Experimentation

As I've written, my first pass at my Cygnar was using a green and blue scheme that I hadn't fully thought through.  I didn't have a clear picture in my head of what I was working towards.  Sometimes that works out, but it's not much of a way to run a railroad, and sometimes it ends badly, as it did with my Lancer.  That guy sent me back to the drawing board.  What I've come back with is this Hunter.

The mould line across its carapace is obviously not so good, but other than that, I'm pretty happy with how he turned out.  The mix of bronze and grey on the weapons and steamwork is something that came out quite nicely and I like the mixture of buff and turqoise on the armour. 

The biggest lessons learned here are that the turquoise looks too good to be an entirely secondary colour, so I'm going to shift the balance between the two on different models.  Some will be buff-heavy like this guy, others will have more turqoise.

The other thing that needs improvement is that the gradient size across the buff isn't big enough.  I think I'm going to start with an overall basecoat of a darker yellow, possibly just this buff with a bit of brown mixed in, which I'll just leave in deep recesses.  The overall tone is fine, it just needs more depth.

Overall, quite happy with how he's turned out.  Looking forward to getting going with this on the rest of the shiny silver Cygnar on my shelf.

Here's a comparison shot of the new scheme with the first pass.  The Lancer is going to be stripped and repainted as soon as I decide on the lowest-impact way to manage it.  Stryker is okay in his green scheme, I doubt I'm going to want to use him much anyway so I'm not too worried about repainting him.

Supporting Cast

Got a couple more models finished for the growing Khador horde.

Silas (I refuse to use y as a vowel, damn Welsh elves) is a very handy guy on the tabletop but he fits into my Khador force more than Cygnar, so I went with a scheme which fits in with their colours, and based him accordingly.

I'm not very happy with how he turned out so maybe I'll come back to him eventually and see if I can come up with something better.

Bad Santa ended up a lot more like what I had initially envisioned.  I'm pretty happy with how he looks on the tabletop and how he fits in with the rest of the force.

Mongo Likes Candy

No no, don't shoot him.  You'll just make him mad.

The Sentry is still my favourite titan, on the aesthetics, but this model is really great.  Brutal, stylish, and fun to paint.  He's got a very different mixture of armour and bare flesh as compared to the Sentry, but the scheme I have going worked well on him.  Very pleased with it.

In Between

This is one of those blog posts that doesn't have pictures of models. 

There's a lot of stuff on the workbench, all Khador and a bit of Skorne while I give my Cygnar scheme some more thought. 

On the workbench are a set of three metal Demolition Corps.  I actually have a grand total of eight of these guys, thanks to the vagaries of packaging.  I got the three metal ones ages ago, before I properly started playing Warmachine; I don't recall now but I might have had the idea of using them in some other game or a homebrew.  Since I started playing I've fallen in love with the lumpy, bulky, way too slow Man o War units, and went looking for an extra two guys to fill the unit out.  Since they have been released in plastic it's almost as cheap to get a full unit of 5 as it is to get two more individual guys in metal.

I'm painting the metal unit of 3 for now.  The full box of 5 more in plastic are in a holding pattern until I decide whether I really want a full additional unit or whether I should just use 2 of them to fill out the metal unit and then use the rest for conversion fodder.  I figure I can make a Man o War Kovnik, a Mechanik UA, and a really interesting objective marker. 

My Koldun Lord is creeping towards completion and I have added Sylys to the in progress pile.  Sylys in particular I'm trying to paint in a way which doesn't really match the rest of the Khador force but does fit in.  I'm basing and painting him to match with my Khador even though I can use him with my Cygnar. 

The other beast on my table is a Bronzeback Titan.  This fellow is one of the ones that's half resin-plastic, and thank the lord for that; I can't imagine how monstrously hefty they must have been when they were all metal.  Yikes.  He'll be fun to paint though.

No games in the past little while, due to the havoc imposed on everyone's schedules by work and the rearing of offspring.  Hopefully I can get a game in this week.  In the meanwhile, making good progress with the painting, which is a pleasant change ...

Call Me Bruce

Caster number 3 for Khador finished up recently, eIrusk.  This one had two significant modifications, one intentional and one reactionary.

