Live to CRUSH

For those reading the last post (its got nothing for me!), here is a group shot of the army list.

Half done, half undone. I put some time in on the black ogruns because they are the most torturous to paint. The mostly completed ogrun still needs a of of work. I noticed I forgot an ogrun there too. I wonder where he got to?

I think I’m going to go real dark green on snapjaw and the opposite on wrong eye. Or hell, maybe I’ll just paint them red like some sort of thunder lizard. YES!! Dinosaurs rule! I love painting red too. It’s one of my favourite colors to paint. Hence why I love my cygnar scheme.

I want to paint hawk like pamela anderson. She isnt as cool as a dinosaur, but very interesting and inviting. Its a different sort of infatuation.

Oh and did you see the new warwitch siren?!?! 0.o~ Ooo la-la

I wonder if I could get some of my fellow live to crushers to do some list posting/painting. If any of them are man enough to step up to the challenge….

Gotta go. More painting to do. Ahoy!

I have to admit, I have had it up to about here (See figure 1) playing with a half unpainted army. As you can see, it is past the point of infuriating. I refuse to take pictures of my games because the figures are only primed. I am almost at the point of refusing to play with unpainted figures. It’s well beyond maddening I tell you!!!!

What drives me more insane is that I cant stick with an army list long enough to focus on completely painting it! Somewhere along my path to glory, I gained a few skill points in attention deficit disorder. My cryx force consists of a small cadre of painted jacks, 2 of 5 painted warcasters, and a bunch of half painted units. The rest is in a primed state looking like a gray blur. I’m sick of it. Its sapping my will to photograph and I bought a fancy camera just to take snaps of my figures.

I’m setting a goal, right here, right now, and all you are going to help me enforce it. See this 50 point list:

Iron Lich Asphyxious
Nightwretch x2
Cankerworm
Deathjack
Reaper
5 Black ogrun boarding party
Warwitch Siren
First Mate Hawk
Snapjaw & Wrongeye
Withershadow Combine

I’m gonna paint the whole damn thing and only play this list until it’s fully painted. Sure, I have half of it done at this point, as all you optimists might say. However, it’s also half undone and that’s the part I can’t live with. Pour that half full glass down your happy throat!

I just finished a helldiver (pics coming soon) and now it’s this list or bust! I’m riding the paint pot to technicolorville! I’m sailing the primer can into the prismatic pool! I’m not writing another ridiculous analogy! I gotta go….paint! Farewell!

Figure 1

I love painting bonejacks. They take about 2 hours tops and they are finished. Meanwhile a single black ogrun takes me 4 hours. sheesh! The time is in the details. Lets have a look at the details I glossed over…

Gotta love it. 2 hours! To clarify what I did here, when I made the “jenner” nightwretch(see the cryx gallery), I used the defiler’s body. I lopped off the head at the cowl. The jenner has a greenstuff cowl. So this chicken is made from a nightwretch’s body with the head and cowl from the original defiler. From there, its just some of my usual cryx painting antics to finish the beastie up!

Now its onto some black ogrun and a few mcthralls*

*After I fix the chips I made from dropping the defiler a minute ago! Argh!!

Assassinated….yes that’s what happened to me…..again.

Let me take you back in time to last thursday night. Cue the trippy time warp music or lady gaga video. Your pick.

Here I am a happier lad, with a chip on my shoulder and a star on my brow. I build a Goreshade list happily and meet up with Cloudfang to play a 50pt game.

Here is the breakdown:
EGoreshade with Deathjack, Leviathan, and Cankerworm
10 bane Thralls
Bane lord Tartarus
Bloat thrall
Necrosurgeon and Stitch Thralls
Necrotech and Scrap Thrall
Pistol Wraith
Pistol Wraith again
6 Black Ogrun

Cloudfang mentioned how he was playing a tourney on Saturday and took his 50pt Lylyth list to get in the mindset of playing with her. It went a little something like this:

pLylyth with Carnivean, Seraph, Angelius, and another Seraph
6 Striders with UA
Scather crew

Not a great matchup for me. Troop horde versus a lot of shooting that ignores stealth. Cloudfang won the roll to deploy and go first, but made me do it which was weird for his list.

