Why the Avatar is SPD 4...

This model is taking me forever to paint. I keep getting distracted with other projects. The Seraph got bumped in my painting queue due to the upcoming Steamroller 4 tournament at the LGS on the 14th, and I feel obligated to at least make an honest attempt at getting back to fully painted. Anyway, I'm tinkering with the Avatar at the same time. The photo this time is better, but the lighting on my desk just exacerbates the challenge of photographing a model that was primed black on a bright background. However, as you can see, I've got the golds and silvers mostly done except for final highlighting. I've base coated the cloth bits at this point and plan to do them next. I always prefer to leave whites until last only because of my tendency to splatter onto them. Hopefully this weekend will provide for a bit more painting time on this big boy.

eThagrosh vs Stryker

Last night I played a wicked fun game against our local Cygnar player at the LGS. Right up front, let me apologize for the photo quality, as I am still getting used to the new camera and need to figure out the many settings. However, despite the terrible photos, the game itself was ridiculously fun, and not just because I won either. My opponent was very gracious, and this battle was actually the result of the two of us not getting a chance to play against each other in the Flash Point tournament. As a result we brought our lists from that tournament in order to see how things would go, but we also turned off the "tournament mode" and returned to friendly gamer mode.

The Lists:
Me: eThagrosh, Typhon, Carnivean, Seraph, Shredder, Incubi, Striders+UA, Deathstalker, Forsaken, Totem Hunter, Swamp Gobbers
Aaron: Stryker, Ol Rowdy, Thorn, 4 Storm Lances, Trenchers (9 + Grenade Porter), Laddermore, Squire, Journeyman Warcaster, Black 13th, Gorman

The Mission:
Assassination, plain and simple.

The Throwdown:
This was a fun battle. I don't have a lot of experience playing against Stryker, so naturally he caught me numerous times with earthquake, especially the poor Seraph which, despite being a flying creature, got knocked down with alarming frequency. Gorman was also highly effective at tossing black oil on the Carnivean just when I didn't want him to. However, on the flipside, the Striders did a great job of thinning and eventually wiping out the Trenchers before they could do too much damage. And the good thing about the Seraph is he can still use slipstream and give Typhon a bit of a movement boost by sacrificing his attack. In fact, the Seraph never took a shot the whole game. Thagrosh and Stryker were both commanding their armies from the back, waiting for the right opportunity to strike. Due to some unfortunateness with Laddermore's arcing lightning, the gobbers met an early end which sort of forced Thagrosh's hand though. Fortunately the consummate rockstar Typhon was able to deliver some serious disruption to the front line of the battle.

The Endgame:
Again, Typhon is a rockstar. With the benefit of Dragon's Blood and Spiny Growth he managed to get stuck in well and then the Seraph was able to slipstream him into position to start trashing Stryker. Unfortunately, it was on Stryker's feat round, so the trashing was kept to around 10 points of damage. And then Stryker retaliated with earthquake and fleeing and surrounding the Carnivean with stuff to stick him in. However, Stryker couldn't get enough damage leveraged to take anything in particular out. Despite getting Typhon knocked down, the Seraph was able to slipstream Typhon up enough so that he could stand and hose down Stryker with 3 sprays and finish the job of the previous round.

The Highlights:
Typhon continues to be a slippery little devil, and the Seraph just makes him that much more amazing. Those two make a duo that presents a lot of disruption potential to enemy plans. In Aaron's own words, he was trying to get in position to pull off an assassination, but my army was just too fast and tough. The overall synergy of the army continues to be flexible and fun. It's hard to point at any piece of it and say it's the single most effective or useless piece of the army.
On the Cygnar side, I have to admit that the Storm Lances were very good at blocking lanes and tying things up. And Ol Rowdy was certainly a nasty little beatstick. Stryker himself too is a very effective toolbox. It was definitely a fun challenge to play against this Cygnar force.

The Reflection:
It's odd for me to think that I'm likely to keep playing this same list for a while. Certainly there's the limitation that I need new models to really change it up much. However ignoring that, I really love playing eThagrosh. eLylyth is even sitting in my cabinet fully painted and never played because I find eThagrosh so entertaining. This last game I even managed to use more of his spell list as I found a good opportunity (although failed the roll). Anyway, it's late and I desire to dream yet further of the great avatar of Everblight marching across the plains toward victory.

Minotaur Side Project

This side project has been sitting on my desk for months now, and I finally got around to finishing it. It originally started as just a distraction model to practice blending and fine details on when I was doing squads or speed painting other stuff (essentially to have an OCD outlet). However recently I decided to just get it finished up. It's really one of a very few display-only pieces I've done ironically. My normal display case doesn't actually have any display-only pieces in it so this is sort of a first for my own collection.

What went well:
* Skin - Although it isn't "beastly" or "dirty", it was good practice for me. I put more time into zenithal highlighting and feel like it helped a lot. There are definitely places where the blending is not very smooth, but overall I feel pretty good about the use of color.
* Axe runes - More on that later.
* Horns/Hooves - These turned out pretty good. I didn't do a wash over them in the end, which I think could have smoothed them out.
* Metals - I like how well these pop. I really put more effort into this because the metals are such a prevalent portion of the model. Honestly, I feel like I learned a bit more on how to work with just silver metals.

What could have been better:
* Leathers - They just didn't turn out the way I wanted. Not sure how to explain it, but they just don't look right.
* Hair - Blah... what more to say. I tried out a bit of a new technique which I think will work better in the long term, but after reading some tips from EricJ, I'm totally disillusioned about sculpted hair and how to paint it now.

