Bust a move - Part three

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bust a move (part two) - More Relic busts

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bust a move - Part one

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

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

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

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

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

  

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

Size comparison. 

Relic - Magnetic bases

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

Well, grimdark 40k space anyway.

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

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

So i decided to magnetise the bases.

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

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

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

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

Day three - eNemo laughs at your collosals!

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

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

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

Artists impression of Scott at his old job

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

It was well sad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Game Nine vs Kraye and Cygnar (Richard T)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stormclad eyes up Stormwall - you ain't so tough

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

Conclusions


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

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

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

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

Convergence - Battlegroup box and book!

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

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

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

How to "win" at Warmachine? The NZ Nationals Day Two

Day Two - The day of fail

So when we left our intrepid adventurer he had somehow managed to beat three really good players and burgle his way into the top tier for days two and three.

personally, I think the reason I made it to day two was that my eCaine list is very good against certain match-ups, and I got to play those match-ups (and not fail)

Round Five vs eSorcha and Khador (Rick T)

Turtle vs Death star...... that doesn't sound fair at all. 

This was a very close game and by far the longest game I played in the tournament. Rick needs to tighten up his time management skills a smidge, as he was deathclocked in one game and came perilously close to be clocked against me.

My list was a little wacky but loads of fun. pHaley sitting inside her bubble with a defender and a stormstrider, with Precursor Knights as the counter punch unit. Out in front of the bubble ranges a hunter, a grenadier and some chain guns. For 2 points the humble chain gun is an annoyance that is very difficult to remove with shooting, and on occasion, does a bucket load of damage.

The grenadier had a bit of a blinder in this game, accounting for an awful lot of the Death Star with its incredibly accurate blast weapons. Temp bubble + Trencher Gunner + Standing still gives the Grenadier effectively rat 12??? and 3 shots at pow 12 (with focus for boosts from haley) and you have a pretty cheap, very effectively little package.

I adopted my standard anti-collosal tactic is this game...... ignore the big stupid thing and shoot the caster instead.

Lordy that worked well here, Sorcha ran forward, used her feat, wiffed most of her armies attacks asides from one good shot on the Storm Strider (which blew it up in one shot..... ouch). Then, stuff happened, and not good stuff.....

Die you frigid cow DIE!

You see this pic... this is the second round of shooting I had against Sorcha. You see on turn one I hit her with everything, including the kitchen sink under blitz. Shot after shot smacked into her and did a whopping X-1 damage (X being her life total).

Yep, 1 life left and then the turn above. Rick, at this point is on 4 minutes time left.

After going for Glory, Haley got collosal fist to face. 

I ask myself the question, do I go for the kill shot? Or do I run Haley away, camp focus and be a giant douche and let Rick time himself out.

Kill shot ordered! One damage needed, 5 rolls on 3 dice needing one 12 to hit.......

Miss, miss, reroll, miss, miss.  GODDAMIT TO HELL!!!!!!!!!

Next round Conquest applies fist to face, Rick ends with 90 secs on the clock.

Result: Haley gets big fist to face, Rick wins : Score 0-1 for this comp (3-2 overall)

Round Six Vs. The Coven and Cryx (Sean Lincoln)

So apparently the coven suck....... Lies I tell you, freaking lies.

What an amazing "caster" the coven is, something truly unique in the game. Sure, they aren't "blow you pants of OMFG awesome" like some top tier casters, but they allow for some very interesting timing rules as they can split their casting across multiple phases of one turn.

Sean used this to great effect one turn by activating one witch, casting a spell that granted ghostly to a  unit, charging with them, then activating the 2nd witch and casting the spell on another unit. Very clever, and very effective.

This game was attrition, pure and simple. Turn by turn, Sean and I dismantled each others forces until very little was left. The picture below shows all the models left in the battle on the last turn (asides from the coven, who were hiding far far away). Sean punched through with his barely alive arc node to deliver the final kill blow to haley, who had run out of focus trying to boost attacks to kill said arc-node.

Arc node..... why wont you die!

Sean and I both learned a lot from this game. Here are some of the key lessons.

• Terrain does not stop Cryx from doing anything ever. Ghostly units move through buildings....
• Don't forget chain guns, under temporal barrier they are effectively Rat 10 with 4-6 shots. 
• Pistol Wraiths suck.... shoot them in the face early and often. 
• However, having your pistol wraith shoot the Stormstrider just powers it up, it wasn't moving anywhere anyway and has 360 degree fire. Boosted striders are scary scary things.
• Explodey thralls make expensive units of precursors very very sad. 
• Haley has chain lightning, and always rolls a 6 for the number of jumps it makes. Satyxis do not enjoy this. 
• Always keep some focus on Haley so she can't be spelled to death. 

Result: Haley gets spell to face, Sean wins : Score 0-2 for this competition (3-3 overall)

Round three - Bye (Bonus pics)

Having lost both games I drew the bye round (we had a player go home sick, he came back for Day three though). I was quite tired and sore (I had been having tooth ache all weekend, three days after the tourney I got 3 wisdom teeth out... FUN!).

I used the time to take pics of the other players and stuff going on.

Oh yeah, I lsot every game i played this day..... so how to win at warmachine is still a long way away.

Chris P (legion) vs Sean (with venethrax this time)

Dans Awesome Hyperion vs one of the many Cygnar armies (not sure who's)

Trolls vs Mercs (M.White)  Poor Mr White had a horrid tournament

Gators vs Mercs

Another Cygnar player vs Petes Circle 

Richards Cygnar vs Matts Circle

Caseys gators vs Skorne (Chris Ford?)

Skorne vs  Menoth (Snook?)

More Cygnar vs Toms Khador

Theocratic crisis as Pope Chong takes on Cardinal Ginge 

More freaking Cygnar (Thomas C) vs Robs Legion

BONUS PICTURE OF SUCK

Why 40k sucks in one pic. Spam list, not painted...... this was the 40k tourney in a nutshell.