Death Marshal #3

Last of the three Death Marshals! This one had some additional work on the magical flames coming out of the coffin, but otherwise he was pretty much done from the assembly-line work on all three.

What went well:
* Painting all 3 together for the initial work, and then working them individually helped a lot. It also helps that it was only a group of 3 of them, rather than 6 or 10 like I'm used to with WM/H.
* The coffins. Based on the feedback, the coffins obviously worked out quite well. I'm probably happiest with them over everything else about these models.
* Different, but uniform. I feel like I did a pretty decent job of keeping a uniform tone to them all, but also captured the unique details of each pose.

What could have been better:
* Faces and skin in general were not my best work. I think some additional color would have helped, but I just didn't quite get that pasty-goth kind of look that I wanted.
* Being clumsy. I mean seriously... I dropped the one model off my desk. I broke the arm off the jumping one when attempting to pin him to the coffin. I have expected to accidentally spill a pot of paint on the third one. At least the recovery processes weren't so bad.

Well, 3 more down from my Malifaux backlog! Eventually I'll get there I'm sure. These models, like the entire line, were a joy to paint. Not that I dislike the PP line, but I definitely have a more consistently pleasant painting experience with the Wyrd line. At least so far that is. Pandora's avatar form is up next so we'll see how that goes.

Death Marshal #2

The second of the three. Some minor trivia about this one... When I was clipping him off of the basing pin, he slipped out of my hand and fell off my desk to the hardwood floor. It's the rare times like these that make me re-think my standing-height desk and hardwood floors. *sigh*

This one was a little disappointing to attach since it sort of floats a bit above the coffin unfortunately. Otherwise it was pretty easy. I have to admit this is my favorite pose of the three of them too.

Highborn Tactics: Initial Battle Report

I was originally just going to write a battle report for a game I played on Tuesday night. However, the post quickly started to grow and take on a life of its own. So instead, I'm going to do a series of posts with my thoughts about the Highborn mercenary contract. This is sort of a departure from my normal painting posts since it deals specifically with the Warmachine game itself, so for any of you visitors out there looking for painting posts, don't fret, I'm still working on painting projects. This is just a cathartic exercise for myself. For this first post in the series, I'll focus specifically on the battle report. Regarding the photo: please note, there was a lot of proxying in this battle since we were both trying out some new stuff that we don't own yet.

The Setup:
Mission: Overrun
Khador (Lance): Zerkova (tier 4), 2 Berzerkers, Marauder, Doom Reavers (6+UA) x2, Greylords, 2 Koldun Lords
Mercs (me): Ashlynn, Mariner, Vanguard, Devil Dogs (10), Mangler (JM'd by Devil Dogs), Forgeguard (10), Dougal, Bokur

The Throwdown:
The Zerkova tier 4 list was crazy. Khador won the initiative and went first, which meant the Doomreavers were on my side of the table on round 1, and the jacks were already touching the control zone. Talk about being in my face. From there things went from bad to worse. The Doomreavers kept making tough rolls and destroying any plans I had to pronto the Mangler around and into the flank. On the other side, the Forgeguard went down like a house of cards. Eventually as I started to thin out the Doomreavers though, the jacks started rolling in and causing even more problems. In the battle of attrition, it wasn't going well for the mercs. However, Dougal and Ashlynn were the stars of the show, surviving long enough to clear out the left flank of Doomreavers and sneak around into the control zone. Eventually Ashlynn survived just long enough (by keeping Admonition up and camping 5 focus) to sneak around, ignoring the jacks, and get a run on Zerkova to finish the job. This was, however, a large piece of luck. At that point, only Ashlynn, Dougal and 1 Devil Dog were left for the mercs, while Khador still had 3 fully functional jacks, a Koldun Lord, a Doomreaver, and a Greylord. I have to point out that originally an abnormal dice roll finisher off Ashlynn beforehand, but we decided to ignore it and play it out, so it's actually a combination win/loss.

The Dice:
I think it important to note that Lance's dice rolling was on fire. On the Ashlynn feat round it was almost moot from the number of high dice rolls. Doomreavers were making lots of tough rolls, and generally the luck was with him. I on the other hand had medium to low luck on dice rolls. Not abysmal, but below average. However, the dice rolls alone were not what put the merc army through the meat grinder.

The Takeaway:
Zerkova is not a closer, and that's basically what kept me alive. Despite the amazing dice for Khador, that's not what crushed my army. The Forgeguard were completely outmatched by the Doomreavers, with their (at best) 18 arm not affording them any protection against pow 13 weaponmasters. The merc jacks were also pretty outclassed by the Doomreavers. And without enough ranged shooting, the Doomreavers were mostly left unchecked. In hindsight, I think that putting Quicken on the Devil Dogs would have been smarter than putting it on the Forgeguard, but even then the matchup was poor. I was at least hoping to pronto the Mangler into a good position and lay out some serious hurt, but that didn't work out either.

Next post: Units available to Highborn...

Death Marshal #1

This is the first of the three Death Marshals. I'll wait until I've completed all three to do a complete recap of the entire painting experience For now I'll just note some specific things about this model.

For the base, I needed to create a more obvious reason for the coffin to be resting in the way that it was, so I painted up a piece of pumice to look like a rock and rested the coffin on it. Some specific small details that I also rounded out are highlighting the static grass with some pure white, and putting a bit of a shadow on the top of the coffin around where his coat hangs.

