Battle Report: 25pt Newbie Tournament

No, I'm not a newbie. I crashed this tournament at my LGS for the following reasons:
1) I like helping new players have a good experience with the game.
2) I haven't played much lately.
3) Putting 1 and 2 together, my gameplay kinda sucks right now and I'm a good punching bag.

As it turned out, it was great that I showed up. There were 3 other players, all who were relatively new players. With me it became 4 players which made for nice pairings and I was able to help answer rules questions and do set up for the event with the PG. The event was a 25pt Incursion format with 30 minute death clocks.

I brought a pNemo list: Stormwall, Lancer, Arcanist Core, 2 Stormsmiths.

The other three players all brought Khador, 2 of which had pButcher and the other had pVlad. I'm very proud to say that I lost all 3 of my games! In all 3 cases, the PG and I gave my opponent a pro tip on how to pull of a significant maneuver. In most of those cases it enabled them to turn the tide dramatically and resulted in me losing. In one case it was a clever use of another model to ensure that Electrify didn't push pButcher back out of reach range of the Stormwall, thus he got to completely level the Stormwall in a single activation with focus to spare which I think really got that guy excited.

Unfortunately I don't recall all the lists, but I do recall all my opponents being great guys and we all had a good time. Our PG even had some leftover Journeyman League patches that he handed out which was a nice bonus too.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #61

Better late than never...

Relatively light week on progress, but I'm feeling better about the Stormblades. I brought one of the standard bearers up to near complete as a sample piece to work from. He's the only one in this state unfortunately. All the others are just now starting their reds. It's going to take quite a while to finish them up, but at least now the next step takes them from looking less than halfway to being near complete. I'll probably resort to doing them mostly in small groups at this point and doing all the work except for insignias. I'll still need to sort them into squads and paint insignias to separate them out. Definitely an "A" squad and probably a "Z" squad.

I also painted a whole big batch of bases in prep for these Stormblades as well as for upcoming things. I'm hoping to paint the two Stormblade Captains and a Stormclad right on the heels of these Stormblades.

And that's pretty much it. I managed to play a few games this last week including an event at my LGS which I'll post about tomorrow.

Inspiration: Atomic robo

Just a random bit of inspiration. I've been reading the Atomic Robo comic series and absolutely loving it. It's a great mash up of pulp action, science fiction and humor. And even better, there are free issues on Comixology! Go get it!

And no, I'm not affiliated with them in any way, nor do I get any benefit from Comixology. Just spreading some inspirational comics happiness.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #60

Super fast, but on time for once.

So this was not as busy as I was hoping, but still got some stuff done. Stormblades are coming along, with about 70% of the dark cloth work done. I basically need to go back and put in dark shadows on all the cloth and then go back and do the quilted black cloth which is only base coated.

Thunderhead obviously got done which has me yearning for another jack to paint now.

I also did a bunch of work prepping bases. I got 26 small, 1 medium and 2 large bases primed, base coated and black washed. I also drilled and glued in magnets into another 20 small bases. This last bit of work was good since it gets magnets into my entire supply of Tau Ceti resin bases.

That's really all this week. Time to sleep.

Thunderhead

So very many coils. I mean seriously, there might be almost as many lightning coils as rivets! Well, not really, but damn. Just look at it! Covered in coils. It does however make for a striking look with the blue-red juxtaposed like they are. One of my friends also commented that the blue Cygnus against the bright red makes this Thunderhead look like a sort of robot superhero. Overall I like that impression. I've always thought of Thunderhead as being a bit of a rockstar-style hero in the army anyway. Now he's all charged up with lightning and ready for battle in my Nemo army.

As mentioned in a previous post, I wanted to put lots of insignias all over him and I feel like I got about as many as I could without making him appear overly cluttered. There's even another "secret message" one on his left shoulder that I'll leave mysterious. Insignias still feel like something I'm struggling with, but the practice is good for me and it is slowly getting easier to tackle freehand tasks. There are a few tricks I've picked up from various places that have definitely helped reduce my frustration.

One last note is his pose. I specifically turned his left arm upwards to get him away from "DJ mode" and more into a "High-5" pose. I have a habit of giving my models a high-5 in the middle of a game when they pull off something amazing and I'm hoping Thunderhead will deserve many high-5's.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #59

Yep, eagerly awaiting my new iPhone 6...

So this week wasn't super productive, but I did overcome some of my painting block. The Stormblades are now starting to look like real progress is being made. Rather than show them all, I just picked out a couple of them to demonstrate progress. They are all at this same painting stage. I got all the glow work done. Next I'll do some metal clean ups as needed and then start on the black cloth. Hopefully I can get those two steps done this week. Once things get to the reds then they will suddenly feel like they are coming together quickly, but I like to leave the reds for last because of the process. Sometimes the playbook is the best way to go to stay sane.

I also got back to work on Thunderhead. This guy got started at the same time as the Lancers but quickly pushed to the side. Since I was already doing the glow for the Stormblades, I figured I'd just go ahead and pick this back up. He's basically at the same stage as the Stormblades, but I'm eager to finish him first. What I really need to do on this one is start sketching a bunch of insignias. I want him to be heavily decorated with them.

Oh, and the 2 Lancers got done obviously. I drilled out 10 more 30mm bases for magnets in prep for the Stormblades (so now I have 22 ready). And finally I binged at the LGS and got eAbsylonia, a second Stormblade Captain, and a Stormclad. Didn't play a single game, but yeah, sort of a busy week anyway.

Lancers

Finally finished these 2 Lancers. They had been sitting at 98% done for a week before I finally wrapped them up. I really need to get a game in tonight to help stir my passion for painting again. In any case, nothing fancy to say here.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #58

Blah. Just... Blah.

To say that I've been in a painting funk for the last 2 weeks would be an understatement. More on that later for those that actually care. For now, here's sort of the state of my desk and other hobby related things for me.

The Thunderhead is still early in progress. The vast number of glowing coils has intimidated me a bit. The two Lancers however are nearly done with just insignias missing at this point. I hadn't planned on starting them at all, but there was a tournament last weekend that I was hoping to bring my new Cygnar force to and I needed a few extra points to round it out to 50. Lancers with Nemo1 seemed like a perfect fit and so I was trying to crank them out real fast. Long story short, I didn't make it to the tournament due to a back injury and hence getting these done didn't push to the top of my priority stack.

My next big push with Cygnar is probably an insane one. Pictured here are 2 units of Stormblades. I've got them, with 6 WAs, 2UAs, and a single Stormblade Captain all assembled, primed and base coated. My plan is to paint them all together at once. Like I said, probably insane, but once I do this I'll have my Nemo1 tier 4 army all done and it will give me a whole other level of accomplishment with this new Cygnar army. I purposefully did this roundup post early on Sunday instead of in the evening in the hopes that forcing myself to look at my paint queue would get me motivated tonight.

So what else has been happening hobby-wise? I received my Blighted Bather which is good, although I have no idea when I'll actually get around to painting it.

I also backed the Massive Voodoo Indigogo campaign for the Ultimate Paint Rack. I'm super stoked about this for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it is supposed to ship before the end of this year. An added bonus is that it will come with a brush box and wet palette which will dramatically increase my portability for painting (I theorize). I've been struggling with my existing paint rack capacity already so I'll be curious to see if this solves it or just shifts it.

Beyond that, life has been challenging. I had a back injury a couple weeks ago which really laid me up hard. We also had family visit and work has generally been a different shade of stupid. On the plus side, my son (who is now 4) has been awesome. He's learning to read and engaging at a whole different level now. The joy he's been bringing to my life has really kept me above water.