Battle Report: Malifaux 2E

Just a quick post while my work day wraps up. The other night I got a game of Malifaux in using the new 2nd Edition rules. It is DRAMATICALLY better than before. I really had a great time playing. I played the Lady Justice box crew and Henry played the Zoraida box crew. The game started off poorly for me, losing 2 Death Marshalls before inflicting any real damage. But then things started to turn around and LadyJ got a run on Zoraida which locked things up pretty hard. But more importantly, I want to chronicle my first impressions of this new edition:

• More Graceful - Henry hit this one right on. The new rules, and particularly the model stats, are just more graceful in gameplay function. It feels so much smoother as a result.
• Logical Simplifications - Several rules got slimmed down or eliminated. However more significant is that the models themselves are easier to manage. No more separate stats for attack/casting skills. It's all right in the line with the action. I like this far more. Much less referencing back and forth.
• Same Flavor - A majority of the game has that same wonderful skirmish feel to it. And the models in general still preserve their own unique flavor.
• Upgrades - Who doesn't like upgrades! I really like how they handled the upgrades features. It slimmed down models a bit but gave more options.
• Fewer Catastrophes - There's a lot less situations where suddenly an entire side of the table activates all at once and crushes you. And also a lot less of abilities completely hosing you unexpectedly. There's still a lot of surprises, but I found them to be less invoking of a table-flip desire than before. This makes the game much more approachable for me.

Ok, anyway, that was just one game, but it was against the crew that I always felt was the most broken of anything I had faced. I'm very excited to see what the next game turns out like as we start to dig out more of the more specific rules and get a deeper feel of the changes.

From the Desk: The 7 Week Drought Ends

Traveling for work is both fun and obnoxious. Double that up with a family vacation and things go sideways for my hobby time. I'm finally back and actually picked up my brushes again. I spent about an hour painting on a pair of Shredders to get my chops warmed back up again. Good news is that I can still Two Brush Blend as before. Bad news is that I'm just slower at it having had such a long break. There's more good news, but it's less to do with painting specifically and more just general life, so I'll save that for a different post. In the mean time, here's a couple rather unremarkable WIP shots of my Shredders. I'm just happy to finally be back to painting!

From the Desk: When Disaster Strikes

As a painter, I really enjoy the hobby aspect of the game and take a great amount of care with the models I paint. Thus it is with some frustration that I share these pictures with you today.

I was headed to play a game the other night and included in my force was my Archangel. Now I've put magnets on the bottom of it and I was using my metal toolbox which it sticks to fairly well. However as I was crossing the street, disaster struck, and I heard the sound of plastic landing on asphalt. I turned and to my horror, my Archangel was on the ground, broken. After spending time collecting up the pieces and making sure I had all the bits. What follows is a documentation of the damage, and the repairs I did last night.

So here's a view of the model itself. It looks worse than it actually is. The left wing is broken, but it was a fairly clean break. There's a bunch of paint chipping on the nose and the wing talons.

Here's the broken pieces. As you can see, it looks bad, but the breaks are pretty clean for most of them.

When it landed, the nose took a pretty hard hit as well.

Here you can see the pieces that were all broken off. The one wing really did snap pretty cleanly, but it was still ugly to see. There were also several broken talons from the wing. 3 were broken off entirely.

Another talon was just severely bent. The pin held, but at the cost of surrounding area.

And here you can see another talon that although not terribly bent was really scraped up.

So the first repair I made was to reattach the broken talon on the unbroken wing. Some super glue worked wonders here. The only problem was I got a bit of glue on my finger and it tore up the paint a bit more. At this point though it was a minimal addition to the overall damage. The nice thing was that the piece bonded quite well though.

Next I reattached the tip-most talon on the broken wing. Again, it bonded nicely. I also made sure to avoid spillover glue causing more paint damage.

Next I attached the other broken talon on the broken wing. This went very smoothly.

Finally I reattached the wing. This also went quite smoothly and bonded really well. This is a view of the top side of it.

And here's the underside.

So here you can see my original 3 magnets that I had trusted to keep it held fast. That plan has clearly changed.

Now I have 6 magnets, and kept them strategically placed as far outward as possible. I'm debating adding a couple more in the middle, but I need to test a bit more first.

I'm leaving on another flight in about 8 hours so I'm not doing any further repairs. There's a lot of paint touch ups to do, but fortunately my painting diary will really help out here. All things considered, it could have been far worse.

Angelius (take 2)

My second Angelius. This marks my second duplicate of a heavy warbeast for Legion. Nothing particularly insightful here. I had the idea of putting together an Angelius using a variety of alternate parts more to help build my own skills at making modifications.

Battle Report: CoC Event Tournament

Quick photo dump of the CoC event at my LGS. Mostly pictures of all the armies that were submitted for the best painted army competition.

This was my buddy Bryan's sweet Ret army. Love his colossal!

Another nice Ret army. I didn't get to play against this one either.

This pirate army was from another guy I've played before, Matt, who I got to play. He crushed me with a Damiano list. And by crushed, I mean it was super close. At dice down, he won by 1 destroyed army point. Doh!

