Stygian Prophecies - Prologue 2: Rising Tensions

Titus was feeling that obsolete urge to sit while he pondered the events of the previous night. Of course to sit would be a purely aesthetic choice as his clockwork body never tired from standing, or any other physical activity, and the urge was purely an artifact of his former state of flesh and blood. First the Circle Orboros was here and now this triangle of clockwork angels, acting as scouts due to the speed of their true flight, say that there are Everblight forces in the area. This triangle of angels were lead by Galatea, all women as per the direction of their de facto leader Aurora. Where Aurora was, nobody had been quite sure for some time now. The machinations of the higher command were obscured from Titus, secret knowledge that he had yet to earn. He had to wonder if these two enemies were both here by coincidence or by some intention. The angels knew their current positions and it seemed likely that they would remain in their camp for the night, not wanting to venture farther in the continued unnerving darkness. The clouds had yet to subside, and the moon was still fully obscured, lending them a potential advantage to set up an ambush.

But Titus was not so sure. By what the angels reported, these were Warmongers, blighted ogrun known for their ferocity in battle. And they seemed to be lead by the infamous Gorag Rotteneye. He was thankful that his doubts were hidden by the mask of his mechanical body, for he knew that confidence may be the only tool that could help them. The Ogrun had unfortunately made their camp between Titus' small scouting band and the entrance to the larger Convergence forces underground, and he did not see any reasonable chance to sneak around them. There was a servitor on its way to that entrance now with Titus' message of ill fortunes, but he was skeptical that they could wait for long. No, they must attack while the advantage is theirs.

Titus and Lavinia approached, Lavinia's eradicators now repaired and combat ready, around ten meters apart with the angels flying above, unconcerned that their silhouettes could be picked out of the dark sky. Gorag's camp was just shy of two kilometers from their own, and their attempted silence slowed them down. They made no sounds except the soft murmuring of whirls and clicks from the movement of their bodies. Titus came across the sight of an old brick wall, standing in isolation, covered in vines and ivy with two lit braziers on top. Gorag and his blighted ogrun were near it eating some stew their gobber chef made. Titus and Lavinia each took their place a good distance from them as the angels advanced, landing on the other side of the wall so that the ogrun could not see them. There was a fog creeping in from the west, it seemed to be somehow condensed, not spread thinly across the forest as a morning fog would. The sight of it filled Titus with dread. Lavinia was closest to it, and though her mask was as static as ever, Titus was sure she felt similarly.

Galatea used a signal to order one of her angels to fire the first shot from her binomial beam. She carefully edged to the end of the old wall, the fire light flickering on her mask, fired, making that characteristic thwop sound. With bad luck, the ogrun she was aiming for had hunched over in laughter and the shot just grazed him. There was a split second of silence before Gorag's battle cry reverberated in Titus' auditory receiver and the Warmongers switched immediately to their battle craze. As one coordinated unit they charged directly toward Titus, his position revealed. Lavinia moved her unit of eradicators to enforce their defenses and Titus' reciprocators braced for the oncoming charge.
Their assault was brutal, beyond anything Titus encountered before. When within a single pace, the Warmongers as one leapt at both units, their cleavers high. The eradicators were each slain in single blow, outnumbered and outmuscled. The reciprocators barely did any better, but for every blow that was parried, another came from the flank.

It was over in mere seconds. The last optical image that Titus captured before his body performed an emergency power down was those last three angels, with Galatea in front, charging the rear flank of the Warmongers. Now he's simply in darkness, completely insensate, waiting. Waiting to be powered on again. He hopes the angels were able to avenge him and Lavinia and the rest, but he doubts it. It feels like it's been a long time, but of course he has no way to tell. Titus hopes the servitor made it to the base, so that the greater force knows of these two threats and will come and find him for more details. Surely someone will find them and wake them up soon. Right?

