Reminder: April 2011 Army List Challenge

The April 2011 Army List Challenge is still open for entries.
Nominate the weakest link in your favourite codex and build a themed army list around it.  Full details are on the challenge page; can you get your name in to the Hall of Fame?

Decayed Plaguemarine Backpack, with Nurgling

To create variation within my plague marine squads, I have tried using a plethora of minor conversions.  This Death Guard marine has a ruined backpack -- I've chopped off the right hand side vent (as pictured) and glued a lot of grit around the edge of the pack.  Using some wire, I've then created an attachment from the damaged side to the broken off bit that is sat next to a nurgling on the base.

The nurgling is a Realms of Chaos era one and to ensure that the pose looks correct, I've bored a hole through his hand where he is holding on to the wire.  The broken part of the backpack is then inserted up to his mouth, making it look like he's having a cheeky drink from the messed up remains of the back pack.

Painted Quantum Gothic Power Generator

The Quantum Gothic power generator that I assembled a few days ago is now painted. Most of the painting scheme depicted on their web site is of a rusted appearance, in keeping with their apparent theme of a war that is fought at an atomic level: accelerated aging (etc.).   However, for my kit, I wanted something a bit different and more in keeping with my other bits of scenery that exhibit several solidus colours (albeit in a wrecked state).  For the power generator I therefore chose a pair of colours to work with: blue and brass.  Ultramarine blue was basecoated over a black undercoat on the main cylinder of the power generator as well as both ends and the pipework.  This was inked with a dark blue colour and highlighted back up.  The black parts were drybrushed in boltgun metal and selectively hightlighted with codex grey.  Meanwhile, the brass looking parts started out with a shining gold base coat that was washed several times over with brown to created a worn look.  The final detailing included painting the pressure gauge (top picture) and highlighting the edges of the silver and other raised parts.  The vivid blue of the power generator will make it hard to miss on many playing tables -- and this is the point.  If I use it as an objective, I certainly don't want to overlook its existence!

Review: Quantum Gothic Power Generator

Quantum Gothic's power generator comes in seven parts.  The image below pictures these parts directly out of the package.  As with the Comm Dish that I previously bought, the power generator has very little in the way of flashes of resin needing to be trimmed away from the kit before assembly can begin. Being pedantic, I did use a hobby knife to sharpen up the edges of the four nuts and bolts bits (lower portion of the image), but realistically, not even that was needed.

I've said it before, and I'll state it again: the quality of Quantum Gothic's resin is tremendous.  There are no air bubbles in the pieces and there are no issues with flexure. The quality control that the company does is fantastic.  The power generator itself is very simple to put together: to be honest space marines are probably harder to glue in place.  The two side bits are glued on to either side of the main body of the generator (the main body is symmetric, so it makes no difference which end one glues them to) and the four nuts and bolts are positioned on the corners of the rectangular resin base.  Assembly time was no more than five minutes, including ripping open the packaging.  It really was that easy!

The assembled power generator is shown below mounted on a large citadel circular base.  For contrast and scale comparison, a chaos space marine with a missile launcher and a tyranid warrior are placed either side of the piece.  As can be seen, the power generator is a little taller than the chaos marine, but the tyranid warrior can just about see over the top of it. 

As well as being scenery that can block lines of sight within games, the power generator's other obvious use will be as an objective marker.  For the moment, I intend to let the generator be a free-standing piece rather than part of a larger terrain piece, but clearly the hobbyist could do either.  One of the more fascinating options would be to create a chain of power generators as a set scenery piece.  At 7.50 UKP, this could be quite a realistic option for even the average gamer and modeller. 

To balance this review, we now turn to what could be improved.  I suspect that the nuts and bolts could have been cast with the main body of the piece with a bit of work.  But that really isn't so important as I personally quite like having the option of being able to include or exclude these small features.  The corners of the piece also extend over the edge of the standard 60mm citadel circular base (see the image below).  To me, this again is not an issue as I have plenty of miniatures that do likewise and I am (after all) combining a citadel base with a non-Games Workshop kit(!)

Disclaimer: Although I am not affiliated with Quantum Gothic in any way, they did ask me to write this review.  However, I was under no obligation to make any positive, or negative comments about the product. At no stage did the company insist on reviewing this article before publication.

Shadow Sword: Part XI. Hull Highlighting

My traitor Shadow Sword continues its long journey to being fully painted.  In this update, I've completed the edge highlighting of the grim-purposed red panels.  The edging was performed by applying a pure coat of mechrite red around the edges, followed by selective highlighting of mechrite red mixed with blazing orange (but thinner in width than the previous highlight) followed by pure blazing orange on less locations and thinner still.  The process broadly matches what I did with the las cannon sponsons earlier (which in retrospect, I can consider a test for this tank-wide painting scheme).  Further, the bolts have also been picked out in near pure blazing orange.  All of this gives the appearance of a used and, perhaps, slightly rusted tank.  The contast with the layers of dark wash are impressive.

In the image, I've configured the kit in the Banehammer form thanks to the crafty magnetization and main weapon enabling I implemented from the commencement of this project.  But there's still plenty of work (i.e. painting) left to do with this tank yet.

April 2011 Army List Challenge: The Weak Fight Back

The April 2011 Army List Challenge is about making the most of something that is potentially weak. 

For this challenge, you need to select (and justify) what you think is the weakest unit in your chosen codex and build a themed 1500 points army around that particular unit.  Your selected unit must be the primary feature or theme of the army list, though.

So if you're a chaos player like myself, could you come up with an army that is centred around (e.g.) units of Chaos Spawn or Possessed (both of which are regarded as sub-par choices in the aging chaos codex)?  As an example: perhaps Fabius Bile has "enhanced" multiple squads of possessed marines?

Rules
(1) Design a 1500 points army list from any codex to take on this challenge.
(2) Post your army lists as a comment to this posting and suggest why you've chosen the particular unit you have to build around (i.e. why they're weak!) and why the army list still works and is themed.
(3) Entries close at 01:00 GMT on March 14th.
(4) On that same day, I'll open a poll for Warpstone Flux readers to judge which army list they consider to be the "most effective army list that also best articulates the theme" (whatever readers interpret that to mean) out of all entrants.
(5) The winner will be tallied and announced on March 21st (and entered in to the hall of fame!).
(6) One entry per person please.

Remember that there are no prizes for these contests, beyond kudos, honour and entry in to the hall of fame.

Good Luck!