Flameguard Cleanser Officer

I haven't completely forgotten Warmachine. Despite spending almost the entirety of January painting stuff for SAGA I mananged to play more games of Warmachine than it. I wanted to get this guy since Wrath came out but I kept putting him off. He finally popped up on the local games stores shelf and I grabbed him. He was simple to paint as I haven't gone for much complexity with my Menites. Keeping them simple means that even though I have somehow been painting them since 2004 I can keep them consistent. They look great en mass on the tabletop. I, as seems all to common, haven't got my new model to the tabletop yet. I am playing a League at the moment and I am using my Circle army. I am hopefully getting a friendly game in soon so I can test him and his buddies out. I rarely take my menites off the shelf. I think last year I may have used them about five times in total which is a shame. Hopefully I can rectify this over the course of 2013.

Angry Stompy Robot

I have had a few Khador Warjacks sitting on my desk half completed for quite a while. Two brush blending is a rather difficult technique and I need to build myself up before I embark on doing it. It came out fairly okay on the berserker here but I could have done with spending a little bit more time and attention on the model. It is always presented as being quite simple. I have as yet not found it to be. I don't know if it is related to the paints I am using or how I am using them. I also added some battle damage which I didn't do to the other 'jacks in the army. I had practised it on the Killa Kans and that came out fine. I might go back and apply some damage to the Kodiak and the Devastator.

Attend me Priest!

I saw this guy a number of times in the local game store and I eventually gave in. At that point I wasn't really sure what he did and if I had I probably could have resisted much longer. He joins a mercenary unit and they then count as friendly faction models. In some cases that is excellent but I can't see a unit whith whom they are really that useful. I have Croe's Cutthroats but at ten points they are expensive and adding two more points to them won't really help! I also have Sam McHorne and the Devil Dogs but I really don't se them benefitting either. It is nice to have the model painted but I guess he will occupy the shelf for a long time to come.

I did a quick paintjob on this guy. I wanted to experiment with some yellow and pink highlights. They came out much better than I imagined and I will use these colours a little more in the future. I always highlight red from a very dark base colour. It prevents the colour from becoming too orange or pink. Hence I never really tried out a red where I intentionally wanted one of these to come through. I think the rich pink I managed to get fits quite well and so I will have to experiment with it elsewhere in the army. The yellow came out fine but it doesn't really fit the models that well. I guess not everything can come out as I want it. I think I will stick with a less vibrant yellow like on my Circle army.

I am back!

It has been two months to the day since I posted here. I just wasn't painting anymore and so I didn't really have anything to put up. There are enough news and rumour sites around that I don't feel I need to contribute to constant repetition. I was still playing regularly of course but battle reports are or at least good ones are very time consuming to write up. I never get many comments on those that I have done and their pageviews aren't very high so I haven't kept with the habit of doing them. My painting and general hobbying is the lifeblood of the blog and if I am not doing that then the blog has to go silent.

So as the blog moves forward I am hoping I can keep the pace up and keep a regular schedule. My plans for the coming year are three to four warbands for SAGA. I assume I have the models for that much as I bought what felt like a massive saxon army many years ago. These will eventually become Jomsvikings, Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Danes and then a fourth as yet undetermined faction. It will probably be Irish, Welsh or Scottish as the remained of models are unarmoured cheorl types. I have at least one opponent locally and maybe if I am playing in the club I can entice a few more guys to start. Currently my Menites are fully painted as are my Circle guys. I of course want to get a lot more of them but now that they are fully painted I want to make sure I keep them at that status. Whatever I buy has to be painted as soon as possible. It also means no bulk buys! I had a terrible habit of ordering €100 - €150 worth of models at a time. This lead to them piling up and getting neglected. So I will gradually increase these factions but no big splurges.

I do still have three other factions however for Hordes and Warmachine. I am not a hundred percent sure how that happened. I want to get my Khador army complete. That means a fifty point tier four pButcher list. A few other tier lists would be nice to have but that is the one I want to start playing with. That means I need to do a lot of painting. Also I want to start using my Blindwater Congregation. I have everything for them except a Warlock and Rask will fit the bill nicely. Once he is out I will start using them. Finally I have a nice selection of Mercs bought at various times and with various ideas upon their eventual usage. I want to complete a tier four Drake McBain list and that means steelheads. I have everything else painted so sometime in the near future I have to collect some halberdiers.

Then finally there is my all to massive collection of GW stuff. I will very soon have to cull it I am afraid. I have far too many armies in various states of completion and to be honest they are doing nothing but gather dust. I can never hope to sustain more than one or two of them for each system and so I need to consider offloading what I don't want. I guess at the moment that means I will be selling an Undead, Ogre, Skaven and possibly Empire army. I don't want to but I can't keep them all. Anyway I can still manage to squeeze them all into various storage spaces so it is a problem future me can worry about.

Hitting a Brick Wall

Linear Obstacles in Warmachine seem to be a rather popular piece of terrain and I thought I would try out making one. I wanted to do a quick mock up to see what could be achieved and this here is the result. I wanted it to tie in fairly well with the other terrain pieces I have so I went with bricks. Using bricks allowed me to thicken the wall a little bit more than if I used some other materials. I wanted the wall to emulate the template provided for these in the rule book. So it should be three quarters of an inch thick. This prevents models without reach from attacking over it for instance. The length was determined by the piece of plasticard I had left. It is about four and a half inches long.

I capped the piece with metal as this again ties in really well with the other terrain pieces. My rust technique didn't really work here as I had to be much more careful than normal. The foam I make the walls from dissovles if the turpentine I use for the pigments hits them. I wasn't able to slather on the washes as I usually would. I think I will tone down the rust for the finished pieces when I get around to making them. I have a few other projects I want to do first. The biggest one of them is getting the railroad pieces done. I finally ordered the sand I need to complete them and once it arrives is will be getting back to them.

One thing that does annoy me a little is random wall syndrome. I like a realistic battlefield. Randome walls have no place on one. They make no sense even though they are fine for the game. If I do more pieces I am thinking I will make them as some sort of a fixed size enclosure. It would represent a storage yard or the like. I think walls like the above shown one might be a little too much for agricultural purposes! I haven't decided yet but I think a terrain piece like this can work.

Everyones Favourite - Kossites

Following on from yesterdays solo syndrome I have a different painting disease to discuss: regiment rot. I hate painting units. These guys have been on my desk for well over a week. Only the rare alignment of a productive weekend happened and I managed to make good progress on these. I bought the Kossites as they were on offer and I assumed they were good. This was before I really got back into Warmachine. I have as yet never used them but I doubt they can be as bad as everyone says... right? I hope they will get a unit attachment soon to bolster them a little. Painting these was a little bit annoying. The detail is a little strange, a symptom of early Warmachine models. I kept the colours neutral. They don't fit the colours of the rest of the army but as they are an irregular unit I don't think it matters. They will still look cool on the battlefield.

How do they steer this?

I got the Gun Carriage finished finally. I have been working slowly on it over the last week and it was becoming a little bit of a chore. I painted it in two stages. The horses and undercarriage were the first to get done. I glued these into place without pinning them and now I am thinking I should have pinned them. I guess they will stay attached to the base. I was suprised by how much metal is in this kit. I would have thought the horses were resin too. At least assembly was simple, there aren't that many parts to work with and I only had to fill a few gaps on the horses.

I think the blending worked out for the most part especially with the large flat sides of the carriage. The weathering from the top and the wheels doesn't match 100% as they were painted separetely and I decided to experiment a little. I had wanted to put some dried mud on the wheels which would have covered a lot of the weathering but instead I wasn't brave enough and left them as is. The best mix for the mud I have found involves using plaster (spackle) and if I screwed it up it would be really difficult to remove. So rather than do this with an expensive model I think I will experiment a little more with some other cheaper model. The weathering on top is similar to that which I did on my watchtower. It isn't as textured as the wheels. I still think it looks fine.

So does anyone know how the crew manage to steer this thing?

A devastated brush...

My experiments with two brush blending have continued apace. I am slowly making better progress but it is an uphill battle. I got this Devastator finished last week to get some more practice in before I began the Gun Carriage. The metals and other parts are left basic here as I really focused on the green. Again I managed to get the shading in fine. I went much more dark than I have down previously and I think it worked fine. It is three shades in total each occupying about 50% less space than the previous shade. Again the problems presented themselves when it came to the highlighting. I think I am doing it too quickly without enough intermediate stages. However adding all the stages brings me back to layering something I want to try to evolve beyond. I think I will pick up a Merc 'jack to paint with some different colours to see if that is helpful. I need to pick up a Bucaneer at somepoint anyway. I hope the local store has one in.

