Lets be social!!

I quit on the pink, I started to paint a 'jack and just said no. It's just unreasonable and in a week I got 2 models done. I switched to my original idea of silver models and battle damage them up from there.

The picture is very bad and due to using flash you can't see any real shading so it looks terrible. But I painted him in a day and I just need to add some stains and grubbiness. I have the Griffon half done and 8 of the Invictor bodies done.. I should finish my army in a week or two at this rate.

If I feel up to it I'm going to a tournament tomorrow, may report it..

I decided I wanted to try and meet more Warmachine players and get to know the wider community and to discuss things with people outside the PP forums. So I'm going to post my AIM name and see what happens. Say Hi, troll me, whatever, I just think it's a cool idea to get to know folks.

So my AIM name is AstrayPenguin . I'm usually around, so drop me a line.

Wip Shots

Some quick off the hip pics







All WiP, but startinng to get there. I'm not sure if I just want to ink the cloaks and make them a dark blue or what.

Retribution review part 1

Today I worked some more on the Ret. Started to paint Aiyanna, Kaelyssa (Boob armour!) and the Invictor is almost done. I absolutely HATE the Heavy jack and I will make a full post on it, because that kit is absolutely vile and deserves to be absolutely demolished.

But onto the main show!

I'm going to review every model in the Ret book, but using only 1 sentence for each.

The Retribution seems to have a solid theme going with adaptable troops able to hold scenarios with the solos and 'casters suited to assassination. So in SR4 Ret will either go for "you can't win" and assassination or full on Scenario abuse. Another overriding theme is pressure, Ret excel on applying pressure, especially to 'casters.

Garryth.

Melee Assassin. He's exactly like Abyslonia in Legion, except has Arc nodes. I really liked her in that, but in Ret he just doesn't feel as strong. Does make me think E Morghoul's fan will be passive in MKII though. But yea, he'll pull 'casters around and then stab them. Nothing else to say.

Kaelyssa.

She is a disruption and mind games 'caster. Her abilities tend to disrupt your opponents troops with rough terrain and cripple their warjacks/make them shake. The fury/focus leeching leads to mind games with Hordes and she is deadly against casters, but lacks the ability to set them up. She should be a strong 'caster but will take a lot of skill to really abuse. She will also be one of the first Ret epics, her fluff is all "Will be awesome"

Rahn

Rahn I really don't like, he's a scenario 'caster and that's about it. He just pushes things around and disrupts, but it's just not enough for me. Why is my 'caster pushing dudes instead of killing them on mass? Has a terrible feat and just feels unplayable to me. I love his model and will pick it up to complete the set.

Ravyn.

Emo chick! She's a really strong 'caster who applies pressure best of all the Ret. She can extend ranges, move things faster. She can easily kill a 'caster in close combat and has the ability to move things around to open lines. Her feat is just insane with the right army, it screws the def stat and lets you move forward, take some shots and then move 2 inches back to deny the charge and stabby death.. I think she is a very strong 'caster, with the Ret units and her spell list she can force people to play on the back foot and then corner them ready for the kill.

Vyros.

Ret's jack 'caster with some troop support thrown in for good measure. He's a jack of all trades and will be solid for being so, but he could do with some more ways to boost 'jacks or generate additional focus.

Chimera

It's an arc node that you can't engage. It's just a solid little Lancer style dude, what more do you want?

Gorgon

Another disruption piece for the Ret, they have a lot of pinning models in place abilities and the Gorgon excels at this. My only complaint is that I'm not sure if the Gorgon is worth the points (I'm unsure on how to value a point in MKII yet), it's going to pin something down, but anything worth pinning (Character 'jacks/beasts etc.) are going to beat it senseless. Time will tell ifi t's worth it in the meta game.

Griffon

It's a beat stick and it's cheap as hell. You could take 10 of these in 500 points. How the hell do you deal with that many beat sticks at once? With Vyros these are nuts.. speed 8 pathfinding jacks you could just swarm with. Yes, freaking, please.

I'll continue this tomorrow with the Heavy jacks and the units!

Painting frogs and one eyed monsters!

I haven't updated for almost 2 weeks now, so I thought I should get down to it and well... update.

I've mostly been building and painting my Wood elves but I have been trying to push forward on my Warbeast painting too. I finish the two Basilisks and I've got the Shaman maybe 80% done. They're just tabletop but it's at least a step forward and I hope to get my full 750 point list fully painted. I did have E morghoul almost done but I decided to strip him and repaint him up because his pose is just so.. difficult to really get at, so I'm going to put pins in him and then paint him in sections. I'm tempted to buy a Primal Morghoul and put E Morghoul's torso and arms on him rather than have his weird "I'm falling off my epic base" pose he has now, but I don't want to wreck my Primal Morghoul in case I want to use him for tournies in the future.

Oh and this guy is getting painted up as best I can, I think he deserves it for running through half a Menoth army in his first game.



I need to find a new gold recipe for him though, my current gold just isn't suitable to larea areas and his shoulder plates are HUGE. Which is also why I'm going to be free handing a Skorne symbol on his shoulder and left the spike off to do so. He is a character Warbeast and will be up in my opponent's face every single game so he needs to look pretty.

On the Fantasy front, I hope to get my first game in on Thursday or Tuesday, but Tuesday will probably be me taking my Skorne to the local store instead. Either Hexeris or Mordikar will be played, probably with a list very much like the one I played last time. I like that style of army, although I may (GASP!) drop my 3rd beast and risk running 2. Maybe Molik and a Shaman or a Krea. We'll have to see how it goes.

