Starting Legion of Everblight

Ok, this is a long one, but bear with it, there's a competition in here!

Last year I took the plunge into Privateer Press's Warmachine/ Hordes games by starting a Minions army.  My gators have had a few posts of their own but although I like the models, I found their choices limited, their game play restrictive and a bit defensive in what is generally an extremely aggressive game.

I have been thinking for a while maybe I picked the wrong faction for my play style, certainly when just starting out with a game finding an army you enjoy is important.  With the news that my local store 7th Heaven Games was going to run another Journeyman league I thought I'd approach the game with a fresh set of eyes and give it another go.

After a lot of pondering and reading of the excellent BattleCollege I decided that I rather liked the Legion of Everblight.

Shredders from the Legion of Everblight

These monsters are the babies of a dragon (Everblight) and, in the world of Hordes, Dragons are serious business - essentially Gods or Titans made real.  These little critters are only the tip of the iceberg, the whole army is dripping in shark headed dragon things of all sizes so I was really quite tempted.  I have issues with some of the infantry models, but the range choice available compared to Minions was enough that even if I ignored the units I didn't like, I'd still have 3 or 4 times more things to choose from!

The Cheat from Homestar Runner

As well than my dragon fixation, I noticed the shredders reminded me a lot of the Cheat, so that more or less sealed the deal.  Things got sweeter when I found someone (thanks Hobbydad) to share the 2 player starter box with - Legion are one of the two forces in the box and along with a mini rulebook, for the same price as a starter battlebox you get an entire unit of troops extra (big beefy infantry at that).

Having chosen my new army, I then had to decide how to paint it. I didn't want to use the standard colours if I could find another scheme that worked plus there's 3 other local players with Legion already so I wanted mine to be a bit different.  For inspiration I looked on the official forums for ideas (link here).

I narrowed my inspirations down to 3:

CloudFang

Some amazing paintwork here and a really interesting idea.  Click on the name to go to CloudFang direct on the forum and see more of his work.

PG_Col_Festus 

A minor variation of the main scheme and some great paintwork once again.  Click on PG_Col_Festus's name to see more.  This made me think about how I could tweak the main colours and still have my own flavour.

captainspud 

The last option was a lot more unusual.  CaptainSpud's scheme is, well, orange and you may have noticed on this blog I like orange, although I never paint a lot of it.  This chap has featured in the pages of No Quarter magazine so clearly this is a top notch job as well.

Having chosen three templates, I needed to try them out.  I like painting over a black undercoat and while I am happy to take my time, I don't want to go mad with very difficult colours or effects (hello and goodbye yellow).  I had some GW Genestealers spare that share a lot of features with the Legion - chitin armour plates, tough skin areas, lots of arms and claws and teeth.  Hopefully I would be able to make a decision based on how painting them went.  For all the schemes I used GW's current paint range, generally their recommended colour progressions as well.  My thinking was I needed to be able to get hold of the colours easily (in order to be able to add to the army for years to come) and if possible avoid mixing highlights to make everything as consistent as I could.

So here's the CloudFang scheme.  This was tough to pull off effectively, maybe a Genestealer isn't the best model to try this on, but it was a lot of effort and didn't really look anything like as good as the original inspiration (CloudFang has done an excellent tutorial on his threads if anyone wants to have a go - black undercoat was the biggest mistake here).

PG_Col_Festus tweaking the normal scheme inspired me to do something similar, the Genestealer figure inspired this in part, but its also the same colour combo I used on my Vargheists.  I was pleased with how this came out.

So finally CaptainSpud's colours.  I was really hoping this would work but orange can be a difficult colour.  It took a fair amount of effort, however the final effect was I think worth it and worthy of consideration.

Next I went to social media and asked anyone who would share an opinion what they thought of the three.  I was secretly hoping for orange, but the blue-purple was a close second.  In the end orange got the thumbs up generally so now convinced I wasn't just orange obsessed and it really did work, it was time to get going...

...and here's the Shredders.  Notice how they aren't a million miles away from the Cheat?  These little mouths on legs are a lot of fun to paint but there's not a lot of armour on them so I'd need to get to a bigger beastie to see how that looked.

What's the colours?  (For my own reference as much as anything):

Orange : Mephiston Red, Troll Slayer Orange, Fire Dragon Bright - Yriel Yellow optional

Grey : Mechanicus Standard Grey, Dawnstone, Celestra Grey - Nuln Oil wash optional

Blue : Kantor Blue, Macragge Blue, Altdorf Guard Blue

Base stone : The Fang, Russ Grey, Fenris Grey

Base sand : Mournfang Brown, Averland Sunset

Snow : Baking soda and PVA glue!

I'm going to try using Jokaero orange over Mephiston Red in future before Troll Slayer Orange as otherwise it takes several coats to go anywhere over red, so hopefully this will save me some time.

This is Lylyth, my warcaster.  I'm still experimenting with the skin tones I want to use on the Nyss (that's northern elves to the uninitiated) but here I've experimented with an orange base blending to a subtle light purple (I don't think you can tell!).  The clothes and cloak are orange but with a strong red base.  The armour is the chitin grey and as a spot colour I've used dark blue.  This wont come up much on the beasts but on infantry there's often too many elements too close together to just use 2 colours to my mind.

