Hobby Progress 1/13/2016

I've been exclusively working on one of my goals for this year, which is the painting of Mantic demo armies. Currently, I've made a ton of work on the undead half of the Kings of War demo box with only some basing left.

The zombies I finished first, they were all primes a light green then had the cloth painted brown. Next they were dry brushed heavily with a bone color. Then the small bits of hair and metal were painted before finally the whole model was doused in brown wash.

Here they are, ready to have their bases drybrushed.

Next were the ghouls. There were primed a slightly darker green. They were then drybrushed Skarsnik Green, to differentiate them from the zombies more. The cloth was picked out in Caledor Sky Blue and the metal and hair picked out last. It finally received a very small amount of brown wash.

Finally, I finished the ten skeletons that I had available. We are still looking for the other ten, but no clue if we will ever find them. They were all primed brown then heavily drybrushed Screaming Skull. The cloth was picked out in Stegadon Scale Green and the Shields in Incubi Darkness Blue. Finally, all the metal bits and insides of the shield were painted along with some rags, ropes, and belts. The pattern continued, with them receiving a heavy brown wash.

The army is now mostly completed for Demo games, only needing a quick drybrush on the bases. They are all just base coat plus wash, which means that at later times more detail could be added to each individual model to improve the paint. In all likelihood, this will never occur but it's nice that to know the poorly painted models can be easily improved.

Dwarves are next!

Kings of War Battle Report: 1/5/2016

It's Wednesday (Thursday) which means that it's time for a gaming post. This Tuesday, I played a 2000 point game of Kings of War with Jason. I won't be going into details about my review of Kings of War, which I'll save for a separate post. This one's all about the game.

My list was for the Elves, and consisted of:

• Tallspears, Horde
• Palace Guard, Regiment
• Palace Guard, Regiment
• Kindred Archers, Troop
• Kindred Archers, Troop
• Kindred Gladestalkers, Troop
• Silverbreeze Cavalry, Troop
• Drakon Riders, Horde (Represented by the Sky Chariots)
• War Chariots, Regiment
• Bolt Thrower
• Dragon Lord
• BSB
• Wizard, with Fireball
• Blade of Slashing, for the Dragon Lord
• Boots of Speed, for the Cavalry

Jason was running the Herd, and his list was (from the top of my head)

• Archers, Troop
• Archers, Troop
• Spearmen, Horde
• Spearmen, Regiment
• Cavalry, Regiment
• Cavalry, Regiment
• Greataxes, Regiment
• Greataxes, Regiment
• Wizard, with Heal
• Lycan Alpha
• Guardian Champion
• Stampede!

We rolled off and Jason picked sides and here he is deploying his Herdstone. We rolled for Kill! and Pillage with six of objectives. We both bought new tokens from Mox Boarding House to use as objectives and counters which you can see here. They were very easy to see and good at reminding us of the state effects.

Jason also won the roll and chose for me to go first.

We took turns deploying our army with my army being pretty equally spread where Jason presented me a refused flank with deep deployment. This was something we hadn't seen before and Jason was worried it wouldn't work. I, on the other hand, felt I had been out deployed since the threats on that flank were far greater than I had counters to and the furthest flank couldn't really take advantage of the extra mobility because of the houses and what I had deployed there.

My first move was just mostly forward with some adjustments for shooting. I shot the Herdstone a bunch, but didn't accomplish much. I also shot his archers and was able to have them run off the table from the get go. First blood is drawn!

Jason also moved his whole force forward, His cavalry clear the fence and are menacing my flank. The question is can I break them in one round?

I charge with everything on the left flank, and I'm able to rout his cavalry in the center. My Drakon Riders are neutered since they have to land in the forest to fight his Stampede horde. This leaves me open for a pretty big incoming counter attack. I had no option to overrun because his second rank is waiting for me and opt to reform instead.

Jason gets a huge counter charge off. He also makes a brilliant tactical move and brings his skirmishers forward to protect his spearmen horde that had been fighting a grinding melee with my own. You can see them threatened in the second shot above.

Jason has been casting heal constantly on that unit of spearmen, and they are likely going to last quite a long time at this rate. The Lycan isn't likely to kill my dragon, but everything else on that flank might go at any time. I'm lucky in that Jason rolls only average and most of the flank holds. Except the Drakon riders, where he causes more wounds than their Nerve value. Them running is going to be a big problem since then his Stampede! can face my spearmen and roll the rest of my army.

But, Jason flubs the roll! My riders get to last another turn!

Lucked out! I once again enter another grueling combat, hoping to get some damage and maybe get the upper hand in this combat. Now is my time to shine!

I'm able to break one unit of Longhorns and waver his spearmen, but not enough to break them. All my other break attempts are double ones. Luckily they weren't as important as Jason's.

Jason puts the nail in that flank's coffin. Everything over there goes down, starting with the dragon He also wavers the spearmens. Things are looking grim for the elves as he reforms to finally turn the flank.

I charge the Stampede with my Gladestalkers to protect my flank. I'm able to also kill his archers that are protecting his spearmens flank, but it might be too little to late to save my spearmen.

He kills my gladestalkers and sets up to again face my flank. He doesn't need it though as my spearmen final goes down to his.

My Palaceguard final attack his spearmen a turn too late. My wizard sacrifices himself to fireball Jason's last cavalry unit, killing them for a huge swing. The Palace Guard roll really well and destroy the spearmen. I'm looking in pretty good position after this chain of events. Only low point was my roll to remove the Herdstone fails with double ones. Lots of fail breaking tests this game.

