Timor

This will have been the 2nd dragon I've painted for Action Games Miniatures' Drake game.  The Timor dragon of the Mountain Lords (formerly Garrick) faction is a monstrous mass of flesh, muscle and bad attitude.  While not as physically large as the Garrick dragon himself, the Timor is no less fierce in melee and damage potential.

The model I received to paint was one of the first run test casts for the Timor, and therefore was an off-colored white resin cast.  The gaps and mold lines weren't perfect in these earlier runs but I did my best to cover them up.  I'm really not great with green stuff and putty etc but thats a topic I'm thinking about writing a separate blog post about.

The model is really open for an artist's interpretation.  It has wonderfully sculpted smooth surface areas of muscle and wing tissue with some minor detailed spines on the back of the neck progressing into larger spikes down the back ending in a clubbed, stegosaurus type tail.  The face features some spines jutting from the cheeks and ram's horns curling forward.  After a brief color scheme talk with Ben, AGM's director, I decided I wanted to have a pretty simple 'backdrop' to the flesh of this model done exclusively with the airbrush with free handed, brushed on scales in various places that draw the eye to key points of the model and break up the monotony of the smooth airbrushed flesh.

I started by priming the model Army Painter's grey primer.  I then applied VMA Light Brown to the entire model except the horns, spines, and  base.  I then shaded the model with VMA Medium Brown until satisfied with the results.  I went back with VMA Light Brown to hit key areas I wanted to be lighter.  Simple!

Now on to the fun part.  I started with P3's Umbral Umber and 'penciled' in where I wanted all the scales to be.  I focused on areas around the existing, pre sculpted scales on the back of the dragon's neck, shoulders, thighs, head, wings, and back.  This took quite a while as you can imagine, especially considering I did about 5 layers on EACH scale.  The finished product is quite something though.

I slowly shaded every scale starting with pure P3 Sanguine Base followed by pure P3 Skorne Red followed by pure P3 Khador Red followed by pure P3 Khador Red Highlight.  I found that with such a small area to work on like an individual scale you don't necessarily need to do any separate stages in between pre manufactured colors, so no mixing involved. 

It was about this time when I had an epic brush fail x2.  I recently decided to crack open a new GW brush because after finishing my Empire army I wanted to throw away my previous brush that I'd contaminated with metallic colors used on armor plates.  However, the brush I opened was horribly frayed and would NOT shape back together to my annoyance.  I decided to put it aside for now as time was a factor and I opened a 2nd brush I had sitting around.   This brush ALSO had the same problem.  I'm wondering if the factory forgot to put on the gum arabic to shape the bristles or what.  Not having any gum arabic lying around at home to use, I had to head to DeSerres and ended up spending a bunch of money on a Windsor & Newton brush.  I really forgot how awesome those brushes truly are.. so impressed.  It seems before I took them for granted.

At this stage, I was debating painting the horns the traditional bone color but thought it may be too similar to the skin tone so I went with a stark contrasting black highlighted up with P3 Coal Black and P3 Trollblood Base.  Simple yet effective.  As for the base of the model, it has some nicely sculpted rocky areas and some areas that are assumed to be dirt.  I did a couple layers of drybrushing greys and browns and ended up with something I felt was dusty and natural enough.  Some premade static grass clumps from army painter were added and 'she' was done!  I had to quickly take pictures in my crappy little light box before one of Ben's men came to pick it up for photographing.  It was nice knowing you Timor!  By the way this model is fucking HUGE!  Airbrushes are definitely suggested.

My next project is for a friend.  It's a Dwarf King on Bear from Scibor miniatures.  Pretty excited to paint this as its a pure awesome model and it'll mean back to NMM for a bit hurray!

Wet Coast GT 2013

Just finished playing at Wet Coast this weekend and what a time it was!  I'll do a very brief overview of my games and summary of the event overall.  I will, however, first say that I won a 'medal' for best Empire General (out of 2 players YEAAAHH!!) and a $25 gift certificate to Imperial Hobbies through a raffle draw.

