It's been a bit of a busy hobby time of late with projects and ideas floating in and out of our heads, so we thought it was about time to share them.

As you may know, we're Beastmen fans here, and the Tzeentch Beastmen, the Tzaangor, have been a bit of a challenge getting the look and feel right. Then the other day I hit on the thought of putting wings on these birdy-Beastmen, and by the Gods it worked! Although the colour combination may be a little off, pretty happy with the look of the Blood Angels wings - they're not too big and seem to suit the angular nature of the head and weapons. Bit of Green Stuff and the wings and you're set!!

The ongoing War Hounds Legion project, although at times sometimes on the back burner, never stops - this time with quite a bit of progress on the once-fledgling Breachers unit. With the help of some Forge World Death Guard torsos and Mechanicum heads, we were finally able to get the look we'd been after; heavy infantry! For more pictures and information on the changes to the markings and direction of the Breachers, head over to the War Hounds Project Blog. 

In the vain hope that Games Workshop may actually give us some new Seraphon./ Lizardmen troops, we decided to try a test scheme on this  ​Saurus Eternity Warden because frankly he's the best looking of their current models - even if he is Finecast.. The figure itself is a pain the arse to make; the moulding is all over the place, there's a lot of trimming and the pieces really don't fit that well together. Apart from all that, the paint job was a bit of an experiment with the scales having quite a bit of attention and going for a white body with tiny black tattoos, feet and face. Not entirely sure this is a strong scheme , but it's a start! The other colour is a jade green which was a contract to the orange of the scales.

If you've every listened to the Eye of Horus Podcast, you will have heard them mention NPCs for games. Well this guy is my Non Playable Character. He seems to be a scribe or maybe a guy stealing secret documents. Not entirely sold on the robe, so may work on that. He's a combination of Battle Wizard, and Mechanicum parts which work in surprisingly well... with the help of a hobby knife!

Finally, the weeks before Malign Portents were around the Undead. Having been a huge fan of skeletons in Ray Harryhausen movies, it seemed time - and the new Citadel Skulls made fixing the awful GW ones the old skeletons a breeze. Just a bit of a nip and tuck and they fit right on PERFECTLY! Really happy with these and their layered rather than drybrushed finish. The layering was a bit of a pain, but the result is so much better. Speaking of pain - the Mortarch kit is so so painful! STRUGGLING!

Today is the first day of the International Tokyo Toy Show, and one of the new products on display (apart from a tonnes of Gundam models I'm sure) will be the new Space Marine Heroes from Games Workshop.
We don't know a lot about these at the moment, but they seem to be starting in Japan as potentially Gashapon figures. If so there will be questions over the quality of the plastic as these are generally cheap products sold through blind boxes or in vending machines.
Anyway, apart from that, we got our first good look at them today - and with paint on them they look pretty damn cool with dynamic poses and what looks like some very nice moulding.
It has also been confirmed from previous leaks that, yes, these will have scenic bases!
Although real information is very limited, there is an offical website www.spacemarineheroes.com

++ EDIT ++
Thanks to Gobbla, I have had a bit more of a look around and found this shot (below) on Wargame News and Terrain which shows some (if not all) of these guys have alternate heads! Also on closer inspection, notice the Marine pointing the Bolt Pistol has an Umbra pattern Bolter. Added drool-factor!

Today, Games Workshop released some more information on the upcoming Primaris Space Marines.
There's quite a bit of information, and some of it makes it a little clearer as to the origin and intent of these new Space Marines.
As you may remember from Gathering Storm, the Space Marines took an absolute pounding, with many Chapters under siege, destroyed or simply just lost - they needed a life line and the newly returned Primarch of the Ultramarines had a pretty nifty surprise to reinforce these beleaguered defenders of the Imperium - the Primaris Space Marines.
The existing Space Marine Chapters will get reinforcements, but thew exciting news is the formation fo whole new Chapters - and not just super-soldiers, these new Space Marines were created using the gene seed of the nine loyal First Founding Legions. Yep! LEGIONS!
Want a Space Wolves Successor Chapter? Well congrats, here's a way the fluff will give them to you!
The fluff now says that these new Primaris Space Marines  have now occupied the deserted bases of the lost Chapters, taking on their heraldry and traditions. Think of this - the Crimson Fists FINALLY have reinforcements. Scythes of the Emperor and the Lamenters, so often the brunt of devastating attacks, now have some beefy troops to continue their crusade with.
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This is a pretty cool addition to the universe. Having the untainted gene seed of the Legions to play with and adapt to your own custom Chapter? Have at it hobbyists!
Have a look at a few of the Chapters below - some familiar, some not, but a pretty damn cool opportunity to really be creative and add some of the existing bitz to these models and come up with your own idea.

