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Craig

Tournaments

AdeptiCon 2014 – Saturday, Masters of Malifaux!

Posted on April 15, 2014

I walked into the Malifaux room with trepidation. I didn’t know anyone, and I hoped to make a good impression. Direct communication is still the best way to get to know people!

In addition, I was wearing a costume for the Story Encounter that night. I had asked on Facebook whether or not folks wore them to the Saturday Masters, and was told that some people had been the day before. I was staying at a hotel a 7 minute walk away, and didn’t want to travel back at the end of the first event…laziness won out over anxiety so I showed up to the Masters in a tea-stained tank top (“wife beater”, what a horrible name), a pair of coveralls, a stereotyping Asian hat, steampunk goggles, a homemade hammer and a leather satchel. No one else in the Masters wore a costume. >.>

Wargaming is nice, in that if you have nothing to talk about, you can find some models on a table, kneel down and start asking questions. You can ask about how they find the models or how they painted them and if you pick the right person, a conversation is easy to start. I did this and found someone friendly, but then foolishly moved on in the room. Rookie mistake! I grabbed some water outside, rather than stand around awkwardly. 😛

Game 1

My first game was against Jarrett K and his Seamus crew. We were playing Turf War with Line in the Sand, Bodyguard, Frame for Murder, Entourage and Protect Territory with a Standard Deployment. I picked Frame for Murder on the Emberling and Bodyguard on Kang. You can see the table in these photos.

It was very tight quarters with a bottleneck in the middle. That plus Turf War meant I knew we were going to get stuck in pretty quickly. I knew from GottaCon that Frame was superb with the Emberling – I tossed him as far forward as I could and hoped that Sybelle or Seamus would attack him. As luck would have it, Seamus ended up on one side of that horse and buggy, so I put the Emberling behind the buggy protecting him from attacks from everyone but Seamus…and the CopyCatKiller. I think I tried to out-activate to ensure it was Seamus and not CCK that fired…but it was lucky for me that it was Seamus that finished him off, giving me 3VPs!

We positioned ourselves around the Turf Marker, and Jarrett did a great job of ensuring that he had the 2 models every round, as did I with my legion of cheap tanky models. I remember wishing I could push the enemy at one point, but that’s an upgrade I rarely look at on Mei (and Kang was in the wrong spot). 🙂

Kang killed Sybelle. Sybelle can be a pain in the ass, she buffs the Belles and has a decent attack. She isn’t a high priority target compared to CCK, but she was standing where Kang wanted to stand. Giving Jarrett 3VPs for Frame. Damnit! >.<

In the middle of Turn 4 I looked at the Schemes again and realized that his Bodyguard was on Killjoy, who was still hiding. I Defensive Stanced my entire crew to prevent anymore death that turn, ensuring that Jarrett wouldn’t get the point for Bodyguard! I got that point because Kang was on the table, and is an excellent Bodyguard!

In the end, I won this game 9-8 because I stopped Killjoy from coming on the table! Jarrett was an super friendly guy, and if there had been Favourite Opponent voting, I’d have given him my vote.

Game 2

After my first game went well, I expected a hard second and I got it. I played Jeff Kroesch and his Rasputina crew. We played Reckoning with Line in the Sand, Breakthrough, Distract, Deliver a Message and Spring the Trap with a Corner Deployment. I took Line and Distract, and revealed Line. He took Line and Deliver a Message and revealed Line.

We flipped for deployment and Jeff choose the table side I was sitting in. He admitted after that this gave him a distinct advantage, which I struggled to overcome. You can see the board below, this photo was taken from the side of the table I played from.

Jeff had the high ground, with easy access to stand up against the grates and shoot horrible horrible icey death upon me. He removed the Rail Golem and a Metal Gamin in the second turn, putting me on the backfoot with regards to Reckoning, a Strategy that I’m particularly bad at anyway.

I placed my December Acolyte in the closest right corner to my table edge – you can see a little alcove there, where he spent most of his game. Eventually he tentatively came out of that pocket to earn me 3VPs for Line. At one point I had to push him forward to ensure that Jeff couldn’t remove my Scheme Markers, exposing him to ice from above. I’m not certain what else Jeff had going on, because I felt at that moment like he could have stopped me from getting Line by killing the Acolyte (I felt, relatively easy, given the models Jeff had) and picking up that single Marker. He didn’t, and I brought Kang around to defend the Acolyte.