Stygian Prophecies - Prologue 1: Doomed Patrol

The sky was dark, clouds concealed the multitudes of stars above and the moon was fully in its dark phase. Titus was leading a heavy patrol out into the black forest above ground with his other two most trusted Reciprocators, Cleora and Horace. They were joined by Lavinia's Eradicators Theophilus and Octavia. The six heavy clockwork bodies moved quietly through the light brush, near the Great Tree when Titus' optics caught movement. The patrol had been routine, ordered because the Iron Mother suspected they would not be the only ones interested in the node atop which the Great Tree grew. Titus raised his halberd in the air to signal a halt so that his accoustic relay could pick up the air vibrations of whatever caused the movement.

Whatever it was, it was on the other side of the Great Tree. Titus nodded to Lavinia, who knew the protocol at least as well as Titus himself did. The two groups split apart and began to creep forward. Their engines ran silently, powered entirely by their soul vessel, so while they gave off no smoke or the glow of a coal fire, they could only dim the faint magenta glow of their optics so much. It was Cleora who saw the two figures in the night, no more than fifteen meters ahead. Sure that they were already seen, Titus slammed his halberd against his shield making a loud clang which reverberated through the thin forest. The signal received, both Titus and Lavinia willed the gears in their legs to drive them forward toward the enemy. Whoever these figures were, they could not be allowed to escape and reveal the sight of Convergence presence.

They detoured around a pool of water, not knowing its depth, and saw the two figures running to meet them. Surely they must be mad to take on six battle ready heavy infantry as only two? But a quick glance to Titus' left showed their enemies' true plan, an ambush! Theophilus was completely surrounded by savages with some kind of glaive. Theophilus tried to fight them off but their coordination allowed one to score a strike against one of Theophilus' hydraulics in his right leg, releasing its steam and momentarily crippling him. Some bird cawed unnervingly right above Octavia and looked like it shifted into a man who struck her from behind. One of the first two figures came close enough for Titus to see that it was made of stone, confirming his suspicions of who his enemies were: Circle Orboros. The stone figure summoned thousands of tiny stones and sent them toward Theophilus, who could not get out of the way in time. The rain of rocks damaged him so much that the glow from his soul vessel started to fade. The other Orboros man used the same incantation to buckle Octavia down to a knee as she held off the mysterious man behind her.

Seeing this man as the leader of the band, Titus charged at him with his protean polearm charged from his vessel, and struck him down in one fatal strike. The two halves of his body hadn't even hit the ground before Cleora and Horace were at his side. Titus ordered them to assist their brothers and sisters, but he needn't have worried. Octavia openned her protean buckler revealing and furiously tore into the strange man who appeared behind her until he vanished from sight again using presummably the same magic that teleported him there. Lavinia charged into the ambushers with her bucklers in attack mode and avenged Theophilus, slaying a third of the unit within a second. Titus swung at the stone man as he monitored the skirmish, but that slight distraction allowed it to escape long enough to pelt Octavia with stones in her moment of furious triumph, bringing her down.

Horace came around Titus' flank and cornered the stoneshaper enough that they were both able to bring it down, collapsing into a pile of rubble. Lavinia, now with two of her Eradicators in the dirt, slaughtered each of the ambushers even before Cleora could assist her. There was a moment of silence as Titus and Lavinia tuned their accoustic receivers to hear if another ambush was approaching. The forest was silent except for the rustling of the great trees. Titus knew he needed to report this as soon as possible and considered briefly if he had the time to bring Octavia and Theophilus' bodies or just their vessels. The bodies did not look beyond repair and he knew an Enigma Foundry should be near by. Now the only question remained, what to do with the bodies...

My Next Faction - Convergence of Cyriss

Like I said in my previous post, I'll be swapping over to painting a different faction in Warmachine for a while, as a change of scenery. I still enjoy Khador and will keep playing them, adding the odd mini here and there but for the most part I'm happy with the collection I have.

So, to begin with, I planned out a palette. 

