Gravity 1, Treewoman 0

I suppose something had to happen since we don't have the Wraithlord to kick around anymore.

A deadly chain reaction of shelf content tipping resulted in the Ultraforge Treewoman plunging off the shelf and hitting the floor.  She missed the dogs' water bowl.  I guess treewomen don't like swimming as much as Wraithlords do. Either that, or they have worse aim.

Tonight is hobby night, for the first time in a couple weeks.  We've had some real tragedy in the family lately, and I will be sharing that a little later.

Adding Snarky Word Bubbles with Gimp

Because IP laws are vague when it comes to parody!  (Or are they?  You didn't hear me say that!)

So let's start with "Barfy the Troll" ...

We'll put a word bubble off to the upper right of his head.  Start by loading the image in Gimp.

Then use the "rectangle select tool" (shortcut R) to draw a selection box for our speech bubble.

Once you draw the rectangle check the "Rounded Corners" box and increase the radius until the box looks like a bubble.

Now we'll add the little arrow to the bubble.  Choose the "Free Select" tool (shortcut F).  Here's an important step: now click on the title bar of the image.  If the image is the selected window, holding shift will make the little lasso tool get a "plus" sign next to it.  We want to add to the selection, so that's good!  Hold down shift and click three points to make the arrow.  Then release shift and click on the first point of the triangle to complete the selection adding.  We now should have a shape that is our word bubble, but it's still just a selection.

 Now choose the bucket fill tool (shortcut shift+B) and select "Fill whole selection" with "Affected Area (Shift)"  Make sure your color of choice for the word bubble is the currently selected color, and then click within the word bubble.  There!  Now our word bubble is filled, but we want to add a border so that is shows up against the backdrop.

Open the "Channels, Layers and Paths" window and choose the paths tab.  Since we have a selection open, we have the option to turn our selection into a path.  Click the appropriate icon to do that.

Now that our selection is a path, we can stroke along the path to draw an outline.  Click the "stroke along path" button (right next to "selection to path") making sure your outline color is the active color.  Choose line thickness and click "stroke."

 Our word bubble is done, but we need a humorous caption or nobody will know how clever we are.  Choose the text tool and click in the word bubble.  Use a lifetime of internet usage to come up with something hilarious, perhaps a reference to a 1980 movie starring Leslie Nielson.  Change the font size as needed in the dialog to fit your caption in the bubble.  If you need to, use more than one text object.

Now you are done!  Save your creation and prepare for the hilarity that will ensue.

They Shall Know Satire!

Because Fear is not on the menu!

I got the preview email from Games Workshop for the new Grey Knights models.  They look pretty cool, but I can't resist making a few humorous observations.  I'll let the Ordo Malleus speak for themselves.

Not a fan of 90's manga?  google it

and a book, apparently!

Yes, you are Burny the Bunny.  Congratulations.

Maybe I'm nitpicking on that last one, but if you are going to drill storm bolter barrels for your studio army make a template or something.  Those look about like my pin-vise workmanship.

Also, super giant robot exo-skeletons?  I dunno.  We're taking one scary step toward Dreadnoughts being able to link up to form Volton.

Game Day: The One Hour Typhon and the 0/9 Record

March Game Day is over, and it was quite a day.  We had a new player pick up Warmachine using a Cryx battle box left over by someone who moved out of the area.  We saw our largest single Mk II battle.  We tasted a number of homebrew and commercial beers.  I painted Typhon.

First game of the day was 35 pts of Khador vs. my Protectorate.  Epic Irusk and the High Reclaimer.  As you can see from my deployment I was planning on sending out a lot of cloud templates.  Once again, I took the bait and sent the Avatar running off after a 2-point Widowmaker solo.  With stealth and his 14" POW12 shot, I just did not want that guy popping the HC every turn.  As it is I make an error in the ash cloud placement that left HC open to a mortar shot.  With "fire for effect" in play, it took nearly half his health.  That solo could not be in my back line.  So, 11 pts wasted chasing a 2 pt solo.

We inched toward each other, eventually meeting on my right (near side of the shot.)  Iron Fang Pikemen put up a decent showing, trading about half their number to kill a unit of zealots.  Bastions must have forgotten to take their vitamins because they missed every swing against the IFP's.  The Reckoner and the Spriggan were toe to toe, the Spriggan's charge not disabling any of the Reckoner's systesms.

Let's take a second to ask: What do you expect a heavy jack with three focus to do to an opponent?  For the Reckoner (P+S 17 attacks, made P+S 19 with the choir) I was expecting to disassemble the thing.  I should have done about 20 points of damage to it, ideally disabling the right arm or cortex.  The 8 or so points that I actually did were disappointing.