Moliktastic

Today I finally got to play with Molik. Yes, F'king please! Molik is absolutely insane and more than made his points back. The guy was a new guy and had never played Skorne before, so I didn't want to pull too many weird and dodgy models out and start bouncing around and ignoring everything. So I went with a list as follows (roughly)

Mordikar
Krea
Molik
Shaman
3 Ferox
6 Venators
Swamp Gobbers

500 points.

I played against a jack heavy Menoth list using Kreoss and the choir. First time I'd faced a lot of these models. A Crusader, Guardian, Dervish and the Bastions were all pretty new to me, but I still did pretty well until the last turn.

Molik cut a wave of destruction through the enemy army. On like turn 2 he wrecked the Crusader then proceeded to eat the Choir pretty soon after and was ready to threaten Kreoss the following turn. His animus is just sweet sweet awesome, he makes the Shaman into one hell of a trickster. you use the animus then charge and get some insane distances off most of your army. It's even useful on Warlocks to cast stuff then retreat.

The game ended with Mordikar getting hit in the face by a Paladin when he had no fury on him. Two reasons for this, we were being rushed for time (someone else had booked a table before I got there and the 40k players had stolen it, so we tried to get the game wrapped up asap for them). And I didn't measure my control range. I wanted to cast Void walker on the shaman and move him up to Kreoss to threaten him and force him to pop his feat, so I could send in Molik and smash him into a pulp. The problem was my opponent was holding his feat back and I didn't want to commit to any sort of attack that involved everything falling over in front of a Paladin. So I goto cast void walker (didn't pre-measure) and I'm out of range, so I move Mordikar in removing the 2 fury he should of had to transfer. Plus the Paladin pretty much rolled 4 6s on his dice and just 1 hit killed him.

I really enjoyed the game but I learnt a lot about my playing style. I look at the board and tend to want to keep things alive when I'm playing Mordikar or Hexeris, I put high value on every unit and don't want to sacrifice any of them, where as when I play E Morghoul I consider every model except Morghoul to be disposable. And that second attitude is so much more natural to me. I like playing high risk and putting off fancy tricks to win games. Dancing around the table with Morghoul makes me much happier than sitting back with Mordikar using Manifest void (which is insanely over rated IMO, it rarely does -anything-). So I think from now on when the chance for 750 comes up I'm going to be fielding E Morghoul, he fits me so much better than anyone else. A good example of this is earlier I had the perfect Morghoul charge lane set up from where Mordikar was. I charged in, stabbed the paladin, teleported to Kreoss, used the feat and fan to disable his focus and then I just plain killed him with the 3 following attacks. It felt so freaking natural to look at the board and see assassination runs, it's just how I see the battle. I've pretty much always thought this way in and out of tabletop though. I'm rarely the guy running in head first, I'm always the guy looking for a flank or a weak spot to exploit to rip the enemy apart from an angle it couldn't cover. So I think I'm going to play Mordi at 500 but Morghoul at anything higher. So sorry Mordikar fans but Morghoul is just my dude.

Before the game I also had an interesting conversation with the other Skorne player in store. He likes Makeda (cough Makeda fanboy cough) about Molik and Gladiators and comparing the two. I've never found a gladiator to work well for me, but Molik just feels so damn right. I would take Molik is he just had his animus and his weapons. That animus is freaking sweet, I can be half the board away one turn and right up in your face the next. The double move lets you resposition and bring him back into the battle where I've often found once a unit or beast is out of position there is no way I'm getting them back into the fight. As I said earlier Shaman and Molik make a nice little team, you can get them way up the field early on or move them where you need them to. While road to war makes Gladiators better, Molik's utility is just so freaking high that the extra power and such just doesn't do much for me. I'm thinking I may replace the Cannooneer in my 500 points list with Molik. I love my ranged element (always have venators and an extoller, they come with the Warcaster ;) ), but god damn is Molik sweet.

I'm thinking of doing some painting tutorials, but I'm not quite sure yet. I don't think I have enough readers to bother with something like that and I'd feel bad about posting the blog on the PP painting forum with just a link here. On the other hand I maybe posting some pictures of a WIP Lancer. I decided I wanted to do some Cygnar (my 2nd faction, although so are Legion technically, but I don't enjoy playing Legion and my Cygnar haven't been out in a while even though I like Stryker a lot) in a pink sheme for the Paint pink thingy ma jiggy. The problem was I suck at painting pink, it just shows brush strokes so bad that I thought I'd do something different. Battle damaged pink Cygnar! This lets me use a darker purpleish colour scheme and only using pink in limited ways, while still having it a pink army.

As the Lancer stands it has a broken shoulder that's been messed up to look like it got hit with a mace, I'll probably paint it to look like it was hit by a flaming mace when I get that far but it is quite a way off currently. I'm tempted to cut the hand off the shield arm and model it as if the shield is strapped to the arm and wirings and cogs are all that's left of the hand now. Make it look like a really roughed up Lancer. I think the key is going to be making it look worn not wrecked and this will apply to the entire army.

But that's enough of this for now. If I play some more this weekend (my Stores 2 year anniversary), then i will blog about it but if not hopefully I will on Tuesday or at least get my Drake painted up to table top.