Hoisted By My Own Petard

I had a rare chance to play against Blondie, but unfortunately he didn't have his army with him. So I put together two 35 point lists from my Khador and Mercs. I gave him the Butcher, who I figured is the easiest of my casters to get the hang of:
Butcher I
- Kodiak
- Devastator
- Sylyss
Croe's Cutthroats
- Valachev
Kayazy Eliminators
Alexia & the Risen
Widowmaker Marksman
Kell Bailoch

The two biggest problems I've had with the Butcher are his lack of speed buffs for his jacks and his inability to hand out Pathfinder. So I picked the Kodiak for Pathfinder, and the Devastator, because it can afford to be slow. Then I tried to pick shooty models since I figured that would match Blondie's playstyle. I gave him Alexia and the Eliminators as they are just fun units. For myself I decided to take the chance to play the Hoff:
Strakhoff
- Torch
- Wardog
MOW Kovnik
- Berserker
Nyss Hunters
Harlan Versh
Koldun Lord
Maddie
Reinholdt
Thor

This was an opportunity for me to pull out some models that don't get much play time anymore, like the MOW Kovnik and Torch. Thor is in there because I had a couple of points left and no other solos. OK, yes, I could have taken mechanics or something, but why would I do that?


Pre-Game:
I remembered the terrain this time, but forgot the gaming mat. Sigh. We made do by taping the zone markers at the corners of the 4' play area. We picked the mission with two round zones. I won the roll and chose to go first.


Deployment:
Nothing special happening on my side. I put Strakhov on the right so he could potentially hang out in the forest for protection.

Blondie spread out a bit, putting Butcher in the middle, Alexia on the far right, the Eliminators on the left, the Kodiak behind the forest and the Devastator balancing him out on the other side. The Cutthroats went in the center, Kell stood in the forest where he could get Stealth, with the Widowmaker behind the wall.

Forest and a wall on each side, a hill in the center.

Round 1:
I ran my models up and spread out. Superiority went on Torch (obviously) and Occultation on the Kovnik. Strakhov stood in the forest.

His forces advanced. The snipers and Cutthroats took out half the Nyss. He toed both zones even though he didn't have to worry about them yet. Fury went on the Devastator and Iron Flesh on the Cutthroats.

Round 2:
I lost more Nyss Hunters than I had expected last turn. Unfortunately for me he was still out of range of most my models; it's possible that my some of the Nyss Hunters might have been able to walk into the 5" range where I could actually shoot at his models, but it would only have been two or three of them at most, shooting at DEF 16 models; I decided I had best run forwards to jam instead. So the Nyss Hunters ran to engage the Cutthroats.

For some reason I decided to try to put some damage on the Demolisher, so I moved Strakhov up and feated. I cast Overrun on Torch in the hopes that I could use it to move Strakhov backwards, but I failed to kill the Cutthroat in front of the Devastator so I had to use to move Torch into engagement instead. This left me running all my support models around Strakhov to try to protect him from the Eliminators. The Kovnik and Berserker took advantage of the feat to close the distance with Blondie's lines.

Meanwhile, filled with righteous fury, Kell gunned down four of Alexia's foul undead servants.

Kell is actually out of frame, on the bottom right.

Butcher popped his feat and charged Torch, taking out almost half his boxes with a single hit. The Devastator then finished him off with his initials, leaving him sitting on 3 focus with nothing to use it on (I suggested he use it to attack the nearby Cutthroats, but Blondie wasn't convinced...).

The Cutthroats then used Zephyr to disengage from the Nyss Hunters (why did I run to engage again? I should know what Valachev does!) and shot a couple down, with Croe himself cutting down the Kovnik with the exact damage roll needed. The Kodiak used his Vent Steam to kill two more Nyss Hunters. Three Risen charged Versh and clawed him to the ground. The Eliminators and the Widowmaker took down Strakhov's screen.

The Eliminators scored the left zone, and the Kodiak scored the right, bringing Blondie to two points.

Round 3:
Well, I had just lost most of my army; all I had left was Strakhov, the autonomous Berserker, and a single brave Nyss Hunter. But I still had a small chance to win.

The Nyss Hunter killed the Cutthroat in front of the Butcher, and the Berserker charged him. Needing 9's he whiffed both his initial attack. Oh well, it was worth a try.

