I posted the images of these cards, but they just came in the mail after having them printed off for my community. These are looking awesome, and I’m excited to have the reminder to use these cool army options in game!
The two numbers in the bottom right are — [Cost] and then [How Many]. For Superior Shard, above, you can only have 1 per army total. For something like Block! you can have up to your Auxiliary count, so it says “AUX” in that sweet sci-fi font.
Is it “Targeter” or “Targetter”? Both are spelled incorrectly according to Chrome.
I speedily finished off the Targeter Probes, lamenting my singular lack of painting talent while I did so. I’ve been playing World of Warships and painting in between deaths, so I’m actually painting more than when I play Hearthstone. š
After I finished the Probes (just avoid the “T” word entirely), I made a decision — I was going to paint the Drop Command Leader, and only the Leader. Ā To see if I could paint and make myself believe that I was ok at it.
I’m pretty happy with the results, although my OSL against white needs work.
The lights are Ice Blue. I read this tutorial on OSLĀ and it says:
The easiest and most effective way to create a believable glow effect is to start with an otherwise dark model. This doesnāt mean you have to paint your model blackāyou still want good contrastābut it does make your life easier if you choose a darker than average palette. Remember the cardinal rule. Itās not impossible to pull off a lighting effect on a white model, but it is extremely difficult. (Retribution players, you have been warned.)
(Emphasis is mine) Ah hell. I tried to start darked by going over with the watered Nuln a few times around the areas that I knew I was going to try to Ice up, so I had a darker surface to lighten. Drybrushed up the Ice and put it in the center of the lights. Then mixed the White with the Ice and went inside the lights. I really like how it looks on his shoulder lights! But the backpack (which you can’t see in this photo) bugs me in the same way that my unphotographed T7 bugs me — painting into engine vents is tricky work.
When I added the “Recipe” header, I had more I wanted to write that wasn’t about the painting. I guess it’s just nice to know that when I take the time, I can make a model that looks pretty sweet.
And with this scheme, it should be pretty easy to do the rest of the squad (9 more models, over 2 squads) the same. It was pretty quick, so I should be able to get at least 1 guy done every time I sit down.
Now I just need to find the time to play…>.<
These guys are among the best looking models in the range! Specifically, the Drop Command, but at this point they models are mixed together so I don’t tell which I love the most.
Easy to assemble, with small mold lines not obscuring detail. I did the bases in the same way as the Targeter Probes, because I literally did them at the same time. š
I have no idea what this unit does in the game, something about improving Acc when they in base contact with an enemy unit. But they are 20 points and add an additional orders dice for you, which is good tempo gains.
They are kind of terrible looking.
I’m not a huge fan of the miniatures for this game. In general, I think they are “good enough” (except for the T7, drool) (which I finished, but appear not to have not taken a photo of). These are one of the few units that I think aren’t good enough.
This was a quick and simple conversion to make them look better, and also to bring them back in line with the aesthetic of the rest of the drones.
I flipped them backwards so they laid flat and drilled a hole in their center. I primed just the models, without the bases, and then used green stuff to fit the flying stands into the new holes I’d drilled.
Because I’m also a little tired of the Warlord bases being a little gangly, I used some sculpting putty to build up the area around the bottom of the flying stands so the base sits smooth. Then just a little Vallejo Lava paste, and now I have a unit of probes that looks pretty good! (my opinion only)
I have totally been busy painting and stuff. I just haven’t been posting about it, at all. I’ve been working on my Blood Bowl display board, and it’s coming along pretty nicely although I think my reds and greens are pretty brutal looking. You’ll see later, I’m sure.
This post is about some cool cards I made.
About a week ago, Warlord games via the community Facebook group announced they had printed a bunch of action cards for a local UK tournament and that they would be selling extras on the website at 9am. UK time.Ā That’s like 2am PST. I’d claim to be annoyed, but this is public. (…the game has fans outside of the UK, right?). Rather than trying to wake myself at 2am to buy something silly online, I made my own.Ā
There are other action cards and play-aids available that others have made, but none of them made me want to go out and get them printed at a professional shop. The cards are useful, because you tend to forget items like this in your army, those that don’t have a physical presence. So, like Blood Bowl, you make cards and make them visible! I like my accessories, and I like them pretty looking.
