Painting.

Been working on painting the Cryx and the Panzergrenadier motor pool.

The Germans have been very easy, as I've been doing the vehicles with basecoat and wash, and don't need to spend time on the bases. This would make them look very unfinished, but I'm also doing German crosses and 10.Panzerdivision icons, which makes a huge difference to the look. I've got 15 or so transports and tanks done, with another 19 to do, which are all undercoated khaki and staring at me. I think there's only 14 infantry bases unpainted to complete the whole force after that.

The Cryx have been a bit more of a pig. I keep stalling when trying to work out what colours to use where. I'm using my own colour scheme, am doing them just basecoat and wash, and need to keep the colour palette across the range of disparate unit types (warjacks, undead, corrupted trollbloods and satyxis (corrupted female satyrs)), which is what's causing me trouble. I've also stalled on wanting the bases doing at the same time, with plastic sheeting, and having not based the models I want to paint. Bah. I've got all the bases done now, and I think I've got enough experimenting on the painting done to make the main painting job much quicker now.

Once I'm happy with the amount of Germans and Cryx that are done, I'll do some more construction, and then it's into the Epic Lost and the Damned, and into the Mid Nor.

Playing.

Played Rich again at Warmachine 2 weeks back. His campaign handicap left him on 690 points to my 750. I, unfortunately, had a moment of madness and picked a force of interesting things rather than optimal things. He spent the game running away from my effective sharp end (Deathjack, Leviathan and Cankerworm), but, on the turn where it would have made a difference, left a pair of models in my charge corridor, which I then couldn't manage to get rid of. If either of them had gone, Cankerworm would have got a charge on his Angelius, and the game would have looked very different, as his charge with the Angelius then Typhon were devastating. His other points of contention were to throw (hideously underpriced) elk riders into one flank, and to use Typhon to lob my Bloat Thrall into the middle of my Mechanithralls, where it popped like a pimple and blew up the Mcthralls in the process.

I'm happy that I had him on the back foot for most of the game, wasn't happy with failing to remember to play nasty with list selection, was happy with several of my units, wasn't happy with the way eSkarre plays against Everblight, and wasn't happy that I've not got more models painted.

Also had a session of Monsterpocalypse against Rich last week. Played Anglax backed by Triton units, with a splash of Martians, against Cyber Khan with mostly Ubercorp units, splashed Fire Kamis and some Apes that never saw the table. We won one game each. I might have won the first game if I'd not taken the chance that came up to throw Khan through the Imperial State Building as I told Rich I would do, rather than an alternate attack that might have caused more damage. We're playing to prepare for the tournament at Maelstrom at the end of the month, as well as to generally smash hell out of each other.

Plotting.
Been planning a few things for launching into in the new year.

- Someone suggested a big game when the Tyranid book comes out. I've suggested playing 3-4 games as warmups, with consequences influencing a big Apocalypse game. I won't be buying bugs, I'll be fielding Imperial Guard. Should be fun.

- I've also got it into me head to have a go at planning and building a pair of ships and maybe a harbour so we can play boarding action games in Warmachine and the like. First thing will be to draw out some ship plans and play on them, see what layouts work and what's less good. This would be with an eye to setting a table up at Leadbelt when it comes around next autumn. I've kinda been inspired by the 60 year old Australian I had a bit of an exchange with this autumn.

- I've also got to get the Warmachine campaign back on course in the spring. That game with Rich was the penultimate game of turn 3, and once tonight's game is done, will be our last game playing under Mk1 rules.

- Maelstrom are planning some more tournament weekends. Starting with a Monsterpocalypse one. I'll either roll out the Tritons or the Lords of Cthul. Ain't sure yet.

- Aaaaand, I'm going to ebay a ton of spare toys. I'm looking at stuff that I've not used for years and won't actually get round to using. There's a scary amount of it.

Painting

Finished all of the stuff I was working on (building FoW buildings, IG Valkyrie and a ton of Cryx). I magnetised the heck out of the valkyrie. The weapons are all magnetised, and so's the cockpit, so it fits back into the box the kit came in.

I'm trying out colour schemes for my Cryx now. My test bonejack model has lots of ice blue-to-white on the armour, with occasional black raised edges, and with bone for some of the plates. I've also got some detail in glowy green. It looks very pale and very good on the jacks, but I'm having trouble transfering the scheme effectively to the infantry. Think I'm going to have to mix in more colours.

Playing
( Much rambling... )

I won my first tournament on Sunday. Went to the Leadbelt Wargames Show on Saturday, which I'd only heard about on Wednesday, got told, whilst there, of a Warmachine tournament on the Sunday. Turned up on the Sunday morning, no one else does, and I claim the win by default. Arf.

