Graham McNeill in Belfast for book signing

If your a fan of Graham McNeil and live in Northern Ireland then you are in for a treat. I have heard that Graham McNeil will be in Northern Ireland on Friday 4th June.

He will be in Games Workshop (Castle Court) in the morning and then Waterstones in Belfast from 1:00-1:30.

You can read a bit more about him on his website.

Legion of the Damned are coming

Today at Games Day Italy, Games Workshop unveiled the all-new metal Legion of The Damned models.

The Legion of The Damned are Spaces Marines in appearance. Their black armour is adorned with chilling images of bone and fire, and an eerie glow suffuses their sable armour and a halo of ghostly fire dances about their feet. Considered by some to be an extension of the Emperor’s superhuman will and by others as the vengeful and immortal spirits of fallen Space Marines, Damned Legionnaires fight with a chill precision few mortal warriors can match.

Out in January, the Legion of The Damned are an Elite Space Marine unit who can always Deep Strike and can even opt to re-roll the deep strike scatter dice. Also, their 3+ saving throw is invulnerable.

Excellent news on something that has been doing the rounds for a while now. I think they will either be a 10 man box or more likely a 5 man box for £20 to £25.

Nice as they look i think i will just stick with my old plastic beakies.

The Christmas Bash

A few friends and myself had an excellent post christmas 40k day on Saturday 27th December.

Four of us got together at my house and set up two tables with modular sections. So no table with a cloth for our games.

The armies were also varied. There was a tyranid army, Tau army, a chaos space marine army and I had a space marine army. Between the four of us we got a good two solid games each on the day

I got to play both games with the "Sieze Ground" scenarios, the first being a Dawn of War mission while the other was Spearhead.

I fought against the Tau in the first game - lots of minor mistakes on both sides - both in tactics and rules - but hey it was still fun with, bizzarely, a discussion on what to do between the two of us when we were supposed to be clobbering each other. Very enjoyable and ended up a draw - but mostly because of friendly tips from the Tau player.

I am still trying to get my head around objectives. I have mostly always played space marines, but i am a natural Khorne follower, i.e. charge and shoot and kill and loot and destroy.

The second game was against Chaos Space Marines. Plenty of fun and learning in this game too. Lucky for me though the Chaos player got slightly stuck between a hill and a building while i slowed him down and grabbed as many objectives as possible. One of the funnier moments was when the Chaos Land Raider decided to ram my own Land Raider. There was lots of bangs and smashes with little but paint work scratched when the smoke and dust cleared. I justcould not believe he rammed me. But it was a good run through of the rules on ramming. Might try it myself sometime - not as desparate as i first thought it was.

Lots of last turn tricky shooting and blowing things up rolls with the dice rolling in my favour this time.

All in all a brilliant day, which i hope will happen again soon.

40k: Revolutions

Well by now you should already be aware of the imminent release of 40k 5th Edition.

Some nice rumours can be found at Bell of Lost Souls

There is also a mother of all cheesy trailers on the GW website at

Surprised that they have it hosted on Youtube, but there you go the money meisters are at it again, probably knowing full well that they do not have to do that much of a hard sell.

I have dibs on the Gamers edition which will, apparently, be in a nice ammo crate box with some counters.

I also received via the 40K underworld an alleged copy of the 5th edition pre-finished in a pdf format. I wonder if this is a real thing, and if it is - is it a deliberate leak to get people playing with the new rules now so they will be used to the difference come July when it is launched??

I win!!!

Went into GW Belfast and entered the miniature competition and guess what??

I won. Huzzah for me.

The winning entry was.......

A grand day out to get trashed

Well, my army of Space Marines got their asses handed to them for breakfast – twice. Once by the Ultra Marines and once by the Imperial Guard.

The first game was against Trev and his Ultramarines, tooled up with a Land Raider, a Predator and a Whirlwind. Throw in some scouts with sniper rifles, a few Space Marine troop choices (one with a Razor Back Rhino), jump troops, close combat terminators and a jump packing Chaplain. My God, what a ton of stuff for 1700 points.

