Bandai 1:100 Tactical Pod Glaug, Macross Model Kit

 

 

Right, so I've been very slack as of late and haven't made a post in ages.
For shame!

I've recently overcome a bout of the dreaded hobby malaise/painting block/burnout- I'd sit down and pick up a brush but I'd hit the wall within minutes, even a humble Night Goblin seemed to be an impossible task.

Somehow this led to me digging out a model kit that I've had gathering dust for years and finishing it off in about 4 days.

It's a Glaug Tactical Pod from the anime Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, which was dubbed, edited/retarded and renamed as Robotech for those of us in the West (and wherever else)...those of you who are old school Battletech fans may know it as the Marauder.
Here's the box:

Their example, from the instructions ( I chose not to use all the transfers)

An early W.I.P.

Side view

Rear

and alongside a Toynami 1:100 Valkyrie (traditional enemy)

It's my all time favourite "Mecha", and is articulated.
I used citadel paints ( Administratum and Eshin Greys, Mechrite Red, Evil Sunz Scarlett) to paint it and is actually the first substantial model kit I've ever built.
It may not be oldhammer but the kit and anime itself are from the mid 80's.

Keeping with the Macross theme, here is a little wind up, walking Minmay doll that I built and painted a few years back

Happy new year people!

Random Post of Stuff

My workstation is currently littered with WIPs in various stages of completion: 4 Deathskull Orks ( the last of them!) awaiting painted arms and armaments, a handful of Escher gangers, a basecoated Chaos Warrior and Goff Rockers that have been languishing for 6 months, plus a Blood Angel Devastator Squad, Terminator Squad and a Predator.
Then there's a Stone Troll and some Night Goblins too...agghhr.

In that boom or bust fashion, I recently belted out a heap of Space Marines in a short amount of time and now can't seem to finish anything...well, almost anything.

When stuck, I pick a nice Fantasy miniature out of my little collection for dungeon crawling/no real use at all and recharge the batteries.I had only just received this Ral Partha in a trade from Just John on the Oldhammer forum and she seemed like a good candidate.
I had no idea who she was what she was or what she is supposed to look like until after painting her- I believe it's Alustriel Silverhand from Dungeons and Dragons: Forgotten Realms.

Those of you familiar with the Oldhammer forum may know of the fantastical D&D adventure a few of us have going there- my character is a good natured, unlucky in love, bumbling pants wetter who has mummy issues as well as being rather brave and foolhardy- his name is Rambulge Dungaree Pastorious and he is a fighter/mage with a toad familiar called Lemmy Wurzel.

Fellow adventurer Asslessman ( AKA The Paladin Sir Seu Antheus) recently painted up a fantastic representation of both Rambulge and Lemmy, as seen here.
Sneakily/awesomely Assless sent this miniature to forum member Captain Crooks, DM/fellow Aussie/adventurer "Bufo The Black Hood" to give to me when we met up for a game.

But tragedy struck the erstwhile Devout Cleric in transit, and his paint job was chipped and damaged when he arrived...so with advice from Asslessman administered via Skype, CC put in a late night to do a repair job on poor Rambulge, adding his own touch:

A red raw nose, because if Rambulge isn't soiling himself the poor bastard is crying.
I was blissfully unaware of all this until CC presented the mini ( and BOYLdrick) to me, well played guys and again a massive thank you!

Finally, this guy was in my top ten miniatures and I've slowly been chipping away at him for yonks now, and he's just about finished

BOYLdrick the Oldhammer Miniature

Being both in Australia and ( more disappointingly ) in a relatively poor financial state means that attending the Mecca of Oldhammer that is BOYL or Oldhammer day at the Wargames Foundry in person is something that isn't going to happen any time soon, as much as it pains me to admit.

But there are no tears in the beer, the excellent blog coverage by those in attendance was almost like being there...almost.

Anyway, not gracing the event also meant I wouldn't have the chance to get my grubby mits on the wonderful Kev Adams Gobbo the folks at Foundry gave to those in attendance...or so I thought!

On our Sydney Oldhammer Forum meet up on the weekend, Captain Crooks produced a Space Marine Chaplain that Asslessman/JB had sent ( along with the Killdozer the Captain had lent him for the Wacky Race ) to him to pass on to me- this I knew about.

What I was totally not expecting was the Oldhammer mini that was there with it!
So here is my rendition of BOYLdrick:

 

While I wanted to do my own thing with him as much as possible, I've already seen a few painted examples and the use of the red and yellow Foundry Colours ( by whoever that was, all apologies as I can't remember! ) was too good a scheme not to make use of somewhere on him.

Many thanks to the Ansells for their kindness in not only giving away the miniature to attendees but supplying extras to distribute to a few geographically challenged tragics like myself and many thanks to JB for deeming me worthy- may the road rise to meet you!