Game 1:  My opponent was Peter Davis from Chop with Lizardmen.  I liked his conversions he did for his army, some of which included some funny googly eyed chameleon skinks and saurus in the middle of bringing down some bretonnian knights of the realm.  His army wasn't too scary as far as Lizardmen armies go, with the worst part of it being 2 scar veteran heroes and 2 slann magepriests with one having the becalming cogitation (opponents discard 6's when casting spells) and the ability to gain a 'free' dice for casting a spell.  The game really came down to one scar vet walking through my entire artillery line at the back, and his 2 slann sitting in a building becoming virtually untouchable.  I beat up his army pretty bad, and forced him to flee with most of it, but unfortunately I just couldn't roll high enough to catch him in most situations and didn't manage to take off as many points as I would've liked.  I feel I did a lot better than the points tally showed at the end.  Loss for me game 1.

Game 2:  My opponent was Iain Edgar also from Chop with his Dwarfs.  Iain was a brilliant opponent to play against and such a good sport, he got my favorite opponent vote.  His army only had a couple warmachines, yet he had an anvil of doom which really is hard to predict.  I basically played the fleeing and setting up to shoot the piss out of his army type game and actually ended up tabling him in the end.  He did get my steam tank though with his slayers.  Win for the Empire.

Game 3: My opponent was *Ryan* McKinnon from Vancouver Island's "Greenskin Nation" gaming club.  He was one of the 9/33 players that brought Warriors of Chaos.  I felt horrible in this game because turn 1 I cannoned off his level 4 daemon prince.  however, similar to a common theme during this tournament, even when a couple tough melee units got through my guns they managed to wipe through a warmachine or two and an engineer in the process.   My opponent conceded after one of his Slaanesh Warrior units was obliterated off the table by a nice round of volleygun fire.  No harm no foul there.  Empire Win.

Game 4: My opponent was Andrew Muirhead with his Ogres.  Andrew and I actually played a practice game with our exact same lists a couple weeks prior to the event so we knew how the game played out pretty much.   It didn't go well for the Ogres but was probably better than the first time we played.  I ended up tabling him as well, only suffering the loss of a cannon to a misfire, a unit of chaff knights to a maneater unit, and a helblaster volleygun and my archers were taken off from a couple rounds of combined leadbelcher and ironblaster fire.  My steam tank managed to get into his big horde of ogre bulls and held them up until demigryphs could charge their REAR.  bad news for ogres.  Empire win. (poor Andrew, I don't think he likes playing me haha)

Game 5: My opponent was Alex Harris with his Orcs and Goblins.  This guy was a real 'joy' to play against.  Starting off by taking a march move back after going through dangerous terrain with his wolf rider chaff unit and rolling 3/5 1's for his DT tests, he decided he didn't want to move AFTER the result...  I let it go because I don't enjoy making a scene or calling people out on rules (although sometimes I should stick to my guns and call people out).  The game progressed and I cannoned off a couple stone throwers and killed some chaff wolves etc and basically the entire time he was bitching and whining about how awesome my dice were and how broken my shit was... really not fun at all.  He was complaining about every 'horrible (horribly average) ' roll he was making and every 'good' roll I was making.  He killed my steam tank, he basically walked through my entire army yet still I could not get an ounce of cheer from this man.  Really lame sauce.  After fighting a unit of his trolls with my demigryph knights, getting 9 wounds in total, and him passing 8!!!! out of 9 of his 4+ regens, I thought this would be the last time he complained about how awesome my dice were.. yet nope!!! He kept wanking off about how everything sucked and at this point I tossed him my hand to shake and say GG because I was fed up with how he was acting.  I told him I really didn't enjoy the game and all his whining (even though he was still winning).  Normally I don't mind a bit of complaining but this guy was just an asshole about it.  I have no shame in saying it was my least enjoyable moment from the weekend and I hope I don't end up drawing him as an opponent in future tournaments but you're always going to run into people like this I suppose.  Loss for me (and too bad the event had to end on that note!)

