Lord General Coleman Stryker Commission

This figure was finished a couple weeks ago but I kept stalling on posting about it.  I was originally waiting to post about this one until after Strategies held its annual Immortal Brush Painting Comp to ensure nobody saw it until the actual judging!  I think this is a safe way of getting the best results in a competition where the judge doesn't know what to expect.  You're more likely to get sick of something the more you see it!


The first comment I'll make on the figure itself is I underestimated its complexity.  Complexity is something I've been debating and getting better at judging lately.  I intuitively know complexity by picking up a model and painting it but explaining it to a customer interested in a commission is a completely different ballpark.  The best explanation I've come up with so far is "I price models based on complexity, quantity, and overall size where complexity means how many surfaces I have to be CAREFUL about basecoating and blending."  An example of super complex would be ANY skorne infantry figure or beast where I would first paint the red armor and then need to carefully coat the gold trim without "going out of the lines" on to where I've already finished.  An example of simple would be a Space Marine or Retribution of Scyrah figure.  These models both have large smooth surfaces without much detail on top of the armor itself.  A Chaos Space Marine, however, has trim EVERYWHERE and would drive me bonkers!

That being said, take a look at this figure now and tell me if it's simple or complex:

Most have probably already guessed complex as hell.  I think I got excited about how much blue there was without gold trim (when I'm used to painting Skorne I was pretty damn happy) but then after the blue was finished I realized how many other odds and ends were scattered all over the model including things like leather straps, lightning nodes, silver gears and details, etc.  Needless to say it took me a lot longer than I expected.

As for the finished product, I'm pretty happy with it.  I entered it in the competition at Strategies as I mentioned earlier and came out with 1st place in the Fantasy/Historical large category.  I particularly enjoy the facial expression that Stryker is sporting.  My favorite part has to be the flag and just the pose itself.  It's a really cool sculpt that I otherwise would never have painted for myself so I thank my client for the opportunity.  Of course the client is happy as well as he now owns a competition winning entry!  

Attack-X 2014 "Sage Brush" painting competition

On Sept 12-14th a few friends and I made the 4.5 hour trek to Kamloops from Vancouver to attend a gaming convention, Attack-X.  I played Warmachine, of course, but did pretty damn poorly so we don't need to talk about the gaming!  But the painting, on the other hand, I will do some talking about!

I took a few pictures of the entries relatively early on the Saturday of the con so unfortunately I may have missed some entries that were put in the case later on in the afternoon, so apologies if I missed your figure! (I'm certain there were a couple I missed that were there the next day sadly).

Without further delay:

Really spectacular dwarven battlegroup with tons of weathering, nice OSL on the visors and an excellent display base to make it really stand apart from the other entries.  I believe this one was by Karim Sadik

A very interesting chaos dragon.  I'm not sure if this is a conversion or if its an actual Forgeworld model but either way it was well done with nice little freehand scales on the wings (similar to something I've done in the past).

Here's a pretty cool Kraken that was almost certainly inspired by Todd Mcneal's Kraken with the pink color scheme and mud streaking down the hull.  This one added some really nice water effects on the base which I actually prefer to green goo but both are fitting for the model for sure.  This entry ALMOST confused me into thinking it was Todd's at first but the blending is not QUITE up to par with Todd's though its nothing to sneeze at.

This was a terrible picture with bad glare because a door was open facing the cabinet.  Overall this was a pretty cool take on a Cephalyx monstrosity.  I liked the blue/grey skin that was well blended.

In this picture we have a few entries that I couldnt get closer pics of due to the layout of the cabinet.  This picture mainly shows off Todd Mcneal's Pandora crew from Malifaux.  Some very nice bright ghostly green on these dudes.  My own Tiberion sits in the upper corner.

This masterpiece is all Alex Yuen.  After talking to him about this one I discovered this was disqualified from Gottacon's painting competition for being X rated.  I think its pretty funny personally but I can understand it's not for everyone.  Good job and very creative Alex.

