I participated in the Holiday Miniature Exchange again this year. I did it last year, and I like it, because it’s a little bit of community building, a little bit of Christmas surprise and a little bit of the joy of giving someone something that you don’t really have to worry about whether they’ll like it or not. 🙂
My gift arrived in the mail today!
Cat not included, although I made that joke on the Wyrd forums. So stoked about the McCabe box, it’s exactly what I wanted!
It’s been a while since I did any hobby stuff, but with my Black Friday order coming in I have a new project! I’m getting on the translucent lighting train! I had planned to try this for the Wyrd Winter painting contest, but the cat is to far out of the bag and to many other people are doing it to make a big splash, so you get on time posts instead. 🙂
Here’s the starting point for the project, some electronics.
That is:
I had thought to use the PoweredPlay solution, but after looking at the price including international shipping (no ocean to cross, guys…) I decided, with some help to do my own thing. Turns out there are some knowledgeable people in CHOP!, so they helped me re-figure out the mathematics required to make it all go. (Last time I looked at any of these formulas was grade 12…)
Next post – figuring out how the hell to get the wires into the Ice Golem!
All of this model painting does have “real life” application!
I’ve never made these before, apparently called salt cookies or something similar. Also apparently not really edible, they become significantly less edible the more acrylic paint you put on them.
I tried some highlighting on the yellow star, but messed it up because stars are internally lit, dumbass so the highlighting is backwards. My second attempt at fanciness was the pink/yellow/white thing in the top right corner, but I couldn’t mix our 4 primary colours together enough to be successful. The bell on the left worked out pretty nicely, although the primary blue could use a little black to grey it out a bit for my NMM. Lastly, I was asked to write words on things that Miranda had painted, which I excelled at. Long years of practicing a steady hand have finally come in useful around the house!
I was asked to guess why we had arrow shapes. The answer is that we don’t have a heart shaped cutter, but we do have a spade shaped cutter…align the arrows with the tops of the hearts to find the answer.
Happy Holidays! 😀
I’ve been super busy this year and haven’t had as much time to play Warhammer/Malifaux. This is a little sad, but I made my decision and I’m happy with my priorities. So when I noticed that Foodhammer Fantasy was on a Sunday this year, I made sure to put it into my schedule!
I’ve really enjoyed my Lizardmen, since adopting a Nicholas Klose attitude of “Warhammer Fantasy is a terribly written game, but it can be a ton of fun if you want it to be.” At OFCC this year, I took a Skink Priest+Beasts magic heavy list, that was fun to play but not terribly effective. For Foodhammer, I wanted to do something completely different, and I’m stoked to see that I finally have enough models to do that. As well, because Special Characters were allowed I was really happy to finally start and finish painting Chakax, which is such a badass model. My list consisted of a Slann+Loremaster High Magic, Chakax, 2 Level 1 Priests on Heavens, a Scar Vet on Cold One, 2 units of Skink Cohorts, 4 units of Skink Skirmishers and a Temple Guard Bunker. 50/50 Lords/Heroes helped, as I went over in Heroes because Chakax is a stunning 270 points.
I’ve had this model for years. My starting post for him tells the story of how he ended up painted finally. I was about to repeat it…
Another model that I’m intensely proud of, as opposed to some of the Malifaux I’ve been painting. (But not these guys – I love them). Despite the promise of Malifaux being “add a model and dramatically change your playstyle”, and the idea that I don’t have to paint 30 skinks to affect a change, I’m still speeding through a lot of these single miniatures. I wish I could tell you why, but I reserve my deep internal psychological probing for things that are actually a problem. In the mean time, Chakax gets an amazing paint job, and the Fire Gamin get all-but drybrushed. 😛
I can’t tell you to much about how I did it, but I’m taking more points from the James Wappel school of painting. He does this highlight-up-shade-down thing, but in my laziness (even here) I’ve been just starting with white primer and bright base coat and then shading down. The thing that I’ve been taking from him most recently, is using a variety of colour tones to create visual interest. The metal isn’t just metallic, it’s got some green and brown glazes on it. The skink isn’t just grey, it has some purple in places. The rock has green and red and blue and purple, then was drybrushed again.
