The long overdue light-up Marine

I actually finished assembling this guy almost a year ago (according to the dates on the photos), in fact I primed him at the same time as my first light-up model. I guess I was a little burned out on Space Marines as I haven't painted any since these scouts, and they don't really count as they aren't even wearing power armour. I was pretty burned out on trying to put lights in my models too, as I'd been working on it for ages by that point.

But as I mentioned in a previous post, I've made great strides in making powered bases recently, so I thought I'd finish off the last of my old prototypes. Plus I really liked the model as I put a fair bit of work into the conversion, so I thought I might as well paint it. Fair warning, this is going to be a REALLY long post as a LOT of work and experimentation went into this guy - if you count this then I've been looking at lighting up my minis for well over three years now - and I wanted to write about it for my own benefit.

I was building an assault squad back in 5th when vehicles were everywhere and it was traditional to put a "hidden fist" in every squad to give it punch. As I'm not a huge fan of the aesthetics of power fists, I opted for a hammer instead. And just to give him that truly heroic resilience, I added a shield as well. The way wound allocation went back in fifth, I could have allocated any low AP attacks to him instead of regular attacks, meaning I could allocate wounds in such a way that his survive-ability wouldn't be affected but that of his squad would be greatly enhanced. I reckon it's still how I'd run an assault sergeant in sixth to give him some punch in challenges.

I call him Daedalus. When you say "Icarus" people think "Flew too close to the sun: wings melted, died". Well, Daedalus was his father, he built the wings, and he didn't fly too close to the sun and didn't die. In other words, he was the one who knew what he was doing.

I tried to put an LED in his hammer, but I just couldn't fit two cables down the shaft without taking out too much material and compromising the strength. In the end I decided to leave that for another model and just put an LED in his jump pack.

However, just to make things harder on myself, I decided to make the jump pack removable. Well, OK, it was to increase his versatility and it also didn't sound much harder at the time, but it turned out to be quite frustrating to get it to work. Still, the result is a more versatile model.

To do this I used two magnets which served to attach the jump pack and carry the current. Now, you can't really solder a wire to a magnet without destroying, or at least weakening, it's magnetism. So what I did was solder wires to magnets, then let that stick itself to the back of the actual magnet that formed the connection. Even without magnetism of it's own, it would still be ferromagnetic allowing the second magnet to attach to it. The second magnet would then be glued in place in the model, and the same arrangement would be repeated on the other piece.

I wanted the pose to be very dynamic, with his whole body twisted back and his arm drawn back to deliver a crushing blow with the hammer, his other arm holding up the shield to block incoming fire until the last moment. It took a little work to pose the arms (Space Marine arms aren't usually posed held too far out from the body as it can interfere with the pauldrons on the shoulders (let's face it, those things aren't designed for letting the wearer do anything as unnecessary as raising his arms), but it came out OK in the end.

I don't like the two-piece GW thunder hammers, I just wanted a single massive block of hammer (like the Coteaz or the Master of the Fleet), so I made one out of greenstuff. The arm/shaft was a Sanguinary Guard axe arm (I may have had to file some gems off, not really sure). The shield was a Celtic Shield from Scibor Miniatures.

What with the big old hammer and decorative shield, I wanted him to look "knightly" and gothic. However I also wanted to keep his armour as utilitarian as possible - on planes and race cars every ounce counts, I figured a guy who goes flying through the air for the Emperor would value every bit of speed and range over ostentatious un-aerodynamic decoration. And purity seals? Flappy bits of paper that would get torn off in the rushing air or sucked into an air intake or something? Forget about it! So I used the simplest, plainest parts I could - the weapons being the exception.