Saturday's Ye Olde Gaming

My brother and I met up with Captain Crooks and littleleadperson from the Oldhammer forum for a good day of gaming in Parramatta this past Saturday- as I very rarely get to actually play any tabletop games I relish the opportunity to get the plastic and tin soldiers into action!

First up was a game of Gorkamorka (my second time playing this game) where myself and LLP were pursued by Crooksie and a cohort in a Mad Max style race to the table edge- a great scenario and a lot of fun. I was pleased to survive the encounter relatively unscathed, the polar opposite of the last game. I even made it out with some loot!

After lunch we got stuck into a game of second edition Warhammer 40,000 with four players commanding 1000 point armies and forming two teams.
 Road testing my newly painted Blood Angels, I paired with Captain Crooks ably commanding a force of Squats- while my brother adopted the guise of a Goff Ork Warboss leading the boys in an uneasy alliance with littleleadperson's Chaos warband, the Devotees of Effluence and their Black Legion cohorts.

The Imperial set up

The Chaos Warband

The Ork line

The Imperial force's mission was to take and hold the hexagonal building seen here, while the Chaos and Orks had to engage and destroy their opponents where possible.

On the right Imperial flank, LLP's Chaos warband decimated the Squats in the ruins before suffering the wrath of the Squat Thunderer squad that bristled with heavy weapons.
In a string of mishaps, the Chaos Commander was turned into a Plaguebearer when the "plague wind" psychic power was reflected back and the Nurgle marines lost their Hero level leader heavy weapons fire.
Making good use of his Magus' psychic power "the gate" LLP began sneakily began funnelling the Devotees Of Effluence right onto the ruins on the edge of the Squat gunline.

Veteran Sergeant Lucion's squad had to abandon shooting up advancing Cultists and Gretchin to support the Squat Ancestor Lord against the overrunning Chaos Marines and Plaguebearers.
Unfortunately I forgot to pack the Squat Psyker Lord miniature, but a completely unexpected, surprise proxy was on hand to do the job, having covertly travelled from France to save the day.
( more on that in another post)

 

The Gretchin advance as the Chaos Forces sneak up the side of the battlefield.

Warboss Muglurk oversaw a mob of boys as they rushed the Imperial objective, while the other mob made to rush around the side of the ruined Imperial building to meet the Blood Angels and Squats lurking on the other side.

Coming under heavy fire from the get go, Squad Mephiston attempted to stop the advancing Ork Dreads. Their missile launcher hit one of the lumbering Ork machines with two krak missiles but failed to damage it either time and they were wiped out by the end of the game.

 

With Techmarine Baccio in tow, Furioso strode onto the objective and began unleashing hell.
One of the Ork dreads peeled off to face the old one down and was all but destroyed by Furioso's multimelta, while the mob of Orks below suffered the wrath of it's auto launchers.
The Squat Warriors at the corner bravely faced down the advancing Goffs, their melta gunner managed to cripple one of the last functioning dread's weapons before the game drew to a close.

Brother Captain Valerio, the Apothecary and Squad Paulus lurked behind the objective- the flamer unleashed burning promethium on the Orks further thinning them out.

The game ended ( as we ran out of time) on turn 3, with the Imperial Forces on 9 VP and the Chaos/Greenskin alliance on 4 VP.
Furioso holding the objective gifted us with 5 VP, scores were otherwise even.

Things would have been very interesting on the next turn though, as the Marine Captain and Squad Paulus were about to engage the Warboss and the remnants of the Orks around the objective, while both sides of the Imperial line were being flanked by overrunning Chaos Forces on one side and Goffs on the other.

I had an absolute blast, hats off to littleleadperson and Captain Crooks (and my brother) for being good blokes and great gamers.

Cowabunga!

 

Dreadnought and Techmarine

It's been a long and drawn out process, but I've finally finished painting my first Space Marine Dreadnought ( first I've painted, that is) - I picked him up for a pittance on ebay, complete except for the banner pole.

The banner pole is made from a length of the black Space Crusade sprue, and I bought the winged skull from a bitz seller- I'm not sure which modern plastic kit it comes from but it's close enough to the original ( minus the crossed bones)

I used the BA Dreadnought transfer sheet and a printed banner, though I changed the 2 to a 3 on it and repainted the red border and black background.

With the Dreadnought completed, it seemed fitting to paint up this Techmarine in MK 4 Maximus armour too.

Talisman Gypsy and some familiar characters

Though painted more than a few months ago, I've struggled to get a decent pic of this mini until now-the skin always seemed to show up a lot browner than it really is.

The Talisman range is chock full of excellent miniatures, I have the Merchant, Gladiator and Crusader on the "to paint" list.

When I get burnt out on painting "armies", I like to treat myself to a nice characterful fantasy miniature like this.

