Pureblood Warpwolf

Well, it's finally done. Overall I think it's pretty decent. The skin could have used some reworking in additional spots, but there's a point at which I have to just decide it's done. Perhaps one day I'll just stick out a model until I'm completely happy with it, but that will be sometime well in the future. I've got other little guys calling out for some paint. Some final notes about this paint job:

The little rune stones were actually quite easy. I just gave them a coat of Ironhull Grey, then a wash of black ink, then some highlights of white with just a touch of Ironhull Grey in it. I specifically didn't use Frostbite to make sure they didn't blend in perfectly with the skin.

The eyes were sort of a pain, and in general I hate painting eyes. For these I just used Cygnar Blue Highlight as a base, then added white to it in successive highlights (about 3) until I did a final dot of just pure white.

The base was easy. Just added a bunch of static grass, and then some of the tall grass in a bunch. I'm still not really good with the tall grass, but this batch seems ok. I also added some of the tiny leaves to help give a little more variation to the base.

In summary, this was a great model to paint. Some particular challenges and learning experiences was working the large skin surfaces, particularly in a shading of white I don't normally use.

More GIMP Notes

I wanted to create another composite image of the Alpha Warpwolf for posting on CMON, so I had to learn again how to do this. I'd done it before with Vilmon, but of course forgot how I did it. Turns out it's pretty easy. Here's the steps I went through:

1. Make sure all the images to go together are the same width
2. Open all the images
3. Create a new image, using the width from the images, and a height of the total of all the images
4. In the first image, do "Edit -> Copy"
5. In the new image, do "Edit -> Paste Into"
6. Move the pasted piece into position in the new image
7. Repeat steps 4-6 for the remaining images
8. Save! (Potentially resizing)

Resizing is easy... just do "Image -> Scale Image" and then follow the easy to use dialog.

The individual pics of the Alpha will be in the next post in a couple minutes, but I'm taking these notes now before I forget again what I did.

The Wolf Starts To Shape Up

Made some serious progress tonight:

Armour: Did the metal bits, including a few select pieces of highlighting on it. This stuff was really basic. Just Blighted Gold followed with highlights of Brass Balls. I love the look of the Blighted Gold. In addition I did some specific highlighting of the green with straight Iosan Green.

Skin: This was the real work. Rather than starting all over, I decided to just rework some key spots. I basically just re-did the highlighting work I had done before, but on the pieces I felt really needed it. Notably were the chest, thighs, hands, and shoulders. I also highlighted some of the transitions between skin and spines/claws.

Spines/Claws: Did these entirely. Basically they are 5 coats, going in order: Battlefield Brown, Bootstrap Leather, Rucksack Tan, Menoth White Base, Menoth White Highlight. I'm thinking that I'll do one last highlight of straight white, but not tonight. Getting too tired to see straight.

Base: Just gave this a clean-up coat of Cryx Bane Base.

Muzzle: Did a little stippling with black ink to create a bit more natural transition between the nose and skin.

There's still alot of details to do, but now it's just down to details. Eyes, Rune Stones, Fur, Teeth, and a couple other things probably, but the list escapes me at the moment. Headache and all. Anyway, pics ahoy!

In Need Of Warp Speed

The Warpwolf is in the early stages of taking shape. The leathers are done, and I've started the armor plates. One thing that makes this model easier to cope with is that there aren't a large amount of varied details. There's plenty of detail, but not lots of little tiny fiddly details like the Fell Caller had. Anyway, here's what I did since last update:

Leathers: These are finished up. I gave them a glaze of the Rust Brown ink, and then a thin wash of dark brown ink to create more depth to the surfaces. Overall I'm fairly happy with the results.

Armor: The inlaid green of the plates is done. These were first given a couple good layers of Iosan Green, and then glazed with green ink, and then a wash of green ink with a dash of black as well t really deepen the recesses. They don't look too snappy at this point, but once the gold trim is done, they should really pop nicely.

Claws/spines: This have just gotten a first coat of battlefield brown. There's plenty of work to do on these. The goal at this stage was just to get the base brown on them so that I start thinking about them now.

I traded a couple emails with Sean about the skin tones. At this point, the plan is go rework them. I just need to mull it over a bit more before I make the next attempt. Most likely I'll continue to work on other aspects of the model first and then come back to the skin later. I'm sure I'll regret that, but I really want to see the model take shape before I commit to reworking the skin.

The Stupid "Middle Phase"

Made some more progress on the Warpwolf yesterday, but got lazy about posting. 2 update pics. Basically it's slowly coming together, but the skin is giving me some real grief. I'm having alot of trouble getting a blend that I like. I think part of my issue is I'm trying to create more shading than there is legitimate surface to shade. In other words, it's overly dramatic shading for the surfaces. Here's a pic of the progress before I decided to start working on the leathers to help bring the model together more.I'm really frustrated with this skin. I've give some details of what I'm doing, but 1) the blending is kinda sucking right now, and 2) I've been doing so much experimentation that I've forgotten what I mixed. Mostly its mixing Ironhull Grey and Frostbite together at different ratios. I'm half tempted to go back to a pure Frostbite base coat, and the highlight up to Morrow White, and do some very slight washing with Frostbite and a touch of Bloodstone. I'm not convinced this will look any better though, so it's a question of whether to cut my losses here, or keep laying more paint. I'll see what Sean thinks so far.

Models often seem to get depressing for me at this stage. It's before all the base coats are done, and there's still primer showing. The model always looks terrible at this stage. It will get better... I hope.

The leathers are going much better. The pic below shows the first 3 steps. Start with Bootstrap Leather as a base coat. Next, do a wash of Battlefield Brown. Next, highlight with Rucksack Tan.

My next steps are to do a very thin wash of Black paint, and then a thin glaze of GW Rust Brown ink. The GW ink is one of the non-P3 pigments I use. I just love this stuff on leathers. It gives the leathers a slightly wet look to them, which I prefer.

Menoth Puts Away The Skorne!

Had an unoffical summer rampage battle yesterday with my buddy Lance. We were too lazy to drive down to the LGS (which happens to be 25 minutes away), so we just played at my place. It was Amon vs Hexeris, in a brutal scenario. We played the Menoth mission, which had the effect of dust storms that pretty much shut down most options for units.

The Armies:
Skorne: Hexeris, Titan Gladiator, Cyclops Savage, Krea, Paingivers, Totem Hunter and Gatormen
Menoth: Amon, Castigator, Revenger, Daughters, Knights Exemplar, Vilmon, Rupert,a Paladin and 2 Wracks.

The Battle:
Generally the battle went well in my favor. Skorne took control of 2 of the objective points early due to the dust storm delaying my plan. However, it wasn't long before I dislodged control and evened things up. The Totem Hunter found himself on the business end of Amon's Sand Blast, putting him away early. This freed up one end of the field for the Paladin to just park on the objective for the rest of the game. From there, it was a slow downhill slide for the Skorne. The Castigator held control of the middle. The Knights and Daughters held the other flank firm, and eventually thinned down the paingivers. In the end, the battle was tied on objective points and came down to VP's, of which Skorne game up short.

The Dice:
Overall, the dice were fine for me, but the Skorne had some odd luck. Hardly a single missed attack roll, but routinely poor damage rolls. Overall I think it ended up mattering little, but it did throw the game in my favor.

Top Performers:
Again, Daughters were remarkable, and Amon, as always, was a badass. I really enjoy Amon for his versatility. I've heard alot of bad comments about him, but I think alot of that comes from him not being a very good "playbook" caster. I'll post more about that another time though. Overall, this was a lovely list, and I look forward to using it again. I think it strikes a good balance between Amon's battlegroup and flexible but potent units and solos.

Juggling Activities

Lots going on right now. Trying to get painting time in, but there's 4 other big things going on:

• Work managed to get me wrangled as the release manager for this July release, so there's a couple long long days coming up for me.
• Summer Rampage League is totally fun, and I'm totally trying to pack in lots of games with people I normally don't play against.
• I enrolled in Bartender School. It's 10 4-hour classes, which I can spread out as much as I like, but I'm going to shoot for once a week. I'm totally stoked about this, but 4 hour classes that run from 6 to 10 in the evening is going to be killing one evening a week for a while.
• I'm reading Harry Potter 6, and the 7th book is sitting on my desk as well. I just can't put them down!

