Castellan Paint Studio

Painting Step-By-Step: WHFB Nurgle Champion

2011-09-25T03:03:00.009-05:00

So, in an effort to stave off building a new Ogre Kingdoms army (good lord their new monsters look cool!), I've been trying to knock out some older WHFB projects- namely my Chaos army. I originally built the force when I worked at GW, quite literally because I was left alone in the store too long. When you get that good of a discount, it becomes remarkably easy to talk yourself into things, and the next thing I knew, I was playing a 2000 point game the next night. Flash forward a couple of years, and I have a strangely configured force that's only half painted. I've been playing some games, and getting some painting done of late, and along comes the new plastic Nurgle hero. I've been a huge fan of the new single-sprue plastic figs that GW has been putting out of late, they use the material very nicely, and are really nicely thought out- if this is what is eventually going to replace Finecast as the replacement for metal figs, sign me up. It also just so happens that our local GW shop is starting up a cyclical paint competition- everyone paints the same model, winner is decided by votes by store visitors, and the winner chooses the next figure. A paint competition? With a figure I wanted anyway? Sounds good to me. I haven't really done this kind of step-by-step since I was logging my painting on Warseer, so I figured it'd be fun to do again.

STEP 1: Basecoats - 90 min.

On a figure like this, I find it helps to get solid colors in first- while it's not anywhere near as absurd as some of the Privateer figs where you really can't tell what some of the greeblies are, there's a couple of things that are easy to miss, like the strap on the back of his helmet. If I'd started working the flesh without noticing it, I'm not sure I would have even bothered fixing it. This part is easy- Tallarn Flesh for skin, Gretchin Green for cloth, Boltgun Metal for all the armor and the axe blade, Khemri Brown for the horns and the axe haft, Calthan Brown for the straps, and a little bit of Tin Bitz for the three little circles on his chainmail tabard. Neatness is key here, as anything that needs to be corrected after the next step will be kind of a pain.

STEP 2: The Easy Bit (Allegedly) - 35 min.

My Chaos army is unified more in technique than actual color. All of the Warriors start out with silver armor, which then gets sprayed with a wash of their god's chosen color, along with matching capes. The nice part about spraying the washes is that if everything goes according to plan, it behaves more like a glaze than a proper wash- you get a nice smooth coat over the metallic paint beneath. This time, it was slightly less according to plan. Turns out I forgot to clean out my spraygun from the last regiment (Baal Red wash for Khorne warriors). (PROTIP: Don't do that.) Once I got it cleaned up, I got to rejigger my jerry-rigged hose connector, as the GW spraygun hose doesn't seem to match anything else I have, and then get the thing spraying properly. After a half hour of cleaning and fiddling, this step took about a minute and a half, plus a couple of minutes later wicking away some excess wash with a brush to help ensure a smooth finish. The all-over coat also serves the same role as a blackline, helping define transitions between materials without being too stark, and also tones the figure into the green spectrum a bit on all the colors.

STEP 3: Axe I, Horns I, Flesh I - 30 min.

The axe is corroded, but unlike the armor, I want it to be mostly silver, so I re-coated it in Boltgun Metal, leaving the green wash in the pitting. The horns get a coat of Khemri Brown, leaving a bit of the washed brown visible at the base, and between the ridges on the shoulder spikes. The haft of his axe also got some Khemri Brown, mostly a very light edge highlight, as I want to keep that a bit darker. His chainmail also got a quick overbrush of Boltgun, to make it contrast with his green platemail. The flesh gets a coat of Tallarn Flesh, leaving the greenish color visible at the edges and in the rolls of fat. Looking at him again, I actually kind of wish that I'd used Dwarf Flesh here- it's a little ruddier and more translucent, but Tallarn covers ever so much better that Dwarf Flesh has largely fallen out of my arsenal.

Step 4: Gore I, Flesh II - 40 min.

Green wash looks pretty excellent as a shading tone for red- color theory wins again. With that in mind, I want to keep the highlights on the exposed gore crisp and smooth, so that the green shade shows through, and so that they will look good covered in gloss at the end of the process. They got a second coat of Mechrite Red, making sure to look carefully at the holes in the skin to see the texture beneath- not all of them are flat, a couple have secondary indentations, which were left the darker tone. The skin got a layer of Elf Flesh. OMFG do I hate Elf Flesh. It's lightly pigmented, but for some reason seems to be prone to thickening weirdly- if you're getting Cakey-Face when you're painting skin, you're probably using this color. Unfortunately, it's one of the better light skintones out there, even with the weird 90's GW orangey tone. (I will admit here that I forgot about the P3 skintones- I don't think I've used their lighter one. Rackham's old elf skintone is almost white, much too light for this step.) This step covered even less than the second coat of Tallarn Flesh, for a basic layering technique. I attempted to make the transparency of the color work for me, but it's not very consistent. Here I blame one of my many bad painting habits- do as I say, not as I do, and use a palette. Getting used to pot-painting just screws you up later.

STEP 5: Horns III, Flesh touch-up - 30 min.

Most of this step was fixing my lousy painting in the last step. Working slower, with thinner paint, I went over most of the Elf Flesh again, trying to even out the tone. Painting at 12:30PM instead of 2AM helps with this. The horns got a coat of Dheneb Stone, again leaving the darker tones between the ribbing at the base.

STEP 6: Armor I, Gore II- 20 min.

The armor gets a very soft drybrush of Chainmail, to bring out the edges. This is actually my one complaint about the figure- the edges on the leg armor, particularly the knees, is a little soft, with the delineation almost completely disappearing on the outside of the knees. The exposed guts got a highlight of Red Gore, again trying to increase the dimensional effect of the holes.

STEP 7: Armor II, Flesh decomposition, Cloth- 30 min.

The armor gets another soft drybrush of Mithril Silver, concentrated on the hard edges and places that are visually important- the fly on his bracer, and the "face" of the helm. The wounds are outlined with Rotting Flesh, increasing the contrast between the skin and the wounds, and also making the flesh look unhealthy. All of the various sores and pustules are also dotted with Rotting Flesh. Another highlight on the wounds and intestines, mostly focused on the intestines, with Blood Red. The cloth on the tabard is highlighted with Gretchin Green, using the darker green-washed portions as a nice sharp shadow between the folds.

STEP 8: Axe II -5 min.

To further sharpen the contrast with the corroded portions, the blade gets a coating of Chainmail, and then a sponging of Mithril Silver along the sharp edge to make it look sharp, but not perfectly maintained.

STEP 9: Axe III, Armor III -5 min.

On the back half of the blade, it gets a sponging of Tin Bitz, followed by another of Blazing Orange, to get some more traditional weathering. This also gives a second bright point at waist height- the hands on the figure aren't really the visual focus like they'd normally be, in this case, the eye is drawn more to the bright red of the exposed gut, with the bright orange rust drawing the eye across the figure. This is probably also why the Studio version of the fig has a silver helm instead of a green one- it provides another point to draw the eye, since the figure has no face or real eyes for the viewer to be drawn to, and the head is so tiny compared to the rest of him.

With the drybrushing on the armor, it has depth, but it is not green enough anymore. A light glaze of Thraka Green tones it back to green without taking away that highlight. I specifically went light over the eyeholes on the helm, in an attempt to brighten the "face" of the figure to help keep it visually interesting. The skulls also got a quick coat of Bleached Bone to brighten them back up.

STEP 10: Details

Frankly, if this fig was just going into my army, I would probably have stopped after the last step. The painting is solid, the colors look good, and it fits the aesthetic of the rest of the force. For a competition, however, especially one judged by passersby, there needs to be a little more flash in the scheme. I picked out the fly on the bracer in a corroded brass, and stippled some Tin Bitz and Chainmail onto the axe blade to tone down the orange a little bit. I also added some bright green glow in the helmet with Scorpion Green, while re-highlighting around the holes with Mithril Silver. A little bit of paint on the base and gloss on the goopy bits, and I'm done.

So, including meals, writing the blogpost, and a few periods of doing more TV watching than painting, I figure I spent about 8-10 hours staring at this little fat dude. Frankly, I'm still not sure I'm happy with it, but I've pretty clearly moved into the stage where additional tinkering might do more harm than good, so I'm going to wrap it up, and look at it again in a day or so- I have until Saturday before it has to be done for sure. If I were going to do another one of these, I might rethink the skintone- while the ruddier healthy skin tone is easier to paint, and provides a nice contrast, it might be more fun to play around with a more necrotic tone, or a bruised, purplish tone like the studio model. It's been a while since I did a marathon session like this, much less for a single model, it's a nice change of pace from painting full units.

The Loathsome Ratmen

2011-04-07T10:45:00.007-05:00

So, anyone that knows me reasonably well knows that I have Somewhat Peculiar taste in animals. I've got zero interest in owning a dog, and the bird in the house doesn't like me. What I do like, however, is rats:

(This is Marcy, my rat. She is, alas, no more.)

Given that preference, it's really a wonder that Skaven were my 4th WHFB army (not counting a few smaller projects). I find it really interesting that they're in the current starter set- I would not call them a beginner's army in any sense. With huge numbers of models, highly unpredictable (if high-powered) units, and wildly unstable leadership, they have incredible potential for both victory and frustration. But hey, if it means I can get models cheaply from players buying Island of Blood for the High Elves (Thanks Emily!), it works for me.

I built and painted my Skaven force in the waning days of 7th edition, with the last edition of the Skaven army book. The Skryre Army of Doom was the strongest build, but I couldn't resist a horde of Clanrats and Slaves, marching along with the Screaming Bell. With the old Mainstay rule, my force was built in chunks based on the Clanrat units- 25 Clanrats, 20 Slaves, 20 Plague Monks, wash and repeat.

The update to the Skaven book changed that quite a bit. For one, the Screaming Bell changed size dramatically, making my Stormvermin unit suddenly rather the wrong size, and the power level of the weapon teams swung drastically away from the Ratling Gun (the obvious choice previously). Clearly something had to be done, but I let the army sit for a bit, as I was working hard on getting my Dwarfs to a relatively finished state.

Enter 8th Edition. With so many advantages to large units of infantry, the Clanrats started to look better and better, and my old list with it's 25-rat blocks started looking just a little bit inadequate. After getting my hands on the Skaven from the Island of Blood, I finally had the motivation to look through my collection and figure out how the force would work.

First to go was the relatively tiny Clanrat units. With plenty of spare models in the bitz box, it was a simple matter to combine them into a 50-strong unit with spears. Running in 10-wide Horde formation, the first four ranks get to fight, and dropping a Warlord in the unit gets them to Leadership 10 with room to take a few casualties without losing effectiveness. The two smaller units of Clanrats get a role protecting the flanks of the big monster unit.

