Descent - Painting the Altar of Despair!

First off, I must say that the Altar of Despair has some excellent new rules for the game. More treachery, crushing walls and Invulnerability potions are my favorites. but i'm here to talk about the monsters, and you get a good range here, far better than well of darkness.

Blood Apes

First up are the blood apes. I took a simple approach with theses guys, perhaps too simple as I think the red looks a bit mediocre. I'm also not a fan of the narrow oval bases.

In game these guys are devastating. Very tough for how many you can bring in with a spawn card and the leap ability can cause players massive headaches if they a not ready. They also hit very hard and are solid melee monsters. The masters are signified by having a darker and bigger red stripe on their backs.

Dark Priests!

Now we are cooking with gas (or unholy power). I can't help but do a Darth Sidious impression when I attack with these guys. Something about rolling all those power dice makes me want to scream "UNLIMITED POWER!"

A nice simple base coat and ink wash effect with these guys works wonders. red robes = Bad ass powers!

Deep Elves


Not dark elves.... nope. Deep elves... must be into transcendental meditation or something.

These guys rock and my players hate them. Something about the master having more piercing damage than any character has armour just makes them shudder.... that and you cant stand back and shoot them from range. A great unit for game supported griefing of players. Master is wearing a red robe of course.

Chaos Beasts

These guys are tough, and a little odd to use. Its a case of pick whatever dice you want to use at any given time.... although invariable this leads to using the green heavy damage dice.

The models are rather nasty to look at and I painted them in flesh tones. Flesh colour just adds to the "WHAT AM I LOOKING AT" factor. The master is designated by its little pink primary tentacles. Subtle, but you very rarely have more than one on the table.

Trolls

I love classic monsters, and trolls are a quintessential bad guy in dungeon crawlers. I'm slightly surprised they don't regenerate,which would have been nice. They do, however, hit as hard as anything in the game. I've had one kill a character even though he took an invulnerability potion (something like 17 damage on one roll.... obscene!)

Paint job was simple, these guys respond really well to inks and dry brushing. Master has a red hair do!

Right, only one more post to go for Descent and I'm done!

Latest project

Right, so last night I battled the evil superglue monster and vanquished the horrid green stuff beast in order to assemble the next batch of models to paint.

In there I have Sam and the devil dogs, a unit of rangers (who had bent/broken guns grrrrr), Victor Pendrake, Arlan Strangeways, the female jnr warcaster, a gun mage captain, Captain Caine, Captain Murdoch, Constance Blaize, Gallant, Thorn, a sentinal and a heavy omni jack.

I've already made a small conversion to Gallant, by adding in some back banners. I'll paint him at the same time as Blaize to ensure continuity.

Thorn is a model I would like to do something different with. I want him to look part of the army, but clearly stand out as a character model. The precursor knights have given me an idea for Thorn (Not them personally, as my models don't actually send me messages or talk to me....... often).

Next step is to sculpt some custom bases and muck around with sand. Then on to the spray painting desk for a good seeing to!

In Morrows name!

FINALLY!

It feels like I have been painting this unit for an eternity. The underpainting worked well on them, the armour is pretty much only a light chainmail coat and some ink. I also felt the underpainting helped with the white cloaks, if only to help me with shading and highlighting.

The shields are a second attempt. I had to rip them off and bathe them in dettol to remove the original, ineffective paint job. I had this idea of doing them as a sunburst, with red in the middle radiating out to yellow on the edges. It really didn't work out at all, so I went with a dark gold look instead.

The bases are also done differently, as Precursor Knights aren't technically 100% Cygnar units I wanted to make the designation clear. So I picked yellow for the front and a dark blue for the back. The writing on the front says "For Morrow" in the Cygnar language.

For final touches I also used some weathering powder to dirty up the cloaks a little.

Now I have to assemble something to paint..... I wonder what it will be. I'll give you a clue, the next model comes from the minions book.

Descent - Well of darkness

Well of darkness was a pretty cool expansion in a lot of ways. 6 pretty good heroes, treachery for the overlord, loads of new traps like rolling boulders and dart fields, and many little extras.

