Christmas Marines.

Very quick post before turkey and ham. Here's a link to a post and some pics from Stormy's blog of some pretty festive season themed toy soldiers from our LGS. I have to find out who did these sometime so I can credit them.
Merry Christmas!  Ho ho ho... (click here to go to the post for more pictures)

image shamelessly stolen from touchedbygreatness.blogspot.com

Army pics; Mergoths Daemons.

Hi again! Today I'm going to share some pictures of my finally complete Daemon army. So far, this army stands undefeated (touch wood) at 15 wins and a draw (kudos to Stormy for that!).


HQ:

This is my take on Kairos Fateweaver. Because I was damned if my army of Daemonic killyness was going to be led into battle by a giant turkey. Based on the old Nagash model, pimped with a new staff top, a dark pegasus wing and the party hat sawed off and greenstuff skull replacement he makes sure my guys don't die (see the undead reference? Huh? Huh??),. He also dishes out fiery death to all and sundry at range. Sucks a bit at close combat, but turning Lysander into a spawn on a 5+ is LOLZ.

The Bloodthirster is my second HQ choice. His job is to stick to Fateweaver like glue then run at stuff like dreads and land raiders that the rest of the army has problems with. With Unholy Might S9 on the charge is epic win. 


A lot of people seem to dislike his sculpt, but I must say I really enjoyed painting him. The "moobs" people like to complain about are mostly hidden by the classic head, it's when you stick the donkey-thirster head on him you start to question his original gender.














Elites:

This chap started life as a Khorne Chaos Marine lord, but they suck
so he's much better off as a Bloodcrusher with Fury of Khorne.

For my elite choices I always take two units of Bloodcrushers, and oh boy do they rock! With S6 on the charge and power weapons built in they mangle Marines and transports. I always take as many wargear options as I can per squad for wound allocation, rending, and laser-guided deep-striking.

Most of the crushers are a mix of Chaos Knight, Khorne Berzerker, and Bloodletter bits. As well as being a blast to kitbash, I made 5 for the price of 3 of the "official" plastic ones, they're unique, and I had parts left to make more Berzerkers and Bloodletters if I want them. Score!

As an added bonus none of them are sprawled across their mounts like the plastic crushers. Tut tut GW...

This one here's an icon bearer.

Here's one with an instrument...

...and a personal favourite of mine, a Bloodcrusher dragging the mutilated remains of a Dark Angel Marine.

Folks have asked why I don't take Fiends, as they're supposedly better, but I find these guys synergise so well with Fateweaver that I'd really miss the 3+ rerolled armour. Also, in my local playing area people use a lot of terrain, so the Fiends would not be so fast anyway. I might convert some up at some stage and try them nonetheless.

Troops:

Bloodletters. One squad of 8. No upgrades. Put them on an objective and watch your enemy avoid it like the plague. Built-in power weapons and furious charge for 16pts. Bloody bargain.

I like the plastic Bloodletter kit, and they're the only models in two years I've just stuck together with no converting. Needed a break I guess.

One large unit of Plaguebearers with an icon to go in the bad wave and laser-guide the hardhitters...

...and one small unit to sit on objectives and give cover saves to Bloodletters.

My Plaguebearer models are plague monks with zombie and ghoul heads. Didn't need much cutting besides clipping the tail off and trimming. This way I got 20 for the price of 5 metal ones. Yes I am cheap. No I don't care.

My last troops choice is usually a small group of Nurglings. They're not a scoring unit, but have 3 wounds, a 5+ invulnerable save and are eternal. I like to charge enemy walkers or monstrous creatures and tie them up for 3-4 turns.

Fast attack:

Fast attack for Daemons? Haahaahaaa! Moving on...

Heavy Support:

Ever one to capitalise on eternal (Meaning no Soul Grinders for me), I like to take 3 (counts as) Tzeentch Daemon Princes with Bolt of Change and Unholy Might. S6 in close combat is a godsend against AV 13+ and vs Marines. Fluff wise they're Khorne Princes with Kai Guns. 

I built them from the Warhammer Minotaur kit with Killer Kan and Defiler bits (as well as other bits I had lying around).

So that's pretty much my standard army at the moment, occasionally I'll try something different but the core is the same. 

Comments/criticism welcome!

whoops almost forgot! pictures by anna soares (she'll hit me if I don't credit her)

Terrain update.

Another post so soon? Well I've been a busy boy these past evenings. Behold - the glory of the painted ruin, modelled by some Plague Marines and their ride.

I sprayed the entire model with Chaos black and drybrushed Codex Grey. The rivets/support beams were painted Boltgun Metal then washed with Ogryn Flesh for a rust effect. I dribbled some wash down the walls from the rivets to look like the rust running from the rain (not sure how apparent this is in the pictures though).

All in all I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, and I'll be giving the other ruin and the factory the same treatment soon.

Actually, the board they're sitting on is new. I went down to the local (local??? Blackpool, a good 45 minutes walk out from the city centre) hardware superstore and found some precut MDF boards 2" by 4". "Perfect", thinks I and picks up 3, meaning I can make a 4" by 4" for skirmish games (hello Malifaux) or a 6" by 4" for 40k. I also picked up a spray bottle of  'Rust-oleum Stone textured finish' black granite paint on a whim, which I would heartily recommend to anyone making a board on the fly as it single handedly textures and highlights all in one go. Bloody amazing. Comes in a load of colours too. I was so impressed I got up early this morning and went out to pick up some more.

