Two years later....

Wow I can't believe it's been over 2 years since our last blog post here!! To be honest I think that Covid has just removed 18 months without any memory of it so we'll just call it 6 months!!!

Anyway I hope that whoever reads this is well and doing ok after the historical pandemic we have just/are currently living through. Our apologies for not contributing to the Games Workshop universe in any way over the last couple of years but a lot has happened - just not much in the way of Warhammer!

I (James) have just been working solidly. I am a teacher in a special school so we have been in full time all the way through but just much busier as the extra Covid responsibilities and risks have increased our workload.

Steve has also been working solidly in his school as he has had to be bringing the school up to date tech wise for online learning and working from home.

Dave has been involved in his own engineering career and has been doing lots of GW stuff but has focused on his own projects and Instagram page (@dave_the_dr) and getting involved in the community as he lives in Nottingham and we haven't been active at all!

Rich has been an international jetsetter! He now lives and works in Jordan and has a new family home in Orkney!!! This has obviously impacted his hobby time!

Anyway so here we are and I thought I'd try to write down some updates as to what we're up to as and when, to both keep me interested in the hobby and also to hopefully provide some interesting content to read for others. It's been such a long time since I was involved with 40k I thought it might be interesting to share a little of my journey back into it over the coming months.

I have to say that it's a scary prospect to reintegrate back into 40k as things have changed so much since I last played and it's a quite intimidating prospect to get updated and get back into the game. I wonder if many people feel this way and if GW lose any custom because it's a difficult game to get back into once you're out?

There's no doubt that the volume and speed of releases are incredible but just how alienating is it to those, like me, who haven't properly played since 5th, 6th or 7th edition? I did get the 8th rulebook but only played a couple of games. On the plus side I have been playing Necromunda with Steve which is absolutely brilliant and I'll also be bringing our progress on that side of things too.

If anyone wants to chip in and help or offer their experiences please comment below and I'll gladly bet a conversation going.

I look forward to posting again soon,

Adios!

fourdadsoftheapocalypse.blogspot.co.uk – A blog about Warhammer 40k and the Horus Heresy by four Dads

Eversor Assassin - Painting the evil little blighter!

The finished model. See more pics and find out how I painted him/her/it below...

The finished Eversor Assassin

Quick update as the Mantic Terrain Crate scenery grows with more magnets!

Here is a quick video showing how the Mantic Terrain Crate Scenery is growing after I received some more magnets this week.

It is completely modular and can be altered at will. The strength of the magnets is impressive too allowing 2 walkways to join together across a gap which will hold a fair amount of weight.

Magnets!!! - Terrain crate Gang Warzone from Mantic - Part 3

As you may know I am in the process of putting together the Gang Warzone Terrain Crate from Mantic Games (bought from Goblin Games) and have been documenting the process so far in part 1 here and part 2. This blog post is all about magnetising this scenery pack to make it truly modular. At the end there is a short video showing how the few pieces I have magnetised fit together and how strong they are - happy reading!

The Gang Warzone Set

Disclaimer - Later on I have included a few videos to show what I have done with the magnets as it's quite hard to explain in text and much easier to show instead - I accept no responsibility for the adverse effects of my voice on anyone's health. Apologies also for having to use Youtube, the file sizes of the videos were too big to upload to the blog.

Recap
My vision was for a cheap, good looking set of industrial terrain to use for both Necromunda and Warhammer 40k. Also I wanted the terrain to be completely modular so that I could arrange it however I wanted individually for each game I play.

If you have been following then you will know that the terrain is well priced and very well detailed for the price. I really like the 'boxy' look although I understand that some people may not like this look. It is fairly easy to paint with car paints from Halfords which also makes it cheap too.

The paints I used

At the current moment the terrain is at a basic level of painting which would look fine for a game - I have sprayed the base colours on (part 2) for a weathered look and have now painted all of the silver parts in Leadbelcher which just needs washing with Nuln Oil.

Metal bits painted - Nuln Oil needed

Painting and weathering - Hairspray & Salt - Terrain crate Gang Warzone from Mantic - Part 2

Following on from the discovery from Goblin Games and unboxing of this kit in part 1 HERE I got right on and started painting. I had no real idea how to paint this terrain other than that I wanted to get it done fairly quickly as I was excited about putting it together and playing with it!

I turned to the dads and asked their advice and Dave came up with the idea of using Halfords car paints for ease of use and cheapness (£6.50 a can). Rich and Steve came up with a colour scheme of mustard yellow - kind of like the colour scheme on the box. I haven't got an airbrush though so Dave suggested to use the hairspray and salt weathering method instead. Now I haven't done this before so thought it would be exciting to give it a go!

Firstly I split the bits up into four parts and blu-tacked them to 4 pizza boxes - 2 x wall panels, 1 x floor panels and accessories and 1 x metal bit so that will just be sprayed black then Leadbelcher.

Laying the terrain out ready for spraying

Shipping Containers painting update

Thought I'd post a quick update on my progress on the large crates that I bought from TT Combat with the little hobby time I have had.

For my review of TT Combat's kit check out the 2 posts - Part 1 and Part 2.

I want to get a bunch of these containers and so I decided to use these 2 as my pilots to find the simplest and most effective way of painting them in a short space of time. I thought that I would paint the large crate red as a base as I have a Dragon Red army painter spray can and the small crate blue as I would have to brush paint it.

Priming
I used Chaos black spray to prime the wood and I was surprised that 1 coat was fine for coverage as I had read a lot about lasercut wood soaking up the paint but no such problems here.

Primed with Chaos Black

Base Coat
The red base coat went on fine and provided a good base colour too. This was fairly quick with the can so all good so far.

Based with Army Painter Red Dragon Spray

The blue paint took a little longer to brush on but not significantly to warrant spending any more money for different coloured spray paints. Also I needed to do 2 thin coats because of streaking but again my tank brush coped perfectly well with the task. In all time difference to base coat each crate was only 5 minutes or so longer with the brush.

Based with Mordian Blue by Brush

Astra Militarum Hellhound - Burn for the Emperor!

Recently I managed to stumble across an Astra Militarum Hellhound that I must have bought a while ago. I have always loved these vehicles and wanted one in my Emperor's Feth army so, as I am at home with a broken ankle I thought lets get it on!!

I haven't quite finished it so far but got to a point where it just needs weathering. Here is the story...

1. The beginning

This is how I found the hellhound - unloved at the bottom of a box!! I'd obviously settled on a scheme and started painting the barrels and hull. I can't remember any of this though and had no idea where the turret, instructions or if there was a back half to the vehicle!!!

How I found it

 2. Lets get started!

I wanted a change in colour scheme from both what I was painting (White) and what the rest of my army Chimera's and Leman Russ's looked like (Dawnstone Grey). I figured that these guys are the suicide kings and want to be noticed as they fly across the battlefield in their big petrol tank just waiting to be turned into a mushroom cloud! So I settled on Ulthuan Grey which is a very light grey with elements of a blue hue in it.
I quickly painted this up as a basecoat and then Leadbelchered up all of the metal bits before applying a Nuln oil wash to the metal and an Agrax Earthshade wash to all of the recesses in the model.

TT Combat Large Crates for Necromunda - Review Part 2

Back for part 2 of this review of my first order from TT Combat - a company specialising in laser cut MDF terrain. Again just to remind you that I am in no way affiliated with the company and that this is a totally honest review in my quest to get some decent terrain at a reasonable price.

Recap

If you followed part 1 then you will know that I got to this point with the crates:

Progress at the end of part 1

TT Combat Large Crates for Necromunda - Review Part 1

As you may know Steve and I (James) have been trying to get into Necromunda recently. We both love the game but have struggled over the last few months to get to together to play it. Steve has bought the box set and I have bought an Orlock gang and have nearly finished painting them up.

Orlocks 1

Orlocks 2

Anyway we are currently learning the rules bit by bit and are playing through the missions in the Underhive rulebook. We last played 'The Trap' which is the 2nd mission of the 6 and are planning on getting together more often to play through the next 4 and then progress onto 3D terrain and play a campaign.

Ahead of playing on 3D terrain I have started thinking about get some proper Necromunda style terrain ready to play on. After looking around and realising everything is so damn expensive I stumbled on TTCombat.