In a report straight from an employee at Games Workshop, we have found out that the awesome new Space Marines in the upcoming Warhammer 40,000 Dark Imperium starter set will be snap-fit. The heads are seperate, but the rest of the model has very limited poseability and is definately not multi-pose.
This is a huge disappointment, but a later release will see multi-part and mulit-pose Space Marines.
We already reported that the Death Guard are snap-fit, so it's a real shame the Space Marines are too!
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Well that's me not buying the starter box - what about you?

Well here we have it, Games Workshop have revealed the starter box for Warhammer 40K 8th Edition - and .. .WOW! Apart from the massive 280 page Tome of Goodness, there's a tonne of new mins!
Wielding the new bolt rifle, the Space Marine Intercessors are the backbone of your force. To supplement we get the heavy support Hellblasters, and the Inceptors and their jump packs that drop in from orbit with the added fury of their twin assault bolters.
As we predicted, the Rogue Trader era rank of Lieutenants is back and they are joined by the banner-carrying Ancients, something we haven't seen before - a Captain clad in new Gravis armour which seems to be a fusion of Power Armour and Terminator Armour!
The Death Guard are equally impressive with a unit of Plague Marines and new Nurgle cultists in the form of the Poxwalkers. There is a vehicle familiar to Forge World fans - the Bloat-drone. The Death Guard also get some cool characters with the huge new Lord of Contagion, a Blightbringer and a Nurgle Sorcerer, the Plaguecaster

To coincide with the release of Dark Imperium, there's some other new products too - new dice, Wound Trackers and some very cool Sector Imperialis Objectives. 

Also revealed are the five new rule books for the existing range - two for the Imperium, two for Xenos and one for Chaos! They look quite hefty, so curious on the price for these...

As predicted last week, this will be a two week pre-order window, like Silver Tower.

So finally this morning the story broke!
For months now there have been rumours about the new Space Marines and now we have official proof.
As a bit of background, you might remember we had an early image of this guy (right). When rumours first started about this there wasn't anything out there, so we decided to do some trawling and see if we could find an image - and where better than Reddit. That's where the image you saw in our first post breaking this news in March came from. We then posted it on our Twitter and of course on our Facebook for you where it got a lot of attention..
It's not the best picture and of course created a lot of conversation amongst us all - which is the great thing about the community - people talk and debate excitedly. There are some amazing converters out there after all so it could have been a Stromcast kitbash or custom resin parts!
Unfortunately certain well-known blogs were pretty vocal in shooting down our find - and you'd suspect it's only becasue they didn't go looking and find it first! Never mind, at least the model is on the way.
The inital image did look odd and very like Stormcast bitz, but now seeing the GW offical version, we can all see how well these parts go together. This is a great looking model and we're excited to get our hands on them - escpecially that proto-MkIV helmet! Here's hoping it's as multi-pose as the current range so some great dynamic models can be made.

Getting a whole squad done one miniature at a time is a long process, but when you're done it's exciting.
Today I finally finished my Veteran Tactical Squad for the War Hounds Legion and having been the first squad I started it's good to have them now being able to sit proudly next to their completed Tactical Squad brothers. Having finally worked out markings and how to inject a bit of character really helped bring each one of these guys to life - and not just have a whole lot of "gun pigs". 

More images and write up HERE

Making unboxing videos is pretty fun and it makes you look at the miniatures in a whole new way - really apprciate the details and opens you mind to modelling possibilities.
This weekend saw a massive release of Tzeentch stuff, some so popular it sold out pretty quickly.
So without further ado, here's our look at the backbone of the Tzeentch Legions, the Rubric Marines and Tzeentch's loyal attack dogs, the Tzaangors - and didn't they have a surprise in store for us!