All things considered, I can't really complain too much. Other than the work stuff, I am totally excited about all these activities.

The Alpha Project

Tonight I started painting the Alpha Warpwolf for a friend of mine (Sean). This is a majestic model. It makes me sad that I don't like the Alpha Troll as much. Anyway, this beasty is going to take a while, especially given my busy schedule, which I shall discuss later. So, I figured I'd use this as an opportunity to do another series of posts of the progress, but this time show alot more incremental updates. I'm not going to haul out the lightbox for every photo, so the picture quality will probably not be so hot. Plus, this photo will be one of the only ones where he isn't glued to a spray can for easy handling, so even if I wanted to use the lightbox, it would be difficult at best.

This first update isn't going to look like alot of progress. Basically, I received the Alpha fully assembled, attached to his base, and primed black. And when I say attached to his base, I mean this bad boy is going nowhere. Kudos to Sean for a kick-ass job getting him attached. He's not moving at all.

I've been mulling over what to do color-wise with this model. Sean already has some of the studio green/gold armor bits on his other Circle models, so that choice was made easy. However the fur was another issue. I decided after debating options for a couple weeks, and looking at other warpwolves on the Privateer forums and on CMON, that the studio scheme will be my base for the color. I've got a fair amount of experience with painting white, and it really does make this model stand out. We'll see how I feel about that once I start trying to shade him.

With a basic color scheme chosen, this first step was to base coat all the white skin. I'm starting with this for three reasons. First, there's alot of it, and I've found that painting all the skin on trolls first serves me well for feeling like I've made progress early on. Second, it's easier to just be sloppy when doing all the skin and then be precise later on when doing smaller bits. Third, it gives me the opportunity to review the whole surface of the model. There were a few places where the primer was rather thin, so I made sure to get some paint on there to cover up any bare metal. The irony of going with black primer (and I really love black primer) is that whenever I paint a predominantly white model like this, I always feel like there's some wasted effort going on. Tonight I tacked this single task of getting a couple of nice even coats of P3 Frostbite on all the skin and the fur transitions. This first step always takes me longer than I expect.

The next step will be to begin shading the skin, but not tonight. One thing I still need to decide on is what to do with the base. I want to really spice it up a bit, but there's limited real estate to work with.

Dire Troll Blitzer

Finally got off my lazy butt and finished up the blitzer. He'd been sitting there all done except for his Pyg Ace rider for almost a week. I used alot more washing techniques on this one with mixed results. I'm not entirely happy with it, but it did give me more experience with a technique that I feel I could really benefit from using more. Something I think will help in the future is to add matt medium to washes in order to eliminate the reflectiveness that often results from using the flow extender in the washes. Something to try next time I guess. Beyond using washes, the rest of this was pretty standard techniques for me. The model itself was rather hard to work with due to its shape and weight. I'm not sure if I like the bone-style protrusions. Painting them as rocks achieves a better look I think, but this does help maintain a better color balance. Overall though, a very entertaining model.

The camera is starting to get more comfortable for me. Plus, I learned how to use Gimp to crop the image down. For those interested (and as much for my own benefit in case I forget next time), here are the steps:

1. Open the image in Gimp (Duh)
2. In the image window, go to: Tools -> Selection Tools -> Rect Select
3. Select the region of the image to keep
4. Go to: Image -> Crop Image
5. Save the image

The reason this is so valuable is that the camera really produces a very large image (larger than necessary), and also that taking the picture from further away helps focus the image better, especially for a model like this that has much more depth of field

Har Har Harry!

Just a little amusement...

You scored as Severus Snape, Well you're a tricky one aren't you? Nobody quite has you figured out and you'd probably prefer it stayed that way. That said you are a formidable force by anyone's reckoning, but there is certainly more to you than a frosty exterior and a bitter temper. Severus Snape 70% Ron Weasley 55% Remus Lupin 55% Albus Dumbledore 55% Hermione Granger 55% Sirius Black 50% Harry Potter 50% Ginny Weasley 40% Draco Malfoy 35% Lord Voldemort 30% Your Harry Potter Alter Ego Is...? created with QuizFarm.com

Summer Rampage League: Week 1

Just a quick update... I might come back and edit this more later.

Played 3 games for the summer league on Tuesday. It was awesome. Lost 2, won 1.

The first game was against Eric's Trolls, which I lost, but it was a fairly pitched battle. I just couldn't quite secure my hold on the field. Plus, I totally pulled off a rampage, but failed to actually use it at the time. Doh!

Second game was against Jeff playing Menoth. Icky... Menoth vs Menoth. This game was a little more one sided. He got a good ranging on me and wiped out most of my zealots, and from there the rest of it folded. I had a No Quarter Challenge moment, but it required better than average luck and my dice were not cooperating.

Third game was against Dan playing Menoth. I switched lists from Amon to Feora. This payed off well. He had mostly infantry and a good turn with Feora's feat wiped out over 50% of his troops. It earned me the bounty, and the victory. He almost pulled off a No Quarter Challenge on me, but he needed superb damage rolls and didn't get even close to lucky enough. Overall, that battle felt like a mugging.

Blitzer In Progress

Spent most of the day working on the Blitzer today. I'd done the skin earlier this week. At this point everything except the Pyg Ace and his machine gun are done. Here's a quick snapshot of him, although the picture isn't fabulous. The Blitzer is a pretty dynamic model and I need to learn how to properly focus at such close range with this camera. I'll write up more about the actual painting techniques when I finish. Needless to say I'm beat from a full day of working on this guy. Great model, but the large models definately take me a while. I'm not sure I like the overall color scheme at this point, but once the Pyg is on top I'm sure it'll shift.

New Camera!

My new camera arrived today! It's not a big fancy camera like some people recommend, but it's adequate for my needs. Below is a comparison picture between the new (left) and old (right). There's definately a color quality improvement. It's also 10 megapixels vs the old one that was 2 megapixels. It also has image stabilization which makes taking clear pictures much easier. There's some oddness though to using the macro mode on this camera though. The old camera could focus in macro mode when zoomed in all the way. This new camera seems to have trouble focusing in macro mode when zoomed at all. However, it does have a very close focal range, so what it lacks in zooming, it makes up for in distance. It'll take me a while to refine the process, but overall this feels like a fair upgrade.

Grim days for Severius

Played another game against Zugbart yesterday and I have to say, he delivered a thrashing to me. The entire game I felt like I was trying to recover from the previous round and if I'd had a lucky round, it probably could have turned my way. Overall though, Grim never presented himself as a target, and used careful scalpel-like strikes to eliminate key models. By the 3rd round, I was really hurting for firepower. Overall, I just executed poorly and spread out my forces too wide. I should probably have bricked up. Following my practice of fielding whatever I most recently painted, the second Seneschal and Grogspar both got some field time. Although my Seneschals got whacked early on, Grogspar at least got to fire a couple harpoon shots. He wasn't supremely effective, but he was very intimidating.

The armies:
Me: Severius, Revenger, Vilmon, 2 Seneschals, Daughters, Grogspar, 2 Wracks
Zugbart: Grim, Mauler, Axer, Impaler, Gobbers

The dice:
Overall, I can't complain. I had a number of very poorly timed bad rolls (like the triple ones on a damage roll to kill the axer), but I also had some good rools, and I can honestly say I don't recall missing more than 1 attack roll. It was the damage rolls that really fluctuated wildly and caused problems. I've started getting more conscious of matching up my attacks on targets in such a way to increase my odds of hitting overall.

The endgame:
In the end, Severius and the Revenger were trying to hold off Grim, a nearly dead Axer, and the fresh Mauler. There was just never really a good chance to blast Grim unfortunately. I can definately say though that Severius made it very very hard to finally get damage to bear on him, between his Sacred Ward and his Vision spell.

Star Performers:
Once again, the Daughters outperformed my expectations. With Eye of Menoth as a bonus, 2 of them laid out a pile of damage on the Impaler, taking it out after it had been hit a couple times by Ashes To Ashes.

Learning Lessons:

• Stay in closer formation.
• Focus firepower when targetting a warbeast.
• Flanking with the Daughters works well, but not at the 350pt level where there isn't enough other support.
• Don't forget all the special features of models, like Daughters' stealth, and Seneschals' Righteous Fury.

