The Sapphire Guard - Week Five a.k.a. OH MY GOD I'M DONE!

Judgement Day, Armaggedon, Ragnarok... whatever you want to call it, it has come! Finally done with the Gamer's Journal and I am proud to report that I successfully painted up my full 35 point list. The finished product is as follows:


The Sapphire Guard [1][2][3][4]
Archdomina Makeda (*5pts)
* Cyclopse Savage (5pts)
* Cyclopse Shaman (5pts)
* Bronzeback Titan (10pts) [1][2][3][4]
* Titan Gladiator (8pts)
Paingiver Beast Handlers (Leader and 3 Grunts) (2pts)
Praetorian Swordsmen (Leader and 9 Grunts) (6pts)
* Praetorian Swordsmen Officer & Standard (2pts)
Extoler Soulward (2pts)

The newest addition to the squad is the Bronzeback, who I am affectionately calling King Kamehameha.


I'm extremely proud of him. He was assembled, based, primed, and painted over the course of two days. He's definitely the most extensive model and base I've ever constructed, and I love everything about him. The paint job, the base, the pose, absolutely everything!

Battle Rep:

I found myself across the table from Starman's Trollblood army for the first time since our 15pt lists (we were painting so much we had no time to play during the weeks leading up!) and suffice to say I lost. I won't go into it, but I was testing out the Paingiver Beast Slavers (Blasted Heath special unit) and I didn't deploy them well, plus I moved some models poorly after getting in sidesteps with them, and King K rolled for crap on his first couple of attacks (always happens right after you paint a model, y'know?). The list still played relatively well, but it's trickier without Condition for certain. I may switch it up during the league and drop the Savage from the list just because I don't feel like I have the fury to run him with all of this stuff.

Growth:

More than just this list, I'm looking at growing this army. Things I own that will be getting painted soon to allow some options:

* Xerxis
* Basilisk Krea
* Ancestral Guardian
* 2 more Paingivers (for max unit)
* Min Ferox unit
* Min Venators unit
* 1 (possibly 2) Gladiators
* up to 4 Savages (this depends on what I can salvage from the pile I got)

Stuff I don't own, but plan to:

* 2 Razorworms
* Zaal
* Hexeris
* 2nd Paingiver unit
* 2 Ancestral Guardians (to max the FA)

That's at least what I want right now, Menoth only knows what else I'll get.

Thoughts on The Gamer's Journal:

Holy balls this has been fantastic motivation! I don't even have to paint right now, and yet when I came home it was my first instinct and I really wanted to go down and get some models primed and ready to go. I didn't end up doing that, but it was definitely on my mind. I love that this has gotten me a beautiful force to play with, along with the urge to paint! Hopefully I can keep this going and get my Protectorate stuff finished up, finally!

Much thanks to Starman for keeping me motivated, the other Gamer's Journal players for doing the same and providing me with a lot of great feedback, and Naahz for coming up with this idea in the first place! Good luck to everyone else in the future!

The Sapphire Guard - Week Four

Another week has come and gone, and I wasn't able to finish all of the models I had hoped to finish. I had a busy week with friends visiting and some other craziness, but everything's fine now and I'm totally happy with the 8 models I was able to finish! Here's a shot of the models. I spruced up the picture as best I could to make up for not painting a few.


Here's the list, once again, of what I am up to at 25 pts:
Archdomina Makeda (*5pts)
* Cyclops Savage (5pts)
* CyclopseShaman (5pts)
* Titan Gladiator (8pts)
Paingiver Beast Handlers (Leader and 3 Grunts) (2pts)
Praetorian Swordsmen (Leader and 9 Grunts) (6pts) [1][2]
* Praetorian Swordsmen Officer & Standard (2pts)
Extoller Soulward (2pts)

Since I'm particularly proud of the shot, here's my Extoller:


List and Painting:

This list only got one game in this week, but it played very well for me. Painting was annoying because, as I stated frequently to Starman during the course of painting, I -hate- painting units. The repetition just drives me insane. I can't paint them all at once, I prefer to paint a few models at a time. Three is actually the optimal number for me, though I did do four at once one night. (That night was brutal, btw.)

Battle Report vs. Cryx:

I didn't take any pictures of the battle, but it was pretty straightforward. The Cryx player brought Epic Asphyxious (hate!), Deathjack, full unit of bane knights, Bane Lord Tartarus, a pistol wraith, and a skarlock. He won the roll and decided to deploy first, spreading his units out across his deployment zone with the bane knights and Tartersauce to the far right, Gaspy in the middle, and the skarlock and pistol wraith to the left. I countered by deploying my entire army in a block all the way to the far right (his left), putting them across from pretty much just his warcaster, skarlock, and pistol wraith. He kinda freaked out and placed the AD'd Deathjack to interpose that, as I assumed he would, but it put the bane knights -way- out of position.

On his first turn, he ran his knights and Tartarus to try to close the distance, threw Hellbound on Gaspy (hate!) and moved everything up. I cast Defender's Ward on the Praetorians, Savagery on the Paingivers, and ran my whole army to the right to put even more distance between me and the BK's.

His second turn the BK's ran again, about half of them getting in melee with my Praetorians, and Deathjack moved up and killed 3 swordsmen. Gaspy threw a bunch of caustic clouds down in my ranks, forcing me to think hard on my next activation.