Immovable Objects vs Cygnar and Mercs

Sunday I was host to a 2-on-2 game of Warmachine, and it was a really fun time. It was 35pts each of assassination goodness. Sorry about the terrible pictures. I forgot to switch off macro-mode and it screwed them all up, but I didn't realize it until I uploaded them today.

The Lists:
Team Awesome:

Cygnar (Aaron): Stryker, Lancer, Stormclad, Defender, Long Gunners (6), Stormblades (6), Journeyman Warcaster, Squire
Mercs (me): Madhammer, 2 Blasters, Basher, Herne & Jonne, Gun Mages (6 + Officer), Nyss Hunters (10), Dougal, Reinholdt, Stannis

Team Immovable Object:

Trolls (Henry): eMadrak, Mauler, Axer, Champs (5), Krielstone Bearer (4 + Elder), Fennblades (10), Fell Caller
Khador (Lance): eSorcha, Behemoth, Devastator, War Dog, Fenris, Widowmakers, Widowmaker Marksman, eEiryss, Koldun Lord, Harlan

The Throwdown:
Rather than try to recall a turn-by-turn replay of the game, I'll hit some highlights. On one flank the Nyss faced off against the Widowmakers and eEiryss near the stream. On the other flank, Fenris and Harlan faced off against Stannis and the Long Gunners. In the middle, an impressive troll brick formed up with Champs in the center, and the beast on one end, while the Behemoth and Devastator took up the other end of the line. Behind that line were the Krielstones, eMadrak, and the Fennblades, while eSorcha stood carefully behind a wall further back. On the other side in the middle was a mish-mash of all the Mercs and Cygnar.

Some of the highlights from the battle:
* The Behemoth got plenty of good scatters with the mortars, taking out 4 of the 7 gun mages on the first round.
* Jonne laid out some great template action, taking out eEiryss, the War Dog, and some Fennblades on Madhammer's feat turn.
* Concentrated attacks from the Cygnar/Merc force took out both Troll beasts before they could get into the fray, negating eMadrak's fury generation potential.
* Stannis and the Long Gunners held their flank like champs. By the end of the game, Stannis had racked up 5 kills: Fenris (after being dismounted), Harlan Versh, 2 Fennblades, and a Fell Caller. Two of those he killed on defensive strikes!
* Although the Basher got to grand slam the Devastator into the Behemoth, eSorcha's follow-up feat round was crushing, leveling the Basher, a Blaster, and the Lancer all in one turn.
* eMadrak's feat was brutal, with a single Fennblade killing almost all the Long Gunners, not to mention the champs nearly getting a solid run on Stryker.

In the end, eSorcha went down first. She was just a bit too close and Stryker caught her with an earthquake. At that point it was a concentrated ranged effort by a large contingent of models to pile on enough damage to finish her off. eMadrak went down a couple rounds later, but only after another extremely focused effort along with a key earthquake hit on a nearby Fennblade. It's important to note that Team Awesome, although awesome, didn't have the hard hitting power needed to really punch through the Devastator and Behemoth. Both of those jacks remained relatively untouched the entire game. It was merely the concerted efforts of the Basher and Gun Mages to keep those jacks at bay by pushing/slamming them back that prevented them from causing massive casualties.

The Closing Thoughts:
[Note: The following closing thoughts are, let's say, paraphrased]
* Scott: Wow dang! That was a ton of fun! And Stannis is just the man.
* Henry: What the heck? Where'd this Stannis guy come from? I mean seriously, taking out a Fell Caller on a defensive strike! Crazy! I'd heard the legends of Stannis but didn't imagine it was all true.
* Lance: STANNIS!!!!!
* Aaron: At first I was concerned about that one flank, but then Stannis rolled in and provided the kind of leadership you only see in a Conan movie.

I'm sure the above quotes will garner a comment or two. In all fairness, here's a list of MVP's for the game:
* Mercs: Stannis - For being an outright stud and killing 5 dudes.
* Cygnar: Stryker - For bravely stepping up with the earthquakes, even after his arc node was down.
* Khador: Behemoth - For generally being terrifying, and mortaring the heck out of stuff, along with wrecking the Basher in nearly a single hit (eSorcha feat round, charge attack did 24 damage in one hit).
* Trolls: Champs - Cause nothing takes a licking and keeps on hitting like Champs.

From the Desk: Death Becomes Them

Work has been really crazy lately, so my painting pace is behind where I'd like to be, but I still managed to get some work done on the Death Marshals. I got them worked to this point with basically just cleanup work and the coffin flames left to do. I decided that the best way to tackle the remaining work is to base and finish them individually from here on out so that I can focus more on each one's unique details. I'll post them each individually as I complete them.



In other news, I got a 2-on-2 game of Warmachine in yesterday (for which I'll post a battle report tomorrow morning), and I finished watching the first season of The Last Airbender. I really enjoyed the series. It's probably the little kid in me that enjoys it so much.

Also, as a part of my normal scanning around for sources of inspiration, I found this rendition of Wyrd's Perdita that is just fabulous. Of particular interest to me is the cactus on the base. So small, and yet so well rendered!

From the Desk: The Last Paintbender

Quick post before getting some sleep. I managed to carve out some additional painting time today and continued to work on the Death Marshalls. Terribly reflective photo, but it gives you the general idea. I worked the pants, boots, and coats (in that order). Getting the pants and coats done gives me a real sense of accomplishment and progress on the models, even though there's a ton of detail work left to do.

I also started watch Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series. It's pretty entertaining so far, although I've only watched a couple episodes so far. I also watched the Miniature Mentor series with Jennifer Haley on Monochrome techniques. It was pretty interesting to see that she doesn't thin her paint very much in comparison to other people that they've featured before.