I made 17 card decks, containing 3 Block!, 3 Extra Shot, 1 Superior Shard, 3 Well Prepared, 3 Get Up!, 3 Pull Yourself Together and 1 Marksman. The front is a free border, and the back is an image of the Horsehead Nebula (found on Google Image Search, Labelled for Reuse). Ā They should be suitable for printing, as they are 3.5″ by 2.5″ with a 0.24″ bleed (for PrinterStudio, usually it would be 0.25″ bleed)Ā at 300 DPI.
Here’s what the cards look like (butĀ don’t use thisĀ image to print from!)
Card links (3mb each):
Feel free to print them and use however you desire. Let me know if you do print them out, and where you are in the world!
After their humiliating defeat against the Freeborn mercenaries, the ground forces of the 21st Regional took to the holosim to practice new techniques in warfare. The local Algoryn commander volunteered toĀ oppose the Concord, but insisted on being the ones to drop.
Whispers took root among the 21st, about whether the Algoryn had volunteered to show them up after their initial failure at Xilos. Morale lowered the longer it took to prepare the simulation.
As the “game” started, Arenal Yu chose her battle plans carefully, placing a strike squad on the generator, an X-Launcher team hidden in some nearby trees and another strike squad on the far side of the generator, attempting to spread out any possible damage from landing pods.
The Algoryn landed a mere 3 units after the simulated Concord anti-air guns, however they were laser-like in their precision of landing and destroyed the X-Launcher and all-but destroyed one of the Strike Squads upon reaching the ground.
(In my initial game I missed that the drop-pods caused D6 SV3 hits as well as placing the unit Down! This is huge!)
The Algoryn seemed confused in their objective as they raced past the generator to get into combat with the physically weaker Concord. After brutalizing a few squads, they remembered their plan and hopped back to take the generator and hold it for the rest of the simulation.
The Concord fought forward, forced to come to the monstrous Algoryn and fight them on their own terms. That, combined with the Concord’s lack of fast-moving troops ensured that they couldn’t getĀ to the generator to stop the Algoryn from holding it.
At the end, both sides were devastated. Arenal herself took an entire salvo of gunfire from a skimmer squad, a move that seemed calculated to embarrass the leader as she took to the field of battle herself.
This is a much more balanced game with the D6 SV3 hits. >.> Also although Pat (who played the Algoryn) landed with the same number of unitsĀ as I did when I defended, this game was only 750 points so ratio-wise it was a lesser loss of power. This is a hard scenario, no matter what side you are. TheĀ Attackers start with less units, but the Defenders have really no where to hide if they want to contest the generator because there’s a big open space around it.
I need faster models. It’s just that simple. I’m losing these games because I can’t get to where I need to go, and even though I have a couple different squads and my hope was to be able to fire with one while running with another and then switching, it just doesn’t allow me to place enough pins on my opponent. I brought my T7 to this game, but Pat wanted to play 750 so I wasn’t allowed to play with it! There was a mess-up in an order at my local games store and so I’m still waiting for my drop command to come in!
I only took the one photo, because I forgot. š
Freeborn Privateers led by Lady Jessica held a Quantum Gravity Generator on behalf of the Ghar. Concord forces led by Arenal Yu used borrowed Algoryn drop pods to land and try to take the generator from their enemies. The Freeborn anti-air guns proved exceedingly accurate, destroying 8 of the 12 incoming pods, 5 of which contained Concord forces. The remaining 4 pods contained a 5-man Strike Squad, a weapon drone unit of 2 C3D1 Light Support Drones, a kitted out X-Launcher squad, as well as a single support lander that held a table edge against Freeborn reinforcements.
Bereft of leadership, Strike Squad Delta attempted to fulfill their mission to capture or destroy the Generator, but were overwhelmed by Freeborn forces.
I cut out 12 3″ circles to act as drop pods and showed up to help Clayton learn how to play Gates of Antares by playing one of the more complicated scenarios. š I didn’t want to buy 12 drop pods for a scenario I might play once or twice, so “drop construction papers” it is!
