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All posts for the month November, 2014

Studio Update, Aquablight

Posted by Plarzoid on November 21, 2014
Posted in: Games, Hordes, IABN, Painting (Hobby), Studio Update. Tagged: . 7 comments

After spending some time with family and puppy after the push to get the Khadoran Trenchworks done, I quickly needed to get a Painting Exchange model done.  The Exchange is next week (12/3), so I’ll post that model up after the victim gets their dues.

I didn’t want to lose momentum on the Aquablight though, so I set aside a night to work on the Teal Legion.  I also took a chance to test out my new photography setup.

Lo, and behold:

Shredder_Proto_Big

Shredder_Proto_Big2

Legionnaire_Proto_Big3

Legionnaire_Proto_Big2

Legionnaire_Proto_Big1

All that’s left on these guys is autumn leaves and snow, just like my Khador.

So, what do you think?

PS: Of course I notice the bit of purple on the sword now, after the pictures have been taken. *sigh*

[HtT][Terrain] Khadoran Trenchworks

Posted by Plarzoid on November 18, 2014
Posted in: Conversion, How-To Tuesday, IABN, Painting (Hobby), Terrain, Tutorial. Tagged: , , . 1 comment

Holy cow, it’s a How-to Tuesday.  It’s been forever, right?  Libby and I are both very excited!  Ok, maybe she’s just excited about the peanut butter…

Libby_pb

As the Nova Nomads club grows, we wanted to focus on what we had to offer our members and the other nearby play groups around us.  One of these things is a positive and fun gaming experience.  For the longest time, players have owned and maintained their own terrain sets because up until our current store, we couldn’t store anything at the shop.  Given our new home store will allow us to do so, and we have club funding from dues (which also go towards club t-shirts, chess clocks, awards for events, etc), we wanted to get some club terrain.

In order to make this fun and exciting, and make sure we got the best looking terrain out of the time put into the project we made a competition out of it.  Club members were encouraged to group up into teams of two (or solo or threes) and com up with a concept for a table’s worth of terrain.  Lots of members had donated their personal sets to the club, so teams were free to take anything from that cache to use for their tables.  Teams were given a tupperware bin for their terrain to fit into, and each team had a $25 budget on top of whatever the club purchased for them to use.

Most of our existing tables use forests, hills and linear obstacles.  That’s great, but it leaves out lots of other fun terrain pieces like rough terrain, large obstacles, trenches, etc.  Not to mention, the terrain rules support custom combinations of things, like rough terrain plus concealment might be brambles or long grass; something that slows you down and also obscures your position, but doesn’t offer nearly the same advantages as a wall or building.

I wanted to tackle trenches, because moist of our tables look like the random countryside with hills and forests and no buildings or signs of civilization.  However, the Iron Kingdoms is full of battlefields and entrenched positions that nations feverishly defend and assault.  I wanted a real battlefield.  Since I had a ton of Khadoran bits laying around (mostly spare shields), I figured that faction was as likely to have trenches as any.

Khadoran Trenchworks Banner

So, here’s how I went about building an entire table’s worth of terrain from scratch, in about three weeks.

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[Unboxing] Thagrosh, Painter of Everblight

Posted by Plarzoid on November 14, 2014
Posted in: Commentary, Games, Hordes, IABN, Model Discussion, Product Review, Unboxing. Tagged: . 4 comments

Whenever there’s a con, I try and get together with some friends and doa combined bits order.  We get to snag whatever odd things we need to repair models, and we get to order some of the awesome, limited edition models that Privateer Press makes available.

Tis go around, during Warmachine Weekend, I’ll admit that I was upset that the Blighted Bather didn’t make an appearance.  She had sold out before out order was filled during Gen Con in August, ad my group missed out on getting ours.  Those misaligned feelings were quickly disregarded when I saw this beautiful lug:

ThagroshPainter

Not only is he a fun alternate sculpt, but he’s one that gives a nod towards one of the often disregarded (by manufacturers and event organizers) and my favorite part of the wargaming realm: the hobby.  Of course, I ordered one.

So, let’s have a look at what comes in the blister!

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[Field Report] 35pt Tournament Battle Reports

Posted by Plarzoid on November 10, 2014
Posted in: Battle Report, Commentary, Games, Hordes, IABN. Tagged: , . 3 comments

This past weekend, there was a 35-pt 2-list event.  As I mentioned earlier, I took Legion.

The event had 20+ attendees, so there was a split into an upper and lower bracket after the first round.  There were trophies for the upper tier and coins for the lower.  I liked this approach, since it meant that the ‘game’ wasn’t over for anyone that didn’t manage to win their first game.

Anyway, I took notes and pictures of my turns during the games I played.

For those that want to skip to a particular game, here’s an index:

  1. Thagrosh1 vs Skarre2
  2. Thagrosh1 vs Hexeris2
  3. Thagrosh1 vs Kaya2
  4. Lylyth1 vs Rahn
  5. Thagrosh1 vs Father Lucant

Let’s fire up the post-game over-analysis machine, shall we?

