Song of Warjacks and Warbeasts: Simple wargames for kids

No pics today.

I've been recently looking at how to introduce my much younger nephew to wargaming. A couple of years ago I gave him all my old Warhammer Fantasy Battle figures as a Christmas present (including the Bretonnians and the War Wyvern) So that I could continue to enjoy them with him and his dad, without just having them sitting in a box for years and years.

But he's pretty young (think 12ish), so I needed a ruleset that would allow us to push figures around with dirt simple rules to keep his interest.

I found 1 Page Warhammer from One Page Games, which has since been rebranded as "Age of Fantasy", probably because GW got in their face. Free to download, and easy to play. Each figure has a quality that they roll to hit and save by, a few special rules, and ALL the army lists that you'll need. It's perfect and we played a great game with my old 3rd edition orcs, goblins and trolls that XMas. There is also "Grimdark Future" with basically the same rules, except using Bolters etc. It's the revision of 1 Page 40k. He's less into 40k for now, and I'm keeping my Tallarns because I love them.

BUT, then I got into Warmachine. Have only played a few small games so far, but have a painted 35 point army of Menoth ready to go. I've been wanting to find a simple "1 Page Warmachine" so that we can have some 'jacks on the table but the OnePage rules have yet to bring that one out. Maybe you could jimmy it. I dunno.

Enter Song of Blades & Heroes. It's from Ganesha Games, and it looks just as great as the 1 Page rules, BUT it looks like it can handle things like Warjacks, and gunpowder. This is especially true with the addition of "Advanced Song of Blades", which I won't try to play with my nephew, but will take a couple of the advanced weapons and spells. There are numerous supplements due out for ASOB including gunpowder and cannons (and dwarves) with the Hammer & Forge expansion. There will also be a "Steam and Cogs" expansion for guess what!? Robots and Magic automatons Steam punk style = Warjacks and Warcasters!

So I'm hopeful that this will become my simple to play WM game. Still want to play Warmachine actual, but actually don't know anybody in the North Bay Area that I can play against so here's hoping.... Also since SoBnH doesn't care what figures you use, I can start collecting Warmachine Dwarves and even the new Crucible Guard (which look AMAZING) without worrying about creating a legal army. This also means I can finally use my Mariner 'Jack without having to have silly pirates as a faction. I'm hopeful you can play Colossus as well, but we'll see.

Magnetizing Protectorate Plastic Warjack

So I finally had some time to do some modelling. I didn't do any painting, but I did magnetize the Protectorate Plastic Warjack kit. Its actually 3 heavy warjacks in 1; a Crusader, a Templar, and a Vanquisher, all of which use the heavy warjack Crusader chassis. Awesome stuff. After looking at this forum link on the Privateer Press Forum about how to magnetize the jack, I tried it myself.  These are the results. I didn't use 1/4" x 1/32" disc magnets.  I used 2 x 1/8" x 1/32" discs.

I won't go into detail on each photo, so hopefully its self evident. And at the end I have a few shots of all the options. I think it came out really well so can't wait to paint this dude up. My original Crusader is unmagnetized but my favorite figure from the Menoth army. I also used greenstuff to set the magnet for the Templar's shield, and I didn't magnetized the head. Just used the Templar head since it looks awesome. All cutting and drilling was done with a dremel round mill, and an exacto blade.

The Protectorate Crusade

Finally got to take some pictures of the finished based Protectorate force. Of course its not finished yet. I have some random lead to paint still, warjacks, pSevy, more deliverers etc.

BUT this is a force I could field and have fun with.

And in case you're wondering where the big kahuna is, I'm still working on him, but have become a bit bored with painting tan for a while, so shall be focusing on my FOW US Airborne force for a while (and some my Carthaginian Gauls, Australian WW2 jungle troops etc. etc.).

He's big, he's in pieces, and he's slowing getting done..

Fear and Basing in Las Vegas

Ghoulio has been giving me crap for ages about how I need to base my Warmachine stuff.  There is a reason I have up until now not done it. Fear.  Fear of screwing up my carefully (and slowly) painted figs with a crap base job.  Back when we started this nonsense, everybody used to use bright green flock.  Everybody was apparently fighting on a golf course.  I even flocked my Tallarns this way for YEARS (http://legiominimus.blogspot.com/2011/03/vendetta-ogryn-chimera-and-tallarn.html).  Then I realized that the days of flock were long gone.  Happily it was relatively easy to fix them (http://legiominimus.blogspot.com/2011/04/tallarn-110th-redux-battlegroup-ptolemy.html) by simply painting the flock like dirt, throwing on a couple of stones and bob's your uncle.

