Epic Space Marine aerospace assets

Putting my printer to work. White balance was a bit off in the photo again but not by much.

I have to admit the new thunderhawks look better than my old one:

Epic Dark Angels complete

Here's the latest units to my Epic Armageddon Dark Angels army. I still have some ideas to expand them with some Razorbacks and AA tanks, but now I have the requisite 3000 points for a "standard" sized game.

Fist I'll show off a formation of four Whirlwind tanks I converted. Getting the models you want for Epic is beginning to cost a bit on Ebay, and I was feeling cheap so I decided to make do with a conversion. The Whirlwind tank is based on the hull of a Rhino APC (which I have piles of). You just have to mount a believable rocket launcher pod on top. I looked at some pictures of real life missile launcher tanks and converted these using bits of sprue and some plasticard. These will do nicely for me, even though I'm not very happy about the missile ports. I should get a tiny drill to do them properly.

Next up is a formation of Vindicator tanks. I didn't have enough of these either, but I took this as an opportunity to practice mold casting and made one copy from resin cast into a silicone mold.

Finally, there's the old school Thunderhawk gunship. It looks boxy and ugly compared to modern models, but the decals I got from a friend really improve the look.

So there you go. The army really was quick and easy to paint, I probably spent as much effort on it as I'd usually spend on a 28mm skirmish warband. Maybe I'll do Chaos at some point but I think I have other projects that need my attention. It also wraps up my painting for this year along with some 1/72 Germans I also finished today. I'll do a separate post on them later. See you then! 

Epic 40K: Dark Angels versus Tyranids

I played a 3000 point game of Epic Armageddon today. The same opponent I played my first game against came over to school me a bit. Unlike last time, he didn't pull his punches. At least I hope he didn't pull his punches, I lost THAT bad. The pictures came out shitty due to the poor lighting and some dirt on my lens, so I decided to embed commentary in the pics themselves. See if that clears up any of the action and let me know if this is a direction to pursue in future reports.

My Dark Angels army consisted of a core of infantry backed by armor (2x tactical, devastator, land raiders, vindicators, whirlwinds) with some Ravenwing units on my right flank (land speeders and bikes). In reserve, I had some Deathwing Terminators waiting to teleport and a Thunderhawk gunship carrying a group of assault marines.

My opponent based his army on Gaunt groups supported by Carnifexes. He also had a Dominatrix, some heavy artillery support (I don't remember the name of the unit), some burrowing Trygons and a flying.. something.

Here's how it went down. The victory locations are marked with stars.

So, that was a clear beating I took, but it's fine. I think I learned a bit on how I should play this game. I tried a "hold the line" attitude with the marines, which worked out poorly against the superior numbers of the Gaunts. I lost my fast attack units to reckless manouevering and neglected to support my armor on the left with infantry so I guess I got what I deserved. The Thunderhawk did a good job in the match, but this was pretty much due to the complete lack of enemy AA. I heard the Tyranids don't really have any effective anti air units, so I feel a bit bad for fielding something my opponent can't counter.

I like Epic Armageddon. A lot of movement, a lot of things decisivel happening and you definitely win or lose battles by manoeuvering. Much, much better than vanilla 40k. It also plays out real quick which is a bonus.

Epic 40k Deathwing and Ravenwing units

I broke 40 000 hits on my blog just now so I thought it appropriate to celebrate with some content of the grim and dark variety. I completed some more units for my Epic Dark Angels army and here's the results:

I've liked Deathwing Terminators ever since I played the Amiga version of Space Hulk back in the day so naturally my Dark Angel Terminators would be in Deathwing colours. I also added a couple of Dreadnoughts to fill out a Thunderhawk I'm working on. Sadly this is all the Terminator models I have for Epic, but they suffice for one unit choice and a HQ option. I like how they turned out.

These are some Land Speeders and Bikes for the Dark Angels. Naturally the fast attack units had to be in Ravenwing colours then. Too bad the paint job ended up sucking. I just can't paint highlighted black and make it look like anything. Oh, well.

Anyway, I now have nearly 3000 points for my army painted up. I have a Thunderhawk in the works and some Vindicators to paint up. I'm also considering on converting some Whirlwinds from Rhinos as I definitely like the idea of having indirect barrage fire options. Also, I have three Predator tanks but they're not enough for a full choice. There are multiple versions of the Epic Space Marine Predator around and I'm hesitant to start bidding on e-bay for just one model. If someone has one of these in his collection and symphatizes, drop me a line :)

Wanted: One more of these.

More epic Space Marines complete

They're so easy to paint up I couldn't resume doing the greeks just yet but did some more of these. I almost feel lazy. I think the weathering powder works really well to make the models look like they're on a dusty desert planet. Here's what I have completed so far:

Two formations of tactical marines, their Rhino transports and a commander stand. These incorporate the ones I showed you in my previous post. I accidentially put them on 30mm washers instead of 25mm washers like I was supposed to, so I had to do a quick rebase. I also reduced the amount of figures per stand from five to four to avoid cramping up the smaller base. Good thing I noticed the wrong size at this point!

A formation of devastators, a formation of assault marines and a dreadnought. These along with the tactical marines constitute a Space Marine company as far as the official fluff is concerned. I decided to base my army around the "real" organization as I haven't read the rules yet.

A formation of Land Raiders for some heavy support. I haven't done weathering on track before and I'm quite pleased with the results.

These models already make up 1400 points for Epic where 3000 points is the "standard" size of the army. That means I'm almost halfway there. All too easy. I'll have a learning game with 1500 points coming up in Warcon. Good thing I'll have all my models completed way in advance this time!

First 6mm space marines done

I got a bit excited about the 6mm epic space marines I got so I had to paint some up and get it out of my system before resuming work on the greeks. The figures themselves were super quick to paint and even though I spent more time on the bases than the models, I think I did this tactical detachment in two hours tops.

I went for a Mars/dusty desert look using Vallejo powder to help me out. What do you think? Nailed it? Note that I ran out of varnish before doing these so There's nothing to fix the dust in place yet.