I played with him at Foodhammer last weekend, and he did as miserably as I had expected. It seems nobody wants to get into combat with 1000 points of Chakaz+Slann+Temple Guard, and who can blame them? He was kited around the first game, shot up the second game and in the third game he finally managed to do something. He caused a wound and removed the Armor of Destiny from an opposing Scar-Vet before dying to that same scar-vet. Who is 154 points. As opposed to Chakax’s 270 points. Yeah.
The nice thing is that I didn’t expect the unit to get into combat against a competent opponent. It was more about points denial while the magic/skinks got me points, and about having a solid block if I came up against a push-it-forward player. I liked the unit, but I’d definitely replace Chakax to reclaim some points next time.
So he won’t be played as Chakax again any time soon. Maybe a scar-vet on foot if I need such a thing.
The one on the left was, as for the Fire Gamin, done for the summer painting contest which I won’t shut up about. (or at least, I feel like I’m mentioning it every other summer painting contest). I knew the colours I had used as a base, so I tossed those onto the male and then used washes and glazes to make it look good. I didn’t try to do any colour matching outside of the base coat. I think both of these models kind of look a little bit like ass, so if there’s a new Kaeris/MS&U box that comes out, I might consider re-doing them.
I used these guys in the 4-player game I had a few weeks ago and they are very effective at killing things. Malifaux is not a game about killing things, but sometimes that can be an excellent tactic. In that game, because I had deployed a gunline, Duke decided to walk the other way towards Jordan and against engaging me. This allowed me the space to do whatever I wanted for the first 3 turns of the game.
I haven’t had a chance to use them in a 2-player game yet, but I’m thinking about Sue, whom I have used a bunch. I’ve found that in general, he’s hard to get into a good position. He always needs to walk somewhere before he can shoot, or he’s to far out of range, or you need to organize your activations so your opponent comes closer, etc. I’m thinking about the Charge action and how you spend 2AP to move and also get 2 attacks, but with shooting you can either move or shoot. Charging you put yourself in harms way and also block yourself from moving (because of engagement), so it’s probably good that it’s notably more efficient than shooting.
I don’t know what sort of toolbox model these guys are, if any. Under what circumstances would I want a ranged crew as opposed to my usual melee crew? Is there a scheme/strategy/opposing faction combination that makes you do one versus the other? Or is it just personal preference or your own personal playstyle?
I’ve wanted to play the Kaeris box set with Mei Feng for a while. I had previously painted one Fire Gamin and one Gunsmith for the Wyrd painting contest, so it was a relatively easy matter to paint the last three models.
The one on the right is the one I did for the painting contest. It’s interesting to see here, because the old one is better painted, but in these photos the new ones certainly have a bunch of “pop” from the bright yellow at their base!
I started painting Chiaki with the colours that I had down to paint Toshiro in. I like them a lot less on her though, the green doesn’t look quite right, and the “wave of energy” or whatever her base is made of is a really strange colour against the high saturation colours of her dress and scarf thing.
Then, once again, I suck at faces.
I really like how these guys turned out, so I’m a little sad that they might just end up being summon fodder instead of an actual part of the crew. I started by using this image as reference. You can probably tell this, but I use these images just as a starting place for the most part and then take it whatever way the paint wants to go.
In this case I liked the contrast between the grey/blue pants and goldish armour. I ended up doing Stegadon Scale green pants, shade, shade, highlight. And Mithril Silver armor, with Seraphim Sepia and then went over again with the Mithril Silver, really wanted down. When you do this you need to get rid of most of the paint from the brush, because if this stuff runs you’ll end up with silver all over your model, and that sucks.
Bone was just Ushapti, Seraphim, Ushapti. Red was Mephiston Red with two coast of Seraphim. Bases were the same as for the Crooligans previous, except I started with Stegadon Scale Green and drybrushed up from there, and I’m really liking the colours on these bases.
Here’s a ton more photos.
In lieu of photos of painted models, I present a moderate battle report.