Mine looked piddly compared with his – and as ever numbers can be the real key. The more bodies on the ground the more shots you can fire off.

The scenario was Take and Hold, where the table was quartered and to capture the quarter you had to have a scoring unit in the quarter without any opposing units contesting it.

Unfortunately, I became so engrossed with the game I did not take notes. However, some of the highlights were the vindication of blowing the hell out of his whirlwind, predator and razorback with a few well placed lazcannon and krak missile shots – but alas these small victories came too late in the day with his tanks leaving my lot in a devastating mess. His termies were just shit hot but I took him down from 5 to 2 with an immobilised dreadnought and a couple of ordinary troop space marines – very pleasing indeed. I just imagined the space marine carrying the lazcannon bashing out the brains of one unlucky terminator with lightening claws.

My Command squad could have done better but in the end held their own for 3 turns with the Chaplain, Master and Champion still alive at the end. They did well but still not sure if they are worth the points. That said I really enjoyed the way they were hard enough to take one 4 units at once, including the assault marines with the Chaplain.

My two dreads were both immobilised but kept fighting and shooting as much as they could and the Land Raider went out of action around turn 3 or 4. My Terminators were knocked off early and thus I lost my ‘Assault cannons of Death’. Though I was stupid in setting them up in full view of his shooters. Ah well. In the end I think it would have been a narrow solid victory as it would only have taken another round to finish me off and he had two quarters to my one. The last quarter being contested.

I have to say though over all I loved the game. Nail biting for me at times but fun. One of the main things I learnt was watch were your opponent sets up, use cover and take out as many light to medium tanks before the bigger ones. I spent two much time trying desperately to blow the hell out of his Land Raider. I glanced it and penetrated that sucker nearly every turn and all I could roll on damage was ones or twos. I had my assault troops attack it as my sergeant had a power fist. I hit, I penetrated and ……. I destroyed an armament. Ended up being a bloody pintle mounted storm bolter. AAAaaaahhhhhh. His termies launched out of the Land Raider on one side and a group of six space marines dumped out the back of their razorback on the other side. I was still scraping my assault troop’s sorry asses off the table when the game ended.

The next game was against the Imperial Guard. They ended up being hard as ….. well, as hard as a really hard thing. I committed the cardinal sin of underestimating the imperial guard and how they can be upgraded – carapace armour and plasma guns. My friend had a great time ripping the marines to shreds.

I stupidly fell for a ‘come and get me if you think you’re hard enough’ trick when he placed a full squad of guards close to the front of my Land Raider in which I had my Command Squad. My idiocy knew no bounds when my Command Squad leapt out and had fun decimating them only to have hordes of the bloody imperial guard spend the next few turns turn my Command Squad, slowly but surely, into plasmatic gloop. Never, ever, ever underestimate Imperial Guard, their cheapness and the number of plasma guns they can bring to bear. Tank Shock, damn it, tank shock!!!! His command squad was right behind.

Leman Russ Tanks are a real bastard to kill. As hard as a Land Raider on the front they were nigh on indestrucable to my firing as I kept up my luck from the last game – rolling ones and twos on the damage charts.

Mind you in the very first round of shooting I took out his Hellhound and in retaliation he blew up one of my dreadnoughts. He also fired his nice battle cannon at one of my squads and took them out to a man. Wow, blatant weapon of mass destruction.

He essentially wiped out my assault squad and command squad with cheap troops tooled up with plasma guns.

Ah well, back to the drawing board.

I may have lost both battles but I was still happy with the moments of small victories and good dice rolling. The command squad was expensive but I loved them to bits.

I will upload the list I used in the next post – hopefully – and then tweak. I like the army but I need to just get a bit more out of them.

First Outing for GT Army

Well today i had my first outing with my Grand Tournament army as a dry run for the actual event in August.

I used the Dark Angel veteran models for my command squad with a Company Master converted from the Azrael model. Make no mistake though, this is no Dark Angels list.

It is just an ordinary Adeptus Astartes Codex Chapter, with a leaning towards the darker ritual based side of the Space Marines.

I am going with the Marines as, basically, i like them and i have a lot to learn in tactics. I can think of them afterwards but never, it seems, at the time when it would help me win a battle.



