Yearly Archives: 2010

Painting Progress – 20100811

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Although we went out of town for the top half of my week’s vacation, I got to spend the bottom half of the week at home, in the man cave, doing hobby stuff.

For starters, I got the ball rolling on some new terrain; I’m working towards building an underground themed board to match the new basing scheme I’m using with my Skaven (see this post for an example).  No real pictures for this, yet, since I’ve just got one piece of terrain (a cave pool) done up, and I think I might have used too much Water Effects on it. : /

I spent the bulk of my time churning through a box of Clanrats.  Before ducking out, I’d decided (as so many other folks have) to do my Clanrats with the armored bodies and my Skavenslaves with the unarmored bodies.  Across three days, I’d painted up the whole box (well, 19 of them, since I’d painted up one as a test model when the kit first came out).  I’m extremely happy with how they came out… less so with the pictures.  Apologies in advance if I decide I’m disgusted enough with these to re-take and re-post them.

First, the Slaves:

Then, the Clanrats:

Obviously, I still need to paint the banner.  Not sure when I’m going to do that: I’ve been so stopped up on those things, I decided to push on and do more models instead of fuss around with the banner.

I also did a little re-basing.  I’m going to have to do a lot of that before I’m done.  One of my Plague Mortars got dropped a few weeks ago, so he was a good candidate.  Also, I decided to go ahead and do my Warlock Engineer.

Random Topics

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Now that I’m back from vacation, I’ve got a few random things to flush out of my head in hopes of making way for a return to more regular posting:

Although I won’t be able to participate in the NoVA Open, I will be helping set up (and will possibly be helping break down).  That also means I’ll be kicking around the activities on Friday evening.  I’ll have my Khornate Daemons with me, and will have a hunger for carnage.

The Iron Fist League doing Rapid Fire at Games Day again.  I probably should give this it’s own, full post, but in case I don’t… better to touch on it here or not at all.

It’s an adaptation of the format we’ve used at Game Vault for two years, jiggered to make it easier to build lists without much prep.  500 point games; as many as you feel like playing.  No commitment to spend your day stuck in games… just the opportunity to play some quick games and break up your day.

We’ve dragged our heels a bit on getting the rules out: the 40K army construction rules are unchanged from last year, but with the new edition of Fantasy, we’ve hemmed and hawed about construction rules for that quite a bit.  It looks like those have mostly cleared up, though.

It was an immense success last year, and I hope it’ll be one again this year.  Make sure to stop by and say hi and maybe get a game or two in!

I’m extremely disappointed with the Cypher‘s treatment of Hell Dorado at Gen Con.  Malifaux and Hell Dorado fill very much the same sort of niche, and Cypher (in my opinion) really needed to launch Hell Dorado at Gen Con this year to get back on people’s radar.

That they didn’t have the rulebook ready killed it, I think.  We’ve known that it’s been translated for a very, very long time (the translator is active on RPG.net’s OGO board), so there’s really no excuse.    That the game wasn’t launched at Gen Con means that Malifaux will continue to pick up steam and not really leave much room for Hell Dorado.

Heck, at this point, the best thing Cypher could probably do is wait for Malifaux to run it’s course and, in a couple of years, take advantage of all the folks who’ve grown disillusioned with the overcomplicated mess Malifaux is doomed to evolve into (as Malifaux took advantage of all the folks who’d grown disillusioned with the overcomplicated mess Warmachine had evolved into).

Speaking of Malifaux, while I haven’t been doing much with it since 8th came out, I had planned on picking up the new book and gremlin stuff.

Then I took a look at the Ophelia spoilers and it pretty much killed any enthusiasm I’ve had for the game.    It’s just so much crap to learn and memorize.  I don’t think I want to get stuck in a cycle of having to learn 18 billion new rules every year (see above comment about an evolution into overcomplicated mess).  Too much to have to keep up with.

I mentioned on my Twitter (something I think I’m going to try to use a bit more) that I might be done with hobby podcasts.

I’d only started listening to them because my friends had started one of their own, and I figured I owed it to them to show them a little support.   That lead into listening to a few other podcasts, specifically The 11th Company and Dice Like Thunder.

DLT cheesed me off when they started talking tough about soft scores in tournaments.  Besides being Wrong, when you’re not involved in tournaments, you don’t get to speak authoritatively about what works and what doesn’t work with tournaments.  You literally don’t know what you’re talking about.  That, followed by “tactical advice” based on misunderstandings of the rules was enough to convince me my time could be better spent.

The 11th Company’s interview segments are, I think, extremely interesting, but the codex countdown stuff doesn’t work for me.  And, for some reason, I’ve been having a really hard time keeping up with it.

The only podcast I’ve kept up with is, understandably, The Gamer’s Lounge… and I turned that sucker off on the drive into work yesterday.  I expect Jay to occasionally wade in the Sea of Unreasonableness, but Bill really went off the deep end over the Throne of Skulls thing.  After the third or fourth, “Really?  Oh, come on,” that would never be heard, I decided it was too much annoyance for a Monday morning commute.


It’s possible that this is just a bad aspect of the meta-hobby for me to “participate” in.  “Participate” gets the scare quotes, because it (listening to podcasts, at least) is really a passive activity: just sitting there, listening to some dude spout off about whatever.  If I agree with them, I gain nothing… because I already agree with them.  If I disagree, nothing happens.  They just keep talking…  I think I’m too opinionated to for this.

So, some time off.  Maybe I’ll come back to them.  Maybe not.

I think that’s all the kruft rattling around in my head for now.  I’ll have to get a painting progress post up soonish, since I spent a good chunk of my vacation painting Skaven.  I also should do some rumination about Golden Daemon: I’ll be putting some things in, but I don’t expect any of it to go particularly far this year.

Painting Progress – 20100729

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I’ve knocked out a couple of Skaven Rare choices over the past few days.  Both of them, strangely, repaints… something I’ve sworn I wouldn’t do very often.  (Why repaint something you’ve already painted?)

I was pretty stoked about the wood effect I managed on the Warlord, and I’d had a 20% painted Doomwheel sitting in bits on my desk.  Last Sunday, I got the bug to put the wood and steel effect into use on it.  Shockingly, I was able to finish almost the whole thing in a day, wrapping it up the following afternoon.

It’s not all the way done, I suppose.  I’ve still got the banner to do.. but I’m having a great deal of frustration with those at the moment.  So, I’m leaving those where they are.  I’ll deal with them later.

This weekend, I got the notion that repainting the Warp Lightning Cannon I’d previously painted wouldn’t be too hard.  I banged out most of it in the day.  The only thing that really kept it from being “done” until today was the crew.

I think it came out looking really good.

I did something a little different with the Warpstone.  I think it ultimately looks better, but it’s not quite as striking at arm-length, which is unfortunate.

I did the usual Snot Green -> Goblin Green -> Golden Yellow.  Then I went a bit farther and threw in some Sunburst Yellow. before washing it with Thraka Green.  Then I washed it with a thin coat of Leviathan Purple on an impulse.  I think it made the green richer… but less vibrant.

I’d been half-considering what I was going to do for a Plagueclaw Catapult.  I’d run one last week (with an old Screaming Bell as a stand-in).  I haven’t been particularly het up to convert one up because 1) I need to focus on painting and 2) I’m not sure I like the unit (it was particularly disappointing in this week’s game), but the question of “how” had certainly been rattling around in my head.

Then, it occurred to me: Zvezda.  I’d ordered a Zvezda Siege Machines kit a long while back to use the ballista in my Harad army; it’d come with a catapult that I’d never bothered taking off the sprue.  So, I took it off the sprue.  Then I tarted it up a little bit with some Skaven bits.

Not going to win any awards or anything, but it’ll do.  It’s better than a proxy, at least.

Also, it was extremely cheap: ~$15 for a ballista and a catapult (plus some barricades).  That’s a deal and a half, even if it’s not perfect.

In case you couldn’t tell, I’m very excited about painting Skaven, now.  I love the new basing scheme (rocky vs. swampy grass), and the colors of everything this side of the flesh are perfect (and I’m perversely stuck on the Bronzed Flesh).  Time to start plugging everything into a spreadsheet and planning on knocking this stuff out.  Also: grinding Clanrats.