Exemplar Seneschal

Finished my second Exemplar Seneschal tonight. As opposed to my first one which was green, I did a more traditional red color on this one. I didn't put the same level of effort into this model as the other recent stuff I've been working on. I just went for tabletop quality. The one effort I put out was the freehand work on the banners. The runes use the protectorate character set to spell out Menoth. They weren't as hard as I was expecting. I was going to leave them blank, but I found that adding them was not only a good chance to practice freehand work, but also really rounds out the model better. It's really probably the only good feature of the paint job. Overall this model is a pain in the ass because of all the parts. I painted him as all seperate pieces (all 7 of them) since, once assembled, he's just a nightmare to reach all the nooks and crannies.

Bosun Grogspar

Yay for time to paint! Finished Grogspar this afternoon and he was a blast to paint. I took a few shortcuts on things like skin and metals this time. Overall though, even though it was a relatively simple model to paint, he ended up being fun. I have to say though, I waited to paint the stripes on his shirt last and, up until that point I was thinking that he wasn't that great looking. Something about putting some stripped pirate flair on him really brought him to life. He may not be my best paint job, but he's definately going to the top shelf of the display case. The stripes on his shirt worked out pretty well, to the point that I even did a small amount of shading on them in a couple specific places. Definately worth the effort. The rest of the model was pretty routine though, so putting the extra effort into the stripes was my bit of painting like I have a pair. I'm starting to get more confidence in my "freehand" work finally.

Fell Caller

Finished the Fell Caller tonight, and I must say, this model was both very fun and very torturous at the same time. There were a zillion little details to paint. There was a comment I had heard about Hordes models when they were first released: "You can spend as much or as little time painting them as you want." Well, this is definitely true for the high end. I spent the better part of 3 days working on this guy. In any case, I'm very pleased with how this bad boy turned out. The picture is kinda lame for a couple reasons, the primary of which is that it makes the water effects of the base look bad, and they really aren't. This time I was smart and sealed the model before attaching him to the base.

There were 2 things that I decided to just paint like I had a pair. First, the fire effects on his torch-banner-thing was something I hadn't really done before. I think this turned out not too shabby overall. I started by painting the inset part white, and then building towards orange as I went out, with a final haze of orange around the edge. Second, the Tartan patter, which is moderately ok. I'm pretty unpracticed at freehand work, so the lines are pretty poor. Still though, I'm glad I did it. From more than 12" away, it looks decent enough.

Well, my desk is a total disaster so I need to clean it up. I have this habit of leaving out the paint pots that I used for a model until I finish that model (yes, I only paint one model at a time), and for this guy I seem to have an excessive number of pots out. Let's see... [insert abacus sounds]... 32 pots of inks and paints.

...Let there be Swamp!

Here's my second attempt at a water base, this time with more of a swamp style to it. I used the article from the Brush Thralls on making swamp bases as a guide, following the 3rd option for maximum quality (and effort). This picture wasn't done in the lightbox and I don't think really does justice to the base, but it gives you the basic idea. Overall it probably took a total of an hour of work to make this one, which isn't bad. The Envirotex behaved quite well for me. Here's some notes of what I did that seemed to work well:

• Just used a teeny tiny drop of green and blue ink, rather than a big drop. Gave just the right tint to the water.
• Used several clumps of tall grass to make the base seem more populated. For the grass I also followed the Brush Thralls article and used Woodland Scenics tall grass, bunched up. I put in the grass before pouring the Envirotex, so as a result, the Envirotex sort of soaked into the grass a bit, further clumping it up. Mildly unfortunate, but not very noticably unless you actually poke at the grass with your finger.
• To create the texture on the ground I used DecoArt's stonelike textured acrylic. This stuff worked great. It created a very fine but uneven texture to the whole thing which, once painted and drybrushed, looks very nice I think.

Totem Hunter

This model was a blast to paint. Overall I'm relatively happy with it, although there is one particular mistake I made: I sealed it after attaching it to the base. The matt coat put an odd finish on the Envirotex, making it look hazy (these pictures are from before I sealed it). On the one hand, I look at this model and see a bunch of things I could have done better, or I see technique mistakes. On the other hand, I'm happy with having painted like I have a pair and just gone for it. The spots on his skin and the water effects are two specific examples. They could have been better, but having never really done those things before, I'm very satisfied with my first time results.

Dick Blick

No, "Dick Blick" is not some new fancy curse word. It's an art store. Specifically, it has an online store from which I recently ordered more W&N Series 7 brushes at what feels like a complete robbery. I also picked up a very nice 12 well porcelain palette and some color shapers. I love all these things, and so, here's a quick tools summary.

Brushes: Winsor & Newton, Series 7 - I swear by these brushes. I was always afraid to get them (primarily because of the cost), and used to use synthetic bristle brushes. Now that I've switched to these, I'll never go back. I simply couldn't use any other brushes anymore. They keep a point amazingly well, are very durable (if taken care of properly), and are simply an order of magnitude better than any other brushes I've ever used. Unlike other lower quality brushes, I am able to use a size 2 for 75% of the painting I do. I recently picked up a second #2 and #1, as well as getting a #0 to try out. I don't expect to be using the #0 very much, but I couldn't pass on the price. Just as a final testimonial, my first W&N S7 was $35, and I've been using it for probably 8+ months now. I've NEVER given it a second thought that I spent so much on a single brush. Literally, after using it for a week, I've never regretted it and would easily spend another $35 to replace it if need be. Fortunately, Dick Blick has provided another option.

Palettes: multi-well porcelain - There's probably 50 different schools of thought on this topic, with alot of the differences based on personal preference. I like the porcelain palettes for 2 primary reasons: 1) They are easy to clean (just plop them in a bowl of water overnight and the next day just a light rub removes the paint), and 2) The wells keep me from making a mess. This is definately a preference things, but if you're going to get those crappy little plastic or metal paint well palettes, spend the extra money on a porcelain one instead. You won't regret it. The porcelain ones never stain, always come clean, and will last forever. Again, like the S7's, they pay for themselves after about 6 months.

Sculpting tools: Color Shapers - These are a new aquisition for me. The recommendation came from the Brush Thralls. I'm pretty lame when it comes to sculpting and conversion work, partially because green stuff has always given me fits. I've only used these new Color Shapers a couple times now, but I must say, they are marvelous. Literally, the green stuff does not stick to them. I was always having problems with it sticking to my metal sculpting tools before. I can't wait to use these little bad boys more. I got the variety pack of size 0 shapers which is probably the perfect size for the amount of sculpting I do.

In summary: new toys = good. Now, back to working on the Totem Hunter!

Outrageous!

I played 5 (!) games of Hordes this weekend against my friend Lance. I brought my trolls to face off against his Skorne, and I must say, it was a righteous rumble all weekend long. The final score was Trolls 2, Skorne 3. Clearly, there's no game summary for each game, but here's a spew of highlights:

• Madrak went undefeated in his 2 games.
• Doomshaper lost all 3 (once due to ridiculously lucky damage rolls
• Champs + Krielstones + Gobbers + Sure Foot = abso-freakin-ridiculous.
• The Totem Hunter managed to works as a great distraction. In one game he tied up a Cyclops Savage, Ancestral Guardian, and a pair of Paingivers for 2 rounds, giving the rest of my army buffer to focus on taking out a Titan with little danger.
• Titan Gladiators are obnoxious to dispose of.
• The Blitzer routinely performs great.
• The Fell Caller is like a massive swiss army knife. The analogy is especially good since although a swiss army knife has alot of features, you can't really use more than 1 at a time safely.

Here's a listing of the various battles and their "killing blows":

• Madrak vs Morghul - I forget how this one unfolded exactly. I think Madrak used his axe.
• Doomshaper vs Morghul - A crazy big damage roll on Morghul's "can not transfer damage" spell put Doomshaper down.
• Madrak vs Hexeris - The Madrak brick rolled forward and the Blitzer delivered a beatdown on Hexeris in melee.
• Doomshaper vs Hexeris - Another crazy damage roll, this time from Deathbringer cast at the Mauler, and I stupidly left no fury on Doomshaper to transfer with that round.
• Doomshaper vs Hexeris - I attempted a No Quarter Challenge at got betrayed by my dice, at which point my army was totally exposed and got beat down. A cyclops charge finished off Doomshaper.

