Updates! Infinity! Rum and Bones! Etc.!

Hello fellow plastic crack addicts!

This weekend proved to be very eventful in the gaming department, as well as a few other distractions.

On Saturday I managed to play a pick up game of Infinity with my buddy Reuben. Although we had planned on playing Malifaux, he didn't have a deck of Fate Cards and I completely forgot to bring spares of useful things like that. What is the point of having 5 Fate Decks if I don't bring them along for new players?!

Luckily I did bring my Infinity models as a back up, and Reuben already has a sweet set up at Toxic City Comics - the store we met up at - so we decided to play a small 185 point game using my Yu Jing against his Nomads. The scenario revolved around capturing the center building over 3 turns. Usually I brush up on my rules before playing a game I'm not as experienced with, but this one caught me off guard so I was extremely rusty on my rules and abilities.

My Shinobu's hidden deployment and Superior Infiltration

I spread my force out to cover a few crucial lanes while he concentrated most of his troops in the center. I had a Guilang sniper on a central roof and my Hsien leader on another roof nearby, while he had a sniper in a corner building. In hindsight it was a terrible place to put my leader with no cover, but I overestimated his staying power.

The first turn he killed my Hsien in one shot using Double Action ammunition, which is brutal stuff to a heavy infantry. I spent the rest of the turn using my Shaolin Monks to throw smoke and advance while creeping up my remaining forces. Our snipers shot back and forth, and I eventually lost him as well.

Both hidden deployments revealed!

When I managed to get close to the building he revealed his Spektr, and I countered by revealing my Shinobu! I felt bad though, since I forgot to roll my Superior Infiltration during deployment so he didn't know I put her in his half of the table. Even though I rolled it when the mistake was brought up and passed, it's still crucial info that your opponent should have at the beginning. 

I managed to miss my surprise attack with the Combi Rifle. Instead of keeping Shinobu on the Spektr I had my Monks and Celestial Guard dispatch the Spektr, and Shinobu went after the Mobile Brigada.

Time to Slice and Dice!

She is just a beast in melee. She killed the MB in one fell swoop, but he reacted with a flame template that killed her back. Due to rustiness, I had completely forgot about having a high critical chance along with sending him straight to the Dead state, but it wasn't a big difference. I had managed to capture the building with my remaining forces and snatch the victory. It was a fun game, I'll definitely play more of it.

Infinity's rules are quite dense, however. A lot of rules will not pertain to your particular game but is necessary to know in case that it does come up. It also results in a lot of important abilities not being used correctly or at all. The game's learning curve is extremely harsh, even for gamers with experience like myself. The most helpful thing I've come across is bringing your laptop with the rules on it, that way you can search for rules much faster than using your phone like I had to for this game. It's also much faster than searching the book itself, and you can have access to the Wiki as well.

Yarrrrrrgh!

Yesterday I had a chance to play a new game I have called Rum and Bones. It's a pirate themed board game based on Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas (MOBAs) like League of Legends. I'm a fan of MOBAs, and play Smite almost every day on my computer. I was extremely intrigued by a board game version of the popular computer game genre, especially since the models are pretty nice.

Overall I really loved the game. It's a Cool Mini Or Not game, so you're getting tons of card and plastic for the price and is pretty complete out of the box. The rules are extremely easy to grasp, after a few turns you're swimming along at a fast pace and can understand the overall goal well enough. Strategies formed very quickly and the game would swing back and forth leaving no impression of being steamrolled. This is a very important point for me, as I thought that it may snowball once you start racking up Objectives.

We got a few rules wrong, namely how you respawn heroes and the Sea Dragon. We were initially not counting the Dead Man's Coins toward respawning limits and had heroes coming back onto the field way too fast, this was making a pretty big stalemate as there weren't any consequences to throwing heroes out to die. Once we corrected this it proved to ensure caution and consequence when throwing your heroes out there. It's a really fun game that you should go out and try, even if you're not a computer gamer used to the genre!

In other news there was a recent reveal at Fantasy Flight games about RuneWars Miniatures. This really piqued my interest as I absolutely love Fantasy Flight games (what can I say, I'm a sucker for cardboard tokens and tiny cards). This game taps into my old love of Rank and Flank Warhammer Fantasy games.