Summary:  I went 3-2 which I'm pretty happy with, coming in 15th place after everything was added up which is in the top half of the field.  The tournament itself was very well run by a fellow named Dan Miner who frequently does these kinds of events.  He's a great guy who really does us all a great service in organizing these tournaments.  There were TONS of prizes to be raffled off so it seemed everyone got something which was also great.  There was one bit of drama that happened between a couple players (someone walking away from a game angry) that I won't go into but nothing else major as far as I heard.  I'll be signing up next year and if you're in the Vancouver area and play Warmachine, Hordes, Malifaux, Flames of War, 40k, or Fantasy I suggest signing up as well as the event now hosts all those systems.

1500 PTS Premier Tournament @ GW Highgate

Today I had a sort of warm up for WGT coming up in a couple weeks.  I tried out a 1500 pt Empire list for WFB at the local GW (somewhere I haven't been gaming in ages).  My main game being warmachine, many of my opponents from that game DESPISE GW stuff.  I think it's a bitter attitude (one that I once shared at a time) for people who believe they've been slighted by GW.  If you look past all the bullshit GW constantly does, which is sometimes hard to do, you can see a light hearted game with great looking models and most of all pretty awesome and fun people who play (WFB at least.. 40k night probably smells bad haha).

Almost finished all 8 Demigryphs.  These guys did more scaring people with their bark than actually destroying them with their bite!  They look scary!!!

I wanted to use some of the Demigryphs I've recently painted so that was a must.  I also wanted to practice redirecting and fleeing more, so I took a small group of Knightly Orders with musician to help out with that.  I took some guns to shoot stuff dead and a Celestial Wizard Level 4 to improve their damage output with the Harmonic Convergence spell.

General: Celestial Wizard Level 4, Earthing Rod
Battle Standard Bearer Captain, Standard of Discipline, Full Plate Armor, Shield
Master Engineer, Light Armor (I had 1 point leftover)
Master Engineer

Halberdiers x32, Full Command Group
Detachment Archers x5
Knightly Orders x5, Musician

Demigryph Knights x5, Musician
Great Cannon

Helblaster Volleygun
Helblaster Volleygun

Game 1:  I faced off against my good buddy Kiel! Who ta thunk?  I signed up for a tournament to face someone I regularly play. The scenario was Blood and Glory, leaving me with 4 fortitude points and Kiel had 5 I think.  Kiel brought Beastmen with notable threats being a Cygor, a horde of Gor with two hand weapons and a couple characters inside, 1 being a BSB and 1 being a level 3 bray shaman on lore of Beasts, and a big block of 25-30 Bestigor with great weapons.  It turned out there was a huge piece of area terrain in the middle of the damn table that meant Kiel's force wasn't going to be steadfast in combat (though i dont want them to be there!) but also meant I was at a -1 to hit modifier with all my guns.  The short of it was I spent a couple turns shooting his stuff, taking off the Cygor turn 1 with a single cannon shot, and mowing down about half of the Gor with helblasters.  There was a turn where my knights were in the rear of his Gor, my block of halberds in the flank, and my poor helblasters in front.  This ended up with me eventually grinding him out, breaking him, and winning then and there with more than half his fortitude destroyed in 1 unit.  The DGK also had a bit of fun breaking the bestigor who were out of BSB range, and had also failed their hatred check.  I didn't end up catching them, however, though it did not matter.  Empire victory.

