Painting Update - Wargods of Aegyptus, Guild Ball, European Village

Here's another update from the painting table. 

I completed another unit from my Wargods of Aegyptus project. 

This is technically an 11-strong unit of Asar Warriors with hand weapons, shields, and medium armor. The unit Champion, which is bought independently, is equipped in the same way and is placed in between the Musician and the Standard Bearer.

This is the second unit in my small warband of Dispossessed (followers of Osiris and Isis) for Wargods. I know just have to paint the characters - the Harbinger, Hero, Master of Words, and Priestess of Isis - and that'll be the core done. From there, I'll move onto some units and characters from other races. Probably Tethru and Sebeki.

I'm also pretty pleased with the blue/bronze color scheme. I've been considering doing the same for the other races, but decided against it. I think it'll look better if each race has their own scheme. For the Tethru, I'm thinking of using gold and purple, and green and tan for the Sebeki.

I also worked on my Union team for Guild Ball. Including Mist, this puts me at seven Union players - just shy of the eight player limit for tournaments. I'm going to be using this team for the foreseeable future, as I'm planning on running them in a tournament later in April.

One of these players - Decimate, on the right in the back row - can play for the Masons, so that gives me more options for my original team. Gutter, Fangtooth, and Rage (front-left, back-left, and back-middle, respectively) can't play for the Masons. They can, however, all play for the Brewers, as can Hemlocke, the other Union player I'm considering picking up as my eighth. I wonder if that's a sign as to what my third Guild Ball team should be, sometime in the future...

When I put up my blog post about painting Mist, I complained about the quality of the paints I used - Privateer Press' "Beaten Purple" and Citadel's Blood Red. To replace these, I used Vallejo's Game Model "Hexed Lichen" and Citadel's "Wazdakka Red." While the Hexed Lichen is great, I wouldn't want to use Wazdakka Red any more than necessary.

Additionally; back in August of last year, I talked about a few buildings I was working on for some WWII terrain. While other projects have taken up most of my painting time, I have been working on the buildings on and off, and finally managed to finish them.

The fence came together nicely, with some simple painting and washes.

The miscasting is still noticeable on some pieces, however. But it's easy to miss at arm's length.

The Barn House looks great, although I did skip painting the interior.

The same goes for the battle-damaged Continental House.

And a Western European Barn. 

These buildings ended up being pretty great, and I'm looking into picking up at least the rest of the buildings in the series, either whole or battle-damaged. This comes at the cost of realizing that the Battlefront building I bought is far bigger than the MkIV buildings - it's so large, I need to remove the top floor just to get in into scale!

Local Trouble - Heroes of the Aturi Cluster AAR

There's been some interest in trying out the Heroes of the Aturi Cluster campaign for X-Wing. Kevyn had the chance to try out the rules solo during the recent blizzard, and had some pretty positive things to say about it. So last week he set up the introductory scenario.

Rebel Command: "Welcome to the Outer Rim, pilots. Our convoy is currently en route to a hidden Rebel Base in the Parmel Sector, and you'll be on escort duty until we arrive.  

We've picked up a group of enemy signals in the nearby asteroid field; likely an Imperial patrol. Intercept these those ships, and keep them away from the convoy until we can execute a hyperspace jump to ensure our base remains hidden. 

Good luck!"

Raider Squadron

Raider One: X-Wing

Pilot: Kevyn

Callsign: Catalyst

Raider Two: Y-Wing

Pilot: Brian

Callsign: Brick

Raider One: "Heads up, Two; I've got three Eyeballs coming in fast."

Raider Two: "I seem 'em, One. Shields up and engines hot."

Raider One: "I'll take the two on the right."

Raider Two: "Leaves one for me. Hey, that one Eyeball's kinda funny looking..."

Raider Two: "One, I've got another guest at this party! And my shields are taking hits from these damn rocks!" 

Raider One: "Keep flying, Brick. I'll handle my Imp and get back over to you."

Raider Two: "Squint! Cat, you've got a Squint in your six!"

Raider One: "Damn! Command, we're going to need some backup here. We've got more Imperials than we can handle."

