2nd Edition Sisters of Battle, Order of Our Martyred Lady

Armour as black as a dark thing... robes also very dark black. Yep, I really didn't notice how GW changed the colour scheme over the years for the Order of Our Martyred Lady.I do actually really like the darker look though - very nuny ... nunny(?) ... makes them look like nuns. I like the few additional red trim bits too, but I've introduced a little yellow to lift the characters and vehicles. Everyone likes hazard stripes - even nuns. 
 

It's not a big force yet - 6 sisters, a classic Rhino, Cannoness (yet to be named) and 5 Frateris Militia. The militia back then were basically similar to imperial guard conscripts with a brutal WS 2 BS 2 profile. The only good thing is you get a plus to BS with some guns at short range which isn't bad for a meat shield... I mean valuable citizen that the sisters would surely not use as a meat shield every single game...

I've had the metal sisters for a number of years and picked a bunch of them up off eBay in about 2012ish for an old army. They army had fallen out of use a long time ago, and these were crying out for for a new life. I got the cannoness more recently in an eBay bits lot for a few pound, but she was missing her raised icon, so I gave her a power maul to replace her missing hand. 

The legendary Frateris Militia came straight from my junk box. Led by the famous Peter Crotchplate ... an old 90s Goliath ganger who had been rolling around the bottom of the drawer as the butt of a number of jokes. Next to the left is Greco - legendary Wardancer with a weird gun conversion who also was in the junk pile. Further to the left... a bretonnian archer with a 90s chaos warrior head and a few milliput additions. Added to them was an ancient catachan and a 90s Orlock ganger. Many if these had been converted as Diggas for a Gorkamorka campaign that never really happened, and now they've been pressed back into service on the front lines of 2nd edition.  They were quick to paint too. My new tip is that if you thin gore grunta contrast it makes a good skin tone contrast!

Official frateris militia models do exist, but they're pretty rare and expensive. At some point I hope to get a few to scatter in the units for good measure. 

Back to the ladies firing guns on a sunny day in the grassy green fields of what was once not quite such a grim dark future. That said, a full suit of armour on a hot sunny day would probably get grim pretty quick. No wonder the battle sisters were angry! 

I did my best to copy the freehand door designs on the side of the rhino and they came out pretty good. I'm not a huge free-hand lover (well, I like looking at good freehand...) as I get inpatient if a design is complex, but these were good fun.

The original lore for Sisters of Battle puts them very much on the front line - functionally being the first line of defence for imperial worlds. There's no mention of Planetary Defence Forces and while waiting for Space Marines or Imperial Guard, they were there to save the earth from the scum of the universe. It also explains why Militia were a thing. It was also amusing to read that Militia were made up in part of ecclesiastical admin workers and other hopelessly unprepared types - which also explains the less than shining stat-lines. 

Exactly what job Peter Crotchplate had in the ecclesiarchy was a mystery. Master of re-education would be my guess...

2nd Edition Tyranid Army (1000 points complete)

 

Finally, a project several years in the making has burst forth from the cupboard of shame - yipping  and dribbling with oddly adorable grins, they burst forth onto the battlefield ready to tear some imperial beakies limb from limb!

A few years ago I posted a hive tyrant and then a few years later a carnifex. I've been playing Warhammer Fantasy 5th edition for several years now, and do love the old game I grew up with. Back in those days, 2nd edition was in full swing, but I couldn't afford to play a second game - the price or a new starter set was way out of reach, but I still spent hours staring at the old models. Actually I remember at about age 10 spending an afternoon with a piece of tracing paper building a picture of a cool space marine force by tracing out a range of different terminators and marines! Anyway, I also wanted some tyranids. I collected these over a few years, but about 6 months ago finally got a little inspiration and picked up the termagants and warriors to really get things started.

After playing so much fantasy, I'm no stranger to a huge pile of old metal slag. A bit of building work and an undercoat and they were ready to go. I find the trick to pai ting in a second edition style is generally to start with your brightest colour and then highlight that. These warriors were given a few coats of whatever you call Blood Red these days and then highlighted with s0me oranges to really get the colour as hard as possible. Love the metal warriors too. They're so different I  design to the Space Crusade type plastic ones that they would have passed as something else altogether! You need to have a venom cannon too! 