Battlefoam! W00t!

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Came home to a pretty large box: my Battlefoam came in the mail!

Originally, I’d been looking at shoving all of my Daemons into foam… but Casey was able to convince me that that was wasteful.  I’ve got a great transport solution for everything except for the Soul Grinders and Bloodthirsters… why spend several hundred dollars to fix what ain’t broke when I could focus on what is?

So, I e-mailed Battle foam the shapes and asked them if they thought fitting everything into a single tray would be feasible.  After a bit (Origins happened shortly after my e-mail), they responded that three of the four shapes would definitely work… but that they wouldn’t know if they could do all four without actually trying to do it.

I took the hint and decided it was my best chance, anyway.  After a bit of fiddling, they got back to me: success!  All four fit!

I might snag a PACK Plus to shove this thing in when they’re released.  We’ll see.

IFL 3rd Quarter RTT & AAR

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Saturday, I ran the 3rd Quarter IFL RTT.

It was a 40K Tournament, using much of the NoVA Open structure, with the intent of giving our members an opportunity to get a feel for the format.  16 people made it out which, given the bracketing format, was perfect.  As we’re about as local as it gets, Mike Brandt came by and helped make sure everything went smoothly.

Casey Campbell‘s Tyranids and Jeff Payne’s Space Hogs (Space Wolves) went undefeated.  Doug McNaron’s World Eaters won the Player’s Choice award.

Scores and pairings can be found here.

A bit of a rambling AAR follows:

  • The format worked well.  I’ve run a bit hot and cold on it over the past several months, but it undeniably ran quite smoothly.

    In terms of matching and the hard side of things, the tournament practically ran itself.

  • Concerns about the bracketing approach frustrating some players with early losses weren’t unfounded.  Several players were (vocally) upset about being matched up against known stronger players.  Before the tournament started, they “knew” that they didn’t have a chance of winning the event.

    That can’t really be helped.  And, fundamentally, it wouldn’t be any different with a Swiss-style tournament save that the “you must be undefeated” expectation is explicit, rather than implicit.

    Ultimately, we had three players drop out of the tournament. One left due to frustration over two rough games, another having to leave in the name of spousal appeasement.  These two players coordinated their departure, to ensure it wouldn’t impact the tournament.

  • The third departure had nothing (and everything) to do with frustration. Chris Shriner: at the top table in the third round, playing for one of the two “Undefeated Player” slots was called into work two-thirds of the way through the game.
  •  The soft score side of things was a disaster, in my opinion.  That’s entirely my fault.

    For me, it’s essential to have a soft score component to a tournament.  I think they’re an important part of the hobby and, therefore, they need to be an important part of tournament.

    Unfortunately, because I’d been waiting for an indication of how the NoVA Open was going to handle Appearance and Sportsmanship awards, I put off announcing any system until it was too late.  (If you’re going to use an objective Appearance checklist, you need to advertise what it is with sufficient time to let participants try to adhere to it.)  That meant I had to fall back on the “Player’s Choice” approach we used at the last 40K IFL RTT: rank every other player.  Weight those ranks.  Whoever’s ranked highest wins an award.

    I can’t complain too much about this approach: I’ve won that award, but the approach is, overall, slapdash and doesn’t value enough what I consider to be important.

    Furthermore, I 1) didn’t allow for enough time for people to look at the other armies and 2) wasn’t successfully able to get people to leave them out on display.

    Because Game Parlor keeps poor hours (11AM to 9PM), and the NoVA Open format allows for two hour, fifteen minute rounds, time was tight, so I only scheduled a 30 minute lunch break.  When all was said and done, I should and could have stretched that out to an hour.  We were packed up and done before 8:30 (closer to 8), so an extra 30 minutes wouldn’t have hurt us.

    Yelling, “Don’t put your armies away before lunch” wouldn’t have hurt, either.

    I’m dissatisfied enough with how the soft stuff came out that I feel like I need to apologize to everyone for it.

  • Interesting thing: Mike Gatewood made an unhappy comment about how Doug always wins Best Appearance / Player’s Choice / etc.  Suggesting that it was a bad thing that one person consistently wins the same award time and time again with the same army.  In some ways, that’s fair.

