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.

Malifaux Brawls

This weekend I ran an event at 7th Heaven Gamers focusing on larger scales Malifaux games.  The event was called the "Masquerade Brawl" as a knowing wink to the larger games being called Brawls and many of the players at the liking a bit of a dress up.  In all the excitement I didn't get photos of people in their assorted masks (Ian was in a Lucius mask and wig at one point) and in one case full steampunk cos-play (Emily was a heroine in the heat yesterday!).

Brawls are games where 2 masters can be used and typically larger amount of soulstones are available to hire crews.  We decided on 50 soul stones and below you can see the crews that turned up.

This is Mark's exceptional Arcanist crew.  This is more than 50ss but its all the figures he could potentially use during the game due to powerful abilities that allowed models to be summoned, combined or powered up into Avatar form.

Of particular note is the wonderful Avatar Hoffman model Mark has recently completed.

Described by Mark as a robot-dragon-spider he was very keen to get to use this guy in the game.

 Mark's opponent was Matt C using a combined Misaki and Yan-Lo crew, as Ten-Thunders.

Here's the Torakage Matt's been working on, its looking really nice.

On to the next table we had Emily's Jacob crew, playing as Ten Thunders.  He was joined at the last minute by Misaki (not shown here).  This represents all of Emily's painted figures, but the Thunder will be adding choice soon I'm told.

 Emily's opponent was Andy using Guild, with Peridta and Lucas joining forces to round up some varmits.

This is Jen's crew of Ten Thunders (clearly a popular choice!) again Misaki turning up, this time only 1 master but Von Schill was hired to help out.  The Freikorps are actually Simon's but its all a cunning plan to combine collections to give the most choice I'm told.

Here's my crew - Neverborn lead by Zoraida with Lilith turning up to help.  Most of these figs have been shown on the blog before, but the Waldgeists are new and finished, whereas Lilith and Zoraida's avatar are WIP.  I got to play as it wasn't a tournament with time limits, poor Jen had to put up with me answering rule queries but we did get a solid 3 turns in.

The final game going on saw a huge crew lead by Lucius and Lucas taking the the field as Guild controlled by Ian.

Facing them would be Matt K with his Arcanists, Mei-Feng, Rasputina and Kaeris (as a henchman) all turning up for a crew that was very polarised with extremely powerful models and really weak gamin and totem.

I wanted to show the epic table that Ian and Matt K were playing on, Rob spent 2 days making this Terra-clips masterpiece, its a great showcase for the game.  Featuring 2 levels of streets over about half the table and several multi-story buildings it has lots of interesting locations to play over and a nice water fountain feature provided by local game designer Tarran.

Here's another shot as the game kicked off - you can see it fits nicely on a 4'x4' table as Malifaux is played on a 3'x3' area, leaving space for cards, rules, counters etc. around the edge.

The final shot from the day highlights Mark having a ball with all the large models he could possibly get on the table.  Both Ramos and Hoffman have manifested as Avatars here, the Cophee Duet have combined, a peacekeeper is pitching in and, not to be left out, Matt C threw Izamu the Armour in for good measure.  Despite how it looks, Hoffman died shortly afterwards as Misaki is a beast in melee.

My oft hinted at competition is almost ready to be unveiled - I just need the weather to cool down long enough to complete a few things.  If you want in, please subscribe!

Time Travelling adventurers from Heresy

Wow, my post last week is now the most visited page on my blog - thanks to everyone who shared it and my new subscribers.  I do have a competition on the way, the prizes are now almost ready so please do subscribe to get a chance at winning!  On to the new stuff...

I've been sitting on this post for a little while as these figures were done as birthday presents for big Dr Who fans I know.  Now they are happily with their new owners I can share them.

Heresy Miniatures do a wide range of figures for a variety of genres and there's a few of the sci-fi range that with a bit research could be painted up to resemble certain pop culture icons.  I selected Dr Hugh and a Sharclon officer as suitable figures.

So here's Dr Hugh, complete with red sneakers.  Very pleased with this chap, looks better in real life but my ongoing battle with my camera aside hopefully you can see how this chap looks.  I've noticed that these photos are at the stage where I hadn't quite finished the base, but you get the idea.

Detail from behind.  A nice coat he has on, quite a lot of surface to play with if you like that sort of thing when painting.

This stout little chap is the Sharclon.  I'm really happy with the paint job on this and the sculpt itself is a masterpiece in all the right detail in the right places, the face is wonderful and you get a selection in the pack, including a helmeted version if you prefer that.

Based to roughly match Dr Hugh, these two figures have ended up in the same household after a couple of birthdays - so now they can face off or band together as the wibbly-wobbly timelines play out!

Twisted Allegiances : Malifaux Tournament

Last weekend I ran my second Mailfaux Tournament - another multiplayer extravaganza!

After the first event earlier this year the feedback was generally "more of the same" so I looked into what I could do.  Some lessons learnt from the first time round was to be more prepared and to remind people to turn up promptly!

With this in mind I worked with Rob, the shop manager to ensure we had all the schemes and strategies printed out and protected to give out to all the players as packs as they arrived.  I had registration sorted out using the store PC and I made sure I took photos of all the crews entering the painting this time around.

I arranged a few votes to determine some of the details of the event and one of the changes this time was to try out a few story encounters.  These took a fair bit of play testing and while the first encounter seemed reasonably well rounded, the second was problematic and on the day proved tough make much progress with in the short space of time we had available.  The details of the full event pack are here.

Anyway on to the eye candy.  Here's all the crews that entered the painted competition.  A huge thanks here to the sheer number of new players and crews that turned up as well as the longer in the tooth players (and their crews) who constantly support these events and games we arrange.

Molly's crew by Si - I love Molly and the crooligans here especially

Von Schill's crew by Big Simon, bought and painted in the last couple of months - the Orian mere hours since the paint dried!

Jacob's crew by Emily, painted in what I am calling a canvas style,
really interesting and striking effect, even more so in person

Jacob's crew by Steve, my old mate.  Recently returned to gaming and painting,
he's adding more detail to these as he gets chance

Zoraida's crew by Jason - its all frogs here with a really nice shared  palette
and great bases to bring the models together

Nicodeem by Matthew, an interesting mix of book 1 and 4 models
overshadowed by the huge and grim Killjoy

Perdita's crew by Andy - the selection grows as Andy leaves no
corner of the guild unexplored for recruits
(he married the proxy into the family in one game)

Finally we have our winner, Rob's Leviticus crew.
We have a rule at 7th Heaven - you can keep entering a crew  until you win -
Rob was narrowly pipped last event, but now he'll have to paint something new!

One thing I did forget to do was take shots of all the tables, I had spent a fair bit of time constructing a pile of terraclips buildings to help on the day.  Before the event started Rob, Steve and I built 5 tables in readiness, you can see hints of them in the crew shots above and there's a few shots I've stolen from Matt below of some games in progress.

Battle at the farm!  The noobies take on Rob - Rob suffers!

Its Jacob and Jacob vs Lucius and Mei Feng - my Oogie Boogie guest starring here.

A streets of Malifaux table - very pleased with this board.   The Tazos are markers!

So the day went really well, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, although once again time was the enemy. I'll have to consider how the sort this out for the next event, we'll certainly be doing more before Malifaux 2.0 hits officially.

The overall placings then were:

Best Painting: Rob
Best Sportsman: Jason
3rd Place: Jen (very narrowly pipping Ian on a technicality)
2nd Place: Matthew - for the second time just missing the top spot and...

1st Place: Big Simon - a stunning first place with a clear 2 point lead.  Newly into the game Simon is crushing his foes with the combination of Hulk Hogan moustache and giant leaping Iron Man suit.