Siege joins the painted minis

I took a break from painting Skorne to get some blue color back on my brush. Siege got the call and went under the brush for a few hours and here's how he came out. Out of everything, I'd say I'm most proud of the face. I'm not usually able to get that much detail. He has proper eyes and everything

Major Markus "Siege" Brisbane

Box o Cygnar!

We're having our first 50 point match today. I wanted to see if my magnetized army could fit in my Fallout lunchbox. Looks like they can!

Naaresh and Friends

My new iPhone friend and I (ProCamera seems to handle the phone's native contrast problems when trying to capture miniatures pretty well) took a few more pictures of the fully painted Naaresh with some buddies he likes to bloody the sand with.

The man himself. He likes striking from farther across the board than you think he should, taking lashes in the back and trading his own blood for power.

Everyone say DIE CRYX... I mean CHEESE! They're about 90% of the way there. I just need to finish some bases, then seal and dullcote the lot. Whether that comes BEFORE buying more models is highly doubtful.

I Finally Post!

I blame iPhone photography on my failure to post so far. It can't fight back so that's as good an excuse as any.

I was looking forward to one thing in Domination. Master Ascetic Naaresh. For me, he embodies my favorite aspects of Skorne. Aggressive, cruel, a little insane. Here is my stab at painting him.

I tried underpainting. Getting the light and dark in first, then putting on the color in thin glazes. I dont think I did it very well, the paint wasn't thin enough, but I still like it overall.

I've played two15 point games with him this week. My record is 1-1. It turns out that frail looking Cryxian Asphyxius isn't so frail. Oops.

Trollblood Impaler & Axer

Finished shots of my Impaler & Axer. Something to note, I did assemble the Axer incorrectly (his torso needs to be rotated about 15 degrees for the buckle to appear to be holding up the whelp satchel), but I did not really notice till I was just about done painting him. :/ Someday I am sure I am going to want another axer, so I will do him right then!

I still have one other impaler to paint (from the TB battlebox), so hopefully I can outdo my old one and show signs of leveling up! But overall, I am happy with these two buggers.

One of these characters always makes an appearance on my table. For Kith and Kriel!

Kriel Stone Bearer Unit

My KSB Unit work in progress. Need to wrap up all the details (scrolls, pouches etc...), clean up the faces and base them. But they are close!

Bloodtrackers! Ready for the table...

Finally!  Final touches on the spears tonight and finally ready for a coat of sealer means these girls are ready to go back in the bag.

My Dire Troll Mauler, an on-and-off relationship

Ah! My Dire Troll Mauler! He was the first mini I tried to paint. He was also the first mini I used to 'rush/charge' into my first Warmahordes game. I had no idea what I was doing, and he was pretty killed in one turn by a Circle Warpwolf (thanks Willem...lol). Happened again, the next game I used him, this time against a Carnivean (thank Tim). I was starting to not like this model in the least bit. Granted, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing in-game yet. So I decided to break up with my DT Mauler for a while. It quickly became an unhealthy relationship.

Then onto the painting relationship I developed with this Dire Troll...

He was the first model I tried painting. I hated the work done on him on my first pass, so I begrudgingly 'green-bathed' him. I fixed up whatever crap was left over from his bath, and set him aside to work on something else. I placed him on a speaker, had some crazy bass pumpin' one night, and he danced a jig towards the edge of the speaker (unbeknownst to me)...then fell off, shattering back into blister pack format :/ . In the process, I ended up losing a tooth and had to re-order that part form PP. Pinning did not save his arms from flying off, I had to re-glue, re-green stuff and wait for my tooth to come in during the PP back-order frenzy. Finally, I pieced him back together, and after finishing up my Janissa Stonetide, I tackled the Mauler again and asked it back out on a make-up date. I was determined to make this work. I learned a ton by pushing through the problems of my love/hate relationship with this mini, and finally arrived at something I really liked.

Since he got his fresh coat, new tooth and basing...he has torn up the battlefield. All he wanted was to look good, before he started pounding minis with his big meaty fists. We now have a great relationship, we snack on Warjack wrecks in fields of grass, make Whelp pies for comfort food and rage out all the time.

Wow...this post is kinda sick. haha...enjoy!

Janissa Stonetide

Starting to post some of my painted figures. First off, my Janissa Stonetide. This is the first time I tried working on a cool base, and only my 3rd painted mini. I took rocks from my yard, fractured them to appear sharp and placed them around Janissa, as if she is summoning them up from the earth!

Into the scary unknown...

This weekend I finally took the plunge into something i've been avoiding since I started all this mini painting business.  I even went so far as to spend a buncha cash on resin bases so i wouldnt have to put up with it.  Well...I finally bit the bullet and tried a few of the hundreds of crap i've been wanting to try but been too hesitant too.  

I picked up some liquitex resin sand, which works amazingly well as a ground filler.  Yes, I know it's just clear paint and sand...but it works goddammit.  the rocks were carves from a dense type of carving block that I picked up at the art store.  It's very easy to carve, which makes it great for stylized rocks.  It's a bit brittle, but porous so you can cover it with glue to strengthen it up a bit and the glue will soak right in.  So far so good, although much too much time on this first one.  Tomorrow, i'll finish up the base, do some cleanup on Kromac  himself, and seal it up so I can add grass.

Old guy

...and here's a guy I started a while ago.  Slightly less unfinished than the rest of um.  I'd like to go back and wrap this guy soon.  

New guy

 Yet another guy to add the the queue.  this guy kept staring at me so I finally gave him what he wanted.  Been looking forward to painting the lord of the feast for a while now.  Fantastic model, and an awesome theme makes for lots of fun painting.  I got to figure out dead skin on this guy...a nice challenge.