At the request of a previous comment, here's my notes on how I painted the coffins. It's sort of a quick summary of the paints and techniques and not a super detailed set of steps.
0) Prime in white - This is important since I started with washes
1) 2 washes of RPP Desert Tan (about 8:1 dilution)
2) wash of P3 Beast Hide
3) wash of P3 Gun Corps Brown
4) controlled wash of P3 battlefield brown
5) WP highlighting of RPP Desert Tan (following zenithal highlighting)
6) thin staining of VGC Sepia Ink
7) controlled wash shading of VGC Black
8) additional WP highlighting of P3 Beast Hide and RPP Desert Tan
9) 2BB P3 Battlefield Brown around the chains to make them stand out a bit more
That's my best recollection of what I did. The multiple layers help create more variation of color, and I didn't worry about blending too smooth since the color shifts help reinforce the wood grain look.
The NMM chains were a bit simpler:
1) Base with VGC Cold Grey
2) 2 washes of VGC Black (3:1 dilution using part water and part flow medium)
3) Highlight mix of VGC Cold Grey and Ghost Grey (1:1)
4) Further highlight VGC Ghost Grey
5) Further highlight VGC White

Anyway, sleep is calling to me since I have another hectic week ahead of me.

From the Desk: Coffins

It occurred to me the other day that I haven't been posting much on my blog lately except when I have a finished model or an entertaining battle report. Now in all fairness, life has been kicking my butt pretty hard lately, so I've had a decent excuse for not posting more. However there's a fine line between being busy and being lazy. So, to combat laziness, I'm going to start posting more in-progress stuff and random notes. In order to give myself more of an excuse to do so, I'll also give mini-reviews of the junk I watch while painting. And when I use the word "junk", it really is junk sometimes. Netflix streaming is awesome, but for some reason my MST3K sub-brain takes over during the movie picking process and I end up watching a lot of really stupid movies.


Today I carved out a bunch of time to start working on the Death Marshalls. More specifically, I worked on their coffins. I basically used a combination of washes, 2BB, wet palette, and some basic point highlighting. The only thing amazing really is the amount of time I spent on them. I'm really trying to lavish more time on all the Wyrd models and these guys are very fun to work on. I do have to say, the time I spent speed-painting Cryx models using wash techniques really did pay off in terms of being more confident with washes. I feel like that really helped me get a good base coat on these coffins the way I wanted it.

Today I watched two things. First was an episode of the TV series The Greatest American Hero. It was just as silly as I remember it being. I also watched an installment of Miniature Mentor about battle damage. This was very good. I highly recommend the series to anyone looking to learn new skills. The camera work continues to impress me. This particular tutorial around battle damage was definitely informative, but I can say that the amount of battle damage is a bit more than my preference.

Madhammer vs Mortenebra (round 1)

I labeled this as "round 1", because I highly suspect that there will be more games of this combination in the future. Henry and I had a blast in this game. Anyway, on to the battle report:

The Setup:
Scenario: 50pts, Assassination
Me: Madhammer, Basher, 2 Blasters, Nyss Hunters (10), Forgeguard (10), Alexia, Gun Mages (6+UA), Herne & Jonne, Dougal, Bokur, Aiyana & Holt
Henry: Mortenebra, Deathjack, Harrower, Nightmare, Biles (10), Pistol Wraith, Warwitch Siren, Withershadow, Gorman

The Throwdown:
This was actually a pretty fast battle, despite my swarm of infantry and it being 50pts. I won the initiative and went first, rushing towards the middle at my typical stumpy-dwarf pace. I'd positioned the Forgeguard centrally with Nyss on one side and Alexia/Gun Mages on the other. The Cryx force surged in, slightly favoring the side with Alexia and the Gun Mages, mostly due to the terrain I suspect, but also because the Deathjack was further up due to AD. I pushed in closer, used Madhammer's feat, and took a few shots. I rolled good damage on the Harrower, but unfortunate location rolls meant it didn't lose any systems. This is where things nearly got completely out of hand. You'll notice in this first picture my positioning after my 2nd turn. And then...

...the Harrower rolled in. I had not really thought through just how effective the Harrower could be against infantry. Between threshering on the first attack and buying extra attacks with the accumulated soul tokens (and continuing to chain based on those soul tokens), it cleared out the entire unit of Forgeguard and 1 Nyss. Geez! The Nightmare then trampled in, killing 2 more Nyss and buying an attack to kill Aiyana. And then the Deathjack rolled in and clobered Alexia and a Blaster. It was a pretty hammering round to say the least. However, victory still lingered within my grasp!

First the Bokur moved up out of the Basher's path. Then Madhammer advanced, put Redline on the Basher, and took a case-cracker shot at Mortenebra putting some damage on her. Then the Basher slamed the Harrower back 8"(!), taking out both it and the Pistol Wraith at the same time. This cleared a path for the second Blaster, which advanced and sprayed Mortenebra and due to the powerful shot, put some more damage on her. Then the Gun Mages advanced around, did a little clean up, and more specifically took out the Warwitch. This cleared the path for the Nyss who then charged in and finished the job. It took leveraging everything left in my army in order to pull it out, but that's what a "No Quarter"-style win is all about.

The Post-Game:
Man what a fun battle! It was Henry's first time running Mortenebra, and only my 5th or so game with Madhammer. It was fast and furious, but very entertaining. I think there were a couple key things that contributed to the fun from my perspective: First, the caster selections are entertaining. I've had discussions with multiple players now about how some casters suck the fun out of the game because they shut down armies and general remove your ability to just play your army (eDeneghra, Kreoss, Sorcha, eMagnus, Baldur). Motenebra and Madhammer fall into the category of where their feats boost their own armies rather than handicap (or downright stall) their opponent's army, which keeps things more entertaining. Second, both armies had more of the "toolbox" feel. Lots of features with lots of flexibility, and many choices to make each round.

Now, for the MVP awards:
* The Harrower - Good lord! 11 mans in one activation! 11!!! Level up baby! That whole soul-chaining thing is just badass.
* The Basher - Hooray for getting a slam off! I'm still not 100% convinced he's worth 7pts, but when he pulls off a Redlined slam, it definitely brings home the bacon.
* My dice - I have to acknowledge the fact that my dice didn't betray me, and when I needed to hit, I hit. No tragic rolling of 5 on 3 dice to miss a critical attack or anything like that.

Durgen Madhammer

Rounding out my initial Rhulic battlegroup is Durgen Madhammer. In the first few games that I proxied him, I had a great time, and I'm really looking forward to getting more games in with him. This model presented me with a couple of key options that I feel obligated to point out. First, the visor comes separate and can be positioned as desired, so I opted to go with it closed, mostly because I felt it gave him a slightly more surreal look that I liked better than with the visor open. The second thing was the spare ammo, which I attached to his hip. This came separate as well, and after painting and roughly positioning it, decided to go ahead and include it.

What went well:
* Painting him with the rest of the jacks helped speed up the process as well as create more uniformity to the whole group.
* Using a wet palette for metals was helpful. I wasn't really expecting it, but it was helpful, especially when trying to mix shades of gold and silver together to create better highlight colors. I need to give this some additional practice and see what it will achieve.

What could have been better:
* There are a few places where the metals look a little too cartooney due to too much blacklining contrast. Overall I felt like I got some good practice with metals in, but some of the detailing work is still eluding my skills.

Overall this battlegroup was a lot of fun to do. It also afforded me an opportunity to practice more with doing real metalics, which I personally prefer the look of to NMM. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, and I do acknowledge some very impressive work done with NMM. However I just prefer the look of real metalics and would like to refine my skills with them much much further. Hopefully the experience of using the wet palette will open a new door for me.

Ghordson Basher

Next off the Rhulic assembly line: the Ghordson Basher! This compact but potent creation features a heavy duty smashing front, strong powerful legs, and a tail hitch for a convenient 10-ton towing capacity! Seriously, the tail hitch is probably my favorite feature of the model. It makes me laugh every time I look at it.

This model was worked on at the same time as the Blasters, and Madhammer in order to keep the look fairly consistent. Again, more paint wear to represent usage, and even more verdigris on the bronzes to show extended use in dank humid tunnels.

What went well:
* Painting these at the same time as the rest of the battlegroup really helped keep things looking consistent.

What could have been better:
* The numbering was not quite as crisp, but still readable.
* More challenges with placement on the base, but much more reasonable than the Blasters.
* Flat plates on the legs made for some challenges around zenithal shading choices.

For my own future reference, here's a quick summary of the painting process:
Prime: black
Steels: heavy drybrush Boltgun Metal, wash Badab Black
Bronzes: Shinning Gold, wash Gryphon Sepia, selected wash P3 Turquoise Ink
Verdigris: selected wash Arcane Blue, selected wash Necrotite Green, selected wash VMC Smoke
Reds: (all wet palette) base Skorne Red Base, highlight Khador Red, first shade Skorne Red Base + Meridius Blue (3:1), second shade Umbral Umber
Steels: highlight Boltgun Metal, second highlight Mithril Silver
Bronzes: highlight Shining Gold, second highlight VMC Brass

Grundback Blasters

Fresh off the assembly line: 2 new Grundback Blasters! These nasty little buggers, often referred to as part of the "gun bunny" family, are a part of the Madhammer battlegroup I am currently working on. Although small in size and point cost, I've found them to be an amusing addition to my merc force. Sprays are very potent in MK2, particularly in clearing off infantry from an engaged heavy, and these little guys are champs at that job.

Before talking about painting these, I'd like to mention the assembly. They posed a bit of a challenge in a couple ways. First, their feet are not exactly basing friendly. Big wide flat feet are amusing, but hard to position reasonably, especially when I paint the model off of the based and attach him later. Second, the joints all required pinning as the joins are less than perfect. I ended up doing a combination of pinning and green stuff to get them all together.

As far as painting goes, I decided to go with a metal-and-red scheme, since Madhammer strikes me as a bold sort of fellow. Red is the color of fire, and blasts, and well... more fire! So that's what I decided to go with. Just like the Vanguard, I wanted some battle damage on them so that they appeared used, but not broken down. In order to do the battle damage, I used the same technique as before. Specifically I did all the metals first, with metal everywhere. Then I used the wet palette and added the reds afterwards by controlling the transparency and layering the red on. This gave it a look like the paint was partially worn/blasted off in places. I've become more and more fond of this technique as I use it.

What went well:
* These were fun to paint! Quick, easy, and not at all frustrating (except for the normal tedious nature of bronzes).
* The numbers for each of them, although not Rhulic characters, turned out good. I like the industrial formatting of them.
* The bases worked out great. I used a little red in the shading of the rocks to tie the whole scheme together. My wife even went out of her way to comment on the bases, so I take that as a good sign.

What could have been better:
* More time as usual.
* Better planning around the bases so that they positioned better.

