A light work week this week

 I haven't got a lot done this week. Long days and real life have definitely led to a diminished capacity for nerd related festivity.

Jagdpanther!

I finished the third Jagdpanther and it came together as easily as the first two. I had a bit of primer-related drama where the can was a bit too close and pitted one of the side skirts. A bit of plastic putty and some serious filework and the damage is mostly invisible.  

So now I have *most* of a neat little Jagdpanther list and if I can get hold of a box of Ostwinds before December, I might run this for our end of year club event.

From the Pile

Some classic Hordes Warlocks, Midas and Helga: 

Midas always struck me as an interesting Warlock for Farrow by making combat troops out of a support unit, which I loved. Helga was something that appealed as just as a concept and the fact that there are Farrow Valkyries are just a whole thing that I wouldn't say no to. I enjoyed working in a palette that was mostly shades of brown with a few highlights. Helga's metals are a bit shinier and goldier and Midas' are all rusted, as befits a bonepicker!

These are from back when I was super down the PP rabbit hole and was thinking of getting back into Hordes. With the impending release of Mark IV, and the promise of some new models, I'm tempted to consider Farrow going forward IF Mark IV pans out to be as good as it promises at this stage.

Workbench

Blogger Scotty and I somehow talked each other into giving Warhammer Underworlds a go. Partly because it looks like a lot of fun and the model kits that are coming out for it are frankly amazing. I've decided to start with the Crimson Court as my first team:

The GW pushfit models are frankly incredible. These ones required me puttying one seam which is super impressive sprue design. I've started getting paint on them and they're stonking models. They are, however, a bit of a pig to prime. I probably should have primed them on sprue if I'm honest.

Next Time

Scotty and I will play a game or five of Warhammer Underworlds so a review will be inbound. First read throughs look really promising though. I've also lined up a game of Flames that I think I'll take some Storm Grenadiers for and we'll see how that goes. 

Full Steam ahead!!

Nope, I've not succumbed to steam age naval warfare, Full Steam is the name of the release event for Privateer Press' third edition of their Warmachine and Hordes rule sets. For anyone out there not familiar with Warmachine or Hordes (Warmahordes from now on) it's a blend of Steam punk and classic fantasy with armies led by a powerful warcaster or warlock controlling steam powered robots or ravenous beasts.. and some mooks to get squished :) seriously, check out www.privateerpress.com for a nosey, it's a tight rules set with some really nice sculpts (some pretty dubious ones too but hey :))

The Full Steam event was more casual than the usual Warmahordes tournament, 2 hour games, one army list and no turn timers - pretty damn relaxed.

10 players turned up and we got underway

we played out three rounds and I even managed to get a game in when Mike T turned up in the afternoon for a look see - damn those pigs are scary! (check out the farrow minions models on the PP site.. go on!)

There were three prizes for the day -

Marshall - most scenario points
Artisan - best painted battlegroup
Iron Valour - best sport

Artisan and Iron Valour are peer voted awards which is a nice departure from the usual "best of faction" awards at the book release events. PP are starting to acknowledge the "soft" scores through extra awards which is great, though tournaments are still won by winning games :)

Points were scored 2 for a scenario win, 1 for an assassination win (kill your opponents Warcaster/Warlock). Additionally there were a number of one off awards to get through the day as well, such as playing a fully painted army, win a game whilst destroying 50pts or more of models, win a game in under 25 minutes and so on.

At the end of the day, the final tables looked something like this:

Player                    Faction                       Points
Mike            Protectorate of Menoth        21 pts (Marshall)
Chris P        Legion of Everblight            15 pts
Kane                     Cryx                              8 pts
Mitch                  Cygnar                            8pts
Scott            Mercenaries (Cephalyx)        8pts (Artisan)
Jaime                   Khador                           7pts
Chris F        Retribution of Scyrah             6pts
Bob                      Cygnar                           5pts
Thomas                Cygnar                           2pts
Dutton                 Skorne                            0pts (Iron Valour)

Big props to Dutton, not only his first event but plays a Skorne all beast 75pt list and gets the Iron Valour award - well done! :)

and now for some eye candy

 Mike's all conquering Severious 1 battlegroup of DOOOOOMMMMMM!!! 