Not only is it a callback to blocks of infantry and monsters, but it modernizes the game by utilizing their Maneuver Dials from X Wing miniatures. This may be a divisive point for some, as I know a few puritans who don't like fidgety tools for game enhancement. Their opinion carries weight of course, as I know that it's a turn off for a certain type of gamer really, just like how tons of rules instantly turn me off a game but works for others.

One of the main reasons I'm a fan of FFG is that they integrate gaming devices to ease game play. With X Wing they used bases that had notches to hold their movement templates. In WHFRPG they used small cards to showcase talents and abilities, which almost eliminates looking at the rule book entirely. Granted this does create a cluttered table with all their extra bits, but I honestly prefer it.

In this game they have notched/interlocking block bases. While not the prettiest solution, this does create a great amount of potential in game aids. One, units can lock onto each other. This isn't a necessary thing, as more often than not it's probably easier to just slide them into each other rather than locking them. But if you look at their turning aid it shows that it locks into the side of the base and precisely guides the wheeling of the unit. In the old WHFB games it was pretty much an inaccurate affair to wheel units unless you got a third party widget for wheel maneuvers. I've encountered plenty of people who purposely got additional movement from shady wheel practices, but this extra aid helps eliminate it as much as possible. I've yet to see movement disputes in X Wing due to foresight in mechanics like this.

The addition of the dials creates an interesting mechanic, as you'll have to plan and anticipate moves. This creates a lot of interesting turns in X Wing, but it's doubly so in this game as one dial decides your unit's action while the other modify's it, creating a lot of possibilities in your choice. I find this pretty invigorating but can see it generating frowns from the old school gamers who don't like frivolous additions like this. We'll have to see if it's successful, but I'm pretty motivated to try it out one day.

Another point of division may be its proprietary dice. For some reason special dice in a game is a huge turn off for a lot of gamers. I don't agree, as it's only proven to be a problem to me when dice are out of print, but surely solutions can be made with a printer and label sheets.

It doesn't hurt to have sweet models that bring back style nostalgia!

We'll have to wait to see if it's a good game, as in my experience FFG can be hit or miss. Lately they've had very impressive games, as I love Descent and X Wing is pretty smooth. Their rules can be pretty clunky in writing and implementation at times, but they tend to hit it out the park with their simpler rules sets.

That's it for now, I unfortunately do not have any painting updates. I recently got an electronic drum set for myself as a birthday gift (lol) and haven't spent much free time painting. The wife is extremely thankful that I can use headphones with this!

Infinity: Shinobu Kitsune Complete!

So the other day I finished the Shinobu and am pretty pleased with the results. I changed the shoulder plates and it stands out much better, and I touched up a few NMM spots on the arms. I also added the green OSL glow to the forearm and sword, which the sword turned out to be a pretty difficult task as I got the spray all over her torso and had to retouch it all up.

I decided against adding the rust to the base as I am a lazy guy lol.

Let me know what you think!

Infinity: Shinobu Kitsune WIP

Howdy Howdy!

So over the weekend I decided to work a bit on one of my absolute favorite sculpts for Infinity: the Shinobu Kitsune for Yu Jing. Lately I've felt a bit stagnant on Malifaux models and needed a change of pace. My friend Reuben has been getting back into Infinity and building up the local community, so I was easily coerced into brushing on some paint for this gal (by coerced, I mean only mentioning Infinity made my brain go oooh shinies).

I was taking a look at my Infinity models and deciding which one deserved some treatment. I decided on this one, even though I figured she'd be a real challenge and easy to mess up, but she is the one I'm most excited to use on the tabletop and I started the work.

I took some textured plasticard that I already had cut into a circle a long time ago and cut it in half. I also used plain plasticard and a strip of thicker card and used them to cover up the slot in the base. I had to keep the tab on her foot as she has a tiny contact point where her toes are, as I am too lazy to figure out another solution or attempt pinning such a small area.

Through some clever anglesI feel I've done a decent attempt of covering up the slot while preventing it from being obvious as a lazy cover up. This part took me way longer than I had anticipated, as shaping the card to be round was very difficult with just a hobby knife - again, too lazy to get sand paper from the store. I left part of it as bare base as proof of said laziness.

The next day I primed the model black. I airbrushed a minimal amount on the model, only using Black/Sombre Grey on her pants. She's very tiny, and I wasn't too confident on using the airbrush for the NMM grey for her torso and arms. I'm sure I could do it, but I wanted a dark metal color and that required more control via brush. Eventually I plan on practicing my airbrush technique with a lower psi than normal, as right now I'm used to about 40psi. In his painting book Angel Giraldez, the Infinity god, mentions he uses 30psi and is able to get very thin consistent layers so I figured that I should try that out.

After spraying the pants lightly I sprayed the entire base black, then did the riveted section with Grey/White. I then mixed a light green and light blue 50/50 and sprayed the other half quickly. After black lining and edge highlighting you get what you see.

I then started working on the pants, which was extremely challenging to say the least. I already struggled with a similar texture before with the Oniwaban with disappointing results, so I tried something new. Painting black is one of my weaknesses, as it's hard to do without making it look grey for me. Although I feel they look good, it still doesn't read as black to me and some parts are very sketchy and inconsistent. I also didn't realize that I didn't have good lighting while I painted in the living room, so it affected how I painted. I may touch it up later on but I didn't want to stay hung up on working the pants.

Here I just put some basecoats on the face, hair and armor. For the face I used Reaper Tanned Skin Shadow. The hair was a 50/50 mix of Wolf and Somber Grey. The armor was 50/50 Cold Grey/Black.

Here it is with better light from the kitchen, which was when I realized I should have painted there lol. Here is where you can see more of the inconsistencies in the pants.

Here is how she stands as of now. I started on the NMM for her legs, torso and arms using Black/Cold Grey/White. I painted on Wolf Grey/White for the hair with a glaze of Reaper Blue (can't remember which one) with a limited controlled glaze of GW Nuln Oil for shading. I also painted the face using Reaper Golden Skin Shade/Mid/Highlight with a bit of white for the brightest areas, and used the Reaper Blue color to shade the eyes.

There are some areas that I like and some I need to fix. The plates on her shoulders get lost on the model as they're just black, so I plan on just painting them the same NMM as the rest of her armor. I also mentioned earlier how I need to clean up the pants as well, as it just seems messy to me. I'm particularly happy with how the face and hair came out, especially considering I spent less than five minutes on the face and hair is generally a weak area in my experience. I also like how her hip area and calf turned out, I wish I was as consistent with her arms but they're so darn tiny.

So far it's been a great exercise in restraint for me. For everything except the face I only used two palettes, and it's all been a variation of grey. Her hair and pants are the same colors, just different mixes of Sombre Grey and Wolf Grey. The rest of her is different variations of Cold Grey, Black and White with attention to values. Like the Oniwaban, I wanted to keep her sort of monochromatic with the only change of color coming from her sword, which is something I've got to paint when I'm done with the rest of the model. I'm also debating if I should put rust on the base for variation using pigments, I just don't want to mess up the work I've already done.

Hopefully I can finish her this week and move on to another Infinity model. In the small list I made to play against Reuben I needed 4 Shaolin Monks and 2 Celestial Guards, I may do the Guards next - or most likely my painting ADD will kick in and I'll move onto something completely unrelated. Until next time, let me know what you think or if there are any criticisms!

Oniwaban WIP

Here's a WIP I have going for Infinity, the Oniwaban:

I kept it mostly monochromatic with the only deviating color of green on the sword and eyes. The armor on the arms, legs and hands were all a mix of Vallejo dark and light grays airbrushed on, then lined with black ink and edged with light grey and mixed in white gradually. I'm not too fond of how the pants turned out, black cloth has always been my bane. When I try to airbrush the color on it always turns out too gray. When I try to brush it on it doesn't look right. I ended up brushing it on, then the mix seemed way out of whack, so I knocked it back with a heavy black wash and said screw the rest, it's passable.