I still had a chance to score my zone for one point though, if Strakhov could kill the four models in the zone. I figured I could kill the Eliminators with a Rift (which would also help keep Strakhov safe), then hopefully the two Cutthroats with shooting attacks. Sadly it took two Rifts to kill the Eliminators, and without any focus Strakhov couldn't hit the Cutthroats even though he aimed.

So Blondie scored another two points, bringing him to four.

The Kodiak attacked the Berserker in the back; he used his chain attack to knock down the Berserker, and finished it off with the Butcher. Something killed the last Nyss Hunter. The Alexia, the Marksman, and the Cutthroats all shot at the zero-camp Strkahov, but only managed to do a few boxes to him.

Finally Blondie scored another two points, bringing him to six points and winning him the game.

Postmortem:
Well, at least Strakhov survived, right? Even if nothing else did... seriously, I was not expecting my army to get wiped out so easily. Eh, I guess that's just what the Butcher does, right?

In hindsight, I can see a lot of mistakes I made. I should have put Occultation on the Nyss Hunters; I was worried about poisoned weapons killing the Kovnik and depended on their good DEF to keep them safe, but with aiming snipers and Cutthroats on the other side that wasn't good enough. Meanwhile I wasted my most accurate model - Torch with Superiority - on the ARM 25 Devastator. I probably should have just ignored the Devastator; Strakhov probably could have kept him locked down with Rift or something, and left Torch to occupy the Cutthroats, or tried to get him into Butcher.

Thematic though it may have been, Holt was wasted on Risen. Well, with Stealth on everything else he wasn't going to do very much before getting killed no matter what. Still, he killed four models in one turn, that's pretty cool. The Kovnik's death was rather sad; if I had just left him out and taken the Berserker on Strakhov then I might have had a better chance of taking out Butcher in the end, seeing as I would have been able to allocate focus to the Berserker and cast Superiority on it.

Perhaps I should have tried to put up a bit of a cloud wall in the early turns, with Reinholdt for the second Cinder Bomb and Torch's own smoke bomb? It would have meant moving very slowly, but against a stealthy shooting army that might have been the right way to go.

Anyway, Blondie played a good game, quickly getting the hang of the different model's strengths and using them to good effect. I don't think he needed to get Butcher involved the way he did, but I imagine it was fun for him since I don't think he's had a chance to play with a heavy hitter like Butcher before.

Final MkII Battle Calculator Release

I've finally gotten the MkII Battle Calculator to the point where it basically works for most normal situations. There's still a few special rules that it doesn't deal with (like Convergence force fields and Crit Shred)... that I know of, and probably a whole bunch that I haven't thought of, but it finally handles the five W's: Warcasters, Warlocks, Warriors, Warjacks, Warbeasts.

It also displays more information now, though not quite everything that I was originally thinking of. I initally planned to have it display the chance of both a Warjack's cortex and main weapon surviving, but I decided it wasn't worth the effort at this point, especially since it's a simple multiplication of the two numbers that it does give you.

I can't promise that it doesn't have any bugs (actually, I'd be pretty surprised if it didn't), so it might be a good idea not to put too much faith in it right now. I don't really have any ideas for how I could have made it more robust, but again it doesn't really matter since it'll be obsolete very soon.

Some things I would like to do for the next version:

• Make it look nicer
• Make the interface neater and more modular
• Display the actual damage done by the attacker assuming infinite damage boxes on the defender (currently the simulation stops when the defender dies, so we don't actually know the total damage done; though you can basically figure it out for simple situations by creating a warrior with, like, a million damage boxes).
• Allow simulation of multiple attackers (right now you can fake it for attackers with a single weapon profile by adding focus for each extra attacker). 
• Comment the code better so that it's easier for others to read it and give me feedback.
• Give more structured visual feedback / debug info to make it easier to catch bugs and check that everything is actually working the way it's supposed to.
• Perhaps add some way of saving out the profiles, so you don't need to enter a model's full profile every time you want to run a simulation with it (not sure if I would be getting into some sticky I.P. territory here).

We'll see how it goes once I've had some time with MkIII.

[ArnieVoice] Ice To Meet You! [/ArnieVoice]

New naming convention: from now on all battle report posts featuring Sorscha will use horrible "cold" jokes from Batman & Robin. That should save me from having to think up my own stupid jokes for a good while.

