Recalcitrant Daze - Twitter, Open Day, Buying Stuff, Models.

That title is a bit of a mouth full isn't it?


New Years Open Day.

This Monday I'll be at the Open Day at Warhammer World. Most likely spending more money than I should.

As always I'll have my camera with me and I'll do one or two posts on RD. However I will also put up the odd picture on Twitter during the actual event. Not done that before but thought it might be fun to do.

Twitter:

Must admit thus far I've quite enjoyed the whole Twitter experience. Seems easy to join in without it being too much of a distraction or taking up all the spare time.

As I mentioned above I will probably be using Twitter to post up a few pictures during the Open Day, so if you want to see some pictures earlier than normal from me pop along to Twitter and look up @Rictus40k


Buying Stuff:

Went on a bit of a spending spree book wise recently...

The two Apocrypha books were a definite to buy and join the softback Astartes version I have.

Not really sure why I bought the two Codex books, it was partly to get the free postage when I ordered the Apocrypha books I have to admit...doubt I'll ever actually use any of the rules in them but they were a nice enough read.

The Index Chaotica Apocrypha book arrived damaged unfortunately. Alas due to their limited nature GW couldn't replace it with a new one. However I can't fault their customer service as they both refunded the cost and gave me a voucher.

Joining those two books will be the new anniversary edition of Rogue Trader which goes on sale at the Open Day. I've got an original on the shelf but it's too fragile to actually read so I am looking forward to getting the new one and being able to read it properly again.


Models:

I've actually been working on some models.

Shocking, I know.

Hopefully you saw the update on the Decimators already and now I am looking at the Adeptus Mechanicum Zone Mortalis force. While the full force will be 1000 points the aim is to get the first 500 done by the Heresy Weekender.

The path of Heresy begins with a small step.

Update to come soon (I hope).

Blessings of the Plaguefather - Decimators 11

An update.

With actual models.

That I have worked on.

I should be working on my AM force for an upcoming game, but instead my attention returned to my two Decimators. You may remember that I had one Decimator built with a second as a WIP.

The built Decimator needed a new 80mm base to match the second one and also needed a CCW (due to me not reading the rules right when I built it, turns out if you have a conversion beamer you can't take a second ranged weapon which screws me over a bit).

So my first job was the base. I didn't want to pull the Decimator of its base as I was sure it'll just break. Instead I took an 80mm base, cut a hole in it and fitted it round the existing base, this was trickier than it sounds. It was then textured to suit.

For the CCW I used the standard claw from FW, I couldn't be arsed making my own which I had been thinking about doing at one point.

One thing I really don't like about the Decimator model is the wrist and leg joints, the bits that look like this:

For a start they never seem to be cast well, one side always seems to be at an angle or twisted. But the main issue is that they are so damn fragile. They very easily break and are an absolutely bitch to fix, there is almost no area of contact between the body and the hinge parts.

On this first Decimator one of the wrist pieces broke off and I have had a nightmare trying to sort it. I won't bore you with the details but I really wanted to put him through the window at one point. It took super glue, two part epoxy, Green Stuff and some brass rod to - I think - resolve it.

In the end the first Decimator looks like this...

For his younger brother I got the body all finished, the Claw done and finished the base off.

You may (but probably not) remember I wanted to make one half of him more Nurgley than the other, as thought he Daemon inside is slowly spreading it's influence working from one side to the other.

So I fixed the one shoulder plate in place allowing me to add more GS and bed the plate in more.

As you can see I also added the Decimator head. I spent a long time contemplating and mocking up alternatives but in the end nothing else really felt right. So I went with the stock head plate but attacked it with the Dremel and added GS around it, again as though the Daemon inside is slowly corrupting all of the body to it's true nature.

The second shoulder plate is not glued on (for ease of painting later). In the pic above it is just blu-tac'd in place. You may notice is doesn't fit exactly the same as the right shoulder plate - this isn't an issue or a problem, I wanted a bit of difference to show how the right shoulder plate is being distorted and moved by the growths inside.

