A Work in Progress

Just a few words before bed.
I've been keeping up as best I can with the Khador commission, but also painting some of my stuff on the side, so I don't get burnt out from painting either faction. Tonight I painted three more Winter Guard Infantry, including the Standard Bearer, making a total of 10 models ready for the dip. Now I just need a decent day to go outside and play with it. Being the middle of November, I may be hard pressed.

On a side note, I must remember to make sure that all the model are firmly attached to their bases. I've incidents in the past of models breaking in the most terrible way. On top of shattering the model into its component pieces, it tends to make the quick shade settle in a way that makes then final product look haphazard.

Also tonight, I got the base colours and some washes on to my Dawnguard Scyir. I love that model.  His pose just screams, "Come at me, bro!"

I've also been working on Adeptis Rahn v.2.0. He's looking good, if I do say so myself. He was the first model I painted for my Retribution force, and I was still finalizing the colour scheme at that point. I thought that since I'm working towards a fully painted force with a decent colour scheme, I owed it to myself and my favourite Warcaster to give him a repaint. At this point, he only needs some highlights along with a small bit of freehand and a decent base.

Finally, I'm quite excited to have ordered a large amount of custom bases from Dragon Forge. I'm hoping these bases will give my force that little something extra and help them stand out. These are all from the "Forgotten Empires" line:

That's all for now. More when I have it.

For Khador!

As I mentioned earlier, I have worked with the Quick Shade on Khador models before. Just a moment ago I found a picture of how it turned out, so I thought I would share it with you.

What do you think?

Painting

As per usual, its been three or so months since my last update. That notwithstanding, here's what's been going on for the past little while.

Recently, my friend Magus asked me to paint all of his Khador force. This is quite an undertaking, since he owns something in the range of 70 points. I myself own somewhere in the vicinity of 120 points of Retribution of Scyrah, the majority of which is unpainted. I did agree, however. He has promised me payment, and as a show of good faith, bought me a unit of Dawnguard Invictors.

I spent the better part of 6 hours the other night just painting the man's infantry. In that time, I managed to painted two of the four main colours of the scheme on 18 minis. As I'm a pretty slow painter, I think this is going to take a while. That's ok.
Instead of painting everything to my normal standard, (using washes, highlights, etc) I'll be putting only flat colours on each model and then using the Army Painter Quick Shade, Dark Tone. I've used this stuff on a couple Khador models before, and it works great. Really, its only a matter of getting the flat colours on a high voloume of models.

I don't want to burn myself out on painting Khador, however, so I've decided to alternate between painting Magus' stuff and my stuff. The advantage of doing a job for a friend is being able to do it at my leisure. I hope that the other guys at our FLGS take note of the painting and approach me to do the same for them. I figure if I can make some cash of it, I can support my habit, er, hobby by doing my hobby.

I also started doing a repaint of Adeptis Rahn Shyeel, my personal favourite warcaster, now that I've definitely settled on a colour scheme and improved my skills. I'll get some pictures up at some point.

That One Game

Out of all the games I've ever played, there's one that sticks in my mind more than any other:

First released in North America in 1993, and ported to numerous consoles through the years, Final Fantasy 3 is the game that truly made me fall in love with video games.

While it might be cliche to say that FF3 is one of the best games ever, there's a reason why cliches come to be. Quite simply, FF3 does nearly everything right.

The game opens up with a story about how, far in the past, a dread force known as "magic" more or less destroyed the world. Now, thousands of years later, the world has begun to rebuild, and high technology reigns. This game is laden everywhere with what I would later learn to be "steam-punk" As an 8 year old, I didn't quite appreciate it, but having gone back and played through the game again rather recently, I'm enthralled with the world you, as the player are placed in.

Keeping in mind that this game is edging in on 20 years, old, the graphics, while extremely dated, are still a joy to look at. Everywhere you turn, some stack is spewing steam or smoke, there's cogs turning in infernal machines, and great suits of steam powered armour piloted by goggle wearing soldiers. And airships. Quite literally a ship with propellers. Its impossible not to become enthralled in such a fantastical and well thought out world.

The story does start out fairly straight-forward for a Japanese style role playing game. You play as a young girl named Terra, who (surprise, surprise!) is suffering from amnesia. As per usual, there's some evil empire that is threatening the realm, and its up to Terra and a group of rebels to bring back peace. The hitch is, Terra can use Magic, something noone else can do, and as such, most of the conflicts in the game center around her abilities. Rather quickly from there, you are forced into many strange and wonderful conflicts, such as the numerous fights with a fast-talking, condescending octopus and a very evil clown.