It'd been so long since my last game (a whole six weeks) that I'd forgotten how to play. Either that or I just hadn't been getting enough sleep. Luckily I had a list all ready written up since before my last game, so at least I didn't need to waste any precious brain juice on that.
Sorscha II
-Spriggan
-Decimator
-Sylyss
Croe's Cutthroats
-Valachev
Nyss Hunters
Aiyana & Holt
Eliminators
Harlan Versh
Reinholdt
Koldun Lord

That's right, no Alexia. MADNESS!!! It was difficult and slightly painful, but I decided to take her out of rotation for a while as I wanted to try Harlan Versh; he's supposed to be good when you can freeze whole units. Beanpole has announced his intention to play Makeda I through the rest of 2nd edition; I think he might not be particularly enthusiastic about some of the leaked changes that will effect her in MkIII.
Makeda I
-Molik Karn
-Gladiator
-Krea
-Marketh
Cetrati (6)
Immortals (10)
-UA
Paingiver Beast Handlers (4)
Tyrant Commander
Ancestral Guardian


Pre-Game:
We played the scenario with three flags. I won the roll and chose to go first; I decided today was not a day to make things harder for myself than they needed to be. Beanpole picked the side with less rough terrain. By the way, I had actually forgotten to bond a warjack to eSorscha, so we played without it.


Deployment:
I put one unit on each side, with Sorscha and my solos in the middle sandwiched by my jacks. Beanpole basically did the same, but in a tighter brick.

Round 1:
First thing I did... was make my first mistake and forget to allocate focus. Second thing I did... was make my second mistake and forget to leave anything close enough to Sorscha to put Iron Flesh on. So my jacks got Boundless Charge instead (I even forgot that I could use Power Booster...), and everything spread out, with my solos running unprotected down the middle.

Beanpole put Savagery on the Cetrati, who moved up in Shield Wall, then swapped Defender's Ward onto them and moved Savagery over to Immortals. The Krea put up it's animus to protect some of the Immortals.


Round 2
Well, I didn't want to have to deal with DEF 14 ARM 22 Cetrati in my face, so I decided to jam them away from the flag with Iron Fleshed Nyss. I decided that Sorscha would focus on the left flag, so I moved her posse towards it while running the Koldun Lord over to the other side to support the Spriggan.

Meanwhile, I wanted to start whittling down the Immortals as quickly as possible, so Aiyana moved up and Kissed them. Holt killed one but whiffed on another, and Versh gunned a couple down as well (Savagery is an upkeep...); sadly the 2" limitation on his quad-iron coupled with poor target acquisition on my part kept him from killing more. The Spriggan killed one with hot dice on a grenade, and the Cutthroats killed one or two and I think put a few boxes of damage on the Krea. At this point it occurred to me that Karn might be able to reach my Spriggan, so I ran the Eliminators forwards to try to help keep him safe.

The Krea moved up and used it's animus to reduce the DEF of my Eliminators. The Immortals and Ancestral Guardian jammed forwards and killed a bunch of Cutthroats and one Eliminator. Molik Karn walked up and cut down Aiyana, Holt, and Versh. The Cetrati moved up a bit and killed an Eliminator but missed their attacks on the other. Finally Karn used Fate Walker to move over and help shield Makeda. I think I might have had a chance to trigger Versh's Witch Hunter shot on Makeda this round, but I forgot until later and I doubt it would have done anything anyway since she didn't have any upkeeps on her.

Round 3:
The Cetrati had killed one Nyss but missed the other, which was slightly annoying because it actually meant that most of them were engaged, making them harder to hit with Freezing Grip. So Sorscha took all the help she could get, moved up and boosted the roll, luckily landing the hit. However, she didn't have enough focus left to move back now, so I tried to form a wall in front of her with Nyss Hunters, spending their actions on CRAs into Molik Karn. I had planned to move the frontmost Eliminator in front of the Cyclops as well, but for some reason I didn't. The Decimator walked two inches into the forest, then shot a Cetrati and used Beat-Back to move the extra half-inch needed to base the flag and score me a point.

Over on my right, I decided to use my two Greylords to spray the bunched up Immortals rather than casting support spells - they would ignore engagement and the Krea's animus after all. Their attacks whiffed horribly and didn't do any damage at all. The Cutthroats killed, like, one Immortal, then the Spriggan hit the Krea a couple of times. The remaining Eliminator charged at Molik Karn, mainly to make it harder for him to get to Sorscha.

It seems I can't judge Molik Karn's threat range very well, because my "Nyss Wall" wasn't very good. Makeda moved around the well and killed the Eliminator, clearing his path, and he charged the Nyss. With Carnage up he needed 9's, and luckily for me his first attack missed even boosting. His second attack killed the Nyss Hunter and allowed him to Side Step closer, but it turned out he was about a quarter of an inch out, so he used FateWalker to move back and base the central flag.