I thought it would be nice to see the colors beside each other to get a feel of what I think. I may yet change them later but for now I'm happy with the mix of warms and cools. I then chose my bases. For my Khador, I now know it was a mistake to wait to decide on the bases last, so I'll try the opposite and choose them all first. I made a big order of Micro Art Studio's Pipeworks bases, which were recently on sale over at Miniature Market. When I got them in the mail, they looked like this.

Which is pretty good! So I painted one up.

Of the things I've noticed so far is that the "base" area is smaller with these than PP's bases, preferring a large lip. Thus there is less space for the feet of the model to attach to. Not only that, but the flat space in general is scarce because of all of the piping so I'll need to be careful to find the right orientation for the models to be as centered as possible. Overall, I quite like the bases though. The problems above will be mostly solved via pinning the models to them so I'll be getting a lot of work out of my Dremel.

The base done and me happy about it, I started painting up a test model to sit atop it.

I brought the red glow from the grate up to the robes, and the blacklight glow from the coils and eyes downward. I'm thinking I'll be doing both glow effects, hoping it won't get too busy. There is some inversion of the studio painting scheme in which a more steampunk-y bronze is the primary color rather than steel, which is relegated to an accent. I have three different warm metals (bronze, brass, copper) and two cold metals (steel and chromium) so hopefully that'll be enough visual variety for the eye.

Let me know in the comments if you have any C&C, they are welcome. I'm still in the planning stages so now is when it'll be easy to make sweeping changes.

Eliminators and end of Journeyman

So I have a few updates since the last post. I finished up Markov to the point that I feel good playing with him, but I won't be showing him off yet until I finish all of the little details, of which there are a lot, and his face. I tried dozens of times to get his eyes right before I just gave up. I'll try again "later".

As you can see, I've also started writing out character names on the base's front arc, largely because of these three, who I can never tell apart.

It's tough but rewarding. I intend to do this definitely for every named character, and possibly giving all my unnamed characters a name as well, from my solos to my grunts.

I also got a unit of Kayazy Eliminators, which were challenging because of how different they were from my heavily armored infantry.

I green stuffed the cobblestone bases because I figured they were technically mercenaries and so should have a more "neutral" base. It'll still have snow on it when I finally do that though.

Now I'm done to my unit of IFP, my battle mechaniks, and Sorscha0 and that'll be the last of my Khador for the foreseeable future. I'll of course continue to play them (especially since they're almost fully painted) but I want a break from them and will be starting up a Convergence of Cyriss army instead. I'll post about them later though.

Hope you enjoy.

Repainted Juggernaut and a little wip

I skipped last week because I was moving. Luckily, all of my minis made it through the move without disassembling themselves. Unluckily, I haven't have a lot of time to paint. I do however have a small backlog of pictures that I haven't done any updates on yet though. First is my Rager:

I hesitate to call it done-done, but it's a solid single done I think. In that second picture I intentionally added my thumb for scale because that 5th border legion logo there is now my smallest freehand of any model I can remember. For reference, here is the official pin of the 5th border legion (which I do not yet own!)

The Rager is not a traditional 5th border legion jack like the Kodiak, but that does bring my up to my next project which was to update some of my Khadoran red jacks to the 5th border legion paint scheme. Here is my Juggernaut before and after photo:

It's hard to see in that picture but I even repainted the shoulders in my first attempt at wet blending, here is a close-up of the result.

 It's not perfect, but it looks great for my first try I think! Blending has always been the barrier I never attempted in painting because it always seemed "too hard" so I avoided it. But I think it could add a lot to my minis, so I'm going to be using it extensively in my next several models to get some practice.

The other model I just started is Kovnik Markov, and he is taking a very long time because it turns out that blending doesn't always work out as easily on a non-smooth, irregularly shaped surface. But here is a WIP of him. Hopefully I can post his finished form by next week.

