As I speculated earlier, work on The Iron Agenda has really hurt my posting schedule here on Dankelblarg. ย Fallout 3 hasn’t helped a whole lot either but podcasting has wound up consuming a lot of my free time since we started. ย As a result I haven’t made as much progress painting-wise as I would have liked – and I haven’t updated Diminutive Denizens in ages - ย but I have been able to get some work done since July.
Iron Agenda: The podcast about Warmachine, Hordes, and whatever else is on our minds.
We’re finally ready for an official announcement! ย The Iron Agenda Podcast is an hour long discussion in which we will try to cover two topics – one strategic topic and one more meta-related topic – when discussing Privateer Press miniature games. That said we’re certainly going to stray from this format from time to time. In fact we’re occasionally going to stray from PP games entirely – we already have plans for a Pulp City episode for example.
In addition to the regular hosts you’ll hear other voices from time to time as we have some of the other locals on to provide additional views on whatever topics we happen to be discussing.
Our first episode has been released on our web site as well as an initial Episode 0 designed as an introduction to our show. Episode 2 and Bonus Episode 1 have both been recorded and are currently being edited – our feed will be updated as soon as they drop.
We’re still finding our voices and settling into things but we’d love to get feedback from anyone who cares to listen.
As exhausting and draining as it was, Privateer Weekend was a phenomenal success. The PP Weekend committee did a fantastic job organizing the events and putting the weekend together. We had a number of great players come in from the surrounding areas and every tournament that was run was packed. And to top it all off we were able to reach the 32-man requirement for our Official Hardcore tournament and still had about a dozen people playing in a Hordes Steamroller event that ran simultaneously!
Despite my best intentions, I got absolutely no models finished in February. Not a single one. Talk about shooting my efficiency in the foot. I’m going to go out on a limb and say the primary culprit for this procrastination was an old nemesis which somehow caught back up with me: Sid Meyer’s Alpha Centauri. That cursed game consumed many hours back in college and when I made the mistake of reinstalling it I found myself falling into old habits. However March was an entirely different story.
The St. Louis Riverdogs are pleased to announce our first Annual Privateer weekend at Diecon 8. This will be the premiere event for the Midwest prior to Gencon 2008. Privateer weekend contains 3 days of spine crushing, cortex smashing fun over more than 7 events. The terrain is amazing including specialized scenario tables. The competitors are top tier in both skill and personality. The gaming will be second to none. Featured events over the weekend include three steamroller competitions, an ongoing tour of duty competition, painting competitions, Iron Kingdom knowledge test against Capt Saulty Dog, and our main event, an official Hardcore tournament on Saturday.
Check out http://diecon.gamestlouis.com for our complete event schedule and follow the link to Diecon 8 to see other convention activities and preregister. Or check out http://www.diecon.com for general convention information. A summary of our event schedule is below.
Read More “St. Louis Privateer Press Weekend: May 30 – June 1, 2008”
I’m pretty happy how quickly I was able to get some painting done in January. I started my Blighted Legionnaires early on and was able to finish them in less that two weeks. While I was working on them I also completed my Swamp Gobbers Bellows Crew. After that I took about a week or so off and before deciding to break into the big stuff. I’ve had a few warbeasts sitting around primed – a second Carnivean, a second Seraph, and my Raek – that I decided to try to do all at once. It’s slow going and the process is pretty monotonous but they’ve been sitting in my miniature case primed for long enough.
I haven’t finished the warbeasts yet but I hope to in February. I’m taking my time and trying a slightly different color scheme – doing something a little more gray and a little less blue. I’m also adding a little bit of texture to the beasts’ musculature to give it some additional visual interest. I still have some shading to do on the skintones – especially on the Seraph – but I’m making pretty good progress. I finished up the dirt and stone on their bases and now just have to do the wrecked warjack on the Carnivean’s base, the Seraph’s wings, and the bone and mouths on all the beasts.
On top of the painting I’ve also started work reposing my second Angelius. I hacked apart the end of its tail and repositioned it using an paper clip armature. I’ve added some bulk with greenstuff already but haven’t gotten any detail work done on the top layer. I’m looking to finish the sculpting and assembling the rest of the model by the end of the month. That way I can have both Angelii primed and ready to paint so I can do them both when the mood finally strikes me. Given how much I like using these beasts I hope the mood strikes me sooner rather than later.
I did pick up Aiyana and Holt as well as a box of Incubii and a Feralgeist in January. I also had a few gift certificates that let me get a second Angelius and a box of Farrow Bone Grinders. Thirteen models in and twelve out left me one in the whole for the month, dropping my running total to a negative seven – definitely not the direction I was hoping to go.
At least there’s only about 7 models from February through April that I’m interested in getting, so I’ve got a good chance of pulling back into the positive pretty soon as long as I can keep up a decent pace. With any luck I can be in the black by the end of March.