This pStryker army was fielded by a new young player named Keb. He'd painted this whole army over the course of the last month. It's the first painting he's ever done too apparently. I was not only impressed by his painting already, but also at his poise during the game. He beat me by clocking me out actually. He had the presence of mind to play to the clock when he realized I was running myself out.

A circle army that I neither played against nor even actually saw in action.

Likewise, another army I never played against. I was quite amused that a second Archangel appeared at the event though.

Another army I didn't play against. I think all said and done there were 5 colossals/gargantuans at this event.

This was a really nice Cygnar army that I spent a bunch of time looking at. I didn't get to play against it, but between games I was looking it over a bunch. Honestly, for the painting competition, this was my top vote. If he'd had a jack heavy list, I bet he would have won best painted.

This Haley (from the above army) was really striking to me. The orange set into the cloak really helps tie the overall appearance together so well. Just really like this paint job a lot.

Like I said above, if he'd had a jack heavy list, he would have won best painted. Love this jack!

This was one of the custom terrain pieces that someone made for the event. Really liked this one.

A second one created for the event. Also pretty cool.

So how did I do? I went 1 and 4, and only cause I had the bye round. Otherwise I got shut out completely. However I won the best painted army with my Lylyth3 list, probably mainly due to the Archangel being in that list. I had a great time and really fun games overall. Honestly I kinda like being in the losing bracket cause then I don't stress about winning as the tournament goes on.

Shredders (5 and 6)

Super fast painted Shredders! Not trying to win any awards or accolades here. Just simple tabletop quality midget beasties to put on the table. It's part of my whole strategy to just keep adding more lesser beasts to my Legion force and keep beefing it up. I have to admit, it was refreshing to paint a couple of these guys again. I'm sort looking forward to picking up a couple more to paint.

Lylyth, Reckoning of Everblight

After what feels like a really long break, I finally have something new done. Certainly not my best work by a long shot, but I am quite excited to have Lylyth3 completed. I really enjoyed the couple times I proxied her so I made it a self-imposed restriction to not play her again until she was painted. Now that she's done, I'm looking forward to unleashing her on my opponents.

This project was fraught with challenges. It's quite a different model than almost every other PP model thus far and so I didn't really have any proper experience to fall back on in some areas. Rather than my normal "good/bad" analysis, I'm just going to overview those challenges:

Assembly: Normally I would assemble as much as I can, excluding base, and paint it in as few pieces as possible. This model however pretty much required that I work on it in 5 pieces: Lylyth, sleigh, 2 elk, and the cross bar. Painting those separate pieces worked well, but once it came time for assembly, things got really rough. Putting the sleigh on the base and then attaching Lylyth actually went pretty well. After putting together the base separately, I ran a pin down through the middle of the sleigh that also attached to Lylyth's front foot. This worked great except for the fact that with a single pin the sleigh tended to be wobbly. I managed to secure it by putting a second pin up through one of the runners. So far so good. But then when it came time to add the elk and cross bar, things started to go sideways. The pin holes for the elk to the cross bar were far from aligned, so I had to use smaller pins to make things sort of work. But before attaching the elk to the cross bar, I made sure the bar was ready to attach the the sleigh. Then I lined up the left elk, estimated a hole for the pin from it's hoof, and drilled. And then, well, the position of the whole was just wrong. This was first evident by the angle of the elk itself, but also when I tried to line up the second elk. So after drilling a second hole and doing some minor surgery, I managed to correct the problem and eventually get it all assembled. Would I have done it differently if I was doing a second one? Perhaps. But I'll reserve those theories for now unless someone out there is especially curious.

Painting: The challenge of painting in multiple parts is striking a good color balance, and I feel like I failed at this pretty badly. But there reaches a point where I have to just surrender to what I've done. This wasn't an inspirational piece for me so I am happy to end where I did.

Timing: I worked on this model for more than a month. It really is hard to spend that much overall duration on something particularly when there's a solid week of break in between some painting sessions. I really lost a lot of momentum which contributed to the frustration and desire to just be done.

Ok, enough of that. I really am stoked to have this model done and ready for the table top!

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #33

Early and short posting cause I'm about to get on a flight for Australia.

Lylyth 3 progress. She's pinned to the base but needs some work to hide one of the pins better. I also want to visually break up the snow a bit more so I'm going to add some grass tufts. Other than that stuff though, this part is mostly done at this point.

Here's the other parts not finished/attached. The parts are all about 50% done at this point. I was originally pretty psyched about this model, but as time wears on, I'm having so many logistical challenges with painting it that I'm running out of steam quick. Painting it in parts was pretty much required, but holding those parts has all been a real challenge.

And 2 Shredders that are still in progress. They are what I do when I'm just waiting for specific tasks to dry on Lylyth. There's lots of work left on these but they are small and fast to paint overall.

From the Desk: Figure Art Book Surprise!