This is Dave Brereton's (I hope I spelled that correctly) big ass Woldwrath.  It's always impressive to see these huge models in the display case at painting competitions and this one was quite well done with real life made into the pose as if its lumbering forward.  

Here's a picture of my Trollblood battlegroup I entered into the squad category.  I'll have better pictures of these in a later blog post hopefully.  Behind these guys and really hard to get a good picture of is an excellent chaos sorcerer/lord on a manticore.  It had some great blending going on with the manticore's skin and the rider's cloak.  This was one I can tell probably deserved more than it was awarded but thats my technical eye speaking.

Centered here are some sweet looking Legion figures with an alternate color scheme that fits quite well with the models.  Had the blending on these ones been slightly better I think they would've had a very good chance of taking the prize as the painting was generally clean and the models had a nice balance of cool and warm.

Here are a whack load of different entries.  My Xerxis is sitting there along with some great freehand on a Mercenary warjack.  A really nice turquoise dwarven Tactical Arcanist squad sits alongside a turquoise Scaverous boasting some NMM gold trim in the corner.  The Scaverous belongs to Will Hellebrand and was actually painted to the same style and recipe as some of my older gold NMM (I wrote an article on Handcannon Online quite a while back). 

First place for small base - Todd Mcneal

First place for Squad - Karim Sadik

First place for large base - Glen Tarbet
this is one in particular that I didn't get a closer picture of because it was added later on in the day.  Glen has consistently smooth painting along with brilliant colors and professional, non-sloppy use of Armypainter Quickshade.  Great job Glen!

Annnnnddddd... not to toot my own horn but.. I'm the PAINT MASTER!!!!! (I went around all Sunday informing as many people as I could that I'm the PAINT MASTER!!!!!!)  Very cool trophies thanks to Nathan Bosa and Lukasz Kruszewski for making and providing them.  Thanks for the Sage Brush painting competition - I hope more tournaments and cons have this opportunity in the future.

Painting your heroes and center pieces

With life advancing ever onward, I've decided to start selling my skills for money.  I could use a second job after my day job and practicing painting at the same time is always a bonus.  It's been a little while since I've done anything for anyone else besides myself which was a much needed break but I'm leaning towards the conclusion that I get more done when I'm painting for someone else under a loose time line.

What will I paint?  Not armies thats for sure.  I will paint single models, large models, heroes, monsters, small groups of models but NOT an entire army unless I'm going to be compensated handsomely.  I don't mind working a few hours a day for what usually works out to be >$10/hour on a model I ENJOY painting but completing an entire ARMY at that rate is just not in my interests.  Like I say, there are always exceptions so it never hurts to ask just don't expect a cheap price because armies are TONS of work and hours.

Contact Info: anichol88@hotmail.com  please label the subject as PAINTING or COMMISSION, thanks!

Here is something I've completed for a client.  It's a Forgeworld Minotaurs Chaplain (Enoki I believe?).  This guy has sadly made me excited to paint space marines.. a really unwanted distraction at the moment!   For how horrible GW is at making a balanced game system for competitive play they certainly do make some cool models.

I particularly enjoyed painting the black power armor on this guy.  I'm not often happy with highlighting black but I think I've found just the right amount of blending required to make it look well shaded but still black, not turquoise or grey.   Lots of bone details all over this model were fun to work on as well, specifically the bone handle of the crozius as well as his helmet and ribcage.  Overall I'm pretty excited about how he turned out.  I hope you like him.

A long break from the blog

***Disclaimer: my copy+paste function was acting up and I realize some words aren't aligned correctly but I'm far too lazy to re-write the whole article so.. fml***

It's been a while hasn't it?  I haven't been posting projects on here so often lately due to multiple reasons (lack of time with a kid, not wanting to show off models I plan to use in competitions, no good photos etc) but have found without posting stuff I don't motivate myself enough.

Here is something I've finished recently: Tiberion.  I had this guy assembled and base coated for a long time but only got around to completing him now.  This is the first Skorne model I've painted since last year I believe and I've made an adjustment to my NMM gold recipe.