Paint rotation...

No matter how I try, nothing I paint is ever done in before I start noodling on the next thing, and even when they're "done" theres always more to i'd like to add.  So when I say I'm currently working on my Bloodtrackers, what I am really working on is all of this:

No model is ever done...sigh

Rawr!

I'm Willem and i'll be bringing you a dose of Orboros painting action.  Stay tuned...once I figure out how to take proper pictures with my crappy camera I'll start spamming my progress.  I have a terrible habit of getting things to 99% and never adding the final touches, so feel free to call me out.

In the pipeline at the moment is:

• Tharn Bloodtracker (uuuugghh details)
• Tharn Ravagers (80% there)
• Feral Warpwolf 
• Megalith (just started)
• Basing....EVERTHING.  

Welcome!

From 0 to 60: A year in Wargaming

Hello wargamers, painters, blog tourists, and random friends checking this out because a link popped up!

This is the first of hopefully many posts from a collection of Warmachine and Hordes players. I thought I would start us out by summarizing my first year as a wargamer. It is a chronicle of gaming on the cheap but still spending way too much money!

I first played High Elves in Warhammer Fantasy Battles. I probably spent $200 (most starting costs are higher but I saved some using ebay and taking advantage of unwanted halves of the 2 player starter box). I did lots of assembly and horrible paint jobs and played about 4 games total (against one Skaven opponent). The pace of the game is so slow. You have 2 big cool armies marching at each other but with the way movement works and such, it feels more like naval combat where big boats kind of lumber at each other, bump hulls and one eventually wins. Magic is interesting but too powerful and chaotic at the same time. A few dice rolls determine the win when you bring wizards. I abandoned WFB for 40k and my High Elves were exiled to The Closet

So 40k... I picked up probably $400 worth of Tyranids (the realistic minimum starting cost including the codex). I liked the game more from a rules standpoint. My armies moved better, looked cooler, took to the magnets in the bases better and thematically, 40k is fantastic. I really enjoyed my first games but a few things started to really bug me. The pace is very slow. My 1500 point games vs 10 year veterans still took 3 or more hours to complete. I also found that once my models were on the table I had very little in the way of real choices to make. Tyranid models have very specific strengths and weaknesses. They also have no in-game options (like the grenades, ammo choices, tactical choices that various Space Marines get to make). So once they're down, you've pretty much committed to a script to follow. You've already either won or lost, the only real variables are the dice, your opponent, and your own mistakes. I'd look across at the various space marine flavored enemies and see them shoot from 40 inches away, select bullet types, give tactical orders... meanwhile my guys just march across and chew face.

I was also frustrated by the lack of support from Games Workshop. List building is a difficult process made even more annoying by the lack of any assistance. I had a 3rd party simple piece of software (thats technically illegal thanks to GW's draconian property control) that really helped by having a simple GUI take me through army building. Included were all options and it gave me a print out with all of the (pages of) special rules for the models I have chosen have for quick reference.

Ultimately, I was having too little fun with the game to continue and started to stray and explore another system. Warmachine. Tyranids joined the High Elves in The Closet.

I came into Warmachine as Privateer Press was celebrating their 10 year anniversary with a big sale. They were selling bundles for armies that included the starter kit for the faction of your choice + tokens for your faction + the main rule-book for the game for about $60. Less than the price of JUST the rule-book for 40k. I and 6 other folks from the office, including people who had never played war-games before, jumped in on this deal and we all started putting things together. Of the 7 of us, 3 chose Hordes armies. In the past 4 months, we have all constructed and expanded our armies and have probably played a dozen games each.

I'm playing Cygnar. I have probably spent $500 so far and have a well rounded collection (including the starting bits of a new Skorne army)

We are all enjoying the game immensely. The rules are well built and allow for matches at a faster pace. One of the main differences I am enjoying is that your units themselves have no pre-game options but plenty of in-game options. For instance, my dual-chaingun wielding warjack, the Cyclone, has 2 ranged attack options. One is laying down covering fire, placing 2 AOE templates on the battlefield which will trigger on any unit that enters it during my opponent's turn. The other is straight gunning. Then there's the melee combat options. He could do a power slam to knock an opponent back into his buddies, doing lots of collateral damage. He could trample attack over a swarm of infantry. He could pick up an infantry and chuck him at his buddies. He could do the same to an enemy warjack and potentially crush some baddies. He could headbutt a guy to the ground and start wailing on him. Finally, he could just walk up and start pounding on him.

On top of a fun game, Privateer is much more liberal with its permissions than Games Workshop. People have created web and smartphone apps for army building, rule reference and collection management with the blessings of the company. I can sit in bed and poke away at my phone to noodle around with army ideas.

So for months we have been playing and we are all 7 still heavily interested in the game. Some of us are continuously buying new models as temptation becomes too great (me!). Some are getting deeper into the hobby aspects of building and painting. Some are staying fairly close to the starting kit but still playing with the rest of us every time, just taking expansion slowly and utterly ignoring the painting aspect. Everyone gets excited for game night and we all wish we could play more often and that is a rare amount of excitement and dedication from a jaded pack of gamers like us.

That includes the two 10+ year Warhammer vets. They miss 40k, but they agree that Warmachine is just more fun as a game.

In the coming days, I'll post images from that first year. Being the first year as a wargamer also makes it the first year as a miniature painter. I'll post it all, from the awful High Elf Sword Masters, to the full unit of Nihilators that I just finished and am quite proud of.

Stay tuned!