Almost fully painted for KingdomCon!

So with just a week left until KingdomCon, I only have to finish painting Snapjaw and a Bull Snapper and paint Wrongeye to be fully painted (aside from reinforcements).

So I finished sealing the Eliminators this morning. I'm not too happy with them because their faces look terrible, but they're freaking tiny! One thing I do like is their bases. I glued half a champagne cork to each base, and then cut it down and ripped out chunks to get the big rocks. Then I glued on some sand, and primed everything. The other thing I like is my new way to do snow. Mix up gloss varnish (I used Liquitex Gloss Medium/Varnish) with some baking soda. If it's got too much varnish in it, it won't look right when it dries, so err on the side of too dry. So I mixed that up and glopped it on.



I also finished up the last 4 Assassins earlier this week, but I did put snow onto all their bases since I was doing that to the Eliminators anways. I also cut off Disco Steve's raised arm and green stuffed something else terrible for a bicep, but at least he's not Disco Steve anymore.


I also finished up Rocinante for Ashlynn's list, and the Mangler and 2nd Nomad for Bart's list. Eventually I'll actually order a new sword for that Nomad from PP, but for now, the green stuffed version works.



Anyways, hopefully I'll be able to do well in the Saturday tourney at KingdomCon and have something to report here.

Canine Cancer 2012

I just wanted to take a little time to promote a charity cause I'm working with. Dawnlord on the PP forums is painting a 50 point eKaya tier list to auction off to support canine and feline cancer research. Being a big animal lover I have volunteered to paint a couple models for the cause. You can follow the action on the PP boards or on the Canine Cancer 2012 blog. Look for some WIP shots here as well.

Things I've learned in practicing for KingdomCon

So I've been trying to get in as many games as I can to practice my lists before KingdomCon, usually with timed turns. Bart doesn't usually have any issue with timed turns, but Ashlynn's can be a little rough. That said, she usually does okay, especially now that I've got a few more games in with that list.

On to the stupid little things that I've learned (and the mistakes that I hope to not make in the tournies):

• DEF 17 on Ashlynn is hittable by ranged armies. If Ashlynn is going to be exposed, even on feat turn (unless the models will have to be in your control to shoot her), Quicken should be on her to take her up to DEF 19, which is outside the range of most things to hit even with boosting. Also, kill Rangers and support early if possible to further enhance her survivability against the ranged assassination.

I was retaught this lesson in one of my games against Siege. I managed to kill all his Rangers, most of the Nyss, and most of the Gun Mages. He still had 2 Defenders and his support with Siege (i.e. Reinholdt and Arlan). One doubleboosted shot from an aiming Defender ended her since it was outside the feat. Siege missed, etc, but 4 shots with boosted attacks at RAT 6 and 8 have the ability to hit DEF 17. DEF 19 is a little better. Engaging the shooters is best. This leads in a bit to the next point.

• Models need to be in Ashlynn's control to be affected by Roulette. Don't run Anastasia to the very limit of her control, rather stay 2" inside with her.

This was from a game against eMadrak. I think I won this won by gaming the scenario (Guidons before they fixed it in SR2012 v. 1.3). I ran her up to the edge of Ashlynn's control, about 8" away from eMadrak. He had enough Kriel Warriors plus eMadrak there to easily end her though.

• Anastasia di'Bray doesn't have Acrobatics, she has Parry. You have to open a hole for her to get through. Also, she turns into a 14" threat with Quicken. It's worth the 3 focus if you can get Espionage off.

I found this out in a different game against a strange Siege list, but it turns out you can't just walk her over both armies :p. Regardless, I did manage to hit my first Espionage. It's ridiculous and awesome.

• eAlexia is good for reinforcements. Make sure to get her into melee with something, and bring her in on Ashlynn's feat turn to protect her.

DEF 15, ARM 19 (with 3 souls) is good, but if they have a ranged army, you gotta try and get engaged to take it up to DEF 19. It's going to be a lot harder to take down, even for Siege. Lucky for me he flubbed 2 of his damage rolls (and the fact that she has 10 wounds).

• Flank Deployment is rough with 4 squads of infantry. Be sure to deploy the Steelhead Cav where they will be able to charge the things with the highest ARM.

Nothing particularly of note here other than a lack of familiarity with Flank and Radial scenarios. I just don't have a good idea for how to deploy initially here.

• On scenarios with Reinforcements, don't put any support over there, or they'll get picked off.

A hunter and Aiyana and Holt coming in on Reinforcements just killed eEiryss and Rhupert dead. Can't be having any of that.

• Block LOS to Bart! If he is on a hill, his jack wall needs to be up there too. DEF 13 or 15 isn't out of range of shooting, and ARM 19 is good, but good rolls can make the rest of the game really hard.

