Service interruption

Sorry I haven't been around lately guys, we've had a bit of bad news in the family and it's caused some drastic changes. My dad isn't that well and along with other things, it's meant we're going to be moving back to the family fold.

I haven't even had time to pick up a paint brush these past few weeks and I can't see me getting any hobby time in over the next month or two. So, I'm having an enforced break from the hobby and blogging for a while.

Hopefully, I'll be back in a couple of months, until then be happy, be healthy and may all your dice roll six's.

Laters guys.

ColCorbane

For whom the bell tolls

The bell has been rung and I have heard it's call. Yes, that's right folks, the Colonel's gone and got another posting. Bigred, over at Bols has asked me to come on board as a regular contributor to their blog.

I'll be posting all about the non-competitive side of the hobby, everything from narrative gaming to homebrew rules. The first few are already in the bag and you should be seeing the first go live on Bols over the weekend.

Hope you like it guys!

Tutorial : Easy base pinning

I've started work on Harker's Squad and one of problems I have is that because they're all metal and I use bases with a solid plasticard top, I have to pin them all. Now, this is normally a long winded process requiring drilling holes in everything and glueing bits of wire here and there whilst avoiding stabbing yourself with your drill bit because you're pressing so hard trying to drill into the sole of the foot.

To be honest, it's all a bit of a hassle, so I'll show you an easier way of pinning metal models to solid bases that I picked up on my travels through webland. You'll need ...

• Clippers.
• Flat file.
• Superglue.
• Pen or paint.
• Pin vice drill and bit.

So basically, all your normal hobby stuff. The important thing is to use a drill bit that's as thick as the metal basing tab but not thicker, the large GW one works fine. First off, using your clippers, remove the central portion of the basing tab leaving two prongs under the feet.

Then, using your flat file, round of the prongs so that they're the same thickness as your drill bit. It's best to have the bit handy so you can compare it against the prongs as you file.

Next up, size up the position of the model on the base and then mark it with you pen or paint.

Then simply drill the holes out making sure that after you've drilled the first, you double check the position of the second hole using the model.

Once you've got your holes done, put a bit of superglue on the prongs and mount the model on the base.

And there you have it, a simple way of pinning metal models to solid bases without using bits of wire, with a minimum of drilling, and the whole process takes about two minutes from first clip to glueing. Hope you found it useful guys.

Corbanian Purgers Chapter

Like most players, I've collected space marines. I can't even claim that I did it because I was new to 40K as they were my second army. In truth, I collected them as an anti tyranid force, hence all the Deathwatch shoulder pads and bolters.

Anyway, here's The Emperors Purgers or more commonly known as the Corbanian Purgers. First off, we have the commander and his partner in crime .....

I also added a Damocles command vehicle from IA books as it came with a host of options ...

In the elite section, we have two squads of terminators and two dreadnoughts and a veteran squad ....

The troops section was made up of five 8 man squads, a scout squad thrown in as I really liked the models along with a rhino and a razorback to give me some transport options ...

Next up we have the fast attack options comprising of two five man squads and two land speeders ....

For the heavy support, I've got a good mix of troops and vehicles. There's two devastator squads, a vindicator, whirlwind and a pair of predators ....

The lasts predator was a bit of a home rules version as it was a Baal predator packing twin linked multimelta's, I called it a Purger pattern predator ....

One of the reasons I got a Damocles command vehicle was that it allowed you to take an Imperial Navy flyer as a heavy support choice, so I added a Vulture gunship for good measure ....

There you have it, my Marines, more guard goodness coming soon.

Kitbashing a Hydra

I've had a little while off from the painting station and I'm feeling quite refreshed and ready to get stuck back in. As normal with my burnout breaks, I end up devising all sorts of hobby projects and this break has been no different. I've got a couple of projects that I'm raring to get into, so expect good things coming soon.

I've been looking through the codex and decided that I'd like to get a couple of Hydras to complement the Corbanian 1st. I've had a look at FW version and I'm not much for it, the guns are just a bit too big for the chassis and even with the rumours of a plastic version coming out next month, I still think that I'm going down a different avenue. So, I decided to have a look at what's currently out there in the real world.

