follow up

so,

i played a couple games today at a  friends place. two 15 point matchups against khador, the second of which was conceded pretty quickly when Siege and Co. set up shop and started blasting everything away. here is a picture of the end of the first game when the defender landed his hammer into sorcha to do that final point of damage. it ended up being a little too close for comfort, but it worked out.

i also managed to get a little bit of work done on my 'jack workshop. mostly just some shaping and patterning. i hollowed out the top of it too. i think its going to look pretty cool. i may put a little bit of paint on the chimney next or start working on the rest of the building. time will tell.

tangerine workshop

in between my pre-party chores today i managed to get a start on my structure. its just a "maroc" tangerine box. i pulled all the staples out of it, shortened the corner pieces, and shortened the length of it a little. Other than those little adjustments it was almost like a pre-made terrain piece. i made a roof out of cardboard which was also really easy to do. just at the end i glued two scrap pieces of styrofoam together that i will make a chimney out of.

i have a scheme of what i want the finished product to look like in my head. i made a couple simple sketches at work the other night aswell. im going for the 'jack repair shop on the outskirts of town motif. im going to try to make this one pretty cool.

heres a couple of pics i snapped with my iphone:

Thoughts from my brain

I haven't done any painting since my last update. The wifey and I are having a party this weekend an I've been tidying up the laboratory (spare bedroom) for guests to stay in.

I was just about to throw a tangerine box in the fireplace when I thought I could very easily convert it into a large structure for terrain. I opened up my list of warmachine things to do and slipped in into place.

As I browsed down the list there was a couple of ideas I have saved for a rainy day. One was to start taking pictures of my completed models for easy updates. The other was a railroad terrain project, which sounds like a really fun idea. I would want to make a small station, a track along the board, and let the train move a couple of inches each turn. Or not at all.

if you click them, they will grow.

good news: nearly finished the knights
bad news: wifey took the camera (ie: no pictures of the steps.)
bad knews: one of my horses broke a leg
good news: i ficksed it.
bad news: his arm broke
good news: fixed that too.
bad news: there is still much to do
good news: i'll get around to it.

heres some pictures.





the sword knights still need some highlights and their spare swords, and the storm lance will need plenty of touching up. the leg that was broken needs to get de-uglied, and i managed to rub some paint off in spots during the repair process.

i used the sword knights the other knight in their current state, and was relatively happy with them. i have vowed to myself (and them) that i will learn the right spot for them in my force and make them a force to be reckoned with.

i tried to fish the horse with 5-min epoxy alone but that didnt work. i tried to fix him by drilling a bit and filling it with super glue and green stuff but that didnt work. finally i drilled deeper (in the TINY horses leg) and filled it with a rod and epoxy, which worked. in the end fixing him ended up being a pain in the ass and i lost the ambition to make a joke about horses with broken legs and glue factories. oh well, im sure you can figure something out.

until next time,

viva las vegas! errr.... HAPPY GAMING!

pizza party

it's been a while, i have no excuse, but i'm here now...so get off my back. (pretending someone reads this keeps me interested, ok?!)

ive got a little back log of content to put forward, most of which i will save for a future update. i'm starting to feel overwhelmed with the content actually so i'm just going to treat it like painting a squad of troopers: bit by bit. i have a bunch of pictures, a couple battle reports, and the results of my scenario test. i'll save the battle reports for another day, as i find them a bit tedious. in fact i'll do the scenario later too. feel free to request which one comes first, otherwise i'll just get around to it.

i'm going to just share the project im working on, and how i've been doing it. i know it's not rocket surgery, and this technique is nothing new (and it may even be wrong) but i'm stumbling around in it now. enjoy.

In the beginning:
this is my first large squad of troops. they are knights and they have a pretty traditional feel to them, so i wanted to give them mainly metallic armour. i primed them black. heres the new part. i did a mass base coating with my favorite metallic paint (reaper shadowed steel) using a DOLLAR STORE BRUSH! i purchased this package of crappy brushes for painting terrain, but due to the volume of silver paint i was going to apply to each knight i decided to make use of the wide (crappy) brush. so basically i just slapped it on:Pictured here. this i was able to do over the course of a week to the whole squad just by sitting down for ten or fifteen minutes when i had a chance.