Anyhow, I set up in a strange arrangement alternating Bane Thrall with Black Ogrun to make a wall of meat and shadow. It was a nice idea in theory. The banes and their dark shroud would have aided the ogrun in a frontal assault. It was next to useless against his double seraph, striders, and scather.

It was all for naught though.

Yes there was a lot of knees bent running about. However, at the bottom of turn 2, I left just the slightest window open for Lylyth to shoot at Goreshade and he died. Actually, it was the Angelius whom softened him up with a triple box car maximum damage shot! From there Lylyth would have had only to queef on him to kill him.

What did I learn? Think before you move your warcaster! Will I remember it? Probably not. In my defense, I was deep in thought at the time. I was pondering: I need to get Goreshade just in range of the Leviathan so he can cast phantom hunter on it. Of course, I did not think of this on turn 1, which would have been more optimal. This counters most of my own defensive arguement. Well, as the saying goes “sometimes it takes a turn to get the gears working.”

The moral of the story is: THINK
All the time

I had the pleasure of engaging Cloudfang’s Legion of Everblight the other night in a duel to the death. As I’m the one typing this, you have assumed right that he is no more.

I wish cop cars had red and green lights instead. And when they pull you over they gave you a present. Officer: do you know how fast you were going? No? Well here is a kit kat. Share that with your passengers….0r else your going to jail!
Anyway…

We played a 50 point game and that was my first of it’s kind. It’s a way better experience than a 35pt game. There be more options and more room to screw around. As this was to be a fun game, I took a non-competitive list. It looked something like this:

eGoreshade with Deathjack, Stalker, Nightwretch, and Seether
10 Bane Thralls
5 Black Ogrun Boarding Party
6 Mechanithralls
Necrosurgeon and Stitch Thralls
Bloat Thrall
Necrotech and Scrap Thrall
Bane Lord Tartar Sauce

Lots of troops for reanimation! The plan was to have the black ogrun hold he center and the Deathjack, Bane Thralls, and Seether follow them in and clean up. Goreshade’s feat will then replenish the units. I should be able to out last the enemy through a protracted fight.

Cloudfang’s list was:
Rhyas with Carnivean, Nephilim solider, and Nephilim Protector
10 Blighted Archers
10 Blighted Swordsmen with UA
10 Blighted Legionairres
3 Warmongers
5 Incubi

Lots of troops too! It was sizing up to be a long game. I’ll make this a short report though. He won deployment and went first. His rotten legion ran right into the middle of the board. What a scrumdog! Rhyas cast dash and rapport on the Carnivean. The legionairres took the center with the swordsman just to the left nad the archers to the right. Rhyas and the three warbeasts hung behind in the center.

I wasn’t to be detered. I ran the black ogrun right into the face of the legionnaires
The Bane Thralls followed close behind but far enough to not make an easy target for the carnivean assault spray. The mcthralls took the left followed by the surgeon. The Deathjack made for the left of the ogrun daring the enemy troops to charge him. The stalker took the right and encircled some terrain over there. The Bloat thrall fired on the archers and missed completely even with the scatter.

Blood was spilled in the middle. All but one Black Ogrun died to a combined assault of Legionnaires and Warmongers. The Swordmen did some decent damage to the Deathjack, disabling his right claw. The archers put down a sustained fire template to hold up the bane thralls and remove any that stay still.

My turn started with the bloat firing on the archers killing 3. Then Tartarus charged in and thresher attacked the Warmongers and Legionnaires killing the troops but leaving two of three warmongers with one life each. The DJ killed it’s first victim and fixed it’s right arm. Then it chewed through the rest of the troops near it. With one black ogrun left, I should have popped Goreshade’s feat but held on to it like a fool.

Saryn pooped her feat. This was going to hurt. The DJ died to a rampaging carnivean who also sprayed Goreshade for a little damage. The Seether perished to an acrobatic dashing Rhyas who bounced back to the safety of her Nephilim squad. The last Black Ogrun died and I was sad.

At this point we had to call the game due to the time being extra late. I was in a position where I had to bring back lots of banes but was in a poor position to do much else without rushing too much. I think the Legion of Ever Delight would have won, but Cloudfang doesn’t really agree. Fortunately, we agreed to a modified list rematch!!