I found my original gold color was too dark for my liking and a little complicated to achieve - using paints from multiple different manufacturers.  I wanted to find something brighter colors and ideally colors from one company (I find the same brand paints mix together easier than trying to mix different brands and this is probably due to the colors sharing the same ingredients?).  I went with my favorite, P3, and I'm really liking it.

I start off with a base of 50:50 Bloodstone and Rucksack Tan.  I'll then have my 2nd layer be pure Rucksack Tan.  I'll now go back a couple stages (something I'm really starting to get into after attending Meg Maple's master class) with pure Sanguine Base as a shade.  The red shade makes a great, dark but still warm contrast with the pale sand color I finish off with.  After playing with the shade color for a while I'll start highlighting again with 50:50 Rucksack Tan and Moldy Ochre.  I'll then do a layer of pure Moldy Ochre.  Finally I'll finish off with an extreme highlight of 50:50 Moldy Ochre and Menoth White Highlight.  I found one of my favorite things with this recipe to be the huge contrast between the dark red/purple shade and the bright off-white highlight.

I also finished Tyrant Xerxis using the same variance in gold as Tiberion.  I'll definitely be sticking with this one from now on. 

I will also be making a blog post announcement shortly that will rock you to your core!! Not really.. I doubt it will change much at all but desperate times call for desperate measures!  Stay tuned...

Foodmachine charity figure donation: Lord Exhumator Scaverous

Finally finished this one for Shawn Leblanc, 2nd place winner of Foodmachine at Connections.

First of all I have to say this model is very cool.  I normally dislike undead figures (mostly because everyone else seems to love them - I'm a hipster like that) but this figure is just large and imposing with a great sculpt and a menacing look.

I wanted to make him a little taller, so I started by adding cork to the base.  I glued the figure together completely and that was my first mistake.  After priming him (pretty terribly to be honest), I picked up the model to apply the first few layers of paint and subsequently dropped him on the work table, smashing him into smithereens... I then decided it would be good to pin the crap out of this model - something I should've done from the get go.  I did, however, keep him separated in two major parts: the legs and body, and the arms and weapon.  I don't normally do this due to pure laziness and the idea that "what is covered up I can't see anyways so why paint it?" but I decided to try something new.  I don't regret painting it in pieces.

Other than that, I pretty much knew what I wanted to do for this guy.  This was originally intended to be a Gottacon 2014 painting competition entry but I didn't finish it quite on time.  With the competition in mind, however, I wanted to throw as many silly gimmicks into this figure as possible.  I'm not one for "special effects" on figures, but I know judges sure like them (I'm looking at you Kelly Kim!), though I am a huge fan of technique.  Thus, I added NMM, which I wasn't originally intending to do, OSL, AND some silly airbrushed cotton fire just to really cake on the cheese!

I used my Skorne red, my Circle of Orboros gold NMM, my standard steel NMM, and some black cloth.  I got some GW skulls (because lets face it-  PP can't sculpt a decent skull worth crap half the time) for the base as well to add to the undead theme.  Usually I think putting corpses on bases is super tacky but I felt it suited this figure.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results and I'll have to kindly ask Shawn to borrow the figure for a competition of some sort in the future.  Which one I'll enter it in is yet to be decided.

My experience with thinning paint for use with the airbrush

I'm working on a commission project for Beautiful Warfare Studio of some really cool Forge World Pre Heresy Night Lords raptors and a couple vehicles.

For the main blue cote of these figures I want to save time by airbrushing it instead of hand brushing.  The biggest problem I've found with doing this is that after using my Vallejo Model Air paints to base a figure I have difficulty blending via hand brushing afterwards.  Sometimes the jump between airbrush to hand brush blending is too obvious for my liking or sometimes I want to go back to that base color to find that VMA blends in a completely different way than the normal P3 paints I tend to like using.

I want to use P3 blue colors for the Night Lords because, as I've said in the past, P3 just works for me and my method of feathering.  These paints are so silky smooth and, to be honest, have a little wiggle room for mistakes or imperfections here and there.  It's just their nature.