The Battle of Prospero has always been an interesting one in the Warhammer 40k/ 30K universe. Apart from the Space Marines being massive thugs who destroy anything the Emperor doesn't like, it was really the first time we see the Emperor being spiteful or not seeing the whole picture. Magnus did break the rule not to use his psychic powers, but he did it for a good reason - albeit to bad results.
When the Emperor sends the Space Wolves to destroy Magnus and his Thousand Sons, we see the unrelenting armoured fist of the Imperium to it's full and blind perspective.
There has always, therefore, been a mixed feeling about if the Space Wolves and the Emperor did the right thing or if Magnus and his Thosand Sons ended up pissing the Emperor off on a bad day.
We asked the Twitter-verse what they thought, but what do you think?
Does this show the Emperor being fallible and as human as the rest of us, or can he do no wrong and he was justifed in his actions against what was effectively a loyal Space Marine legion?

Let us know what you think here or over on our Facebook

It's been a while since we've done a video, but Burning of Prospero seemed like a big enough event.  

This morning when we posted up the pre-orders from the Games Workshop, there were initially no images of the new sprues. This was later  changed, and it was then revealed that the Mark 8 Space Marines we had first spotted, were not vanilla, but were exclusively Deathwatch.
​(Yes you can convert, but we're talking straight out of the box).
Now, thanks War of Sigmar, we can confirm some of the thoughts we pondered earlier concerning the Death Masque boxed set. Here's some of the key elements we thought were most interesting....

As you cen see (above) the Mark 8 Space Marine armour is in fact specified for the Deathwatch. The nifty new ammo pouches on the front of their torsos is also catered for within the structure of the moulding.
​This is also the first time we have seen all the Chapter symbols in the set. Very interesting to see Howling Griffons among them - certainly one of the harder Chapter symbols to paint!

We can also now see the combi-Heavy Bolter/ Flamer, the Infernus Heavy Bolter and also the Xenophase Blade - not sure if that's Eldar or Necron, but it's not human!
The dreadnought does come with quite a few optional Deathwatch bits including weapons options. There is also two maces included, giving you either ambidextrous Marines, or a very scary looking dual wielder. 

Finally, something of interest is this optional "Black Shield". Certainly a mighty looking hero of some sort!

So what do you think of these guys? Pretty sure the individual boxes will be flying off the shelves, but at what price? This boxed set is quite expensive for what you get, so when you break it into bits, will the individual Deathwatch boxes break the bank?!

Great news from Forge World, with the release of the new World Eaters/ War Hounds Transfer Sheet. 
The original has been unavailable for some time, and thankfully this new one also includes the War Hounds markings - the progenitor Legion of the World Eaters.
By the look of it, there are not only red and white markings, but also some gold ones as well.
Unfortunately it looks like there will be less War Hounds markings on this version, with only one size of the hound head profile and heraldic hound which is a real shame.

One of the joys of Space Marines (and Imperial Guard I suppose) is the huge range of aftermarket upgrades out there to make your Chapter look truly unique.
One of the really unique ones is the Astrium Legio Rapax Upgrade Set from Werewoolf Miniatures. Based on the ancient Roman Lorica Segmentata armour, the whole set includes torsos, heads and shoulders - but the elements are available indivdually as well.
​Although not perfect for every Space Marine Chapter, these would certainly suit Ultramarine veterans, any of the Progenitor Chapters in the days of the Horus Heresy, or if you wanted a bit of a tweek on the ancient Greek look, they could be used in a Minotaurs force.

I've ordered a set of the heads to see what they will look like in my War Hounds Legion and will hopefully have a review for you soon.

This morning Games Workshop released the video for the upcoming 30th Anniversary Space Marine, and I noticed something a little strange - the right shoulder armour has been changed.
The original picture (left) shows a circular disc moulded into the shoulder like the original model we mentioned from 30 years ago. The right shoulder on the Space Marine in the new video is smooth (right)!
Could there be a choice of shoulder pads? Could they have changed the design on the final model?
What do you think? Do you like the old school disc or prefer the smooth?

Bit of an update today - looks like we were right - there are alternate shoulder pads!!