The intentional modification was a head swap, entirely because I hate his silly hat.

I get what they were trying to do but it just looks ridiculous.  Instead I fished a plastic head out of the bits box, probably something originating in the GW nebula, which I thought worked better.

The other modification was not expected, but the massive patriotic flag that he carries was badly warped in my package; the bulk of the flag was twisted around so that it would need to intersect his body if the hand was properly aligned.  I tried to fix it but realized I wouldn't be able to bend it unless I got out the vice grips, which would damage the piece and render the entire effort moot.

I went in a different direction instead.  I tried to come up with something that looked like the Khadoran equivalent of a French Imperial Eagle.  I think it's suitably grandiose for the guy.

I went heavy with the gold on this guy; he fits in nicely with the rest of the force, while being glitzy enough to stand out as the obvious centerpiece.  Very happy with him.

Also, I really think that, with the new head, he looks like Bruce Campbell.  Which is not a bad thing.

Success, and Otherwise

A bunch of projects on the workbench creeping toward completion.  A Koldun Lord and eIrusk (with some converting done to him) are in varying states of completion.  Two models got wrapped up lately, neither of which I'm totally happy with.

The first is a Manhunter.

Fitting her into the existing scheme was a little rough and I didn't really start out with a clear picture of what I wanted her to look like.  She worked out okay, but not as good as she could be.

The other model is a Lancer, for Cygnar.

I could spend a lot of time talking about what's not working on this guy.  When I painted Stryker I was sort of making it up as I went along, and it ended up in a place I was pretty happy with.  Blowing that scheme up to jack scale really didn't work out as I'd hoped.  I ended up trying out a sponge weathering with gun metal paint and it helped somewhat, but the colours don't particularly work together, the shield is just a huge mess, and the whole thing doesn't pull together well.

On the upside, the conversion of the arm and lance is something I think worked out very well.

I'm torn about what to do with my Cygnar.  I have a metal Hunter light jack coming in the mail and I think I'm going to try a totally different scheme with it.  If it works out, I'll strip the Lancer and repaint it to match, and just leave Stryker as is.  I don't really like him as much as I do some of the other casters I've used, so I can live with him being interestingly painted in a different scheme.  On the other hand, if I can't come up with a better scheme, I might be able to salvage this one by updating a few bits and redoing the shield.

Skorne

I knew that I wanted a Hordes army, but I really didn't know which one.  It was very conflicting.

There's alot about Legion I like, but a lot I don't.  I'm not sure about their playstyle and I suspect painting them would get repetitive.

Trolls never really appealed to me much.

Circle did.  They have an interesting design, a challenging play style, they're very different from the other factions I've played, and they look like they'd be fun to paint.  I went so far as to buy a Druid Wilder and start painting it.  Unfortunately I want to do them in a style that their design doesn't really support, and I have concerns about how their play style would work for me.  Reluctantly, I shelved them.

Skorne has always pulled at me, though, but in a contradicting way.  I loved the design of the titans, but I hated the infantry.  I didn't like how the studio models were painted and so I assumed I couldn't do anything interesting with them.  And I had misgivings about their style of play.

In the end I bit the bullet, bought eHexeris and a Titan Sentry, and decided to jump in and see what happens.

Man, am I glad I did.

I'm calling this scheme "Centauri Imperial", for obvious reasons.  It's a very different colour scheme than the Studio one, or any one that I've seen online.  I love how they look and they're unbelievably fun to paint.  The only downside is that everything I had on the go was put on ice until I ran out of Skorne models to paint.

eHexeris is a fun guy.  I like his playstyle and it's a great miniature.  This was the first one, and just about everything about him was an experiment.  I had a picture in my head of what I wanted and I knew that I would have to figure out three or more techniques and approaches that I'd never really done before in order to make it work, and they all came out exactly the way I wanted.

The Titan Sentry was the product of a few requirements.  First, I love the model.  This is one of the old metal ones and I think it's a great sculpt.  It also works well with eHexeris because you can use him as the bonded beast, and have an arc node who is hellishly hard to take down.

