Chaos Nid?

Just a bit of a post showing my entry for the Bay Hammer "Chaos Tyranid " contest.

I made him from a bloodletter and a gaunt, I recycled him from some built and painted models that were in some lots that I picked up recently.

I know that Chaos has no effect on Nids, but I wanted to enter the contest.

I have been picking up some great deals on lots of warhammer stuff off Craigslist. You should keep an eye on it in your area and score some goodies, unless of course you live near me, then it sucks and you would hate it, so don't try it.

I got some Necron in a pile of stuff, and my housemate has taken an interest in them.

I actually got a game in for Christian's birthday Sunday, I played 1000pts of Nurgle Deathguard, and they did great vs Orks. I need to practice with them, as I want to enter them in a tournament perhaps at Pacificon.

I also made the rounds in the area and picked up some great bits for some future projects.

John

Anything but a One.

I was practicing my new speed painting technique, and figured I should build a funny mini.

I stole the idea from this motivational poster.

the paint was a base of Dark Angels green, with some very hard outline highlights in goblin green, with heavy green wash, black wash and green wash again, it really blended everything together very well. I even used a red wash over white on the eyes.

John

Winners ! West Wind Heads Give Away

Using Random.org we have chosen three winners.

Big Jim

The AKH

Wienas

Please contact me at: av8hotrod@yahoo.com with your mailing address.

Each of you will get an assortment of these unreleased heads from West Wind, 5 of each style, 15 total.

Both Big Jim and The AKH had us listed on their blog rolls at their blogs, so they will be getting some extra swag from me.

Big Jim you will get some of my resin cast Deathguard shoulder pads, and some old school Space Wolf metal minis.

AKH I will include some of those OOP metal Guardsmen to bolster your forces.

Thanks to Wendy at West Wind for the head sets, and to everyone for the comments, and stay tuned for more free stuff in the near future.

John

West Wind Gas Mask Heads Give Away! Free Stuff!

You may remember that Wendy from West Wind Productions was kind enough to send us some new and unreleased heads from their Secrets of the Third Reich, Separate Heads System.

I have been using the British Gas Mask Heads on my Ardwick 23rd troopers.

Use this link to read our earlier review.

Here are the Veterans with flamers that Mike used the heads on, you can see his article here

You can also see how I used them here.

This give away will be a little different than usual, we will have THREE winners, and each will receive FIVE of EACH heads.

These heads are great for conversions, and you can't even buy them yet, so you will be the first on your block to have them.

Rules:

As usual, all you need to do to win, is to be a subscriber to our blog, and post a comment on this page. Please feel free to use the comments to leave feedback of the new heads for the folks at West Wind to see.

We will choose three winners this time from the comments list using a random number generator.

We will ship anywhere, so everyone is eligible. ( Our last winner was from Finland!)

Also, if we find our blog on YOUR blogroll or links, you will receive an awesome bonus prize that I will hand pick from my own collection of Warhammer goodness, based on the content of your blog.

The winners will be chosen late Sunday night, our time, so if you want some free stuff, get your comments in!

John & Mike

The last Mech Rough Rider...with flamers!

I have been working on my Mech Rough Riders for a while now; here is the link to the ones done. I never felt that the horsemen looked very realistic and always had a vision of them being mechanized. Here's my last one, a kitbashed Mech Rough Rider with a flamer, not the usual lance. This time I used a model from Micro Arts as the basis for this kitbash.

I figured the flamer is actually quite handy. The lances can only be used once and after that the Rough Riders are pretty much defenseless. Having a flamer nearby gives the group an option to soften up the enemy before getting into close combat. Although it lookes like it should be twin linked, that rule doesn't apply in the game.

The servitor model comes from the Witch Hunter retinue. It's a great sculpt and I felt bad cutting him in half.

For the tank on the back I used the bit from the basilisk kit. To connect the servitor to the barrel, I used base guitar string that John gave me. The little round exhaust on his back is a part from a space marine jet pack. Some green stuff was required to finish all of it off.

Here is the painted version.

That skull on the back of the tank comes from the Basilisk sprues.

The base is from back2baseix.

Hope you liked the Mechanized Rough Riders from the Bishkek 2nd Desert Raiders.

Mike

Attn!! Next Post will be the 4th Give Away at Santa Cruz Warhammer! We will be giving away some awesome West Wind heads for IG or Traitor IG! Stay tuned!

Why am I buying the new models?

