2021 End Of Year Report

Honestly, 2021 was rough for me. I kind of feel like I'm improving in some ways, but slipping back in a whole lot of others.

Old Resolutions
Nope.

1. Plan My Time
I started trying to use the planner, but I was never able to stick to the plan, and then I just stopped using it. Didn't seem to be any point.

2. Stick To A Good Routine
Ha ha, no.

3. Eat Better
Well, I've made some progress here perhaps, but not nearly enough.

4. Take Better Care Of My Home
Um, I'm not doing too badly here, but I'm not doing very well either.

5. Stop Chasing Mental Stimulation
I don't think I've made much progress here, no.


New Resolutions
Since making lots of life-changing resolutions doesn't seem to be getting me anywhere, this year I'm going to try to make thing easier.

1. Take Better Care Of Myself
I don't know how exactly to do this, but I will try to keep the idea in mind: I need to things that are good for my physical and mental health, rather than getting consumed with the idea that I have to get "stuff" done and not doing what I need for myself.

2. Make Plans
That means writing lists; to-do lists, day plans, etc. Perhaps I need to try to be more flexible? Or maybe the opposite? I dunno.

3. Work On The Hobby Models I Like, Rather Than The Ones I "Need"
Pretty much this whole year, and much of last year too I believe, I've spent most of my hobby time on models that I liked, but didn't love, because they were what I needed for a game I wanted to play. Monpoc, Warcaster, etc. This year I'm going to go back and finish some of the many, many models that I was once passionate about, but that I ended up putting aside "temporarily" before they were done and never actually going back to.


I really need to make some changes to my life this year. Let's give this another go I suppose.

Experimental Apes

I finally got some Empire of the Apes units done. I started with the specialists so I could try some tests and see what I liked. I tried to use similar colours to my King Kondo, with the addition of a military green as a sort of "faction colour". However, Kondo himself was a little labour-intensive and didn't exactly turn out perfectly, so I tried to streamline the process somewhat.

All the ape units were primed in Vallejo 73.660 Surface Primer Gloss Black. I intially tried to airbrush some basecoats over that, but found it was too dark and the colour was too hard to build up. So instead I gave all the ape units a basecoat of P3 Menoth White Highlight that I could layer the actual colours on top of. I then airbrushed some rough basecoats of Vallejo 72.730 Game Air Goblin Green where needed. With the airbrushing done, I started on the Command Ape first. I found him surprisingly enjoyable to paint, so I ended up taking my time, using specific washes for every colour, that sort of thing.

Command Ape
The fur was basecoated with Citadel Layer Skrag Brown, then drybrushed Formula P3 Rucksack Tan to bring out the texture. I then drybrushed the upwards-facing surfaces with a mix of Rucksack Tan and Vallejo 71.132 Model Air Aged White. I followed this with a wash of Citadel Shade Nuln Oil, then Citadel Wash Ogryn Flesh.

The skin was basecoated in Vallejo 70.992 Model Color Neutral Grey, then I applied some rough highlights with the Aged White. I then washed with Nuln Oil to darken and shade, then with Citadel Shade Seraphim Sepia to introduce more of the warm tones (as I had found neccessary with Kondo).

I filled in the eyes with Menoth White Highlight before painting a dot of Green Stuff World 1832 Acrylic Color Redwood Brown. After cleaning it all up I lined the outside of the eyes with Citadel Shade Agrax Earthshade.

I painted both the teeth and fingernails with Menoth White Highlight, but then I applied a light glaze of Citadel Shade Seraphim Sepia.

For the leather I chose Citadel Colour Snakebite Leather, which I hoped would stand out from the fur. For the brass bits I just added a couple of layers of Citadel Layer Gehenna's Gold over the Snakebite Leather. I shaded with Agrax Earthshade, which also made the leather darker and more saturated.

The dark grey areas were just Vallejo 70.862 Model Color Black Grey shaded with Nuln Oil. For the steel I wanted to stick to slightly darker tones, so I used Vallejo 71.072 Model Air Metallic Gunmetal shaded with Nuln Oil again.

For the details on the back, I used Formula P3 Morrow White and GW Scab Red. The screen was basecoated in Green Stuff World 1796 Acrylic Color Kraken Green, text painted on in Scalecolor SFG-22 Fantasy & Games Surfer Orc Flesh, then it was glazed with Citadel Glaze Waywatcher Green.

Finally the green armour was washed with Citadel Shade Athonian Camoshade, then I airbrushed on Vallejo 25.517 Acrylic Varnish Gloss followed by Vallejo 26.518 Acrylic Varnish Matt.

While I was very happy with the results, I wanted to cut the painting time per-model. So for the Ape Infiltrator and Rocket Ape, I tried to limit myself where possible to just basecoats and a dip.

Ape Infiltrator & Rocket Ape
I used the same basecoat of Citadel Layer Skrag Brown for the fur, followed again by a drybrush of Formula P3 Rucksack Tan. For the second drybrush however I just used Vallejo 71.132 Model Air Aged White.

The skin was also basecoated with Vallejo 70.992 Model Color Neutral Grey, and roughly highlighted with Aged White. I followed this with a wash of Citadel Shade Seraphim Sepia.

The fingernails were again painted in Formula P3 Menoth White Highlight with a glaze of Seraphim Sepia. I accidentally used Aged White for the eyes instead of Menoth White Highlight. The dots in the eyes were Green Stuff World 1832 Acrylic Color Redwood Brown again, but I didn't outline the eyes this time.
The leather was just Snakebite Leather again, with the brass details again picked out in Gehenna's Gold. The grey hardware was just Vallejo 70.862 Model Color Black Grey, the steel was Citadel Base Leadbeltcher this time (which is very close to the Vallejo Model Air Gunmetal, but in theory should have better coverage).

I painted the rope and canvas with Rucksack Tan, and then highlighted with Formula P3 Menoth White Base. Wood was simply Citadel Layer Doombull Brown. Any red details were painted in Vallejo 72.711 Game Air Gory Red (I didn't want them to be too bright and eye-catching, but perhaps this was too dark?).

I picked out the holes in the rocket launcher in Vallejo 70.950 Model Color Black. The Rocket Ape's beret was basecoated in Vallejo 72.729 Game Air Sick Green and highlighted with Vallejo 72.732 Game Air Escorpena Green. The lenses on the Infiltrator's goggles used the same Escorpena Green, and the concrete under his fist was the same Vallejo Black Grey but drybrushed with Vallejo 70.989 Model Color Sky Grey.

Once that was all done, I gave the two models a dip in The Army Painter Quickshade Dip Dark Tone, making sure not to let it pool too heavily anywhere. After letting it dry, I airbrushed on a coat of Vallejo 26.518 Acrylic Varnish Matt.

Although the results were not identical to the Command Ape, the quickshade worked quite well over most of the surfaces. It might not have done all that much over some of the darker colours; with these two models that didn't seem to be a problem, but it's something I might need to watch out for on others. The main issue I had was that the fur ended up much lighter than I would have liked, and is also too close to the colour of the leather. I could go back to washing the fur with Nuln Oil (as well as the dip of course), but I think I might get better results if I just paint the fur in darker browns to begin with. I think I'll try that next time.


Overall I think all three models look good, and they were more fun to paint than some of the larger or fiddlier models I've worked on recently. They took a lot longer to paint than my Terrasaur units, for obvious reasons, but they're still not too bad. I have another 12 apes to go, but sadly I have no idea when I'm going to have time for them. Nevermind more UCI...

Strike, Raptor!