    But really, I’m completely okay with that.  If you’re tired of seeing someone win “Prettiest Army” again and again: step up.  Make an army that looks better than his, and bring it out.  If one player has an auto-win for that, it’s certainly not their fault: it’s the community’s.

  • It looks like most everyone who made it out had a good time.  That’s very important to me.

WHFB 8th FAQ

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GW’s FAQ’d  the Warhammer 8th core rulebook.

This is magnificent.  This is precisely how I want a gaming company to handle things.  Nothing’s going to be perfect, but when you find something wrong: fix it.

Further Skaven thoughts

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Won my game on Tuesday. We rolled Dawn Attack, which helped me out a lot: most of his units were cramped into one flank while I got spread much units pretty evenly, with a number of units to place wherever I wanted.

My list was basically the one I’ve been running, but with the third clanrat unit dropped in favor of a Warp-Lightning Cannon and a Plagueclaw Catapult; I’ve really not spending enough of my Rare allowance and I wanted to give them a try.  Unfortunately, neither really got the chance to do much.  So, I’ll have to experiment with them some more.

Here’s the list I’ll be running next week:

20100727
Skaven – 2,500 points

Lords
Warlord (General) – Enchanted Shield, Talisman of Protection, Warlock-Augmented Weapon

Heroes
Chieftain (BSB) –  Shield, Storm Banner
Warlock Engineer – Lvl 2, Doomrocket, Warp-Energy Condenser
Warlock Engineer – Lvl 2, Dispel Scroll

Core
Clanrats x29 – Full Command, Shields
– Poisoned Wind Mortar
Clanrats x29 – Full Command, Shields
– Doom Flayer
Skavenslaves x30 – Champion, Musician, Shields
Skavenslaves x29 – Champion, Musician, Shields
Stormvermin x30 – Full Command, Banner of the Under-Empire
– Poisoned Wind Mortar

Special
Gutter Runners x6 – Slings, Poisoned Attacks
Rat Ogres x6 – Master-Bred, Packmaster x3
Rat Ogres x6 – Master-Bred, Packmaster x3

Rare
Doomwheel
Plagueclaw Catapult
Warp Lightning Cannon

So, with a few games under my belt:

Dumping the sixth big block of troops worked really well for me: I’ve had problems getting in my own way with so many blocks.  I’m continuing to spend those points on war machines, in the name of science.

I’m really happy with the Warlord’s kit.  He’s hard to kill, with a 3+/4+ and kills hard enough with 5 S5 Attacks.  Ditto with the BSB.  Stormbanner’s far too key to Skaven survivability, and I can’t think of a better banner for him to take.  The Engineers have done well by me, though I need to learn to hold  on to the Doomrocket a little longer: if I wait a turn or two, I won’t have to shoot as far, won’t have to roll as many dice, and will be more accurate.

The Mortars have done okay by me so far.  The Doom Flayer hasn’t really had the chance to shine, though.  It should get a respectable number of wounds, though, which will offset the lack of killiness of the clanrats.

I’ve been incredibly pleased with the blocks of 30 Slaves.  At 20 Slaves, I felt that the unit wasn’t worth taking at any cost.  At 30, things are very different.  They will be Steadfast.  When they blow up, they will cause a respectable number of wounds.  I hated them at 20.  I like them, a lot, at 30.  Now I’m going to try them out with a Champion: he won’t make a difference in terms of CR, but he’ll keep more bodies in the unit, which will help with the Steadfast/Cornered Rats.  I might even drop the Musician; it’s not like I flee with these guys any more: they’re better at controlling enemy units holding them in place than drawing them into hard-to-fail charges.

Clanrats are clanrats.  They don’t really kill much of anything.  The Parry save has made them a little more survivable, I’ve found.  They don’t win combat any more… Static 5 CR is now Static 4 CR and that’s worth precious little now, but they don’t go anywhere.  Steadfast + Strength In Numbers means they just grind away at the enemy (which is effective, though not especially dramatic) or they hold them long enough to get the Stormvermin or Rat Ogres into the flank.

One them I have learned, though, is that if Slaves are in the front, I do not want to flank.  They give up so many wounds that it just means whatever I’m flanking with is going to lose combat, too.