The only let down, compared to the other expansions was with the selection of new monsters. Kobolds, while amusing, aren't really very effective. The best they can do is act as a delaying tactic, but one heroes with breath or blast can clear them out very quickly.

The ferrox's are an effective creature, a good middle sized hard hitter. I suppose the issue with them is they don't have any real resonance. They don't invoke an classic feelings of D&D dungeon crawling, in the same way Ogres and Trolls do.

Finally, the best monster of the set, and one of my favorites in the whole game is the Golem. Hard as nails, and a classic dungeon monster, these things give players fits as the usual tactics don't work very well against them. They need to be taken down slowly, with lots of hard hits, but sniping them will rarely work as they are immune to pierce. they were also super fun to paint, undercoat, codex grey, black wash and then some detail work. All done in a very short amount of time.

New Warcaster - pHaley

Well, first things first. I don't know if under painting really helped asides from giving me a better indication of where to highlight and shade.

I suppose the big development with this model for me is trying to build a custom base. It's not the best, but for a first go it's not he worst thing I could have done. I think I need more patience in putting a custom base together. that's the problem with working with  modeling clays, they can take ages to work.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with the look. Haley fits in with my Cygnar theme, but the raised base gives her a bit more presence. I do wish I had gotten the other Haley model though, its a mice nicer sculpt than this. The obscured face was a pain to paint.

Haley should hit the table shortly.... I don't think i should count the last time i used her.......

Gobbers!

Just a quick update from me today, i've been on leave and busy doing garden work. You would think that being at home would make me blog more, but it doesn't. I've painted a fair bit while watching TV, and I hope to put up some pics of my precursor knights in the next few days..... if only I can get the shields looking right.

Reinholdt is one of my favorite characters in the Iron Kingdoms setting. Hes a gobbo, who claims to have adventured everywhere and seen everything. He is also an incredibly lucky SOB, a collector of random artifacts, and has an uncanny awareness of incoming personal harm. I reckon he also has a cocky accent, but that's me projecting.

In the game hes a handy 1 point mercenary that can follow around your warcaster giving assistance. Probably his biggest benefit is the ability to allow a caster to shoot one more time with their weapon, which will be very handy for a guy like Siege.

You'll also note that his base is done in a different colour to designate hes a mercenary.

At the same time as painting Reinholdt I did my mechanic and his gobbo assistants. A very cheap unit that can patch up Warjacks, and have been very useful in the one game i've used them... although that was mostly a luck thing rather than any inherent ability they had.

One annoying thing is that as these are metal, and a small unit you can easily see there are only two gobbo sculpts. To break that up a little I painted each gobbo in a slightly different scheme.

Next up, Precursor Knights! I HOPE!

The really big news from Privateer press today - and It's not colossals

So, if you have been checking out the gaming blogs today you will have seen references and pictures of the Colosals. Super big warjacks that look amazing and will be centerpieces for both wargamers and hobby collectors.

I like them, I think they are amazing. But they are just models.

The really big news for me is in the technology space.


http://privateerpress.com/warroom

The War Room app for apple and android mobile devices is really the big news of the day for me.

Being able to build an army list, take it with you is a good start. Being able to record damage and effects on the cards in game is excellent. Being able to connect to another player and view their lists and damage/status effects in game is supurb.

But what makes it for me is the rules look up section with live erratas. Worried that a rule is buried deep in one of the many books and erratas? Don't want to carry a stack of books two foot high to games? You won't need to. Apparently, the app has more functionality they haven't discussed, so i'll be curious to read some reviews when it comes out.

Mobile device use is increasing dramatically and it wont be long before it's unusual not to have one. (For a 1st world gamer who can afford to spend money on model soldiers at least). That PP have recognized their is a market for this app, developed it, and are getting ready to release it shows they understand their market. Gamers are, as a rule, technology friendly. I can see this app being a must have, and in a few years a requirement at tournaments. It sure as heck beats bringing a list on a piece of a4 paper.

Here PP knows where gaming is going and isn't dwelling on where it has been.