Shaping Up!

Sorry... bad pun. Doomshaper is done! 9.5 hours of half torture, half fun. The photo is ok, but the raised rune details on the leather armor got washed out. I used the P3 Blighted Gold on them and they have sort of that mild-metalic look to them that reflects differently at different angles. I totally love the look of it, but it does have a tendency to not show up on first glance, as the photo demonstrates. Anyway, with the finishing of Doomshaper, I now have all my troll models painted, and I'm a mere 2 models away from fully painted!

Draggin Out Doomshaper

Over 6 hours of painting on him so far. For being a model I'll probably never field, I'm spending alot of time on him. It's turning out pretty good so far though. I'm really trying to work my blending skills to the max, and practice being preciese on edges where possible. Remaining parts to paint are: stone at the end of the staff, scrolls on his back, toe/finger nails, face warts, and the numerous scroll straps. Anyway, again, time for sleep. Hopefully I can finish him in the next couple days.

Doomshaper Disaster?

I've never had a model give me so many problems before I've been taking every precaution I normally would, but I've managed to drop Doomshaper 3 times now. One time his right arm broke off, and another time his left arm broke off. Fortunately both were at the glue points, but still it's incredibly frustrating having to re-glue and touch up paint that gets chipped. Fortunately in another half hour of painting I can glue him to the base and make him a bit more stable. In the mean time, I'm actually trying to do a primo painting job for my skills as best I can. I could probably do better, but the details on this model are pretty intense which make it hard to detail every bit, especially since I've tried to paint him fully assembled instead of in pieces. Anyway, time for sleep.

CMON

I created a CoolMiniOrNot account last night and posted the pic of Alexia. It will be interesting to see how some of my figures rate on that site. Overall it doesn't seem too terrible for how they rate minis, but really, it's just a rough gague and I don't plan to take it too seriously. I just figured since I won't be making it to KublaCon this year for their painting competition, I might as well enter the CMON arena.

I haven't touched a brush since I finished the Mauler. I'm starting to get the shakes!

Mauled

And then there were 3... The Dire Troll Mauler is finished! He was about 7.5 hours of work total. Using Lance's distance rating scheme (which is basically the distance at which the model still looks like a good paint job), I'd rate this guy as between 12-18". He was alot of fun to paint, similar to the Ogryn Bokur, due to having alot of muscle and skin to blend. It's not a super paint job of course, but it was fun and good practice anyway. The base was a slightly different experience for me. I pretty much fully assembled the base (painted, grass, leaves, etc) before mounting the Mauler on it and it worked out pretty well.

Today's lesson is, don't stay up till 4am playing some stupid computer game just because it feels like the game is almost over. Stupid game. I got a pretty minimal amount of sleep and it left me with a headache and feeling mildly sick all day. This bothers me mostly cause I think of how many hours I spent playing that stupid game instead of painting. I could have literally painted an entire model instead of playing that last mission of that stupid game. Anyway, lesson learned, moving on.

3 models left till fully painted! I'm expecting to cave and order new models before I finish all 3. Next on deck is Hoarluck Doomshaper, and the second Ogryn Bokur is sitting in bits waiting for a vision of how to convert it to strike me.

Victorious Defeat!

I played in a coin tournament at my LGS on Saturday. There were only 6 people in it unfortunately. It was a 3 round, 750 point Steamroller 3 (beta) set up. On the minus side, I only won 1 of my 3 games, and one of those I got completely humiliated. On the plus side though, I got a Protectorate coin (since I was the only Protectorate player there), and 2 of the 3 games I played I got the pleasure of very fun and friendly opponents. Here's the sum-up of the rounds:

Round 1: Assassins - Opponent: Cryx (Skarre). This one came down to VP's, and I basically pulled it out something like 9 to 6 by totally wrecking the Deathjack in the last round. Severius' feat and Eiryss were a constant threat to the Deathjack, but it was Gorman and the remaining Zealots that buried it in a single round. My opponent was totally civil and fun to play against though.

Round 2: No Man's Land - Opponent: Khador (eVlad). This battle was actually quite close, but eVlad and the Uhlans were pretty humbling. They wrecked a guardian and a castigator in a single charge assault. On the flipside though, they are totally a one-trick pony (no pun intended). After their charge I killed 3 of them and they broke and turned tail to run off the board. I think I got rolled a bit by not knowing all the calvalry rules, but it wasn't that important.

Round 3: Uh, the 3 control point one - Opponent: Cryx (eSkarre). This was the totally humiliating battle. I got utterly crushed. It wasn't even close. I lost something like 26 to 4 on VPs. My opponent was fun to play against though and I felt like I got defeated by a clearly superior strategist. His army was very slick and he executed very well. I didn't get suprised really... he just outmaneuvered me and neutralized my army's strenghts. Despite the total smashing I received, I enjoyed playing this game alot since it taught me a number of important lessons.

In the end, I had a great time, but I also feel like I need more troops to be able to compete better at a tournament. 2 squads is just not adequate at the 750pt level. Sorry no pics. Maybe next time.

Madrak Finished!

4 models to go! Madrak was about 6 hours of painting. Rather than the storyline version of him that makes him an albino, I decided to try out a green skin scheme instead. He's ok, but I could clearly have done better in the details department. There's a lot of fanboyism on given them scottish patterned sashes which I've clearly departed from primarily because I just don't like it. Actually, as I look at the picture again, I did a pretty decent job of blending. It's just the little details like the ax highlights, the teeth and nails, and the "warts" or whatever those bumps are that could have used a little extra effort. The funny thing is that after doing the Harbinger, Madrak felt like minimal effort. Blending color is so much easier than white and black.


I started the Mauler last night. There's some unfortunateness with the join points, but I'm not really very concerned. He'll be big and blue and badass. He'll probably go faster than most large bases since he's 80% unobstructed skin. I did however fully assemble him (except for a base) before starting. I'll probably regret it, but I can always paint another.

The Push To Fully Painted

My buddy talked me into going for fully painted before ordering more miniatures. The primary motivator at this point is that since I am NOT going to KublaCon this year, I have no pressing need to paint models for an army list that I'd be fielding in May. So, in order to gain a little respect with my wife, I'm going to finish painting the remaining models before ordering new ones. It's really not that much left. Here's the list:

• Ogryn Bokur
• Madrak
• Doomshaper
• Dire Troll Mauler
• Vlad (special Katrina edition)

I started Madrak the other night and am probably 30% done already, depending on how much detail I put into him. The Mauler is on deck and ready to be primed already. Vlad is probably going to end up as an experiment and be turned into a Thrall Warrior for Alexia. Poor Vlad!

Harbinger Finished! (Almost)

All the painting is done. Just handling the last bits of assembly now, excluding the chains. There's a minor bit of unfortunateness around the assembly. Instead of the one Acolyte being too far forward, instead it's the Harbinger who's too far back. The side cloths didn't fit very well, but a little creative bending and pinning has them roughly in place. It's not the best assembly I could have asked for, but it's good enough. Given how bad I am at the "modeling" aspect of the hobby, I'm not going to pitch a fit. No pictures tonight though. I'm going to try and finish the last assembly and get chains on it first.

Harbinger Status: Minor Disaster

So today I started assembling more of the Harbinger and managed to do something not so clever. I mounted all the Acolytes to the base, but one of them is too far forward and so the chain won't reach. I'm now left with a couple options: order more chains from the parts service and somehow attach two chains together, or create my own chains. For now I'm going to opt for option b and see how it turns out.

On the plus side I got nearly 3 more hours of painting in, which has the banner very close to completed now, and the side cloths basecoated. I'm probably looking at another 4 hours or so to finish up painting and then a couple more hours of assembly. If I were smart, I'd start prepping the second Bokur, but I'm very intent on staying focused on the Harbinger for now.

More Harbinger Progress

I made alot of progress today, catching up to where I wanted to be by yesterday. The work week was really ridiculous with 2 14+ hour days, which pretty much blocked out much chance of painting. I probably got about 6 hours of painting in today and finished up the main body and shoulder armour for the Harbinger. There's also a bit more progress on the banner as well, but nothing worth mentioning really. Tally for getting to this point: about 8 hours.

The real challenge at this point is going to be the assembly. My plan at this point is to attach the acolytes next, then the side cloths, and then the chains. I had intended to do the chains first, but after pondering it and looking at various pictures of the fully assembled model, going with chains last is the only good option. The banner and shoulder armour can definately go on very last.

I applied a tip that I'd read somewhere else (probably the PP forums but I forget, sorry): I superglued a screw nut to the bottom of the base. There's 2 reasons for this. First, it is glued right up against the pin for the main body of the Harbinger. Second, (and this is the original tip I'd read) I can use the nut to provide a way to anchor the model inside a box for safer transportation. I'm planning to get an Army Transport case but I'm afraid that it won't be able to safely accomodate this very delicate and spindly model.

Delayed Catchup

I actually played Warmachine a few days ago. Must have been last Sunday I think. The days have been a bit of a blur for me lately since work has me really overloaded, but let's see what I can recall of the battle.