On January 10th we finished up our Bloodstone Marches Theatre of War campaign. Although the other factions fought hard the Legion of Everblight managed to win their third strategic objective, allowing Thagrosh to escape to recover from absorbing Pyromalific’s athanc in safety.
Everyone seemed to have had a good time during the league and the rule changes we made seemed to go over well. A few more were proposed for the next time – things like doing away with detachments completely. I can see where detachments were initially intended to make sure participants didn’t change lists mid-round but we play all our games in one day. On top of that the campaign is meant to be very casual for us, so it seemed like a fair suggestion to just let folks bring their lists to play on campaign night. It’s less record keeping for the campaign organizer and less work for the teams to get all the lists together early, so it’s win-win for everyone.
There were also a few inconsistencies between scenarios and some of the rules that seemed a bit confusing at time – things like columns that need destroying varying in rules between scenarios. I’m not sure how much can be done there without adjusting balance. There were also some complaints (from both sides) that a few scenarios seemed unbalanced. We’ll definitely have to look at the scenarios a little more closely if we run the Bloodstone Marches again.
But all in all the campaign seemed to be a success and I look forward to giving another Theater of War a shot in the future.
Part of what I’ve been working on the past couple months have been miniatures for other people, so I couldn’t post progress at the end of November without giving away what I was working on. But now that the holidays are past I can actually talk about what I’ve been painting again.
November was about as bad as expected for miniature throughput. I picked up a full unit of Idrian Skirmishers and am glad I made that decision. I’ve played the a couple of times with Kreoss and once with the Testament of Menoth now and have been happy with them together – Protection of Menoth makes them very survivable and Pathfinder, Coordination, and Intercept give them a nice tactical flexibility. I want to paint these guys but have a lot on my plate at the moment. And since their UA has just been announced I’ll likely postpone the models until I can do the UA along with them.
I also went to an event at Fantasy Books and Games over in Illinois in November and won some store credit. Unfortunately they didn’t have a lot of stock in and I don’t go out there often enough to warrant saving it so I wound up buying Bosun Grogspar. I’m not sure how often I’ll use him but at least he should be fun to paint up.
On the upside I was finally able to get a handful of miniatures done for the month. I finished up my Nephilim Soldier and Kell Bailoch for myself as well as a Totem Hunter and a Reinholdt model I’ll be handing off to their respective owners. ย But that still left me 7 models in the hole for the month – and an even dozen in the hole cumulatively – but what are you going to do?
When December rolled around, things looked promising for my throughput. The only model that came out that I wanted to pick up was a Raek, which meant I had a chance to get ahead. I started the month finishing a couple more gift miniatures – Morvahna and a Fell Caller – then decided to try and paint my Reindeer. It took right up through the 31st but I was finally able to complete all 5 of my Raptors, putting me up 6 models for the month and cutting my running deficit in half.
Looking forward I’m going to try to do my Blighted Legionnaires in January, as well as one or two more individual models if I get time. I really need to get the unit done – I’m already looking at picking up Lady Aiyana & Master Holt and a box of Incubi later in the month. I have some assembly that I want to get done as well. My Raek is still in its blister and I need to get the Neren the Scary I mentioned being asked to do a couple months ago based and primed so I can start on that as well.
WIP shots have been hard to come by lately – this update just has some finished shots. I haven’t had time to stop and take pictures as I paint and all of my current WIPs have either not had any progress made on them since last posting (Alahel) or are completed and will be up on my web site soon. I did get a mini tripod for my camera for Christmas so I’ll try and make more of an effort to take WIP pictures in January.
Death Soars over the Marches!
Until recently the rumors of miners spotting reptilian creatures flying overhead have been dismissed as conjecture, but now we know them to be fact. These creatures have been seen en masse north of the Crag, around the Scarleforth Lake and along the Hawksmire River.
We at the Dispatch doubt the rumors that these creatures are in fact dragons. Everyone knows that dragons are massive creatures with wingspans that would block out the sun. However even though the creatures seen have appeared much smaller in size, what they lack in size they make up for in quantity and destruction.
Starting December 19th a dozen of the local Hordes players, myself included, will be starting up another Call to Arms campaign set in the Bloodstone Marches at one of the local gaming stores. Saultydog and Prorpger will also be joining in on this one, and that combined with Manaburst may wind up meaning we don’t get back to our initial campaign. We’ll have to wait and see if we get a chance to finish it up some time in the future.
As for the new campaign, we learned some lessons based on how the first attempt went and have made a couple minor rule tweaks to try and help even things out a bit. These changes should help us finish the campaign before the first tour of the 2008 Call to Arms league starts while while also combating the “snowball effect” that can help one person run away with the lead. So with the following changes, the Legion of Everblight prepares to conquerer the Bloodstone Marches. ๐