I do want to note now that I am NOT affiliated to TT Combat in any way and they won't even know that I am writing this review!!

Throne of Skulls Doubles Tournament Feb 2018 - Part 5 - Best Painted Competitions

Following up from our tournament reports: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 & Part 4. I thought it would be good to write a quick post about the best painted competition for the weekend regarding what happens, what to expect and of course post a few photos of the armies nominated.

We were one of the lucky pairs to be nominated and although we didn't win - we didn't deserve to which you'll understand when you see the other armies involved - it is a very proud moment to see your hard work in the cabinets at the mecca of 40k - Warhammer World.

'The Feth on Parade'

What happens?

During a tournament weekend at Warhammer World there is always a 'Best painted army' competition where the best 6 armies in the room are shortlisted by the organisers and invited to be displayed in the glass cabinets at the front of the gaming hall. During lunchtime on the second day of the tournament everyone in the tournament then votes for their favourite and the army with the best votes wins the title!

Day 2 - Game 5 and Results - Throne of Skulls Doubles Tournament Feb 2018 - Part 4

Sunday - Day 2 - Game 5
During dinner all we could do was sit in silence as we couldn't believe what had just happened in Game 4!! Now it really didn't matter whether we won or lost the last game as the one we just played had been so good!!

We slowly picked ourselves up and wondered if we could still do it though. Could we still win the tournament?

We were slightly delayed in starting our final game as our army was in the cabinets for best painted army and being voted on which didn't help as we were rushing around getting it sorted. Finally we realised we were on Table 14 against a team called 'Twelve inch assault' - so in the top 28 players - not bad!

Army
We found our opponents waiting for us and their army was Salamanders and Ultramarines. We introduced ourselves and had a very lukewarm reception - I'm not sure if this was because we were delayed in getting our army back or whether they were just tired or what but let's just say that the conversation didn't flow. Also when we asked about using the dice app it was a straight refusal with a hint of disgust for suggesting it - fair enough but the game was going to be a lot slower and we had already started late.

Looking at their army they had lots and lots of missiles from elite marines and tanks. They had a grav tank that had loads of missiles, 2 Lascannons and a Gatling Cannon, a Sicarian and a squad of Intercessors that had 39 flamer shots autohitting plus loads of missiles too!
In fact I would hazard a guess to say that once in range they would have more shooting than us. However, we looked at the army and both thought that we had the edge in this game as we outranged their guns and so could possibly do enough damage before they got close. A lot was also going to depend on who got the first turn as both armies could really cripple each other...

Mission
The mission rolled was Resupply Drop
This mission involved 6 objectives of which after the 3rd turn 4 randomly get taken off the table.

Rich and I both quite like this mission as it means that the game is effectively a shooting match with a last minute run for the two objectives - exactly how we like to play!!

Day 2 - Game 4 - Throne of Skulls Doubles Tournament Feb 2018 - Part 3

On Saturday night we had a couple of beers in the oldest Inn in England - Ye Old Trip To Jerusalem underneath Nottingham castle and then moved on to Ludorati which is a board game cafe/bar. I decided to introduce Rich to a really simple but quite tactical game which my daughters and I like to play - Lost Cities. We had a fun time and playing a different game allowed us to wind down a little as all we could think about was Warhammer tactics!

As we walked into Bugmans on Sunday morning and ordered the first of many Lattes we wondered whereabouts in the rankings we might be after our loss. This tournament doesn't just take into account wins and draws but also favourite games and votes for best painted army so, although we thought we might not be able to win, we did believe we could still finish highly. So a good marker would be what table number we would be playing on...

Sunday - Day 2 - Game 4
Table 20 was the result so we knew that at least we were in the top 40 somewhere. Our opponents Jason and Rich duly arrived and we had a good old chat. These guys were playing on the next table to us for the first game of the tournament and so we had already said hello. I had even already said "thakn goodness we're not playing that army"...

Army
Jason and Rich were playing an army called 'Void Rage' which consisted of Dark Eldar and Eldar.
The army consisted of a huge amount of flying or hovering stuff which meant -1 to hit for the flyers and -1 to hit outside of 12" - This was not going to be fun hence my comment of yesterday - Nice to look at though!

