From the Desk: Cleaning Amusement

I was cleaning up my painting desk yesterday and came across these. To the recycling bin with you MK1 cards!!

Tempest Blazers

Finally finished the Murder Ponies! It only took me a year to get these painted. They were a Christmas present from my buds last year. A couple notes about these for other folks that end up taking them on:
1) For anything beyond very careful handling, I recommend additional pins into the hooves to make it more stable to the base. A single plastic leg to support the whole model and bond it to the base is just ridiculous.
2) Make sure to fit the riders to the horses before putting the arms on. The riders with the arms outstretched forward can be a nasty fit around the horses' heads.

Quite honestly, I can't say I enjoyed painting these that much. I hate painting horses, and the final assembly was very tedious. I'm glad they are done.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #102

Last roundup post for this year.

I'm fully painted on my Legion collection! Hooray! Let's see how long that lasts. I'm starting to think about getting caught up on the remaining Legion things I don't own, but that might get eclipsed by whatever plan I make for Lock & Load this year. This year will probably be another focus on Unbound, but I haven't settled on what to bring.

As pictured here, the Murder Ponies are getting closer to done. Not doing anything amazing from a quality point of view to be honest. I'm going to try to get a little more contrast and color on them tonight before I crash. I did also get the Reliant primed just in case I end up finishing these and have a little more time left before the Christmas time crunch starts.

My buddies got me a wonderful gift for Christmas too. It's a total trolling: a Woldwrath. I hate to admit it, but I do want to paint it and am thinking about ideas for how to make it really interesting. I will not concede that this is getting me into Circle though.

I'm leaving my paint targets on this post for my own tracking, but honestly they aren't getting much attention for now other than trying to finish up the Murder Ponies.

Cygnar Paint Taget (tier 4):
pCaine - done
Ace - unowned
Reliant - primed
2 Gun Mage Captains - done
Gun Mages + UA - done
Gun Mages + UA - assembled
2 Hunters - done
Black 13th - assembled
Tempest Blazers - painting

Remaining DZC models:
Neptune - primed
2 Triton A2s - assembled
2 Phobos - primed
2 Odin - primed
2 Enyo - primed

Blight Wasps

2 units! Done! And to my buddy Mike: HAH! You trolled me into 2 units, and I've painted them. Just wait until I field them and start owning face!!

It's really hard to take these models seriously. I mean really... They're butterflies! But seriously, they aren't that horrible to paint except that their poses are all crouched up. They also required some special work since I needed to seal them before putting them on the flight bases. Otherwise, they are about the same effort as a Harrier.
I gave each unit a slightly different tint, with one being more red and the other being more blue-green. This makes it simple to differentiate them on the table.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #101

Bite me holiday busy time!

Day behind since I forgot to post last night. This week was pretty productive. Finished up Zuriel and the Twins. The Butterflies are nearly completed, with just detail work remaining. I even got a bit of work done on the Murder Ponies, finishing up the horses and getting them attached to bases. Hopefully I can finish up both of those projects before the end of the year.

Cygnar Paint Taget (tier 4):
pCaine - done
Ace - unowned
Reliant - assembled
2 Gun Mage Captains - done
Gun Mages + UA - done
Gun Mages + UA - assembled
2 Hunters - done
Black 13th - assembled
Tempest Blazers - painting

Remaining Legion models:
Blight Wasps (8 total) - painting


Remaining DZC models:
Neptune - primed
2 Triton A2s - assembled
2 Phobos - primed
2 Odin - primed
2 Enyo - primed

Locked!

Got my hotel reservation and purchased my badge for Lock&Load 2016 yesterday! Thus begins the next 6 months of obsessing about what I will plan to play at L&L this year. Perhaps another Unbound game hopefully!

Saeryn and Rhyas Talons of Everblight

Let's see how much I write up in 5 minutes here. Loved painted these two. Great sculpts, albeit a little tedious to put together and handle due to the flowing sashes. I went a little out of style for myself and did some OSL on the glow from Saeryn's hand just for fun. Otherwise these are pretty standard for my Legion painting. For not having painted a Legion model for quite some time, I have to say I'm pleased with how these turned out. Sorry the picture tint is off though.

Zuriel

It's been a while since I finished a Privateer Press model. Almost 5 months actually. Getting Zuriel done feels like a real success. I've been painting, but all DZC stuff lately, so to step back into Legion was a refreshing experience. Why? Well quite frankly, the scale is more pleasurable and painting Legion is always a refreshing break because I can play with color options a little more freely than my other projects. Zuriel here in particular was a lot of fun cause he's big and posed well. It's also a morale boost since he'd been sitting on my desk for quite some time before I got around to even priming him. Once I started putting paint on him though, it went fast and joyfully.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #100

Three and a half years of roundups instead of random desk updates. Crazy.

So despite being the "100" milestone of doing weekend roundups, this one is not particularly special in any way. I'm almost done with Zuriel and the twins now. I'm hoping to get cranking on the murder ponies again once I finish these, but it's possible that painting the butterflies will instead spark my interest. In general though, I'm really finding my joy in painting again. One particular thought that is now striking me is whether to start painting arcs on my Legion models. I've found it very valuable on my Cygnar and not really that distracting from the quality of the models. Perhaps these will be the first ones to try it with.

On the topic of paint targets, below is my next major paint target for Cygnar which I'm planning to aim for next once these Legion models are done. Note that this list actually contains a model I don't own yet as well, namely Ace.

Cygnar Paint Taget (tier 4):
pCaine - done
Ace - unowned
Reliant - assembled
2 Gun Mage Captains - done
Gun Mages + UA - done
Gun Mages + UA - assembled
2 Hunters - done
Black 13th - assembled
Tempest Blazers - painting

Remaining Legion models:
Saeryn & Rhyas, Talons of Everblight - painting
Zuriel - basing
Blight Wasps (8 total) - assembled


Remaining DZC models:
Neptune - primed
2 Triton A2s - assembled
2 Phobos - primed
2 Odin - primed
2 Enyo - primed

Battle Report: PHR vs Scourge

Basically just posting pictures here.

Finally played a game of DZC with my 1500pt force. This is less of a battle report and more just notes about the game.

Wrecking buildings is fun. Especially when the building contains a bunch of enemy infantry and has vehicles next to it. I really enjoyed that and I see that as a viable PHR strategy overall.
Having a higher commander rating really is useful, not just for the initiative bonus but for the additional cards. There were a couple times when my opponents cards really swung the tide of the game.
Finding the right balance between infantry, anti-ground, and anti-air. I'm starting to see more and more the merits of walking onto the battlefield rather than spending points on transports to do it.
This game is hot looking with fully painted armies on the table.
A full 1500pt game really takes longer than I expected. Like a lot longer. We had to look up lots of rules and by the middle of turn 4 (out of 6) we'd been playing for 3 hours. I was starting to fall asleep from exhaustion so we estimated the rest of the game. I was losing the overall attrition war, but I'd eliminated almost all of his infantry which thus prevented him from scoring much at all.