The Plague Monks didn't have a whole lot to change- the new army book gives them two hand weapons by default, which is what I had built mine with, it was just a matter of adding more models to the unit. 25 should be enough, at least until I build a Plague Furnace.

The Skavenslaves get no help. Nay, they DESERVE no help! Intended as a discount speedbump, I don't know how to improve on 20 models for 40 points, except by churning out a couple more units of the poor guys. Nothing like getting them into combat in order to hold a target in place for shooting. Life is cheap, especially at 2 points per model.

The Stormvermin are a bit of a conundrum. I need to get my hands on some more of the old models- 19 just isn't enough to hack it, and the new figures, while beautiful, don't match up well visually. I have re-based my Screaming Bell, but without the Stormvermin to push it, I think I'm going to stick with a Warlord as my general for a little while.

Ah, the Weird Stuff, the reason to play the Skaven in the first place. Island of Blood comes with some killer Rat Ogres, not to mention the only available model for the Plague Mortar. I also have a stack of Poison Wind Globardiers and Plague Censer Bearers from the Warhammer 25th Anniversary box. The right mix of weird stuff, of course, can define the character of the army. At the moment, I'm leaning towards a Warpfire Thrower with the big unit, though I am seriously considering picking up a Doom Flayer for maximum smashiness. The other units are currently getting Ratling Guns still, since I have them around, but I will likely be switching them out for Warpfire Throwers. The Warp Lightning Cannon is less overtly bizarre than it used to be, but it still certainly merits a spot in the list.

A horde gets nowhere without someone to lead it, even someone as conniving and cowardly as a Skaven general. The Skaven line was hurting for cool looking characters when I got started, but the Island of Blood solved that problem rather nicely with a fantastic looking warlord. My old Warlord model will now be doing BSB duty, and with Ikit Klaw back in the army list, I'll be using a regular Engineer for my pistol-shootin', lightning zappin' duties.

Overall, I think the new army book is a vast improvement, and with a couple of players spinning up WHFB armies right now, it's a good time for me to stop resting on my Dwarfy laurels and get to painting again. The original Clanrats and slaves are some of the most effective and easiest models I've painted- once I fire up the spraygun, I'll take some step-by-step shots.

Army Update: Dwarfs

2010-11-10T17:15:00.004-06:00

So, one of the first posts I made here, about a year and a half ago, was about getting my Dwarfs ready for a small tournament. Since then, I've done a lot of terrain posts, a few battle reports, had about three posts with no content at all, and used Valten in more photos than he's really worth. So I figured I'd revisit the Dwarfs, since the launch of 8th edition spurred on quite a bit of painting.

The first time the Dwarfs appeared on the site, they looked like this:

Now, that was hardly all I owned at the time (I had a couple thousand points back then, too!), but that was about all that I had done, apart from a Grudge Thrower and a couple of heroes. Here's what the force looks like now:

It's a little harder to get the whole thing in a decent picture now... Time to pull out a few highlights, I think.

The core of any Dwarf army build of mine is the war machines. Depending on the role they're called upon to perform, there's nearly always a combination of weapons and runes to get the job done in an impressively explosive manner.

The Grudge Thrower dates back to the Hobbytown days, before I even had a Dwarf army, and the Cannon from my first post on the Dwarfs is joined by another. Relatively new to the party are the Organ Gun, and the Bolt Thrower. There's some interesting stuff going on with the paint schemes, since there's about a five year window between when the Grudge Thrower was painted, and finishing the Bolt Thrower. The Grudge Thrower is very bright and shiny, going way back to my older painting, though the crew has some detail from my first flirtations with strong use of inks. The Cannons and Bolt Thrower are much more modern in terms of my paint style, with heavy use of washes and a more utilitarian look. The Organ Gun occupies a funny middle ground- while it's painted using the same techniques as the other newer guns, it's painted with the bright, bluish silver tones that I used on my Ironbreakers. More on them later.

With the change in the army construction rules in 8th Edition, there is more of a focus on Core units than ever. (Gee, maybe that's why they call them that? I should ask about that...) Points-based requirements mean that a lot of my army lists are fielding more Core than I'm used to, and that means that I had to expand my basic unit selection. Not a lot, mind you, as Dwarfs are still pretty pricey models. The half-finished Warriors from the first post are still the first choice, though now they look a bit better.

Backing them up are two units of Thunderers. Shooting unit choice in the Dwarf book is interesting- everything is Move or Fire, and the Quarrelers trade off a +1 to hit for 6" of extra range. I have never managed to get them to work for me, but they may get a second look now that the rules allow for shooters to fire in two ranks. In the meantime, the Thunderers have quite a few kills to their tally.

The final Core unit is the Longbeards. Modelled with Great Weapons and shields slung over their backs, they are one of the most expensive units in the army, but they repay it in versatility, striking power, and support for nearby units through the Old Grumblers rule. Built before the lovely metal Longbeards were rereleased, they're built from the Warrior kit, with metal facemasks and quite a bit more gold detailing to differentiate them (not to mention their much paler beards).

The Special units are really where the Dwarf army book comes into its own. Containing most of the war machines (with the exception of the Gyrocopter, Organ Gun, and Flame Cannon), it also has several of the most deadly (and coolest looking) Dwarf infantry units. In Ye Olde Days of 7th Edition, it was a careful balancing act to get all the different army roles filled, as there are several very different units in the Special section. Now that army construction is percentage based, with up to half of the total army points spent on Special units, there is much more room to expand and use a variety of different units in concert.

The Ironbreakers are probably my favorite Dwarf unit. While not always the highest performing on the table, the concept of Gromril-armored dwarfs that specialize in clearing infested tunnels is a pretty cool one. Here's hoping that in the next army book, the Dwarfs get something similar to the Vault Wardens from Lord of the Rings. The Ironbreakers were originally going to be painted in P3 Platinum in order to get a very different finish to their Gromril armor. After painting my Grey Knights, however, I ended up changing my mind, and going for the blued, polished steel look. It sets them apart from the rest of the force, without going too far off the mark.

Hammerers just might be the best unit in the Dwarf book. Damn near uncrackable when a Lord is joined to the unit, and brutally powerful in close combat, they know how to get the job done. Funnily enough, though, they're the most recent addition to my army. As older metal models, a full unit is damned expensive. Big ups to the Joes for a superlative birthday gift. They're painted in the same way as the Longbeards- similar colors to the Warriors, with extra gold trim, and a unique beard color for the Champion. I would like to go back and dress up the standard at some point, though- compared to the newer ancestor pole bitz in the plastic kits, it just looks a little dull.

You've already seen these guys, there's not a lot to say other than that no matter how many times they get shot full of arrows crossing the battlefield, they keep finding their way into my army lists. It's hard to say no to that kind of daft enthusiasm.

And finally, the leaders, the shouting gits that get the Dwarfs to run willy-nilly at much taller and angrier opponents (Except the Slayers, there's nobody as angry as they are). The bloke with the white beard and the grouchy look on his face is actually the model that made me want to start the army- released at the same time as the army book in the waning days of 6th Edition, I was unpacking an order at Hobbytown, pulled him out, and thought "Well @*&#, now I'm going to have to start a Dwarf army." There are very, very few models I've ever seen that get across the character of a race as effectively as he does. Joining him are the Lord on Oathstone, a model which I like quite a bit, but haven't been able to quite talk myself into using as my general, the Battle Standard Bearer, the Runesmith, the Skull Pass Dragon Slayer (who also occasionally does time as a Giant Slayer in the Slayer Regiment), and an Engineer. Previously, the Master Engineer was a foolish waste of a character slot, so he was just occasionally a regular Engineer serving with the Bolt Thrower crew. With the low cost of Dwarf Lords and the new rules, I've been tinkering more and more with running my Runesmith as a Runelord instead, and using the freed up points in the Heroes allotment for the Master Engineer. Now that heroes cannot join war machine units, his rules have changed, allowing him to hover in a cluster of war machines, choosing from turn to turn which of the machines he's going to aid. It's always fun to see a model get new use like that.

I really need to spend an afternoon getting static grass on all the new units, I keep putting that off. Next up in the queue is the Anvil of Doom, and I'd like to add another rank or two to the Ironbreakers. A Gyrocopter might be a good idea too, the flying machine and the Flame Cannon are the only Dwarf units I've never actually tried out. With the way the Dwarfs have been doing in 8th Edition so far, I'm seriously considering a unit or two of Warriors with Great Weapons, or using the special rules from the Lord to allow for a second unit of Longbeards. Somehow, no matter how many points get finished up, there always seems to be just a little more to add...

Battle Report- Ultramarines Vs. Tyranids

2010-11-09T19:49:00.002-06:00

Played a game tonight against the ZombieArchivist as part of a Planetary Empires campaign that's been going in fits and starts. It's supposedly also a bit of an Escalation event, so tonight's game was at 1000 points. Just enough points to fit in a few nasty things, but not enough to take everything.

We played the Seize Ground mission, with 4 objectives, with Pitched Battle deployment. Nice and easy, especially when compared to my 5-6 game streak of only playing Dawn of War deployment. My force consisted of a Captain with bolter and power sword (my cheap replacement for Sicarius in small games), Tactical Squads I and II with plasma guns and missile launchers, Tactical Squad III with a flamer and a missile launcher, 5 Scouts with a power fist for the Sergeant and a heavy bolter, a Dreadnought with an Assault Cannon, and a Vindicator with Siege Shield. Lots of bodies, but with the tank and the Dreadnought to handle any big angry bugs.

The Tyranid force was not quite what I was expecting. I'd been seeing lots of Genestealers out of him lately, and this list was basically the opposite of that. A Tyranid Prime with Rending Claws and Adrenal Glands, 2 Venomthropes, a unit of 30 Hormagaunts with Adrenal Glands and Toxin Sacs, 30 Termagants, a Tervigon with Catalyst, and a Mawloc. Way more bugs than I'd planned to be seeing across the board.

My deployment was pretty straightforward- I split all 3 Tactical squads into combat squads, while the Scouts got into position on the objective in the near crater with their Scout move. The back halves of Squads II and III (IIB and IIIB) parked on the hill with their missile launchers, while IB got ready to set up shop on the wrecked Rhino with the objective. IIA and IIIA were escorts for the Vindicator, and getting ready to take the far crater objective, while IA ran with the Dreadnought to leapfrog the Scouts and take the objective in the forest on the Tyranid side. At least, that was the theory- we all know what happens to plans at contact.

The Tyranids set up in a couple of huge groups- the Hormagaunts in the forest on my right flank, the Termagants and Tyranid Prime on the hill on the left, with the Tervigon and the Venomthropes in between.

