A new direction

My painting muse has fled… this happens to me from time-to-time. I can paint non-stop like a rampaging half-bull half-manbearpig hybrid at times…. And then, all of a sudden, I cannot be bothered with it.

I’m nearly done with painting Relic, but lordy, has that been a pain. What I've noticed is the amount of time I spend painting is directly related to the time I spend playing PC games. I just started playing The Old Republic and I’m enjoying the stuffing out of it.

So what does that mean for the blog?

Probably very few painting updates and game reports for a while, but I do have something else planned, excellent stuff in fact to fill the void. I’m planning two new regular columns for my blog. It’s all hobby related, but not to do with painting.

The lads review

Expert opinions from 3llt gamerz!

I have a core group of friends who play games most Monday nights. We alternate between RPGs and Boardgames. My idea is to review the games we are playing as a group. I’ll write a central narrative to the review and get commentary from the other 4 lads. We will also score the game based on our own experience with it to create “The lads score”.

Five different perspectives on a game should offer more insight than the usual one person reviews you see online, more about this later.

Horus Heresy recaps

Probably the most iconic scene in the 40k universe. 

I’ve been reading the Horus Heresy books and I quite like them. I started off playing “Epic Space Marine” instead of 40k. I’ve always preferred the 30k setting to the 40k setting and I think the book reviews will be a good project to do. They will be filled with spoilers, so if you don’t want the books “ruined” for you then I suggest ignoring this section.

Right, that’s about it from me. Hopefully, if the weather is fine I can take some pics of the Relic busts and finish off that project. Until next time…

Bust a move - Part three

Right, so indoor photos were just not working out for me and the weather here as been a bit bad. So it's taken longer than expected to get this update sorted.

Three more relic busts done and i'm passably happy with these guys.... not really over the moon but not upset. Weird thing is i'm enjoying painting them for the most part, they are pretty cool figures, but something is missing, but that's probably just my painting mojo ebbing.

I tried doing something a bit different with the colour selection on the rogue trader (mostly, because most of the other models are red, i thought purple would be a nice change). I also tried doing an odd style of highlighting on the jacket by choosing two shades that aren't on a natural continuum. The photo of the back gives you a better idea of the effect i was after, i'm not 100% sure it worked, but it looks different at least.

The mechanicum Tech-Priest Enginseer is an annoying model to photograph. I tried making his eyes glow, but shot of shining a bulb in his face you just cant make out any of the detail there.... sigh.

Very pleased with the red on this guy, it's nice and solid. Used a few motes of dust to "wear up" the model as well. I do like pigments (and you'll see more of those on the ogryn later)

Finally the Inquisitor. He looks alright I guess. The red again looks pretty good, and overall I've been pleased with the faces. Was tempting to try some lightning source shenanigans with the glowy thing under his chin, but  decided against it. (mainly as i was pleased with the face and didn't want to gloop it up with green)

Bust a move (part two) - More Relic busts

Righto, the first round of busts for relic are complete. Thanks again to the Megagpope for doing such a fine job on the Ultramarine Captain, but in the words of the original BMF Samuel L Jackson "Oh, you're finsihed? Allowed me to retort"

The Commissar is just a baddass figure, I mean look at that chin. Judge Dredd would respect that chin. I personally love that the model had no eyes to paint. Adds to the menace of the hat and the general scowl you associate with Commissars. I really like how the face and sash turned out, less so with the metals. It's not easy to see by the black is actually a very dark blue (which is a new technique i'm trying with black for highlighting).

The Canonness has a great face to paint, but the rest of it is rather plain. I Following the art I decided to add some dusting effects to dirty up her armour somewhat, with mixed results. Again, happy with the face, less so with the metallics and the black. This time I used dark green for highlighting.

The Callidus Assassin is a very very straight forward model. In many ways its hard to pain this well, as she really is just a jet black jumpsuit with a bright pony tail. I look like how the hair and eyes turned out, but im especially pleased with how the "wet look" vinyl/pvc/rubber bodysuit ended up. For the record it's the old citadel gloss applied liberally by brush. It's WAY too shiny to use for protecting models normally, but it looks very good on black bodysuits (I have used it on eldar aspect warriors before to paint the mesh undersuit)

All in all, these models have been a lot of fun to paint and the change in scale has been really rewarding. Only 6 more to go and then ill have to wait for an expansion..... and you know this game will have one of those.

I only wish they had come up with this idea earlier, Horus heresy would have been fantastic with busts of the Primarchs.

Bust a move (guest post)

The following is a repost from my friend Megapopes blog, go look at it..... do it now...... or when your done here.... actually i'm not fussed.... whatever suits you :)

This puts me in a bind now, as if i do a crappy job on the other nine busts everyone will go.... OOOOOOO I REALLY LIKE THE ULTRAMRAINE, HES THE BEST.

And every time that happens, a little part of me will die. So thank you Megapope and f*** you as well!

Megapopes text in bold and italics.... like some wiggly time travel effect in text form.

My good beardy friend Vomkrieg got himself the Relic boardgame a while back and after a few games he's getting around to painting up the character models that represent the various 40K universe archtypes that you can play.

  

And well, since I'm the resident space smurf fanboy, I got the Ultramarine captain to paint up. Hurrah! Here he is. Took me about 6 hours all up, including having to completely redo an entire shoulderpad when like a complete bloody idiot I wiped green tinted brush-cleaning water all over it, didn't realise and then let it dry.

Size comparison. 

Relic - Magnetic bases

Relic is a fun, but silly game. If you have played Talisman, it's that, IN SPACE!!!!!!!!!!

Well, grimdark 40k space anyway.

It's not a game that rewards amazing strategy or tactical foresight. It's a roll and move, draw cards, have fun and watch the madness game.

It does have some very nice character busts I want to paint, unfortunately the pegs for the busts are unbelievably tight and the process of putting them in and taking them out would eventually damage the paint.

So i decided to magnetise the bases.

It's a pretty simple process. Get some rare earth magnets, some green stuff, pack the sockets on the busts, lop the top off the pegs and Viola! it's done!

Just make sure the magnets are pointing the right way or you will feel like a complete idiot.

These busts are really pretty and im looking forward to painting them. They have a date with the spray can later today.

How to "come 5th" at Warmachine - The final day of NZ nationals

Day three - eNemo laughs at your collosals!

I decided after day two that I had no show of winning the tournament (not that that had figured in to my calculations, but on day one I was looking pretty good), so I decided to play eNemo in both games this day, regardless of what my opponents list was. It turned out to be an awesome decision and eNemo turned out to be a blast to play with.

5 warjacks, with a potential 23 focus to spend on his feat turn, how can you not like this.

Game eight vs Magnus the traitor with Mercs (Scott A)

Artists impression of Scott at his old job

Scott is a very good Warmachine player (ranked 3rd in NZ) and a damm fine bloke too. He could be described as a big square jawed ex-copper..... cause that's what is.

Anyway, when I ran into Scott in the morning he was in bad shape. Two things had happened to him in this tournament.

One, his dice rolls were so bad on day two that he threw them away and bought new ones.

Two, he had commiserated his bad day two by having a few too many brews the night before. A couple a laughs and the game is under way.

Scott had the first turn and ran his force forward. Nyss hunters on the left flank, Galleon in centre, Magnus and jacks to the right. I decided to do something midnumbingly ballsy to see if it worked.

On my first turn eNemo advanced forward as far as he could and shot Galleon. he was standing, uncovered on a hill 10 inches away from Galleon, but critically he was in the left arc. I fired my tractor beam effect that locked Galleon in place and then tried to cover Nemo with jacks to prevent the eventual counter attack.


The Warmachine gods clearly did not like Scott this day as absolutely nothing went his way, and I mean nothing.

On his turn everything missed or did minimal damage asides from Galleon impaling the Minuteman that hadnt got out of his left flank. The Nyss hunters completely missed my trencher commandos in melee. Not one hit on 6+ with 6 or 7 attempts (some Nyss got grenaded earlier). The nomad couldnt kill my Ironcad and the Renegades wiffed with their rockets. 

It was well sad.

In my turn I fluffed about trying to be clever before realising an assassination was on the cards. Under Nemos feat he scratched the Nomad before giving up and letting the Ironclad kill it. Magnus was behind a cloud effect and i moved my charger into the cloud to shoot him. Then my 2nd ironclad charged the renegade and earthquaked it, nemo and gorman down. (yep, realised i should have done that first). Minuteman then flak fielded Gorman to death.

Magnus was knocked down and on about 3 or 4 boxes, one good hit and he was smoked. I had one jack left and it was the stormclad and I was out of charge range. Then i remembered the damm thing has a short range gun. Advanced and kill Magnus. 

Total causalities were one Trencher Commando who died on my turn to a free strike to free up the Stormclad's move. 

The finale - Sorry about the blurry shot but you can see magnus surrounded by Warjacks just to the right of galleon

I would bet on Scott to win nine times out of ten in a match up with me. He's very very good, but it doesn't matter how good you are when absolutely nothing works out for you. 

Took the loss like a champ, always got time to play against Scott as its always fun.

Result - Magnus get pack mauled by warjacks Score 2-2 for this competition (4-3 overall)

Game Nine vs Kraye and Cygnar (Richard T)

The battle for Cygnar supremacy came down to an unlikely matchup. Super horseman Kraye vs Electro-nutcase-Geriatric eNemo!

I play and talk to Richard a fair bit as he's one of the other Cygnar players in Wellington. We are one spot apart on Rankings HQ and tend to finish in similar positions in tournaments, so it seemed only fair that we would throw down to determine who was the CHAMPION CYGNAR PLAYER!!!!!!!

Seriously though, neither Richard or I think we are particularly good at this game and were both surprised to see the other had done so well at the weekend. 

I image a lot of Cygnar vs Cygnar games are dull affairs with each side staying just on the edge of shooting threat range and exchanging defender/gun mage/long gunner fire.

This was nothing like that, it was a swinging game of move and counter move with one really annoying bit of forest to jump around.

The game settled down into an attritional affair, with me trying to slow down the Stormclad by feeding him Ironclads, and Richard trying to lock down an Assassination run on Nemo.

In the end, attrition went my way with some good tactical strikes. The turn below shows the decisive round.

The stormcaller on the left kept disrupting the hunter by the objective. From here on in, that jack never gained focus, which caused Richard no end of annoyance. Nemo energized the charger left around the forest, stormclad forwards and the barely functional ironclad into the rubble in-front of Richards Stormclad.

The charger boosted two shots into the Journeyman caster, hitting with the 2nd and blowing him away. This dropped arcane shield from Stormwall. My Stormclad, with +2 strength now engaged the 19 armour Stormwall. 4 hits later and one entire side was wrecked. oh, and lightning had murdered all the support crews in b2b with Stormwall.

Richard then rolled the dice on an assassination run with Kraye and missed his shots. It wasn't a high percentage run and I think Richard had psyched himself out a little. He could have used the focus to absolutely destroy my Stormclad with his, but went for the harder quick win. One more turn of attrition and I would have been reduced to nemo and the charger.

Stormclad eyes up Stormwall - you ain't so tough

Result - Richard concedes and does not play the final turn  Score 3-2 for this competition (5-3 overall)

Conclusions


A good time had by all.... well by most.... one of my friends had a pretty dire weekend and played some games that did not sound remotely fun. He was pretty unimpressed with the attitude of some of the players, and from what was said, i completely understand why. I'm glad I didn't play them as the vast majority of my games were good times. (Except round 3 where I brain farted vs Mike T and probably made that round not much fun at all).

Thanks again to Chris O (Palerel) for doing the mostly thankless task of geek wrangling, and to Mike for driving me all three days to the tourney!

So good enough for 5th place apparently! Go me! That's like a pewter medal or something? Tin? Aluminium?

Can I make my own medal out of a coke can?

Convergence - Battlegroup box and book!

New stuff coming from PP, It's only the box cover and the model boxes for the heavy Vectors, but I must admit, this looks pretty damm cool.

Quite excited to see the contents of the Cyriss book, they could be a good option for a 2nd faction for me.

These models just look so damm cool, and i've had a soft-spot for this style of design ever since "City of heroes" and the Clockwork faction from that game.