End Transmission

One of the armies that always interested me in the 40K universe was the Imperial Guard. The bulk standard human army that faced up to the alien and genetically engineered forces that surrounded them.

Unfortunately I don’t really like either of the plastic kits too much, so I decided to have a go at butchering a few different sets together to provide some basic troops and some elites. The chosen kits were the basic Cadian troops to get the essential Imperial Guard bits, some Space Marine Scouts and some different heads from Pig Iron to stop anything looking too much like the original kits.

The Pig Iron order went nice and smoothly, arriving in good order, very quickly. On arrival though it was clear that the heads were rather smaller than the GW equivalent; especially the Kolony Inner Guard heads. Still. They are nice, so I decided to go ahead and try anyway.

The visored helmet (used in the first unit below) works on the Cadian body without too much work. all that needs doing are some high, padded collars adding onto the body to level off the heads. They are still very narrow compared to the standard GW heads, but it’s not too noticeable once they are painted up. The Inner Guard (domed) heads are far too small for the Cadian body, it just looks silly. 

These guys are for general guard, replacing the Cadian/Catachan models. It’s a pretty simple combination of Marine scout legs, Cadian body and arms with the Pig Iron heads. There are knee and elbow pads added onto them in addition to the previously mentioned collars. You’ll also notice that they also have cut down/modified lasguns. It seemed to fit the aesthetics of their new, bulkier  appearance. If I ever get around to doing a full Guard force, this is certainly going to look nice on the battlefield.

For the Elites I had to do a little bit more work to get it looking right. As I mentioned, the domed heads that I ordered were far too small for the Cadian bodies. Thankfully, with a little bit of work, the scout bodies make nice carapace armour for these new Guard. First I carefully removed the eagle, giving it a smooth front to the armour. Next up I had to raise the front of the Scout bodies and build a new respirator block on the front. This leveled off the top of the armour so that  it looks like the Inner Guard head only comes down to nose(ish)  level. I’m not quite finished with these yet, but here’s a WIP shot of the comms officer.

Today seems to have been a day of polarisation within the Emusic community with a mixed batch of news sneaking out.

1) Sony have decided to put their back catalogue of anything older than two years. Including Sony BMG, , Columbia, Epic, Jive, LaFace and Legacy Recordings. Probably a number of other sub-labels as well, hopefully American Records too.

It’s great to have so many important acts adding to the Emusic library; especially useful for new subscribers that don’t know about the small labels, or their offerings. The only problem I can see wit this is that it’s a US only addition, yet the rest of the world gets stung with the associated price increase for no additional benefit. All the articles that they are promising, linking together releases from Sony to similar material from indie labels mean nothing to us.

2) Some albums with more than 12 tracks are going to be offered as “full album downloads” that count as 12 tracks, even if they have 20+ tracks. Again, great news, especially when you consider lots of old Jazz/Blues stuff comes with very long track listings as they tend to contain multiple albums. Unfortunately there is currently no indication as to exactly which albums this covers. Is it every album with more than 12 tracks, or just some newer ones?

3) Price hike. It’s understandable that prices need to go up every now and then, it just happens that this one is very badly co-ordinated and very dramatic. The information form emusic says that it’s a slight price increase. Slight is probably the worst word they could have picked… depending on which package you are currently on it can be up to 115%! For example, my current package is 100 tracks for £19.99; this will change to 50 tracks for £17.99. The announcement says that the price increase has been timed to occur with the addition of Sony’s additions so people don’t feel too unhappy about the increase… Sadly this statement only makes sense if you are American as the price hike is global; access to Sony’s material is US only. I can’t help but think if the increase is due to Sony’s inclusion, then offer a separate subscription package that gives you access to Sony’s material as well; in a similar manner to their audio book section.

In theory I have no problems with a price increase as it’s a good service and it means more money for the small indie labels that I tend to download from. I am, however, rightly annoyed that I only found out about this from a third party. Emusic have failed to notify me that things are changing in any way. Some people, mostly US based, are receiving a note on their Emusic homepage about the changes, but this hasn’t turned up on mine yet. In addition, it seems they are refusing to honour people’s contracts where they have pre-paid for their X number of downloads a month, which seems highly unfair. Surely that’s the whole reason for people to pre-pay?

I can’t help but think it would have been nice to have some sort of email go out from Emusic to all it’s subscribers at least warning them that this was coming rather than radio silence. I’ve seen a lot of people threatening to leave; while I’m unhappy with such a dramatic increase for no additional gain, I will stick around for a while longer to see how thing go as it is still the cheapest online music store… though it will prompt me to be more careful when selecting what to buy and where from as old CDs are now cheaper to buy than a download; or even amazon’s MP3 store when they offer albums for £3 a shot.

We shall see how it goes…

Well. I mentioned the other week that I’d taken up painting again… this evening Adrian asked to see how I was going… so here he is.

I need to get a magnifying glass and better lighting to do the last few bits as there are some details that I can’t see properly when I’m painting that look really odd on the camera. The face is the main area of concern. Some of the blending also needs work… but for the first thing I’ve painted in 10 years… it’s pretty good going

Also need to sort out better lighting so the pictures come out better…