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 ...

Zen and the Art of Highlights/Shading Part III

Okay...I will keep this brief...and I must reiterate that uploading zoomed in pictures at 10 Megapixels is not forgiving at all. Case in point was the Skarlock post...when first uploaded Segrig thought that the paintjob was not so great but then when he saw it in real life it was actually better than he expected.

So...instead of put in many posts on every aspect of shading this little beastie I spent some time this afternoon and did the rest of the shading portion to the best of my ability. I think it has turned out really well for my first time and is starting to look really good in comparison to all my previous models.

A couple of points that I discovered, it is a lot easier to apply shading to light colors because it shows up really well. The challenge becomes blending the darker shade back in. On the flip side...shading a dark color is harder because you really have to get a shade that is dark enough to show, on the other hand it blends back in a lot easier...those are my thoughts at this point anyway.

I have to keep reminding myself that this is my first attempt and that people have been painting these models for years and still work at perfecting this aspect of their painting...

So without further discussion...here is my little Bile Thrall all grown up er I mean shaded...highlighting will probably begin this week.