Spectating at Connection Games

I went down to Connection Games after work today to try and find an opponent for a league game, but I ended up the odd man out just when I arrived.  I got into spectating a game between Lawless Monk and a new player who had recently picked up some Skorne. As I got wrapped up in their game, I let a few opportunities to find an opponent slip by, so I was obviously content where I was.

The lists were a Skorne warpack (Morghoul, Titan Gladiator and twin Cyclops Savage), a Cyclops Brute and a unit of Immortals vs  Lawless Monk’s Borka, a Dire Troll Mauler, an Axer, a unit of Fennblades with attachment, Fell caller and a scribe-guy.

Lawless Monk very kindly put up with my repeated coaching of the new player (Craig…?  Crap – I got him to tell me his name twice and still forgot.  We’ll call him Mr. C), as he was having a few issues with the order of things.  Even though I wasn’t playing, it was actually pretty cool to watch someone pick up the mechanics and even some of the subtleties pretty well in just his second game.  Obviously Mr. C was no rookie gamer, but still, he was directing order of operations pretty well mid-way through the second turn.  Lawless Monk played pretty loose, such as popping Borka’s feat early when he was pretty sure things were at the limit of his range and just generally running models into the middle to make it a big hairy mess without worrying too much about getting the most out of his surprisingly nasty list.  Side note: Holy crap!  If I end up facing Fennblades, I’m going to remember they are crazy-go-nuts fast.  Particularly with Borka’s feat.

Watching (and coaching – sorry Lawless Monk!) also reminded me that while I’ve been frustrated with playing Hordes, Morghoul with a whole whack of beasts is pretty awesome. The game was a lot of back and forth, plenty of tough rolls were made – I think the trolls were running about 60% success near the end… Even with two units with vengeance on the table, there were plenty of whiffs, knockdowns etc.  A highlight was when the mauler charged from outside Morghoul’s feat area into it, hit the Gladiator with both attacks and the chain attack and successfully heaved the hephalump at Morghoul who was chilling by a rock column.  Another was when two cyclops with three fury each still made their frenzy checks despite Morghoul screaming at them to get angry.  Lots of chills, thrills and spills.

As I didn’t get a game in, I ended up leaving the store a little early and getting home in time to put a little work in on the Man-o-war shocktroopers.  I have the two grunts almost fully basecoated with just black trim on the shoulder pads and cleanup to do, then I can get to the red overcoat.  The leader needs a bit more work to get up to the same state as the others, but the unit is progressing all right.  The models will end up being pretty rough in some areas, but any colour on the models is better than none, right?  I mave a lot of bare metal to cover before I worry too much about the quality of my workmanship.  However, I have convinced myself to paint my second unit of Shocktroopers while they are still in pieces.

I’m thinking I will try and get a game in on Saturday. My itch to roll dice has not yet been scratched this week and the urge to order soldiers and warjacks to die for the motherland is rising.

Painting update – Shocktroopers

I had a busy start to this week, but I did manage to get some time Thursday to get a little painting in.  I sat down for an hour and put some red undercoat on two of the three Man-o-War Shocktroopers.  When I was at GottaCon I had two of the three Shocktroopers weapon arms come loose…  I wish I had waited to glue them back on.  Painting the crevices under the shoulder pads is tricky.  I also changed my mind on what colour I wanted to do the ends of the shoulder pads in between model 1 and 2.  It should be easy enough to fix though, as the colours I want to paint on are darker than the GW foundation red that went down yesterday.

On a mildly related note – I had something happen to me that has not ever happened before.  Hours after I had put the brushes down and seen to dinner, I was finally settling in on the couch with my PS3 controller in hand.  Despite having done some painting earlier in the evening, I still had that itch to do more.  I may have finally caught the painting bug for real…  We’ll see if it lasts. :)

This weekend I’m hoping to get some shattered grounds league games in at Connection Games.  I’m not sure if I’ll aim for Saturday or Sunday (maybe both???).  Hopefully I will also find time to put the red undercoat on the leader of the Man-o-War unit and fix up the colours on the other two, then snap some more work in progress shots of them.  While I am looking forward to getting the Shocktroopers done, I’m also eyeing my partially assembled Devastator and itching to get some colours on it.