Speedy and I finally sat down for our second game of Warcaster. Needless to say I had to read the rules again seeing as it's been over a year since our first game. Our lists were a little larger this time; I was running:
Artemis Fang hero solo
Coalition Weaver solo
Hunter solo x2
Ranger Fire Team sqaud
Ranger Infiltrators squad (proxied with G.U.A.R.D. Exo-Armours)
Dusk Wolf light warjack (Talon Rocket Pod, Battle Rifle, Ripper Saw, Neural Net cortex)
Strike Raptor heavy warjack (Railgun, Railgun, Battle Rifle, Battle Rifle, Ace cortex)

Speedy had:
Justicar Voss hero solo
Paladin Weaver solo
Paladin Commander solo
Paladin Seigebreaker solo
Paladin Enforcers squad
Palading Defenders squad
Firebrand light warjack (Harbringer Cannon, Fusion Glaive, Repuslor Shield, Jack Hunter cortex)
Morningstar heavy warjack (Gate Crasher, Maelstrom, Heavy Fusion Glaive, Dauntless cortex)


Pre-Game
We played Skirmish (so three pulse rounds of three turns each) and rolled the first mission, with three objectives. BTW I was using the WNM card tokens, but to avoid mixing my tokens with his Speedy agreed to use some WMH acrylic tokens (Focus tokens were Arc, spell tokens were used for activation markers). We used the pulse round tracker to track turns, with a dice tracking the rounds. Speedy won the roll-off and chose to go first. He deployed his Weaver behind the close objective on my left, and his Morningstar behind the central objective on my right. I mirrored his deployment with my Strike Raptor and a Hunter. I put the Strike Raptor behind cover, but with LOS to the objective.

Pulse 1.1
Speedy advanced his Weaver a few inches to the objective. He charged his Morningstar, advanced it, and used the Gatecrasher to put down a gate with three Arc. In the Deployment phase he summoned a Firebrand and Justicar Voss from the new gate, which collapsed. He then summoned a new gate from Voss (seems I took the photo before he put the gate down). I charged my Strike Raptor and started putting shots into the Firebrand, but couldn't kill it. The Hunter advanced slightly, but stayed out of LOS. I put down a gate with four Arc next to the Hunter.
Pulse 1.2
Speedy pushed the Firebrand and Voss right into the Strike Raptor's face, but Voss couldn't get into melee range and thanks to cover the Firebrand wasn't able to do much. Finally he deployed his Seigebreaker and Enforcers from the new gate, which collapsed. All my units had activation tokens, so I was able to clear the tokens and activate again. I put a second Arc on my Strike Raptor and continued to fail to kill the Firebrand (on account of him benefitting from the same cover as I was). The Hunter started to make his way towards Speedy's objective, but was able to kill an Enforcer on the way. In the deployment phase I deployed my Weaver, Dusk Wolf, and Artemis Fang next to my objective, collapsing the gate.

Pulse 1.3
Speedy cleared the activation token off of Voss using a Cypher, allowing Voss to finally get in and start doing damage. He also activated his Enforcers, but they weren't able to do very much. Finally he put down a gate.

I finally brought the Strike Raptor up to 3 Arc. I took a couple of shots with Artemis Fang before repositioning her, but she whiffed, leaving cleanup duty to the Dusk Wolf. Between them they only managed to kill two Enforcers. Finally I put down a gate in a protected spot near the center of the table.

Pulse 2.1
I don't remember exactly what happened here, I think Speedy might have continued to try to kill the Strike Raptor, but at +3 DEF he was proving stubborn. Anyway, Voss repositioned towards my objective, then Speedy brought in his Defenders (again, photos are out of sync with the action).

My Strike Raptor rolled hot and finally took out the Firebrand, then started to make his way towards the objective.

Looking at the photos now, I probably should have spiked for Flight as that would have let the Strike Raptor score this turn, but I had spent the entirety of last pulse round charging him up so I was reluctant to part with the Arc now. My Hunter repositioned and whiffed a shot at something. I deployed my Ranger Fire Team and then put down another Gate towards the Morningstar.

