I've seen the green light

The (nearly) finished group.

I had an epiphany while painting Orks today: if I don't stop painting them eventually, they'll never get done.  This may seem obvious, but it's a hard step for me to take.  I've mentioned my desire to fully shade and highlight every buckle on a mini in the past, which is a noble goal.  However, it doesn't work so well with a horde army.  As such, I'm about to call this batch done.  I'm considering doing some of the weapon details like the glyphs in red, and they need to be based, but I'm happy enough with the group to call them nearly finished.  They aren't my best work ever, but they'll look fine as a group.  Quantity has a quality all it's own after all.  I hope to get a similarly productive day in tomorrow, though I'm torn between sticking with painting and assembling more boys.  I'll need more shoota boys regardless, and I think I need more slugga boys too.  I'll also need to make up some power klaw nobs and possibly a few special weapons. 

US Battle Report - The First Team Battle

I had a couple new experiences tonight at the FLGS.  We had four show up for US action again, and thanks to a bit of pre-planning we got a team game up and running.  It was my Iron Dwarves and EV's Shroud Mages facing off against Kairaven's Orcs and VAtank's Imperial Humans.  This meant it was also the first time I played in a game where the wind actually mattered.  We played 700 per player, so 1400 a side, which was another first for game size.  We nearly didn't finish before the store closed, but managed to scrape under the wire.  With fleets as big as they were, it shouldn't surprise me that I ended up with a lot of pictures, but it surprised me all the same.  Many pictures, plus all the other battle report goodies, after the break.

Battle Report Backlog part 2: Uncharted Seas ghetto intro

As noted before, I had a bad experience with Battle Fleet Gothic way back when, so I was hesitant on Uncharted Seas. EV liked the idea of the game, so he got the book and we made some paper slip "ships" to try it out. As you can imagine, those are less than beautiful pictures, so I'm passing on posting most of them. A few notes about the game though.

We played it somewhat wrong, but we knew that at the time. The aim was to get a feel for the system in general, so it didn't really matter that we did ramming wrong or didn't know that firepower decreases as a ship is damaged. One thing I learned was not to get your ships too close together. I managed to get a cruiser stuck on the outside of my battleship while both were trying to wheel around and fire at the same target, which meant the cruiser never really did much and there was always the danger of collision. The game ended in spectacular fashion, with a bunch of Orc Frigates ramming a Dwarven Battleship and Cruiser, as such:


You can see why I'm not posting most of these shots. The Orcs didn't fare too well and broke themselves on the Dwarven prows.


The dice are explosions as I was feeling creative. Those were the last two "models" left of both our fleets. We cut down the starter fleet by a cruiser and 3 frigates for time concerns and limited space. I probably posted thoughts on US previously, but a little recap all the same. It's quick to play, the ships are (mostly) maneuverable, and you can roll buckets of dice. The Iron Dwarf Battleship, for instance, has a 16 dice broadside when close to it's prey. That's a fistful of dice. And it has exploding 6s, so you can just keep going. I'd been skeptical going in, but I've rather enjoyed the first two games.

On the painting front, not much has happened lately. I'd been waiting on priming my ID fleet while considering basing, but I've decided to not base them for the time being. I primed them this morning. Humidity was a bit higher than I would have liked, but hopefully it'll be ok. The ships look fine. In theory I'll be painting them up while I watch some baseball in an hour or so, but we'll see how that pans out. I also seem to be going through the Duplicolor awfully fast. It goes on pretty thin and takes a couple passes to coat properly. The level of detail is good, but at what price? I'll see how it works when I actually paint over it and make a final call, but I'm disappointed in how much I've used so far. Granted it's not terribly expensive, but it seems the other sprays I've used to prime have gone a lot further, though I should probably reserve judgement until the can runs out and not just when it starts to feel lighter. Maybe some pics later. I still need to take one of the finished WG Mortar and hopefully I'll have some ships done too.