Vassal of Menoth

Well, my wife and I were out of town this past weekend, so anything hobby-related came to a dead halt. And so went the last weekend of the summer!

However, over the last couple of days the gears of Warmachine started to grind again, and out popped a new Vassal of Menoth.

These cheap little solos are so good, I couldn't resist adding this second one to my collection. They add a lot of defensive versatility to Menoth 'jacks with their Enliven ability, can boost 'jack offensive output with Auxiliary Attack, and can even fling their own magic spell...but really, it never comes to that.

'Til next time.

Epic Asphyxious

As beautiful weather continues here, painting production stays down. That's fine. This week, one more chip away at the "to be finished" pile. Here is Epic Asphyxious, arguably one of Warmachine's strongest Warcasters. On his feat turn, he brings 10 warriors back from the dead (your choice) for one last incorporeal charge attack against the enemy.

There was one fun part to this fig...in the middle of his weapon's blade, there is a creepy eye.

Hope you are all having a great summer as well.

'Til next time.

Absylonia

Finally, there's good summer weather up here in Edmonton. The festivals over the past couple of weeks have been excellent, and my wife and I have been enjoying them all.

Of course, this means figure painting has been taking a back seat. In Edmonton, you have to enjoy the warm temperatures while they are here.

So, this week only one figure made it off the hobby table. Absylonia is a Legion of Everblight warlock who excels at running multiple heavy warbeasts.

I'm sticking to my main Legion theme, which is bluish skin and metallic bone extrusions.

She is small, so a pretty quick figure to bang out. When the weather turns, painting production should go up...but I'm not wishing that for anytime soon.

'Til next time.

Necrotechs

Dug a little deeper into the "to do" pile again this past week. These guys are Necrotechs for the Cryx faction of Warmachine. They are cheap and perform a couple of good functions. For infantry spam lists, they generate Scrap Thralls out of wreck markers. They repair damaged 'jacks. They are also on medium bases, which are good for blocking tramples and charge lanes.

I used these three guys in a 50-point game with Elliot this week. They were in a prime Asphyxious tier 4 list, and performed great. They helped clog up the middle of the board with Scraps and even got a repair roll off, allowing a Slayer to mess up a couple of Elliot's Man-O-Wars.

'Til next time.

Scrap Thralls

OK, back to work on the "to do" pile. This week I finished off six Scrap Thralls. I'm a little disappointed that these models only come in two poses, but what the heck. They blow up so fast on the battlefield, there will probably never be more than a few in play at one time anyway.

Keeping up with bad habits, I'm adding to the "to do" pile as quickly as I'm depleting it. These are some new Legion models for Hordes. Oh well.

'Til next time.

The Hobbit

No surprise...like a lot of people, I'm a fan of Tolkien's Middle-earth books. When I heard some years ago that two more Peter Jackson Middle-earth movies were going to be made, I was ecstatic. Photos of the cast have started to come out...here's a composite of all the major characters.

What I find amazing is that each Dwarf has his own unique look. Very distinctive and worthy of the level of production design established by the Lord of the Rings movies.

Thorin is not as I'd imagined him, but he looks completely bad ass. If you read The Hobbit when you were young, as I did, your favorite Dwarves are likely Fili and Kili. These young Dwarves look suitably "elven" and heroic.

I'd have to say, I'm really excited about seeing this film when it comes out!

'Til next time.

Tutorial: Cryx Battle Engine

Well, knocking off models from the "to do" pile turned out to be a bit tiresome, so I figured I'd dive into the new Cryx Battle Engine. This post is sort of a log of step-by-step build notes.

Started with the box and the tools I figured I'd need, including a dremel.

So here are all the parts. Most of them are in a soft, buttery resin. The metal was pretty clean, but the resin was full of horrendous mold lines. 1 - 2 mm mold lines through detail is trouble. I would have expected better for $85...fortunately, the model looked like it was going to be pretty cool and intriguing.

Mold lines were not the worst of the resin problems. Overall fit was pretty bad, and as can be seen in this photo, lining up all the pipes was going to take some work with a hair dryer.

The carapace was going to create a visible cavity in the model's interior, so this required the base model to be painted first. It got a base coat in black.

Moving on to the metal parts, the first thing I noticed was that the left hand was miscast. Great! :-(

As can be seen here the wrist guard and a portion of the wrist joint was completely missing.

Time to improvise! I had a spare Exemplar shoulder pad which made for a pretty good match. This would form the basis of the new wrist and guard.

Here are the two arms with the new wrist guard filed down and glued in place.

OK, all the components are glued in place and primed black. On the base, I've glued down a couple of detail pieces. These will get painted up later when I'm doing more work on the base.

The model is airbrushed with Cryx base and then a top-down overspray of Cryx highlight.

The brass fixtures and the head are brush painted next with Vallejo Bronze. I painted the tubing, which is often done in steel, with Vallejo dark rubber instead. This gives it a kind of PVC look.

This is about the half-way point in the painting. The brass areas got a wash with turquoise and I started into the MIGS weathering powders on the main body. Using rubbing alcohol and turpentine as a base, I worked up from the mud browns to the red browns and finally to the dust and rust patches. I also got the sand onto the base and built up a pile of rocks with cork and slate bits.

Well, skip ahead a few days and the painting and basing is all done now. The PVC tubing got a drybrush of Vallejo light rubber. The brass areas got a highlight of Vallejo old gold. Scraps of cloth are in Cryx base and highlight. Bare metal scrapes are done in steel and silver.

The necrotic Cryx green uses the P3 base color with a highlight of off-white and finally a wash of green ink. Not great, but serviceable.

As for details on the base, this is a Mantic skeleton. I thought the model was pretty cool, bursting out of the ground. I think it makes the Wraith Engine feel like it's rousing the dead as it passes by.

But this guy is likely a little too freshly dead to be roused! This disemboweled figure is from Army Painter.

Well, another Cryx corrosion piece for the collection. Despite the trouble the model molds gave me, the end result was pretty satisfying, and it makes a good centerpiece for the army.

Haha...while I was building and painting the Wraith Engine, I figured it would be little trouble to do a Harrower Helljack at the same time. Two for one!

'Til next time.