There was a hell of a lot of movement nonsense going on in my end. At one point Kang Whomped a Metal Gamin to push him 3″ through a door, so he could Walk and Distract. Mei started on the walkway to the top left and Railwalked down when Jeff’s Acolyte moved down.

Actually, that part was funny. I talked through my entire Mei activation, before choosing to do something else. When I finally did activate Mei, I was really glad that I had taken the time to stop – my original thought had been to charge his Blessed of December – which could have given him 3VPs for Deliver! Instead I Vented Steam to protect my models…unfortunately I was to timid and Vented to far back to save the Rail Golem – a costly mistake that I wouldn’t make again in future games.

Jeff won this one 7-6. He congratulated me on holding onto such a solid loss, and I’m pretty happy with this game (outside of that Steam mistake…)

Game 3

2 days of AdeptiCon and 2 hard games of Malifaux later, and I was pretty tired. I played Adam of Cheated Fates Radio and we had a hell of a great game! First, a photo of the terrain.

Adam and I spent 20 minutes discussing how the hell to play this board. We finally settled on the sewer pipes being Ht1 and Severe. That meant the bridges were Ht1, and a Ht2 model couldn’t walk under them. The center of the board had a pit into the sewer pipe from a donut-shaped grate, and it meant that this was also Ht1. And that any Ht2 model caught down there was probably trapped. In this game, the terrain affected my choice of models as much as the scenario did!

The scenario was Squatter’s Rights, with Line, Assassinate, Distract, Cursed Object and Plant Explosives with a Standard Deployment. I played Plant Exposives and Distract, schemes I’m pretty confident with. Adam played Plant Explosives and Assassinate.

I pulled out a Steam Arachnid that I’d only just painted for Ramos, since it was Unimpeded and Ht1. I put that and a Metal Gamin on one side, the Emberling and a Gamin on the other side and Mei, Kang and an Arachnid Swarm in the middle. Adam played Tara as a Resser, with a few Necropunks, the Nothing Beast, Chiaki and a Hanged. I lucked into him deploying the Necropunks on the edges, so my Gamin Magnetized forward and started hurting them badly. On the Emberling side, the Necropunk died, and that Gamin spent the rest of the game moving 4″ a turn out of the sewers. On the other side, the Hanged reinforced his position, and I was pretty sure he had Plant so I backed up to prevent him getting points for it.

The downside with Plant…you can give your opponent 2VPs, and he might take them. But if you put him down to 1VP, he probably won’t take that and you still have to worry about that Scheme. Adam had 2 at one point, and I reduced it 1 by using the Swarm to remove his Markers. Next turn he was back up to 3VPs for it. Thankfully, I also got 3VPs for Plant so we were tied there.

We both got 2 points for Squatter’s Rights. This was a hard Strategy in the sewers, because all of the markers were in the muck! I did my best to take him off of the Markers, but I spent more energy trying to prevent Plant, which he got for 3 anyway. In hindsight, I’d have been better off focusing on the Strategy instead of plant.

Two more things of note happened in this game, one positive and one that I was incredibly frustrated about.

Turn 5 and we’re at 8-6 for me. It’s been a hell of a long 2 days, and a hell of a long day of Malifaux. We’re playing on this incredibly challenging board and both of us are trying desperately to keep it all together. We’ve made a few minor mistakes. Then we made a really big mistake, which ended poorly for me. He activated the Nothing Beast and moved it twice towards Mei who was at 2 wounds remaining and swung at her. He did 1 wound. And then I remembered that Kang had been standing right next to the Nothing Beast when he walked away. We missed a rule.

Different gaming circles have different ways of dealing with this sort of thing, as do different games. Malifaux’s card mechanic means that “backing up” is not possible, since each card flip is affected by all those that came before it. Unlike in Warhammer where you can just pull the unit back and re-roll, or agree to keep it, or 4-5-6 the result, in Malifaux you just have a situation where nothing can resolve it perfectly.

This sort of thing most often happens when an opponent has Terrifying. When I’m moving my own model, I don’t have the Terrifying models card in front of me, and I can’t be expected to remember it has this ability. So far, in my area, we’ve tended to “back up” the card stack so that the first card flipped is for the Terrifying, and everything down the line is flipped in order.

So, here we are. We asked each other what we wanted to do. We were both mortified that an absolutely superb game was about to be ruined by a stupid forgetful mistake. I suggested we leave the cards as they lie and put the Nothing Beast back. Adam suggested a third-party. The third-party we chose said that cards had been flipped, the game continues on. I was frustrated. Adam suggested we call a judge, and abide by his or her decision. I agreed, since this is the pinnacle of the most reasonable option. The judge ruled that cards had been flipped, and that the game continues on. I was frustrated.