That last battle deserves a quick note. What happened was this...

1. Doomshaper feated
2. Hexeris, in order to have Fury next round and avoid Doomshaper's feat, backed up the Bronzeback behind him, and riled it for 5.
3. Doomshaper runs the Mauler forward, then charges the Mauler from behind in order to move forward 8", putting him just within 10" of the Bronzeback.
4. Doomshaper casts Rampager at the Bronzeback, which has 5 Fury on it.
5. The Axer runs in to form up with the Mauler making a wall in front of Doomshaper, who is sitting on 4 Fury.
6. The Scattergunners gun down all the paingivers and other models nearest to the Bronzeback, leaving Hexeris as the closest model.
7. During Hexeris' maintinance phase, Rampager takes effect, forcing a Threshold check on the Bronzeback. He's got 5 Fury, and a 9 Threshold, and... rolls a 4. If he'd failed, the Bronzeback would have frenzied and charged Hexeris in the back. It would have pretty much collapsed the Skorne army at that point. Unfortunately, it left me on the hill in a position for the Bronzeback, the Gladiator and the Cyclops to deliver beatdowns on all my warbeasts. Stupid dice! In the imaginary No Quarter world, I would have won that game. Still though, I'm glad I went for it, even though I lost.

I also got started on the Totem Hunter, but not far enough to post a picture.

Role Reversal

Played against Zugbart again last night, but this was a bit of a switcheroo. I played mercs and he played Protectorate. We only played 350pts, but it was quite entertaining.

The Armies:
Mercs (Highborn Contract): Ashlynn, Nomad, Alexia, 2 Bokurs, Gorman, Herne & Jonne.
Protectorate: Kreoss, Crusader, Repenter, Revenger, Eiryss.

The Game:
Ironically, I got assassinated by Kreoss in the first game on round 2. You'd think that being a Menoth player that I'd have watched out a bit more closely. Alot of it had to do with Ashlynn just being a superwuss for taking damage. So, we played the same lists again.

The Game (for real):
This time I played more conservatively with Ashlynn. Even though Kreoss' feat was still a pain in the ass, it didn't come up until the Bokurs had already gotten to have their charge round in, which made for some pretty serious devastation on the enemy jacks. All around, it was just an uphill battle trying to disable the jacks, and in the end I still hadn't taken out the Crusader. Kreoss also proved to be difficult to hurt, taking multiple hits from various sources before the final blow was struck. In the end, Ashlynn (enhanced with her Quicken spell) walked out of melee with the Crusader and took a hand cannon shot on Kreoss, striking him down.

The Highlights:
The Bokurs performed well, Gorman was Gorman, and Herne & Jonne were both quite useful (despite my early assessment of them). Alexia was really not that helpful, mostly due to a lack of living models to generate Risen from. The Nomad was, well, a damage machine, for one round. Unfortunately the Crusader got the charge against him so that dramatically limited the amount of damage I was able to lay out with him. Overall, I'd have to say that the Bokurs and Ashlynn were my favorite models in this battle.

Bases, part 3

The Envirotex dried. I think the blue ink actually doesn't look so great. I think using it straight would have perhaps been better... or else maybe just alot less blue in. I barely put in even half a drop too. Anyway, here's the pic with the water added. I'll probably add some static grass and leaves before calling it done. The ironic part is I still haven't decided what model is going to get this monstrosity.

Bases, part 2

Finished my two sample wood plank bases. They came out pretty well. The balsa wood part was really the hardest part. Once the pieces were glued to the base and dried, I just hit them with a generous coating of slightly thinned P3 brown ink.

The water base is pretty much ready for water at this point. Below is a pic of the prepared base. Before I foul it up with Envirotex though, I figured I'd better do an experiment so that I understand how to use it. I mixed up a very tiny batch of it, adding in a couple drops of blue ink, and it's sitting on my desk in a small plastic cup drying. I figure I'll give it a couple days and see how it turned out before I add it to the base.

Covenant

Finished the Covenant of Menoth this weekend. No time for a big description. If you look carefully, you can see the image of Trogdor on the bottom right of the book.

Misc Day #314

Not really getting alot of any one thing done today. Instead I'm puttering around on a number of seperate things today. I've got the book bearer of the Covenant model painted, but the priest is still not even started at the moment. Probably later tonight.

I picked up Doc Killingsworth and Bosun Grogspar. Bosun is a way cool model. He'll probably get escalated even though I don't plan on fielding him anytime soon.

I also picked up some balsa wood to experiment with making wood plank bases with. I've been determined to find a quick and easy way to make wood plank bases for when I inevitably start getting lots of pirates. I had started with coffee stirrers and such but that wood is just a pain in the ass to cut to shape. The balsa wood is ideal. I've also been intrigued with making some swamp bases and finally found some Envirotex to experiment with. So I've prepped a base for that experiment as well. Below are pics of the bases in progress, along with a pic of the bottom of the swamp base just for example purposes.

Grim vs Harbinger, round 3

Got to play against Zugbart again on Tuesday. Although it was a fun game, it took over 4 hours, and by the end I think we were both ready for the game to be over. In the end, I couldn't kill off enough beasts to thin him down quick enough and ended with the Harbinger all by herself, who then got killed by beasts. To her credit, she put up a good fight. There was a moment near the end of the game where I might have had a chance to assassinate Grim, but it would have required slightly better than average dice rolls, and up until that point, both of us had had problems with our dice cooperating. Zugbart had a number of missed attack rolls which made a big difference. I had a number of damage rolls that would come 1 short of killing my targets, which made a big difference (since those blasted warbeasts just heal back up eventually).

Highlights from the battle for me:

• Rupert dealt the killing blow to an Axer, in melee, rolling boxcars on a damage roll.
• Gorman did a great job of neutralizing the Mauler up until Grim sniped him down.
• Supported by Harbinger bonuses, 4 chior members came incredibly close to killing Grim in melee. Who knew?!

This Harbinger list featured half infantry and half warjacks. Honestly, I liked the idea at first, but I think it doesn't execute very well. Once the zealots were below half, and I had lost a jack, I quickly started running out of options. I think all-jack or all-infantry lists with the Harbinger are the better choice.

One new feature for me was using the Reclaimer. I have to say that he was handy, but once I ran out of infantry, he quickly became less useful. Pretty much his role the entire game was to turn dead protectorate models into focus for warjacks. His other features pale in comparison. If his actions were abilities instead, I could see him being way cooler. His other 2 special actions are relatively useless unfortunately.

Reclaiming My Time

Hooray! I finished the Reclaimer solo today. Not necessarily a model I plan on fielding very much, but it was a lovely model to paint regardless. I used him as an opportunity to practice a couple of colors that I've been unsatisfied with lately.

The black robes I did by starting with Ironhul Grey. Then I did 2-3 thin black washes on top of that. Then I highlighted with Ironhull Grey again, and used some straight black in some recesses to emphasize certain places better. I like the way this turned out, and it was relatively easy and fast to do. Black has been a color I haven't worked with much and rarely been satisfied with my results. This definatey helped my confidence. I'm looking forward to using this technique on the High Reclaimer and Testament. I really do like the look of black, red and brass together. Extending the color scheme from the Daughters to this guy worked great I feel.

The brass pieces took a little more work. I started with Pig Iron as a base, then used Brass Balls on top of that. The Pig Iron is just to give a smoother result to the Brass Balls. Then after that I did a wash of Blighted Gold. Then I used a mix of Armor Wash and Turquoise Ink and a little water (about 4:1:2 ratio). The Turquoise was a tip I picked up from one of McVey's articles in No Quarter (I forget which issue). It really makes a nice tint to the brass.

Grissel's First Battle

I played straight Hordes on Wednesday night. It was 500pts of my trolls vs a mostly proxied Skorne list. A friend of mine is considering playing Skorne and wanted to try them out. Overall the game was amusing. I have to say that I really like the feel of a Hordes game for a couple reasons: 1) Timing is critical, which requires more careful thinking, and 2) It forces you to take warbests, which keeps the game more in the realm of small squad action rather than the infantry swarms that seem to plague Warmachine. Anyway, on to the highlights...

The Lists:

Me: Grissel, Blitzer, Axer, Impaler, Fell Caller, Champs, Gobbers.

