Dogs of War March Forwards

So, November has seen a surge of activity from me for my Dogs of War. Asarnil still continues to sit on the back burner, but I did get my 200 points done for the month, so a good bounce back compared to October.

First up, is the now completely finished Beast Wizard. All that's been added really since last time is the grass on his base. Still, I'm very happy with how he has turned out in the end.



Next up are everyone's lovable Halflings, Lumpin Croop's Fighting Cocks. These guys were both fun and frustrating to paint. Very hard to paint the lower half of the body, since they're so tiny. However, they're great charactful models, so really enjoyed painting them. Not happy with how Lumpin's Shield is though, I think I just rushed it. Really need to go back and revisit it someday, as I had no real direction when painting it.



Lastly is the stuff I've been working on recently. I have also assembled some more Duellists! But they'll show up fairly soon when I paint them. But yeah, working on the Bearmen of Urslo! I already have the Beorg miniature, so it's just a matter of converting up all the Bearmen. I'm trying to keep the appearance of the models in line with the old models when I convert figures, so everyone's gonna have their fur pelt draped on their back. Also sculpting the Bear Standard as well, which has turned out reasonably so far. Anyway, it's fairly easy to do the conversion work on these, and I think they look great so far!



And that's all for now. Got a lot of work ahead of me, I still need to do my 200 points a month and then some to make sure I'm ready for GobboCon in March. But I should pull through! I'm sure as GobboCon approaches it'll kick start me to get Asarnil done (Since he's about 1/4 of the army! So I need him done by then!).

Dogs of War update

So it's been a while since I talked properly about my Dogs of War army. Plans slowly change when you're painting. At the start of the Tale, I decided I'd be painting stuff willy nilly, whatever I felt like. If need be, I could paint lots of Regiments to fulfil the points per month.

Of course, October was a bit of a set back. Asarnil or more appropriately, Deathfang is more effort than expected. Didn't help that I had the Australian Go Nationals, Mordheim terrain building and the Bloodbowl Grand Finals to compete with my weekend free time.

Also, some guys decided to attempt their own 'Tale of' kind've thing at the local game store, with the idea to take the army to tourneys around Australia. Now that changes things, because now I need to make a somewhat proper army.

So now I've got a few goals to head towards.
Goal 1 : Get to 1000 points. Hopefully shouldn't be too hard, especially when Asarnil becomes 'done' (Since he's almost half of that).
Goal 2 : Get to 1750 points by March. There's a local tournament at that points level, would be good to attend it.
Goal 3 : Get to a fully fledged 2500 point army by June. Again, another tournament at that time at 2500 points.
Goal 4 : Just paint up the rest of my stuff, regardless of performance value. A lot of my models I have gotten because it's like "Hey cool, Cursed Company" or "Pikes are what Tilea is all about right?". So you know, I don't want to lose focus after I get my 'competition' army done, but want to go ahead and paint all the rest of my models.

Anyway, here are the latest photo's to do with my army.

Here's my Beast Lore Hireling Wizard. He's an old Amber Wizard model, so I thought a bearskin toting Wizard fits regardless of whether he's Empire or not.


Here's just an updated photo of my Marksmen in full. Maximillian Damark sighted fully done for first time. I can't remember if I posted the full unit on here, since the previous image was pretty dark and couldn't see much.


And that's all for now. I certainly have more stuff in the works, and hopefully I get some more stuff done soon so I can post about it.

Heralds storm the Finals

So, it's been an interesting few weeks.
For starters, my second match to get me into the Semi-Finals was cancelled. My opponent was pretty crook and couldn't make it to the original time. I told him to call me up if he felt better during the week, but never happened.
So... free ticket into the Semi-Finals.

The semi and grand final were held on the one day, with the Semi's starting in the morning while the Grand Final starting early afternoon.