I think we’ve all been in a situation like that at some point or another. Now you’re about to lose, and it’s because two people screwed up a rule that can’t be undone. You’ve got a choice to make – be frustrated for the rest of the game and ruin it for both of you, or suck it up and move on. I did my best to do the latter. (but I’m not above noting that if nothing else changed, I would have been 6th out of 45, instead of 12th out of 45 :)).

The super cool thing that happened (for Adam, mind you :P) was he had a Malifaux Moment similar to my game against Mark some weeks ago. We’ve moved on. We have a bunch more models to activate, we do some things. I make the critical error of using my last soulstone on the Firestarter who was holding the center against being taken. I didn’t even know if he could take it, I didn’t want to calculate it, I just wanted to make sure it didn’t happen. He takes a look at the clock counting down, and says “Pass, your go”. I think that the game is done, nothing else to do, and I do the same. He reminds me that I have to activate every model. I ponder about why…and then remember that the Nothing Beast, who is engaged with my 1 wound Mei, has Unnerving Aura. And there is a very good bet that Adam has Assassinate.

I take my 3 chances to get away, and failed all 3. No scrap markers or constructs nearby to help her out of the bind, and no more soulstones to save her. Blat, 2VPs for Assassinate and the game ends in an 8-8 draw. Draw is good, everyone wins!

Some Other Stuff

These were some good games of Malifaux! I played a bunch of Masters that I had played before, which I was very glad helped me out. At the same time, the same Masters in new hands still means new things to look out for – I hadn’t realized Tara was a Resser master, for example! (The Hanged is an awful model!)

That sewer table was amazing. I wouldn’t have wanted to play all 3 games on such brutal terrain, but I think that throwing such a thing in the middle is an excellent plan. Malifaux is a game of adapting to changing situations, but after a bit I’ve tended to pick the Schemes that I’m good at, and a relatively set crew list for those Schemes with some variation depending on my opponents crew and that’s that. Making the terrain horrible had a wonderful way of shaking up the game again.

Patrick and Pip had been playing Warhammer all day, and I had barely a clue what they were up to. None of our breaks lined up at all. I had a feeling they weren’t doing as well as they’d hoped.

I left the room and found some food – I had only 2 hours before the Story Encounter!

Featured Images

Malifaux – December Acolyte

Posted on April 14, 2014

(I wrote this post a month ago, but it kept being pushed back for AdeptiCon coverage. I think I’ll take a day break here, to make sure he gets some love. :))

And this guy finishes my glazing thoughts for now. The white shown in the photos is just white primer. I took the Guilliman Blue and watered it down, and painted it very carefully again into the undersides and pits of the cloak. After I’d painted his paints and quiver, I did the same thing with the blue on them as well. At one point this model looked so strange – white and stark blue with very warm beige clothing, accessories and the trim on his cloak. I toned it down quite a bit by drybrushing white on the cloak, and using the blue glaze to bring those warm colours back down in temperature similar to the cloak.

Lastly, as you can see, my first attempts at using the Secret Weapon Crushed Glass bundle. This is very neat stuff! I did it in two layers, not because I had to, but because I underestimated what it would look like after the first layer. That layer looked very weak, more like slush everywhere. I went back again and used less of the Realistic Water in the mix (watch the video on how to use it) and it came out much more snow-like.

Tournaments

AdeptiCon 2014 – Friday, Team Tournament Photos!

Posted on April 14, 2014

And the last of my Friday coverage, some photos and commentary from the Fantasy team tournament. It’s 1000pts per general, 3 games over the day, and you’re only allowed a single Lord choice.

Our first game was against Tomb Kings and Vampire Counts. First turn I Freedom Cannon’d off their Casket of Souls, and one of their generals was heard to say “We just lost the game”. Ah, Warhammer. These guys were fun opponents, they kept trying until the very end even though they knew that they weren’t going to be able to get anywhere. One of them even offered to trade me my Warmachine box for the one I wanted! (If you read this – I traded with someone else later!) We did end up winning this game pretty handily.

Our second game…was odd. It even started off odd. The gentleman in blue hardly said a word, and the fellow in the Nights Watch t-shirt was very gregarious. They offered us a dwarven beer, which we accepted. Neither of them drank during the game though. Night’s Watch fellow made several anti-Canadian jokes before we’d finished deploying. One or two is funny. Three or four is past time to move onto better material.