The green is an interesting story. Since I don't have many primary colors for airbrush and didn't feel like trying to thin out my GW for airbrush I just found my blue and yellow VMA paints. Yellow mixed with blue is green, right? Well, it is an extremely dark green, even with a bright yellow. I ended up wasting a lot of paint trying to get the mix right. It took a hell of a lot of yellow to make a regular green like snot green, then I lightened it for the highlights by adding white. The last highlight was almost all white with a small bit of the original mix.

I've still got the base to paint, along with his accessories like the grenades and pistol/case and glowing forearm thingy. But I've liked the results so far so much I wanted to post my progress.

I'll keep you posted on further painting updates!

Updates

So, my last entry was in mid August and now it is mid October. In between those times work had hit pretty hard, so a lot of side projects were put on hold, including upkeeping the challenge of a hobby item a week. I had, however, accomplished a few things here and there and even attended a local steamroller tournament.

This particular steamroller actually had prize support for best painted model and army, so I decided that instead of trying to win with my Mercs I'll try to take best painted with my Trolls - who do terribly in SRs due to their design being based solely on attrition with my brick and have no way of winning by scenario short of a single zone scenario. My beast list is the opposite focusing solely on killy killy stuff, but is very prone to assassination with such a squishy caster and I tend to overextend myself with it. I did end up winning both painting awards, but my games weren't so successful.

Well, I ended up playing a guy I faced before doing the exact same lists we played against each other and the exact same scenario. Instead of getting pulverized like I did before I actually came very close to winning, but I timed myself out. I've learned quite a bit between our last bout and even survived an assassination attempt by Molik Karn, which is quite a feat. Lesson of the game: don't waste time, and avoid assassination attempts with too many moving parts. Things I learned and applied from last time: don't overestimate units, both mine and his; it's okay to hold onto your feat until turn 4 sometimes - better to use it late when it's more useful than early and less useful, even if you have less units to benefit from it. He actually forgot I still had it by then, which came to my benefit. But really it was useless to use it the turn he popped his feat since they had a minimum defense of 16s around the board and tough.

Due to the loss the second game was much easier. I played against a beginner Khador using a Conquest and two units of Man-o-Wars. I decided to use my Doom/Mulg list as to not lock my last list in, plus Mulg can easily dispatch the Conquest on his own. The plan worked and Mulg killed it in one turn (although it used all his resources) and the Long Riders tied up the Manowars easily.

The last game was against a Cryx player. My trolls have an extremely hard time going against any Cryx players. When I first started playing in Mk I my meta was only my friends, which meant I never played against Cryx or even in tournaments. I never had to deal with Incorporeal or debuffs that much. So I only bought models that worked for the brick. Once into Mk II I lost interest in the Trolls and hadn't wanted to fill these weaknesses out since I already had a painted force. Thus Cryx, even mediocre lists, dominate my trolls. I'm not proud, but hey at least they look pretty when they die.

Because of my limitations to using my painted force I didn't do so well my third game in. Again my time became an issue, so it's definitely something I need to work on. Because I couldn't manage my time I didn't utilize a trample when I needed to and costed me the game. I could have trampled over and assassinated the caster, least of all been out of range of the unit causing me not to be able to heal or be healed. Mulg could have gotten the win, but I played a bit too conservative with him. Lesson learned: go for the win if it's a clear shot, learn to utilize the clock.

Here are some pics:

I actually started painting Mulg for the steamroller and utilized the challenge to motivate me. He ended up being mostly painted - I'd say about 75% - in time for the steamroller. Even though he wasn't finished he was the model I put up for best painted and won. I hadn't touched him since, being that he's such an overwhelming task with all the details. At least he's tabletop standard.

In the meantime I also got a coworker into Malifaux and played a demo game with him. He ended up buying the Pandora box and a Teddy - which made me jealous as I've always wanted to play as them. I have waaaay too many models as it is however and am completely fine with not having that crew. I already have several crews and have only played a handful of games so far.

I can't wait until that Dreamer box comes out, although I just want to paint Lord Chompy Bits. I've already got so many damn models I need to stop. I bought the Som'er Teeth Jones box and the University of Transmortis box and I still haven't even painted one crew yet.

