Articles tagged with: Space Hulk

My Old Space Hulk Terminators

While ordering stuff and trying to make some more space (I'm in a cleaning spree), I grabbed my old Space Hulk box and checked what I actually have inside. It is a 1st edition base game, and I knew I had inside at least the pieces and instructions of Deathwing, Genestealer and the Space Hulk Campaigns book. I also knew I had at least some miniatures, as I have more than 50 genestealers in total, and at least two painted plastic Terminator Librarians (as Deathwing, of course). What I didn't knew is that, probably when I was learning how to paint, I painted two full squads of the plastic Terminators of the base game plus their corresponding Librarians too!

It's so funny to see them, the blocky, rounded miniatures, painted quite terribly, with gloss varnish and even with the bases "wrong" for Space Hulk (but as green & brown was the official GW bases color back in the day...).

Here's the Dark Angels squad, with the old black color schema and also old transfers applied.

Dark Angels Terminators #1

Dark Angels Terminators #2

Dark Angels Terminators #3

And here's an Ultramarines squad, with black chapter symbol transfers, which look terrible indeed.

Ultramarines Terminators #1

Ultramarines Terminators #2

Ultramarines Terminators #3

I'm not much of a fan of repainting miniatures, so I'll probably leave them as they are. I kind of like to see my beginnings. Also, after all I have around half a company of Deathwing Terminators awaiting to be painted so there's plenty of units for future games (If I play Space Hulk again, that is).

Apart from this findings, I haven't done much, just base-coated a few Necrons and painted two of them. I sold a few but keep more than enough to make for a nice army, and as they are one of the easiest miniatures to paint I should keep working on them.

Painting progres... A few necrons

My Contemptor Dreadnought had also some highlights layer and now I'm painting the metal but I'll wait until it's more complete to take any picture.

So the painting progress has been slow, but at least there's movement. Summer also means escaping from the city which means more reading and less painting.


The Elder Diary: #20140418

As my spare time becomes more scarce and I prefer to write fewer blog posts but with more interesting content (at least more focused and containing less offtopic clutter), it's been quite a few months since I posted something about my painting progress or CRPG related entries.

As a summary, that I will probably do again in the future, this is more or less all what I've been doing:

Boardgames

D&D Castle Ravenloft: Not much to say, we played the first missions, it is interesting but hard to win the bad guys!

Our ongoing Risk Legacy campaign: Finished battle 9, really cool how the game develops, and still way to go until the map "becomes fixed".

Descent 2nd edition: I liked it so much I bought the base game. Expansions seem a bit meh, until I get tired of the base game I doubt will buy anything else.

Flash Point: A collaborative game where up to 6 firemen try to save 7 people from a house while fire and smoke spreads and causes explosions.

CRPGs

Braverly Default: I'm loving it. Same as Final Fantasy series are dead (last games being a disgrace), this is a nice spiritual successor, combining Final Fantasy III job system with summonable friend special moves and combat tweaks, plus configurable difficulty setting and encounter %. And lovely graphics. Did I already say I'm enjoying it a lot?

Zelda: A link between worlds: I was reluctant to play this because the 2D Link wasn't appealing, but I tried and I actually like a lot the puzzles, but I agree on the general consensus that it is quite easy. I haven't finished it yet, but due to lack of time.

Project X Zone: More tactical than RPG, it's very similar to Final Fantasy Tactics but with simpler "fighting-like" battles.

Diablo 3 expansion: Now it finally is a roguelike and action house went to hell, so has become what it should have been two years ago.

Warhammer Quest on iOS: Along ALL expansions, and now I'm playing the additional characters, so you can imagine how much I like this game. One of the best purchases for my iPad, it's so great to have a "portable WHQ" even for holidays.

Space Hulk: One of my big dissapointments, and not due to the game itself, because the mechanics are so nicely replicated, but due to the mess of technical issues and bugs that come and go on most game updates. From neverending turns to glitches, sound muting or crappy 3D performance (I recently updated my graphics card, which makes the situation even more absurd), if the game worked tecnhically correct it would be great.
Also the DLC plague made it a "just buy the basic game, and if on sale, better" approach.

Shadowrun Returns: After finishing the main game, how with the Berlin campaign/addon free for being a backer I'm having more netrunning and turn-based combat. I still have my hopes in the fan-made content for the long term, but even without it is a nice old-school like RPG.

Fire Emblem: Awakening: This was a cool strategy-RPG mix, that hooked me to my 3DS for weeks. I pumped 30+ hours to finish the main story and didn't managed to do every side-quest and character sub-plot, so it can become a really long game if you want.

RPGs

Not much, although I'm reading a lot of Warhammer 40,000 codexes for the lore and background (literally skipping the rules). I must have read around a dozen codexes, along with companion books (new Games Workshop way of squeezing more money, put half of the lore in another book), and of course the books which I still do reviews here.

But no pure RPGs since a while...

Painting & Assembling

I'm still assembling all Deadzone minis, plus a cool Imperial Knight and some unexpected things; GW's new website and the exclusive minis touched my collector weak point so I grabbed my wish list and now have a few more things to take care of.


I'm currently painting the Imperial Knight, and had some started minis pending (some old Rogue trader-era MKVI Space Marines and some Necron basic troops) also on the queue for whenever I want to change a bit.