Something (probably an Immortal) killed the Koldun Lord, and my Cutthroats were cut down to just two men, who failed their command check. The Ancestral Guardian and the Krea put a bit of damage on the Spriggan. I scored a second point on the left flag, while Beanpole scored a point in the center.

Round 4:
I had to decide whether to freeze the Cetrati again, or to focus on Molik Karn - I might be able to kill him without freezing him, but it improved my chances. Ultimately I decided that Karn was by far the bigger threat. So Sorscha hit him with a boosted Freezing Grip, the popped her feat to catch him, the Gladiator, and the Cetrati, before walking away and camping a point of focus. The Decimator then hit him with a POW 15 shot, rolling 1 damage (which was doubled to 2). Three Nyss Hunters walked up to jam the Cetrati, managing to kill one (no shield wall this turn thanks to Freezing Grip last turn, and the feat helped of course), while the remaining five put a POW 15 CRA into Karn, rolling 8 damage. Doubled to 16, this was enough to finish him off. I was planning to walk the Spriggan up and stab him if he survived, but looking at the photos now I don't think I had the range, so I was lucky I got that big damage roll. Instead the Spriggan finished off the Krea, and the Cutthroats rallied. I scored a third point.

The Immortals killed another Cutthroat but left Croe alive. The Ancestral Guardian, Tyrant Commander, and some Immortals started focussing on the Spriggan. The Gladiator based the flag. Makeda killed a couple of Nyss Hunters, allowing two Cetrati to walk forwards and contest the flag. Beanpole scored another point for the central flag, bringing him up to 2.

Round 5:
Dammit, Shield-Walled Cetrati were contesting my flag! I gave the Decimator a point of focus. Sylyss gave Sorscha Arcane Secrets, then she froze the Cetrati again. The Decimator fired twice at the rear contesting model; sadly it bumped into Makeda while still in contesting range. Three Nyss Hunters killed his now unsupported buddy, but it wasn't enough to let me score. One Nyss Hunter moved up to contest the central flag, and Reinholdt joined him just to be extra annoying. The Spriggan finally finished off the Ancestral Guardian, and Croe killed the Immortals' UA.

Makeda put up Carnage. The Gladiator abandoned the flag and focussed on killing Nyss Hunters, managing to take two down. The Beast Handlers moved up to take his place, basing the flag and attacking Reinholdt; luckily for me they missed. The Immortals surrounded the Spriggan and started chipping away at his armour, while the Standard Bearer based the flag on the right - this would allow his unit to score if he could just take down the Spriggan.

Round 6:
I might have been able to get the Decimator into the Gladiator this turn, but that would mean spending my focus on that rather than keeping the Cetrati locked down. So I decided to take the chance that he could get to the Decimator and focus on scoring. Sorscha froze the Cetrati again. The Decimator killed the contesting Cetrati. The Nyss Hunters shot at the Beast Handlers, killing two, and formed a wall in front of the Decimator. The Spriggan rolled poorly and failed to kill the Tyrant Commander. I scored my fourth point.

Makeda came forwards and tried to open a path for the Gladiator to reach the Decimator, but whiffed both her initial attacks against the Nyss Hunters. So she just camped the rest of her fury. Marketh swapped Defender's Ward onto the Gladiator, who moved up to contest my flag, killing Cylena while he was there. The Immortals and Tyrant Commander spread out so the Spriggan couldn't get his shield attack without taking some free-strikes; he was probably down to a third of his boxes or less at this point. The Beast Handlers whiffed on Reinholdt again.

Round 7:
OK, I just needed to score one more point to win. The Decimator might be able to push the Gladiator far away enough to let me score, or I could go all in and try to kill it. Or I could try to kill Makeda, though with 4 fury I didn't think that was very likely. Ultimately I decided to try something else instead.

So I allocated one focus to the Decimator as a backup, and charged Sorscha at Makeda. I actually got the hit, doing 8 damage which was transferred to the Gladiator. Then I used Cyclone to move over and base the middle flag, killing one of the Beast Handlers. Unfortunately I had misjudged the distances and the second one was out of Sorscha's melee range. With three focus left, I cast a boosted Razor Wind and rolled high, killing the last Paingiver.

