Preregistration for Masters has been closed and tickets have been bought. I hope nobody had their Masters lists finalized, packed, and painted, because with a month left before GenCon Privateer Press has released a rules addendum to their Masters event. The big change is this:
The GenCon 2009 Masters event encourages players to not only demonstrate mastery with a single warcaster or warlock but with their entire faction line-up. A warcaster / warlock that appears in one of a players’ lists cannot appear in another list for the remainder of the Masters event. Mercenary warcasters can only appear in a players’ list[s] if that player is playing Mercenary contracts for the whole of the GenCon 2009 Masters event.
Bellevue WA. June 30, 2009 – Privateer Press is pleased to announce Grind, an extreme combat sports board game for two players ages 14 and up releasing this October. In Grind players customize a team of steamjacks—10-ton, steam-powered mechanical robots—and battle to move a large, spiked ball into their opponent’s goal. The game comes with several highly detailed plastic components, including six Runner steamjack figures, four Crusher steamjack figures, 32 interchangeable weapon arms, two spiked pillars, and the Grinder ball. Also included are a full-color game board, 11 tokens, and custom dice.
I hardly ever played the initial Grind release – it just didn’t pique my interest enough. If I was going to be getting my Warmachine miniatures out to play, I’d rather just play a game of Warmachine. It wasn’t that the concept of Grind wasn’t interesting, but it seemed to be cobbled together from the existing Warmachine rules and so suffered from a rule system that wasn’t really designed to support it.
For many people tabletop war games can be a very visual hobby. I’m not a proponent of having to paint to play but there’s no denying that painted models and nice terrain can really dress up a table. Sometimes, though, well crafted terrain can add difficulties to play, or worse yet be damaging to models!
My most recent run-in with good terrain gone bad was after DieCon when I discovered a few of my models with decent sized chips in them. Most of them only came out for the four rounds of Hardcore, so they hadn’t seen much play. The likely culprit is the play surfaces themselves – 4×4 foam table tops with sand glued down for texture. While the sand drybrushed well to make the table look nicer, it also had the tendency to turn the tabletop into sand paper and damage models that happened to topple in play.
I like a nicely terrained table but sometimes I’d just rather have something that’s more playable. Hills that are both steep and tall make placing models along their edges difficult. Forest templates that are warped – no matter how nicely flocked – are unstable surfaces for figures. There are actually a number of potential pitfalls for forests in particular… for example trees that are permanently affixed to the template base can interfere with placing miniatures.
Is a finely built yet potentially damaging piece of terrain simply analogous to the fantastically converted model that for whatever reason suffers when it comes to playability on the table? There are a number of Warmachine and Hordes models that suffer similarly. A prime example is the Seraph, which hangs over its base so far that it can be difficult to maneuver models around it on the tabletop. Should gameplay suffer for art? Should art suffer for gameplay?
I enjoy fielding painted miniatures whenever I can but I find myself unfazed whether I’m playing on particleboard, cloth, or a flocked tabletop… whether I’m using a fantastically painted and sculpted piece of terrain or felt cut to size. Does this mean I have a double standard when it comes to tabletop aesthetics?
After I finished Epic Thagrosh I took a bit of break from miniature painting. I’m not sure if it was the culmination of the burnout I had been feeling or the stomach virus I had caught but I pretty much put down the brush about a month or so ago. It wasn’t until just a couple nights ago that I finally sat back down with Typhon to try and get back into the swing of things.
Last time I worked on Typhon I had applied the initial wash to his skin but I hadn’t gotten any further. But when I sat down to try to smooth out the base coat, before I knew it I had flown through a majority of the layering and the clock was telling me it was an hour past when I should have gone to bed.
The following night I did some initial work on all of the carapace areas. I still have a lot of detailing and more highlighting to do on the skin though. The mouths also need a ton of work but overall things are progressing rapidly. Before long I should be able to seal and base this multi-headed monstrosity.
I haven’t decided what I’m going to paint after Typhon. Neither the Fire of Salvation nor the Blessing of Vengeance have been touched in nearly six months. I just haven’t been able to bring myself back to painting warjacks since then. Half of me really wants to get them finished and off my workbench but the other half remembers how un-fun jacks are to paint. Painting beasts is so much more fun.
Fire of Salvation and Blessing of Vengeance
I’m also considering switching to Rorsch & Brine. I basecoated Brine’s skin a while ago but he he’s virtually unstarted. Rorsch is just primed but if I paint him I’ll probably paint my Bone Grinders at the same time just to make sure that all of my Farrow have a consistently colored hide. There’s also a Stannis Brocker that has been in-progress for a while now that I wouldn’t mind working on either.
Stannis Brocker WIP
That’s just my models that are in progress, too. One of these days I should make a list of my unstarted models to try and prioritize them. Damn figmentia!
On Episode 29 of Iron Agenda I gave my initial impressions of Epic Thagrosh, along with the rest of the new models the Legion of Everblight received in Hordes: Metamorphosis. Ever since I saw the sculpt I knew that I wanted to be able to play the Messiah with confidence, and that meant a lot of practice to get a good feel for him and what he can do to overcome his weaknesses.
