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Greetings brothers,

A new face to Gary's excellent blog!

I'm very proud and excited to have been asked to contribute to the blog so before I start bamboozling you with my wit, wisdom and other things beginning with W I figured I'd introduce myself.

Real name is Alex West and I've been playing 40k for about 22 years now.

I'm a member of the Cold Steel Mercs and a long time player of Space Wolves. Since they went all icey wolfy mc ice freeze wolf my interest in them has faded (I prefer the heresy executioners background personally) and the twisted side of my personality is drawn inexplicably to the Night Lords.

I'm finishing off my wolves at the moment to make them usable in 8th edition, until they get a new codex anyway, and then I'll be indulging my dark side with the Night Lords.

So I'm a mix of loyalist and chaos really!

I'm also helping organise our new range of tournaments geared towards players who prefer a tactical challenge instead of looking over the table and thinking 'Oh I've won!' or 'I may as well go to the bar'.

Shameless plug: http://elementgames.co.uk/event-tickets/CSM-NatChamps17

I'll share more in the future but thought I'd pop in to say hello and remember...

The night is dark and full of terrors, we have come for you!

Alex

Everybody needs a big one...

Hi all,

Remember this guy?

I finally got around to renovating him (I'm going with 'him', it suits him). First task was to dry fit the parts to see what pose he was originally in and then to see what, if anything, could be changed. Some of the parts were pretty well fixed. So much so that I was wary of applying too much pressure to separate them in case I damaged or broke the pieces. 

Quick break for a mini-rant. It really amazes me sometimes that people are willing to spend tens and sometimes hundreds of pounds on models, especially Forgeworld models, and then treat them with such contempt. This model costs £90 pounds new. When I got him he was in bits (see above picture), parts not cleaned up, a half arsed, unfinished paint job, and with so much superglue residue all over him that it took me the best part of three days to get him ready for more work. Ok, rant over.

I then got on to removing the old paint. I discovered this stuff a couple of years ago and what a revelation it was. Cheap (around £2 a bottle from Super drug,  in UK), quick and easily disposable.  

It strips paint in a few minutes. After soaking in a cheap tub for around 10 minutes and with help from an old toothbrush the paint just slides off.

A good wash with soapy water and allowed to dry overnight followed by a final clean up in the nooks and crannies with the point of a craft knife blade and I was ready for assembly.

The Red Tide are currently collecting skulls on the hive world of Grent, in the Bellopheron Sector of the Segmentum Pacificus. As such my model collection is based for an industrial/urban theme hence the ruined metal bits and pieces on the base. I tried to align the gatling cannon with the direction the head is looking in (the head was one of the pieces welded in place) with the axe ready for action once he's finished shooting the crap out of something. The right leg was another fixed piece when I got the model so I had to pose him as though he's stepping over the rubble. Here he is, ready for painting.

Next time we'll see the beginnings of the paint scheme (hint, my warband is The Red Tide).