The Decimator whiffed both his shots against the Gladiator, the Nyss whiffed on Makeda, and the Spriggan whiffed on the Tyrant Commander, but none of that mattered as I scored my fifth point for the win.

Post-Mortem
That was a tense game! Even though I was technically in the lead the whole time, my position was always tenuous; many times a single good roll was all it would have taken to cost me the game.

Actually, Beanpole had some pretty poor dice on some pretty important rolls. Obviously Karn missing his attack on the Nyss Hunter was the only thing that saved Sorscha, but a single good Paingiver attack roll would have taken out Reinholdt and allowed Beanpole to start scoring the central flag, and a few good damage rolls against the Spriggan (he was rolling solidly below average on that side) could have freed up the flag on the right. Makeda missing the Nyss Hunters while trying to clear a path for the Gladiator to get to the Decimator was also crappy luck, but to be honest it wouldn't have changed anything since at that point I was already prepared to send Sorscha into the Paingivers and the Gladiator wouldn't have changed that.

Of course if I hadn't managed to kill the last Paingiver at the end, Sorscha would have been left high and dry with Makeda in her back arc. Well, even if Sorscha had missed Rienholdt could have moved out of engagement, giving my Nyss Hunters and perhaps even the Decimator (who had a focus on him) a chance to do it themselves (assuming they survived the free strikes, but at DEF 18 they had a decent chance).

Thinking about it, perhaps I should have tried to kill Rienholdt using the attack from Cyclone at the end? That way I would have had much better odds of hitting the last Paingiver with a Razor Wind since he wouldn't have been engaging anyone, and Sorscha could still score since she was basing the flag.

In retrospect, it would have been nice if the Spriggan had been bonded. Not for the focus, but because then I would have kept freezing Beanpole's models, which would have made a big difference on that side. Especially since the Spriggan missed several attacks. Also, I've been thinking that Beast 09 would have done more than the Spriggan in this game. Having less ARM would have been a factor, but Thresher and his higher MAT would have done a lot more work in that situation than the Spriggan did. Of course a Devastator would have worked too. Still, the Spriggan killed more than 8 points of models and held up that side for the entire game, so I certainly can't complain.

I was careless with my solos; losing Versh early was a shame on his first game, but that's pretty much normal for me; I think it happens to most models first time I put them down. Of course killing them kept Karn busy; otherwise he might have been able to reach the Spriggan, so it was a worthwhile sacrifice I would say. Maybe next game I'll do more with him. Losing the Koldun Lord was probably the stupider move; having some focus to put on the Spriggan would have been nice. Eh, Sorscha 2 doesn't really want to spend focus on jacks anyway so I probably shouldn't be taking two of them, but I don't really have anything else that isn't dependent on DEF to survive, and against the wrong army having too fragile a force is a problem, plus they are more dependable armour crackers than the Nyss or Cutthroats, so I like having them.

Bustin' Some Ghosts

I played a "learning game" of Ghostbusters with some friends who don't play wargames but have been known to partake of the occasional boardgame. Needless to say it was quite messy at first, but things were moving a little more smoothly near the end.

Dramatis Personae:
Dr. Peter Venkman........... NeoXFire
Dr. Ray Stantz................. Soul Samurai
Dr. Egon Spengler............ Fish
Winston Zeddemore......... Plastic Man

Ironically, the only one of us who is an actual doctor is Plastic Man. Anyway, the game started with us all hopping out of the car and catching some of the smaller ghosts... and getting slimed.

The slime really bogged things down, plus we had problems with ghosts escaping from our traps, so we started to stick closer together to clear the slime off each other, focus our proton beams on the tougher ghosts, and deposit ghosts as soon as we caught them.

Thanks to slime and some bad rolls, it didn't feel like we were making much progress for a while.

But eventually we managed to focus on the gates and shut them down.

By the end of the first game everyone had reached level 2, with Dr. Plastic Man leading in experience. Interestingly enough none of his experience came from his characters' special ability (unlike myself and NeoXFire). Either he caught a whole heap of the ghosts, or he was subtly cheating...

The game played a lot slower than I was expecting; it felt like you couldn't do very much in a single turn. However, I think our inexperience was part of the problem; perhaps next time we'll get through turns quickly enough that not doing as much in a single turn won't feel like such a limitation.

There's a few rules I'm still not sure about. It seems that getting into or out of the Ecto-1 requires a "maneuver", but you can also get into it by just walking "onto" it? Also, do you get experience when you catch a ghost or when you deposit it? We played it as being when you deposit it, which I suspect makes more sense since there's ways in which ghosts can escape.

