Angels Come Forth

Ok, its been a crazy month. Lots of personal issues have stayed my painting hand quite a bit, but with the imminent approach of Battle on Beale, I have to start kicking this angel army into gear if I am wanting to have it ready for my brother to play by mid-July. That gives me two months. There is a lot to do in those two months, but I think I can make this happen.

I have almost completed the second angel for the army. What I need to do is make a list of all the models I need to complete the army, gather them up, and begin to construct them in earnest. Here is a couple shots of the mostly completed Angel who I believe will serve as a mobile, fighty character of Tzeetch. Additionally, I threw in a picture of the whole army for good measure. Enjoy.

DE vs WoC Battle Report

well, I suppose there are 2 distinct positives to your mom having a spontanious brain bleed. The first is that spontanious brain bleeds, while super scary, don't kill you, but the experience certainly leaves you and your family with a healthy dose of realism about the fragility of life, and preciousness of time together with those you love and care about. The second positive is that if you have siblings living overseas, these type of events tend to bring them back unexpectantly, and if things go well, as they did in this case, once the immediate family crisis has passed, the additional time they have in the States is bonus time you get to hang out with them. Thus did these events transpire to allow me the privlidge and honor of playing my Brother Joe [of "roll 'em up, roll 'em, em' up Jojo" and "thats just where we're at Brother Joe" fame]. Joe is here a short time, so this will probably be our only battle.

I was fielding my combat oriented dark elves that I posted here a while back. I am still learning how to use the new book effectively, and i have recently replaced my bolt throwers for mobile artillery in the form of two level 2 mages. Joe was fielding, for the first time, his Angelic Host Warriors of Chaos army. Obviously this army has a lot to still be done on it, so it was heavily proxied. Joe has posted many versions of that army on here, but this was the one with BA Chaos Lord on Disc, BSB on Disc with Banner of the Gods (125 pts) and 2 level 1 sorcerors. We were both excited to see how this army would play, and Joe was especially excited to get a little experience with the army prior to hillbilly.

The game got off to a great start by going absolutly old school, like 1998 old school, by taking place in the infamous Nietzel Dinning Room. we had 4 buildings, a nice forest, and a bridge to absolutly nowhere. the buildings were placed to my right in a diamond pattern sort of breaking up the right side of the board. The lone forest was to the left, in the middle of the battlefield. I won deployment, and joe started placing first. He planted a solid center from left to right of Mauraders, WarShrine, Dragon Ogres, Maruaders. Behind this was his BSB on disc, making this solid center stubborn. He misplaced his warriors and they ended up behind the marauders, and out of the main fighting action. His flank to my left had Knights, hounds, and sort of the left out warriors. To my right he had knights and hounds. His cheese dick move of the game in my opinion was starting his general perched on a chimney of the dwarf forge so that he could see the whole battle field with his flying movment. This guy was between the stubborn center and right side knights/hounds. I went for classic ben nietzel deployment of the warriors (with wizards) and blackguard in center, backed up by my chariot mounted BSB... which is really a unit i love. I kept my Cold One Knights in the center to support this group as a respone to his stubborn center placement, and the fact that the forest and buildings made a pocket in the middle that looked to be the crux of the fighting. To my left I placed some dark riders and chariot, and to my right i placed double dark riders out wide, my favorite. My harpies went behind my line. I plunked my shades behind building near his deployment on the right, so i could pop out and smoke his hounds, thus isolating his knights. I also dropped my general with my fast cav out right to put pressure on his general and/or the chaos knights out there. My dick cheese move of deployment was to pick up my knights to see if they could fit in a gap between the buildings. It was dumb, but i didn't place the terrain and was curious if they'd fit, i don't think it was very sporting on my part.

The game started with some jockeying. I went first and moved up to position myself for a big turn two. My two highlights were the shades popping out and making the hounds wish they'd come across michael vick on a bad day instead. I smoked them all. My sac dagger shadow mage also dropped pit of shades on Joe's Dragon Ogres killing one. Joe's turn he moved right into my face, with his only action being a crazy ass charge of his general right at my cold one knights. I had mistakenly told him I didn't have a banner, but oops, I had a banner and warbanner. However, we didn't count them as he wouldn't have charged knowing that. Despite that, he didn't do enough wounds (it was a dumb charge unsupported) and I won by doing a wound and outnumbering. He undeservedly failed a morale test, and fled. The first of many. In my turn I charged like a banshee. I sent a dark rider unit into his hounds, that were in front of his knights, and another into his other knight unit. Here's a fun tip, Chaos knights apparently get 2 attacks each and a 1+ save, so even if your fast cav with Str 4 on the charge, hatred, and a +2 CR from a rear charge can get them, pass on that. Especially if that unit has a Warbanner. [interesting rules question here. If unit A is charged by unit b in the rear, and unit A still manages to wipe unit B out to the man, at the end of combat, which was is unit A facing???] My other riders smoked the dogs, who fled into the knights, causing them to panic (yes they failed their reroll) but in hte interest of having a fun game, we ignored that panic. Anyway, my general and harpies also charged his mauraders to try to take out his fleeing general. It almost worked, but he stayed on the board by 2 inches, and set up an epic general on general battle in round 3.

