Hard work and a box with teeth

I've been meaning to pick up some of the Discworld minis by Micro Art Studios for a while. The other day I showed the website to a friend who reads Terry Pratchett, and foolishly suggested that the Luggage looked easy to paint and I could probably get it done in a single saturday. Since his birthday was coming up I decided to paint him a model as a gift.

I was wrong. I wasn't able to finish it in a single saturday. Nevertheless I managed to get it finished in time:


It came with a slotta base with a recessed top, but the model itself had no tab to fit the slot and I didn't like the recess so I filled it with milliput. I had to pin the model to the base, and I didn't like leaving the pins exposed under the base (plus I wanted to write on the bottom), so I filled that too:


Here's a picture for size comparison:


First I primed the model white, then painted the different surfaces.
Cloth: scab red basecoat, blood red, blazing orange drybrush, light bleached bone drybrush, baal red wash.
Brass: tin bitz basecoat, Bronze layers, boltgun then chainmail drybrushes.
Wood: calthan brown basecoat, devlan mud wash.
Teeth: skull white.
Legs: elf flesh basecoat, bleached bone toenails.

Then everything was washed generously in watered down gryphonne sepia. This worked quite well for the teeth, did very little to the wood and brass, but wasn't quite enough for the legs, or more specifically the recesses between them, which were not dark enough as the washed flowed down and got sucked under the model. So I had to apply more, laying the model horizontally so the wash would pool properly, but first I applied a heavy wash of devlan mud directly into the recesses at the top, where it looked like it should be darker still. This was a little messy so I had to touch up the legs before the second wash of sepia, which I did with dwarf flesh (which was very close in colour to the sepia-washed elf flesh).

Finally I applied an extremely light drybrush of bleached bone on the legs, not just to highlight but to reduce the warmth a little (my previous experiments with drybrushing skin were terrible, but it seems if you put almost no pressure on the brush you can get a subtle improvement overall). I actually performed a bunch of experiments before painting the skin, this was the best effect I was able to get.

I considered using Army Painter quickshade but decided against it in the end. I'm not fond of the effect quickshade has on most surfaces, though I love how it works on skin - except the colour is a very dark brown that's not "warm" enough even for dark or tanned flesh. Mixing it with washes didn't work (it doesn't mix), washing over it was better but I'll need to experiment more - glazes may work, but washes probably don't add colour in the same places as the quickshade so it will create different overall skin colours - or at least that seemed to be the problem in my early tests. Perhaps a weaker quickshade would help, I'll have to experiment more in the future.

Overall it came out quite well, but the spaces between the legs and between the teeth aren't dark enough. Next time I'll wash between the teeth with devlan mud or badab black before the sepia then touch up the white, and I'll carefully paint the legs a different colour to the spaces (which will be slightly harder than I'd like because there's not always clear boundries between the two, but I'll just have to keep hacking away until it looks right). I don't think I'll bother basecoating the brass in tin bitz next time, as it took a while to build up over white, I'll just use the same brown for simplicity. It might help with the legs too, at least if I want a dark colour between them. In fact I'll probably just use brown as the basecoat for everything except the teeth.

I do love the cast, and overall I think it turned out pretty well, in fact I'm considering painting another for myself. I might put Rincewind on the same base as I think the models will work well together, though I would have to paint them seperately. Too many other things to paint first though, so it might be a while.

Third game

Played my third game yesterday. My opponent had to throw together a 500 point list proxying Sanguinary Guard models for Assault Troopers (with power fist and melta guns – in retrospect I wonder if he made a mistake, don't Blood Angels assault troops get melta pistols instead of melta guns?). He took two units of 5, a Librarian with jump pack and melta pistol and a Sanguinary Priest with melta pistol. I took:


Amadeus as a Captain with power weapon, bolt pistol, and melta bombs (120 pts),
Tactical squad with Fistandantilus (power fist sarge), flamer, plasma cannon (200 pts),
Scouts with sniper rifles (75 pts),
Dreadnought (105 pts).

My opponent was a really great guy, he helped me a lot by pointing out tactical mistakes I was making and letting me take them back, and giving me advice on what he "could" (would) do if I made certain moves.


We had a nice table to play on this time, with a landing pad, piece of ruin, and some craters. We rolled up dawn of war with objectives; he placed two objectives near my deployment and I placed one off to the side. With my limited mobility, I think he wanted to keep the action near me rather than forcing me to slog across the table. He even gave me first turn.

I split my marines into combat squads, four guys and the flamer stood in a line in a crater while the others, including the sergeant and the plasma cannoneer stood behind them with Amadeus. They had an objective between them and another close by. My plan was to intercept the inevitable charge with the first squad, and assault in with the second unit and my captain (it didn't occur to me at the time that his jump troops could jump past my buffer unit). My dread was in reserve, and my snipers infiltrated.

He placed one unit with the librarian out of sight of my tac marines, and the other was deep striking. I set up my snipers on the piece of ruin, which had been my plan all long but now had the advantage of giving me line of sight into his unit. They wouldn't all fit on top so some had to stand on the ground floor, which may or may not have made a difference, as you'll see. In retrospect I probably should have just put them farther back to use their range, but then again it was night fighting.

The game began, and we promptly forgot to keep track of turns (as well as ignoring the objectives). My dread walked on from the middle of my table edge, my tac marines sat around wondering where the baddies were, while Amadeus sent some texts on his mobile and my snipers adjusted their scopes. Satisfied they were dialled in, the scouts fired at the assault squad, passing the night-fight roll and amazingly landing all but the missile (I forgot that he was supposed to be just another sniper, but it made no difference anyway). Two shots managed to wound, of which one was rending. Their librarian cast sanctuary for the cover save against the rending shot, but in the end one wound got through and he lost a marine. They passed their pinning test and my turn was over.

In his turn he charged the scouts and wiped them out using unleash rage. If I didn't have any scouts on the ground floor I'm not sure what would have happened, I need to re-read the building rules. If he hadn't killed them all I would have used chapter tactics to run away, in the hope that they would be left exposed to my tac squad shooting. It didn't occur to me at the time, but this would have been good even if his unit had caught up as the fearless wounds could have killed the scouts and left the assault troops vulnerable again. Of course if the did break free successfully he would have either had to chase them down (taking him farther from my tac squad and the two objectives), or leave them to rally and shoot again.

In my turn my dread tried to put himself between the assault squad and my tac marines. I considered moving my marines away but he reminded me that the the plasma cannon wouldn't be able to fire, so instead I shuffled the other squad a bit as they were already in 12 inch range as far as I could see. The plasma shot scattered, and the rest of my shooting did little.

Next turn he brought down his other squad with the Sanguinary Priest behind my dread and wrecked it with melta and bolters on it's rear armour. Then he assaulted into my first tac squad with his other unit and wiped them out thanks in part to furious charge gained from being within range of the dropped priest.

I considered charging my last squad into his depleted assault unit, but he counselled firing it's plasma cannon into the dropped squad as they were all bunched up, and I decided that realistically that was my only chance to do any real damage, and left them alone. I did move Amadeus out of the unit so he could counter-charge after they get charged, but he reminded me he could either fly over to get him or even multi-charge both the captain and unit, so instead I moved the captain towards the depleted unit in order to assault them. The plasma cannon was on target and ended up claiming three assault marines (his librarian was close enough to cast sanctuary and he passed one cover save), and the rest of the squad's shooting killed the power fist sergeant. In my assault phase my captain charged his remaining assault squad, who were now down to two marines and the librarian (who I think was down to one wound now). I sent three attacks at the librarian and one at each marine. I failed to wound the librarian but killed both marines, then took a wound in return. Luckily for me he couldn't activate his force weapon as he had cast sanctuary that turn!

Next turn he killed a couple of marines with his Priest unit in shooting and assault (Fistandantilus missed all his attacks – again!), then my Captain finished off his librarian and we decided to call it (one assault marine with a melta gun and a sanguinary priest with melta pistol and chainsword against a captain with power weapon and pistol (who was about to charge in for the extra attack), two or three marines, and a power-fist sergeant - his odds were slim).


It was a close game, but only because he helped me so much. I got a few lucky rolls at the end (that plasma cannon really made up for it's ridiculous miss last time), and he normally played pure Sanguinary Guard so he was a little unused to not having power weapons and 2+ armour, plus he had to write his list right there, proxying models as needed. I don't know what would have happened if we had counted turns, though by my count the game was over by the fourth and the objectives were all right there so I don't think it would have made a difference.

I really enjoyed it despite being so tired I had trouble reading the dice at times, and I won't deny actually winning gave the game a sweet after-taste (tastes like pride... sweet, intoxicating pride). Amadeus really saved the game in the end. Fistandantilus didn't do jack. That's three games in a row now that he hasn't landed a single hit - maybe I should bust him back to being a scout?


It occurs to me now even in such a small game between a shooty army and and assaulty one, there's still a fair bit of tactics in play. In fact each decision and dice roll counts for more than it usually would in a larger game because there's more on the line - for example that single plasma cannon shot not only took out a significant portion of his force (it could potentially have wiped out the entire squad, almost half his army), it also caused his librarian to use up his psychic power, which saved my captain from being force-weaponed to death. In other words that single shot made the difference between victory and defeat.

200 point game

I just played another game of 40k. Killteam, or something like that. At 200 points, I just took my tactical squad (power fist, flamer, plasma cannon), my opponent took 2 units of Firewarriors and a Crisis suit with a marker light, missile pod and some form of plasma weapon. Due to limited space we played on the edge of a table at the GW store.

We advanced towards each other until in shooting distance, at which point I started losing men. I split my squad into two basic teams, one aiming to chase down the crisis suit and the other aiming to advance along a walkway towards the fire warriors (because of the terrain these were really the only two paths across the table to the Tau side).

The highlights of the game were when a single Marine finally made it into combat against the Crisis suit, only to miss both attacks then take a single wound (and fail his armor save on a one), and when my plasma cannon marine finally got line of sight and took a shot, which immediately scattered right back onto the head of the guy in front of him (I cannot put in words how accurate a misfire this was, the template covered three of the remaining four men in that squad) and killed two Marines.

The final score was two dead Firewarriors and ten dead marines. My armour saves were just stupid - I think three quarters of my armour save rolls came up ones. So much for the laws of averages.

I didn't enjoy this game all that much. Not so much because I lost and had awful luck, but rather because of the hassle of having to control every model individually, the cramped table on which we played, and the fact that I didn't know the Killteam rules beforehand so I had no idea what I was doing and my force was completely unsuitable. Also because I stayed up past midnight prepping some scouts and then I didn't even get to use them.

I'm not bitter or anything, it's just that I've been trying to justify the time spent on Warhammer when there's other things I could be doing, like programming or playing x-box or writing or even, God forbid, going outdoors. Today it didn't feel worth it.

40k faction suggestion

I was just thinking about this, what I believe is missing from 40K is a faction like Mercenaries or Rogue Traders or something to that effect.

See, I originally wanted a Space Marines/Grey Knights/Sororitas army, because they have very cool models. An entire army of Space Marines is just the same 3 models over and over: marine, scout, terminator. Grey Knights, or at least Grey Knight Terminators, are amazing models - easily the best 40K armoured infantry in my opinion, and the SoB also have some very nice models (plus both factions allow you to take almost any models for inquisitors and henchmen), but I wouldn't want to buy, paint, or field an entire army of only one of them. So the old 'allies' rule seemed quite cool, but now it's gone and with it the chance of variety.

Yes, you can still take inquisitors and henchmen in a Grey Knight army, so I guess that's the way to go if all you want is a variety of different models. But I'm thinking of something more. An army where you can mix humans of all sizes with xenos of all shapes and colours. Something with a touch of the elitism of Space Marines (without the power armor), the range of styles possible to Imperial Guard (without being so weak and numerous or meched-up), and the visual interest and appeal of various aliens.

I'm thinking humans with more character and ability than IG. Perhaps "elite" troops would have WS4 BS4 S3 T3 W1 I4 A2 Ld8, that sort of thing, with lots of wargear and rules that cause re-rolls, to make up for their low strength and toughness and armour. Normal troops can have regular Guard stats, but a specific purpose like heavy weapons. Of course the Elites would include psykers, heavily armoured or enhanced warriors, or specialists with special wargear like snipers.

That's just the regular humans. It can also include mutants, rogue marines (defectors from either side), Ork mercenaries like the Flash Gits, Tau rogue Tau, Dark Eldar pirates, enigmatic Eldar Warlocks working towards a purpose only they understand, or Tau defectors, reprogrammed Necrons, perhaps even pet Tyranids (I'm thinking their minds have been dominated by psykers or their brains wired or replaced, like servitors).