In order to avoid past problems with VMA-P3 / airbrush-hand brush situations, I decided to do something I'm a little nervous about: thinning the P3 paint and pumping it through the airbrush in the first place.  I've never had much success with this kind of thing yet (probably thinning the paint down TOO much to avoid dreaded airbrush clog) so naturally it's not something I'm confident in.  I HATE having to take my airbrush apart and it happens all too often with me.  I even keep the air flow continuous such that my index finger often hurts after a decent airbrush session but the brush STILL ends up clogging somehow.  I really need someone who knows their shit about airbrushing to sit beside me and give me some pointers about what I'm doing wrong.  I've kind of learnt everything on my own thus far...

At any rate, I took the P3 Exile Blue, added some Vallejo airbrush thinner and then by accident dropped a whole bunch of water in the mix.. So then I added more paint and a little more thinner and got something akin to what I expected: a not too thin but not too thick mixture that covers well and doesn't clog the brush.

I used the Vallejo polyurethane white primer to first coat these figures.  This is a strange primer and I'm not sure if it's ideal for use outside, or maybe just not for the climate of Vancouver?  It tends to spray on to the figure messily with easy to identify "drops" all over the model.  After a couple of these cotes the problem fixes itself I guess but I'm still not sure if I'm using it correctly.

I added some of my Exile Blue mix and it went on poorly at first but after a second cote really saved me a lot of time.  I still clogged the airbrush, however, though this might have been due to some primer getting stuck (the primer is a tad on the thicker side itself).  I really get frustrated airbrushing.  I sometimes wonder exactly how much time I'm saving when it seems at least twice a session I'm taking the needle out of the brush and wiping it down... sigh...

The 5 raptors are all very blue now and quite solidly at that.  All the detail has been retained (though I don't usually have a problem with this in the first place).  For the vehicles I plan on going even further with my airbrush experimentation and doing something I've always seen done but have never experienced myself: extreme blending with the airbrush.  To be precise, I mean starting with a light color in the 1st quarter, corner of a panel, then using a few mid tones with the airbrush in the 2nd and 3rd quarters of a panel, and finally using the darkest color (in this case Exile Blue) in the 4th quarter of the panel.

I will have some pictures of the project when I deem them suitable for photography... Until then, let the trail and error commence!

Happy New Year!

It's been a while since my last post.  I started work again after a SWEET nine month parental leave so I've been slowing down the progress on miniatures a little (that and the holiday season created some hiccups in my productivity).

Been back at it now though!  My goal before 2014 was to finish my Pureblood Warpwolf I had been working on.  I did so with a few hours of 2013 left to spare!  I'll include some quick pictures of this model at the end of the post.

Something else I'd like to share is that I kept a tally of every single model I completed in 2013.  I want to start doing this every year so I can look back at how productive the year was and if I can beat my completed  model count for the next year.

Master Ascetic Naaresh
Dominar Rasheth
Paingiver Beasthandlers x6
Basilisk Krea
Nekima, the Dark Sibling
Lord Arbiter Hexeris
Mohsar the Desertwalker
Cyclops Raider
Mortitheurge Willbreaker x2
Paingiver Taskmaster
Warpwolf Stalker
Archidon
Druid Wilder
Molik Karn
Archdomina Makeda
Celestial Wizard
Saan Dragon
Kaymayuk Priests of Zerex x2
Bright Wizard
Steam Tank
Master Engineer x2
Battle Standard Bearer Captain
Cherek Hunters x4
Demigryph Knights x9
Halberdiers x47
Archers x10
Great Cannon x2
Helblaster Volleygun
Knightly Orders x10
Timor Dragon
Shifting Stones x6
Stonekeeper
Agonizer
Khorne Daemon Prince
Druid Gone Wilder
Terrax
Totem Hunter
Knights of the Realm x6
Kaymayuk Warriors x6
Warrior Priest on Barded Steed
Battle Standard Bearer on Steed
Kaymayuk Chieftain
Corbrulo, Hellion of the Deep
Dwarf King on Bear
Saan Power Marks x3
Eye of Kyran
Kaymayuk Priestess
Kaya the Wildborne
Woldwarden
Minotaurs Terminator Captain
Gorax
Norse Bloodbowl Trophies x4
Norse Bloodbowl Werewolves x2
Norse Bloodbowl Yeti 
Pureblood Warpwolf

Thats 159 models by my count.  Not too shabby!