*whir*  *click*  *bzzzzzt*

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Aquablight Color Palette

Posted by Plarzoid on November 4, 2014
Posted in: Commentary, Games, Hordes, IABN, Painting (Hobby), Studio Update. Tagged: , . 1 comment

Suck it up, ‘zoid

I’m sick of playing with bare models, and I have as good of an excuse as any to get started:  There’s a 35pt, 2 List (D&C) event this weekend, and models must be primed with at least one color on them.

Can I get enough models primed, airbrushed and (hopefully) blocked out by Saturday?  I’m not sure, but over the weekend I assembled a Neraph (what a cool model) and played with paints until I came to some mixtures I like for my Aquablight Color Palette.  Getting these colors nailed down has been the primary issue with getting the iceberg moving again.  Well, enough is enough.  For better or worse, this is what it’s going to be.

wpid-20141102_232445-e1415026885639

The armor chitin recipe hasn’t changed from the Scythean prototype I worked on months ago.  That was the one good thing that came out of working on that model.

The flesh recipe is about the same; it’s still grey mixed with flesh tones.  However, I finally found a base and highlight color that I like.  Despite being icy creatures, they’re still warm blooded, and I want the flesh to have a warm feel.  This not only conveys the fact that they’re living beasts, but the warm counteracts the cold feel of the chitin.  They don’t really give that feel in the picture, but they’re more flesh than grey, and have just a bit of warmth to them.

I sifted back through all the feedback on the Legionnaire trials, and most of feedback preferred the red.  Since it was my first option from the beginning, I decided to keep it, but shift it away from the core primary color red, and more towards a wine or sanguine feel.  Less natural, more blight-y!  I plan to use this for the skirts on the Legionnaires, sashes and weapon hilt wraps, etc.  It’ll be a unifying accent color.  On beasts, it’ll be gums, injuries, those sensor pads on the sides of their heads, etc.

I left the purple on here, since it’s such a fun transitional color to put between armor and flesh, but that could be too tedious, and might be too many colors.  The sanguine color may do well in that same place – I’m not sure.  Something I’ll have to try out.

Lastly, I threw together something to cover metals.  It’s based on my Lylyth1 resculpt and will work for now until I find something better.  Heh, looking back at her now, she has that same sanguine accent that I’ve come back around to ow, two years later.  Good omens?

The Lists

After consulting the forums, I’ve settled on the two following lists to get me started:

Thagrosh, Prophet of Everblight (*5pts)
* Carnivean (11pts)
* Ravagore (10pts)
* Scythean (9pts)
Blighted Nyss Legionnaires (Leader and 9 Grunts) (6pts)
Spawning Vessel (Leader and 5 Grunts) (3pts)
Blighted Nyss Shepherd (1pts)

This army is an armor cracking bunker of beast-y awesomeness. Spiny Growth + Dark Shroud gives a net +4 ARM to my front line beasties, and the Ravagore keeps the pressure on my opponent or lets me control the board with Scather templates. The tarpit and stew pot are staple units and can easily hold or contest a zone for a few turns if I need them to. This list is a colossal or armor skew buster.

Lylyth, Herald of Everblight (*6pts)
* Shredder (2pts)
* Ravagore (10pts)
* Scythean (9pts)
* Seraph (8pts)
Blighted Nyss Striders (Leader and 5 Grunts) (6pts)
* Blighted Nyss Striders Officer & Musician (3pts)
Blighted Nyss Shepherd (1pts)
The Forsaken (2pts)

This list is an anti-infantry focused counter to the Thagrosh1 anti-armor build. Lylyth1 loves quantity of attacks in order to get the most out of her feat. The seraph lets her do some interesting things with threat ranges that most won’t think of, and can offer her some interesting options when combined with bushwhack. The forsaken gives me fury management and some additional anti-infantry or anti-Hordes tech, and the Striders supply me with a nice shooting / jamming unit depending on what I need. Lastly, I play Lylyth1 all the time so she’s a very comfortable warlock for me. Her magic arrows will provide interesting lures for a potentially slipstreamed Scythean…

Let’s get Rockin’!

So, to field these two lists on Saturday, I need to get a fair bit of models painted!  They only need to be primer +1 color, but I’m hoping to have the colors all blocked out.  I’m not going to worry about shading or highlighting at all, just getting the color where it needs to go.  Additionally, I’m not going to re-use any of the original models I painted four odd years ago.  Everything’s getting the new P3 colors and scheme as done on the Scythean.

That means I can use my painted Lylyth1, Stinger and Seraph along with the half-finished Scythean and barely started Shepherd.  That leaves:

  • Thagrosh1
  • Shredders (I have four plastic ready to go)
  • Harrier (I have one assembled – this is for the pot)
  • Carnivean
  • Ravagore
  • Legionnaires (max)
  • Spawning Vessel & 6 Acolytes
  • Striders + UA
  • Forsaken

Two large based models, two medium based models, and 30 small based models.  I guess it’s a good thing I have this Friday off work, eh?

I’m not sure how much I’ll stop to full on write an article here about progress, but Twitter and Facebook will probably get updated fairly often, and I’ll probably do one larger update late Friday with an after action report on the tournament.

Wish me luck?