To be honest, I don't remember much of my Semi-Final game. All I can remember, is that it was a damn good game. I know it started off well for me, I think I turned over the opponent and a fairly large scrum happened where I was losing the numbers battle, but came out slightly ahead with a touchdown. In the 2nd half, I think the opposite happened , where I got turned over and a touchdown scored on me. So we went into Sudden Death Overtime at 1-1. I went into it with no re-rolls, but a full team up against 8 Orcs. Looked like it may have been over at one point, I had used my numbers advantage but he was giving a last ditch attempt at a pass to a Black Orc. Pass went wild, and I capitalized by getting many guys on the ball and driving up the field. Came down to turn 24, where I had to blitz my way out and a go for it on the line! Luckily my luck held strong and I got my touchdown.
That's unfinished business part 1 taken care of. These Orcs had tied against me earlier in the season by a miracle touchdown. Part 2 was now to defeat Dark Elves in the grand final who had given me my only loss of the season.

The Grand Final was an odd game (and so was the fight for 3rd place). With no idea on how progression will work next season, people pretty much emptied their treasuries. I went full force, a Wizard, Hack En Slash and 2 Bloodweiser Babes. My opponent took a Wizard. Game was looking to be ordinary in the first turn, he received, one sided defense and running up the field for a 2 turn touchdown until...
His ball carrier tripped. That's right, fell flat on his face stunned, losing posession of the ball. Now here I was thinking "My, all those other Elves look like a nice Fireball target if they only stood still" and that chance happened upon me. Fireballed 7 Elves, 3 knock outs, 2 stuns. Not a bad result for zero turns worth of work.
I ended up grabbing the ball and making my way up field while smashing the crap out of the Dark Elves. Crowd pushes, regular thumpings, the works. I was wary of a Lightning Bolt on my ball carrier (up field on his own, but no Darkies in range) but decided to stall a turn. So scored on my 7th and that was pretty much the Half.

I was feeling good about the second half. 1 up against Elves and I was receiving, couldn't get any better. However, I focused a bit too much on one side with a loose cage going up the sideline. Fireballed and snagged the ball carrier. A Dark Elf waltzed in, to pass the ball, and fumbled it... into the crowd, and the ball ended up where he basically wanted it anyway. Not so good a result, the Dark Elves capitalized driving down the other side and scored on the 4th.

So a draw game with 4 turns to go. The Dark Elves pretty much kept on sitting a few lines back to stall my advance, while my guys struggled forwards, going right, going middle, going left. Eventually I had to take a bit of a risk, I left the ball carrier open for a Blitz that would be 2 dice against. Luckily the Dark Elves screwed up earlier than that (But not before putting some pressure on the carrier). So after a few pushes around the place to get tackle zones off the ball carrier, he waltzed in with a go for it on the line to grab the 2nd touchdown.

At this point, it was the end of my 8th. So only a riot could save my opponent. Low and behold, a riot turns up on the kick off table! Crap I think! But then I roll the dice to see what happens, and the game moves forward. End of game!

It was a great game really, in fact, pretty much the opposite of my previous game against these Dark Elves. Last time I could barely break armour, but this time I seemed to do it plenty (I actually ended up killing both of his Witch Elves). He started off with 16 players (odd for Dark Elves, but with no inducements in the finals, it could be done). By the end of the game, he could only just field a full team (About 4-5 sat in the knock out box most of the game, he didn't get a single knock out back until the last drive that got riotted). So yeah, payback for the loss earlier in the season complete :D

So with all that done and dusted, the Khemri rose to the top of the league. The Heralds of Osiris brought death and destruction and managed to win the Grand Final.

Now back to their tombs they go, a well earned rest. Most likely won't be playing them again next season. I think LRB6 will probably kill them, and I want to take the opportunity to play another team. It's plausible though that I may ressurect them in a later season.

Heralds pass first hurdle

Figured I'd update about my Khemri team.
I just had my first finals game last night. After being shafted from 2nd place due to scoring less touchdowns (same differential, just less overall), I have to fight my way to the very top (Being in 2nd place, would allow for me to if I won, had a week off, if lost, a 2nd chance).