As usual, with my rate of painting It'll take weeks, but I prefer to go slow but leave it in a decent painting level (decent for my skills, not for normal standards which are way higher).

Apart from normal miniatures, I've finally started painting a Star Trek Enterprise model I had from my trip to Australia a few years ago. I expect to finish it soon as I don't want to ad too many details.

Star Trek Enterprise model


New Space Hulk videogame in 2013!

Today is a happy day :D

Teaser video:

And info from the official site:

  • 3D digital turn based strategy game
  • Blood Angel terminator squad
  • Fearsome Genestealers with challenging AI
  • Thematic 3d environment
  • Single player campaign based on the "Sin of Damnation" hulk
  • New coop multiplayer levels against the Genestealer AI
  • Multiplayer head-to-head recreating the board game experience against a friend
  • Cross platform multiplayer between PC, Mac and iOS
  • Level editor with ability to share creations
  • Game expansions in the future as DLC

I can't wait, specially since being turn-based instead of real-time like its two predecessors (from 1993 and 1996).


Assembling a little bird + some painting progress

With the newly released Grey Knights I couldn't resist ordering a few of them to build another small army.

My plan is to have in time 7 or 8 different race armies of at minimum 1500 points, to be able to play with friends and all enjoy as much variety as possible, but as I'm the only one that buys them...

It is also quite nice to paint different models and in different colors, I noticed some time ago that both of my armies were too dark and greenish in general.

Right now I have this armies:

  • Space Marine Dark Angels: Endless army, one day I should count the points, but I can play just with a Deathwing sub-army if I want.
  • Orks: Another big one. I have almost all models I want (as with the Space Marines) but also is a huge green swarm with lots of orks and heavy stuff (2 dreadnoughs and the like).
  • Genestealer Cult: All my old and new Space Hulk Genestealers, the old and new hybrids, patriarch, mages, a Carnifex (big badass and awesome miniature) and one tank small conversion I will show once painted (someday...). Very specialiced and probably not suitable for all battles, but I wanted my genestealer horde to become a true cult :)
  • Dark Eldar: Kabalite warriors squad, 3 reavers and one mandrakes squad. right now the smallest army, whenever the 2nd wave of DE miniatures is launched I'll probably expand it.
  • Grey Knights: One normal squad, one terminator armour squad, a brother captain and the Stormraven I'm currently building.
    Also they have as allies two inquisitors and two assassins (models I bought a while ago and couldn't use with the Dark Angels due to Codex restrictions!).

I also bought a Chaos Space Marines battleforce, Terminator lord and Soul Grinder.

So the total is 6 armies so far. Most of them unpainted so not worth taking pictures (what is painted is already in my photo albums).

In the future I will probably add an Eldar battleforce and some Necrons (which rumors say will be revamped soon), and that will probably be all. Increasing ranks but remaining races like the Tau or Imperial guard do not engage me enough and have just one or two nice-looking miniatures for me to collect and paint.

Having said all that, I can focus on the initial idea of this post, divided in two parts. First, my progress assembling a "little bird":

I've also learned to not glue everything before painting, so the pilot and cabin aren't glued to allow me to paint everything in detail.

The Stormraven is huge and heavy (and I haven't finished yet), with an amazing level of detail. I'm looking forward to paint it and try metal highlights (it's going to be for the Grey Knights). An expensive (at least for GW range, compared with Forge World items is even cheap XD) but awesome model.

And the second part of the post is that having enough time to paint seems to be a difficult task for me. Anything below 1 hour is not enough, and usually when I have at least that much spare time is after midnight and my pulse is not perfect due to starting to feel tired.

So in painting I advance slowly, quite slowly. But I do advance something.

I finally finished painting the remaining details of Azrael, my Dark Angels army commander. He had a few details still unpainted (weapon, head and banner pole/angel figure at the top), so I finally did them:

I also have started to paint the ork Stompa, not only because it will look great, but also because has 6 fragments unglued waiting for being painted, so now it is both unusable in games (at least without blue-tac) and taking a lot of space in the shelves.

Those are two finished fragments, the back gretching with a drill, and the head with the Ork Kaptain giving orders.

I am currently painting the main body to glue this pieces and then glue each remaining fragment as I finish with them.


Deathwatch, Deathangel and Castle Ravenloft

Finally, a long awaited order arrived with some interesting new games:

  • Deathwatch: A Warhammer 40.000 book RPG. Being able to roleplay individual Space Marines (as alien-hunters instead of mere army soldiers), looked too appealing to let it pass. As far as I've read it is not a substitute for Rogue Trader but a newer version of the rules focusing on SMs. The book looks awesome but I have almost 400 pages to read!
  • Death Angel: A card game version of Space Hulk that can be played from solo to 6 players (all with Terminator Squads, Genestealers are played automatically). I'm still reading the instructions and the system is quite clever and seems to have ported the basic feeling of Space Hulk battles.
  • Castle Ravenloft: A module I didn't ever played on the old D&D converted into a boardgame full of miniatures, random maps and that also can be played solo or up to 5 people (with automatic rules for foes). I just assembled the contents and gave a quick look to the instructions (quite small, but the maps are random and there are lots of encounter cards).

I definetly want to prepare a Deathwatch campaign to play with my friends, but if I hadn't already too much to read, more stuff...