Ok, one specific thing to focus on for this model. The runes on the axe head are something I tried different than usual. I wanted to make them appear somewhat glowing, but I opted for a different style. Here I used a technique called stippling (lots of dots basically) rather than trying to blend, and the end result is sort of a "star field glow" sort of effect. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Well, that's it for now. My painting desk is now back down to a single active project (the Avatar), and I recently finished building a new paint rack so I suspect my painting frequency should climb back up to a respectable level again.

Starting to paint the Avatar

After what feels like a very long dry spell, I finally got started painting the Avatar. It's pretty sad progress, mostly because I spent a portion of the day making a new folding game board for Malifaux and painting a minotaur model I've been working on for months now. All I've done here is basic metals work, with a base coat of Oily Steel, then washing with GW Black Wash, then drybrushing back up with P3 Quicksilver. The reason I started with the metals is that I've found my techniques for metals get pretty messy and I often splatter washes onto other parts of a model. So rather than get mad at myself later for splattering on some finished white coats, I figured I'd start with metals and work backwards. Unfortunately the photo is pretty terrible as I learn how to use my new camera phone, and find a better improv photo method for stuff on my desk.

Pandora vs Ramos (the feud continues)

Well, this post is behind schedule, but I finally remembered to pull the photos off my phone today. Played another game of Malifaux, this time fielding my fully painted Pandora box, and also throwing in the Poltergeist Totem, and Taelor. I was facing off against the Ramos box with the Brass Arachnid Totem and Joss.

This battle was epic! The battle ebbed and flowed, with hideous beatdowns delivered. The Black Joker once again delivered me a swift kick in the head and caused Taelor to miss with an attack to knock the Steamborg back, leaving her to die quickly at its claws. Pandora laid a vicious combo on Joss, putting him in a nasty position of multiple Wp checks to take an action which caused him to implode. Pandora though fell to the might of the Steamborg and multiple exploding arachnids and electrical creations. In the end though, Candy snuck in with a Sorrow and delivered a killing blow on Ramos and finished out the last of the enemy crew.

Here's the punchline: Despite wiping out the entire enemy crew, I lost on victory points! My strategy was Treasure Hunt (which I failed because Ramos was the one holding the treasure when he died on the very last activation of the game). Ramos' mission was Reconnoiter, which he obviously failed as well. In the end it came down to schemes, and one of Ramos' was to keep enemies out of his deployment zone. That one VP won him the game. DOH!!!

Anyway, it was an epic and fun battle and I continue to love the Malifaux game.

Games played: 10
Dollars spent: $135.00
Cost per game: $13.50

Recent Legion Tactics

The evolution of my current Legion list got me thinking through my tactics and strategies about why I use the models I do, and how I use them on the table. This uncharacteristic (for me) post is sort of a (long) brain dump of my own tactics philosophy around this current list. I'm certainly no master strategist by any stretch, but perhaps there will be some random valuable nuggets in here for the readers out there.

Background:
First some background...
* For a long time I was predominantly a Protectorate and Troll player.
* I'm not as much of an assassination tactician. I tend to build lists that are more balanced and can adapt as the game unfolds.
* I'm also in it to have fun just as much as to win. I don't like taking "easy button" lists, nor lists that have a single strategy to them. Thinking in the middle of the battle is what makes the game fun!
* When I decided to branch out from Protectorate and Trolls, I wanted to start an army that would play different so that I could build a wider play style.
* Finally, I'm more painter than player now. I would still paint models even if there were no game rules, however I wouldn't play a (tabletop) game where there was no opportunity to model and paint.

Premise:
Starting Legion was primarily motivated by wanting to paint and play something different. Admittedly, I hadn't read many of the rules for the Legion models, nor faced off against a Legion army hardly at all. I start out by looking through the selection of models and picked out the ones that I was interested in painting without reading rules. Although I knew that this could put me in a diminished army capacity, I decided that, just like when I did this with Cryx for the showdown challenge, it forces me to learn how to make the best use of what I have. I honestly believe that doing this has made me a better player, even though it was frustrating for a while.

Models:
The following is my complete collection of Legion models at this point:
* Warlocks: Thagrosh, eThagrosh, Lylyth, eLylyth
* Warbeasts: Typhon, Carnivean, Seraph, Raek, 4 Shredders
* Units: Striders (+UA), Spawning Vessel (6)
* Solos: Deathstalker, Warmonger War Chief, Forsaken, Shepherd, Incubi
* Minions: Totem Hunter, Swamp Gobbers
I'm not going to go into details about each of these models. There's plenty of places to get that sort of info (like Battle College). I picked most of these models because I actually wanted to paint them. My actual list is as follows:
739pts, 22vps: eThagrosh, Typhon, Carnivean, Seraph, Shredder, Incubi, Deathstalker, Striders + UA, Forsaken, Swamp Gobbers, and Totem Hunter.

Small Scale Tactics:
There are many schools of thought on tactics for an army, and I'm certainly not one to expound on them. When I played Protectorate I tried to build lists with a lot of synergy between models so that they could work as a cohesive group together. Playing mercenaries I tended to build smaller "fire teams", where 2 to 3 things worked well together as a small group, but the overall army wasn't designed to have a cohesiveness to it. My current Legion list takes a different sort of approach. I'll break it down into groupings.
* Interception: The first group of my army is an intercept group. This is comprised of the Striders, the Totem Hunter, the Deathstalker, and the Incubi. These models are able to move quickly and flexibly. They can intercept specific threats and either delay or diminish those threats. They aren't meant to be speed bumps like tougher units. I can keep them all together or spread them out equally well, and none of them need support from my warcaster to be effective in this role. Despite the points I pay for the Striders, the UA and the Deathstalker, I find them to be very effective at dealing with swarm threats like Bile Thralls, and can CRA at light arcnode jacks alike. The Incubii are intercept because as Striders get killed, Incubi get to pop out and immediately engage tie things up. This is very helpful against arcnodes I've found.
* Core: The second group is my core. This is eThagrosh, Typhon, Carnivean, and Seraph. This is the tough nasty center. There are some nice combinations here that make for some nasty stuff. Dragon's Blood + Excessive Healing on Typhon is awesome and is a common combo for me to use since Typhon is often the primary target of my opponent. Slipstream allows eThagrosh and the Seraph to move the Carnivean and Typhon into charge lanes. The 3 beasts can provide good cover for eThagrosh as well, keeping him relatively safe. Not to mention, the sheer damage output of the Carnivean, Typhon and Thagrosh is just stunning. This battle group also gets very heavy use from Glory of Everblight, and honestly I feel that eThagrosh makes a better support caster for his battle group than an actual front-line beatstick.
* Support: The third and final group is the support group, made up of the Forsaken, the Swamp Gobbers, and the Shredder. These models are here to provide specific support capabilities. The Gobbers are obviously to provide cover for eThagrosh since he's on a large base, however they are a little tricky since both eThagrosh and the Forsaken are Abominations. The Forsaken is specifically there for fury management. Although his Blight Shroud is occasionally useful, I've found that it's best to just leave him near the core group and pull fury as needed. The Shredder is there to be a damage transfer sink and toss the occasional Tenacity on things. It's amazing how +1 to DEF and ARM can make a huge difference, but kicking eThagrosh up to 14/18 really does have a noticeable effect.

Dealing with Threats:
There are a number of threats I've faced in other lists, and this army has a number of tools to deal with them:
* Swarms: Infantry swarms are always oppressive to deal with. In order to handle them, this list uses the Striders with their rapid shot, the Seraph's Strafe, the Carnivean's spray, eThagrosh's spray, and Typhon's 3 sprays. That provides a very large amount of anti-infantry ranged attack. Also, the Musician's mini-feat can really throw a kink into a unit's plan to charge.
* Speed: Although there are faster lists out there, and this one does not have cavalry, the slowest thing in the list is eThagrosh at a 5, with about half of the list having SPD 7. Slipstream is also very helpful to give that extra 2" of threat range on something. Slipstream on a Carnivean means he can reach something with his spray on an assault charge that is almost 19" away.
* Hard Targets: The Carnivean, Typhon, and eThagrosh all hit hard, without a doubt. However the Strider's CRA is nothing to scoff at, particularly with rapid shot. If they all team up together they are delivering a pair of POW 18 shots.
* Ranged Assaults: An army with a heavy amount of ranged attack is still no walk in the park, but the Striders, Deathstalker, and Totem Hunter all have stealth. In addition, Tenacity and the Gobbers' cloud is driving DEF up by 3 on the core group which makes most of them a DEF 16+.

Assassination Tactics:
There's a couple of key combos that I use most of the time:
* Carnivean: The Carnivean's assault charge has a really big threat range, and should never be discounted. I've had him pull off an assault charge and incinerate two members of the Witch Coven with just the spray. With Glory of Everblight and a boost from Slipstream he's got a 19" threat range and on average can hit a single target with DEF 16 doing an average of 25+ damage. Honestly I'd say that the Carnivean has more caster kills than everything else in my Legion army combined.
* Typhon: This guy is a rockstar. Slipstream up for a 13" threat range and then fling something with no STR check either. It's pretty ridiculous. Especially if he's throwing it so that it lands somewhere for the Carnivean or eThagrosh to beat on.

Dealing with Scenarios:
A list is not complete if it only aims towards assassination. To that end I wanted a list that could deal with at least the Steamroller 4 missions fairly well. I'm not going to list out each of those missions here, but basically they all amount to having models in specified sections of the board. When my army needs to spread out I use the intercept group to hold one section and the core group to hold the others. In the case of Mosh Pit, I tend to just drive the core group right up the center like a Mack truck. The Striders' and Deathstalker's advanced deployment are invaluable in scenarios as well as they give that extra boost toward the middle of the table while the rest of my army is making a mad sprint to get there.

The Achilles Heel:
There are some specific things that are not easy for this list to deal with:
* Dispelling: This is a bit of a problem. Losing Dragon's Blood means more fury drain on eThagrosh, and if animii can get dispelled it makes things far worse since Spiny Growth, Tenacity, and Excessive Healing are the cornerstones of the core groups survivability.
* Terrain: Most of the list is pretty effective at overcoming terrain (Carnivean, Seraph, Striders and Totem Hunter), but eThagrosh and Typhon are not, and they are the rockstars of the list.
* Preventing Forcing: Skorne is great at this, and preventing forcing is a huge problem for this list. Glory of Everblight helps quite a bit to overcome it, but it's still a big hit, especially for the Carnivean, to not be able to boost attack rolls.

What Next:
Where do I go from here with this list? Honestly I don't know. I really enjoy playing it and although I want to try out other stuff, I'm mostly limited by my ability to get stuff painted since I want to limit myself to one unpainted thing at a time. However, I have been pondering some stuff that I think would make an interesting addition:
* Angelius - Yeah, duh, it's freakin awesome. I'm just not sure what to drop to put him in.
* Bone Grinders - These are debatable, but I think a minimum unit could be really useful. Adding +3" to eThagrosh's knockdown AOE spell could be just the ticket to move that spell from a 5% spell into a 50% spell.
* Legionnaires - I love the look of these models, and I think pairing them with a second batch of Incubi would just be brutal for an opponent to deal with.
* Nephilim Protector - This guy would make a good addition to eThagrosh's protection and generally a good addition to my army.
* Other warlocks - Eventually I'll move on to Saeryn, Rhyas and Absylonia. I really enjoy playing beast heavy lists, so it's going to take some serious thinking when I swap to one of them, especially Rhyas.

In Closing...
Well, that's certainly turned out to be longer than I expected. Hopefully something in here was useful, and of course I'd love to hear thoughts from people. Everything I've talked about here is heavily tied to my play style, so there's definitely going to be other opinions, but I'd love to hear about other combinations or changes to consider trying out.

Quick update from the desk...

Things have been a bit hectic for me lately, and I've found myself short on time for both gaming and painting. Lots of stuff to do around the house, and a lot of immigration paperwork to deal with. However, I did enter the painting competition at the LGS and they had the awards today. They did 3 categories: Masters, Open and Youngbloods. I decided to enter Kade since he was relatively recent and I thought it was a good example of how I've put a lot of focus on color usage. The judging was done by the store staff, with guidance from Lazlo (of Hot Lead fame). To my surprise, they decided to bump me up to the masters category. To my further surprise, I got second place, winning a complete set of GW Foundation paints! The first place entry was a GW goblin shaman that was very well done. Although it wasn't a huge event, I'm certainly not going to scoff at the prize. Plus, I got a chance to meet a couple new painters and chat with them. It's always nice to make more connections and share tips and techniques with each other. Anyway, back to grinding out my weekend household tasks in an effort to carve out some time tomorrow for either playing or painting.

Favorite Models to Paint

With all the crazy busy schedule in my life, and the push to play more often, I found myself in an unlikely position recently of having time to sit back and think about the models I paint while I was in between models. The question came to me recently from a local friend about what my favorite model to paint was and it really got me thinking. It wasn't easy to come up with a snap answer, and certainly not without a caveat or two about why something was my favorite. Since that time (a couple months ago), I've put some thought into it and what follows is an introspective look at my top 5 favorite models that I have painted.

First I need to qualify some context for this list:
* This list includes only Privateer Press models. There are models from other lines that I absolutely loved painting, but I decided to focus specifically on my Hordes and Warmachine models.
* It does not include models I have not painted, as I wanted to speak from my own experience. There are models that look great but turn out to be very not-fun to paint.
* This list is regardless of the painting quality I did on the particular models.
* I'm not big on conversion work. I'll do some small amount of conversion work, but I prefer to spend my time painting rather than cutting and sculpting.
* My list is biased with models I painted more recently. This has a lot to do with both my memory being fresher, and simply putting more thought into what I enjoy painting.

#1: Gnarlhorn Saytr
This model is incredible. I really enjoyed painting it for a number of reasons:
1) The pose makes sense. He has a sense of action and purpose without being overdone.
2) Everything on the model is accessible for painting when fully assembled.
3) There's a good mix of hard and soft lines to the model.
4) The model has good readability. I can't stress the importance of this enough. Some models have too much detail, with little sculpted bits all over them. Instead of looking like a street vendor cart from a kung fu movie, this model finds a good balance of detail and "non-detail".

	#2: Skarre, Queen of the Broken Coast Another great model. This one has the advantage of a sculpted base as well. I also greatly like this model because the combination of the pose, the features, and the base come together to tell a small bit of a story about the model.
	#3: Gudrun the Wanderer Gudrun will always hold a special place for me. I poured a lot of hours into painting him. Not sure what more to say other than I've heard many people comment about how they loved the sculpt.
	#4: Sea Dogs These guys were a blast to paint. Even if you don't want to paint them to a high quality, the detail level makes it so each model basically paints itself. Some simple techniques and you've got a kick ass batch of pirates. I also particularly enjoyed them because all 6 sculpts were different!
	#5: NightmareThe only warjack to make my list. The Nightmare stands out from the rest due to its pose and it's detail work. The runes create a built-in opportunity for the painter to try out some minor OSL work. The only other warjack that had a chance of beating out Nightmare is the Seether, and I simply haven't painted one of those yet.

And what would a top list be without some Honorable Mentions? The following are models that almost made this list, but for whatever reason I decided not to include them.
* Bokur
* Raek
* Grim Angus
* Typhon

Thanks for indulging me in this brief introspective interlude. It's easy to get busy trying to paint an army and not stop to think about the enjoyment of spending quality time with a really good model.

Flash Point Tournament Results

Yesterday was the Flash Point tournament at my LGS and the results are astounding to me. I managed to win the Dawnlord prize for most consecutive defenses! My list (shamelessly shown above along with the Dawnlord medal and the spiffy button) was eThagrosh, Typhon, Carnivean, Seraph (shamefully unpainted), a Shredder, Striders with the UA, Deathstalker, Incubii, Swamp Gobbers, and the Totem Hunter. I managed to snap a couple pics of the first three games a couple turns into them just to show off everyone else's stuff.

There were 7 total players, and for the first round I ended up sitting out. Once I got into the rotation though, I really got on a roll. First game in I was playing against a Kraye list. At first I was worried this was going to be an uphill battle with the Trenchers really standing tough against my Striders. However once I started to punch into the center I managed to lay some damage onto Kraye and cause him to fall back. If he hadn't been no-knockdown I'd have easily laid him out earlier on, but it took a second attempt to drive in and clear a path for the Carnivean to assault charge for the win. In this battle, Typhon and the Carnivean were rockstars, especially under Glory of Everblight.

My next game, as defender, was against a Terminus list with a fair amount of infantry. This battle required me to really take advantage of my ranged attacks. I managed to use bushwhack to my advantage and get a couple good solid rounds of clearing infantry with my Striders and Seraph. In the end though, a careful use of Slipstream to move Typhon into range, and then a charge followed by a pair of flings threw Terminus out of his woods and into range of the Carnivean who, of course, assault charged and finished the job like the assassin he is.

Third round pitted me against a Krueger list that had 3 Woldwardens and Megalith! This list was played by our local press ganger who is, in my opinion, an exceptional player. It's always an entertaining event to get to play him and I often learn something about the game when I get to. In this case. I was terrified of what he was going to do to me. Fortunately I got pretty lucky by catching the Bloodweavers under the Strider Musician's no-orders ability to prevent charges. At that point Krueger hid behind a wall of 4 wolds (literally, a wall of them), and taunted me. I once again used Slipstream to position Typhon, charged up to fling a Megalith into Krueger. Now at this point I still had my feat move/attack left for my beasts, but I didn't think I could pull it out until my opponent pointed out that the Seraph triggers Strafe on that bonus feat attack since it's not a special action. I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that, in the words of my buddy Lance, "I accidentally beat Marco".

The last battle I managed to get in was against the Kraye list again, but this time with me as the defender. I'll summarize this one by saying that I won because my dice were on fire for pretty much every roll that game. Glory of Everblight definitely helped a lot, but my dice were seriously crazy. Honestly I felt bad about it. I destroyed 3 light jacks, a heavy jack, almost every trooper model, and Kraye by the end.

My eThagrosh list is a lot of fun for me to play. It suits my playstyle and is very versatile. I've been refining it as I go and this tournament was a good test of it. It has plenty of ranged threat to deal with infantry swarms (Striders, Seraph, Typhon's sprays). It has plenty of hard hitting power for hard targets (eThagrosh, Carnivean, Typhon, Strider CRA). It has good mobility with eThagrosh being the only model with less than SPD 6, plus Slipstream gives that added bit of shifting needed. Plus when I need a hard target to tie something up, Typhon with Dragon's Blood and Excessive Healing makes for a really tough nut to crack. Similarly the Carnivean with Dragon's Blood and Spiny Growth is a really big roadblock. And finally eThagrosh's Glory of Everblight and his feat give an excellent overall boost to the beasts.

In summary, the day was a blast. Everyone at the tournament was what I consider to be the A list players of our LGS' Warmachine community in terms of sportsmanship and fun. I had a really great time playing. Winning the Dawnlord awards was just the icing on the cake of a really great day of Warmachine!

Avatar Assembly Finished

Assembly finished! I'm not going to get super detailed here on my pros and cons, but just some quick notes.
* I'm happy with how he has more of a presence. He's tall and in charge.
* He's a little thin in places. It sort of makes him look spindly, but we'll see how that looks after I finish painting him.
* The pose is much better. It's more dynamic, and conveys more motion.
* The effort involved wasn't overwhelming. Despite my busy schedule, I was able to complete this fairly quickly, given my skill level at conversion work.

Now, as soon as the weather changes and the humidity goes down, I can prime him and get started painting!

Avatar Progress Part 10, and a battle report!

Minor update on the conversion project. Got the cloths attached. Tomorrow night I should have time to finish the rest of the assembly and snap pics.

On another note, I got in a game tonight! A practice game for the upcoming Retribution tournament event this weekend at the LGS. I brought an eThagrosh list and was playing against an eGaspy list. It was a pretty vicious battle in the middle, with a swarm of Bane Knights breaking into the middle thanks to Tartarus' beckon. eGaspy's feat round was brutal with both Bane Knights and Soul Hunters driving in, however eThagrosh hung in there and survived the onslaught. At that point the remainder of the battle was academic, with the Totem Hunter, eThagrosh, Typhon, and a Seraph all with clear charge lanes to eGaspy.

Avatar: 1, Fingers: 0

Well, tonight I was doing some additional assembly and managed to jab my finger. I was drilling holes for the cloths that hang from the shoulders and the drill bit slipped and drilled my finger. Ouch! Anyway, I got the holes drilled at least, as well as finished assembling the other arm with extensions. With the additional work of getting a model ready for the small painting competition at the LGS, progress is a bit slow. However, I'm closing in on the end now. I'm planning to finish the cloth attachments to the shoulders tomorrow night and then the final complete assembly the next night.

Judge

I've been working on the Judge off and on for a couple weeks now and finally finished him up. This model was a complete delight to paint. It has a marvelous pose that allows for some really dramatic highlighting.

For the base I decided to go with a somewhat western theme and have some wood planks. I was trying to make them look like steps up, but the scale isn't really great. The entire base sort of has a scale problem, but I'm fine with how it turned out. The cattails were an amusing experiment that (although being too large) seemed to work out pretty well I think.

Well, no great analysis on this one. There are plenty of spots that I wish had turned out better such as the hair, sword, and gloves. Other parts turned out ok, such as the coat, bandanna, and pants. Overall the color balance is a point of contention in my mind. It has a relatively common set of colors, with just the bandanna and chain to draw the eyes around the model, but it seems to be enough to achieve that goal. Despite the numerous little mistakes and problems that catch my eye on close analysis, I'm pretty happy with how this turned out, and especially happy with the learning experience. Spending the extra time on all the Malifaux models is really worthwhile.

Back to the Knife

After being gone for the last few days for a much needed vacation, I've returned to my desk to get a bit more work done on the Avatar. This evening I managed to chop the arms apart at the forearm and get the sword arm reassembled. When I cut the arms, I decided to swap the shoulders. This gave a better angle to both arms, opening up the pose. Here I've gotten the sword arm completely reassembled. I wanted to create a bit more dynamic pose to the arm. I've also drilled holes for pinning the shoulders to the body, but have only done an initial dry fit for the moment (to ensure the arm position is ok).

I'll probably work on the shield arm tomorrow. Before I attach the arms to the body I also want to work out how to pin the cloths that hang from the shoulders. Once that's done there will be very little left to do before priming. The biggest barrier to moving forward is a painting contest at my LGS, for which I need to get an entry ready in short order. Depending how well I managed to juggle tasks, I may still get more progress done on the Avatar while getting that entry ready.

The Avatar Stands Tall

I sort of lumped the progress of the whole weekend here. I was hoping to get more done, but I was distracted with a number of other things. It's late here, so time to get on with the updates.

First, I decided to create a somewhat epic base. I decided to go with a stone slab, raised up on top of some stones. To that end I created a couple rough shapes and then marked out where I wanted to cut the circular slab into individual stones.

Once the pieces were cut up I went through and roughed up the edges appropriately. Then I reassembled them using some Miliput and put the whole thing together on the base. Although not pictured here, I also carved a menofix into the slab's surface. This whole process turned out to be rather labor intensive, taking pretty much the whole day. Cutting up the slab into blocks took a while since I had to drill and saw to break it up. Then I had to rough up the edges with the cutters. Then the re-assembly with the Milliput. At that point I painted the menofix on the surface and carved it out with a blade.

After the work on the legs, I decided to re-angle the toe of the back lag to give it more of an action pose. To create a stronger join all around, I drill the holes so that I could use a single bent pin to join the toe to the foot and also have the pin stick down for when I joined the leg to the base. This guy is big enough that a thick pin for each foot is totally warranted. The space between the toe and foot of course got filled in with some green stuff and smoothed out. Once it all dried and hardened it was remarkably strong.

Speaking of stronger joins, when it came to attaching the legs to the hip, I needed to put some extra strength into the whole thing. I've had some problems in the past with hip joins and wanted to avoid those troubles (pins shifting and causing the join to rotate). So this time for the join I used two pins and then green stuff. This picture shows both halves to give an idea. Perhaps it was overkill, but with the Dremel doing most of the hard drilling for me, I might as well do it. The Dremel also makes it easier to drill nice deep holes to ensure a strong fit.

Finally, I got both legs on and attached the big guy to the base after drilling holes. For his left leg I left the thick cast pin still on the foot and drilled out extra space to get a nice tight fit for it. Overall this whole thing is incredibly sturdy. I've also got the two long pins sticking out the bottom so that I can attach it to an empty spray can for painting purposes.

Whew! Well, it doesn't look like a pile of progress, but this really gets me a long ways toward done. I'm unfortunately going to be gone for a few days so it might be a while before I finish up the last of the assembly unless I manage to squeeze in a little more work tomorrow night.

Sharper, Taller, Better...

A little more progress. First up is the sword. After the Milliput had properly hardened, I used the dremel to grind down the end of the blade into (roughly) the shape I wanted. Now, a fair word of warning here. The dremel is king at this task, but it also throws a fair amount of dust obviously. It saves lots of time over filing it down and certainly can be just as precise. When I was sanding it down, it turned out there was a tiny air bubble inside which got exposed. I simply added some green stuff, smoothed it, and filed it once it was hardened. It's not a super great job, but it's close enough. I specifically didn't want a pointed tip to the blade in this case, but it would definitely be possible using this method I bet.

Second is the legs. Again, not long enough. His stock legs make him look like a dwarf. I want this guy to stand taller than the other jacks, and this was definitely a necessary step. Here I did very similar to the hip replacement. I used the jeweler's saw, cut, filed, drilled, and reassembled. This was actually not so much work as the other, primarily due to the simpler cuts and pins. I did however make sure to drill deep holes to make sure the pins would easily support the weight of the body once everything was assembled.

That's it for tonight. With the weekend coming up I'm hoping to make significant progress.

Minor Avatar Progress

Yadda yadda yadda... Work is kicking my butt and slowing my progress, but I'm still making headway!

First change is the sword. I wanted to extend it, not just to reflect reach, but to create a bit more of a dramatic balance to the pose overall. I actually did a few steps here. First I lopped off the top point of the sword. Then I drilled a hole and put a thick pin sticking out to a length that I wanted to extend the blade to. I gave it just a bit of a bend to put some angle to the sword. I should point out that I repeatedly and obsessively verified that I was putting the right angle on the blade tip relative to the hand's pose. Finally here I used some Milliput and built out a rough shape for the blade extension. My goal was not to create the final shape for the blade. I intend to use the dremel to shape it down.

Second, I added the sides of his torso, and also added a couple "tubes" to the hip join. For these tubes I used thick guitar string as the shape gives them that ribbed hose look.

That's it for today. Hopefully I'll get some more time tomorrow to work on this. Thanks to everyone for the feedback so far! Although I'm not real confident with doing conversion work, this is turning out to be quite fun.

The Avatar Gets a Hip Replacement

Step one is complete! I chopped the hips off of the center torso. It took a while to saw through and then file and clean up the surrounding material. Once that was done I drilled some small test holes and made sure things line up ok. Then I drilled the larger holes and put in the supports. In order to make two of them look more like pistons, I picked up some brass tubing and slid shorter pieces of them over the main pins. If you buy your brass rod at hardware or train stores, they usually have a variety of types including tubes as well. I just made sure to get ones that slid over smoothly. Note that you can't just cut the tubs with wire cutters since it will mash the tube. Once that was in place I just added a little milliput to the surrounding area to smooth things out. Despite seeming like a small step, this actually took me quite a while to do, mostly because of the sawing and dry-fitting steps.

Project: Avatar of Menoth

I've been absent for a while (working lots, plus trying out Malifaux), so the Warmachine aspect of this blog has been on a bit of a hiatus unfortunately. However, with the preview release of the final MKII stats (and if you haven't seen them, head over to the PP site), I got a sneak peak at the Avatar and was pleasantly surprised at him gaining reach! It was the one feature I felt he was really lacking that would give him the extra edge he needed to be worth taking. The Avatar is the last unpainted PP model I have currently, and this preview was enough of a kick in the shorts to get motivated to work on him. To that end, as I did with a couple of other key projects, I'm going to do a series of posts of my progress on the Avatar.

First, let me be blunt: The stock sculpt is kinda... dumb. I'm almost done with a post about my favorite models to paint which will get more into what I like in a model, but I think I'm not the only one who dislikes the Avatar's standard pose. I've had this model in my backlog for probably at least 2 years now and had decided it needed to be a serious conversion project. I'm pretty pitiful when it comes to converting, and I'm primarily a painter, so this will be a big departure for me. My goal is to turn this model into something truly worthy of being the Avatar of Menoth, without trying to cobble together an entirely different model.

So, the first step was to make a plan. I got all the pieces out, trimmed them, and started reviewing them (all 18 of them). I also did some research by searching the PP painting forums and CMON for examples of conversion work that was done. There also used to be a great conversion job on the BrushThralls site, however that set of pictures seems to be inaccessible now. In any case, the following is a list of things that need to be done to the existing pieces:
* Extend hips lower from the body - This will help make him look taller.
* Widen hips to give a wider stance - This will help make him look more stable.
* Lengthen legs - This will allow for a more dynamic pose to his lower body.
* Extend upper arms - This will allow for a more dynamic pose to his upper body.
* "Fix" sword - Yeah, seriously... the flaming butter knife is just dorky, especially now that he'll have reach.
* Remount shield - Not sure exactly what I plan to do here, but something that improves the pose angles.

Well, that's about it for now. My goal is to have at least a small amount of progress every two to three days.

Sorrows

Well after what has felt like an eternity, I've finally finished painting something new. Work was absolutely kicking my ass lately, otherwise I'd have gotten these done a while ago. Now, to be honest, they aren't my best work, but the photos really seem to have come out worse than they are in real life for some unknown reason to me. Probably a problem with how skinny they are against the backdrop or something. However I don't photoshop anything anymore (cause I'm lazy), so I'm stuck with mediocre photos. Sorry out there. Anyhow, these guys were actually quite fun to paint as I opted to practice more with using washes to smooth out blending transitions and also practice using more variance of hue in my paint schemes. Overall I learned a lot and am quite happy with how they turned out.

What went well:
* Lots of color variation. I feel like I'm really starting to build a better sense of color, both in terms of when to add a different hue, and what hue to add. These have a lot of variation in the washes which gives them a much more rich and complex color scheme.
* Washes, washes, and more washes! Really, I feel better about my abilities here. On these I did some pretty rough highlighting on them and then used multiple controlled washes to smooth out the transitions which worked great.
* Themed, but varied. For these guys I decided to make them all different, yet cohesive. I kept the same sort of flowing magical mist beneath them, and the eyes and tongues are all the same, but the skin was all handled quite differently.

What could have been better:
* I could have spent more time on them. Honestly, it could have made a noticeable difference. These were half experiment and half serious.
* Better zenithal highlighting. I did a little of this, but I don't feel like I made it dramatic enough to make it obvious. It's something I'm always conscious of, but still haven't quite mastered.

Well, the good news is that this wraps up my Pandora box set for Malifaux! I'm pretty stoked to have made it this far. I'm looking forward to more Neverborn models being released that fit with her crew, but I've certainly got enough backlog to keep me busy until then. Before I close this out, I wanted to include a group shot of all three of them, just because the basing scheme really helps to bring them together as a group. Until next time, happy painting!

Lady J Strikes Again.... Almost

Today I played two more games of Malifaux. Well, sort of. The first game was the Lady J box vs the Zoraida box. The quick summary is that I ended up forfeiting after turn 2. The whole Zoraida thing is turning out to be completely broken. Both Henry and I worked through the mechanics and math of it and it turns out she basically can't fail on the Obey whack. There was a battle report I failed to post from last Sunday where we played Lady J vs Zoraida and it went pretty much the same way. I hate to say it but I highly recommend steering clear of Zoraida for your first 30 games, particularly if someone knows how to play her well. The game honestly feels broken.

The second game was the Lady J box, Scales of Justice and Bishop vs Leviticus, Rusty Alice, Bete Noire, and Desolation Engine. This game was a blast. The Leviticus list was pretty crazy to play against. Lots of weird things going on, with Bete Noire popping back in a couple times. It was very strange. In the end it looked like I was about to lose and then Lady J made a gamble to move over and engage Leviticus. It turns out that Lady J is pretty much a freight train of pain. She walked twice and then carved Leviticus to ribbons, and that sent the rest of the game solidly in my direction.

All in all, I think we both had a great time, and it was certainly nice to use the gamer side of my brain again after an absolute hell of a week at work. I haven't picked up a brush for over a week now!

Games played: 8
Dollars spent: $115.00
Cost per game: $14.50

Pandora

Quick post today. I sealed up Pandora last night. Work has been quite busy lately so I've just been tinkering away as I can. This model was, unfortunately, not one of my favorites to paint. Something about the sculpt was just a struggle. There's an awkwardness to her features that I can't entirely pin down that made it hard to paint and be happy with. I think a large part of it was her hair, but also the "stuff" coming out of the box. Some parts I'm happy with, and other parts are just very blah.

For this model I decided to follow the art in the book rather than anything resembling the studio scheme. I opted to ditch any OSL work on it as well, which now that I'm finished I think was maybe a poor choice. Overall, not my best work by a long shot, but I'm happy to get her finished and on the gaming table.

Candy

Another ridiculously small model. This is definitely stretching my skills to paint these tiny models and to do it to the best of my abilities. I'm enjoying the challenge though, and I can honestly say that I never really felt like I just wanted to "be done" with this model. It has a certain sort of fun to it due to the pose and implied story. Unlike the studio scheme, I wanted to capture a more realistic skin tone and more innocent looking appearance while still maintaining a hint of malicious intent. In hindsight, I think having the eyes looking to the other direction would have been better (since the scissors would have been more "behind" her), but I still like how this turned out.

What went well:
* The eyes looking to the side gave a bit more of a scheming look to her.
* The overall composition turned out ok, although there is a something I can't quite pin down as wrong. Maybe someone will notice and let me know.
* Lots of details! I really spent the time to pick out the little details on this model rather than gloss over them. I feel it really helped the overall appearance and yet it doesn't look too "busy".
* Lots of happy accidents! I'll point these out later, but there were a number of happy accidents that happened.

What could have been better:
* Blending on this small scale is still difficult. There are a few spots I'm not terribly happy with (shirt and skin for example).
* Mounting to the base just didn't work out. I knew it would look like she was somewhat floating, but there wasn't much I could do. I either needed to file the bottom of her shoes down more, have her leaning forward, or just go with it. In the end I decided not to stress over it and just do my best to minimize it without doing surgery or making her look like she was going to fall over.

Ok, now it's time to talk about "happy accidents" and what I learned while doing this model. Typically when I paint, I tend to focus on a particular area and base, shade and highlight, before moving on to another area. Then at a later point, I'll go back and clean up things that need some adjustment. While I was working on Candy, specifically her face, I had a number of happy accidents along the way. Rather than correcting them at the time, I decided to just leave them and I'd address them later. The main ones were the corner of her mouth (her left) had a little extra dark shading to it, and her eyes were off center when I painted the irises. Once I was done with the first pass of work on the face, I noticed that these (and other subtle "mistakes") led to a more mischievous expression. So the lesson I learned? Sometimes the small mistakes should be left until later when the overall composition of the model is more assessable.

Anyway, my long weekend is nearing a close. Time to get Pandora primed before I have to start tackling my weekend tasks that I've been putting off.

Lady Justice vs Ramos

Just a quickie battle report here. Played two incredibly fun games of Malifaux today with Henry. I was fielding the Lady Justice box set and he was fielding the Ramos box. Both games were to the wire and I can honestly say we are really starting to get the hang of the game. We played both games in under 4 hours!

The first game pitted Ramos with a Reconnoiter mission against Lady J with a Claim Jump mission. We were quickly battling in the middle and the Steamborg was really bringing the hurt train. However Lady J is a powerhouse in melee and made short work of the mechanical monstrosity. At that point it was a matter of mopping up, and the Judge was able to deliver some serious pain to Ramos. Ironically though, it was the Slow To Die attack from a Death Marshall that really put the nail in the proverbial coffin.

In the second game, Lady J was charged to Assassinate Ramos while he was trying to perform a rapid Treasure Hunt. Again, the Steamborg brought a pain train, nearly killing all three Death Marshalls in one turn. Lady J quickly held off the Arachnids from making off with the Treasure. This one was a nail biter! At one point Ramos had Lady J down to 1 damage point left. Then she and the Judge rallied back and nearly killed Ramos. Through some judicious use of soulstones to stay alive, Henry averted a loss and pulled out a tie as the game to a close after turn six, thwarting my attempt to pull out the victory.

There were a number of highlights in these games. First, we played two games in under 4 hours! Second, we really have a better handle on the rules and there were no significant rules questions that came up that we couldn't handle. For only being game four, those two points are pretty huge.

I really really enjoyed playing Lady J's crew. It was very entertaining and I felt like I had lots of good options. As entertaining as Pandora is, she's more tedious to plan out. Having more terrain on the board really helped as well. Unlike WM/H, this game plays well with lots of terrain since it really is a skirmish based game. Anyhow, I'm very much looking forward to my next game of Malifaux already!

Allegiant of the Order of the Fist

I love long weekends. Nothing like a three day weekend to get out of a painting funk. Work has been kicking my ass lately and so it was nice to round out my week with an evening of painting. I had his guy primed and decided to just start working on him last night. I was just aiming at tabletop quality and to get him done fairly fast, but it was still surprising to me to finish him off in about 4 hours. It would have been faster but I was watching the latest disc of Torchwood that came from Netflix.

Anyway, I'm skipping my normal painting analysis this time. I got him painted fast, and I'm happy with the quality. I didn't want to go overboard since this guy isn't in my "my paint awesome" category. He's more in my "must collect everything for Protectorate" category which has pretty much stopped being an obsessive thing for me now.

At this point I'm down to just the Avatar for all my PP models. I'm sure that will change next time I hit the LGS. Anyway, it's time to get back to my Wyrd stuff and perhaps working on the Avatar conversion some more.