Salute 2016
I have awesome news. The tickets are booked, my brother and
I are going to Salute 2016 at the Excel in London on Saturday April 16th.
It will take me about three hours to get to London by train and another hour to
get from Waterloo to the Excel. My brother is driving down from Derbyshire, so
both of us would be looking at significant round trips in a single day. So my
brother suggested that we book at hotel and stay in London on Friday night.
I was expecting a Travel Lodge or a Premier Inn, but when my
brother showed me the hotel he has booked for us I thought he was joking. We
are staying for one night at the Sunborn Yacht hotel in London. It is basically
a super-luxurious cruise ship moored in the London docklands, and it’s right
next to the Excel centre!
I am so excited about going to Salute after hearing so much
about it on The Overlords and The Independent Characters podcasts and watching
all of the coverage on Beasts of War. It’s not often I have adventures like
this and I’m fully expecting to spend a lot of money. In fact if Forge World
are there I might treat myself to a Fellblade tank model.
Warhammer World – September 2016
In even more good news, my brother is getting married in
September and he has asked me to be his best man. The last time I went up north
and visited my brother I managed to squeeze in a quick hour-long visit to
Warhammer World on the way.
This time I have factored in a whole day before the wedding.
So, hopefully I should be able to visit Warhammer World again on Friday 16th
September. This too will be an expensive trip, because I promised myself that
if I ever got to Warhammer World again I would treat myself to a titan, and I’ve
got my eye on a Chaos Warhound.
Advertising
You may have noticed that I now have an advert for Element
Games on my blog. I got an e-mail from Element Games a few days ago advertising
their affiliate program and I decided to sign up. As I understand it, if you
click on the advert on my blog and follow the link to Element Games and then
proceed to make a purchase I can earn 5% commission. There’s a minimum
commission payment of £10, which means that you guys will need to spend £200
before I’ll see any money from it.
In all honestly I don’t expect to ever make a single penny
from the affiliate program. But I am happy to advertise for Element Games
anyway. Element Games are now my first port of call for pretty much all of my
hobby purchases. Their prices are good, their delivery is great and their
service is absolutely second-to-none, and to top it off they’re a really nice
bunch of guys and I’m happy to help spread the word and help them out.
The Army Painter – Wargames Mega Brush Set
On the subject of Element Games, I bought an Army Painter
Mega Brush Set from them last week. Most of my brushes are getting pretty worn
out. Almost all of my Detail and Standard brushes now have chisel shaped tips
instead of points and it is making detail work difficult.
I’ve only ever used Games Workshop brushes in the past, but
they’ve become so expensive now that replacing them isn’t something to do on a
whim. The complete set of Games Workshop brushes is currently £81.65, while I
paid under £30 for the Army Painter Set.
I have always bought my brushes in stores in the past, so
that I could inspect the bristles before buying. A couple of times recently I’ve
gone into my local toyshop to buy some brushes and left empty-handed because
every single Games Workshop brush they had in stock had frayed and bent
bristles.
So I was very nervous about buying brushes online without
being able to check them first. I haven’t tried my new Army Painter brushes
yet, I may well write a review of them at a later date. But what I can tell you
is that when I opened the box, every single brush has a pin-sharp point, and
not one single bristle was out of place on any of them.
eBay
I was short of money in January so I decided to sell some
items on eBay. I raised enough money to buy myself the Army Painter brush set
and the new Tomb Raider game on PC. Ebay is a great place to source and sell
models and model bits. I sold my converted Venerable Space Marine Dreadnought
and my converted Master of the Forge on Space Marine Bike.
The Venerable Dreadnought has spent so long on my painting
table, being pushed aside in favour of other projects that I decided just to
sell him. My painting ability has improved so dramatically since I started
painting him that I knew that just finishing painting him wasn’t an option, I
would have had to start again and I don’t have time for that. I did keep his
Multi-melta and converted Siege-hammer though. I really like how they turned
out and I will use them for another new dreadnought in future.
I like the idea of a Techmarine on a bike, and it’s a
conversion that you really don’t see that often. So a couple of years ago I had
a go at converting one. I was never happy with the job I did, particularly the
greenstuff work joining the torso to the legs. I also realised that assembling
the model had made doing a decent job of painting it almost impossible. Again,
it’s something I would like to come back to and have another go at in future,
older, wiser and with better modelling skills.
The Beasts Arises
I received my copy of ‘Predator, Prey’ by Rob Sanders
yesterday from Amazon. I really enjoyed the first book. I even bought a second
copy for my friend Andy for Christmas and had it sent to him in the States.
So I was really disappointed when the second volume came out
and I added it to my cart on the Black Library webstore and a £4.50 delivery
charge popped up. I didn’t pay a delivery fee for the two copies of the first
book in the series that I bought. £4.50 pushes the total price of a book from
reasonable to unreasonable. £17.49 is too much for a single novel.
So I have had to wait for the book to be available on
Amazon, weeks after it came out on Black Library. But it only cost me £12.08
including first-class delivery and that difference in price is too big for me
to ignore.
The upside is that while I was waiting I cracked open my
copy of ‘The Lost’ by Dan Abnett, the last of the Gaunt’s Ghosts omnibuses, and
I’m loving every page, just like all of the previous Gaunt’s Ghosts novels.
FINISHED – Imperial Fists Legion Chaplain
I finished the Chaplain from the ‘Betrayal at Calth’ set.
Allow me to introduce you to Chaplain Andreus Orator (named after my friend
Andy) of the Imperial Fists Legion. You can see more pictures on my Flickr account here. I uploaded some pictures of him to the Games Workshop Flickr
Pool, and as I write this they have about 1,300 views.
Works in Progress – Imperial Fists Legion Praetor and
Contemptor Dreadnought
I am currently working on the Legion Praetor and Contemptor
Dreadnought from my ‘Betrayal at Calth’ set. I’m making slower progress that I
hoped because I’m having some trouble with my black paint. It just isn’t
covering the yellow very well. It seems unusually thin and is requiring two coats
and then a coat of varnish over the top to prevent it from just rubbing off.
On the Back-Burner – Chaos Space Marine Squads
I got discouraged by my slow rate of progress on the two
Chaos Space Marine Squads and so they have slipped onto the back-burner for the
time being. All that’s left to do on their bodies is their belts and then I can
move on to their weapons and arms. That doesn’t sound like much, but the number
of coats of various reds I’m having to apply is daunting me.
Current Size of the Unpainted Legion: 271 models.
Currently Reading: ‘The Armour of Contempt’ by Dan Abnett
& (Non-Black Library) ‘The Third QI Book of General Ignorance’ by John
Lloyd et al.