My experience with the Messiah has confirmed many of my earlier opinions regarding some of his deficiencies, but with a few tournaments (including an official Hardcore) utilizing him under my belt, I feel confident enough to talk about him in more depth.
Fluff
I had been waiting for Hordes: Metamorphosis ever since Hordes: Evolution was first released, primarily to see how an event as epic as Everblight consuming Pyromalfic’s athanc would be handled while maintaining balance on the game table. We’ve always known that some personalities in the Iron Kingdoms defy tabletop rules. Was Thagrosh to be elevated to those ranks, already occupied by the likes of Voyl, Toruk, and Vinter? Fortunately for Legion of Everblight players and modelers the answer was a resounding no.
This is the second and final installment of my Hardcore Tournament report from Privateer Weekend 2 at DieCon 9. You can find my list-building discussion here and the first part of my Hardcore coverage here.
I started Hardcore with a loss to the Protectorate of Menoth, but they say if you fall off the Blightning, you get right back on and try again. After a round two win against Khador I was hoping it was the start of a streak.
Once again I’ve included the list I used for reference and have tried to recreate what each of my opponents were running to the best of my recollection. I can’t guarantee what I have for my opponents’ lists is 100% accurate but it should give you a rough idea of what I faced each round.
Hardcore is a lot like riding a bicycle; you never forget how to fall off.
At least that’s how I felt preparing for Privateer Weekend 2 and my second Hardcore. I knew what to expect from the time clock and how to handle the short turns, but the competition at Hardcore is a notch above your standard Steamroller event. So I needed a secret weapon…
At the first Privateer Press Weekend at DieCon 8 I assembled my Protectorate of Menoth forces to take a stab at the Hardcore tournament format. I was happy with my army’s performance and would have been happy to run it again but I wanted something different. This year I turned to my Legion of Everblight forces, the Frostfang Brood, to see if I could lead them to similar success but first I had to build an army.
For me the first step in building a Hardcore list was to decide what I wanted to accomplish. Every round of a Hardcore tournament is an assassination game so there’s no building lists for scenario victories but it’s not uncommon for players to gear their lists towards winning one or more of the four Hardcore medals:
Despite what most non-gamers think, gamers aren’t a bunch of socially maladjusted slobs with no sense of hygiene or communication skills. Most of the gamers I associate with are good folks who are friendly, outgoing, and dare I say normal. But still it’s inevitable that any community has its own shining stars of asshattery. One particular way this is embodied in the gaming community simply astounds me. “Ur game sux!”
When I first started painting miniatures one of the things that was suggested was to not hold a miniature by a freshly painted area so as to not accidentally rub paint off of the model. It’s still a practice that I follow when I can, and part of that has been coming up with a few ways to mount and hold miniatures securely without having to worry about disturbing a paint job. Most painters develop their own methods; here are a few of mine.
Binder Clip
The biggest deciding factor on how I mount my miniatures is if I base them before I paint them or after. My usual preference is to base the model after I paint it if possible – that means there’s no base making it harder to get my brush into the underside of the model. I also tend to clip the pewter tab that connects a models feet and pin them to the base with brass rod. This makes it easier for me to base them (no tab to deal with covering) and opens up some options for mounting, as shown here.
Cork Mounting
One of the quicker mounting methods is to attach a black binder clip to the pins coming out of the feet of the model. This setup also works if I leave the pewter tab attached to the feet. This won’t work if the feet are too far apart to be clipped and I don’t like to use it with just one foot pinned but it works well most of the time. A very similar method is to push the pins of the model into a cork to use to hold it as seen to the left. It works just like the binder clip, with the advantage of being able to (usually) set the model down on the cork. The downside is that the cork can interfere with painting the bottom of the miniature, but I can always remove it for that.
Exacto Handles
For models that I only pin one foot, I’ve used the handles from Exacto knives to hold the miniature while I paint. I’ve seen many painters that use hemostats in the same way but I don’t have any around the house and my Exacto handles work well enough for me. Depending on the diameter of brass rod I’m pinning the model to the base with the pin may be to small for the handle but wrapping a bit of painter’s tape around each pin adds enough width for the Exacto handles to hold them securely.
Taped to a Can
Models that have already been based can usually be held by the base itself, but that can be a bit unwieldy for larger models (like the Legion of Everblight Seraph). For models like that I use a few simple components to create the Super Secret Tape the Model to the Can Method. Models like the Seraph here are still heavy enough that if I tip the can too far it will fall right off the tape, but that’s where the Kung Fu Monkey Grip comes in. In addition to securing models I use this method regularly to hold bases while I paint them.
3rd Arm Stand
The last tool I want to mention is the 3rd arm stand that’s used by electronics aficionados to hold material that they’re soldering. I don’t like laying miniatures down on their painted surfaces so this handy tool lets me secure them in place while they dry. There are other ways to prop up a miniature but the advantage of the 3rd arm is that I can secure them at any odd angle, so if I’m doing a wash that I want to dry in a certain way I can leave the miniature tilted while it dries so everything stays where I want it.
That’s it – a few ways that I secure miniatures for painting. They’re not all original but they’ve been handly little techniques to store in my painting toolbox. I hope you’ll find one or two useful to you as well.