For now I'm just focussing on getting the board and scenery play-able, then I'll come back and add grass, corpses and battle damage. Y'know, the usual stuff one finds around ruins.
To close, here's my ingredients;

• Chaos Black Spray
• Codex Grey
• Boltgun Metal
• Ogryn Flesh
• Pre-cut MDF boards
• Awesome-ass spray paint that does everything

photos by anna soares

Making 40k/Malifaux terrain

So now I live in a house instead of a damp bedsit (hurrah!). This means I can have my own gaming table and people can come to MY place for a bloody change and stop my having to traipse across town at all hours to get a game.

I did my market research first. GW terrain is nice - but pricey. The 40k ruins are perfect for both 40k and Malifaux, but I wasn't too thrilled about the 50-80 euro price-tag for the set. Ebay turned up some good results for a modest price, but also modest quality. Eventually I came to the conclusion that, if you want something done, always choose the cheapest option. Which meant make it myself. Luckily having just moved, there was (and still is) a lot of strong corrugated cardboard boxes lying around as well as some religious newspapers some nuns optimistically put through the door. At work the next day I scrounged a small box an order had come in, some drinking straws, some strong thin card from washing-up liquid refills (the same quality and quantity of card in the art shop would have put me back some 3-5 odd euro) and a large tin tomato can from the restaurant upstairs. I had superglue at home, but picked up some more as well as some masking tape and polyfilla (see previous post about the glues lack of chloroform) at the nearest 2euro shop. So far my list of ingredients were;

• Thick corrugated cardboard
• Thin cardboard
• Small box
• Superglue
• Tin can
• Straws
• Masking tape
• Pollyfilla

First I decided to build a factory. I used the small box, stuck it to the thin card, cut out a door from card and glued the can to the back as sort of a silo-thing. Some masking tape strengthened up the structure and I poked some holes in the back to insert the straws as pipes.

Just to make extra sure the masking tape would hold during painting I gave it a coat of the super-cheap super-glue. Right about then I noticed that there was no obvious way for models to climb up to the top so I opened up some paperclips I found on the table (I think the girlfriend got them for serious boring non toy soldier related grown up reasons) and used a modelling drill to make holes at regular intervals before I pushed the paperclips in and secured them with glue to form an industrial style ladder up the side. OK, so that's another ingredient. Here you go.

• Paperclips.

Once the glue was all dried I roughly cut around the structure with some scissors to make a base. A liberal coating of polyfilla covered the masking tape and provided some texture. I've found that sand and superglue are like cement, so I squirted a load of glue around where the base met the structure and sprinkled this with rough sand to attach it all more firmly to the base. Next step will be to flock the rest of the base and undercoat, but more on that later...

You might notice I've made no mention of measurements, and that is because... I didn't make any. Everything by eye and so far it's been working just fine. My advice to anyone new to making terrain, but too lazy to measure, is to keep some models to hand so you can check and make sure doors are large enough, does my Rhino fit under there, will my master/terminator's base fit on that ledge etc. Using pre-made shapes like boxes also helps as they're designed to be square.

Feeling mightily pleased with myself  for making a serviceable factory, I decided to try my hand at making some ruins. Have you all played Fallout 3? If not, do. Awesome game with lots of nice ruins. So nice in fact that I decided to base mine (roughly) on theirs.
To start off I took a long strip of corrugated cardboard, then arbitrarily folded it in half with the "grain" of the cardboard running vertically.  Taking up my trusty kitchen scissors I hacked an irregular ruin shape making sure the point formed at the top of the fold (I know this isn't totally clear so just look at the pictures, OK?). To make the remains of floors I took the offcuts from making the walls and used a pen to mark more or less what height I wanted them to be, and more or less how far out they'd stick out. Again, scissors to hack a nice ruined shape, and again,  kept models nearby the make sure I didn't get over zealous and hack off so much it was useless. After much swearing I managed to get the walls to stay in a right angle and fixed the floors on with masking tape and glue. To cover the ends of the cardboard I used more masking tape and glue (seems like I didn't use anything else huh).
Now for the clever part. To create the appearance of broken support beams and girders in my ruins, I cut in half some cocktail sticks and poked them through the ends of the cardboard in the direction of the corrugation and secured them with, you guessed it, superglue. The ruins then got a coating of polyfilla same as the factory.
Add ingredient;

• Cocktail sticks

About this time I started to notice a design flaw in my ruins. Since I want them to be free standing they were top heavy - but built of light materials, and I don't know about you, but I'll be damned if one of my models is going to fall onto the table, or worse, the floor, to be damaged because someone sneezed during a game. That  would make me a sad panda.
Again I ended up in the local 2euro shop, and came home with a pack of nails which I stuck into the bottom (giggidy) of the ruins and glued to add weight. So far it seems to have done the trick.
I am a genius.

photos courtesy of the very lovely Anna Soares

First post.

Hi everyone (that is the two people that'll read this :P). As the title would suggest, this is my first post. I'll keep it brief since I should be in bed for work tomorrow, but hey who the hell needs a good nights sleep anyway?

I'm Mergoth. You might have seen me on other peoples wargaming blogs under different names, such as Lord Mergoth, or Merl. I'm starting this up as wargaming blog to document my projects more for me as for as for anything else. When I get time I'll post pictures of toy soldiers and terrain. Maybe even a batrep... who knows. The name of my blog comes from a tub of cheap superglue I bought earlier today. On the bottle it proudly states "Contains no Chloroform". Now, I had no idea that it usually had chloroform in the ingredients, and to be honest if I had, I'd have been having WAY more fun with my glue up till today. Oh well, what can you do.

Mergoth out.