... but I probably purchased more than I completed :(

The color of the scales were the biggest debate with this figure.  I'm glad I decided to paint them last so I could get a proper sense of the overall finished scheme before I committed to a scale color.

I've been practicing blending different basecolors together to eventually have a nice meld between two very different finish tones (in this case, white to tawny fur)

I love this sculpt and am glad I managed to acquire one.  Thanks Kiel for the great deal on these figures.

Modelling Cork Bases

I've been pretty smitten with cork bases lately.  They make easy, natural looking rock formations in a pinch and cork is cheap and easy to find.  Here is a little walk through of how I use cork (particularly on small and medium based models).

The cork comes in a pack with 2 sheets of it purchased from Daiso (2 dollar store).  They have varying sizes but I chose the thickest one I could find for some nice elevation with my figs.

I began by ripping a chunk of cork from the sheet with my fingers.  For smaller models this is very doable and looks more natural and random than using a knife.  If you really want to use a knife to cut the pieces you can just rip small chunks off the edges later with your fingers instead.  I super glue the cork directly to the base.  It has enough surface area that the glue by itself will suffice without any need for pinning.

It's okay and actually encouraged to go over the lip of the base.  In my opinion it creates more of a surrounding atmosphere to the model; you can easily imagine the rocky, uneven terrain in the figure's environs.  This admittedly sometimes conflicts with practicality and ease of playing a game from time to time.

The next stage is prepping your figure.  It may be common knowledge to some, but a good trick is using the hunk of metal designed to fit into a slotted base as your ally!  Simply cut off the majority of the metal tag but leave a little 'peg' attached to either or both of the figure's legs.  These will act as your pins without needing to fool around with an annoying and time consuming drill.

After you've created your handy pin, test-fit the model on the cork.  It's important to choose a piece of cork that will have enough surface area on the top to position both of the figure's legs securely.  Once you've chosen a suitable location for the fig, use a hobby knife to 'dig' holes in the cork where the model's pins will slide into.

I think the rest is self explanatory though I love stating the obvious:  super glue the figure onto the cork using your crafty pin and laugh as all your attempts to destroy and uproot your figure from its base are futile!

Here's the completed unit:

Drexoll League Tournament Battle Report Write Up

On Sunday November 24th, 2013 I attended a Warmachine and Hordes tournament at Drexoll games on West 4th ave near Arbutus on Vancouver's West side.  This is a brief summary of the 4 games I played using 2 50 point Skorne lists detailed below.  The tournament was run by Douglas Duncan, a newish press ganger in the area who did a magnificent job and sacrificed not only his time to run the event but various donations for prizes as well (including an Army Transport bag and some models out of his own collection!).

The 2 lists I used were:

Dominar Rasheth tier 4 chain gang:
Rasheth +5
Bronzeback Titan -9
Titan Gladiator -7
Titan Sentry -8
Titan Sentry -8
Basilisk Krea -4
Gatorman Posse max -9
Paingiver Beasthandlers max -3
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew -1
Paingiver Taskmaster -2
Agonizer -2
Agonizer -2

Lord Arbiter Hexeris +6
Bronzeback Titan -10
Titan Gladiator -8
Titan Sentry -9 (bonded beast)
Basilisk Krea -4
Gatorman Posse max -9
Venator Rievers min -5
- Venator Riever Officer and Standard -2
Paingiver Beasthandlers min -2
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew -1
Paingiver Taskmaster -2
Extoller Soulward -2
Mortitheurge Willbreaker -2