I'm kind of lucky, kind of not, in that I accidentally dropped him and he shattered into his three main pieces and then discovered he's actually a lot easier to paint this way so I'm leaving him unassembled for the time being.

Still no battle reports, I keep forgetting until halfway through a game. Maybe next week.

The whole Cryx army

I was looking through here and realized that I never posted how basing my Cryx went. So, even though I did this years ago, I pulled them all out to take pictures and because my wife wanted to try them out. I tried to do a swamp effect with tall grass and water effect and I think it really ties them all together. They're quite a bit dusty, but I couldn't find my can of compressed air.

So that's the lot. I haven't done any new painting on them besides the basing and I think a few touch-ups on Deneghra, but I figured I ought to show that. I recently picked up some Bane Knights too, which could see some paint before too long.

Journeyman League!

I'm starting in another journeyman league on July 1, with my Khador. I thought for a long time about picking up a third faction but I think I still have a lot of learning to do with the Motherland before I move on. Another player is doing the standard Khadoran battlebox of Kozlov and his Juggernaut and Decimator, which I've already posted here, so I thought I'd change it up. I'll start week 1 with the following list:

https://conflictchamber.com/?c32000f-dZkZ

Khador Army - 0 / 0 points

[Kozlov 1] Lord Kozlov, Viscount of Scarsgrad [+28]
 - Grolar [18]
 - Rager [10]

Mainly for the reasons that I like Kozlov, I never get to play with my Grolar, and I just got a Rager, which I magnetized for the first time. Plus, don't they look great together?

The picture is a little out of focus, but I also went back and touched up Kozlov some. Here he is now, with the old image in the top left for comparison.

I'm really happy with the face, something I've been struggling with lately for some reason (as an example, see Strakhov's weird face in the last post), but his looks great. I'm also very happy with how the cloak turned out after the touch-ups. The rager will be one of my submission for painting as well as a full unit of IFP, Uhlan Kovnik Markov, and possibly some more models that I've ordered. Like the battle mechaniks that still haven't come in yet. In week two I plan to just add a full unit of IFP without CA but I might change my mind on that one. It might be more worth it to take a min unit plus CA for the minifeat and relentless charge.

If my opponents are fine with it, I plan on doing at least one battle report per week to help with my post-game analysis. I know that LegoS is not the best (or even in the top 3) Khador themes but I trust PP that it is at least usable in most match-ups, I just have to figure it out first. 

Strakhov 2 and friends

I made a lot of progress on Assault Kommando Strakhov and his friends. I'm happy enough with them to play them but I'm not entirely sure I'm done with them yet.

I'm going to set them aside for now, and I might come back to them later. I tried experimenting with the black with hard highlighting, to try to imitate shiny leather or rubber which gives them corrosion immunity. I did the same with the red.

I thought that the extreme highlighting might evoke a night time lighting but I think I missed that.

As always, I'll wait to do the basing later with the rest of my army.

I also recently got the Extreme Destroyer and was surprised at how many pieces it had!

Even the individual fingers were separate pieces. I wanted to assemble it in a dynamic pose, with the 'jack looking where it was shooting, and I think I did a decent job of that. Here is what it looks like now, though I don't feel finished with it yet.

So I've gotten it to the point that it's at least as good as my other destroyer, but I want to do more to it still. I'm thinking some weathering and rust. What I like about it so far is the blue steel of the axe and a good looking Khador symbol on the top hatch.




Hope you enjoy.

Just bearly tabletop quality

Just finished the Great Bears, which means that I now only have two unfinished models in my Khador force.

Like I said in the last past, I wanted them to be violently Khadoran, hence the bright red. Eventually I hope I can actually play with some of these in a game. Maybe I'll take pictures and do a battle report. Anyway, the individual pictures:

I also finished up the war dog (who doesn't have a name yet, but I'm leaning toward Petunia). Here she is by Sorscha.

