Druid Wilder and Drexoll Games review

I finished my 3rd Circle model, though it's not officially part of my Mohsar list.  I've been keeping up with my don't buy any more models rule well enough.  Next is stones.  

For this model I tried a skin tutorial from Bell of Lost Souls that was written about some Kingdom of Death Survivor models.  I think this is the brightest skin I've painted in a long time (skorne skin is more tanned).  It was good practice and I think works for females; males I like to have more of a dark to light transition because their features are more chiseled and sharp.  Females look better with soft and unnoticeable transitions from mid-dark to light.  I'd like to practice different skin tones eventually, including more ethnic ones.  I think tharn bloodtrackers suit darker skin tones, so that is the plan.

Another thing new about this model is doing reddish hair (also from the tutorial on BoLS).  I'm actually happy with hair for once.  Sometimes I just want to drybrush hair because my normal methods for painting it are kind of sloppy I find with highlights inevitably running into the crevices and all that nonsense.  I was extra careful this time though and managed to avoid any running.

The gold NMM on this model is not as precise and sharp as the warpwolf stalker but thats for 2 reasons: 1. its on a smaller sculpt and harder to make look clean, and 2. it's not sculpted sharp in the first place; many edges are smooth not hard and therefore you kind of have to fudge a line with your brush directly instead of just following a nice sharp edge highlight.  Those are my thoughts!

I had the opportunity to check out a not so LGS thats on the other side of town: Drexoll Games.  Overall there were tons of people and it seemed like the press gangers were very involved and dedicated to the crowd at their store.  They had about 6 or 7 tables set up and they were all full with some people even waiting to play still.  A few people I invited out also showed up and had some games against people they don't normally play which is always a good change of pace.  It seems like most players there are not so serious about the game and play for pure fun which is good and bad.  I guess I feel like this store is the complete opposite of Connections; it has players who (IMO, I don't at all know them but this is what I gather from observing a few games and looking at lists) are just getting into the game and haven't seen everything thats out there (for example  I was the first skorne player to attend a game day at Drexoll) where as Connections makes you want to bash your head into a wall because most attendees net deck and power game the shit out of their lists.  I feel Strategies has the perfect balance of competitive people who really know the game and people who are just having fun and people who are just getting into the game.  Generally I would prefer to play against someone of Connection's caliber to start but if I get absolutely smashed I'd like to play a player who just wants to have fun for my 2nd game of the day.
My opponent today was one of the press gangers who is a really cool guy and I would play again any time.  The game was unfortunately not the most fun game I've had.  This is because I felt like he had no idea what my army did (even after explaining to him briefly and helping him try to make decisions on how to best face my list) and I kind of rolled over him without much competition.  Frustrating for him I'm sure and no challenge for me = not very much fun.  He was trying a new list with a fairly new warlock (Grim 2) which also played a big part in why he didn't put up as much as a fight as he would normally.  I was using Morghoul 1 with a bronzeback, a gladiator, and a mammoth.  We played Incursion because I wanted to practice that scenario with Morghoul who I think isn't exactly good at holding 2 objectives (especially when they are ALWAYS on the left and right flanks!).  Also, after a really drawl game at Connections last Wednesday against my friend's Circle Orboros and losing on objectives really sloppily I felt I needed to win this scenario to make up for that shameful loss!
I would consider going back to Drexoll, though it is far.  I can see myself going for tournaments especially but hopefully I can get a game in against a nasty list that will just kick my ass and teach me a few things about the game.  The table space was a bit cramped and my butt was constantly rubbing other people's butts as we moved past the aisle between tables.  Also no chairs.  Not a big deal I guess.  One other cool thing was they were fazing out their Games Workshop stock so everything GW was 30% and if it was in an old package it was 60% off!  I picked up an Island of Blood that was for some reason priced at 89.99 instead of the current price of $120 or so for an extra 30% and an empire cannon and high elf archer regiment both for 60% off!  In total, the Island of Blood, Elf archers, and empire cannon cast me about $100!  Deal!
Overall, everyone was friendly and if you're in the neighborhood I don't see why you wouldn't play there.  As I previously mentioned, I think it's just young and people need a little more practice to develop into truly competitive players that can achieve the balance of having fun/enjoying the hobby without winning every game but also putting up a mean fight.  Here are some pics of a couple tables that my friends were playing on:

Archidon, list ideas, and testing the Mammoth/Incindiarii

This one was pretty quick all things considered.  Most of the work was done with the airbrush anyways.  I tried an oil wash for the first time on this model and I'm having mixed feelings about whether it truly added anything significant or not.  I feel like most of what the wash did could have been achieved with paint and with more control.  I'm telling myself its really just my inexperience with oil washes however.  It seems kind of gimmicky to me but I've seen people make it work to great effect.  Maybe it's just not my style.  The skin didn't need much in the way of brushwork on it, aside from further shading a bit and some edge highlights here and there.  The muzzle/beak I painted a little darker for some interesting visual contrast.  The NMM was obviously the most time consuming part, but overall I don't think it's terrible, just not my best.  One thing I dislike about the Archidons is that their wings need huge amounts of putty work and of course knowing my luck I was driving home from teaching a friend some painting techniques and had my Archidon in a bag on the seat and somehow (unsurprisingly) one of the wings broke so now all that putty work is not so subtle and there is an obvious gap where the wing connects to the body.  I craftily did NOT take a picture of that side ;). 