Pulse 2.2
The Morningstar advanced to the objective, shooting at my Strike Raptor but not managing to kill him (I think a Cypher was used here?). So instead Voss went back and slammed my Strike Raptor off the table (luckily only a couple of weapons and an arm broke off when he hit the floor... j/k). The Defenders put some damage onto my Dusk Wolf and Weaver, but couldn't clear my objective.
I think I charged the Dusk Wolf. My Weaver and Dusk Wolf killed a couple of Defenders but couldn't clear the unit, so they couldn't score. I deployed my Infiltrators and my second Hunter, collapsing my Gate, but then I placed a new one even closer to the Morningstar.

Pulse 2.3
Speedy finally activated the Seigebreaker, who killed my Dusk Wolf. I believe he also scored with his Weaver.
I killed his final Defender with Artemis Fang, then moved my Fire Team up to block the Seigebreaker's access to my objective. I considered using their grenades to try to collapse his gate, but instead decided to focus-fire on his Seigebreaker; that thing can put out a lot of damage. I used a Cypher to move my Infiltrators up to his Weaver so he wouldn't be able to score at the start of next turn. Finally I deployed my Strike Raptor again.

Pulse 3.1
The Morningstar moved in to melee with my Strike Raptor, managing to do some damage and inflict a System Failure. Luckily we rolled melee weapons, of which my Strike Raptor had none. He also used the Gatecrasher to put down a Gate behind my Strike Raptor. The Seigebreaker killed off my Weaver and Fire Team. I think we hadn't yet adapted to the fact that you can shoot THEN move, as looking at the photos now I suspect he could have scored this activated if he had done so. Speedy collapsed his Gate to summon a Paladin Commander behind his Seigebreaker.

I moved Artemis Fang between the Commander and my objective, putting some shots into the Seigebreaker and also scoring. My Infiltrators took down Speedy's Weaver and scored on that side too. I deployed a Weaver behind my Strike Raptor, collapsing that Gate, but then put down a new one between Artemis and the Commander.

Pulse 3.2
Voss advanced and scored the centeral objective. The Commander advanced and tried to destroy my Gate; I think he might have knocked an arc off it, but I don't really remember.

I charged my Strike Raptor, then cleared Artemis Fang's activation token with a Cypher. She put 4 attacks into the Siegebreaker, finally managing to finish him off. The Strike Raptor Spiked to fly over to the objective, putting all his attacks into Justicar Voss. Only the last attack actually hit, and Voss Spiked to ignore the damage. Finally I deployed my Fire Team and second Hunter, trying to use them to body-block the Commander from reaching my objective. In retrospect I should have been able to put down a couple of gates to make it even harder... oh well.


Pulse 3.3
I believe I was up by one here; Speedy had already scored the centeral objective, so he would need to score one of the remaining objectives, both of which were surrounded by my models. So he used a cypher to give his Morningstar +2 speed and Flight, moving it up to shoot at Artemis and my Hunter, but he whiffed his rolls. The commander was able to move around my models and reach the objective, but he failed to kill Artemis and so couldn't score, leaving me with the win.

Post-Mortem
I don't really remember what happened last time, but I feel like the game went better this time, with us understanding and using more of the rules. Obviously we still made a TON of mistakes, and looking back I can see how we could have played various turns better, but I still feel things came together better this time, and I was able to get a better sense of the flow of the game. Things like the dice system being more swingy than I expected, Arc being harder to get out and keep on your models than I had realised, and Gates just popping up ALL OVER the place! I was surprised by how quickly Speedy was able to bring in a whole bunch of reinforcements, while I literall wasn't able to activate any new models until the last turn of the first pulse round; that Gatecrasher is pretty cool!

I went into the game planning on putting all my resources into the Strike Raptor, to take advantage of the offensive and defensive bonuses it gets when charged, so I spent the entire first pulse round charging it up. It ended up doing less damage offensively than I expected, partly because I allowed my targets to get cover in order to stay in cover myself. It did prove very resilient, but that was in large part because I messed up the rules and was rolling extra Power dice instead of extra Action dice for the extra defense from the Arc. Which reminds me: I wish PP marked the rules with Power dice and Action dice icons the way they do sometimes in the Monsterpocalypse rulebook, as-is it's too easy to read a rule in a hurry and not pay attention to which kind of dice you are supposed to add.