To finish the game, Brian used Irusk's spell that lets him move 'jacks out of activation to slide the Spriggan into the Reckoner, using bulldoze to slide it over a couple inches and open up a charge lane to get at the HC.  Stomp, stomp, stomp, swing, splat.  Game Over.

NEWS FLASH!!!  From the PP FAQ regarding bulldoze: "When this model advances into B2B contact with an enemy model during its activation, it can push that model up to 2˝ directly away from it."  (Emphasis mine) The Spriggan could not have bumped the Reckoner out of the way as a result of Energizer.  I revise my record to 0/8 and I demand a rematch!

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The beer tasting continued.
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Next I played a 15 point intro game vs. Cryx with the new player.  The game ended when the Khador player looked over the battlefield and recommended to the Cryx player to use Deneghra's "ghost walk" spell to allow a Deathripper to charge over a linear obstacle.  Oops.  I forgot about ghost walk.  So he slid in with a spray to pop Severius for a few points, then charged with the aforementioned Deathripper to finish the old man off.

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The beer tasting continued.
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Next, new Cryx guy Josh and relative newcomer Legion guy Matt had a 15 point game.  I was coaching Josh, but he didn't need much strategic guidance, just some rules clarification.  Josh managed to slip some arc-node chicken-jacks through the line to blast Lylyth with venom one turn, then slip a Defiler in to deliver the kill shot.  The game was getting quite raucous, and even turned into a drinking game wherein both players drank (about a 4 oz tasting glass) whenever a model was removed from the table.

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The beer tasting continued.
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After the game, someone mentioned the fact that I had brought my paints.  Was I expecting to paint something?!  My answer:  Heck yeah, now I am.  Give me something to paint!  I'll paint it in one hour!  Matt promptly handed me Typhon.  He had to pick the big one didn't he?

One hour is not very long to go from assembled and unprimed to fully painted it turns out.  Here was the result.

Good from far, but far from good.

The basic recipe for a one-hour Typhon is Charadon Granie chitin, heavily highlighted with a 50/50 P3 bootstrap leather/charadon granite.  The skin is Reaper Leather white, highlighted with skull white.   The claws were skull white with a sepia wash.  Teeth were skull white.  I wish I had done more with them now that I'm looking at the photo.

The general consensus was positive.  Basically the "if my army looked like that I'd be happy" sentiment.  I showed it to my wife, who was upstairs hanging out with Brian's wife.  She was not terrible impressed. 

On the way home we were talking about the events of the day.

   "Everyone seemed pretty happy with the way Typhon came out after just an hour of painting."

   "Yeah, but they were pretty drunk."

   "Oh, yeah."

Drunk or not, the Protectorate is now 0/9 and someone walked out of there with a painted heavy warbeast.

EDIT:  I am revising the record to 0/8, per the News Flash above.

0/7 .... Another Sad Day for the Protectorate

See how cleverly Kreoss sends his forces off to
his left so he can engage the enemy alone?

Today, a group of filthy mercenaries invaded the conference table in my office.  My Menites mustered forces to repel the invaders.  There was a swamp involved.

Clearly this photo shows that all other armies pale in comparison to the might of the Protectorate!

In battle.... well a bit different.  I repeated my common mistake.  I separated my force, put my caster in harm's way and ended up having to make the choice between getting gunned down at 15" or get splattered standing toe-to-toe with a heavy 'jack.  Kreoss, ever the exemplar, went down swinging.

They may have lost, but they lost looking good.

Kreoss goes down swinging.  His MAT7 vs the Avalancher DEF9 means
that he'd only need snake-eyes to miss.  Yup, there they are.
To add insult to injury, the Avalancherkilled him with a shield.  A shield.

...but who is the best looking army on the table?
I'm talking to you primer-white mercs!

No Lunch Game For The Choir

Work had issues today, so I decided to call off the lunch game rather than give the appearance of shirking.  The newly painted choir was disappointed.  Hear their song of woe!

Quick question for anyone who reads these.... is there a particular type of model you are interested in seeing a step-by-step walk-through for?  I'd be interested to see what interests you, and if it interests you enough to potentially buy a pdf guide (fairly cheap.)  Let me know!

Choir of Menoth, ready for their first game

Well, their first painted game anyway.  Tomorrow is our traditional Warmachine/Hordes lunch day, and I have a fully painted 15 point list ready!  This is my first time fielding a fully painted Warmachine force of any size, so I'm quite excited.  I'm guessing that the Protectorate will march to a full color victory.  After all, I've lost the last 6 games.... statistically speaking I'm almost guaranteed to win, right?

