Forgetting how to play

I am SO rusty at this game.
Malakov 2
- Destroyer
- Juggernaut
- Wardog
Forgeseer
- Decimator
Nyss Hunters
Alexia & the Risen

I didn't want to change my list from last time too much, but I didn't feel like playing Butcher so I cycled back to Malakov. The idea behind the list was to use Risen as Sucker targets to keep Malakov safe early game, then use the Wardog to knock stuff down late-game. I would push the jacks forward and keep them safe with the feat. Destroyer shooting with Open Fire could thin down enemy infantry.

I decided not to make any changes to the list I made for Speedy last time:
Vlad 1
- Juggernaut
- Spriggan
- Berserker
- Adjunct
Croe's Cutthroats
- Valachev
Doomreaver Swordsmen
Kayazy Eliminators (proxied)


Pre-Game:
I considered trying to play a Steamroller scenario for the first time, but those things are so damned complicated for new and rusty players, they have like 5 scorable elements at minimum. It's too much hassle. So I just threw a couple of zones on the table and tossed some flat terrain on top. I won the roll and chose to go second.


Deployment:

Round 1:
Speedy advanced his Cutthroats aggressively and put a cloud on Vlad (we were too lazy to actually put the template on him so we just left it lying around nearby).

Malakov cast Repo on the Decimator, Escort on himself, and put a cloud next to the forest. The Decimator trampled and repo'ed, while the other jacks just ran up. The Nyss Hunters moved to claim the zone on my right, while the Risen just clustered around Malakov protectively.

Round 2:
So it turns out Cutthroats can just walk into a forest and shoot at my guys without any issues. I probably would have known that if I had ever played Warmachine before. I mean, it's not like this is my favourite miniatures game and these are MY flippin' models! God I'm so rusty. Anyway, Speedy walked the Cutthroats up and focussed down Alexia first before starting on the Risen. The Eliminators ran to engage my Nyss. The Spriggan flared my Juggernaut then actually put three points of damage on him with a boosted POW 10 grenade attack. The Adjunct clouded Vlad who walked up and cast Wind Wall.

I was not happy about those Cutthroats being so close to my caster. I've honestly completely lost my sense for distances in this game. I didn't really have enough attacks on that side to deal with them, so I decided to buy time and back away. I dropped the cloud but upkept Escort and Overrun, and allocated two to the Juggernaut and I think one to the Destroyer. The Risen charged into the Cutthroats, doing nothing. The Decimator was close enough to aim and use Strike True to kill two Cutthroats. Andrei Feated and walked away, followed by the dog. The Forgeseer empowered the Destroyer, who aimed and shot the engaged Nyss Hunter in the back. I killed the two Nyss caught in the blast but boosted damage rolls against the Eliminators only killed one...

Then my Juggernaut walked up to Vlad and rolled hot on every single attack and damage roll to take him out with three completely unboosted attacks (meaning I had two focus left).

Post-Mortem:
Ugh, I forgot everything. I forgot to remind Speedy about the Cutthroat's Prey, I almost forgot Stealth, I might have forgotten to give my Nyss Hunter the engagement bonus, I DEFINITELY forgot to give him the defensive bonus for being in the trench, I forgot the Cutthroats have Pathfinder... I dunno man, my brain is just fried these days.

I felt Speedy already has a much better grasp of what the models can do, taking good advantage of their mobility. I guess he underestimated Vlad's resilience (although to be fair my Juggernaut's dice were very hot), either that or he wanted the game to end sooner as it was a little late and he seemed quite tired.

We discussed whether Blood of Kings would have been better than Wind Wall on Vlad. Obviously it would have seriously cut down on my Juggernaut's chances of killing him; needing 11's instead of 8's to hit is a big difference. I would have been able to put a lot more shooting into him then of course. Perhaps the best thing to do would have been to just hide behind a clouded Spriggan?

Monsterpocalypse Now

I finally got to play Monsterpocalypse. I roped in my friends Neo and Fish; we'd played King of Tokyo before and they'd enjoyed it so I figured they might be interested in a more... three-dimensional Kaiju game. It was definitely nice to have a table covered with only coloured models and no raw primer or anything for a change.

