Project - Bolt Action Winter terrain

I appear to be on a terrain binge!

Terrain is one of those things that can really make a game. Many people I have spoken to will spend huge amounts of time and money on buying, converting and painting their models in their chosen army (armies!) but often terrain is an after thought.

Im not sure why this is. I imagine it is partly related to space for storage. Possibly also a lack of experience building terrain! For many people, gaming at a store allows this omission to be ignored as most stores (GW in particular have spectacular gaming table with great terrain.

With the growth of YouTube, and its plethora of hobby channels, terrain building has become much easier. I particularly value the videos produced by Mel "The Terrain Tutor" with his channel. This guy always pumps out fantastic project logs and tutorials, often covering the experimental phase of terrain projects so you don't have to!

I will be uploading several more of my terrain projects over then next weeks adn months, but today I wanted to cover where I am up to with one project in particular - Bolt Action Winter terrain.

As you can see there is quite a lot of it!

I wanted to make this usable for winter northern Europe, especially Battle of the Bulge/Belgium, but also for the Eastern Front/Russia. Band of Brothers was a big inspiration but I equally wanted modularity. This made foxholes especially dificult to do

There are three types of tree setup. Above is a set of "blasted trunks" to represent pine trees which have been felled by mortar rounds - visualise devastating scenes from the medic/BotB episode of Band of Brothers.

Below we have the smaller trees which will remain bare and barren.

In the top image, bottom left, eagle eyes readers will spot blank mounds - These are for some "gutter guard" pine trees to stick into. I might do a post on these trees at some stage but they are very much not my idea!!

To expand my range of terrain I included some infantry and tank obstacles. Czech hedgehogs, barbed wire and Dragons teeth all feature.

Bocage/Hedgerows (although not a Belgian thing) are vital for Bolt Action, so of course made an appearance.

All of these will be receiving some dark and moss flock cover. Some snow and mud effects and finally a dusting of snow static grass to finish them off.

More pictures to follow as well as a confession...I have bought more stuff!

Der H

Thought for the day: "To the German commander. Nuts! From the American commander."

Project - Blood and Plunder Terrain

Just trying to keep my motivation going across all of my projects so wanted to show some of the progress (slow as it is) I’ve been making with my B&P stuff! Going all in for the "admiral" pledge level means I’ve been sluggish at best with painting, but there has been some progress!

Terrain
Trees/forest tiles – I've made quite a few with some awesome plastics from Amazon – I've seen a lot of these around on Firelock games' site and the FB group. They're from the Amazon store Highly One with Trees and Shrubs both being great value!

Also some WIP Hills/islands as invented by Beasts of War as seen here. They need some flock (and some better photographs!) but are coming along nicely!

Of course, any good pirate game comes with ships!

Sloop – nearly done
Gone for a civilian/private/waling ship vibe with generic colours….possible changes: might change the prow colour to brown again….
Needs detailing, possibly going to drybrush highlight too but not sure….

Brig – block colours
Gone for a variant of the surprise. Yellow and white. Want it to be a British ship… blocked colours only for now

Frigate – block colours
Black and red (the red need alot more work…) as per the Acheron! Obviously much to do still!

What so you guys think?

Der H

Project - Lord Commander Eidolon

I am now enthused and engaged with this blog!

The ETL from 2016 was great fun and I proudly wear my signature banner as a reminder that (on occasion) I do get things finished.

It also made me go through and see how long I had owned certain models in my IIIrd Legion army and actually get them finished. Palatine Blades and Phoenix Guard terminators are the best examples of this phenomenon; I LOVE the models, I love the sculpts, I even love the rules! But they sat for so long unpainted and unloved.

Lord commander Eidolon shares this heritage! A beautiful model, I bought it as soon as he was released. But Since then....nothing...

Here is where my Lord Commander sits at present:

In my defence....no I actually cant finish that...He is magnetised, and even has purple on him but this is the month...this is the month that I finish the great Lord Commander of the IIIrd Legion once and for all!

The magnets fit into my larger IIIrd legion character series - see the pictures in the Gallery for more from that series and check back on the blog to see updates as this project comes on!

Der H

Pledges - August 2017

One of the recurring features of this blog will be the Pledges!  

In 2016, TheHobbyButterflies took park in the Bolter and Chainsword ETL. It was a summer of fantastic progress and we actually made some in roads into the legions of grey.

This year there is no ETL, and we fear we will not make the same progress without some incentive!

Each month we shall each make a pledge of a unit, character or other project from our endless hoards of grey and have them finished by the end of the month!

Let us begin! 

Der H

I Der H, do humbly pledge to paint Lord Commander Eidolon by no later than the 1st September in the name of the Phoenician and for the glory of the IIIrd Legion.

Brother Handro

 I Brother Handro, do pledge to paint an XV25 Stealthsuit team, with homing beacon and some form of drone, by no later than the 1st September, in the name of the Vior’la sept. The Cadre commands it!

Let's see how it goes! 

Things to come...