Round 1: Opponent: Andrei (Khador) Caster: Sorcha 2
Sorcha 2
Conquest
Beast 09
Winterguard Infantry max
-Winterguard Infantry Officer and Standard
Great Bears
War Wagon
Kovnik Gregorovich
Sylis Wyshnalyr
Thank goodness he chose this list. His second list was a Butcher 3 list who I'm totally uncomfortable playing against because I've never had the opportunity to face him before nor do I like playing against infantry swarms (which was pretty much was his list was).  I ended up choosing Rasheth in the hopes that he would play Sorcha 2 because I have 2 agonizers that could shut down his jacks no problem as well as having 4 titans to deal with a colossal if need be.  The game basically came down to some poor terrain situations for my opponent because he had 2 huge bases that were hard to maneuver around the board.  I had a turn 2 charge on his battle engine with one of my sentries and LUCKILY didn't kill the thing.  This created choking problems with his bases and I got a nice breath of corruption off in the space where his winter guard pretty much HAD to advance through.  They advanced anyway for the Motherland and many a Khadoran did die in that noxious cloud.  The next turn I got the jump on his jacks with agonizers and suddenly wasn't afraid to advance in to threat range of them.  The gladiator charged the damaged battle engine to finish it so my sentry could charge Beast 09 and rip off his ice axe and take out his movement.  In his next turn he tried in vain to use Sorcha's feat to put some hurt on my titans but after Sorcha herself charged my bronzeback, she epicly missed all of her attack rolls!  What poor luck for her.  The great bears charged and did a ton of damage but failed to take out any of my elephants.  The next turn I got my gladiator to do a boosted headbutt on the iron flesh'd Sorcha who was then knocked down for my bronzeback to beat her into the dirt even further.  Assassination victory for Skorne.

Round 2: Opponent: Jeremy (Legion of Everblight) Warlock: Vayl 1
Vayl 1
Proteus
Carnivaen
Angelius
Succubus
Blackfrost Shard
Blighted Ogryn Warspears min
- Warspears Cheiftan
Blighted Ogryn Warmongers min
- Warmonger Chieftan??
Forsaken x2
Spell Martyr x2
I think my opponent may have made the wrong choice in lists here.  His second list was Saeryn which would have been scary but not unbeatable for Rasheth.  I took Rasheth again obviously, for he is such a great matchup for hordes factions in general with all his debuffs and feat stacking nicely against living models.  He caught me off guard a little with a spell martyr running up turn 2 to rampager one of my sentries way up the field and then shot the sentry with Proteus' dragging tentacles.  Through all the chaos and 2 beasts focusing on the sentry, my opponent's beasts failed to get the job done and left him with enough hitboxes to strike back in my next turn.  My next turn was pretty bad for my opponent, with my feat going off and gators charging his angelius at +2 strength from the taskmaster and taking it off the field.  I ran a gobber to a nice location and with one nicely placed breath of corruption killed his succubus and all 3 of the blackfrost shard! I rammed titans down his throat and hoped he couldn't deal with all the armor and hitboxes under -2 strength from Rasheth's feat and -2 to damage rolls from my double agonizers crying in the back.  In his next turn he feats and kills the damaged sentry but doesnt achieve much else.  His cat and mouse shenanigans leave vayl protected by her two remaining heavies.  In my next turn I killed his carnivaen who did not have spiny growth on him at this time and then decided the assassination on vayl was good to go but of course i forgot about dark sentinel... lol.  so after Proteus moved and took out the mind of my sentry attacking vayl i gave up on that and just killed Proteus instead.  I removed both his forsaken and all his warspears at this point with my krea scoring some objective points out of the action.  In his next turn he vainly tried to do some damage with vayl and 2 remaining warmongers but then called the game after his efforts were futile.  Skorne victory via.. Assassination I guess?

