Retribution Chimera & Malifaux Crew

So I managed to get a third game of warmachine in last week using the Retribution against Kurt, now Kurt is one of these guys who keeps on smiling no matter how much smack down you give him, but it was to be Kurts night with his trollblood gunline doing some very sneaky shooting (but quite clever) and my caster once more rolling over and playing dead!

The game was a good laugh and I discovered that dawnguard Invictors are pretty tasty and once there stuck together I'll be putting them on the painting table to sit there for a couple of weeks and hopefully the paint fairy will sprinkle some magic dust on them! I.e. if I have the time and can be arsed!! (I've picked up both call of duty & deadrising 2 so xbox time has gone through the roof!)

 But onto the Chimera.....
 
The colour scheme was a bit of a cross between the "challenge Ant" that Spencer gave me as well as the while that I painted on the caster, in layman terms its a right ball ache however it does look sweet on the table and once the whole lot is done it's gonna look mint!

 

Its a fairly plain scheme which gives the models the animi look, they kinda remind me of the suit things out of appleseed,

So how does it fair on the tabletop?

Well points cost its the most expensive out of the three light warjacks that Retribution can field at the moment, however it is one of only two jacks that carry an arc node, now as a cryx player arc nodes are my bread and butter but with the Retribution, I'm still to find a happy medium with the arc node and offensive spells, but that'll come with time.

The thing that I like about the Retribution jacks as a whole is that you get forcefield's with each jack and the Chimera rolls in with 6, the other cool things that come with the jack is Apparition, the important bit on the description is that the model is placed, so according to the rule lawyers down the shop it's exempt from free strikes, but you do have to be completely within the 2" so basically you get to jump outta the way and carry on rocking!

the other little trick is the Phantasmal Field, basically +1 Def for each point of focus against ranged & magic attacks, but that would give you a defence of 15 if you stacked it to the max, but the focus could be spent else where so not too sure how much of a benefit you'd get out of this skill,

The actual hitting power of the jack is pretty naff, ok so you can combo attack for a P+S 20 attack which isn't to be sniffed at or make full use of the two open fists and long bomb your opponent around the board.

So over all "ok" is the way to describe the Chimera I've still alot of games to get under my belt so I can suss out how the model fits in with my plan and if it actually deserves a place in the army!!

Now on to the Malifaux crew, I've had these since April when I went to Salute but havn't really done much with them, I tried a game with Chris but that didn't really go too well as neither of us really knew the rules so was a bit slow to say the least, but recently I've been told by one of the other guys that the chaps over at wargames inc are playing it quite a lot so I did plan to go over there and get some dice time in, but other things came up so didn't make it, hopefully next week I'll get there and see what I can pick up,

But I did manage to get the crew painted, all in one day which I was happy with, over all the models are fairly easy to paint but are a little delicate but as I'm used to warmachine & 40K stuff these are actually in scale! I wanted to keep the actual scheme fairly simple but also quite dark as they are "bad guys"

Overall I'm quite happy with these as tabletop standard and it nice for something differant to paint I might get some more bits and bobs depending on how I get on with the rules system, but as I'm having a clearout I don't need anymore stuff to be honest!

Retribution Mage hunter strike force... are they really that dirty??

Well... the painting has taken a bit of a back burner to say the least!

On a positive note I've managed to get a unit of mage hunter strike force finished

The big question is are they really as good as people make them out to be??

So far I've played 2 games with the retribution and when the guys I normally play against find out that I'm trying out the new project its meet with moans and groans of the usual cheese which makes me smile ;)

The first game against Spencer I'll be honest I had no idea how to use them and it was tight to say the least, I sent the mage hunter group after Spencer's warcaster and only just failed to take him out.

Now the second game was against Stef's troll's, with the new Trollblood army book out I wasn't looking forward to this game as it was going to be a tough one! Stef didn't disappoint me and promptly stomped all over me! (I did make a schoolboy error at one point but the less said about that the better!!) however I sent the mage hunters after his warlock and once more they failed to do the job that was expected of them.



Breaking down the unit into the basic areas...

Movement:

So they have stealth, pathfinder and advanced deployment with the upgrade which makes them nice and fast and the threat range is very impressive.

Shooting:

fairly good range, if you use a certain caster and get snipe on them then they border on the insane! Arcane assassin is nice and with that skill it appears that they are warcaster/warlock killers but then they also have jack hunter giving you 3D6 against warjacks, include the unit upgrade and you ignore LOS, so far all very impressive, but then you look at the actual power of the ranged weapon and its only 10... now against anything above armour 18ish then your going to need some above average rolls to score more than 3 to 4 damage points sometimes easier said than done!

