Small Update

I have added a few more links to miniature manufacturers in the Hobby Links section. There is some amazing stuff going on right now in the world of gaming. It is a great time to be a gamer!

Not much work done this weekend. I drove out to a few stores looking to pick up some Halloween Town type terrain, but nowhere I went had any. It was a wasted weekend for terrain. I did paint a little bit, but only base colors for the Satyxis witches. Not very exciting.

On the plus side, I found a gun store nearby that is in the same building as a model railroad shop. I have honestly never been in such a cool place. It was the convergence of two of the most formative elements of my childhood. Frankly, I am still reeling.

I also made it to the gym pretty regularly this week. I have been on a diet and exercise routine for the last month and a half and have so far lost about 15 pounds. It seems pretty good until I realize that I have about 50 to go and will have to spend a fortune on new clothes if I am successful. Oh well, sure beats heart disease and diabetes.

-Maniple

300 Challenge: Cryx Chicks Part 1

My next step in the 300 Challenge is into Warmachine. I already have a bunch of models painted up, but these Satyxis models have been sitting around for over a year. I did manage at some point to get them on some nice Back2Base-ix resin bases, but after priming them I got sidetracked. As you can see, they are highly detailed and come in a variety of poses. My first step was to paint the skin with a blend of Elf Flesh and Rotting Flesh. I then hit the wooden bases with some Scorched Brown.

 As you can see, I have a ways to go. My plan is to try and do two colors every day this week and get them done in four days. I should be fine. Today was flesh and wood, tomorrow will be cloth and leather.

 This group comes to the table half done. The models still need a lot of work, however. There are a lot of buckles and straps to pick out as well as mistakes to clean up from my previous attempt to get them on the table quickly.

 Here is the new sculpt of Pirate Queen Skarre. I really like her pose, but she needs a new base. I think I can find something that will work.

This is the old version. still pretty cool, but she is chiefly being used as a test piece for the other one so I can get my colors right.

So far so good, more updates soon!


-Maniple

40K Battle Report: Imperial Guard vs. Marines

Battle Report!

I successfully recruited one of my buddies to come over to the house and try a game of 40K. I put together a small force of marines for him and a guard army for me. The battle would be seize ground, with the variation that any infantry unit could hold an objective. Here is the breakdown:

SPACE MARINES

• Space Marine Captain with Power Sword and Artificer Armor
• Command Squad with the following equipment: 1 Plasma Pistol, 1 Pair of Lightning Claws, 1 Power Sword,Company Champion, and Apothecary
• 10 Man Tactical Squad with Plasma Gun and Heavy Bolter
• 3 Space Marine Bikers with a Melta Gun

I was a little worried about this army since I only have a few models at hand (hence all the extra equipment). Turns out they were fine!

IMPERIAL GUARD:

• Company Command Squad with Autocannon
• Platoon Command Squad with Missile Launcher and 2 Plasma Guns
• 2 Squads with Heavy Bolter and a Power Sword on the Sergeants
• Veteran Squad with 3 Plasma Guns in a Chimera
• 2 Armored Sentinels with Autocannon and Plasma Cannon

I honestly thought this would be enough plasma. I really did.

 Aaron split the tactical squad into combat squads and moved the heavy bolter to the top of a building in the first round. He had a good field of fire and began putting the hurt down early on. They also controlled an objective. There was one near his deployment zone and two near the center. The rest of his force began running down the table to pounce on the center objectives right away. He left his bikes in reserve.

 This unit would prove the toughest to dislodge. After this command squad got in the ruins, it proved very difficult to put any wounds on them. Their Apothecary kept them going despite Lasguns, Heavy Bolters, and Autocannons causing tons of wounds. I had intended to wipe them out with the Veterans, but they were delayed in getting there.

 Here is a birds-eye view. I spent three turns leap frogging my infantry units near them, but was unable to cause any casualties. I refrained from getting too close to their potential assault.

 The Captain went off on his own, trusting to his armor to see him safe. The bikes racing up behind got a bead on the Sentinels, who themselves were targeting the combat squad on the other objective. You can't see it here, but the Captain is getting ready to assault a squad between the buildings.

 In a later turn, he managed to wipe the squad out, but then my Chimera finally showed up and three veterans with Plasma Guns popped out the top hatch and hosed him with six shots! Despite some fevered dice rolling, the Space Marine Captain was wiped out. He performed well, however, destroying the squad I was trying to use to seize an objective with.

The chimera, platoon command squad, and sentinels wiped out the bikers and the combat squad on objective number two. We rolled to see if round six would begin and it was a "2." Game Over! With another round I could have used my vehicles to contest the other objectives and the veterans to hold one. Close to a victory, but not close enough. Congratulations to the Noob!






I made two big mistakes. For some reason I put the Missile Launcher and Plasma Guns in a standard platoon command squad. They should have been my Company Command Squad where these weapons would have benefited from the improved BS. As it was, the Company Command Squad was pretty useless as the marines got their normal save from the autocannon hits and the junior officer could not force the marines to reroll cover saves from the plasma.

