Heroes of Armageddon - It's all coming together!

The Heroes of Armageddon Charity Project is starting to reach "critical mass". It's my favorite part of the whole thing, as visions of armies start to become clear, and models from across the country (or even around the globe) start to trickle in to "Build Team Headquarters" : )

Below you can see the bulk of the armor for the Steel Legion army. There are four Leman Russ variants, and NINE Chimeras : ) It does this old treadhead's heart good to see so much 40K mech in one place!

With the Steel Legion army, I knew that one of the most important factors for creating a great, cohesive force would be to have a solid looking armor base. It's the first thing you'll be dropping on the table, after all. To that end the vehicles were kept with within a fairly tight group of hobbyists, to ensure we could get maximum cohesion. I should also mention, there are still two Hellhounds, a Vendetta, and a couple of BIG surprises to add to the iron fist above.

Let's take a closer look at all the vehicles we have so far. The Leman Russes are from the 23rd Steel Legion Tank Regiment.

Leman Russ Vanquisher (23-1)

- Assembled by Bob Weiss

- Painted by Brien Dulaney, Joe Marshall, and Dave Taylor

Leman Russ Executioner (23-7)

- Assembled by Bob Weiss

- Painted by Brien Dulaney, Joe Marshall, and Dave Taylor

Leman Russ MBT (23-4 & 23-5)

- Assembled by Josh Roberts

- Painted by Brien Dulaney, Joe Marshall, and Dave Taylor

Chimera Armored Transport (01)

- Assembled and painted by Justin McCoy (of Secret Weapon Miniatures)

Justin really went to town on this model. He was the first to tackle the paintjob and really set the tone for all the other work we did on these vehicles. It is only fitting then, that this vehicle has been designated as the ride of Yarrick and his Commissariat Bodyguard. In my mind, this is the Chimera he used during the Second War for Armageddon, pulled out of retirement for a second go around.

The following Chimeras are all transports for the fighting men of the 276th Steel Legion Regiment, 4th Company, 1st & 2nd Platoons.

Chimera Armored Transports (276-4-C through to 276-4-7)

- Assembled by Dave Taylor

- Painted by Brien Dulaney, Joe Marshall, and Dave Taylor

Loads of armor and transports just itching to get to grips with Ghazghkull and his Orke horde!

So, if you think you'd like to have a chance to win these tanks (and do a lot of good at the same time), please click on the Paypal link in the top right corner and donate a lot of money to Doctors Without Borders!

More to come : )

Cheers

Dave

The Artillery Train of Nuln (Part 9)

Grab a cup of coffee, sit down, and relax...there's quite a lot in this post : )

As faithful readers will remember, last Saturday I took my army to the GW store at White Marsh to compete in the Armies On Parade store heat. I was the winner on the day and you can check out my shots of the cool looking Nurgle force I was up against in this post here. Well, I managed to get some photos of finished pieces last Saturday and tonight I finally have a chance to put them up here.

The photo above is the entire force as it was displayed at the store, complete with flocking.

Some of you may remember the Helstorm Rocket Battery I had painted up. I was looking for a few suggestions regarding a design for the back of my merchant's cloak. You provided lots of great ideas, some of which I really wanted to try out, but time and the primary color (the turquoise) didn't really help out with the decision making. Fortunately I spotted the perfect thing to key off. I simply repeated the Empire eagle motif, found on the back of the "rocket board", in a slightly lighter version of the turquoise. This way I could create a direct visual link, and not feel like I was introducing too many other colors to the piece. Rest assured though, those ideas will surface again.

I also added a small N in the lower right corner of his cloak. Just something for a little fun.

The next piece I finished up was the second cannon. I wanted this crew to have a stronger sense of urgency, as though the enemy was almost upon them, the barrel is loaded with grapeshot, and it's almost time for the last ditch defense.

I figured that with such a short range war machine in their hands, the Helblaster crew would also be about to mount a desperate defense (or run away as the case may be). The guy with the barrel swab has obviously had little weapons training, unlike the gunner reaching for the sword in the rack, but both are showing a great deal more courage than the third gunner about to flee the scene.

