Heralds Winning Streak Over!

So yeah, the winning streak of the Heralds of Osiris finally ended on Tuesday evening. After 5 wins in the league, I could only manage a tie against the Orc foe.

This game was going to be tough on me. Khemri and slow, and have basically no passing game. Orcs are also slow, and like to play the grinding game. Generally when I play, I want my opponent to score quickly or prevent them from scoring at all. That way I can grind for 5-6 turns if they score quickly, or can take my time in the 2nd half to score and win 1-0.

Unfortunately, it was 1-0 down at the start of the 2nd half. I was having great luck, smashing the Orcs off their feet. Sacked the ball carrier, and went to grab the ball... and couldn't pick it up. Could've been a 2-0 win. However, his luck finally showed up, and he managed to get the ball well into my half with 1 turn left. I sacked his ball carrier, and it unfortunately scattered onto a Skeleton. A 1 dice blitz, dodge, pickup in the rain and 2 go for it's later and he had scored.

2nd Half was basically me grinding my way down the pitch knocking his guys off their feet again. Scored on the 6th turn, and managed to hold him off for the remaining 3 turns.

Very tough game. I'm happy with the result (Except the 10k winnings, terrible) but I know it could've been better. So my winning streak has been foiled, I've now had 2 touchdowns scored against me, and my position at the top of the table comprimised! Hopefully I get back on my feet next week and manage a win.

Tale of X Painters Update

So, here's my second update this Sunday afternoon.

As mentioned previously, things have got a bit haphazard with the Champions Online beta coming out. This last week of August is extremely busy, with lots of stuff needing to be done by the end of the week.

First I've got Southern Shrikebowl on this weekend. That means I need my Khemri team I'm taking in an acceptable state, as I really wanted to get them done for Eucbowl but didn't want to rush them. I won't rush them this time either, but I'd like to at least have the basic colours and wash done on all models.

I've got to get my Paymaster done for the Dogs of War Online Golden Pike 2 competition. He's also for the Tale of Fantasy painters. He is no problem, in fact as I type, he's almost complete! Just feathers and boots to finish!

I have to finish Kroq-Gar for the Pyramid Vault competition. This is the real tough one, as I don't have much motivation to paint him because he requires a lot of attention. I really need to do it though (Since I'm the one who's been promoting this one as such a good idea and all! It would be fairly bad if I myself didn't manage to enter).

And then of course, the 2 Tales on top of that. The Marksmen of Miragliano are within working distance of the goal. It's realy just some boots, hands and crossbows remaining. They're just taking a back seat for now, as I'll easily be able to do them I can just do them a day or two into August.

The Marines however... I really hope to get them done is all I'll say. I put a lot of effort into the one I'll be showing a little further into this post. The red has about 5 layers, while the blacks are about 3. That's a lot of work, but I think it's very worthwhile! We'll see how things go, I should be able to focus a lot better after this week is over.

And here are the pictures.

First up, you can see my Paymaster is almost complete! At the time of taking, the hands, feathers, staff and boots are unfinished. Since then the hands and the staff are done, and the boots are being worked on. Not sure what to do about the feathers yet, I'd like them to stand out so he stands out more.

Here you can see my first Blood Angel I've painted in a long time. He's not complete obviously! The Bolter needs to be painted as the firstmost priority. Then I still need to do the Blood Angels emblem and company symbol. There's also the backpack. Still he looks quite nice, and I'm pleased with how he has turned out.

In other news, a few things arrived last week, as well as a few more things to come. My package arrived from America, containing a fair few things for me! First and possibly most importantly, the Cursed Company! I managed to snag 6 blisters + the Command for a fairly reasonable price! Very awesome, as apparently they go for zonks on ebay. I also have ideas on how to increase the size of the regiment using plastic figures.

Also included, were 4 blisters of Bugmans Rangers + the Command Blister. I have a Bugman figure as well, so these will be some mercenary Dwarves in my army! They'll be a smallish sized unit of Dwarves with Great Weapons, should be cool.

I also purchased a random pile, that had a painted Borgio the Besieger model without horse in it. That was pretty much the only reason I got this bunch (There are a few other cool models in it as well though). He'll need to be stripped, but I'm glad I managed to get my hands on him.