Heroquest Barbarian as He Man.
It's not exactly an original idea, but it is a good one and had to be done!
I have a shelved Battle Cat WIP that I must get around to finishing too.

My man, Skeletor- taking a rest from his video blog of evil.
Skeletor's Video Log Of Evil

"You hate me how much?"

A few Night Gobbos

I was very much a latecomer to WHFB- I only bought in with the 7th edition starter set "Battle For Skull Pass"...but I've long admired the little green dudes with a penchant for fly agaric mushrooms.
I have a large (3000pts) army of the little buggers and their squig and Troll accomplices that is only partly painted, but seeing as I'm stuck in the middle of painting Space Marines with not much to show I thought I'd do a stop gap post with a couple of Night Gobs.

I just finished this guy, what a total dude of a miniature.

Unusually for me, my NG army is mostly modern minis.
"Boss Drokslit" here ( and the next guy, came 2 to a blister ) was my first purchase after the boxed game and the first one to get painted, and he has led the gits to inglorious defeat in what few, largely unpainted games of WHFB I have played.

He's had a few touch ups along the way.

"Boss Scabbrow"

He's a bad ass.

I was proud as punch when I got these two guys painted, the skulls on the rack gave me a real hard time back then, not having painted for years.
Like Drokslit, he's had a few touch ups along the way.

Shaman "Gakskat" - another modern NG.
I usually turn my nose up at the new fangled minis but Night Gobbos are an exception.

Yum!

MOAR SKULLS

Skarsnik, Warlord of the Eight Peaks and his pet Squig, Gobbla.
I really like the modern Skarsnik, but really dislike the modern Gobbla.

Inspirational Armies, or Imitation is the highest form of flattery

I'm continually amazed by the creativity displayed by people in this hobby, the out of the box paint jobs, conversions, scratch builds and pop culture references I see on blogs and forums blow my mind.
It almost makes me feel a bit dull just wanting to recreate the studio armies seen in White Dwarf and the books...almost.
I have a couple of projects that I plan on doing my own thing with, but what dragged me back into collecting and painting again in 09 was the idea that I would recreate the two armies from "The Fangs Of The Wolf" battle report, which was originally published in WD# 158 but was more familiar to me from it's appearance in the Space Wolf codex- and I do mean familiar because I studied and reread that battle report many, many times over the years!

Ably commanded by Andy Chambers in the report, this army was the bees knees to me back in 93 and although they weren't painted I had managed to collect the majority of it by the time I initially dropped out of 40K and miniatures etc somewhere around 97.
The rest ( and much much more) was picked up via ebay this second time around.

And the opposing Ork warband, commanded by Jervis Johnson as Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka.
My version of this won't be a carbon copy but will be pretty close.
I'm already more than halfway there actually...

Now when I got my first White Dwarf magazine, it was issue # 166.
All I had was a few Heroquest minis and Space Crusade at the time, and had only discovered the magazine and the larger world of 40K and the other games the previous week when I had read through a big stack of WD's on a holiday at my Brother's place.
The free plastic Marine Sergeant that came with it featured in my last post, and the battle report contained within it's pages was another Chambers V Johnson grudgematch, "Angels Of Death"

This is what I think of when I hear the words "Space Marine Army".
Getting this lot painted is my priority at the moment!
As you may well know, this is the battle report where Andy's "Brother Captain Erasmus Tycho" was slain by Jervis' Weirdboy, giving birth to the Tycho special character and mini.

The Orks, mostly the same models as in the Fangs Of The Wolf battle, with the plastic Goffs and Gretchin making an appearance.

This seemed like a HUGE army back then!
To my credit I've restrained myself from collecting Ultramarines and Dark Angels.

Hope you have enjoyed my nostalgic ramblings and the pretty pictures!

Blood Angel Progress

For the last couple of weeks I've been focusing on "the Ninth Legion", more specifically marines from the 3rd company of the Blood Angels Chapter.
I have a lot of Orks and Squats painted, so it seemed time that the power armoured chaps got some attention too, lest they accuse me of bias from their unpainted, dull chinese food container prison cells...as long term unpainted miniatures are known to do.

Brother Captain "Raguel Valerio"

The Sergeant here is a rather special mini for me, as he was my freebie from my very first WD, #166.
He was painted by my brother using enamels back in 93, I have given him a new coat of paint and lease on life, his banner is of that vintage too.
I'm currently working on his replacement ( the same mini ) but this guy holds sentimental value.

Here's the before shot, I thought this was an amazing paintjob back then!

The second half of the 1st Tactical.
While hardly the most inspiring miniatures, they have a nostalgic value for me.

Reinforcements for the Space Crusade squad. Shitty picture, sorry!

This one was just painted out of whimsy, mainly because the Space Crusade box pictured the Blood Angel Commander armed with the heavy bolter and I've always dug it.
In game, the BA guy is much better off with the power glove and sword.

A work in progress.