That Forge World Touch

Hey everyone time for an update on that idea of mine. So I had a go at trying to add a bit of realism to my models this week and the results were better than I had expected, I chose to use a picture of one of the first Blood Angel models I painted for the blog (the Sanguinary Priest). The reason for this is because I had used a clear background that I could filter out using the photoshop software I was using.
For this experiment I used free photo editing software called GIMP (yes I laughed too). The programme took a little getting used to but considering I have never done anything like this before I got the very basics in a couple of evenings. A lot of this project was down to trial and error and I lost count of the amount of times I started again. However, I persevered and I am very pleased with the result. The most difficult part of this was layering the images but once I'd learnt how to crop and cut the blending and airbrushing gave a little extra finish to the picture.

So here's the original...

 and here's the Priest ready to fly off into the sunset.

I had a lot of fun with this and as the software is free I recommend that you have a go too. Well I'm off to go create so more photo magic. See you soon.

In the (half a) Company of Angels

Welcome back fellow travellers to The Folly of War. The time has come to take stock of how my Blood Angel 3rd Company is coming along. So far I have added a few units here and there and I am now almost on my way to having a fully painted half a company of marines.
My model list totals thus:

• 3 tactical marine squads
• 2 five man devestators
• 1 assault squad
• 1 company command
• Captain Tycho
• Librarian

It has been great fun painting and researching the deeds of this oh so famous company of marines and finally I got to use them in a game. At the H and L Friday night club I played a 1500 point game against the new chaos codex. My opponant was Mr. Pidwell a fellow enthusiast of the fluff and an avid RPG(er). His army consisted of over 14 spawn, a lord on bike, 2 havoc squads, 2 plague marine squads and the infamous Daemonic Rapper E Didy (epidemeus). Now, I can hear you calling from the rafters "that doesn't sound too hard". Well, my eager readers unfortunately for me every model in the army had the mark of nurgle, including, the Havocs. For those of you who have put 2 and 4 together, you will have realised that for each kill a model does in the army E diddy gets to up the tally making the army better. I'm not saying 14 spawn are any good, but when these spawn have hatred, wound on twos with a re-roll and ignore armour, you do feel slightly (oh so slightly) inadiquate. On the plus side it was a highly entertaining game with a delightfully funny opponant (shame about the army). I left the game feeling better about 40k as looking at the 57 marines in the 1500 which, made me think with pride, what a good job I have done with the army. Even though I was slaughtered (to a man) I loved the imagery that both armies had inspired. The thought of a brave last stand against the diseased, rotting, monstroserties rampaging towards combined bolter, las and plasma fire was fantastic to watch and inspired me to keep plodding away at the rest of the company.

In other news I was trawling the BOLS site and came across an article about home made photoshopped backgrounds for miniatures. The cogs began to turn in my head and I thought I could do that. Over the next couple of weeks I am going to experiment to see what I can produce and I hope to show you something very soon...wish me luck. Finally before I would just like to wish everyone going to PAW this year the very best of luck as unfortunately I cannot make it this year. Until next time travellers farewell.... 

Dropzone Commander

Greetings! The Folly of War is anchored in high orbit this week preparing for rapid deployment planetside. I am of course talking about the fabulous new 10mm scale Dropzone Commander. This game focuses on rapid deployment and re-deployment. This is key to the games design as ground forces are limited to very slow movement (infantry can only move up to 3" on average compared with a dropship's 24").

MINIATURES:

The sculpts on these bad boys are amazing and all of the factions have been handled with care. There are for armies to choose from; The United Colonies of Mankind (UCM), Post Human Republic (PHR), the Scourge and the Shiltari. Each faction has various dropships, aircraft, tanks, walkers and infantry. What stands out about these miniatures is that all (yes every single vehicle) can actually be carried by the transport models and dropships. A word of warning though depending on the faction you choose determines the modelling difficulty. Shaltari, being the easiest as they use portals so the models are not technically carried and PHR being the hardest as you will need to magnetise each model. The models are made of a flexible resin which in my opinion puts finecast to shame. They are quick to clean up and so far I have not had any detail loss, which I found happened far to often with GW's finecast.

This is NOT the Harbinger.

GAME: So, I have played a few practise games with the rules and have found them to be quite easy to pick up. The game focuses around battlegroup actions instead of the my turn your turn mechanics of 40k. My first proper game was against Heroes and legends own, Guy. He used his PHR which focus on slow movement but make up for it with the range and power of their weapons. The game went well for me and due to an error with his deployment Guy lost a huge amount of his forces to my desolator dropship (which in no way resembles the Reaper Ships from Mass Effect...). The game ended with me claiming more objectives than Guy but as with any newly learnt game I regard this win more down to luck than tactical acumen.

My Second game was against Mr. Birch, this did not go so well. I also learned how effective intercepting fire is (the hard way). The majority of my stuff died in my own turn due to the amazing amount of AA that came my direction. Interceptor fire allows unactivated units that have not fired to shoot at aircraft that move within their range. It is harder to hit though so the risk of waisting the shots is ever present. Unfortunately for me Mr. Birch hit with everything sending the Reaper.. I mean Desolator crashing to the ground. Dropzone is a balancing act between knocking out ground troops whilst maintaining good solid air superiority. Mr. Birch used our game as practise for a tournament coming up in few weeks, where as I used the game to bed in some of the more complex rules. Overall Dropzone (warning cliche alert) is an easy game to learn but a hard game to master.

I hope that this weeks post has inspired you to take a look at this very interesting and tactical game. You can find out more information at www.hawkwargames.com