Wednesday, November 26, 2014

General Adept Nemo

Wrapped up yet another Cygnar caster. This one was a bit of a rush job just to get it done. I opted to exclude his "epic" base enhancement since it would have occluded my normal basing scheme. The side effect of course is that he's sitting pretty far back on the base. it's not really a problem balance wise unless he gets positioned on an uneven surface.





Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Lieutenant Allister Caine

Getting Caine done was sort of a sidestep in my painting queue in an odd sort of way. When I got into Cygnar I hadn't really thought about getting many of the casters, but after getting a tip from one of our local PG's about Caine, it got me excited to paint him. Plus I have to admit that the boom The Way Of Caine was really great and got me extra excited about fielding Caine. I even took him for a first run last night and beat Aurora which was a bit surprising to me given that I hadn't played him before.



Sunday, November 23, 2014

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #68

Ultra fast post this week.

Fairly productive week despite some serious Diablo3 binging. I finished a Stinger and pCaine. I also have nearly finished Nemo2, and my Ironclad is about half done. I also assembled a pile of stuff: Storm Tower, Neraph, Blighted Bather, Strangeways, Charger, Sentinel, pStryker and eHaley. All of that stuff also got primed, along with Gaston and Sturgis, and about 20 bases. I also have eAbsylonia about 2/3 assembled at this point as well.

On the priming front, I found that I slightly overprimed a couple of the items. Not a disaster but annoying. Also the fumes from priming all that stuff was noticeable in the room. It has me rethinking my priming strategy. There's a lot of advantages in both directions so we'll see what I end up choosing in the long term. For now I'm done priming until after the Christmas break though.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Battle Report: Convergence Proxy Fest

So the other night Lance and I got a game in. eFeora tier 4 list (2 full TFG units, Daughters, min Cleansers, full Choir, mechanic, Judicator, Crusader). Lance had Lucant, Axiom, double battle engines, double mechanics, angels and small based shield wall dudes.

Early on things were looking great for me. My tier bonuses gave +2 SPD for all flameguard models, and +2" deployment zone, and I was going first. I swarmed the objectives and positioned my Judicator to be ready to unleash fiery death the next round. Lance rushed forward and feared with Lucant to improve his chances of surviving. I then purged almost all of his shield wall guys, blocked out one objective entirely and got set up to control the second objective. Then the wheels started coming off the bus.

Axiom managed to get the drop on the Judicator after having a hole sprayed clear by one of the battle engines. Through some crazy rolling, he leveled the Judicator almost entirely. But the damage output didn't stop there. With only 8 points of damage left on the Judicator, the second battle engine strode up and sprayed over Axiom to finish the job. The one saving grace was that Lance's damage rolls were not discriminating and tore the Axiom a new one. After that I was able to take out the Axiom with my Crusader which was in turn taken out by a battle engine and Lucant himself. At this point though I was up on scenario 4-0. Lance then proceeded to roll up a battle engine and drop two 4D6 damage sprays on Feora: 4-6-4-5 and 6-6-4-4. The spiky damage on 2 pow 10 sprays put Feora in the dirt despite her arm 18 status.

And this, my friends, is why I'm so very done with Protectorate.

I will say that I am terribly impressed with the utility of the Convergence battle engine. I'm looking forward to seeing those on the table more. They bring a really unique style of mechanics to the game.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Stinger

It's a Stinger! Boom! Nothing else to say!

Monday, November 17, 2014

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #67

Again, travel sucks...

So this last week was productive by sheer force of will. I cut back on my Diablo 3 addiction a bit, and worked on things in small chunks. Pictured here is the key stuff. Nemo2 and Caine1 are started, as well as the Ironclad base metal work is done. The former two are part of a big push I'm feeling around getting more casters ready. After having played Haley1 I've got a desire to try some more of the casters. To that end I also got Sturgis and Gaston assembled (pictured here), as well as Stryker1, a Charger and a Sentinel. I've sort of had this push to get stuff assembled and primed so I can get ahead of the painting phase again and this gets me there quite well.

I also finished yet another Stinger which I'll post tomorrow, got a game in last night which I'll post later this week, and generally did some clean up on my painting desk in terms of organizing my tools and such. Hopefully this week will be more productive from an actual paint-on-model point of view given that I'm not planning to travel.

One last quick note: DickBlick has W&N Series 7 brushes available again. Hopefully the US Customs block on sable hair brushes has finally been removed. And no, I don't get any sort of kickback from anyone at all on this. I just like the brushes above all others and wanted to share the word.

Friday, November 14, 2014

Cygnar: Rivet Counts

A little random humor for your Friday...

Wow does Cygnar have a lot of rivets. Like, loads of them. Ridiculous amounts. At the beginning I was actually counting them as I trimmed and cleaned the pieces for models. I gave up on the task eventually but I figured I'd share the ridiculousness of how many rivets I did end up counting. I don't claim that these are 100% accurate, but they are pretty close.

ModelRivets each
Nemo156
Stormwall1024
Stormpods18
Thunderhead286
Ironclad234
Defender220
Lancer175
Thorn244
Hunter69
Firefly319
Squire80
Storm Strider308
Journeyman Warcaster51
Allison Jakes40
Stormsmiths5

What this means is that I've painted well over 3500 rivets at this point.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Fyanna the Lash

This was another cursed model. Got knocked over multiple times. Got primer and paint scratched. Had a missed gap and a missed mold line. Sat on my desk for a long time before getting started. Just generally it took on a will of its own and tried to break me. However I've finished it and happily so. Keeping a Legion model on my desk at all times is a great way to keep my sense of color fresh. I tend to play with color just a little different every time I paint something for Legion and this one was no exception. The skin was standard, but the hair and cloth were both slightly different than how I had done them before.

Monday, November 10, 2014

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #66

Traveling weeks suck.

This week was not great for actual painting progress, but I got lots of stuff posted up on the blog. Stuff that I'd backlogged to post but spent the time painting instead during the previous week. Fyanna however has gotten a lot of work done. She's about 75% done at this point, but I haven't even started a base for her. Working on a Legion model again has reminded me how streamlined my Cygnar paint scheme is. Painting this model is much more work given the wider variety of colors at play. I do love painting my Legion though, and particularly these solos that have nice character to them. However it's no wonder I've cranked through a much higher volume of Cygnar in such a short time period than any other faction.

I also worked on a prototype for the Alien Temple bases. I've been thinking about putting my new mercs on these bases to give them their own theme. I wanted something that looked different but I could still get done efficiently. These are not super efficient, but they go pretty quick. I think the real question is whether I actually want to re-base any models or not. This also goes back to my Cygnar Gun Mages being on different bases (and having a different theme as well). I'll probably stall until I've gotten much further through my Cygnar paint queue to make this decision, but having the prototype for this base done now helps for the future. I still need to decide what to do about the bits of moss growth on these bases though. For my own reference, here's what I did so far:
Base coat: Ironhull Grey
Streaks: thinned Underbelly Blue
Wash: SWW Algae
Base coat cracks: Ember Orange
Highlight: Cygnus Yellow
Highlight: Cygnus Yellow + White
Highlight: White

And finally, a big reason I haven't gotten more done this last week is that I've been re-bitten by the Diablo3 bug along with a couple buddies of mine. I've been playing a lot and this is an example of one of my recent spoils. I'm not proud of how much I've played but sometimes my inner muse needs a break with some semi-mindless button clicking.

Saturday, November 08, 2014

Thorn

Getting Thorn done was a small bit of focus and willpower for me. After already painting a pair of Lancers, it was a little difficult to get excited about painting another arcnode but since he was already base prepped and his glow work got done with the Stormglad and Defender, it was a little easier to get moving on him. The rounded shoulders made this one a little weird to work on compared to most of the other Cygnar jacks that don't have as much of a bubble look to them. As a result I felt like this one needed more insignias to disguise the lack of proper highlighting.

Thursday, November 06, 2014

Inspiration: Bohun

Sometimes the work of another artist can be both inspiring and disheartening. This is definitely the case with Bohun. I'll let his work speak for itself, but whatever you do, definitely check out his tutorials on Facebook before moving on.

You can see his Putty and Paint profile here.

And here's his CMON gallery.

Wednesday, November 05, 2014

Stormblade Captains

These two Stormblade Captains round out the last of my Stormblade forces. I have to say these are really nice models too. Loads of detail. I actually opted to downplay and hide some of the detail just because the model was already quite visually busy. There's also the side effect of my paint scheme not handling too much cluttered detail very well. I honestly could have spent twice as much time on these if I'd really wanted to, but this Cygnar army is about getting on the table and looking good together. Still though I'm quick happy with how these turned out and I'm looking forward to playing them.

Tuesday, November 04, 2014

Defender

Yep! It's a Defender! Adding to my arsenal of gun jacks. Nothing particularly interesting about this one. I opted to make his ammo appear glowing just for kicks. Beyond that he's nothing really special.

Sunday, November 02, 2014

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #65

Roundup right before packing for a work trip. Blah.

Lots of stuff got finished so my desk is pretty low on things worth taking pictures of. The only real notable thing is that Fyanna is in progress. It's funny how coming back to painting Legion feels like putting on a comfortable pair of shoes. Fyanna is one of the few Legion models I've actually played unpainted. Normally I hold myself to playing painted models but I was curious to try her and couldn't wait. Hopefully I'd cover up this shame by finishing her this week.

I've also got Nemo2 and an Ironclad started with metal base coats done. The Ironclad is the last Cygnar jack I have assembled and prepped. After it things will slow down and I'll have to get back to some assembly work again if I want to add more jacks.

I'm trying to resist buying more Cygnar, which is only succeeding because I've told myself I'll wait until Dynamo comes out in December. I've also got the bug to catch up on Legion which shouldn't take me long. I'm hoping to get a couple of them done before the Blightblades come out this month.