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Last week we took a look at how to build a stretch of sandbags to use as a linear obstacle in your games – useful in games such as Warhammer 40,000, Bolt Action or Warmachine. As a quick reminder, here’s how the finished product looks:

Here’s a set I prepared earlier

Of course, now you’ve built your sandbag wall, it is time to paint it – which we’ll take a look at this week.

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I’ve been painting miniatures now for around fifteen years, and I’m fully aware of my limitations within the medium – I can’t paint eyes, for instance, and I’ve never even bothered to look at painting non-metallic metals. Part of this reluctance is that I don’t view myself as a display painter, but rather an army painter – I want my models to look good when they’re on the table, but at least be presentable if someone is picking them up and looking at them from six inches away.

Having said that, there is one area I do hear compliments on regularly, and that’s how the gold on my figures comes out. I can’t take credit for the method, as I initially found it on The Painting Corps, but I’ve been using it for a few years now with some great results.

Unfortunately, last year Games Workshop decided to completely replace their paint range, meaning that Gryphonne Sepia, a key component in this technique, is no longer available. And guess who forgot to make time to go and pick up a couple of pots before they went off sale?

As I’m almost out of this precious resource, I figured it was time to try out the replacement for Gryphonne Sepia, Seraphim Sepia. Hopefully, this will be a success – but let’s see.

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2012 sees the start of a new project – I’m running A Tale of Warmahordes 2012 over on the Privateer Press forums. It is a simple proposition – paint 50 points of models for Warmachine and/or Hordes over the course of twelve months, with an allowance of two months “off”. I take no credit for the concept, as I took part in the 2010 edition, which petered out in August/September as people lost interest.

I had two reasons for starting this up – a mid-year goal and an overall resolution for 2012. The mid-year goal is, surprisingly enough, the 2012 European Team Challenge, a Warmachine/Hordes tournament taking place at Maelstrom Games in July. I’ve attended the two previous years with a Mercenary army (Durgen Madhammer in 2010, and Drake MACBAIN in 2011), but decided in the aftermath of the 2011 tournament that I’d change faction in 2012 – and build a Theme Force instead of a standard army. As a result, I’m building a Tier 4 eNemo army.

Despite my pledge to have the army ready in time, I’ve only managed to get three out of the fifty points painted thus far, in the form of three Stormsmiths. Motivation, then, is clearly not my strong point – and the need to paint a minimum number of points per month from the Tale of Warmahordes so as not to be embarrassed in public should help keep me going.

The resolution aspect is fairly simple – I’ve pledged that over the course of 2012 I’ll buy less points-worth of models for Warmahordes than I manage to paint. From what we’ve seen previewed thus far – and what I’ve seen within Warmachine: Wrath and Hordes: Domination – I reckon I’ll be looking at one or two purchases a month, which should mean staying ahead of the curve is fairly straightforward. Having said that, there are still elements I need for my ETC army that I need to buy, so this may get interesting – I’ll post updates on here at the end of each quarter so you know how I’m getting on.

So, if you’re a Warmachine or Hordes player, why not sign up for A Tale of Warmahordes 2012? We’ve had over 100 people sign up thus far – so if everyone manages their pledge, that’s over 5,000 points of models we’ll have gotten painted – and that’d be a great achievement, wouldn’t you say?

NB: I’m aware that the comments aren’t working on here – it looks like one of my anti-spam plug-ins has vanished, and crippled the functionality. I’m looking into how to fix it.

Cadian Company Commander

I’ve been an Imperial Guard player for a while, though I’ve lapsed in recent years as I’d been mainly playing Warmachine/Hordes/CCGs/etc instead of Warhammer 40,000. I did pick up the codex for 5th edition 40k, just so I could see what they were doing to my PBI – the number of new tanks, including the return to the codex of some old favourites, was nice to see, but I missed the Doctrine system that had been present in the 4th edition book. The doctrines allowed you to customise your army to how you saw your regiment fighting, and without it you end up with a fairly carbon-copy army – unless you want to use a special character.

While I’d flicked through the codex, I hadn’t taken the time to see how my existing army worked under it. Having been woken up ridiculously early by the sun the other morning, I decided to dig out the army list for the 13th Armageddon Auxiliaries and try to rework it under the 5th ed format.
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I’ve now completed two months of my rationing, and we’re still going strong – I suspect part of this is due to the fact that I keep finding blisters (or cases, even) with figures from the four factions from Warmachine and Hordes that I’m working on. With the exception of a couple of units I want to pick up for the WAMP Army Challenge I’m working on, I shouldn’t need to buy any news figures for them for a while, though there are some Trollblood figures which tempt me, such as the new Scouts. Anyway, time for an update…

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