Painting Update – Llama the Ramma finished, Shocktroop still in progress

As promised, I put in the few finishing touches on my marauder, “Llama the Ramma”.  I was experimenting with the macro close-up on my digital camera, there may be some pics that are a little strange, with a really shallow depth of field.  Also, I don’t have a light box, so the lighting is less than ideal.  But who cares!  I finished a jack!  Here’s what I did to finish up Llama.

• P3 Pig iron on the ram pistons wedge surfaces.
• P3 Quicksilver on the ram piston wedge leading edge.
• P3 Quicksilver on the rest of the rivets on the legs and shoulders.
• P3 Menoth white base then P3 Morrow White for the direct facing indicator and name.  Needed a couple of coats because of the purple underneath.
• Ash waste flock in patches on the base.

The shocktroopers just got pig iron on their feet, and I did the stacks, arms and piping of the third unit member.  I should also note that I picked up a second unit of Shocktroopers from Strategies Games.  Strategies was featured in a Groupon deal on Saturday, so I used the coupon I picked up on a new unit.  I’ll have to figure out how to differentiate the units visually.  I don’t want anything drastic, as I’d like to be able to run a full unit without the two extra grunts looking out of place, but if I’m running two minimum units with Butcher it would be good for my opponent to be able to easily tell the two apart. I suppose I should concentrate on finishing painting the first unit, though.  I’m getting ahead of myself.  ;)

Anyway, enjoy the pics.

Man-O-War Shocktroopers in progress, Llama almost finished

During the lead-up to GottaCon, I had found myself with a few spare hours before registration, so I had base-coated the shield cannons (and shield arms) of my three Man-o-War shock troops.  I started with the shields as I wanted to glue them on for the tournament.  I’m going for the same colour scheme as on the Marauder – the Khador insignia will be white on a field of purple, with a more standard red with silver, black and bronze trim.  Last night, I put down some more iron sections on the shock troops.  As I bone-headedly forgot to take pictures of the work in progress, I’ll use this post to quickly describe which paints I’m using in my scheme.

• Primed in grey – no idea what brand, I’m guessing Krylon sandable primer
• Red base coat:  GW foundation red (Mechrite?)
• Red over coat/highlights:  GW Blood red
• Purple areas:  GW Liche purple (thick coat for base then thin coat to smooth it out)
• Black:  GW Chaos black
• Iron:  P3 Pig Iron, highlights with P3 Quicksilver
• Bronze:  GW Dwarf Bronze, highlights with GW Shining Gold
• White:  Undercoat with P3 Menoth White Base, covered with P3 Morrow White
• Base:  P3 Battlefield Brown and P3 Bootstrap Leather.

As for washes, these are what I used:

• GW Leviathan Purple over the reds (and purple, but it’s a bit understated there.  Might just shade with P3 Coal black).
• P3 Armor Wash over the iron and bronze.  I might have done P3 Flesh Wash on the marauder’s head?

You can see the final-ish results on “Llama the Ramma”:

I put a bit more work in on Llama, and now have access to a better camera than my Blackberry’s built-in fish-eye I should get an updated picture.  Last night I did a bit more work on Llama’s base, painted the base-ring Liche purple (his name will be white, like the khador logo).  I also painted pig iron over the quicksilver on the ram pistons and washed over it, so the metal is no longer so flashy – will add very small quicksilver highlights.  With about 10 minutes of work (mostly on the name I would imagine) and a few splashes of Ash Waste on the base, Llama will be all finished!

Still a long way to go on the Shocktroops though.  Hopefully I can find time on Sunday to start on the red base coat.

Catching up

Subhedgehog here folks.  It’s been a while since I posted anything – due in large part to not having played a whole lot of Hordes in the late stages of 2010.  But if we’re being honest (and you are being honest, right?) mostly I was lazy.  I have recently been handed the reins to this site, so I guess there’s no time like the present to change my miserable ways.

So, what has happened since my last post (dated April 18th, 2010…  Ouch.  That’s a while)?  Well, aside from uninteresting mundane details of my life, I have done something drastic.  I was feeling a growing dissatisfaction with the Hordes mechanic, particularly in late stage turns or non-scenario play.  I looked over the Focus / Fury fence and saw green grass, rainbows and unicorns.  Wanting me some of that awesome fairy-dust fuelled horse-flesh for myself, I swooped in on some timely deals offered by local gamers and picked up a decent assortment of Khador forces.  With the Forces of Hordes:  Khador book firmly in hand, I found a few casters that I really liked that also, conveniently, had a lot of overlap in their tier lists.  I ended up, after a few months of other deals and new model purchases, with these fine red-clad murders:

• The Butcher of Khardov in his apparently classic pose
• The Old Witch and her be-crowed pal Scapjack
• Kommander Strakhov

Of course there is an assortment of units, solos and jacks to go with them.

Not only did I pick up another faction, but I also did something shocking to those who have enjoyed my “silver ghost” painting scheme for a couple of years:  I painted a jack!  Without further ado, I present to you “Llama the Ramma”

I still have a few things to do, such as a little dry-brushing on the base, add some ash waste flock and paint the base ring.  I also messed up on the piston heads.  I was rushing to get the jack done and grabbed some quicksilver instead of pig iron…  Should be easy enough to fix, maybe a quick wash would darken it enough.

And why was I painting things?  Well, other than the desire to stop having to wear a brown paper bag over my head when gaming with my snazzy bare metal figs, I was trying to put in at least a token effort for GottaCon, which was in Victoria over the past weekend, Feb 4th to 6th.  More on that later!

Building Legion models

I had some free time this weekend and so I took a moment to assemble some of the Legion figures I had sitting around the gaming den. I probably should have been painting but I really wasn’t in the mood and sometimes there is really nothing as satisfying as building a pile of figures.

I managed to get the Hex Hunters, Raek, Nephilim Bolt Thrower and Nephilim Protector built.

The Hex Hunters went together quite easily as did the Bolt Thrower. The Raek required some work to get the head plates and the jaw to fit into the rest of the body. The trickiest of the lot was the Protector and only because his weapon arm and second arm don’t attach and so I had to fiddle with arms to get them to match. It is something I am terrible at and really do a poor job of despite the years I have had to do this with various models.

Up next is the Grotesques box and then I think I need to look at getting another Heavy Warbeast so I can do all four tiers of Thagrosh’s theme list. These new additions will give me more options when building lists as I now have another infantry unit as well as several new light Warbeasts.

Reasonable Dream Challenge

Some of you might be aware of the Impossible Dream challenge that various Privateer Press staffers are running. Recently we decided that since most of us have lives and don’t work for a game company that perhaps doing a 100pt Warmachine army in a month was literally impossible.

But since we decided that we wanted to have some fun and perhaps paint up a 100pt force we decided to start the Reasonable Dream challenge. Three months to paint a 100pt army starting either from scratch or using an existing army as a basis. A few of us have already started posting army lists.

Cryx painting round-up

Before I started working on my Circle force I thought that I would take a look back at all of the Cryx figures that I have painted since starting on the army at the beginning of the year. You’ll have to excuse the single, long-distance, photo but the rest were sadly too fuzzy for posting.
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Last Cryx painted

Prior to starting out my adventure in Hordes tree-hugging with the new Circle army I finished off a few of my Cryx figures. The Vancouver Gamers Pax Qualifier is this weekend and that may be the last time the Cryx army sees the light of a gaming table for some time as I want to focus on my Circle army for the Hordes Battle Challenge.

What I managed to finish was Venethrax and a unit of Satyxis Blood Witches and the Hag. Venethrax was actually a bit more fun to paint than I thought but the Blood Witches were a pion in the ass and got a very quick and dirty paint job. They, along with the Raiders, have far, far too much fiddly detail for a model intended to be fielded in units of ten. I got them done with the barest minimum of painting. Its interesting to compare them to the unit of Bile Thralls I did where I promised myself I would paint them quickly but then found myself shading the hosing on the models and doing multiple washes and highlights on them.

I’m glad they are done but I have to say that I hope I never have to paint a unit of Satyxis, of any type, any time in the near future.

The models still need to be sealed and once I have them sealed I’ll post some photos.

Last Cryx painting in the works

The last two Cryx units I am painting are now on the painting table. Venthrax is actually almost done and will be ready for the Warmachine game day at my house on the 4th. I also hope to finish my unit of Satysix Blood Witches and the Hag for the same game. Once those are done I’ll be putting aside my Cryx to concentrate on painting my Circle force for the TGN Hordes Battle Challenge.

I done quite a bit of assembly and priming this week. I put together:
Epic Asphyxious
2 x Soul Hunters
5 x Black Ogryn
Warwitch
Blood Witch Hag
Satyxis Raider Captain

Those are all ready, but unpainted, and might see some gaming in the next week as well.

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