Visitors

Hey Folks.

For those of you who will be in the Wellington region on Monday,  The Perry twins and Adam Troke will be in the Wellington Games Workshop store from 4pm.  The Perrys are two of the most prolific, and in my opinion, talented sculptors out there.  Adam Troke is a writer who has worked on many of the Lord of the Rings books and the High Elves army book.  If you have questions about sculpting or rules development Monday is a great chance to have your questions answered by the pros.

Cheers

Ben

Ooo, that'd be cool.

For those who don't know me, I have a bit of an interest in Model Railroad.  Just recently I've been thinking about trying to do a small 40k model rail layout.

My interest in the idea was originally sparked when I saw these images in the Apocalypse book a few years back.

I shelved the idea back then as being too much work (not to mention ongoing monetary concerns) But now, with the 40k city terrain, trees, craters and the awesome Realm of battle table sections, the idea not only looks way more plausable, but heaps of fun too.

So heres what I've got in mind.  First off, get hold of three or four realm of battle boards.  Use these to arrange a shelf layout 2ft deep by 6ft (possibly with an L layout using the fourth board.)  Build up a raised track bed with Styrene and bits and pieces of City terrain and the like.  Lay the track similar to the way you might have a crossing, paved surrounds etc.  Assemble buildings and other scenic elements utilising the 40k city terrain, Trees, Statues, Barricades etc.  For the Trains,  Scratch build the bodies of the loco's and wagons using plasticard and put these on HO chassis. Then I would add characters and scenes to the layout.  A gang fight might be a good option, using the Necromunda figures.

Obviously right now this is a bit of a pipe dream, but I'm really liking the idea and I thought I'd share it with you all as a way of combining interests.

Later Folks

Ben

Tell me what you want.

Hey folks.  After having looked over a few comments in various scattered contacts out there, I've been getting the impression that there are a few people out there who'd like to see some coverage on the fundamentals of painting and modeling.  To this end I'm envisaging a couple of step by step articles covering the assembly, preparation, painting and detailing of a Spacemarine or similar.

If there is something you'd like to see please contact me at Bellum.Malleus@gmail.com or post something on the Bellum Malleus Facebook page.

Cheers

Ben

This week in Warhammer...

I've decided in addition to my planned how-to articles and the like, I'll also try to give a weekly update as to what I'm working on, reading and thinking about.  This week I've been working on heaps of stuff, far more than my usual load in fact.

I did some more work on my Chaos Knights.  I'm trying a different colour scheme with these, adding gold to the palette.  I've also been experimenting with the application and I believe I've come up with the best way of doing these which I'll cover in an upcoming episode of Path of Chaos.

I've been working pretty hardcore on the previously mentioned Pirate Conversion Competition.  I've added a bunch of little details to the base to really give the model some points of interest.  There are now Barnacles, a rat, a starfish and a crab strategically positioned about the place.  This project over all has been heaps of fun and it's really been pushing my boundries in the hobby.

For the upcoming article on Weathering and Battle Damage, I've been thinking about making a start on a little Codex Spacemarine army.  To this end I've been having a look through various bits of info on some of the more obscure Chapters (being that Dan and Jarrod have already got two of my favourite chapters locked down).  After some consideration I've decided to go with the Raptors.  For those who don't know, I used to have a Raptors army and they are an absolute joy to paint.  They have a colour scheme which really lends itself well to weathering and damage too.  I've started by doing a practice piece which seems to be coming along nicely, and I'm super-detailing a Vindicator to do the Vehicle section of the weathering and battle damage article.

I finally got round to finishing the assembly of my Drop Pod. (yay!)