But with the Protectorate, I wanted to go further.  I wanted the rocks to sit IN the dirt and not just sit on top of it like pebbles.  I also wanted to try my hand at static grass, something I haven't used before.

So to get over my fear, I decided to do test basing on 1 unit and make sure it looked fine.  I have chosen my Wracks, for no reason other than they had nice big bases with lots of places to try things out.  Below is a step by step of what I did.

Here you can see first glued on the seashell rocks onto the base, and then put on some fine sand, the idea being that the rocks would "protrude" out of the ground a bit.  This *kind* of worked, but the rocks still looked like they were sitting on top.  So I put down a second layer of sand.  This worked, but almost too well.  Now the rocks were buried. Not a bad look, but I think next time I'll angle the rocks so that part of them sticks out and the other part is under dirt.  Something to try.

Painting the entire thing black, and then painting the bases bestial brown, followed up by a leather lighter brown for highlights seemed to work. Well.  I followed this up with a very light drybrush of light tan.  I wanted the dirt to look like dirt, and not sand like I did for my Tallarns.

The next step was to highlight the rocks.  Using Adeptus grey as the initial highlight and then Fortress grey seemed to work well.  Of course GW seems to change their colors every year or so who knows if these colors are going to work.  Black + dark grey + light grey.  Boom.

Seeing Ghoulio's awesome white lines to demark the front and back of figures, I decided to copy this.  But I was worried that I would screw up marking the "half way" point, so I printed off a bunch of circles and marked with pen the appropriate line. Worked quite nicely I thought.

Call me a spaz if you like but it worked nicely, and this particular group of circles will work for all my figs. 

  

So now everything was ready.  I dull coated the models NOW, as I've heard that static grass doesn't like varnish.

Using the "small dabs of glue" and really mash the grass onto the base with WAY more grass then you're going to use.  Press it firmly with your finger and shake off the excess.  It worked out perfectly.

The only complaint I would have is the grass looks a little dark (especially in these photos), so that leaves me with a dilemma. a) Use lighter static grass (I have golf course green as well), or b) highlight the dirt more so that the grass has more contrast.  I think I'll go with b).

Either way, since everybody except the Big Kahuna (Judicator), and a few other solos is done, I'll start basing this weekend methinks.  The fear of static grass is gone!

Temple Flameguard Test

Have been trying to paint up my new unit of plastic Temple Flameguard.  They are *mostly* done, but figured I'd put up the first test guy to make sure I'd like how they'd turn out.  I do, although still haven't mastered Menoth white yet.  All in all a nice simple fig.  They'll make great 'jack fodder.

 

Yes yes, no bases I know.  Once the big Kahuna (Judicator) and the rest of the deliverers are done, I'll base the entire army in one go.

Vigilant Joins the Three Amigos

Finally had some time to paint up my Vigilant this weekend.  He turned out very well.  I'm getting better at the clean smooth plates that I'll need when I get to the Judicator.  Before he's done, I'll magnetize the 2nd Crusader plastic box.  So this last light 'jack joins the ranks of The Three Amigos, The Vigilant, the Revenger, and the Repenter! Still have to base all these mofos but at least I'll be able to do it all in one go..

Bend Spear Fixed with Hot Water

Just a quick update about the plastic spear problem.  As pointed (pun intended!) out by Dai from my last post, using hot water to heat up the plastic and simply bend the spear back was indeed the solution.  I even found I didn't have to bend the spears, they practically straightened themselves out.  It was amazing to watch.  Check out this photo:

 Straight as an arrow.  Boomsnaps.

Temple Flameguard Plastic Review

I've started gluing together my new Protectorate Flameguard, and I figured since these are new figs, that I'd keep a record.

First off, group shot.  These figs are great.  First of all, they are far less complicated than the Examplar Errants.  They fit well, and the sculpts are wonderful.

 Also, again unlike the Errants, these figs are easy to figure out which arms go with each torsos.  Each arm is keyed which makes it even easier.

Note that the arms fit PERFECTLY.  I did trim the end off the key, but otherwise a perfect fit.  And no weird armor interfering with other pieces.