To the left is a picture of a Sergeant from my Chapter. It is a very nice model and i like the style. The colours are metallic silver, metallic gold and black with a little bit of crimson thrown in every so often.

This style came from the beginnings of my Daemonhunter army, which i only have one full 10 man squad of Grey Knights in Power Armour and one 5 man squad of Grey Knights in Terminator Armour. I really liked the colours i was able to come up with and how them all seemed to complement each other, or at least i think so anyway.

I thought they looked Gothic, dirty and powerful. Something which always appealed to me about 40K.




To the right is my Grey Knight Brother Captain in terminator armour. Hope you like it, but he is far from finished, paint job wise.

I think that is what i like about metallics - they can look finished fairly quickly. Which helps as i am a lazy bastard when it comes to painting.




I will put up the army list i used tomorrow as well as a couple of write ups on how they went.

Lets just say that its not the winning that matters but the taking part.

A GT Virgin am I

I love playing 40k. It is a load of fun and i always puts me in mind to paint those damn minis i have bought.

There is a yearly grand tournament on the outskirts of Dublin and this year i am taking the plunge by having a go.

A grand tournament is basically a big excuse for over 16s to play wargames. The tickets are 60 Euros or about £40. So i phoned Games workshop mail order and placed my order.

The GT is taking place in the Clarion Hotel in Liffey valley and i am bringing my own command squad (wife and little pink daemon now 10 months old)

I got kicked into action at Q-Con 14 in June this year when i met up with Martin Morrin from GW who organised a 40k 1000 point tournament at the con. I could not take part as i was not able to arrive in time. I had visitors in the morning and that scuppered the old plans - ah well.

So - hotel booked and tickets booked - what next. Ah yes the army. At 1700 points it looks like i can have a good go at making a good list.

Unfortunately for me it is so damn hard to do, but i will give it my best shot. Hopefully on the 14th July some of my friends and i will have a run through but i have a feeling my ass will be handed to me on a plate as usual.

I will put my list up as soon as i have something finalised but i keep changing my mind!!

Games acoming

Recently i have been quiet again because i have had very little time to roleplay and any spare time i have had i have been painting minis.

I have a load of old plastic Space Marines (the Rogue Trader plastics) that i am putting together and painting becuase i thought "waste not, want not". I also bizarrely have loads of plastics from the 2nd days - nice and quick clip together minis.

Currently i have a Grey Knight terminator squad decently painted and a grey knight 10 man power armour squad aslo not bad in the old painting stakes - although it is very easy to paint the blighters as they are silver. The old drybrushing is a god send.

A friend showed me how to base them and let me tell you a good basing is as good as a good paint job on the figure. I will take pics and upload in the next week.

I am going to use them as allies with my own army the "Headhunters" chapter 231. Still doing the background fluff and i am not yet sure of the complete backgroud and where they come from.

Pictures of the lads will be forthcoming.

All your Firebase are belong to us

There are plenty of really good Warhammer 40K websites outthere but one of the best is called Warseer.

There are forums, rumours, galleries, and tons of goodies.

They also run an online 40k magazine called 'Firebase'- very good stuff in there. These guys are dedicated.

Life ploughs on

Unfortunately i have not been able to attend TTN for a while now and am missing out on a good roleplaying session of superhero type goodness. Ah well, i may get back at some stage.

I want to host a few table top games at TTN, though i am looking forward to a massive space marine vs genestealer slugfest in April. The whole set up looks really good and it won't be using entirely Warhammer 40K rules and should be a good laugh. I will give an update and hopefully post some pictures of what happened.

Some friends and myself are getting ready for a big 40K game over Easter and i currently drawing up a scenario for it. Again i will update the site when the event happens.

Magmatrax - the Jawdropping Juggernaut

I was surfing the net - as you do - and came across a start to finish description (with photos - very important) of how Vincent Hudon (a.k.a. Boltman) built and painted his Juggernaut of Khorne with champion.

He used a number of effective techniques that i can only dream about and created a thing of beauty.
I really suggest going to the website at The Making of Magmatrax