On a related note I felt Artemis also under-performed slightly on the offensive front, but overperformed defensively - which got me the win, so no complaints I suppose. I was actually rolling lots of Blast damage attacks with Artermis, and a few with the Dusk Wolf, but we completely forget about the ISA's Compound Armour. I actually found summoning too many units was a problem, because I believe there was at least one instance near the end where I would have been able to clear my activation tokens and gain an advantage if I didn't have my useless Weaver sitting around un-activated. The activation system does take some getting used to. Speaking of, so far the most useful Cyphers I've found were ones that cleared activation tokens. I really didn't get too much value out of my Cyphers this game. And for some reason I really don't like Furies; yes, they are free attacks, and that's fine, but... they are a little limited, and a free attack just doesn't feel that interesting. Well, it's partly my fault for not spending any time on building my Rack.

Overall it was a very close game right to the end (that probably would have gone to Speedy if we hadn't messed up so many rules), and it was a lot of fun. But it was also kind of exhausting. Obviously not knowing the rules well enough or being familiar enough with the game overall was a big factor here, but also the constant back-and-forth activations with very little down-time, the complexity of the turn and activation system, models popping up all over the place all the time, and the back-and-forth flow of Arc made it a whole lot more mentally taxing than Monsterpocalypse (which, while deep, still seems easier to "autopilot" if you don't feel like thinking too much).

It also made it much harder to write a battle report for! There's so many more turns in WNM than in WMH, with models not just being taken off the table, but also contantly being placed back on! Gates can be placed, used to deploy models, and then collapse all between photos! Arc can be allocated to almost any model, and then cleared in that same turn. Cyphers can allow models that shouldn't have been able to activate move around and kill things. All in all it's a lot harder to decipher the photos and remember exactly what happened when compared to Warmachine. I don't know if I'm going to be able to write up this sort of blow-by-blow after every game!

A Murderously Malevolent Mechanical Mockery

Obviously this guy was always going to be high on the list. It helps that I like the UCI monsters more than most Destroyer factions. As with previous homage models, I did look to the older movie versions of Mecha Godzilla for inspiration, going for a full metallic look with orange glows (applied sparingly). I did add a bit more variety to the metal by tinting the "inner" areas in warmer tones, and I think it does a good job of adding more visual interest.

I originally considered trying to use chrome paints for the whole model, but decided to stick to standard metallics; I guess I wasn't feeling all that ambitious with this model. Which I think shows; I didn't put a whole lot of creativity or experimentation into this guy, opting for basic and reliable colours and painting techniques. Which I think is fine; he still took quite a lot of time and effort on account of all the edge-highlighting required. I did notice something a little unfortunate towards the end of the painting: the glows are pretty hard to see when looking down on the model from above, as you would normally do. Well, I don't think there's very much I could have done about that without overdoing the glows, which as I've learned in the past would risk making the model look unfocussed.

Cyber Khan:
I primed the model with a solid coat of Vallejo 73.660, trying to make sure all the recesses had solid coverage as I wasn't planning on using a dip or anything, so I didn't want and brighter areas showing in recesses. I was originally trying to get a solid smooth layer to serve as a good base for chrome, but it seems even applying the primer a fair bit more heavily than usual wasn't enough to get a smooth coat on some of the metal areas. Luckily I decided against the chrome in the end.

After the primer was dry I established a zenithal highlight by layering Vallejo 71.073 Model Air Metallic Black, Vallejo 71.072 Model Air Metallic Gunmetal, and Vallejo 71.063 Model Air Metallic Silver RLM01. The highly square and angular model did not take the zenithal the same way that more organic, curved models do, but it still give him more depth.