Not much really to see on the Claw weapon.

I have mounted all of the magnets on both Decimators in the same position, so if I want I can use any weapon on either Decimator. So if I wanted I could go with one walker with two Claws. Also means I can come up with more weapons later and have them fit into any arm on any Decimator.

Annoyingly I found I was one magnet short, so the Butcher Cannon below is just held on with blu-tac for now.

And the two brothers together:

Well they were a pain in the arse.

Lootin' Tutorial - Part Three

Continuing my step-by-step part one and two post on how I Loot vehicles, part three follows the  second and third Looted Wagons covering their hull re-builds turrets. Also, lots of finished pics!

Lootin' Tutorial - Part Two

Continuing the step-by-step article on how I loot vehicles, part two follows the progress of the first Looted Wagon and shows how I went about rebuilding the hull and adding weapons and details.

Lootin' Tutorial - Part One

After joining Twitter I began showing some of my Ork builds, from a question or two on there I realised it was a long time since I did my Ork Lootin' articles for Bell of Lost Souls. So I thought I would revisit them and post them up on Recalcitrant Daze...

This three part article will follow my progress as I turn three old Leman Russ tanks into Looted Wagons, covering everything from concept to the finished build. This first part covers the basics and also the benefits of doing a mock up.

Blood Bowl, Zone Mortalis and Twitter

Things are still packed over here, too much work, too little time.

However, as always is the way having no time to do do anything with models hasn't stopped me buying them.

Blood Bowl...

Ah, Blood Bowl, lovely, lovely Blood Bowl.

In the box is also Death Zone with the extra rules. In there is the Nurgle team, I will be waiting for those to arrive before really 'doing' a team. The human and Orcs in the box will just get built to get some games in. They'll stay in the coloured plastic they come in I think.

Zone Mortalis.

I've been sorting through my Adeptus Mechanicum models and sorted out the 500 point force I'll be working on over Christmas with the plan of getting them done for the Horus Heresy Weekender in February.

The force numbers seven models. Surely I can manage that? Especially when one is already built...

In the Blood Bowl order I also picked up the set of daftly named Haemotrope Reactors. I plan to use these as terrain in Zone Mortalis. I admit now I'm not a fan of the big AM skull panel and the Orky like exhaust things, they will definitely be left off.

Twitter.

So I've done something I never planned to do. I've joined Twitter. Not, I hasten to add, to follow vacuous celebrities and their ilk. When I was at Warhammer World for the 40k Open Days I got talking to someone whose work I admired but who no longer posts on his blog or on forums. He finds being able to put up the odd update on Twitter far easier.

It occurred to me that I might be missing out on the work by others, known or unknown to me, by not being on their.

So I signed up. And at that point I'm not sure what else to do. I'm guessing the next step is to start following people. Who is the question.

So if you know of anyone on Twitter who is worth following (hobby related...) please give me a heads up.

I plugged for @Rictus40k on there. As annoyingly someone already had the version without the '40k' bit added on, rather inconsiderate of them wasn't it?

Update: I've done my first tweet. Oh the excitement in the Recalcitrant Daze household is almost electric I tell you.

If you search #RecalcitrantDaze you should be able to find me. Or not. I don't really know what I am doing.

Well, this happened.

Yeah, well. It's hard to say no when one of these buggers comes along...

The big question is do I stop at just one of them?

In other news I had the second sketch book from the excellent Karl Kopinski arrive yesterday.

Like the first volume it is full of great sketches and each one has a one off sketch in the front cover.

In other, other, news I've not touched anything hobby wise still, except getting some gaming in over the weekend. I am thinking that I need to get something going just to keep my eye in.

With the Weekender coming in February my eye is turning to the Adeptus Mechanicum Zone Mortalis force I have unbuilt in a box.

IPMS Model Show 2016

Here are a selection of pictures from the IPMS Scale Model show.

These are taken from both the club stands and the competition.

