Basic Painting Questions

So there's been an eager new troll player that's just starting to paint, and he/she has been asking me questions through PMs on Dakka. I figure I might as well post up my answers here in case anyone is wondering about the same questions as well. Plus I think one of my answers will be pretty long...

Q: How do you do the skin on your trolls?
A: Here's an old post where I talk about painting the skin:
http://datrollcave.blogspot.com/2007/02/painting-maulerbegin.html

I've since sped up the process though to cut out the regal blue and electric blue steps. I now base with GW electric blue (also available as the same color in Vallejo) and mix in more and more space wolf grey as I highlight/blend up.

Usually around 3 steps for infantry, and probably about 6 steps for beasts. I'll then sometimes do a very very watery wash of electric blue again in the crevices only (i.e. use your fine detail brush and get a very watered down electric blue droplet).

Q: How do you do the leather?
A: This one is a little tougher to answer for me as I don't have a very standard process. I'll break it down into the various types of leather I've done:

Cowhide/White Leather: This was done on the impaler and you can read about it here.

Yellow/Brown Dirty Leather: Can also be found on the impaler post above.

Red/Brown Leather: This is (surprise) also on the impaler, but I use it on the Axer, and Grim Angus as well (Better pics of leather here). The painting process I used is found here.

Champions Leather Bits/Kilt: For these guys, I used a similar technique, but with more steps. I based in good ol' Scorched Brown (GW), lay down a layer of Bloodtracker Brown (P3), and then Highlight with Beast Hide (P3). Then I washed with brown ink and re-highlighted with beast hide. This was really fast and easy and for a unit of them, I didn't want to spend a ton of time on them.

For the unit leader's eye-patch I spent a little more time on it and highlighted with Bleached Bone (GW) also.

Q: What's your definition of a wash?
A: For me, a wash usually consists of a drop of paint on my brush and then dipping my brush in a clean cup of water (very rapidly). One dip for a dark wash (i.e. if I want some heavy shading in the crevices), two or three dips for a very watery wash. It's not a very scientific method, but it works for me. The first time doing this during a paint session, I'll usually test it on a piece of paper to make sure the consistency is right before applying it to the model.

Q: How do you mix paint and water without wasting a lot of paint? (you dont really know how much you need when you pour some out do you?)
A: I kind of don't have this problem due to the weird way I paint.

I don't really use a mixing pallette (tiles or those plastic paint trays). I've found that the paint dries quickly on those anyway and I actually end up wasting more paint than if I just do things my own way.

What way is that? Well I get some standard computer paper, and basically use that as my pallette. Le gasp! I know tons of people swear by tiles, or pallettes, but they just don't work for me. I've found that while using paper does make paint dry quickly, it's not much more quickly than if I were to use a painting pallette. This is mostly because I'm very very slow at painting, so regardless of what I use, my paints dry out by the time I go back to the pallette.

The other benefit of using computer paper (aside from being cheap, plentiful, and requiring no cleanup), is that as I do a lot of watery painting, I find that it has just the right absorbancy for my tastes. I don't want it to suck up too much water when I dab my brush on it to get rid of excess water. Brown paper, newspaper, paper towels, tissues, and the like all suck up too much water. Whereas tiles, palletes, and print magazines all wick away too little water if I have too much. Computer paper works great for this purpose.

So if my paint is always drying out on the paper pallette, how do I avoid wasting paint? Well, I basically only put as much paint as I need for one application at a time. So basically dip brush in paint, dip brush in water, wick away excess water on pallete (and check color at the same time) and then apply to model. Then I wash brush quickly, and repeat. For blending two colors, I add the first color to the paper, and immediately after, I dip the brush in the other color and add it to the paper. Then I use the brush to mix to my desired color, add some water if needed, and apply to model.

Keep in mind when I say I dip my brush in the paint, I'm talking about a drop of paint. Not a huge glob. So I end up using/wasting little paint. Just as a point, in painting all my trolls so far, I have yet to use up more than half of a GW pot of electric blue! While BrokenZealot kindly bequeathed to me his in case I ever run out (it's a discontinued color now) I've yet to pop it open except to move it to a new container.

Also, while this might seem slower, I've gotten quite fast at doing things like this, especially the skin. I can crank out a champion's skin now in about 15-20 min (that's fast for me ok! :P)

For non-watery coats, or non-blended painting (i.e. basecoats), I just paint directly from the paint pot, onto the model.

Whew that was a long and complicated answer! I'm not sure it will be helpful to anyone, as it's a pretty weird way of doing things, but it works for me, so I'm not about to change heh.

If anyone has any other questions about how I do things, feel free to drop a comment and I'll try to answer best I can.

New puppy

A bit of non-Troll related news, but my wife and I are finally getting a dog. Yay! She's watched me work on this blog over the years and thought it'd be fun if she gave it a go. So we've decided to blog about our puppy as we raise him. If any are interested it can be found here:

Our new puppy blog

In other news, skin on my Fell Caller is done. I'll hopefully finish him off during the work week this week. I'm still debating whether to attempt NMM again or just do regular metallics.

Champions Fully Painted!

Yay all finished! Here they are in a lineup. They still need to have grass added to their bases (and some rocks painted grey), but overall they're pretty much done.

For those wondering, yes, that one on the left in the group photo is in fact "flying" through the air. There were a number of times that I've thrown my surefooted champs as missiles so I thought it was appropriate. Plus, when I made him, the movie 300 had just been released, so it was a fun re-pose based on the guy that flies through the air in the movie to hack off the Persian emissary's arm.

Here is a closeup of the Kithkar:

It took me a while to get used to painting their skin again, but I think I've got it down again.

I was debating between doing the little bumps on his chin in a darker color as in the Metamorphosis art (Dark Blue) but I couldn't make up my mind so just left them light blue for now. It will be an easy change if I do decide to do that though.

Also, I decided against doing a tartan design for now, though I could add one in the future as the brown cloth is pretty neutral and could easily be converted into a tartan.

I just noticed when I posted this pic that I've forgotten to paint the wooden handle on the Kithkar's axe. Oops. I'll fix that later tonight. Not sure how I missed it, but staring at the same models for hours tends to have that effect on me...where I selectively ignore things about the model while working on other parts, then forget to come back to it.

Also, I'm not a huge fan of how the axes came out for the Kithkar, whereas I'm fairly happy with the weapons for the other members of the unit. I don't like how the axe highlights came out on the Kithkar's axe, and the bronze bolt-on part didn't come out with enough contrast. This is where I suppose NMM techniques would have made a big difference, as it's easier to make gold/bronze metals "pop" like I did with Grim's weapons.

If you look closely, I added a bit of rust/dirt to their armor with a brown ink wash, but it didn't come out quite as well as I had hoped. Still for a quick application, I suppose it gets the job done without me spending a lot of time on it. The other added benefit is that it gives a slight brown tint to the armor, so it doesn't look as "shiny" and looks more weather worn to me.

The second thing to go is your memory...

So I forgot how to paint gems...had to look this up on the web again. I'm going to post this here for my own future reference. Heh.

Finished the Champions

Finished, minus basing and four gems. Yay!

I'm going to try and finish the gems tomorrow, get some pics, and maybe start on either the Krielstone bearer or the Fell Caller.

"Sandy" Primer

Well crap. So I took a closer look at the guys I primed a few days ago and apparently they all have this "sandy" feeling quality to them. I'm not sure why this is...maybe the primer is no good anymore? Maybe it was too hot when it was drying? Whatever the reason, it's left a very rough primer coat on them. The primer also seems to flake off the models fairly easily if I run my finger over it...

I'm not really sure what I should do now...I'm worried that if I paint over it, it may not look as nice...and it might flake off. But then again, maybe if I paint over it, the acrylic paints will "fill in" and smooth out the sandy texture...then I could just seal it as normal...

Darn Arizona heat (if that's the culprit)!

EDIT:

So it seems that fortunately the mauler extreme and the Long Riders mostly escaped the "powdery" fate. Thank goodness for that. The Pygs seemed to have gotten the worst of it...and I can live with that. Borka and Keggy were mostly ok too...just some bad spots which I'll just hand prime over I suppose.

On a side note, the weather hear has been crazy. Today it rained...yep, rain, in the middle of the desert, while it was 87F outside. Go figure...

Did some painting and priming today

So I got up early this morning (on a vacation day no less :/) to prime a bunch of my trolls. It's been incredibly hot lately and I knew I'd have to do it early before it got too hot. Even at 7 in the morning it was already 85F out. Yikes. I had a lot of trouble with my old GW Black Primer...which seemed to have gotten clogged over the year or so since I last used it. After a lot of cleaning I finally got it working though. So the things I got primed were:

Borka and Keggy
Long Riders
Pyg Burrowers
and last but not least, the Mauler Extreme...oh yea!

I also did some more painting on my champions. I've just got one guy left to do now, and some final details on the others. The last guy should be fast though since he has very little skin and is mostly just armor.