In addition there were some random bits and pieces. I snagged an old metal Amber Wizard to use as a Beasts Wizard, an Imperial Noble who looks dashing and cool. The Ice Queen model I've been after and got that, not necessarily for my Dogs of War though.

I got a handfull of Long Drong Slayer Pirates as well in another purchase, 6 of them in total. My brother has 9 of his that he may give to me, or I may get some in an auction off ebay (But not fussed either way).

Still to come, I've got 2 boxes of Leopolds Leopard Company for the cost of 1! Very nice. 3 of them won't be useable, but I can live with having to purchase a blister down the track.

I also bits ordered some more stuff. Got a variety of High Elf bits, so I can in turn make an Asarnil on foot if he ever gets Deathfang shot out from under neath him. I like to have unmounted versions of guys that can have their mounts killed, just in case!

Phew, that's a long post. But that's it for now, more news from me as I get things done!

Bloodbowl Update

So, after beating some High Elves senseless last night (There were very few left on the pitch compared to a full steam-rolling Khemri team), I remembered that I hadn't actually posted pictures of my Khemri in a while. In fact, I have made a fair amount of progress on them, so much that when checking a previous picture... I notice that I didn't even have pictures of 2 Skeletons that have been finished for like... ages. Unfortunately, noticed that after taking photo's, so probably won't see them for a while (Probably until the group shot at the end of the long road!).

So here's some pictures of my Bloodbowl stuff.

These models aren't finished. I still need to work on the brown wrappings and paint their bases. They turned out fairly well I think, I'm definately glad I chose this colour scheme.
This is a Bloodweiser Babe that was commissioned by a couple of guys on the Ausbowl forums. A treat to paint, and I think it turned out excellent apart from one glaring thing. Yeah, you know exactly what I mean. That BLOODY mould line on the arm and body. You can't see the one on the arm (It's hard to tell in photo's, but very simple to tell in real life), but the one on the body is as plain as daylight! It pisses me off that I didn't just accept I'd have to repaint some of it and file off the mould line. Now that it's done and painted, it hurts even worse that i'm going to have to destroy some of it. Just noticed even now the one on the leg (Although, that's not as bad. That's a groove compared to basically metal hanging off). I feel sometimes mould lines are alright, but these just hurt the model so much it isn't funny.

Champions Online First Impressions

So, I played Champions Online last now. Off to a rough start with the game, that involved me having to redownload the 2gig client (So... didn't get to play it on Tuesday :(). This has of course, unfortunately sidetracked my painting... so I'm going to have to get a wriggle on with that.

Anyway, my oppinions on the game. The character creator is very in depth. I would be quite amazed if I saw anyone exactly identical in the game. You can customise pretty much everything. At some point, definately going to make some form of Dwarf :D. I think the only annoying thing I've found is I couldn't find an option to not have some form of mask on. Mabe it's a Champions thing, where everyone has to be masked (Which I suppose, almost every super hero is).

Also, powers are pretty diverse. Basically they're a whole bunch of skills. You can't suddenly merge powers (like fire and a sword to create a flaming sword, that would be cool but unfortunately you can't do that), but you can say, choose some powers in Telepathy but also choose some from say, Twin Swords. For my first guy, I've chosen to use Fighting Claws as my main set of powers. Fighting Claws aint bad, but somewhat irritating when everyone is running around and I can't hit them in PvP (Other than my running kick).

Basically I'm fairly happy with the game. I haven't played a Super Hero MMO before, so it's all fairly new to me. I have noticed that my laptop probably isn't powerful enough to play the game though, so first thing I did today was talk to a mate of mine about building a new desktop for me. Gonna have to finally get all the crap off my current desktop and get rid of that, gonna need me some space!

So yeah, pretty happy with the game in the 4 hours I've spend on it. I'll probably post more thoughts after I've played around a bit more.

Post-Weekend Update

So, here I am, Monday at 3pm. Bored at work, so what better to do than make a blog post.
Unfortunately for the Marksmen, the mind got a little side-tracked over the weekend. That's not to say, I didn't make progress on them. I did make progress, I just didn't finish them off. I think they're about 2/3rds of the way done. I've got the legs, shoes, and then crossbow to do on them. But hey, falling behind schedule was the reason why I gave myself a week spare. I hope to finish them off tonight for reasons mentioned later.

