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.