Poll: Catachan Tiger camo scheme

ok, this stuff up here is for Teo's brand new army: Catachan imperial guard!
i'm doing some tests for the camo scheme. the idea is to stick with a early Vietnam tiger camo scheme, so horizontal black sharp stripes on a green background. the problem is: which green?! the choice is, respectively, between:

1. snot green
2. dark angels green
   

please vote in the poll box! thanks!

RESULTS:
snot green 2
dark angels green 6
neither 2

Black Templars' banner

Hi guys!
do you remember this Land Raider Crusader i've painted for my friend Teo? well, we added a banner drawn by Teo and painted by me: here it is!
it is done in the oldschool way: drawn by hand on paper, painted, cut and sprinkled with PVA glue... just to make it last!

Vendetta pilots

Vendetta update: these are the pilots. still nameless.
even if a Valkyrie/Vendetta isn't a fighter aircraft, i tried to give this guys a "top ace" look customizing their helmets: the pilot got a Japanese rising sun design (quite a classic) and the gunner something like Merlin the wizard.

i'm pretty happy with the pilot sunglasses.

...and i really like how the panels and the screen turned out.
that's all for now!

Vendetta camo scheme complete!

whoa... the end of a nightmare! you can't believe how frustrating can be painting a model this big with a poligonal camo scheme... by hand! so, if you ask me, go for masking and spray paints! let me tell you why this has been a nightmare:

1. black basecoat
2. Vallejo german grey undercoat
3. heavy drybrush with codex grey (or Vallejo basalt grey)
4. hand drawing of the poligonal spots with watered down black paint
5. drybrush of the spots with Vallejo german grey

in one word: hellish! basically the problem was drawing neatly on the Vendetta surface all those spots...

if you are interested in, this scheme has been "stolen" from an italian aircraft camo scheme in use during ww2 in temperate/desert areas, so i adapted it for urban scenarios and made it more poligonal.


hope you like it. the next steps are the pilots, weapons and insignas... that's gonna be much easier.
hey, i just remembered that tonight i dreamt freddy kruger!

Baneblade WIP (part I)

so, first of all i'm gonna convert the crew. the baneblade model has many hatches so i want to exploit their "potential" the best that i can.

on the turret there are two hatches, one for the commander (here shown without fur and medals conversions) and another one for the second in command/gunner/whatever. everyone on this tank wear ushanka caps and gasmasks (Pig Iron heads) to give a Valhallan flavour to the crew.

adding some armour on the heavy stubber will make the gunner much happier!

demolition cannon gunner checks everything out there is ok... or maybe he is simply waiting for some targets getting into range!

final notes: Baneblade cannon is still missing because it's gonna get some magnets as well as side sponsons... someone said Hellhammer?

that's all for now!

Heroquest wizard!

this was the last of the heroes i had to paint. i kept this for last because the right arm, the raised one, was broken so i had to replace it with an imperial guard tank commander arm which turned out to be quite good, even without the glove.
the paintjob with a decent light is quite good but i don't know why the picture didn't turn out really well. probably i should use a light diffuser and give this miniature a bit of matt varnish.
i was also thinking about adding some stars on the shirt, would it be good?

Heroquest Barbarian restyling!

lots of time ago i painted three of the four Heroquest heroes, but the Barbarian was quite fragile: the sword was already broken and glued when i bought the game so, when it got broken again, i thought it would be good to do a bit of restyling.

i used a sword blade from the GW Skeleton sprues and then glued it on the hilt. instead of painting it plain metal, i chose a neat colour gradient in order to make it look like a magical, red-hot, sword. i'm quite satisfied about it. can't wait to play all the Heroquest expansions with my friends!

Baneblade tank commander

finally back!
this is my new Baneblade tank commander, still nameless. it's just the basic kit, with a Pig Iron head and some sculped fur and medals. do you like it? charge!

Scotland time!

so, i'm finally in Edinburgh! in reality it's already the third week of stay and i must say that i'm really glad to be here: the town is nice and the beer is delicious!
i could not bring the baneblade with me (too bulky for the luggage!) so i'll paint some infantry that you will see soon.
by the way: if someone out there is from Edinburgh, let's get in touch for a 40k chat, a beer or a walk!

Graduation gift (better: i love my friends)

as you may already know i recently graduated in mechanical engineering. well, above there's a picture of what my friends gave me as a gift. I LOVE YOU GUYS!
i've planned to build this pet in the next two months, when i will be all alone in Scotland... it will be full of conversions, unique!

Panther approaching!

2nd FoW post.
this time we've got a original Battlefront tank, scale 1:100. i've planned to deploy this beauty with my SS panzergrenadier kompanie, as regimental support or something like that.

Battlefront tanks are really detailed, the hull is made of resin, while tracks, weapons and other details are metallic. note how resin makes the Zimmerit finish realistic.

as i previously said, this model will represent a Panther A from some company of the 2nd SS panzerdivision Das Reich, active in Normandy, after D-Day. it will follow Cobra rules. i gotta choose a camo scheme for it, any suggestion?

