Starting my Cryx

So this weekend I've decided to start painting my cryx force. There is a journeyman league starting up at Bridgetown Hobbies next month that I'd really like to get into. Which means at this point, it is cleaning the models up and priming.

The starter set models I have are older, metal models, so that makes cleanup a whole lot safer. I'm using Krudd Kutter, which by the way is typically safe for plastics as well. You just dip the models in for 24hours, and then brush away the paint. I've used it before on cleaning up some tanks for Flames of War. It also removes any white glue (typically used on bases).

As to the color scheme I'm going for, it will be a bit unusual. I'm going to go for a sort of Fall, Halloween look for the models. That means a flat orange for main color, a greenish brass for metals, and then purple for the witchlight. Any sort of other minor color will most likely be in greys, possibly black, but I prefer lighter colors so that shading is visible.

Pretty excited about this. I know that orange is not a typical color for Cryx, but I did see a few examples on the web and they looked fairly good to me. I happen to have quite a few Defiler jacks in my collection, so one of those will get to be the crash test dummy. I'm hoping it turns out well.

The one model I am probably most concerned with is the Deneghra. How exactly will orange look on her, and how far do I take it. Now I have the old metal version of her.

 Fairly decent amount of armor, but also plenty of cloth as well. So perhaps I keep the armor as orange like the jacks, highlighted with the brass. That leaves a fairly important cloth color to be decided. That might end up as grey as it will allow decent shading and won't contrast too much with the rest. Have to see how it goes.

 

Oh Nelly!

So I'm pretty stoked. This weekend saw the arrival of more warmachine via the postman. Thank you Mr. Postman!

I got my ebay lot of Menoth guys and the book. Woot! So I did some reading on that and got a little more familiar with those guys. I have to say, I'm a bit torn now. You see I'm an RPGer, and story and background mean a whole lot to me. So as I might have indicated last time, I was interested in doing a Feora list for the PoM. Chick with flame throwers...and melee-centric, plus I really like the flame guard units. But then I read her background...and well, she's kind of a bitch. And not like a cool bitch...but the kind you want to get hit by a car.

All said and done, I really liked the background for Kreoss. He's a good guy. He cares about his men, he wants to get the job done, but not at all costs. He has heart. The thing is, I'm not crazy about his themed lists. It isn't that the exemplars are bad or anything, they just don't really do it for me model wise. So I'm sort of torn at the moment. Kreoss or Feora?

Honestly, its all moot at the moment because I still haven't played a single game of MKii yet. I should probably do that before investing anymore into it. Yeah right. :)

Oh, and I also got in my Cryx starter plus a few extras. This was a Bartertown deal I did. Models showed up mostly intact. The ones that were painted were not done poorly. Pretty excited about the whole thing.

I also am reading the rules, which should help when I want to play the game. Of course being the RPGer, I'm reading the background stuff first. So sue me. I loves a good story.

So right now WM is riding high at my house. I've tossed out a fairly small amount of cash and have gotten some good returns for my investment. Now lets pray the game is fun and the people locally are cool with it. If that happens, I can see sticking with this for a while.

Full disclosure

So yesterday, I happened to be browsing around ebay looking at Menoth stuff...cuz I'm a nerd like that. Lo and behold this wonderful small lot for a decent price. Now at first I tried to tempt Robert with it. It seemed like the evil thing to do. But he's most into Cygnar, so he didn't bite...though his gaze did linger a bit. :)

Anyways, I happened to put in on my watch list. Well right before quitting time, my phone rang me with a reminder that the lot was about to end. The price had not moved. Now see, I'm a cheap bastard most of the time. I hate paying retail for stuff...well let me rephrase, I hate paying too much for stuff, and most of the time, this hobby stuff is way overpriced. So when I see a good deal, it is really hard for me to pass it up.

I tossed in my bid, vowing not to raise it in case it got beat, and what do you know? I'm the proud new owner of some Menoth models. Told you I was crazy. Best yet, the lot comes with the Menoth book, so at the very least it gives me insight to another faction. All this for less money than a starter box. Told you I was cheap.

Beyond that, I thought I'd throw up some pics of my current Cryx collection.