It's about 105F right now...so I think I'm going to like down in a corner of my tile floor and try not to melt...

Retribution Cover Fully Revealed

So Privateer finally revealed the rest of the cover for the new Iosan faction. At first I really didn't like the look of them. The high-tech rifles bothered me, and they still do. I think the Myrmidon (jack) on the right is pretty cool, but what's with the one on the left? Can we say pinhead? Hah!

After looking at them all again though, they're not too bad, definitely have a different/original feel to them, especially the warcaster. Grittier, angrier elves I suppose. He almost looks like a Nick Fury, but elven. The lightning fists look kinda funky in the picture as well, but is a neat idea. Will be interesting to see the rules for them.

The more I look at them, the more they tend to grow on me. Of course it's still no contest with the Trolls, but really, what could be? :)

Well here's hoping the models turn out well!

PS. Went on to the DakkaDakka forums, and surprisingly most of the people there (mostly 40k players) seem to like it a lot and are talking about picking up the faction as their WM army. So even if they turn out not to be my cup of tea, it's nice that others seem to like them.

Edit: PP removed the pic from their site, so no pretty picture to link to anymore. :(

Retribution of Scyrah

So it looks like Privateer is releasing the Retribution...and I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed at the moment. They look very "Eldar" to me...I would have thought they'd come with something more original. I was definitely hoping for something a little more unique, and a little more gritty to fit the Iron Kingdoms.

However, it's hard to tell exactly how they all fit together since there's still a lot of the picture obscured...but my current feeling is still "meh." On the other hand, I suppose going with this look could be a play to try and grab some more 40k players.

Here's hoping the models are cooler than my impressions of the art.

Worked on my champions a bit

I spent about an hour or two working on my champions today. I started base coating the skin on the other three. Two of them are pretty much done now except for some fine details and their tartans. I still am not sure how to do these, so I may just experiment randomly tomorrow. I'm thinking about going with an orange/brown base, with blue, white and red smaller lines. We'll see how it goes...probably poorly hah!

As a side note, I also had to re-learn how to do armor properly. I completely forgot that I need to wash the silver armor with a black ink/watery base before highlighting. The rediscovery today was funny, but also sad. I wonder what else I've forgotten in the last year!

In other news...I'm really tempted to start up a Cygnar army...I'm not really sure why though...might be all the Mk II talk on the forums. That and I've always thought it'd be nice to have a Warmachine army too.

Mk II Warmachine Thoughts

So, while I haven't really be able to play any games in forever, I have been keeping up with the changes to Mk II Warmachine and overall I think the changes are really nice. Things I particularly like:

* I love that warjacks are actually good and cool again. That was primarily the reason I first got interested in the game way back before Prime and where there were only the Battleboxes.

*Warjacks getting +1 MAT/RAT. Nice! One can only hope that warbeasts get this too when they get around to redoing Hordes. I always hated how my beasts had such a tough time hitting things...I basically always had to boost to hit.

* Less special rules and exceptions to rules overall for units across the board. This was a huge turnoff for me (and it's a problem in some ways with Hordes too). There were so many special exceptions to rules, and unique abilities per unit that it was getting impossible to remember everything. Even in games with Scott, as a "new" player, it was really really hard for me to remember all the things his units did. It also slowed down my decision making a lot with my own units, let alone trying to remember what everything else on the other side of the table did. It would be nigh impossible for someone new to wargaming to pick up the game in the state it was in.

* Warjack points for warcasters. Initially I thought that the warjack points could be used to get whole warjacks. E.g. Haley with WJ Pts. +5 could get five additional jacks. That would have been sweet. Sadly, not the case, but still good as it gives most casters a free light, or half a heavy, which is better than nothing.

* Warjacks getting tougher. I always thought that warjacks were pretty fragile when compared to beasts in Hordes. Now they don't die completely until you've marked off every box, which makes them a whole lot tougher.

All in all, there's a lot of positive changes to the game that I like. Things I don't like are the new LOS rules. These just seem obtuse to me...and the old LOS rules never really seemed to be a problem point for me, so I'm not sure why they changed these.

Also, there's a huge amount of whining and crying on the official forums. It's really kind of pathetic and ridiculous. You'd think that Privateer had cut off some players' fingers or something. A lot of the whining seems to be coming from the Cryx players in particular, who got "hit" the hardest by the removal of all the special rules and exceptions.

I for one am glad a lot of the special rules and exceptions were removed. Good riddance.

Anyway, I'm sure once the frothing dies down, people will once again return to sanity on those forums and realize that it's not the end of the world. Looking at all the Cryx units with relatively "fresh" eyes (i.e. I have not followed any rules for anything Cryx since original Prime) a lot of the stuff doesn't seem as bad as people on the forums make them out to be.

Champions...some progress

So I didn't quite make my painting goal, but I managed to squeeze in a couple hours of painting today. This weekend was pretty jam packed as I have a presentation on Wednesday, and was working on a procurement model for a simulation I'm doing. My entire Saturday disappeared into the depths of an excel spreadsheet.

Anyway, I did get the armor for one done, and the armor for the other basecoated. I also finished up their eyes and mouths. I tried to do a rusty armor wash for the one on the left, but it didn't come out quite right. I'll probably have to revisit him with a once over again later. But since I'm just shooting for tabletop quality with these, I'm not too worried.

I've definitely taken a step backward in painting ability...hopefully it will come back quickly, but it's why I wanted to start with some troopers I guess....to work all the bugs and rediscovery process out of my system.

As a side note, I still hate GW screw cap paint pots. A bunch of my paints completely dried out. Blargh! I'm going to need to buy some new paints when time permits.

On another side note, my wife did some mini painting with me today too. That was fun and nice. She started painting up an old cryx bonejack a college buddy bequeathed to me a long time ago (when the Warmachine battlebox first came out). If you're reading this, it's not too late to pick up Hordes/WM! You know who you are! ;)

Champions starting point...

So, as promised here is the starting point of the two champions I'll be working on. As you can see, the skin isn't that great, but it should be good for tabletop quality. Also, I'm planning on doing the armor with metallics since I don't want to attempt NMM at this point, especially not for the entire unit.

More later this week I hope. I've got a busy schedule this week, but I'm determined to finish at least one.

P.S. Changed the blog format template to a new one. How does it look? Or should I go back to the original template? The other one I liked is the one Brokenzealot uses, but I didn't want to completely rip him off. :D

The fixed width definitely seems to make the posts easier to set up with pictures!

Back to the Trolls

So after that brief stint (brief being about 3 months...hah) of building 40k Orks, I've now got that out of my system and am again excited about working on my Trolls and with Warmachine/Hordes. I've also been listening to Fell Calls podcast again during my drive to and from school (about an hour drive both ways, so just about a full episode!).

I think for me the most truly difficult part is just getting started. I've been trying to get started again for the last week or so, but something always seems to come up. A group project, yard work, the need for sleep, job interviews, taxes (ugh! still not done yet....) etc. etc. I just need to get off my arse and get something painted. It's just tough when you don't get to play any games...that was always a good motivator for me to paint.

Even so, I'm going to paint one champion this week. He's had his skin done for a year or so now, but never got a good coat of armor and is still sitting in his black primer. Well no more! I'll aim to have him done by this Saturday (I hope). No doubt my painting skills have greatly deteriorated so I'm just going to shoot for tabletop quality and take it from there.

I'll post up a pic of how he looks currently tomorrow night.

Started a Small 40k Ork Army

So I picked up a bunch of Assault on Black Reach Orks over the last couple weeks and have been slowly assembling them. It's been fun putting them together, and the warboss model is just cool. Really good detail for a plastic 3 piece model. GW definitely has their plastics tech down. The deathcoptas are also neat looking and should be fun to paint.

Plus, the price for these was pretty good. I think in total I spent about $50 for 60+ models and the new rulebook. Not bad. Ebay for the win!

Short update - Warmachine Demo

So school has started in earnest now, and I must say, it's a ton of work. The first 3-6 months I hear are the worst, and the first couple weeks certainly seem to be keeping up appearances.

In gaming related news, I ran a demo of Warmachine for my long time 40k buddy and also my wife last week. I think fun was had by all, though I actually did forget a couple of rules...embarrassing! Well not really, but it's funny how I didn't pay as much attention to the Warmachine side of things as opposed to Hordes.

The game was one of Cryx (wife) vs. Menoth (friend) box sets. Both sides were plagued with pretty bad dice rolls, which added to the humor at times, but also made it frustrating too. I think Cryx definitely got the worse end of the bad dice though, missing a couple easy spells (missed two 5+ rolls on two dice) and slams (7+ on 3 dice). Those misses really tipped the game over to Menoth's advantage.

In the end, Menoth was victorious with a great showing from the Crusader, mightily smiting the Slayer in two massive, flaming hits. My wife was a little disappointed with her game, but wants to give it another go. I must say though that Denehgra is a bit tough for someone new to the game to use. I think my friend also found the mechanics of the game interesting/different, so I'm glad he got something out of the game too.