This weekend marked the latest wave of Space Marine releases including the Landspeeder Storm and Ironclad Dreadnought.

As a Dark Angels player, this shouldn't have meant much to me , due to a lack of update to the Dark Angels Codex, I can't really use these models in my army.

I think this is a mistake when GW should be trying to sell more of the new models to Space Marine players.

I can't even figure out if the Storm would be painted black as the rest of the speeders in Ravenwing ( probably not, as it has nothing to do with the 2nd Company) or just green as a regular Darkangels vehicle.

But I bought them anyway. I like Warhammer and want to do my part to keep it alive so I just buy what they come out with, and give them my money, its like paying dues to be in a club.

The first thing I noticed was the nifty Dred base was grey instead of black plastic and it seemed thinner like the new blastscape or the crater set, and the quality was not that great.

As you can see it was warped out of the box and will not lay flat, I tried to bend it around to get it flat, but it's still tweaked. I am afraid to try hot water as it may get even worse.

When I looked over the rest of the kit, I noticed the front of the torso was missing off the sprue, so I had to give GW a call and they will be sending me a replacement in the mail 5-7 business days,( they are really good about that) it's kind of a drag though as I wanted to put it together.

Pretty disappointing for a kit that was over 40 bucks. I hope the replacement stuff gets here soon, I think it will be a cool model with all the extra weapon options.

Well the Storm was much better. A nice kit, and I do like all the Scout bits in it. All for around 30 bucks.

I wonder if anyone else has had trouble with the base or the same part missing in the Dred. it looks like it was barley attached to the sprue.

Oh well, I have plenty of other stuff to work on, while I am waiting.

John

Update; I have recieved the replacement model and it is fine and the base is flat, the missing part was almost falling off the sprue, so I can see this being a problem.

As much as I bitch about GWs model prices, you just can't beat the customer support.

Imperial Guard Flamers with brand new West Wind Heads

West Wind, the company that produces the great 'Separate Head System', gave us some as of yet unreleased new head sculpts to try out. John used them in a post here and I showed some IG veteran flamers here. They are now painted and I just wanted to share with all of you how well these heads work for our models. No sales pitch, it's just true. The different heads give your models lots of character.

Reading Gaunts Ghosts, you realize that all these soldiers have been at it for a long time and are allowed to use their own gear as long as they do duty to the Emperor. The one thing that is still unresolved is the lack in body difference: tall, short, skinny, big etc. Using older models and a host of fantasy models (like Bretonnians) can resolve that and I am going to work on that in the near future.

Anyway, here are the 3 veterans:

They wear the proud should insignia of the Bishkek 2nd, 1st regiment, that has been fighting in a desert setting for years..

Another Give Away!

West Wind has been so kind as to donate a bunch of heads to Santa Cruz Warhammer for us to give away. We will do that next week, just like the last few times, except this time we will draw 3 winners and we will make 3 baggies with a nice assortment! Keep checking in it to find out more!

Have fun, be inspired, inspire others!

Mike

Make Your Own Death Korps Models, With West Wind Heads

These three figures were built using new unreleased heads from West Wind, in our last post we previewed these new head sets and Mike showed some models that he is working on using them, you can see the review here.

I decided to make some Death Korps style guardsmen, with just a head swap. I did the same thing with West Wind heads for my Ardwick 23rd troopers, and really like the way it came out.

Picklehaube head

Painted dark green grey and used the kit pack from a Warzone figure.

Adrian head

I chose blue like the WWI French uniform with a heavy wash.

Kepi

I have to say I was a bit stumped with this next unique head sculpt, and decided to do an American Civil War style mini and this head seemed a bit small to me, so I used an old Ratling which I decapitated and swapped the kepi head on. I decided to paint him green like the Civil War sharpshooters I also made the scope brass.

Here they are side by side

These new heads are ripe for Imperial Guard conversions, so keep any eye on our blog for the next give away which will be some of these unreleased head packs from West Wind.

John

Exclusive Preview New West Wind Gas Mask Head Packs

As you may know I am using West Wind's British helmet with gas mask for my Ardwick 23rdImperial Guard troops, and I am very happy with them.

Wendy at West Wind Productions was kind enough to send us a few of their new gas mask head packs to preview, these are not on the website yet as they are not yet released, and will be available shortly.

