Rival crews

I've been taking the odd snap of my opponent's crews as and when I remember to.  A couple of them I've shown before, but here's a collection of largely painted crews doing the rounds at the moment.  There are more crews in my local group so I'll try to remember to capture them as and when they appear.

First up is the Nicodeem crew from the local henchman Matthew.  These chaps were painted with a Mardi-Gras theme - Matthew has several versions of Nicodeem now.  Since this photo was taken Matthew has progressed his crew to include a totem, an avatar and several unpleasant minions I have yet to face, like Bette Noir.  I'll endeavour to get an updated shot once the show down is scheduled!

Next up is the Marcus crew belonging to Carl.  I'm facing this crew again this coming week so it'll be good to see how this has grown since these humble beginnings.  I know there's a lot more beasts that could potentially be turning up.  I especially like the bases on this crew.

This is Andy's Perdita crew.  Andy is very new to painting minis and it good to see him progressing and working on figures from various games.  Andy does have a fairly broad Malifaux guild collection so I hope to see more interesting combinations in the near future.  In the back ground you can see a swamp built using the guide I posted last year and painted by Rob the local store owner.

Largely considered to be the player to beat in the local area, Mark has been running Ramos recently, although he has a large collection of guild figures too.  There's some great light source painting here and bold schemes running across the figures.  Facing Avatar Ramos, the Coryphee duet and Lazarus in a single crew (roughly 35 soul stones here) was terrifying I can tell you.  I managed to take the Coryphee down sacrificing both my Stitched Togethers to achieve this.  Lazarus I managed to blast apart with concentrated Avatar Zoraida pins and needles power.  After this is was a case of stick to the strategies and schemes to pull off a very narrow win (7-6) and worry about the next time I face this pain train (or possibly Mei Feng now as Mark both owns that crew and the name fits better).

Finally for today we have Rob's crew, lead by Leviticus.  There's some great painting in here, the bright greens and pinks are very eye catching and the skin tone and highlights on the abominations/engine is unusual and effective.  An usual crew as they don't get to draw cards in the normal way, the focus is to get Leviticus to die as often as possible and return to life to reap the benefits. Rob's got an interesting collection of figures here, heading largely down the undead path to start, with Guild Autopsies and Punk Zombies.  There's a sneaky effigy in here too for some card manipulation tricks.  Rob's had some mixed luck with this crew, I was able to keep Leviticus from returning to life by dealing with his waifs (the colourful ladies) with my gunslinger and when all else failed, mind controlling Rusty Alice to finish the job.

Nightmare after Christmas

So I made a snowman - well snow sculpture anyway.

The subject matter might be escaping you - answers after the jump along with the miniature related goodness that inspired this endeavour...

Stitched Together

Well its been a while since I updated my blog!  For 2013 I am going to try to post smaller updates more often rather than trying to save up for the perfect, but far too long (and daunting to type), posts.

Looking at my last post the Malifaux hobby league had just started and a lot of games and hobby effort has been and gone since then.  I really enjoyed the league and did far better than I had anticipated - I'll hopefully come back to that in another post.

For today, here's the Stitched Togethers I am now the proud owner of.

These little critters are some of the more unpleasant characters in my Zoraida crew.  Zoraida can create all manner of evil dolls and bestow a mockery of life into them.  Based on Oogie Boogie from the Nightmare Before Christmas (they have abilities such as "Gamble your life" and are clearly little burlap sacks filled full of nasty) I love these figures so its a bonus that they look great and work extremely well in the game too. On this first little figure I extended his head a bit, adding the "pony tail" with some green stuff to make him look even more like Oogie.

This first sack of unpleasantness is mounted on a raised base that supposed to be a sewer pipe outlet, leaking some nice green ooze.  The figures are quite small but in game they are "height 2" which is average so larger bases help remind me and my opponent of this during play.  The small die was added to the base to again emphasise the gambling aspect of these guys, plus again they are Oogie's favourite toy in the film.

