Crisis of Faith

Figliturally (trademarked) I am having a crisis of faith. I am all hyped on Warmachine right now. The crisis though has popped up due to Menoth. I was all set to learn the game and grow with it playing Cryx. I love Deneghra, I like the undead angle, and I got a great deal on figs and have room to grow. All should be right in the world.

But it isn't. I also got a small set of Menoth stuff a while back in the hopes that my friend Robert could use them. Well Robert went and got into Cygar instead (which is cool). But that left me with another book to read...and models to play with. And once I started reading the Menoth book...I really really liked it.

On a personal note, I've never been one to have a strong faith in the holy. Not a big fan of religion, and it took me years to finally come to a place where I am accepting and happy with my faith and belief. I have to say, I have always been jealous of those that have a strong faith. What an amazing thing it is to believe so completely in something that it soothes your soul and sets your mind and heart at ease. That sounds wonderful.

As a big roleplaying nerd, I've always been attracted to the divine classes. I think because I don't have that sort of belief, it is great to play someone who does.

Warmachine has a whole faction to play like that and it is really intriguing. Plus they have some great models. Originally, I was going to go with Feora and a bunch of flameguard. I like themed lists..so sue me. Plus, Feora seems so different from Denny in terms of play style. However, the more I've been reading about Menoth, the more I like Kreoss. He's a decent guy who does right by his men. How can you not like that?

So there is the problem. I have all this cryx stuff, which I like. But I also have a starter of Menoth which I could use instead. What do I do?

Back again!

Hello gentle readers,

I am back. I was off on a fantastic vacation. Three words, Swam with Dolphins. In fact that may be my new indian name. :)

Thanks to all two of you who keep checking on this darn thing. I will be making some progress soon. Things are crazy at home as you can imagine after being gone a week. I have been working on a mechanithrall and with luck will get that finished within the next couple of days. I'm hoping it turns out well.

Thanks again for stopping by. I will be posting up more in the next few days. Also, my friend Robert finally took the plunge and now has a Cygnar force, so he and I will be learning the game together quite soon. :)

To be fair

So I posted up pics the other day of a new model I did because the orange paint scheme didn't seem to be working. However, to be fair, the first pics I posted lacked any shading done to the models. So last night I did a quick shading to the two test models to see how they would turn out.

Compare this to the last set:

Quite an improvement actually. Now even with that, I don't think the orange is the way to go. I do like the tan better. However, I am still looking for a good contrasting color. Now I might pick up the typical cryx green and find a way to incorporate that into the model. I still want the tan to be the primary though. Or, I can go with a darker metallic and see how that plays out. So the above two minis will be heading for the krudd kutter soon so I can repaint them.

Was super busy last night so all I got done was the wash. I am getting my scuba license and did an hour and a half in a pool and then had a futsal game after that. I am beat.

But very excited to be painting my Cryx minis. Can't wait to get a force done to play.

Cryx paint scheme part II

Okay, so went back to the drawing board on the paint. The orange really wasn't doing it for me. It was getting more and more apparent that I was trying to force the color to work. So I went back and thought of something else.

He has the bright green in the vents, but that didn't really pop out too well. Also, the bronze is really close to the tan. There just doesn't seem to be enough contrast. I like colors to have a certain level of separation, and this model just doesn't seem to have it.

I mean it doesn't look bad...not like that orange by any means. I'm just wondering if maybe I should ditch the bronze and go for a gun-metal color instead? Or maybe some other darker metal (not bright silver though).

Maybe a contrasting base will help it out. Robert seems to like it. And I did this in just a couple of hours, so it was pretty easy to do. Also, the bright green I used was really watery. I had to put in several coats and it just never worked how I wanted it to.

I was using a paint from Val's Game Color line. I loved the color..but maybe I should see if PP has a matching one. I hate thin paints. I'd rather they were thick and let me thin them down. All in all though, a much better turn out than my first attempt.

Next up, a mechanithrall done in the same color scheme.

Test run was a little shaky

So over the holiday weekend, I actually got some paint down on models. I grabbed a defiler bonejack and a mechnithrall to be my test subjects.

The defiler was primed grey and the thrall was primed in zombie flesh (courtesy of AP). First color up was the orange. Now after rummaging through my paint stores, I ran across GW's old foundation orange paint. I really liked Foundation from GW. It did what it said and was fantastic for base coating. Unfortunately, while the paint worked great, the pots were crap! Most of them are completely dried out despite the fact that they were never used. I hate hate hate hate hate GW paint pots. Jesus GW, get with the program!

Rant over. So the bonejack started looking really really really orange. Cuz most of it is just armor plating. But I had faith and kept going. The thrall got the orange on all the armored sections..so fists, head, and back mostly. Not bad, and I'm sure once the dip/wash phase happened, it would be all good.

Next up the bronze color. This was my first screw-up. The color works well, I just didn't use it where I should have. I ended up painting some areas on the bonejack a silver..and those should have just stayed bronze. Good to note though for the future. The thrall just didn't have enough space. There were dots of bronze here and there, but no good solid piece. I think I will fix that by doing the fists in bronze and just keep the armor sections orange. Plus, it sort of looks like they have pumpkin hands.

Next up I made an iffy choice by painting some necrotic flesh on the bonejack...basically the area around the stacks. Can't say it worked well. I think that is going to go away.

My next blunder was to try and use purple for the witchfire effect (and thus on hoses too). That really didn't work out. So I'm going to go back to glowly green for that effect. I love my Clemson, but the orange and purple did not work out on Cryx models.

So all it all, it was a bust. I will have to strip these models and try again. But, it did get me painting and gave me some ideas for the next trial run.

Pics below. No shading was done to these models. I knew they were heading for the Krudd Kutter so why waste the ink? They might hang around until I get another test model done..so I can use for reference.

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.