So the first game and possibly the last of the season for me, was up against a Chaos team from the other conference (our league was split into two conferences of 11 players each. Everyone played everyone else, and on the bye match, the players from each conference who had a bye played each other). Things were looking good right from the start, after he received and grabbed the ball and caged up a bit, his Minotaur (with Claws) tried to have a go at one of my Mummies. Unfortunately for the poor fella, it was a Blizzard. After pushinjg my Mummy back, the Minotaur fell on his face in the icy conditions.

That being done, I went about smacking his team backwards. Keeping a constant eye on the minotaur (always enough guard and strength around him so if he blitzed, it'd be 2 dice against, or if he got up, I'd just knock him back down). I did in fact punch the minotaur with a skeleton, but with a push and a double down... I took the both down hoping I might be able to take him out early. Unfortunately, the Minotaur gored a Skeleton who regenerated the harsh wounds. I eventually managed to pummel him enough and surged through to snatch the ball and drive for a touchdown. Things were looking up, as I could foresee a 2-1 victory happening rather than a 1-1 tie with sudden death overtime.

After the setup, strangely I thought he caged up a little further back. I ran a few guys along the side to herd him towards the centre. A chance happens, and I get a hole in his lines and send 2 guys onto the ball carrier (unfortunately, I wanted to blitz him then and there, but a Chaos Warrior refused to go down to open my path). I sent 2 guys up within distance of scoring a touchdown, and sat back. Unfortunately for the chaos, the turn ended when the ball carrier tried to dodge away and fell on his face. I scooped up the ball, handed off, and with a go for it had a 2 touchdown lead going into the 2nd half, and receiving to boot!

The 2nd half saw me smacking the Chaos back a little bit, then fumbling the ball. I managed to pick it up, and went towards the left side of the pitch to cage up (As the Chaos were busy pushing a mummy around, I figured I could go off to one side and hold off 3 of his guys). A little bit of a scrum happened, and I decided with most of his guys in one place, and Chaos not being super fast movers I'd make a run for it with my Thro-Ra. He got out of Blitz range, but a Chaos Warrior was right on his tail. Lucky for me, his blocking actually freed up a Blitz-Ra to get down there to assist, so the Thro-Ra just blitzed the Chaos Warrior down and run in for the touchdown.

Can't remember much of the last few turns. Minotaur ran along the sidelines to keep a Skeleton and Blitz-Ra busy. My Thro-Ra went in to try and turn over the ball and knocked the ball carrier down. However, the next beastman just grabbed the ball and ran into my half. With the Blitz-Ra on that half occupied by the Minotaur, I couldn't manage to stop the Beastman trotting in to get a touchdown.

So game end, final score 3-1. Casualties 2-2. Unfortunately for me, I had 3 guys ready for skill up and only one skilled up (Got a casualty which was good, but then stole the MVP to boot). So frustratingly enough, I'll be going into the 2nd round of the finals with pretty much the same team.

Still first hurdle down, just 3 more to go. If I win the next game, I'll be where I was last year (which was only top 4 for finals). Let's hope I can go all the way to the top.

Been even longer

Well... the last time was a mere 9 days, now it's been an entire month.
Been fairly busy with various bits and pieces really, but here's the low down of what's been happening.

Dogs of War - Progressing well enough. Asarnil and his buddy Deathfang are taking a bit longer than I suspected. A lot of work to get a Dragon looking good. However, Asarnil himself is nearly done and is looking ace I think. I may end up throwing a few Duellists in this month so I can spend a bit more time on Deathfang.

Blood Angels - I made a decision. I was spending too much time per Blood Angel to get them done at a decent page. Was that a bad thing? No. I was painting good quality stuff, multiple layers and all that. It just meant, I made the decision to drop them from the Tale of 40k painters. I'll just continue on at my own page.

Mordheim/Posssessed - I can't remember if I mentioned this much, but there's a Mordheim league taking place in the Bloodbowl off-season time. I've chosen Possessed, because I wanted an interesting conversion opportunity. I've been enjoying things so far, I got some magnets for arm swaps and all that. The only slightly frustrating thing is the Chaos Spawn is HUGE, and way too large to be a Possessed. I'm gonna stick with one for now, but at some time later I really have to convert and sculpt my own (Time I don't really have for this season). Also, last Sunday we had our first Mordheim get together to build terrain. Was a good day overall, even if only about 8 people turned up. Gonna have to churn out a few more buildings to get our first table done.