Anyway, off to bed for another fun filled day that begins at 5am. :/

Pics of Extreme Mauler and Special Edition Eyriss Assembled

So, a little late, but here are the pics of the mauler assembled:













This guy took about 5 pins, one for each arm, 2 for the main body, and one from the legs to the body. I also filled all the gaps with plenty of greenstuff. The model didn't fit very well together, and there were quite a few large gaps between the pieces. I'm not sure if this is because the individual parts had warped over time, or if it came like that.

Again, I used the greenstuff + a small dab of superglue at each of the joins. I've found that doing this really gives the greenstuff an easy time of drying correctly, as the superglue mostly holds the pieces in place while the greenstuff dries overnight. It also makes for a super strong bond.

And here is Eyriss. Was pretty easy to put her together...just required a tiny dab of greenstuff in her shoulder joints and some to cover the slot in the base.

Just need to add some sand to her base and she should be ready for primer. The only problem is I still haven't set up any place to do primer spraying yet. I might need to go pick up a bunch of old cardboard boxes outside home depot or Walmart as I don't want any errant spray particles hitting the house when I spray outside.

The other concern I have is that it's really really hot here, and I'm not sure how that's going to affect the consistency of the spray primer.

Lack of Warmachine/Hordes in the area...back to 40k? Eep

So it seems that there is a distinct lack of Warmachine/Hordes games being played in the greater Phoenix area...most players seem to play 40k/Fantasy. That makes me a little sad. I haven't investigated too many game stores around here yet, but the two I did go to seemed to be very focused on GW games. The selection of Privateer Press products seemed rather scant at both stores. Only one of the stores I went to carried any P3 paints as well. There is one store a bit further that I'm hoping runs regular games, but it is about a 30min. drive.

In other news, my old college roommate is out in the Phoenix area for the next couple months, so I may play some 40k games with him in the near future, depending on how school/work goes. Good thing I didn't actually sell my old Tau army, though it's in pretty bad shape: lots of busted models, several unprimered (stripped the paint off after I bought them off ebay/craigslist), and some still unassembled vehicles.

The good news is, I probably could field a fairly sizable force, maybe 1500-1750 pts. I'll probably want to start playing some smaller games first though since I have been out of the game for almost 2-3 years now I think. I do hear some decent things about the new 5th edition rules though, and hopefully the games will be a little more interesting than they were before.

I watched my friend play a game last weekend, and it does seem much more objective based which is nice, along with a bigger focus on using troops and cover. They've also taken several queues from the Privateer games it seems such as deployment, who goes first, and some of the missions. The downside was that it's still a game about rolling bucketloads of dice, and also that movement and placement really doesn't require much thought or planning. In fact most of the game is still very straight forward, mostly about who can unload more fire into the other guy's targeted unit.

Sidebar: I suppose it's why I liked the Warhammer Fantasy system more than 40k...movement and positioning mattered. Unfortunately, they ripped out all the fun aspects of my beloved Orc and Goblin army, and it just feels very vanilla now.

That's where I feel the Privateer Press games really have an edge over the GW games still. The amount of brainpower that I burn in one turn of WM/Hordes probably equals the amount I'd use in an entire game of 40k. I really loved those games I was able to play against Brokenzealot because they really made me think hard every single turn. Sometimes I could swear steam must have been coming out of my ears. Movement, positioning, unit synergies, and planning ahead are super important. Furthermore, there are tons of fun aspects about the game such as throwing, slamming, feats, special abilities, etc. etc. There is a ton of "fun" variety...the kind that I used to have in my Orc and Gobbo army.

Anyway, I still plan on continuing to model/paint my Hordes army. I love my Trolls to much to stop, even if I can't find many games in the area, though I'm still hopeful I'll find some folks somewhere that play.

Worked on the Extreme Mauler some last week

So I was able to finally finish building the Extreme Mauler sculpt yesterday. It took a ton of pinning work, lots of green stuff, and several hours, but he's finally put together. I've left him off the base because I want to paint the base separately first. Also, I still need to drill some pin holes for attaching him to his base.

This guy is a total beast. He has to weigh in at about a pound of pewter, and I pity anyone that had this guy drop on their foot!

I also worked on one of my Trollkin Champs, laying down some basecoating for his armor, leather, and weapons. It's been tough doing painting since I don't have a well lighted area set up yet in my house. I also don't have a modeling/painting table set up either, so I can only paint for very short periods before my back hurts too much from hunching over my coffee table. I'm not too happy with the results, so I'll probably improve it a bit before posting pictures.

Later this week I should have a table all set up though, so I should be able to paint for longer stints.

No pictures yet, but I will post some up tomorrow of the Extreme Mauler in all his unpainted (but assembled) glory!

I'm not dead yet!

So it's been, what, a measly 10 months since I updated this thing?

Yikes.

Anyway in that period of time I managed to:

1. Get into a MBA program.
2. Move out of state.
3. Quit my job.
4. Watch an amazing cancer recovery that my mother-in-law went through.
5. Get nothing modeling or painting done. At all. :)

But! Now that I'm settled in, I'm going to try to do a little bit of painting every week. Most likely no one reads this thing anymore so I'm doing these updates more for myself I suppose than anything, but it should be fun.

So picking up where I left off, I think I will be finishing up my Champions next. Let's see if I can still remember how to paint their skin...

Managed to do some painting and modeling

I was able to get some assembly work done this week on the Long Riders and the Extreme Mauler. The Long Riders are all done and assembled, but the Mauler still needs a lot of work. That guy is a beast! He must weigh about a pound.

I also did the skin on two troll champions. It went a lot more slowly than I thought because I've not done the skin for so long that I completely forgot how I normally paint it.

Even so, it was a ton of fun to get back into the painting/modeling groove. It was especially nice because I was able to paint with an old college buddy (who happens to be working on a GW Tomb Kings army). Painting with a buddy always makes it seem to go a lot faster and it's really nice to just relax on a Sunday afternoon and chat. The football game was also on in the background too for added entertainment.

It was really nice to catch up with my old buddy, and I got a lot done to boot as well! All in all quite a wonderful day.

Borka's Night on the Town

Had a fun game tonight with Scott and his Menoth. I brought the Borka beast list I posted in an earlier entry. I had to proxy the Pyre Troll, but everything else was correct. I'm not going to put up a full report, but instead just go over some things I learned about Borka today.

1. Borka is TOUGH! With Champs and a Kriel Stone Bearer, they are all DEF14 ARM19. They took a full barrage from zealots and only lost one champion.

2. The Mosh Pit spell is nasty! Anyone ending their activations in melee range of a troll gets pushed back one inch, generating free strikes. This totally fouls up any melee troops.

3. The Keg Bearer is awesome...because Scott didn't want to kill him, Lil' Keggy was able to kill 3-4 zealots and get in the way of others. It was a lot of fun running him in like the crazy kamikaze drunk pygmy that he is.

4. I need to remember to transfer damage when I get hit. I had two fury and forgot to transfer damage when some Daughters got in and backstabbed him.

5. The High Reclaimer is pretty gross when he can get tons of soul tokens...he got I think close to 20 focus one round and almost killed Borka in one round. Amazingly, Borka lived with 1hp to spare, and the Arm19 from the KSB really paid off big this game.

6. Borka is pretty bad with three beasts. I found that I couldn't really support three and had to make many frenzy checks during the game. I just couldn't pull enough fury off to keep the beasts cool. Also, he doesn't really have any spells that help beasts out. I need to drop one for more troops.

7. When the Fell Caller gets a free strike, it's brutal! Well it was also a monster roll too, but still, he did a POW 30 hit to a revenger leaving combat. Took out the two middle columns in one giant cleave. Go Fell Caller!

8. I still hate Daughters and Zealots. They're too fast and they do hit very hard! If not for the KSB and toughness of the champs and Borka I think I would have gotten quickly swamped.

Overall I think it was a really fun game, though we couldn't play it out to the death. Borka was on fire with 3hp left at the end of the game, while a lot of the Menoth troops were dead or routed. I think it could have gone either way, though probably was more in the Menoth's favor since my beasts were all mostly wild and I was down to 3 champions.

I'm definitely looking forward to next week, and maybe I'll have my champions painted in time for that battle.

Borka Built for Battle

I put together Borka last night. No real major issues with assembly and all the pieces fit together nicely. I did however do one pretty major change. I didn't really like his codpiece so I left that off and instead tried to sculpt my own belt and loincloth for him. This was my first major attempt at sculpting anything big with greenstuff.

I found it really hard to get the loincloth folded right; I think I may have been trying to shape it too soon after mixing the greenstuff because it just wouldn't hold it's shape and kept getting stuck to the table or my fingers/tools. I remembered later that to sculpt a wavy piece of cloth, it's best to wait an hour for it to harden before trying.

I also had some trouble doing his belt buckle and so it doesn't quite look right to me either.

I'll post up a picture later today, once it's all dry.