I was using Black Templar heads on the rest of the squad, so I wanted his head to look a little different. I took a Grey Knight head and filed the front down to make it less pronounced, then filed some new "air" holes in the front left side. The result looks about halfway between a Grey Knight and a Black Templar helmet. This model was from the first batch using my new shoulder pads; I take plain shoulder pads, file off the rims to make them a little smaller, and fill any details. I did give him a slightly more "archaic" torso than the standard assault marine, and greenstuffed a shield across the front to replace the existing symbol (I think it may have been a Black Templar symbol). Of course I sculpted the Sentinels Eternal symbol on his left pauldron. A standard jump pack would not have left room for his hammer and would have blocked his view, plus I would have had to use 2 LEDs instead of one, so I used a Sanguinary Guard jump pack (sans wings) instead.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the model except that I wanted to paint him in metallics. I've already got a Grey Knight and I'm hoping to paint a bunch more eventually, and I already have a bronze marine, so I decided to go darker on the body with bright details for contrast. I basecoated him in Calthan Brown then Tin Bitz. Some details were painted up to Dwarf Bronze, and most of the decorations were brought up to gold. I washed him with Devlan Mud, but that just dulled the Tin Bitz without adding any shading or contrast, so next time I won't bother. I then edge highlighted with one shade higher so Tin Bitz was highlighted with Dwarf Bronze, Dwarf Bronze with gold, and gold with a mix of gold and Mithril Silver.

At this point there wasn't any contrast on the brighter metals, so I carefully painted Army Painter Quickshade strong tone onto the bronze and gold areas. I ended up giving the shield a couple of layers to really create contrast, then carefully touched up the gold on the raised areas.

I hadn't sculpted anything onto his right pauldron as I didn't have any ideas, so I decided to leave it smooth and paint something on. While painting I came up with the idea of putting lines of "text" across it to make it look like he had scripture engraved into his armour. The thing is, once I had done that (in Mithril Silver for maximum brightness), the rest of his armour looked really boring. I think it might have been fine if he was in brighter colours, like gold or silver, but as it was my original plan to keep it plain was backfiring. So I went ahead and just painted "scripture"across every bit of armour large enough for me to scribble a line across.

I think that turned out quite well actually; it makes him look very devoted as the only decoration on his armour is his chapter symbol and his holy texts, plus it's a rather unique effect (I don't remember seeing it used to this extent before anyway). The size and quality of the "text" is highly inconsistent, but it's the best I could do over so many different hard-to-reach areas, so I'm happy with it.

I originally considered painting the hammer head in gold to match the shield, but I wanted it to stand out, and the idea of white marble really appealed to me. I found a tutorial written by Abaroth on how to paint various shades of marble, and while there's still room for improvement in my technique, I think it came out reasonably well in the end.

I used this piece of wall to practice painting marble; each section is slightly different.

I varnished him in 'Ardcoat as it brightens the colours a bit and I figured he would look good shiny. I used a Vallejo brush on matt varnish for the base and hammer shaft. It's the only brush-on matt varnish I've found that actually works, and it works really well and dries quickly.


Of course, it was always the lights that took the most work. After trying a number of different approaches, I settled on making a completely new base from breadboard and plasticard. This allowed me to make it a bit more spacious by not sloping the sides, create cut-outs in the sides for the battery and switch, and to save room by not needing wires. Soldering was a whole lot easier, and it made it much easier to fashion a terminal / battery retaining "spring" from a paperclip soldered into the existing holes. On the down side, I was still figuring out liquid greenstuff at the time and I didn't to a very good job of filling the holes in the top to a smooth finish, but luckily a thick layer of paint and good matt varnish seem to have done a good job of hiding the problem.

I tried using a disc cutting saw on a pillar drill to cut the breadboard disc, but it created a large hole in the middle, which was a problem. I found I could get a smaller hole when I just snapped a roughly circular disc out of breadboard, attached a small screw through the middle, and used the drill to file away the outside against a large file until it was the right size. You can see it on top of a standard base in the third photo:

I used a circle cutter to cut plasticard discs. When I tried to cut into the plasticard using the blade in the typical fashion it took half an hour of finger-blistering effort to cut out a disc. I mean that literally; it took half an hour and I had blisters afterwards. And the edge was a bit of a mess too. The problem is that the blade got wedged into the the thick plastic and it was very difficult to continue to exert downwards force. However, when I tried spinning it the other way, I found that the back of the blade carved neat little strips of plastic off the top, and within five minutes I had a clean disc of plasticard in my hand.