I played an eFeora list that included TFG's, Vengers, and a bonded Redeemer (amoung other things). My opponent was Cryx led by eSkarre and included 4 turkeys, fisties, raiders, biles, 2 bokurs, and some other stuff that I'm forgetting. Here are some of the highlights of the battle:

• Having Blazing Aura on the TFG's, which made them pretty obnoxious to remove.
• The Vengers didn't suck. In fact they were pretty boss, even just taking a minimum squad. I think that Blazing Aura would actually be pretty swanky on a full unit of Vengers.
• eFeora's feat actually turned out to be pretty useful, but not until the 4th round when I was struggling to mop up the stragglers.
• eFeora's Escort spell is super badass for granting the +2" movement. I was more interested in the +2 ARM for eFeora at first, but giving the Guardian a 9" charge is spanktacular.
• The bonded Redeemer was totally worthwhile. I had low opinions of the redeemer before, but with a chior in the backfield to back it up, and automatically causing fire, it's nothing to thumb your nose at. Definately worth getting it instead of a squad of those inept, unboostable bottle rocket monkeys.
• eSkarre's feat is pretty obnoxious, but I had an amusing time using nearby targets to the untargettable models and "cryx"ing the Cryx guy. My favorite part was using the Guardian's critical pitch (with a little luck) and pitching a bonejack into the untargettable Bokur and knocking him down.

Overall I like eFeora, but mostly because she plays alot more like Severius than like regular Feora. Her spell list is very flexible and with a solid arcnode up front (like the Guardian) and a Devout to provide her cover in the backfield, she is really slick. The TFG's were pretty cool, but I'm definately going to look at other options. I like the idea of dropping them, upping the Vengers to a full squad, and tossing in a unit of Daughters. Part of this is due to the fact that I'm super interested in painting the Daughters over anything else right now.

Ok... quick update on the Harbinger before I go back to working. I'm well behind where I wanted to be. I'm probably about halfway through doing blending on the main white robes. It's in that middle phase where I look at it and get depressed cause a) there's a long ways to go and b) it doesn't look good at all yet. Anywho, that's the situation. This weekend I fully intend to get the main body, the banner, and the shoulder armor done.

Acolyte Pics

Finally found a break in the storm to post these pics. I uploaded them this morning but my job is pretty much kicking my ass full time, so I didn't get a break until now. Anywho, here's pics of the Harbinger's Acolytes as they are now. They aren't attached to the main base yet of course since I need to fit all the pieces together.

Acolyte1











Acolyte2











Acolyte3












A little under 8 hours to paint these 3. The camera washed out alot of the white shading unfortunately. I've sort of resigned myself to this medium-level photography for now. I'm not that great of a painter that I need badass pics anyway.

On the equipment front, I found a really kick-ass arm lamp with built in magnifying glass the other day. They had to order more unfortunately, but the magnifying glass seems like it will actually work well, unlike almost all other once I've seen before. Once it comes in and I get that bad boy home I'll post a pic of it.

And now, time for some rambling. I'm stuck at work for another half hour or so while they finish up a code release so I have some time to burn. I'm getting pretty exhausted with work. The manager transition is really rough when I'm still being used as a coding resource. Especially when I'm routinely double-booked as a coding resource AND have to do my manager duties as well. It's sort of like having 3 jobs. Today in the downstairs hallway I bumped into a couple people and they were confused to see me there. I explained that they cloned me and that when they go upstairs, they will probably run into my clone. There was much more joking after that around how to tell the clone apart from the original. The sad thing is, I could really use a copy of myself right now. I'm very hopeful that things will even out over the next few weeks as I get a handle on the situation. Well, enough whining. Time to get things wrapped up and head home.

Harbinger Acolytes

The 3 acolytes are done now. Spent about 7ish hours on them. I'm fairly happy with them, although I did cut a couple corners that I'll probably not cut when doing the Harbinger herself. They aren't really in a state to take pics of right now, but perhaps tomorrow I'll get some pics of them. The next couple bits are primed, but the weather here is very cold so I've got very narrow windows to do priming when I get home. Urgh, I'm exhausted. Pics later... sleep now.

Crushed

Finally got to play Warmachine again today. I got smoted. I've been trying to plan out a more effective list but this one got heavily crushed by my buddy's Cryx list. I'm thinking there needs to be some alternates put in, but I'll elaborate more later. For now, I want to paint some more. The acolytes for the Harbinger are almost done. Tomorrow I'll probably be needing to prime parts of the Harbinger herself. Hooray!