40k Open Day - Part 2 - Magnus, Golden Demon and Exhibition

Last part of the pictures.

Magnus, you only realise how sodding big he is when he's in front of you.

40k Open Day - Part 1 - Wolves, Gold Men and Prospero

First part of the picture dump is Leman Wolf and his Puppies and the WIP Battle of Prospero Display Board.

First here is Wolfy McWolfface and his Puppies:

Recalcitrant Daze - Not Dead Yet...Open Days and Little Plastic Men

I'm still breathing, just very busy...

However I decided quite late that I can spare a day out this weekend at the 40k Open Day.

I'm not there today (or i'd just be posting pictures), instead I am going tomorrow. So while I won't be posting up anything you won't already have seen today I am sure in amongst the many, many pictures I put up there will be something worth seeing.

Sunday is also the Golden Demon day so I'll be trying to get some decent shots from that as well.

I also had tickets arrive today for the Heresy Weekender. Alas it is still three months away but it will be worth waiting for.

While I am of course delighted to be able to benefit from getting these on pre-order due to previously attending I can fully understand peoples annoyance at missing out when there are people who buy these tickets purely to sell on at huge profit.

I saw only this morning someone selling a Weekender ticket for £200 on eBay. People taking advantage of the 4 ticket per person limit to make money off those who couldn't benefit from the pre-orders. Shame FW can't act and cancel the ticket and strike the person off the list.

I don't begrudge someone selling a spare ticket at face value, done it myself plenty of times with spare gig tickets, but setting out to screw someone over is beyond the pale in my eyes.

Anyway...

As well as the 40k Open Day tomorrow I am going to the IPMS Model Show next weekend.

As such you can expect two weekends of posts full of many pictures of models. Just need to stop myself spending too much over the two events.

Especially as I picked up this...

Recalcitrant Daze - Semi Hiatus

You may have noticed a distant lack of content on here over recent months.

Bar the one post on AI terrain and a post showing some AI planes I'd picked up from eBay there has been nothing of note for quite some time.

This is down to a number of reason.

The greatest reason early on was a distinct lack of motivation and enthusiasm. I just can't be arsed to do anything with models, just one of those periods I think everyone in this hobby gets from time to time when they just don't want to pick a knife (or brush) up.

Another big reason was lack of time, so when I have thought about doing something I haven't had the time to put it into practice.

Unfortunately free time is going to be even more scarce as I have started a degree, this is being done in the evenings and weekends so time to do anything hobby related is going to be rare.

However I don't want RD to remain completely silent so I will try and put something regular up.

• Expect a handful of more White Dwarfs from the past popping up.
• I've made sure there will be time to go to the IPMS model show next month so I'll do posts on that as normal.
• Blood Bowl is coming. Things will happen.
• Sheep as threatened to start painting the Militia infantry. So I may need to force myself to finish the HW teams to send them South.

We'll see how it goes shall we?

Aeronautica Imperialis - Terrain 1

I've actually done some hobby stuff.

A very small amount, but in the light of how much I have done over the last couple of months it can be counted as progress and worthy of an update.

As soon as I picked up that load of AI planes from eBay I was thinking I needed something Eldary for my airplanes to blow up and/or capture from the pointy eared ones (which will be referred to as "Panzies" when I'm using the Bommerz).

So I thought some bit of half buried Eldar structure, maybe a warp gate or some such would be good.

A couple of years ago I was commissioned to do a mould and casts of some Warp Vanes for a Wraithknight by the extremely talented Andy Hicks. He is an awesome converter of Eldar infantry and vehicles, if you haven't seen them I suggest you take a few hours off to browse his website. The Wraithknight with the warp vanes in place can be found on this page. He was selling casts of the vanes, so if you want some yourself drop him a line and he might be able to help you out.

I'd got a couple of the warp vanes knocking around from when I was doing the first test casts so I decided to turn them into a piece of AI terrain.