After assembling the inner components of the base, I put a ring of plasticard around the outside (with channels cut right through for the battery and switch), filled it with milliput for strength and weight, and capped it with another thin disc (with cutouts around the magnet and "spring" in order to keep the thickness down). The result is a functional powered base of the same diameter as a standard GW 25mm base, and only a millimetre or two thicker.

I forgot to take a WIP picture of the components, but here's the finished base.

This base took a lot of effort to make, with careful positioning of component on the breadboard, scratching off sections of copper, and shaping of breadboard and plasticard necessary. The result is not the same shape as a standard base, it looks a little rough, and the switch and battery slot are visible from the outside. It's also very vulnerable to scratches around the switch and battery slot. My new bases are much better and I'm finding them easier to make, but more on that in my next post.

As a parting shot, here's a picture of my first successful lit model, but with a new battery (unfortunately it seems the battery I used when taking pictures for the old post was a little run down and the pictures didn't end up as impressive as a result):

First Warmachine Battle

I finally got to play my first real Warmachine battle today. My opponent was a very nice guy who made a real effort to make sure I understood everything that was happening and every rule that came up, and to make the game educational by discussing strategies and giving me possibilities and options.

I had a 20 point list based on the old Kador starter box, which I picked up at my local hobby store. Right now I feel like I don't want to bother with infantry or high model counts, so I'm going for a jack-heavy list. Since Sorscha can support two jacks at best, I decided my next jack had to be able to run around on his own. That meant a Berserker or a Kodiak, and since the Berserker is cheaper and can also charge for free, I picked him. Then I stumbled onto the Man-O-War Kovnik. He can marshal up to two warjacks and can boost all their initial attack rolls. I figured if I put him in charge of both the Berserker and the Juggernaut, I could get the equivalent of up to 6 focus points out of him, and I could walk my heavy melee hitters up the board without putting Sorscha at risk - plus she'd have enough focus to actually cast spells. Thus my list ended up as:

Sorscha
- Destroyer (Fluffy)
Man-O-War Kovnik
- Juggernaut (Jughead)
- Berserker (The Abomination)


My opponent had just finished a larger game where he had been running Haley and a Stormwall, and he actually didn't have any other jacks with him, so instead he threw together a Cryx army on the spot using proxies and picking units from the main rule book (that I would have some familiarity with) based mainly on their points costs. I suspect he may have avoided picking too much infantry (going for a somewhat redundant second arc node instead) as he saw that I had very little anti-infantry in my list. For simplicity he picked identical light and heavy warjacks, and actually played a point down as well. His list was:

Asphyxious
- Slayer
- Slayer
- Deathripper
- Deathripper
Max Mechanithralls


We played a simple caster-kill game. I won the roll-off and elected to go second. He placed his jacks in the middle of his zone and his thralls off to his right. I deployed Sorscha and the Destroyer opposite his thralls on my left, planning to hit them with AOEs, and the rest a little to my right, planning to charge his jacks.


Round 1

He gave his jacks a focus point each and ran everything forwards, moving one of the Deathrippers to stand with the thralls on my left.

I kept all Sorscha's focus for herself, then moved her forwards with Fluffy towards the thralls. Despite being out of range, she cast Tempest on the nearest thrall, but it deviated in the wrong direction. She then cast wind-rush to move back away. Fluffy scored first blood by killing two thralls with a bombard. I knew it would get me charged, but I ran the other three towards his jacks since I had to get them into the the fight or else he'd just move everything towards Sorscha.