One of his small arms is just a blade grafted onto a stump.  I got tired of trying to glue on the actual hand/blade piece and decided to improvise.

I wasn't as happy with how the white bits turned out on this one but I learned a lot and the end result is quite acceptable.

I have more Skorne on order and I can't wait to get my hands on them.

Cygnar

The second army I'm putting together is Cygnar.  I settled on them due to a more extensive list of criteria; I wanted a faction that I'd find interesting to play, that was different than Khador, and that would be a good force to lend people while I teach them to play.  Cygnar is a great teaching force, with lots of ranged options that lets a new player have some elbow room while they figure things out, and one which isn't particularly convoluted to learn.

So far I only have one finished figure for this force, pStryker from the battle box.

This guy was a learning process in a couple of ways.  I'm gradually converting from Delta Ceramcoat craft paints to Vallejo game paints, due to the former's abrupt unavailability at Michael's in Canada (bastards).  My Cygnar force uses a lot of Vallejo paints and I'm experimenting with their washes as well.

I wanted something with a bit of blue (it is Cygnar, after all) but not the typical scheme, and something which looks very distinct from my Khador army.  I think this is about what I was looking for.

I call this force Vitamin B Complex.  If you've had to take any, you'll get it.

Khador

When I started getting interested in Warmachine, the choice for my first faction wasn't a difficult one.  I liked the style and character of the Khador miniatures, I thought they'd be interesting to paint, and I thought I'd enjoy their playstyle.  Plus, the Warmachine starter force made for an inexpensive way to get started.

Eventually I came to understand that Khador isn't as good at being jack-heavy as I had thought, that Man o Wars aren't considered to be very good, and that the faction is mostly characterized by the strength of their infantry; but I don't play in tournaments, and Warmachine is nicely balanced for casual play.  I find that those hard evaluations of what is good and what is not (the "forum logic" as it were) is really oriented towards a much more competitive, tournament-based environment than any I'm likely to play in.  I can win plenty of games with jacks and Man o War units in my usual meta.

I wanted a lot of red in my Khador scheme, but I didn't want something that just looked like every other fire-engine-red Khador force.  I opted for a much darker maroon and black mix for them, with black pieces mixed in, and a bright cyan to liven things up and put a unique touch on the force.  Metal pieces are all in bronze with a reddish wash and gold highlights.  The whole force has a very distinctive look.  I'm really happy with how they're turning out.

Bases have rock outcroppings made of spackle, with flock and static grass, and a judicial scattering of Secret Weapon leaf debris.  I've marked my bases with forward arcs in a muted maroon.

Incidentally, these pictures are the first ones I've taken with a crude light box that I bodged together.  I'm still a long way from being able to take what I would consider good pictures (ones that are properly representative of what my models look like in the pink) but I'm getting closer.

The Butcher was basically my first warcaster; this was the first model I got after a set of metal Man o War Demo Corps, and the first one I painted, so this is where I was figuring out the scheme.  Like any pilot mini, you learn a lot and none of the rest look exactly like him, but warcasters are supposed to stand out, so that's okay.

In game, the Butcher is my favourite warcaster.  Axe to face, as subtle as a brick through a window.

I tried pSorcha for a few games but she just didn't click for me, so I converted the plastic Sorcha from the starter box into a Zerkova.  Zerkova is complicated, nuanced, and strange.  Switching from the Butcher to Zerkova is like switching from an M-1 tank to a speed bike.  I tend to have a harder time winning with her, but when I do, it feels like I pulled off a complex and subtle magic trick.

War dog.  Great little utility player.  I really like how this guy came out.

Widowmakers.  These guys were my first effort to adapt the scheme to someone who wasn't in head to toe armour.  I tried to mix in a few different colours to make them a little more varied and ad-hoc, while still obviously fitting in with the rest of the force.  It's something I'm going to have to push even farther into when I do my Woodsmen.

Man o Wars.  The first full unit I got finished.  These guys are hefty and it takes a while to paint them.  They look very intimidating on the tabletop though.

Jacks!  I have three of these bad boys and they're all magnetized so I can field all the available options.  These guys were easy to paint and just look great on the tabletop.