Rear shot, there was a little flash, but nothing some primer and paint shouldn't remove.  Also note something I'm not so keen on, the bent spear.

You can see the bent spear problem here.  Unsure what to do about it, although this is a common problem with Greek Hoplite figs. Perhaps I could mount some stiff steel wire to the underside..

Here is the mounting amount of unpainted Protectorate figs that I've finally glued together.  In you can see the Flameguard, the Flameguard standard bearer and unit leader, 4 more Deliverers (to bring my unit up to full strength), and an Errant Exemplar with his ridiculous flags folded in.  I'll show in another post.

Protectorate Wracks Done

Only took a couple of days to do these guys.  The Protectorate Wracks.  Along with the Vassal, these guys really add to the "your faction is kinda evil" feeling, even if some of these guys are "volunteers".

Anyway I took the opportunity to try out painting rust.  Which happily isn't as hard as I thought, and looks half decent.  I also did 3 layers for the flesh and pants of each guy as a direct contrast to the shabby look of the wracks themselves.  2 layers of ink (Ogryn Flesh and Delvin Mud which apparently doesn't exist anymore. grrr) over a base of silver, and with all the edges spatter drybrushed with terracotta seemed to do the trick.  Still trying to master the "water streak lines of rust", but hopefully I'll have that down when I start painting the Mariner.  Far too much effort on them, since the 3 of them cost 1 point total, but they came out well enough.

As for not doing the bases yet, yeah I know.  I'm going to wait until all of my guys are done, and then I'll base them all in one go, and then dull coat everybody.  The bases intimidate me because I've never used static grass before and I really want to try it, but just have to work up the courage to do a test base, possibly with one of the jack wreck markers before moving on to all the other bases.

Protectorate Deliverers Done

These guys didn't take nearly as long as the Exemplar Errants.  They came out very nicely, and I even ordered another 2 blisters of them from http://www.thewarstore.com/ just so I could have a unit of 10 of them if I wanted eventually.  PrivateerPress seems to have gotten into the habit of removing blisters of 2 figures in favor of just giving you a boxed set with the maximum unit size.  I agree with this, but it means that I would be stuck with a min unit AND a max unit if I wanted a larger one (as happened with the Errants).  Anyway we're set to go.  Next up will be the Wracks, and possibly the Reckoner. Also have to start eventually on magnetizing the plastic Crusader box..   

In a moment of weakness I bought the Protectorate Colossus, The Judicator.  Awesome figure but it'll take quite a while to work up the courage to paint them. 

Protectorate Errants Finally Done

I have finally finished my Protectorate Exemplar Errants...
These were perhaps my least favorite group of figures to assemble and paint.  Assembly was a pain in the butt, it was unclear the poses that would be good, I had to shave off parts of their armor to fit properly, and there is just SO MUCH baroque rubbish detail on them that painting was a chore.

I'm glad they do well in the Warmachine game, because I don't want to paint them again.  Unfortunately I may have to, as I have some plastic ones (that don't match sizewise) to make the unit up to its max of 10.

Looking forward to painting my Flameguard and Deliverer units for the very reason that I couldn't stand these guys.  In retrospect, they were OK.  The capes were cool, and some of the armor was nice, but good God so many little bits of junk on them..

Warmachine Starter Sets Part 2 of 4 - Menoth!

So here is part 2 in this 4 part series of speed painting some Warmachine starter sets. The only reason I am posting this right now actually is to completely embarrass Greedo's attempts at Menoth (well, not really lol). If I am going to be serious for a sec I remember a few months ago I did a small post showing off my failed Ogre and asked if anyone else had projects they just couldnt get off the ground. I remember seeing Greedo complaining about how detailed the Menoth were and how it has really been impacting his ability to get them finished. I remember thinking "dude...man the fuck up and get this shit DONE!". I officially want to retract that comment Greedo now that I have finished a bunch of them.

These are hands down my least fave figs I have ever painted in my life.There is so much nonsense detail on them which wouldn't be so bad if they were just so terribly sculpted. When I talk to a lot of my friends in regards to getting into Warmachine the #1 deterrent for them getting into the game is how bad the models look. I am almost 100% certain when they say that they specifically mean Menoth. Ah well, despite how shite the models are I am pretty pleased with how they turned out considering the goal (speed) of painting them.

Next Up: Going to take a break from posting Warmachine stuff to post some updates on 40k projects. One of them is something that I have been working on for years and FINALLY decided it was time to finish it.