Next:
i used the same brush to slap an ink wash on. this is new to me as well. normally washing happens much closer to completion of the model. i really wanted to darken them up so that i could dry brush GW 'mithril silver' over them and actually be able to notice it. This stage is pictured here. normally my drybrushing occurs much later as well, but as i said... im trying something new. "learning" if you will. (although ill hold out for the finished product before final judgement). you may notice these men have no arms. i find it REALLY annoying to try to paint around appendages, and will thusly paint them seperately for later attachment. this washing/drybrushing stage really didnt take very long either actually. it probably took me a couple hours to do all the troops and all their left arms. I would have done the right arms as well but i had just enough primer to do the left arms. so i moved on to:

The next step.
i dont know what these are called. bright yellow doesnt really cover well on black so it is going to take two coats. the guy on the left has only one coat. you may also notice im keeping a trend of showing which brush im using on each step. i only got halfway through this step today, but i intend to finish it tomorrow.

im hoping to do more posts like these in future. i'll snap a pic at the end of a step and make an update. some may be longer or shorter depending on how often they are posted, but im always hoping to increase frequency of posts. i'm also feeling incredibly scatterbrained at the moment and i suspect that is showing through in this update.

happy gaming!

potential warmachine scenario - WIP

I've been pondering this idea for a little while now, but I think it's best I get a little help. I was going to design a scenario to play and whip it out last minute, but I think getting some input from others will help me polish the edges a little bit. It will lose the surprise factor, but I'm not sure it will make a difference.

Keep in mind that this is really the first time I'm putting this onto [paper] and will likely need some overhauling and possibly play-testing before I (we) could call it a finished product. It is also my first attempt at designing a scenario. Enjoy!

Project Exterminate intended for 2 players
The basic idea is that there will be a number of models ("Marks") not involved in either army, possibly 15. One player will be tasked with exterminating 2/3 of these Marks, and the other player will be tasked with defending them. The twist is that the Marks have a mind of their own, not content to sit idly by and watch the carnage. They want to wander. I think each Mark will use the deviation template to move D6" at the beginning of each players turn, with the 1 pointing roughly in the direction that model last wandered.

The Marks, I believe, should be deployed closer to the defending player. Perhaps three clusters 6" ahead of the defending players deployment zone.

The Marks will have the following stats: Spd* Mat5 Rat5 Str5 Def13 Arm13

The game will end on a set number of turns, I think 5 or 6 should be enough time for the attacking team to work their magic. It may work as well to start rolling at the end of the fifth round to see if the game ends (IE: on 5th turn game ends on a roll of 5+, 6th - roll of 4+, 7th - roll of 3+ et cetera.)

I think perhaps the attacking player should have a larger army because they will have spend precious resources killing marks while the defending player tries to pick apart the attacker. Perhaps attacker 20 pts, defender 15 pts for example. Although I  had originally thought the players would roll at the beginning of the game to decide attacker/defender. Maybe both players will have to bring some extra points just in case they are the attacker.

I suppose that is all for now. I would like to hear any and all input as everything is open for modification.

As always, HAPPY GAMING!

Making a spam and colgate sandwich:

As i have returned from my Eurotrip, I have found myself with motivation to get things painted, and have been quite content with my progress. I have a small contingent of models that are lined up for the dip and they are getting it at a decent pace. tonight i squeaked in 30 minutes before i had to come to work my night shift. Every little bit counts. i'm actually trying out a little bit of a new technique (new to me anyways), but im cataloging that for a future update.

Earlier I was strolling down the painting blog circuit and came across a blog I liked. (www.ironheadstation.com) there was a good article about keeping motivation. One idea that appears to be a fundamental is to make sure you keep switching things up. Things like not doing squads and squads of soldiers, but instead breaking it up. rewarding yourself for finishing up a whole squad by moving on to a completely different solo model. a warcaster, a 'jack, a solo, maybe even a model you just like from some other product line. There was one other suggestion in particular that piqued my interest, and that was to "Paint something for a friend’s army in their color scheme.". Which leads me to the POINT of this whole update: I propose Xevious and I swap a model and paint it for each other! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!

Good idea? Good idea. I think it will be a nice break from my normal paint scheme, and it will still be progress towards getting our armies painted.

Also, on a side note...apparently the same core concepts work for writing as well. (setting goals, making projects, mixing it up, and doing it often.) So I would like to try to reinvigorate this blog as well.

As always: HAPPY GAMING!

swampy pond

so i finally made a terrain piece with water. its been on my list of things to do for a while and i was perusing an art store and came across a kit for making watery dioramas. i figured if i bought it ($13 or so) i would use it. and i did. so i decided on a murky pond or swamp and decided to check around the net to see what other people had done. i came across the blog of a guy named Gareson. he has a lot of good content and had put up a tutorial for making a swamp (among other things). i used a couple different materials than he did, but essentially stayed pretty close. i used pink insulation board and a sharp knife to cut out the banks of the pond, a couple of sticks for logs, and paperclips and green stuff to make cat tails, and green stuff to make lily pads. i added sand to the banks, painted 'er all up, let it dry, added the water effect followed by the lily pads, and after the water was dry i added the static grass to the banks.

in the end i learned a couple of things. 1) water effects take a really long time to dry.
2) i need to sand down my pink foam after shaping it because the edges dont get rid of themselves...
3) i need to find a better product to make water, because the diorama stuff cracked in a couple of places while it was drying.