Arcane Tempest Gun Mages

Sometimes I am caught off guard by a model. I think to myself "Wow! I love those! I want to paint those!" If they aren't in my primary factions, then I often wait or look for an opportunity to paint them for someone else. In the case of the Gun Mages, MK2 made them available to the mercenary Highborn contract, which made me very excited. I proxied them one game and found them to be excellent. I rushed out and bought them soon after. I stuck them to bases temporarily and played them unpainted while I was finishing up previous projects. Then I started painting them and... they were tedious. Not just a little tedious. They were painfully tedious. I honestly couldn't explain why either. Painting units is frequently soul-crushing, but these were especially so for some reason. I finished them up, and they aren't great, but they are finished. So it got me thinking... why were they so painfully tedious to paint?

1) Units are tedious. Duh!! Painting a whole unit of models together can be frustrating. So much time gets spent in the beginning and so little progress seems to get made.

2) I primed these white, and I often have a problem with being frustrated with my progress when painting over white. It has to do with the color balance to the eye. I typically don't base coat everything before doing shading and highlighting, so I'll get to this point where half the model is done and the other half is stark white. It makes my eyes angry.

3) Although these models appear like nice simple sculpts, there was something about the color choices I had and the surfaces available that just didn't seem to jive. I think used much more of a brown palette and eliminated the green that I'd have been happier. Unfortunately that didn't become clearer to me until I was nearly done. *sigh*

4) Rushing to get them done obviously got me cranky. I was sick of proxying other models in my battles while I tried to get these guys done. Lesson learned: Don't field something until AFTER it's painted.

Most of this is no revelation to anyone out there I'm sure. This just felt like a chance for me to step back and pay attention to where my own personal desire to paint is gravitating towards and aim more in that direction.

5 Games In One Weekend

Nothing stacks up the fun like a spontaneous visit from a good friend and a full weekend of Warmachine. My buddy Mike came down and brought his Retribution and we managed to get in 5 games! Clearly I'm not going to do a battle report for each, but I'll summarize and hit some highlights. The majority of the games were experiments for both of us to figure out what works best.

The Battles:
The first 3 games I played all Madhammer, and Mike played Kaylyssa and Ravyn (I'm sure I spelled both of those wrong). We played 35 and 50 point games, and both armies tended to be pretty infantry heavy. These games were really helpful learning experiences for both of us. I was trying out all kinds of combinations of mercs with Madhammer to decide what best fit my play style.

The 4th game we played was actually a 2-on-1 game of Madhammer and Ravyn teaming up against Lance's Khador combination of eButcher and eSorcha list of 70pts. This was a seriously pounding battle. Madhammer got killed first, and then eButcher went down next. Then finally eSorcha went down with Ravyn pulling out the win.

The 5th game we played was Mike and I at the LGS, and I rolled out 35pts of Reznik goodness against Ravyn. In a brutal display of punishment for my tactical mistake, Mike nearly assassinated Reznik on the top of turn 2. Reznik was down to 5 damage remaining, and was set on fire! Due to extraordinary luck, he managed to survive and (as the picture above shows), the Avatar brought home the victory. Sorry Mike, but I couldn't help posting the shot of Ravyn trapped in the Avatar's Gaze.

The Highlights:
* The Mage Hunter Strike Force (with the UA) is just crazy awesome. When Ravyn snipes them, it's terrifying. Ignores LOS? Really?!?! Seriously, these guys were MVP's almost every game. Why would you ever not take them?

* Madhammer is super fun to play. I had a great time playing him. He's a toolbox of options and brings some good synergy with some of the other mercs I love to play. I think Mike would agree that putting Primed on Alexia and her Risen was pretty brutal.

* Pairing a Dawnguard Scyir and a light jack made for a pretty nasty flanking team.

* When the Ghordson Basher manages to pull off a slam, it rocks the house. Mine sent eSorcha's bonded Devastator hurtling 7" out of a control zone.

* Stormfall Archers behind a wall of Houseguard Halberdiers was pretty awesome, especially when sniped. I learned the hard way that Ranked Attack now allows anyone else in the army to see through that unit. Very cool stuff!

* No matter what you are, there's a magic threshold of DEF 15 that really improves survivability. Nyss and Gun Mages both tended to do very well for me for that very reason.

* In my book, Madhammer has 2 warcaster attachments: Dougal and Reinholdt. Both are pretty much auto-includes.

Lady Justice

After a long break from the Malifaux models, I have circled back on them. Lady J had been sitting on my desk, primed, for months now and I was feeling guilty for not having even put a spot of paint on her. True to my charter, I spent extra time working on her. She's got some mistakes and problems, but overall I think she turned out fine. I should note, I haven't played a game of Malifaux for quite some time now, but the models still hold my attention.

Also, while working on this model, I used a wet palette the whole time. I'd recently seen the tutorial on Jeremie's video about the wet palette and it gave me just enough extra information to try it out one more time. Rather than just use it for a couple things, I specifically used it for everything except when I needed to make the odd wash or glaze, for which I used the ceramic palette. Overall, I had a very positive experience of the wet palette. Enough to justify buying a better setup to use it more extensively.

What went well:
* Working one area at a time - For this model, I worked on logical section at a time to completion before moving on. For example, I did skin, then shirt, then pants, then hair, etc. This actually worked out quite well for me. The nice thing was seeing a section come to completion before moving on. The hard part was that until I was nearly done, it was hard to get a better sense of how the overall color balance would turn out.
* Wet Palette - This worked out great. Perfectly thinned paints and the ability to keep working with them and re-mixing as I went was super useful. I only wish P3's came in droppers bottles.
* Red Hair - Per my previous post about using Kuler to create swatches, I implemented that swatch in the process of painting the hair. It worked out quite well. I also implemented advice I had gotten from EricJ to "ignore the sculpting of the hair" to a fair degree. How that shook out is that I treated it as a textured surface, but did not use washes to shade it. Instead I used 2BB techniques to shade it as if it was a flat surface. Working over a white primer base and the thinning from the wet palette did the hard work of creating "texture" to it.