Hexagonal bases!!!

do you remember those hexagonal slottabases that came with Talisman's miniatures, back in the 80s? well, i have them! i bought them at Gateshead Gaming. i'm planning to use them for my Dungeons & Dragons miniatures, in order to spare my round bases for 40k. what a blast from the past!
[in the picture: Aenur, the sword of twilight, still WIP]

Fixing a Catachan lieutenant

this miniature belongs to Teo. it has been bought used and hadn't got any ammo belt down the boltgun so i fixed it for my friend with a spare ammo belt from imperial guard weapons platform.

Flames of War: first post

i always liked ww2 militaria, films, books and whatever else since when i was just a kid. some time ago i found in my home this 1:72 Wehrmacht models, bought a pair of years ago when i went to London and i visited the Imperial War Museum (which is a really neat place to go if you are a militaria fanatic). i decided, even if they are too big, to use them like test models to learn how to play FoW, so i bought some spare bases and painted them: this is what i did.

in the picture above there is a command team from a german grenadier platoon, the equivalent for an imperial guard platoon command squad. it is a simple rifle team but i guess in the game i'll make it count as SMG/panzerfaust team or whatever else. these miniatures represent pretty well the basic german grenadiers who invaded Poland and France back in 1939-40 so i painted them codex grey as this was the early war uniform colour.

on the right side of the lieutenant helmet i painted nazi germany national emblem, an early war feature that disappeared due to war economy. the base has to be completed with come static grass i have not yet bought.
i can't wait to paint a whole army!

PS: as i said these are not official FoW miniatures. i used Italeri models. their scale is 1:72 (25mm) which is pretty different from the official 1:100 (15mm) but i don't care (for now).

1st birthday!

i'm 2 days late but i just don't care, i'm sorry for no posting these days but try to understand me: i'm next to graduation, it's spring (which is a really nice season in italy) and i'm happy. so wish me good things and please be patient, i'll come back, don't know if soon or not but i'll come back for sure. i promise i'll try to update the blog as much as i can! see you soon, friends!

Mathammer: Basics

let me begin with this: luckly, there's not a right way to win at wh40k. personally i really enjoy to have a nice time with my friends when i play with "toy soldiers" but, of course, no one wants to lose games all the time and i am no exception.
every player, when it comes to list making, asks himself what unit he should put in or which piece of wargear suits best a possible combat with a designated enemy. some simply choose the most expensive options, others always use the same bone-crunching combo that their codex allows.

well, this article wants to be something different. some time ago, while i was passing from one defeat to another, i worked out this method which is a simple probabilistic analysis of what is more likely to come out with a roll of dice.
let's say you want to know how likely is that your space marine kills an ork, ok? in order to understand how much this event is likely to happen you simply have to make a little maths but don't worry, only some products or divisions :-)
space marines has BS4 so hit on 3+, bolter has S4 so wounds a T4 on 4+, bolter's AP is 5 so no armour save is allowed. on a D6 a roll of 3+ happens in 4 cases on 6 so we use a fraction to say this: 4/6= 0.66. we can say almost the same for the 4+ roll: 3 cases on 6 so 3/6=0.5

let's put this altogether:
if space marine shots 1 time we have: 4/6*3/6*100= 33.33%
(as you can see i multiplied by 100 to have a number in percentage)
if space marine shots 2 times (eg: target within 12") we have: 2*4/6*3/6*100= 66.66%

you can apply this approach with nearly every weapon and target in the game, there are some tricky issues i'll explain in next posts.

i hope i've been clear, i explained the question in the most straightforward way i found. i don't know if any other player wrote on this issue before, so if this is not that piece of news, please tell me. thank you.

PS: of course to apply this method you've got to know, at least vaguely, which enemy will stand before you.
PS2: BIG WARNING, this is a method with which you can know the average behaviour of a weapon or trooper against a given enemy. if you are lucky/unlucky with dice the "statistic prediction" may not work! also: the more dice you throw, the more you'll stick with Mathammer results.

and yes, i'm a nerd.

Fantasy Monday #3: Heroquest Evil Sorcerer

"Skeletor" is done! i'm not completely satisfied about this miniature but i don't think i'll strip it for now. i really don't like how the skull turned out, vallejo bad moon yellow doesn't provide a very bold coverage, which is bad. i will use a different approach next time... maybe i can try to give it a wash. i'll see what i can do to fix this fantastic miniature, it's a shame that i painted it this bad.

Black Templars' custom painted hatch

not that much to say: a nice way to make your rhino unique: templar cross with the (Navarre) crusade badge.

One more Chaos Space Marines scheme

do you remember this? well, today i tried to paint it but i sadly realized i have not got any colour close to that very light green so, together with Michele, we planned to switch to another green, the dear old Goblin Green. this is the plan, i'll paint one test miniature asap. do you like it? i do, it reminds me all those old orky miniatures... 1993-94 circa.

Battle for Tcharkov objective counters

this is the first surprise i was talking about in the previous post. not that incredible thing, of course, but these counters are quite useful when you play a lot of Seize Ground games. they simply are some 20mm round bases, painted with Battle for Tcharkov campaign factions' logos.