This second little chap is again mounted to add to his height.  This time on a sewer grate, he's just rolled a pair of dice and (after a little bump) managed a double 6...little cheat!

Anyway, short post was the plan, so there we go.

Return to Malifaux : Starting Zoraida crew

My ongoing enjoyment of Malifaux has gone up a notch the last couple of weeks.  My local gaming shop has kicked off a slow grow hobby league and I was keen to take part.  Stealing a bunch of ideas from the Warmachine slow grow league, Rob the shop owner, Matthew the local Wyrd henchman and I (the local OCD organiser and planner) came up with a hobby focused set of league rules.

The key driver behind the league is getting people to play lots of games of Malifaux, ideally with painted figures.  The format allows for an unlimited number of games to be played, by only 12 scores will count.  There's lots of fun achievements to earn points for which again focus on trying new things out rather than playing all out to win.  Avatars are encouraged, with bonus points for painting them and managing to manifest them.

Relegated to the shelf for the time being, they'll be back!

So with all these incentives floating about, I looked at my Kirai crew and decided to put her on hold for now.  I'm waiting for the new Storm of Shadows Ressers to be released to expand my undead, there's only one or two other figures I really want for Kirai.  This means from a hobby point of view there wasn't a lot to inspire me.  So it was time to pick another crew.

Zoraida the Hag, WIP, mostly just base and voodoo dolls to complete

I've picked up a Spawn Mother figure as I think the idea of a giant murloc is funny and I really like the miniature.  I also like the Silurid figures, so I guess a crew of fishmen was the next logical step.  Reading around on the Wyrd forums and PullmyFinger wiki it seemed that I could either go Marcus (and focus on beasts) or Zoraida the Hag.  My friend Carl was toying with Marcus, so that left me with the Swamp Witch.  As it turns out, I am the only Neverborn player representing so I am pleased I chose this crew.

Larry, Moe and Curly - the Silurids

As the league progresses I will able to change master, but I am not sure I will go that way, there's so many choices the Hag opens up that I am keen to stick with her and also try out the Avatar version.

My little voodoo doll

 The first two weeks of play are based on the starter boxes, with a 20 soul stone limit.  Some aren't great selections so we've allowed some changes, but for Zoraida its not a bad start at all.  I've used Bad Juju and 2 Silurids consistently - with the boxset coming with 25 SS of men, it was the only sensible choice really.  Zoraida can summon a voodoo doll totem for free during the game so that helps a bit.

Bad Juju WIP, with a bit of green stuff work to make him look a bit swampy thingy...

I've squeezed in a lot of games these two weeks while the crews are small to get a feel for my crew and give me some leeway if I can't make any of the later weeks.

Game 1 verses Arcanists (Marcus and Carl)

Carl's WIP crew - big and beastie!

This first game was my second ever with Zoraida and Carl's first with Marcus.  There was quite a lot of head scratching as we figured out what on earth we were doing.  The story behind the game seemed to be that Marcus had been encroaching onto the Bayou and Zoraida was going to claim it back.  Marcus had left all sorts of valuable things in the areas, some of which I wanted and others he needed to destroy.

The early game was dominated by bouncing silurids tagging every piece of terrain on the board and a devastatingly effective attack from Bad Juju dealing with Carl's Razorspiner Rattler.  I got over confident and left Zoraida somewhat in the open.  After Myranda turned into a huge bear, I obeyed her into charging Marcus thinking I had the game sewn up.  Turns out Marcus is more wily than that - deftly dodging the bear he covered a huge distance and took a lump out of the Hag.  This was followed up by a Waldgiest uprooting what seemed like half the table and attacking Zoraida with an entire forest.  Down to 3 wounds the Hag looked even worse than normal.

Fortunately I got the initiative on a pivotal turn and managed to repulse everything with the Hag, turn into a Raven and get out of dodge.  By now Myranda was dying from poison thanks to the voodoo doll and an obeyed Waldgiest charging her giant bear form.  The Silurids had finished their tour of the entire table and Bad Juju finally caught up with the Waldgeist.

