So at the end of April we gathered in San Diego for our first official Corehammer West Coast Chiller. A month or two before that I had gotten the crazy idea of building a modular ruined city for the event so that at least I’d wander up with something to add to the festivities. I ended up only having something like 3 weeks to build the thing starting at the beginning of April, but in the mad dash to produce something I did manage to document the process so I figured I’d share it with you all now. That way you can learn exactly what I did, ignore it, and make something way cooler on a normal human schedule. I’m going to describe what I did, and not go too far down the rabbit holes of ideas not considered or techniques not used. Feel free to ask questions in the comments about anything you want though. Corners were cut, designs were simplified, but in the end, I had a table that can host a number of games in all sorts of different setups.
Category Archives: Painting & Modelling
Airbrush Guide Part 3 – Basic Tips & Tricks
So you’ve bought your compressor, you’ve bought your airbrush, what now?
You want to use it right? Wrong! There are going to be some useful bits you could do with getting hold of before hand that will make your life easier, and hopefully stop you rage quitting when you get your first clog. Because you will get them, and it will piss you off. Immensely!
Oath of Moment (Redux) – Ave Deus Mechanicum
My original oath of moment was to make some headway into my Word Bearers going into 2015, and that continued nicely into 2016 with a load of new units, with more being added fairly regularly. I’ll do an update on how that’s going in a few weeks having re-appropriated a few units from the old III Legion army. Continue reading
Airbrush Guide Part 2.1 – KKmoon 0.25 Any Good?
There’s always questions flying round the Corehammer Facebook group about airbrushing, there’s two guides already on here I did about brushes and compressors, here and here.
When whispers of a cheapo airbrush that wasn’t absolute dog eggs reached me, I took a punt. 13 brick for what seemed to be a pro airbrush, too good to be true? Read on…
Corehammer Fest 2016
Things may have been a bit quiet on the blog front, but we’re still rolling dice, chatting shit and having a laugh, but it’s time we all got together for some fun, so we are proud to announce Corehammer Fest 2016. This will be at the newly refurbished Element Games NWGC and we have plenty of activities planned. Tickets are just £5.00 and limited to 40 places, so grab one asap from the Corehammer Munitorium . Details below the poster, but all will be revealed over the coming weeks
Choosing a Legion – Andy Hoare of Tales from the Maelstrom’s Emperor’s Children
It’s been a while, but we’re back again with the What Legion series, this time Andy from Tales from the Maelstrom steps up with his Horus Heresy Emperor’s Children army. If you’re unfamiliar with his blog, and you’re reading this, you’re in for a treat. There’s a tonne of classic gaming and miniatures from the Rogue Trader era. This is an article that will take you down memory lane, back to flicking through those late 80’s copies of White Dwarf.
First up, can you let us know who you are?
I’m Andy, I’ve been a gamer since the mid 80s and worked as a games designer for Games Workshop, Fantasy Flight Games and various other companies since 2001. I’m currently product manager in charge of bringing the most beloved of the specialist games range to a new generation.
Oath of Moment – Bad Moons part 1
Since starting up on OoM towards the end of January, I’ve made some fair progress with the first stage of this plan – to finish off the bulk of the figures that I’d started painting over the course of 2015 but, for assorted reasons, fell by the wayside before they were completed.
Most of the models that fell into this category were bits and bobs of the 40K Bad Moon Ork army I initially started putting together way back in the days of 3rd and 4th edition, and I’d set about sprucing up and updating last year, following a decade-long break from the hobby. Also, several were additional members to add to units I painted the bulk of in 2015, so my first couple of update posts seemed like a good opportunity to show off the army so far, and share some thoughts regarding what’s changed since I was last having a crack at it.
This time round, I’m going to concentrate on the Troops choices – these were always what served in the past as the biggest stumbling block to me in terms of staying disciplined about completing an army. I’m pretty pleased with having overcome this to a sufficient extent to have well in excess of the bare minimum requirement.
Weathering tanks for the 31st Millenium
In this article I’ll go over a few techniques I use to weather my tanks, these have been predominantly word bearers tanks so if you’re starting a XVIIth army then this is a good place to start. that said, the techniques are mostly things you can use over any paint scheme so worry not if you’re painting up a different legion.
The techniques are all military modelling skills, and will give your tank a much grimier, dirty look and feel to the bright GW/’eavy Metal schemes, if thats the look you’re after then theres going to be little of use here. If you want your tank to look like its actually just driven off a real life battlefield complete with dings, mud, smoke, oil, and burn, then read on.
Oath of Moment – taking stock of what I can do in a year
Towards the tail end of 2014, I came back to the “painting and playing games with little toy men” hobby, after a break of about ten years. I’d previously worked up at GW head office in Nottingham, and upon leaving that job and moving to London, a combination of factors meant I just kind of drifted away from hobby stuff. However, the 4th Edition of Space Hulk sucked me back in. Not long after that, I stumbled across Corehammer, which was very encouraging in terms of discovering people out there approaching things in a way that appealed to me, rather than the relentless tide of tedium and negativity which seems to comprise the majority of internet discourse surrounding tabletop gaming.
In my year or so back astride the Hobby horse, a couple of things happened. First, without the constant bombardment of new stuff (at GW staff discount), and with more limited hobby time available, I became a bit more disciplined about actually finishing off painting projects. Second, in spite of the former point, I still managed to amass myself a reasonably-sized Pile Of Shame™. (There is an entirely different PoS™, consisting of the majority of the stuff I amassed in my time as a GW employee, sitting in the loft of my parents’ home, but that’s another pile for another time).
Continue reading
And They Shall Know No Fear: Female Space Marines in Warhammer 40k
Warhammer 40k is the most popular wargame on the planet, full stop. It is a sprawling franchise that encompasses novels, video games, a theatrically released film, RPG’s, board games and miniature games (that happen to dominate its industry). The grimdark future world created by the Games Workshop design team decades ago still captures the imagination of gamers across the world and drives sales of a massive product line and supporting hobby supplies. This doesn’t surprise me; the world of 40k (and 30k) is pretty fucking cool. Even as I’ve aged out of their core demographic, Games Workshops dark vision of space has a lot that can draw me back in. Powerful imagery, insane power struggles and every aspect of military cultures turned up to 11. Massive hive cities where 100’s of millions of inhabitants live on top of each other in Dickensian despair, in their midst hide alien conspiracies and brutal gang warfare. Powerful manifestations of chaotic gods pour forth from a rip in space and time so massive its swallowed whole planetary systems.A devout order of space fascists, sitting in a fortified monastery on a surviving chunk of their destroyed planet, secretly hunting traitors from their own order. This world is batshit crazy and insane in some of the best possible ways. It’s a Tolkien fantasy world ripped to pieces, thrown into deep space andstitched back together with a punk rock ethos, space opera drama and a heaping helping of gothic trappings. Warhammer 40k is without question the showpiece game of the hobby (for better or for worse). It is the most popular, best selling, widely known and most visible game of the entire wargaming world. Sadly, it’s a game that is still lacking in female representation, and that’s some shameful shit. It’s a world that quite frankly deserves female Space Marines.