Goaliejack Luongo! aka Go Canucks Go!

This is the tale of how one unassuming little warjack grew up to be one of the best goalies in the world. Warning: this post contains conversions, sculpting, hockey talk, and may contain traces of Canucks fanaticism.

As well as being a miniatures enthusiast, I’ve been a Vancouver Canucks fan for 18 years now – as long as I’ve been watching hockey. Shortly after I started following the Canucks, they came within spitting distance of the holy grail of hockey: the legendary Stanley Cup.

They were exciting times in the city of Vancouver, as it was only the second time the Canucks had ever gotten as far as the finals. When the Canucks lost by 1 goal in game 7, it was devastating.

Thousands of ‘fans ‘ jumped off the bandwagon, but I stayed true. Through 17 years of more disappointments than victories, I stayed true. Now, at long last, the Canucks are in the Stanley Cup finals once more. For the first time ever, the Canucks are the favorites to win it all. I decided that I must honor this achievement in my own way, by creating my own personal mascot for my team. (more…)

Dreaming of Lock and Load – Spriggan WIP

I sat down this Saturday determined to make up for a few days of non-painting. Not counting Sunday, I have managed to maintain an average of an hour a day of painting. We’ll see if it turns out to be enough, or will I have to step it up?

The Spriggan (started here) got a bunch more work today, although a lot of it was metals in areas that will be covered or occluded by other parts of the model. I was listening to a bunch of podcasts while working (finished up Lost Hemisphere Radio ep 25 which I’d started at work on Friday, Extra Time MLS podcast, some Nerdist goodness and a couple of smodcast episodes). I must have been caught up in one of the Nerdist stories as I realised suddenly that I had been painting a wreck marker for ten minutes, without really meaning to. I didn’t know my subconscious had such a defeatist attitude! Who plans for their jacks to be destroyed? I have sentenced my subconscious to a gulag in Hellspass so that it may contemplate its failures. As punishment for not warning me when I wandered off track, I ripped off the spriggan’s shield to more easily paint the shoulder and arm. That’ll show him. (more…)

Dreaming of Lock and Load – Spriggan – First steps

A bunch of the Vancouver folks are heading down to Privateer Press’ Lock and Load in June and I eagerly signed up with them. I have always regretted not participating in gaming conventions, so this year I decided I’d seize the opportunities rather then hem and haw until it was too late. I got this idea in my head when I was staring at the events schedule months ago that I would participate in the hardcore event. I believe, at the time, I had a grand total of two painted Khador models… But since that crazy thought ran through my mind, I haven’t been able to shake it. I make no claims to being a good player, but I do know something about myself as a gamer (or in general, even). I can make clear and sound decisions under time pressure and I also feel like I learn much more when I’m under the gun and make a mistake. I like playing games where time is a consideration – Blood Bowl, for example.

The idea of a strictly timed event pleases me greatly. And hey, some stupid sucker has to enter these hardcore events and get slam-bang-ssassinated in under 4 minutes, vaulting yet another player into internet stardom on the Privateer Press forum. That stupid sucker might as well be me. And as an added bonus, I will have a strong incentive to paint my models, and keep painting! And in that vein, I have a small painting update. (more…)

A Reasonable Dream part II

In our last installment, we heard about the beginning of my journey towards trying to get 100 points of my Cygnar army painted in 3 months, ending roughly at the halfway mark with a pitiful 5 models painted, out of 58 that I had planned to paint. Whoops.

Shortly after that point, a Warmachine/Hordes league was starting up. I decided that I wanted to try something new for this league. Specifically, I wanted to use Epic Stryker’s theme list. I wanted to do this for 2 main reasons. First, I’ve never actually used Epic Stryker before, mostly because I have a tendency to only play with casters who are painted. Second, I wanted to have an army with 2 units of Stormblades assaulting everything in front of me.

Based on that, I knew that the models that I would paint next would be Epic Stryker, and the unit of Stormblades plus officer and standard bearer. The fact that I had already begun the basecoat on the Stormblades sealed the deal. The fact that I hadn’t begun the basecoat on the unit’s weapon attachments, the Storm Gunners, meant that for now I wasn’t going to bother with them. (more…)

A Reasonable Dream part I

In late 2010, the staff at Privateer Press (the makers of Warmachine and Hordes) had an in-house “Impossible Dream” challenge, in which they each attempted to paint a 100 point army within one month.

When I heard about that, I thought to myself: “Self, I think I’d like to try that.” I tossed the idea around amongst the regulars over at Vancouver Gamers and was ultimately convinced by them that it was a ridiculous idea, but changing the timeline to 3 months would make it a fun thing to attempt.

A few of us decided to take on this challenge, with the ultimate goal of having some sort of show-down at the end, where we would take our newly-painted 100 point armies and battle it out for bragging rights. Unfortunately, it looks like that grand finale probably won’t be happening, due to waning interest, one of the participants moving to another city, etc.

Anyway, for me the most important part of the challenge was always trying to get that army painted. I really enjoy painting, but for some reason I always have trouble getting myself motivated to actually do it. I tend to find that unless I’ve got some kind of deadline in which to get a certain number of models done, it just won’t happen. Because of that, I’ve got a firm rule that I’ll never take an unpainted model to a tournament (I will sometimes use unpainted models in casual play, but I greatly prefer not to). I also take on whatever painting challenges come my way. If I didn’t, I’d probably only have a half-dozen Cygnar models painted right now.

The first step for this particular challenge was to look through my depressingly large collection of unpainted miniatures, and decide what to include in this 100 point army. My primary focus was to include models that I’ve wanted to get painted for a long time, with a secondary focus on ending up with a playable 100 point force, and a tertiary (yes, that’s right, I just used the word tertiary in a sentence – thank you AD&D module D01-02 Descent Into the Depths of the Earth for teaching me a word that I could then insert into a blog entry many years later in an attempt to make people believe that I’m educated!) focus on making it somewhat reasonable from a painting standpoint. No massive infantry horde for me! (more…)

Introducing Sharkie the Sharkjack

A few weeks ago I was looking at my partially assembled Devastator and imagining terrorizing women and children my opponents while pushing around a jack with a shark fin and teeth painted on it. In my minds eye, these faceless foes cowered in abject terror as a uttered such battle cries as “LAND SHARK!” and chanted the theme from Jaws. A few hours later, I was describing my day dream to some of the folks who were assembled at Connection games. I wasn’t there to play, but rather shoot the breeze for a while before running off to do other things. One of the professional painters of the area, Chad (profile on Vancouver Gamers: http://www.vancouvergamers.com/index.php?action=profile;u=36 – blog: http://chadspaint.wordpress.com/) just happened to be making an appearance while I was blathering on.

Luckily for me a small spot opened up in his painting schedule – long enough for a tabletop quality job on a jack, and Chad pinged me with an offer to mod and paint up Sharkie for me. As a birthday gift for myself, I decided to take him up on the offer, particularly since Chad’s brush skills would do the angry-jaws art much more justice than mine would. I have now in my hot little hands the finished product. Without further ado, I give you Sharkie the Devastator.

I can’t wait to get Sharkie out on the table. I’m pretty pleased with the way the jack turned out. I know I’ll be using the piece as a visual reference as I work on my highlighting and shading techniques. Thanks Chad!

Result! Man-o-war shocktroopers completed

I spent a handful of hours over the last three days pushing to get my Man-o-war Shocktroopers finished. Minus a few touch-ups, base markings and some ash waste over the sand, they are complete! I’m pleased with how they came out, though I’m still trying to figure out how much or how little to highlight, and where. I was much more judicious in the application of the purple wash over the reds, so it doesn’t look quite as slapdash as Llama the Ramma’s red areas. Next up in the painting queue is a jack, either a Juggernaut or a Spriggan. I’m leaning towards the knight in battered armour, but I digress. As usual, the photos are taken with seemingly random settings to ensure that none of them come out perfectly, but at least they’re not cell-phone snaps, right? Check out the results:

I think I will celebrate with a scotch (runs off to raid the stash). Ended up with Caol Ila 12 year. It has the brininess of all the Islays but with some of the sweeter notes I expect of a Highland malt. The finish is an odd blend of peat and some lingering flowery taste. This particular bottle has already scared off some non-scotch drinkers, but I find its hybrid nature growing on me. Cheers!

The long road to a painted collection

I’ve seen this going around on those internets, among the other warmachine bloggers, like @Gingerk1d on his blog GK-Workbench (post: http://gk-workbench.com/?p=3069) or @oconlan on his blog FarFarAway (post: http://www.farfaraway.org/blog/2011/03/23/painter-or-gamer/). Check out their painting progress – it’s impressive. Both of them are very skilled hobbyists so make sure to check out their old posts too. @oconlan posed the question “Painter or Gamer?” See if you can figure out which I am:

So…. yeah. I will use this as a badge of shame to drive me to paint more than my usual 10 models a year – I’ve already hit that this year between Blood Bowl models and Warmachine / Hordes stuff, maybe I’ll even hit 20 whole models! Painted! IN ONE YEAR! Start looking forward to 2037, when I finally catch up with my model-buying proclivities.

In other news, I put a couple of coats of red on the Man-o-war shocktrooper leader, as well as getting colour on his head and the chest emblems. Some washes and highlighting are all that remain, I’m going to try and get to that tonight. A pic will follow once he’s finished (and his savagely removed arm reattached, of course).

Cheers!

PS: The above image was generated using http://www.forwardkommander.com/. Great online tool for list building and managing your collection! If you haven’t checked it out, you owe it to yourself to do so.

Painting update: Shocktroopers WIP

Hey there internet. I know it’s been a while, but I want you to know I don’t hold it against you.

I have been engrossed in Dragon Age lately (first finishing Origins, then Dragon Age 2 that I received as a gift for my birthday) and this has detracted from my efforts to paint. Finally guilt overwhelmed me and I decided to spend a couple of hours paying attention to my semi-painted man-o-war shocktroopers. I have finally finished the base coat (with the exception of the head and emblems on the leader). Woo, progress!

I noticed that I had missed a few parts in crevices, particularly around the leader’s shoulder. In a fit of rage and superhuman strength, I tore off the offending arm and happily fixed up the wide missed swathes. Mental note: when I get to my second unit of shocktroopers, who are waiting patiently in their box, I will prime and paint them partially assembled. Things will probably go much faster!

Enough blathering, here are two cell-phone pics I snapped:

I always feel better when paint covers most of a model, but the dull red of the GW foundation red doesn’t really look great. You can see a fully red section on the shields to contrast. Hopefully I will find time tomorrow or this weekend to work on the red overcoat.

Until next time, internet. I’ll try not to leave you alone so long this time.

Slow Grow League Announced @ Connection Games

Local Press Ganger PG_Geist (aka Geist) has announced a slow grow league at Connection Games on Renfrew.  His announcement is posted on vancouvergamers.com and is re-posted here for those who are not wanting to click through.

Geist sez:

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