A few thoughts, I have too many troops on the table…so many to the point where I get in my own way. I’m not sure where the right number lies, but its clear this was too much. Maybe a better player can handle a troop horde, but I couldn’t in our terrain covered table. In addition, Goreshade is really playing a jack support role in this list and not casting too much of anything in his arsenal. Sure, he helps the banes too, but the other troops really get no benefit from him. When I tweak this list, I’m going to try to take some models to capitalize on his spell list. Oh, and the deathjack is god.

Next time legion dog! Next time!!!

I don’t even know what the title of this post means. I should lay of the crack rock before typing posts. It has been a little quite around here lately. I have spent the last month and a half relocating my life to a new home. I can’t say that I am done with the whole process, but I feel like I am on top of the lion’s share of the work. By lion, I mean Aslan, who as we all know is a very busy lion.

These are difficult times. I have no quantitative backing to that statement. I just inserted that sentence to sound like the President of the United States. My painting desk is 50% erected. That’s 50% un-erected for the non-mathematical types. In layman’s terms, that means I can paint stuff on it, but there is a mountain of crap in the midst of my painting. Nevertheless, I sat down this week and painted on the mountain. This sounds crazy than it was because I never left the confines of my office. “Trippy” would be the word I use to sum up this paragraph.

Yes we can…..get an update for you to read and pictures for you to ogle. This day marks a new day of infamy and a vague starting point where I will post regularly once again. Al Gore is quoted as the creator of the internet and gosh darn it, I have internet at my house! I will not go silently into the night! For any reason! Ever! Even with the promise of ice cream!

Its going to be slow at first. My faction standing with my wife is completely dependent on how many quests (read: repairs) I complete on the house. I’ve got some battle reports in the works. I’ll probably follow that up with some painting. Add a conversion or two here. Then perhaps some terrain and a new gaming table. Throw in a little more painting here. To wrap it up, the last of the cryx conversions, which will likely end with be the big boy himself: Terminus. Nothing like going out with a bang. Then…who the f knows.

So, sit back all you frothing fans of small metal models. Conversions, battle reports, and tomfoolery are all on the way! Vive les postes!

Reinholdt has been finished for quite some time now, but needs to be posted nonetheless!

That wraps up another point! I hope Gorten approves this addition.

Its a darn shame Goreshade wasnt able to kill Nyssor. That would have been epic. It’s more of a shame that Cylena and her angry elves found out about the incident and didn’t want to be in Goreshade’s tier list for a second go. That cheeky B!

Up today is one of Mrs. Nyss’s angry elves all done up. Its the ole test model for the scheme. I think I’m happy with it. I should poll myself for certainty! The only part I’m on the proverbial fence on is the white fur trim on the loin cloak. I’ll try the next model without it. What do ya think?

The scheme idea came from Cloudfang’s blighted LOE nyss scheme. I wanted mine to look like his, but still full of life and vigor instead of tainted soulessness. Oh and I gave them bandanas over the mouth. Those make anyone look cooler. It is a fact of life.

What a long strange trip its been.

After countless (implied 22) hours of painting I finished the monstrosity.

Behold!

DOne!!! DONE!!! done1!!!11 DoNEE!!!! I can finally stop sitting in this chair!! Gaaah my back!

Now, I’m not the worlds best painter. I know that. But I’ve been doing this for 16 years and, like Cohen the Barbarian, I have gained a certain level of cunning through experience. I know some tricks and I know how to make stuff look good in the mediocre style that I paint in. So while there are parts of this model that I could have spent more time on and really done things right in order to grow as a painter and all that crap, I didn’t. I got the job done in my own way and to be frank, I think it looks pretty….badass.

Thanks for everyone that offered me tips, ideas, critiques, and encouragement. While I couldn’t heed everyone’s advice, the general enthusiasm and clamour really pushed me to get this done in a timely fashion for you, the readers. A hearty thanks and a wrist clasping shake to you all!

Whats next? Pffft No idea. I should be moving next week and if I manage to find anytime to devote to gaming, I’ll be surprised. I’ll also post it here. Cheers