Hunters

Yep! 2 Hunters. Not much to say here. I painted them to field with Jakes since I figure they will make a good pairing for her. Can't see it in these photos, but I numbered them 1 and 2 on their right top shoulder plating to easily tell them apart.

Lieutenant Allison Jakes

This was the sculpt from the PP Kickstarter. It's the first of the Kickstarter sculpts that I've painted too. I love the dynamic pose of this sculpt too. It was a lovely model to paint. The details are incredibly finely detailed. More so than my skills really support unfortunately. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this project quite a bit.

Tactical Arcanist Core

These guys were, admittedly, a late addition to my Cygnar wish list and motivated entirely by their helpfulness for Nemo1. I haven't even proxied them yet either. I just liked the models and figured I'd try them out.

Because these are mercs and not Cygnar models, I struggled with how to paint and base them. I wanted them to end up looking sort of like Nemo's pit crew. To that end, I kept them on the same style base, but gave them a more traditional Cygnar blue look to accent the glowing orange-red arcane parts. Before I'd finished the highlights I was getting a bad feeling about them, but once the final highlights went on, I was pretty pleased. I'm looking forward to fielding them next time I roll out Cygnar.

Storm Strider

Nothing makes a new force seem bigger than it is like having huge bases added. Throwing in the Storm Strider to my queue definitely had that effect. I'd been anxious to paint this one up once I opened the kit. It was pretty quick to put together and paint, and I really did enjoy it. Some parts were annoying to work around, like having all the legs put together and trying to paint the interiors. Other parts were easy though. I worked the project in 6 pieces: base, legs and hips, main deck, ball, pilot, and leader. I just worked from the bottom up and assembled as I finished parts. The last piece was the insignias, which I have to admit I struggled with a fair amount. In the end, the insignias ended up being a bit random but I feel it gives the right sort of look to the whole thing.

Nothing much more to say on this one really. I've fielded it a couple times already and find it to be an amusing addition to my list. Definitely well suited for taking out chunks of infantry, but if it can get a couple power tokens, it can hit pretty hard too.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #57

Oops! Missed a week again. Mostly cause I was painting and playing a lot. And went to see Guardians Of The Galaxy which was badass.

Somehow I failed to take any pictures this week, so I've included this single photo from the shelf beside my desk to give a sense of the state of things. I got a lot of stuff done in the last 2 weeks, while my wife and son were out of town. It doesn't necessarily seem like a lot to me since nothing really got done, but there was a lot of prep work that will streamline upcoming projects. Here's the highlights:

Painted a light dot in the center of Stormwall's base. This was a suggestion from Lance and is specifically to have an easy reference point for when a Stormpod gets launched, since the POW 10 hit is based on a line from the center to the center. It's already come in handy once.

Ordered way more paint than I should have (Andrea, P3, Vallejo). A bunch of this was due to running low on various paints, but also had a lot to do with making sure I had ample supply of the colors I'm using for my Cygnar army. My LGS was shockingly low on P3 stock so I had to pick them up at a slightly further store. At some point I'll do reviews of the various stuff and what my personal take on each is.

I avoided buying hardly any models! Just the Gobber Tinker. He's 1 point and will be convenient in a Cygnar list sometimes.

Assembled, primed and base coated a ton of stuff. Like, a lot of stuff: Allison Jakes, Thunderhead, Thorn, 2 Lancers, Ironclad, Defender, 2 units of Stormblades, 6 Stormblade WAs, 2 Stormblade UAs, a Stormblade Captain, and 6 mechanics. All the jacks have gotten metal base coats on too. I'm currently focused on Jakes and the 2 Hunters.

I got a bunch of bases drilled and prepped for priming. As many as I could until I ran out of magnets, which I also ordered. I think the count is 10 small bases, 10 medium bases, and 6 large bases. The drilling task is annoyingly tedious so this was a nice step to get completed.

Oh, and I updated my Cygnar Dragon Horde spreadsheet. Yes, I created a spreadsheet. Currently at 23% completed of all the new stuff I bought for Cygnar. It tracks the state of all the models. It's convenient to have it on my phone for reference when I'm at the LGS. Oh, and an amusing column on the spreadsheet is the number of rivets each model has. Yes, I'm that crazy. I'm counting rivets. Cygnar models are just completely covered with them. It's very humorous. If folks are really interested, I'll share the counts once I get further along in painting my Cygnar army. As a teaser, the Stormwall has just over 1000 rivets.

One last thought: I'm debating re-basing my Gun Mages. I've used them a couple times now and really enjoy playing them with my force. I'm very tempted to make them fit in closer with my overall army just for kicks.

Journeyman Warcaster

A necessary addition to any Cygnar army is "Junior". This was a pretty quick model to paint. I'm not super happy with all the parts, like the freehand which still feels a bit awkward looking. However I am particularly happy with how the face turned out given how quickly and few coats of paint I used on it. But again, this is just a tabletop army, so I'm not in a twist about it at all.

Battle Report: 15pt Reveals

So our 15pt reveal tournament has come and gone. The results are pretty interesting.

Henry's List: Harkovich, Conquest, War Dog
Lance's List: eThagrosh, Nephilim Soldier, Swordsmen (6+UA), Bone Grinders (4)
My List: Nemo1, Stormwall, 2 Stormsmiths

Battle 1: Harkovich vs Thagrosh!
In what looked like a rather one-sided battle, Harkovich advances and tucks in behind Conquest and an obstructing stone. What happened next bent the odds. 3 Swordsmen charge in, followed by eThagrosh, and they destroy Conquest entirely. In a single round! It was insane. After that, it was a quick grinding out of the rest and Harkovich's army was tabled.

Battle 2: Harkovich vs Nemo!
In a well played batch of maneuvering and timing, Conquest gets the drop on Stormwall and destroys it. After that it was a desperate attempt by Nemo to Voltaic Snare Conquest and shift towards an assassination run. Unfortunately a well landed crit devastation sent Nemo sprawling and then gunned down like a dog.

Battle 3: Thagrosh vs Nemo!
This battle started out pretty good, taking out the Soldier early with some good rolls and then clearing out Swordsmen quickly. However I got greedy and put Nemo in obvious harm without thinking. If I'd played an attrition game I could have easily won this one. Unfortunately Thagrosh and the Bone Grinder leader landed multiple spell attacks on Nemo and slayed him.

Observation 1: It was amusing how the reveal resulted in a sort of rock-paper-scissors set of match ups. It reinforces my high opinion of the Warmachine game as being well balanced.

Observation 2: Although only my force was fully completed, all three of us agreed that having the goal and the date was a great motivator for making progress on our projects. Henry in particular said that this was exactly the motivation he needed to get Conquest going given that it's such a huge project.

So what's next? Perhaps a 25pt reveal? We'll see!