I was playing a game against Macbain, and forgot that Bart was standing on a hill. I had him in a pretty tight spot thanks to my feat covering all of the control point (which I think only needed two points to win for scenario). But Bart was on a hill. I was on ARM 19 at this point, so dice -5 there. Good thing he rolled 6,5,5 for 11 damage. He also popped his feat turn and surrounded himself with unkillable Kazazy and flooded the zone with the rest of them. His unit of eliminators sat in the zone and was unkillable too. So since I dropped Rocinante out of my Bart list to put it with Ashlynn, I didn't have any good ranged attacks to drop into Macbain. I killed all the KD kayazy in the zone with my assassins, took his eliminators down to tough, and then ran Bart with 2 focus + BDtH + Spiny Growth (ARM 23) to hide by a wall.

• Bart has tough, and if you make the tough roll with Batten down the Hatches up, you aren't KD!

Same game as the previous point. Rocinante managed to trample to the opposite side of the wall from Bart. Needed 8's to hit, so he bought an attack and saved the last focus for boosting damage. Of course he rolled the 8 on 2d6 to hit, then boosted damage with his last focus (at dice - 6), took me down to 1 health left. 3 jackhammers later, Bart got hit once, and had to tough. I played it as KD because I totally wasn't thinking of BDtH, but he'd still be standing here. Then he took a potshot with Macbain, which missed the DEF 7 from cover and the -2 DEF from BDtH. He would have needed a 12 here, but it's always worth a shot, especially with how his dice seemed to be behaving this game. 2 Eliminators later, Macbain was dead, but I still had a Nomad or two depending on the range, Snapjaw, and some Assassins left to seal the deal.

• Once you've popped Bart's feat, the only reason for him to be at all forward is for his jacks to benefit from BDtH. Other than that, he needs to stay back to avoid being assassinated.

This was a game against pKrueger. He didn't pop the feat early, so my Kayazy were able to wreck a lot of face, and Snapjaw killed the Feral (who had killed the Nomad that his druids dragged across the table. Bart moved up behind his jack wall, but the druids opened a big enough hole for a Stalker to charge in (taking 2 free strikes along the way thanks to reach on all my heavies and no KD from BDtH).

• Beware casters with control wide debuffs and sprays (like Deneghra, Grim, etc) because they can kill Kayazy dead.
  

This was from a game with Bart against Grim Angus and Scattergunners with UA. Even though I had popped Bart's feat, Grim's feat can cancel this out in addition to preventing the Kayazy from charging on the next turn. Scattergunners aiming are RAT 7, to DEF 14 or 15. If the Scattergunners are outside Bart's feat, they can be effective RAT 8 or 10, which isn't too hard to get to 14 or 15. It might be useful to keep back a unit or two of Eliminators just to be able to jump in after the feat turn to engage things and kill others.


Anyways, that's just some of the random thoughts that I've had with my past 10 or so games with my lists (Ashlynn and Bart now if you hadn't caught on that I've dropped Durgen from the lineup). As for painting, Ashlynn's list is all done aside from Rocinante, and Bart's has 14 models left to paint: 4 Assassins, 4 Eliminators, a Nomad, a Mangler, Kell Bailoch, Wrongeye, Snapjaw, and a Bull Snapper. Most of these have some form of paint on them, so I'm hoping to get it all done in the next 2 weeks. KingdomCon here I come!

To Infinity...and beyond!

I haven't posted anything in a while because I've been working on submissions for the Kingom-Com painting competition and I don't want to spill the beans. I took a break today to paint up an Infinity model from the Haqqislam faction. This is as basic an infantry unit as you can get, a Ghulam.

When I first saw these models my first thought was, "*string of expletives* those are small!" So I had to adjust my techniques and expectations. I'm going for tabletop quality as it's pretty easy to have a fully painted Infinity army as far as model count is concerned. Anyway, keep an eye out for more Infinity and later in April my Kingdom-Con entries.

It's that time of year again... KingdomCon!

KingdomCon is a month away now, and I'm trying to get prepared for it. First of all, I'm trying to decide on the lists that I'm going to play. Second, I want to get all of the models painted that I'm going to be using. At this point, I'm only going to be playing in the 50 pt tournament on Saturday, but I'm tempted to go down Friday night and play in the 35 pt theme list tourney at midnight. We'll see though.

I've been playing Mercs relatively exclusively for the last 6 months or so, and I've got a few favorite casters. Namely, Ashlynn, Gorten, and Durgen are my favorites. However, I recently picked up Shae and all his pirates, Bart, Damiano, and Constance Blaize.