I got the G.U.A.R.D.:
Defender X
G-Tanks x4
Strike Fighters x4
Exo-Armours x4
Repair Truck
MR-Tank
Rocket Chopper

Neo and Fish cooparated to run the Terrasaurs:
Terra Khan
Carnidons x4
Bellowers x4
Raptix x4
Spikodon
Brontox
Pteradactix


Pre-Game:
We pretty much decided to ignore all of the model special rules (except I think Flight and High Mobility as those seemed to fairly intrinsic to movement), focussing on just the core rules. I said I would go first so I could demonstrate each rule first. So we put down our buildings and monsters and got started.

Round 1:
We spawned units and advanced, figuring out spawning and movement. I explained how their Bellower could shoot at my Strike Fighter. The attack was successful.

Round 2 & 3:
I advanced Defender X, stepped, and punched a building down, so we could talk about stepping, attacking, and earning power die. Terra Khan knocked a building down. I think a combined attack from the Terrasaur units took down another building, while three of my units secured a building on my side of the table.

Round 4:
Now we got to explore power attacks. Defender body-slammed Khan onto one of his units, then Khan threw Defender back into a building across the city. I decided not Push my monster dice this turn.

Round 5:
As I had still had five dice in my Monster pool and could go back up to three or four Power Dice in the Power Phase, I rolled directly into a second Monster Phase, using Defender to body-slam Khan. Stupidly I took as much damage as he did as I ended up stepping onto a Hazard in order to line up with him. The Terrasaurs needed a Unit turn to recharge their dice, destroying a building on the right with a combined Brawl attack.

Round 6:
This turn I brought in the MR tank and tried a combined Blast attack into Khan, but missed by one. Khan activated and body-slammed Defender into another building before Stepping away.

Round 7:
I wanted to try a Fling attack, so Defender grabbed a Bellower and used it to bean Khan in the head. The Terrasaur units destroyed another building.

Round 8:
Defender failed a Brawl attack against Khan, then finally went down to a body slam.

Post-Mortem:
I think the core rules were reasonably quick to grasp. I liked the variety and thematic nature of the power attacks; the battle between the monsters played out a lot like an old movie, in that there was a lot of slamming and throwing each other into buildings. There is a huge difference between the damage dealt from a normal attack and from landing a successful power attack into a building; perhaps even too big a difference, in that normal attacks almost felt pointless. Of course we didn't even look at most of the special rules, so I don't know how much they will change things. I found that it could be difficult to line up power attacks sometimes, especially when units get in the way. I feel like the game might be a bit too simple with just one monster each side, I'm sure two monsters a side will play very differently and demand more strategy. We were typically using all our dice every turn, especially our power dice, but that was clearly excessive, making more efficient use of dice is something I'd need to get used to. I feel like it'll take me a lot longer to figure out how best to use unit turns; my units did very little this game as once they had grabbed a few power nodes I didn't feel too much incentive to do anything with them. Plus there were times when my own units felt like they were in my own way a little bit.

Overall I'm starting to get a sense of the game's depth, but it hasn't really clicked for me yet. I'll need to play more games using the actual special rules, although that would probably be easier if I didn't run too many types of units at the same time. And I haven't even considered messing around with buildings with special rules yet...

Anyway, here's some fancy photos we took mid-game:

A Third Colour

I picked up Artemis Fang between kickstarters so I wasn't able to batch her painting with any other Marcher Worlds infantry models. One of the design elements I'm implementing with my Marcher Worlds is to not have any skin showing (as I don't like the idea of skin being painted in the same grey tones as everything else). Since a head swap on this model would be very impractical, I simply sculpted a bandana over the exposed part of the face. I think it looks pretty good, and is in keeping with all the flowing cloth and general "rogueish" looks Artemis and indeed most of the Marchers have. I also cut the tactical rock off her foot and just pinned her to the base.

But of course the big thing here is the second glow colour. Some of the feedback I received on my Dusk Wolf was that he needed a third colour. One idea that had vaguely occured to me and that was independently suggested by others was a magenta glow. But with so many models already painted in a consistent scheme and with my plan for my Marcher Worlds being to paint them quickly and not get too precious, I was reluctant to change the formula. Nevertheless, the more I looked at the model the more I felt it not only needed that magenta glow, it would actually look really cool with it. So I decided that, since all the models I've painted so far were "generic" units and Artemis Fang is a Hero - a special unit type with different rules - that it would still be consistent if I expand the colour scheme to add Magenta as a third colour exclusively for Hero units. Justification achieved!