Jason is poised to kill my wizard but fails. He risked not getting to an objective by doing so and is now in bad position with his unit. The wolf marches towards my archers.

I finally kill his herdstone, and move my archers to try and avoid the wolf. Everything else goes and grabs objectives

The wolf marches again, contesting an objective and ready to charge if the game continues. His unit finally kills my wizard.

With that, the games ends on a roll of a two. We tally up the objectives and it's 3-1 for a 400 point advantage to me. Tallying up the kill points it's 1425 to 1415 in Jason's favor. With the objectives, I go over the 200 points needed for a draw and get a narrow victory!

It was an extremely close game. The couple of turns that my flank held out really won it for me, as I had nothing left to fight his nearly undamaged remainder. If he had an additional turn, he would have gotten that unit of archers AND two objectives, for a 515 point swing. This would have turned the game into a draw.

Hi! I'm Jake and I am mostly going to be writing about Infinity when I contribute to Swan's blog.  I am attending a charity tournament on January 16th and I decided I wanted to play with a fully painted force.  A bit ambitious since I don't even have most of my models primed yet, but I figured it would be a good way to motivate myself.  Right now I am aiming to just have tabletop quality (basecoat and wash for the most part) but if time permits I will go back and work on some highlights.

My first Infinity force was Morats, a subdivision of the nefarious Combined Army.  I was really happy with the scheme I choose for this army and painted a handful of them... but then Corvus Belli decided to come out with AMAZING new Morat models and I knew I would never see myself using the old sculpts.  I kept this hacker model (above) because I figured he would make a good HVT (high value target/civilian, used in some scenarios).  In my original army I used clear acrylic bases, which was kind of cool but I think an force like Combined Army needs a unifying base theme to pull the disparate looks of the army together.

Here is the list I decided to use.  12 models in total.  I decided with this list that I wanted to include all the different aliens that the combined army employs, so I made sure to get representative models from morat, umbra, fraacta, shasvastii and of course the evolved intelligence itself.  I got started with painting the Morats first, since I knew I wanted to try to match my old paint scheme I had some direction on how I wanted to go.

Here they are with just a simple basecoat.  The idea is for the models to have olive cloth/underarmor and grey for the "hard" armor.  The bases are Secret weapon miniatures "Alien temple", which I plan to bring up eventually to a brighter green.

Here they are after a "Nuln Oil" wash.  I also picked out the hair on the models since the base color was the same as the armor and they looked silly.  If time permits I will go back and add highlights, otherwise I am happy using them for the tournament as they are there.

I could not resist playing a game with my newly painted force.  I played Jimmy's "silver surfer" Ariadnan Scots army, and a good time was had by all.

As of now I have eleven days to finish the last 7 models.  I think next up will be the Charontid since he is actually pretty simple.  Hopefully I will have it all done by next Saturday!

Welcome to the New Year

This year gets kicked off like every other year: with New Year's Resolutions. Since this is a hobby blog, I thought I'd share the various hobby related resolutions I've made for this year, so we can track progress together. That way, when I don't achieve them, I can look back to see why.

• 100% More Models Painted than Purchased: This is the big one. I've always used to just impulse buy the models I wanted. I've definitely started to slim down on the purchasing end, but now it's time to start clearing the debt I've accumulated due to that spending history. I have more than enough models to get enjoyment from painting, so meet this goal I need to paint two models for every one that I purchase.
• Blog Three Days a Week: Since this is a new blog, the only way I will continue to keep up with it is to get into a rhythm. We're going to have a three day a week schedule at Swan Song Miniatures, with Monday and Friday being hobby related and Wednesday being gaming related. Current plan is for Monday to be what I'm working on and Friday to be what I have already done.
• Finish Mantic Kings of War Demo Armies: Since I would like to become a Pathfinder for Mantic due to my love of Kings of War, I need to paint a demo army for the Dwarves and the Undead factions. This amounts to about 50 models for each faction.
• Paint all my High Elf Chariots: I have numerous different High Elf Chariots, including Lion, Tiranoc, and Eagle varieties. Since I'm using them all in my Kings of War Elven army, they need to be painted as a priority
• Paint Ratkin Cavalry: Since my Skaven have been completed for the longest time, the only thing I need to use them in Kings of War are the cavalry units. My long delayed Rat-Riders of the Apocalypse now need to come off the shelf and be finished.
• Finish Painting all Warjacks: Most of my Retribution of Scyrah force for Warmachine is complete, but the jacks all only have a highlight on the armor away from completion.
• Paint Remaining Dawnguard: The Retribution force has a unit of Invictors left, as well as some Dawnguard casters and solos. Finishing these up would complete this style of troop for the army.
• Paint all High Elf Archers: I have about twenty remaining archers to paint for my High Elves. I hate them, they're ugly but they need to be done for my own peace of mind.
• Paint a Dragon: I have about seven various dragons. At least one of them needs to be painted this year.
• Paint Eldar Epic Army (2000 points): Specialist games are returning. Time to quickly paint some Eldar!
• Paint Mantic Dreadball Demo Forces: See Kings of War Demo Armies. I'll be painting Orcs and Humans.
• Paint a Point of Saga a Month: I've agreed to do a mini-escalation to six points with some friends. We are currently on the third point for January, which I've already completed. Three more points to go.

That's the current list. Achievable or Over-Ambitious?

Welcome to Swan Song Miniatures, a blog dedicated to my love and collection of wargame miniature hobbying. I will be discussing my current projects and general hobbying. Mondays will be dedicated to hipster games and miniatures, Wednesdays Warmachine, and Fridays Fantasy.