As for the list I'm going to be using him in tonight, I think I'm going to try this out:

Borka
-Pyg Keg Carrier
-Mauler
-Axer
-Pyre (using my Impaler to proxy)
Champions
Krielstone Bearer + 4 scribes
Fell Caller

I know he should be a lot better with just two beasts and more infantry, but I don't have the models to include Kriel Warriors or long riders yet. The Pyre in this list is kinda extraneous since the Mauler is there.

I'm expecting to get crushed tonight by Scott since he'll have his tournament list there, but it should be fun anyway to see what Borka can do.

Hordes: Evolution - Quick Review

So I'm back from Taiwan now, been back for about a week. It was a pretty good trip; I got a lot of things done work-wise, the people there are great, and I enjoyed my stay there for the most part. While I'm glad I'm back to the US now, I will probably have to go back there again in a month or two.

A nice bonus that waiting for me at GameCastle was my preorder of the Hordes: Evolution book. I spent most of yesterday reading the fiction, which was quite a bit of fun. I really like how they advance the storyline with each new book they release. (No big spoilers for those that haven't read it yet, just general thoughts and impressions).

The Story

The trolls have carved out a little corner of Cygnar for themselves, but things are very tenuous and life is still hard for them. I really liked the way they expanded Alten's character as well as using him to explore Grim's character a bit. I found it interesting that they are making Doomshaper into a serious warmonger, trying to instigate a fight between the trolls and Cygnar. Not really much else of note on the troll story front though.

What I found the most interesting though was the legion fluff, in which they showed the "nicer" side of it, where Everblight is seen as a loving father rather than a crazy evil dragon, and all the warlocks are a sort of weird extended family. Very strange, but interesting nonetheless.

I didn't really like the Circle fluff much...it was all very political, and dealt with characters I'm not really interested in. I was pretty disappointed in Kaya's story progression though. She's just going to be used by Morvahnna now as a pawn. It was sad that she was too dumb to realize this. Oh well.

The Skorne story was pretty interesting in the parts that involved Magnus. The last part was especially interesting, and it makes me wonder what Zaal and Hexeris are up to, and what Vinter's master plan really is. Cool stuff.

The Art

The art throughout the book is very well done, and there's quite a lot of it. I like most of the new troll art, especially the full page picture of the keg carrier and his whelp. Circle art was pretty nice too, though since I'm not really interested in them, I didn't pay much attention though. I do think a lot of their new units looks pretty nice though. I especially like the wolves standard bearer and champion though, and the new Satyr heavy warbeast looks pretty cool.

Legion art was ok, nothing super special. Same with Skorne. The Agonizer art is even worse than the mini, so if the mini bothered you, then be prepared for the art. It's pretty gross looking. Other than that, it seems like more of the same for the Skorne.

The Troll Units

I'm sad that the trolls didn't get a pygmy bushwhacker UA, but happy that there is another pygmy miner unit. I'm definitely picking up a set of these guys as they seem really useful in scenario games and for claiming/contesting objectives. Plus popping out and dishing out a bunch of POW 14 slug gun shots to the face seems quite strong.

The troll bouncer light warbeast seems pretty useful. He's got decent power, great armor, and some nice defensive bonuses for having him near your warlock. Still, I'm not sure how I'd fit him into my army, especially my 500 pt. lists as he just doesn't seem quite good enough for me to want to replace my Axer in most cases. He might be more useful in 750, or maybe with Doomshaper and an Earthborn.

The best new unit/addition though has to be the new Standard Bearer, Musician, and Caber Tosser. These three guys make Kriel Warriors incredibly good. The standard bearer and musician make the Kriel Warriors tougher (tough on a 4+, unit members can't be knocked down) and faster (extra movement if not running, more spread out formation ok), while the caber tosser adds a much needed attack oomph to the unit. With the option to lay down 6" of pow 13 death, or a single target POW 20 hit, these caber tossers are brutal. Plus I really like the art for these guys and I hope the minis look cool too. I'm definitely going to be picking up a unit of Kriels once these additions come out.

Lastly, I've got mixed feelings about the new Solo, the Stone Scribe Chronicler. He's pretty much like the testament of menoth, where he has to read his special abilities in order. The bonuses are nice, but the order might cause some trouble. He's cheaper than the Fellcaller though, but doesn't quite seem as nice. Maybe in larger games he'd be a good addition, but I probably won't be getting one.

And of course there were all the guys covered by the previous NQ magazines (Earthborn, Long Riders, Grim, and Winter Troll). I'm definitely looking forward to some Long Riders soon. I think they should be out in a few weeks.

Which brings me back to painting. I really really need to get started again soon. I think my goal for next week will be to slam out the Champions, who have been sitting patiently in my army transport for months now, waiting their turn to get painted. I also want to get Borka assembled and primed for a game next week against Scott too. I'm sure he's sick of seeing Grim across the field. :)

So the week after will be Borka, and then maybe a break to paint the swamp gobbers or the Rhyas I got just to paint.

Heading to Taiwan...

So I'm finally done with my GMAT, and I did well enough that I'll never have to take it again. Yay! I'm really glad that's over and done with.

The bad news is I'm getting sent to Taiwan for work starting this Thursday for a week. Doh. But after that, things should be well settled down and I should be able to dive back in to painting. Plus, Evolution should be out by then and it'll be fun times again for games I hope with all new units coming out. :)

I'm thinking about taking some models and paints to Taiwan with me so I have something to do at night...but I'm worried that it won't get through security...they might think the paint was some sort of liquid explosive.

Grim Angus 95% Done

Ok, I know, I've been really bad about updating the blog with progress on my trolls. Sadly, the reason is that I just haven't made much at all lately. As some of my readers may know, I've been slammed with work and school.

For work I have to set up a whole new engineering team in the US and Taiwan. School sees me getting close to taking the GMAT exam. Anyway, all that in short = BLARG!

BUT! The bright news is that I'm now 95% done with painting Grim now! Woo! All that's left is his tartan, which I'm still undecided on how I want to paint it, and touching up a couple of boo-boos on his gun (there's a slightly messy highlight on the top of the scope that you can see in the closeup of the scope). I like his green goggles, the NMM work on his guns, and his pants and shirt.

Also, I managed to get a couple of Winsor Newton Series 7 brushes via a super sale online that Broken Zealot spotted and alerted me to. They would normally have sold for over $50, but I got them for only $20. As I understand, these are the Ferrari's of the mini paint brush world. Yea, ok that's super geeky, but whatever. :) I'm excited about using them sometime soon instead of the old GW brushes I've been using.

Back to Grim, here are some more pics of him as he is today (click to enlarge):

Summer Rampage Week 1: Picnic by the river

I played my first game today as part of the Summer Rampage League against Broken Zealot's Menoth. I brought my Grim Angus army, and we played the Menoth scenario. The objective was to be the only side with warbeasts or warjacks in a 12" circle in the middle. We played on a board with two big woods, one on each side, a nice river running down the left side of the board, and a few hills and low walls. The only terrain that really came into play were the two large-ish forests.

The Trolls deployed first, and Menoth went second. Amon came with a Castigator, Crusader, Revenger, full zealots and monolith, Gorman, three wracks, and a full choir. We played five turns with the mission victory conditions, caster kill, or VPs, whichever came first.

In summary I was able to do a good job controlling the board with Grim and his movement spells. For the first time the Gobbers didn't do to much, mostly because I had them on the wrong side and they were blown up by the zealots early on. The Impaler didn't really do all that much either. He got a couple of shots off, but once again no critical slams. It's been several games now where he hasn't really done very much. His animus did prove useful though, where Grim was able to snare gun the Castigator.

Grim was definitely the star of the show, throwing out cross country spells, shooting to throw bait on the Crusader so the Mauler could charge, man trapping to knock down big heavies, and snaring the Castigator to keep him out of melee. You name it, he did it all. I'm really loving Grim for his versatility in missions like this.

The Axer was quite good again, he was able to absorb a fair bit of punishment, slam around some warjacks, and just be an all around nuisance for the Menites to deal with. The Champions, sadly were on the wrong side of the board so didn't get too much done, but thanks to cross country, they were eventually able to get into melee with the choir, and wiped them out. One champion also got into melee with Amon, doing about ten points of damage to him (after concert bonus and a huge melee damage roll).

There were a couple of times that I made some blunders. One was deploying the Champions and gobbers badly. The other was one turn where I forgot to use Grim's feat to keep the zealots from bombing him and it almost proved fatal. Grim was reduced to 5 hp. Thankfully his super high defense (18 in woods) saved him from taking a single direct hit, otherwise he would have been crisped. He was also able to use his feat on a later turn to prevent zealots from approaching him then, so in the end I suppose it worked out anyway.

All in all, I have to say that it was a very enjoyable game, and the win went to the trolls, though just barely and by a sliver via victory points. I had four points and the Menites had two. Plus, the Mauler was on his way out on the last turn, with only about 5-6 damage boxes left. Had he gone down, the game would have gone the other way with a 5-4 win for Broken Zealot.