End of the game result was a victory for me, but Marcus is a much more powerful master than I think most people think, now Carl knows he's going to be a lot more aggressive and the mistakes I made won't fly next time.

Game 2 verses Resurrectionists (Nicodeem and Matthew)

Dem Bones - Nicodeem pimped out

Matthew is the local henchman and crazed Nicodeem collector - he's got all 3 versions of him, 2 Mortimers and a whole mardi-gras of punk zombies.  For the hobby league Matthew started painting a new version of this crew with a Southern/Voodoo theme, so Nicodeem is Baron Samedi, Mortimer is Uncle Reemus (zip-a-dee-do-dah) and the punks are all kinds of day glow.

This game really worried me as Matthew could summon a lot of punk zombies if the cards were nice to him and I was unlucky enough to get Slaughter as the strategy.  On the plus side there was a fair amount of water on the table so my Silurids would be a bit more free to move than normal.  Matthew had destroy evidence, so yet again it looked like Zoraida's territory was being invaded and she was having none of it.

Fortunately between voodoo doll poison and the punk zombie ability 'self mutilate' the undead were falling over themselves time and again, so I was racking up a fair number of kills.  Towards the end of the game Matthew picked up the pace, paralysing Zoraida for a turn (even with will power 10!) and killing bad Juju.  Finding a nice safe high spot as a Raven, the Hag held on for the last couple of turns, about facing the nearest punks with obey spells and mugging poor Mortimer with both Silurids (zip-a-dee-do-ARGH).

End result was a solid victory for the Hag, but if the game had gone on much longer attrition would have seen off the Silurids and Matthew would have gained the last piece of evidence he needed to destroy.  A very different crew will be needed if I get slaughter again, maybe I should reflip the strategy if I get it, even at the cost of a soul stone to do so.

Game 3 verses Guild (Perdita and Andy)

(No picture yet!)

Andy has a number of Guild crews and is using the Ortegas for this league.  Again the Hag's territory was being disputed, this time I needed to claim the centre of the table.  Knowing how tough Perdita was I had to tread carefully here as I could lose any of my models in a single turn if I got into her sights.

Andy was unfortunate not to bring Francisco with him meaning he had to take Papa Loco.  Papa Loco has one of the lowest willpowers in the game which made the voodoo doll and my obey spell all too easy to use and he blew himself up almost immediately.   Already on the back foot, Andy struggled to get my men into his sights, using cover and movement tricks to their fullest I was able to avoid almost all of the pain he was threatening.  Poor Nino was eaten by fishmen, Santiago ran around confused by obey spells and Perdita was trying to get a bead on Zoraida.  Bad Juju appeared on Andy's board edge, claiming a scheme for me.  In the dying moments, the fishmen and Zoraid as a raven all flew right up to Perdita to contest the claim.

Andy had a tough game here and I really started appreciating just how good Silurids can be in this game.  I did however get a tough lesson in crews with high willpowers - once Papa Loco was dead it was close to impossible to tell any of the other Ortegas what to do.  I need to think about including minions of my own worth obeying, especially with the voodoo doll.  Hmm, what to take?

Game 4 verses Outcasts (Henchman Ophelia and Si)

(No picture yet)

Right on the heels of seeing off the Ortegas, the gremlin versions of the family turned up in my Bayou.  This was a smack down challenge Si and I were looking forward too.  Much like Papa Loco, Pere Ravage was an obvious voodoo doll target for me, so I was interested to see how this would go.

Si wrote the battle up already so here's the brilliantly composed report from Ophelia's perspective...

Ophelia LaCroix put her back up against the tree and stared about at the swirling mists of the swamp. This one, she'd admit, had not gone to plan. The swamp witch had been sending her scaly critters further into LaCroix territory and Ophelia had figgered this place was as good as any to send the message that she wasn't going to stand for it. The humans had tried to put up one of their stone buildings here and would you lookit, the thing had fallen down. What kind of idiot put a stone building in a swamp anyways? So this was where Ophelia decided to tell the old human woman where the line was. It was, whatsit, a cymbal.