What could have been better:
* Chalky finishes - Some regions of the model have a sort of chalky finish to them. I'm starting to learn a bit of why this happens, but I'm still not great with avoiding and/or fixing it. More thin glazes are what I've heard, but I guess I didn't apply enough of them.
* Better use of complimentary colors - I should have thought out my color scheme a bit more ahead of time instead of just deciding as I went. I think the color balance is not all that great, and I did a poor job of using complimentary colors to shade with.
* Silver NMM - It's just not as good as it should have been. Probably needs darker shading.
* Fine details - I had some trouble with some of the fine details and picking them out properly. The belt is an example of where the belt loops and very top of her pants don't have enough distinction between each other for the eye to properly track.

Templar

Very quick post here for the Templar. This wraps up the plastic jack kit. This was most definitely a speed painting job. I have to admit that I really dislike painting these stocky Protectorate jacks. The lines and surfaces of the model are just frustrating and it is hard for me to really get at all excited about it. So, I muscled my way through this one and got it done. This model was definitely painted just for table play. I was going to snap additional pictures of the various configurations, but my camera's battery died and I didn't feel like waiting for it to charge back up.

As a side note of process, in order to paint the various magnetized bits, I put together these little holders. They're just wooden sticks with metal alligator clips on the end for them to stick to.

One last note before I go, there's a definitely one advantage to plastics. When I was getting ready to take it outside to seal it with gloss coat, I accidentally tripped and every part took a 4 foot header to the floor. Amazingly, no damage was incurred to the paint job!

Ok, now it's on to painting something a bit more inspiring to get me energized again.

How To: Using Kuler to Create Color Swatches

I'm starting to appreciate the "science" aspect to painting more and more, especially in regard to color. It's one thing to just slap a base coat down, throw a highlight on, and then wash it with a shading wash. It's another to paint in a way to represent reality. Don't get me wrong, I do my fair share of quick painting to get models on the table, particularly for models I'm primarily painting just to play. However for the last year I've been trying to train my eye to better understand the colors I'm seeing in the real world. It's actually quite fascinating once you stop and look closer. What follows is a new technique I've added to my toolbox to help in that regard. This was inspired by starting to work on the Lady Justice model, and her predominant feature: long flowing red hair. I've tried red hair before and had, at best, mediocre success. Time to step up my game!


The first step was to find a reference photo. A quick Google photo search turns up plenty of options. I scanned a few and settled on this one. I've included the link to the original site, which has nothing to do with painting of course. I won't elaborate too much on why I chose this photo too much. The key reasons are: 1) It matched the tone I was looking for, and 2) It was large enough to provide good detail so that when I load it into Kuler, it would be easy to pick out various color zones. That leads me on to the next step...





Enter the magic of Kuler! There's definitely other ways to accomplish this same goal, but I'm going to use Kuler because it's free and easy. Simply pop it open in a browser, hit "Create", and then "From an Image". Then you upload your reference photo. Kuler will automatically attempt to guess what colors you want for your theme, but that's not why we're here. You'll see that it gives you the image with 5 targets to move around. Simply move the targets around and they will display their target pixel's color at the bottom on the swatch. For this photo, I moved them all to various points of the red hair to get a sense of the color variation. If you want to create a Kuler account, you can save your swatches for future reference.

Something fascinating about red hair is that it isn't really all that "red" most of the time. It's more brown and orange than anything else. The swatch above shows that it's got a lot of flesh and tan tones to it. All of these colors have red components to them, but are not dominantly red.


Armed with my Kuler swatch, I now embark on trying to mimic those colors. I've got a bunch of plasticard pieces sitting around to create actual physical swatches with. As you can see here, what I've done is put down some paint that I think fairly matches the first color from the Kuler swatch. Unfortunately trying to photograph both my laptop screen and the swatch together doesn't do it justice. However, in this case I managed to match pretty closely using just P3 Umbral Umber. I then repeat this process for the other colors of the Kuler swatch until I've filled out my plasticard swatch.

And here's the finished plasticard swatch. I labeled the back for reference. This will definitely come in handy in the future. There's clearly plenty of ways to accomplish this same goal. For example, I've heard of other painters using notebooks to keep notes of particular color builds. For me, having swatch cards like this will come in very handy I think. This will also be useful as I start to work on Lady Justice's hair.

Vanguard

The Vanguard is an intriguing model to assemble and paint. It has sort of a hunched pose to it, with its legs bent down quite a lot. I'm not really a huge fan of the legs and considered trying to rebuild them, but in the end it seemed like too much trouble. I can always to a second one eventually if I get that motivated. Otherwise it's a pretty nice model. The shield afforded a nice opportunity to put some battle damage on it to represent its shield guard ability. I didn't want to overdo it, and I think I captured just the right amount of battle damage. Other than the right hand, I decided to avoid any battle damage anywhere else, to represent how it was doing its job using the shield and not its body.

Nothing much extra to say here. It's really another speed paint job, but I tried to put some decent zenithal highlighting practices to work on it.

Yay for Mercenaries!

Another slightly delayed and pictureless battle report. I got two games in the other day with my merc selection and these were two incredibly fun games. Here's the highlights...

