On the Painting Table Week in Review

Since my last lost I haven't painted that much.  I have been incredibly busy with work and family issues and I haven't had much time for hobby.

Here are the rest of my light jacks that I painted over the year end.

Hunter
I tried glazing for the first time.  The blue blade on his axe was supposed to be a gradual fade from silver to blue but I guess the technique is harder than it looks on youtube.  Oh well I guess it will just take some practice and I will get it down.

The Firefly Twins Zip and Zap

Work in progress report orange Cygnar army

Ok so December is usually taken up by all of the things going on. I probably won't get to my local game store at all this month and painting time is almost as hard to find. However I do manage to get to painting last night at around 10:30 and got about an hour and a half in before I had to turn in. I got quite a bit done though. All I have left to do on these warjacks is the tan areas, some highlighting and touch ups, and the fine details like the rivits and things.

Stormwall up.... Kind of

Well I have mostly finished putting together the stormwall. Unfortunately I did not notice the major manufacturing defect in the right arm socket. There is a huge bump that stoops the arm from seating properly.

I am going to use my dremmel tool to grind it out. The dremmel can obliterate fine detail that I don't want to get rid of quite easily. I am sure it will be able to get rid of something like this without much problem. The main thing that is holding me back from doing it tonight is the fact that it is resin. And I do not have proper ventilation or a dust mask so I need to stop at the Home Depot on the way home tomorrow and get one.
Other than that set back I like how it turned out for the most part. I had envisioned it smashing a Cryx he'll jack wreck marker but it doesn't have long enough arms to make it look convincing. I guess I will try to work it into the base or many the base of my storm strider that will be finished soon as well.
Anyway here are some of the pictures of the assembly process.
Enjoy

Starting the stormwall

Well I am still working on my minuteman as i get time, but we have a local 50 pt steamroller tournament coming up this weekend and I really want to use stormwall in my tier 2 eNemo list. 5 storm callers 2 fireflies and stormwall will be so much fun as the core of the army.
So I cleaned up all of the pieces and I started to put it together last night at about midnight. I will finish assembling it tonight after the kids go to bed. Here are a couple of pics of the legs. I thought that I took some of the upper body and storm pods but I guess I was wrong. I will post the pics of the assembled model tonight.

More minuteman

Well I have made some progress on the minuteman since my last entry. I have primed and then painted the dark blue base color. I usually do the Metallica first because I like to dry brush them and t makes a mess. I may end up reprinting the blue if I make a big mess of it, but that is ok because the blue is all on easy to access surfaces that do not have tons of details. I am enjoying this model and I think that it will be fun to finish up.

Minuteman

So I have gotten myself a minuteman.  This little guy will work well in many of my lists and I think he will be fun to play.  So I took some pictures of the steps of putting him together.

This is all the parts

 This is putting on the jump pack.

 Close up of the jump pack.

 The assembled model ready to be creatively placed on its base and then painted.

Journeyman League

So my FLGS is doing a journeyman league. I have only been two of the three weeks so far.  I missed the first week because it was the first day of school for my kids and I didn't want to miss out on our first day of school traditions.
I am playing Cygnar but I have some concerns about the battle box content.

Charger: I like the model a lot but it is so focus hungry. It can really do some damage when it is loaded up with 3 focus but it need 3 every time I am going to attack with it and when pStryker only has 6 to begin with it doesn't leave much to upkeep spells or boost other jacks.

Lancer: I am split on this one.  I like the arc node.  It has been nice for channeling some of pStrykers spells. But I haven't been able to really do anything with it offensively other than that.

Ironclad: Great jack. I upkeep arcane shield on this one all the time.  So it effectively has armor 21 in this league, armor 26 during pStryker's feat turn.  It's quake hammer has done quite a bit of damage to other heavies.  I always seem to forget about the critical knockdown effect though until I get home and review what I could have done better.

pStryker: At first I didn't really like the jack of all trades aspect of him.  But I have really started to like him and his bag of tricks against other warmachine armies.  At first I didn't really like his feat because it doesn't help me do more damage or set up an assassination run.  But now I am learning that with the proper timing it can help me set up the next round after the first big strike, and still have most of my army in tact.  So I am doing OK against warmachine, However hoards eat me for a light snack. pStryker's pow 10 pistol is great when it can disrupt something even if it doesn't do any damage.  But when you plink a warbeast and it does nothing it is frustrating. I probably would benefit from buying a copy of the hoards rules so that I can understand what my opponent is doing, maybe that would help me against them.

So after the battle box I added the Black 13th the week that we were at 15 points.  They were a lot of fun to play with and really helped me control the board to some degree.  Brutal damage is awesome. I was a bone head in the next round when we expanded to 25 points when I dropped the Black 13th in favor of  a full unit of Arcane Tempest Gun Mages with the unit attachment and Jack marshaling a Hunter to the attachment.  I like the hunter but the gun mages were less than stellar with so few squishy targets to shoot at.  I think that they could be good in larger armies that have a lot of infantry  but they do nothing against jacks and beasts.

So next week when we go to 35 points I don't exactly know what I am going to take.  I think that I will bring the Blck 13th again.  But beyond that I am not sure.  Suggestions are appreciated.

The bits to the collosal

OK so in poking around I found this picture on the privateer press website.
http://privateerpress.com/community/privateer-insider/insider-3-7-2012
There are a lot of pieces to this model.  I like that because it means that we can take more custom approaches to construction if we want to and likely fewer will be posed exactly alike.  It also answered a question I had about the lightning pods.  They will be deployed by the Stormwall to be used by it.
:)

Cygnar Stormwall

OK so I haven't put this one together yet and it won't be available until later this year.  But as a Cygnar player I must say that I am excited for this to come out.  Ever since hearing about the Collosals I decided that the money that I had been saving for the Cygnar Battle Engine was now going to wait for the Stormwall.  From the Privateer press website.

"Perhaps Nemo’s greatest creation, the Stormwall towers over Cygnar’s enemies with all the majesty and menace of a looming cloudburst. From the thunder of its guns to the blinding cracks of arcing electricity from its lightning pods, the Stormwall is the mechanikal embodiment of the tempest. Powered by both steam and surging voltaic energy, it riddles the enemy lines with cannon shells and hails of bullets before smashing survivors with its electrified fists."

I love playing storm army against my opponents mostly because I like the idea of electrical jumps from enemy to enemy and I am glad to see this model following in that tradition.  I really like the fact that this is both electrical and steam powered, my hope is that it will be at home in either a storm army or a more traditional army in the Cygnar lineup.  I am interested to see how the lightning pods work will they have movement or will the be emplaced before the game starts?  It will be interesting to learn strategy for this new type of jack, I think that this will either draw the enemy to it with concentrated attack to take out the biggest cannon on the field.  Or if the enemy is more mobile than the Stormwall they may try to stay out of range and take out the rest of my army.  Just some speculation because I haven't seen the official stats yet.  So basically I have more questions than answers at this point but I am still excited for the prospects of what has the potential to be a great piece in a nice army.

The thing that concerns me with the Collosals is that they will likely cost a lot of points and will only be useable in large battles. If I am going to pay what I am assuming is going to be over $100 for a model I would like to get more use out of it than just occasionally.

Magnetized Khador Warjack

Well I magnetized a Khador warjack a while back.  It has been sitting in my work in process area for quite a while.  I am happy with most of the work that I did on it but the magnet that holds the top and the bottom is a bit out of whack.  I still have some finishing highlights, basing and I want to freehand a Khador symbol on the top of it.  But here are the pics of it assembled various ways. enjoy.