I'm definitely looking forward to another game next week. As a side note, I almost got a bonus point for killing off all enemy solos...but one wrack remained at the end of the game. Doh! :)

Grim patrols the woods...

Played a quick 350pt game against Broken Zealot today at Gamekastle. I took a Grim melee list with a Mauler, Axer, Impaler, and Swamp Gobbers. The Menoth came with Severius, a Revenger, two Seneschals, Vilmon, six Daughters of the Flame, and Troll Bosun Grogspar (traitor!). Oh and two wracks.

Terrain of note was four stone walls in the center, each of us had a hill near our deployment, and some woods also. The hill on my side was on my right, and the woods to the left.

Deployment: Menites deployed in a line in the middle, with Vilmon and a seneschal to my left, and Grogspar and a second Seneschal on my right. The Revenger and Severius were in the center. My deployment was slightly off-center with the trolls closer to the forests than the hill. Grim was in the center with the Mauler to the far left, the Axer and Impaler on the right, and the gobbers in the middle next to Grim. The Daughters advance deployed on my right near the hill.

Turn 1
The Menites all push forward in an all out sprint. Everything runs and gets some cover behind the walls, except Vilmon, who goes into Impervious wall and makes a beeline for Grim. The Daughters run up behind the hill to my right.

The trolls move up close to the woods, and the Mauler actually moves into it. Grim casts Man Trap on Vilmon, killing him outright. The Impaler throws a spear at a Daughter killing her. In hindsight he shouldn't have been able to do this, but it probably didn't matter in the end as you'll see soon. The gobbers pop their smoke so that the Daughters can't get LOS to charge anything.

Turn 2
The menites move up again, with the Revenger behind the stone wall closest to my side. One seneschal runs into melee with Grim. Doh! The second Seneschal gets a charge lane on the Impaler for next turn, and the Bosun moves up slightly behind the Revenger but it out of range for his harpoon gun. The Daughters run around the hill and now threaten me from behind. These little gal's speed still amazes me every time. Severius casts ashes to ashes on the Impaler, hurting him some, and also killing one swamp gobber. Luckily only one is hit, instead of two, so the second gobber picks up the swamp fog gun.

The Axer goes first, moves into melee with two daughters and kills them with a Thresher attack. The Imapler goes next and spear slams the Seneschal to the right, killing him, but he could come back to life if someone dies within his command range. I spent some time thinking about this, and what to do, and I think I came up with a solution. The Mauler walks up to the Seneschal, who is in hand to hand with Grim, grabs him with two meaty fists and chucks him far to the left and away from the other Seneschal. The Seneschal is killed by the throw, and since he's too far from the other Seneschal now, both of them die. Nice. Grim shoots a Daughter and kills her. The gobber pops a small smoke cloud in front of him, Grim, and the mauler, blocking LOS to them all from the Revenger.

Turn 3
Severius goes first and casts ashes to ashes again through the Revenger on the Impaler, doing some damage, and more importantly killing the last gobber. Grogspar shoots and hits the Impaler with his harpoon gun, and the Impaler is now stuck with Dynamite. The last two Daughters charge the Impaler and shank him from behind, killing him.

The axer turns around and walks into melee with the unit leader of the Daughters killing her easily. The last Daughter panics and runs. Grim backs up into the woods, and out of LOS of the menites and casts man trap on the Revenger but misses. He shoots Grogspar, doing enough damage to him, but he makes his tough roll. Grr. The Mauler also moves deeper into the woods and out of LOS.

Turn 4
The last daughter runs, but regains her composure after she gets some distance from the frightening Axer. Grogspar shoots the Axer and sticks a piece of dynamite on him too. Ugh. The Revenger moves up around the wall to get LOS on the Axer. Severius does a good amount of damage to the Axer with multiple immolations through the arc node, also setting him on fire, but he manages to stay standing.

Grim moves up and puts Grogspar out of his misery with his rifle, and then heals the Axer some. The Axer regenerates and then slams into the Revenger, knocking it back 5". The mauler moves up behind the middle wall.

Turn 5-7
Basically the last few turns boiled down to the Axer repeatedly slamming the Revenger back, Grim taking pot shots at whatever was available and then finally feating to keep Severius from running away. Raged Axer charging finished the game with one mighty swing, cleaving Severius in twain.

Conclusion
Another fun game with the trolls, and I feel like I'm getting better use out of Grim now. I was able to really put the forest to good use, moving in and out of it as needed. The Axer was great, doing tons of damage, taking tons of damage and finishing off the game in style. The Mauler was also key with a well timed and placed two-handed throw of the seneschal. This let me kill them both in a single turn. Killing Vilmon early with Grim was a fortuitous event too...if he got into melee it would have been a completely different game.

The Daughters didn't do as much damage as in previous games, I think mostly due to the smoke clouds that the gobbers were laying down. Stopping their charges was key, though I did have to sacrifice the Impaler. I didn't think he would go down that quickly, but in the end, he did his job.

Overall I just feel a lot more comfortable with Grim now that I've gone more toward a melee based list. I'm looking forward to new units in Evolution, as well as playing in the upcoming league.

The Black Hole

So all my time these last few weeks has been sucked down the black hole known as "getting ahead in real life." I've been totally slammed with school, studying for the GMAT, and now, as (if all that wasn't enough) I'm going back to work part time too. My old boss made me a killer job offer, in terms of pay, that I felt I couldn't really turn down. Hopefully it turns out ok, but so far so good.

Anyway, what all this means is that I've had zero time to devote to painting or playing games, and I guess the lack of updates here is a testament to that fact. Every day my Trolls look at me with sad, betrayed eyes, I've become like King Leto! Gah! :)

School should be finishing next week though, so that should free up a little bit of time, and I'm hoping that work falls into a regular rhythm so that I can at least get back to playing once a week and also a couple hours of painting a week.

In other news though, my wife got me the Dire Troll Mauler Extreme for my birthday! Woo! Can't wait till FedEx drops him off later today or tomorrow. Muahaha!

Interesting fact...

So I remembered just today that I had created a forum account on the PP site ages ago when Warmachine first came out. I tried logging in with it, and after a few guesses at the password I found that the account still exists!

Apparently I was forum member number 740. I think the members have gone up to the tens of thousands now.

It's strange, but it's kinda nice being old school yo'.

Grim vs. Harbinger...take three

So I played another game against Broken Zealot again with a melee heavy Grim list vs. an infantry heavy Harbinger list with a few jacks thrown in too. We had planned to play two games, but this first game took an unbelievable four hours to play out. Yikes. By then end of the game, my brain was totally fried. I think I have to chalk that up to us both playing semi-turtle casters. The games that we play with melee casters goes a lot faster.

The list I took was:

Grim
Mauler
Axer
Impaler
Champions
Fell Caller
Swamp Gobbers

We both had pretty bad luck on our dice rolls...I missed several key attacks by one or two most times with low required rolls to hit. I even rolled triple ones with a boosted attack (though Grim actually hit better now that I have him painted!). Scott also flubbed several damage rolls by a point or two (i.e. he's need to do 9 damage to kill the Impaler, but only managed to do 8) This happened quite a lot...it was uncanny.

Anyway, I think the most memorable moment was when the Choir charged Grim, taking him down to 3hp with some crazy Harbinger buffs. That was pretty impressive. Fortunately for Grim, the Impaler was able to thin them out enough for them to flee and free up Grim to move away.

Oh, and one other really memorable sequence sticks in my mind. The Axer, charges in to the Repenter and with the Mauler scrap it. But the Axer in turn is charged from behind by a Dervish, who nearly kills him (1-2hp left). The Axer heals up enough the next turn and pretty much cleaves the Dervish in twain. Rupert charges the Axer and almost kills him again. The next turn, the Axer once again heals enough to attack, but fails to finish Rupert off! He's down to a single hitpoint. Mortally wounded, Rupert summons up all his strength for one last desperate attack. As the Axer is leaning in for the kill, Rupert stabs him through the heart, killing him!

That sequence is worthy of Peter Jackson himself. Well ok, maybe not.

The Swamp Gobbers were again really nice...they blocked off some charges, and with Grim's Spread the Net, allowed the Trolls to actually get the charge instead of the usual being charged. I'm thinking about moving these guys up on the paint ladder due to their total awesomeness in game.

More Grim Angus Work

So I spent a couple more hours working on Grim tonight. I've finished off his goggles (boy what a huge pain that was...I kept messing up the gem effect...I must have done it 5-6 times). I also did the gold/copper metal on his guns. Lastly I finished his pants, the net refills, and his shoulder pads. I didn't really like how the shoulders came out though...I may redo them in the golden/copper color instead. I'm also thinking about redoing his bedroll.

I do think the gold/copper colors came out decently in the NMM style. I used a base of Snakebite Leather, and slowly worked my way up through Golden Yellow. For the very edges and tips I used half Skull White, half Golden Yellow for a very light creamy yellow color. I'll try and get a couple of pictures tomorrow hopefully when lighting is better.

All that's left now on him are his gloves and his kilt. I'm still not sure if I want to do a kilt or just make it cloth. Ah well, I'll decide that later...time for sleep.

Grim Angus Gets Some Color

Here are a couple of quick shots of the work I've done on Grim Angus so far. I've finished off his cloak, skin, bandana, and most of the gun. I just need to change the scope clip to a bronze color and do the medallion. Also, I really like the olive green shirt color. It reminds me of military undershirts. I just need to give it a bit more shading so it looks nicer.

So there's not a lot left to do for him. I'm not sure what color to paint his pants though...and I think I may change his backpack colors...it looks too weird with the beige and red/brown. I also don't like how his sleeping roll looks now that I've seen it on photo. Then it's just gloves, net gun, boots, and shoulderpads. He's a ton of fun to paint too because there's all sorts of things on the model that require different styles/skills. For example, while he has a lot of leather, he's still got troll skin, metal pieces on his weapons, cloth shirt/pants/bandana, glass/gems on his rifle and goggles, etc. I'm hoping he'll be done by this time next weekend or sooner.

I'm also going to get someNMM bronze/copper going on his gun and shoulderpads.

Hopefully with a finished paintjob he'll start doing better in games. :)

Oh, by the way, I tried to make his scope have the reddish-orange reflection found in a lot of sniper scopes these days. Here's the reference photo I used:

Grim Angus...don't go where he goes...there's only death there...

So I played another game with Grim today against a Harbinger heavy infantry list. Oof. I think I did a lot worse in this one than the last game. The hordes of Menite infantry totally overran my lines. Most of my beasts were totally ineffective, Alten couldn't hit anything, and the Champions got munched by Vilmon. All in all, it was a really poor showing for Grim and his warband.

The Pyre troll (which I proxied) was kinda neat...but in the end he didn't really do all that much. I didn't really need the animus at all (no jacks to attack) and his flame breath was only mediocre. This army is really giving me fits...I'm just not sure how to play it correctly...either that or Grim just isn't meant to go up against Menoth. :)

Anyway, I'm not gonna give up on him yet...I'm hoping eventually I'll be able to figure something that works. If I can make it to my normal game next Wednesday, I'd like to give my Menoth box set a go for a change of pace. It's been sitting here in my army box for years...should be well aged enough to play. ;)

In other news, folks on the forums seem to like how my Axer came out! I think I'm improving my painting skills slowly but surely, and it's nice to see folks liking how he looks. I just need to deepen some of his shadows, fix some boo boos, and I'm going to call him done. I thought about doing some bronze/copper armor pieces...but I don't want to mess him up...so he'll be the meticulous troll...always keeping his armor nice and shiny.

What I will try though is some bronze/copper armor on Grim's shoulder...that's suitably small enough to experiment on without needing a lot of effort...plus if I mess up, I just paint it black and start over...it's easy at this point since I've only finished his skin so far.

Grim Angus needs corrective lenses...

Grim Angus faced off against the Harbinger of Menoth tonight. It was a pretty grinding fight, and a lot slower paced than the other recent battles I've played. It was also my first game with Grim, and also my first game against the Harbinger, so there was a lot of learning on my part.

Basically I think this was possibly one of the wort matchups for Grim due to the fact that the army I took was very heavy shooting oriented, and the Harbinger army was pretty strong against ranged attacks. I had a really hard time cracking the Menoth knot today. I definitely credit Broken Zealot for an excellent use of his resources to totally neutralize my strengths.

Here are the lists:

Trolls
Grim Angus
Blitzer
Impaler x2
Champions
Alten Ashley
Swamp Gobbers

Menoth
Harbinger
Crusader
Castigator
Devout
Vilmon
Paladin
Seneschal
Choir
Wrack x2

Deployment
Basically, the Menoth deployed in a brick, with the two heavies completely blocking line of sight to the Harbinger, the Devout to her right, Choir following behind chanting no shooting, and the solos on the flanks.

My deployment was warbeasts on the left, Grim and the gobbers in the middle, and Champs to the right. Alten was only deployed slightly forward in a forest.

The Game

I'll skip most of the turn-by-turn commentary and just hit the highlights because there wasn't a lot of action going on for the first few turns. Basically the warjack wall with no shooting made all my guys mill about aimlessly as they advanced. I did try to hit Vilmon with Grim's Man trap, but kept missing horribly (on 3 dice even, needing only a 7 to hit!). He also missed a rifle shot at a choir member and a snare gun shot at Vilmon in the opening turns. I blame his non-painted goggles! (they are still primed black...he was obviously having trouble seeing through them)

Eventually, the Champions got stuck in with Vilmon and the Paladin, who promptly then got butchered by said Paladins. Also, the Harbinger's feat did a ton of damage to the Champions...finishing off any that the Paladins didn't down. The Blitzer took the Crusader down to just systems left (did damage evenly across all the columns, but unable to take anything out), but then the next turn the Blitzer was killed by a fully focus laden Crusader. Ouch, that guy can put out a ton of hurt against other heavies! The Castigator also downed one of my Impalers.

Alten got a couple shots at the Paladin, dropping him twice, but he was brought back by the Harbinger's resurection ability. Vilmon was also killed a few times during the game as well as the Seneschal, but that darn resurection spell kept bringing them back. Alten was also able to cap the Choir leader eventually which definitely helped. But it was a little too late since the warjacks were now in melee. Still it meant that they didn't get the bonus to hit and damage.

One bright point was when the swamp gobbers charged the Seneschal and killed him while he was knocked down (from the resurection ability). The swamp gobbers also helped quite a bit all game with the fog cloud effect. Sadly, I didn't realize I could use it to block line of sight from my own guys to the Harbinger during the feat turn. That would have saved a ton of damage on the first Impaler and also the Champions. Doh.

On the second to last turn, Grim and the remaining Imapler were able to finally take out the Castigator and Crusader, but by then they were the only things I had left. Meanwhile, the Harbinger, Devout, Vilmon, and Paladin were still left. I could have kept running backward and taking shots at the remaining Menoth, but I opted to just go for the kill.

The Harbinger was down to 9hp from all the resurections, but the Devout was still ready to jump in the way of a shot with his shielding stance. So Grim walked up, man trapped the Devout, knocking it down so it couldn't intercept the shot. He then shot at the Harbinger, doing 7 damage (another low roll here with an 8 on 3d6). The Impaler walks up to finish the job, needing a 9 to hit, sadly the spear just misses wide of the Harbinger (8 on 3d6, doh!). Next turn Vilmon and the Paladin finish off Grim.

Conclusion
I guess the theme of the night was a lot of missing on my side. I just could not hit the broad side of a barn/warjack/etc. Even when needing really low rolls (like 6 on 3d6) I just couldn't hit. It was pretty frustrating, but that's just the way of the dice. I guess this game balances out the horrible dice rolling game that Broken Zealot had a few weeks back where he just couldn't hit my guys.

The other thing was that the no-shooting Menoth special ability from the Choir coupled with the warjack wall really threw me for a loop. I just am not sure how to get past that since it's near impossible to kill the Choir since they're behind the wall too. I definitely credit Broken Zealot with totally neutralizing my army's strengths with his list and formation.

That and the fact that I didn't have a way to reliably boost my damage output either through a Mauler or some other spell. This really hurt me because I couldn't take out the heavy jacks with the Blitzer. He's just too weak at POW 15 vs. ARM 19. This makes me sad because I really want the Blitzer to be useful with Grim, but I'm just not seeing him being better than a Mauler which is sad. Instead of two Impalers, the Pyre might have been a better choice also. At least that way I could bump the Blitzer up to POW 17.

Actually one way I thought of to beat the warjack wall is to move the Blitzer up and two hand throw the warjack out of the way. Then I'd need to shoot and magic with everything I had at the Harbinger and then run in a second melee beast. Even then, I'm not sure if I could take her down, especially if she is camping focus to overboost her armor.

Also, the Champions really lose a lot of staying power without the Krielstone Bearer and Surefoot. At 14 DEF they were pretty easily hit by the Paladins. The Harbinger's feat did hurt them quite a bit though, maybe if I had shielded them with a fog cloud they would have been better off.

The best performers for me this game though were clearly the swamp gobbers. These guys blocked charges, lowered melee attack, and even took out the Seneschal. For 15 points, they were well worth the points.

Worst performer had to be Grim. Not being able to hit anything was horrible. Clearly I've overestimated his shooting ability. Thinking back on things though, I really can't see doing anything differently except for the fog cloud blocking LOS to the Harbinger. It was just a tough matchup. Hopefully he'll do better next game though! He definitely very different from either of my other warlocks, and I have a feeling he's going to be a lot harder to learn.

Finished Trollblood Axer Photos

Here's my finished Axer. But as usual I've found several problems with him after examining the big photos. There's several places where the blending just isn't smooth enough. I've also decided that I don't really like how the axe came out.