Bloodbowl - Been a while I think. I had my first loss against the top of the table Dark Elves. I drew facing one of the top contender Wood Elf team (a somewhat miraculous 3-3 for the slow moving Khemri). I then beat the 4th placed Chaos team. The Wood Elves failed to win, so got knocked out of the finals. So unfortunately that leaves me in 3rd place (I have the same record and touchdown diff as the 2nd placed team, but he has more touchdowns so I assume that's what counts). This means, I have to fight my way to the finals everyway. Our finals are done the same way AFL does theirs (top teams play each other, the winner has a bye. Bottom teams are strictly elimination all the way through). So it's gonna be tough, got a Chaos team with lots of block and a nasty looking Minotaur to deal with.

Warmaster - I actually picked up an Undead warmaster army in blisters/boxes fairly cheap. So could be that you'll see a warmaster army from me sometime next year or in the free time. Should be a change of pace to paint smaller stuff that I'm not doing to any particular deadline.

Go - Go I haven't talked much about in my blog, but I figure now is a good time to speak up a bit about it. Go is an ancient Asian board game. Go look it up on wikipedia for more information. To be frank, it kicks the crap out of Chess in complexity overall. I'm a decent player I'll say, definately wouldn't rate myself as good, although of course, others below me might. But I like decent, there's plenty of room for improvement left in me, and people (like the Pro's) way above me.
Anyway, recently at the start of October, I attended the Australian Go Nationals. Was a great event. I arrived on the Thursday night, and pretty much just watched a bit of tv and went to bed (Wasn't exactly prepared to be wandering around an unknown city at night right after I arrived). Friday kicked off with a teaching day, where I met some of the people running the event, others as well. Around midday, the professional player An Young Gil arrived, and gave us a lecture on 'Connections on the 2nd line'. Was very informative. He later played a simultaneous game against about 8 people. On the Saturday and Sunday were game days. There were some slight hitches at the start, but once things got going it worked out relatively well.
There were 3 divisions at the Nationals. The first was the Open Division, for people ranked 3dan and above. This is a non-handicapped division, and is played for representative points (A system Australia uses to determine who goes oversea's to represent Australia in some of the international events). The 2nd division was 2dan to 3kyu, this is the division I played in at the 3kyu rank. The final division was the 3rd division, for 4kyu to 15kyu ranked players.
I played 5 games (With 1 bye due to the odd number of people in my division). I managed to win 2 games, and lost 3. All were very good games, the games I lost being very close indeed. While the games I won, had fairly tense fights going on, whoever died would surely resign (And luckily I lived).
At the end of the day, everyone who attended got a japanese style fan. A bit dodgy in quality (or I don't know how to close fans properly. Kept on tangling itself up) but still a nice touch to award all who attended. I got mine signed by An Young Gil.
Overall, had an enjoyable time in Melbourne. Kind've nice to see a bit more of it, as every time I've been there has been for work and just driving off to wherever we've had a meeting.

Hmm... I think that's all that's happened really. It has been a long month.

Been a Little While

So yeah, been a little while since I've posted. I've been pretty busy with lots of stuff to be honest.

For starters, I didn't quite get my guys done completely for the Tale of Fantasy Painters. Maximilian Damark I didn't finish, because I wanted to give him a bit more attention. That also meant I didn't put grass on any of the Marksmen bases (Want to do them all at once). The good thing is though, once I have them done, I'll have 280 points of Dogs of War painted. I'm going to be working on Asarnil this month. I ordered some bits (yet to arrive) to also make him on foot, just in case Deathfang gets shot out from underneath him. That does however mean I have to basically do all my green stuff work on Asarnil himself again. Deathfang still needs work, really need to get him done so I can figure out what I want the base to look like.