They played double dwarf, and we knew we couldn’t face their giant block of dwarves with 4 characters in it. Our plan was to cannon/magic off Rares (for points) and hang back. It mostly worked, except that my Tzeentch Herald zapped himself off the table first turn, and Freedom Cannon couldn’t shoot through any entire warmachine before it was removed as well. In the end, we tried to arrange our positioning to reduce the effect of their gyrocopters, and to avoid getting charged by the giant block of doom.

At the start of round 2, these four guys decided that playing shirtless was a good idea.

In the end, we lost this game. And we scored them low on sportsmanship as well, which is never good for anyone. The gentleman in blue spoke up a bit more, and we genuinely felt that he deserved a 4 on the sports scoring. His friend, however, just kept pushing buttons and saying things that were just a little insulting, and he wasn’t entire clear on all the rules and argued about his lack of knowledge. They had come from a 40k background, and not knowing all the rules can be forgiven, but added up with everything else we felt that we couldn’t justify giving them a normal scoring. 🙁

Our last game of the event was against Team Northern Defenders, a Little To The Left. They were great fun to play against! They had brought a Tomb King and Warriors of Chaos pairing with a ton of TK monsters and a ton of WoC chariots. We held back and used magic and the Freedom Cannon to victory!

That night Patrick and Pip were scheduled to play in the Warbands event which was a 500pt Fantasy thing. I brought a list, intending to try to sign up at the last minute, but everyone decided to drop it and do something else instead. We wandered the vendor hall, checked out the games people were playing and then went back to the hotel to sleep “early”. We had an early morning on Saturday, and a lot of games still to play!

Tournaments

AdeptiCon 2014 – Team Strawberry Flavoured Awesome

Posted on April 13, 2014

Just some photos of the display board we’ve been working on, and the armies that sit on it. I’m playing Daemons of Chaos, and Patrick is playing Warriors of Chaos (after flipping 2-3 times :P)

CHOP!

The whole damn thing. The paper is our fluff, which Patrick wrote. We moved it in later setups so it wasn’t blocking the castle.

Much better. I designed and printed a bunch of business cards. I wanted to promote my blog, and thought Patrick might want to promote Chumphammer at the same time. Everyone wins!

CHOP!

Marauder horsemen. Creepy, creepy Marauder horsemen.

My handsome Plaguebearer unit.

An awesome conversion Patrick was working on for his Dark Elves, but she got ported to this army as a Sorcerer Lord. So cool looking!

Tournaments

AdeptiCon 2014 – Friday, Assorted Armies

Posted on April 12, 2014

Here’s a ton of photos of armies from the Fantasy team tournament! As usual, click through for (much!) larger photos!

A two-level underground by Thomas Prati and Dave Rankin.

I don’t know if these guys won, but they probably should have. By Bill Kocher and Cory Burns. (They also used it as a 40k board on Saturday/Sunday).

The boat is an iron.

They did a really nice job on the water effects.

Fairly simple, but I liked the effect. By Dennis Wendt and Josh Fouke.

Brandon Palmer brings his pirate ship again. Him and Gareth Peter Dicks played at the team tournament together. By which I mean that Brandon played while Gareth wandered around taking video. 🙂

I loved this board, but wasn’t overly fond of the armies. 🙁

By Team Regum Auratis

Christmas by Adam Tidwell and Kaleb Walters. Ridiculous. 🙂

Castle Northern Defenders by Vincent Tremblay and Dominique Carette

I don’t know what this thing is, but it’s awesome.

Side view of the rodent laser thing.

Really liked this display board. The ground is pretty plain, but I love the mural in the backdrop.

These guys are playing Warhammer Historicals, High Seas at night, and drinking a lot of rum. There’s a boat. You get VPs for getting the boat around the island. Win.

The computer I think is for organizing what’s goin gon, the rum is for drinking.

This company shows up every year and sells bitz. Those bins are filled with bitz. Anything you could want.

Technique

AdeptiCon 2014 – Thursday, Sculpting Class

Posted on April 11, 2014

My last class of Thursday was the Sculpting class with Jose Orteza.

This class started poorly. I think a few of the guys in the middle row had to much to drink at their events, and they weren’t focused all that well. Jose was either tired or not as organized, and it felt like he was trying to organize his stuff while these guys were joking around, and the class started a bit late. I was sitting around at 10pm for a class that’s going until midnight, and I wanted to get on with it. We ended up going a half hour overtime, which wasn’t great.