As a side point I should probably also mention the scenery as I built that too. Cliffs are the thing of the day and were in abundance back then - as was flock ... so both were built and used liberally. I made them stackable so for photos built a big pile of them to try to fill in the back. At some point I'd like to do a painting to fill in the open sky, bit for now a furry white blanket is masquerading as clouds. 

The classic carnifex is a must - as we're a number of termagants and genestealers. Actually the old metal hunter-slayers came from my brother who got them from someone else and they were already painted. They matched my scheme so well, I decided not to strip them and just kept the 90s paint as it was. At some point I will tidy them up a bit. 

The hormagaunts were the most difficult thing to paint in the arms - lots of pointy arms on there! I do love the old design though. You can just imagine them going to town with those ferocious looking spring loaded stabby-arms. Love the long lobe type heads too. Actually these are probably the models I deviated more from the official scheme of the day on.

The genestealers were painted in a single 24 hour period. I tried to keep them pretty classic looking and used a bit of drybrushing to speed them along. Their bodies were given a solid coat of Vallejo dark prussian blue mixed 50/50 with Royal Purple as a nice saturated base to work on. I gave them a quick drybrush of this same colour with a little white in it. I then painted transparent red in all the bits that were to be pink and slowly built them up largely by drybrushing vallejo magenta with ever higher amounts of white in the mix.

The army had their first outing today in a few skirmishes. Next up might be the old zoanthrope, although more terrain also looks like a possibility. 

Genestealers break from cover to ambush a Sisters of Battle patrol

Infinity scale Sci Fi Cars - scenery/terrain project

 

I'd been wanting to get my hands on a few cars to compliment my new Infinity terrain I've been working on, and was scratching my head for some time. The best option for a while looked to be trying to get hold of some diecast models. There are a few proper options out there, or resin 3d prints maybe, but it was looking a bit expensive. I don't like putting too much money into terrain pieces. While pondering this, I had a flash of inspiration- what about that box of run down old Scalextric cars that had been in a drawer for 20-30 years?

So I pulled them out and hey - the scale wasn't bad. Maybe a little on  the big side, but who knows how big cars will be in the future right? - I'm not a perfectionist for these things. The other advantage was that they were really really dirty... no wait that wasn't the advantage, the advantage was that as they were race cars of a few types they already looked sort of non-mundane and a bit futuristic. Also according to Downfall (an Infinity book/novel - which has been really good) there are still cars that don't fly and even sports cars. It was all coming together. 

With nothing to stop me, I set about the task of cleaning the dust off of them. I decided to keep the clear windows as were, so I put masking tape on those, and then undercoated them with a bit of black spray. 

Some airbrushing later, a few very hasty panel highlights and a freehand go-faster-stripe and here we have the finished result - apparently ready to deploy my Yadu multi-rifle and tacbot into the fray!

It's always nice to repurpose something from the junk heap of life. These cars almost went in the bin about a year or so ago during a house move, so it's a cool thing both to have for the field and to rescue from oblivion. 

Original photo below of the condition  of the cars when they were found. You could almost just clean them up and pit them on the table if you don't mind the cheap plastic look and are in a hurry, but I wanted then to match the aesthetic of the game. I pulled 3 cars for the initial batch. So far I've only finished one, but it's a start. 

Well, that's about it for today - I posted this really in the hope that one day someone else could do the same.  We'll see if the idea catches on.

Infinity Aleph Rudras GunBot

 

Work on odd Infinity pieces continues. A big part of the appeal of the game is the high tech cyberpunk style aesthetic and rules. In that vein, I've painted a rather nice Aleph remote. In terms of the game it functions similarly to a fast heavy Infantry, but also comes with a handy repeater installed that allows you to use it as a sort of hacking hub to expand the reach of your hackers. 

This also gives me a slight opportunity to show some of the infinity scenery I've been working on. It's a mix of different MDF kits and I'm keeping yhr bright colours coming. I love a bright and exciting looking board, so I've had that in mind with the scenery too. I really want it to pop on in the table, and nothing says futuristic like neon bright colours! 

