I had 12 Space Wolves new on the sprue from when I started this army.  I wanted to keep some guys in case I needed some new options. I have taken the opportunity to start building my Grey hunter special weapons to fill in some gaps in my infantry choices.  I had built four wolves with melta guns in 5th ed.  One for each pack, since the pack leader wasn't an upgrade, and he didn't count towards the unit to get the second weapon.  In 7th ed that has changed.  I can now take six in my three squads.  I would also like the option of bringing some plasma guns.  I am building four to start.  That will give me up to two packs with dual plasma guns, and one with melta for some mid field tank hunting.

I think the plasma are a little more fluffy since the Space Wolves are supposed to be the Space Marines that kill other Space Marines when the need arises.  AP 2 here we come!

This also got me thinking about these guys:

I have all my turrets built as twin-linked lascannons.  This add-on looks great, and  I am a huge fan of kitting my Wolves out to the max (just look at my Wolf Guard).  They also have some great claymores that I want to kit out some more infantry with.

These look amazing.  They really have a future greatsword/claymore  feel to them.  While poking around I also stumbled accross these:

I'm not a fan of all of them, but one handed axes are not as easy to come by as I would have hoped.  I have also thought about cutting the upper hand off the 2h axe that comes in the SW sprue.  I will give it a shot and see how it looks.

Pictures to follow.

Made it to Adepticon

Adepticon has come and gone, and it was a great weekend.  I was lucky enough to snag a quick game with Jon from The Overlords Podcast.

It was me vs. Jon and my friend.  They both brought 750 of AM each.  I can't remember the entire army list but they had a Vendetta and a Valkyrie, some heavy weapons squads, and several veterans.  I want to say Sgt. Harker made an appearance and possibly Strakken.

I brought a pretty competitive Tyranids list that I have been working on over the last year and a half.  I had the usual two Flyrants with TLDwBW to start.  That was accompanied by my brand new Hive Crone to round out the flying monstrous creatures.  My troops were two squads of termagants, and I had a Dakkafex, which finishes off the CAD I brought.  The remaining points were invested into the Living Artillery formation, which is comprised of an Exocrine, three Biovores, and 3 Warriors.  They all may re-roll their scatter dice if they are within 12" of the Warriors.

We played the mission with two objectives, one per side, and I won by first blood on turn five.  We called it because Jon had another game to attend, but had it went on the Nids would have eaten everything.  It was way too harsh a list on my part. SORRY JON!

I ended up playing two more game on Saturday, and two more on Sunday for a five game weekend. Not too bad considering I commuted and didn't stay in the hotel.  Next year will be different.  I'm going all out.

Adepticon 2015

Adepticon is 45 days away and the paintshop (i.e. Me) is hard at work completing my Salamanders list.  This army has the most complete, by far, which is why I am just going to finish it up and bring it.  It also can fit in 1 GW case which is a bonus.  I will hopefully get this back up and running  with my hobby progress.

This week I brought up my Sternguard up to a table top quality in just a weekend.  It's amazing what gets done, when I just put paint on models.

Last year I was able to get about 1200pts of Tyranids done, and this year I hope to finish a 'Nid army that I can field, and my entire Salamanders army.  I have added about 10 bikes, and 2 Thunderfire cannons to the army, so I am not as close as I once was to completing it.  Some monstrous creature purchases also means that my ,Nids aren't that close either.  A detailed list with pictures to come.

 So here we have the final product! At long last she roars to life.  In this configuration to the right, we have the Razorback with twin linked lascannon, bolter, and dozer blade.

I love the number of options I have with these.  And since I incorporated to magnets under the top hull, I have the option of adding more later. And remember folks, options are good!

The next is the Rhino shown here with the Razorback turret option next to it, and the dozer blade removed.

The final picture is all the options show separately. I did not magnetize the round hatches, as I thought this was far enough for me, but you are more than welcome to go bananas.

Good luck on your magnetizing projects, and have fun saving some serious dough while doing it.

 Now I have added two magnets to the bottoms side of the top hull piece. This is for future additions like spot lights or hunter killer missiles.

 As you can see all the turrets have been assembled. They can articulate and with the magnet modification they won't fall off while playing.

 The next step is to cut off a bit of sprue and attach it to the turrets and the Rhino hatch doors.  This is probably the trickiest, but most important part. You need to measure the distance between the floor of the Rhino to the height of it, minus the thickness of the magnets you are using.  I also used a rotary tool to make a space in the floor to accommodate the magnet.  If you are going to do this, be careful not to puncture all the way through the model.
As you can see I have done this with both the Rhino door and the lascannon turret. If you want you can use a few of the Bolters, but I chose not to.

 Once we have all the doors and turrets magnetized, we can make any combination of Rhinos and Razorbacks. Shown here is 5 Rhinos and one Razorback. Below is the configuration I will use to start, 3 of each.

Now the only thing left is the round hatches.

The next step was to start gluing the hulls to the tracks.  Now we start to see how fast these come together once we get cookin'. 

Now my desk is starting to look like a Martian Forge world production plant.  I just nerded out there for a second.  This is the point where I start to magnetize the inside of the front of the hull.  That is where the dozer blades will attach to.  Then I may try and figure out a prettier way to magnetize the rear hatch shut.  On the prototype I just glued magnets to the inside and out.  But the outside magnet is visible.  Not a huge deal, but now i have a dremel, and can bore out a spot for it.  Lets see if I can make it flush.


That's all for now.  But Pete you better be ready, my army is almost fully operational...

Tank Building!

Back to the Razorback/Rhino building!  Well I finished the prototype and am now at the assembly line stage.  It is way faster than finishing each model individually.  But I haven't gotten to the custom work yet. The tank treads were a cinch though.

I used my new Dremel rotary tool (new Christmas present) to bore out a spot for a magnet inside the hull (left).  And the top of the tank is glued on with 2 magnets underneath it for hunter killer missiles and spot lights for later.  I love the added customization that magnets award to models like this.  It makes the WYSIWYG so much easier, transporting easier, its just the tits.  Plus we now have options, and options are good.

I used sprue bits to make the support for the magnetized turret.  This is what holds the turret/doors to the hull (right).  These little rare earth magnets are so strong for their size.  This is essentially the difference between a Razorback and a Rhino (Razorback at top, Rhino below).


Once this one was completed, the next step was to do the other five in an assembly lined fashion.  This is the way to build multiple tanks let me tell you.  Once I cut out all the bits and separated all the individual tanks into bowls, gluing them together was super quick.




Now all I have to do is keep this going, and do one section at a time, then glue them all and I'll be done.  This will give me any combination of 6 Razorbacks or Rhinos.  More to come...




Happy New Years!