All in all im pretty happy with the effect and intend to make more watery terrain pieces. hopefully bigger, better, and cooler ones. until next time, dont forget the gun mage captain is looking for you, and he'll gitcha. Happy gaming!

Monday night madness.

Step right up! ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.

anyways... im on night shift tonight. last night Sweet Pete and myself had a battle. i took a picture each round with the idea that i would spend any downtime i had tonight making a BatRep. i took the pics with my iphone, so they arent the best quality, but hey its better than nothing right?

my lady friend decided to head to a friends place to watch the finale of the bachelorette (thank goodness), so i immediately called PJ and we decided to have a war. now since we adopted the MKII rules i have only ever played 15pt. match ups and multiplayer arena style, so this is a nice step. I came up with a fun list, a variant on my Siege strike force, that featured some guns 'a' blazin', 3 'jacks, 3 solos and some quick movin horses. Pete came with a horde of infantry that are all packin' heat, 1 'jack, 3 wracks, and the Priestess of the Flame runnin' the show. Model count: Cygnar = 10. Protectorate = 36. at this point i am bracing for an uphill battle. I win the dice roll and deploy first. we take the hills on opposite corners.

Turn 1

i make a bee line for the enemy. hunter runs up into the forest, siege drops a foxhole for the other jacks to hide in, the horses run to go around the small forest.

Pj advances everyone, his deliverers take the hill (where they stood and fired all game(with a 14" range why not?)) and lobb rockets at the concealed hunter with minimal effect.

Turn 2.

I pretty much accomplish nothing. i advance and am only in range with the hunter who fails to kill anything. i double back across with my cavalry.

pete fires again with the rockets and puts a small dent into the hunter. the deviations have minimal effect due to the safety of the foxhole. the exemplars advance and pull a trick to negate my foxhole and put a decent ding into charger. his grenade wheeling zealots make a run for my front line and pop a mini feat making them indestructable for one turn. Siege is feeling the heat.

Turn 3. (bad picture/pivotal turn)

Faced with mounting pressure and overwhemling numbers Siege must act quickly. he sends orders to the ironclad who then crashes into the zealots. the attempt at trampling has no effect due to the mini-feat, but when the ironclad slams his hammer to the ground they know he is there and many fall to the ground. Siege lets loose with his ground pound attack on the exemplar, who are then zapped from the other side by the cavalry's lightning sticks. they take heavy casualties.

The zealots begin to pick themselves up. one tries to escape the ironclad and has his brain mashed up in the process. those not engaged hurl grenados at the cavalry, who with the aid of an arcane shield manage to survive...if just barely. the deliverers deliver concentrated fire on the charger who takes heavy damage and loses his hammer arm. the Priestess not pleased with what she is seeing draws ample power from the wracks and sets her sights on the ironclad. She demonstates her power in a feat of strength. in the blink of an eye the once mighty ironclad is reduced to rubble by a few swift strikes. without pausing the Priestess' feat erupts and fire rains down on her enemies.

Turn 4

The Cygnar troops are feeling the heat. literally. they are all on fire. everyone but siege takes damage. the gun mage captain and the goblin speculator are instantly turned to ash. Siege knows he must strike while the iron is hot, he must lay it all out of the table. Protectorate troops feel as though their armor is shrinking under Siege's powerful gaze. He side steps, aims, and fires a single powerful round straight at the Priestess. Her loyal devout 'jack throws himself in harms way and takes the bullet. the hunter mows down a line of sight for the charger who then takes aim and fires a single shot at the Priestess. She takes heavy damage but is still standing. The cavalry, who now have a clear path, charge the enemy caster and two of them have enough gas to get there and get the job done.

all in all i would say we had a pretty decent battle and learned plenty about our forces. i am reinvigorated to paint and play warmachine as well as update the blog. hopefully ill be able to post again soon. until next time: HAPPY GAMING EVERYONE!

hello again

as i am working away on my mini's, i thought i would drop a quick note on a new product i just picked up and am quite happy with.

it is Testors brand matte spray enamel. i have long been opposed to putting a clear coat on my minis because i found it made them too shiny and slimy. i tried this out, and it looks awesome. im really really happy with it. ive put several coats on several of my minis and i would definitely give it a humbs up at this point.

anyways...until next time.