Drat

I've managed to trash my neck and shoulder a bit. It's mostly muscle pain and probably either from biking or stress from work. In any case, painting is on hold for a few days I suspect. Hopefully this passes soon.

New Year's Resolutions

I hate these things. Really. I heard a great sermon today about how we create these "expectations" that this year we can manage to do (or not do) what we failed to accomplish last year, just cause the promise of a new year has arrived. We're creatures of hope, and that's a marvelous thing, but come on people! Anyway, here's my "New Year's" Resolutions:

1) Paint instead of watching TV - Whenever I start to lounge around and watch TV, go paint instead. At the worst, paint while watching TV.

2) Enter a model in a painting competition - I have no chance of winning, but I want to do this anyway. My lofty goal is to enter something at KublaCon this year. Most likely this will be the Harbinger.

3) Maintain a balanced work situation - I got promoted to manager (of 5 software engineers) at the beginning of this year. I need to maintain a balance of only working 9 hours a day max, and definately no weekends.

4) Play Warmachine more - Hopefully once a week, but at least once every other week. More importantly, I want to play at the LGS at least 3 times this year at their monthly 750pt WM tournaments.

5) Watch more classic movies - Duh... classics are good. Up next in my netflix queue are Lawrence of Arabia, Citizen Kane, 12 Angry Men, and, uh, some other stuff.

That's it... nothing habit-altering really except the painting thing. A normal list would probably have something about my family or wife or whatever, but honestly, my wife and I are doing great and making a resolution would just be an insult to the deep importance of my marriage in my life. Hope y'all aren't making silly resolutions out there!

Harbinger Progress (part 2)

I meant to keep more detailed steps of the harbinger progress, but 1) I got lazy, and 2) I'm lucky to get an entire uninterrupted hour of work at a time on it. Here's some completely terrible pics of the progress so far.

First, I managed to reinforce the banner pole. The pole on many examples I've seen gets very week between the join point on the Harbinger's hood, and the base of the flag itself. The big problem here was that the pole is thin and flat, so simply drilling it out from the hand and replacing it with brass rod was not really a good option for my minimal conversion skills. While at my LGS, I was discussing with a couple people there about the problem and the idea came up to reinforce it with some brass rod glued to the side of the existing pole. I further extended on this idea by bending the brass rod to form sort of a hand guard over the Harbinger's hand. This will provide the necessary reinforcement to the banner pole so that it will survive a bit better on the game table. It's still delicate, but it's better than nothing.

Next I got the Harbinger's torso and legs attached together so that they are quite strongly bonded. This will probably be the second piece I work on after the Acolytes are finished.

And finally, I've started painting the Acolytes. The picture here is terrible but basically I've got 2.5 hours on them so far and only have base coats for the robes finished, along with faces pretty much finished. The Khadric and Midlund Flesh P3 paints are really nice tones. Even without any washes or such the skin looks pretty decent. I'm still terrible with eyes, but in all fairness, these guys are squinting and obscured. No one will be looking at their eyes.

This project is incredibly huge and challenging, and I've resolved to try and do the best painting job I can on it. I'm still debating robe colors for the Harbinger herself, but at this point I'm heavily leaning towards sticking to whites. Anyway, there's my latest progress. Hopefully in a couple more weeks when my home and work situations settle back down I'll have alot more time to work on this.

Transformation

Yesterday I had two new employees start. I spent most of the day in training, and can expect to do that the rest of the week. My brain was hosed by the end of the workday. I sadly got no painting done, but on the plus side, I watched Good Bye, and Good Luck with my in-laws instead. Quite a good movie. I can feel that the Harbinger is going to get little work done for a few days probably. Hopefully once I get back into a regular sleeping schedule I can pull off an hour each night. Starting is always the hard part.

The American Altar

Foreward: I am guilty of most everything I'm about to complain about.

When was the last time you walked into a house and found there to be no television in it? Actually, scratch that. When was the last time you walked into a house where the family room wasn't organized around a television? Every home has a room that has this technological altar centrally placed. Chairs, couches, endtables, and almost everything in the room is organized to help visitors to this room to focus on the television. I can count on one hand the number of times I have entered a house and not found this room.

Television forms a sort of social glue in our culture today. When you go to a party, and someone starts talking about that latest episode of an evening drama, or the recent sports event, or the world news, it becomes easier to join into the conversation. Everyone that has watched that piece of television programming is able to connect with that conversation. It also allows us to not expose ourselves to other people except in the shows we watch. Instead of talking about what's going in our own lives, we can talk about the lives of other people, even if they happen to be fictional.