Developed in a world before widespread voice acting in games, SquareEnix (then SquareSoft) lets the music convey the tone of the story. The score has many themes that have become classics in the gaming community, from the main antagonist, Kefka's theme to the Opera scene, to opening credits. The score is spot-on throughout, haunting and sad at times, playing and silly at others. Other sound effects, such as when casting the spell fire, to swinging swords, are nothing particularly special, again, letting the music do the work.

As this was the third North American release of a Final Fantasy game, (the sixth for Japan), the gameplay is familiar, and old-hat for long time RPG fans. Walk around in towns, talk to NPCs, leave town, fight some monsters, repeat. The battle system followed the same formula as other games in the series, which was to select the commands for each character as their action bar fills up over time, watch the commands play out on screen, then repeat. Square did try to get the player a little bit more involved, though, with special commands such as "Blitz" for the character Sabin. The truth of the matter is that Final Fantasy games are not about exciting gameplay as much as they are about an engaging story-line.

Spanning a storyline of at least 30 hours of play, not to mention the plethora of sidequests and alternate story sequences and secret weapons to search for, it is certainly feasible to spend upwards of 70 hours or more playing through this game.

Released in 1993, this game has been ported to the Playstation, Gameboy Advance, PSP, and most recently the Wii's Virtual Console service. This game is widely recognized as being one of the best games ever made, and if you have never played it, or its simply been a long time since you last picked it up, I would highly suggest immersing yourself in the world of Final Fantasy 3.

Score: 9/10

What have you been painting?

It's been a little while since I've done an update, and this is going to be a fairly quick one. I've been busy with work and what-not, but have managed to paint one model to completion, and have done quite a bit on another.

I've painted the Magister to completion, save for the flocking on the base, and have brought the Hydra up to about 80%. I have to finish the highlights and the magical glow. I'm discovering that Retribution Warjacks look a little... boring when painted. They're basically just large panels of singular colour. If I had any sort of talent with freehand, I'd paint murals or something on the shoulder pads. Here's some pics:

These actually look better to me in the pictures than they do in person. I need to tidy up some lines on the Hydra, particularly around the wrists. I like how the blue looks on the yellow. Each of the nodes will painted as jewels, as opposed to bolt look they have normally.

Well, I'm rambling too much, so that's enough for me.

Hobby Happenings

Been a bit of a busy week here for me. I'm working through the tail end of me two week work-marathon. And my cable's out. Nothing new to report really. Mark and I did manage to get out to Forbes and play some Warmachine this weekend. A 15 point game took us nearly two hours, but that's because we basically talked about what we were doing as we were doing it with two store regulars, Caleb and Dustin. Mark ended up winning the game, as I underestimated the assassination powers of Sorscha. I've got two pictures here, and a bit of a mini battle report (a summary, really)

As I said, it was a 15 point game.

My list:

Adeptis Rahn +6

Phoenix 10

Arcanist 1

10 Houseguard Riflemen 8

> Riflemen Officer and Standard 2

Mark's:

Kommander Sorscha +5

Beast 09 11

6 Winter Guard Infantry 4

> Winter Guard Officer and Standard 2

Winter Guard Mortar Crew 3

The table was fairly basic. Some houses around the perimeter with an open center. We both chose to use infantry to show Caleb and Dustin how each part of list works (Caster, 'jacks, solos, and units). Mark won roll off and deployed first. He deployed the guards and mortar crew to my left, hugging a house, I think Sorscha was more or less in the middle, and Beast 09 was in front of her, acting as a shield.

On my side of the table, I deployed my riflemen in front of a house, hoping to take advantage of their long range (14"). I had Rahn and the Phoenix on the right side of the table behind a house.

On first turn, all of Mark's stuff ran up. I'll say this now. Mark has been doing reading or something. It seems like Warmachine just makes sense to him. Aside from the occasional reminder about rules, his list ran like clockwork. Anyway, the guard ran up, with Sorscha and Beast behind. He used her Veil of Mists to provide concealment.

On my side, I fired away with the riflemen, having all but two in range. Due to concealment, I only managed two casualties, but not terrible. Rahn and Phoenix moved up and to the side.

