What did you do today.

[Konrad]

Thanks, gents. Yeah, the only thing that tops a Warlord in "anti-swoosh" is a Gargant, I reckon.

I don't know. Skorchaz make sort of a "swooshing" sound. Right before the exploding and screaming drown it out....

[The Other Dave]

I ran into town to pick up some primer yesterday, so I'm getting back into the titan matsuri after a couple days off - warhounds'll be next, I reckon.

Then I'll have a painting conundrum vis a vis my knight contingent. Seems there's basically two options here: either a house (like, canonically, Coldshroud for Gryphonicus) that has colors that echo the titans (in Coldshroud's case, pale yellow and pale gray), or a house, (like Vyronii) that has colors that stand out from the titans (green, white and red in their case). There's pros and cons to both approaches, and I'll probably waffle basically until paint touches model on them.

I've also, on Auxryn's advice, been playing Mechanicus on Steam, an extremely characterful and rather well-done X-COM-ish tactical game of AdMech versus Necrons. They've toned down a lot of the gross combos that made the initial release almost laughably easy, and even added a difficulty slider. Good fun!

[YellowStreak]

I have only been painting sporadically of late (new dad syndrome!) but I have finally got a start on my Bolt Action Allied Narvik force for Bolt Action. I'm using the generic Noway defence force selector from Germany Strikes! as it contains a mix of Norwegian, BEF and French Foreign legion troops and vehicles (mostly using the lovely minis from Gorgon (https://gorgon-studios.myshopify.com/).


Once I get that done, next up will be the counter-force, which will be primarily German Gebirgsjager (also from Gorgon) with some blitzkrieg heer to back them up. Go Go early war!

I'm headed to the Carnecon (http://meatshank.com/index.html) Bolt Action tournament next weekend. Taking my desert French Foreign Legion - doubt I'll do well against what is likely to be lots of late war forces but "C'est la vie!"

[Primarch]

@YS - Does that tournament have a free BBQ? Right, I know what I am doing for the next NagoyaHammer.
Nice looking Norwegians.

I have finally managed to tear myself away from MtG: Arena for a couple of hours today and got some painting done. Nothing to show for it yet, but some progress was made.

[The Other Dave]

@YS - looking good! Those are some nice-looking sculpts.

I got my summer bonus this week and splurged with the fifth titan for my little maniple. As that brings me to a full 5-titan maniple with knight support, and a comfortable 1750 points or so, I'll probably hold off on buying any more AT stuff 'til I get some games in, but man oh man do I ever love this scale after all (and the rules looking pretty tight is definitely a bonus).

[YellowStreak]

@YS - Does that tournament have a free BBQ? Right, I know what I am doing for the next NagoyaHammer.

Yes it does! It's also a canned food drive for a local charity.

[The Other Dave]

Couple warhounds done:



Knights are next while I assemble my second and final Reaver!

[Primarch]

@ToD - Nice little doggies. I like how you have used different patterns on them so that they look similar without being uniform.
Now if they would just add infantry, AFVs, aircraft, artillery and other stuff to the game, it would start to look really tempting.

[The Other Dave]

Thanks! The goal was to make them all look like Gryphonicus titans, while playing up the fact that even the smallest are unique god-engines that've been at war for (as of the HH timeline anyway) hundreds of years nonstop.

As for support, ironically enough (especially for me, the lover of mass battles that I am) AT is basically a really crunchy skirmish game - a handful of models per side with detailed status tracking and lots of customization. While I'd like a new Epic, it is what it is. (OTOH, they are - for some reason - planning on re-releasing Aeronautica Imperialis in the same scale in the not-too-distant future, so maybe that's a sign of things to come.) But, like with AT1988 and Epic, they'd really need to revamp the rules to include anything smaller than knights - it's really not built to handle any weapons weaker than a vulcan mega-bolter very well.

Side note for anyone interested - the plasma glow is one of the Contrast paints, "aethermatic blue" in this case, and it worked basically as advertised - a very simple way to more-or-less reproduce something that I could've done with inks and medium on my own, but that would have been fiddly. Worth the 1000 yen for the pot? That probably depends on how much plasma I'll be painting moving forwards.

[me_in_japan]

You've certainly cracked painting Titans, dave - those are top notch. I assume you use templates/tape of some kind for the lines, cos those are crispy as all get out. Very nice work

As for me, I've been working on some nurgle guys for the past couple weeks, and amazingly actually managed to finish them in time for a game of (dun dun daaaaaaaa!) Age of Sigmar (no, really) at the weekend. I went to Chez Spevna and we managed to fit in 3 full games in the space of a day, which honestly kinda surprised me, as neither of us had ever played before. So, the rules get a tip of the hat for being straightforward. Overall my impressions of AoS (Skirmish) were:

• Rules are easy to pick up, and stats are kept to a minimum.

• Some stuff doesnt quite work in skirmish (case in point: in one game I used my Stormcast from Shadespire, and one spell the leader has does 1 mortal wound to all units within 18 inches. In regular AoS, that's one dude dead from your unit of 10 or 20. In Skirmish, since each model is its own unit, that's pretty much a board wipe and game over. In our particular case it wasnt too much of an issue as Spev had taken a bunch of multi-wound big guys as his warband, so it was far less lethal than it might have been, but against a larger warband of smaller guys with 1 wound each? Sayonara, dudes...)

• Setup is more important than I gave it credit for, as (of course) there are no vehicles, so you need to watch where you put your guys so they can be places and do stuff. This is probably just me being too used to Eldar in 40k, rather than inherent to AoS.

• It's very nice to be able to play a new game and spend zero money on it. I have a bunch of daemons (and indeed, old skaven and general chaotic types) that I can use. Plus all Shadespire warbands have AoS rules online. In fact, the complete rules for play (rules pdf, and all the unit datacard thingies) are on the GW site. Hell, they even have an army builder you can use.

Overall, I'd recommend it for those who fancy a wee dip back into fantasy. Skirmish works, and my next plan is to actually paint up some more daemons and a Hero or two and try a smallish-but-full-AoS game some time after I get back from Scotland in the summer.

Also, here's some pics: