Travis: (Insert Witty Pirate Pun)

Greetings all, for those who undertake/undertook further education can probably understand when i say i haven't had much time for painting this week. My education demands have become quite heavy and i didn't get much painting done.

Since i started the blog, i vowed i would paint at least 1 LoTR model a week, and knowing i would be busy i did just that.
The Fallen Realms book allow you to take 50% bows in the Harad and Umbar list as long as your warriors are limited to the Harad stuff. The rule is called "The Scorpion Sting". Here is my first Haradrim raider painted in the Greens of my "Scorpion Sting Army".

Got Spear, Go Fight

I decided im going to keep all their horses dark and when i paint Suladan he will have a white horse. So people know who to shoot at.

Following my first game of Mordheim using Pirates i thought i would share the models that i used to undertake this game. Unfortunately due to unreliable shooting the Marienburgsmen (or Marienburgers) overwhelmed my scurvy blighters and the Pirates fled at the loss of their Captain.

Here are the shots of my "Noble" pirate crew, who sail under the Jolly Roger of Captain Luigi Vampa, a Smuggler and a Thief. The Captain himself, armed with. Pistols, a Cutlass, Buckler, Peg Leg and Parrot. He commands the crew with his swords edge and promise of gold.

"Ever considered a life of Piracy?"

 This is Fareon, Luigi's First Mate, he knows where to look for valuables. Responsible for navigating the Black Shard. A decent shot with a Crossbow and carries a pair of Hammers.

My Compass indicates we're nowhere near water"

Satara, a fiercely powerful and loyal man. Washed upon the banks of the river Reik. Not sure of his heritage he encounters Luigi and his crew and has been a Pirate ever since. Not much of a talker or thinker, but very handy with a heavy object.

He's allowed the anchor as long as he puts it back

 Young Frederick, a Cabin Boy aboard the ship. Luigi had an undecipherable (except to Luigi) treasure map pinned to his back. So that Luigi didn't need to carry it.

The Map Boy

This is Hugo, he escaped the noose because the Rope was an old fenced rope found in the markets. Hugo was being hung for womanising and murder. Once Luigi found him, he offered him a job. Hugo keeps the Noose as sign of good fortune.

The Womaniser Hugo, always good for a laugh

Aktara is the deadliest man on the Ship, he is the ships gunner and to be honest a little unhinged. Aktara carries a Swivel gun into combat and can often be seen climbing buildings to get a good vantage point.  The others steer clear of him because the Swivel gun attracts a lot of attention.

36" Strength 5 Armour Piercing Death

 Gerhart is an old soldier who took to drinking and rage, two qualities almost a necessity for a Pirate. Luigi loves a good drinker. It doesn't help his archery skills any, but claims he was once a Reikland Marksman so the crew let him try.

Rarrgh my bottle is empty!

The Valiant, Noble and Resplendent Crew of the Black Shard.

I still want to do some more work on my Pirates i need quite a few more models, but im trying to fill every member with a bit of character even the not so important ones. And once the crew is complete i may even make the Black Shard to display them in.

Apart from that i have started building a Shelob, working on a few more Pirates. And an Essay on Dysfunctional Conflict in the workplace...

Mark: AOBR 4, Real Men Aren't Afraid to Fight in the Flower Garden

Well they're done wild flowers and all (well mostly I spotted somewhere that I missed but that will only take a couple of minutes to fix). This little experiment has taken up a lot more time than I expected it to but I'm happy with the results. I continued the experimentation onto the bases using some MiniNatur late fall foliage that I had laying around. With a little more experimentation with lengths and placement I think they could look quite good on the bases of my Wood Elves or Circle of Oboros forces.

I've only managed one game since my last post, it was against my co-poster Travis on the war torn streets of Mordheim. He took his Pirates and I ran my Marienburg Merc's as usual, his shooting was far and away less effective than it should have been which gave me a massive advantage once I had closed in and joined melee. So that's another win for me. I'm getting a bit worried, I'm on a bit of a winning streak at the moment, they rarely last long and tend to end with an embarrassing bang.

Until next time .......

Mark

Back to Work

So for the last 2 weeks I've been in Thailand, it was an amazing holiday. Bangkok is truly great. Its so full on but i couldn't find a Warhammer place anywhere. Everything is so cheap but Warhammer in Bangkok is priced by Australia so i guess no one sells it there.

 

In Phuket

I didnt manage to do any painting there but i did do some before i left and finished off a few models since i got back.

Firstly here is a fancy Deagostini Base for my Fellowship, i did it more brown then it probably should be but that's so my bases tie in with both the display and the rest of my armies (except Gimli).

The Base

As it was

As it should have been

I also managed to finish my next Rohan warband, the army still isnt legal but its getting there.

I went with Eowyn, 4 Royal Guard, 8 Warriors of Rohan

Another bunch of Rohan guys without horses

So that makes my Painted Rohan Army 327 points

Also i have all the tools to defeat the Witch-King

Next on the list is some more Haradrim, i picked up Suladan and some Raiders (uggh horses). Hopefully i can get them done quickly.