In the next turn, Beast was close enough to charge, thanks to his affinity with Sorscha. He charged the riflemen, but Mark misjudged the distance, and so thresher only accounted for three wounds. Manageable. The riflemen and mortar crew were out of range, and the mortar went wide. Sorscha ran up behind a house on my left, keeping Beast just within control.

On my side, the riflemen backed away from Beast, and towards the guard. The officer delcared ""Whites of their Eyes" and I rolled extra hit dice at them. I got two more wounds. Phoenix was close enough to charge Beast, but Rahn wanted more leverage. The Arcanist power boosted the Phoenix, giving him +2 to melee dmg, and Rahn then TK'd Phoenix into a position in Beast's back arc. Fully charged with focus, the Phoenix rushed in, choosing to go b2b. He did something like 26 damage overall, knocking out Beast's cortex and open fist. Not that the cortex matters, thanks again to his affinity to the Ice Queen.

Next turn, the Bear showed its fangs, and nearly ended the game. Sorscha winded herself around the building, feated, then charged Rahn. I was quite thankful I had left Rahn sitting on three focus, or the game would have been over. She expended all of her focus trying to beat on Rahn, but even at DEF 5, she could get past his ARM 19. Sitting at three health on Rahn, I was in a bad postion. The guard moved up (I had forgotten they had the officer with them. He grants them grapeshot, 8" spray) and grapeshot the HELL out of my riflemen, killing all but two and the standard bearer. The riflemen managed not to panic, though. Beast did the best he could against the Phoenix, but managed only four damage to his shields.

On my side, it was basically do or die, so I had Rahn keep all of his focus. Spending one to shake stationary, he then force blasted Sorscha 4" back, then charged in, and swung and swung, pushing her back at total of 7" over the turn, including the force hammer. When all was said and done, Sorscha was at three health, with nothing in position to provide assistance. The arcanist, being stationary, was just out of range to give the Phoenix a focus, and so Phoenix did negligible damage to Beast, and the Riflemen were a lost cause.

On Mark's turn, Sorscha got back up, and charged in, doing 9 damage to Rahn and ending the game. Victory to the Motherland.

Things I learned:

DON'T underestimate Sorscha's mobility. Seriously, bitch is fast. Also, a review of my tactics later revealed that on my "do or die" turn, what I should have done was popped Rahn's feat, then cast Force Hammer, as that does a STR 12 hit, which would have been boosted, and taken the chance of not pushing her 3" away, which is what I wanted for my charge bonus. I should have played the math. She was likely to be pushed 4", and taken an extra hit. For the extra focus it would have cost me to cast the spell, it would have been worth it, in my opinon. Ah well, live and learn.

A discussion with Mark after the fact had us both agree that the fact that we were talking through the game with the other guys, and answering Dustin's many dithering questions (yeah, the guy gets on my nerves. Caleb's cool, though) had us both forgetting some things, and taking way too long with others. Still, it was good to show off the game.

Mark had to take off after that, but I stuck around. While we had been playing, Caleb had been gluing together his Legion box, and Dustin was proxying the Circle box set... using 40k models. I explained the importance of using Warmachine models, as millimeters make the difference in this game. He didn't seem to get it. I promised he would and let him some models. Over the next two hours, I guided them through a game of Hordes. As it turns out, my time spent gaming against you left me in good standing to teach Hordes. I only had to consult the Hordes book twice, because I forgot about riling and reaving.

I'll say this about Lilith. She's damn mean, and fast. She has Buswack, so she gets to make a full advance before advancing. So, Bushwack, shoot with her bow, which in turn allows her to cast a spell against that target regardless of LOS or RNG, then advance back behind cover. Also, I impressed the two of them with Kaya's mobility using spirit door in conjunction with her feat, which won Dustin the game. They were both satisfied, and were thankful for my non-partisan advice. Also, I'm not going to deny that I got pretty excited watching their game unfold.

Full Steam(punk) Ahead!

Lately, I've been feeling quite motivated on the painting front of things, and have been pushing ahead on my Retribution models, in attempt to get a 25 point list painted up. Over the past two days, I've managed to complete one arcanist, bring the other to about 75%, and get my two Magisters to about 60%. For me, that's a great amount of progress. Here's some pictures:

I'm working over 100 hours over the next two weeks, so my free time is going to be severely limited, but I'm going to try and continue the progress I've been making.