WH40K

With a great deal of concern I learned that the AT-43 guys I know have been lured to Warhammer 40,000... despite my warning and frowning and fist shaking.

I don't sneer at others who play and enjoy the game (I think it's rude for miniature wargamers to be snobs about the games they play) and I have a rather large collection of Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Chaos Space Marines... etc so I'm certainly in no position to criticise. However I am a little saddened that they have moved away from AT-43 as so many others have - there was a time when it was championed as The Next Big Thing for 30mm sci-fi players. The fading of AT-43 feeds more kids into the maw of Warhammer 40,000.

By all reports the demo game of 40k they had at a GW store left them very impressed with how fast and easy the game is. Obviously their games at home will not be anywhere near as fast as they will not have an enthusiastic staff member in the room to talk them through the rules. I suspect (perhaps harshly) that the page flicking that they experienced with AT-43 will be the same, if not greater, with 40k. To be fair the problem is not the game (or indeed any game) it's the infrequency of game events due to Real Life commitments creating a situation where every two months the players have to start at the bottom of the learning curve again, promising to consult forums and/or "sitting down to really read through the rulebook properly before we meet again". Alas if only work and wives and children would not foil these good intentions! ;)

Of course the eternal question is why should I care? I don't have to play 40k with them, I don't have to coach them and I don't have to have anything to do with the mess. I can smile and wish them well and concentrate on 6mm Napoleonics or 15mm WW2 Germans or anything else. Yet I cannot!

As much as I dislike 40k and as frustrating as I find pageflicking (where players try to find obscure rules deep in the usually incorrect part of a rulebook) all those soldiers and tanks and whatnot sitting deep in cardboard boxes cry out to me! And so it is that I find myself sprucing up old unfinished 40k projects such as the "Five Land Raiders" Space Marine Army.


This afternoon I finally cranked up the mini air compressor and airbrush that I purchased long ago and experimented with a basic masking technique, with interesting results. My first attempt was actually better than my second - from which I have learned that distance from gun to target is important to avoid clumping and splatter, as is the consistency of the paint.

Dracomarines Land Raider Prometheus; a bit of Desert Yellow to get things started. This will later get a coat of Bleached Bone over the top.

I hope to give the other half a blast of Liche Purple either tonight or tomorrow morning (assuming motivation and courage do not fade!). The colour scheme for the chapter is a quartered purple and beige thing I came up with a year ago (to replace the mono-purple scheme they currently wear).

Dracomarines Tactical Marines; this is how the chapter colours look "on paper"... I'm not sure how it will go when applied to actual models, particularly not with the help of an airbrush.