These are part of West Wind's Secrets of the Third Reich line of miniatures, there is some interesting figures in the line including some that would make some great female Commissars and cultists. The packs we received are also part of the SHS or Separate Head System of heads which are perfect for converting 28mm minis. Each pack pack comes with 20 heads and is very reasonably priced at 3.50 pounds, which is about $5.00.

They also have other SHS sets for historical minis, I like the Brit para beret heads for guardsmen.

We received SHS-SOTR16 Picklehaube Helmet + Gas Mask Heads,

SHS-SOTR17 French Adrian Helmet + Gas Mask Heads,

and SHS-SOTR18 American Civil War Kepi + Gas Mask Heads.

As you can see this is some interesting stuff for headswapping. I think they would make great conversion pieces for a Death Korps army.

Mike has built some IG veteran flamers with the new heads for his Bishkek 2nd Desert Army.

"I used all three heads in these veteran squads, fully well realizing they are very different. But who cares? These guys have been in battle for a long time and are allowed by the commander to use the equipment they like best. As long as they get the job done!

I did sculpt some synthetic protective harnasses that give them protection from the intense heat.

The model on the left has his flamer in a contraption that let's him carry it around on his back. The body, which has a more bulky armour is actually from one of the gunners of the Valkyrie kit. Of the German head I snipped off the spike, that was going too far for my Bishkek 2ndDesert Amry

The bases are not final, I am going to use 3 resin bases that you can see when all of them are painted. For now this is easier to hold them when I am painting."

Mike

I will also be using them on some new models and posting them here soon.

In a couple of weeks we will be doing our 4th Give Away with these heads and we will be sending these off to some lucky readers for free and before the rest of the world gets a chance to buy them.

John

And the winner is:

Allright, it's time to announce the winner of the 3rd Santa Cruz Give Away. We are happy to give away an awesome set of Dragon Forge bases. Using Random.org, we generated commenter number 9 which is

Aleksi Lehtio said...

Those Bases are sooo awesome. I like how the 40mm base is a little more elevated, making those terminators stand out on the battlefield.

July 9, 2009 1:25 AM

The winner will have to email mike.tess@charter.net to claim the prize.

Attn Everybody! Even if you didn't win the basing set, you can still get a free gift. If you place an online order on www.dragonforge.com and in the comments of your PayPal payment mention Santa Cruz Warhammer, you get a FREE GIFT! Jeff from Dragon Forge told us he will add a free something to each order that's coming from this Santa Cruz Warhammer Give Away. This promotion will go on until next Thursday. This is a great way to support small, creative and independent companies!

Thanks to everyone who participated. Keep following this blog, as we have made connections with many companies whose products we love and will give away more soon. Next up will be West Wind productions, whose separate Head System is great for IG and Traitor Guard Players.

Cheers!

John and Mike

We are giving away FREE Dragon Forge resin bases!

Hey, here's another Santa Cruz Warhammer Give Away, aimed at all you creative modelers who like to support the independent and creative little companies that give our hobby extra color. This time, as promised, Dragon Forge Design donated a great set of resin bases. Here are the goodies

10 25 mm urban rubble bases. In this post, John used the base with the cogs, 3rd from the left, top row.

1 40 mm urban rubble heroic base.

1 60 mm urban rubble base

I am not selling out when I say that Dragon Forge makes some truly awesome resin bases. They are very clean, creatively laid out, extremely detailed and have no flash to clean up. Although they are not the cheapest base out there, the quality delivered and the joy working with them makes up for that.

And as with all our Give Aways, we buy products incognito to check them out and model with it. Here is the 40 mm base I used for one of my Mech Rough Riders. I bought this base ages ago and sat on it until the time was right to use it.

Here are the rules to try and win this cool set:

1. become a follower

2. leave a comment. The companies that we try to promote really dig the comments, as it brings them in direct contact with the customers. Let them know what you think in these comments.

In 3 days we will use a random number generator and pick the happy commenter. We will ship it for free to the winner!

NEW!

Dragon Forge wants to give everyone a chance on a prize! If you place on order on his website and in the comments of your PayPal payment mention Santa Cruz Warhammer, you get a FREE GIFT! Jeff from Dragon Forge told us he will add a free something to each order that's coming from this Santa Cruz Warhammer Give Away. This promotion will go on for one week starting today!

OK, let's have at it!

Later added: some commenters have concerns about international shipping of products, let's say to Malaysia or Europe. Jeff at Dragon Forge added a post on his blog about these concerns. Click here for that info!

John and Mike