Covenant of Menoth

I have dreams of having a fully painted army list or two in time for Kingdom Con. It is very unlikely that those dreams will be fulfilled but I can at least ride the wave of motivation and try to get as much painting done as possible before I come crashing down in a ball of flame.

One major step in the right direction is finishing this little beauty. Since it finds its way into most of my lists I figure it was a smart idea to paint it, plus I think it's a really cool model. For the amount of love given to this solo by the PoM community I'm surprised that I never see it painted. So here you go little buddy, a paint job all your own. Keep on promoting literacy Covenant of Menoth.

Kingdom-Con Role Call

Kingdom-Con is less than a month away. Jon and I will both be attending and I for one am pretty excited. 3 glorious days of playing and watching games of Warmachine, checking out sweet paint jobs, conversions and terrain, and connecting with fellow hobbyists. It's like some king of steam belching, metal grinding, no holds barred hippie love fest.

Anyway, one thing I'm looking forward to is putting faces to all the blogs I so thoroughly enjoy. So if you are a writer, or reader of blogs on the IABN (which I assume you are since you are reading this) and are planning on attending Kingdom-Con leave a comment below. Ideally we can all schedule some time to meet up for a few minutes to shake hands (or sock-jack innocent bystanders, whatever it is people do when they meet in person). Looking forward to meeting you all!

Soulhunters WIP

So this is just a brief painting update. I've assembled the max unit of Soulhunters that I got off of Bartertown and started painting them. While I don't like the models a whole lot, I think I can get a better color choice than the studio scheme. Anyways, I also tried my hand at sculpting a log that the leader is jumping over to make sense of both back legs being up.

And here is with my paint starting on them. I mostlyhave metals and red flesh to block in, as well as touchup horse skin and thrall skin/bone.

Flying Dragonman of Dooooom

So I finally finished my Terminus conversion. I say finally only because he's taken longer than anything I've done in the past 2-3 months, although he still only took me 8 days or so to finish. Regardless, less than 2 weeks from start to finish, so I can't complain too much.

So now that you've seen it, I'm gonna do my likes and dislikes so far about my conversion/painting.
Likes:

Pose: The new pose is much more dynamic, and not so sucky.

Head: While not the best sculpting around, it feels better on the model to me than the original bug-eyes that the sculpt has.

Robe: I think that I did a pretty good job painting the robe on this model. I tried to put in much darker shadows than I normally do. I might be biased, but I think it looks purdy good.

Wings: Again, I think they look purdy good. I primed with gesso (grayish color), then reprimed after some more conversions, this time with a pink hued gesso (hence why I bought white gesso). The only reason I'm not upset at the wings is they were really easy to do thanks to the GW washes. (Baal Red followed by Devlan Mud).

Dislikes:

Joins/Arms: My conversion caused a little bit of a hassle in the shoulder area between the head/headdress, shoulder sockets, and wings. ugh, at least I have lots of GS still.

Painting: in general, this was a really sloppy paint job, way too quick, not enough attention to detail.

Overall, I'm happy with how it came out. Many thanks to those of you on the PP Forums with the suggestions on how to fix his pose.

Roh well, at least it's done. C&C welcome.

So I've managed to pin on Terminus' wings last night, as well as getting some gesso primer on him. I tattered up the wings before I pinned them on, but I forgot to smooth some of the back edges out, so I will need to work on that a bit more. Here's a view of the slightly more tattered wings.



The more I work on this model, the more that I like how it's coming out. I really don't care for the model as it comes straight out of the box, but with a little extra work, he comes out looking pretty good.



I found that I'm going to have to cut the arm in the middle of the sleeve to rotate the bend of the elbow. My repositioning of the wings left them blocking the shoulder pad for the sword arm. Hopefully it won't take too much GS to make it look seamless. Regardless, the arms are going on after I paint the rest of the body. My next post will be after he's got some paint on him.

On my own two feet again

So after some thinking, and asking for ideas from the Privateer Press forum community (big thanks to D. Vader, although I doubt he reads this blog), I figured out how to fix my last big hurdle, which was the pose. So here's what I've gotten done on that front. Leaning the upper body forward allowed me to "easily" pull the left leg back, creating a more dynamic pose.



Hopefully, once I pin his wings on, it'll look like he's bounding/charging forward.