The Steam Tank came out very nicely I think, considering it was a bit of a "Frankenstein" job. I had to stitch together various parts from the plastic and metal kits, as well as a few sheets of plasticard. The dark metal of the body was painted in a slightly different way to how I painted the rest of the dark metal on the other war machines. I mixed Boltgun Metal with Flames of War/Vallejo German Grey. This gave me a very dark and smooth basecoat that looked great once I added a couple of layers of thinned Badab Black.

After checking out the photos above, I realized I hadn't named the beast, so I scoured the internets to find the names of the original Steam Tanks, and immediately settled on Pride of Nuln. Very fitting.

So, I was nearing the home stretch. Just a few characters to go. Here's my Battle Standard Bearer, regally bedecked in his shiny gold armor. I knew his uniform and the banner were going to be black and I really wanted something that was going to pop. The gold works really well, and has it's own lovely depth added by applying two thin coats of Secret Weapon's Amethyst wash to the recesses.

I decided that this relatively small force (for a city the size of Nuln) must serve defending one of the numerous gates or waterways into the city. For no particular reason I settled on the North Gate, so this army is now "The Northgate Defenders". Appropriately enough, a portcullis and a cannon are the symbols on the Army Standard.

And finally (or so I thought), I had to finish up my Engineers. A friend of mine had recently lambasted me for not running Engineers with my cannons. He went so far as to say that it was the main reason I'd lost so many games with the army. I dug through my boxes of Empire bits and put together these two daring students of blackpowder from plastic bits alone. I'm quite happy with them. Of course, in my last game they helped kill a Hellpit Abomination, which promptly came back to life with six wounds and rampaged through my line. Thanks for the advice John ; )

The last thing I had to do was finish off the "planter boxes" I'd made. Almost all of the bases in this army are from Dragon Forge Design (their Temple line). Jeff was kind enough to let me know where his secret stash of textured plasticard was sourced from (the UK actually) and I had to make a couple of orders to get enough for the display base. I had a few sheets left over and knew I needed to add some height to the terrain. I painted up two of the twisted GW plastic trees and built these two "planters" out of the textured (and some untextured) plasticard. A little bit of putty, paint, and tufts of grass and they were good to go. They are separate from the table for ease of transport.

I hope you've enjoyed the tour through the latest additions to the Artillery Train. The Marienburg Landship is slowly grinding its way towards my painting table.

Stay tuned...

Cheers

Dave

Heroes of Armageddon - Gale Force Nine templates

On Friday a nice big box was delivered to my front door from Gale Force Nine! When I opened it up it was full of the templates for the Heroes of Armageddon project. One set for each of the four armies.

I quickly jumped in and grabbed out everything for the Steel Legion army. Here they are: a Turn Counter, a set of Deployment Zone markers, one of GF9's great Multi-Template, and one of the great GF9 T.A.C. Templates!

Very exciting stuff. There's a set for each of the armies, so the four winners will have matching equipment to go with their spectacular force.

If you are an event organizer and are interested in getting some custom etched templates (or markers or counters) as a cool piece of swag for your event, you can contact the Battlefront Global Events Manager, Joe Krone, at joe dot krone at battlefront dot co dot nz

If you're a store owner, you can talk with your Battlefront Customer Service rep. Note, you'll need a minimum of 24 items to get started.

Thanks very much to the team at Gale Force Nine for these great additions to the HOA Project.

Donate now! : )

Cheers

Dave

Armies on Parade, here I come!

Ok, the "first round" of Armies on Parade judging took place in the North American Hobby Centers yesterday. I decided to take my army to White Marsh as it has really been my default store since the closure of the Glen Burnie Battle Bunker.

When I arrived, Scott (the manager) let me know that there were only one or two others who had expressed an interest in entering. This was a little disappointing, so I headed across the street to grab a quick beer with a friend and former colleague, until the set-up time arrived. When it did, I hustled back over and set up my army across from a young guy fresh home from his first hectic year at college, Daniel.

I will admit it felt a bit like I was, as they say in the tournament scene, clubbing a baby seal.

Unlike my six months of on-and-off work on this army (of almost 150 models) and my 20 years of painting experience, I discovered Daniel had only started his army two weeks ago, upon returning home for the summer. Even with only two weeks on the force (and about three years of hobby experience) Daniel put in great showing, with some fun conversions and a really cool looking display board. Here are some shots of his board and army.

