40K - Alpha Legion Chaos Space Marine Reinforcements

A few additions to my Alpha Legion Army today, the most impressive of which is this old style predator below.  Based on the origanal rhino chassis with metal add-ons.  I've added a couple more chaos bits too it as well.  Armed with an autocannon and two heavy bolters, it saw action for the first time today and performed well.

 

Next we have the chaos lord from dark vemgeance.  Like al the dark vengeace stuff is a good model and this also means I've finished the chaos side of the boxed set.

 

And finally two of the first models I ever bought way back in the early 90's.  These are two classic renegade space marine, there was origannly a third one with horns, but I'm not sure where he's got to.  They're a bit small compared to the current range of models, but do add a nice bit of character to my force.

 

Dreadball - Marauder Team

I've managed to finish painting the last of the season one teams ahead of season two arriving, this time it's the marauders, or as they are more obviously called the Orx and Goblins.

I've left them till last as although I like the models I find them hard to play with.  It's always fun to bash people with the orx guards, but trying to score with the goblin jacks is not fun.  That's balance for you though.  As will all my dreadball figures they've been given a coat of gloss varnish to help them survive the rigours of play

I've still got the 8 MVP's from season one to paint, but as I've not even used one yet they're not a priority.

40K Chaos Space Marine Alpha Legion Hellbrute

It's finally warmed up a bit and that means it'll soon be the season for full on wargames (since my big table had to move to the garage it's been board games in the winter) and I've been inspired to start finishing off some 40K and warhammer projects thats have been languishing at the back of the painting table. 

The first of these to be completed is the Hellbrute from the dark vengeance boxed set.  It's a great model and a nice improvement on the old chaos dreadnaughts, it actually looks properly chaosy now, before they were too Imperial.  Unfortunatley I've never had any real success on the battlefeild with dreadnaughts of any variety, I find they're just not worth their points, still it's a nice model for the shelf.

Fishguard Fort

It's been a bit quiet around here lately, and thats mainly because I've been off on my Travels again, this time to Pembrokeshire in south wales.  The first military site we visited we actually found by acident as we drove through fishgaurd.

Fishgaurd fort was built around 1780 in response to a pirate raid and was maintained until the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815. It origanlly had 8 guns of which 4 remain today, and was crewed by three 'invalid gunners' from woolwich. I'm not sure what invalid gunner means and how effective they would have been at defending fishguard!

As well as the gun emplacement one building, which looks like a magazine remain mostly intact and there are two walls of another building remaining (possibly the barracks).

Army Focus - Star Wars Miniatures Imperials

A few weeks ago I posted a couple of silly pics of my star wars minis AT-AT in the snow.  It generated a lot more interest than expected so in the latest installment of my occasional 'army focus' series we have my Imperial army for Star Wars Miniatures.

Army might not be the right word actually, as actually playing with all this is one battle would be practically impossible, collection might be a better word.  SWM was very much a skirmish game and got clunky at anything more than about 20 minis per side, we did play a few larger battles, but they never seemed to work properly.

Too many Stormtroopers? No such thing!

 

The Imperials are very much the grunt force of SWM's and you find yourself feilding a lot less named characters than you do in the other factions.  To play really well you also need to combine the right commander effects to make your somewhat useless grunts become less useless.

Which Vader shall we play with today?

The Imperials do have some (anti)heroes, it's just that most of them are different versions of Darth Vader.

SWM also makes full use of Star Wars expanded universe and timeline, which means the Imperial faction can conatain poeple several hundered years apart, as well as various dark side force users and specialist troops not seem in the movies.

The future of this force? well there isn't one really, SWM is pretty well dead, and although I still enjoy playing I just don't get as much gaming in as I'd like and SWM's seems to get pushed to the back of the queue behind more 'current' games, which is a shame, it's a game I miss.