Working on Molik Karn and finishing the Archidon has prompted me to stark painting Archdomina Makeda.  I made a list I quite like for denial tactics (extremely my style) and would use against forces like Menoth or Khador who don't have huge threat ranges at the best of times.  Menoth in particular I think would struggle to catch this list in melee and if they relied on shooting they wouldn't have many turns of opportunity for that tactic to have great effect.  To be honest, I think this list would do well against most factions besides Cryx and maybe trolls (because tough is hard to account for).

Archdomina Makeda +5
Molik Karn -11
Archidon -7
Titan Gladiator -8
Bronzeback Titan -10
Aptimus Marketh -3
Nihilators max -8
Paingiver Beasthandlers min -2
Agonizer -2
Mortitheurge Willbreaker -2
Mortitheurge Willbreaker -2
50

Another thing - I tried the Mammoth and Cataphract Incindiarii out the other day.  I'm not too sure how I'm liking the Mammoth.  I think its an awful big points investment for something that in both games I played did NOT make it's points back.  Perhaps I just need more practice, which is true, but I'm thinking the Mammoth may not be my style.  I played it in my first game against Cygnar and found that its really not a great beast in that matchup.  Cygnar has ways of ignoring blast damage (foxhole, arcane shield basically nullifies it) so where I initially thought my crazy awesome gun would do some serious hurt on infantry, it literally did nothing but damage a heavy jack a couple times.  I ended up using him in melee more than I did at range (which isnt necessarily a bad thing) but I had built my list around making his gun work and getting a ton of shots.  I find that E. Hexeris is also not very thrilled with things like foxhole and arcane shield (I was playing against Siege).  He loves to fight infantry, but not ARM 18 stormblades or DEF 18 rangers in a foxhole.  I found I used my feat to cast hellfire a bunch of times at stormblades but thats really not a good FURY for model trade, nor a good use of my feat.   In the end, I only had a gladiator and Hexeris on the table, he had Seige, a minuteman without a cortex, and an inert stormclad.  He was running out of time so instead of camping on the objective and winning in 2 turns by dominating the flag, i stupidly decided to charge his caster who was defending an obstacle with Hexeris and failed an assassination.  great. GG no RE.  My second game fared better for me. We played the Hardcore scenario and  I used P. Hexeris against probably the best cryx player (best warmachine player in general) in my province.  To be fair, I wrote this list in particular to counter cryx infantry spam that I always see in people's lists at tournaments.  I figured with P.Hexy's feat, eyeless sight and magical weapon on a stick, AOE's everywhere, soul slaved razorworm, access to farstrike and puppet master on whats important, I could take out the most annoying things in any Cryx arsenal (warbitch sirens, pistol wraiths, necroseurgeons, banelord tartarus, bilethralls, etc).  Long story short, his dice were pretty poor this game and he didnt kill the mammoth with his kraken and failed an assassination on Hexeris, leaving the kraken to be taken out by the mammoth and hexeris and Asphyxious 3 exposed so in the final turn hexeris managed to clear a spot for the mammoth to land and the mammoth trampled over some stuff to get into melee with Asphyxious and stompy stompy.  Lucky game for me I think, my opponent is miles better than me at this game AND I think Skorne struggles in this matchup in particular.  For fun, my list was:

Lord Tyrant Hexeris +6
Mammoth -20
Cyclops Raider -5
Razorworm -4
Cataphract Incindiarii Max -9
Nihilators Max -8
Paingiver Beasthandlers min -2
Extoller Soulward -2
Extoller Soulward -2
Mortitheurge Willbreaker -2
Mortitheurge Willbreaker -2
50

2nd Circle Model finished - Warpwolf Stalker

So I had a terrible accident recently with a paint bottle.  It was a vallejo model air Gold and it was pretty clogged in the dropper and I decided instead of being smart and poking a hole through the clogged paint with a wire rod or paper clip i would squeeze the dry paint out.  This ended badly.  Gold paint exploded all over my clothes, all over the table, all over the chair, the floor, and my models.. a couple of which were already finished!!!! GRRRR I was so mad at myself.  Oddly enough, it only hit my circle models and my skorne stuff was completely missed.  It got on my warpwolf stalker that I had finished the NMM on basically, and on mohsar who was completely finished.  After smashing my palette on the floor (i really needed to throw SOMETHING) I cooled down and just fixed everything up.   Because of this whole incident, I will push extra hard to finish models on my painting table to avoid paint spilling on them again.

I'm really happy with the warpwolf stalker.  There aren't many parts of this model that I think aren't done to my best ability.  I think the NMM is done almost perfectly, both gold and steel.  the one thing im not sure about is the black spines.  coulda done them bone colored but thought this might clash with the leather and gold nmm.  I really like this sculpt now that ive held it and painted it.  the only thing i dont like is the little spines that are practically his eyebrows.  they seem out of place and come out of nowhere; his skin is unbroken where they are projecting from his brow.  weird.

I can now buy another circle model and paint it (keeping up with my only buy a model if ive painted what i have for an army) though i need to paint a druid wilder for Matt Kotovsky from youtube and the PP forums.  He makes awesome battle report videos from big warmachine events and I really appreciate his tournament coverage so would like to give him something in return for his efforts.  It will be painted in a winter/blue scheme according to Matt's army.