Thankfully, now that I've finished all my sculpting, the pinning of the wings will be the last thing that I'll need to deal with before I start priming and painting.

Speaking of sculpting, I've finished the sword grip and attached hand.



While I'm not entirely happy with how the fingers turned out, at least it's all recognizable and done.

I'm still debating about whether or not to take my dremel to the wings to try to tatter them up more, but I at this point, I think I'm just going to leave them as is. You'll find out in the next few days, whatever I decide.

Hot off the table and cold under the knife

Well, let's start with the painting that's kept me from my Terminus conversion. I give to you, Gerlak and his Bloodgorgers!


I'm not entirely happy with how they turned out individually, but as a unit, I can't complain. I spent way too much time working on them last week. That turned into me just rushing through to finish them in the past two days so that they'd be done in less than a week. I find things like mold lines on some, and shoddy brush work on others, but overall... I can't complain too much.

Now, back to my Terminus conversion. I've already posted my sculpting of the new head for Termy, but there are other problems with the model. ie the pose of the sword hand and the squat. I sawed off the sword from his hand, so I'll have some sculpting to do there. As of now, at least the sword is back in one piece.


So I need to reattach it to his arm, as well as sculpt on the grip of the weapon and the hand to hold it. The reattaching it to his arm will probably be the hard part considering how much pewter I lopped off of the grip.

On to the body/stance. I still need to figure out some way to position the left leg so it doesn't look so awkward. The foot in the air (pictured below) just doesn't seem quite right, but neither does having it on the edge of the base there.


Last but not least, a look at why I need to be more careful when drilling pins. You can end up with something totally off-balance.



I'll be working to try and correct most of the stance issues over the course of the week, but any suggestions would be welcome.

Painted Models! Efeora, Paladin and an action shot

After failing to do any posting or substantial painting for months (I think at least 4) I finally got my butt in gear and finished Feora, Protector of the Flame and a Paladin of the Order of the Wall.

EFeora is probably my favorite caster so I figure I owe it to her to paint her up. I got tired of seeing so much white on the table and so to add some visual variety to my army I decided to alter eFeora's scheme a bit. I like the scheme, but I'm not too happy with the execution. I guess that's what I get for letting my skills get rusty for nearly half a year. There is a lot of cleanup that I'm noticing I need to do now that I look at the pictures, so we'll call this one WIP. I plan on doing a similar scheme whenever I get Daughters of the Flame so maybe then I can pull it off better.

Next up is a Paladin of the Order of the Wall. I recently starting playing Harby and I must say that I am very impressed with Paladins, especially for scenario play. I have always thought the model would be fun to paint, and I was right.

And here's a little bonus, two action shots from my last game with Jon. Some TFG facing off against the Deathjack, a Seether and some Banes. The TFG nearly boxed the Deathjack (due to some extremely lucky rolls) and put a little dent into the Seether. I definitely could have trashed the DJ if I had concentrated my attacks, but how was I to know that a measly 4/6 unit even stood a chance at downing the all mighty Deathjack. Oh, that those zealots you see, proxied TFG.

My goals...to date:

Alright, so before I found an AMAZING bartertown lot, I was 5 models without semi-finished paint (aka basecoat + 1 highlight). Before I got his lot, I had the Reaper (who is close, but not quite "fully painted" and the Coven [4 models that are primed and waiting...as they have been for a year). I just finished my Nightmare model recently. Come to think of it, I should post pics of my painted/varnished Seether + Nightmare + Deathjack...aka my most used jacks atm besides my arc nodes...notably my Defiler and Nightwretches.

Regardless, my list of unpainted models is now the following;
Witch Coven of Garlghast (4 models - 3 witches + egregore)

Terminus

Mortenebra +Derilyss

8 Bane Thralls

5 Soulhunters

6 Bloodgorgers + Gerlak

Bloat Thrall

My main focus right now is the Bloodgorgers + Gerlak, with a side focus of Terminus. As you may have already seen, I've done some sculpting for Terminus already. I'll hopefully finish the Bloodgorgers + Gerlak by Sunday night. Terminus will definitely take some more time, but I'm excited to be able to field him. I'll probably try and get my conversion and priming done by the end of next week so that I can field him against Micah and David.

