Monday, 29 May 2017

WarhammerFest 2017: Part I - All The New Things

Pictured: The Forge World Seminar, 3 people taking photos
on their phones, and an ear from someone from
Blood of Kittens

So, this weekend I was at WarhammerFest 2017. On the Saturday I dived pretty much straight into the Forge World seminar once out of the queues. I wasn't taking notes, as the Warhammer Community site and various news blogs do a good enough job that I don't need to do a blow by blow, and can just experience it.

The seminar opened with the sad news of the loss of Alan Bligh. It must have been hard for those who knew him well, but they soldiered on and did their best to make the event an enjoyable experience for everyone.

There was little new information for Age of Sigmar from Forge World - the Khornate Dragon is basically done, but a decision was made to re-do the Khornate Lord, which has held it back a bit. There's now a plan to start a dedicated Age of Sigmar team within Forge World - the applications for the manager role closes today. If the Specialist Games team are anything to go by, we can expect a lot of awesome stuff once they've assembled their team.

40K wise, the "Fires of Cyraxus" book was delayed because it would have come out too close to 8th edition. There will be four "Index" books to cover the new rules for all the existing Forge World models - price point likely to be £15. They're also releasing the Chapter Master of the Blood Ravens and re-doing some of the Tau fighters that were a bit hard to assemble.

For Horus Heresy, it was mostly Sisters of Silence and Custodes, with a few teasers of "Angelus", the next Heresy book. The big news was that Heresy will be staying with 7th edition, and a "red book" of 7th edition rules for Heresy released soon-ish.


The licensing area had a whole bunch of cool stuff. Pictured was the game Doomwheel, which involves a sideways scrolling Doomwheel dodging obstacles and running over clan rats...

Also around was Dawn of War III, Mordheim: City of the Damned showing off a VR rig version of their game, Man O'War Corsair and Mordheim: Warband Skirmish. I got to try Warband Skirmish (and bought it) and also tried Corsair, and love it and plan on buying it. ;)


Back to the miniatures! Here's a new Primaris Marine in a size comparison with a traditional Marine. It gives you a good idea of how they'll fit into a force together if you were so inclined.


Meanwhile, here's a Primaris painted up as a Blood Raven, which is pretty awesome.


Sim and I got to get a quick test game of the new Warhammer 40,000. I played some Primaris Hellblasters, while Sim picked the Foetid Blight Drone. The game itself was a score draw, but we got a good idea of the new mechanic and had a bunch of fun.

From what we played, the new game is fun, plays quickly and should be pretty quick to get the hang of. Now we're both really looking forward to the new release.


And finally for today, I saw the new sprues for the 40K objectives that are being released at the same time. I was impressed by the technique of casting one sprue with both clear and opaque plastic, and tweeted about it. Sadly, it seems at least one rumour blog has since re-posted it without attribution, but these things seem to happen these days.

The technology isn't new - Gundam kits and similar have been doing this sort of thing for a little while. But it's exciting to see GW doing it, and realising what it will mean for canopies and similar in future kits.

Thursday, 25 May 2017

Spring Showdown III: Malifaux Battle Report: Collodi vs Asami Tanaka

Back at the start of May, I pottered down to Wayland Games for a Spring Showdown event run by the lovely Mike Marshall. I was even willing to brave the horror of Rail Replacement Bus Services for this, which is no small feat.

My first opponent was just starting to learn Asami Tanaka, although I believe he's not new to Ten Thunders. We were deploying on the Flanks, with the Strategy being Collect the Bounty (kill more important stuff each turn than your opponent), with a scheme choice of Claim Jump, Dig Their Graves, Leave Your Mark, Set Up, and Mark For Death.


I took Set Up on Asami and Dig Their Graves. The former required me to drop scheme markers close to Asami, while the latter required me to kill stuff near my scheme markers.

I started off the battle by swinging the Mysterious Emissary around to drop an awkward hazardous terrain marker on one side of the field to funnel all the nasty Oni down a narrow lane of approach on my right.


In return, I got a summoned giant spider demon in the face. This did not fill me with joy and cuddles, especially as Asami's summoned critters vanish quickly with an effect called Flicker, and I was really worried I'd nearly kill something only for it to vanish and me score no points.


I conveniently countered this by firing Teddy off into Asami, sort of forgetting about that entire "Set Up" business and focussing on trying to win the Bounties.


Collodi, meanwhile, tangled the annoying spider demon up in puppet strings and made it walk off in an awkward direction. I can't recall if I killed this one or it flickered out.


 Asami, meanwhile, wanted none of this Teddy nonsense, so used pushes to get out of the way while tiny puppets fought the horrible spider demon.


I got surprised by some nasty Oni getting summoned right in the centre of the board. Points were close, but I believe Asami was ahead.


Toshiro the Daimyo decided to interpose on Teddy to stop him getting to Asami, and a Red Joker on Teddy's damage flip resulted in the incredibly tough undead monstrosity getting torn into tiny, tiny pieces. In the dying moments of the turn, I'd managed to score a point in Collect the Bounty, bringing the score to a massive 2-2 draw.