Round 2

Next turn he distributed focus, then popped Asphyxious' feat to give him seven focus again. He cast Parasite on the Juggernaut to drop it's armour to 17, and hit my Kovnik with Hellfire (he may have boosted the damage), but luckily for me he rolled and 8 and my Kovnik only lost half his health. Then his Slayers charged my two warjacks. By the time he was done rolling, I had exactly column 6 left on both their damage grids.

Proxies abound, with two empty bases beating the snot out of Jughead and the Abomination.

The game had just started and he already left my heavy hitters with a single functioning arm each. Things did not look good. While discussing my strategy, he suggested that now would be a good time to use Sorscha's feat. Hmm, good thing he brought that up, I had completely forgotten about it. One feat later (and a quick wind-rush backwards later) and the only models in his entire army that weren't frozen were Asphyxious and a single thrall.

Sorscha's feat: she froze EVERYONE! Using a variety of different markers.

After some explanations about how trampling worked, I decided the most important thing to do on my left flank was to kill the Deathripper, so I used a focus-laden Fluffy the Destroyer to do just that. Meanwhile, my two invalids warjacks, with a single functioning axe-clutching arm each, beat his Slayers to near-death. My Kovnik followed this up by precisely delivering the exact amount of damage necessary to finish one off.


Round 3

With his heavy warjacks almost completely eliminated, and Sorscha (seemingly) safe behind a straw hut, things were looking up for me. But I was still to learn just how fast those evil little Cryxian arc nodes are. Moving Asphyxious up, he paid a focus point to get the Deathripper on my right moving and ran it down to where he had an angle on Sorcha. She was at defence 18, but I hadn't payed any attention to her facing after moving her so she had her back to the little mouser, He cast Hellfire and  boosted the attack and damage rolls to knock nine points of damage off her.
Having spent two focus on the Deathripper and five on the spell, he didn't have any left for his Slayer, and the rest of his army was left frozen.

I had a bit of a problem now. I wasn't going to be able to hide Sorscha from his Deathripper, leaving me with little choice but to try to kill it. I put three focus on the Destroyer, then spun Sorscha around and moved her into melee with the wretched little thing. Three focus points weren't enough to kill it, but they were enough to knock out it's movement, cortex, and arc node, rendering it harmless.

AN EPIC DUEL!

This freed up Fluffy to walk forwards and, ignoring a paltry four damage from a free strike, make a boosted attack roll to... completely miss Asphyxious. In retrospect I should have planned that better and not allocated Fluffy so much focus, as he was now left with two focus points he couldn't use. Oh well. The Abomination destroyed the last remaining Slayer with a single blow, and Jughead ran over the the first one's corpse towards the tantalizingly-close Asphyxious. The Kovnik, on the other hand, politely picked his way around it, then used his axe to shoot Asphyxious (as you do) for a little damage.

Revenge is a dish best served green!

Round 4

At this point I figured I had already won. He had nothing between his caster and my heavy hitters, and his thralls were too far away to pose a threat to mine. But there was a problem. In moving Sorscha towards his Deathripper earlier, I had given Asphyxious a line of sight. Moving forwards, he put all his focus into a single boosted Hellfire. Result? One roasted ice queen.

SNIPER! MAN DOWN!

"Asphyxious" wins! Fatality!

I really enjoyed the game, and it cleared up some huge misconceptions I had about the rules. Again, my opponent was a great guy who was clearly focused on making this game fun and useful for me. I was a little miffed I hardly got to use my Kovnik's "Drive" ability despite it being the basis of my entire list, but coming back from the dead to wreck his Slayers more than made up for it. Thinking back, I don't remember if he counted the "firing into melee" penalty on that last shot. We played the "what-if" game anyway, in which Asphyxious was instantly killed by a rampaging Abomination, so I don't feel as if it made any different either way to my enjoyment of the game.

