Avatar Nearing Completion

My painting, playing and posting have all taken a serious hit lately unfortunately. Primarily due to holiday stuff, work stuff, and general life stuff. I got some painting done though, and the Avatar is pretty much wrapped up. It's not the most crisp paint job though, and honestly I'm thinking of continuing to work on it. However that's for another day, perhaps after returning from my Christmas vacation (for four weeks). Anyway, pics below, and constructive feedback appreciated about whether I should continue or not.

Seraph

Just under the wire! I've got a tournament at the LGS today and getting the Seraph painted was my goal so that I could once again be fully painted. I've been getting a lot friendly flack about having won the last tournament because of my one unpainted model, so this is my chance to show them that bare metal does not win tournaments. However, I have to admit, I'm fully expecting to get smoted this time around.

This guy was a bit of a rush job unfortunately, but also not quite as much fun to paint as I was hoping for. There are some subtle things about the sculpt that make it a little strange to paint. For example, the tips of the wings obviously want to be painted as claws (and are in the studio scheme), however the wing membrane is attached to said claws. I could have improvised something there, but in an effort to be done by today, I opted to just pass. I can always paint another one if I so desire.

What went well:
* The wings (aside from the membrane thing mentioned above) went much better than on eThagrosh. I'm actually pretty pleased with them overall.
* Skin shading worked out good again, with using the stark shading of Sanguine Base. I really like the look it creates.

What could have been better:
* Carapace just didn't work out. It's predominantly smooth, with little to no sculpted detail unfortunately.
* Mold lines on the head managed to escape my attention, so there's a couple of stupid spots as a result.

Hopefully this nasty cheating bugger helps bring me victory today! If nothing else, I'll feel less cheesy fielding him now that he's painted.

Retribution Prototype Paint Scheme

Recently a friend of mine said he was starting a Retribution force and was trying to work out a paint scheme. We were kicking around ideas and I volunteered to paint up a prototype for him. What follows is an overview of the process of painting this prototype. First though, I want to clarify the goals:
* The scheme should be darker, ideally incorporating the Cryx Bane Base.
* The scheme should be fast to paint.
* Purple was the alternate color to offset the CXB.
With that said, here's what I did.

Step one is to prime in white and then base coat the parts that will be metal with black. The white primer base makes it faster to lay down base coats. The black however is to help the metals pop better.

The next step is to base coat everything. For this scheme I used P3 Wurm green for all the armored parts, P3 Cygnar Blue Highlight for the cloth parts, and GW Boltgun Metal for, well, the metal parts. For the P3 paints I thinned them just a bit (about 2:1 paint:water) but the metal I took straight from the pot.

Next I do the first round of washes. The green gets a thick wash of CXB (about 1:1). The blue gets a thick wash of P3 Beaten Purple (again, about 1:1), although I found that it took a couple coats of this wash to get the desired effect. The metals get a healthy dose of GW Badab Black wash. I've become very fond of this wash lately for doing "clean" metals. There's a lot of buzz about Devlun Mud, but I really like the Badab Black to create a cleaner metal look.

I've included a picture of the back here to better show the effect of the purple wash over the blue. I like the effect that this method creates because the purple ends up with a cooler tone rather than a warmer reddish tone.

Unfortunately for the next step I didn't break the pictures down much, so I'll roll this up. First, I made a thin wash of VGC Black (about 1:8 paint:water) and washed both the armor and cloth parts with it. I did a small bit of sponging to make sure things didn't get too dark or pool too much. Next, I drybrushed the metal parts with GW Mithril Silver to work the metals back up quickly. At the same time I quickly painted all the "bumps" that pop out on the armor with the same silver. And finally I also made a thick wash of P3 Arcane Blue and P3 Turquoise Ink (about 2:1:3 paint:ink:water) to add the turquoise glow to the metals. Mixing in the ink wasn't necessary, but an added bit of punch to the color. For the bumps on the sword I painted them with straight P3 Arcane Blue.

Ugh, more blurred pics. Sorry! Anyway, for the final steps I highlighted the bumps on the sword with P3 Frostbite, and I also did just a bit of highlighting with P3 Wurm Green on the upper armor plates to bring the color back up just a bit.

And that's it! Grand total it took about 2 hours or so. The scheme worked out fairly well. I think a lighter green tone might be better, but this made a good prototype model at least.
The scheme is also very quick to paint, and could easily be put to an assembly line system to roll out a painted army fairly quickly I suspect. It's certainly not a show piece, but it gets paint on a model quickly and when facing the prospect of painting a whole army on a limited time budget, wash techniques can really help do that.

Progress is progress

I'm only really posting this to keep myself motivated. Yesterday I kept staring at all the black primer and it was driving me nuts. So, I went ahead and did the base coating of white. This is always the big debate in my mind when painting Menoth, especially jacks. It goes something like this:

MeOne: "I'm going to paint this Menoth model with the traditional white/red scheme."
MeTwo: "Then why don't you prime in white?"
MeOne: "Well, painting metals over white is terrible. I'd have to base coat black for those areas first."
MeTwo: "So prime in black?"
MeOne: "Yeah, but then it takes forever to basecoat all the white areas."
MeTwo: "So go with a black/red scheme instead?"
MeOne: "I thought about that, but warjacks should stand out on the battlefield."
MeTwo: "So just suck it up and do it."
MeOne: "First I want to whine about it though."
MeTwo: "Screw this. I'm going to get a beer."
MeOne: "...."
[and then the model sits on my desk for a week before progress gets made]

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.