At this point I shaded the silver parts of the armour by painting Citadel Shade Nuln Oil directly into the recesses. After this I painted Citadel Shade Agrax Earthshade over the bronze areas, tinting the metal and also shading in one step. I had a bit of difficulty deciding on a highlight colour for the bronze; I tried some old Citadel Layer Runelord Brass, but it was too close to the underlying basecoat so I ended up mixing Citadel Layer Gehenna's Gold (a rich brassy colour) with the Vallejo Silver RLM01, which gave me a warm and fairly bright but somewhat desaturated colour that I felt worked quite well for the highlights.

The silver armour was then painstakingly edge-highlighted with Scalecolor SC-66 Metal N' Alchemy Speed Metal. I usually find Speed Metal a bit hard to work with for some reason, this time I ended up thinning it quite heavily with Phoenix Artist's Acrylic Retard Medium (which is a very thin drying retarder), and that seemed to work quite well. I did try to make the teeth, claws and horn stand out by building them up in solid Speed Metal, I'm not sure how well that worked out tbh.

For the glows I basecoated with Vallejo 72.008 Game Color Orange Fire, then glazed on some thinned Vallejo 72.007 Game Color Gold Yellow to try to create a bit of a smooth transition. At this point I used the same Gold Yellow to drybrush the surrounding areas, which worked really well over the metals to create a bright yellow glow. Next I built up the brighter areas with glazes of thinned down Vallejo 72.005 Game Color Moon Yellow. Then I shaded the areas around some of the glows with Vallejo 72.709 Game Air Hot Orange. I dotted the centers of the glowing areas with a small dot of Formula P3 Morrow White thinned with the drying retarder, and finally gave the glows a light glaze with Citadel Glaze Lamenter's Yellow (mainly just to tint the white).


Overall he looks... appropriate I would say, very metallic and still contrasty. The use of very bright metals meant that the orange glows don't stand out very much, but they still look OK, thanks in large part I think to how well the yellow drybrush worked over the metal. The glows inside the mouth gave me a bit of trouble; I did want the glow inside the mouth to look reasonably bright and cast light, but I didn't want the teeth to look like a yellowish metal from the outside. The result doesn't look too good from the wrong angle as parts of the teeth have light cast on them, and other neighboring parts that should have a yellow tint actually don't. But I don't think it looks too bad from most angles, and I'm not sure I could make it look better, so I left it there.


Overall I think he looks OK; I don't know if I could have made him look much better without losing some of the connection to his cinematic inspiration.

A Big Monkey Walks Into A City...

This was Speedy's second game of Monpoc. I still don't have four painted monsters so we're still running one a side, but I decided to play Kondo with the Terrasaur units instead of Khan. I won the roll to go first.

Units rush to grab power nodes.

The monsters clash, with Kondo being thrown into a building but bouncing right back into Defender's face.

However a step back from Defender leaves Kondo unable to align for a power attack, so a basic brawl is all I can do.

Units trade blows, but we're too spread out to focus attacks very well.

Defender is able to fly around Kondo to get into a position to throw him again, backing up afterwards.

Kondo gets behind Defender and suplexes him backwards into a building.

Our units aren't really doing all that much, with lots of missed attacks.

Defender gets off another power attack, leaving Kondo on 2 health. Kondo throws Defender as far away as possible and then backs away.

A bunch of spawned tanks hit Kondo for a point of health; I try to block alignment with my units but Defender really just needs to land a blast attack to take Kondo down. It costs him a point of health to get into position, but he manages to land the shot for the win.

This was my first game with Kondo. Getting to ignore buildings and things with High Mobility was nice. I didn't really miss having a blast attack, but at first glance I'm not sure how to use his kit. He seems to want to destroy buildings and units? I don't really know. But more and more I'm seeing the importance of positioning. Problem is I can't see what I need to do yet, so far I only see what went wrong or right after the fact. I still feel like we need two monsters each for the game to really work, but we'll see.