Work in Progress Wednesday - D&D and Pathfinder Characters

 

The last two Frameworks D&D characters are now undercoated and ready for paint. I'm a little annoyed about the human rogue as I managed to snip off one of the poison drips on her dagger getting it off the sprue, but I reckon it'll still look OK when painted.

My Gnoll Artificer is also ready for paint (although by the time this posts, he's got paint on him)...

3D printed Sci-fi Civilians

I've finished up the last of the sci-fi civilians I picked up at last year's Sheffield Infinity Satellite event. They were given out to use as civilian "HVTs" for the Rescue mission. They're not the best paint jobs I've ever done, but they're OK, and I'm happy to be done with them.

While these were the last of my "Contrast Underpainting Experiment", All but the skin tones were painted with the Monument Hobbies "Rogue Hobbies Signature Set". It was fun to mix some of the lessons from the Roman Lappat painting course I went on with the underpainting technique from the Ninjon YouTube channel.

I'm still not super getting on with a wet palette though, and am tempted to go back to a traditional one. I end up not getting my paint consistency right a lot using the wet palette, and perhaps mixing on a dry board will mean I'm happier with my paint consistency...

White Company Reinforcements

 

Those folks who know Infinity well may correctly identify that these models aren't available in White Company... These are models that can be taken by NA2 in the Reinforcements option - Contracted Backup.

From left to right, we have Miranda Ashcroft, Lucian Sforza, a Wardriver and a Monstrucker. I've not played Reinforcements yet, but I'm curious to see how it plays in future.

Little jobs and repairs

 

My goal this month is to paint up this gnoll artificer from Bifrost Miniatures that I'm planning on using as a gnoll wizard in Pathfinder. On a whim, I decided to continue to use the MDF base he was supplied with rather than switching to the plastic bases I normally use.

I got him glued to his base and threw some Krautcover Common Earth (Dark) down to texture it. I've also finished assembling the last of the two Wizkids Frameworks adventurers I picked up in January. I'll get these all undercoated as soon as possible.

I'm going to send this Triphammer from TAG Raid off to Thunderbrush Studio shortly. Because it comes with an integrated base, I've done a little basing work to make it fit in with the rest of my NA2 forces.

I cut a chunk of a 3D printed base from Monstrous Makings and glued it onto the base in line with the base edge. I also added a small brass etch grate from Etchmaster to add a little more detail.

I've also done a whole bunch of repairs. Here's two Daturazi who'd lost their pony tails.

Now with their hair back to its full magnificent length, these can go back in their storage box for now. You can also see a Fast Panda and a Miranda Ashcroft who'd lost arms who got fixed without getting a before and after photo...

So, quite a few repairs done here - the Raicho TAG, the errant Daturazi pony tails, and an Oznat whose head had tried to make a break for it. I also assembled the Morat Vanguard Sniper who'd missed an assembly batch because of a missing arm. It was surprisingly easy to do, so I might look to assemble a few more Infinity figures myself in the future...

40K Reclamation of Orberus Crusade - The Defence of Python IV

 

I've signed up for a Crusade campaign at my club, Hackney Area Tabletop Enthusiasts. We were slightly distracted by our usual venue, Bethnal Green Working Men's Club, being closed for some renovations. So, my opponent and I booked a table at The Arcanist's Tavern.

The Arcanist's Tavern is a new venue that has a few wargaming tables, a few D&D tables, and some tables for board games. They serve food and drink and I will definitely be going again.

I'm continuing the narrative of my old Astra Militarum, as the Tallarn XVI, fed up of constant victimisation by dubious Inquisitors, went to hide out on a Necron held planet. To avoid consequences, they've drawn an extra I onto the unit insignia to masquerade as the Tallarn XVII. Hiding among the mind shackled Guard, they found themselves under attack by another Guard regiment believing them working for the Necrons.

My force has quite a lot of tanks for its size, and my opponent was running a massive wave of infantry guard. The mission narrative was that we were fighting under horrible Necron pylons, so you had to try and hold territory and pass battleshock tests near the objectives.

The infantry advanced towards the Tallarn lines using the buildings and ruins as cover. Their lasguns started off outranged as artillery and tank shells took some pretty heavy chunks out of of their lines, but there were still a huge number closing in...

A large Cadian squad turned the corner to advance on the objective I was guarding with a Hellhound...

And a savvy Inferno Cannon gunner pulled off an overwatch shot to absolutely ruin the day of the squad in question...

That absolutely terrified the infantry guard and they poured all their fire into the Hellhound, desperately trying to take it out. It ended up holding together on a single wound due to a round of very lucky armour save.