So how did I get distracted? Well, for starters I painted up one of my Bloodbowl models I've had sitting around for a couple of months now. This is a fabulous Bloodweiser babe called Lucy. She was sold with an esky and alternative hand/eski contents to Australians earlier this year, and will be heading to Impact Miniatures stores soon. She can be made up as a Bloodweiser Babe (selling beer) or as a bribe counter (With loot sack, and gold contents for the Eski/Chest). I made this one up as standard, as I wasn't sure about cutting into her arm for this model. I've got a 2nd one sitting around as well which will be turned into bribe counters. I'll be sure to get images of her posted sometime soon, as I think she turned out looking very nice.

I also spent a fair amount of time working on Asarnil. I spent some time chopping the rocks and stuff off of the Dragons legs. Going to have to do a little reposition and fixing to get them looking nice. For Asarnil himself, I sculpted a shoulderpad for his right arm. I think that turned out alright, it's not as nifty as what his shoulderpad actuallyl ooks like, but it had to fit with the torso. All in all, I think Asarnil is actually nearly ready now. I have to decide whether I want to do any more on him.

Next, I put some effort into my Khemri team. I fully painted up one of my Mummies from base coat to pretty much done. I say pretty much, because he's not quite done... but in a ready state for playing. I also got another Blitz-Ra to the same level. That leaves me with a Thro-Ra and 3 Mummies to have done in a little under 2 weeks (A long with Kroq-Gar, the Paymaster and the Marksmen).

The last thing I did a bit of work on was my Paymaster. I was looking through the Marco Columbo White Dwarf and saw they did his coat in a nifty way. Basically they used red gore, and added white to it. It turns out pink as you highlight upwards, but after, they gave it a red ink wash to turn it into a nice red. I tried to do the same on my Paymaster, and felt that it turned out decently.

So yeah, while I may not have got my Marksmen finished as scheduled, I'm still pretty much on track for most things. Kroq-Gar I'm just not very motivated to paint, because my colour scheme for lizards works... but to get it to better quality takes a lot of work. Just really need to sit down and put some effort into him though, because I'm running the competition at the Pyramid Vault, it'd be poor if I didn't at least man up and get in my own entry.

Lastly, to make a busy month even busier. Champions Online beta starts tomorrow (Well, it starts on US Monday, which pretty much means Tuesday to me). It looks fairly cool. I haven't played any of the previous super-hero MMO's (They were at a time, when I didn't really have money to afford such things) so it should be an interesting experience. Just gonna be tough to choose what kind of super-powers I want! A lot of them sound very cool. Usually in MMO's I like to be a hybrid fighter/support/healer type class. I love Shamans and Paladins in Warcraft for instance (Not necessarily related just to WoW, but like Warcraft 3 as well). So hopefully the game does not punish those that like to hybrid. We shall see, more comments on that at a later point.

Tale of Fantasy Painters 08-09 : Empire

So, the previous years Tale has ended. I didn't get too far in it. I had a great idea I reckon, a Witch Hunter army. I'd have Militia rabble being led by Witch Hunters and a Flagellant as a musician. I'd have witches being burnt as my standard bearer's. There wouldn't be much blackpowder apart from pistols, rabble don't have access to that stuff. Mounted Warrior Priests Knights, Flagellants, Rabble, small portion of state troops. Warrior Priests as characters, could either be led by a Arch Lector or Inquisitor Lord (General of the Empire).

Unfortunately it didn't come to be. I got through the easy stuff, and failed when I had to paint lots of small figures (Militia are damn cheap!). It also didn't help that I was moving house during that time. But yeah, to be honest, I went through the expensive parts and failed on the cheap parts. I found it hard at the time, as Militia had a lot of small details I wasn't used to (Lizards are pretty much just skin and scale. State troops were simple in their clothing), and it was a lot of effort at the time it just felt like a lot of effort to paint 20 models for 100 points.

Anyway, here is where I got up to. Nowhere near as much as I'd liked, but I gave it a shot. At some point, I'd like to come back to them, but for now gotta focus on the current stuff. Maybe in the next Tale I'll sign up for 1000 points of Empire, but that's a long way into the future.


You can click the image to see a larger version.

Pre-Weekend Update : Dogs of War

So here's the 2nd part of the update. As mentioned in my post yesterday, I was messing around with making some Duellists. I'm not completely happy with them, as the Pistolier pistols are quite large. Not exactly your dueling pistol size. So I think I won't use them as holstered pistols anymore.


