Convergence reinforcements

No sooner had I finished the previous batch of Convergence models the next wave of reinforcements landed in my lap,

So your looking at conservator heavy vector, a combat heavy chap with armour 20 as long as he's got both his arms however he does have an anger management problem with hand of vengeance.

next up is the optifex directive, three chaps armed with screw drivers and swiss army knives. So maybe not the most effective combat unit but these guys are great for buffing both units and vectors and can repair vectors as well.
One thing I did notice on the repair text is each model can repair so if your feeling lucky and roll low enough you could get 3D6 damage points back add that with the forge masters skill and that's an additional D3 damage points back.

and finally you have the transverse enumerator, a unit attachment that armed with a screw driver and a blow torch, again this guy can repair vectors and gives some great buffs to units that he joins, not sure if you can join a unit give them some buffs then run off and repair a vector though?

so the latest lot in a group shot, the red with the bronze works really well on the robed infantry and do remind me of the mechanicum from 40K

it was totally unintentional however it suits the back ground of the cyriss really well!

So with these lot done its off to sort out the next batch fairly soon, so I've now hit 38 points of cyriss enough to give me a decent game.

Rebooting the Convergence of Cyriss

A while back I painted up the battle box for the Convergence and as usual they collected dust whilst sat on my shelf for quite a few months.

With the vengence release a month or so ago I thought I'd give these guys a run out and see how they played at my local shop, I only managed to get one game in and I enjoyed the way that they play however Spencer didn't ;)

so after watching the original unboxing and tactic's guide on beasts of war I picked up some more bits and bobs and rebooted the convergence,

I picked up another light vector the Diffuser

I managed to snap off one of the arms whilst dry brushing but didn't bother sticking it back on for that "battle worn" look, I also need to touch up the red around the lens.

This is quite a funky support vector and buffs charges against what ever it hits so very useful

I picked up some units as well the first being the Recipocators

these guys have a massive 8 wounds each and if you shield wall them your looking at armour 20, on top of that you can repair these as well!

the other unit was Reductors

Armed with a spray weapon that can't damage your own models due to clear, well that's alright in my book and it happens to be a pow 13 spray as well!

All I need to do is get a few games in so that I can see how they work on the field and then continue the expansion of these guys, I've been quite restrained as I've not bought too much at the same time so that I can paint as I go along which isn't like me at all!

so the Convergance so far,

I've painted the newer stuff slighty differant as I've hightlighted after the wash and I'll be revisiting the orginal battle box to do the same. 

Back into the breach... Painting the Warmachine Convergence of Cyriss starter set.

I picked up the new Cyriss faction book and starter box set with the intention of selling these on however I thought I'd have a flick though the book and was very impressed with the fluff, feel and rules of the army.

As usual the quality of the book is tip top and the artwork within is superb, I'm not a mathhammer player and tend to go with the rule of cool with picking a force, however if your a rules junkie and like all that jazz then Beasts of War have done some cracking vids.

and their is plenty more on the website to wet your whistle, has been quite an eye opener for some of the units and vectors.

So after spending some time at "work" reading the book, I decided to crack open the battle box when I'd managed to escape from the GC & the searing heat of the UK (at the moment!)

This is what I was presented with when I opened the box....

2 bags of bits and no instructions! This starter set is not for the "novice" gamer with the amount of bits. However Privateer Press has done a "how to" for the box set on their website this will save you a lot of headache!, why they didn't just print instructions is beyond me!

so the two bags opened up,

the heavy vector

the 2 light vector and warcaster, place in bag add glue and shake!

I spent some time pondering how to paint these and decided to avoid the silver as I remembered how much of a pain in the ass they grey knight test model I painted, Bronze it was to be!

So after sticking and undercoating I started with tin blitz

Brassy Brass on top of that,

I then added some gunmetal and dry brushed the models, once this was done I did some extreme highlighting with just the silver with a bit of bronze,

a close up of one of the light vectors with the extreme high lights, I could have stopped here but I wanted to tone the models right down and make them less toy like and more "evil" looking

I banged some army painter strong tone and after leaving for about 7 minutes it dried like...

So onto the secondary colour after consulting my muse's Red was the one that was "suggested" as well as teal! After messing about with the red the box set is ready for basing & marking of arc's

so the usual mix of basing done, and the Cyriss are good to go!!

Overall I'm liking the paint scheme dead easy to do, but what do you guys think?

warmachine Ogrun Bokur for hire...

One of the lads at the club was getting rid of some random bits that he had and decided to nab a ogrun bokur off him,

I've liked the model for ages but never really thought about buying one and as I've been on a model spending spree cut back, with the ogrun being the only model that I've bought this month I decided to splash some paint on him and add it to the pledge.

So I decided to subtly convert the bodyguard and I'd spotted a conversion via google images and decided to rip it off!

I replaced the head with a spare khador jack dead and the shield from a man O war kovnik with the khador symbol filed off, a spare sword in a scabbard from a everblight blighted swordsman and he was good to go!

Undercoated and then tin blitz base coat

I decided to give the new GW dry paints ago, and grabbed a necon compound and the contents surprised me a little....

its really solid state but you don't need a great deal on your brush to get a good effect

 so a few moments later one dry brushed chap

I added some basic colour and washed him in army painter dark tone (badab black) and was quite happy with the result, 

I hit him with some seraphim sepia and then re highlighted the leather straps and the blue around his cloak, a touch of red wash for a battle worn look and apart from the base he's done and dusted!

So onto the "pledge" its been a cracking month again...

Bought - 1
Painted - 38
Difference +37

so nearly 9 months into the year and this is where I'm currently standing...

Bought - 203
Painted - 326
Difference +123

lovely! plenty of room for the new chaos stuff that comes out next month!

Celts good as done & lots of goodies....

Well with the final push on the hail Caesar celts the Cav & final warband are good as done just some basing left on the warband and a quick anti-shine coat and they'll be ready to rock and roll!

I need to some kind of unit "filler" any suggestions?

It was only after I PVA'd the sand did I find a few more spare bases! 

Looking a tad shiney! 

but in between the dip drying and all that I decided to crack on with the Bushido models that I picked up at expo a couple of weeks ago,

I don't normally do a work in progress but I'm liking these so far and they are a real joy to paint, 

A close up of one of the Bakemono, a bit of a fucker to put these together but nice detail though,

Zuba, the "standard" colour is going to be red no doubt due to the studio painting there's red and it does kinda remind me of hell boy! but after a bit of wiki-reading about Japanese mythology and all that it turns out that the Oni which what this basically is could be a number of colours and as I was thinking about an Ultra Marine army for 40K I figured I'd better get some practice in doing blues!

But as always some thing distracts me...

So the warmachine Cryx Wraith war engine, its a great looking kit and the detail it real nice, should be a doddle to put together and with the techniques that I've used for my cryx army & death guard shouldn't take too long to paint.

But I'll do that as a "treat" once I've done the Bushio stuff and the other odds and sods that have been on my painting table for far too long!

and whilst I was putting together the Bushio models this caught me eye...

Superb sense of humor that only the English can get away with!

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!