Even a charge into the Hellhound didn't manage to take it out!

The Hellhound burned the attacking infantry to a crisp, but left a single officer alive. My nearby infantry squad charged in and cut him down. In turn, the Hellhound was finally taken out, while the infantry were badly shot up.

I needed to pass a Battleshock test to score . . . and completely failed to. I'd three different sources of rerolls, but could only use one, and just rolled absolute garbage. I could have auto-passed, but thought I'd be fine with the reroll and wanted to save my command point... The Commissar could end the Battleshock by shooting a surviving Guardsman, but that didn't count for the purposes of scoring . . . oh well.

Meanwhile, my Manticore and Leman Russ Executioner smushed a guard squad to a fine paste. The Enginseer survived and ducked behind a building to start looting Blackstone shards. With experience for kills, and narratively, wanting to please the local Necrons who were tolerating our existence, I lobbed a barrage of Storm Eagle rockets onto the poor Enginseer.

Meanwhile, a tide of Catachan crashed into my other infantry squad.

The Demolisher drove off to get blown up elsewhere, but the psyker stayed alive, cutting down Catachan left and right, but ending the fight in a bloody stalemate.

The Executioner got charged, but there just wasn't quite enough violence to take it out before the battle was over - but the loyal Guard had taken the field, winning the game overall 45-5...

White Company Expansion

 

I got another batch of White Company back from Tesseract Miniature Studios. First up is the Guija, the Yu Jing TAG that White Company has access to. It's a pretty standard TAG, with the advantage of Super Jump, to allow it to get some good firing angles.

I've not tried using the Guija with White Company yet. It's a little pricey, so using it would mean using less Heavy Infantry and other expensive pieces. It'll be interesting to see what compromises I need to make to make it work.

I've also got the Jujak box painted up. These Heavy Infantry pair with the ORC Troops to form fireteams. They have a slightly different profile to the ORCs, so you have a good opportunity to mix and match for the skill set you're after.

Finally, there's a few individual pieces. First there's the production model of John Hawkwood, the leader of White Company. I already have the limited figure of him painted up from Defiance. I've got two as White Company has a Holomask profile so I can deploy two "Hawkwoods". In the middle is a Beasthunter from TAG Raid. White Company can take two, and I also have an Ariadna Spec Ops I'm using for the other one. Finally, there's a Nokk Spitfire, who is a midfield piece who doesn't have Camouflage - its an aggressive attack piece that's quite fragile and needs supporting with other midfield pieces to prevent it being take out before it can attack. 

Infinity Battle Report: Firefight, Qapu Khalqi vs Imperial Service

 

At HATE the other week, we had a visitor over from the US. He hadn't managed to bring an army over, so some of the club members got together to loan him a list. They put him together an Imperial Service list with three Su-Jian. These are very powerful transforming robot minatures where you usually take one, or maybe two. Three is very very silly.

Meanwhile, knowing that our visitor hadn't played in a good while, and thinking through the painted factions I had lying around, I decided to break out the Qapu Khalqi. I'd been watching some Rob Shepherd videos where he talked about Qapu Khalqi and I wanted to play around with the list building a little bit.

Because Qapu Khalqi can run two Haris links and a Core link, I decided to run with that. The first Haris used an Azra'il as an attack piece, a Druze link because I wanted a linked Pitcher, and then a Ghulam link. I hid my Lieutenant by having a Hafza pretend to be a Druze E/M Grenade Launcher.

Wait, I think this list is wrong. I swapped out the Druze HMG for an Odalisque Spitfire to upgrade the Druze Killer Hacker to a Hacker... Can't work out where I put the final list, though...

We picked Firefight as a nice simple mission, so we needed to shoot up each other's models, and hunt down Lieutenants, and score three random Classified missions.

I started off by dropping a Yuan Yuan behind one of the three Su-Jian and used smoke to drop a big ol' Chain Rifle template over a few targets. In this case I made the mistake of catching a Kuang Shi in the blast, which meant it shot back blindly through the smoke and took out the Yuan Yuan before it could do more damage.

The Azra'il went to try and take out a Su-Jian that was out on ARO, but a couple of unlucky rolls and taking a couple of hits from Panzerfausts, it ended up unconscious, then Rouhani had to run over and heal it up.

I left my Druze / Odalisque link a little too far forward, and a Motorised Bounty Hunter Duo with a Su-Jian ran up and smushed most of the link with a Chain Colt.

One of the Su-Jian then catapulted forward and shot up the Hafza, but I was incredibly lucky and survived the attack. I then had to bring my Azra'il around and shot the Su-Jian down.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief at this point as the mission scores additional points for killing enemy Lieutenants...