Opponent: Morghul, Titan Gladiator, Bronzeback, Cyclops Savage, Paingivers, Harpoon guys (whatever they are called).

I chose Grissel primarily because I've never seen her in action before. The Blitzer was a no-brainer. Choosing Champs over a Mauler was simply a matter of wanting a speedbump in the list.

The Game:

Overall I have to say that my execution was not too shabby, with the exception of my feat round. Without getting into gory details, the primary issue was about timing. I should have activated Grissel first, feated, and used her spells before activating anything else. If I'd done the order right, I would have really clobbered the two titans. I spent the rest of the game attempting to recover from a bad series of missed attacks. The Titans are just hugely impressive creatures with their 19 ARM. Without having a Mauler to boost str, it was hard laying out enough damage.

The Dice:

Ok, for the first time, my Vegas dice betrayed me. I had a shocking number of bad rolls, especially at critical times. Particularly on my feat round, if I'd had even average rolls, I would have made a much larger impact I suspect.

The Endgame:

In the end, probably because it was getting late, my opponent brought Morghul around into my backfield to attempt a kill on Grissel. At this point in the game I was really reeling. Morghul had Unrelenting on him and with his 17 DEF, he's already hard enough to hit. So... I went into No Quarter Challenge mode...

Below is a shot of the battle at the critical juncture. There's alot of proxy action here, so let me elaborate. Gorman (NE) was Morghul. All the other small bases were beast handlers. The eMauler was my own proxy for a blitzer (since my blitzer is not quite assembled yet). The Reaper (engaged in the center with the 2 remaining Champs) was the Titan Gladiator. The Devastator (S) was the Bronzeback. The Bokur (SW) was the Cyclops Savage.

It's the troll's turn. Grissel has just pulled 4 fury from the blitzer for a total of 6 fury. The champ leader was at 1 one wound left and knocked down. The Blitzer, Fell Caller, Grissel and the other Champ were undamaged. The Titan Gladiator was heavily damage, with only 1 aspect left and 4 Fury on him. The Bronzeback and Savage were relatively undamaged, each with 3 Fury on them. Grissel (measuring her control area) was approximately 5.5" from Morghul. Morghul has Unrelenting on him and no remaining Fury.

Here was my solution... The Fell Caller charges the Bronzeback (7 MAT vs 11 DEF), succeeding and doing some damage, but more importantly, his Inspire grants +2 to attack rolls for Grissel. Grissel moves slightly and casts Calamity on Morghul (6 Fury + 2 from Inspire and boosted, for 8+3d6 vs 17 DEF), hitting and granting +2 to attack and damage rolls against Morghul. Calamity doesn't cause any damage, so Morghul's Unrelenting is not triggered. The Blitzer walks into melee with Morghul and two-handed throws him into the rocks to the east (5 MAT +2 from Calamity and boosted for 7+3d6, vs 17 DEF). The throw (boosted of course) does 14+4d6, and at this point Morghul is out of range of any beasts he can transfer to, and he's knocked down. The Blitzer's Pyg Ace then proceeds to blast him with the gun. Note that average dice rolls for everything result in Morghul getting slain.

Star Performers:
The Fell Caller was badass. I love this dude, and he's getting promoted in my painting stack. The champs weren't great, but they did a good job at what I needed them to do, which was form a massive speed bump. The Gobbers of course were their own little rockstars. Grissel was, well, she was ok, but I can't say I think she performed great. It'll take me a couple more battles before I can really make a judgement on her. The Blitzer was (ignoring my dice rolling) quite the badass, laying out shot after shot with the gun and taking out key things along the way. Putting Farstrike on the Blitzer is something I now categorize as "stupid cool". Overall though I'm going to award MVP to the Fell Caller for this game.

Painting Again!

I finally put brush to model again for the first time in what feels like a month. I got started on the Reclaimer solo. He's been sitting primed on my desk for quite some time. I'm using him as an opportunity to practice shading black before I work on the High Reclaimer. It feels great to find time to paint again. I feel like my life has just been shooting along too quickly lately. This last week I finally managed to slow down enough to start reading the 5th Harry Potter book as well.

There will be a battle report coming, but I'm waiting to see if I can get a particular picture from the battle before I finish it.

Assembly-O-Rama Weekend

Well, I haven't painted for long time it feels, but this weekend I spent alot of time getting models assembled. Normally I hate doing assembly since I'm doing it as needed before painting the next model, so this was a night pro-active opportunity. It's late, so just a quick list of stuff I assembled this weekend:

• Champs (all 5!)
• Grissel
• High Reclaimer
• Testament
• Covenant
• Blitzer (well, not entirely assembled, but over 50% done)
• Trimmed but not assembled Alt Paladin

Harbinger 2,Grim 0

Another battle against Zugbart yesterday, although I have to say that this battle was less fun than our average battle. Zugbart's baddice luck with Grim continued, although not quite as terrible as before. Probably the bigger difference was the army compositions. I had almost an entirely infantry army against his almost entirely warbeast army. I spent my first turn getting the right models in the right place, and then on my second turn I had my daughters already charging Grim while the rest of my army was setting up for a crushing wave. Although the daughters didn't kill Grim (primarily due to his high defense), they did a little damage to him and more importantly forced him to use the blitzer's animus to sneak out of the fray. By the third round the zealots were delivering firebombs and the knights were setting up charge lanes. Vilmon was the star performer in this one, tying up 4 champs at once all by himself. The Harbinger mostly spent the game far in the backfield, not even using her feat. I must say, the more I use Vilmon and the Daughters, the more I love them. Anyway, there's a couple of pics of the battle on my photobucket album, but here's the shot of Grim in peril:

Grim Angus and the Unkillable Paladin

Once again, another super fun battle against Zugbart. This time we both fielded different casters. After a long stretch with Amon, I've decided it's time to start learning how to use the Harbinger.

The List:
Building a 500pt list with the Harbinger was rough. Add in my relative inexperience with using her (maybe 2 previous battles total), and I had a really hard time. This first list I decided to leverage my list experience with Amon and go jack and solo heavy. I've also been theorizing about building a "brick" style army, so this was a good opportunity to try both. First was the obligatory Devout, which I decided I'd just accept as necessary. Next, I wanted 2 heavy jacks, so I selected the Castigator and the Crusader, primarily due to cost and flexibility on power attacks. Next up was a chior. The theory here was that the 2 heavies would march side-by-side up the field, blocking LOS to the Harbinger, while the chior chanted no-shoot on the jacks. At this point I was sorely short on remaining points, but had enough to throw in Vilmon, one paladin, one seneschal, and 2 wracks. A core piece of my strategy was to keep Vilmon and the paladin in base-to-base so that when the Harbinger Martyred to keep them alive, they wouldn't be knocked down. The seneschal was mostly meant as a backup to hang out with the brick and provide a specific strike capacity.

The Game:
I gotta say, the brick worked well for me. I felt like a giant steamroller able to just roll up the battlefield methodically (with the exception of Grim's feat stalling me for a round). The brick made it really hard for the trolls to pick out anything in particular to kill. Martyrdom was completely crazy, allowing Vilmon and the paladin to stay alive and by themselves, take out an entire squad of champs. The Harbinger's 20" control area was also completely ridiculous for guestimating ranges to things. Although the Castigator did little more than screen the Harbinger most of the game, the Crusader got to deliver a massive beatdown on a Blitzer. All I got to say there is that Crusader + Infuse + 3 focus for extra attacks = rockin damage output. I spent alot of the game taking down 1 warbeast at a time until finally Grim was at a point he needed to cut himself to get to full fury.

The End Game:
In the end, Zugbart very nearly pulled off a No Quarter Challenge style maneuver on me and came dangerously close to killing the Harbinger. Hats off to Zubbart for pulling out a very clever maneuver in a rather desperate situation. I think the odds were in his favor, but a missed attack roll let the Harbinger live at the very end. At that point it was down to Grim, an Impaler, and Alten, who was tied up in melee with a last chior member.

The Luck:
Zugbart was definately having a bad dice day. There were a number of times when his dice failed him at critical points. I think the game would have been much closer if he'd had average luck. I on the other hand had fairly good rolling, which I am attributing to using my vegas dice more than anything else. Also bad luck was my list was heavily effective at netralizing Zugbart's army. He had primarily a shooty army and I had a ranged-impervious brick. By the time he was able to maneuver and pick off my chior leader, the brick had already deployed.

