These shots of the upcoming Horus Heresy MKIV plastic Space Marines have been floating around the interwebs (I've always wanted to say that!!) since Monday, but to be fair I present them here and credit the WAAAAGH Studios Facebook as these shots are a bit lighter and easier to see.
Few things to take away from these, many of the parts seem to be pretty uniform and vanilla, three of the legs have MKV bolts on the greaves, there are sweet looking combat blades, the helmets all seem very similar if not the same except the officer's crested helm. The chests are all very similar too and there is a Vexilla, a Legion-specific banner that lets you re-roll morale tests and an old-school missile launcher based on the one in the original Rogue Trader-era boxed set of Space Marines. 
Pity the officers seem to be the weird Age of Sigmar construction but still... EXCITEMENT!!
Have you spotted anything else? Let us all know!!

WAAAAY back in November 2013 we decided to get some of the skulls from Blood & Skulls Industry to have a bit of a play with and absolutely LOVED them - especially for the price!
At the time they were being used on some of the Righteous Harbinger Space Marines, but with the old Armorcast War Hound starting to take shape, we found the perfect opportunity top use them. 
The original skulls moulded onto the titan aren't the best, frankly, so using the small and medium skulls to replace them proved to be not only easy, but really effective in updating the look of this venerable and large miniature. On something this big, even the smallest details are obvious!

Blood & Skulls make three sizes of skull (left) - small, medium and large and are not only really smooth and well shaped with no flaws what so ever, they are also crisp and clean and take a fair few coats before you lose any detail! You can also see the skulls placed onto the War Hound (right) and how well they fit. 
I really like these skulls and would recommend them to anyone looking to add decorative bits to scenery, troops, and especially vehicles - because who the Hell wants to hand paint all those bastards?!

The Age of Sigma boxed game is out - and what a box it is!!
Come have a look at what we thought of it and also a little bit on the wider Age of Sigmar experience.

If you're a fan of World War II-style military stuff, then you may have already seen Dust Tactics!
Imagine World War II with walking tanks, zombies and Hind-style attack helicopters... cool right?

It's not all about vehicles either, there's armoured infantry, mech suit snipers, Nazi Gorillas (yes, those kinds of gorillas!!) and the seemingly all-important ladies with big guns!
I've never played the game, but I really like the universe and the models - so when I see a sale I tend to take advantage of it - and when I got an email today saying that Miniature Market were having an 80% off sale on Dust, I figured sharing the good news was just a kind thing to do!

I can't take credit for these pics - they come from Big Red on the Bell of Lost Souls forum - but they are too cool not to post here for your viewing.
I did blow the pictures up a bit so you can hopefully get a better look of these images that are straight from the pages of White Dwarf, which is to be released this Saturday. 
Those Khorne models are a huge step up and will be on the wishlist of every Chaos acolyte! The winged Prosecutors are also very cool, with the beefy Liberators a match for any Chaos Warrior!
Unfortunately they aren't multi-pose and are designed to go together in a set configuration. Here's hoping this isn't the case for the upcoming kits to be released outside the boxed game miniatures.

Nuln Oil - it's a bloody brilliant product! 
It may even be the best thing that Games Workshop have ever released in terms of paints. It goes on well, it dries matte, sticks in the recesses and is great for black lining around armour panels.
Now I admit I was skeptical at first, but once I tried it, we were closer than Paris Hilton and a billionaire!
See, as a Beardy, there have been a lot of GW paint products that have come and gone so it's natural to be a bit jaded and not always an early adopter..
My first GW paints were back in the late 80s when there were "inks" as they were called then. They did the job okay (brilliant for thinning paint mind you) but didn't set the world on fire in terms of their purpose. In fact many of us just thinned the paint and that was the wash - it was matte, covered better, was easier to control and dried in under a week. In fact that's where I wanted to concentrate this piece on...
See, in the old days you would create a wash for the specific colour - so a dark drown for bronze, and blue/ black wash for metal and adding more blue for a silver look. It was a bit of trial and error but was great fun and really looked great. I even found this dark grey combination that really dulled down metallics and made armour look like old heavy iron. It was cool!
But Nuln Oil seems to have replaced that idea in many modeller's eyes. I see it used for shading all kinds of metallics and colours - even reds and blues! This would have been thought very strange in the days when mixing the perfect red wash was a combination of a dark red, brown and smallest bit of black thinned to just the right consistency. In fact there was a well loved way using two washes, one not too dark for the recesses and then the darker one for the really dark areas. I'm not saying this was the right way BTW, it was just the convention of the time and produced some lovely subtle shadows.
So I ask you, has Nuln Oil (and to a lesser extent the other current washes range) made us as hobbyists lazy? I know when I did the head to my Imperial Knight (above) I did all the base colours and then just washed it with Nuln Oil and it looks great to my eye.
So, over to you - is it a worrying trend to be lacking those vibrant specific coloured washes in favour of a matte black cure-all? Do you like the black effect or maybe you too miss the specific mixes for each colour. Keen to hear your thoughts...