Happy New Year 2014

Happy New Years boys and girls!

Hope you all had a good night, we had friends over with their kids but us adults were getting tired so we changed the clocks at 1030 and celebrated at 11pm haha

2013 was a great year in my life, not just for painting; I changed jobs and we got the girls to sleep till 5.30am... believe me that's a lie in in our house!


On the painting front I achieved my goals in ending the year paintless, I moved my Darklands Drunes and my Silvermoons to 2014 as that's when the majority of the models comes out. A massive haul of over 500 models painted makes me proud, and it looks like it will be another big one this year with commissions and my own kickstarter goodies coming in too.

On our club forum I made the following resolutions:

1) Fully paint my Drunes for Darklands
2) Fully paint a new force for Warmachine
3) Fully paint my Amazons & Wendigo for Wargods
4) Fully paint my Banebrood for Godslayer
5) Only start 2 new games this year... Darklands and Wargods


Should be another great year, im getting married in August to my beautiful fiancé Emma and I cant wait!

Unleashing the Ito: Jade Mamba Guard

Drum roll.......................... and done for the year booooooooooooom!

This is the last model I have to paint for 2013, the Jade Mamba Guard for my Ito Clan, a nice addition to the force and im looking forward to trying her out in early 2014 yeah boi!

 

 



Big Boss Nuem time!

The Domini and Degener are done, that's the last of my kickstarter goodies from Tor Gaming:

 

 

Degener

 

 

 

 

Domini

 



Conspiracy of the Cult: Armoured Kairai

This bad boy completes my current line up of Cult models, I have a few more on order but may well have to go "Full Faction" like I have with the Ito as I really like this range and they suit my painting style to a tee!

 



Conspiracy of the Cult: Ikiryo

Just the one today, we had a pretty disturbed night with the girls and they have been grumpy gits all day!

 

Ikiryo

 

 



Conspiracy of the Cult: Kato

No that the Covenant stuff is out the way I can try and finish the last of my unpainted models before the year is out. First up is Kato, The Puppet Master for my growing Cult of Yurei force for Bushido:

 

 



Covenant of Antarctica Commission: Captal Ships and Complete

A big post for today, the six large capital ships of the fleet have are now finished, and with that so is this stage of the project:

 

 

 

 

 

I mentioned that this stage is complete... our club will be undertaking a dystopian wars campaign some point in the new year and Darren has already asked to book in a substantial land force to be painted up :-D



Covenant of Antarctica Commission: Flyers

Small update on this with the Bombers and Medium flyers done, on to the big capital ships:

 

Bombers

 

 

 

 

Icarus Flyers

 



Convenant of Antarctica Commission: 500 models

A productive day off painting, and this also marks 500 models painted for the year yeah boi!

 

Cruisers

 

 

 

Destroyers

 

 

 

Escorts

 

 

 

Frigates

 



Covenant of Antarctica Commission: Small beginnings

As much as I want to keep painting my Cult force for Bushido, I really have to crack on with this job and get it done for next week. Its 69 ships (Inc 26 tokens!), I want to bust out half of it before I can do the last 3 Cult models at least.

Corvettes

 

 

Tiny Flyers

 



 

 

 

These are done to the same scheme and standard as my old CoA fleet, they are add ons to it so must be as close as possible to the originals.



Conspiracy of the Cult: Kairai Milita

Last one for today!

 

 



Conspiracy of the Cult: Kairai Farmer

Next up is the Kairai Farmer:

 

 

 

This is one of the basic zombies for the Cult forces, pretty rubbish at fighting and slow as hell, but with a couple of the other Cult models like Kato and Gengo buffing them up they become unkillable tarpit monsters, capable of delaying and wearing down even the mightiest samurai!



Conspiracy of the Cult: Araka

Work is complete on Araka:

 

 

 

 

 

Araka is a Kairai Oni, a zombie raised by Kato to fight for the Cult! He is one of the few beatsticks in the faction and really stands out on the table, especially against his brother Oni when fighting a Savage Wave force.

 

 

Next up will be some of the human Kairai, they are great sculpts and very quick to get done haha



Conspiracy of the Cult

More Bushido today! I have begun to build up a Cult of Yurei force as my 5th faction, and these are the first pieces painted up over the course of the day:

 

Gengo

 

 

 

 

Kato's Mannequin

 

 

 



 

Taka & Wrath

 

 

 

In addition to these chaps I have the starter set and Araka the Oni, I have these in varing states of preparation but will hopefully be completed tomorrow as I have that dystopian wars commission to crack on with.



Orcs of the Behemoth Commission: Completed

Jobs a good un haha!

Behemoth Mountaineers

 

 

 

Grakkha

 

 

 

Kolgor

 

 

 

Tumakh

 



Confrontation: Orcs of the Behemoth Commission

The four warriors of the wind are up next:

 

 

 

 

 

That's the back of the project broken now, just the mountain warriors and the heroes to go. These are all undercoated, and will hopefully be black washed this evening.

 

 

Its the Bunkermitzu Tournament tomorrow at the club, our first Bushido event! We have 12 players coming along for it and a guest appearance from Toby (GCTs Master T!) to hand out some prizes and hold a QnA so expect a report on that early next week.

