Friday 31 May 2019

WarhammerFest: Contrast Paints


If you hadn't heard already, Games Workshop is bringing out a new range of paints, called "Contrast Paints". The basic concept of them is that they are higher pigment not quite washes that can paint a model in a single coat over a white undercoat. Games Workshop is keen to push these, and has even created a new paint website to explain it all.


These paints are obviously super useful for anyone who's starting out, or who wants to get an army done in a hurry to a basic standard. But they're not restricted to that. This is an example Stormcast (I think from Warhammer Underworlds) that has been painted in contrast paint, with a simple edge highlight over the top. While clearly done by a skilled painter, we shouldn't be writing these off as just for the newer folk.


This Nurgle Plague Marine, however, is just contrast paints and nothing else. That's pretty exciting for me as it's clearly done to quite a good standard, and should really speed up painting.


Meanwhile, here's a Chainrasp who had a zenithal undercoat before the contrast paints were applied. There's going to be a lot of cool and interesting techniques to discover with these, as they're a new tool for the arsenal.


There were some paint stations where you could try out the new paints yourself with a figure they supplied. I picked possibly one of my favourite Stormcast models of all time. There are two new undercoats. Both off white (for better coverage) one bone and one grey - Wraithbone and Grey Seer, respectively.


I tried out the yellow on the helmet first. Bluntly, it's great and sneaky wizardry that I resent not having had access to earlier.


I wasn't as much of a fan of this dark blue, but look at how thick you need to put it on to get it to work right. It dries thin without obscuring details, though. They did indicate that it will not be as robust as their existing range so it'll be worth giving it a coat of varnish or two - and they're also updating their varnish range, conveniently...


So, here's where I ran out of time. I tried some wet blending and playing around, relatively unsuccessfully. You likely want to treat them like watercolours, and paint light to dark colours as you go. There's a base coat that matches the undercoat if you screw something up, but we didn't have any available to play around with on the day.


I painted the shield in the new "Snakebite Leather" - a throwback name some people will remember. It's not exactly the same but I co-incidentally utterly love what it does.


I keep looking at that cloak thinking that it will just pop with a little bit of dry-brushing and maybe a little highlight. But for a first pass, gaming standard piece, it's good.


Here you can see where a couple of attempts at blending have gone wrong, or where over-paint has happened. It's remarkably easy to do, so you'll want to be super precise with these new paints, or you'll have to do a lot more work correcting them. These are definitely a case of "more haste, less speed".

All in all, I'm super excited for these new paints. I think they're going to massively help with me getting more models painted, and I want to spend a bunch of time learning what they can and can't do. I'm super stoked to get the painting desk operational again!

Wednesday 29 May 2019

Wednesday Night HATE


While I was waiting for my opponent to show up the other week, I thought I'd take a few quick photos of the range of games being played at HATE on a typical weeknight.

Here, a game of Necromunda is being set up.


Then there's a game of Age of Sigmar starting up. I think this Hedonites of Slaanesh against some form of Aelves.


One of our long standing Infinity boards, in its natural state of having tokens all over the place.


A bunch of players were playing a big game of 40K with all sorts of cool stuff going on.


There's quite a few Infinity players at the club....


And, to finish up, a game of Bolt Action being set up for the current club campaign.

As you can see, there's a whole range of different games played on any given night, not just the Infinity I usually post!

Monday 27 May 2019

Learning Necromunda


A while back, I managed to pick up a small painted Orlock gang for Necromunda, bundled with the Orlock gang cards which were otherwise out of stock. Coincidentally, shortly after that, the HATE Necromunda group started a new campaign, and I thought it would be rude not to.

Learning from their last campaign, where people playing tons quickly overtook those who only played a bit, there were two campaigns this time - one with the keeners, in the North map, and then a campaign for newer people or those with less time, where each cycle was limited to only a couple of games set in the South.


I enthusiastically challenged someone based on looking at the map and deciding which direction I wanted to go in, meaning I was attacking "The Techy People" Van Saar for their Stinger Mould Sprawl. It was our first game for both of us, so we probably made a ton of mistakes.


For example, my advancing "Toast" way too far forward on his own so he ended up getting shot up and spending most of the fight lying on his back trying to hold his insides in.


The close quarters of the Zone Mortalis board really favoured the Orlocks over the Van Saars with the weapons we'd brought on the day. While a tunnel fight was perhaps sensible for being easy to learn, it wasn't the greatest for a balanced game between a short ranged shooty gang and a long ranged shooty gang.


The paperwork seems pretty onerous for the campaign, but I suspect it will get easier over time. It certainly seems great fun, but best if you're not going for a single competitive game - one unlucky roll could lead to the gang bottling out super early on and feeling unsatisfied.

Rather, this suits well for a narrative campaign, where a short exchange of fire leading to one gang losing their nerve and pegging it isn't unreasonable. Rather, it's part of the ebb and flow of the action. I definitely enjoyed it and am looking forward to my next game.

In the end, we'd both had a ganger die and I'd captured one of their champions. I'm not selling them to the Guilders straight away - they'll get a chance to manage a Rescue first - so they'll get a chance to get my gang back soon enough!

Monday 20 May 2019

Where have you been?


Well, mostly, I was at WarhammerFest last weekend, and while I had the Monday afterwards off work, I spent most of it tidying around the flat. I still don't have a working hobby desk, and there's tons to be done.


This is still the state of the hobby room, so I'll be trying to up the pace of sorting things a little from here.

On the hobby front, the Firestorm tournament with Dahshat Company went super well, so I'm looking forward to getting into them more. I've tried a game of Necromunda, that I really enjoyed, although I'd forgotten quite how much paperwork was involved! I'm also starting to settle on playing Skaven in Age of Sigmar and having more than a little bit of a clear out of abandoned projects...

Monday 6 May 2019

Salute: Dark Sphere's New Tables


It's back into LARP season so I've been busy with that, but I found a couple of photos of some tables Dark Sphere had at Salute. This first one was from a concept by Andy Miller. It's intended for Malifaux, but is a great Dali inspired board.


The second board was a fully Andy Miller effort, with a giant skeleton and loads of weird mushrooms. There was a huge number of daemons fighting over the board, and it looked really cool.

Hope folk like these and maybe they'll give you some terrain inspiration yourselves.