Painting was a lot of fun tonight, with Designer7x and Jimmy talking battletech/mechwarrior almsot all night.  Ah, reminds me of my days in the lounge of Wadsworth Hall, playing battletech with the PFRC gang.  D7x has a cool looking building he's been working on.  He cut a picture of a futuristic city scape up to paste onto the windows of the hanger, making it appear as if the windows are mirrored.  It's a very cool effect.  I also found out that Jimmy was a national Mage Knight champion (playing under the name "Creature".)  Go figure!

Old Stuff: Behold My Crappy Elf

Reaper 02506: Rath Nashanneth

So instead of participating in "Old Stuff Day" by reposting a blog entry, I'm putting one of my very old minis on display.

I got this fellow at a Paint-and-Take sponsored by Black Lightning at my local hobby shop in 2006.  I think he was supposed to be a dark elf, but I didn't know that at the time, hence the color scheme. It occured to me about halfway through that this was the first time I had ever tried to paint a human(oid) face. Go figure.  

At the time, I thought this guy was top notch.  

Common comment: "His sword is so.... green."

Yes.  Yes it is.

State of the Protectorate (and other updates)

Behold the nightmarish lighting of 2 CF bulbs in my kitchen!

The choir is coming along.  The goal is a complete squad of 4 for gaming Thursday.

I've also completed the Redeemer and have put a little more work into the Avatar of Menoth.  I'm saving the stained glass areas until I am ready to photograph progress for a step-by-step.

In fact, I'm getting a reasonable number of painted jacks available to field.  The Redeemer makes 5.  Here are the other 4.

In addition, I have 5 painted casters to field.  I'm still not sure about Feora.  I just didn't feel like I "got" that model the first time through.  Maybe I'll go back and try and salvage a decent paint job out of her later.

On the non-Warmachine front, I am done with the Black Templar Dreadnought.  At least until I find aspects of him that I want to repaint.

And finally, a sneak peak at something I've been working on a little at a time...

Ouch. An Ork Just Math-Hammered Me.

Just a quick summary of something that I really didn't appreciate until yesterday.

30 Ork Boyz w/shootas, 3 rokkit launchas = 210 pts
10 tactical Space Marines w/ heavy bolter, plasma gun = 180 pts

Full squad of Orks shoot at Marines.  18 shoota hits.  9 shoota wounds.  3 failed armor saves.  1 rokkit hit/wound w/ no save.  That makes 4 dead marines = 64 points.  The Marine squad is now seriously compromised.  Points killed per points of unit is .305.

Full squad of Marines shoot at Orks.  Let's assume that are in rapid fire range.  16 bolter  shots  = 11 bolter hits = 6 bolter wounds.  Heavy bolter gets 2 hits and, oh let's just say two wounds.  Plasma gun gets a couple shots... let's just say both wound.  So that's 10 Ork casualties = 60 points.   Points killed per points of unit is .333.

In the end, I discovered that a full unit of Boyz is almost as effective for the points as a full tactical squad of marines, plus the Boyz can shoot you up and still charge you for an effective whomping.

Waaagh indeed.

Choir of Menoth, model 1

I'm of a serious mind to have some painted Warmachine figures with which to play.  My abysmal win record recently (0/5 with PoM, 0/1 with Skorne) can only be attributed to unpainted/partially painted models.  I mean, it couldn't be me, could it?


So here is model #1 of a 4 member choir.  I'm satisfied with the results.  The scroll text was done with a Pigma Micron 005 (0.2 mm tip) pen.  The idea is to basically tap the pen irregularly on the line as you move the pen, creating some "words" that are longer than others.  It makes a reasonable facsimile of text at a distance.

The skin is GW tallarn flesh, washed devlan mud, repainted tallarn flesh over non shadow areas and then highlighted with a little skull white mixed into the tallarn flesh.  Maybe 60/40 tallarn/white.

Finishing this squad of 4 will allow me to field a few variants of a 15 point army, fully painted.

So far I have painted...
Warcasters: pKreoss, Feora, High Reclaimer, pSeverius
Warjacks: Reckoner, Repender, Revenger, Crusader, and a 90% done Redeemer
Units: just the one choir member; a couple Exemplar units have some sporadic color
Solos: Gorman DiWulfe

I also have a painted Testament of Menoth given to me as a gift.  I have to say, getting painted minis as a gift when you really know the person painted it specifically for you is pretty amazing.

Gravity 2, Wraithlord 0

You'd think I would have learned from the last incident, but noooooo.  The Wraithlord took another majestic dive into the dogs' water bowl tonight.  This time the cause was a rinse-water mug being taken off the shelf, causing an HP multimeter to tip forward, pushing the Wraithlord.

