Journeyman Painting Log 8

Ladies first.

Lazy or efficient?  That's the dilemma I have with my painting over the last week or two.  On the one hand I'm cranking out finished minis at a record pace while maintaining a reasonable quality of work.  On the other hand I feel like I'm cheating by leaning on washes as much as I am instead of my usual, laborious process of too many layers.  This is a non-issue, beyond what I'm making of it, as the models look as good as, if not better than, what I've been doing and in far less time.  It's a bit dirtier and not as sharp as, say, the marines I do, but the time investment is in hours instead of days.  That seems like a good trade.  Of course the day that I'm truly satisfied with anything I do is the day we all get splattered by a gigantic comet/Godzilla/Cthulhu, so it's in everyone's best interests that I keep finding nits to pick.

Journeyman Painting Log 7

Two shot magic sniper is tasty.  

More quick work at the painting table today.  Employing the new double wash approach from last time I knocked out Kell Bailoch and Harlan Versh today.  Both feature the same sort of gigantic coat that Reinholdt wears (Kell is little more than the coat). so I made good time with minimal exertion while still painting to a reasonable standard.  Kell's sculpt gets knocked for being tiny like the Black 13th, but I haven't heard any complaints about how ugly it is.  90% of the model is coat and the face is disappointing.  I didn't want to do the coat in 5th Border Legion green since he's a mercenary so I did the pants in green instead.  Hindsight tells me I should have done the hat in green because it will thrust itself forward, unlike the pants which hide in the all-consuming coat.  The stock of the gun would be better with some wood grain too, but I'm happy with the result overall.

Revenge of Tournament Mode

The right way to prepare for a tournament. 

I keep my eyes open for tournaments in the DMV, and this weekend was full of them.  On Sunday Games & Stuff (which I'll get to one of these days) had a tournament going and on Saturday my local group was trying to put together an end of Olgunholt tournament.  Unfortunately that fell through because of the other tournament going on Saturday, a 50 point Steam Roller down at Game Vault, which was already on the calendar for a number of the locals.  We ended up sending five people down south to take the fight to Fredericksburg, the first expedition of the still coalescing Nova Nomads (of which more will undoubtedly be written later, when there's more to write about).  I met up with Danny, Hawk, and Ron in Falls Church, where we all piled in Hawk's car.  After a quick drive down and a stop at Sonic, we got to Game Vault and saw our fifth local, Austin, making his way in.  There were 15 players when we got started, so the TO filled in to even up the numbers.  Fortunately there was another willing organizer who took over the administrative duties (also the same guy whose Skorne I played at Dream Wizards about a month ago, but whose name I still can't manage to hang onto.  Third time is the charm).  I'd played a handful of games over the past week to reacquaint myself with Legion and fielded the following:

Orin Midwinter, Olgunholt Week 2

Ready to persecute your spell casters.

This is a quick one before hockey starts up.  Keeping up the mojo from the Manhunter, I painted up Orin Midwinter today.  Keeping a limited palette meant he was quick to finish, while still keeping an acceptable quality.  I think I may be getting the hang of painting at a decent speed with decent results.  Orin was another 3ish hours with a couple of breaks for drying and the like.  Over the weekend I diagnosed part of my recent struggles to playing with unprimed, and in some cases not fully assembled, models, so I based up a batch of silver troops last night and primed them this morning.  Orin got the nod towards the table mostly because I wanted to paint his robe.  I'm not sure his arc markings are accurate, despite using the same template I always use, and I had no idea what the thing on his chest is supposed to be so I just fudged it with some red and bronze.  The white/cream/bone/whatever parts were a bit of a test run for the upcoming Menites, mostly via a Bleached Bone base and a Gryphonne Sepia wash.  The results were encouraging, though not quite as white as hoped for.  Perhaps next time I'll use a white base instead of bone.

Olgunholt this week was ugly.  Ugly ugly ugly.  I went 0-3.  The highlights included Killboxing myself, getting Beast 09 thrown on top of eSorscha, and moving my War Dog off an objective via Counter-Charge/Return to give my opponent an uncontested scenario win.  Not my proudest moments.  Unsurprisingly there are no pictures.  This week I plan to put up a fight, play for scenario instead of caster kill, and (most importantly) not Killbox myself.

Olgunholt League Week 1

The second seasonal league of the year, Olgunholt, got started this week.  It is at least partially to blame for the lack of posts around here recently.  I managed to get my three games for the week in, though they were spread across three days.  Combine with playoff hockey and things get interesting, so interesting that I don't have many pictures.  Let's not dwell on unpleasantness though, there's some texting to do.

This "Week" in the Gnarls League, Part 5

Not this Death Race (thank Jebus).

As entertaining as the Gnarls league was, by the end of last week I was feeling a little crisp around the edges after all that gaming.  What better way to cap that off than with a tournament?  The format was simple: 25 points, single list, all rounds use the Overrun scenario.  Apparently this is a "Death Race" format.  Looking back on the tournament, the name is fitting.  With 27 minute death clocks (54 minutes total for the game at most) and a scenario that forces you to the center, things got hot and heavy with a quickness.  It was an entertaining setup.

Coming up with a 25 point list was more challenging than I expected.  After getting used to playing at 50 points, cutting my list in half required some tough compromises.  While I could manage to run a tier list at 25 points the resulting list (Typhon, Seraph, 3 Shredders, 2 Shepherds, 2 Forsaken) was too heavy on support pieces (which I count the Shredders as) and too light on heavy hitters.  (I think of Typhon as heavy support instead of a heavy hitter, so the list is all support and no hammer.)  My second try was a little better (2 Carnis, 3 Shredders, 2 Forsaken), but there were two big problems: first I had one Carnivean too many, second I had no Seraph (and therefore no Slipstream).  Slipstream is too versatile to leave behind, so I went back to the drawing board.  Leaving behind the tier list I've come to love so much, my third attempt was much better: 2 Scytheans, a Seraph, a Shredder, and a Forsaken.  With both Slipstream and Tenacity I felt better about this list, but finally decided to trade in the Shredder to upgrade a Scythean to a Carnivean.  My final list was thus: