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fantasy

End of an Era, the Second

Posted on August 18, 2015

I wrote an article in 2012 about how the Park Royal Games Workshop store was closing, and how it affected me. At the time I was melancholy, but hopeful for the future of my gaming club, CHOP!. It didn’t occur to me to write about the End of Warhammer Fantasy Battles until after I’d listened to Chumphammer episode 45, where Patrick used those exact words – “end of an era”. It hadn’t occurred to me, largely because my last game of WHFB was about a year ago. I’ve been watching and reading all of the drama around the Age of Sigmar, but aside from a little disappointment that I’ll probably never play my lizards again, it’s not really a big deal.

It’s interesting to watch the reactions of people. Some people have long since moved on (myself). Some people moved on when the first rumours of WHFB not being quite the same. I feel like some of these people moved on because they were bored, and others might have a little bit of prescience… Some people are raging about 15 years of loyalty lost. Some people are saying the new game isn’t that bad. Some people are saying they’ve given it a try, and it’s pretty good. Some people are saying they’ve given it a try and it’s pretty bad. Some people are in the process of figuring out where they might move to.

That’s a lot of variability! But I think what’s really important to note, is that no one I know thought “ah well, business as usual”. Everyone had to make a choice.

I started my decisions by selling my Brettonians, of which I have no photos here because the army was that old. I still have Orcs and Goblins, my Lizardmen and my brand new Daemons of Chaos. That’s a lot of models for a game that I don’t think I’ll ever play again.

Because that’s the thing for me – at least with WHFB, it was a game I’d once enjoyed, and I enjoyed the aesthetic of it, and I knew that if I brought an army someone would play with me. Now, with the community fractured and scrambling to figure out what the next big tournament game will be, it’s just another game that I own that no one I know really plays.

Which is why you see more Hordes on my painting table! Because a large group of my friends decided to play that game, which I have a few models for.

Anyway, this Era Ending isn’t a huge deal for me…but I thought it deserved writing about anyway.

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Foodhammer 2014

Posted on December 12, 2014

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.

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Warhammer! – Chakax – Final

Posted on December 9, 2014

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.

Work-in-progress

Lizardmen – Chakax

Posted on November 2, 2014

It’s been a while since I painted or posted – after a frenzy of Malifaux stuff, I bought Civ: Beyond Earth and have been playing that. 😛

But it’s been even longer since I bought this model.

Apparently released in 2009, I bought the model almost immediately because it’s so damn cool looking. I assembled him, then started to paint him…and something else got in the way.

He sat on my shelf for most of the intervening 5 years, until I was stripping my horrors for my daemon army and I decided to strip him as well, since I was doing it anyway.

I signed up for Foodhammer Fantasy, after realizing it was on a Sunday, and special characters are allowed and why not continue my reign of making terrible Warhammer choices by including a character who is wickedly overcosted and doesn’t provide that much benefit! Yay!

I’ve lost one of his horns, so I sculpted him a new one. Also, the original flag posts he comes with are awful, so I replaced them with spear poles.

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Skinks!!

Posted on October 21, 2014

Skinks!! I don’t even remember the paint job, but it was pretty simple.

Hmmm, no, I remember a horrible story about glazing down to many times and ending up with super dark skinks and having a little panic and then rescuing them with bright colours.

These are my best skinks yet!

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Ripperdactyls – Final

Posted on October 18, 2014

I pretty much wrote everything I could write about these models already, so here’s some photos.

Work-in-progress

Lizardmen tokens

Posted on September 30, 2014

In playtesting my most recent Lizardmen list, I discovered that I needed a few tokens to help keep track of things.

3 markers for Wyssan’s Wildform and 1 Blot “Stalker” Toad marker. I’m doing the ground starting with Stegadon Scale Green, then mixed that with some SW Heavy Body Black and then just the Heavy Body all over.

Work-in-progress

Another Old Blood – basecoat

Posted on September 27, 2014

This is the state of my latest Old Blood model, 2 days before OFCC.

I don’t feel as though he’s going to be the shining star of my army. >.< If I’m lucky, he’ll get a quick wash to bring down the garish tones, but I also don’t want to get him to close to “done”, in case I forget that he actually needs finishing.

Actually, I think a quick black wash over most of the model, and some drybrushing over the Agrellan Earth will help the model at least not stand-out among the rest of the riders.

Here are some colours:

Cold One: Shadow Grey
Cold One belly and all the bone and spikes: Ushapti Bone
Straps, wooden bits: Snakebite Leather
Metal: Dwarf Bronze
Old Blood skin: Codex Grey
Old Blood scales: Mephiston red

It’s pretty old hat at this point.

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More Movement Trays

Posted on September 24, 2014

I like having skirmisher movement trays, since 8th edition Fantasy has skirmishers less skirmishy and more ranked. I’ve done these before, so it was a relatively easy task to undertake. In addition to the simple drybrushing, I did an under layer of SW Flesh Wash, Guilliman Blue and Waywatcher Green to try to bring some other tones than just grey to them.

The other difference was that I used the Vallejo Lava instead of gluing pebbles to them. So much easier, and just as nice looking. I did press a few pieces of gravel into the lava goop, to try to bring more different textures.

I think they are a little more interesting now. Still just lumps of rock though. 😛

Work-in-progress

Ripperdactyls – Shading

Posted on September 20, 2014

Started with Secret Weapon Flesh Wash. I mixed this 1:1 with water. In the end, it went all over every part of the rippers, but it wasn’t slapped on randomly. I worked to pull the paint from the highlighted areas to the shaded areas. The hope is that when it dries this way, that there will be a semi-translucent gradient from highlight to shade. It won’t work out this way, and will require specific work to highlight, and then specific work to “mid tone”, but it’s a good start.

This dried slightly glossy (ugh) and occasionally in a little to much of a strong edge, where I wanted a smooth gradient.

Then I mixed the SW Flesh Wash with Snakebite Leather to make a slightly less translucent paint and again went over the parts with those strong edges to smooth them out, and to darken more.

(also did just a simple black wash:water 1:1 over the skinks, because it’s really messy and is part of the “simple” method of painting my skinks. Wasn’t going to highlight-up-glaze-down on them.)

The spots are Snakebite Leather, with less water than the glazes to make it slightly more opaque. Then I mixed that with Rhinox Hide to get an middle layer, then just Rhinox Hide. Still trying to paint the middle of each spot/layer so that it looks a little more blended than just “brown on orange”. I was trying to emulate this photo a bit, but I’m happy that the wings are a lot darker than that reference image.

I still have a little bit of shading to do on the undersides of them.

Next I’m going to do some highlighting – raise up the body/limbs a bit in tone, and the edges of the wings. Once that’s all done, it’s onto the skinks (who should be relatively easy compared to painting 24 of them…).

I’ve got one more painting project to get started on before OFCC, but I think that at worst he’ll just get a basecoat and then hidden in the ranks somewhere…>.>

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