After a bit, Jose started. The class started with a number of great basic things (this is Intro to Sculpting), and…a bunch of places to buy specific tools. “You can buy the wax 5 at X”, “this Royal Sovereign set of tools can be found at Dick Blicks”. I don’t even know why I need all these tools, let alone care where I would buy them from. This took up even more time, and I started to wonder if the class was worthwhile at all.

Thankfully, it got good after this for a bit.

Increasingly, I’m finding I have ideas for models I want but I can’t find. I want to work on solo models and make them really nice instead of big units. Malifaux is good for this since everything is solo, but my heart still lies in Lizards even if I’m not overly happy playing Warhammer. I’ve seen what dear Patrick can do with putty, and I’m jealous. I’m jealous because he’s spent years sculpting little things, so that he can sculpt bigger things. I’ve got an idea, but no method of actioning that idea.

Here’s a few tips I left with:

He recommended starting with 50/50 yellow/blue extender/hardener, although some items (cloaks, away from the body) need more hardener to survive.
Fingerprints are very bad!
Pushing “overworks” the GS. (I still have no idea what “overworking” is).
Polymeric Systems sells tubes of GS (this was the one “buy this here” piece of advice that I thought was immediately useful).
Any moisture between the GS and the surface will prevent it from sticking.
If you’re gap filling, fill to 90% and then dry and finish later.
Waiting 10 minutes after mixing the GS together is the optimal time for working with it. 90 minutes later it was still malleable, but harder.
You can scrape with a hobby knife against the GS to remove any “doughiness” – I think it’s that rounding that you sometimes see.
To cut, you have to chop like a paper cutter. Dragging your knife will pull the GS.
Almost anything big needs an armature to provide shape and structure.
You can use a small mirror to sculpt on, and then transfer your creation to it’s final place.

He provided a lengthy document that contained steps to create a variety of different things like hair, scales, jewelry, purity seals, etc. We spent the middle part of the class working on making a purity seal, a length of chain and a feather on the mirror. This was really good!

The last part of the class he rushed through a bunch of ideas on how to make a cloak, a kilt, a banner but he really sped through it and I didn’t retain anything.

I feel like sculpting is the sort of thing where he can show you how to sculpt a feather, and a chain and a purity seal, and then you know how to sculpt a feather and a chain and a purity seal, but you don’t know how to sculpt much else. So I didn’t really learn what I necessarily wanted to learn, but I did gain enough confidence to think I should try. I’m still afraid of trying (and failing), but that’s better than not even thinking I should try.

Technique

AdeptiCon 2014 – Thursday, True Metallics Class

Posted on April 10, 2014

I took 3 classes Thursday night. I’m glad I did them early, because last year I did them on Saturday and was to exhausted to learn anything! I recommend anyone to take a class like this – a 2 hour thing at a convention, or a full weekend with a dedicated teacher – you will learn something. Even if you know everything you could possibly know, you still get the chance to sit down and talk with a master of the art. It’s well worth it.

My first class was True Metallics with Dave Pauwels. Dave was an excellent teacher, and had a lot of great examples to show us and was very personable.

I learned a few things which I’ll share with you:

A wash is a mixture that is designed to fall into crevasses.
A glaze is a mixture that is not for this purpose.
The difference between these two is less than you’d think…mainly in their usage, rather than their mixture.
You can add a drop of white glue to help break up the pigments.
You should be highlighting your metallics the same way you highlight your regular colours.
You should be shading your metallics.
Be sure to let each layer dry first.
He sometimes puts 20 layers of washes on his metals!
He went over some chipping techniques I had learned previously — use foam to stipple on the chip colour, then shade and highlight your chips.
Sometimes you may want to dull coat your models just to make the “shine level” the same across the model.
Shadows are more interesting if you start with blue.

Except for the white glue, all of this was something I was working on with my Rail Golem already. That’s not bad though – it confirms that I’m doing the right thing!

Technique

AdeptiCon 2014 – Thursday, Freehand Class

Posted on April 10, 2014

Freehand

This was a good class to take from Chris Borer of Full Borer Miniatures. He was also really friendly, supportive and helpful!

I tried some freehand on my Herald of Nurgle a few months ago and wasn’t as happy with the results. I didn’t learn a lot of technique, but I did learn a few important things, starting with…

Patience, bitches.

That’s the biggest problem of it all. I lack patience when painting. I want it now, damn it. Doing this in a classroom atmosphere really helped – you have no where else to go, nothing else to do, so sitting and painting the red straight grey line over a red cloak for a half hour is something I can do easily. Doing it at home is much harder.