And once I started accruing all this stuff I got the Hobby ADD again - I've decided to work on Infinity!

So I began by putting together some terrain about a week or two ago. I did all of it so far from foamboard. I have limited experience with it only through my papercraft terrain which was never completed (it is extremely time consuming to do properly). However, I've foraged through numerous tutorials and resources and felt comfortable diving right in. Let me tell you - building terrain is awesome, and foamboard is the bee's knees.

Here's a WIP:

It's not much to look at right now (it is a WIP after all) but you can see the general idea. I used miter cuts to hide a lot of the joins and also cut the perimeter at the base board to make it stable as well as hide joins. The result is spectacular and have since added more details. Once I finish the basic part I will take more WIP pictures to show you everything up until painting, and that's when this thing is really going to shine.

I haven't had this much fun with the hobby in a long time! I always said the one part I hate most is the modelling portion. I love the playing, and I love the painting even more, but I hate the gluing, the filing, the pinning, all the modeling parts. It's the reason why I almost never convert, or make elaborate bases, and why a lot of my models never get put together or painted. It's the opposite for terrain. It gets me motivated and utilizes my creativity much more and just gets me imagining like a kid again. With what I've started I've realized just what's possible, and pinterest definitely fuels the fire.

You'll see exactly what I'm talking about once I get finished with this piece.

I also decided to put all the models I have purchased over time for Infinity. I put together every box and blister I own for Infinity short of the O-Yoroi pilot from the bootleg series, since that's really just a vanity model. I've decided to get going on them and paint them to a tabletop standard, rather than the weeks-long session I did on the first model I painted. We'll see if that happens...

Anyway, that's what I have. Hopefully I'll have more pics of the terrain and what I'm going for next!

Pics or it didn't happen!

I completely forgot to update this thing!

I've actually kept myself very busy for wargaming.

Here's a commission painting for a friend of mine:

Not too shabby for my first airbrushed model. I'm also painting the rest of his army like this, maybe a bit more of the bright red highlight since I didn't like how the flag and right shoulder came out compared to the left shoulder. The shield and left shoulder seem a lot more vibrant and make that yellow just pop!

Now here are more pictures I took this morning. I painted this Hsien a couple months back:

This was my first real attempt at non-metallic metal, and I think I did okay. I felt the sword hit the mark but I missed with the gun. This was also my first attempt at using a bright yellow, and I got excited when I figured out the mix. I can't believe I never used oranges in my yellows - I smacked my forehead out of sheer stupidity when I mixed the two. I had always used browns in my yellows, which is nice but oranges make it extremely vibrant, especially when next to a darker tone. My base was a huge disappointment, however, but since I already tried numerous schemes I settled on a rust that at minimum makes you focus on the model and provides contrast.

Here is a picture of my favorite Trollblood caster and the bane of many armies Madrak Ironhide:

I painted him way back in December of 2012. This was my first attempt at Object Source Lighting just around the eyes. It was also my first attempt at a tartan design wrapped around him. I was disappointed with the way the green came out, but I'm not bothered enough to even think about retrying the attempt on him. I also used an old technique on the brass, but I may touch it up again to make the metal pop.

This was also my first model that I used Lahmian Medium (I think it's just like any mixing medium) for shading and highlighting. Once I discovered this tool it completely changed the way I paint and has created much smoother blends. I used to do a mix of layering and extreme highlighting - which makes your models a little above tabletop standards but isn't quite as impressive. I used to do such extreme changes to show shading and highlighting that it would be almost black as the shade, then layer a bright basecoat, then layer an almost white tone of the base color then extreme highlight white - this made quite a shocking look, but from the distance between standing and the table it attracted a lot of attention. Upon closer inspection, however, most people became unimpressed (well, I became unimpressed. I am my biggest critic after all!).

I will post more updates soon (hopefully). I've not been painting as much since I went on a crazy shopping spree and have since bought enough for 2 troll armies, 2 Yu Jing armies, and a Mercenary army! Goodness me, I need to just stop buying and start finishing! But I have an extremely addictive personality... plus for some insane reason I got back into Magic TCG again... cardboard crack is bad...