I’ve replaced them with Gutter Runners, which will be more dangerous (even at half the model count) with with a higher WS/BS/I, and Poison.  Plus they should be more effective at countering war machines with the improved Scout rules and Sneaky Infiltrators.

I’ve dropped the Night Runners.  They really haven’t impressed me at all.  The only time they’ve really shone is when 10 of them held a building against a bunch of Ogres: the Building rules had them throwing out 20 attacks, which looked kind of nasty.  Every other time, they’ve done little more than ineffectually plink some slings against models.

I love the Rat Ogre units more and more every time I run them.  The Master-Bred goes before most things, and the Rat Ogres go before a lot of things.  21 S5 attacks by Initiative 4 really adds a lot of punch that the Skaven need help with.  The Packmasters and Stomp attacks don’t hurt, either.  Easily my favorite unit, post-8th.

Web Presence Meta-blogging

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Swank!  My Warlord made the FTW Tuesday Top Ten this week.  This is the second time I’ve made the list; the first time was with my Warlock Engineer last October.

Playing around with Google Analytics is interesting.

It’s neat to see the bump that a new post (or a shout out on another’s blog, or the TTT) provides.  What’s even more interesting is to see how people are getting to your blog, and what they’re looking at when they get there.

For example, about of the third of the people who visit this blog come to it straight from Google.  About as many come here from the IFL Forum, which is interesting; the link is in my signature there, but I wouldn’t expect to get all that much traffic from people clicking the link in my signature.

Less than that, I get a number of hits from From the Warp, though not nearly as many as I used to.  I attribute that to FTW’s pretty massive growth over the past year: I might still be listed under Group I, but it’s hard to be noticed with so many other posts.  (I probably should do some brainstorming to see if I can come up with another way for Ron to display recent posts: tucked away in a sidebar isn’t the best way to scan FTW activity.)  I also get a surprising amount of activity from Jay‘s blog; enough that it’s my #8 entrance source.

What’s really interesting is what people are looking for.  Some newer posts are seeing a bit of activity (the Dawn Power Dissolver post, the aforementioned Warlord post), sure, but the stuff that brings all the boys to the yard (as it were) are a bunch of Skaven conversions I posted back in December, my various Hellpit Abomination WIP posts, and my Bloodletter painting “tutorial”.  It’s fascinating to see what has legs and actually goes on to contribute to other people’s hobby.  Quite satisfying and flattering.

Wholly unrelated to my electronic ego: I turned up a link to WIP Warhammer 8th Army Builder file (the link to the current version is down at the bottom of the thread).

It appears to update army construction to use percentages and include the most of the new magic items (all the ones I’m using in my list, at least), so that means it’s good enough for me for now.
Image via the always-brilliant Married to the Sea, w/o permission.

Skaven Warlord

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I finished a Warlord (not the Rat Ogre one) last night and I’m extremely pleased with him.  If I could get all of my models looking this good: I’d probably be insufferable. :)

Because I love the way some of these colors look, I thought I’d break down how I painted them… starting with the colors I think are really, really great:

Iron Armor / Weapons
GW Boltgun Metal
GW Mithril Silver highlights
3:3:2 GW Badab Black, GW Asurmen Blue, water wash

Wood
GW Khemri Brown
P3 Hammerfall Khaki drybrush
GW Devlan Mud wash

Warpstone Blade
GW Snot Green
GW Golden Yellow heavy drybrush
GW Thraka Green wash

Stone
P3 Cryx Bane Base
P3 Cryx Bane Highlight heavy drybrush
P3 Hammerfall Khaki drybrush

(it gets boring from this part down)

Black Fur
P3 Thamar Black
P3 Coal Black heavy drybrush
GW Shadow Grey drybrush
GW Badab Black wash

Gold 
GW Bestial Brown
GW Shining Gold (over the Bestial Brown)
GW Burnished Gold highlights
GW Devlan Mud wash

Red Cloth
GW Scab Red
GW Red Gore layered
P3 Skorne Red highlights
GW Baal Red wash

Grey Cloth
GW Adeptus Battlegrey
GW Codex Grey layered
GW Fortress Grey highlights
GW Badab Black wash

