Tuesday, May 15, 2018

A new section of the underhive opens up

A few months back, a childhood friend came back into my life after 20+ years.  That friend helped knock the doors of the hinges for me when it came to miniatures.  That friend would be called Necromunda.  Maybe it's the nostalgic factor clouding my vision, but I seriously can't get enough of this game.

When the new edition came out, I was little bummed out at first that the focus seemed to be more "board game-ish" with the new edition being tile-based until I saw that they were doing supplements to allow games to be played on 3d terrain in the classic Necromunda style.  After giving the rules a once over, the underhive portion of the game looked pretty cool.  The only problem was that instead of actually having walls there was black boxes on the tiles to indicate that there was a wall.  To me, that seemed like a missed opportunity for GW to sell some badass terrain.  Fear not, for a 3rd party picked up the slack. 

Enter Death Ray Design's mdf kit Deadbolt Derelict..





















Cat not included
 Forgive me for being overly dramatic.  It's a pretty cool kit.  Actually, the door parts are a separate kit.  I bought this around December sometime, built it on one of those nights I didn't feel like painting, and then I've been painting it off and on for about 2-3 weeks.  The bulk of this work was done with spray paints.  Spent a few night blobbing on Liqutex Burnt Umber and drybrushing ryza rust.  I can't take credit for the paint scheme, as I pretty much followed Twilightemporium.net's blog word for word.  I think it turned out fantastic and I can't wait to throw down some underhive in the next few weeks using this stuff.

Thanks for checking it out!

Thursday, April 5, 2018

Test of Honour warband

At the end of my last post (if you actually read all that), I noted that I would show off my Test of Honour force that I took to Adepticon 2018.  Well, this would be that post, and here is the army/warband/clan/whatever.















This was about half the box of the core game, plus the metal unarmoured samurai I showed off a few months back.  You get something like 35 models in there, enough to do two starter forces.  This kit consisted of old Wargames Factory model line that were re-purposed for Warlord's new game "Test of Honour".  I'd say the scale is the equivalent of true 28mm (think LoTR SBG models).

The plastics were a pain in the ass to put together.  I think I spent the better half of my Saturday putting them together.  Note, I'm an extremely fast model builder with a ton of experience and I had trouble with these models.  The spears that go in the hands you basically have to put between the fingers and palms, which bends the fingers, then you have to bend them back.  Every armature is a separate piece.  Head, two arms, two legs, two pieces of the chest, back-flag, and weapons.  This was not a kit for the uninitiated or beginner.  The mold lines weren't bad though, so that's a plus.

As far as painting goes, I think I did them justice.  Warlord's painted examples of them looked horrible and trying to find good reference material was difficult.  They are not easy models to paint and it doesn't surprise me that so many people have had trouble with them.  I wanted to do something a little different than the basic black armor with colored cloth.  I started these guys in early March with a deadline of March 21st (roughly 3 weeks)  and had to cut a few corners, so all the grey/white is pretty much dry brushed.  Normally this is a practice I don't use for 28mm models (besides in basing), but I was in a time crunch.  I think it turned out pretty good.  They're a unique looking force that looks a little different from every thing out there.

Another issue was the musician (4th picture on the far right).  I spent a good hour trying to figure out what the hell he was blowing into.  I settled on a shell and painted it as such.  It's probably something different, but I like the idea of some dude blowing into a shell.

I made the mistake of not priming my bases before gluing sand.  Typically I glue sand, then prime as you get a stronger bond with both the glue and the primer.  For the normal bases, this is not a problem.  For the wide 3 holder bases, chunks of sand split off, causing me to go back and redo them.  The transfers I ordered from Veni Vidi Vici were just a tad too big for the back standards and I had to flip them vertically to make them work.  Historically, they're not correct for a Takedo clan standard, but I think they look good.  I also spent a good amount of time putting the cherry blossoms onto the bases.  I basically hand placed each piece of foliage (with tweezers) as the usual "glue and dump" method didn't look natural.  The cherry blossoms really do add much needed color and was a good idea.  I picked up a bag at Huge Miniatures.