I forgot to ask what points levels people in this club normally play at, but my current plan is to bring my army up to 30 or 35 points in the next few weeks. I know Khador's strength is their infantry, but screw it, I'd rather just add another warjack. Although, after the beating my jacks took in this game, some mechanics sound like a good idea. And maybe a dog to watch Sorscha's back.

First Warmachine Models

I haven't played 40K in quite a while - I'd been too busy for a while then when 6th ed came out for some reason the new rules put me off. I'm not saying that the new rules are bad or anything, but the increased randomness and tendency towards shooting over assault, coupled with the increased complexity (and in fact decreased randomness) in wound allocation, just didn't appeal to me. Plus I was sick of painting Space Marines despite not having completed a single cohesively-painted tac squad.

But a while ago I came across Warmachine. I read a few battle reports and got the impression that the game was somewhat more tactical than what I had seen of 40K, which prompted me to investigate further. I like how well written the rules are, and that they are less abstracted than 40K (a consequence of the different scales that the games operate at). The fluff doesn't appeal to me very much, and most of the models are not really to my tastes (although they are almost all of a very high quality), but there's a few that I really like. Perhaps most importantly to me, however, is that you don't really need large quantities of identical infantry models, and you can build an army almost entirely made up of unique character models. I don't know how well that would actually do on the tabletop, but...

So I've decided to give Warmachine a try. I picked up the Khador starter box and gave the warjacks a quick paint-job:

I'm not particularly fond of the aesthetic of most Warmachine warjacks, so I didn't really care about these two; I just wanted to get the painted in a hurry. It was a real rush-job; basically just basecoats and a shade. I used GW's new red spray paint for the base, and slapped on dwarf bronze and boltgun metal details. I didn't even bother to clean up the flash and mold-lines (although I did cut down the boilers on their backs so they didn't stick out so far).

I used the "chipped paint" effect as it's actually quicker and easier than an edge highlight ( basically just apply an edge highlight in metal instead of red but deliberately make it messy rather than taking the time to make it neat), and it also allowed me to work faster in earlier stages since I could just cover up any mistakes with "chipped paint" in the same step. Also it made any casting problems less onerous since they're supposed to be made of damaged and worn metal.

I used Army Painter Quickshade strong tone for the first one (the one on the right in the above photo), but I felt that it darkened the model more than I liked:

Shaded with Quickshade.

Shaded with Quickshade then varnished with Purity Seal

So as an experiment I used thinned Devlan Mud to shade the second one, and while the metals came out slightly brighter, I didn't really see that much difference overall once I'd varnished them. I actually rushed the varnish on the first one and it ended up with a crackled appearance. My fault; it doesn't really bother me too much since I'm not too bothered about these models anyway. I reckon it'll pass as battle damage anyway; he probably got too close to a bile thrall or something.

I magnetised the arms in order to allow me to play them as other Warjacks in the future, which took longer than I expected since the models were metal and took longer to drill into, but it probably made painting them easier and will hopefully pay off in the long run. I used 5mm ring magnets with a rod in the middle, which I think gives a slightly more stable join than simple disc magnets.

I always try to name models these days, but I often just end up picking the first name that comes to mind. Which tends to be some really stupid association based on the model's official name. In this case, the Juggernaut (the one on the right) is called Jughead, and the Destroyer is called Fluffy. Because when I thought "destroyer", the first thing that came to mind was this:

These guys actually took longer to paint than I had hoped. That's probably partly just a consequence of the size and the increased detail that comes with that size. I am glad to be done with them, but after putting the effort in I have to admit that they've grown on me somewhat. Anyway, here's some individual photos:

I don't think I can be bothered to paint Sorscha right now, but at least I won't be playing with a completely unpainted army. This doesn't mean that I've given up on Warhammer, I'm still enjoying the models and fluff, and I still plan on give 6th edition a go eventually, but there's really no reason to limit myself to just one system, right? Well, OK, time and money are two very good reasons, but oh well.