Lastly, I don't really like how his bracers and his neck guard look. The bracers are not shaded enough and are too washed out while I think the neck guard transition from light to dark is too fast and so doesn't really look natural.

I've definitely learned a ton about painting NMM (non-metallic metal) from this guy. Honestly though, I don't think I'm going to be doing NMM on such a large scale anymore. It was just super time consuming, even frustrating at times. The end result I think is not bad for a first real attempt, but I think I could do an even better job with just regular metallics.











I will still probably do some NMM on models that don't really have a lot of metallic parts though...just not fully armored guys. (E.g. I'll be doing some NMM work on Grim Angus' gun barrel and nick-nacks).

The good thing about this whole process though is that I feel it will really help me to shade and highlight better and more naturally. Highlighting skin, leather, etc. all seems tons easier to do now that I've tried out NMM.

Axer finished!

Finally finished off the Axer today. He's looking ok, though I didn't especially like how the leather came out. I also need to touch up a couple spots on his skin where little paint flecks got on it, but other than that he's done.

Pics tomorrow when there is some better lighting.

Madrak and Doomshaper take to the field

So in my previous post I mentioned that I played two games against Broken Zealot and his Amon army. Both games were really fun, and both games really made me think about my moves. We both won one game which was also nice. I don't really have detailed battle reports for these games since I've forgotten most of the details by now. Doh! I should really write these up the night of the game...but I was just really tired and hungry after getting home.

Game 1

For the first game, it was a very similar list to last week's game I believe. I brought my normal Madrak list. Basically there was a big scrum in the middle in turn two or three when I ran my Champions into melee with his Daughters of the Flame and Herne and Jonne. Madrak got a nice axe throw and ricochet off of an unsuspecting choir boy into Amon, doing a massive 10 damage. During this fight, the Daughters vaulted over my front line of Champions and assasinated the entire Krielstone bearer crew. Ouch! They then proceeded to plink the Impaler to near death by the end of the game.

Luckily for Madrak though, the Mauler picked up the Revenger and chucked it at Amon. Although he missed, since he was so close to Amon, it didn't scatter far at all (half an inch) and knocked them both down. Madrak then hurled his axe into Amon and finished things off.

Game 2

In the second game, Amon came up against Doomshaper and his beast list. Amon brought a lot more bodies this time though, with a full unit of Zealots and Knights Exemplar. Yikes. I think I was outnumbered about 3:1 or 4:1! A notable event in this game was a huge trample attack by the Dire Troll Blitzer, who ran over 3-4 Knights, killing them outright. Had the Zealots not been invulnerable that turn (stupid Monolith Bearer!) he would have snacked on a few zealots as well. Sadly, he wasn't able to kill the Seneschal with the slugger gun after the trample, which proved to be my undoing. The Seneschal and remaining Knights proceeded to slam the Blitzer back with his smite attack and then chop him to pieces. This basically collapsed my whole left flank, leaving Doomshaper very exposed.

At this point I could have tried to pull back and hope to consolidate my forces or go for the all out attack. The Axer had an opening to Amon though, and so I opted to attack. Sadly, because Amon camped all his focus from his last turn (since I feated on my turn, he didn't want to take damage from the feat), he was ARM 20, and the Axer just couldn't do enough damage. The following turn, Doomshaper was bombed to death by the Zealots. Ouch!

Things I Learned:

• Trample is awesome when you can pull it off. I was really impressed by how well a trample attack can thin down infantry ranks. I'll definitely be looking to use this option in the future as well.
• The Mauler is still awesome. He pretty much scrapped a heavy warjack in one turn in the second game. Also, letting him frenzy is actually a *good* thing sometimes. He can still do a ton of damage and it allows you to leech fury from other beasts you don't want frenzying. Plus his two handed throw of the Revenger into Amon was a key game winning move for the first game.
• Madrak's thrown axe is really really nice. Especially with the ricochet rule. Bouncing it into Amon was great.
• Fighting in the middle of the board with Doomshaper's beast army is a bad idea. Once my Blitzer went down, my whole left side collapsed. I suddenly found myself surrounded because I didn't have enough guys to screen/block for Doomshaper.
  
• I need to plan out my Feat turn better. I don't want to be feating the turn before I plan to go for the caster kill. Warcaster camping focus = sad times for the Axer.
• Daughters of the Flame are just gross. Not only can they leap over units, but they ignore free strikes while doing so. AND they can move around to the back side of a model without taking free strikes either. They basically kept jumping behind my Impaler and plinked him to death with POW 9s. I totally underestimated these gals because of how poorly they did in the last game (though I did remember they were fast). I'll definitely have to be more careful next time!

All in all two very fun games. I'm now looking forward to playing with Grim Angus though as it'll be a really nice change of pace. I've got him primed and assembled down and I'll probably start painting him tomorrow night. Tonight I'm going to try and finish off the Axer.

Colonel Angus Reporting for Duty!

I finally got my Grim Angus last night while over at GameKastle. Woohoo! The lame thing was apparently mine didn't come with a medium base, and upon inspecting the other ones in the store, none of them had medium bases either. DOH! I guess there was some QC issues over at Privateer with these. Luckily there was a nice guy over at the store that had a spare base and he gave it to me so I could start working on him last night.

I also picked up a Rhyas just to paint up for fun too (ninjas rule!). I finished assembling both of them last night while watching the Shining for the first time. Pretty freaky movie. I liked Jack's weird axe murderer limp. That and his crazy expressions.

Anyway, I played two games last night against Broken Zealot. Both really fun games. I actually enjoyed the one I lost better than the one that I won. :) Battle reports coming in another post. The nice thing was that I think I'm getting faster at doing my turns since we finished the first game in just under 2 hours. The second game we also finished in about 2 hours.

And a last bit of news, I'm pretty much done with my Axer. Just need to finish up the leather straps and his axe and he'll be all done. I'm going to see if I can finish him up tomorrow night. I'm thinking about doing Grim Angus first before the Krielstone bearer so that I can use him in a game. Plus, he doesn't look hard to paint at all...most of him is just leather armor and a few nick-nacks. Should be fairly quick and easy. I'm thinking about not doing him as an albino though...I never liked that look.

Plus, I'm picking up a Swamp Gobber crew and Alten Ashley for my new Grim Angus list. I'm thinking about taking the following:

Grim Angus
>Dire Troll Blitzer
>Troll Impaler
>Troll Impaler
Champions
Swamp Gobbers
Alten Ashley

I might swap out one impaler for an Axer though...I also really wanted to fit in Pygmy Bushwhackers too, but I'd have to drop the Champions for them...and I think I need the Champions more. This list is pretty shooty, but it's still got some melee punch to it. I'm hoping it does well. I think the Impaler and the Blitzer really synergize well with Grim, and Alten should be nice to have too against Hordes armies, though not as much against Menoth. Still, it's another guy who can shoot really far and take out those annoying solos and maybe even some unit leaders. The gobbers are just there to fill up points, but they should help with some nice clouds to obscure certain things.

No game this week...

No gaming this week sadly, I have finals for my classes. Bah. I did get a little more painting done on the Axer though. I finished up his right leg armor, but it didn't come out as nicely as his left leg. Ah well, it's still looking ok. Hopefully next week I'll have him completely done by Thursday or Friday.

First battle on wednesday night - league game

So for my first and more enjoyable game on Wednesday night, I played against Broken Zealot and a tweaked Amon ad-Raza list. There were the choir and the same solos as always (Vilmon and his two Paladin entourage, a Seneschal, and Gorman). The difference this time was that he brought a Repenter, a Guardian, and his newly painted Daughters of the Flame. I thought that they looked great for the speed that they were painted with.

I forgot to bring one of my Champions, so I instead used my original Doomshaper list. We played one of the Spring League scenarios (Khador vs. Protectorate), where there is one big hill in the center, with four small forests around the hill. The flash flood rule was also used, but there weren't any floods all game. The objective is to claim the hill by having more units on the hill than your opponent at the end of each round.

Menoth Turn 1
Everything runs up toward the hill, with the Seneschal sneaking around the left woods, the Guardian, Repenter, Amon, and Choir moving onto the hill, and the Paladins, Vilmon, and Gorman also move onto the hill, to the right of the warjacks. The Daughters running incredibly fast onto the right side of the hill, but still screening the Paladins, Vilmon, and Gorman. They are almost in charge range of my army already! That is a truly scary move.

Trolls Turn 1
I now need to get some guys onto the hill as well, else I'll start losing control points. Due to the slow speed of the Trolls, I know I need to run most of my guys, else they will not get there until turn 3 or later. The Axer and Impaler both run onto the hill. Doomshaper casts fortune on the Blitzer and advances. The Krielstone Bearer, Mauler, and Fell Caller all toward the hill as well but don't make it onto the hill. The Blitzer runs onto the hill and now has a clear shot at the Seneschal, to the left of the hill. The Pyg Ace gets two shots with the chain gun, and mows down the Seneschal.

Since Broken Zealot has more units on the hill he gets one control point.