All in all, the models themselves turned out really good.  The process was a pain, but I'm really happy with the end result.  I'm not sure when we'll see some more Test of Honour.  My goal this year is to paint for games I don't have anything painted for, to expand my options when tournaments and conventions come around.  Look for more new stuff in future blogs.

Sunday, April 1, 2018

Adepticon 2018



Typically February and March tend to be my most active months on this blog, yet this year was a bit different.  I'm usually pretty busy for the months leading up to Adepticon, yet I've always had time to post pics or something of what I was up to.  Unfortunately, this time around I bit off a little more than I could chew, going into Adepticon with models still needing to be painted.  I partially blame work, but I under-estimated the time needed to complete certain tasks.  I somehow managed to complete everything, but at the expense of not posting pictures (and staying up late every night for 2 weeks ahead of the show).

With Necromunda being re-released this past November, I wanted to do a full game board.  Something simple would not suffice.  I remember at the ripe age of 13 playing with the unpainted plastic bulkheads and the shitty cardstock buildings and then looking at White Dwarf to see the underhive in all it's glorious splendor.  Knowing I lacked the skill and the funds to create the battlezones at 13, I accepted the cardstock buildings and still managed to have a lot of fun.  This time around, in my 30's I have both the skill and the funds to create something awesome, something that screams "Necro-fucking-Munda", and that's exactly what I set out to do.

Not my picture, credit goes to Jeremy O.
Not my picture, credit goes to Jeremy O.

Not my picture, credit goes to Jeremy O.






This table was a labor of love.  I promised I would provide a table for Necromunda at Adepticon this year, so that gave me the motivation I needed.  I spent a good 2 months painting it and I know if I had a time machine and I showed it to the 13 year Dave, he would've pissed his pants.  I bought the MDF kit about 2 years ago from a website called Wargames Tournaments when they were having a xmas sale, and it sat in it's packaging until just after Thanksgiving of 2017.  I drybrush, washed, and drybrushed again every piece before putting it together and it took a long time.  I also added the munitions kit and 2 alchomite stack kits from Games Workshop to give it a little color.  I envisioned an industrial maze with huge towers belching smog as gunfire erupts on all floors.  I have a few more things I'd like to add to it like bases for the platforms and a few more larger towers, but I'm pretty happy with it for now.  The most important thing.... it's awesome to play on.

Getting back to on track, Adeption 2018 was last weekend and boy was it a lot of fun as always.  I didn't do any classes or seminars this year, just played games.  I think going forward, this will be the norm for me.  Not to knock the seminars or classes, but everything taught in them is pretty much on youtube and I rarely get to play games, let alone an entire 4 days filled with dice rolling.  So yeah, I'm going to stick to rolling dice rather than smearing paint at Adepticon.

So I played in the Necromunda tournament Thursday night and ended up taking 2nd place with my Delaque (seen in the previous post).  This was my first time playing the new edition, and I really liked it.  Sure, I miss all the flavor from the original version, but the new edition cut a lot of the nonsense from the original and "stream-lined" the gameplay.  I'm usually someone who hates the term "stream-lined" when it comes to games, be they miniature, roleplaying, or video games because it typically means they dumb it down to the lowest common denominator which tends to kill the soul of the game.  In Necromunda's case, the soul is still there.  They just cut out a lot of the fat that caused gameplay to take much longer and having to constantly be flipping thru the book.  Thumbs up to GW on this one, and I had a lot of fun playing in the tournament.  Here's a few of the tables we got to play on...



