Star Performers:
The brick definately creates a different dynamic for star performers. Without Martyrdom, the paladin would have been dead 6 times over at least, but as a result he and Vilmon were shockingly effective. The chior also was of key importance in the brick. Overall I'm pretty happy with the Harbinger's performance. Her Martyrdom, Purification, and Word of Law spells were all very useful in this battle, as well as her feat being fairly useful. I think a key to using her is keeping her well back, screened and camping half her focus at all times unless there's a pivotal round to unload with. I'm looking forward to better luck for Zugbart in the next game hopefully.

Damage Report:
The Harbinger model unfortunately had a minor amount of damage due to transport only. Basically her flag arm came off, along with the shoulder armor. It was an easy fix, but I definately need to find a better way to transport her safely.

Overall:
Very fun, and I am looking forward to trying the Harbinger with other list types in order to get a better feel for her. A number of her features seemed to not come into play at all during this game. I had this same issue with Amon, but by the last couple games I was at a point where I was utilizing 50+% of his features/spells every game. I'm sure the Harbinger will be the same way once I can get more refined with her.

Why I dislike tournament formats...

Yesterday I played 2 games against Zugbart and I have to say, once again, these were very fun games. We each walked away with a win. Before the battle highlights though, I want to comment about one specific reason these games are fun, and tournaments are not...

I recently had a number of discussions/forum readings where it became clear that if you aren't using your feat on round 2, you're wasting your feat. Now, in a 2-3 round game, that's definately true. Here's my experience of most 3 round tournament games: Round 1, everyone runs. Round 2, first waves crash against each other. Round 3, second waves crash and caster kill attempts are made. Sometimes the caster kill attempts even happen on round 2. Personally, I think this sort of battle is boring. The beauty of Warmachine is that it's like a game of chess. Setting up a combination, working out the timing, moving around tactically... these are the features that really showcase the game I feel. The games I play with Zugbart are always open-ended and as a result allow us to really bring out the deeper strategy of the game. It's not a strategy of ramming troops down your opponent's throat. It's a strategy of overloading your opponent's brain as they try to work out the combinations.
I love that aspect. Ok, rant over, on to the highlights...

Game 1: Madrak vs Amon
This was a close one. It literally game down to a tough roll, which Amon failed. We did the old NoQuarterChallenge after the failed tough roll to see how the rest of the game would play out and the odds seemed against Madrak, but I have to give hats off to Zugbart for a well timed and placed ricochet axe throw early in the game that really weakened Amon. Star performers this game were definately the Dervish, with his very cool Riposte attack, and the Daughters, who not only killed all the Krielstone scribes and almost the bearer too (stupid tough rolls!), but also after being reduced to half squad, nearly took down an Impaler by themselves! I'm very much in love with these little ladies. In the end though, Madrak's bouncing axe overloaded my planning brain (and Amon's toughness), and won the day for the Trolls.

Game 2: Doomshaper vs Amon
Another close game, I opted for a more troop-oriented list, bringing in Knights and Zealots. I also fielded Herne and Jonne for this list (since I'd painted them recently), and they actually got to do something this game. In the previous game they became champ food, but in the end it was Jonne that got the final killing shot on Doomshaper. Again though, Zugbart pulled a maneuver I wasn't prepared for and trampled a bunch of knights exemplar. It's important to note that when trampling zealots under Greater Destiny, they don't get free strikes if you hit them. The Blitzer under fortune is a pretty crazy trampling machine. Fortunately my Seneschal came to the rescue and a concentrated effort took down the blitzer. I'm also finding that trying to kill the Krielstones early on is an important tactic against the "Troll Brick". Star performers were, well, I hate to say it but my opponent's Blitzer and Mauler really stole the show in this game, despite him not winning. The Blitzer's trample was stunning, and the Mauler nearly leveled the Guardian in one round (sheesh!). On my side, the Seneschal was definately key in handling the Blitzer, and Amon did a stellar job of not getting killed for once. Sitting on 6 focus really makes Amon hard to hurt.

Whew, big evening for Warmachine. I'm looking forward to the next battle already. I've learned alot about Amon having played him so many battles in a row now. I'll write up my thoughts on Amon tactics in another post later. In the mean time, hats off to Zugbart again for 2 well fought battles!

All dice are created equal?

I read an interesting posting about dice statistics. I have to admit, I'm one of those guys that brings the small dice with rounded corners, mostly because they take up less space and are less likely to hit models and cause damage. For the next few battles though, I'm going to bring my vegas-quality dice instead and see if I notice a difference.

Downtime...

So I managed to injure my back. Rather than explain how I did it, just insert a story about jumping in front of a car to save a baby, or wrestling a tiger, or something like that. The real story is not interesting. Anyway, it's majorly impacted my ability to sit and paint unfortunately. That combined with a ridiculous schedule of events the last couple weeks has caused a major slowdown in painting unfortunately. However, I did manage to finish off Herne this morning. He's pretty mediocre, but he'll look fine on a table.

Daughters of the Fraidycats!

Another super fun battle against Zugbart tonight. We used the week 3 dispatch for the Warmachine league, playing the Protectorate vs Khador scenario. Basically it came down to a rumble on the hill, with both of us throwing aside attempts to win the scenario in order to deliver righteous smackdown.

The lists were similar to previous weeks. Zugbart had Doomshaper, Mauler, Blitzer, Fell Caller, Axer, Impaler, and Krielstones. I had Amon, Guardian, Repenter, Daughters, Gorman, Vilmon, 2 Paladins, Seneschal, Chior and 1 Wrack. Despite being outnumbered 2 to 1, the trolls once again turned in a victory.

The key point of the game was a big learning experience around two-handed throws. On round 2, the Blitzer threw the Guardian into Amon, wounding him enough and knocking him down so that a couple shots from the Pyg Ace could finish him off.... or so we thought! After reviewing the situation, we discovered a few things we did wrong, and promptly rewound the situation. First, throwing a model at another model requires a ranged attack roll. Second, range of the throw is base on STR, not POW. In the end, Amon got to live for a few more rounds before eventually being speared down by an Impaler. If only I'd succeeded in the tough roll!

Overall this was a very pitched game I felt. There were a number of times where each of us missed critical attack rolls that could have swung the balance in someone's favor. I actually felt I was executing better later in the game when I had fewer models on the table. The poor Daughters were unfortunately pretty useless in this battle, but it was fun to field the little ladies. Next time they will need a little more careful usage. I was pretty suprised how easily the krielstones were able to hit the daughters. Stupid trolls! Amon once again was the star of the show, using his whip's slam ability repeatedly on the Mauler to send it flying into other trolls. Overall though, this was an impressive display of fortitude by the trolls to finally drive home victory.

Daughters of the Flame

Finished these little ladies yesterday. They are, tiny, and thin, and were somewhat hard to paint. However, I just went for tabletop quality and they are halfway decent. Nothing really special to say about the paint job, but the assembly was sort of an issue. I really like the look of a couple of the models, but the studio assembly ends up with 2 poses paired. So, to break it up a bit I switched around arms. The lunging ones are still sort of uncool to me, but the rest of them are groovy. Anyway, enough blabbering...

Vilmon Repaired

Well, I took care of the repairs to Vilmon a couple days ago. For the most part, it's not readily apparent that there was any damage, but upon close inspection the pinning job is apparent. It basically looks like I painted it in pieces and then assembled it. I did go ahead and seal him with a coat of Testors Glosscoat and then a light coat of Testors Dullcoat. I did this against my gut instincts for 2 reasons. First, Vilmon goes on the table pretty much every time I field protectorate now, which means he's going to get more wear than pretty much any other miniature I have. Second, since he was already damaged, I figured that I might as well use him as a test subject for how much the coating shifts the look of one of my better painted figures (despite the lower CMON rating). Despite my fears, the coating hasn't really shifted the look of the paint overall. It's a little bit more shiny, but not dramatically so. Perhaps the damage Vilmon had to incur was just the kick in the pants I needed in order to start coating the rest of my models.

I must say, the Testors Glosscoat followed by Testors Dullcoat was great advice that I picked up from the Privateer forums.

Protectorate and Trolls Win the Day!