Mistake number two was keeping the chimera in reserve. He would have been better off shooting all weapons from round one and pushing into enemy territory to try and contest that objective. The delay to round four because of lousy reserve rolls was punishing.

A good fun game. 600 points is all right by me.

-Maniple

Malifaux Terrain: The Mansion Part 5

I spent a few day doing some detail work on the mansion. One of my goals when starting this project was to add as much detail as I could without resorting to lots of pre-made bits. I could easily by some plastic window kits, but on a project of this size, the price would mount pretty quickly. Instead, I went out to the local craft store and picked up a few basic supplies to start working on the windows. So far I am pretty happy with how they are working out.

 I started with painting them brown. If you leave the paint fairly thin, the wood grain shows through nicely. Along with the popsicle sticks, I had a bag of long thin bass wood strips that would work for trim and the window cross bars. I used a pair of clippers to snip the popsicle sticks to the right length for each window frame and then beveled the edges so they would fit together at a nice 45 degree angle. each window is slightly different, so each piece was trimmed individually.

 From an old miniatures package I cut out some rectangles of clear plastic for the windows. On some of them I cut lines to simulate cracks and other had a corner cut off to simulate breakage.

 Here are some of the finished interior doorways. I glued the top piece in first then slid the side pieces in underneath so they fit snugly. Using the thin bass wood strips, I created a simple frame around them. This adds a further level of detail and also hides the places where the wallpaper was cut out from the doorway. A little white glue holds the whole thing together.

 The windows took a little more work, since I had to fit four pieces together plus two more for the cross pieces. A few of the window frames are a bit wonky, but I did not correct them. I want the building to look dilapidated and uneven so it fits with the ethos of the place. I used a drop of superglue to hold the plastic window pieces in.

 The interiors are finished in a similar fashion as the doors, with a frame that goes all the way around. This level is just about complete. I will order some furniture soon and put a few pictures on the wall.

Here are the first two levels finished!

Well, mostly finished. I have decided that the roof line is just not working for me. I may cut the peaks of the roofs of and rework them to be flat topped. But that is a project for another day...

-Maniple

GW Fanboy Rant

Apparently new Necron pics have finally been leaked. They can be seen at www.beastsofwar.com. They look pretty cool.

This might be a good time to play my GW fanboy card for a moment. If you spend any time on gamer forums on the web you will find a shocking amount of vitriol against Games Workshop. Criticisms range from anger over the release schedule to disappointment over a new codex. Price always seems to be an issue and veteran gamers always get wistful for the "good old days." While I can appreciate the criticisms and well understand where they come from, I don't think any of them really cancel out the good that GW does for gamers in general. Here is how my argument for GW goes, point by point.

Point 1: "GW products are too expensive."
I disagree. The hobby has always been expensive. Most hobbies are. Take a minute and look at what it would take to get into car racing, scuba diving, or hang gliding. Thousands will be spent on equipment, travel and training. To top it off, you could die! Even people who merely go to the gym or start running will eventually pay a good deal on new shoes, spandex, and membership dues. In short, people will generally pay what they can afford as long as they think it is worth it. Some will say that GW is uniquely expensive because of the number of models you need to play with. The argument goes that Malifaux or Warmachine is a better option since you can play full games with fewer pieces. While this is true, it hasn't ever stopped me from spending my full hobby allowance even after purchasing my one starter box. There will always be another model I want or a new crew to start. The problem with these kinds of skirmish games is that in order to have such a small buy-in, they are limited when it comes to playing with a larger force. I will never really be able to field all my Resurrectionists together, even though I only own about a $150 dollars worth. Such a game would be neither fun nor realistic. However, I can easily field every Space Marine I ever bought, along with Every Imperial Guard and Sister of Battle model, at the same time!. By now the number is something like 400+ individual models. The game scales well with the right rule set (Apocalypse). Further, I can field just five Space Marines and the same basic rules work for that size game as well (Kill Team). I know that Warmachine is trying to address the scaling issue, but they are a long way from the flexibility that GW offers. While some of the new game systems do make it financially easy to start, they pretty severely limit what you can do on the table once you have been collecting for a while.

For me, it all comes down to budgeting. I will soon be starting a new GW army and I will plan to budget just $30 a month over the course of a year to see what I can come up with. This will be $360, a pretty significant investment for any game. However, when I am done, I hope to have an army that can be fielded at any points level. The same investment in Malifaux, for instance, would yield me 10-12 crews, but they could only be fielded in one kind of battle while all the rest sat on the shelf.

I recently did some research into all the starting boxes offered by the mainline gaming companies. Warmachine offers 8 basic starter boxes (around $50) with a model count of anywhere from 3 to 6 models. Malifaux offers 24 starter boxes (around $30) with an average of 5 models per box. Games Workshop offers 26 starter boxes (around $100) with a model count from 16 (Ogre Kingdoms) to 51 (Tomb Kings), with most armies falling in the 30 model range. Many 40K armies even come with a tank or other large size model. Further, all the GW box sets are fully customizeable, poseable, and upgradeable. Chances are that you will also be left with a pile of bits for further conversion work. Here is the average cost per model, assuming you buy one of the smaller kits with 5 models and one of the GW kits with 30 models. Privateer: $10 per model. Malifaux: $6 per model. GW: $3.33 per model. Despite the larger initial cost, the value is worth it.