 Thomas' Cygnar electroleapin' army

 Jaime's Butcher led Khador 

 Mitch's boys in blue

 Chris P's winged horrors

 Scott's monstrosity horde! with 3 models converted from hordes heavy beasts

 oh, and these little dudes hiding off to one side.. probably not wanting to be stepped on..

 Kane's shambling undead horrors with his invisible Kraken

 *sigh* yes, more Cygnar, Bob's this time ;)

 Chris F's angry, angry elves

 Dutton's Skorne army, yup, that's the whole army!

 mitch and scott smash into each other mid table

 "but they have wings sir!! and pointy teeth!!!!" *squelch*

 "Hellooooo?!?!?"

 "Git orf moi land you round eared gits!"

 "CHARGE!!!!!!"

 "If you'll just put your warlock right about there that would be awfully good"

 "Titan steaks for dinner lads!"

 the finger of god almost obscures Mike's battlegroup tangling with Bob's

 NOM NOM NOM NOM!

"AAARRRGGGHHH!!! A SPIDER!!" oh no, sorry it's your warjack..

hopefully my next blog post will involve me actually playing a game! I was eying up McBeth's great game of Frostgrave a couple of tables over.......

The end of MKII.......

So on Sunday the new version of the Warmachine rules will drop. The previous version has been in place since 2010 and this new version means to change quite a few basics of the rules.

But be fore it goes far into the night I had one last hurrah with Scott P........

The game was a 50 point surprise, i.e. bring what ever you like. I thought to make it even more of a surprise I would let my 12 year old pick my list. This turned out to be advantageous, not hugely but it did help.

Deployment, Scott P can just see me a way yonder with my high-vis Legion

And for this game a toast was in order!

I got first turn and took advantage of my AD hex hunters to get way up the board. Scott P counters by putting up the meat shield of Boomhowler Trolls

The inevitable charge in and the failure to kill more than one Boomie, with the old tough rules, things will change in Mk III 

My left flank needs to make its way west to be part of the action, thank goodness for pathfinder and eyeless sight on my Scythean

Borka goes all out feats and wipes out my infantry, the Throne and the Helions. The Scythean had gone in and failed to scratch the Glacier King....oh oh

Borka had come out to get me and I went all in on him, even though he has stumbling drunk and Iron Flesh up.

The result  was that it failed leaving me with Bethayne, Belphagor, a shredder and a shepard standing in front of the glacier king.

I popped Bethayne out of her suit and charged Borka for the win it was quite a brutal game quick and messy.

The new rules seem to indicate they will be even more brutal focusing on encouraging big monsters and machines instead of infantry.

I can not wait......

Scotty

Meet Gary, Gary Glacier.

Gary is a Glacier King for Trollbloods in Warmachine and Hordes. The Glacier King is a Gargantuan model which is a very large model standing about 10" tall. This is a huge model for me and I am not used to panting on this scale but I was really looking forward to it.

Clean up on this model was a real b#tch. I had to slice around 3cm of resin off his kilt and there is a lot of filler plugging gaps. I used Vallejo Putty which works a charm.

I put the core together, then I decided to paint the arms and head separately and stick him together later.

After an undercoat of light grey the base coats went on. I recently bought the P3 Trollbloods paint set and used the official colours for the skin. I then gave the skin a wash with Agrax Earthshade.

The icicle spikes were painted light blue and then washed with a dark blue wash, The the process of blending and highlighting started.

Then the snow needed a good couple of coats of white and then we were ready to stick it all together.

Next there are a few touch ups.

Lastly the job of painting and flocking the base, and Voila - meet Gary Glacier.

I can't wait to get Gary out on the table - I'll probably aim for Lords of Ruin in September - but I'll need lots of practice before then.

Cheers

Tank

McZ's Magpie Resolutions

#shamelesslyfollowingonfromMcBeth

I had a pretty good year keeping the magpie at bay in 2015, amazingly. I started one new game (Frostgrave) and bought a sum total of zero models for it. I picked up maybe half a dozen releases for my Warmachine Protectorate army and mostly spent the whole year staring at my assembled, but unpainted Teutonic Order army and used that as the lever to not spend more money on anything else!