I am just putting the finishing touches on the Gun Carriage now. It is an awesome model. It isn't a Celestial Fulcrum but it still has its own charms. I only wish the two horses weren't identical!

Steam Roller - Ass Kicking

So yesterday saw me lining out with some friends against some of the best players here in Germany. My local club organised a Steamroller event and despite a smaller than expected turnout we had some great fun. My first round was against a good Cryx player who used Mortenebra. Uusally I find this a tough match up as I can't often deal with the armour easily. However my druids really were the stars of the game. In the first turn they pulled the Deathjack about 10" forward and allowed me to do about 80% damage to him, knocking out his cortex most importantly. Second turn they pulled Seether in while pushin back the rest of the force. Both the Deathjack and the Seether were destroyed in that turn and due to sprint I had nothing within his range. A perfect game for me really.

Things went downhill from there though. The next round was again against Cryx. 50% of the players brought Cryx. I popped down Kreuger and my opponent popped down Deneghra with thirty Mecanithralls. I managed to kill twenty six of them in one turn and both necrosurgeons but my opponent was really canny and pressured the scenario right from the first turn and I was never able to get on top. He won with a scenario victory in Outflank, Outfight, Outlast. It didn't help that I thought that Tornado was a slam effect and not a throw effect. I used it on my Warpwolf to try to help clear some threats and after I had cast I read the spell and realised what I had just done. I wasn't too happy.

Things continued downhill from there. Next up was Skorne and I used prime Baldur. I have not faced epic Morghul before and I was nervous going into the game. The scenario was Sacrifice and I felt I had a good chance at a scenario victory. However I pushed Bladur up and feated thinking I was safe. I was very very wrong. Despite the Archidon having massive wings I forgot it could fly and ignore my feat. I also forgot that Ghostwalk ignored my feat too. I was close to actually surviving as not much could reach me but enough did and Baldur went down. That was a fairly basic mistake so I can't blame anything but my own stupidity. It was still fun to play despite a quick loss.

Then I played some pick up games as we finished way earlier than anticipated. Of course I won these then! That always seems the way. I did get to face off against the newest incarnation of Asphyxious and wow what a 'caster. He really dominates the board and I imagine is great fun to play. Still two Warpwolves to the face are enough to get the job done usually! So there still are two rounds to play today. I will be right in the middle of the first game when this posts. I hope I can pull out some wins now that the pressure is off. Though it is the toughest field I have seen at a german tournament and there are no pushovers at all. There are some shots of the event from yesterday here if you want to see.

Butchery Time!

I decided to paint the Butcher. I wanted to leave him until last but I didn't fancy starting work on the Gun Carriage just yet and the Butcher was the only model I had assembled and ready for paint. I kept him in the standard 5th border legion scheme. I wouldhave liked to get a little more contrast with the armour but I wasn't brave enough to really shade him down. I will try it on a Devastator I have assembled here. I think I can really get it darker still and that can only be for the better. I still have to do the base as I haven't varnished him yet. All my Khador will be varnished at once and based afterwards. Maybe I can get a group shot once everything is done.

I have been wondering if I am using paint that isn't suitable for two brush blending though. The Butcher came out fine but on some other models I haven't been finding it very easy. I managed the shading easily but the highlights remain difficult. I use Vajello paints. The base colour is German Fieldgrey WWII. I shade it down with Charred Brown which is easy enough. I highlight it with Dead Flesh. With the shade I get a smooth transition without too much effort but with the highlight it is always a struggle and I seem to only luckily get the effect I want. Does anyone have advice on what type of paint it best for two brush blending?

Backswing Brutes

I had two of the Demolition Corps needing to be finished. I haven't really been motivated to get them done. I need them for my Khador list and so yesterday I sat and got them finished. It was far easier than I remembered. Two brush blending is a lot quicker even though I make a good few mistakes. The large flat plates are really nice to work with. I am hoping that this means I will get the 'jacks done quickly. I haven't as yet added battle damage or done the basing. I am unsure if I really want to add the battle damage and I won't base them until I have them varnished.

I really like these in the game. Their MAT is high enough to reliably hit. Backswing basically gives you a reroll, though the errata changes this. Now you have to make the second strike even if there are no enemies within range. This can make for some difficulties when you are positioning them. I usually have Fury cast on them giving an effective P&S of seventeen. That is high enough to threaten 'jacks and 'beasts. They are slow however and as I use them as a counterpunch behind a wall of infantry I often don't get them into battle until very late in the game. This is okay but not ideal. It is good to have all points in the army working at the same time rather than having a lot of it sitting at the back doing nothing. Still if I can manage to attrition well with the forward elements of the army I can really dominate the end of a battle as the Demolition Corps comes into play without a scratch.

