Category: Wargamming

Stripping paint from miniatures, UK style

I’ve been a gamer for many years, so long in fact some of my collection is over 20years old. Whilst my painting skills are far from Golden Daemon standard some of my first forays into gaming are, um, not good. But some of the figures are great, and with the cost of gaming going up (there’s another rant right there) and spawn0 draining my bank account I’ve been trying to be more frugal and reuse some of my old collects.

First aspect of this is to strip the old paint from the miniature. I’d spent a while searching through various forums for advice on stripping paint, most solutions I found were US-centric with specific products (mostly oven cleaners) named. Based on this I started with an owned brand oven cleaner, the results were less than spectacular.

Luckily I’ve since come across Spud Tate – paint stripping from a gamer in Leeds, recommending Superdrug’ acetone free nail polish remover. At ~£1 a bottle, it was too tempting not to try; pleased to say first test batch was successful, old Delaque gang currently submerged as I type.

–Andrew

The Necron tomb awakens

To get inspiration for my Word Bearer host I read Anthony Reynolds excellent Word Bearer Omnibus. As the Necrons are the recurring antagonists it sparked my curiosity in the futuristic undead, they became an obvious choice for my next project.

Despite the ease of painting (and my own shortcomings in the area) one thing I want to avoid was a monotone metallic force so went off in inspiration of alternatives. Fortunately the GW site has an article challenging a selection gamers and modellers to design a new scheme for a Necron force in just one day. Dan Harden’s attempt immediately caught my attention due to a distinct lack of metal, serving as a great design base I swapped out Dan’ purple (which I really liked) as I wanted to continue to make use of the translucent green gauss barrels from the warrior set.

Without further ado: Single warrior

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Full Unit

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And matching scarabs

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More of the tomb should awaken shortly…

Introducing the 25th Host

Since about 7 years old I’ve been a table-top gamer, with game of choice being Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000. I’ve not actually played for many years since my weekly club closed (if any fellow alumni from Tudhoe/Spennymoor’ Friday night group are about, say Hi), and anyone who ever played with me will know I was never much of a painter, either in quality or quantity.

For the last couple of years I’ve been trying to change my painting habits, starting by building up a force of WordBearer Chaos Space Marines. Several of the units started life as test cases, so the quality currently varies from unit to unit, but I have started to find a style that works for me. I’m not liable to win any Golden Daemon awards any time soon, but the end result is better than I’ve had in the past, and more than acceptable for gaming with.

So without further ado, I introduce: The 25th Host.

At the core (and several of my practice units) are the Chaos Space Marine units. Several weapon options available, and are providing a core force to keep my Host in-line with most (all?) Force Organisation Charts for gaming

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Jo bought me a Chaos Defiler as a gift (admittedly, asked for) which is one of the reasons I started with Chaos, love the look of the model and hopefully I’ve managed to do some justice to it. On the battle field, I’m hoping it will provide some serious firepower with it’s battle cannon, as well as provide a scary enough target that opponents focus on it, leaving the rest of the Host free to go about their blasphemous deeds.

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Adding to the theme of walking firepower comes in the form of a Dreadnought Hellbrute. Whilst a little extravagant  I immediately took a liking to the WordBearer Dread available from Forge World. It took over two weeks to complete the paint job, I’m pleased with the end result, making a good centre piece to the Host, both visually and in the midst of combat.

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For some close combat punch there’s a small unit of Possessed, like the rest of the Host, mostly because I just like the look of the figures.

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And Khorne has provided a boon on the close combat front with a unit of Berzerkers

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For the time being, the Host is without a Dark Apostle (scandalous, I know) with command falling to the illustrious Fabius Bile (mostly caused I’ve loved and owned the figure for years). Ol’ Fabius is actually one of the first figures I started painting, I’m generally happy with the end result but definitely areas I want to improve on when I have time to give him a make over.

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Recent interception by the Astropathic Choir indicate that the 25th Host may be expecting re-enforcements in the near future, thanks to an un-opened Dark Vengeance boxset and a unit of Mutilators thanks to a Christmas gift from Alex. Updates to come….

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Andrew