Leather Straps
GW Bestial Brown
GW Snakebite Leather highlights
GW Devlan Mud wash

Skin
GW Darkened Flesh
GW Bronzed Flesh layered
GW Elf Flesh highlights
5:3:2:2 GW Devlan Mud, GW OgrynFlesh, water, matte medium wash
(just as easily GW Devlan Mud wash)

Eyes
GW Goblin Green
GW Scorpion Green dot
GW Thraka Green wash

Teeth, Claws, Bone
P3 Menoth White Base
P3 Morrow White highlight
GW Devlan Mud wash

So, you can pretty much tell that most everything is a base, maybe a mid-tone layered in, a highlight, and a wash.  Those GW washes are really nothing short of magnificent.

Warhammer 8th Updated FAQs

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In case nobody noticed (since they don’t seem to have advertised it), GW has updated the Warhammer 8th FAQs.

This is magnificent news. Not that I’ve looked to closely at the updated FAQs, mind you, but it indicates an approach to FAQs that’s pretty revolutionary for Games Workshop. I don’t think anyone wants to see the FAQs change weekly, mind, but I can’t think of anyone* who doesn’t want to see them be updated when they need updating.

(Because I’m primarily concerned with Skaven), one thing the update did, however, was remove an FAQ: the “Q: Does Strength in Numbers apply to Steadfast rolls? A: Yes.”  (I’m paraphrasing, here, because my print out of 1.0 is at home and 1.1 removed it.)

This will cause a little heartburn because it doesn’t exactly mean “No.”  The second item in the errata is:

Page 33 – Strength in Numbers
Change the second sentence of the first paragraph to “Units with the Strength in Numbers special rule add their current rank bonus to their Leadership value for any Leadership test.”

That Steadfast test is a Leadership test.  The rulebook says, “Take the Leadership test on your unmodified Leadership.”  The army book says, “Sure, but always add your rank bonus to your Leadership.”  Armybook > rulebook, and all that.

I’m also pretty sure that, when the rulebook says, “unmodified,” it’s specifically in the context of modifying your Leadership by the combat resolution value.  Otherwise, things like the Standard of Discipline aren’t applicable, either:  “We’ve got a magical standard that makes us braver but, because there are more of us than you, we don’t get to use it.”

It certainly doesn’t feel right: the entire point of Strength in Numbers is to represent individual Skaven being extremely cowardly… but quite brave when there are heaps of them.  It also makes Slaves, a unit the army’s supposed to rely on, that I’m already fairly frustrated with, wholly useless: Steadfast on a 2.

Anyway, I don’t think it’s crazy to think SiN doesn’t apply.  The FAQ was there: now it’s not.  One must assume that was intentional.  In earlier editions of the game, it kinda-sorta didn’t apply.

Fortunately, it looks like most of the other guys who play Fantasy agree with me that it probably does apply.

I did want to take a moment to mention all the goofy accessories that came out with the new edition.  I’m a complete sucker for stuff like this; I really am.

I kind of wish I weren’t, though: I’m pretty unimpressed with the Warhammer 8th tchotchkes.

The Engineer’s ranging set is unneccessary.  Why use a not-particularly-rigid folding ruler when you could use a measuring tape that’s just as flexible, measures farther and takes up less space?  This thing would be less of a disappointment if it didn’t bend so much.  The calipers are neat… but equally unnecessary.

The dice are interesting looking, but have a weird weight to them.  Of all of the accessories, these are the least bad.  I’m going to use them as casting/dispelling pool dice, since I’m unlikely to accidentally pick them up and roll them for something else.  I think

The templates are… very cool looking, but impractical.  I’m not talking about some asshat arguing that the flames touching bases count, but rather that you can’t see through all that detail.  That makes it harder to count bases.  The flame template isn’t too bad, the large blast template isn’t great, and the small blast template is nearly unusable.

Kind of disappointing.

* I did come across a blog post (that I can’t seem to dig up again or I’d link to it) last week about how that GW had to release the FAQs along with 8th was a terrible thing (as opposed to simply updating all 15 armies with new books at the same time).  Such a position is, in my opinion, preposterous.