The top of Round three saw all of our units in the center arrive for battle. I flank charged his Stubborn (I didn't know) Dragon Ogres who had been given the ultimate Shrine roll (4+ ward and stubborn) with my black guard and front charged them with my assasin. Poor placement of my assasin would give joe a chance to smoke my assasin, and prevent my warriors from charging later... dumb! Anyway, I did some wounds, but did not break the stubborn with a reroll DO's who had the BSB right behind them. The general v general fight went bad for me as my Lord's 6 Str 7 attacks only did 1 wound, and his flaming sword of multpilying wounds made a mockery of my regneration armor defense. I was scared of the sword, but knew his 20 inch range meant he'd find me sooner or later, so i figured the charge gave me the best chance of living. I lived, but the bottom of round three was gonna be all she wrote. I was killed. In the bottom of three he charged my Black Guard/Assasin with the Shrine (a real beast) in the flank, and had his maruaders hit my rear. My ASF BG and Assasin did well, but lost by 2. Luckily they held with their stubborn selves. Joe made a big mistake of moving his BSB behind my lurking warriors units to terror bomb them.

At top of 4, i passed all terror checks. My BSB chariot hit the mauraders in teh flank, my Cold Ones, who had been facing a builidng after repeling the general charged his DO's in the flank, and my warriors with sorceresses turned to face the lone BSB. In the magic phase I fried the BSB, and it was goodbye stubborn. In the combat phase, ASF, impact hits, and massive charges ended with a CR of 22-2 in favor of the elves. This blew the game open. I couldn't hurt his Shrine, he was still in the flank of the BG, but my 4 units overran him, and destroyed him. The overrun took my BSB into contact with teh warriors who were still struggling to make contact. They ended up smoking the warriors, especially in the top of turn 5 with help from the assassin. My BG ran close to joe's general, and he charged. He smoke the champ in the bottom four but they held with stubborn. With no one to challange in turn 5, my weight of attacks took their toll and finished him off. Meanwhile my harpies flew to strand his knights on teh left who chewed up my poorly spaced chariot, but this ensured they'd never play another role in the game. My remaining dark riders did the same to his knights on teh right, who would later fall prey to a 3D6 Str 1 no armor save magic missle that killed 3. In the end, I think joe finished with 7 knights still on the board.

It was a fun game, and much closer than the final tally showed. I think 3 things made a huge differnece for me:

1 - Joe had never played the WoC before and made some blunders in deployment and usage that he is sure to not make a second time. Nothing huge, but its tough to use an army for the first time, especially against a good book like the DE's

2 - My army is geared to fight an army like joe's. I am a combat army, he is a combat army. Virtually no shooting was done all game. Combat WoC is a really nice match-up for my dark elves. My experience with the army made me better able to take advantage of the combat heavy game we played.

3 - three key dice rolls went my way. I'm not saying all three were lucky, one was super lucky, one was sorta lucky, and one was as it should have been

a - super lucky - my harpies getting hit by a fireball that i should have scrolled in mid game. it killed 2 of 6, and I luckily passed the leadership test. This allowed me to fly behind his knights next turn and crush his spirit by march blocking them for the next 3 turns so they could play no further roll

b - sorta lucky - his general bouncing on my knights and fleeing. He probably shouldn't have fled since he was testing on an 8, but it was a stupid move for a general designed to kill big things and characters, so it was probably just desserts. still, this put his general out of the way for basically the rest of the game b/c i pressured the fleeing general.

c - expected - my black guard passing their stubborn leadership test after getting flank and rear charged. Elves should pass that, and they did, but if I fail that, my center collapses and he runs riot on me. In passing it, my BSB and CO Knights get in next round and that's all she wrote for his whole center.

sorry, kinda long. Ton's of fun though. Super glad we got to play.

Painting tan skin

Blair asked me how I painted my skin, so I thought I'd post that. While Shawn is certainly 1000x better than me, I thought that this might have a bit of merit as my techniques are sort of dumbed down from shawn's advice, so that any idiot (as demonstrated by my models) can use it.

What you need:
A eye dropper with clean water in it
a plastic pallette for mixing
toothpicks
the following Americana paints - available super cheap at hobby lobby
Black (normal black)
White (normal white)
Toffee (actual name)
Flesh (actual name)
Games Workshop's Ogryn Flesh wash from their new washes line

I use the pallette and eye dropper to water down my paint. Ususally I do one small squirt of paint and add one drop of water. I then mix completely with a toothpick. Shawn recommends the consistancy of milk, but I don't drink milk, so I just get it roughly close.

1 - I start by basecoating my entire miniture with black.

2 - I then dry brush the skin areas white, so this leaves the raised areas white, the recessed areas black, and the middle areas sorta gray.

3 - I then paint the skin with toffe, which has been mixed with water as above.

4 - after this dries, I go over the skin again with toffe. Usually I might add another drop of water to really thin the toffe down, before I repaint it.

5 - I then water down some "Flesh" paint and pick out the raised, high light areas. This is a paint that has a pinkish hue, but it'll look better once I tie it in.

6 - I then use the "Ogryn Flesh" was all over the recessed areas of the model. The new GW washes are really, really good and can be used straight out of the pot. I really like them.

7 - to tie it all in, I go back to the toffee. I use a really, really thin mix (2 drops of water to 1 drop of paint) and paint over almost all of the skin area. Just leaving the very extreme edges and crevices alone. I find that this sort of blends teh "flesh," "toffee," and "Ogryn Flesh" areas together nicely.

Thats it. Its not great, but it has really been good for my skill level. It doesn't take a ton of steps, and I've been really happy with it. I had not had any successful skin paint jobs until Ogres, so I am pretty happy, and I owe most of my success technique wise to Shawn's advice. Hope that helps.

Test Angel Completed

Well, I am proud to announce I have finished my test angel. Its not awesome, but I am happy with it. I think the blues, golds, and off white look fairly good together. Obviously she needs a base, but you get the idea. Feel free to comment. I also will throw in a nearly completed unit of 10 flaggelants... I need to buy some more of those guys asap.

GW vs. Privateer Press

The following was my response to a discussion held on "The D6 Generation" Podcast discussion the move of Warmachine to its new rules set, Warmachine Mk. II. Specifically, the guys were looking how this move was being viewed by the community at large, and how it impacted their GW vs. PP discussion in episode 1A. This is especially relevant as many former GW players have jumped ship to Privateer Press's Warmachine and compatitble Hordes "steam punk" minitures games.

my response follows:

I found your discussion on GW vs. Privateer Mk. 2 to be fairly interesting. I am a huge GW fan, who loves the universe and Fantasy battle game. I do feel upset however by many of GW's policys and practices in past years (I've been playing since '97). I don't play PP games other than M-Poc mainly b/c I don't live by any gamers right now, and when I do get a rare occasion to play, all my friends play GW games. So while I am intrigued by Warmachine/Hordes, its an outlay of costs and time that makes no sense for me currently. I spend enough time and money on WHFB and Necromunda for the 10 games I get to play a year, that I don't need to try to do it with a whole different gaming system. That being said, I do love to buy books and read rules, as well as look at cool new minitures, so I do own Prime:Remix and I recently bought a couple No Quarter Mags while on vacation in NYC. Interestingly enough, this was in response to me picking up the new White Dwarf to buy, and seeing that it was $9. I am so disgusted by how this magazine's content has been gutted and the price has continued to rise in the last 12 years, I couldn't stomache another dollar increase. I remember the glory days of Fat Bloke, Tale of 4 gamers, inserts, and when resigning a subscription got you a box set of minitures. Now I pay twice as much for a quarter of the content and perks. Thats not just inflation at work... but i digress. Or do I? I do see how PP runs things, the content the including in NQ (thats why I got it), how responsive they are to the community, and how they put out new content all the time. Its refreshing. In fact, I feel the White Dwarf issue is a microcosim for GW in general the last 12 years. I guess to me, when I first started it felt like GW was my buddy, the local butcher or pharmacist I'd go to that would ask about my family as he filled me order. Now, GW feels like Wal-mart. Granted, some of that is probably nostalgia, but I do think that people who assert GW has become this faceless corperation who does what they want, and has an attitude that consumers can take it or leave it have a vaild point. I also believe they have realized this, and working to correct it, just not very quickly. Having said all this, I probably seem to be a disenfranchised GW fan, ripe to be swept up in the PP frenzy, but I am not. Certainly some of it is the investment I've already made in GW, some of it is because my friends whom I play with (when I can) are barely even aware PP exists, and some of it is just how sweet and diverse the GW universe and model range is, but its more than that. Here are 3 main things I think you missed in your discussion, and they are reasons I think some of flak GW gets is unwarrented.

1 - Privateer Press is still a new company. This leads us to a couple issues.

First, they still have a great and dynamic figurehead in Matt Wilson. Mr. Wilson is the driving force behind his company, and its his ideas and commitment to them that have created and driven this company. He is still around, he is still the driving force. Not only does this mean that his creative genius is in full flight, but he also gives the PP fans a leader, a rock star if you will. Whose in charge at PP? Matt Wilson. If you love somethign about PP, thank Matt Wilson. If you are pissed about something, blame Matt Wilson. How about GW? I consider myself fairly informed in GW affiars, but I don't have the slightest inkling whose in charge there. Every army book seems to be done by somebody else. Warhammer and 40K are related and yet overseen by different people. I have no idea who makes decisions for the company policy as a whole. If I love something, who do I thank? If I hate it, who should be the object of my ire? It makes a difference. Jervis Johnson, Andy Chambers, and Rick Priestly are gone... its been 25 years.

Second, being new, Privateer still has a lot of great ideas, and you are seeing those in action. I'm not talking about just game ideas, but I'm talking about ideas on how to use the internet, how to market, how to fix problems. How to sell and do right by retailers in an E-bay/Internet discount world. GW started up over 25 years ago. They have to adapt to the internet and the evolving gamer and radically shift paradigms espeically at the corperate level. PP had to understand both of those and utilize them just to start up. They were born into the current enviroment, thats an advantage.

Third, there is no greater zealot than a convert. PP does benefit from a huge fanboy base. I have nothing against fanboys, I'm probably a GW one, but many of the people singing PP's praises are people who felt burned by GW and switched. There is nothing wrong with that, nor is it unusual, but if you've left one company for another, I think you going to be quick to find faults with the old and doggidly support the new. This can go both ways, but I think PP fans are probably a little too optomistic with their game, and bitter about GW's.

2 - 40k sucks. one of my gripes with this whole debate is a lot of people, and you guys espeically seem to focus on 40k. Now, I understand that. I know that Russ was a huge 40k guy, and this love affair bore the store and the DakkaDakka site, and so its only natural that you discuss what you know. I also know that the "steam punk" aspect of Warmachine gives it some basing in science fiction, but I think this is a mistake. Its a mistake to compare warmachine/hordes to 40k only b/c 40k sucks. It does. I've played both WHFB and 40K, and its not even close. Don't get me wrong, 40k's imagery, fluff, and models are so amazing, its almost worth it. I mean, I love science fiction a lot more than fantasy, but the game itself is terrible. The problem is scale the table isn't big enough for the range of weapons or speed of the models. Either the game needs to be brought down to a skirmish game, or it needs a size reduction, which is why Epic is so awesome. Warmachine works well b/c it plays at a size that 40k should be around. I think if you compare PP games to fantasy, GW comes out a lot better. Fantasy didn't need a complete rewrite (like I agree 40k does), its a great game. Is there some balance issues, yes, but overall its a highly competative game that will see a more skilled player win 19 out of 20 times. I think its easier to extoll the virutes of GW when you look at that game system, that plays beatifully in a the 2000-3000 point range on a 4x6 table, then comparing 40k which is not a good game. I want it to be. I would love it to be, it just isn't.