And then I picked these guys up:

So a full unit of mechanithralls. I've already based them in my zombie flesh color. Next up, base coat the details, then dip and we'll see how these bad boyz look. I do need to get some of the big brute guys to buff the unit into true "pain in the ass" levels.

Now due to the color primer, the bases have gone zombie flesh too. I've noticed that most pics people keep the bases black. Is that typical?

One Cryx, two Cryx, three Cryx, four!

Yay! My Cryx are in the hiz-ouse! Yeah, sorry about that. My kids won't be reading this or otherwise I am sure that they too would be ashamed of me.

Anyways, what is really important is that I got my Cryx army in. The models took a small beating despite their excellent packaging, so some repairs will need to be made. Now this force was listed as a eGaspy? force. However, it did list that it could also be used a small pDenny force too. Regardless, it was a pretty sweet deal and I couldn't pass it up.

I now have everything I need to start playing except for the rulebook. However, a very cool dude up in Seattle is actually sending me one and will be here in a couple of days. So by the weekend, I'll be ready to rock and roll. I also nabbed a cryx starter (basically) with a few extras on Bartertown. It only cost me my KoB fleet from Dystopian Wars. For those that follow my DW blog, no worries, I still have four other fleets and this was my smallest.

To help prep me for my future games of WM, I've been reading the Battle Collge on a daily basis. I have to say, it is in much better shape than when MkI rules were in effect. The BC sort of caused me to give up a bit when I would read "this unit is useless" under the descriptions. The site has done a much better job of listing uses and synergies. That promotes the game way better in my opinion.

The only downside to reading the site is that it can peak my interest in another faction. Right now I've been looking at Menoth and a Feora themed list. I've always liked the flameguard units and she seems like an "in your face" kind of caster, which is completely different from my pDenny style. Of course I'm getting way ahead of myself here. I need to play Cryx and only Cryx and learn the darn game before I go crazy with the buying.

I'm such a nerd.

Anyways, I've heard that a local game store is going to be hosting an escalation league for Warmachine next month. So if that pans out time-wise, it will give me a good environment to learn the game. Also, my poor friend Robert is trying really hard to stay away from this one. Heh. Of course if I end up liking it, he's a dead man. You hear that Robert? start saving your pennies man! :)

Another beginning??

Hello sports fans! So today I'm going to start blogging my trek into the game known as Warmachine. A quick history for this game started out many years ago. I was deep into the local competitive scene for warhammer fantasy. Lo and behold, a new game comes out from a NW company called Privateer Press. They start a new skirmish level game called Warmachine. Starter boxes were $50 and had some pretty cool models in them. Best of all fantasy steam jacks! Big hunks of walking metal powered by magic and steam. What could be better?

Well as it turned out, I didn't much care for it. I started out with Cryx (being the local undead player) and while I did love the models, I did not like the gameplay. Borken* sucked. So I sold off my small collection and didn't really look back.

A few years later I did a pretty sweet trade with a guy and got a huge Menoth army. I saw the game was still going strong and they had added a lot more units finally...so why not give it a try. Problem was, it was still 1.0 and borken. So found a buyer for my army and away it went.

A few more years later and I had a chance to buy a sizable Mercenary force for the game. Once again, good intentions and all, I thought it would be cool. But now it was 2.0, and not very newbie friendly. I quickly got scared off by the combo nature of the game. I was at a point in my life where learning another game system just did not appeal to me, especially one where I needed to know everything about the other factions in order to compete. So that army got traded away.

Now you ask, why after three failed attempts am I going once more into the breach? Well, cuz I'm a little crazy that's why. I have always loved the models, and truth be told, they aren't much cheaper than GW stuff. But I've reached a point where I think I can start small, and find some like-minded people to play fun games against.

So here we are. I have gotten my hands on Cryx again. I'm going to stay small, learn the game piece by piece, and hopefully have fun painting and playing. The hard part will be finding shelf space for the models.



* Borken was a misspell of "broken" which people frequently used to describe the game balance of Warmachine. It sort of became the tag line for the game. "It was so broken it was balanced." Yeah, I didn't buy that either.