The paint scheme for the Rudra matches my Aleph. Essentially based around a white grey base airbrush blend with everything else being jist normal brushwork. The numbers and letters are all freehand too. 

All the metals are non-metallic style on this thing too. It's a technique I've experimented with a bit over the years, and have made decent progress on. I think to do it really well takes a very long time, so for me I'm happy to get only passable/decent results if I can do it relatively quickly!

Infinity Aleph Army - showcase

Jist a quick post to drop photos of my burgeoning Aleph army for Infinity. It's still a work in progress force, but these are the finished models so far. I've especially enjoyed working on the remotes (robots) for them- some great designs and they also feel very distinct compared to most of the warhammer type stuff I've painted recently. 

I've had these for a number of years, and this was a project almost a decade in the making

 I had a stuttering start on Aleph a number of years ago, but I wasn't happy with the paint scheme and lost momentum on the project. Compared to the official scheme, I've introduced more yellow and gold style non metallic models. 

Speaking of the non metallic metals, it is quite a basic recipe for the gold/yellow - basically, baler brown with Skeleton Horde contrast on it. Then highlighted up with demonic yellow (army painter) and then mixing more white in before finally adding the pure white highlights. It works great on the smaller areas, but I probably need more practice for the bigger areas!

 

Gathering of Might - Massive oldhammer undead vs Empire and Dwarf Battle

 

The game was about 5000 points per side. In the red corner weighing in at several pounds of chunky painted lead was old 90s Nagash who was being backed up by a number of mighty Sylvanian Vampires. Across the table was the allied forces of Dwarf and Empire being led into battle by the Elector Count Marius Leitdorf of Averland together with his illegitimate son Ned Neederlander who was bearing the army battle standard. The Dwarf force as ever was led by the largely undefeated Drong the Hard. Many cannons were also in attendance.

Every single model was fully painte which was over 400 models!. The Vampire Counts and Averland Empire are my armies. My brother Ed (BerserkerBlade Blog) was fielding the Dwarf and Tomb King sides.

In fact, it was so many models, I had to reduce the scenery significantly to make space for the number of units compared to what I would normally use!

Now, there's no way I could battle report on this whole thing. In fact it took about 7 hours just to play it to a reasonable conclusion - and that was moving pretty quickly, but I wanted to record the event. I rarely do a battle this big, and a lot of the fun is the spectacle!

Marius is shown above in a rather costly unit of knights. I was just able to finish the Imperial battle Standard in time for the game - I have named him Ned Neederlander and have a bit of a back story going on where he is the illegitimate son of Marius Leitdorf- or possible his nephew. Nobody knows whether Marius or his brother Wilhelm  Leitdorf (my other general) sired the child one drunken night in a tavern. The one thing we do know is that he's embarrassing for the family and they've been trying to kill him off ever since by giving him a big flag and a horn and sending him off down the front!

The first shot of the game from the flame cannon roasted about a dozen skeletons! Ed holds the template in place over Nagash's unit as the war begins!

Of course, the undead weren't defenceless. Vampire Bats saw off some of the artillery and return fire from a trio of Screaming Skull Catapults put a dent in a few too!

The Steam Tank ran rampant - running over skeletons while fighting with its own malfunctioning boiler! At T10, it proved very hardy until a Vampire Lord with a double handed weapon started putting dents in it!

A near miss for the undead - Nagash faced Marius in the middle of the field. NAGASH IS A juggernaut of power, but Marius charged with a full 7 frenzied attacks. Needing 4+ to hit and then 6s to wound it didn't look good, bit the Runefang was with him and he scored 2 wounds which doubled into 4 wounds on the Lord of the Undead! Unfortunately, on Nagash's turn he healed the 4 wounds back, but for a moment he was almost toppled by the Elector Count! 

In the end, Nagash proved pretty unstoppable. The Slayers held up one end of the field well, but the undead tool the victory and pushed harder towards Averheim.

Let's hope Marius and Drong escaped somehow to fight another day!