Battle 1 - 35pts:
Me: Ashlynn, Vanguard, Nomad, 2 Forgeguard(6), Gun mages + UA, Herne & Jonne, Dougal, Bokur and Stannis.
Henry: eDoomshaper, Mulg, Axer, Mauler, Fennblades(10), Fell Caller, Chronicler, Swamp Gobbers.

This battle was actually more about testing out stuff than a serious throwdown. I won the initiative and used the opportunity to rush up towards the middle, putting Quicken on one unit of Forgeguard and Admonition on Ashlynn. The trolls likewise rushed forward and spread out, with the Chronicler putting that loathsome song on the Fennblades to knockdown enemies that kill them. Both of us had positioned troopers in the way of our heavy hitters. At this point I had a decision to make. Due to the positioning of my heavy hitters and the threat of Mulg and the Mauler, I decided to take a sort of balanced advance plan. Dougal used his mini-feat and then his action to boost up Jonne's gun. Herne and Jonne opened up, clearing out multiple Fennblades. Then the Gun mages opened up, killing some more Fennblades and also managing to push back the Mauler and Mulg by 3" with thunderbolt strikes. The Forgeguard then charged and eliminated all but 3 of the remaining Fennblades which failed their command check at that point. Stannis moved up as well taking a shot, and then the Bokur and Vanguard took up flanking defensive positions for Ashlynn who advanced and camped her 4 focus. I specifically move her up and told Henry to go for it with Mulg and see if he can kill her. Boy was that a mistake! Mulg was easily over 12" away, and probably more like 14-15". The Mauler advanced and 2-handed threw Stannis at the Vanguard, just barely catching Ashlynn and knocking her down. It was super borderline and probably a 50/50 roll, but I gave it to him to taunt him into committing Mulg. Then eDoomshaper put wild agression and rush on Mulg and feated. From there it was just a whirlwind of obscene abuse. Mulg charged in and started clobering his way through things, using overtake and goad to close in easily on Ashlynn with 4 fury remaining. At that point it was academic.

In review, I could have played this game much more conservatively and feated with Ashlynn and hung back, but it was an interesting test. Mulg is a serious beatstick, and even without eDoomshaper's feat Mulg's overtake would have gotten him there which is just frightening. The arguments about his being overcosted are now firmly in the realm of being ignored by me. Sure, eDoomshaper is a great combo for him, but the overtake was really the star of the show for him.

Battle 2 - 50pts:
Me: Fiona, Buccaneer, Vanguard, Alexia, Gun mages + UA, Mariner (marshalled by Gun mage officer), Aiyana & Holt, Dougal, Nyss Hunters (10), Bokur, Sea Dogs (6 + 3 riflemen).
Henry: eAsphyxious, Reaper, 2 Deathrippers, Wrathe, Soulhunters(5), Tartarus, Bane Knights(10), Withershadow, Skarlock, Gorman, and probably other stuff but I forget.

This battle turned into a mercenary toolbox display. Again I won the initiative (shocking), and rushed forward, putting Nanokian Brand on the Mariner, Teglesh Mark on the Buccaneer, and Roth's Mercy on the Nyss. The Cryx army moved into position, with the Soulhunters running to engage the Nyss, and Asphyxious throwing an AOE and killing Aiyana, Holt, and 3 gun mages. It was time to show what mercs can really do. The first challenge was clearing a bit more of a hole in the middle, so gun mages and sea dogs opened up with a hail of bullets and cleared out a couple key bane knights. Alexia also used the opportunity to command a Bane Knight to kill his buddy. Then the Buccaneer, fueled with 2 focus, attempts the assault charge on Asphyxious. This went wrong in a couple ways. First, Asphixious was sitting in a Gorman cloud and thus def 17, so the Buccaneer needed a 12 to hit, which he missed. Second, he ended up in melee range of a Bane Knight, thus negating his Teglesh Mark. Doh! Despite the failed attempt to knock down the enemy caster, the Mariner stands firm, takes aim, and fires a sniped shot. I'd like to point out that with Dougal's mini-feat and snipe from the Gun Mage marshalling, he's got a 20" range with that deck gun. He had to use his boost in order to hit, but BAM, he laid some damage on the caster, which is always good news. However, I now faced a dire situation. The Nyss managed to cut down a couple Soulhunters and keep the flank held but I was going to be in trouble the next round, so Fiona marched forward, camped on her 5 focus, and used her feat. The following Cryx round was hilarious. The -1 die prevented taking hardly any casualties, and forced the Cryx to try and tie up key things in melee. The poor Buccaneer got blinded by Gorman and then cut into little pieces by the Withershadow, which promptly re-assembled him into a bonejack, the first time I'd ever seen this happen. The Bane Knights ran up and engaged the Gun Mages in melee, and the remaining Soul Hunters engaged the remaining Nyss. Tartarus, in a rash display of anger, charged forward and threshered to kill half of Alexia's remaining risen. Asphyxious laid out some spell action through the arcnode, but failed to hit his target. Due to an unfortunate dice roll, the Reaper failed to hit the Mariner with his harpoon, and thus 2 more focus went to waste. All-in-all, Fiona's feat made the Cryx army cry trying to hit def 13-15 troops on a single die to hit. There was much smiling on the merc side of the table. At this point, I could see how things would eventually turn out: Cryx would grind me down. It was time to pull out all the stops. Fiona dropped all her upkeeps and held her 7 focus (no bonus due to poor positioning of sea dogs on my part). I had a narrow path down the middle that needed to be cleared for my master plan. The Nyss cut down a key Soulhunter to clear the left side of the lane. The sea dogs ganged up and cleared a key Bane Knight on the right side of the lane. Then Alexia slid to the side, sacked a risen to boost herself up, and commanded Tartarus to do the unthinkable: walk back and stab Asphyxious. Success! Tartarus turned around, walked forward, and brought his blade down on his master. At the command of his client Fiona, the Bokur then ran up the lane to 4" behind Tartarus and smiled with confusion as hit orders. Then Fiona steps up to the plate. She Teglesh Mark's the Bokur and promptly starts rolling out the Influences on Tartarus. Slash! Slash! And down goes the evil Asphyxious at the hand of his own minion!!

I can't express just how amusing this battle was. Henry was cracking up at the amusement that was my merc force. For me it was like one of those huge Christmases where you just keep opening presents with new surprises. The flexibility of Fiona continues to amuse me, and her feat doesn't pose the same logistical challenge to me that Ashlynn's does which makes her less difficult to plan around. The entire army brought such a toolbox of options for me that it would be hard to pick an MVP, but Alexia is definitely on the short list. I'm very excited about mercs and really feel like MK2 has brought them up to a respectable level of competitiveness.

Anyway, thanks for bearing with another long battle report. This weekend I'm hoping to get some serious painting time in, and perhaps even another battle.

Resurgence Recap

Resurgence has come and gone (a few days ago now), and the event was a blast! This is unfortunately a photo-free post of the event. All 3 of my games took the full time allowed and I didn't get a chance to wander around and take shots of the other games going on. Even my games were intense enough that I didn't remember to take pictures during
the battle. Overall that was a good thing though.

The Event:
This tournament was a hit. There were 14 players there, several of which I had never met before. In talking with some of them, there were a few that had played years before, but were just now getting back into it due to MK2. And despite opening it up to Hordes players as well, it was an entirely Warmachine event. I'm not positive on the exact breakdown, but there was pretty good representation for all the factions, looking roughly like this: Cygnar - 2, Protectorate - 2, Khador - 4, Cryx - 3, Retribution - 2, Mercs - 1. I have to give a shout out to my LGS as well. There's a different event organizer now and he had the tournament ready to go right on schedule. And other than a couple hiccups with assigning matches in rounds 2 and 3, everything went pretty well for being a new organizer.

My List:
25pts: Kreoss, Crusader, Devout, Zealots (10+UA), Choir (6), Knights Exemplar, Vassal, 3 Wracks
35pts: Kreoss -> eKreoss, + Avatar
50pts: Crusader -> Fire of Salvation, + Repenter, Hierophant, Orin Midwinter, Paladin, Covenant
I had a couple key goals to my list planning. First, I wanted to get the Avatar in as soon as possible, which meant I had to do some jiggery-pokery with swapping in eKreoss at the 35pt level. That also meant I needed to make sure the core of my list was already contained in the 25pt list, including the Vassal. Second, I wanted to have a serious Menoth knot, with an array of denial that would cause serious problems. It doesn't really come together until the 50pt level though, at which point the knot is in full swing with lots of spell denial, and knockdown protection.

My Matches:
My first match was against a pretty typical Deneghra list. This battle was actually pretty close, but my opponent played his army extremely well and with impeccable timing of his abilities. The match actually came very close to being won on scenerio by myself, but I ran out of time.
My second match was against the other Protectorate player who had brought a Testament list with lots of troops. Not surprisingly, we tarpitted in the middle and just kept punching each other in the face. I don't really feel like either of us had the upper hand during the match. Again, we ran out of time during my turn, but this time it would have been hard to actually clear the middle zone. In a longer time game I would have been able to grind it out pretty easily.
My third match was against Henry and his eSkarre list. We'd played almost this same exact battle previously. It really is a painful match because eSkarre's feat is just brutal, especially in a smaller model count battle. I ended up forfeiting a bit before time ran out because there was no way for me to really pull it out. The highlight of the battle though was when the Deathjack marches up, arm locks the Avatar (preventing both Enliven and the shield bonus), and the promptly attacks a zealot standing next to it which was Sancrosanct. Bam! Knocked down! There was much laughing at the moment as Henry realized his folly. Still though, a well played game.
Overall the frustrating thing about my first two matches was losing the initiative and then running out of time during my 3rd turn. In the case of the first match it probably made the difference between a win and a loss. The whole "dice down" thing really isn't my favorite thing. My biggest criticism of the event was that there could have been less time sorting out the pairings between rounds, and spend more time actually on the rounds.

The Results:
In the end it turned out that Retribution won the event. I was pretty shocked actually. The final match was a battle between Khador and Retribution. Unfortunately I was unable to get much more detail about the championship battle. I think that the specifics of the scenario caused a number of ties to take place, and I noticed that Retribution player was routinely done early with all his matches, which means it was likely that he was pulling off assassinations every time. I myself won the Protectorate coin, despite a pretty dismal record. I have to say, I really like the coins as rewards instead of the trophies from the SR4 tournaments.

The Community:
Overall I was pretty impressed with the players there. Everyone seemed to have a good time and I didn't see any serious rules debates. All 3 of my matches were quite civil and very enjoyable.
A shout out goes to Henry for being our Press Ganger lite, in the absence of our previous PG who has moved on to a different game now. *sigh*
One final note was that I got to be a part of a little community support behavior myself there. One of our Cygnar players had a Stormlance model that had broken right above the hoof. So I brought my trusty pinning kit (dremel, brass rod, glue, files, etc) and did a quick repair job for him.