Raider One: "How're you doing, Two? I've got two Eyeballs wrapped up."

Raider Two: "I've gotten out of the fire. Going after the Squint."

Raider Two: "Who put all these rocks in the way?!"

Raider One: "Two, we've got another Tie coming in."

Raider Two: "I'm already up to my eyeballs in Eyeballs here, Cat!"

Raider Two: "In the clear!"

Raider One: "Careful, Brick. You've got a furball going on behind you. Don't get caught up in that."

Raider Two: "Good shooting, One! Scratch one Eyeball."

Raider One: "Two, you've got two Imps on you. Get out of there!"

Raider Two: "I can't! Too many rocks! I can't shak-AAAAAAAAAARRRRGH!"

Raider One: "Two? Two?!"

Rebel Command: "Brick's down, Catalyst. Reinforcements are on the way."

Raider One: "Just need to keep them off of me..."

Raider One: "Ha! One more Eyeball down!"

Sword One: "Raider, this is Sword. Get out of here - we'll take care of the rest of these Imperials."

Rebel Command: "Great work pilots! Our convoy is safe from harm. Now we can begun operation against the Empire in this star system. 

Raider One, we've homed in on Raider Two's emergency beacon. We'll pick him up and bring him back to base."

So, Kevyn managed to score 4 experience points over the course of the game, while I lost the Munitions Failsafe modification I had bought in the hopes of getting some torpedoes. Oh well - there's always next time!

Painting Update - Kings of War, Guildball

As before, I'm continuing to work on my Kings of War project. 

I finished four bases of swordsmen, enough to combine into two Regiments or a single Horde in the Kingdoms of Men list.

Alternatively, these can be used as the back half of Citizen Militia units in the League of Rhordia list. The front half will be occupied by Halberdiers, as the Citizen Militia have the Crushing Strength (1) rule. These Halberdiers are assembled and sticky-tacked to their bases, so they're the next ones on the list that need to be worked on.

I should note that I actually had to re-base these models, along with the Arquebusier/Musket Block units shown previously. I had thought that the models would be able to withstand handling glued down only to the spackle that makes up the top layer of the base. That turned out to be a big mistake, as only after a couple games, many of the miniatures were tearing free.

The solution was to purposefully rip the miniatures from the base, cut off the hardened glue and trapped flocking, and then drilled down to the plastic underneath the exposed spackle. Then I glued the miniature back down - a much stronger bond formed with the plastic of the base - and touched up the base so that no white was showing.

Although time intensive, I think it worked pretty well.

After acquiring Mist after Snow Ball and playing him in a game (10-12 against Kevyn's Alchemists; Mist did score a goal, however), I painted him over the past weekend.

I'm not totally happy with the paint job - the Citadel Blood Red and the P3 Beaten Purple don't have enough pigment for my taste. So I'll look into replacing them with Vallejo equivalents (Vermilion and Royal Purple, respectively).

This scheme is what I plan on using for my Union. Boring, I know, but it works!

Painting Update - Guild Ball Terrain

My recent experience with terrain in Guild Ball really has me fired up to get some of my own terrain for use with the local players. So, after making sure I knew what the official terrain rules were, I headed out to one of the local craft stores to peruse their shelves and see what I could find. 

I found a baggie of thin wooden shapes - the last one! - and found, after some measuring, that the circles were perfect for what I needed. This gave me four 4.5" circles, four 2.5" circles, and six 2" circles. That's enough to cover two Guild Ball pitches in the maximum allowed amount of terrain (seven pieces). 

So, I planned to have:

1 Forest (restricted to one, maximum 6" area)

3 Rough Ground (maximum 6" area)

1 Barrier (restricted to one, maximum 3" area)

3 Fast Ground (maximum 3" area)

6 Obstacles (maximum 2" area)

The Barrier started pretty simply, with blocks of sticky-tack glued together to form a wall. Mist is here to show the height.

In the next step, I coated the sticky-tack with Citadel's gloss varnish. As the varnish dried, it hardened, making the sticky-tack less malleable. The base was then covered in spackle.