Artemis Fang:
I started by painting the model the same was as the rest of my Marcher Worlds infantry. To summarise: over a primer of Vallejo 73.660 Surface Primer Gloss Black, I airbrushed a zenithal highlight of Vallejo 70.862 Model Color Black Grey, Vallejo 70.992 Model Color Neutral Grey, and Vallejo 70.990 Model Color Light Grey. I then edge highlighted everything with the Light Grey, before darkening it all down with a wash of Citadel Shade Nuln Oil. I picked out areas to apply a glow with layers and drybrushes of Citadel Layer Sotek Green, Citadel Layer Temple Guard Blue, Citadel Edge Baharroth Blue, and Formula P3 Morrow White.

With that all done it was finally time to try to figure out the new element: the magenta glow. At this point I realised I only had one magenta paint. I didn't want to have to mix my own colours, especially not for an effect that I might be repeating in the future for a uniform army, but I didn't want to order new paints and have to wait weeks for them. So did the best I could with the paints I had lying around.

First off I basecoated the "hair" with Formula P3 Murderous Magenta. I then drybrushed the Magenta onto the surrounding areas. Next I painted lines of Citadel Edge Fulgrim Pink along the strands. I brightened the centers of these lines with Formula P3 Morrow White thinned with Formula P3 Mixing Medium. I then drybrushed the Fulgrim Pink over the hair and the surrounding areas.

At this point I felt the brightness was pretty good but it looked too desaturated, coming across as a light pink rather than a magenta. So I glazed the hair with a Badger Minitaire D6-173 Ghost Tint Magenta thinned down a lot with Mixing Medium. I was reluctant to use the Ghost Tint as I have issues in the past with their flow properties; they are designed for airbrushing and don't seem to take all that well to being applied by a brush. Also when testing I found that applying the Ghost Tint Magenta directly on the Fulgrim Pink darkened it far too much (it is a very saturated glaze). When thinned with the mixing medium (maybe around 2:1 medium:tint?) it didn't darken the pink nearly as badly. I also didn't have any flow issues, which may have been the effect of the medium as well.

Once the glaze dried the saturation looked good. In fact the glow as a whole didn't look too bad, however it wasn't very bright anymore (especially when compared to the surrounding teal glows). So I applied the Fulgrim Pink again, trying to restrict the application to smaller areas than before, and followed that with even smaller areas of the thinned white again. The white was probably thinned to about 1:1 with the mixing medium, as a result it was more like a glaze that lightened the pink, and didn't really go up to an actual pure white.

Then it was time to paint the base in the established way, using Citadel Colour Tin Bitz, Vallejo 71.068 Model Air Metallic Copper, and Citadel Shade Agrax Earthshade.


I think perhaps I should have been more agressive when drybrushing the magenta and pink onto the surrounding surfaces as the glowing hair doesn't really cast very much light. It was hard because the immediate surroundings were hard to reach with my drybrushes, and I couldn't go very far without hitting the teal glowing areas. I didn't really manage to get a smooth gradient on the glows on the hair either. That's just the limitations of my lazy drybrushed glow technique I guess. Still, I think she came out looking pretty cool.

Giant Green Gojira

Here he is at last, the King of the Kaiju; Godzilla Terra Khan!

Terra Khan was definitely my favourite Monsterpocalypse model so far. I think the sculpt is great; I like that he seems (to me eyes at least) to draw some inspiration from the 1998 American Godzilla as well as the more obvious Modern/Classic original. Personally I always liked the '98 design as it felt much more agile thatn the original. It looked like it could run, crouch, climb, burrow, and even leap, while the original - limited of course by originally being a rubber suit - didn't look like it could do much more than waddle around. Terra Khan feels to me like a happy medium.

I had original thought to paint him to look like Godzilla, but when I actually came around to start planning my paints I realised that Godzilla's colour scheme is kind of really boring. At least for a miniature; he's just dark grey. That's really it. Top to bottom, head to toe, Godzilla is just a basic dark grey. I did not think I could make that look good, especially since Terra Khan's sculpt has a lot of detail that kind of wants to stand out a bit. Also it would not fit very well with the Terrasaurs I had already painted.

I tried to compromise by painting him in just one dark green (applying three brightness levels as a zenithal highlight), but it looked really boring. So I gave up and incorporated some more greens; a yellowish tone for his belly (in keeping with the rest of my Terrasaurs), and a brighter, more blue-ish shade along the back as a reference to the way Godzilla's back spikes are sometimes shown to glow when he uses his "nuclear breath". Plus of course similar details colours as his smaller brethren. And yeah, I think it looks good, while still not feeling too big a departure from Godzilla himself. So yeah, I'm pretty happy with how he turned out!