Friday, I just helped my buddy Brent run his "Attack of the Frost Giants" game.  It was a large 8-player Frostgrave game that pitted the players against both each other and a bunch of Frost Giants that would appear when certain treasure tokens were picked up.  Brent played the frost giants on his side of the table and I played them on the other side.  When the players picked up certain treasure tokens, a frost giant would appear, 8 total including a king and queen.  It was a lot of fun.  There was a ton of climatic moments but the only picture I managed to take was a lone dwarf about to charge my one giant in the center of the table.
And the dwarf won....
Saturday I played in a custom scenario written by the man himself Joseph McCullough who was present for the entire tournament.  Have a question?  Just ask the dude who wrote the game.  I always enjoy Joe being around at Adepticon to bounce a few crazy ideas off him, like my "Albino Orc warband" idea.  I still need to play him in a game of Frostgrave.... or maybe LotR's if he's up for that.  I'll bring the armies if he's got the time.


Basically it was 3 games on 3 different boards, each board had 4 people playing 2v2.  The 4 people stayed together on each board, but every game you were allied with a new person, so by the end of the 3rd game you were allied with each player for at least one game, hence the name "Strange Alliances".  Each game there was a task you had to complete with your partner while trying to prevent the other 2 players from completing they're tasks.  I played my necromancer for this tournament.  The first game, we were in the dungeons (scenario 3 in the package) trying to collect treasure and not be eaten by golems.  I got my ass kicked in this game.  The guy directly across from me was on fire and I took a beating, and then got eaten by golems.



I managed to fling some mud around, but my crew pretty much all died and my necromancer ended up being a snack to that one golem.  Oh well, life is cheap in Frostgrave.

The second game I didn't take any photos of.  I had managed to keep my guys alive going into it (minus one guy who had to sit out).  We had to insert keys into statues in the center of the board and grab a treasure being guarded by armored skeletons.  In order to get the treasure, we both had to insert our keys then the treasure would appear.  We actually managed to win this game.  My one opponent decided to shieldwall his guys in columns of 3 and play javelin toss with my wizard and a dog while I was able to carry out the task at hand.

Third game was similar, but there was a giant troll in the center of the board.



I ended up killing the monster and doing my task.  My partner got pinched in by like 2 guys while I was trying to kill 2 warbands at once.  I held off the one warband while seriously damaging the other.  We ended up losing the game barely.  Another few turned and I could've stopped the one warband and gotten at least a draw.  Oh well, it was a fun game.

Later that night, we played a big game called "Escape from Arcandium".  I was only supposed to help, but we lacked a few players, so I ended up rolling up a quick warband and joining the action.  I knew most of the players, so it was a pretty relaxed game.




It was 6 players total, 3 players on each side of the dungeon.  The goal was grab treasure, and kill this orb on your side of the dungeon, a total of 1 orb per side.  When both orbs were destroyed, the center of the dungeon would open up and you had to kill the orb in the center and then the dungeon would open up and allow you to escape.  A bunch of demons were in the center of the dungeon, plus you had to contend with 2 other warbands on your side, then all 5 warbands when the center opened.  I was on one of the edges of the dungeon, so I put mud everywhere in hopes the other two guys would battle each other and leave me alone to grab treasure and do the objective.  I wanted to be fresh for when the center opened.  My plan worked.  I blocked a narrow passage that led to my side of the dungeon which allowed me to grab treasure unhindered and destroy the orb on our side while the other two guys battled one another.  The one dude had some crazy roles and destroyed the other guy.  When the center opened up, it was an all out war.  I managed to place a wizards eye in a central location and sent my lackies in while I cast offensive spells from a safe spot.  When the orb was destroyed, I quickly left the dungeon.  I managed to walk away with the title "Treasure Hunter" and a brand new box of gnolls.  I had a lot of fun playing this game.

Sunday I played a game of Test of Honour from Warlord.  I didn't take any pictures, but I will post some pictures of my force at a later date (this entry is already very picture heavy).  I ended up taking 4th place out of 6 people, so not bad considering this was my first time playing the game.  I really like the mechanics of this game and hope to play more of it.

All in all, Adepticon 2018 was a ton of fun and I'll definitely be back for more action at Adepticon 2019.