I played my first 2-on-2 game tonight. Barring the stuff in the previous post, this was a very amusing game to play. It was combined 1000pts, with myself and Zugbart teamed up against Circle and Legion. In an accidental twist, the Circle player had miscounted his army's points and was short 100pts unfortunately, but it still made for a good game. It was a fast 3 rounds, with the Legion warcaster (Thagrosh) being assassinated by myself, and the Circle player forfeiting after failing to assasinate Madrak at the end of round 3. Alot happened, so I won't try to recount the battle itself, but here's some highlights:

• Kruger's feat is crazy. It's definately less effective against Warmachine than Hordes, but it's still crazy. It killed Vilmon in the first round.
• Warlocks with no focus, are just bait waiting to be ground up.
• Tharn Ravagers with 4" reach are naughty.
• Circle continues to amaze me for it's ability to move dangerous things around the table with so much freedom.

The assassination of Thagrosh was a beautiful No Quarter challenge sort of item. Well, not entirely as complicated as a NQ challenge, but still beautiful. Here's the setup: The Revenger was at the very edge of Amon's control area, engaged with a Carnivean and a Shredder, and about 4" from Thagrosh, who has a second Carnivean right in front of him. The Devout and Castigator near Amon. Here's the chain of actions:

1. Amon puts one focus on the Devout.
2. Amon activates first, feats, and meditative stances, putting the 2 focus on the Castigator.
3. Amon casts Mobility. 3 focus goes to the Revenger.
4. Amon casts Synergy. 1 focus goes to the Castigator, one to the Devout.
5. The Chior activates, moves forward, and catches the Devout and Castigator with Infuse.
6. The Devout charges a Tharn Raveger, cutting it down and clearing the lane for the Castigator.
7. The Castigator (using Amon's SPD 6 and Mobility) slams the Carnivean, barely scratching it, but slamming it into Thagrosh, knocking both of them down and doing a couple points to Thagrosh.
8. The Revenger walks around the Carnivean, taking a free strike from the Shredder, taking enough damage to take out it's movement boxes, but no fear, Amon's feat overrides the reduction to the Revenger's SPD.
9. The Revenger moves around into melee with Thagrosh, but still in the Carnivean's melee arc (this part was key).
10. The Revenger, now at +2 to hit from Synergy, proceeds to take a pair of attacks on Thagrosh. After the first hit, it's at POW 16 with Synergy against Thagrosh's ARM 15. It only took two attacks to slay him.

The above... that's exactly why I love Warmachine and Hordes. It's brutal, unforgiving, and like a chess match on steroids. Timing and combinations are the core gameplay features of the game.

Pouty Players Suck

Ok, I'll admit, I've had more than one frustrating game of Warmachine where halfway through I want to smash something, but I always try my best to maintain my composure. Tonight I played a 2-on-2 game where 2 frustrating things happened.

1) One of the opposing players totally fouled my miniatures. We needed to slip a template underneath Vilmon and my 2 Paladins who were in a triangle formation. He did the old crane grab on them, mashing them together, in order to pick them up. In the process of doing that, he broke the glue join on Vilmon's arms. So, now I have more repair damage to deal with. I haven't inspected it closely yet (or the other models) but I think the damage is repairable.

2) The same dude, when I killed his warlock, seriously lost his cool. He swore (loud enough that everyone heard in the room), and acted like I had cheated. Now in all honesty, I did pull off a relatively intricate set of actions to bring alot of synergy to bear, and if I'd failed, would have probably be open to dying next round. And yes, it was only his second game of Hordes/Warmachine ever. And yes, it is frustrating when you get "cryx'd", which I somewhat did. And sure, he probably didn't know all the capabilities of my army, which is frustrating. All that aside, I did not cheat, and I was clear about everything I was doing as it rolled out. I'd be frustrated too (and definately have been in similar situations). But this dude was seriously pouty and fuming for probably 10 minutes, making comments that were borderline unsportsmanlike in my opinion.

Maybe my bar for being considerate and sportsmanlike is set higher than average, but based on all the other people I've played at this location before, I was definately caught off guard. Anyway, this entry is more of a rant than anything, so readers shouldn't take it too seriously. I'll post another entry later with the actual battle report. I just needed to get this out of my system. I hope that this game didn't leave a bad taste in this guy's mouth. I tried to be gracious and offer some perspective and advice on how to avoid it in the future.

1 down, 5 to go

Finished the unit leader for the Daughters of the Flame. I figured rather than try to paint all 6 at once, I'd fully paint the leader first as a template for the others. I departed from the normal color scheme because, quite frankly, bright white armor on a set of stealthy assassins is, well, silly. I'm sticking with my plan for tabletop quality only for units, so this little lady isn't real fabulous, but I can easily reproduce her.

Arquebus Jonne

Just finished Jonne this morning. He's really just a tabletop quality job, but very entertaining to paint. Instead of practicing my blending, I did alot more practice at washes on this model. It really helps speed the painting process being able to do washes. Anyway, not alot of comments here, enjoy the pics.

Stupid Dice!

Had another game against Zugbart last night and I have to say, I had some of the worst dice rolling ever. It was pretty much insurmountable. I still had a good time, but such terribly one-sided battles are rarely entertaining. Anyway, here's some quick highlights.

Trollkin Champs backed up by Madrak's Surefoot are pretty solid for indestructability. With Surefoot, and in base-to-base with each other (the "troll brick" strategy), they are DEF 16. And that on top of ARM 17 and 8 wounds is pretty outrageous. On the downside, it took 4 of them, 3 rounds to take down a castigator.

After surviving a Mauler charge (mostly due to his high DEF), Amon was able to completely beat down a Mauler in a single round with 6 focus.

Back in the Saddle (finally!)

I finally finished a model again. This is the Iron Kingdoms Paladin. He was much more fun to paint than I expected. The whites actually turned out better than I had hoped for. I used some different shading techniques than I've used before. Specifically I make sharp dramatic transitions where the plates come to corners rather than trying to smooth blend. It's pretty logical to do so given the shape of the model.

Ok, so there's some wierdness about the paint job on this model. Scroll down and take a look. Does it stand out to you? If so, post a comment to me. If it hasn't already jumped out at you, the problem is that the shield has a bunch of battle damage on it, but the Paladin's armour has none. On the one hand I like the look beacuase it says that Paladin is so badass, that he never takes a hit to his armour. On the other hand, it makes the model look inconsistent. I might revisit the model and put some a few battle damage marks on him later if it ends up bugging me.

And now the pictures...

Amon vs Doomshaper

Ok, before I say anything else about this battle, this was hands down one of the most fun games of Warmachine I've played. It was the weekly Wednesday game against Zugbart, but for some reason this game was just outrageously fun. Hats off to Zugbart for going to the mat to pull out the victory on this one. The game ran about 3 hours and probably 10 rounds, so there's no play-by-play description this week. First, the lists:

Me: Amon, Devout, Revenger, Castigator, Chior(6), Vilmon, 2 Paladins, Seneschal, Gorman
Zugbart: Doomshaper, Mauler, Blitzer, Axer, Impaler, Fell Caller, Krielstones(4)

Now the highlights:

• The Impaler made an impressive showing against the Castigator, charging in and ripping off one arm of the Castigator. Unfortunately for the Impaler, the Castigator recieved 3 focus from Amon the next turn and delivered a brutal beatdown from the one remaining fist.
• The Seneschal managed to return back from the dead briefly after a Paladin got snacked on by the Mauler, only to be gunned down by the Blitzer right after that.
• A lone chior boy got did 4 damage to the Blitzer on an amazing free strike roll. For all of you at home counting, I rolled 5-5-6 on the free strike damage roll, doing 22 damage to the Blizter. Not enough to do anything major, but still an impressive showing.
• Vilmon and a Paladin very nearly put down a Mauler in a single round, but in an unfortunate twist, they were short by 1 damage from killing the Mauler. That very Mauler ended up surviving till nearly the very end of the battle.
• Amon and Doomshaper traded spell blasting at each other troops. Amon's Sand Blast spell was very effective at delivering slams to key things, especially when cast through the Revenger's arcnode. Doomshaper's Accursed spell again frustrated my jacks.
• Rock walls are awesome. Especially when Amon stands behind one. It makes him pretty much impossible to hit.
• Doomshaper's feat was crazy outrageous. He scored 14 damage on 5d3 against Amon when Amon spent 5 focus to finally dust off the Mauler. That's 1 short of max.