He was a bit of work to put together; because of the complex skin texture I had to be careful when removing mold lines as I would not be able to sculpt back detail easily. I did have to scratch up a couple of areas with the back of my hobby knife to try to maintain some degree of continuity with the surrounding texture. With all four limbs and the lower jaw as separate parts, there were some gaps. They might have looked OK without filling, but I felt it was safer to fill them. Which I did with Vallejo 70.400 Plastic Putty. This was a lot more work than I had hoped; it might have just been easier to use greenstuff. But it worked out in the end.

And with him done I now have a minimum force of Terrasaurs to go alongside my minimum force of GUARD, meaning I now have enough models to actually play a minimum sized game! Which hopefully I will do! Someday, when the world goes back to normal (if such a concept even makes sense).

Terra Khan:
I basecoated the whole model with Vallejo 72.728 Game Air Dark Green, then applied a zenithal highlight over the whole model with Green Stuff World 1797 Acrylic Color Forest Green airbrushed down from almost directly above.

I then airbrushed Vallejo 72.729 Game Air Sick Green onto the belly, makind sure to fully cover the plate scales but deliberately going past them to create a soft transition to the main colour. I then airbrushed Citadel Layer Moot Green onto the scales from about an angle down onto the front on the chest and belly, to try to get a bit of zenithal highlighting going on. Finally I airbrushed Vallejo 72.026 Game Colour Jade Green onto the back scales, with Scalecolor SFG-22 Fantasy & Games Surfer Orc Flesh airbrushed onto the center/tips.

The model is quite "three dimensional" (especially the tail), so it was a little hard to get the paint where I wanted it without spraying past onto other areas, and I did have to do some cleanup, but I did manage to do it all with the airbrush. And with that the airbrushing was done and it was time to move on to the brush work.

I painted the eye sockets with the same Dark Green as I had been feeling that the solid black I was using on the previous Terrasaurs was too much. I filled this in with Vallejo 72.005 Game Color Moon Yellow, followed by a dot of Vallejo 70.950 Model Color Black.

While the zenithal highlighting had created some contrast and the washes would create more, I thought it was still worth doing some drybrushing. I drybrushed the dark green areas in a top-down motion using Citadel Layer Warpstone Glow; this subtly brightened the tops of scales and helped the skin texture to pop a bit more. I drybrushed the entire belly with the Moot Green, then mixed Moot Green with Citadel Edge Gauss Blaster Green to drybrush over just the "zenithal highlighted" areas. Again this really brought out the texture.

When painting the Bellowers I felt that my claws and teeth were too bright, so I tried to paint them much darker this time. I used a basecoat of Formula P3 Menoth White Base, then I thinned Formula P3 Menoth White Highlight with a lot of Formula P3 Mixing Medium to create a glaze that I used to build up to a brighter highlight at the tips. I then applied a wash of Citadel Shade Seraphim Sepia to further darken them. Similarly the inside of the mouth (painted before the teeth) was the usual Formula P3 Ryn Flesh, but shaded with Citadel Washes Ogryn Flesh to make it darker than usual.

With the details done I applied a very generous amount of Army Painter Quickshade Dark Tone wash/varnish, and then I spent a while carefully removing it as it settled, to make sure it didn't pool in places I didn't want it. The shade did a greate job of bringing out the skin texture, and coupled with the previous washes on the mouth and claws brought those brighter areas down nicely.

When that had fully dried, I went over the back scales with a heavy drybrush of the Jade Green, significantly reducing the effect of the wash. I considered just painting it straight on to completely cover the wash, but decided I did want a little bit of the shading to come through for contrast. I then drybrushed the Surfer Orc Flesh back into the centers/tips, and finally brought the colour up to a very bright highlight on the very tips using a drybrush of the Gauss Blaster Green.


The Terrasaurs have been a learning experience in airbrushing. When working on Terra Khan there were a couple of things that I tried that didn't work. While painting the original green coat I actually tried to highlight up to Warpstone Glow, but decided it was too bright and darkened the model down again with the darker two greens before moving on. I also initially experimented with tinting the belly with Badger Minitaire D6-170 Ghost Tint Yellow as a more subtle way to give the belly that yellow tone rather than using different greens, but this looked terrible so I went over it with the Sick Green.

Overall the novelty of using an airbrush to do most of the work on a model this big was a lot of fun, and seeing him come together so quickly was very satisfying. Hopefully I'll slowly get bolder and more skilled with the airbrush as I try to use it more.