Top Gun of the future

Mission and Tactics
The mission was Scorched Earth from the Chapter Approved book.

Day 1 - Games 1, 2 & 3 - Throne of Skulls Doubles Tournament Feb 2018 - Part 2

Following on from our first post HERE about our participation with our Astra Militarum army in the Warhammer World Doubles tournament in Feb 2018 and Rich's post about slow play and our experience at combating in the tournament HERE I am going to cover the games we played across 2 posts.

On day 1 we were scheduled to play 3 games and this is the story of those three games - not in massive detail but a selection of highlights and a recap of our experiences of each game. Day 2 will be covered in a future post.

Prelude
We were going to the tournament to win. Have a great time yes, but win. As you may know from our previous posts Rich and I didn't have much time to play before the tournament but had done our research and preparation as much as we possibly could and were ready...

Friday Night
We had arranged to get to Warhammer World on the Friday night to play a quick friendly(?) game against Dave (@errantwolfdave) and Chris (@ChrisFrosin) to test our theories and strategies and to give me my first play of Astra Militarum in 8th edition - eek! (Our list is HERE if you are interested)

The game was super fun and was great to meet Chris and his Necrons for the first time and catch up with Dave and his Space Wolves. We lost!! What?!! How did we lose??!! To be honest I expected to struggle a bit as this was the first time that we had played our army and we made a few mistakes:

Early on against the pesky Necrons

- We deployed poorly - it was our first time and we set a screen of infantry up but too close in to our corner deployment which meant that we left a couple of tanks outside the line!!
- We put Pask on the side closest to the enemy and so he got targeted straight away.
- The main mistake - we took too long and run out of time! We played 4 turns and if you have read Rich's post (HERE) you will know we need 5 at least! If we had played that extra turn we should have won the game. Dave had no models left on the board and Chris only had a handful whereas we had most of our army left. Gah!

Overall a good game though and very tight. It was a good benchmark for what we needed to work on for the next day so we swiftly reconvened to the pub to talk tactics...

Dealing with Slow Playing at Tournaments and Dice Rolling Apps

As you’ll have seen on our previous post HERE, Dad’s James and Rich visited the Warhammer World 40k Doubles tournament in early February. We went with the focus on having fun but winning and so did a lot of prep beforehand, not much gaming as we were struggling for time, but a lot of other prep including getting solid strategies for each of the missions, planning out all the stuff we needed to remember in sequence for a turn (See below for our own cheat sheet for our army) and even pre-deployment. But in all this prep time, in the few practice games I did get, I noticed that neither myself or my opponent were getting through the turns quickly enough - one game didn’t get past turn 2 as my opponent spent 75mins on his first turn! This could totally ruin our chances as we have found throughout all of the editions in 40k that the Astra Militarum (our army) always get stronger the longer the game goes on. The amount of units available and the options that the army has means that turn 5 has always proven to be crucial to the Astra Militarum for securing a victory.

Now our tournament was at 2,000 points with a strict 2.5hrs on the clock. This would mean an average of 15 min turns per team and that excludes set up time. We knew from experience that if you spent 30 - 45 mins each on turn 1, you were unlikely to ever get to that magic turn 5 (even if there were fewer models to deal with for the remainder of the game).

To tackle this, we did a number of things, including seeking advice on the Competitive 40k Facebook Group and Reddit. We have collated these thoughts and our own experiences and have listed some of the processes we put in place during the tournament and our opinions on some other time saving ideas below:

Warhammer 40k Throne of Skulls Doubles Tournament - 10/11th Feb 2018

Just after Christmas Rich and I decided to enter the Warhammer 40k Throne of Skulls Doubles Tournament in February. We haven't played competitively since 5th edition back in 2010 & 2011. Since the onset of young children in general our hobby time has been limited but we thought that it was about time for us to compete once again.

Motivation
In previous years we have always focused mainly on painting and trying to win best painted at the event. 4 times we entered and 4 times we were nominated but never won - always the bridesmaid...sigh! This time around however we have decided to be competitive and actually try to win the thing! Even though I have been playing Blood Angels since 8th began and Rich hasn't played many games of 8th due to his focus on his Imperial Fists 30k army we decided to resurrect our first love - The Emperor's Feth Astra Militarum army. Both of us love this army and it has been good for us to have a rest and paint something else over the past few years.

