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
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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
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