So big beasty time.  I was already planning ahead by this point and had bought a Legion heavy warbeast box which comes with the components to make 3 different gribbles.  Using magnets I would be able to use all of the options in different games, and with 2 torsos to work with, I had a lot of variety very quickly.  My wife pointed out that with the main arms and head removed, the torso actually looks like a cute dinosaur, the black ball joints are the eyes and he has a huge chibi style head so I had to take a shot to share this with you.

This is the Carnivean mode.  The 11 point monster is a bit of a poster child for the Legion so I was more than happy to have him as my first big warbeast.  The three shots I think give you a good impression of how the colour scheme translates and I think looks really effective.

Some shots from the front and rear.

Here's the Ravagore version, a simple head and upper arm swap and I have a different beast to use in my games, this one is an acid spitting monster (I have a flame/acid spurt effect to add to the mouth once its complete).

Finally there's the Scythean, a close combat specialist with huge shoulder spines for some reason.

Here's the battle box group shot, the basic starter force.  Its 13 points which is a lot for a battlebox and very effective in the game (unless you are playing against Mark's Stearforge).  I've played a lot of games at battlebox level, winning 4 out of 6.  At 15 and 25 points I've played 2 games each and just (and I mean really close in some cases) managed to win all 4.  I strongly suspect my luck is well overdue a bashing so I'm already at peace with an inevitable string of loses soon!

That more or less brings me up to date with my new Hordes army, the henceforth named Legion of Orangeblight.  The league expands up to 35 points which means I have a lot more things to paint and I hope to show these in my blog over the coming weeks.

Competition time!

This just leaves the competition.  Now I've chosen my colour scheme I've got 3 Genestealers floating around who are in need of a good home.  Post a comment below as a registered member of my blog (sorry you can't enter anonymously) if you'd like one - you can state a colour preference if you like and if there's more than 3 people interested, I'll pull names out of a hat.  Obviously you'll need to provide me with a postal address at some point - we'll sort that out privately once I announce the winners.  You've got until 5th August to post.

Making your own wargames scenery - swamps

So as promised previously, here's a post on making some swamps.

I've made these specifically for my Hordes Minion force, but the bigger templates and the technique can definitely be used for other games.  I am working on a bigger swamp for Malifaux and we'll see if that's a good size for games like Warhammer and 40k too.

After the jump you'll get to see, in best Blue Peter style, a step by step of one I made earlier.

Privateer Press: Journeyman League - The Conclusion

So the Warmahordes Journeyman League came to an end a few weeks ago but I've not had time to post on how things went, so here's my round up post.  I've been fiddling with photography again this post and given up trying to lay the pictures out better on Blogger for the time being so excuse the rather scattered look!

So after my last post on the subject I had one round left to play before the league finished.  I was also trying to get some more bits painted before it all ended.  At the end of the league, games played, games won and figures painted all counted for points!

My final game was 35 points again Brian, using his Khador.  Brian is the very model of the best sporting attitude and he pointed out a number of things I was about to do wrong (turn order and so on) which meant I was able to play my force to their very best.  I did manage to win as a result, but Brian was very generous to allow me to do so!

I managed to get one of my favourite gators painted up in time - Snapjaw.  This guy is a character warbeast who hangs around with a mini-warlock called Wrong Eye.  The pair of them make a reasonably effective team and look great on the table.  I think I especially like Snapjaw because he reminds me of Godzilla - look at the profile in the first picture above to see what I mean.

The final scores for the league meant that thanks to me persistently turning up and playing (8 games), sometimes winning (4 games) and painting a fair old amount (3 large warbeasts, 5 medium infantry and 1 small solo) I collected piles of hobby points. It turns out I received the largest amount of painting points and came top overall as a result!

After the league finished, finally my Bullsnapper came into stock.  I love this little guy so have painted him up to near completion quickly.  This dude is much brighter than my other gators as I seem him being quite a different species and also rather nippy.  The colour scheme I think works nicely.

5" template for the Swampy Pit spell Barnabas uses to great effect

Part of the way of gators play allows me to set up swamps on the tables before the games starts and also create temporary pits throughout the game.  I decided to make some scenery to represent these rather than just use templates.  I've not completed all of them yet and intend to do a post showing how I went about it, but for now here's one of the big pits I've made complete with tree stump, fetid pools, grass clumps and little mushrooms!  This is also the reason my painted gators aren't based yet, I am still figuring out the best way of achieving a decent water effect.

Finally for this post, a shot of Steve the Mad Wizard's tower from last time.  Now completed with flock to match Rob's modular table in 7th Heaven, looking good!

Privateer Press: Journeyman League

Big catch up blog alert!

5 weeks ago or so I signed up to a local Journeyman league.  There's quite a few local players of Privateer Press's Warmachine and Hordes games and this league is designed to introduce new players, encourage players to start new forces, play games and paint.

Its a standard format that Privateer support, not sure if there's any prizes, but we do get little icons and stars and stuff as we achieve various goals throughout the league.  I'm only a week away from the end now but thought I'd show some minis and reflect on how things have gone (plus I have a different blog post in mind for next week).