Melee:

For what ever reason the unit comes with combined melee attack? again the arcane assassin & jack hunter skills can be used in combat but with a power + strength of 9 I don't quite "get it" either stand 12 inches away and shoot like a nutter or run up and get a +7 to hit and damage with one attack (minimum size unit and commander) assuming you can get all 7 into melee range of the target.  

so final thoughts??

Against warmachine armies they do have there uses, aka jack hunter however as I found out to my cost against hordes they are "ok" maybe I expect too much of the unit? and should use them more as a "sausage" unit? I've had the usual suspects trying to tell me what to use but I like to find my own way as we all have a differant playing style.

now the question is turned over to you.... would you agree with what I said or am I missing something?

Any how I'm working on one of the retribution light jacks to see if the technique that I tried on my caster works on the bigger models, so far its looking quite good but I'll try and get this finished sooner rather than later, and once its done I'll break down the model from a gaming point of view as I enjoyed disecting the mage hunters gave me some food for thought!

More Skorne & something a little differant....

Alrighty!

So with my new found passion for Skorne the 35 point force is coming along nicely, this week I've managed to get the pain givers and the pain giver grand master flash turntable tormentor done as well , I slipped the second agoniser as well and I'm about half way though the warlock Rasheth aka FB.

The pictures are a little poor this week as one of my bulbs went and I've not had the chance to pick another one up yet, but one with the shots

so the grandmaster flash... 

really enjoyed painting this model, nice and simple and the alternative colour scheme works really well on it,

basic pain giver unit, the red has come out a bit LOUD! but in real life they look pretty good to me!

The second agoniser, Ross mentioned the other day how the first one looked "wrong" not in a painting sense but as in an abused why, well that's mission accomplished! ;)

so this is whats left....  the Cyclops's are my original test models ;)

I'm waiting on the Crocmen to turn up and once I've a few games under my belt then I'll increase to 50 points, but I'm really tempted by the immortals, the guardians and the new special guy though....

now the something different is to do with a game that Dave wants to play, he sent me a text a while back seeing if I'd fancy playing Dr Who, now I'll be honest I was a bit humm... "ok" at first but after a little thinking I thought bugger to it lets give it a crack.

Now it turns out that you can have UNIT which is basically normal military guys, I then remembered that I've some 28mm modern Russians kicking about along with BMP so after a bit of digging I found them and decided to crack on with what I've got,

Well it turns out I've more than I remember so Coops is bring some bases for me (metal 25mm penny washers) so that I can get the rest sorted,

So these are from the assault group and are the MVD with aksu 74's but I'll just use them as an urban assault group, spetnaz or what ever they look cool and that's good enough for me,

Painting these guys was a step into the unknown as I've only done "real" stuff before in the form of flames of war and that was 15mm so pretty easy to get it looking nice, these being 28mm I just winged it really and I'm happy with the finished result,

now previously I've stated that I'm going to be cutting back on the systems that I play etc... well that's gone out the bloody window already!!

A new chap has come down the club asking for play testers for his home grown rules system, in 6mm! so epic scale now I've had a mooch about and the models are bloody cool! and yep I've claimed the Russians already!

so once I've got the shopping list from the rest of the guys it shouldn't be long before loads of little T90's are on the painting table!

Hordes Skorne & a blast from the past!

Its been a bit of a slow month as I've not really painted much (well for me) I had a couple of games of warmachine last week and got my ass royally handed to me, which has only made me more determined to break out the "Inner Anton" and get my game face on,

I'm stepping away from the cryx for a bit as I've become a bit bored of them and going to focus on my skorne, now I've not really played as a horde player plenty of time against them so it should be something that I can look forward to and hopefully enjoy and try and win a few games!

so I'm going to run with the following 35 point list for a couple of games to see how I get on with them, now the idea was planted in my head by a fellow warmachine player who has a knack of coming up with filthy lists...

"chain gang tier list" 35 points

Dominar Rasheth +5 warbeast points
Bronzeback titan +9 (-1 for tier one benefit)
Titan Gladiator  +7 (-1 for tier one benefit)
Titan Gladiator  +7 (-1 for tier one benefit)

Agonizer x2
Paingiver beast handlers (4 man unit)
Paingiver task master
Gatorman Posse (3 man unit)
Totem Hunter (it wasn't until stef asked if I could have a totem hunter in the list did I check! well I can have units but not solo's, so I've 3 points spare!)

so its about as subtle as a brick in a handbag the chain gang theme really pays off at 35 points with 3 titans! both agonizers fully loaded with fury and an extra 2" deployment with the three titans, the gatormen get +2" movement on there first turn and the totem hunter there for a laugh! see above!

so I suppose the question is what would you do for a 35 point skorne list??

so I painted these guys up that I've had for a while is the best way to describe it! the colour scheme was suggested to me by Spencer a while back and I really like the contrast rather than the usual bright red of the skorne,

and I also decided to paint an agonizer...