In theory, it should have been a good show. They had Harvey Hadden Stadium's gym, where the Club Challenge was in previous years, and had half gaming tables, half local model companies (Warlord, Hasslefree, Heresy, etc). There was meant to be a Flames of War, a Hordemachine and a Warhammer Ancients tournament over the weekend, but only the FoW got the players. I think there were about 20 of them, and not a great number of other folk showed. The FoW games did look awesome though. Next time, the organisers say, there's going to be more warning, and a lot more advertising...

And in other news.

Modelling

I've finished the Deathjack and 98% finished the Valkyrie. The Deathjack was actually even less fun than Lich Lord Terminus (Sister for scale reference) to stick together. And that's including pinning Terminus' poxy wings on (very small contact area and wings that size...).

Deathjack doesn't have feet at the end of his legs. He has a thick base pin. Then the feet stick on the side of that. And, once you've got him glued down, you've got a massive, metal body and arms, which are all in front of the legs, and there's no support to stop him toppling over forward...

At least the Valkyrie is a joy of chunkiness to put together. The only bits to do are PVAing the windshields and magnetising the weapons. I love this model, but realise that the resin version would have been a pain in the proverbial to build...

I've also got a ton of smaller Cryxian bits and pieces cleaned up, based and glued.

Gaming

On the tabletop, I filled in for Jake in a campaign game, dismantling Biscuit again in the process. I tried out my small privateer mercenary force led by Broadsides Bart against his secondary force led by Magnus the Traitor. I basically had Bart loading cannonballs into his Mariner all game, blasting things to pieces with the additional shots provided by the Broadsides spell, with the damage boosted by the Hotshot spell. Meanwhile, my Buccaneer threw nets over Biscuit's jacks, and the Freebooter got in the way and smashed what it could, all in order to slow his advance with his melee jacks, letting the Mariner do its dirty work. It also didn't help that most of Magnus's dirty tricks revolve around knocking enemy models down, then smashing them on the ground, and all my jacks are designed to stay upright on a moving ship, so are immune to knockdown... I didn't realise how much sting that would take away from him when putting the list together...

The campaign is looking like it may go on hiatus for the minute. We did the opening brawl and two rounds of the planned six so far. However, of 5 players, Jake is being out of town and the two Riches are both talking of being burned out on skirmish games, as they've been playing nothing but for a year and want to do something larger scale for a few weeks. Hopefully this isn't a death knell...

I also got to play in a random game against a random dude called Felix in one of the new games shops in Nottingham. We've suddenly got somewhere between 3 and 4 new shops all opened at the same time, all covering some combination of comics, board games, wargames and ccgs. The big thing they bring over the two existing comics shops is playing tables...

Felix took Menoth, which is the first time I've seen them on the table. And I put out Searforge as they're the only Warmachine faction I have with more than a couple of models with paint on them as yet. He played very very aggressively, burninating my infantry and smashing my Driller with his caster on second and third turns. I took full advantage of this, as he did left his caster up front and a bit exposed, so I bit her head off with my armour plated bear. Felix, unlike my usual crew, plays very very fast. It's something I need to do too...

Sister of Battle army.

1500(ish) points. Based using plastic stonework sheets from the local railway modelling shop. I've got a few more Sisters as well as all the weird stuff (penitent engines, repentia, flagellants, inquisitors, living saint) to paint.

Army painted with flat colours and a Badab Black wash, in order to get em looking like an army as fast as possible.



( close ups )

Warmachine Searforge Commission mercenary contract army.

1150 points (500 points is a usual evening game), made up of rhulfolk (dwarves), ogruns (ogres), warjacks and one giant armour plated bear. Based with Iron Halo's Deus Ex Machina resin base inserts. A couple of them are missing base inserts as I added them to the army after ordering the first batch of inserts. This represents all but one of the models I've got for this army. The missing model being a recent converted Bokur that hasn't seen paint yet.

Army painted with flat colours and a Badab Black wash, in order to get em looking like an army as fast as possible.



( close up pics )

Painting:

September saw the painting of the rest of the first 1500 points of the Sisters. 35 Sisters, 5 Seraphim, 2 Rhinos, 2 Exorcists, all based, base coated and washed.

Added to the already painted models gives me:

2x Canoness with jump packs and either Eviscerator or Blessed Weapon.
2x5 Seraphim with Sister Superior and a mix of special weapons.
3x10 Battle Sisters with Sister Superiors, heavy flamers and a mix of special weapons.
1x10 Retributers with 4 heavy bolters and a Superior.
2x Rhino for 2 of the Battle Sister squads.
2x Exorcist.

And that's 1500 points done.

I picked up the Rhino to Immolator upgrade sprue some time back before they stopped selling bitz, so once I realised that the AFVs were looking really plain, I dug out the sprue and pimped them out. They look so much better for a couple of bits apiece.

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Modelling:

The FoW buildings are a bit stalled, but are nearly there. Two of them just need a bit of modelling clay (for door lintels and suchlike) and they'll be ready to paint. The tomb needs a roof building, plus a bit of clay, and it's ready to paint.

Recently I've been doing a round of building stuff. Been working on complicated Cryxian nightmares (Lich Lord Terminus and Master Necrotech Mortenebra rank up among the hardest builds I've done yet), cleaning and gluing a Soviet Tankovy company for FoW, and some random stuff from other forces.

I've got those FoW buildings, the last couple of Cryx bits, a couple of Pirate warjacks and my plastic Valkyrie to build, then it's back to the painting, starting with the Cryx I'm using in the campaign. I got the Valk on pre-order, and it's still on it's bloody sprues...

---

Playing:

We got the Hordemachine campaign going at the end of August. We did a 5-way brawl to start with (I got eliminated first, with Jake the ultimate winner), and are into the second round of resolving declared attacks. I lost my first game (against Nathan) due to taking my eye off the ball, and my second (RichB) by fractions, but took Biscuit apart in order to win the third, leaving me 1-3 instead of the expected 2-2 (I expected to beat Nathan and Biscuit, and to be out-bearded by Rich). Seems to be going well so far.

The Mk2 Warmachine rules have been released in full now, but without the Hordes Mk2 field test, we can't move over as 2 out of our 5 players are using Hordes factions in the campaign, and everyone but Jake has models for a Hordes faction.

This month, I have mostly been building things.

Maelstrom Games had their big re-opening at the start of August, with 25% discounts on everything. So I went berserk on Hordemachine stuff and a little bit of FoW. I've since spent the last 3 weeks building things (when not sat in a field in Derbyshire watching metal bands), and only touched a paintbrush for the first time last night. Still haven't finished building everything. I've got 3 heavy warjacks and 2 heavy-warjack-sized warcasters still to build...

I'm also most of the way through three more African buildings for Flames. Two larger Adobe buildings to match the first two I made, one with a courtyard, and a tomb, also with courtyard.

I bought a set of FREEM dice off Turn Signals on a Land Raider some time ago. Lovely things, but they're silver and cyan marbled, and while the FREEM is in white, the spots are silver. Can't read them in the light in the pub I play in. So, the first painting in a month was to respot them with white. I wanted to put some base colours on Sisters last night, but didn't get home from beating the Imperial Fists with my Iron Warriors until late.

Just about to kick off a Hordemachine campaign. I has written rules. I hasn't written any background or fluff, just rules for handling the campaign. Please make some noise if you see something I've forgotten or have obviously cocked up:

( Campaign Rules )

Brief update.

I came to a conclusion. I can spend lots of time making models look pretty, or I can spend time battering through many models making them look OK in order to actually have painted models on the tabletop, and then come back later and add more layers of paint.

So, this last month, I've been getting a base coat, then a layer of Badab Black, on all my Searforge Commission models (these guys, these guys, these guys, and their mates). I've also been putting resin base inserts onto their bases, which has meant clipping all the base tabs and drilling a pin into each foot... There will be photos once I've completed the painting.

I has a proper dining room table now the dining room is painted, so I've also been acquiring scenery. Made contact with a GW staffer I'd not seen in a bit, who happened to be having a clearout, and I've now got a big heap of Epic and Cities of Death scenery and the plastic trees. Shiny.

Finally tried out Flames of War at long last. I've been mostly playing Hordes/Warmachine this year, and that one's all about individuals pulling nasty combos on the opposing models, where FoW is very much about company level play with weight of fire being much more the deciding factor, so the feel is very different.

Hopefully going to have a go at running a simple Hordemachine campaign very soon. Going to use it as impetus to paint up more models, as well as a chance to have more background and scenario play to the games.

Finally. Bloody. Finished.



I'm not happy with the photo with white models on a white background. Pale grey or blue would have been better. I'm not happy with the pale colours all around the head of Belakane. Either the hair or cloak should have been darker to make her face pop more. I need to work on shading the reds more, I need to smooth out the white more, I need my black highlighting blend to be smoother, and I need to speed up with painting these things.

*pant* *pant* *pant*

Other than that, very happy with them. Huge improvement on where I was with a brush 2 years ago.

My first 5 finished Battle Sisters. Very happy with the sacred roses on the sleeves, and with the overall look. I still need to work on smoothness of finish and on how to highlight the red effectively. And on turning them out a bit faster.









And WiP Canonesses. I was only going to do the first one of these, but kinda got carried away with painting both, as I'm loving painting the second one. She's got all little extra details all over her that keep my attention. The "Madonna" style breastplate is a bit silly though.