There's a huge range of possible vehicles, with Imperial, Tau and Eldar all having some great stuff. It will probably go the ork route of having a general description of the vehicle, with a number of analogues actually being possible in modelling terms (eg a "hovering transport" will have certain rules and stats, the player can then chose between, say, a Tau Hammerhead, an Eldar Wave Serpent, or a Marine Land-Speeder model). Actually, this same idea could be applied to infantry units as well, so a unit of scouts could use Marine scouts or Pathfinder models, and each has slightly different rules or wargear (the same as sniper scouts and combat scouts play differently and are visually differentiated by their wargear). This would create variety without needing an obscene range or units.


I guess the real reason behind this idea is to create an army that is fun for people who like painting or modelling individual models, rather than large numbers of the same model over and over. You can get nicely matched models in a unit, but there's no need to ever paint more than one unit of the same model. In fact, to enforce this (and to provide a counterbalance to the large variety of units available), the codex may stipulate that you cannot have two of the same unit (or possibly you can but they need to be different races, like the Scouts and Pathfinders example above). I know that there's a fair number of people who would like an army with no spam. Or just enforce a different maximum for each unit, the way some codices do (or did? I'm thinking Inquisitor Lords in the previous Grey Knights).

Anyway, I might actually try to come up with a few rules for this army. I think I'd put most units as troops, to allow for said variety without too many unnecessary rules - instead the limits on individual units will prevent spam. It might even be worth getting rid of the army composition chart altogether. The problem is I'm really only familiar with the Space Marines and Orks codices (and some other power-armoured variants). I'll start with those anyway, and pick units or create my own based on them. Of course I'm open to suggestions.

First real game

Tonight I played my first real game of 40K (at least the first one in about 10 years). I ran a vanilla Marines list I threw together which had the main virtue of being mainly composed of models that I actually have painted (though there were a few "counts-as"):

HQ:
Chaplain Sebastian w/ terminator armour, combi-melta, melta bomb: 140
Troops:
Tactical Squad, 5 man, power fist (Fistandantilus), plasma pistol: 130
Tactical Squad, 5 man, power weapon, plasma pistol, melta bomb: 125
Elites:
Dreadnought: 105
Total: 500 pts

My opponent played orcs, he clearly had a much larger army with him but he played using:

HQ:
Big Mek, Custom Force Field
Troops:
15 Orks, power claw
15 Orks, power claw
I don't know:
Battlewagon or something with a roller
Some form of smaller truck

His army was very well painted, it certainly looked far far better than mine - his big truck thing was a converted Land Raider, for example. We decided to play annihilation since it was simplest, and we forgot to count the number of turns so we basically played until everyone was dead. By the end of it my Dreadnought was the only thing still alive, so I won 5 killpoints to 3. I believe he took it easy on me (he didn't take any anti-tank, for one thing, so he didn't have much to hit my dread with, and his Mek was mostly wasted), and I did get some very lucky dice rolls (at one point he rolled 4 ones to hit with his power claw against my dread, and every damage roll was a 1).

Sebastian was not terribly effective at all (I expected this going in, he's not suited for the army but he was the only painted HQ model I have). Fistandantilus missed all three power-fist attacks in his one turn of combat then got flattened by the roller. The Dread missed a LOT of hits (two attacks really isn't much, even when they're I4 S10 power attacks), but also wrecked both vehicles and whittled down a squad of Boys until the remnants of one of my tac squads could jump in.

So what did I learn? Well, for one thing, even such a small game can be very unpredictable and take longer than you would think. Even a 5 man Space Marine squad can hold out a while against an Ork charge, with a little luck. A Dread is quite a force to be reckoned with if his opponents aren't tooled up properly.


Well, I had fun, hopefully I'll play more games in the future (though it will still take a while to get more painted model in).

Sebastian competes with the big boys

Last weekend there was a mini painting competition at the local GW. It seems they run it every month, 'Brotherhood of the Brush' I believe it's called. This one was for 40K independent character or unit. I asked if I could enter a mini painted some months back and they didn't have a problem with it, so I entered Sebastian.

I certainly wasn't expecting to win. While Sebastian is probably my best work to date, I'm still using very basic techniques and simple colours, I've seen so much better on the internet and in this very store. Besides, the varnish I used on him is now noticeably a little cloudy, so he doesn't look as good as he used to.