With it having been a while since the game, I don't quite remember where all the points were scored, but this was a fun and challenging game that I was pretty happy with. I'm still making Malifaux mistakes, but fewer of them, and most of them are a "teaching moment" as well, which is making me a better player.

Monday, 22 May 2017

Inquisitor (54mm) at Dark Sphere


This weekend, I'd popped into Dark Sphere to pick up a couple of bits and bobs I'd ordered online a while ago and get a top up of white primer. As I was heading to the till, I noticed a very unusual game going on at the table by the door. I asked nicely, and they were kind enough to let me take a few photos.


Yup, it was Inquisitor - the full 54mm version! I was also quite pleased to see that a lot of the terrain they were using was the MDF stuff Sim had painted up for Dark Sphere recently.


(I believe the scenery is TT Combat, and a mix of their City and Sci Fi ranges.) I was really impressed with how well it managed to fit in with the 54 mm figures when it's intended for 28mm.


There were a lot of impressive figures to look at. I suspect this person is a little bit Radical / Chaos-y.


Then I saw this. At first glance, from this photo, it might not seem like much...


... until you see it next to some scenery and realise it's a 54mm scale scratch built Sentinel. The detail on this is simply breath taking.


And then the players "help" with "Oh, have you seen the Rhino?" And yeah, sure, it's a Razorback, but it's in 54mm scale, with an opening back hatch, interior lighting and headlights. Stuff like this really blows me away. It's an awesome bunch of hobby.

Tuesday, 16 May 2017

Painting Miss Ery (Teddy) for Malifaux


With Spring Showdown II coming up, I wanted to get my Teddy painted up to a reasonable standard. I decided I wanted to try and make it look like the example art on the card, which is a challenge I've not tried before.


I painted the Teddy separately to the base because I reckoned it would be much easier and quicker. Unfortunately, once I'd undercoated the model, I realised I'd missed a bunch of gaps. So, on goes the liquid green stuff while I sort the base out...


The base idea was to do the dark green that Malifaux's art background often uses. I used the Vallejo Sea Green as the base. The basic painting plan was a bone drybrush, then a green wash, light green drybrushes of various types, then a little bit of line highlighting. Oh, there was some Duck Egg Vallejo on the vegetation sections. This is the point at which I'd put the wash on.

If you look down at the finished base, you can see the extra detail I'd got from the extra greens to bring some nice subtle variation to the base.


The base coat for the main part of the Teddy was a Rhinox Hide base. It looks oddly gloss for a while.


I then layered on lighter browns and pale green blended in. I dropped some duck egg green into the patches.


The stuffing was an off white with a dark shade. The metal claws were Dark Star Tarnished Steel with a gloss black wash. I also tidied up the blending much more. I'm much happier with the lighter brown blends than the darker brown blends.


This is the finished base, with the black edge added in and the different tones of green blended in, and a little manual line highlighting on the chest bars and a couple of other places.


And finally, a finished Teddy. There's a few things I might go back and detail later, but he's definitely done for now. And ready in time for the Spring Showdown! He's not an exact match for the card art, but close enough that you can see what the intent was, which makes me pretty happy.

Monday, 1 May 2017

Infinity Battle Report: Bakunin vs Combined Army


With some new Infinity models assembled, I realised I had just enough models to put together a Bakunin Sectorial list and start learning about fire teams and all that fun stuff. I threw together a quick list and off I went.

And lo, did I encounter the Avatar. And I'd left a tiny gap where my Lizard TAG was visible.


The space on the right is where the Lizard had parked up. Bugger.


So the intention had been that the Lizard ran around shooting things while a defensive moderator link did it's thing. These are the old Moderator models - I picked them up with the new ones due as I will definitely be wanting to run a double sniper core fire team, and model variation is big and clever.


I needed to get a specialist up to the Combined's HVT, but there was an Umbra Hacker parked right next to it. So, I got to pull one of the great party tricks of Bakunin and fired a Pitcher up field and landed it right in the middle of a group of Remotes and a Hacker. Sadly, Zoe was only able to mildly inconvenience the Umbra, so that dream died pretty badly...


Still, there were comedy moments. My opponent ignored a combi rifle Moderator to make sure he killed the sniper. "So I need 1s, then?" There may have been some slight nerves as he took a double crit to the face. We took the Avatar out from it's position to stand in shame next to the dice. The Zero was not this close to an angry Avatar...


This was the line of fire from the Moderator to get the glorious shot of doom. He was then turned to mush in revenge, but there's a moral victory there, right?


The Avatar then ran away with an important gubbins to score lots of objective points...


While my Zero couldn't quite get the orders to score a single point for activating a console.

So, another thorough drubbing. But I was pretty pleased with how both the Pitcher and the Link Team went. I'm pretty sure that with a bit more practice, I'll be getting better. Which is good, as I've signed my Bakunin up to the HATE Infinity League...