Crappy pictures I know but you get the idea. I mounted the vanes on some 1mm styrene then added milliput to bulk the bases out and help it look a bit more 'natural'. I decided to split the base so they could be either set up together or as two separate pieces. However I do wish I had made the join a bit more natural as now they can't really be set up as anything other than a pair.

Scale shot, I know, using an Eldar aircraft would have been more appropriate but I have packed them away ready to give to Nife and I couldn't be arsed to get them out just for one picture.

After the milliput had cured I covered the bases in tissue and thinned PVA. Then filler was added to the PVA and painted over. More filler (in powder form) was then sprinkled over.

To be honest I was making it up as I went along hoping to get a pleasing result. I didn't want to just sand it as I thought that would be both boring and not really fit the scale.

Quite happy overall. Needs bit more cleaning up and GS to the one air bubble but otherwise it is close to being done. I may decide to add more filler to one base to have the vane a bit more buried. We'll see.

Aeronautica Imperialis.

I've not touched any models since the last post, but as usual that's not stopped me buying more...

I have been a fan of Aeronautica Imperialis since the first book came out and I am still disappointed FW canned it when GW pulled the Epic range. While there is a chance the new Specialist Games department may bring it back the fact is it would almost certainly be in the new Epic scale.

You may (but probably don't) remember I picked up some Chaos aircraft from eBay a while back so that I could finally put together a Chaos airforce. They cost me a fortune but ever since then I have been keeping my eye on eBay for more aircraft, but Chaos and others so that I could expand the playing options.

So last week I hit gold by picking up a single auction for a large amount of aircraft. It arrived yesterday...

Once combined with the aircraft I already have I'll have a large Chaos force.

But that isn't all that was in the box, oh no...

A decently sized complete Tau force. With fighters, bombers, large transport and AA units this covers everything I'll need.

But that's not the end, the box contained a third force, larger than the other two.

A full, large Eldar force. With Nightwing Interceptors, Phoenix Fighter-Bombers, Vampire Raiders and Vampire Bombers as well as some AA units we have enough there to play any scenario from small to large.

Alas the Eldar will not be staying with me as Nife will be having those.

I might start looking at that Chaos force soon, might be what get's me back into the swing of things again.

Though the Chaos force will be large it will be missing two big elements.

1. A Chaos Thunderhawk to give some transport craft in the force.
2. One of these buggers:

Isn't it awesome?

Recalcitrant Daze - Down Time

So it's been a month since I last posted on here. That post was a return-from-holiday-pictures post, the one before that was a White Dwarf look back piece and before then we had the Forge World Open Day coverage. I've not actually done a post involving models I've worked on since the 2nd of July.

Which is a bit shite.

This is due to two things, 1. lack of time and 2. lack of motivation. It's just one of those periods that when I do have free time I just can't be arsed.

I have been catching up on some reading, currently working my way through Fiefdom, the first non Black Library book by them I've read.

After that I think I'll be picking up one of these two. Two of the best authors in their field (in my opinion at least).

Now last weekend I got my hands on the new White Dwarf.

With various posts I have made on here you probably know it has been some time since I bought a White Dwarf and my thoughts of them is more than just a little negative. But I thought it was only fair to pick up the first in what has been billed as a new start.

While I've not read it all yet I have to say my first impressions are positive.

There is a lot packed in there and a lot of what used to annoy me seems to have been toned down.

Even before I do fully read it I can see me picking up the next couple of issues to see if this new start continues or if they've put all their eggs into the basket that is the first issue.

I have to say it is nice to see artwork on the cover again.


Something else I have picked up is the Index Astartes Apocrypha book. I have mentioned being disappointed in missing out on this when it first came out as they had stupidly limited it to a very small number. It's now back in softback so I got in there quick just in case.

It is interesting to see not only how the background has developed but also just how different the artwork has changed over the years.

It only arrived yesterday, I'll put it aside till I finish Fiefdom and White Dwarf.



I did say at the beginning of this I'd not had much free time recently. One reason for this was going to a wedding last weekend in York.

While there I grabbed a few pictures of some ruins. I like ruins.