Taking the first turn meant that things were easy for me to start with- everyone moved up as planned, and my shooting phase was tremendous. With Squads IIB, IIIB, the Scouts, and the Dreadnought shooting at the Hormagaunts, I was able to thin their numbers very quickly, and an incredible stroke of luck with the Vindicator obliterated BOTH Venomthropes. All of the A squads ran, moving into position for the next turn.

Turn One for the bugs was not nearly as positive. Awful Difficult Terrain checks left the Hormagaunts swinging in the breeze right in front of the Scouts, and the Tervigon rolled 1-1-2 for his spawning, creating a unit of 4 Termagants and running out of eggs for the game.

In the second turn, the A squads continued to move up, while pouring fire into the Tyranids. The Scouts, IA, IIA, and the Dreadnought continued to lay waste to the Hormagaunts, while all of Squad III and the Vindicator dropped fully half of the Termagants.

In the bottom of the second, the Mawloc showed up, right in the midst of Squad IIIB, easily chowing down on four of their number, the missle-armed trooper just staring up at the massive beast in shock. The Hormagaunts finally remembered that they were hungry, assaulting the Scouts and Squad IA. The Scouts weathered a terrific number of attacks, managing to lose only one of their number, along with one Tactical Marine. Only managing to kill three of the Tyranids, that fight continued. On my left flank, Squad IIIA managed to account for 5 Termagants to no losses of their own, with the additional armor saves from Fearless accounting for 4 more dead Termagants.

In the 3rd turn, Squad IIA, accompanied by the Captain, moved up to support the Marines fighting the few remaining Termagants and their extremely angry Tyranid Prime, while the Dreadnought turned back towards where he started in an attempt to go deal with the Mawloc. His shooting was inadequate, but the two missile launchers on the hill were able to account for a wound on the huge monstrosity. The Dreadnought was slightly better in the assault, wounding the Mawloc twice while being immobilized itself, as the Mawloc failed its attempt at Hit and Run. The Captain and the Tyranid Prime squared off, with the Tyranid scoring one unanswered wound on the Marine hero. The Scouts and Squad IA continued their stalemate with the Hormagaunts, with the other Tactical Marine forward elements accounting for five Termagants, the rest of them falling to extra wounds from fearless, leaving the Tyranid Prime in combat with a full ten marines and the Captain.

The third turn for the Tyranids was almost entirely done in the Assault Phase. The Tervigon jumped into the fray to defend the Tyranid Prime, while the Hormagaunts were cut down by the Scouts, leaving the two remaining Scouts to consolidate their hold on the flag in the crater, with the Sergeant and Plasma gunner from Squad I making a break for the lightly defended forest objective. The immobile Dreadnought managed to inflict an unanswered wound on the Mawloc, while the fight between the Tyranid Prime and the Space Marine Captain continued to be a tied contest.

Turn 4 was a big shuffle for the Ultramarines, with squad IB moving from the wrecked Rhino forward towards the unoccupied crater objective, while IIB and the lone survivor of IIIB moved to take up their positions in the wreckage. The remaining Scouts, IA Tactical Marines, and the Vindicator collectively only accounted for 3 of the 4 Termagants guarding the forest objective. The Dreadnought managed to inflict a fifth wound on the Mawloc, though it got exploded for it's troubles, while the Captain continued his streak of bad luck, still failing to injure the Tyranid Prime, while it cut down two Tactical Marines. Their resolve held fast, however, keeping the fight going for another round.

With it's mechanical opponent now scrapped, the Mawloc took the opportunity to dig deep into the desert sands, avoiding any hostile gunfire. With a lucky Fleshborer shot, the lone Termagant in the woods managed to bring down the plasma gunner from Squad IA, leaving a lone Sergeant to face off against the vile Xenos. The Captain finally managed to wound the Tyranid Prime, but not without cost, with three more marines killed, while a fourth fell to extra wounds from combat resolution.

Returning from the ground, the Mawloc, eager for vengeance against the Vindicator, attempted to bore straight through the armored behemoth, but miscalculated, missing completely, a move that would take it almost completely out of the fight. The Vindicator, unfazed, brought it's Storm Bolter to bear on the lone Termagant, robbing the Sergeant of a chance to best it in single combat. The Tervigon crushed the last member of Squad IIA, but the Sergeant from Squad III and the Captain held fast, with all four objectives now solidly in the hands of the Ultramarines.

With the random game length forcing the Ultramarines to hold on, they had little to do besides hope that their Captain could hold the Tervigon and the Tyranid Prime in combat. The Vindicator easily obliterated the already wounded Mawloc, but the Captain again failed to wound the thick-shelled Tyranid Prime. The Tervigon had no such problem, eviscerating the Sergeant from Squad III, and feasting on his remains.
With only two models on the table, the Tyranid turn progressed quickly. Now undistracted, the Tervigon easily devoured the Captain, with Consolidation moves allowing the Tyranid Prime and the Tervigon to contest the objectives held by Squad IB and the Scouts, respectively.

Another unlucky turn roll led into turn 7, with nearly every Ultramarines model on the board firing on the Tyranid Prime in hopes of dealing a deathblow. The Heavy Bolter from the Scouts managed to deal a wound, but it was not enough to bring it down. With the Tyranids getting the last chance at assaulting, the Tervigon handily beat the Scouts, with only a single wound from the Sergeant's Power Fist on his way down the Tervigon's gullet. The Tyranid Prime managed to kill two of the five Marines holding the far crater, but the rest held fast as the game drew to a close.

With the Forest and the Rhino firmly in their grasp, and the Tervigon in the near crater, the Ultramarines held the field, two objectives to one for the Tyranids.

I think this game was a pretty good example of going in with a well thought-out plan, while remaining adaptable. I had hoped to get my Captain and Squad IIA onto the far crater, but with the Captain's power sword the only real shot at cutting into the Tervigon (with the exception of the Scout Sergeant's Power Fist, and he already had a job to do), I had to play leapfrog with my units on the left flank. The Mawloc was extremely disruptive- during turn 5, I spent my whole movement phase trying to spread out the squads holding objectives in hopes that the Mawloc's return wouldn't blast me off of an objective- really the only thing that kept it from being devastating was Joe's intense hatred for the Vindicator, even going so far as to admit that it wasn't the smart tactical play. There were a couple of rules errors that should have been obvious to me at the time- we misplayed And They Shall Know No Fear for a couple of turns, defaulting the Marines to Fearless when they failed a morale check, rather than after being caught by a Sweeping Advance. That cost me a couple of Marines and probably a few attacks from charging back into the fight, and there's really no excuse for it- I've been playing Space Marines for more than a decade, and ATSKNF has not really changed all that much. I also was panicking over the Tyranid Prime during Turn 7, forgetting that because it wasn't a Troops Choice, it had no chance at taking the objective away from Squad IB, just contesting it. Really, Turn 7, especially the Tyranid half, was a formality- there was no way for the two remaining bugs to contest or destroy enough Marines to keep the victory away from me. My own mental failings aside, however, it was a well-fought game by Joe, especially considering his poor luck early on with the Tervigon, and a pleasure as always. Certainly a worthy game for his debut in the Steamwerks.

Finishing an old terrain project

2010-11-07T15:58:00.002-06:00

So I've had the CNC Workshop church sitting around on my terrain shelf for like three years now. I bought it, built it, sprayed most of it with GW Roughcoat, and then couldn't decide how to roof the damn thing. After taking a whole pile of pictures with it for yesterday's battle report, I figured it was about time to finish it up. I had tinkered with thatching the roof, but I didn't think that'd make a whole lot of sense in the desert, plus I already had a bunch of wood slats handy. Here's how it started out:

Slat roofing is pretty much as easy as it gets, and I got lucky- the roof on the entryway was just the right size to fit nice and even without any overhanging sticks. This was pretty much the only part that fit that neatly.

The tricky part about the roof was fitting around the belltower. With shingled roofing, like on my Flying Tricycle buildings, you have some room to fudge any minor fit issues, since they overlap. With the slats, everything has to fit at least close to flush or it'll look funny. I initially started laying slats from the top of the roof down, but as I hit the bottom of the belltower, I realized I was going to run into trouble, with the roofline under the tower being about half a slat out of the pattern. I ended up redoing it with a slat under the belltower edge, then working my way up and down from there, leaving a small gap at the top that would be capped off later. Throughout the process, I tried to keep the spacing fairly irregular, using slats cut to different lengths to keep it visually interesting.

Checking ahead this time, I found that the tower roof was just a hair longer than an even set of slats, but since I planned ahead, I was able to use a bit of extra spacing across the whole section to eat the extra space.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/conspyre/5155945282/in/set-72157619404354418/
Starting with slats flush to the top and bottom of the roof, I started laying in pieces to fill in the middle, adding a tiny bit of extra space between slats in order to take up the quarter-slat of extra space.

With the guides in place, it was a simple matter of filling in the gaps to finish it off.

With the roof laid down, all that was left was to cap off the roof with one horizontal slat, to cover the peak of the roof, and deal with a few warped slats.

A few drops of glue and some patience (while watching a little TV on Hulu) got them sorted out. I like a bit of irregularity in the roof, but obviously the lifted edges in the photo are a little much.
With the roof done, there were still a couple of details to attend to. The kit is designed with a big crucifix on the back of the belltower. Given that it gets used mostly for Warmachine and Warhammer Fantasy, two settings where Catholicism doesn't have a whole lot of sway, something had to be done about it.

A quick trip to Michaels netted me a half-dozen wooden discs about 1.5" across, for the princely sum of $1.30. Craft stores are awesome, and these feel like the kind of things that may come in handy later.

The other issue that remains is the windows. CNC Workshop likes cutting out windows. On their village buildings, that's not so bad, as they have interiors, but for my church, they either just look dark, or show off the tan table underneath the building. Once I get some paint on this thing, I'm planning on gluing paper inside the building, colored to look like stained glass. The last part I leave as a question to the gentle readers- What denomination is this church? Certainly not Sigmarite, as there is a beautiful GW piece for if I decide I need a church in the Empire. Menite? Bretonnian? Generic "Church of Happiness" a la Pelor in D&D? Let me know your thoughts!

Warmachine comeback!

2010-11-07T00:32:00.003-05:00

So, after a post-GenCon hiatus, the Usual Suspects have been clamoring for a bit of Warmachine. After feeling a bit burned out on the game, I'm trying to try something a little different from my old Severius and 2 Revengers assassination list. The game ran a little late, so there were a few tactical mistakes, but for the most part, it was back to what I originally enjoyed about Warmachine- tight tactical play and tense fights.

Protectorate Vs. Cygnar (Martha), 35 points, 'Caster Kill

Protectorate Force: High Exemplar Kreoss, Heirophant, Revenger, Crusader, Vanquisher, 6 Knights Exemplar, 5 Exemplar Bastions, 4 Choir, Knight Exemplar Seneschal.

Cygnar Force: Commander Coleman Stryker, Squire, Lancer, Thunderhead, Gunmage Captain Adept, Journeyman Warcaster, 3 Stormsmith Stormcallers, 6 Sword Knights, 10 Storm Guard

The table was set up "competitively", but we ended up fairly symmetrical, with a bit of a road running down the center. This was where most of the bloodshed was going to take place, with a bit more right around the church.

Turn 1 was pretty uneventful for both sides. I went first, with most of my army advancing and Kreoss setting up a couple of upkeeps- Lamentation on himself, and Defenders Ward on the Knights Exemplar, preparing them for a flank run towards the Sword Knights. Martha's force did much the same thing- Stryker set up Arcane Shield on the Stormguard and Blur on the Lancer, to buy it a turn safe from the Vanquisher shelling it, while the Journeyman Warcaster gave the Sword Knights his own Arcane Shield.

Turn 2 started a little bit of violence. The Choir set up the Vanquisher for a fire mission with a little Hymn of Battle, his Flame Belcher killing off 3 of the Storm Guard. The Crusader and Bastions advanced, preparing to meet the remaining Storm Guard head-on, while the Knights, Seneschal, and Revenger continued to position themselves.

The Cygnarans had a bit more going on. The Stormsmiths set up a nice chain of electrocutions on the Knights Exemplar, but only actually managed to kill one of them for their trouble. Stryker attempted to Earthquake the Bastions, but failed (forgetting the ability of the Squire to re-roll a casting roll once per turn). The Storm Guard charged into the still-standing Bastions, killing 3 of the 5, thanks to Sanguine Bond allowing the ones next in line to be hit to be killed instead, minimizing the impact of the Storm Guard. The Gun Mage Captain Adept took a potshot at the Vanquisher, but only hit it for two points, only managing to make it angry.

Going into Turn 3, the Menites were getting ready to bring some pain. The Vanquisher obliterated the Gun Mage Captain Adept with a well placed Flame Belcher shot, smearing his remains all over the underbrush in the copse of trees he was attempting to hide in, while the Crusader smashed a pair of Storm Guard into the sand with his Inferno Mace. He probably only really needed one focus, if any. The Bastions failed to hit anything, probably too busy laughing at the two warjacks massively over-killing their targets. The Seneschal dropped one more Storm Guard, while the Exemplars split their charges amongst the Stormsmiths, completely (and hilariously) destroying them. Old men are not well-equipped to tangle with the finest soldiers in the Protectorate.

Cygnar's response was fairly quick in coming. The Sword Knights managed to kil two of the Knights Exemplar, while Stryker cast Snipe on the Thunderhead, allowing it to zap the Crusader for five points of damage.

Turn 4 was the clear turning point of the game. Dropping all of his upkeep spells and only allocating one point to the Vanquisher, keeping the rest for himself, Kreoss activated his feat, knocking down all of the Cygnarans but Stryker, his Squire, and the Journeyman Warcaster. A blast of Cleansing Fire killed a pair of Storm Guard, while Purification stripped the Sword Knights of their Arcane Shield and the Thunderhead of Snipe. The Bastions and Crusader handily saw off the helpless Storm Guard, as the Knight Exemplar Seneschal took a run (and a Smite) at the Thunderhead, but not hitting him hard enough to knock him into Commander Stryker. The Knights Exemplar tried striking back at the Sword Knights, but even knocked down they were only able to kill two of them.

Reeling from Kreoss's feat turn, the Cygnarans spent this round mostly in damage control mode. The Thunderhead and Lancer each spent focus to shake off their knockdowns, with the Thunderhead managing to zap Kreoss with a 6-point bolt of lightning. Stryker himself managed to hit the Crusader with Arcane Bolt, splash damage hitting the Bastions. The Journeyman Warcaster re-cast Arcane Shield onto the Sword Knights, who then failed to damage the enraged Knights Exemplar.

The fifth turn was the Protectorate's best shot at bringing down Stryker. With an open charge lane due to the Thunderhead ignoring him, he bore down on Commander Stryker, managing to pummel him for 15 points of damage, not quite enough to bring him down, even with the slam taking him straight into the Squire. The Revenger moved to screen Kreoss from the Thunderhead, allowing the High Exemplar to channel a couple of Immolates into it, not doing much damage, but managing to light it on fire. The Bastions charged the Thunderhead, doing a bit of damage, while the Vanquisher took a shot at the Lancer, blowing its shield arm off. The Crusader advanced towards Stryker, while the Knights Exemplar only killed a single Sword Knight.

Another damage control turn for Cygnar, the Thunderhead lucked out on his Fire roll in turn 5, the flames going out without doing any damage. The Sword Knights finally got the best of the Knights Exemplar, but they were still far from the rest of the fight. The Thunderhead managed to catch both the Bastions and the Revenger with an Energy Pulse, for a single point of damage to each, but then crushed one Bastion with a Shock Fist attack. Stryker cut the Seneschal in half for daring to hit him, but again forgot to activate his feat.

Round 6 was really the end. The Crusader beat the Lancer into scrap, while the Vanquisher, aiming for Stryker and missing because of his wooded cover, blew up the Squire. The remaining Bastion managed to destroy the Thunderhead's right arm. Even with it in combat, Kreoss managed to light the Thunderhead on fire again before the Revenger moved to engage it, keeping it from making a run at Kreoss at the buzzer. With the Thunderhead burning up during her Maintenance Phase, Martha surrendered at the start of turn 6.

There were a couple of key mistakes this game (Does everyone forget Stryker's feat?), but overall it was pretty damned close until Kreoss's feat turn cracked the midfield open. The Storm Guard were fairly brutal, though not nearly as dangerous against the tough Bastions as I'm used to them being against softer infantry. The Bastions' ability to move damage around in the squad is much more interesting than I'd thought at first glance- it's not just about keeping more of the squad alive longer, it can very effectively prevent the enemy from having targets to hit in the first place, especially heavy hitters like the Storm Guard. This game did do what I needed it to- remind me that Warmachine is actually a game worth playing occasionally, rather than just a few hundred dollars worth of models sitting in a dusty case. I also just picked up the new Privateer token set, which may merit a review of it's own.

GenCon 2010- Day 4

2010-08-08T16:53:00.002-05:00

Day 4 was pretty much just a pack up and go sort of day, with a little bit of final purchasing before getting back in the car for a ride home.

There was one relevant detail, though. I had missed it initially, but one of the guys from the Clan Grand Melee messaged me on Twitter, looking to meet me. Turns out, one of the line developers that wasn't at GenCon saw my angry tweet about the event, and wanted to try to make amends. He sent along a painted 'Mech as a peace offering, and Joseph, the bloke from the game, passed it along. It was much appreciated, and the chance to talk about the game after I'd cooled down a bit was almost as good. CGL seems to like to structure these things like the fiction says they should be, which I can respect, much as single-elimination stings. Apparently there is talk about upping the Battle Value next year to allow Medium 'mechs if there's going to be water on the board. I suggested having a second table already set up and sending downed mechs over there to continue playing, even if they're not eligible for the win, just to keep people from feeling like their time is wasted, and apparently someone in the Powers That Be dug that idea, so maybe it'll be in effect next year. Like I said, I can dig that they want the Grand Melee to be the way it is described in the events, but in tourneys for other systems, even if you know you're irrelevant after losing game 1, it's still fun to get to play the next few rounds.

GenCon 2010- Day 3

2010-08-08T00:01:00.002-05:00

Day 3 was largely recovery from Day 2, with a hell of a lot of Malifaux thrown in for flavor. Slept in until about 2, which would be much more luxurious if I hadn't gone to bed at 7:30AM, and headed over to the convention center for a 4PM Malifaux tournament. Now, I must admit, that with some of the other big releases lately (WHFB8 in particular), I was NOT prepared for this tourney. I hadn't gotten a chance to play lately, and I had just skimmed the new book. The local "scene" (which pretty much consists of 4 of us playing occasionally), which I was dominating pretty handily, is missing a couple of the armies that can really give the Ortegas fits, apparently. Round 1 was against the new Ophelia Special Force, which is a Goblin army with a group of goblins dressed like the Ortegas. It's about as silly as it sounds, but damn if they aren't effective. There's a couple of bizarre things going on there (like an ability that can deal damage through solid brick walls with no save or attack roll), but the hardest for me to deal with was the sheer number of models. Malifaux does not have a system for balancing unequal numbers of activations like Battletech does, so being outnumbered three to one just means that you have to show your hand earlier. I got smoked pretty badly.

Round 2 was against a Leveticus warband. He is a seriously weird dude. His entire warband is designed around him actually dying over and over again, and getting put back on the table at the end of each turn. Unfortunately for my opponent, he drew the Slaughter objective, which requires you to kill more Soulstones worth of models than your opponent, and a Master kill is worth 10ss. One of my Schemes was "Family Justice", which requires me to kill 3 models with Perdita's Execute ability. I managed to achieve it on Leveticus alone, which along with a kill from Nino Ortega put him 40 points behind. Apparently because of our game, the design team is going to look at the rules for Leveticus in that context. Hilarious game, but due to secondary objectives, I lost it 2vp to 1.

Round 3 was against a Ramos warband. Playing against Leveticus showed off a lot of the model replacement shenanigans in the Malifaux rules- Ramos is built entirely around them. Combining Steampunk Arachnids into swarms, creating new ones entirely, summoning electrical constructs, the whole game was about weird mechanical things showing up and slowly crunching away at my army. When time was called, the game was pretty much a draw, but he had me dead to rights- lucky for me it was a slow bleed.

The terrain for the tournament was the prototypes of the new TerraClips terrain. It was, in a word, horrendous. Badly warping, with clips that were difficult to play over and were not holding buildings in place. Given Wyrd's attention to quality and the usual level of polish on WorldWorks's stuff, I was appalled. Rumors were rumbling around the tables of it being cancelled, of the designers being angry, etc. There's a posting up on the Wyrd site here: http://www.wyrd-games.net/node/98 Apparently they are delaying them until they get fixed. Hopefully they'll get it sorted out, since it's also the first time for WorldWorks selling a physical product. The art is pretty decent, but given the quality of the newer stuff in WorldWorks's fantasy line, I'll probably skip TerraClips- for what they're asking, a flat baseboard with a sewer printed on it is pretty weak.

I was impressed with the running of the event. Things proceeded pretty quickly, players were friendly, and Malifaux continues to surprise me with how crazy they can make the rules and still have them interact in convincing ways. I think I'll definitely be looking into the events next year.

GenCon 2010- Day 2

2010-08-07T23:39:00.003-05:00

Friday was a LOOOOOONG one. There had been an Arcane Legions event that I'd wanted to go to, but it was supposedly sold out (found out 20 minutes after it started that it had in fact opened up, but too late), so we spent a lot of the afternoon wandering again. I spent a couple hours in the WoW TCG room- they are doing a weekend-long league that lets you play against anyone else in the league and get swag for playing. I played a bit against other starter-only players, had a pretty good time. I also ended up picking up a Dragon Dice starter and fooling around with that for a bit. Martha and I did a demo for WarGods of Aegyptus, which we were both very impressed with. With Greek armies on the horizon, I might be getting on that bus. It helps that they also have a beautiful Yeti army that Martha is eying. We wound up wandering around town for a little while, killing time getting ready for the big event of the day- the all-night Warmachine tournament.

Tournament-level Warmachine is an interesting animal. It's fast, insanely brutal, and played by a very particular class of gamer. The more I see of it, the less I want to play it. The setup for the tourney was pretty disorganized- we got there 15 minutes early and tried to get registered, and they told us to wait, which led to waiting in line and rushing through paperwork, annoyances that could've been saved if they'd just given us the signup form. There are apparently several different versions of the Killbox scenario floating around- I lost my first game because at this event, premeasuring the size of the Killbox wasn't allowed, and they started tracking it at turn 2 instead of turn 3. What really burns me is that the guy that got the free win off of me ended up winning best overall. There was a huge majority of Hordes players, and I think it really made a difference. Mk. II definitely improved on some of the inequities between Hordes and Warmachine, but I'm sure I was not the only player whose feat was utterly useless for several rounds (my matchups were Trollbloods, Rhulic Mercs, Trollbloods, and Trollbloods). Players bailing out because of the lateness of the hour led to me drawing a bye in the third round, but with the exception of the exceedingly pleasant gent that was playing Dwarves, the tournament was definitely not worth getting back to my hotel room at 7AM.

GenCon 2010- Day 1

2010-08-05T18:59:00.002-05:00

So, since last year, liveblogging from the show floor didn't go so well, I'm taking a moment to collect my thoughts in my hotel room (plus, this keyboard is much nicer than my phone). Today was mostly wandering the vendor hall, plus a Battletech event that I was quite looking forward to (more on that later).

I haven't gotten to sit down and check out demos just yet, today was more scoping things out, and picking up the "got to have it" items. The new Malifaux book is quite lovely (Martha is reading it at the moment, so I haven't gotten all the details yet), and the Battletech Hexpack: Lakes and Rivers is a giant leap forwards from the crummy paper mapsheets included in the current starter box. There was a show special on starters for the WoW CCG, so I picked one up on a whim and played a game- it's a decent "post-Magic" game, not the sort of thing that I'm going to rush out and buy a case of, but it's kind of a fun thing to have kicking around for a lull in the show.

So about that Battletech event. Total bullshit. Apparently the full rules didn't get posted until a week ago on the Catalyst Games forums, which I had checked a few weeks ago. There was very little info on the GenCon registration site, beyond "bring a Clan Omnimech". No weight limits, BV totals, etc. So I happily went to work on my Summoner, ordered some decals, tinkered with different variants, until I was pretty sure I was set to go today. I even emailed the contact address listed on the GenCon website to make sure I had all the details. When I arrived, they had trouble even pointing me to the right place for my event (which was not the table with the sign for the event on it). Once I got there, I discovered that it was really just a qualifier for the actual Bloodname Trial that's going on tomorrow (and I couldn't find tickets for earlier, oddly). Everyone had to pick from a list of five light mechs, none of which I was even remotely familiar with. I know there is a segment of the BT-playing populace that really likes lights, but while it's fun to run around the battlefield 9 hexes at a time, I can't think of a single other thing that recommends them. With armor made of tissue paper, they become incredibly luck-driven. So anyway, after a 30-minute delay, since half the table didn't know the rules that had been added, so everyone had to pick mechs, we get started. Turn one, I advance (walking, not running...) into a river. My mech immediately trips, takes one point of damage, and the right torso floods with water, rendering everything in that section and the right arm inoperable. Turn 2, I manage to stand up, catch a flight of missiles in the chest, and a lucky center-torso crit causes another engine hit, and I'm out. Elapsed time: 45 minutes, 30 of which were waiting to pick a mech and get started. The program specified 8 HOURS, which meant that the whole experience cost me $16. Easily the worst experience I have ever had at a convention. I will very likely not be bothering with BT at GenCon again, unless CGL seriously gets their shit together.

Army Building and 8th Edition WHFB

2010-06-16T17:00:00.003-05:00

I have held the book in my hands. It is very big, and full color, and overall, pretty nifty.

With that out of the way, a look at the new (Old?) army composition in WHFB8. It's been a source of a lot of rumors, a lot of "OMG the sky is falling", and rather a bit of wringing of hands. I didn't get a long look at the book today, but I wanted to at least see precisely what the rules are on composition, so I can start to prepare my army for the new book.

It's pretty simple. >25% for Core, <25% each for Lords, Heroes, and Rares, <50% for Specials, and no more than 2 duplicate Rare units and 3 duplicate Special units.

For someone who cut their square-base teeth on WHFB5, this isn't terribly strange, but if you've only played 6th Edition and later, it's going to take a little bit of getting used to. So what's it mean for the game?

-Points are important, not unit counts. I think this may be one of the biggest (and best) changes for high-cost, elite Core units. No more cheapo filler units to take up the third core slot, if you have a couple of big smashy ranked units that add up to 500pts (in a 2k game), you're all set.

-The sky is not falling for heroes. This is important to note, especially as compared to many of the rumors. Lords get their own points allotment, with plenty of room to stretch their legs. Monstrous mounts are going to get relegated to the larger games, but it also means that Lords are available in ALL GAMES. Now stop, read that again, and make sure that you're not drinking anything while you do it. 1000 point game? You can have a 250 point Lord running your army. Granted, 250 points isn't going to get you a Chaos Lord with all the trimmings, but it does mean that in smaller games, armies with less smashy Lord choices will have a good shot at going toe to toe with some of the more punishing Hero choices, like in the Warriors of Chaos book.

-Unit spam is not completely gone. There was a lot of scuttlebutt going around about stiff penalties for running multiples of the same unit. It's just not true. The book clearly specifies that "2 for 1" choices still count as a single pick, and 3 of the same Special is still going to be quite a few of the same models. That said, the limit does reward running two larger units of a Rare slot, rather than running seven or eight tiny ones, so it does nip a few of the more ridiculous hypothetical builds from the rumor phase in the bud.

I sat down and wrote out a new Dwarf list over my lunch today, and it's actually legal in both editions of the rules. I suspect most people that were running relatively even-handed armies are going to be in a similar position. More Lord or Rare focused forces might be in for a little reorganization, but from what I've looked at for the rules for close combat, I suspect that most of those armies are going to be wanting to take a few more skeletons/warriors/spearmen anyway. I don't envy the guys that have to rewrite the validation rules for Army Builder, but on the whole, I think it's a strong step towards rebalancing things for the better.

It's been a while...

2010-06-11T12:07:00.002-05:00

So, while doing the site redesign with Blogger's neat-o new layout tool, I kept on having the last update from November of last year staring at me. It's got a way of making a guy want to get something done. So here's the "state of the steamwerks" since then.

-Repainted my table! I finally got around to both reinforcing the thing (no more bending!) and getting a fresh coat of paint on it. Now I can actually be reasonably sure my terrain will match the board, and I've got a hell of a lot of Tausept Ochre and Bleached Bone look-alike latex paint.

-Painted a bunch of terrain. With the table repaint, I wanted to get the rest of the terrain set shipshape. In addition to the stuff that's already showed up on the blog, now there's two Gaming Hills, a Temple of Skulls, some assorted small ruins, and the Bastion properly finished, plus the Battlescape and a couple of forests at least partially finished.

-Reorganized my gaming space. This one is still a work in progress. I moved the desk out, and moved in another bookshelf and Martha's display cabinet, along with adding some new terrain shelving. Still plowing through organizing the (probably thousands) minis in boxes that let me actually find things, but I'm closer to having a more usable space than I have been in a while.

-Lost my camera. This one is the main reason I haven't been posting- my phone just doesn't take the quality of pictures that I would like. There is some suspicion about the timing of it, but the main point is that I just don't know where the damn thing is.

-Played a hell of a lot of Xbox. This is one of those cyclical hobby things... With a lot of people being busy around the last big 40K release (Battle Missions), I just didn't end up doing as much tabletop gaming as usual. That said, Splinter Cell: Conviction, and Halo3: ODST were not a bad way to kill a few weeks.

So. Moving forward. Right now, I've got some decent work done on my Romans for WAB, and with the 2.0 rulebook out, it's getting some good play. I've been getting back into painting my Vostroyans, after some disappointment with the codex. What do you folks want to read? More battle reports? Painting logs? Philosophical musings about the state of rules and players? Let me know what you think!

Thoughts on gaming in "Real Life"

2009-11-06T17:47:00.004-06:00

I've done a bit of gaming this week, in all sorts of forms. Played a couple games of Pandemic and Mall of Horror, an online game of Advanced Squad Leader, two 40K games, Warhammer Ancient Battles, and even a game of Battletech, not to mention enjoying the heck out of the Left 4 Dead demo. I was thinking specifically about finally getting a "real" game of Battletech in after so long, as compared to the games I've played recently online, and how they compare. Granted, the game today was a teaching game, using the introductory rules and only two 'mechs, as opposed to the larger engagements I was playing online, but I think I enjoyed this one more, and not just because I didn't get my ass handed to me this time (still lost, though). There is something about pushing the models, rolling the dice, and seeing the look on your opponent's face when the dice fall one way or the other, even if the gameplay is exactly the same. I think that is why this hobby has survived in the face of smarter, faster video games, and nifty online systems (though those are helpful if you have a friend who insists on becoming a Canoodian). That, and it is somewhat difficult to paint imaginary models.

There's a lot of speculation about a new edition of WHFB running around at the moment, and I think it's interesting the different things that they want from a new ruleset. I think one of the things that gets forgotten in all of this is that ultimately, the designers had a specific game in mind when they wrote it. Battletech is a game about giant robots; Warmachine is a game that used to be about giant robots, and is now about way the shit too much infantry (though Mk II may be better); and ultimately, WHFB is a game about big damn heroes, scary monsters, and masses of troops fighting and dying for their race's future. I would love to see a lot of changes to the ruleset, but looking at how the newer army books look, I think we're going to see more stylish heroes and the sorts of things that make the Old World different from any other fantasy setting- strange war machines, wacky specialist troops, and powerful wizards. To expect anything else would imply that Alessio had a sudden change of heart about the entire focus of the game, and I don't think that is terribly likely. Fortunately, there are all sorts of other games in this world that ARE about pushing masses of infantry across the table to get stuck into tense fights, where only the brave and the lucky survive, and there are certainly room for both kinds, both in the world, and on my little patch of desert.

Unit Specialization in 40K

2009-10-15T10:42:00.003-05:00

For a long time, I've had a theory about 40k army building, adapted from a popular saying about the roles of women and compatriots- Boys before toys. It came about from my Guard army, where in the old codex, it was very easy to spend tons of points on Doctrines and cool hardware, without remembering that at their core, they were still just regular guys with lasguns, a weapon that is really only effective en masse. It does apply, however, to nearly every army, and I played a game a few days ago that illustrated it extremely well.

The Game:

2500 points, Ultramarines on both sides of the table. This kind of matchup is always nasty, as the Space Marine codex is certainly versatile enough to build many different armies, but ultimately you've got two armies both using the 40K baseline stat line, so it becomes less about the dice, as any kind of even fight is going to be a coin toss anyway. Then it comes down to stacking the odds in your favor with either numbers, or hardware.

The Armies:

Mine:
Cato Sicarius and Command Squad (Apothecary, Company Champion, Company Banner, Thunder Hammer, Power Sword/Storm Bolter)

5 Assault Terminators w/ Land Raider Crusader (Sarge w/ Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield, 2 Lightning Claws, 2 TH/SS, LRC has Sergeant Chronus, Multi-Melta, Storm Bolter)

Venerable Dreadnought (Assault Cannon, Extra Armor, Drop Pod)

Tactical Squads I-IV (I and II have Plasma Guns, III and IV have Flamers, all four have Missile Launchers and a Sergeant with Bolt Pistol and Chainsword)

Scout Squad I (Sergeant Telion, Missile Launcher, 3 Sniper Rifles)

Scout Squad II (Sergeant with Power Fist, 2 Shotguns, 2 BP/CCW, Heavy Bolter, 4 Boltguns)

Land Speeder Storm

Vindicator with Siege Shield

Predator Destructor (Autocannon turret, no other upgrades. Discount tank!)

The Enemy:

Chapter Master (digital weapons, melta bombs, artificer armor, plasma pistol, power weapon)

2 Dreadnoughts (Extra rmor, Storm Bolter, Assault Cannon)

10 Terminators (2 Assault cannons)

Tactical squads I-III (10man) Flamer, plasma cannons in I and II, Lascannon in III, Teleport Homers on Sergeants, Razorback with Lascannons and Extra Armor for III)

Land Raider (Multi melta, extra armor)

Vindicator with Sergeant Chronus, Siege Shield

Grey knight grandmaster and retinue (Grandmaster, NFW, Psycannon, Holocaust, Retinue x5 with Holocaust. )

Obviously there are some similar units in our forces, but in general, the opposing force is better equipped compared to my fairly numerous army. The game was a two-flag objective mission, and the opposing force mostly tried to camp their objective, while the front halves of my Tactical Squads advanced across the table, with the back halves providing covering fire. The Dreadnought dropped in right in front of his lines, doing a bit of damage before a lucky Plasma Cannon shot blew him up, and the Vindicator got into a game-long duel with his Land Raider.

The key difference was in the use of our Terminators. While giving his Sergeants Teleport Homers was a good move considering the two expensive teleporting units, he didn't move his Tactical Squads aggressively enough to make the homers worth using. That led to making risky unguided Deep Strikes, which resulted in his Grey Knights being destroyed, and his Terminators spending the rest of the game walking towards the action. My Terminators, on the other hand, enjoyed the comfort of their Land Raider until they were needed, keeping them safe, warm, and well fed (Didn't you know, Land Raiders have a minibar!). They were able to get out towards the end of the game and clean up, while the Crusader meandered around the battlefield blowing the crap out of whatever got too close to it. My investment in my Terminators was much less, and better protected, leaving more points available for the blue guys with boltguns that ultimately will carry the day for any Space Marine force (though they're not always blue, I suppose). Certainly I got lucky with the deep strike mishaps, but ultimately, do you want nearly half of your army depending on whether or not you manage to roll below average on scatter rolls?

Game vs. Tomb Kings, 6-27-09

2009-07-17T00:41:00.003-05:00

Ah, the delay when one has Flickr sets to sort... Or, y'know, is lazy.
Anyway, I played a number of games in preparation for a tourney at the Chicago Battle Bunker this past Monday. This particular one was against John (not of Plastic Legions, though he's a good guy too!) and his Tomb Kings. Those that play against me in WHFB on a regular basis know a basic truism- I *%#$ing HATE the Undead. So any chance to give them a kicking is a good time, though given my record against them, maybe not...

Here's my standard "castle" deployment. Warmachines on the hill, Thunderers on the flank with a Dragon Slayer to discourage people from just rolling up the thin line of shooters, Slayers on the other flank, and my three major combat blocks filling up the center (Left to right, Warriors, Longbeards, and Ironbreakers). The best laid plans, of course...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/conspyre/3676978951/sizes/m/in/set-72157619335123663/

And the view across the table. Chariots on my left (led by his bitchin' flaming Tomb King chariot), more Chariots, a thin line of Skeleton Archers, two Screaming Skull Catapults, some Tomb Guard, and Yet More Chariots. That many S7-vulnerable units should be a Good Thing for my Bolt Thrower and Cannon, but that remains to be seen.

Turn one was a bit more eventful than usual. The Tomb Kings advanced, with a little magical assistance speeding up a couple of Chariot units, and the Screaming Skull Catapults dropping a couple of Slayers, while the Tomb King's unit reminded me that yes, TK Chariots have bows by killing two Thunderers. The Dwarfs retaliated, powdering a Catapult crewman with a cannonball, and destroying a Chariot between the Thunderers and the Organ Gun.

Turn 2: The Slayers square off against the fast-moving Undead

Turn 2 was a quiet Magic phase for the Tomb Kings, as between a Rune of Spellbreaking and some solid Dispel dice, they didn't see a single spell go off. The shooting phase was a bit nastier for them, with a (obviously huge!) shot from the Screaming Skull Catapult demolishing the Organ Gun, leaving the crew a bit puzzled as to what to do with themselves. Like all good Dwarf gun crews, they ended up parking themselves behind the hill to have a quick pint or five until they were needed. The Dwarf shooting wasn't quite so stellar, with the Cannon failing to hit, though the Thunderers and Bolt Thrower each destroyed a Chariot.

Turn 3: It Came From Below!

As is traditional, turn 3 was Interesting. All of John's reserves showed up, namely two Tomb Scorpions and a swarm of three bases. The last chariot in his second unit attempted to charge the Thunderers, only to be gunned down by their Stand and Shoot reaction. Using my last two Runes of Spellbreaking effectively shut down his Magic phase again, leading neatly into one of the Screaming Skull catapults misfiring. His Tomb King's chariot regiment easily cut down the Thunderers, despite their earlier triumph, and overran into the Dragon Slayer. Despite it landing practically on top of them, the Warrors easily defeated the first Tomb Scorpion in combat resolution, and the Bolt Thrower crew bravely defended their machine against the other one. The Slayers, alone on the right flank, managed to hold up against the Swarms and his right-flank Chariot unit. On the Dwarf side of the round, the Cannon managed to do two wounds to one of the Screaming Skull Catapults. The Tomb Scorpion fighting the Bolt Thrower crew cut them down, demolishing the machine, while the Dragon Slayer found his glorious end against the Tomb King. The Slayers were whittled down by the Chariots and Swarms, the Chariots claiming their banner for the trophy halls of Khemri.

Turn 4: Surrounded, the Dwarfs try to regroup.

After the frenzy of combat in Turn 3, Turn 4 was relatively sedate. The Magic phase was again quiet, while the Skeleton Archers dropped a cannon crewman. The Cannon responded by destroying one of the Swarms with Grapeshot, but otherwise it was mostly preparation for Turn 5, which would inevitably be the decisive turn.

Turn 5: I somehow don't have a good picture. Please enjoy this kitten.

The Ironbreakers got charged by both the Chariot and the two remaining swarms. Again the Magic phase was silent, though I can't say the same for shooting, with four Longbeards killed by airborne craniums. One Tomb Scorpion killed off the Cannon crew, overrunning into the Organ Gun crewmen, while the Ironbreakers fled and were cut down.

Turn 6: The Tomb King and his retinue fight the Warriors.

Without the Runesmith to help with magic (he was killed with the Bolt Thrower crew), the Tomb King was able to advance his unit into the Warriors, while the Tomb Guard got the rear of the Longbeards. The Warriors broke and fled, cut down by the chariots, and the Longbeards fled, running into the Skeleton Archers, leaving the table clear of Dwarfs.

This was a tricky game for me. I'm used to the Vampire Counts, where if you can stymie their magic, they're in a great deal of pain. In this game, John didn't get very many spells off, but his Chariots were still more than enough to crush my infantry blocks.

I'm not dead!

2009-07-17T00:15:00.003-05:00

A quick post while I get photos sorted for the other posts I should write tonight-
The new Imperial Bastion is HUGE (Valten for scale, as ever).

Robots!

2009-07-02T17:32:00.003-05:00

Just a quick peek into the OTHER obsession, which I spent today indulging, rather than writing the (3) blog posts I have piling up...

This is my games table, not a truck stop!

More than meets the eye, or robots in disguise? I was a Gen 2 child, myself...

Terrain: Oasis

2009-06-30T23:57:00.003-05:00

I happen to have a desert table. Not a dessert table, mind you, as while delicious, it makes it tricky to play Warhammer. I've been trying to build up a good assortment of the main kinds of terrain (area, linear, buildings, woods, etc), but it's a little tricky to theme pre-made water features to make sense on my board. So I built an oasis. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take pictures during the actual construction, but it's pretty simple, I'm sure you guys can figure it out. It's a board of thin MDF (actually an old forest plate), with a foamcore second layer. The water area is cut out to allow for the depth of the water, and the trees are the Citadel Jungle Trees. A quick coat of sand, and it's on to the paint!

The first step was a quick coat of Tausept Ochre from the spraygun, which is the color I'm planning on using from now on for desert terrain, as the Desert Yellow just doesn't cover well enough.

Not much to look at yet, but I promise, the good stuff is coming. The tree trunks got a coat of P3 Battlefield Brown, as I had some kicking around, and I like the slightly more purple tone that it has as opposed to GW Scorched Brown. The foliage got a coat of GW Foundation Knarloc Green, which is usually my go-to medium green.

That pretty much gets them back to the garish look the bright green and brown plastic had, but now is the fun part. All the foliage gets a coat of GW Leviathan Purple wash. It seems like a funny color, but I really like the dark tone it gets in the veining on the leaves. While that dried, the trunks got a quick overbrush of P3 Bootstrap Brown.

Next, the base and tree trunks got a pair of drybrush rounds, first with Desert Yellow, and then with Bleached Bone. This highlights the sand, and on the trunks works similarly to the Bleached Bone drybrush on the Arcane Ruins- it highlights subtly, and tones them a bit to match the rest of the terrain set. The foliage got a quick drybrush of Knarloc Green to get them back to green, but with the darker veins.

The final touch was the actual water. Over a few days, I did three very thin pours of Woodland Scenics Realistic Water. I am slightly concerned that the second may not have set entirely, as there is still a bit of milkiness to the look of the water, but I'm giving it a few days to cure further before I give up on it entirely. Valten appears again for scale.

Arcane Ruins painting

2009-06-24T11:56:00.002-05:00

If you've spent any amount of time painting in hot, humid weather without air conditioning, you may have noticed an interesting phenomenon- the paint starts acting a lot less like paint, and a lot more like glue until you thin the heck out of it, and then it dries super quickly on the palette. Frustrating, no? I was in the mood to paint yesterday, but rather than ruining a perfectly good model, I took the opportunity to work on a piece of terrain that had been kicking around in the bins for a bit.
The Citadel Arcane Ruins are a great utility piece. Super simple to build and paint, and they stack so well, you don't really have to glue anything unless you have something very specific in mind. My set is currently all loose pillars, as I like the flexibility of just setting them up to suit the game, especially with the True Line of Sight rules in 40K.
The first step was a quick blast with the spraygun, coating them with Charadon Granite. I really, really, really like this color for terrain. It's got a ton of subtle tones in it that you can bring out with different color highlights, and it warms things up nicely from black primer so a drybrush doesn't look too stark.

After the spray coat dried, they got a heavy overbrush of Adeptus Battlegrey. Another good utility color, it does suffer from a similar problem to Codex Grey- if you give a model a solid coat of it, it looks kinda like you didn't paint it at all. Problematic.

The solution to the grey problem also helps tie the piece into my desert themed board a little bit. Bleached Bone, while almost completely replaced in my painting by Dheneb Stone, is really good for a toning drybrush, as it's very translucent. Just a light drybrush, occasionally running a thumb or my palm over flat surfaces to wipe up any excess to avoid brushstrokes, and it's all done.

And the whole thing, with Valten for scale:

Also, be careful about the seams on the sides of the pillars, or you'll be like me, and notice just how bad they show up under bright light just as you post pictures on the Internet for everyone to mock you for...

WHFB Battle Report, 6/22/09

2009-06-24T00:58:00.003-05:00

I played a game on Monday against Anthony to test out a list for a staff tourney I was invited to, as while I'm not really staff anymore, they needed someone else to beat on (I kid, I kid!). The tournament is 2250 points, which is just a touch larger than I like playing in WHFB (I'm a firm believer that the game is balanced for 2000 points on the nose), but it's not so big as to make it impossible to get at least a good chunk of my Dwarfs sorted before then.

My list was an expansion of my 1000 point list from the store tourney, adding a BSB, an Organ Gun, a Bolt Thrower, a unit of Longbeards, and a unit of Ironbreakers. Dwarf Battle Standards are absolutely fantastic. The runic item system makes it so that if you want to spend the points, you can make a truly insane swiss-army knife banner that does damn near everything. In this case, the main use for the BSB is to carry the Master Rune of Valaya, which adds +2 to every dispel roll, and also automatically dispels any Remains in Play spell within 12" at the start of each player's Magic phase. The Longbeards are a second line unit, intended to help the Warriors stick in with the Old Grumblers special rule, and do a bit more smashing with their Great Weapons. The Ironbreakers are a bit of a comprimise. I think Hammerers are probably the better unit, but I don't own any, and I don't have the $100 for a unit of 20, so currently I'm using the Ironbreakers as a hard flank to my force. The war machines are also kind of a mixed bag. The Bolt Thrower is arguably my favorite war machine in the army, kitted out with a Rune of Seeking and two Runes of Penetrating, making for a pretty unholy one shot killer for any chariots running around (Black Coaches, I'm looking at you!), and a very reliable shish kabob maker for light to medium infantry. The Organ Gun is a new one for me. I like the idea of being able to shoot the bejesus out of anything that gets close, on the other hand, I'm not sure I like that they have to get close first.

Anthony played a very tough, compact Lizardmen list. One block of Temple Guard with the Slaan Mage Priest, two units of Skinks with a pair of Kroxigors each, a small unit of Skink Skirmishers, and a pair of Ancient Stegadons with Skink Priests riding them.

Initial Deployment:

I ran a pretty classic Dwarf castle formation- pop the war machines up on the hill, park the big infantry blocks in front, and let them come to me. On my flanks were the Slayers, hopefully to stop his Skink Skirmishers off on that flank, and the Thunderers on the other to provide a cross fire, and maybe tempt him to present the flank of a unit. Anthony set up dead hard, with his Slaan hiding off in the woods, and the Stegadons set up inside the Skink units. His Skirmishers are out of the picture to the left, hiding behind the watchtower and waiting to sprint across the board.

Turns one and two were fairly uneventful, the only major casualty being my Organ Gun- to itself. Hard to see what a new unit will do when it blows itself up the first time it's in range of the enemy. Oh well.

Turn three started to see the first few casualties. After pretty much locking down the Lizardmen magic phase, a Skink priest managed to get a bound Thunderbolt off to kill my Dragon Slayer. I didn't have much luck returning fire, most of my shooting bouncing off the Stegadon approaching on my right flank.

Turn four was not good for our vertically-challenged heroes. The Slaan got Spirit of the Forge off, killing 8 of my seemingly invulnerable Ironbreakers, while the Stegadon that the Thunderers failed to dispatch easily killed them off.

Turn 5 saw the other Stegadon finally hitting my lines, running down the unit of Warrors with the Runesmith and running into my Longbeards, which was part of the plan, with my Dwarf Lord set up to smash the hell out of the big lizard. In the bottom of the turn, my Cannon finally saw off the Stegadon on the right, greatly lessening the effectiveness of that group of Skinks, and giving my Ironbreakers a fighting chance to hold the right side. The Lord did a fantastic job, easily wounding the Stegadon 4 times, allowing the Longbeards to hold their position.

Through all of the carnage in the center of the table, Anthony's skinks on my left flank were doing a little dance, trying to bait the Slayers into a fight. Turn 5 was finally their undoing, with the Slayers easily breaking the Skinks, and running them off the table.

Turn Six was mostly mop-up. The Dwarf Lord and his Longbeards finally broke, fleeing off-table, and my two remaining war machines both misfired, bringing the match to a close.

The final score left little question, with the Lizardmen scoring 1602VP to my 678VP, for a solid victory to the Lizardmen.

(How much detail do you guys want to see in batreps? Turn by turn pictures and movement, or just general impressions? Let me know!)

Housekeeping

2009-06-19T22:28:00.002-05:00

Tiny little post....
What do you guys think of this layout? The only thing I'm not quite so enamoured with is the slightly hidden commenting, you have to either open the full post, or click on the number to the top right of the post to get to the comments. I'm still learning how to do the formatting on Blogger, so please, feel free to make suggestions, tell me the thing is hideous, whatever. And please, comment on everything, it makes me feel less like I'm just shouting into the void, I do that enough on Twitter (@Conspyre, if you're into that sort of thing).

WHFB Tourney Report, 6/7/09

2009-06-13T13:01:00.004-05:00

So I'm a little late with the tourney report, but that's still more updates in a week than Tabletop Madness has had, y'know, ever... (nothing like a public nudge to get someone to post, right?) Snarkiness and my horrid showing aside, this was a fun tournament, I've been really enjoying the Sunday games at the Oak Park GW shop. The games are small (750 pts for 40K and WotR, 1000 for WHFB), and the people are mostly pretty dedicated hobbyists, or at least players (We'll get into issues with the hobby side in a minute).
My army:

I ran a very basic "core dwarf concepts" list- 20 Warriors with axes and shields, with full command; 10 Thunderers; a Cannon; 12 Slayers with banner and musician; led by a Thane with runes of Snorri Spanglehelm, Swiftness, and Fury; a Dragon Slayer with three runes of Fury; and a Runesmith with three runes of Spellbreaking. The plan was to use the Slayers as a rock solid flank, anchoring the other end of my line on a board edge with the Cannon, and trying to shoot the bejeezus out of anyone trying to cross the table to come to grips with my forces.

Round 1:
My first game was against Kevin. He's a young kid, but he's a remarkably skilled general in WHFB and WotR/LotR (don't think I've played him in 40K, but I've heard good things about his Templars). He was running a fairly brutal Warriors of Chaos list, pictured below:

With a Khorne-marked Hero, 8 Khornate Knights, 15 Warriors of Khorne, and 28 Marauders, Kevin's army is all about two things: Blood for the Blood God, and Skulls for the Throne of Khorne, and it delivers in spades.

This is just after Kevin's charge moves in Turn 2. Turn 1 was largely ineffective, my Cannon stuck a shell in the mud right in front of his Knights, and while my Thunderers dropped a couple of Warriors, it was mostly a setup turn, getting ready for the logical matchups. Warriors vs. Warriors, Knights vs. Slayers, and the Dragon Slayer squaring off (well, kinda, he's turned sideways so he doesn't fall down the hill) against the Marauders. This is where I really, really, really underestimated the shock power of the Khornate Knights. I'm used to being able to hold a charge from damn near anything with the Slayers, and the Knights tore through them like they weren't even there. They ripped through the Slayers in a round, overran into the flank of my Warriors, demolished them, overran into the Thunderers the next turn, and finally into the Cannon, while the Chaos Warriors calmly wheeled around and killed the Dragon Slayer (though not before he killed no small number of Marauders!) An easy win for Kevin, he tabled me in 4 turns.

Round 2:
The second game was against Paul, the manager of the shop, and his (absolutely lovely!) Chaos army. A little bit tricky as he had to bounce in and out to help customers in the (woefully understaffed) shop, but Paul is a really pleasant guy to play against. Have to put up a couple of shots of models that he didn't run in the game, just because they're fantastic! Here's his Warshrines:

He's also got a very, very impressive conversion of Vilelitch the Curseling:

(not sure my photo does it justice, but it's definitely worth going to Flickr for the full size shot)
Here's the army he ran, along with a dashing grin:

His army was 2 Tzeentch wizards, a unit of 10 (unmarked) Knights, 2 units of 5 Marauder Horsemen, and 2 units of 5 Warhounds. I was a lot happier to see his heroes than Kevin, as his army was a lot more magic reliant, which I was pretty well equipped to handle. Turn 1 was much the same as against Kevin- my cannon stuck a shell right in front of his Knights, and the Thunderers picked off a few Marauders. I shut down his Magic phase, but used two of my Spellbreaker Runes in the process.
Turn 2:

Once again, by turn 2, the battle was properly joined. One unit of Warhounds charged my Cannon after losing one of their number to a (much better aimed) cannonball, the Knights charged the Warriors, and the Slayers were double-charged by Warhounds and Marauder Horsemen. The Cannon crew saw the Warhounds off handily, an extra round of stout for them! The champion of the Knights challenged my Thane, no doubt seeking the favor of his heathen gods, but the finely-crafted armor of the dwarf deflected his blows. The combat was nearly a draw, but outnumbered by the frightful Knights, the Warriors fled, getting cut down easily by the faster Knights. The Slayers easily held against the lighter Chaos units, breaking them in combat during turn 3, while the Knights rode over and slaughtered the Cannon crew. Turn 4 saw the Warhounds and Maruaders rally and start making their way back to the Slayers. In turn 5, the Thunderers fled off-table from the mighty Knights, and finally in turn 6, the sinister magic of Tzeentch killed off the last of the slayers.

Round 3:
Round 3 was against Leo, a High Elf general I'm always happy to play against. He started the hobby about the same time I started my High Elf army, and he's been doing a good job of building up quite a sizeable contingent of the pointy-helmeted blokes. His army for the tourney was built around one of the more interesting High Elven Hero choices, the Dragon Mage:

In addition to the Dragon Mage, he used the modified High Elf organization chart to the fullest, running one unit of Lothern Sea Guard, one of the Phoenix Guard, and a Repeater Bolt Thrower. In turn 1, in a (now-familiar) bit of frustration, the cannonball overshot the Dragon by quite a bit, the dragon cooking all but 2 of my Thunderers in return. Turn 2 was mostly maneuver, apart from the Dragon finishing off my Thunderers, and the Cannon misfiring, leaving it silent until Turn 4. Turn 3, the Warriors and Slayers charged the Sea Guard and Phoenix Guard respectively, locking them solidly in combat. The Sea Guard broke during turn 4, netting me some of the only victory points I scored during the game, as the Dragon Slayer made a mad dash at the Dragon Mage. He found his glorious death, killing the Mage but not the Dragon, while the Cannon managed to miss again, overshooting the Bolt Thrower by mere inches. The game ended early in Turn 5, as Leo had to duck out. The first game where we actually had to count VP, but overall a win for the High Elves.

Despite my horrid showing, the tournament was pretty enjoyable. My one quibble is that in the last couple of weeks, the scoring scheme has changed, and in the process paint has not been being judged (despite being supposedly part of the overall score) because "there aren't enough painted armies". I strongly object to the idea of advertising a tourney where painting is supposedly being scored, yet players that have unfinished armies aren't losing anything for showing up with bare plastic. In the size of games that are being played, there's really no excuse for not being able to get things at least as block-painted as my Warriors and Thunderers, and honestly I think the Slayers took less time than the block painting did. I try very hard to promote the mindset that whatever the size of the tourney, one should treat it like a GT (painted army, printed army rosters for each opponent, proper gaming supplies, etc), and I feel like if everyone in the shop showed up with that level of preparation, then the Sunday tournaments could really build some strong feeling and high-level play in the shop.

Book Review: Uniforms and Heraldry of the Empire

2009-06-09T11:58:00.000-05:00

The tourney report is still on the way, but I thought I'd take a minute to scoop the local Elector, John from Plastic Legions and get a review up of the new sourcebook.

It's really a nice little book, hardbound, with a sewn binding (lovely in the days of codicies that don't last more than a month before pages start falling out). Full color, and printed on nice (if a little glossy) paper, this is a book that feels like it's worth the $25 (really $24.75 with the new screwy pricing)

Judging books by their covers aside, the content is very nice. Each province has a number of different examples of color schemes on both infantry and war machines, with nice callouts for things unique to each province, like common variants of armor, etc (My personal favorite? Apparently Helblaster crews tend to wear symbols of Morr to show that they're paid up with the priesthood of the god of death). Each province also has a page showing a unique unit for the province, typically an elite regiment, but there are a couple of other nice ones. The TO&E of a Drakwald Patrol is especially cool. I want to call attention to the fact that pretty much every illustration in the book is unique, rather than a recolor of a different one, which is the case in Insignum Astartes, which is more expensive to boot! The pictures in this book do a great job of illustrating the many ways in which the colors of a province can end up on the varied uniforms of Empire troops.

Not everything is perfect, but honestly at this point I'm nitpicking. The book is a little smaller than I'd like, both in length and dimensions. I would love more content, but if it came at the expense of quality, I'm happy with how much is in the book. It does kinda bug me that it is a little shorter and narrower than an army book, but that's mostly shelving OCD. There is also no hobby content in the book, it's entirely in-character. Again, not necessarily a bad thing, but with the new Marius Leitdorf model out, and my Averland army gestating, a few tutorials on how to paint different tricky parts of the heraldry (YELLOW!) would not be out of place. Hopefully we'll see more web content as the new wave of models settles on the shelves. My other two nitpicks are entirely fluff-based. They point out that there are eight remaining Steam Tanks, but then only depict three. I know that they're probably leaving the other ones nebulous so that people can design their own, but I'd really like to see the others, to see if there is one that is "historically accurate" to put in my force. Also, in the Dwarf army book, they make a point of mentioning that while the Empire has bigger cannons than the Dwarfs, they are cast from brass rather than forged from steel, which is a technology only the Dwarfs possess. Every single cannon in the book is silver or black, with nary a brass one in sight. Crazy nitpicks from a Dwarf player, I know.

Bottom line is, this is a fantastic book for anyone that is even a little bit interested in the Empire. If you have an Empire army, you really ought to check it out, especially for the unique regiments. I'm really tempted to paint up one of my own, and I finally found a Knightly Order I like in the book. GW likes to talk up how players should identify with Empire provinces like they do with Space Marine chapters, and I think this book is the necessary addendum to the hobby section in the Empire army book for players to find that affinity.

Stunty Mayhem!

2009-06-08T13:22:00.000-05:00

So, I suddenly found myself with a free Sunday on the WHFB week in the local GW tourney rotation. Now, I am NOT a good WHFB player. In fact, I'm pretty abysmal. However, with a free day, I'm not really one to turn down a game. Or three, in this case. The question, then, was what army to play. I tend to flit from army to army in WHFB, whether that's because of my lack of success, or the cause of it, is up for debate. For this one, I decided to go back to my Dwarfs for a couple of reasons. They're a compact army, so I wouldn't have TOO much painting to do, they're pretty rock-solid in smaller games (the shop WHFB tourneys are 1000 points), and I kinda miss playing the little guys. I've been trying really hard to make sure that I only play fully painted armies in store events, trying to be a paragon of the hobby and all that. If I were smart, I would have played my Skaven, since they're pretty much finished, and I definitely have enough done for a 1K game, but what can I say, I'm a glutton for punishment.

The list I planned for the tourney is one of those "so you want to start a army" sort of lists. Warriors, Thunderers, Slayers, a couple of heroes, and the ubiquitous cannon. I'm using mostly Battle for Skull Pass models for a couple of reasons. The most important is that because they're so similar, they're really, really easy to assembly-line paint, even with my color scheme. I also really like building that sort of army out of obvious sets of models- setting the example for someone who's just starting. "Hey kid, look, if you trade for a second Skull Pass set, pick up a Runesmith, and a couple boxes of Slayers, you too can be awesome like me."

Army philosophy aside, here's what I started out with:

All the models have some paint on them, it's just a matter of whether or not it's GOOD paint. The Slayers are priority one, as they're both my favorite models, and the ones that I think most benefit from a decent coat of paint. Plus the Foundation Paints, washes, and the spraygun make them really, really easy to get done to a decent standard.
A quick spray of Tallarn Flesh, followed by Ogryn Flesh wash got their skin sorted, then it was on to the beards. Slayers are notable for their orange hair, so the Mechrite Red I had originally painted them was Not Okay. I went back and laid down Macharius Solar Orange:

followed by a wash of Gryphonne Sepia, and a quick coat of Boltgun Metal on their axes:

I've got fewer pics at this point, but I think you all can figure it out from here. Dwarf Bronze on the remaining metal bits, Khemri Brown on the trousers, and Calthan Brown on leather pouches and shoes, followed by a Devlan Mud wash for those same parts. The Dragon Slayer also got a bit of Mordian Blue on him for woad.
One of my favorite bits of finishing any unit is basing- there's few things that make a unit go from good to great as quickly. Here's the unit after sand, but before paint:

And after:

They got a coat of clearcoat, and then a little bit of static grass.

The next thing on the list was the cannon. I like basing my war machines on the textured movement trays from GW, but the Skull Pass cannon is a little bit smaller than the regular one, so it looks a little lost on that size of base. To eat up some space (and use one of the many Grudge Pony carts I have lying around), I decided to add the cart to the base. In retrospect, I wish I hadn't done that, since it was a pain in my butt to paint. There are a number of small details on the top of the cart that are hard to tell what they are. Here's how they all started out:

And here's the finished product:

This is actually the finished shot of the whole force, as unfortunately I ran out of time because of life getting in a way. Not quite as much as I'd hoped to get done, but at least there's no bare plastic or just-primed figures in the army. Tourney report to follow!

And thus it begins!

2009-06-05T12:03:00.000-05:00

So, I've done the whole Livejournal thing, and did a painting log on Warseer for a while, and come to a bit of an impasse. The sorts of things I want to post now are not directed towards the sorts of people that I really want reading my dithering about college relationships, and I don't like dealing with waiting for posts with tons of photos to get approved on forums. I already tend to take a lot of pictures while I'm working on figures (It's all your fault, Martha!), so it's a pretty short hop to the Many Internets to post them for other folks to see. I'd also like to get into a bit of battle reporting, though I'm still a little leery of posting photos of unpainted armies in battle, seems rather unprofessional to me. However, if it works for BoLS, it can't be all bad... :P Anyway, welcome aboard, keep your hands and arms inside the ride, and enjoy the show!