Here's the result after painting, basing, and varnishing. It's not perfect, but it'll work. The sticky-tack has also become much less malleable during the process.

The Rough Ground each had pieces of styrofoam glued down.

And then spackle was applied. I was aiming to show that there's uneven ground in these terrain pieces, while still allowing models to be places anywhere without falling over.

I did take a risk while priming these, knowing that the spray primer I was using wasn't water-based. The resulting melting, however, gave the styrofoam a much more natural look with less sharp edges.

For the Forest, I decided I could spare some trees from my collection, and added these to the base. They won't be glued down, however, so that way the trees can be removed in case a model needs to move into that particular section of the terrain. 

The layer of spackle went on around the trees, leaving holes where they would go afterwards.

Some painting, flocking, and varnishing later, the trees still fit in place!

The Fast Ground pieces were probably the easiest to get ready. They just needed a layer of spackle to start.

And to finish, they were painted, washed, and then covered in a layer of Citadel's gloss varnish (I've used that varnish more times in this project than I had in the past year).

I actually forgot to take mid-build pictures of the Obstacles, but here's the end result - cubes painted to look like crates, and thread spools that (hopefully) look like barrels.

And here's the final result. Compared to the original image, I'd say it's a half-decent turn out for a couple nights worth of work.

Now I can finally get back to painting miniatures.

Snow Ball 2016 - Guild Ball AAR

This past weekend I drove down to Enter the Realm to participate in the Philadelphia area's first Guild Ball tournament.

As I was more focused on playing the games, I didn't take any pictures, but I will be grabbing a few from the Facebook page of the event.

First off, Alex, the TO, did a fantastic job of running the event, and everything went smoothly. And big thanks to Chris, the store owner, for not only hosting the event and providing catering, but for offering really awesome prize support!

The event had 21 players (it did get a little crowded), and was played over four rounds. Chess clocks were also in use, with 45 minutes for each player. You can check out the official tournament rules pack for more information.

The totals for Guild representation were:
Alchemists - 2
Brewers - 3
Butchers - 3
Engineers - 2
Fishermen - 3
Masons - 4
Morticians - 2
Union - 2

So there was a good spread, though Masons were a little over-represented.

(In a twist of fate, poor Tom - one of the local guys running Morticians - ended up playing against all three of the Butchers team in the first three rounds. Ouch!)

Teams were mostly good on painting, with most being painted, while some were partially finished and only a few were bare metal. But some of the paint jobs were incredible! And Mike, a local Brewers player, won Best Painted with his team. He certainly deserved it.

I was running pure Masons, and used the same six players in all four games:

Honor
Marbles
Mallet
Brick
Flint
Chisel

Which I felt could either do a scoring or bashing game depending on what teams I was facing across the table.

I played against The Union (12-2), Fishermen (4-12), Morticians (12-4), and Masons (6-12). The Fishermen were the biggest surprise, as I had never played them before. They took my Masons apart and ran circles around me. It's a paint to realize that what should have been a power-turn is wasted because half your team can't move!

Funny enough, my last match against the Masons was a mirror match, with my opponent taking the same players. So at least we knew what the other player's abilities were.

Apart from one other game, these were my only games played on the clock, and it adds a whole new dimension to the game. I've had some games of Guild Ball go 2-2.5 hours due to unfamiliarity with the rules and analysis paralysis. The clocks add a sense of urgency to the game, and make sure that the time doesn't run on forever. I actually think it's much more fun to play on the clock, especially since both players only have 6 models to worry about, while still needing to think about positioning and activation order.

I ended up 2-2 and in 10th place, which I'll take for a first tournament and still being relatively new at the game. I also got a goal token for being the best Mason player that didn't place in the top four (my last opponent got 2nd place). I also decided to pick up Mist while I was there, for potential use in the future, seeing as how Harmony and Tower sat on the bench for the whole event.

Overall, I had a great time, and I'm looking forward to getting out to more events. It looks like there some going on either further north or south of the Philadelphia area, so I guess it all depends on how long I want to spend in the car.