James' half of a previous doubles tournament back in 5th edition

Pulling out the army has brought back many memories of tournament play - getting in the top ten  and then being crippled by our opponent seizing the initiative in the last game, rushing through the last turns to complete a victory with seconds to spare, rolling unbelievably hot with 2 Manticores and destroying an Ork army in one turn (sorry!), etc. etc...

However an army from 5th edition is not one that will suffice now and so we started to do some research...

Astra Militarum in 8th Edition - Part 1 Review

I have spent the last few years focused on the Horus Heresy and kept gaming with 40k by just transferring my codex over, well that was until 8th came along. I tried using the fandex which is brilliant work, but it just wasn't the same.

So it was time for me to unpack my Astra Militarum (still getting used to calling them that) and take a look through the 8th edition rules properly and the AM Codex. Suffice to say I am loving them!

I've been looking through the codex, listening to podcasts (Forge The Narrative), and scanning through various blogs to look for consistent great units. With a tournament in mind next year and a desire to get a half decent sense of what makes a good army in mind I am embarking upon a review of what I think works well in the codex for me and fits with the models I have already (although I'm not ruling out the odd addition here and there).

8th Edition and the Horus Heresy - a gaming crossroads!

I’ve played a few games now and feel I’ve seen enough to give a view, at the least from the perspective of the Imperial Fists anyway. I used to play friends who had 40k armies at 7th no problem. My army was fairly well balanced with theirs and the difference in genres didn’t seem to affect us at all. So it was with some trepidation I tried out my army with the Horus Heresy fandex (which is too casual a description really for the great work that the guys have put into this - take a look at http://heresy30k.invisionzone.com/topic/10351-the-8ed-heresy-project-legiones-astartes/) against a Blood Angels and Imperial Guard Army. 

General thoughts on playing 8th from the Horus Heresy

- it’s got the potential to play fast, although because we were still learning the rules it wasn’t much faster than 7th, but the potential is there.

- the psychic phase seems much simpler - I’ve not used Psykers for a long time so it’s difficult for me to compare. But compared to 7th I picked up how to do psychic stuff in no time at all so it’s got to be better than before. 

- templates gone - I like this, much quicker all around both as it doesn’t mean you need to worry about bunching up squads and it’s quicker in the shooting phase to play with largely similar results (although see my comment later!). 

- no scattering for deep strike - yippee!

- turn 1 charges - yippee!

Beautiful Models v Time - The ultimate rivalry

You might well talk about Man Utd v Liverpool, The Bengals v The Steelers or The Yankees v The Red Sox but I think it is universally given that Beautiful models v Time is the ultimate rivalry in history.

The greatest rivalry?

I came up against this particular rivalry once again in my life the other day. This time of year (September - December) is generally my busiest time. It is the start of a new school year, we have many birthdays through October and November in our family and then Christmas hits. During this time of year I get precious little hobby time and when I do I need to be very efficient and focused in what I do. It is usually in these situations where I hate Games Workshop the most!

As you may know I have been working on expanding the Death Company for my Flesh Tearers army this year. It has been an incredibly slow process for me but I have been grinding through them as the year has gone by. Finally I had got the main torso's finished and in my hour spare I thought I could make some good headway on the arms and weapons and they would be very close to getting on the table.

Finished torso's on the Death Company

Painting Non Metallic Metal (NMM) Power Swords - My journey!

I have previously posted about painting power swords (here) a few months ago as I experimented with painting a lightning effect:

Death Company with lightning effect power sword

At the time I thought that it was cool but I am having second thoughts as I have decided to paint another 6 Death Company all with power swords and having 2 squads with 3 power swords in each squad.

On close inspection my power sword looks a bit lame and so I did a bit of research online to find some that I might like to emulate. My favourites were these:

40k Flesh Tearers v Grey Knights - 8th edition comment on the Grey Knight Codex

 The last time my Flesh Tearers played against Steve's Grey Knights was well back in 7th Edition and I got well and truly tabled in about 4 turns! I was determined to get my revenge as Steve wanted to try out his brand new Grey Knight Codex for the first time.