3 - Size matters i felt like you guys sort of touched on this, but then passed over it. Size is a huge, huge factor in this debate. GW is massive. Its a monsterous corperation that has a lot more people employed worldwide than PP. It produces 3 major miniture games that all independant of each other, and while using similar D6 mechanics and charts, are not interchangable at all. PP produces 2, though I'd call it more like 1 since while they use different mechanics (focus vs fury) they are interchangalbe and not unlike play an Undead army vs. a dwarf army. Within each game, GW has double the factions or even 3 times as many if you consider warmachine and hordes to be totally seperate entities. When PP does a release for everyone, they only have to release for 4 factions (maybe 5 if you count mercs). Compare this to GW, GW has to release for 12-14 armies. Not only is this a huge difference in terms of number of model and rules needed for a joint release, but also consider this. PP has four factions, so they only need to keep 4 distinct flavors to their armies. This isn't tough. GW has 13 distinct armies. It becomes much harder to keep these 13 armies feeling different in terms of fluff and rules. No one wants to buy the Tomb Kings Army book repackaged as the Vampire Counts book. There has to be distinction. This Distinction is easier to achieve when you produce all the units for one army in a book together. But it leads to long intervals between new armies. This lapse in "real time" leads to people departing and changing jobs, and so codexs and army books are being written by new people all the time it seems. This creates a lack in vision and clarity, as well as consistant language. I do blame GW for this to some extent, but its hard. Additionally, I know some people are upset their special army no longer exists or is supported. it sucks, and at times it has seemed dubious by GW, but again, this is an issue of size. As Russ has smartly pointed out various times, stores don't have the SKU room to carry more and more armies, especially for 3 systems. The Size of GW makes them much more inflexible and slow to change. Its not an excuse for all their transgressions (Slayer armies, no online store listings, White Dwarf Pricing, horrible retail support) but it does make things tough on them. The assertion that GW could easily switch to a card based system where all cards were released for 13 WHFB armies and 12-14 40K armies is unfair and honestly, in my opinion silly. I'd like to see them create decks of cards, but to try to do this 2 or 3 years out for a new army just woudn't work. I suffered for years with terrible dark elves through most of 6th edition and part of 7th, but its the price I am willing to pay to have an army level game with the diversity of options that WHFB has. I would love for GW to operate more like PP, but I wouldn't want it at the price of being reduced to 4 or 5 playable armies.

Necro Update

Played my first game of Necromunda with my Goliath Gang. Perviously, I had rolled up a Cawdor gang b/c while I loved the gang models for Goliath, I noticed on the forums they weren't very good in the long run. That being said, I came to the realization that I probably won't play enough for this to make a huge deal, so I decided to create a Goliath Gang. Additionally, this is the most fun part of the game anyway, and we realized in our previous game we had screwed up some of the money parts. My gang looked fairly similiar to the Goliath gang I posted below, but I dropped a heavy in favor of another ganger and bringing a hired gun - in this case a scavvy named "Dirty Harry." He was underwhelming, and I might go with a ratskin Scout - Tonto - for next game.

The game was very fun, but I have to say that my luck was not impressive. I had 5 guys take a wound, which wasn't unusual persay, but all 5 of them rolled a "1" to be knocked out of action on their first rolls! Thats 5 natural 6's following 5 wounds... ouch. We played a straight gang fight, and when I finally bottled out, I had 7 guys rolling on the serious injury chart. Highlights of the postgame festivities included my Leader losing an inch of movement due to a bum left leg. I also had a Juve drop a ballistic skill from 2 to 1... ouch. Get that fella a knife! On the plus side, I had a juve score 5 kills. That, along with his survival bonus, gave him 3 upgrades. He rolled pretty well getting +1 WS (yawn), +1 W (BEAST!) and the weaponmith skill. I also lucked out and found a Juve recruit for free from my settlement.


All in all, it was a fun game on great terrain, and we had an eventful and wild post game. Everything Necromunda probably should be! Below is 3 of my gang models. As I said earlier, I did not really paint these models. All I did was repaint the pants and paint a blue circle around the base. I saw Driver do this with his gang, in red, and I really liked the effect. The middle model is my leader, and I am painting him from scratch. He is still in progress, as you can see, but I'm happy with how he looks thus far. Comments welcome!

Angels - the beginning

I have finally begun construction on some of the angels for my brother's Warriors of Chaos "Angelic Host" army. The first model I have begun to paint is a test model of sorts. I need to sort out the wings, armor, skin, and additional colors in my quest to create a decent looking angel plan.

The wings are rough. I sought some help on the wings, and originally tried to paint them white, wash them black, and then highlight them white again. That didn't look to good. Driver came up with the idea of using gold to accent the wings, and i think it looks pretty good. I am going to have to get the angel totally done and take a look at it before I declare it decent. I am happy with the cloth. I painted it a sand color, washed it brown, and then highligthed it with sand/white and finally a very thin line of white. It is also not done, but i like its look for now. The skin and armor are both in very, very early stages, so please be patient with them and don't judge them to harshly.

I am hoping to finish this guy off by the weekend, solicite some advice, and then correct myself and begin the other angels next week. And here... we... go.