slow and ponderous

its been a while for me. im glad to see xevs making posts again, as it creates some inspiration to get my own work going. i managed to peel away from my girlfriend yesterday and get some work done. i know it to be fact, but all i really need is 10-30 minute increments to keep making progress. its easy to complacent. Anyways, i managed to get a model painted up. nothing special, and it still needs basing, but progress none the less. one less model to be painted.

lately ive been playing settlers of catan for the iphone with my girlfriend. its a lot of fun and has also led us to play settlers on catan on the table a couple times with our friend William. i'm quite pleased to find that she likes board games. warmachine and the like may be a little much for her, but i recently got her to play 2 games of memoir 44!!!!! thats some REAL progress.

games weekend: if we are to play some warmachine, we need to decide on the size of confrontation, and the rule set we will use. i do have the mkII rulebook in transit to my house. i was just talking to PJ and he was leaning towards mkI (there is always resistance to change.) we do need to change eventually, and the updated rules are likely to be better, however the old rules are the ones we already know.

food for thought.

Enter the Bloat

So in my last post about this massive terror of a Thrall I posted some pics where I had sculpted in some holes and deficiencies when the model was put together.

I am really happy with the end result, I am going to post a bunch of pics of the finished Bloat Thrall and some zoomed in pics of the areas that I had specifically fixed with the Mighty Putty. I think that I upped my game in the highlighting, shading and overall detail category for this guy. Not to mention it went pretty quickly this time. Overall I really enjoyed painting this one and I have a feeling that is because I able to get the level of detail to where I really like it.

Again the camera is likely to make it look like a piece of crap but oh well...it looks really good in its actual miniature version.

I am guessing that my next project will be the 2 Pistol Wraiths that I have...Yeah no more Thralls for a while!!!

Stay tuned...

Well my apologies...the zoomed in shots of the sculpted areas are all out of focus GRRR I put the best one in...it was also the most major repair because I had to sculpt a fat roll over a Tube and Fitting that didn't match up at all. I am too lazy to get more pictures plus I am hungry and supper is ready...so maybe tomorrow I will put in a new post with better zoomed in shots.

Holy Water Retention!!!

Now this is one monster that put on waaaay too much weight over the holidays!!!

This is going to be a brief post, I just wanted to capture some shots of my latest model project.

So let me introduce the Bloat Thrall...yes continuing the Thrall theme!! This was one of the first models I got. After doing some research it isn't really the best of units from a competitive point of view but probably a lot of fun to throw into the casual games. However because he probably won't get used all the time, and basically because I have way cooler models coming up, I decide to experiment on this guy as well.

He is this huge bloated zombie like Thrall...and the model is pretty big in comparison to the others as well. One of the problems with this model is that a lot of the joins had huge gaps. So the other day I glued the 2 parts of his upper body together and was not happy with those major gaps (in one instance a hose didn't even join up to the hose attachment on the other side which looked completely shitty).

So today, anxious to move on from the Biles, I used some Mighty Putty to fill in those gaps and sculpt some "bloat rolls" over that hose that did not match up to the coupling. Again, this is my first time doing this so not sure how the finished product is going to look...but hey why not?

Normally gamers would use green stuff or some other clay like epoxy that is specifically marketed to miniatures to do this kind of work. I bought Mighty Putty because it is way cheaper and I am part Scots...need I say more? I would say the only complaint I have with the Mighty Putty is that it sets really fast, you literally have something like 5 minutes before it is too hard to shape. I would guess that is because its main application is actually bonding things as opposed to filling in holes or modeling. On the plus side because it hardens so fast you are ready to go that much sooner...with a little planning and only kneading together small amounts I had no problem accomplishing my goals with minimal wastage.

I have never used the other products so can't really given an honest comparison...maybe in the near future I will get some and post a comparison of both products...and as it turns out I lied, this isn't a short post at all...haha

Anyway...here is the fat little bugger...

 

Zen and the Art of Highlights/Shading - The Conclusion

Well it certainly has been ages since this blog was updated. I discovered that painting an entire unit of miniatures can be very monotonous, repetitive and boring. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed doing the different highlights and details, plus moving through the different colours and shades but after doing the same bit 7 or 8 times it was enough already....and this is a small unit in comparison to what some other gamers do...crikey!!

So the urge to just get these little beasties done plus the holidays cut down on my posting. However it is the new year after all and I decided to pick up the brushes anew...and boy and am I glad I did. I just today finished my unit of Bile Thralls...they are painted (but not based, like my other models) as much as they are going to be and battle ready.

When you see the pics bear in mind that there are probably details that I could have done more of or better but basically I am sick of painting them...and this is my first time doing this level of detail and color mixing/blending...I am really really pleased with the end result. Again the 10 Megapixel camera is great at highlighting deficiencies.. ...

Well without further blathering here is my battle ready Bile Thralls...now if I could only get around to basing them ...