Also, here is a bit more on Asarnil. This is the Dragonheart Amulet. I tried sculpting a star, but it didn't work out so well. Then I saw in the official model, really it's a gem surrounded bu lots of little points, so I had a go at using Plasticard to do it. I don't mind how it turned out, I think it'll look decent when it's finally painted but we'll have to wait and see.
As for this months painting. I lagged a bit this week, but not too much. The goal is still to get the Marksmen except Maxamillian done by the end of this weekend. A lot of the base colours are done on them, so it should be doable.

Pre-Weekend Update : Blood Angels

So here's my update before the weekend. First up are my blood angels before I primed them this morning. I'm quite happy with how they turned out, a fairly dynamic combat squad. At the moment I'm only signed up for 1000 points in the Tale of 40k Painters (40k is second fiddle to Fantasy for me). I'm hoping it should be simple enough, as really it's 5 Space Marines each month! Not exactly a boatload of miniatures to paint. Next month I'm thinking about finishing off the squad, and painting a character. Then after that, I'll paint some Assault Marines so I have a legal force. It's just good that I'm finally getting a move on with these Marines. Got plenty of stuff sitting around in boxes now, so really need these Tales to start moving mini's out of boxes.

Braindead Moments

No, I'm not talking about Zombies. Well... maybe just a bit. Just had a really stupid moment quite honestly. There I was going through some bits I got recently, and was wondering how many crossbows I had from my Militia sprues to use with some of the new Empire Archers bits I got (Some bodies and heads). So I sift through them, only to find out I'm left with about 6. I think that's alright, but get sidetracked to start making my Duellists.
Well, what happened was I managed to place 3 sprues under some plasticard. So after I finished with the 3 I was doing, I went searching for more legs. Found the torso sprues, but where were the leg sprues! Surely I couldn't have used them up previously, I have 12 torso's left!
So I went through every single box of Warhammer stuff I have, trying to find these legs! It just didn't make sense! Just about to give up, I move the plasticard by accident, and lo and behold, 3 sprues with legs on them!
Doh! What a waste of time!

Heralds on the Warpath

So, in another Bloodbowl update. This week my Khemri team the Heralds of Osiris faced off against the Greenskin Slackers! I had 160k in inducements to spend as the Slackers had too many players (He has gone a bit overboard with his purchases). Since I knew I could not win the war of attrition, I decided I needed my guys to get some help sticking around. I invested in an Igor and a Bloodweiser babe. This would mean, I had a better chance of reocvering from knock outs and in the case I fail a regeneration (Which in all likelihood, I would've) I am allowed to re-roll one during the game.

As the game commenced, my fans screamed in through the stadium, I managed to win the fame having 15k fans to the Slackers 11k. In this weeks event, there was a bright wizard in the stands, and the weather was to be very sunny due to his magical fireball in the sky. I wasn't fussed about that, Khemri aren't exactly known for their passing skills.

I won the kick off result, and decided to receive. I'm a bit 50-50, but when I'm up against a tough team, I think it's better to receive and hopefully knock them around a bit early on. Against a faster team, I would probably let them receive as they likely don't have the strength to deal with my mummies. This will force them to score early, and give me plenty of time for my drive (And then I get to drive in the 2nd half). The half opened nicely, with the crowd tossing a rock at a Black Orc who fell face first into the dirt.
Things went fairly smoothly. In the 2nd turn, the Slackers Troll attemped to punch a Mummy but got a both down result, sending the Troll to the Knock Out box for the rest of the game! I made my way up the field, and at the end of turn 5 I believe scored my touchdown. The slackers didn't manage to score, so it went into the 2nd half.

