Most of the time when an experienced player is trying to explain Warmachine and Hordes to a potential new player, they’ll use a common phrase to compare and contrast the focus and fury mechanics that drive the two games:
“Hordes is Risk Management, where Warmachine is Resource Management.”
I cringe every time I hear that.
Read More “The Fallacy of Risk vs. Resource Resource Management”
I’ve talked before here and on the Iron Agenda about being more than ready for the arrival of MkII, but I’m still hesitant. I’ve finally realized why I haven’t been willing to forsake MkI completely – the lack of official stat cards. That in turn made me realize just how convenient stat cards are for play.
Read More “The Missing Piece”
Tomorrow the Hordes communities will be whipped up into a frenzy with the release of the Hordes Field Test Rules. While there will undoubtedly be players dissecting the rules and identifying the merits and flaws of various models logically, the amount of outcry promises to be very entertaining. I can’t wait for the circus to start.
I’ve been less than satisfied with most of the pictures from my last few rounds of miniature photography. I’m not sure what the problem is, but my color balance has been all kinds of out of whack. Even the manual color balance option on my camera hasn’t been able to produce the results I’m after.
The miniatures that I’ve put in my last couple of site updates have each been photographed a few times now, and there are about half as many up as there should be, simply because they haven’t turned out any good. I’m using the same photography set up I’ve been using for a few years now, but suddenly it’s like I’ve forgotten what I was doing.
I’m just going to have to keep trying to fix my color balance and re-trying, but my goal of getting caught up by the end of the year is looking frustratingly less and less likely.
Although Warmachine MkII has brought positive changes to the Warmachine community, it unfortunately coincides with the closing of Game On!, a game store that has always been a strong supporter of the Warmachine community. On Wednesday the 14th, we had a last blast 35-point Mangled Metal MkII event – our first MkII event in St. Louis.
After throwing around a few possible casters, I decided on some of my lesser-used options to see how they changed in MkII. I was curious to see if they and their battlegroups would fit my playstyle better now, or if I would be able to change my playstyle to better suit their abilities.
Read More “A First and a Last in St. Louis”
Carl, better known as Clutch, does a fantastic job organizing Warmachine Weekend every year in Springfield, Missouri. He always packs a ton of events into the weekend and Privateer Press and Meta-Games Unlimited provides some fantastic prize support. In addition EXPLOSIVO!!! has outdone himself with this year’s awesome trophies. You should see the finished versions!
I’m sitting back in my room after day 1 tired but still ready for tomorrow’s events. I arrived last night with Brakus so we were there for the 500-point Mixed Steamroller event that kicked off the weekend. There were already a lot of familiar faces showing up, which was a bonus. Last year I met a lot of great players at Warmachine Weekend and it was good to see many of them making it back.
Looking over my painted miniature gallery, it looks like the last time it was updated was August 8th.
Of 2008.
It would be fair to call that significant slackage. It’s not that I haven’t painted anything since then, I just haven’t taken the time to photograph my miniatures and post. Yet. Time to shame myself into action.
When I sat down with my Bastions the other day to prep them for painting, I decided to knock out Rhoven’s Honor Guard at the same time. It’s been a couple years since I painted any exemplar models and I remembered I hated painting their armor, but I forgot just how time consuming it was.
I’ve been asked a few times how long it takes me to paint a model. Most of the time I don’t keep track of how much time I spend on a given model – I usually don’t want to know how many hours of my life I’ve spent on this hobby.
Usually I listen to podcasts, music, or DVD’s while I paint, and the length of one of the podcast episodes I was listening to happened to correspond to a painting step that shed a pale sickly light on how long I had been at work on my exemplars.
First, a little setup. Painting exemplar armor is a fairly complex process because I prime in gray. I tried priming in white on my Knights Exemplar Errant, but the time I saved on the armor plates was quickly lost in the recesses of the model. From prime to finish, my process goes something like this:
The time I spent on step 6 for all 5 Bastions and the Honor Guard pretty much corresponded with the running time of the podcast I was listening to: about 1 hour. That got my models to this point:
Unfortunately, I’ve been able to estimate roughly an hour per coat to get this point; so roughly 8 hours so far. And there’s still plenty left to do, including all of the purple areas after I finish cleaning up the metallics.
As a side note, I’ve found working on the Bastions and Honor Guard at the same time to be mildly humorous. As medium based models, the Bastions are far and away the largest models in the exemplar ranks of the Protectorate of Menoth, far huskier than any of their compatriots.
On the other hand Juviah Rhoven’s supposed Honor Guard are vertically challenged even by Knights Exemplar standards. Yet as pewter miniatures, the two Honor Guardmen weigh far more than the five Bastions.
Gius and Cassian sure have been packing it away.
To our players:
We have decided to do something radical. We’ve been paying a lot of attention to our forums and talking with our players at the conventions this summer and it’s clear that the anticipation for MkII is driving everyone a little batty. Many are excited, some of you are a little afraid, but the suspense is killing everyone and the speculation is killing us! So after a great deal of deliberation we have decided that the best thing we can do for the mental well-being of our community is to completely change our plans and do what we said we wouldn’t: we’re going to put all of the MkII rules and model information online as PDF downloads, because four more months is just too damn long for everyone to be holding their breath.
Once a miniature hits the table, it’s inevitably going to be subjected to the rigors of gaming. Even the most careful of gamers will have accidents. It’s painful to see hours of hard work spent painting a figure vanish in one quick tabletop accident, but that’s why most gamers seal their miniatures after painting them.
So how do you want it?
Sealants come in a variety of finishes, but for the most part they can be grouped as gloss, satin, and matte. Most people prefer a matte finish on their gaming miniatures but this brings with it a problem. Unfortunately the strength of a sealant is usually proportional with how glossy the finish is, meaning matte sealants tend to offer the least amount of protection to miniatures. This isn’t as much of an issue with a display pieces but with a model that will face the rigors of the game table it means being more susceptible to damage.