A whole days painting...

When the wife and kids went to Christchurch for a couple of days, I took the chance to get some painting done. It's been a while since I sat down for a whole day at the painting table. While I've got all sorts of lovely models waiting for paint, I decided that I just had to get my Winterguard unit finished first. They've been sitting in various stages of undress for the best part of a year.

That filled up the morning quite nicely, and a bit of the afternoon too. Feeling somewhat better about life, I thought that I should continue with the "partially finished" theme, so I pulled out my Berserker and Kovnik combo. The Berserker in particular got plenty of attention, with its first couple of layers of reds and metals finished. At that stage I figured I could safely attach the arms and still be able to paint everything - anything I can't reach with a brush is in shadow anyway, right? The metals are done (although not as well) in the same way Alison McVey paints her Khador models - as described in No Quarter #1. The reds are also following her technique fairly closely.

Painted vs Non-painted

One topic which comes up on the forums again and again is whether people play with fully painted armies or not. Many people refuse to play with anything but painted miniatures, and I applaud them, really I do. Myself, I find I just can't carve out enough time to paint all the figures I buy. Buying is part of the hobby for me (* big sheepish grin *), and I just struggle to keep up.

Throw in a family and work that can often call you up at unexpected times of the day (or night) and painting armies comes at best a poor third. Add in all the other good things in life, like reading, watching movies, playing games of any sort etc and somehow the painting is never quite finished.

So I've come to a compromise with myself. It can be summed up as follows:

1. Play with painted miniatures in preference to "uber-powerful" unfinished models.
2. Never play with a bare metal model.
3. Figures are assembled with textured (sand / pebbles) bases and primed. The first thing that they then have done to them is four colours quickly applied to the base; brown ink wash, dry brush Bestial Brown, drybrush Bleached Bone and finally tidy up the black trim around the base. As a side note it's important to let the ink wash dry thoroughly, as it has a tendancy to loosen the glue holding down the sand. And that can really rot your socks.
   

While these are obviously still far from finished models, they are at least tidy in some sense, and don't jump out quite so much as bare metal. I guess a number of people still wouldn't approve, but it helps me get to play the games I enjoy with a variety of interesting options. And I will paint them, one day.

Honest.

Rapid army building

Well, I wish the title of this post was refering to actually assembling and painting armies. I'm actually talking about building army lists though. I've recently grabbed a copy of Armies of Immoren, which is an army building program. I still have a version of Army Builder v2, which is a great tool, but updates tend to lag behind quite a bit, and the interface is general enough to handle any type of game system. This might sound good, but with a system as simple (in terms of building lists) as Warmachine, the extra generality gets in the way of a simple interface.

Armies of Immoren is purpose designed for Warmachine, with a reasonably simple interface. It's written in Java, which allows it to be used on multiple platforms. More importantly it just works. There's a couple of small bugs, but I'm sure they'll be sorted out quickly enough.

As for building real armies, I have managed to assemble and prime the Old Witch, Scrappy and a unit of Doom Reavers. Plus one more IFP. One day I'll have the whole unit assembled...

Fire and blinding light

Time for a battle report. Sam came around in the weekend and we had a couple of 500 point games. I thought I'd take some photos as we went, to help remember what happened, and maybe learn something from it.

As it turned out, I failed to take pictures regularly, meaning a number of turns have been missed out. I guess I was enjoyng myself too much - planning carnage for the Behemoth and such :)

Anyway, game one pitted Vlad against Feora. I was trying new casters today and now that I've played Vlad I'll definitely do it again. Rough force compositions were:

Khador:
Vlad
Behemoth
Juggernaught
Widowmakers
Trollkin

Menoth:
Feora
Reckoner
Devout
Knights Exemplar
Flameguard
Choir
Piper
Eiryss

The first photo shows the setup after the first turn or so. Both of us were leading with our Warjacks, protecting the squishier troops behind. Not much happened in the first couple of turns, the main action being the Widowmakers and Behemoth chipping away at the Exemplars and Flameguard. Sam was using Feora's wall of flame to shelter the Flameguard, but I was always able to see a couple around it, and picked them off.

The Menoth 'jacks charged mine, causing much consternation and not a little damage. The Knights also hit home (with a couple of figures) against Boomhowler. Feora popped her feat, and set pretty much everything on fire. Ouch!

In my maintenance phase, most of my infantry fell victim to fire. The snipers all died, and a large chunk of Boomhowler's lads. If I could have swapped my tough rolls with my putting out fire rolls, I'd have been much happier. The 'jacks and Vlad didn't really care too much about the fire though. Fortunately the Behemoth had kept both its hands operational though, and was able to pick up the Reckoner and throw it into the Devout. I was aiming for Feora, but unfortunately she was protected by the Devout. Still the Juggy laid the smack down on the two helpless 'jacks, causing much happiness. Another turn at them would most likely have done the job. Boomhowler and Co also got stuck into the Knights, more as a delaying tactic than anything. Vlad mopped up a few flameguard, and didn't cast Blood of Kings, because I didn't want to take damage from Feora's spell that damages anyone casting spells. What a dick.

Here's where it turned sad. Not being familiar with Feora's abilities, I thought she couldn't get too me. She could though, and ran around through the gap mad by Vlad killing her Flameguard, and "Engine of Destruction" gave her just enough distance to catch Vlad and beat him up real good. Game Over. The last photo show the situation at the end of the game.

A few of lessons to learn here, but the big one is to keep Vlad's BoK speel running at all times. If it had stayed up he'd have had a much better chance against Feora. I should have probably kept my snipers away from her feat too. Boomhowler's boys had a chance against it, but the Widowmakers were dead meat.


Game two, Sam switched to the Harbinger, and I trotted out the Butcher, another new one for me. I dropped the Trollkin and proxied some Iron Fangs, with the Kapitan and Standard Bearer attachment. I deployed the IFP up front, followed by the jacks and the Butcher. The plan was to make the most of Shield Wall to protect and distract before using the IFP to lock down a target unit and free up the 'jacks for charges. My Widowmakers were covering the left flank, although after Sam deployed his ROF 3 warjack across the table from them, they moved in behind the rest of my army to lend their support to the right flank instead.

Sam bought his Zealots around to my right and Exemplars in the middle supported by the Harbinger and Choir. Things looked good initially, the Behemoth and snipers started ranging in, forcing Sam to either loose the troops or take the hit on the Harbinger.

The IFPs charged the Exemplars and supprting 'jack, which was at the limit of their reach, so only the front rank got into the combat ( or perhaps I stuffed up the movement of the second rank?). Still did a fair chunk of damage, and ending up with a number of enemy killed or knocked down (saved by the Harbinger).

Unforunately the Behemoth ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and got munted by the Seneschal and a bunch of Zealots. How embarrasing. The might of Khador toppled in a single round. To add foolishness to stupity, I tried to send the Butcher in to finish what the Behemoth started. Didn't work though, and the Harbinger pounced, knocking him down, and the Zealots were able to break of and grenade him to bits. Very sad.

Still, I had a lot of fun with some new units that I hadn't used before, and I'm looking forward to the next time I take on Sam, hopefully for a bit of retribution ;)

Measurable (though small) progress

I said I'd post some pics of the Behemoth, so here he is in all his primed glory. He went together fairly easilly in the end, considering how many parts he has. I used a number of pins, as he's just so darned heavy. I also used Araldite on most of the larger parts, as it's less brittle than super glue and I trust it more.

While I don't hate the Behemoth's pose like some people, I thought I'd try to pose him with both his feet on the ground, perhaps looking like he's just about to take a step. So feeling brave, I cut off the locating bits on the right leg, allowing me to swing the leg into a different position.

My first attempt was fine... until I put the top half of the figure in place. Once I did that, it became apparent that the figure wasn't well balanced, and the weight of the top half caused the pins in the pelvis to act like an axle. End result is the top half of the Behemoth slowly succumbed to gravity until his forehead rested on the ground in a most undignified pose! This in turn lead to the legs becoming unstuck so it was back to the drawing board.

The drawing board dictated that the best thing I could add was more pins! I moved the arms slightly to better balance the figure, and then put more pins in the pelvis, five in all until eventually the beast was still.

The only other trouble I had was the spikes for the shoulder pads. I kept dropping the buggers. Only one was lost for good though, and after a little thought I pulled out my unassembled Bereserker and used one of its spikes. Of course the spike was too large, but a short time later with a bit of careful saw work I had the piece I needed.

A coat of primer and a black wash, and he's where you can see him in the photo... He's been blooded in battle, of which more later.

Here's a photo of my Winterguard unit. It's taking forever to paint. I don't think there's a specific reason, it just seems to be taking a long time. They're looking pretty good though, and I just need to fill in some details and they'll be all go.

Start the year by looking back...

Happy New Year!

I've just finished assembling my Behemoth for Warmachine, and let me tell you it was a bit of a mission! The parts fit together well enough, but there's just so much weight on some of the joints that you have to make sure everything's well balanced when you stick it together.

I'll post more details and some decent photos soon, but first I realised there's a lot of stuff not on this blog yet that I've done over the last year or two.

First off, here's where the armies live. I tried to keep it to painted figures, but made a number of exceptions so that I could see my armies assembled in all their glory! Although the original intent was to use the cabinet for other things, I've pretty much taken it over now. Which is why the wife has relegated it to a bedroom that most visitors never see!

Here's a couple of my Warmaster armies. It's a great GW game that I have a lot of time for, and the figures are a dream to paint. I'm beginning to realise that, by and large, I'm happier painting the small scales. It's largely that I tend to enjoy myself more if I can paint something fairly quickly with reasonably rough brush strokes - hence I love drybrushing and washing! Carefully painting layers onto 28mm miniatures is not my favourite thing in the world...

You can see both High Elf and Orc armies here. One day when I've figured out proper macro photography on my camera, I'll post some better pictures.

There's lots more Warmaster figures waiting for the paint brush - easily 2-3 times what's painted, but they'll all have to wait for now. They're lower on the priority list than my Khador and Cryx for Warmachine. My Hordes army once I get it, and the 3 armies I'm putting together for Flames of War. Oh boy have I got a problem...

Speaking of Flames of War, here's my Afrika Korps army. Currently a tad under 2000 points. I've been aiming to get everything painted to a minimal standard so that I can play games.

So all the vehicles have basic colours on, but you can see that there's still details to fill in. Also, I've not put all the infantry on their bases yet - I figure it'll be too hard to paint 5 figure on a stand, so I've put 2-3 on each stand, and I'm painting the rest separately.