Being a cliché, and 'Find the Cyclops'

Well I have been busy.

So apart from this Renegade Hellhammer beastie (more on him later) in the last month, I've got my house sold and looked at 18 separate houses to then buy afterwards (only 2 had a dedicated study, but hey ho) I've enjoyed a lovely holiday with friends, was best man at an awesome German wedding for my good man Den, had a birthday, and finally had an enormous game of Apocalypse, all with a pregnant wife and little spare time at all.

So I apologise for the delay, Den let me know the delay was unacceptable. Sorry Den.


Houses have been easy to find, but hard to match. Considering at the moment that all of my kit fits under the stairs in our front room where the colourful beanbag sits, finding more space or equal space is always complicated. Happily it looks like we're there.

Holiday was awesome, I recommend Barcelona heartily. Bestial (Bethtial?) on the beach front is fantastic. No Games Workshops at all though, I was barred!

Wedding for Den was great, German food and a whole heap of booze;

For my birthday, I was taken to Harry Potter World, whose Hogwarts scale model puts a lot of our collective skills to shame. Fantastic fun.

I also sent out a Games workshop Birthday list.

Its heartless, but far better than giving your family a headache when it comes to finding you things. Also, it allows planning for lists and the future format of your armies! 

Loot on the day included;
- Wyvern/Hyrda Kit
- Chimera
- Cadian squad
- Astra Tempestus Scions
- Fantasy Warhounds
- £50 for me to spend on whatsoever I may like. I chose 2 Forge world goodies in a Hades Breaching drill, and a Cyclops demo tank which I took along to the Apocalypse weekend.

Just on the Cyclops tank...man that thing is cute! Smallest teeniest tank that I've yet seen. Completely worth its relatively high price vs its scale compared to some of the finecast stuff I've seen. And its scale is definitely smaller than you would think.

Here it is on the high-ish resolution picture of our Apocalypse game pre-setup over the weekend. You get a mention if you can spot it on the table somewhere...

The Wyvern and the Chimera are assembled already, now just need a few hours of paint applied to them. My new Warhounds will be proxied as rough riders because I also managed to get my hands on a tentacle maker so bomb collars and pain-goads ahoy!

But with horns, and scales, and less amicable faces.

The Scions will bulk my existing 9 Scions to 14, so I'll kitbash another to take it to 15 so I can have my Scion Command Squad as well as two 5 man squads, gunlines aplenty.

The Hades Breaching Drill automatically comes with a squad of engineers. So I'll probably convert some of the newer Guardsmen to be bedecked with a more trenching tools and spades than the ratio normally suggests.

Through all of this I've been painting the Hellhammer to get it ready for the Apocalypse weekend we've just enjoyed, hosted by my good friend Bave. Bave is very tired now. Poor Bave. 8 guys, 10 Armies, 20,000 points!

In order to get a nice centrepiece ready for the weekend, I began painting the Hellhammer in my spare time. 
I calculated it was a long process

Black Basecoat

Leadbelcher drybrush on the lesser exposed metals

Four thin layers of Averland Sunset on the panels

 Wash in crevices with Agrax Earthshade 

 Two layers of Averland Sunset to tidy up wash-pooling

- Metals details, guns and the occasional bit of brasses 

- The freehand decals and 2/3 of the graffiti

- Sponge weathering

- Oil paint weathering with Whitespirit and burnt Umber oil paints

- The fine details, remaining graffiti, the skinned hide painting, on the read, the sooting, the heat-stained barrels, the battle damage, the blood.

- Snow effects

- OSL

- Ice and oil final coats.









The big beast of a tank is finished. I haven't used it in games a whole lot, but I intend to from now on, as its a fun little project that I would say took about 12-15 hours to complete overall.