Finally painted something worthy of putting on the blog.

My last few months have been all about batch painting vast numbers of models.  Whilst this is great for getting things done, it doesn't really give me much to show off about.  Sure you painted 240 models but they all look a bit meh, nobody really cares.

So when I burned out painting them I fell back on my Woodies, this also fits nicely with an upcoming tournament where I'll be able to run them out for a bit of fun with a nice fluffy build using all the stuff people normally avoid and refusing to use any glade guards.

The one thing I wanted to do more than anything was run my Dragon, but that build also requires a BSB on an Eagle which I've never painted, and also requires my rider for the dragon to be painted!

So I painted one!

The original model is standing and has 2 swords in his hand and comes from the Skarloc's WE archer box (from 3rd edition times).  I bent the legs (model is 20ish years old so nice soft metal with plenty of lead in it), then snipped off the 2 swords and drilled through the hands.  The BSB banner pole is a paperclip with a couple of layers of liquid green stuff on top to bulk it out and give it some definition and then the banner top from the glade guard box. 

The spear is from the glade rider/glade guard kit.  The spear had the tip snapped off and fed through the hand which I'd drilled out, then I attached a sword from a champion hand from one of the gladerider/glade guard boxsets as the tip.  Eagle is just a warhawk with the standing hole greenstuffed up.

Super happy with how he came out.

Bang! Ouch that's my head.

Yup that bang was the sound of me hitting the wall hard.  Since turning out my first 10 gutter runners on the 12th I've managed to paint the basecoat grey on 10 more and base the flesh on 5 of those.  If you could hear the sound of the gears grinding to a halt it wasn't good.

So what has caused this stop?  Hard to say really, just motivation doing it's usual thing.  I've written about this before and it really does come down to the desire to paint.  But as one door closes another door opens.  I built up my terraclips terrain for the first time over the weekend and I went back to my WE and built a couple of treemen and am also putting together 4 treekin.  These are models I've had kicking around for ages so was just a random spur that made me decide they were where I wanted to focus.  To go with them I've also picked up a couple of projects that had sat unloved for a while, so the WE BSB on an eagle also went back on the table and I converted up a rider model with a flag and a spear as I'm planning to run him with that build.

Interestingly exactly as this happened to me I noticed another gamer on Twitter having exactly the same issue with a skaven army but he's trying to push through it and was complaining about really just not liking the army as a result.  That is exactly why I didn't want to try and force it.  I did it with the WE a couple of years back and it resulted in me dropping them for over a year as I just couldn't face them.  Since then I've always targetted multiple projects rather than trying to push through with one which I was losing interest in.

On the buying front I've picked up my first purchases of 2012.  Not stuff I really need but some offers I saw going to get the bulk of an Orc army together for pretty cheap so I just jumped in.  £90 later I have the pretty solid basis of what most tournament orc armies seem to be running. 30 savage orcs, a buttload of night gobbo archers, a rock lobber and a couple of shamen. Just need to get a couple of doom divers, a mangler or two and a couple of chariots & wolf riders.

Also priced up the rest of what I fancied for the generic tournament DE build.  Not that it's what I want to run, but just to see the cost!

Terraclips - what a fantastic product.

So I've had 2 boxes of terraclips sat in my cupboard for about 3-4 months and finally got round to cracking them out for a game over the weekend.  I used the sewers set just to make a bit of a building. Stuff works really well, it's incredibly simple to put together structures and they're good and sturdy.  Plenty of options for walkways and doorways which allows plenty of options to break up line of sight but not just end up with cordoned off rooms.

The stuff to the right of the area is the leftover bits.  From the tapemeasure you can see it's 18" across so those of you who know malifaux can quickly work out 4 x the structure I've built will give you a completely covered board.  Which is kinda impressive.  So to go multi level and cover a whole board probably takes 3 kits, but 2 should give coverage and a couple of structures.

Onto the game itself I played Zoraida vs Von Schill on a shared line in the sand.  I was attacker and took 3 silurids, 1 stiched and a wicked doll on the basis of they're generally what I had to hand and were painted so fitted well into 25 SS with 2 SS left.  Opposite was VS, 2 Freidcorps, Trapper, specialist and Librarian giving 4 SS.  Rather than taking simple schemes I was trying mixing it up to see how I'd do at some of the others.  I discoverd that vs Von Schill I really don't want requirements to kill his crew, with him and the librarian kicking around they are a tad difficult, particularly vs Willpower requirements as he kept bubbling the +4WP.  I had kill the 2 FK and the trapper and get into his deployment zone (announced).  He had Bodyguard (snore) and holdout (unannounced). 

First flip of the game I got initiative and first query came up.  Are henchment when used instead of masters able to be targetted by Zoraida's Obey? We decided for simplicity I couldn't so I had LoS to his trapper and had him ding VS for 4 wounds, nice start!  Then the librarian healed him straight back up by a couple of wounds (boo).   [have now looked it up on the wyrd site and we played it correctly, henchmen as masters count as masters so can't be obeyed].

That was followed by a couple of turns of him shooting me and me activating dynamite.  A miscommunication lead to me moving my stitched into range of his trapper so I lost him a bit cheaply and as he had the +4WP bubble it was never going to achieve much anyway but the LoS block would have been nice.

Game went on and my silurids were forced into the open because the terrain layout and I want to try and put pressure on him, unfortunately the guns coming back the otherway overpowered me and all three died for the loss of only his specialist, at this point I had zoraida and 2 dolls. with 2 turns left.  I succeeded in killing the specialist and the librarian (neither of whom got me VPs) and he was able to move onto all my markers and disarm in the last turn.

A frustrating game but I know how I'd play it differently now.  I thought I'd put the kill minions mission on his weaker stuff, but then focussed all my attacks on his specials because they were doing the damage to me, so if you need to kill someone anyway you might as well focus on them! Other than that I should have just ignored the fight, kept up my soft cover from shooting defense on the silurids and kept arming tokens.  That would have stretched him towards the open ground where zoraida could control him.  Admittedly testing for obey on an average -4 was costing me dearly on soulstones.

Game ended up 0-6 and a big loss. (sadface!).

Happy New Year

Ok it's a few days late but I've finally gotten round to writing something!

In typical fashion lets open with a review of last year:
Gaming
Played 10 tournaments (51 games) with a 22-5-24 record, every army except lizards was a losing record but only by small margins so given I was using Dwarfs, TK and WE I'm quite happy with that.

Painted 537 models, a ridiculous tally that saw me complete 3 armies and get most way through a 4th one.

Last years resolutions:
Paint my WE and use in tournaments - Success
Paint my malifaux crew, Now have 4 painted - Success
Avoid buying any more armies until I'd finished the ones I had - Spectacular fail, model collection went through the roof with the skaven purchases I made and have loads of spares I'm never likely to use left over.
Some other stuff I can't remember off the top of my head.

This years resolutions:
Finish painting another 3 warhammer armies - Skaven & 2 others (likely to be an all plastic army - daemons, Empire, Ogres all possibles).
Fully paint all remaining Malifaux figures (remains of 1 crew and ~6 other figs)
Avoid playing netlist armies - probably requires expanding my TK.