The first scenario at least didn't really have a realistic loss condition. I haven't read the loss conditions on later scenarios, but I hope they will be slightly more threatening. We'll see I guess.

If there's something strange, In your neighborhood, Who you gonna call?

HE-MAN!

Obviously. But I guess these weirdos can probably fill in if he's too busy.

So yeah, I picked up the Ghostbusters board game, and immediately set about painting the hard-working heroes. It was just under three weeks from start to finish, which is pretty good for me, especially considering how much else I had going on in the meantime. I based the colour scheme on the box art more than on the movies, and other than the warmer colour on the jumpsuits I think I got fairly close:

In deference to the fact that they are board-game pieces, I painted the outsides of their bases in their in-game representative colour, to make them easier to pick out over the course of a game. I imagine it a little bit like a selection ring in a strategy computer game.

The models were less detailed than I had hoped, but I don't hold it against them since they are just plastic board-game pieces. I do think some parts could have looked better if I'd had a bit more to work with, especially some of the faces; I'm actually quite happy with how well the faces turned out considering the models themselves are fairly featureless. Incidentally, this was my first time painting non-Caucasian skin, it took me a few tries to find something that I figured was good enough. Which turned out to be simple Doombull Brown washed with Badab Black, with a light drybrush of Doombull Brown again to finish it off. Not bad I think, but I'm open to suggestions for better recipes.

I had some trouble removing all the mold lines, which is kinda par for the course for me, but in the end I think I got most of the troublesome ones. I did have to make some compromises because of the models themselves; like giving them armbands (which are not present in the movies or in the box art, but were molded in to the figures), and giving Stantz and Zeddemore giant cummerbund-like straps across their midsections instead of the belt and proton-pack waist strap that they are supposed to have and that the Venkman and Spengler models actually do have.

I had been planning to do some highlighting, but after the base-coats and washes, I kinda couldn't be bothered: they looked good enough, and to be honest I wasn't sure that my highlighting would actually make them look better. They matched the cartoony look that I had in my head (or rather that was on the box), so I decided that was good enough and moved on.

I did try to add a few small decorative details; I thought the logo on their arms was important so I tried to make those look good despite the small size. I made sure to paint on their name patches even though only one model actually had it molded in. There were a few props to add interest as well.

I wanted to paint their proton guns to look a bit more interesting, so I thought of trying to give them a glow in the colours of a proton beam. However, it turns out proton beams look something like this:

In other words, to represent all the majors colours I would need to go from blue, through purple, red, and orange, up to yellow. Well, I gave it a shot, drybrushing between layers to smooth the transitions, and this is how they turned out:

Not amazing, but not bad. I considered dropping the blues and just sticking to the oranges and reds, perhaps even starting on a purple, but ultimately decided that this was a bit more visually interesting than just more orange glows, which I was already using for their proton packs.


So overall I figure they're good enough. I haven't actually played the game itself yet, but I've read the rules. It basically has some of the simplest "move/perform action/attack" rules I've seen, but despite the simplicity the combat rules sound to me like they do a good job of capturing the frantic ghost-hunting of the movies; you need to chase the ghosts and pin them down long enough to capture them, but their movements are random and they pass right through obstacles; they could move out of your range and escape your proton beams, or they might move over you and cover you in slime. You can team-up to put down a single ghost more quickly, but a single ghostbuster can deal with a single ghost with good rolls or enough time, so it might be better to split up and cover more ground. I'm not sure how long it will continue to hold a group's interest though. Hopefully I'll get to give it a go in the coming weeks.

I've been thinking about doing a bit of work to the ghosts in order to better differentiate them. I was originally planning to give them different washes to help the details stand out and make it easier to tell at a glance what the different types of ghosts are, but after trying a couple of washes I'm not sure it will look good.

From left: untouched, matt-varnish, heavily watered-down Thrakka green, lightly watered-down Thrakka green.

So what I'm thinking of doing is just painting their bases in the same way as the Ghostbusters, with different coloured rims denoting the different classes. The only question in that case is whether to apply the matt varnish as a primer, or use a brush-on primer directly on the base. In the photo the varnished model looks better, in real life I'm not sure.

Hmm, I should probably get back to painting Khador and Mercs, shouldn't I. Eh, we'll see what happens. The whole hobby seems to be "on hold" a little bit in anticipation of MkIII, so it's kinda hard to get motivated.