Game 2: I faced a dwarf opponent who was named Tanner if i recall correctly.  The scenario was Battle Line.  I was really hoping not to face either of the dwarf players, as I knew it would be a 'cannon-off' and fortune would favor whoever didn't roll 1's and misfires.  Tanner's army had a LOT of scary guns: a grudge thrower, an organ gun, and 2 cannons (1 was flaming).  He also had a horde of dwarf warriors with great weapons and a BSB hiding inside, 10 thunderers, and another 25 man block of dwarf warriors with his general.  Tanner finished deploying first, most things camping the corner in true dwarfy fashion, but I still managed to win the roll off for first turn even with his additional +1 to the roll.  This pretty much set the pace of the game from the start.  My cannon took out his organ gun, the main threat to my demigryphs, while my helbasters advanced up in to range (I actually forgot but my gracious opponent let me move them after the fact!).  My knights marched off toward a cannon that eventually killed itself with a misfire before i got the chance to get to grips with it, and my demigryphs were actually successfully baited toward the bearer of the Rune of Challenge.  Tanner's general was holding that rune, and really caught me out.  I ended up failing a BAD charge putting me in a horrible position that was in direct cannoning line straight through all the demigryphs.  luckily Tanner's dice hated him this game and he only managed to hit and kill 1 with the ensuing cannonball.  after a couple more rounds of helblasters in the face and chain lightning bouncing between his units, all he had left was his horde and Tanner, unsurprisingly and unashamedly conceded the game.  It's never fun getting beat up when there's really no hope anyways, at that point it would just be me rolling dice.  It was quite the kicking and I felt kinda bad. I really enjoyed Tanner and would definitely play him again in a deserved rematch.  Empire Victory.

Game 3:  This was up against Allen's Vampires.  Allen had a metric ass ton of models in this list, with the biggest threats being a vampire general in a block of 30 or so graveguard, 2 units of ethereal fast cav, and a tomb banshee.  we were playing battle for the pass which i thought was going to give me a huge advantage, my army being shooty and all.  However, I had NO idea that the ethereal fast cav were indeed fast cav, and therefore could vanguard.  I had a +1 for the roll for first turn yet still failed.  This was boding ill.  Allen vanguarded directly in my face with stuff 99% of my army cant hurt! awesome! During my turn, I looked at it and figured I could probably charge the close unit of ethereal cav and beat them out on combat res alone.  They don't have many attacks, with 1 apiece, and there were only 5 of them.  After shooting some graveguard and crypt ghouls with helblasters and cannoning off a few more graveguard, i charged in with my halberdiers and my archers also had to charge just to get out of the way.  luckily for me,   his cav didnt do a SINGLE wound, and I managed to wipe them completely due to combat res.  Allen's next turn saw the beginning of a horrible spell haunting me the entire game: Curse of Years on the Halberdiers.  I couldnt dispel it in his magic phase, nor my own magic phase, and finally in his NEXT turn I got rid of it. My knightly orders fled a charge from crypt ghouls after beating up some dire wolves, and that flee reaction panicked my DGK, almost sending them off the board!  The game came down to my halberdiers grinding out a big unit of zombies with the banshee inside, my helblasters almost tabling the graveguard from persistent shooting, his vampire walking through the helbasters, and my DGK destroying the graveguard and getting the vampire down to a single wound.  We were the last to finish, and counting up VPs, I had won!  Allen was another excellent opponent and good sport and there was really no whining or complaining the entire day (probably because I won all 3 games, I'm the biggest whiner after all!).  Empire Victory!

I had tons of fun and would like to thank the staff at GW Highgate for running the event. I think the overall consensus was that it was a  fun event with no real problems.  my friend Kiel ended up winning on sportsmanship/soft score.  He went 1-2! Congrats Kiel, people love you apparently!! I gave Kiel my best sportsmanship vote, as well as a vote for best painted, alongside Jonathan's excellently painted vampire army.   Kiel is really good for taking a dick kicking and still keeping in good spirits (for the most part =P) and is just generally a fun and funny opponent to have a game with.  2nd place goes to both Jonathan and I.  Yay us!  I've already signed up for their next tournament, which will be 2000 points sometime in November most likely.