My Wrastler - first PP mini I built and painted

The first thing I had to do was decide which of the many forces in the game I wanted to play.  Warmachine and Hordes are set in the same world and share a set of common rules.  Warmachine deals largely with human factions of Warcasters and their Warjacks (magical steampunk mechs).  Hordes deals with a more varied set of races focused around Warlocks and their Warbeasts (giant animals and monsters).  I had a long and hard look at at everything both games had to offer and narrowed the choice down to about 3.  I may come back to these other close run forces in future, but for now I went with the Hordes based Minions faction.

My Ironback Spitter, a grumpy old turtle

Minions are an interesting choice.  They are largely ally units that other Horde (and to a more limited degree Warmachine) forces can draw upon to increase the variety in their units.  Within the book however is the option to base a force entirely on Minion units, with certain limitations, and go to war in their own right.  The two flavours of Minions are Gators and Pigs - and generally never the two shall mix.  I loved the look of the Gators and, PP claim you should play the figures you like, so my choice was made.

The Tango-ghost!  My feralgeist isn't the typical green colour...

So having made a choice I needed to understand how to play, what I needed to buy to join the league and how things would progress.  For most forces in the game there is a starter battle box, a nice £30ish get you up and running set made of plastic.  Typically this contains a Warcaster or Warlock and 2-3 Warjacks or Warbeasts.  There's 3 forces in the game that this isn't an option for, I picked one of them, typical!

My Gatorman Posse, possibly the best thing in my force

So talking to my local store owner Rob and looking over the league rules, despite there not being a box, there was a recommended starting force I should pick up.  This consists of Bloody Barnabas a fairly solid melee Warlock, a Wrastler (Mexican luchador inspired giant alligator) and an Ironback Spitter (giant spitting turtle).  A bit of online research on PP's own forums confirmed this was a good start so off I went.

The terrible trio

Now the plan with the league is that as the weeks progress so does the size of your force.  To start with things are a little unbalanced as the battle boxes aren't 100% the same points value or balanced, but they are pretty close (certainly better than a few other companies I could think of).  It also means that the core of your force is likely to be with you the entire length of the league unless you've already got a large selection of stuff sitting at home (in which case the league isn't really for you some would say).  For minions especially the battle box is a very solid start, there's a good chance at least 2 out of the 3 figures would be in any game I ever play.

With my little warband I played my first two games, a loss and a win in short order.  Very quickly it became apparent that Warmachine forces could not be dealt with on equal terms, my minions would have to use all of the dirty fighting tricks I could 'wrastle' up.

15 points of meanness

So after week 1 we moved to 15 points.  My battlebox came in at 11 points (each warlock and warcaster grants bonus points that can only be spent on warbeasts and warjacks to encourage more big nasties on the field) so I had 4 extra points of stuff to find.  Again internet research tempted by local experts (Mark, Pat and Bryan) suggested that a Bullsnapper (another alligator yay) was a good choice having a key ability that would improve my force.  Sadly 5 weeks in my Bullsnapper model still hasn't arrived so I am using my Bushido dragon (its the right base size) to fill in for now.

This left me with enough room to squeeze something small in.  I went for a feralgeist, it can bring my dead warbeasts back to unlife briefly to give something a good kick and has one or two other possible uses as well.  I only managed one game at this points level and it was a convincing defeat - again warmachine forces proving a real challenge to me.

25 points, even more gators

The next level of escalation was 25 points and this would last 2 weeks.  The second week would allow you to swap more things around should I wish to, but I was happy to stick with what I had to try and get to grips with it more.  I added a Gatorman Posse to my force, a really hard hitting infantry unit.  I dropped the feralgeist (yes he snuck in the photo but I didn't use him) and took a Croak Hunter too (little frog dude fits in nicely with all the other swampy creatures I feel).  At this level I had more success, beating both a hordes and a warmachine player.  In both cases the Gatormen were really stars and I am pleased they work so well, are nice models and one of the key reasons I chose Minions.

The whole gang at 35 points

The final level of the league is 35 points so to round things off I added Wrong Eye and Snapjaw.  This pair are a mini warlock and his pet warbeast and great figures to boot.  I also get to sneak the feralgeist back into the force legally now!  My first game at this level didn't go great, some mistakes with Snapjaw and once again the fires of Pat's Menoth causing me no end of trouble.  I have one more game to go so I'll see if I can put in a decent final performance.

I hate these things

Overall I feel I am very much still learning the game.  Like Malifaux there's a huge amount of active decisions in any turn and the warlocks and warcasters each player brings really changes how an otherwise identical force plays.  This can mean there's a lot of questions at the start of a game - I've seen a few cases of "I didn't know that was even possible" followed by horrible losses so I prefer to know what's coming even if I can't figure out how to get around it yet!

The end of the league means I get time to finish painting what I have and think about how I might expand my choices further.  I haven't actually finished any bases yet (I'm playing with swampy effects) and have only used Barnabas, there's 2 other legal warlocks I could use without really needing to change the rest of my force so they would be easy ways to get a lot more variety into my games without having to paint or pay for lots more.