With so much getting done I made another group picture, this time with everyone in my Khador army. *USSR anthem intensifies*

On top of all that, I just put in a big order of some more pikemen, Uhlan Kovnik Markov, Strakhov2, Malakov2, and the Extreme Destroyer. After that, I think the army will be mostly finished in terms of models? Unless PP entices me with something extraordinary.

Rounding out my Legion of Steel

Now I have enough pikemen to play the Legion of Steel theme force within Khador reasonably competitively because I finally finished the Iron Fang Pikemen unit I started painting ages ago and had just left unfinished.

And I managed to catch a little bit of sunlight. I like the more popping red of the capes so I went back and brightened up my Black Dragons' capes as well to match. Now all that's left is my Great Bears which won't look like either Iron Fangs or Black Dragons, because I'm thinking about making them Khador red. They are, after all, living legends and should look the part.

I'm also starting to consider my bases. I'm thinking a blue ice using the tutorial posted here. If that is what I do, I may need to order a bunch of bases or potentially try casting them again. I might instead do a simple cork rock deal with some snow.

Stop. Time for hammers. Also, machine guns.

I've had a lot of work to do with no deadlines and procrastination is nearing its peak for me, which ultimately means another painting figure! This one is the slightly larger than usual Grolar, again from Khador. I took the lazy way out and didn't magnetize him because I don't have magnets. And I thought at the time (without checking out the rules) that obviously the hammer and minigun were better than no hammer or minigun. Well, now I wish I could also play the Kodiak but oh well, I guess I'll have to throw more money at PP. Regardless, I do like the studio paint scheme for the Kodiak for these bigger warjacks than the normal red scheme. I'm not sure if I'm trying to be consistent or not, but in case I am I think I'll paint future standard Juggernaut chassis 'jacks that classic Khador red, and the bigger ones the field green.

But enough empty plans. No decent pictures today, just what I snapped from my painting table. Don't mind the distractingly beautiful table cloth in the background, that what we play board games on and we'll be starting Pandemic Legacy tonight so that's why it's out.

I tried for easily over two hours to replicate what I did on the Behemoth with this guy but I could not get the green to look right. But it's close as long as they're not shoulder to shoulder. As an update, this is my Legion of Steel 75pt theme list so far.

It's just missing the battle mechaniks I ordered with my FLGS, I need to finish my IFP and start my Great Bears, and then it could be tournament ready. Despite being a terrible list. And I probably won't play with Kovlov. Or in any tournaments.

Some Dark Grey Dragons

When I got the big army box two Christmases ago, it came with two full units of iron fang pikemen, with the option of turning either or both into black dragons. When I built them, I had no idea which one I'd rather have so I put them together as one unit of each. Which I'm glad I did, as they seem to have different purposes and are both fun to play with. Since then I've put some amount of paint on all of those miniatures except the black dragons which I've avoided both because "it'll be easy when I decide to get to it" and because I don't like painting black. Maybe I'm somehow still burned out after the Cryx. When I finish each of the other pieces, I'll put them up here too but these guys are the first unit that is completely done.

I'm going for some kind of dark Roman Legionnaires look, which I think worked out well enough. I didn't seal them because I may go back and touch them out, and I've also not based them yet (like the rest of my Khador). I'm a little disappointed that a lot of the details are difficult to see without getting VERY close, but I'm still glad I did it. After almost a year I think I've figured out what those dangly things are on their sash, extra pike tips! Realizing that I wanted the holder to be a different metallic than the bronze of the tips and ornamentation.

I also grabbed a Kapitan Sofya Skirova, a Black Dragon solo which refuses to die. I thought the miniature was great and she was fun to paint up with the rest of her boys and girls.

I don't think that I'm still as up to painting 13 models in an assembly style as I used to, but it definitely felt efficient. I think it only took me three days of painting to get them from primer black to this state.

Anyway I've got about as many half-finished Khador as I do fully finished ones so it's likely I'll be posting relatively often while I finish those off.