40K Game

It seems like ages since I rolled any dice in anger, but in reality it has only been a couple of weeks. And it will be a while longer as the world battles this very real crisis.

One would think that staying at home would mean plenty of time to paint figures and get ready for the return of some sort of normality, but I am really busy actually working…

A while back I posted a bunch of pictures of a large battle between a combined Blood Angels and Grey Knights Task Force versus a Death Guard host.

Before the lockdown, Mr Steinberg and I had another large game, this time a Grey Knights force lead by Inquisitor Coteaz and a small retinue going up against the Old Foe, The Death Guard.

I set up my industrial terrain again, but this time with more open space and less towers.

I used the Coteaz and Retinue profiles from White Dwarf, but they really were not very good. Although it is fun to add a varied unit of soldiers, they are not very well trained or armoured for an Inquisitors Retinue and they were little more than a speed bump.


Mr Steinberg’s Death Guard are a spectacular army across the table, all nauseating green and putrid pustules.

We had agreed what vehicles we would be taking before the game to make sure it would be as balanced as possible.

…so there was a Land Raider on each side.

I was overly impressed with Inquisitor Coteaz’s Psychic abilities, they did not benefit the Grey Knights or the soon to be deceased Retinue. They may work better with an allied Imperial Guard army.


A Grey Knights Purgation unit with Psycannons and a Mortis Class Dreadnought with four Autocannon’s should be able to hold the flank, right?

There were objectives to hold and these randomly changed each turn to make it more interesting, this was a scenario from a White Dwarf a while back.



The Blight Drones with their speed, flamer attacks and probes can make a mess of most things, including a Land Raider.



If you shoot something enough, it will go down, the massed firepower of the Purgation squad and the Mortis Dreadnought eventually killed the tentacled Death Guard Dread.



The Mortis Dreadnought went down and the Purgation fell back to some cover to make their last stand…

The Grey Knights were falling too fast and not taking enough of the Death Guard down, it was only a matter of time before they were overwhelmed.

A really good game again, I just need a a little more firepower, maybe the Leviathan Knight will help next time.

Industrial Containers

It is always good to have plenty of scatter terrain, small bits, medium bits and big bits. These containers fit in the medium category I reckon.

The first containers I made were simple boxes that stacked and are designed to complement the Industrial Terrain range.

I wanted the next one to be a bit different, with a central core surrounded by a reinforced girder structure. This picture below is a prototype that was a bit hard to build so I had to tweak it a bit.

The latest creation is this container below that has working doors, I am really pleased with it. I need to get a few more cut and paint them up. Of course with opening doors, I will have to paint the inside as well…

It will be perfect for zombies to hide inside…

Whats On The Table?

Returning to the Lannister backlog, I have started on a unit of Warriors Sons.

These will have nice bright shiny silver armour and red cloaks to tie them into the rest of the Lannister army.

Untamed Beasts

These are the first models that are “mostly” painted with Contrast paints.

These Untamed Beasts from the starter box are exactly 1000 points with no options as to how they can be built.

Apart from a bit of Bolt Gun Metal and Bronze they are pretty much all the new inks.

I was a bit disappointed with the Cygor Brown as it is very dark, I really should have tested it on something first, my own fault.

As I mentioned a few days ago, the flesh, bone and leather colours are really good and I will be using these a lot.

These models have turned out okay, I will pick up a few more brighter colours and try another unit of somethings!

Game Of Thrones

Game Of Thrones is one of my favourite games at the moment. I have been adding Lannister units to the host over the last few weeks and finally geting the bases and movement trays done.

In last weeks game, I thought I would take a bunch of photographs now that the units are finished, but once the game started, I was so engrossed that I did not take as many as I wanted.

I did mange one picture of Joken’s Nights Watch units advancing across the battlefield. After that, I was so concentrated on what to do next and making sure I did not forget any rules, that the camera did not get picked up again.

So at the end of the game, I just took a couple of pictures of a few of the Lannister units in all their red and armoured glory.

Maybe in the next game I will get my act together and take more action pictures, especially as the next new unit will be the Warriors Sons in their fancy silver armour.

Gap Gizmos

Warcry and Ragnarok have a variety of weapons available that have various close combat ranges between 1″ and 4″. Sometimes getting a ruler into a tight space can be tricky, so I have made some measuring sticks that allow an easy access between models.

One version has a 1″ and 2″ measuring widget and a second version has a 3″ and 4″ measuring thingy.

Whats On The Table?

I bought a few pots of Games Workshop contract paints a while back and was not overly impressed with my first attempts. Mr Steinbergs Free Folk and Joken’s Nights Watch models for Game Of Thrones are really well finished and I feel I am missing out somehow.

I decided to give it another go and paint, or should that be ink, a whole set of models to see how I get on.

My Warcry Iron Golems had been painted “the old way”, so the other faction in the Warcry starter box, the Untamed Beasts were to get the contrast treatment.

I started with the flesh wash which does give a really good effect for no effort whatsoever. I then added the bone weapon wash which also came up pretty good.

The trick is not to get any colour on bits you don’t want. It is not just the case of painting over a bit of careless brushwork as contrast ink over another contrast ink does not really work unless you are using one of the really dark colours. I made the mistake of using a very dark brown on the Untamed Beasts big dog creature thingy and it is really too dark.

The other thing I don’t really like is that they seem very dull and flat. I will have to get some brighter colours to provide a more varied palette, so far I only have nine pots to choose from and they are nearly all variations on brown, a bit limited really.

The flesh effect is great so I can see myself continuing to use that on models that I may complete the old way.

Basically, I am still not sure if I like contrast paints or not…maybe when the models are finished I can make up my mind…