He is now, once again, repaired and awaiting shipment to his new home along with some of his friends.

Black and Tan (pic heavy)

Here is a pictorial of Apple Barrel Country Tan (inexpensive acrylic craft paint) layered over black primer.  The tan is diluted to minimize acrylic binder texture on drying, as miniature painting ideally should be.

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So after 12 coats of tan, the coverage is "good, not great."  There are still visible areas where the coloration is inconsistent.  This is a good demonstration of what goes into a very smooth paint job; I certainly don't have the patience to paint entire models like this for gameplay.  I think the misnomer here is thinking of each of these steps as "coats" like painting a wall would get coats.  When you are painting with very thin coats, one area is drying rapidly while you are working on an adjacent area.  I took pains here to go over each area only once between photos.  In practice I would be going back to the areas that had incomplete coverage almost immediately after finishing a nearly area.  The paint should be thin enough that it dries pretty much as you watch.

I might repeat this exercise with a foundation paint over black primer and see if the result is significantly different.

Tutorial - Over/Under Lightning (Ulthwe Eldar)

As part of the Big Box of Eldar I have done a number of skimmers with the same style of lightning as the Fire Prism in the Eldar codex.  While not exactly like the codex version, mine have used the same over/under technique.  It's easy to execute.

First, paint your lightning as three continuous zig-zag lines.  Neatness is not a prerequisite here as you can see.  Try to at least keep the different lines obvious enough that you can follow them with the eye at this point.

fig 1. basic lightning shapes

Next, choose a line to follow.  In this case I chose the second one from the tip.  Paint sharp edges of the background color at the first place where it intersects another line to give the impression that it is going over that line.

fig 2. first edging over

At the next intersection, paint edges along the other line to give the impression that your chosen line is going under that line.  As you go, clean up any fuzzy edges with more of the background color.

fig 3. second edging, under

Continue alternating over and under.  You don't need to stick with the same line all the way through as long as each line alternates.  If you make a mistake, just paint the lightning bolt color over the edges and then draw the correct edges.

fig 4. alternate over/under

Sharpen corners and edges as you go, continuing the process out to the points of each line.

fig 5. continue and clean up edges

That's it.  Pretty simple, eh?  This would probably work for tribal-style tattoos as well.

Hordes: Minions ... Pigs 'n' Gators!

I love Warmachine, but I had a very hard time deciding on a Hordes army until I started seeing models like Lord Carver or the Blackhide Wrastler.  Pigs 'n' Gators!  I picked up the book this weekend, and ... well... it's pretty cool.  I don't play Mercenary armies in Warmachine, so maybe this experience is shared, but I was a bit disappointed by the division in the book.  It's Pigs OR Gators, for the most part.  That's fine, I can understand that, and I would assume that Rhulic Mercenaries and Magnus would not play nice together necessarily.

What kind of made me sad were the units that I absolutely cannot take as a particular mercenary force.  Playing pigs?  Sorry, no Feralgeist.  Playing gators?  Sorry, no Gudrun the Wanderer.  Playing anybody?  Sorry, no Lanyssa Ryssyl or Dahlia Hallyr and Skarath.  That last one just breaks my heart.   I tend to pick armies based on the models and not the rules, so to find out that my favorite models in the "faction" can't work together makes me sad.  It pretty much dooms me to have to start two Minion armies, plus another Hordes army if I am going to get some of the other cool Minions units/solos.

Then again.... I paint more than I play.  I should just buy the models, paint them, and stop whining.  After all, not playing Legion, Cryx or Cygnar didn't stop me from getting Vayle, Skarre or a journeyman warcaster.

In terms of the book, I was very entertained by the background stories.  Much like the other PP "Forces of" books, the art is big and bold, and the rules plainly presented.  It seems a little light compared to, say, the Protectorate or Khador books but it's a new faction so that's to be expected.  I really would have preferred to see more painting and hobby content, including maybe some close ups of the models to show details that aren't really visible on the web.  That would certainly give the book more value to me.  Pages-wise, it's about 2/3 the size of Codex: Space Marines but with much more color at exactly the same price point.

Avatar of Menoth Stained Glass WIP

If you are going to lose every battle, you can at least look good doing it.  I reposed the Avatar ages ago, and I've been meaning to paint him with stained glass for even longer.  I'm certainly not the first to do this.  My aim is something more ornate than the studio paint job, but not a walking church.

I've left all the tabards/curtains off, with intent to sculpt them to go with the new pose later.