Game End: The end came when Doomshaper managed to hit Amon with Accursed and scored the exact 3 points needed to kill him, AND Amon failed his tough roll. Doh! If he'd survived the tough roll, I honestly have no idea how the rest of the battle would have played out. At that point it was Amon, a movement-disabled Devout, and 2 chiorboys (no leader) vs Doomshaper, the Fell Caller, and the Blitzer.

MVP: Amon was an outstanding performer in this one. Through careful use of his Meditative Stance he was able to lay out alot of damage with the Sand Blast spell.

Learned Lessons:

• Vilmon is outrageous. Being able to sacrifice either movement or action to become immune to everything except spells and feats has a sneaky use for the patient player. Spend one round running into melee range (sacrificing action to be immune), and then the following round sacrifice movement and get to take attacks. He and a pair of Paladins are also a pretty secure lockdown of a control point.
• The Steamroller 3 missions are pretty unbalanced against non-infantry based lists. We rolled to play a 2 control point mission (I forget the name of the mission) and basically since I won the first turn, I could have easily won the mission by the second round without a single attack being exchanged.
• 5 Focus casters are not terrible, but they do require alot more precision than an 8 Focus caster. Wrack usage is also made much more challenging with such a limited range.
• The game reinforced that what I love about WM is the small squad feel of the game. Battles where armies have 50+ models feels like playing warhammer 40k all over again, and seriously, they just take so much longer to play.

All around, this was a fabulously entertaining game!

Another Double Header!

I got to play 2 games again this last Saturday, although this time it was 2 500pt games against the same opponent with different army lists. Here's the sum-up:

Game 1: Madhammer vs Doomshaper
I had Doomshaper with 2 Maulers, 2 Impalers, the Totem Hunter and a Fell Caller. Madhammer had Croe's, Alexia, 2 Blasters, Gorman, Rupert, and a Bokur. This battle was pretty one-sided. I moved in too quickly, but even if I hadn't, it would have still been one-sided. At the beginning of the second round, one mauler was blind and could not make attacks due to some crazy Madhammer spell. The other mauler was knocked down. By the end of round 3, Doomshaper was getting poisoned badly. It wasn't so much that the trolls were outnumbered, but rather that there was just too much movement/action denial stuff pinning them down. It didn't help that the Bokur cut down a Mauler in a single charge round.

Game 2: Amon vs Karchev
I had Amon, a Castigator, a Revenger, a Devout, Vilmon, 2 Paladins, a Seneschal, a full chior and 3 wracks. Karchev had 2 Berserkers, the Behemoth, and Alexia. This battle I got a lucky set up in and used Amon's feat on the second round. This allowed me to sand blast the Behemoth into a Berserker, knocking them both down. Then the Castigator moved up and threw Behemoth off to the side and cleared a charge lane for the Devout. Gorman black-oiled the Behemoth and then the 3 Paladins went to town on it, nearly destroying it. The Seneschal pulled off a chain-attack slam against the other Behemoth, slamming it into Karchev and knocking them both down too. With the exception of Alexia and her 5 remaining risen, everything was knocked down. The next round went similarly too, with everything ending up knocked down or destroyed, and Karchev black oiled as well.

I really like this Amon list. It probably can't compete with an infantry swarm, but I'm ok with that. Having all warjacks and solos for front-line fighting makes for an interesting dynamic.

Feora cryx's Doomshaper

From last Wednesday, another good rumble against Zugbart. This time I took pictures! They are here and are the Apr 11th set. It was a re-run of the same lists from the previous week. My recounting of the battle is somewhat sketchy unfortunately.

Round 1: The surge. Both armies rush forward. I got to go first, so I was able to invade the middle ground and take control of the hill in the middle. This helped me alot through the rest of the game.

Round 2: The stand off. Both armies position trying to set up for something nasty. Due to poor placement, the chior leader gets whacked since he's about the only thing able to be shot.

Round 3: The gnashing. Initial exchanges start to take place. Vilmon get whacked by Doomshaper in melee. Nothing like seeing the High Paladin of the Protectorate get beaten down with a stick. There's some more exchanges in melee, some slamming, and Rupert unfortunately gets whacked by the Blitzer.

Round 4: Feora gets an arcnode shot at Doomshaper, sneaking in 6 points of damage early on. The Blitzer gets pelted by firebombs and black oiled by Gorman. Unfortunately the Devout gets crippled by a super slam from the Axer (ouch!) and the Repenter loses his flamethrower as well.

Round 5: The Blitzer nearly gets finished off and the Axer gets whacked by Feora. The Revenger moves deeper. Feora lights up the trolls with her feat. Unfortunately, most of the fire went away immediately. The Mauler moves in and slams the Repenter into Feora, knocking her down. Then Doomshaper rolls in and very nearly kills her with Acursed. A lucky boosted damage roll of 6+6+5 puts her at 2 remaining health. If it wasn't for the 2 focus she'd kept in reserve, she'd have been toast. Doomshaper blows the rest of his fury going for a kill but doesn't have enough to boost the damage and gets an unlucky roll, doing no damage.

Round 6: Feora shimmies through the rules here. She sacrifices her movement to stand up, her action is gone due to accursed, but she can still cast spells. She stands up and levels Doomshaper with an Immolation.

All around, this was a close game again. I was a couple bad dice rolls away from having something break loose of my containment strategy. Feora again awards the MVP to Gorman for keeping the Blitzer at bay. The zealots get the award for most improved, remembering to use their "you can't shoot me" prayer to avoid disaster. It was also good to not walk them out of melee as much this time. I definately felt like I did a much better job of controlling the board and taking advantage of the terrain.

Closing shot: Feora sends Doomshaper to troll heaven!

Double Header

Last Wednesday I got to play 2 games of Warmachine in the same day! I used the same list for both games, so I got to test out the list against 2 very different opponents.

The List (500pts, 19vps):
Feora
Revenger
Repenter
Devout
Zealots (10) + Monolith Bearer
Chior (6)
Vilmon
Rupert
Gorman
2 Wracks

Game 1:
My first opponent was against a Madhammer list. It included (if I recall correctly): Madhammer, Wroughthammer, Grundback Blaster, Croe's (9) with Bokur, and Alexia.

The game was unfortunately rather one sided. Croe's and Alexia were a pain in the ass to keep under control, but through careful positioning, and the use of the Zealot's and Chior's "no ranged attacks" protections, I was able to create a wall that shut down half of the merc's attack potential. Then on the second round, I positioned Feora and set almost the entire merc force on fire while the medium jacks, Gorman, and a wall of fire from Feora kept the enemy at bay. The game wrapped up with Feora unloading double flamethrowers into Madhammer and toasting him.

Top performers this game:
Feora again proves badass. The chior, zealots, and Rupert were also highly useful as always.


Game 2:
This second game was against Zugbart, and he has once again chronicled the battle quite well.

This game was much closer. There were a few times where things were in danger of losing control for me, but for the most part, I felt like the trolls were staying pinned where I needed them. Losing my chior leader after the first round was a nasty setback. With a full chior I would have layed out much more serious hurt to the troll warbeasts.
I sacrificed alot of guys to walking out of combat in order to set up for more damage. In the long term, it was probably not the best plan. The battlefield also featured a centrally placed forest which was annoying to deal with. Every battle I'm played against Zugbart so far has had terrain that put me at a disadvantage.

Top performers this game:
Feora again was badass. Even more so though was Gorman. Black oil on warbeasts was a key component to keeping the trolls in their place. Vilmon was also an impressive performer this time.

All things considered, these were two fun games. The former was fun to see what Madhammer was capable of. The latter was fun due to the tactical challenge it put on me. 2 victories for Menoth helps reestablish some respect for my skills as a general.

Catchup Work

I finished up some minor things today, as well as doing some prep work. I put the replacement chains on the Harbinger, and put replacement pipes on the Castigator. The Castigator pics are on my photobucket gallery, but they are pretty poor pictures all things considered. Here's the final Harbinger pic though.

I just finished priming Herne, Jonne, and the Reclaimer. The Herne and Jonne models are super cool, so I'm promoting them to ahead of the Daughters.