Well, I'm back...

Back from my trip to Europe to celebrate my 10-year wedding anniversary. I have loads of cool photos to share for various reasons, and will do so in the coming weeks.

Today, however, I wanted to highlight the first two armies completed for NOVA Open Charitable Foundation's 2015 Charity Army Raffles! These two armies are being collectively referred to as The Battle for the Craftworld - the Sons Of Orar Space Marines and the Alaitoc Eldar.

TICKETS GO ON SALE THIS WEDNESDAY, JULY 1! PLEASE HEAD TO THIS LINK ON WEDNESDAY TO BUY YOUR TICKETS:

Small, composite photos are shown here:

And we've been showing off more detailed photos of the various elements of the armies over on the NOCF blog. You can check out all of our posts on them via these links:

Introductory post - HERE

First look at the Sons Of Orar - HERE

First look at the Alaitoc Eldar - HERE

Feature: Sons Of Orar Heavy Support One - HERE

Feature: Alaitoc Eldar Heavy Support One - HERE

Feature: Reminder about raffle tickets and Sons Of Orar Troops One - HERE

Last year we raised in the vicinity of $10,000 for various charities including: Doctors Without Borders, The Wounded Warrior Project, and Fischer House. This year we'd like to raise even more for these great charities, so please get behind us by:

• Buying tickets in the various raffles.

• Telling ALL of your wargaming friends to buy tickets.

• Spreading the word about what we are trying to achieve. 

Thank you all for your time : )

And our thanks to our sponsors who contributed to this project. 
Please support them, so that they can continue to support us!

• Atlantis Games & Comics • Element Games • Secret Weapon Miniatures • KR Multicase

Cheers

Dave

Geek Nation Tours - Battlefields of Waterloo 2015 tour!

Well, if I haven't told you about it before, I can tell you about it now....

I'm currently enjoying the awesomeness that is the Geek Nation Tours - Battlefields of Waterloo tour (celebrating the 200th Anniversary of the battle today, actually). We've done soooooo much in the last three days that I'm struggling to keep up. We've visited many important campaign sites, including Ligny, Quatre Bras, Genappe, Le Caillou, La Haye Sainte, the Allied line, Papelotte, and Plancenoit. We've also visited a few other sites not connected directly to the campaign, such as the Cantillon Brewery, the Lion's Mound, the Panorama, and the brand new Waterloo 2015 museum.

Additionally, I presented two painting classes on Tuesday, thanks to support from Warlord Games and The Army Painter!

So, it has been a lot of fun, with a few more days to go. I just hope I can keep up with it all!

Cheers
Dave

PS. I'll be putting together a full report on the tour for Wargames Illustrated once I return stateside : )

New Dragon Forge Kickstarter!

As many of you might know, my Mechanicum/Adeptus Mechanicus forces all stand tall on the wonderful Tech Deck bases from Dragon Forge Design. I've been using these bases for three years or so now and love them dearly. Jeff has, after much pleading, finally sculpted some great new bases for the line that he is now releasing as part of his latest Kickstarter (launched this morning, if I'm not mistaken). He asked me to paint up some examples, and here they are : )

50mm rounds

60mm ovals (perfect for Skittarii snipers)

75mm oval - One

75mm oval - Two

75mm oval - Three

80mm round

105mm oval - One (perfect for Ironstriders)

105mm oval - Two (perfect for Ironstriders)

120mm oval

130mm round (perfect for Dunecrawlers)

The second Knight base in the series.

So head on over to the Kickstarter and support a small business : )

Cheers

Dave

NOCF 2015 - Drop Pod tutorial!

A little while back I posted about assembling some Drop Pods for one of this year's NOVA Open Charitable Foundation Charity Raffle armies - The Sons Of Orar Space Marines, to be exact. At the time I asked if anyone would be interested in a walk-through of my build and paint. There were a few who expressed interest, so here we are : )

After going through and cleaning all the parts for three Drop Pods, I started to create the sub-assemblies. You can see them above. They basically breakdown to:

• Engine and stormbolter
• Center console and harnesses
• Base and doors
• Five fins

Here's what it all looks like when three sets of sub-assemblies are gathered in a pile. After this, all parts (except the fins) were primed black. More on the fins later.

The bases, engines, and consoles were all heavily dry brushed with VGC Tinny Tin.

Everything was then dry brushed with AP Gun Metal.

I then washed the parts with my "super secret wash".

And drybrushed everything with VMA Aluminium.

I flipped over the base and repainted the armor panels black...

...and then masked off the engine base.

I sprayed the tips of the doors with Mephiston Red  (not pictured) and then I used a custom cut mask/sheet of styrene, and sprayed the rest of each door.

Here's a shot of the doors before removing the masking tape.

I then painted the edges of edge internal door with Averland Sunset (shaded with Skrag Brown).

These hazard stripes were hand painted - nine per side, 90 per Pod, 270 in all.

Back to the fins. I primed them white, shaded then with some Mechanics Grey, painted the panels black, masked them off and finally sprayed them with Mephiston Red.

After some detailing on the parts, here's a look at a set ready for assembly.

On each of the center consoles I painted a silhouette of an Eldar Craftworld, with three glowing points representing the three Drop Pods.

They Pods were then assembled; glue the consoles to the base then one fin in place; glue the engine to the fin then glue the remaining fins in place.

I then gave the Drop Pods a healthy dose of chipping and weathering.

And here they are. All ready to deliver Sons Of Orar directly to the heart of the Alaitoc Craftworld.

In the coming days we'll finally have photos of two of the NOCF Charity Raffle armies ready to go up online. When we do I'll be shouting it from the rooftops! : )

Cheers
Dave

So, I hear you are after some tanks...

As has been the story for the first half of the year, I've been incredibly busy with work during May. It shows no sign of slowing over the summer either. Sounds like a good problem to have : ) The only thing is that it does impact the rhythm of there blog, and for that I apologize.

Anyway, I thought I'd show you all the American Tank Company for Flames of War that I painted in April for a client. I learned quite a few things last year when working on this Armored Recon Force that I was able to apply to these tanks.

Above are the command tanks (Abrams is on the left). Below are the tank platoons, with a mix of different Sherman variants and Chaffees.

Here's the artillery support in the form of a battery of Priests.

The anti-tank support.

And a couple of objectives.

Finally, a tank I had never seen before - the T28 Super Heavy. This massive tank was initially designed as a breakthrough tank that could smash the Siegfried Line in Europe. After a conference in March 1944, five of the tanks were ordered. They were not ready by VE-Day and American commanders considered they might be handy in the planned invasion of the Japanese mainland. Only two prototypes were ever made, and one of them burned up during testing. The only surviving prototype is in now apparently at Fort Benning, Georgia.

My client likes to play around with various "what if?" situations, so wanted one of these cool models (from Heer46) to round out his collection.

I hope you like them : )

Cheers
Dave