When you get down to it, the scenario wasn’t that complicated. TheĀ deployment was complicated, and we both had a lot of fun playing it. But the game was simple – touch the thing in the center, and stop your opponent from touching the thing in the center. The deployment was a mini game where the Attacker chose a number on a dice and the Defender had to guess it. Simple, but there were some other rules that made it more interesting than just “guess my number!” which would have been pretty random. There were 3 types of “drop pods”, one of which had special powers if it did get hit. As well, hitting the final target or overshooting the final target gave different deployment results. All in all, not a game I would play every Sunday, butĀ definitely a new and cool way of deployment your army!
Clayton had some really good and/or lucky guesses. There were two times when he said “2…NO 1!!” and I had hidden “1”. This photo is of my entire force that managed to land. He destroyed 3 Strike Squads, my Nuhu and an X-Launcher. We played 1000 points. >.>
We might have given up and re-racked in another situation, but it was Claytons first game at all and I wanted to help him take the rules he’d read and turn them into reality. Drone squad got Down early and couldn’t get up, my X-Launcher came on in the 2nd turn and missed the one shot it got, and my Strike Squad got surrounded by Freeborn and assaulted and destroyed!
Clayton has a neat mix of troops. A Command squad, some feral troops, some of the well-armed shooty guys, a bunch of bikes and a MOD2 skimmer thing. He put most of it together in a weekend, since I announced this campaign on Thursday and he’d only picked up his army on Wednesday!
I decided to run an Antares campaign for the next 6 months, so if you’re reading this and are in or near Vancouver, Canada, let me know!
I want to play with this guy this coming Wednesday, so I decided to give him some paint so he wasn’t just a grey plastic model in an otherwise entirely painted army.
Ulthuan Grey, Drakenhof Nightshade in the recesses same as the rest of the army.
Brush strokes. I haven’t painted something like this in a while, and brush strokes are currently causing me problems on the underside because I used the Drakenhof to shade it.
I messed up a little bit with the blue cloth here. It had been shaded the same as the rest of the model and I wanted to make it look a little different so I took the Guilliman Blue glaze and just went over the top part. When I was done, it looked kind of cool with a muted blue at the bottom and a strong blue at the top.
Unfortunately, the more I looked at it, the more it was backwards because the stronger blue looked darker than the muted part, even though the muted part had a lot more black over it.
I added Drakenhof blue wash to the recesses, mainly near the lower part of the base because I wanted it to be brighter at the top. Something about dark bases and eye being drawn upwards? I dunno. My eye is drawn towards that badly done cloth. >.<
I cleaned it up a little bit by doing some lighter blue along the edges of the hexagon pattern of the cloth. Oddly, the second photo looks a lot darker, but it’s actually much lighter since it’s been highlighted with white!
Lastly, I found this photo I’d uploaded some time ago and apparently didn’t post, so here it is. Drones!
This is a super cool little kit! After the tournament the other week I wanted to get up to a good 1000 point list so maybe our local community can play that level.
It pretty obviously shares one of its sprues with the C3M4 combat drone, so folks are asking if my M4 is “pregnant” since this thing trades shooting power forĀ the ability to transport.
Here are the common vs T7 specific parts laid out. The top turret is different, since this one doesn’t mount a plasma cannon, as is the “belly”.
This was an excellent kit to put together. The joins are all really well done, with no gaps to fill and all theĀ “boxes” (the front, the middle) fit together really well. What few mold lines I found (I’m miserable at finding mold lines…) were mostly along edges that you were going to glue together, and at worst were along a non-detail edge. Some of the detail is a little soft on the belly and turret, but the common sprue is very crisp and the softness doesn’t look like it will be noticeable when I’m done.
I don’t know why they did this, but the hole in the model whereĀ the flying stand goes is partially filled in. I didn’t want to glue the flying stand on, and with this blockage the drone was back-heavy and wouldn’t stay up on the stand. It was fairly easy to clear the blockage, which allowed the stand to fit snuggly into the model so it would stand up without being permanently attached.
I think my only real complaint was given to me by Clark — that it doesn’t come with a batter drone. The kit comes with a spotter drone (which I have a million of) and a shield drone (which is very useful), but the unit can take a batter drone and I wouldn’t have minded getting one here, since they provide everything else!
I hope you can tell, I love the hell out of this model! I’m really looking forward to painting it, but I think I have a couple other things that need doing first.Ā I signed up for a Malifaux league, so I’m assembling a new model to play with…