Right now, I'm fairly certain that Broadsides Bart will be my second caster because he creates a tough problem for my opponents with his high armor. In general, his list is going to be 3 heavy jacks, Wrongeye and Snapjaw with a Bull Snapper for even more armor, and Kayazy and solos to fill the rest of the points. The particulars of his list depends on what my primary list is. I want it to be able to do ranged and melee so that I don't have a lot of glaringly terrible matchups. So my initial thought was Durgen for ranged control, and then a crapton of Steelheads and Nyss. The idea here is that Durgen plus Nyss provide the ranged control, while the Steelheads provide a strong melee component that can deal with high armor or high defense thanks to Primed. However, strong ranged armies like Cygnar and Menoth have been giving me some issues with Durgen, so I may not stick with him. However, I'm going to be practicing with Dave Henry and others at "The Chamber" later today. If I still don't like how Durgen is performing for me, I may switch Durgen out for Ashlynn. This will change my Bart list up some (i.e. losing Wishnailer and Rocinante), but that list will still do what it was essentially designed for, i.e. being high ARM and tough to deal with.

So now on to the painting aspect. Thankfully, most things that I have in my Ashlynn list are already painted (i.e. Nyss, Forgeguard, Gun Mages, etc), so that will make things easy. However, before this week, most of Durgen's army was still not fully painted.

Last night, I managed to seal up and flock my 16 Steelhead Halberdiers:



Also, before I started on the Halberdiers, I did a fair amount of work on my Steelhead Cavalry:



The bases for these guys are done and sealed just so that I could have the front arcs marked for practice games. Stannis is also assembled and primed, but he's not in the list, so I haven't really done too much to him. The whole Steelhead contingent looks pretty cool together though, that's for sure.



Another model that I've had done for a while, but haven't photographed before now was my Wishnailer model (at least, I think that's the case. I'm too lazy to go back and look it up though). Anyways, he was one of the first models that I started using the zenithal priming on. I'm pretty happy with how his skin and robes came out though. If I ever get better at painting jewels, I'll probably go back and actually paint the ones on him.



On to the works in progress. First, eAlexia:



Her base right now is bland and uninspired, but I'll try and figure something out. Gameplay wise, anybody that can up her DEF to ridiculous levels is great IMO. I've only playtested her with Ashlynn, but I could see her being good with Fiona and Damiano as well.

Next up, Rocinante:



This is my conversion to put the kit onto the metal model. I left off the chains since I couldn't make them fit, but the model exudes character to me. Plus he's amazing with soooo many casters. I love him with Bart, Damiano, and Ashlynn. I haven't tried him with anybody else yet, but I could see him being great with Fiona too.

Another new release from Wrath, the Eliminators:



I haven't really used them much, but their stats are ridiculous. Anyways, I know I've shown them before, but it was a terrible picture, so this is to make up for that.

And last but not least, my gators:





I know that I owned them before, and then sold them. I feel like I'm really getting a lot better use out of them this time though. Partially, it's because of Spiny Growth in Mercs. The other part is making Cryx lists that aren't as overwhelmingly full of infantry, which seems like blasphemy to me, but whatevs. As I mentioned last time, I was trying to replicate what popgoestheworld did with his award winning warhog and other little piglets bases (found here). In terms of skin tone on Snapjaw, I'm going for something like this:



I found this pic on the Tennessee Aquarium website, but it really has an interesting color to it, which I like. So yah, we'll see if I can replicate it.

Anyways, that's all I've got for now. Stay tuned in the next 4 weeks for even more painting, and maybe even some battle reports. I've got pics of a game that Micah and I had, Shae tier 4 vs. Calaban at 35 pts. It was a blast with lots of ups and downs in it.

Until next time.

A few Merc WIPS - Eliminators & Bull Snapper

So first off, the bull snapper. He's going to be used in my Merc armies, specifically with Macbain, Bart, and possibly Damiano. The bases for my gator models is inspired by popgoestheworld's epic pig bases. His warhog won a gold in a painting competition somewhere, so yah, look it up, it's rad.





I'm not terribly sold on the colors yet, but it could be worse I guess. Snapjaw will definitely be a darker/blacker color than this, so we'll see.

Next is my first unit of eliminators. They only had one at my LGS, so I'm just painting up this unit first.



I didn't like the studio poses, so I switched an arm from each model to give to the other. I think it's okay, but not great. I'll have more to post whenever I can take pics of the 16 Steelhead Halberdiers and the 5 Steelhead Cav that I'm painting too. Oh yah, and Rocinante, a second Nomad, and Wrongeye and Snapjaw, all of which I'm trying to have painted by April 14th for KingdomCon.

Vessel of Judgement - Done?

So after untold hours, I think I'm done with this model except for sealing it and maybe putting some tufts of greenery/plant stuff on the base.

Anyways, here it is:




I'm actually pretty happy with everything, especially all the golds. I've also learned why I will never play Menoth or Skorne. Painting that much filigree is dangerous to my mental health :p