 

 

Commission wise there is the last of this Confrontation work to finish and two more booked in; a large Covenant of Antarctica fleet for DW and a massive Ancient Celts project that I am undertaking jointly with Quantum Studios!



Confrontation: Orcs of the Behemoth Commission

Grakku's Tree Spirit is done and dusted, and ive started work on the four Warriors of the Wind who will hopefully be done for Thursday:

 



Confrontation: Orcs of the Behemoth Commission

The four Trackers are done:

 

 

 

 

Six models down, ten to go! I have the Warriors of the Wind an Grakkha's tree spirit undercoated ready to start work on tomorrow.



Confrontation: Orcs of the Behemoth Commission

Second mini completed for this commission, another Behemoth Troll:

 

 

 

 

That's the last of the big lads for this project, its all orcs from now on haha



Firestorm Armada: RSN Fleet Commission

Just a quick one today, here is a RSN fleet that I was tasked with painting for a display on sunday, the two people involved are massive Firestorm nuts and will be presenting nearly 400 ships between them!

 



Spotlight: Lords of War by Black Box Games

Second post of the day! I have been given a copy of "Lords of War: Elves vs lizardmen" by Black Box Games, by my good friend Tom at Cymbeline Games who is looking at stocking the range.

 



Lords of War is a card based system where armies of Dwarves, Orcs, Elves and Lizardmen battle on a map in a game of skill and strategy. They are currently running a kickstarter campaign to produce a third expansion with the Noble Templars pitched against the forces of the Undead:

 

 

I had some time this evening to sit down for a game with my stepson Jacob, he was very looking forward to playing as he loves card games like Munchkin and Smash Up!

 

First off we had a good look through the card packs and I explained to him what all the stats meant and how placement, combat and reinforcement works, and with this over and done with we were ready for a war:

 

 

 

 

 

The two forces are quite evenly matched, the elves have greater missile fire and the lizzies have better close in hitting power. The rules were very straight forward to read and after a few minutes we were both experts haha. Combat is based on the attacks of units exceeding the defence value of the enemy, you can gang up your forces to defeat a powerful foe as long as the arrows (see above photo) point at the enemy unit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Combat is simultaneous so can quickly swing to favour one side with a well placed card! Our game was very close, and Jacob picked up the finer points of strategy and tactics very quickly, I ended up victorious 20 kills to 15 :-D

 

 

We both really like Lords of War and are looking forward to playing it again tomorrow... please back BBG's kickstarter, the link is at the top of the review... or order a copy from Cymbeline Games haha





 



Confrontation: Orcs of the Behemoth Commission

I have been tasked with painting up a range of Behemoth Orcs for Confronation for Dragonfather at the Bunker, these are some pretty awesome mongel style orcs that were amongst the last of the metals produced by Rackham so there aren't masses of them in the range, and the commission is for a warband of 20 models.

 

 

 

 

This is a Behemoth Troll, the first of the range I have completed, he's a pretty badass model and the 2nd troll is well on its way to being completed too.



Spotlight on SphereWars!

A bolt out of the blue today, I have been asked to be an "Army Master" (Demo Monkey) for SphereWars

I got an email from Oscar, one of the founders of the company asking if I would like to be part of the UK team and help promote the system. SphereWars is a Spanish company, and the game is of the same name. It has been out in Spain for over 5yrs with hundreds of players at national events, local tourneys and painting competitions, and is beginning to make a presence over here.

It is a skirmish style fantasy based game, with a model count similar to godslayer and darklands; between 5-20 models depending on the game size!

Models are graded by class such as leader, wizards, elites, regulars, average troops and superiors such as this bad boy below:




This is the Leviathan, the superior for the Scions of Kurgan faction, it is currently the biggest model in the game, but a recent indiegogo campaign has funded the superiors for three other factions (One other alreay existed), and two of those are dreadknignt sized at least!


Like most skirmish games, starter boxes are available for each faction, this is the Newborns one:



Each of these boxes is about 200pts, enough for a small game and to get the basics but more options are opened up with bigger forces as you can include more characters and the elites. The superiors are only available in games of 1000pts+ which stops small games being too unbalanced.


There is a 2 player starter box that comes with the rulebook:




The current rulebook is an A5 softback, but a full hardback is on the way. It is also available for free download here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/725 ... rs_low.pdf


The 5 current factions; the Scions of Kurgan, The Alliance, The Packs of Uresh, The Adepts of Malesur and The Newborn will soon be joined by a 6th force in the Cursed of Malakoy, and are all pretty varied in their abilities and look.

Scions of Kurgan: Children of the Ice God, big monsters with tenticles, hard hitting but few in number
The Alliance: Human medieval forces, displaced following a civil war
Packs of Uresh: Fire demons, lots of little beasties and a few big monsters
Adepts of Malesur: Shape changing creatures, lots of variety with specialised models
Newborn: human faction based on technology, pushed out the alliance from their home land.
Cursed of Malakoy: Undead based, use mind control to force others to fight for them.


This is one of the Adepts, the Moray Eel:





SW are sending me over 2 painted armies, rulebook, dice etc next week so as soon as they arrive I will bring them down the club to try out and put a game on, then on to other local clubs and stores!

 

In addition to the models provided by the company, I will be adding my own personal force so there will be plenty of spherewars updates coming in the near future :-D