Menoth Turn 2
The Repenter moves up and shoots a gout of flame at both the Blitzer and Impaler, missing the Blitzer, but setting the Impaler on fire. The Guardian moves up and engages the Blitzer in hand to hand and takes some swings at him doing a moderate amount of damage. Amon then casts a Sandblast at the Blitzer through the arcnode on the Guardian, but fortunately doesn't knock it back.

The Daughters of the Flame move off the hill to the right and into a flanking position, also clearing the way for the solo group. Thrice cursed Gorman walks up and chucks his evil black oil onto the Impaler and Axer, blinding them. Vilmon sacrifices his action to enter Impervious wall and moves into combat with the Blitzer, Axer, and Impaler. One of his Paladins also manages to charge as well, doing a bit of damage to the Axer.

Trolls Turn 2
(Here I actually messed up the rules on the two handed throw, where I threw the Guardian at Amon and actually killed him, forgetting that the two-handed throw is only at Str /2 not (Str + Pow) /2. So we had to do a big rewind. Below is what correctly happened after the rewind. OOPS!).

The Mauler moves up onto the hill and casts Rage on the Blitzer causing its muscles to bulge with Troll fury. The Blitzer walks up to the Guardian, grabs a hold of it with both hands, and with a loud roar hurls it toward the Repenter, knocking both of them down and doing a large amount of damage to the Repenter, destroying its cortex. The Pyg Ace riding on top of the Blitzer gets a bead on the Paladin and Gorman not in combat and lights them both up with the chain gun, killing them both!

The Impaler takes some fire damage this turn, and pretty much misses a lot due to the black oil in his eyes, and the Axer, with help from Doomshaper and a fortune cast on him, is able to take out the Paladin. The Krielstone bearer moves onto the hill and casts his aura. All the scribes move behind the woods to get out of Line of Sight of the Daughters of the Flame, and the Fell Caller moves up slightly, as does Doomshaper.

No control points are given out as we both have 5 units on the hill now.

Menoth Turn 3
The Daughters of the Flame run through the woods and engage the the Krielstone bearer and scribes, and one Daughter is just short of getting into combat with Doomshaper. Yikes! I totally underestimated their move distance again. Luckily for me, she was about half an inch short.

The Repenter stands up and flames the Blitzer setting it on fire. The Guardian stands up and (thanks to its reach) stabs the Blitzer, severely hurting him. Amon then casts Sandblast through the arcnode and kills the Blitzer. Vilmon gets three attacks this turn, chopping up the Axer, but it barely hangs on by a thread and has 4 hp left.

Trolls Turn 3
With the noble Krielstone Bearer in danger, the scribes heft their axes and, in a flurry of death and dismemberment, they actually take down 3 Daughters of the Flame! The Fell Caller charges into the Daughters near Doomshaper and kills two as well. He then lets loose his blood curdling Rebel Yell and the Daughters actually turn and flee!

Doomshaper moves over to get a line on the Repenter, but misses with Accursed, needing only a 5 to hit. Doomshaper casts Rage on the Mauler. The Mauler charges the Guardian and slaps him around and then takes a big chomp out of it. He takes one last whack at it and puts it out of commision, having only generated two fury. I'm still amazed how easily the Mauler is able to take things out and still have so much Fury left over. (I bet he could take out two Carniveans at once with a little support from Doomshaper...can't wait to try that out on the Legion player...the guy thinks the Carniveans are the best heavy ever. He hasn't seen a Mauler in action yet though heh heh).

The Impaler and Axer together are able to drop Vilmon. I now get one control point.

Menoth Turn 4
The Daughters of the Flame flee and no longer have any impact on the game. The Repenter moves over and has a clear shot at Doomshaper. He only needs a 7 to hit, but fortunately the flame goes wide. Amon charges into melee with the Impaler and the Mauler. He uses his special "crack the whip" attack on the Mauler, slamming it back through my Axer and the Krielstone bearers, knocking them all down. Ugly. I think a couple of scribes die, but none of the beasts are hurt badly. The Choir charges in to the fray and actually do some damage to the Impaler, who is now at 8 hp left. They also block off all the charge lanes to Amon.

Trolls Turn 4
Doomshaper takes aim at the Repenter, needing a 5 to hit with Accursed, and misses! They seem to be trading misses at each other. Doomshaper then casts Rage and Fortune on the Impaler, and also heals him for some crucial damage. The Fell Caller moves up and uses his special action, Reveille, to stand everyone up that was knocked down. The Mauler comes to, slams one of the Choir into Amon, knocking him down, and splattering the poor Choir boy. The Impaler then, seeing the prone Amon, gives him a couple good stabs and finishes him off.

Victory for the Kriels!

Conclusion
That was a really fun game, and we both had a lot of fun. It's really quite fun playing against Amon as he's got all these neat little tricks and slams that send my guys flying all over the place. The battles between the trolls and Amon have been like watching a WWE wrestling match, with people and trolls flying left and right.

The battle could have gone either way a couple of times, like if the Repenter had actually hit with his flamer those two times on Doomshaper, things would have been very different, and it's likely Doomshaper would have burned to death.

I also learned to really watch out for the super fast moving Daughters of the Flame. The amount of ground they can cover is truly amazing. Thankfully the stone scribes are actually decent in melee with light infantry, and so were able to send them packing. The Fell Caller also proved invaluable once again, standing big blue guys up, and also his Rebel Yell that made the rest of the Daughters flee in terror.

The Blitzer in this game was a terror. Truly amazing. He did it all this game with his throwing and shooting, accounting for the deaths of three solos with the chain gun, and taking the Repenter's cortex down (no focus allocation to it, so it couldn't boost to hit Doomshaper) and damaging the Guardian. Not to mention knocking them both down for a turn. Honestly, I was thinking about not playing the Blitzer anymore and just using Champions instead, but he really showed his stuff this game, and I will definitely not give up on him, especially at 750pts.

Aside from my rules screw up, the game went much more smoothly, and I think I'm getting faster at playing my turns, as the game only took about two hours instead of the usual three. I'm also feeling a lot more confident with how to use the Fell Caller and the warbeasts I have in general. What I need to be more careful with though is the Impaler. I seem to be getting him stuck into melee too early on now. That or Broken Zealot has gotten a lot better at tying him up early. :) Next game I may try to hold him back some and instead let the Axer and Blitzer take the lead.

Sadly, I won't be able to make it down to GameKastle next Wednesday as I have a final early next morning.

Two battle reports tonight...here's number two...

The first game was with Broken Zealot, and was a blast to play through. We both also learned a lot of rules. The second game was with the Legion of Everblight player, but since it was super short I'll go over that one first.

Battle 1: Trolls vs. Everblight 350pts.

I had about 20 minutes to kill and so we played a quick 350pt. game. I took Doomshaper, a Mauler, an Axer, and Impaler, and a Fell Caller. He had Thagrosh, two Carniveans, and a Shredder. Basically, I went for the turn 2 kill. I had Doomshaper move up and cast Acursed on Thagrosh, doing only a little damage due to poor rolls. He pops his feat and has two fury left on him. Then I had my Mauler through Rage on the Impaler, and then throw the Impaler toward Thagrosh. What I should have done though was throw him AT Thagrosh, thus knocking them both down. Oh well.

Instead, I walked my Fell Caller over, stood the Impaler up and then had the Impaler beat down on Thagrosh. Unfortunately, due to my bad dice rolling (need only average to below average rolls on the two attacks to kill him) Thagrosh had 5hp left. So then I had the Axer charge Thagrosh, needing an 8 to hit, I miss with a 7. Doh. The Axer would have most likely killed him since he was doing straight damage and only needed to roll a 5+ on two dice. What I should have done too, was move the Fell Caller into melee with the Carnivean, speed bumping him for a turn so that he couldn't charge Doomshaper. You make dumb mistakes while playing under a super time crunch.

Next turn, two Carniveans charge Doomshaper and kill him. Once again I forget to roll my tough roll. Grr. Thagrosh lives with 2hp (took 3 damage from the feat). Oh well. The smart thing to do if I had more time to stick around, would have been to instead have the Fell Caller charge and kill the Shredder that was in melee with the Impaler. Then use the Impaler to spear slam the front Carnivean into the back one (they were lined up nicely). If no crit slam happened, the Axer could still slam the Carnivean. And if he missed, the Mauler could have too. Then Doomshaper could cast Acursed on both Carniveans, taking them both out of the battle for a turn (no movement or action after standing up). Then it would have just been a mop up the third turn, where everything just charges Thagrosh and beats him down.

I'm confident this plan would have worked, had I had the time to implement it. Sadly, by the time it got to my turn, I had to go in like 5 minutes, so wouldn't have time for my third turn. Anyway if we play again, I'm pretty confident against his chosen list. It's all about slamming those big beasts out of the way and smashing Thagrosh, who is really squishy compared to the Menoth guys I'm normally facing. If only my dice didn't suck today, it would have been a cool move.