4 corner hardcore match

Martin, Tom and I were set to play a small round robin tournament on Monday night with each of us playing both the others. However we got a fourth player (Dylan) and decided to play hardcore rules with all four of us on the same table at the corners. We put a castle ruin in the middle of the board as a way to earn victory points and went at it.



Tom headed for me, as did Dylan and i was lucky enough to charge Tom's Hunter with my Vengers and kill it. That made him cautious and he slowed down his advance. I withdrew from the fight happily, knowing that there was no forest between me and the cryx and a fight was inevitable.



The game now became Menoth vs. Cryx at one end and Menoth vs. Cygnar at the other.





I got the better of Dylan and managed to cast Brand of Heresy on Terminus and then charged my Castigator into him. It still took three hits, but I eventually eliminated the Lich Lord.

At the other end of the field Tom and Martin slugged it out and while they both did huge damage to each other, Martin's Avatar got the edge over Ol' Rowdy. When the turns were up, we counted up our victory points from each turn with a model within 3 inches of the ruin and then subtracted our lost VPs from it, giving us our final score.

Dylan was on -13, Tom on -9, martin on -5 and I had a grand total of 1. Yay me. Next time I probably would not want to do victory points that way.

Speed painting

We had a great game last night. Four players, hold the objective, hardcore. Toward the end when I was in the clear I started painting a miniature to demonstrate dry brushing to Dylan who was our Cryx player. I was originally just going to do the shoulders to demonstrate how it looks with steel and bronze, but Tom and Martin were using up their full seven minutes every turn, so I used four of those turns to completely speed paint the miniature. I am very happy with what is a 28 minute paint job. If I had access to it again I would clean it up a bit, but as is it is (IMHO) fine for the table.

Here is the photo. It is the Cryx Jack in the middle.

Vallejo paint issues

The first problem is that within a few months the name of the paint has rubbed off, so when referring to old painting notes I sometimes got stuck remembering which is which. I have remedied this by writing the name on the side of the bottle in marker.

The second and far more annoying problem is when the paint nib comes off inside the lid when you are opening it. In the picture the nib is off, but next to the lid.



Normally I notice when this happens, but a few times i have missed it and instead of squirting out a little blob of paint, I pour out a river. My latest misfortune was with my Dark Fleshtone. I poured out about a quarter of the bottle. What a waste.



I'm sure if i used other paints I would be able to compare problems. I remember how crap citadel paint used to be because of the lids gumming up. However at this point I only use Vallejo paint and overall I like it.

Playing Mk1 Warmachine

So to play against Hordes on Monday night I have to play Mk1 rules again. It has been a while since I have played the old rules and I wonder how much of Mk2 will bleed over accidentally. I am going to try and get Gravus painted by Monday so I can use him. He seems pretty cool and it would be nice to have used him Mk1 at least one time.

Having a blog

Sometimes having a blog makes me feel like I have to post even when there is little to post about. So here goes.

I have painted a few miniatures over the last couple of weeks, but none of them are good enough that I would want to put their pictures up here. I have bought quite a few reaper miniatures and am very happy with them, although none are even primed yet. I also bought an Ariadna starter box for Infinity. I'm not sure I will play Infinity, I just wanted some good looking science fiction soldiers and they fit the bill.

Reasons to fail the May painting challenge

I hardly ever go in for the painting challenges on any of the many forums that do them, but last week I decided to do one on www.rpg.net

The reason I don't do painting challenges is that I don't finish what I put in my vow. However it's not that I lack inspiration to paint, it's just that I paint things other than what I said I would. So here are some of the guys who this weekend have derailed my vow to paint High Exemplar Gravus and the Covenant of Menoth, amoungst other things.

This dwarf is made by Rackham (for the game Confrontation which apparently has died again) and is a really great sculpt. You can imagine what he is about to do.



I just realised I forgot to finish the edge of his shield, but I think I will leave it alone.



This next guy is a Cleric made by Reaper. He seems like a fairly standard D&D cleric and I almost let that stop me from buying him. I'm glad I didn't







I have finally started to paint eyes. i told my wife that and she asked,
"What did you used to do?"
"I just left them blank," I said.
"Creepy"

I am pretty happy with how they turned out. I followed Dr Faust's painting clinic, which an excellent resource on many things painting.

Knight of the Prophet

I bought this guy because I wanted to use his head on a Bane Knight conversion, but when I opened the Blister I decided I liked him. I wanted a scheme that took me away from my other minis and this is what I cam up with:



I was surfing the web looking for pictures of this guy once I had his base colours painted, because I wanted to see if other people were painting the hands as gloves or gauntlets. I found the official picture of him and to my surprise it was almost the exact same scheme as mine.



I am fairly happy with the way he came out, although I am not happy with the eyes, but I hardly ever both with eyes, so it's no surprise I am crap at them.



And one more picture because I am happy with the photography. I am finally get the hand of taking these pics.