After we'd laid out our armies, Daniel and I had a great chat, exchanging information about various aspects of our armies and boards (both lamenting the drying time of Water Effects). He's a really nice guy, and it certainly made me feel old when he asked me how long I've been in the hobby. I realized it's been 20 years (give or take a month). Crazy.

In the end, I was victorious. Thank you to GW for running the event, to Daniel for his valiant effort, to Brien for the use of his airbrush, to all of you who gave me encouragement along the way, and to my secret weapon...my Powder Monkey t-shirt. Looks like I'll be wearing this one to Games Day Chicago!

Cheers

Dave

Heroes of Armageddon - Ordering the Battlefoam Bag!

Things are really starting to ramp up for the Heroes of Armageddon Charity Project. Finished models are starting to trickle in from the build teams, and blog posts are starting to accelerate.

I figured now was a good time for a spotlight on one of our BIG sponsors, Battlefoam!

Last year Battlefoam provided the P.A.C.K. 720 and custom foam trays for the Storm Wardens project. To get a closer look at the bag we got last year, check out this post here.

Last year we had a lot of odd pieces and required quite a few custom trays. This year it's very different. Battlefoam are supplying us with FOUR bags, and the trays to fill them : ) Very generous stuff from Romeo and his team. As I'm taking care of the Steel Legion I figured it was finally time to get my order in. Fortunately almost all of the IG models are pretty standard, so my plan is to provide Romeo with a list of the types of "slots" we'll need to pack it all away, and then let him (or his chief custom guy) work out how to best fit lots of stuff into a small space.

There are a few key things to point out in my thinking though, so I'll run through those now.

• Custom infantry slots - although there are almost 100 infantry models in the army, only three of them fall outside the normal sizes: the standard bearer, Commissar Yarrick (being painted by Golden Demon winner Kirill Zhilkov), and the Master of Ordnance (being sculpted and painted by four-time Slayer Sword winner Chris Borer). In the pic above you can see the outlines I traced for the standard bearer and Commissar Yarrick (based on a WIP shot from Kirill), and the vague outline for the MoO (based on a description from Chris). I've not only put on the dimensions for the MoO slot, but when I scanned the sheet (to be able to email it to Battlefoam) I also added in the side of my cutting mat, showing the millimeter scale just so that the Battlefoam guys know exactly how big these slots are.

• Other infantry on 25mm bases - Taking a good look through the army list I started to add up what I'd need, here's a rough list:

Company Command: 5 slots (including a commissar, but not the standard bearer or MoO)

Stormtroopers: 12 slots (10 for the initial squad, plus 2 for the extra meltagunners being painted)

2 x Platoon Commands: 3 slots each (as each has a heavy weapons team)

5 x Infantry Squads: 8 slots each (as each squad has a heavy weapons team)

2 x Savlar Chem Dogs: 10 slots each

1 x Armageddo Ork Hunters: 10 slots

This is a total of 93 models. Just in case the winner wants to add a squad of their own, I'm asking for 110 slots for standard, 25mm based infantry.

• Heavy Weapons teams - there are 7 heavy weapons teams in the list, and assuming the winner might add another, I'm asking for 8 slots. As almost all of the Steel Legion heavy weapons are short (the teams are either kneeling or prone) I'll let Battlefoam know these heavy weapons teams can be "double-stacked".

• Sentinels - easy enough, we have 3. When combined with the double-stacked heavy weapons team, this will mean there should end up being 7 60mm round slots.

• Chimera-based Vehicles - there are 9 Chimeras and 2 Hellhound/Devil Dogs, I'm going to add one slot "to grown on" and request 12 slots for Chimeras.

• Leman Russes - easy again, we have 4. The important thing to note here is that we have 4 slots for Leman Russes without sponsons, one of these is a Vanquisher (for the barrel).

• Valkyrie/Vendetta - 1 slot for this one.

• Superheavies - we have TWO superheavies for the Steel Legion army, but I'll tell you more about these later : )

I can't wait until the bag arrives. Rest assured I'll do a great post on it, just like the Storm Wardens bag from last year.

Until then, there are two things I need you to do:

a) donate to the Heroes of Armageddon project by clicking on the drop down Paypal button in my top right navigation.

b) head along to the GW at White Marsh, MD, USA, tomorrow afternoon around 4-5pm to vote for the best army entered in the Armies On Parade competition. : )

Cheers

Dave