Another Su-Jian made it up the table and managed to smush the Total Reaction remote, but in turn got shot down...

I was desperately throwing models forward to try and survive the Su-Jian. I managed to get Rouhani into base to base with it to score a Classified objective.

The Yu Jing WarCor ran forward to take something from the panoply to try and score some points for the mission.

My remaining Al Hawwa had scored a Sabotage mission, but hadn't been able to re-camouflage, so ended up getting picked off. However, it wasn't enough to swing the the scoring around and I managed to squeak the win...

Plans for May

 

I didn't get any hobby done in April as I spent my free time on tidying up in the hobby room or LARPing. There are piles of half assembled projects scattered over the workbench. I'm keen to get them tidied up and sorted out.

I'm at UK Games Expo at the end of the month and have signed up to a couple of Pathfinder Games I want to take a character to, so I'm aiming to get this Gnoll wizard painted up in time. I don't want to start many new projects with so many half done things on the desk, but as long as I keep it to one model, I should be fine...

Infinity Battle Report: Firefight: White Company vs Torchlight Brigade

 

As I was pottering about the Interwebs last month, my friend RattlerNXT from the US mentioned he was in the UK for a few days, and was looking for games. I originally challenged him to a game of Resilience Operations, but we didn't have two decks of cards needed, so decided instead to go for a game of Firefight.

I was running White Company, while RattlerNXT was running Torchlight (although with proxies as the models hadn't arrived before he left)...

I opened the game by dropping a Tiger Soldier down behind Torchlights lines and opening fire on the Silverstar Prime - but sadly wasn't able to get through the armour.

I managed to reveal one of the Moonraker "Forward Remotes" that are basically Regular robot Libertos miniatures. I used a Pitcher to get it into my hacking network and Immobilised it.

My ORC Feuerbach got a bit unlucky trying to clear a Beasthunter, and wasn't able to withdraw very far, so I left it out as an ARO piece instead. Sadly, against Torchlight firepower, he didn't last very long!

My total reaction remote was swiftly taken out...

And the Silverstar Prime was able to loot a Panoply on top of everything else!

The second Moonraker went after my Karhu, took him down, but got too close to my Repeater network, getting isolated... 

I was able to get my Lieutenant to take out the Moonraker to let my Kaplan Doctor get the Karhu up for a classified. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough orders to get the Lieutenant particularly well hidden, and a Nightshade was able to get behind them and take them out, leaving RattlerNXT with the win.

It was good to see RattlerNXT again after I first met him in Mallorca at the EIC tournament. Hopefully I'll manage to make it over to the US for a tournament over there at some point. In the meantime, if you're an Infinity player visiting the UK and are looking for a game, don't hesitate to get in touch, and I'll try and give you a game!

Product Review: Dungeons and Lasers PrismaCast Pre-Painted Dwarven Mine

 

While I was clipping the pre-painted Dungeons & Lasers scenery out from the sprue, I thought I'd write a short review. There wasn't quite enough space to lay everything out, but hopefully this will get you enough of an idea of what you get.

The painting quality is really good - someone's hand painted everything, which has then been scanned and painted on the sprue. This is a better quality paint than you could get for the money if you bought it unpainted.

You get six sprues like this - four painted with the centre of the floor panels brown, with another two with the centre of the floor painted blue. This gives you some variation - you could have it not matter, or have the water be deeper and inhibit movement.

This means you've got 72 squares of floor tiles that can be used as corridors or rooms, and each of the six sprues has a door, two torches, a free standing lamp on a stand, four short walls and one long wall. That gives you a bunch of flexibility and plenty to make a small encounter room. For a larger encounter or quest I'd be tempted to get somewhere between two and four sets if funds allowed.

The Dwarven Mine set wasn't designed for Prismacast, so there are spots where it falls down a little. Obviously, they can't paint anywhere that the sprue connects to the miniature. There's also a few spots of mould lines that are unpainted. They've put the base material as a dark brown plastic so it mostly gets away with it, but there's a few places where it's a little more obvious when you look closely.

The free standing lantern poles are the most obvious. There should really be, you know, light there! But the quality line is far, far higher than the Wizkids pre-painted models, so if that's your line, you'd definitely be fine.

So the technology is clever, but at least for this set that wasn't designed for it, there's limitations that a hand painted set would surpass. It's good for the money but not perfect, so if you want it perfectly, you'd need to get the unpainted and get it done the old fashioned way. But for the money, the pre-painted option is very very good and will get painted scenery on your RPG tables very quickly.