My Empire army got a bit of further consideration this week too.  Given the amount of fun I've been having with the Pirate Conversion, I wanted to get a bit of Piratey flavour in the army.  I could have just put a few bits through out the Talabecland army and justified it fairly easily, but I decide to shift my focus to Marienburg.  This will give me a chance to do an "Empire" army with a very different feel to the usual ones you see.  I'll switch out the Sigmar cult stuff etc for the cult of Mannan, God of the Sea and Storms.  I'll use lots of Militia to represent ship's crews which have been pressed into the service of the City.  I'll feature a couple of Ship's gun's, and I'll use a bunch of Ogre mecinaries.  Best of all though, the Marienburg livery is every bit as obnoxiously bright as that of Talabecland.  It would be fair to say I'm quite excited about this project, so you can look forward to plenty of posts about them in the future.

I started a conversion for a Vampire Lord.  This project is in the very early stages, but I am using Urien Rakarth as the basis of the model.  I'll fill you in as I get further along the path.

Last but not least I've been picking through my Dark Angles stuff to build a solid thousand point force.  So far I'm looking at a solid core of Tactical marines and some Deathwing terminators, but we'll see what happens.


So that's it.  A busy week all up, but a fairly productive one. Next week I'll be working on my Warriors for the Army builder challenge and continuing with some other projects.  The big News though shall be Dreadfleet.  It drops on Sunday and I am fit to burst I'm so excited.  Go check out the post in What's new today on the GW site for some more info and If you want it, Go Order It NOW! Today is your last chance to advanced order a copy.

Cheers Folks


Ben

(I'll post some pics tomorrow, but right now it's 4.30 am so I'm going to bed)

A Pirate's Life for me!

Avast me matey's. Over the last few days I've been working on a conversion for Games Workshop Wellington's upcoming Pirate conversion competition.  This has been by far and away the most complex conversion I've attempted in many years.  There is more greenstuff on the model, the paint scheme is realatively complex and the posing is difficult,  but the end result (I hope) will be a very cool little model and thus, worth the effort.  Coinciding with the conversion competition is a costume competition, for which I already have something in mind, so in a fit of ill advised enthusiasm I decided to make a conversion of myself as a Pirate Captin


I wanted to have a modeled base for this project so I decided to start there.  I got a cople of broken pieces of sprue and hacked them up to look like broken timber which I arranged in a frame pattern the likes of which you would expect to find if you were to rip up your floor boards.







  On top of these I stuck a base I'd cut them rims off.  I roughed up the edges to give the impression of the board edges.  I then put a thin layer of Greenstuff down on top of that and sculpted in the wood grain and board edges.  I also did some nail holes to really push the idea of there being boards nailed to the frame.
 






I started with pieces from the Empire Militia boxed set.  There are simply heaps of Piratey bits in this box, more than enough for an entire crew, let alone a single model.  I used the long coat torso and cut out his chest so I could give him a doublet like mine.
I also clipped the coat a bit shorter.






I ballooned out his pants to give the impression of Trunk hose.  I built up the top of his head and made a thin ribbon to do the brim.  Sticking this on was a royal pain, but there was no special trick, just a lot of perseverance and quiet swearing. I put a ridge around his ankles to give the impression of shoes rather than the hose he was wearing.







I wanted to get some more nautical terrain on the base so I decided to go with a mast.  To make this I got a couple of flying base stalks and pinned them together.  To hide the join I wrapped some greenstuff around it and put some lines in it to make it look more like rope.  I wanted him to be grasping the mast as if to steady himself, so I searched through the bits box for an appropriate hand and came up empty.  So I had to take to it with the greenstuff once more.  I've never sculpted a hand before, and I think I did ok, considering the prevalence of mutation in the Old World :P

The painting turned out to be considerably easier than the conversion.  I decided to stick with block colour for the moment leaving the complicated stuff for the doublet and stuff.  I'll post images of that when he's 100% finished.

Cheers folks.

Ben

Coming Soon.

G'day all.

I've been a bit busy of late during my usual posting times, so I'm afraid I haven't got anything ready to post just at the moment. However, I thought I'd give you a rundown of the posts which will be coming up over the next few weeks.

How to paint Yellow and other obnoxiously bright colours.

Battle damage and Weathering: painting tanks and armour.

Path of Chaos: A weekly post on my Army Builder challenge project (These are being re-posted from the Path of Chaos blog)

PIRATES!  My Pirate conversion competition entry and how I made it.

Shadows of the Old World:  My Grey Wizard Project

A New model army:  Refurbishing an old empire army for 8th edition

Dreadfleet:  Soooooooooooo excited, my box has been ordered so I'll tell you all about it once it's in my hands.



As always feel free to leave comments, email me at Bellum.Malleus@gmail.com or check out the Facebook page if you have suggestions, questions or would like to contribute.

Cheers folks, I hope this has whetted your appetites.

Ben

Yarr!

Avast ye scurvy dogs. Behold ye the booty coming soon from GW.

So by now you'll all be aware that Dreadfleet was announced today. I, for one, so excited my brain may well explode violently at any given second. The miniatures are amazing, the fluff is cool and, more importantly than any of that, It's About Warhammer Pirates! I must have it. I've stuck a smattering of hyper links in this paragraph so that you all can go check it out. Be warned! If, like me, you look at Dreadfleet and decide you want it, drop what ever you are doing and go advanced order it right now. This game will disappear fast. If you don't advanced order it you will almost certainly miss out, and then you will be damned to wander the earth for the rest of your days, lamenting your ill fate.

Check out the product description and videos here.


In other news. Today GW Wellington was running a Black Powder event which I took part in. It was a Blast (hur hur hur). The idea of the event was to show Ogre players the hazards of artillery, and shown they were. My Helblaster opened up for 28 hits, setting the stage for a long line of very effective shooting phases. The game ended early with the Ogres having been hosed of the table through the combined might of the Imperial artillery and massed ranks of Saurus warriors and Tomb king Beasts and magic. A real star was the Terrorgheist which killed the Ogre beasts with ease each turn. Here are the pics I took of the event.

The extremely bright artillery crews in the empire line are what I've been working on for the last few days. The Black powder event got me thinking about my long suffering Empire army, so I dug through and pulled out a couple of cannons and my Helblaster Volleygun. Having looked through the Empire army book and the excellent "Uniforms and Heraldry of the Empire" I was really torn as to which colour scheme to go with. I was thinking about the white of Reikland or something, but I really wanted something that would really pop. After chatting with Nathan at the GW Wellington store I decided to go with the Red and Yellow of Talabecland. Bellow are some images of the Artillery as they turned out.

I'll post soon on how I painted the yellow on these. I figure I'll do the technique how tos and the like as separate posts. Obviously I'm still hammering out the layout for this stuff.

Also, If you'd like to see something covered, be it painting or modelling or anything come join us on the Bellum Malleus Facebook page or email me at Bellum.Malleus@gmail.com .

Cheers

Ben

What it is and what it isn't.

Hey there folks and welcome to my brand spanking new Blog.  Some of you may have read past blogs I have written such as the Path of Chaos, in which I covered my progress with my Warriors of Chaos army for the Army Builder Challenge at GW Wellington.  Well this will be more of the same only with a much wider scope.  I intend to talk about projects I'm working on, Ideas I'm thinking about and new releases and things That I'm particularly excited about.  There will of course be posts where I detail painting and modelling techniques which I think will be of interest, and a some info on rules interpretations and the like.

I welcome comments and queries on any subject within the spectrum of the hobby, and assuming I can explain things adequately in this format, I'll be happy to post how tos and things here.  The one thing I ask is that we keep things positive. The whole intent of this blog is to share my love of the hobby, so I have no interest in the rampant speculation about products that may or may not be coming up as seen on other sites. Nor do I wish to discuss GW company policies and marketing. That's what forums are for.

That being said, I hope you enjoy the posts found here, and that you can find something useful to help with your experience of the hobby, be it a handy tip, a technique you hadn't tried or just some inspiration to work on your own stuff.

Cheers heaps

Ben