01/08/17 Eh...where does the time go. (Sorry that sounded a little morose!)

We really do live in a second golden age for the hobby. With GW showing marked improvement in sales (as discussed over @ BoLS) and more and more releases from smaller companies it seems that the wave of hobbying is set to grow and grow.

Part of GW's newly re-found success is certainly listening to their customers. The change back to the monthly White Dwarf (what's that? You have content now!?) certainly saw me renew a subscription I hadn't had for over 10 years! This month's White Dwarf certainly lives up to the new expectation.

Two things caught my eye...

Index Astartes - who doesn't love this segment! 

More importantly, hidden In the letters section was this gem:

This (surely!?) represents a hint at a return of Necromunda to our shelves! Coupled with Shadow War, more stand alone games and the re-appointment of a small team @ GW for other games (specialist games if you will) we could be facing a new side to GW. Even the community post with the laspistol had people wondering about a return to the underhive!

As a self-confessed Hobby Butterfly, this worries me. 

I narrowly missed out on the Shadow War box, although Brother Handro has the rules. I never played Necromunda either, but did play Inquisitor 54mm on occasion. I have read through the Necromunda living rulebook and the Inquisimunda supplement on several occasions and have actively thought about making several gangs/cults/war bands to try my hand at the skirmish side of the hobby. Gorkamorka was a set I had, and taking my yoofs through to boys, scars and all, Is something I fondly remember. 

If this comment is more than just a throw-away line then the shame bell will ring again as I will almost certainly cave in and buy a set. Whether I finish it or not, now that is the question...

Der H

Thought for the day:   "Blessed is the mind too small for doubt" 

Why Tau? (AKA Does an army's reputation precede them?)

There comes a point, whilst you're browsing one webstore, catalogue, shop shelf or another, when your latest hobby plan reaches critical mass and overpowers common sense regarding the number of unfinished projects cluttering up your hobby space. It transforms from 'exciting idea' to 'burning, un-ignorable desire'. At that point all you can do is hope that when you wake up next morning the damage to your bank balance/significant other's hobby tolerance/sanity isn't irreparable. It's the nature of the 21st century that within 36 hours of me biting the bullet and clicking 'checkout' this fine collection of sprues and dreams was on my doorstep.

But why Tau, you ask? A fair question, and one I would've regarded as moot just a few months ago. The Tau had never previously interested me; indeed I found them a little distasteful, morally, in that they appeared to have some, and that just didn't fit my world view of 40k, no, no, not at all. Whilst I would never begrudge anyone's else's right to see and play the universe as they saw fit, I knew inside that the Tau were an aberration, a corporate shill, only for Johnny-come-lately's and Anime kids. In short, they weren't proper, and they sure as hell weren't 40k. 

They also coincided almost exactly with my leaving the hobby, and their arrival seemed to only confirm to me that giving 40k a rest was a good idea. Summer/Autumn 2001; a time that will be remembered for dark events, but also the release of epic mini-series Band of Brothers, and a strange, ill-fitting race of blue aliens; the Tau Empire had arrived, so I left.

My first actual contact with the Tau was via Dawn of War and its expansions, namely Dark Crusade, which introduced both Necrons and the Tau, and made them both stupidly, brokenly OP.

 

DoW, Winter Assault, DoWII, Chaos Rising...could I find my copy of Dark Crusade's Tau cover?...of course not.

Ridiculously, the Tau could have a stealthed Devilfish (or three!) full of Fire Warriors lol just sitting in ur bases killing ur dudes until the enemy had nothing left. (Burst cannon...firing! - As Der H will attest, I am in the habit of endlessly (mis-)quoting DoW. I presume it's very annoying for him). Surprisingly, this did little to alter my snobbish view of the Tau and their tricksy ways, but I, as an average RTS player, loved it. The Tau had begun to get a hold of me...

Aah, Invisifish. Never change...

Fast forward a few years, and I had been pulled back into the hobby with 30k, and thus had avoided the advent of the much-abhorred 'Fish o' Fury', a tactic nearly as game-breaking as its virtual predecessor. The Tau were shooty, gloriously so, but also a little bit snarky, too good for their own (greater) good. They had suits galore, markerlights and actual Railguns for blowing vast holes in any who stood before them. And then came the Riptide.

No, I'm not dirtying this post with an actual picture of a Riptide. For shame!

The Riptide could do everything. Shoot, take a hit, thrust move, throw a pie plate, you name it, it did it, and it was undercosted to boot. And people hated it. Take three, and your opponent was liable to just pack up and leave before you rolled for the first turn. The Tau had now firmly established themselves as 'That Army' for 'That Guy'. The only crime more heinous was to ally with Eldar...Another notch on my anti-Tau post, right? And yet...the new, white Vior'la scheme came to my attention. Huh, Tau didn't have to be ochre...interesting.