So, like McBeth, I'm making a list for this year to try and tick off. I kind of hope that, come the 2016 Christmas holidays I'll be able to post a bunch of photos or links to posts with all this stuff in it. Am I going to get it all done? Probably not. But that's not a good reason to at least have a crack eh? I also blame Pooch for making me actually look in the boxes in the cupboard in the games room and finding things that I now want to do stuff with!

Warmachine / Hordes
I basically own one (or two...) of every model Privateer Press has released for the Protectorate of Menoth. Currently I plan to pick up three unreleased models this year - Pyrrus - Flameguard Hero, the Hand of Judgement and an Indictor. I doubt I'll ever buy a Colossal for Warmachine, but if I do, when the Revelator comes out this year, I'll make a call one way or the other. My real project this year is two 50 point armies for the Hordes Minions Faction, specifically the Farrow pact. I like the organic / mechanical mashup they do so there's lots of opportunity for some nice warbeast conversions.

What's to do:

• Paint two warlocks - Midas and Helga. 
• Purchase, convert and paint the three heavy war beasts required for both lists
• Purchase and paint one or two units

Frostgrave
I love this game. Love. It's fun to play, relaxed, silly and the other magpies are great to play it with. I've really enjoyed painting some old Warhammer Fantasy models to use for it and have been quietly painting new warbands for no really good reason other than the occasional game.

What's to do:

• Purchase and paint a wizard / apprentice for my High Elf warband
• Purchase and paint an apprentice for my Tzeentch Chaos warband
• Convert and paint a box of old Chaos Warriors for my Tzeentch Chaos warband
• Purchase some cheap daemons (hopefully from TradeMe) to make up the numbers! 

Flames of War
Unlike the rest of the magpies, my time playing FoW has not reduced to near zero! I had some great games with clubmate Richard (check out his blog here) last year and will be keen to play more games with him in 2016. What we'll play is something of a mystery although we do both have quite complimentary collections so anything's possible. My Flames collection is mostly painted and so forth so this is all pretty low priority given everything else on this list but if Panzerschreck in July is Early War, some of it might come screaming up the priority list pretty quickly.

What's to do:

Italians

• Purchase and paint a CR42 Falco
• Paint my Lancia da 90mm trucks

Germans

• Finish assembling and painting my Late War StuG company
• Tidy up the infantry and paint camo stripes the vehicles in my Early War Pionier company
• Paint four Panthers for Late War Panzerregiment Franz Bake

Australians

• A tidy up of the basing and some TLC is required for these guys - they've been a bit knocked about. 

Team Yankee
We've blogged one game of TY so far and played a couple more. Suffice to say, I'm keen. I've got most of the models already and enjoy playing Flames of War. So I have already ordered (yep) a few bits and bobs to make up the options for TY  that I want to use. It'll give me a couple of understrength tank companies, some recce, some artillery and an infantry option that'll either be in BMPs or be landed by Hind Ds. This, especially, is cool.

What's to do:

• Paint 5 T80s, 10 BMPs, 3 HAIL21s, 3 2S1 Carnations, 2 Hinds
• Rebase infantry to be identifiable for TY and possibly paint a few more LMGs 
• Rebase vehicles

Infinity
Infinity, Infinity, Infinity. It's a game I love playing. I love it's complexity and the world that it's set in. I hate the fact that I am almost always undone by lucky crit rolls because I don't know how to play the game that well. It needs to be played more. I've painted most of my Chinese Yu Jing army already and basically haven't bothered to finish it because we've not been playing enough. So, I figure if I get it done, and get a table made over the winter (see below) there is more chance I'll play it more too.

What's to do:

• Finish my partially completed Shaolin Monks, Yaozao Remote and Su Jian IAU
• Paint my Celestial Guard Link Team
• Paint my Authorised Bounty Hunter
• Purchase and paint a Terracotta Warrior and one (or possibly both because they are such nice models) Yan Huo Invincibles. 

Impetus
The end is in sight. I have painted, at the time of writing, 8.5 of the 15 bases of models I have for my Teutonic Order army. That's really quite exciting for me, given how long they've sat unpainted because I was too scared to paint all that white.

What's to do:

• Purchase and paint two bases of Livonian allied light horse and 2 of light foot
• Finish painting the 'change' base for the knight wedge (super low priority!)
• Apply transfers to tabards and shields for all the Teutonic foot and horse
• Make and apply banners and pennants for all the lances and foot banner bearers
• Build the baggage dice tower (this is a fun project I'm looking forward to) 
• Base the whole army (which I have no idea on how I'm going to do at this point) 

It will be done for V3, Prinny's Last Hurrah before he departs for Europe, in May. It. Will. Be. Done.