At the start of the 2nd half, the fans of the Slackers were obviously frustrated that they were losing even though they clearly had the numbers advantage. They tossed a rock at one of my Mummies, stunning him in the process. Ouch! That would mean he'd be out for like 2 turns. My plan in the 2nd half was to keep the pressure on and force a score so I could get a 2-1 touchdown. The ball started on the right side of the field, and the slackers thrower passed it to the goblin who decided to go left.
He managed to get half way into my half of the field, before I smacked his ball carrier into the ground. There was a bit of a scrum, but the ball came loose and in decent position. My Thro-Ra picked it up and raced up the field while a few players stayed back to keep the orcs in check. While moving up the field, my Blitz-Ra managed to smash a goblin into the ground, killing the poor bugger. Moments later, a Mummy smashes an Orc who goes out for the rest of the match.
I managed to get up the field, almost losing my 2nd touchdown (My Mummy skulled out, luckily I re-rolled it and it came up decent. I promptly made the touchdown not willing to risk losing the spp).
So with that, the game ended. I got some more money which is just sitting there (Maybe I should buy another skellie, they're dirt cheap), fan factor stayed the same. Unfortunately I now have lots of guys nearing a skill up, but aren't quite there. Here's hoping for a nice soft team for me to bash next game.

Slight Update

So as mentioned in the previous post, I had almost finished the 5 Marksmen I was working on. In the time between that post and this, I have finished those off so I took a picture of them. So now that 6 of them are done, I'm almost 50% of the way through this month (6 out of the 13 models planned). I've really enjoyed painting them so far. Eventhough they're all pretty much in 1 or 2 poses, each one is unique in appearance. I think my favourite so far is the one with the bandage across his forehead. He's got this nice bird tied to his back, and painting the bandage was a treat.

Also I took pictures of my Kroq-Gar conversion before I start painting him. This is pretty much the first time I've shown him. I have wanted to show him before, but there honestly hasn't been much to show. The last time I took pictures, it was just the upper body attached to the legs, which isn't exactly impressive (Chop them in half, glue, fill in gaps). So here he is now. I wanted to do more with the spear arm, but I just couldn't get it to sit right. With time running out, I had to go with a somewhat boring pose.

Dogs of War update

So it's the weekend, which means I've been busy painting and modelling. The Marksmen are going well and are on schedule! This is excellent news, as it'd suck to out of sync with my plan so early. Basically I've only got the Crossbows, and then little bits and bobs in the sacks that some of them carry to paint (Which is going to be the most trouble, figuring out what stuff is suppoed to be in there). I've also started painting up my Paymaster, his golden armour is finished and I'm moving onto other parts of the body. My intention is for him to have brighter colours than the rest of the army (Which will be more natural earthy colours like my Marksmen) so he stands out more.


The major focus for todays update though, is the Dragonlord himself, Asarnil! I've been slugging away at my conversion ever since I got the High Elf Dragon Lord boxed set. Mainly it has been work on Deathfang. I wanted to achieve a look that was pretty much exactly like the artwork.

Unfortunately reposing the body didn't work out that well. I think it would probably be easier to scratch build the body if I re-attempt something like this in future. The armour plates I think are probably the main culprit, but just putting in a lot of bends means you have to smooth out a lot of stuff. Still, I've given up on that idea but still converting some things to be more similar to the artwork and to keep it more distinct than a regular High Elf Dragonlord.

As you can see, I've modified Deathfang's head a bit. Asarnil doesn't use reigns in the artwork (Well, none of the old dragons had reigns, but my excuse is Asarnil's just that good!). The High Elf dragon only has room for either the big horns or the wavy ear things, so I placed the wavey things below the horns and I think it turned out well. There are no horns on either head as well, so I took the time to add a few horns.

Above is Asarnil's Shield, finally finished. I've been working on this just before I started working on Deathfang. I think it turned out well in the end, and should hopefully look a treat when it's fully painted up. Asarnil's Shield was definately one thing I wanted to do, as it would immediately distinguish him from the vanilla Lord.

Just yesterday I started working on Asarnil himself as Deathfang I'm done with for now. Deathfang will get more work once I figure out how I want to base him (At the moment, I am thinking flying rather than launching off a rock to be more unique). Here you can see that I have modified his greaves to be more Dragonlike. His shoulderpad for the lance arm will get a similar treatment once I am done with making the Dragonheart amulet. The head will stay the regular Dragonlord head, as I didn't want to ruin that (And to be fair, it looks more impressive than the Artwork one).

I think I have two major hurdle's remaining for Asarnil now. One is the seat. I think I will keep the Dragonlord seat, but chop off the top and sculpt a Dragon-type thing to gup there. That's going to be a challenge sculpting a Dragonhead that small. The other hurdle will be the basing, at the moment I'm thinking of having two brass rods stick up from the base and drill into Deathfang. He'll just sit on the rods, similar to how pinning works without the glue. That way he can be removed for transport. I guess I've now thought of a 3rd hurdle (Although I've already known about this) and that is his wings. They make a long model, also wide. Gonna have to think about them as I'd prefer for them to removable as well.