For my Marines, failed. It's painful, but I really need to get on with them. Considering I jokered the first month, not only do I have to paint the original 5, but need to paint the rest of the squad as well. Maybe I'm in a bit over my head, as I think with my Blood Angels I've really stepped up the quality of my work as well.

Kroq-Gar I couldn't finish either. I wanted too, but just didn't have time and decided not to rush it. It's unfortunate, but that's just the way things go. I would rather accept not getting it done on time, rather than rush it and not get it looking as good as I want.

Khemri team haven't been looked at since Shrikebowl. With no tournies in the near future, they'll probably be put on the backburner until I get some more free time. It's sad though, because they probably need the least amount of work to be complete.

I got Space Hulk last weekend as well. It looks brilliant. Unfortunately I cut my finger pretty bad trying to get Lorenzo off the sprue (not bone deep, but still deep). That kind've killed the rest of the weekend for modelling. I've managed to get in one game though against my brother. We played Suicide Mission. I won both times (as marines and then stealers), but I also had a somewhat better idea of what was going on, and had some fairly decent dice rolls and command points when I needed them. Due to lack of time, unfortunately I'm not gonna be painting these guys anytime soon. Terminators might get some attention while doing my Blood Angels though.

Tto make matters worse. In addition to having to split my time between Dogs of War, Blood Angels and Champions Online, the Mordheim buzz has been going around. It's due to start after the Bloodbowl season is over, which means I've started (just last night though) making a warband. Gonna roll with the Possessed, and convert up the entire lot. Should be a lot of fun!

Southern Shrike Bowl '09

So just attended Southern Shrike Bowl 2009 last weekend. It was a blast, and definately an enjoyable event.
To put a bit of perspective into things. Bloodbowl was only really just starting up in Adelaide last year. Southern Shrike Bowl was being organised for the first time, and the CCKUP ran it's first league in the 2nd half of the year.
I myself heard of Shrikebowl around March I believe, and figured It might be interesting to get into the game. I wanted to do a Norse team, because who doesn't like manly Vikings, but the local GW did not have any Marauders in stock at the time. So I grabbed a box of Orcs, and went from there.
At Shrikebowl last year, I came dead last! I went a bit flavourful with my skills, and it was basically my first time playing the game. I had a few good draws, some tight games, but in the end, no wins are no wins.

So this year, was aiming a bit higher than that ;). I wasn't aiming to come in first originally, I mean, Khemri aren't exactly known for their game winning abilities (More like, team destroying abilities). However, after a very very nice first game against Necromantic, I was at the top of the leaderboard due to giving them a thumping of 8 casualties! 2nd and 3rd games followed with a win against the Wood Elves and a win against Humans, and at the end of the first day, I was sitting in 1st place with 3 wins! However, there was still a tough road ahead. I knew it would still be quite a task for Khemri to win the tournament with others on 3 straight wins as well, one slip up would spell the end of my first place chances.
So unfortunately, first game Sunday morning I lost against Dark Elves. It was a tough game. It was going basically to plan, but the Dark Elves managed to sack my ball carrier near the end of the first half, and steal the ball away for a 2-0 lead. It was uphill from there, I got a touchdown on the 4th, so had 4 turns to turn over the Dark Elves (now reduced to about 8 players) and score again to tie the match. With a spell of decent luck, I managed to do that! However, elven magic kicked in and after a 1 dice blitz that sacked my ball carrier, the elves were away for another touchdown.
That basically crushed my winning chances. I managed an undeserved tie against Wood Elves (My opponent had some terrible luck, and it should have been more like 3-1 loss than the 1-1 tie it was) and then got a 1-0 victory over Dark Elves to round out the day.
So with a 4-1-1 record, I managed to grab 2nd place in the end. I unfortunately did not get the prize I wanted (It was taken just before my shot to choose), but that's just the way things happen.
I had a great time at Shrikebowl '09, and I got 6 tough Bloodbowl matches out of it. Looking forward to next year, hoping to one up myself and go for the glory!

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.