Until next time, thanks for reading

Mark: AOBR #3

To be honest I was hoping to have these guys done by now but it seems that life has a way of getting in the way of little things like this. I only have a couple of details to pick out here and there and I need to highlight the armour, I know I have Saturday free at this stage so the will hopefully be done for by the end of the weekend.

One of the things that has been taking us a chunk of my valuable hobby time has been the fact that my local gaming club Kingaroy Wargamers has decided that it's time to go and make its self all legitimate and become Incorporated as a non-profit group. I've been leading the charge for this, so I've been spending a great deal of time pouring over the department of fair trading's website finding out what has to be done and working on the clubs constitution. I'm also running the Kill Team Tournament I've been mentioning and I'm laying the groundwork for our annual Warhammer Fantasy tournament "The Tricksters Blade" that I will be running a little later this year. And of course there is the issue of my addiction to Jetpack on the iOS

At our regular club meat (edit: I like it medium rare) on Sunday I managed to get in a couple of games; the first was a play test of the 5th mission I'll be using for the Kill Team tournament next month which resulted in another win with the boys in blue. The second was a multiplayer game of Mordheim  against another two Human mercenary forces with my Marienburgians coming out on top, my long time rival Trev was using his Middenheimers and a newcomer to the Mordheim scene was starting out with Reikland.

Until Next Time .......
Mark

☺ Unless my addiction to Jetpack doesn't take over all of my time from here on out. ☺

Mark: AOBR Terminators #2

Over the course of the glorious long weekend I've managed to put a bit of paint onto the AOBR terminators, and before I go any further I just have to say "I HATE painting white". I've always avoided white in the past because of its bad reputation, that I have to say is well deserved.

OK tantrum over on with the rest of the blog.

The biggest issue with the white has been trying to get some depth into the helmets, in the end I've put a wash of 7 parts water to 1 part Badab Black over solid white, then line highlighted and layered Skull White onto different parts of the helmet, and it's come out looking half decent. As far as the rest of the colours are concerned I have pretty much everything else base coated and shaded, I've added the first layer of highlights to the Storm Bolters but I'm not completely sold on the black and I may end up going with the classic red, and I'm yet to decide if I'll paint the chest emblem and decorations gold or bone at this stage.

As far as gaming goes; I managed to get the missions I'm putting together for the club's Kill Team challenge play tested, they all came through quite well. They're all based on missions out of the Privateer Press Steamroller Tournament Pack, which to Privateer Presses credit are done very well. I can see some of the players who haven't had much exposure to Warmachine having a little difficulty getting their head around the whole I score points every turn holding the objective, rather than the more traditional (for 40k at least) sweep in at the end and take the objective structure of the missions. They have 6 weeks before the event so they have plenty of time to get their heads around the idea.

Of the four games I managed to get on Sunday I walked away with three wins and an ass whooping. All of the wins came from Trev over at Triple Helix, who to be fair had some shocking luck where by whenever he utilized a weapon with the "Get's Hot" special rule he removed one of his own miniatures rather than one of mine much to his disgust. The ass whooping came from Jamie over at Toy Soldiers, I take full responsibility for loosing this one, after taking a couple of his Harlequins out early with shooting I got a little over confident, closed in for the kill and was then promptly shown just how easy it is for Harlequins to tear apart Terminators in combat.

For those of you who are interested in such things, the mission pack I cobbled together can be found here.

Until next time .......

Mark

Mark: AOBR Terminators #1

I'm going to be running a small Kill Team event in the near future for my local club and I need to play test some missions that I've put together for it but couldn't come up with anything out of the Dark Angles codex that fit to the 200pt limit, so I've decided to use the AOBR Terminator squad that's been kicking around my bits box for a while now. I've taken the opportunity to try my hand at sculpting a couple of extra details onto them because I found them a bit boring straight out of the box, and I've been looking for a canvas to learn how to sculpt onto that I don't have an emotional attachment to, so I'm not overly worried if the results come out a little sub-par. So the lords of all things vanilla sorry I mean Macragge will grace the table for a couple of practice rounds.

I haven't tried any sculpting up until now on any of my conversions, I've just found the idea a little bit daunting, but once I got started I found it a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. Each of the U's on the shoulder pads is a little different, that's due to the fact I was experimenting with a couple of different tools and methods. I'd like to give a shout out to Garfy at Tale of Painters for his tutorial on sculpting U's and Ron at From the Warp for his tutorial on how to sculpt scrollwork, they were a great help.

Beyond sculpting U's I've been busy putting together a mission pack for the club's Kill Team event and the players pack for this years Fantasy Tournament has been started. I've also had the opportunity to have a chat to our neighboring (only in Australia could we call 150km an neighborly distance) gaming clubs secretary about our clubs supporting each other, so we should have Kingaroy Wargamers and The Darling Downs Gamers Club Inc getting together for all things gamery (is that a real word) in the not too distant future. I also managed a couple of games of Mordheim last weekend and walked away with a pair of wins. The boys from Marienburg acquitted them selves nicely, they probably deserve a paint job now.

A nice little package came in today's mail, the power cable sample set and ammo belts I ordered from DragonForge a couple of weeks ago turned up. I'll just add that it's not DragonForge's fault for the long delivery time I just happen to live in Australia so it takes 21 to 28 days for packages to arrive from anywhere else in the world.



Until next time .......

Mark