In other news. My conversion of Kroq-Gar on foot is finally finished. Good timing as well, as it gives me 3 weeks to paint him and the Paymaster (Paymaster for Golden Pike 2, Kroq-Gar for Golden Old One). I've also started my Blood Angels for the Tale of 40k Painters. I don't think I've talked much about that, so I'll leave that too when I actually have a post dedicated to them. Unfortunately my poor Khemri team seems to have been forgotten. I really need to paint them as well! As after failing to get them done for Eucbowl, the new target is Southern Shrike Bowl (29-30th of August). It's a very very busy month...

Heralds Call

So, while I was on my lunch break just then, I realised that I had not talked about how my Khemri team is going in the league. No wonder I thought there was a large break between my last two posts.

So far I have won all 3 of my games. The first one I have already detailed earlier.
My 2nd game was against a Human team. I felt kind've bad about the match, because the coach is new to the game and Khemri with their 'Bash, Bash and more Bash' attitude isn't exactly the motivation one needs to continue on. Basically a lot of the game involved me squashing her players into the dirt, and her picking them back up again in the following turns. In the end I won the game 2-0 and winning the casuatlies 2-1. I didn't maul her team or anything (only badly hurts) so it was alright, but again, feel kind've bad for her having to play such a game.

The 3rd game was against Dwarves. Now personally, I don't enjoy playing Orcs or Dwarves. They're pretty much all armour 9, so it's unbelievable hard to remove them from the pitch and they can generally bash pretty well to boot. Basically the game was all about how lucky we were. I basically never broke armour 9, at all. I made a point of targetting his Slayers as they could put (and somewhat did) put the hurt on my Mummies. But all I could get were stuns. It was quite frustrating that he managed to knock out mummies and even took one out badly hurt (Which meant I only had 2 mummies on the pitch during the last part of the game) while I couldn't do squat to him. Basically, the game went as follows. Due to a riot and me shoving Mummies in his face, he didn't manage to score in the first half. The 2nd half saw me bring the ball up to the halfway line, then attempt to make a dash for it. Some untimely skulls saw an opening, but my Thro-ra managed to stay on his feet. In fact, he was very lucky. He survived a total of 5 dice against him, not one showed an inkling of any kind of pow, and then managed to dodge away (using my re-roll) and make the go-for-it to grab the winning touchdown.
Was definately a very tough game, just a little dissapointing I couldn't manage to hurt any Dwarves.

Next game up is against Orcs. Not going to be fun, as I'm down to 11 players while he has about 14. No way with my majority armour 7 will I win the war of attrition. It's going to be tough, and I'm not looking forward to it! I guess luckily there is only one more 'tough' team left in my division, another Orc team. The rest are pretty much Elves, so I should be able to lay down some hurt on them.

The Long March Begins

So last week I started my Dogs of War army as I said in the last post. Since then I've managed to clean up all my Marksmen figures, based and undercoated them as well as my Paymaster and Captain. So all in all, this month is off to a good start!
Last weekend I took the time to paint up one of the Marksmen. I specifically chose this one as he has the poncho type thing on him, and I really like painting stuff like that and capes. Devlan mud has got an extensive work out when I've been painting these models. Anyway, really liking how this guy turned out!

As it stands, I'm in the process of painting up the next 5. I'm basically hoping to have pretty much everything done by the 24th. Basically my schedule looks like finishing these 5 guys during this weekend and getting a start on the rest of the Marksmen the following week. The week after that I'll put some quality time into my Paymaster, Captain and Maximillian Damark. That's the plan anyway!

I've also been assembling my Asarnil. Some slight modifications to the Dragon and making a shield for him more in line with the artwork. I wanted to make larger modifications to the Dragon to make it look more like the artwork in posture, but wimped out a bit. Considering how many parts the neck would need to be chopped into, it'd probably be simpler just scratch-building a new neck. Overall though, I'm really impressed with the Dragon kit. It's simply a lot bigger than I originally thought. Can't wait in the long run to get my hands on a Giant kit and see how much of a monster he turns out to be.