Work in progress...

Just some work in progress stuff from the last couple of weeks...

 

 

I managed to get just about all of my Burn in Designs Kickstarter stuff built, there was one sheet that was incorrect so he's going to send that to me and then this lot will built...  now onto painting.

 

 

Underneath all that stuff is the Games and Gears Battle-boards that are also a bit of a work in progress at the moment. I've got some pre-shading down on them and am slowly lightening them with greys...  time consuming but much quicker with an air brush than a regular brush.

 

I've got a couple of Micr Art Studio buildings to assemble and then I might take a break from building assembly and get back to painting...

 

anyway, enough warbling...  have a look below:

 

 

Progress and something new

Some progress being made on the Battle Boards, right up until I ran out of grey paint:

Once you get going they don't take too long

And something exciting arrived in the mail last week, my terrain Kickstarter from Burn in Designs:

 So much wood!

 Just one of about 10 packets, this contained the wood to make 2 staircases

The staircase sheets 

And the completed staircase 

Close up 

Different angle

The weathering begins...

Just a quick post today...

I've started the process of painting and weathering the Games and Gears battleboards so as to see a bit more of the detail, and to learn some new techniques...

 

A shot of the board and some close-ups:

Also going to try some water effect stuff on teh large empty space on the board...

First try, doesn't look too bad

and plenty more boards to go....

Gribblies

Tyranids are done!

 The gribblies in all there glory

 Tyranid warriors

 Tyranid warrior with bone swords, close-up

  Tyranid warrior with venom cannon, close-up

 Genestealers

 Genestealers, different angle

 Genestealer close-up

 Brood Lord - this model is unique to the box set and it's pretty awsome

 Brood Lord

 Brood Lord - again

 Carnifex

 Carnifex

 The Tyranids with one of my Minotaurs Marines for scale

And Palladium versus Games Workshop, no contest really.

In conclusion, I think the build quality of the Games Workshop stuff is leaps and bounds ahead of anything Palladium has put out so far. And, most tellingly, the copyright on the Genestealers is 2004, which really brings home how much work there is for Palladium to do...

Just a couple of quick notes re: bases. There wasn't enough bases in the box, I think there was only one for the Tyranid Warriors and they need three. It's not a big deal as I'm going to be using Secret Weapon Miniatures: Steel Plating Bases.

And...

Here's a little teaser on what I'm working on next, to give me a rest from assembling mini's:

Battleboards!

In the Grim Darkness of the 41st millennium there is only grimness and darkness....

Shield of Baal: Deathstorm...

I needed to take a break from all the Robotech I was putting together and see if I could do something a bit more enjoyable...   With that, I decided to make a start on the limited edition Warhammer 40k box set, Deathstorm. I briefly considered having a stab at the Privateer Press stuff but I'm not quite ready to commit to that much super-gluing.

What's in the box:

So much stuff!

One thing to point out, most of the stuff in here is not like the old days where it was stripped down versions of the normal stuff, snap-fit or wierd, impossible to modify stuff. Most of the mini's are standard off the shelf items. As such you get all of the options. Note: there are 2 "exclusive" mini's a new Brood Lord and a new Blood Angels Captain, both of which look very nice.

Instructions for putting your mini's together.

Also included are a half size version of the main rule book with all of the rules, but no fluff; and a campaign book with all of the rules for playing everything in the box. I did have a look and the points in the campaign book do seem a little bit off, in comparison to the current codex (at least for Tyranids) but who knows which codex was current when they put this box together.

Rules and campaign book.

Inside the campaign book

More from inside the book, note: full colour art.

And of course who can forget the sprues!!!

All of the Blood Angels sprues.

Death Company sprue

More sprues

Even more sprues!

And of course the bases. One thing I did note with the bases, apart from the new 32mm size bases for the jump pack marines is there does appear to be some missing. I'll know more once I start putting them together, but I have picked up some of the Secret Weapon Miniatures steel plate bases for the Tyranids.

Bases

Robotech Season 2

The UEDF are now complete!

This is all of the UEDF from the starter set.

One squad of destroids

 One squad of valkyries

 

And I replaced the last Battloid mode Valkyrie with a Max Sterling mini I had received a couple of Christmas' ago from Palladium, and constructed him and a fighter/guardian in the same configuration.

 

 As you can see the Valkyries are supplied in the three iconic "modes" you see from the TV show:

Battloid Mode

Guardian Mode

Fighter Mode

Each of the three modes has slightly different attributes, in speed, agility, skill and weapons. I won't go into too maby details but obviously the fighter can fly much faster than the battloid, but the battloid has much better hand to hand skills.

 

I haven't had a chance to play yet, so this review will be mainly centred around the models themselves.

 

To be honest, they're not the best, a friend who's also been puting them together stated: they're the only models he can remember needing tweezers to assemble.

 

The pieces are quite fidly, I've included a Games Workshop Space Marine to show scale:

 

 

 

As you can see they're quite small and with that size comes some issues with assembly:

 

 

 

Here is an arm, 2 parts of the forearm, a shoulder and a gun:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



And a small plastic glue pot for scale:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And this is the sprue for one guardian mode valkyrie sprue:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With a requirement to build 12 different models just to field a basic squad of 4, this may lead to quite a bit of frustration.

 

In summary, they're not the best. You do get a lot of stuff and there was multiple different options included, head swaps for the different model versions, all of the diferent weapon options and all of the upgrades that may be required.

 

But, the detail is quite poor and the pieces are unnecessarily small and fidly.

 

All in all, it does appear to be a very competent starter, but I'll wait until I finish the other 2 before passing judgement.

 

I've decided to start work on the Games Workshop starter next, just to give myself a break from the fidly palladium stuff. I'm going to try and put together all of the included Tyranids. I've never attempted a Tyranids army so I'm quite looking forward to it.

 

One last point, make sure you download the alternative assembly instructions from www.drivethrurpg.com they make a massive difference and really cut down on the frustration factor: