Railroad Terrain

Railroad terrain looks great on a Warmachine or Malifaux board and despite the fact I don't play those games offline anymore I still want to get these pieces painted up. These railway pieces have been lying around in my cabinet for a long time and so I pulled them out and finished them off. This piece represents a flood relief section. I am not sure how accurate it is but I think breaks in the raised bed of the track are made to allow floodwaters to pass through rather than have them erode the bed. It also offers some good tactical opportunities. The bridge section is wide enough to allow a Heavy Warjack to move along it.It is important that the piece is as fully playable as possible and I think I achieved that.

I should have done the weathering a little different. I think the salt method I have done on other projects would have worked better. This is fine and I am not going to change it but next time I will use the salt method. I need to put some vegetation on these pieces still but I am lazy at the moment and as I won't be playing with them soon they are fine to go into the cabinet. When I come eventually to use them I will get the flock out.

Currently I have three foot long sections completed and I will need a fourth as the railroad does have to cross the board. I am not sure though what to do for the fourth piece. I have been thinking of a shed sitting over the track. I have also been thinking of a tunnel but building a cliff face has kind of put me off. I have thought about building one before as a sort of table dressing, something to sit on the edge of the board and look nice. The main problem is storage space for something like that. There is no way it could be small and I already struggle to keep my gaming collection in a somewhat organised state. I am however going to build a railway station.

Red Kaya, whats up?

Red for me is a terrible colour! I can't seem to get a nice transition in any direction with it. I have been doing it a few different ways on individual models for my Hordes forces for a while hoping that eventually I would hit on the right formula. I still haven't. I painted this model a little while ago and for the cloak I started with Hull Red from Vajello's Panzer Aces series. It is a lovely deep dark red and it is the colour I use for the basecoat of all my reds now. I gave this a purple wash and then I shaded it with some Rhinox Hide(GW). It is really easy to shade and doesn't need much effort. For the inside of the cloak I just added back the hull red and then one more highlight and that was that. I wanted it to remain dark. In the picture you can definitely see the brown shading and a hint of the purple wash.

For the back of the cloak I wanted a much warmer and brighter colour. I ended up with a lighter colour and quite muted. I know why and I should have thought of it at the time. I used for the final few highlights Rotten Flesh(VJ) and as this has a green tint it muted the red considerably. I shaded the cloak the same as usual and built back the original colour quickly. From there I added Blood Red(GW) to brighten everything up. That went fine and I got more or less a colour I was happy with. For the final highlights I added the Rotten Flesh. As you can see here it quickly muted the red. It even seemed to kill the previous brighter colours somewhat. I am happy enough with the end result even if it isn't exactly what I intended. I think I will use this colour if I ever manage to return to the Blood Pack I bought. I just hate the PP plastic and I can't be bothered putting in the effort required to assemble the last half of that unit.

Maelock is awake!

I have far more armies for Warmachine and Hordes than I will ever need. I am not 100% sure why I started another only a while back. It was probably related to some deal where I thoght I could get the guts of the army cheap enough that it wasn't too much of an investment. Here is my first painted Warlock for the Gators. Maelock is a fairly complicated model with a lot of textures concentrated into small areas. I had to refer fairly often to the Privateer Press website to see a full rotation of the model so I could work out what exactly everything is. I think I got everything correct! I didn't go for too much blood as I felt that was more likely to result in me screwing up what I had already painted. I know I should add some here and there but really I am too lazy. The model is done and I am happy with it!

I can now finally play with my Gators army which will be fun. I would like to get some of my Bog Trogs finished first. I think I have eight of them somewhere completed and two awaiting paint. Once they are done I have most if not all of the releases for the army complete so I can get more or less anything to the table in short order. I always try to keep up with the latest releases for this army and my Circle one but Medieval II total war has been distracting me from painting quite a lot over the last week and a half. Lets hope I can break the addiction.

A shambling pile of stones

I finally finished Megalith. I have wanted the model for ages and even though I bought him in March I only got around to painting him the other day. I haven't varnished him yet or finished the base. Still he is looking fine and eventually I may get him onto the table top! I have tried to play him a little on VASSAL in Baldur 2's tier list. I haven't met with much success but that is down to my own uncompetitive level of gameplay combined with a somewhat sub-par list. I think it can be good but needs a higher calibre player than I. I haven't tried out Baldur 1's tier list. I haven't even tried him out of tier with Baldur yet. At least he toughens up my stable of Circle models.

I don't like the stock pose of Megalith and so I converted him. It wasn't the most excellent conversion work but it came out fine. The only problem I really have is that his shoulder things are pitched really far back where they should sit more squarely on the model. I also accidently repositioned the legs I think. To me thats how they went together but looking afterwards at the studio model they are really different. I think I captured Megalith taking a stroll! I added an armour plate to the base just for a little variety, I sculpted it up to see how it might look and stiking it on the base is about as good a use as I can think of. Sculpting this wasn't too difficult and I may get a little more ambitious in the future.

Angry Half-wolf

As I painted Epic Morvahna recently I also was obliged to paint her best friend the Warpborn Alpha.. I would love to complain about how hard this model is to actually assemble but I won't as I am thankful that it simply is not made in Privateer Press plastic. That stuff is the bane of my painting career. So far the Alpha has withstood the rigours of transport so it seems I did a decent enough job of pinning him everywhere I could. He is an impressively heavy model almost the equal of soime of my heavy Warbeasts. He definitely needs a lot of attention during assembly if you want him to stay that way. On the table he is a revelation. He has performed excellently in every game I have used him in and he tunes the rest of the unit right up. With Epic Morvahna this is multiplied via her feat. Bringing back nearly the entire unit is as good as it was hyped up to be.

I of course painted him to blend in wit the rest of the unit. His model is impressive enough to stand out without too much effort. I am slowly running out of my stockpiles of standard colours I used on these so I will soon have to look for equivalents. I don't relish that. I have enough of everything to finish my last two Tharn units but once they are done I am going to have to play with the vajello game colour to see if I can get what I need there. I noticed Rob Hawkings complaining about the range recently so maybe I should look further afield. He used them on his awe inspiring Sedition Wars display boards. I haven't had a problem with them but then again I don't think I was paying that much attention to how they dried.

Epic Morvahna revealed!

Enough of the Orks for today at least. I bought Epic Morvahna when she came out first and painted her soon after. Here finally she is revealed: I didn't deviate from my standard scheme too much. I had been trying to get more contrast into my reds and this model was one of the first I really tried. I think I failed. The cloak is still very muted and while it goes from a deep red up to a fairly strong tone it never really pops. The colours on the goat worked well though and I am happy with them. I used English Uniform from Vajello. I love that colour despite the fact that it always comes out too green at the start. I have to shake the hell out of the bottle and after the first few drops it comes out in the nice brown colour. I have no idea what is up with the bottle but those first few drops are terrible. I have at least managed to get a few games in over the last few months with her and she is great. I finally feel like I have a top grade Warlock in my circle force and she will be very much prominent in my tournament lists for a while to come!

Tharn Ravagers, what to do?

I just don't get them. I played in the Irish Masters last weekend and I used these in every list. Aa full unit with the attached chieftan. The package comes in at eleven points for the nine models. In most games I deployed them forward in front of my army and ran them forward to jam the objectives and zones. They also form a decent threat. In most games I was down to two or three models by the time I activated them again. The only thing I can think of is that I am using them in a completely bad role for them. Almost everything my opponent puts on their front line can deal easily with the Ravagers. With a standard defence stat they are easily hit and with an average armour they are easily damaged. Eight boxes help for sure but POW 12 weapons are easily able to remove them from the game. For what can I use my medium infantry?

The first thought is to place them out on a flank. It subjects them to less direct firepower in the early turns but allows them to threaten towards the centre. They are not so fast that they really become a threat out there but they can tie up and possibly defeat a lot of other flanking forces. These should leave a few models by the late game to effectively flank the opponent. However for eleven points, basically a fifth of your entire army you really want them to have some dominating prescence on the battlefield. I played a little yesterday and tested this. I found that the Ravagers are very effective against other medium to heavy infantry. These are also often deployed off centre and the advance deployment rule allows you to pick your match up in most cases. Having a MAT of nine when charging means even defence fourteen isn't too hard to hit and with a POW of 15 on the charge even armour twenty models need to be worried. Curse of Shadows gives them an effective POW boost of two meaning that even Khador 'Jacks will go down to a charge.

Having said that is there anything else I would use them for? I am tempted to use them as a second wave. I have no idea if this would be effective at all but it strikes me as a decent possibility. Having advance deployment always makes me think these guys should be up front and in the mix as often as possible. However that has rarely paid off! Putting them behind an annoying tarpit would ensure that the opponent has to commit something decent to remove the tarpit and allows me to countercharge in relative safety. Thinking a little further I am really tempted to use the Ravagers in conjunction with the Skinwalkers. They are a much more effective tarpit and removing them is no easy matter. Having them spread out allows for lanes where the Ravagers can charge into and deal with the engaging models aloowing the Skinwalkers to move up and repeat the tactic. It is expensive but I am really tempted to try it. Has anyone else tried this?

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.

Black Varnish

It may sound bizarre but I am looking for black varnish and I can't find any. I want it so that I can edge my bases in black and varnish them in one go. Black paint isn't strong enough on its own and varnishing the bases afterwards is a pain as it has to be done for each model. I don't trust a simple spray on varnish especially if I have used something like a hairspray technique. So has anyone out there found a product like this?

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.

The Shadowhorn Satyr

I wanted this guy for a while. I am assuming the Shadowhorn and Gnarlhorn Satyrs will be going plastic when Gargantuans is released. I don't like the new plastic models that much for the Warpwolves and so I thought I had better get the Satyr while I could. I never liked the model until I saw it on the table. It is actually quite taller than all the other Warbeasts, even without the horns. He dwarfs the old metal Feral Warpwolf and even the Gnarlhorn Satyr. Putting him together was easy though he didn't want to stay on the base. I pinned him on of course but with such a tall metal model there is a lot of force on the join with the base. Some greenstuff firmed this up nicely and stopped him from rocking his way off as I painted him. I had this problem with the Warpborn Skinwalkers before and I wish I had done this. They were heavy enough that they began to rock slightly as I moved them while painting. This eventually caused two of them to come free of he base in a shower of curses!

I went with a two brush blend on the skin of the Satyr. It worked out fairly well but muscle tone is a little bit more difficult than metal plates. I also didn't go for enough of a contrast. I find I am generally really conservative with my contrast. In future I really have to actively go for it all out. Still the skin came out fine and he fits in with the other Satyr. I went with darker horns similar to the stock model and these came out well. I only highlighted the ridges on the horns. I think they look good. As far as I understand he is a relatively underused beast in Circle. He sits between a heavy and a light in terms of cost and abilities. He isn't that strong are well protected. At seven points though he is cheap. His animus is useful but I prefer the Gnarlhorn's Bounding animus. The Shadowhorn has Vitality which allows a free power attack and some extra movement on slams and throws. What is interesting is his leap ability allowing him to get into places that the opponent doesn't expect and also sometimes getting himself out of trouble! Tramples are generally better than leap as they at least have the possibility of killing some models during the movement but leap is free and allows you to jump over medium and large bases. It is very rarely going to get you into a position to assassinate but it can often help in taking out some key solos. I still have to figure out a good Warlock to use him with.

Tharn Ravager Archers

It is not often that I post twice in one day. These lovely Tharn Archers were previewed by Matt Wilson on Twitter and I felt I had to share. I have been playing a lot with the Tharn recently and I am slowly coming around to just how good they can be. I am really excited to se what the archers will bring to the mix. Hopefully something good...The original link the the picture is here. I just can't wait!

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.

Iron Kingdoms RPG

I am happy to talk about some roleplaying here again. It is an oft neglected part of my hobby. I was really excited to get my hands on a copy of the Iron Kingdoms Roleplaying Game on Friday. I haven't managed to spend quite as much time digesting it as I would have liked the weekend once again proved bizarrely hectic. The book cost €59 which is a little pricey, especially in comparison to the dollar price. I guess I will be ordering the supplements from the States. The quality of the book is top notch, though the artwork is repeated in places something that always feels a bit cheap to me.

I am a little dissapointed I have to say. There are going to be a lot of fanboy reviews popping up soon I guess but overall I think the ball was fumbled somewhat with this product. I am going to enjoy playing this but I think for what I paid I could have been given a higher quality product. The game is a wonderful transposition of the wargame onto a roleplaying game framework. The mechanics are solid but seem very restrictive in certain ways. I am saying this without having played so maybe I am completely incorrect. The statistical values of all the starting characters fall within a very predictable range. Having checked through the levelling mechanics, which in themselves are good, there is relatively little increase in these statistics over the course of a campaign. This works excellently in keeping the system balanced, something I applaud in the wargame. It does make your character seem a little bit similar to everyone elses though. The differentiation comes in skills and abilities. These add small but significant modifiers in places that you want your character to specialise. Interestingly a change of a point or two towards the positive has a much bigger effect on probabilities in the 2d6 system than in a d20 system. So maybe I am being unfair. Looking at the raw stats alone and their slow development over time makes characters seem very similar. I hope that the abilities however really allow some specific specialisation. I look forward to proving myself incorrect as I get to play.

The background and setting material is also a little lacklustre. Everything needed to play in the world is provided but maybe that is the point. We are presented with a little bit of everything rather than some specifics. I haven't come across a decent map yet, the book only contains one and its detail is sparse. Khador for instance has seventeen locations named within it. For one of the major kingdoms in the setting seventeen locations isn't much to go on. There are better maps available online but I can't see why new maps weren't produced. I think for a lot of players maps are one of the most attractive parts of an RPG. They spark the imagination in ways that text and pictures can't. I always hated Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay for not providing decent maps in the expansion books. A lot of the 4e Dungeons and Dragons expansions failed to provide decent maps. Moving on the bestiary section provides maybe twenty creatures. Aagain I find that this is poor fare. I can excuse the magic spells having no description, I have often found pages of descriptions for things like that boring and pointless. Some of those saved pages should have been dedicated to good creature descriptions and more detailed location descriptions. I have to assume that a Monsternomicon and some setting books will be available soon. Going on the monsters presented in No Quarter I am really happy with the presentation. The boring presentation in the Core Rules reminds me a lot of what I hated most about 4e. The No Quarter presentation provides a lot more information

Overall I feel that we have been presented with a 'Players Handbook' and we are left waiting for numerous supplements to fill in the rest. I suppose the fact that core rules is printed rather boldly on the cover should have given a lot of this away. It wuld have been nice to have been presented with a Monsternomicon and Setting book along with the core rules. At least then the contents could have been shared better between the three allowing some expansion in certain places. I guess the two supplements a year it is a fine model to make the game viable over an extended period of time. If each year two expansions are published it may keep interest in the game up. The book does leave me hungry for more but I wonder how long that will last.

Fly, my pretties fly!

I picked up the Scarsfell Griffon last week. It is a great model and the plastic doesn't suck too much. He was much easier to clean than the Man O' War's I had to do. Hopefully more of the plastics are like this. The arms on the griffon can be posed a little differently and I guess with some sclading hot water the wings could be bent a little. That would allow for some variety which is nice. I am somewhat tempted to get a second one as I think they could be really awesome, especially with pKaya. Their extended control range and the ability to teleport them right back to her makes for some interesting hit and run tactics at extreme range. I lost fairly badly last week with this but I wasn't playing Spirit Door properly. My opponent, Owen from Farfaraway.org, showed me the last line of that spell and from then on it was game over. I do still think there is some potential there but it would be an uphill battle!

I don't really like painting wings. They are hard to get looking convincing and they are often really detailed. I checked a few places online for inspiration and I came up with this picture. I wasn't brave enough to copy it exactly but I took a good few elements from it. As is usual I am unhappy with how the painting of the Griffon went. I guess I am never happy or maybe satisfied with my painting. I over did the dark grey/brown on the underside. It is fine on the outer feathers but it is too intense I think when it gets closer to the body of the griffon. Next time I would have kept it to mybe two rows of feathers and then I would have darkened the inner rows more in keeping with the picture here.

I am a good bit happier with the back of the wings. They are a little dark despite what I felt was an extremely light highlight. The orange pieces break up the monotomy of the wings a lot and there isn't much I would change overall. Lightening up the feathers towards the head of the 'beast light have been better but the feathers there are so small and lack a lot of definition and I thought that changing the colour of them might make them look like fur. Anyway he is done now and can be put onto the display shelf with the rest of the Circle army. I just need to paint a Winter Aargus and that is all the light warbeasts done for the army. Incidently the griffon is the 100th model painted for Circle by be.

Painting Fail

Sometimes despite all the best inspiration and techniques painting just goes wrong. I painted this Feralgeist twice now and both times it has come out terribly. The standard scheme is nice but I wanted to go for something a little different. I started off with a blue scheme and it came out really bad. I am not sure why but I guess I started with too dark a base coat. It made the ghost seem too solid. I didn't learn from this however and I think I have repeated the same thing here. The red purple base colour here is just too solid looking. I highlighted it in reverse much like painting flame. I brought it down to a yellow white in the deepest crevasses. It just doesn't look right to me. I won' be changing him however, done is done. I have too many other models calling for attention at the moment. I may revisit him at a later date. Aat least for now he is a lesson to pay a little bit more attention to the planning stages of painting!

Steamroller Flags finished

I managed to get these done over the weekend despite aching muscles. Moving furniture is not something I do eagerly or particularly well. I think the flags came out fairly well although the colour of the internal wood isn't exactly as I had intended. I sculpted a few more little details such as Dryad's Saddles onto them to break up the surface of the wood. The colour scheme fits in nicely with the rest of my Circle Orboros army and I think these will be a nice addition to scenario play. I just need to think of what appropriate objectives I can make now. I think larger stumps wouldn't be quite right!

I am still tempted to make up some more of the stumps to use as a terrain piece. It is a lot of effort for some terrain but I could cast them up to save some time at least. I have a few half completed terrain projects that would cast up nicely I think. The train tracks for instance would be really excellent to cast as would a trench piece I have. Maybe I will research it and see.

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.