I wanted the model to look well abused and this is where the washes really came in useful with giving it a grimey look and bloodied as well...


The Blast from the past is a case that I found whilst decorating the nursery.....

now these boys are really really old! working it out via the medium of ex girlfriends/nutters I'm guessing at about 8-9 years old? I remember I was working for GW when I had these and the Phat cats club was at the original venue. I suppose these will come out if and when the necrons get a revamp....

Month end update July and the great debate....

Hi folks,

well another month is coming to an end and its time for the update, I managed to get a couple of sneaky bonejacks painted up that I picked up on Tuesday and popped them in the local shop on Thursday as they came out this week, I used to work for the "evil empire" a long time ago and painted new releases give people an idea than a picture on a box or a computer screen, in this case the size differance between the old school versions and what will become the "norm"

So the two ripjaws...

and the differance in size

quite a big differance personally I do like the new resin one though, good crisp detail, and dead easy to put togeather!

now the big debate is do you prefer the old or the new??  I like the new myself!

however.... I've just spotted these little monkeys....

Apart from woohoo! these are going to be awsome for my chaos/blacktemplars!! 

So onto the "pledge"

it been another tiptop month with the paint-a-thon at spencers place at the start or the month,

Bought: 31 (most of those black templar bits)
Painted : 61
Differance: +30! not bad at all!

And normal service is resumed.....

Alrighty so my back is back on track thanks to copus amounts of pain killers and recommended regular movement..

So I decided to have a dance round a field at the weekend to various bands and ended with the prodigy blowing the place away! 

So if you loooveeee the prodigy then have a gander at this Clicky Click it'll make your hairs on your back of your neck stand on end!


So now you've had a dance around your room on with the plasic crack!

I've been a busy busy man chipping away at the last remaining orcs & goblins for the fantasty army that is yet to be played with!

So some boar boys, really nice models to paint,

And the view that I'll see!

now the spider riders where a bit of a playabout I've done most of the orc & goblin army quite dark and evil looking but for these guys I figured something a little differant was needed,

now the colours for the spider riders I've painted for some pratice and overall I'm happy with the way that they have come out,

Now Chris  popped me a text the other week asking if I fancied playing some advanced space crusade, and as I've never played it I decided to give it a pop, now I was asked to bring my chaos down so that we could proxy them as normal marines, but I realised that I actually don't have a non-legion chaos marine squad!

So after a little thinking I remembered I obtained a shag load of prebuit emporers children armed with bolters and other odds and sods, so started banging some paint on those, all I've left to do is the plasma coils on the plasma pistols and gun, and the eyes,

I picked up some ciematic effects from armourcast a while back and decided to pop it onto one of the normal marines and I like it looks quite cool but not too stupid!

Now recently a friend of mine that I've known for a while is slowly becoming intrested in the hobby and actually picked up some bits and bobs for hordes, the only previous painting that Jay has done was for flames of war (15mm WW2) and it wasn't a massive amount and was a bit overwelmed with the 28mm scale and how to paint it etc..

So I was asked to help/coach him in painting, so the first model that he decided to buy was a blitzer and a bouncer from the trollblood range, the blitzer was a bugger to put togeather, but it wasn't long before he was finished....

so most people start on a "normal" size model but not Jay dives in feet first with a huge monster! now I've always been shite at doing skin, so most of the skin was playing about and seeing what Jay liked,

now the bouncer is my eyes is much better, the skin tones and highlighting look good and the metal looks pretty nifty too, last night when Jay poped over to the shop he'd picked up some fell blades and was cracking on with them without any guidance from myself which was good, hell he'd even picked up some brushes and extra paint so that he could do them at home!

A far cry from when I told him that I "played with toy soldiers" with him giggling taking the piss and the like!! all I need him to do is pick up a rule book and the conversion to the dark side will be complete my dark apprentice!

So the question to the masses is...

Looking at what I've shown Jay so far what would be the next step in improving his actual skill or technique?

Challange Ant..... Menoth - Done?

Alrighty so for some reason I wanted to get this Menoth monkey cranked out, was it the man points that I'd gain from the guys or the burning in my eyes everytime I looked at the model??

Ok so undercoated black as most or the model is non white and I don't have any white spray ;)

So I started with boltgun metal on the chainmail bits and banged some black ink on it

Foundation red for the cloak bits
 

Scab red over that and blood red to high light then red ink over that and then brassy brass on the bits that would become gold

So then gold over the brass and gryphonne sepia was to put some depth onto the gold, then dheneb stone for the white undercoat and bleached bone got me to this point

So the model was going fairly smoothly until I hit the white...

So the first coat,

and then two more thin coats later, I decided enough was enough, I watered down some gryphonne sepia and put that on the edges of the armour,

So over all not too bad, the white is "ok" I'd maybe go with a more bleached bone look aka deathwing type white.

What do you think? how would you paint the above?