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.

Friday Showcase - Ork Mob

Here is the core of my Ork army for 40k: a giant mob. I only painted twenty four but I definitely have the miniatures to bulk out the unit to its full compliment of thirty. I just couldn't have been bothered at the time in painting more! I have two mobs of this size and it seemed like enough. I have only fielded them a few times against a friends Silver Skull marines and the numbers became a bit superflouous at times. They all came from the Battle for Black Reach except the Nob. I picked up a Batalion box for some reason at one point and at least it gave me a few power klaws to use throughout the army. Right now these guys are occupying a shelf having not been used in three years, a shame really but I can't part with them.

Wild Druidess

Solos are great to paint. I think that must be the mantra of the blog. I have played without the help of a Wilder for far too long and I got one last week. I kept with the autumnal colours for this model but I wanted to see how the red might work as a more dominant element. I usually go for a warm brown but I wanted something a little different. She came out fine even if the combination of the red and gold look more like Skorne than Circle. I will experiment with the combination elsewhere in the army as I think it helps bring out the autumnal theme a little better. The camera did wash out the skin tones here almost completely. There is quite a lot of effort on the skin but it just didn't get picked up in the shot.

This Solo seems great and will fit into almost all of my lists. I don't know what I will have to drop but something will give. I usually play at thirty five points and points in the lists are incredibly tight. I have also been experimenting with getting some Bog Trogs into the list. Ambush seems really powerful and I wonder why it doesn't get used more.

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.