I love surprises. Even more so after a long day of work. And even more so when I've totally forgotten it's coming. Tonight I got home from work and my wife had put a mysterious package on my desk. At first glance I was perplexed. Then I looked at the label and saw it was from Augsberg, Germany. Quite some time ago I tossed money at an Indiegogo campaign for the Massive Voodoo guys. It was for a book of figures they had painted. I'd sort of forgotten about it and then BAM! it arrives. Needless to say I'm going to enjoy the inspiration.

The quality of the book is pretty good, and I have to say the quality of the photos and printing is exquisite. There's definitely a lot of inspiration to be had here.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #32: So Many Pieces!

Only 1 photo this week.

So my desk is littered with pieces it seems. It's only 3 models in progress at once (and 2 of those are Shredders), but it still feels like I've got a lot going on at once. Lylyth3 of course is about as assembled as I can get her and reasonably paint her. Not pictured here is the base too, which I haven't figured out what I'm going to do with. I'm a little perplexed by the whole sleigh thing honestly. My basing scheme up until this point hasn't included anything that a sleigh could go over. In any case I'm excited to get Lylyth3 on the table as soon as possible.

More Archangel Pictures

As requested, here's a few more photos of the Archangel. I took these photos from within my miniatures cabinet. The lighting wasn't so bad actually since it's the white LED lights.

Archangel

Finally done! Most of these pictures are terrible unfortunately. The Archangel is simply bigger than anything else I've painted and my normal photo set up just isn't even close to capable of handling it. The whole project really stretched my normal processes to their limits and I had to do a lot of adapting. I'm going to use this post as sort of a cathartic release and just dump all my thoughts. For those of you uninterested in all that self indulgent blabbering, I've includes extra pictures!

Time: I started this project at the beginning of April, and it took me 2 months to get to an assembled and primed state. Then there was a big break on June 7th and I started painting it. My wife and son left for vacation visiting family and I was left by myself. What would have taken me at least a month if not more of evening painting sessions got done relatively fast, thanks in large part to a couple of full days of painting. I'd conservatively estimate probably 20+ hours of actual painting time. Without those couple full days of paint binging, I'd have really faced mental challenges working this project.

Holding: Normally I like to fully assemble a model except for putting it on its base and paint it that way. In this case having the wings separate made a really big difference since the wings make it really awkward to shift around. Painting in these 3 parts was, in retrospect, a good plan. I actually waited until it was fully painted to attach them. I had even done the bulk of the basing work before attaching them. I was able to just mount the main body on my normal spray cans and hold it that way pretty easily. I just wish I could have mounted the wings on cans as well, but that didn't work so well.

Color Mixing: There's a lot of surface. I mean seriously, a LOT. A very real problem was paint drying in the paint well before I could finish doing all the painting with it. The was particularly true with the skin which I did after the wing flesh and chitin. This made it really fidgety to work through. To overcome that, I tried to stick predominantly with pre-mixed paints. That kept the consistency throughout the painting process. Although this isn't the way I normally work, it worked well for this project. I would have loved to have done much more color mixing, but working with only the pre-mixed colors forced me to really push my 2BB skills further and that was a nice side benefit.

Painting Techniques: As I mentioned, I had to do a lot of aggressive 2BB work on this model and for the most part that worked out well. I also use a lot of controlled washes and using the larger-well palettes made that work pretty easy as long as I mixed enough paint. Layered washes has been a cornerstone of doing materials like chitin and stone for me for some time. The airbrush was also king for painting the wing flesh. All things considered, my normal techniques worked pretty well when scaled up.

Storage: Uhm, yeah, it's huge. I had to re-arrange my display case to accommodate it. And as for transport to events, I still have no clue. I magnetized it so I'm just planning to stick it to the top of my toolbox. Hopefully that doesn't end in disaster.

So anyway, overall I loved this project. I really do wish that I had the patience to spend far more time on it since it's a beautiful model. If I were to do it again and I was going to spend lots more time on it, I'd probably approach the whole project differently. It's FA:2 anyway, so I could legitimately field a second, but those odds are low.

And it's late, so I'm done. Time for sleep. If anyone wants close-up shots of parts of the model, just leave a comment and I'll snap more pictures.

From the Desk: Roundup #31, but no Archangel

No Archangel update in this weekend post, mostly cause I'll have one tomorrow for sure.

First note is progress on Lylyth3. Got the various pieces assembled, primed, and getting ready to start painting. I actually primed different parts black and white. Lylyth herself and the central bar of the sled are both primed white since they have a lot of non-metal parts. The sled itself was a no-brainer, but the elk was sort of a trade off that I decided to go with black for. It's weird to be tackling yet another huge based model and not have it feel like nearly as much of a daunting task. I'm planning to use the airbrush to lay down a metallic base coat and then go in and shade plates appropriately.

Second note here is that I've been experimenting with using a piece of primed plasticard as a secondary palette. So far I'm liking having it handy. It's easy to do quick thinning and mixing of paints. This combination of plasticard palette and mini-well ceramic palette is really suiting my needs. I'm finding myself using it more and more. Also here you can see the double-ended brush, which is also getting more and more usage for two-brush blending.

And that's really all I've got to report for the weekend, however I'm off tomorrow and plan to do a bunch of painting once I finish my home improvement project.