Round 3: Opponent: Zach (Circle of Orboros) Warlock: Kruegar 2
Kruegar 2
Ghetorix
Warpwolf Stalker
Gorax
Tharn Bloodtrackers max
-Nuala
Druids of Orboros max
-Overseer
Shifting Stones
-Stonekeeper
Shifting Stones
Blackclad Wayfarer
Viktor Pendrake
Gallows Grove x2
Oh boy.. I just played against this warlock in a practice game the night before but luckily that list had more heavies to contend with my beef than this list did.  I used Rasheth again, purely for his awesomeness against hordes and the fact that in general circle has trouble dealing with that much armor in many circumstances.  I was trying to be smart the first turn by arm locking my own beasts so he couldnt forcebolt them up the field but my sentries said NO GET OFF ME! and didnlt allow either of my open fist beasts to successfully lock them.. sigh.. so in Zach's 2nd turn he pulls the gladiator probably a net 10" upfield between forcebolts and telekinesis.  Ghetorix shifts with a unit of stones and starts a swingin at the gladiator.. and fails to kill him with 1 box.  And then Zach fails to kill the gladiator through various other attempts including spraying with the blackclad, charging with viktor pendrake (lol really!?!) and then forgetting to attack it with his bloodtrackers who instead shot at their prey target - the gators.  In my next turn I didn't get a whole lot accomplished other than killing pendrake and advancing upfield a bit.  I charged a druid with a sentry and managed to also engage Ghetorix doing some damage there as well.  Kruegar feats on his next turn and primals Ghetorix to do some damage to the sentry and kill the gladiator.  The stalker also comes in to try to beat on the sentry but fails to kill it.  Now i have a good opportunity to kill the stalker and not worry about ghetorix for a turn because he automatically frenzies.  I manage to make it in melee range of the stalker with 2 sentries even while being -2 SPD from kruegar's feat.  I kill the sentry and do some more general attrition by removing some infantry and moving farther upfield with titans.  Rasheth has feated in the turn previous to mitigate damage and both agonizers are still crying away at -2 damage rolls.  In his next turn he turns my titans around with telekinesis and kills an agonizer from a frenzy attack with Ghetorix.  Kruegar is in a vulnerable spot.  My last turn I enrage the bronzeback and the sentry and have rasheth throw Carnivore on the bronzeback (mat 9 bronzebacks dont miss!).  the bronzeback then tramples for free toward a druid, casts trainwreck on himself, kills the druid and moves an inch engaging the stonekeeper, kills him advancing an inch toward kruegar, and then proceeds to beat kruegar to the ground with a fury point to spare.  Skorne assassination victory.

Round 4: Opponent: Ralph (Menoth) Caster: Kreoss 2
Kreoss 2 Tier 4?
Fires of Salvation
Exemplar Errants max
-Exemplar Errants UA
Knights Exemplar
Knights Exemplar
Daughters of the Flame
Daughters of the Flame
Exemplar Bastions max?
Bastion Seneschal
Menoth Dragoon solo (forget the name I never see it)
Errant Seneschal
Wow.. what a swarm of dudes.  I chose Hexeris 2 naturally for both of my opponent's lists featured many an infantry model.  This game basically consisted of me backing up with most of my stuff while I cast ashes to ashses, black spot, and hellfire at his stuff.  I'll spare the details but the game came down to me having hexeris 2, my bronzeback, 1 venator reiver, my extoller, 3 paingivers, a taskmaster and my willbreaker.  I was down to 48 seconds left on my deathclock! My opponent was dominating a zone with nothing but kreoss 2 left on his side of the board.  I hastily ran hexeris at full camp on to an objective so i could dominate it, and then ran the bronzeback toward my opponent's destructible objective, and ran the 3 paingivers, the taskmaster, and the willbreaker toeing into the zone to score and prevent my opponent from dominating.  in Ralph's final turn, he had to dominate to win or I would win on control points the minute my turn started.  He managed to clear the infantry I had in the zone using every last point of his focus and dominated to win the game!  what an epic battle!  This game was probably the best game of warmachine I had played.

Results: After it was all counted up, Ralph came in 1st place due to the amount of control points he had scored throughout the day.  He had a total of 15 while I had 12.  He got to take home an awesome Army Transport carrying bag and I got a $40 gift certificate to Drexoll games.  The rest of the prizes were given away at random to the attendees of the tournament.  What an exhausting but fun day of Warmachine!  I'm looking forward to my next warmachine tournament at Strategies in the new year.

