Happy Mum-orial Day!

Hope all you gamers out there got some gaming in on this long holiday weekend. Personally, I got a little bit of progress done on my Cryx force, and I decided to have a little fun and paint up a mummy from my Bones Kickstarter.

Right now I'm really glad I bought into Bones. I didn't even prime this guys, so I could just pick up and paint on a whim. It's really to have a big pile of random fantasy figures to paint on the fly. The base is D&D style black for now, but I will probably go back and base him later. I also made a conscious decision to paint the eyes the same as the Bones zombies I painted up a while back. That way, there's a sort of connection between them, like maybe the zombies are the mummy's minions. Either way, I'm happy with how it came out for such a quick paint job.

I'm sure I'll find a million uses for a mummy, but I know he'll find his way into Strange Aeons for sure. He looks marvelous staring down my Threshold team.

That's all for now. Have a great rest of your holiday and happy gaming!

The Banes Of My Existence

My WarMachine project is slowly chugging along. I am about halfway through my 15 point force and I am trying not to rush too much. That being said, I am not above using lazy methods to achieve my goal quickly.

That brings me to my next unit: Bane Thralls.

I have always loved the concept of the Banes. Ancient dead warriors who sneak up on you and hack you to pieces with giant axes are really nothing to pass up. Not only are undead badasses cloaked in a pall of darkness cool, but they are great on the battlefield. Most melee-only troops have to advance under a hail of murder-sticks to chop up their enemies.

But at least they get to fight in the shade.

But Banes get to close in relatively unmolested thanks to their Stealth ability, soften up the enemy armor with a little Dark Shroud, then smash even the heaviest warjacks with an extra die of damage on every attack. Back when I was playing MKI, Thralls saw a bit of downturn thanks to Bane Knights but now that I've returned, I'm glad to see they are viable choices again.

I have two units of Bane Thralls and I intend to use both at every opportunity. However, I hate painting units. I find it tedious beyond belief. That's where that laziness thing comes in. Behold the Banes:

As you can see, I did a lot of drybrushing. The idea was to try and pull off a ghost warrior look. Its nothing but a simple 3 layers of Dark Angels Green, Snot Green and finally Scorpion Green, but I think it works just fine. The bases probably took up half of the total paint time. The other unit should follow suit rather quickly.

I also managed another Deathripper repaint, giving Deneghra her requisite two Arc Nodes. They also make her look like a huntress with her two hunting dogs, so that's pretty badass as well.

I like to believe their names are Chauncey and Monetque.

So that's where I've gotten so far. I'm literally one unit of Banes and a Skarlock Thrall away for being finished. Now if only I can keep my momentum...

Happy gaming!

The Cryx Of The Situation

Back in the Dark Times, when Games Workshop (TM) stalked the land and Space Marines (TM) ruled the earth, I heard of a nascent game where wizards and mechanical monsters smashed each other in the face repeatedly while spewing steam and hemorrhaging gears. This sounded like seven kinds of awesome, so I researched it a bit and found out all about WarMachine.

You can't not want to play magic robot battles.

I managed to convince my cousin that he should play too, so we set about choosing factions. He (being a dwarf player) chose the faction with the most magnificent beards and heaviest armor, therefore purchasing a Khador battlebox. I initially leaned toward Cygnar, but felt like it was too Red-Vs.-Blue and the 'jacks too similar to Khador in most ways. Menoth was a little to fanatical and ornate, plus I hated painting white. That only left Cryx.

"Can you tell we''re the bad guys? I don't think we're wearing enough black."

I was immediately hooked on the idea of battle robots made of bone and metal, with the addition of steampunk necromancy for shambling hordes of undead. I also liked the idea of a finesse army among all the hulking metal stomping around.

We had fun playing battles with our battleboxes, and I expanded my army with a few extra units. Ultimately, though, there wasn't much of a community at the height of our interest and Warhammer 40k was still king in our hearts and it fell by the wayside. I stopped playing altogether around the time Hordes came out, which I was less interested in because the monsters were flesh instead of metal.

Well, a few days ago I dug out my old Cryx models and resigned to get back into the game. There is a sizable community in my area now and the new game shop in town has a a great set-up to play in. A rulebook and some tokens later, plus the great War Room app downloaded and I was ready to start again. But not without a fully painted starting force to keep from embarrassing myself.

Somewhere among all this smashy goodness, I managed the task of painting my whole battlebox. I was very proud because my last completely painted army was back in 2nd edition 40k. It was a task mostly accomplished with the liberal application of black primer and some minor detail work. The end result was a paint job that looked like this:

Back when I thought grass-green flock was the best ever.

While I'm proud of the bone, the rest of the scheme is very flat. I wanted some more color, something a little more vibrant than the old black or the newer grey-green look of the official schemes. I chose purple: still evil but not boring.

My first repaint, ironically, is Deathripper #2

I kept the original metal and bone work, added heavy purple highlights, some hard pink highlights, and repainted the grass flock brown. The flock was drybrushed with a light bone color to give an ashy look and I chose yellowed grass to contrast with the purple. All in all I am happy with the end result.

I also gave my warcaster, Warwitch Deneghra a quick update too:

This just had a purple wash added to the skin and a re-highlight, plus the cloth painted purple. The rest is all original paint. The base was done the same as above.

My ultimate goal is to get a 15 point duel force painted up so I can play the occasional small game. My hope is that this project will lead to me joining the local WarMachine community and get me out of the house a bit more. Of course, true to form, the WarMachine night is on a night that I work regularly. Oh well. For right now I'm having fun painting and there are no shortage of players to duff up some metal on a different day!

Happy gaming!