Point 2: GW doesn't release new stuff fast enough.
This is a complex issue and I admit that I do not have any insider knowledge on the process. However, a company like Privateer obviously has a different workload than GW. If Privateer decides to rework the entire line of one army, we are talking about resculpting around 100+ models. For GW to do the same thing, we are talking more like a few thousand individual pieces spread out over a number of individual sprues and finecast sculpts. For instance, the basic Space Wolf Pack sprue has 218 individual pieces. Most of them must be designed to be interchangeable with every other kit as well. This is a massive undertaking that simply takes a long time to get right.

I am a Sisters of Battle player, so I know what it means to wait for a new codex (8 years). This never really bothered me all that much. As long as I had the old codex, I could play with the models I already had without needing to worry about changing the army too much. The stability of that was actually pretty nice, because it gave me time to hone my skills and gradually build up my force over a decade. If I wanted to play the army in a new way, all I had to do was change up a few units here and there and it was different! I didn't need to wait for a new special character or special unit to come out for that, like in Warmachine. The flexibility to change the army was already in the list itself.

If the new stuff comes out too quickly, gamers complain about the old stuff being made obsolete. If they don't come out fast enough, gamers complain about the old stuff becoming obsolete. Frankly, I think 5-7 years between codices is fine, with a simple FAQ to update them if a new rulebook comes out, which GW has done.

Point 3: "The scale of Warhammer is just too big for me nowadays."
This is something I have heard from several friends and podcasters who have made the jump from GW to Privateer and Wyrd. This is one that I can't really argue with, since it is a matter of personal taste. Further, I know that it can be a challenge to get all those GW models painted up. Here then, is my own take on this particular issue.

• Skirmish games limit my tactical options. In a skirmish game, there is a very limited number of troops on the board. It will be hard to factor in a lot of redundancies. Each unit therefore bears a greater burden than in a larger game, where more units can support one another.
• Some units become indispensable in Skirmish game. Because of the lack of redundancy in a skirmish force, the general will usually have to rely on one uber-powerful unit to win the game, such as a caster,  master, or big nasty. This is not necessarily true in Warhammer. Generally, a force will be able to survive the unanswered death of one or two units and even win. The exceptions would be armies like the Vampire Counts (melting units with loss of HQ) and Necrons (phase out with death of troops). Some reckon that this attribute makes these armies particularly vulnerable, if not weak.
• For me, wargames should have an epic feel. It may be nice to be able to set up a skirmish game in under ten minutes, but there is something special about a large table full of ranks and ranks of soldiery, or a half-dozen rumbling tanks. While skirmish games are great, I always get the feeling that they are leaving the best story untold- the big battle that is happening just over the next hill.

Finally, a note on the matter of customization. This is probably what keeps me coming back to GW time and again. I love putting my own army together with its own story and background, even paint scheme. The problem with the mainline skirmish games is that the background has already been written for you, the story already told. In a way, it doesn't matter if you killed Seamus in the streets of Malifaux, because in the fluff in the book, he killed you! Not so with my Imperial Guard. Their story grows and develops with every game I play. Further, my 40K army will always be different from the one across the table. It is my creation, not someone else's.

Whatever GW's faults may be, I think they make the best models and have the coolest background. I love playing Warhammer and plan to do so for years to come.

Malifaux Terrain: Creepy Structure Part 2

I painted up the little house as a test piece for the Malifaux mansion project. I wanted to see what the best way might be to paint the siding, in particular. I want this house to be "Malifaux" in that it looks innocent at first glance, but then becomes horrible on closer examination. 

 I did something new with the windows this time by painting in some curtains. i will admit that they look pretty crude up close, but from a distance actually look very nice. I don't want a really polished look on my stuff anyway. Malifaux has kind of a storybook feel to it, so more abstract terrain seems to fit better along with the models.

 I also deliberately skewed some of the angels, particularly on the window frames. This contributes to the overall look rather subtly, just like the mismatched shingles. I could have bought all my siding and windows online from a plastic kit manufacturer, but that just doesn't interest me as much. The bricks were painted in various shades of brown and red but I think they still need a highlight so it stands out more. I need to get a hold of some cotton balls to make some smoke for the chimney. I think that will go a long way to show that something horrible is happening inside.

Here is a close up of the front windows. What is happening in there? Well, bad things happen...




-Maniple

Malifaux Terrain: Creepy Structure Part 1

This is a little house I started last year. I want something to represent a creepy structure in Malifaux. So far it looks pretty innocent, but my plan will be to situate it in a piece of creepy terrain. The chimney will have a large plume of smoke and the windows will reflect some creepy firelight from inside.

 The house is simple foamcore sheathed in card strips. I will next fashion a decent sized base with a few creepy trees, a fence, and a walkway. Maybe some gravestones out back?

I would also like the building to be removable from the base. I plan on creating a little diorama with stuff going on inside, like a fireplace, a dining room table, and maybe a rocking chair in the corner. We'll just have to see.

-Maniple