Playing at games workshop Bromley today. I played two games from the new battle missions book. I chose 'War of Attrition' and my opponent (Death Jester) chose 'Pre Emptive Strike'. I lost both games. The first game was a close run thing right up until the end two turns. Turn one I smashed all of the Eldar tanks, wiped out the rangers, shattered the bike squadrion and wrecked half the walkers.  At the close of turn 3 every vehicle on the table was a smouldering wreck.  The Bailed out Wriath guard wrecked both of the Vendettas with gunfire and assaults. At the end of the game it was grenadiers vs wraithguard, which is not much of a contest.  My troops ended up cycling onto the board a couple of times each, guaranteeing the Eldar victory.  Without the Bane wolves, getting rid of the Wriath guard was nigh on impossible.
The second game never came together for me. My HQ started the game standing out in the open and was  anihilated with extreme predjudice in the first turn. The banewolves didn't turn up on the board until turn five and even then arrived on the wrong flank. 
My opponent very skillfully arrived at every fire-fight on the board with maximum concentration of his army, usually facing desultory fire from one or two of my units. Both fun games though and I probably learned slot more from the second game than the first.

The 291st have a new posting!  747.M41 the Regiment arrived on  the world of Praxedes IV, a world under seige.  Tau symparthisers had invited the Tau empire to annexe the world. This had lead to its inclusion as a target for the Damoclese crusade.  With the crusade winding down the 291st, fresh from the withdrawl form the sept world of H'Rus, were redirected to the campaign to retake Praxedes.

Praxedes itself is a brown orb, too close to old father Praxedes to maintain a verdant biosphere, and made up of entirely too much sulphur for full terra-forming.

The Regiment was thrown into the battle almost immediately upon arrival. No time was allowed for theater aclimatisation, or re-equipping for the enviroment.  This saw the regiment fighing its first few encounters in the traditional Krieg black.  It wasn't until after its first 100 days of fighting that units started to be re-equiped with uniforms more fitting for the hot, barren enviroment of Praxedes IV.

In otherwords, I have decided to go for another colour scheme, a desert colour scheme, and to the releif of my wife, a brighter colour scheme.  Fo years she has lamented me "paining things black", so the new buff coats are much better in her opinion.
The method I have chosen it paint these is a hybrid of Airbrush and Brush applied washes.  I've seen a few desert painted Death Korps armies around but it was Ishkurs method that caught my eye the most.  He had some stunning guardsmen up on his site and a very simple recipie for producing them.  He is spraying white basecoat, then , then brush coating them with devlan mud and Grypone Sepia washes to achive some incredible results.
I thought to myself I could do that.  I still wanted a darker finish that he is producing, so I varied the method a little.

So here goes:
1:      Pin any grenades, Packs, democharges or other belt equipment to the body of the Grenadier
2:      Primer the body and arms with Halfords Primer "Grey" Spray

3:      Spray GW Black as an undercoat
4:      Pin the arms to the Grenadier
4b:    Superglue the power cable to the powerpack then using a hair dryer on hot setting, blow dry the power cable until it is soft enough to pull into the slot under the hellguun ans superglue in. 
5:      Using an airbrush, spray ValejoAir: Sea Grey (Much like C: Astronomicon Grey) from a high angle.  this is to try and leave shadowed areas still black
6:      Wash the Steel in CW: Badab Black (4 -5 layers I think)
7:      Wash the Storm coat in CW:Gryphonne Sepia (5-6 layers I think)
8:      Wash the trousers in CW:Devlan mud (2-3 layers I think)
9:      Drybrush the storm-coat with 1:1 C: Snakebite leather and C: Bone White
10:    Paint the leather webbing C:Bestial Brown
11a:  Paint the Face plate of the Gas mask C:Astronomicon Grey wetted out 1:1 with water
11b:  Edge the Steel with White or C:Space Wolves Grey to get the light glinting of points in the armour.
12:    Wet down V:Blood Red and wash it into the eye peices.

And your done.....
I love this method, I lined up 30 Kreig grenadiers all completely assembled and equiped  using step 1 thru 4, then powered through steps 6 thru 9 on all thirty models in one evening.  A few more evenings of detailing where it was needed (powerswords and brass work on the Grenade Launcher ammunition etc) was all that was left and I had 30 New Grenadiers!

Applying this to the Drax Method of Army planning you can see I went from a standing start to my infantry compliment mostly complete!



Next, some Vendettas, This will be like Project Valkyrie Rebooted with Desert Colours.  I did Finish the Squadron of Navy Grey coloured Vendetta's, but Now I want to re do them in a Panzer Yellow colour.