Winterguard ready for action

I had hoped to get the Winterguard unit finished yesterday. There was a little more to do on them than I had anticipated. I am getting close to having the full thirty five point list done now. The Winterguard are a massive part of my strategy. I use the list as a jam list. I slowly advance forward with the Winterguard in front. Behind them sits Alexia using the casualties of the Winterguard to build up some Risen. Generally a lot of effort needs to be put in to deal with theWinterguard allowing a lot of my army to advance unmolested. A full unit of Demo Corps, a Kodiak and the Butcher back all this up to add a good counter punch.

When I play against the Winterguard I have a healthy respect for them. They really pose a lot of difficulties unless your army is tooled to deal with the high defence. Circle doesn't come with a lot of AOE's, though the celestial fulcrum helps somewhat. Usually when I see Khador about to hit the table I use Kreuger. Having played once with the Wwinterguard I start to spot the weaknesses they have. They are slow which is a big one. Bob and Weave which adds two to their defence prevents them from running. Iron Flesh gives another minus one to speed. This means that they are often at their weakest during the first turn of the game. They have to run flat out in the first turn to be able to claim a good position for the second turn. Most often they don't have their buffs up. A good response to this for Circle is Bloodtrackers having prey on the Winterguard. Advance deployment helps as the unit has a short range. Usually you are close enough to get some shots in on the first turn. The problem is the second turn. Once the buffs come up there really is little to do until the Winterguard commit. I haven't got a really good response developed other than Kreuger as of yet.

The dreaded Manflu

The Manflu is a terrible illness. Most of last week I spent feeling terrible and having a tap instead of a nose. I didn't get much painting done but I at least got some reading in. I wanted to read A Feast for Crows again before I started with George R. R. Martin's latest book A Dance of Dragons.

Yesterday I was finally able to sit and get some painting done. I have had the Winterguard sitting on my desk for a while and I intend getting them done soon. I have a 35pt Khador list I would like to be able to field and they are a fairly large component of it. I continued with the 5th border legion scheme. I think it comes out fairly well, although my photography doesn't really do it justice. I am slowly improving my two-brush blending technique and while it is faster it is a lot easier to make mistakes with. I am also not really sure what the appropriate applications of it are. Large flat armour plates I can do but when it comes to smaller details I struggle and often go back to layering.

I will hopefully finish the rest of the unit today leaving me with not too many models to still have to do for the list. I played with it on VASSAL last week and you can see the battlereport here. It is a slow list to play but hopefully familiarity will allow me to build up some speed in play.

Watchtower finally done!

It seems like an age since I started this project. Thankfully it is now completely finished. I really just needed to get my airbrush going to that I could do the weathering I wanted and after that it was simple. The green colour is to match my Khadoran scheme. Now they have something to defend at least!The colour somehow blecds in with the aged wood which wasn't what I wanted at all. I thought it might offer a better contrast when finished. It looks good, just different from what I expected. I did apply a 'filter' of brown over the green and this may have caused the blending. A filter is a very dilute wash with pigments that is worked after drying to simulate something like dust or dirt. I haven't really experimented much with it but I imagine it would be a very interesting technique to use on the colossal I guess I will soon be painting.

I thought that the tower might look a little boring in just the plain green and brown so I added this symbol to one of the sides. I cut a stencil from some stiff paper and used the airbrush to paint it on. I wasn't very succesful as the airbrush applied the paint more thinnly than I would have prefered. I was able to touch it up for the most part. It looked horrible before the weathering but now it looks just as old as the rest of the surface around it. I didn't draw the stencil as exactly as I should have but at least for next time I will know what to do.

To differentiate the entrance from the other sides better I added a barrel. You would think a door would be enough but adding a barrel always helps! I picked these up on a whim in a local games store and I like using them on terrain as it adds a little character. The cd base I was using doesn't fit snug to the walls of the tower so adding this filled up a lot of that empty space I think. I didn't weather the entrance side too much in case I add more stuff to it later. I doubt I will but it is a little plain. A shield or something on the wall might be nice.

If you want to see some of the WIP shots of my progress on this you can see them here and here.

Anastasia

I wanted something quick to paint so I grabbed Anastasia Di Bray last week. I had no idea what she did or if she would even work with the armies I have. Thankfully she does! I painted her up in a muted scheme as befits an intelligence agent. Her clothes are quite neutral and she could be usde as a model for a more modern setting too. I have mainly been working on terrain at the moment as I really have lost my painting mojo. I am not sure why but I can't seem to get too enthusiastic to take my paints out. At least that means I am making some progress on the various terrain projects I have been thinking about for the last while.

Rusty Rails

Despite the fact that turpentine dissolves the foam I have ben using I risked it on the railway. I think it came out fine. Once varnished over it will be less vibrant than it is now. I essentially washed the areas I wanted to be rusty with turpentine and pigments. These are normal artists pigments, nothing fancy. All the pigments that are sold by various companies are all the same and you can buy them in an art supply shop a lot more cheaply than you can from a wargames supplier. I have enough in each bottle I don't think I will ever need to buy more! I got the variance in colour by applying a second wash with much more yellow mixed in over the first coat. As the pigment is suspended rather than dissovled in the turpentine you are picking up variable amounts and this gives a random amount of coverage. This is perfect for a project like this.

Light at the end of the Tunnel

Here is the first section of the Iron Kingdoms railway painted. It so far isn't too impressive but once laid out across a board I am hoping it will be! I want to rust it up too but I need to test how the foam reacts to Turpentine before I do. I can't imagine the reaction to be a good one but just in case it is fine I would like to know. I use turpentine as a carrier for the pigments and it would be really annoying if I managed to dissolve the foam from underneath the railroad after having gone to all this work!

Progress on the Tower

It is a busy week for terrain here. I fired up the airbrush and got my Watchtower basecoated. I am using the salt weathering technique on it. You can see some of the lumps on the metal sections where the salt is sitting under the drying paint. The orange that is underneath is going to be a strong contrast to the green and I am hoping it comes out fine. I have had a lot of problems when weathering stuff as I find it can sometimes blend in to the surrounding colours a little too much. I want to do a stencil design on the side. I cut out a 5th border legion symbol but the five is remarkably hard to do and I am not convinced mine is right. I shall have to experiment. I can't find a handy printable symbol online so if anyone knows where I can find one please let me know! I stuck a castigator beside the tower to show the scale. This building is really tall. It will probably overshadow most of the colossals. It doesn't quite fill the base but if it did it would be great as a sanctuary for the colossal event scenario.

Last week I played over 350 points of Warmachine. Three hundred of those points were part of a campaign between myself and Owen from Farfaraway. Owen is still editing the video of the one hundred point game. However he made a videos of the other games. These are the main body of the campaign and you can find them here if you are interested:

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

The one hundred point battle was an epic clash that took us about five hours to reach a conclusion. Kromac should have been killed early but some poor rolls saved him. We reached a point where I would have killed at least one of the Cryx 'casters in the next turn and the attrition was heavily in my favour. It would have taken too long to finish that turn and pack up so we declared it a slight win to me which was an okay resolution. If Kromac had been killed earlier in the game I think it would have turned out a lot different!

Slow Train

This project is proving problematic. I keep running out of materials to keep my progress at a constant rate. I have three sections almost built now but I don't have the right sand to continue adding ballast. I have searched a number of game stores and nowhere has any of the right size. I am hoping one of the model train stores in the locality has some. The first I visited didn't so I wil have to explore more of the shops. That is a dangerous prospect for my wallet at least as I always find stuff to buy in these shops. I have one fully flocked and I will paint it over the coming days. It will be fairly monotone I think so in the other pieces I have added a lot more areas where the stones are missing. It breaks up the grey with some brown. Otherwise it would be really boring. I am becoming tempted to build a train to go with these but that is a project for the far far future. Getting four sections made is my first priority. I will then consider if it is worth it to make some alternative pieces. I don't really know how functionable these will be in game. If they are too dominant on the battlefield I won't create anymore. I could imagine them proving a really tough prospect for a ranged orientated army to have to fight over!

Winterguard Backpacks

I seem eager to punish myself! For some reason I decided that I must convert my Winterguard. I saw a good sculpting tutorial on Lost Hemisphere and it gave me the idea to provide backpacks for the Winterguard. The riflemen look really great and I think the backpacks they have help a lot. I don't think I could just add their backpacks to the normal guys and I don't fancy having to order them. Sculpting these takes a while but is worth it. It adds a good bit of bulk to the model.