---

With the advent of 8th Edition, I was looking forward to picking up a couple of the new indexes - one for the Guard, one for my Orks (let's not talk about them for now). But oh no, sneaky GW had to bundle a few other armies into the Ork index didn't they? And so I found myself endessly reading and re-reading the Tau section. It was all new to me, plasma rifles, ion blasters, good old, cherished Devilfish with Burst cannon...oh yes, this could be me, this could definitely be me...and what's more, they weren't broken, OP, or even that good at shooting. They could even be a little Grimdark thanks to their Ethereal pheromone shenanigans. And the Riptide costed a fair amount of points! Praise the Emp- Tau'va! I could play Tau, and I wouldn't neccessarily be shunned for it.

And so here we are, on the brink of something new, something hopefully positive, something that might serve as a lesson that anyone can change. A man, his beliefs, his choice of army...

Onwards then, For the Greater Good.

(#NoRiptides)

"The scale of the problem" (or "Why we fight")

It wasn't easy starting this blog.

Bother Handro and I both have amassed sizeable collections over the last 5 years, and admitting that we (like everyone in the hobby (Brother Handro: "I keep saying, this IS the hobby!") have been guilty of buying the nice new shiny things, or even just buying older stuff with the view of "We'll get around to it one day".

With this in mind, i have started the Wall of Shame! page. Herein shall ye find the reams of projects/models which lie disassembled, grey or otherwise incomplete.

This list as stands today is by no means complete, and things will be added to each/all sections in due course. It doesn't include projects for which we have merely parts, It doesn't include terrain and It doesn't include the multitude of other little "bits and bobs" which we have bought/acquired through our time in the hobby.

Perhaps a picture says it better?

The above shows the boxes on my shelf, granted they aren't full, parts have been used. But it starts to show the scale of the problem.

The next image shows the rack of things that need painting (and this is NOT the only source of models to work on!

We have (in this frame anyway) 40K Dark Imperium Death Guard, in front of Blood and Plunder Bretheren of the coast, on top of a tray of Arcworlde (mixture of Battle for Troll Bridge, other assorted elves, and 12 sheep for some reason) - this list is just the top shelf. Other shelves have more Blood and Plunder, Tyranids, Bolt Action and one of a set of islands for Blood and Plunder.

My hope is that, over the next few weeks and months, we will start to chew through our respective backlogs. Hopefully we will have more success, more pleasure and more gaming as a result!

Purge the Grey

Der H

Thought for the day: "Heresy grows from idleness"

Welcome to the blog (AKA we have a problem!)

Der H: Brother, we have to talk...

Brother Handro: Eh?

Der H: Have you seen the amount of grey stuff in the basement?

Brother Handro: One word brother...Tau...

Der H: You've bought another army? We need to work on this don't we...

Brother Handro: It's part of the hobby... [looks left and right shiftily]

Der H: I know; let's start a blog to make us work harder...

Brother Handro: But won't that take up time that could be spent..

Der H: A blog I say! To the internet!

With that whimsical preamble over it is time we explained what is going on.

We are two old friends from Manchester who were avid hobbyists in our younger days. Teenage years came and went, University happened, and gainful employment followed, and after the boozing (Der H), studying (Brother Handro) and several years out of the hobby we both needed to scratch that plasticky-resinous-glue-induced itch that only comes from building little toy soldiers.

It started out with Handro diving into the 30K era of Games Workshop's flagship Warhammer 40,000 franchise (Brother Handro: Back then we didn't have plastic/any MKII, III or IV, and all this were fields....) and starting, slowly to build up some little plastic men. Handro had wisely not thrown out all of his hobby stuff (Der H: Do I need to remind you that you threw out a Land Raider....) [Handro: It was two Land Raiders actually. And a Basilisk. And...] and hit the ground running with some great conversions. Der H came back from university into the busy life of a junior doctor and thought "You know what Handro, I've found a box of Space Hulk 2nd Ed on E-Bay. We could make time for that". As you might guess - that project is not finished. But it rekindled the love of the hobby.

Here we are 5 years later and wow, the hobby has progressed, as have our lives. Scraping together to get a few squads on the table has been replaced with impulse buying plastic and resin 30K. One game system became multiple systems. One franchise became many (Brother Handro: All?), and the butterflies finally were released.

The biggest cause/excuse for this ballooning of our hobby has been buying a house! Der H recently bought a house with a basement, and his wife was nice/foolish/cunning enough to allow him free reign of the space (Brother Handro: Isn't the lock on the outside of the door?). Here it is in all its glory before being filled with the plethora of hobby bits which currently clutter the whole space.

Today's image shows our 4'x6' (extendable to 4'x8') gaming/work table which takes pride of place in the hobby basement. The painting and airbrush stations occupy the other walls and off-screen there is a wall of shelves to store all the wonders that the post-2012 hobby can offer.

This blog hopes to combine all of the efforts across our range of different systems and in doing so, will hopefully force our hands and make us finish some projects.

Stay tuned for updates to the About us pages, project tags, reports from the Forge World Open Day, and hopefully some grey things becoming...less grey?

Purge the Grey

Der H & Brother Handro

(AKA TheHobbyButterflies)

Thought for the day: "Sanity...is for the weak!"