Needless to say I didn't win. In fact I didn't get to see the winning model, but I saw a couple of others in the competition that were pretty impressive so I have no doubt that the winner deserved it. Having said that, I got a couple of good comments about Sebastian, so overall it was encouraging. I think I'll try to enter the next competition, which is apparently any single mini so at least I won't have any trouble meeting the requirements.


In other news, I've just received a"cold heat" soldering iron that I got off ebay for a decent price. It's battery-operated, which alone makes it very attractive (I hate the stupid cables sticking off the back of traditional soldering irons - also it uses regular AAs, which I actually prefer to custom batteries because it means it doesn't need a dedicated power adapter or charger), plus it has a very short distance from grip to tip so it should be MUCH better than my current model for soldering small parts. But the big deal is supposed to be that it reaches high temperatures almost instantly when you actually touch it to the component, so it might help solve the problems I had last time with getting the solder to stick to the components. Hopefully I'll get to try it this weekend. Fingers crossed.

Soldering irons and plastic do not mix

Some time back I was trying to attach some wires and switches using conductive glue. The results were very poor. So I managed to wash the conductive glue away with a solvent and I tried to solder the bits together.

I ran into several problems. The soldering iron is massive (the fact that it has a very small cable and I don't have an extension right now so I had to sit on the floor in front of a power outlet is my fault of course) and the bits that I'm trying to solder are tiny, so it was hard to control everything. Some of the things I wanted to solder are magnets, and I'm afraid they'll lose their magnetism if I heat them up too much, so I was trying not to get them hot. Also everything was already attached to the plastic base so I was trying not to let anything get too hot.

The solder itself is a real pain. When heated it just curls up along the strip (if you've ever used a lighter to melt a strand of synthetic thread, it's basically the same thing) rather than melting off and flowing onto the components. So I had to cut bits of solder off and try to get them to sit on the connections (itself a difficult task) until I could melt them. Even then, rather than spread out over the connection like, say, superglue, it would just ball up on top and almost instantly harden in to a lump that wasn't even connected at all to the components.

The result was that the base melted a lot, and when I was done the curcuit didn't work. In a fit of fury I snapped the base and the plastic model into tiny pieces, cursing a blue streak the whole time and for a while afterwards. Let me tell you, after the amount of time, effort and money I spent on that one little model, I felt extremely dispirited. I have not recorded here just what went into finding and making all the parts, but for me it was a really big deal, all done when there's a lot of other things I could and would like to be doing. I very nearly swore off the hobby altogether right there.


Eventually though the thought of how much I had invested prompted me to try again. I decided to try the conductive glue again since before I had only shaken it, but reading the instructions again (which were written on the blister pack but not on the actual glue vial, I'm lucky I didn't throw the packaging away when I removed the glue) it said to stir the glue. Doing so, I realised that something - presumably the carbon conductive material - had settled into a very thick sludge at the bottom and it took a fair bit of work to even it out. Then I slowly built a test circuit, applying the glue then leaving for several hours to cure then coating in superglue to protect it so the connection would not get damaged in handling.

The results were not great. I estimate that the bulb is half as bright at best - it flickers inconsistantly - when the battery is connected to the circuit compared to connecting it directly to the bulb. So the conductive glue is just plain out of the question. I haven't given up yet though, my next attempt will be to carefully melt a blob of solder on the iron, then 'wick' it up with the strands of a copper wire, then let that rest in an indentation filed on the side of a magnet. Some bits might just be wrapped around each other then selotaped together, if possible. The whole circuit will be assembled with wires BEFORE being glued into the base, so I don't have to worry about melting plastic. With luck and a lot of effort, this might work - though probably not on the first try.

If it works, I'll have to buy the 8 quid model again. It's a nice model, but it's a simple one, I felt ripped off paying that much for it the first time, I'm not happy that I have to pay it again. This time though I have a better idea for the pose. I'll leave the bulb and attachment to the base for last, as now I have a better idea how it will work.


I'm writing this out of frustration, some days I really wonder why I'm bothering with these little pieces of plastic. Even though I can sometimes enjoy the painting, other times it feels like a chore, especially considering how much other stuff I want to do and how little time I have. Well, I guess as long as I don't try to force myself to paint and only do it when I feel like it I can't complain. Of course then I only get a figure actually painted once every couple of months...