Immortal Brush Painting Challenge 2013

Immortal Brush Painting Challenge is an annual competition held at Strategies Games and Hobbies on Main and 23rd in Vancouver, BC.  It's a fun event that I always enter and have been quite successful in in the past.  I took the time to take some pictures of the highlights and winners of each of the 6 categories.  This year saw some truly awe inspiring entries, especially featured in the 'diorama' category.

Lets start with the best first, because I like to be different.


                           


What. The. Fuck.  This is absolutely incredible.  Not only is it well built, sculpted (yes the marine with the power first out front is almost all custom), but it's also well painted to boot - utilizing NMM and splendid blends to great effect.  If it's not at first obvious, this is a zero gravity diorama, with space marine corpses hovering instead of hitting the deck.  The blood splatter is epic, though my one critique about the whole thing is the small droplets of blood next to the chaos marine getting punched look a little like red pins on the floor but hey we get the picture.  This is based off of the book cover art from the Horus Heresy novel: Know No Fear.

 I think it was perfectly done!  If any readers could kindly pass me this gentleman's name that would be much appreciated because he definitely deserves some creds!

Onto Scifi Large.

 

 

This Leman Russ variant (can't recall which one it is) was done by the same fellow who did the epic diorama above.  This guy was just killing it!  He won best diorama, best scifi large, best customer vote, AND a door prize I believe.  Nice!  The tank was great and a really good choice for winner (beating Kelly Kim's Rhino tank and my Khorne Daemon Prince no less!!).  Big congratulations to this guy he really deserved it.  Would love to get his name next time. Shoot.

Scifi Squad.

These Sisters of Battle were done by Kelly Kim.  The classy guy that he is, Kelly almost always (from what I've seen) makes great use of display boards.  They can be simple, like this one, or thematic, like the one he used on his Rhino, but all push the models that little tad further to show that the modeler truly cares about the ground their models walk on!  Some nicely blended reds on these figures, as well as great facial features, a cool power sword and some free handed awesomeness on the banner.  Great job over all Kelly!

Small Scale Category.

Some nice German Panzers here.  I like the natural weathered look to them.  Again no name for this guy unfortunately.  Really, it's hard to make these models look any better than this guy did.  Nice job all around, well deserved win.

Fantasy Large.

This category was debatable on who I thought would've taken it.  The judges were talking about this Kraken that won, or a Nurgle Great Unclean One.  I thought the Great Unclean One was okay, and this Kraken was a bit better, but I also thought there were a couple other entries that were nicer than both of these.  A really nice LOTR Mordor Troll was in the case painted by Dave Clark (an old GW area manager) but I think had been entered already in a previous year at Immortal Brush.  I really liked the paint job on it, but the judge didn't.  It seems there are always incidents where perhaps personal preference comes in to play when judging and I think there may have been some of that here but theres no way to know for sure.  The Kraken was pretty good, probably winning because of the weathering and scenic basing, but as far as technical painting goes there were atleast 3 other entries that I felt deserved the win.  Either way, good job.

Fantasy Squad.

I saved the worst for last this time.  What the fuck again.  I think the judges were on crack for this one.  Maybe the slime and penises on these Bile Thralls really captured the judge's attentions but this is just plain table top quality in my opinion.  Did they not see my Bretonnian Knights?  I didn't really want to ask why these won, because I knew I wouldn't like the answer, and I don't really like bragging or defending my own models but seriously this was a little bit of a kick in the pants.  Perhaps the judges just don't like Bretonnians (maybe the color scheme isn't uniform enough? maybe my bases didn't have slime?) but my technical painting skill far surpassed these models.  The skulls look like they're painted Bleached Bone and washed with Devlan Mud.  The kaki colored bodies looked washed and drybrushed.  I really don't get it. 


Better luck next time for me, but there were some epic models here that I think everyone deserves to see.  Cheers.