AWI 
Like a lot of the magpies, I am painting stuff for the big Brandywine game. No idea if I'll actually play in it, but it seemed like a nice little project for a change of pace. The assembly is done, but I've been focussing on painting my Teutons while I have the mojo to do it so it's next off the list.

What's to do:

• Paint two regiments of Maryland infantry for Triple T
• Paint a regiment of Hessians for McBeth

Bolt Action?
I think I'd like to play BA this year. I think this will be my one serious project that doesn't involve models I don't already own. But I am having a hard time deciding which army to paint - there are too many cool options. It was going to be Italians until I decided I don't want to paint more Italians and then it was going to be Aussies (using Warlord's lovely Chindit models which were on sale at Dat Ape) until they sold before I got to order them. Now I'm back to the drawing board. Tempted by Early War French, Marines, Rangers, Blitzkrieg Germans, honestly......MAGPIE!

Terrain

I have been meaning to put together a decent table for Infinity for a while, partly to encourage me to play it more. Dat Ape has some really nice options that I will invest in some time this year. Either the Plastcraft stuff or the really sweet looking modular bits from Mantic. Not sure yet. I'd also like to finish making up a few other bits to go with my GF9 ruins to make a good set of terrain for both Warmachine and Frostgrave and finally, my 15mm European terrain needs a bit of TLC. This is a winter project I feel.

Stuff that's been done

Yep. I have actually already done some stuff. [smug]

• Finished my Savage Orcs for Frostgrave - I found a Forest Goblin Shaman in the bits box, so he got painted and that was the impetus to finish off the Savage Orc Boar Boy (just in case mounted ever comes into Frostgrave!), the Forest Goblin Fanatic (I made it for Mordheim, seemed silly not to keep it) and the Stone Troll (also for Mordheim) who's just part of the warband. 
• Clean out my bits boxes - I have chucked a lot of random stuff, broken bits and pieces, failed terrain construction projects and reboxed all the things in my bits box into containers for different game systems. It was amazing what turned up. Some of that stuff will find it's way onto the blog this year, although what I do with an out of print 40K Callidus Assassin is a mystery.  I'm open to suggestions on that one. 
• Clearing my desk - it's already clear enough for me to go back to painting on the desk in my games room instead of on the end of my gaming table. Success! 

[/smug]

Anyway, that list is slightly terrifying so I best crack one eh?

Splashing' the Paint Around!

It's been a couple of busy weeks but I have managed to get some painting completed. My first project is completing my Hordes Trollbloods second list. I started this whole new faction because I wanted to run big hitty models. Khador (my first faction) have lots of great warjacks with big smashy axes and loads of armour, but none of the casters can really run more than one 'Jack efficiently (and certainly struggle to run them competitively). So off to Trollbloods I went with my first 50 point list boasting 11 war beasts (the infamous Calandra EE list), and man it is fun. Madrak is my second caster - and I have decided to use as many beasts as I can. In fact I am determined to keep the troll infantry to a minimum for all my lists.

The trolls in the background are my Impaler, Axer and Bouncer. I decided to put the facepaint on them to make them look more savage. I have also finished the Earthborn and a Swamp Troll, and my last Slag Troll.

To finish the collection - a solo, Janissa Stonetide. I am really looking forward to getting these out on the table now.

Infinity is another game popular amongst the magpies. I have a Combined Army (a mix of Alien races ruled and controlled by an EI). I have enjoyed painting the next few in the collection, particularly the Sniper.

And this TAG (big battle roboty thing.

And here is the whole group - ready for action.

The Regiment are also preparing for the Brandywine big fight - and here is my contribution so far (Colonial Militia).

Well - back to the painting table I go :)

From the painting bench...

One of the joys of having some time off is being able to get to the painting table for some concentrated efforts. With a few projects on the go I thought I would show whats been completed.

Infinity Merc Fig Musashi - a possible character for Infinity RPG

The Mongol Horde is coming to Impetus tables....soon

My order finally arrived from Wayland....well some of it did. Krielstone bearers for the Trollbloods in Hordes.