I learned a bunch of other useful things as well.

Highlight up, but not to the top. Then do the freehand, then finish your highlighting. You can much more easily fix your mistakes by painting over with the base colour.
Avoid really contrasting colours, otherwise #1 above will be harder.
Use a reference. For my Herald, I drew out the design. For others, find a photo online.
Make sure your reference is the right size. If it’s huge, and you have a small space you may not know that it won’t fit!
It’s ok to mess up or waver your line a bit – you can go over it with the base colour to fit it.
Focus on one side of a thin line first – you can fix the other side.
For more complex designs, you can draw more than is required and then use the base colour to fill places in. His example was a complex celtic knot thing.
Paint thinner, as it’s easier to fix mistakes.
If you’re writing text, write it down on paper first in the right size and then divide it into sections. Plan those sections on the model and then paint in.
Brown/grey looks better for text than black.

Tournaments

AdeptiCon 2014 – Thursday, How You Use It

Posted on April 10, 2014

I haven’t played much Warhammer recently, because of a strong Malifaux addiction, and I didn’t want to embarrass Patrick at the team tournament, so I signed up for this little 1000pt event. It turned out to be super fun – the most fun I’ve had played Warhammer in a couple years! (which then makes me think about why I’m not having fun playing Warhammer…)

My first game was against Bill and his High Elves. My Skull Cannon (Freedom Cannon) shot off 2 of his 3 bolt throwers before dying. I avoided walking towards a unit of White Lions all game, mainly because they were White Lions and I hates them. My opponent had implied earlier that he might have the Banner of the World Dragon (without actually saying he had it), so on turn 4 he reminded me that he hadn’t actually said he had it. I wouldn’t have charged the WL even if he’d straight up said he didn’t. >.> I made a critical game-losing error on the last turn because we were rushing. In the photo below, if I’d turned the horrors and tried to magic off those two cavalry models on the right, I’d have won. Booo. Bill was a fun opponent, although I think I embarrassed him by saying so after the event had ended. 🙁 I think this one was a draw.

My second game I started out worried. My opponent was a younger kid, without a lot of personality to start. As the game progressed he started talking and smiling more, and I hope he had a good game. He was playing his brothers Chaos Dwarves (his regular army is Warriors), and his brother kept coming by every so often and asking why a particular unit wasn’t on the table, or why it was over there and general criticism of how my opponent was playing his game. I won this one, and Freedom Cannon started to show how powerful it really was.

My last game was against Ian Botts, an absolutely wonderful fellow and his beautiful wife. Ian played, and his wife sat next to him and conversed with us. The two of them were pairing in the team tournament the next day, playing Daemons and Warriors so she had a bunch of questions about how my own Daemon army worked out. I was really glad to meet these two, as they were super friendly and we spoke regularly throughout the convention. Ian beat the snot out of me with his Warriors of Nurgle. I deployed back a bit, but not far enough. I only got a single round of magic in before his Chosen were in my face removing my Plaguebearers. At the end, he had 5 Chosen left, and those 5 models were the difference between him winning and me winning (the scenario was Blood and Glory-esque).

Tournaments

AdeptiCon 2014 – Thursday, Assorted Models

Posted on April 9, 2014

I’ll do another post for Thursday and my games, this is just a bunch of photos of things that I thought were cool!

A bunch of neat stuff from the Fantasy “How You Use It” tournament. I took some photos of Lizardman stuff to give me ideas for later. 😛

Really like the purple and blends on this spider.

A Mcfarlane toy, turned into a Hell Cannon.

This pyramid is super cool.

A bunch of the Malifaux boards.

This table got crazy with buildings placed on each of the 8 middle platforms. I played on it, and have some commentary on it when I write that far. 🙂

Pip and Patrick played in the 3000pt Return of the Big Brawl event all of Thursday. Here’s Pat against his first opponent. I finished two games while they were still working on one. 😛 (Also because they started an hour later than my event :)).

This was another great spider model. It’s really messy, but I really like it anyway. The painter used a ton of splotchy foam spotting to paint on the colours, and it’s a really neat effect.

Brandon Palmer of GMM is the creator of that awesome Chaos Dwarf display board from last year, as well as the pirate ship, and he came back this year with even more. I took some photos, but he has more on his blog. He’s a commission painter, so I’m pretty much helping him advertise here…which I think I’m ok with. This is a stunning piece of work.