First off, we have the German Gepard which although only has two guns, is quite close to the Hydra.

(Modern vehicle photos from www.militaryphotos.net and UK MOD, used without permission)

The same can be said about the Itpsv90 Marksman from Finland, although it does seem to suffer from the same big turret, small chassis problem that the FW Hydra does.

It was at this point that I decided that I really didn't want to go down the flak cannon route and so started to look to my roots and the British Army. The problem with flak cannons is that they're really short ranged and so the British Army adopted the missile as it's primary form of air defence. For a long time, the main system used was the Rapier system which was normally mounted on a trailer unit.

Rapier systems were also mounted on dedicated tracked M548 chassis for more mobility whilst also doubling the rocket capacity.

In the past decade, the British Army has added a new missile to their list of Air Defence systems. The Starstreak missile system is currently in service in many different forms, from shoulder mounted to dedicated vehicles.

So, you might be saying 'Thanks for the cool pics Col. but what's the point?'. Well, remember those Hyperios missile systems that I posted about here that ForgeWorld were kind enough to replace for me? Combine them with a crappy chimera I picked up in a trade and I've got the makings of a Starstreak Hydra Air Defence system, my next vehicle kitbash project.

I'll be bringing you project updates soon guys, first off, I've got to sort the crappy chimera out so it's time to break out the files.

Lights, camera, action!

There are many reasons why I love my wife, and today she went an added another to the list. You see, my wife runs a media company and she's recently updated all her camera kit to HiDef cameras. So, she's been left with a few redundant cameras and she's decided to donate one to me so I can make the YouTube scenery tutorials I've been going on about.

Now the camera she's given me a Canon XM2, which is a top end camera, second hand ones are going for around £700-800 on ebay. So, I hoping to be bringing you all sorts of new tutorials both in the standard blog format and movie format in the future.

Since quite a lot of these tutorials are going to be scenery ones, I'm thinking of setting up a terrain blog specifically for them as I want to keep this blog for my Imperial Guard stuff, so keep your eyes peeled for a new blog coming soon.

Finally, a quick shoutout to Jay from the Gamers Lounge podcast ....

It's Colonel! - LOL

Thoughts on cross posting.

Well, the break is going well, the burnout is subsiding and the creative juices are following again, so you can expect some more guard hobby goodness coming your way soon! In the meantime, I'd like to get your thoughts on cross posting between blogs.

There's a few reasons why I raise the subject, one of which is that I've just been listening to a discussion on the latest Gamers Lounger podcast where the gents were against it and it's provoked me to reach out for more thoughts on the subject.

As some of you know, I also write for Ron's blog in the form of my semi regular FTW Warzone feature and on occasion, I've cross posted pieces on both my own blog and FTW. I don't do it with every piece that I write for Ron, just the tutorials I do. The reason for this is that quite a lot of effort goes into these tutorials and I want to share them with as many as possible via FTW whilst at the same time keeping them on my blog so they don't get lost in the mass of blogs posted on FTW.

So, what are peoples thoughts on this? Is cross posting a good thing? Is it a waste of your time? Does posting the content in multiple places devalue the content? What's your opinions guys?

These are sort of loaded questions, you see I've had an idea for a long term project that's scenery based and will take quite a bit time and effort. Now Ron's pretty good and pretty much lets me post what I want content wise but FTW does have an article style of writing which might not suit this project where's I'm a lot freer with my posts on here. So, I'm struggling to decide where the best place is to post the project and in what form. There's a few potential ways of doing it ...

• I can keep it exclusive to this blog, which means I can treat it as any other project with updates etc but it'll have a more limited audience.
• I can keep it exclusive to FTW, which will get it a greater audience but force me to take a more article approach to presenting it.
• I can cross post it on both blogs and try to merge the two styles into some sort of a hybrid form.
• I can post it as a project on this blog and cherry pick parts to cross post on FTW which will mean the project gets the maximum exposure whilst keeping true to the two styles.

So guys, I really want to here your thoughts on cross posting and this project in particular, either in the comments or even blog about it yourself. I really value your input guys and I could really do with your thoughts on this one, so over to you.