Well, old Pere went racing off as soon as he caught sight of the witch and it sounded like he blew hisself up even faster'n usual. Ophelia had been pushing the boys forward to cover as much ground as possible when the fishy bastits appeared out of nowhere and that was enough to set everyone to shootin'. So much for the plan.

The swamp man about did it.

She'd been figgering once the fish-things keeled over - they got awful confused when you got 'em alone and just up and died half the time - she figgered then they'd be doing alright, but everyone hightails it when the swamp man shows up. She'd pumped a lot of lead at the thing from a ways off but once it came in close she knew she'd be hard pushed to do anything but run like a greased pig. That was when Rami blew the damn thing's head clean off, best shot she ever saw, 'course he went down pukin' after that but could have been the diet, there was some bad hog lately. 

Francois never had the sense to run so the fishman got riled up and beat him bloody, and Ophelia had had to shoot it to teach it a lesson. Then Raphael started runnin' at her with his gun up like he thought it was his time. Well, Ophelia wa'n't going to let Raphael run the family so when he stumbled to a stop a few yards off she just hollered at him to pack up his things and cool off, and off he stomped. Raphael could clear his head pretty well if he had some time to get his strength up, so she wasn't too worried 'bout that.

'Nother of those fish-beasts had come flyin' out of nowhere just now but he looked pretty damned sick and Ophelia reckoned he didn't have long to go. Ophelia was holding close to the tree for the time being and that was when the raven came cawin' down and settled on the one across the ways, and turned into the old crone. Who ever knew what humans were gonna do next?

Ophelia straightened her shoulders and pulled her hat down low. "This still ain't yer swamp, lady!" she yelled, "'cause this here is my damned tree!"

The mist closed in.

Si had only 2 gremlins left by the end and with the Reconnoitre strategy this just wasn't going to work.  We both picked stake a claim and eye for an eye which lead to some amusing calculations and bluffing as the game came to a close.  Although I only had the Hag left at the end of the game, it had very much gone my way.

In conclusion

The starter crew has been working far better for me than I had expected.  I am now looking forward to playing around with what's in my team, but Bad Juju feels like my lucky mascot at the moment.  Its up to 25 soul stones next couple of weeks and I can drop figures from the starter box.  I am tempted to just add another 5 point model for now and perhaps consider a bigger change at 30 stones - I need to get the Spawn Mother painted then I can consider an all fishman crew!

The invaded territory plot seems to be the theme of the league for me, being the only Neverborn player I am happy for the story to continue this way for now.  Perhaps I'll make her hut later for thematic effect!

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.

Sci-Fi Troopers from Mantic and some 40k action

Some weeks a lot of projects come together all at once - its one of those this post.  I've been playing some bits of the new edition of 40k and with so many space marine armies around in our local group I was keen to bring something not in powered armour to the table.  As I've posted previously I'm collecting a Grey Knights army based around Inquisition troops and various other sci-fi miniatures I am interested in.

Very recently I got a copy of Mantic's Project Pandora as I was keen to try the game as I had heard good things from Frontline Gamer and the designer himself.  My ulterior motive was to get some of Mantic's Corporation figures to see if they would be another good source of troopers for my slowly growing force.

The Status Quo guitar swing in full motion

So what do I make of these guys?  They are roughly the right size to go with my Heresy and Hasslefree troops, although somewhat more spindly (possibly more realistic but less fun!).  The figures come with very limited options - a few alternate heads and a few special weapons (which I elected not to use).  Not the end of the world in my experience, but even the repeated 3 fixed pose bodies are very similar meaning the overall look of the squad is very repetitive.

My favourite kind of trooper, one with no face

The figures arrived already removed from sprues so I'm not quite sure whether what comes in the game box is the same as what's in the squad box if you buy them separately.  I also discovered the plastic is somewhat different to the previous plastic Mantic used, superglue being a better choice with this stuff than liquid poly.

The guns I found really hard to paint for some reason, especially given the industrial polymer (or 'grey') look I am using on my guys.  They also look slightly bent to me - see the blue dude above.

One of these things is not like the others...

Like the rest of the troopers so far, I'm continuing the red and blue squad split.  I was originally planning to make each squad a different colour, but this limits the intermixing I can do - especially as I don't know what figures I will eventually put in the army overall.  Inquisition henchmen squads have a lot of options.

The powerfist equivalent thingy is pretty nice actually

Overall I didn't much enjoy painting this squad, the model's details are quite shallow which means most of the detail is sort of hinted at rather than nicely raised and accessible to paint - especially for rank and file troops (potentially as cheap as 3 points each) I'm not willing to spend a lot of time teasing out subtle details!  The guys do fit into the rest of my troopers reasonably well, especially when mixed in.  I don't think I'll be getting any more of these to increase my army size and I fear these chaps will long be the first casualties from a squad (which in the new rules means putting them in front...)

So moving on, and to prove I'm not unfairly judging these guys, its time to show off some other figures from my growing force.  I'm still experimenting with the best way to get photos of my figs (I will give up and get a lightbox at some point) so excuse the spam here!

First up and key to the selections I am making is Inquisitor Coteaz.  By taking this dude as my HQ I get to take henchmen as troops rather than elites, allowing me up to 6 squads!

This is the first Finecast figure I got from GW and despite a few issues (I had to sculpt a new finger, fix a toecap and a few bubbles) the detail is exceptional on this thing.  I've since varnished it, but for the first few games he was unprotected and no paint rubbed away so the material seems to be pretty good if you can get a good casting.  My Mannfred Von Carstein on foot is story for another day...

In contrast to my issues with the Mantic guys, this figure was sculpted to be painted.  Despite the density of the detail in places I had no trouble going to town on him and am very pleased with the final result.  I also changed the skin tone as a nice reference to Samuel L. Jackson in Star Wars - you'll notice the hammer has a purple (s)haft.

Next up is another Hasslefree figure, the Smudgester.  Despite being tiny (that's a 25mm base he's on) he's full of character and perfect for use as a Jokaero in my henchmen.  I quite like the orang-outangs of 40k but this guy is even cooler if you ask me.  He also reminds me a man-hound character from the Ravenor series of novels called Fyflank - we'll come back to his owner in future.  The Jokaero are also quite small and have some unique abilities in game, the key one illustrated by this figure is being able to fire one of a variety of very heavy weapons each turn so I am very happy with this proxy.  I've named him Frank in reference to Men In Black's little alien talking Pug dog.

Next up are a couple more ABC warriors (from Foundry) - I'm getting close to having them all done now.  This is Deadlock who despite being generally a nice model has a pretty awful sword blade - I might replace it at some point.  So aside from being armed with a spatula like weapon this is another figure I like a lot with a lot of cape to go to town painting.  In game so far I've used him as a lone Paladin - yes I've actually got a Grey Knight (proxy) in my Grey Knight army, don't worry there wont be many!  Turns out having a unit of one is quite a lot of fun and the rules aren't a bad match for Deadlock's character.

Here's Ro-Jaws.  He's a toilet cleaning bot in the stories, so I use him as a servitor, it sort of fits.  I've upgraded the heating unit in his head to a multi-melta so he can do more than just fling poop at my opponent.

Finally (usually for me) some sneak previews of future bits for this force.

First up is a Knight Paladin figure.  Based on a design a friend of mine came up with using pieces from all sorts of GW kits, this huge figure (that's a Dreadnought base) is a reference to the Epic games of yesteryear. I've decided to use this as a Dreadknight - if I ever get my Mongrol built I'll have 2 then!

To finish here's my first Chimera proxy.  Its a land train/ bull dozer thing from Ramshackle games. This was a bit of a pain to build but it looks great (and check out the prices) so I may just get several more when they reopen their store.  They are roughly the right size and again fit in with another character theme I am working towards in this force.

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!