After the gorgers, Gerlak, & Terminus, I plan on getting my Soulhunters ready for the table in preparation for 1) the Adventurer's Guild of Riverside League starting in April, as well as KingdomCon in April. After thinking about what I have available, I think my strongest available options for KingdomCon are the following:

1) eGaspy - while he will be tough to fit into 7 minute turns, with practice, I think it's a viable option to either win by Scenario or Caster Kill. Although Caster Kill is well and good, I think that I need to start paying attention to Scenario (sidenote: there are two battle reports that I have pictures for that I should probably post before I forget what happened in the game.)

2) eDenny for Scenario - will include the Nightmare, Warwitch Siren, plus other stealth/incorporeal units like Bane Thralls, Wraiths (Pistol/Machine), and the Combine.

3) Terminus list - I have lots of good infantry for him (aka 20+ McThralls, 10 Bile Thralls, Soulhunters, Bane Knights, Bane Thralls & Bloodgorgers). He is very strong vs. range heavy lists. Although I haven't played with him yet, his strength vs. rnged will presumably make it in as a second list to combat the gunline/range heavy capabilities of Cygnar and Retribroken.

4) pGoreshade list mentioned previously - this has possibilities, especially if I'm trying to pare it down to the 25 points "Mangled Metal + 1 Solo" option for KingdomCon has great possibilites. His feat gives undeniable possibilities with the addition of infantry where the enemy will have none, as well as the possible positioning of soulgate.

Those are all my options for now. I'll relate to everybody my thoughts based on actual gameplay experience relatively soon. In the meantime, enjoy the ridiculous amount of painting/modeling that I will be attempting this weekend. My conference for Chemistry in SF this March may slow down my modeling progress, but hey...career advancement is always good, right?

Until next time, I hope you enjoyed my late night ramblings...

Jon (Jonconcarne/IronTwitch/whatever offensive nickname you currently feel like applying)

Interesting News

Some new league info from PrivateerPress. Notice found here:

http://privateerpress.com/the-future-of-warmachine-and-hordes-leagues-shattered-grounds

So basically, the "Focused Fields of War" idea sounds pretty freaking cool. Combine that with the fact that Micah (JollyAngus) has brought up the idea of going to KingdomCON in April... well, it would be good practice. I'd love to play in a tournament and see how well I can do. To do that, I would definitely need to practice. Mostly so that I can get an understanding of what the other factions that I don't face can do (ie Retribution, Khador, Circle, Skorne & Mercs/Minions).

I'm going to have to stop by my LGS (Adventurer's Guild of Riverside) to see how the league will play out timewise. It's from April 5th to April 25th, but the problem is that I have grad school, trips to SF to visit my girlfriend, & church stuff. Maybe I can squeeze in games 2-3 nights a week. Anyways, I'm gonna start researching the possibilities of playing in a league, as well as playing at KingdomCON.

P.S. Expect to see more Terminus WIP and finished Gerlak + Bloodgorgers soon.

Bartertown Lot + Lots of Work

So what with the coming tax refund and the good deal I found on Bartertown, I acquired a few "new" models. Here's what I got:

Terminus
Mortenebra + Deryliss
Bloodgorgers (6)
Gerlak
Soulhunters (5)
Bloat Thrall
Bane Thralls (8)

So, while he had decent technical paintjobs on the bane thralls and the bloat thrall, I hated the colors. Hence my stripping the paint and taking the models back to their parts.

My focus for the moment is going to be getting the bloodgorgers + Gerlak to a painted state, as well as getting Terminus to a point ready to paint, by the end of next week...we'll see if I can do that. I had a real bear getting Termy back to his pieces because of excessive glue use (that now requires me to go buy nail polish remover to get clean pieces). I read about people using Machine Wraith heads, and that sounded like a good start, but I didn't want to wait for the bitz order or to go buy a model just for the head. So here's what I've sculpted so far on Termy's head, although I might remove the top half of the GS and file down the top of the head to let me make the "Machine Wraith Visor" fit better.

I also bought some Gesso due to the hype on the PP forums about it recently. Without thinning with Future Floor Finish, ok, but not that great. With thinning, much better. Easy to work with, no real detail loss either. Plus using white lets me pick what color to prime in. Very nice.

To help fix Gerlak's vertical challenge as well as to differentiate him from the rest of the bloodgorgers, I also boosted him up on his base.

The side profile helps him not look like he's gonna fall over backwards either, so I like how it's going so far.