Makeda went first, cast Carnage for +2 to all melee attacks, and then tried to hide behind a wall since I had a pretty good idea what was coming next turn. She also feated. My Praetorians, now able to come back from the dead if they were killed this turn, began side-stepping through the BK's and took about 2/3's of them out, with pretty solid rolls. They also plinked up Deathjack pretty good. My Gladiator got enraged by the Paingivers, cast Rush on himself, and attempted to slam the Deathjack. He only needed to roll a 5 because of Carnage and missed! I bought a few attacks and smashed about half the health off of Deathjack. The Shaman activated next, casting Future Sight on himself and trying to shoot Deathjack in the face. He needed an 8, rolled a 5 on two dice, so I boosted after the fact and rolled a 2 for a grand total of 7. Next up, the Savage activated and charged the Deathjack, taking a freestrike from one of the remaining BK's and suffering a pretty solid hit. No spirals were taken out, however, so he was able to scrap Deathjack handily. And, lastly, my Extoller moved up and shot a BK in the face.

Cryx player's turn, he tried to kill as many of the Praetorians as he could, but he only got 5 of them. The Savage went down to a few wicked shots from Tartersauce, and the Gladiator was on the receiving end of Parasite and some BK shots, but he barely took any damage. Gaspy had managed to throw his weapon out to collect souls, though, and was going to have a solid focus pile next turn. All of the Praetorian's came back on my turn, and I managed to chain them into some good spots for attacks.

I activated, had the Gladiator charge Tartarus and kill him, slaughtered all but one remaining BK, picked off his pistol wraith, and despite my best attempts only did 1 damage to his skarlock, but managed to surround it with Praetorians via sidesteps. Makeda hid behind a wall to try to avoid the ridiculous feat about to come on the next turn.

Cryx player activated, moved Asphyxious as far as he could to one side to try to get around the wall, then feated. He was able to place Tartarus and 3 bane knights far enough to the side in order to have LOS to Makeda and charge her. She transferred one attack, then had to take the rest, but the last BK whiffed his attack leaving her with 2 health! The others took out 4 Praetorians, and then he was done, but Gaspy was sitting on 5 focus still from all those souls on the previous turn.

I activated, dropped my upkeeps, casting Carnage and Savagery on the Gladiator. The Shaman cast Rush on him, and he walked 11 inches over to Gaspy through his Hellbound spell for some face beatings. Unfortunately, with all of the focus on him, I was only about to do about half of his life's worth of damage. The last BK finally died, as did the skarlock, leaving Gaspy as the only Cryx model on the table.

Cryx activated, Asphyxious moved around the wall, and with his full focus beat the last 2 health off of Makeda.

Thoughts:

I did pretty well in the fight, and eAsphyxious' feat is just nasty, seriously. I rolled poorly on some attacks that should have done way more damage, and I -really- hate Hellbound.

Moving up to 35pts:

I'm only adding one model for 35pts, but it's a doozy! I'll be throwing a Bronzeback into my list! Very excited, since I love the Fury 5, his animus, Grab n' Smash, and the fact that I can still run all these beasts because my Gladiator won't frenzy with the Bronzeback nearby! Can't wait to get him assembled and painted up!

I -hate- painting units...

Super minor update: Got 3 of the Swordsmen done. Took 3 hours start to finish, so about an hour per guy, which is about what it was taking me to do the Paingivers and Makeda, so sounds about right! 10 more models to go for this segment of the challenge.

The Sapphire Guard - Week Three

Dust wafted amongst her small band as Makeda strode east across the marches, back into Skorne territory. It had been a productive few weeks of travelling, and the skirmishes had easily been grand enough to please the ancestors. Her Gladiator let out a mournful wail behind her, still licking his wounds from the thrashing he had received at the hands of the beast man Kromac, but the Archdomina reached out and soothed his pain enough to cease his whimpers. Normally she would not be so kind, but the titan had proven his worth in that fight, and she had allowed the paingivers to administer extra healing salve. They would replenish their stores soon enough.

Mulling over the strategic retreat she had needed to enact when confronted with the worshipers of the Wurm, she continued to come to the same conclusion. She needed men. Strong men who would fight to the death for her, and charge into battle at nothing more than a nod. Luckily, her reputation was growing, and she had already sent word ahead with one of the paingivers to the many Skorne villages on the outer edges of the marches. Here, on the fringe of their territory, were people of the warrior caste that fought daily to maintain the gloriously growing empire of the Godless. They would serve her well.

Each village was quick to provide their best swordsmen for her cause, men honored to fight by her side. One village even had a young extoler who was willing to guide the souls of the men who were certain to fall in glorious combat sooner or later. Soon she would surrounded by a small army, eager to do her bidding. The young matron of House Balaash could not help but smile.

There would be much blood spilled in the coming days, of that there was no lack of certainty.

-----------------------------------------

Week 3 has come and gone, and not too much got accomplished. I'm okay with that, though, as I had a lot of important things this week to occupy my time! A wedding and a lot of quality time with my lady, things which are definitely paramount to painting miniatures. Nonetheless, I was able to assemble and prime all 13 models that I will be adding to my army in order to grow to a 25 pt list. New models are in italics.

Archdomina Makeda (*5pts)
* Cyclops Savage (5pts)
* Cyclops Shaman (5pts)
* Titan Gladiator (8pts)
Paingiver Beast Handlers (Leader and 3 Grunts) (2pts)
Praetorian Swordsmen (Leader and 9 Grunts) (6pts)
* Praetorian Swordsmen Officer & Standard (2pts)
Extoler Soulward (2pts)

These models are going to add a few vital things to my army composition:

Bodies: First and foremost, these guys are going to be blocking charge lanes and generally getting all-up-in someone's grill and/or business. They will be the front line of my army, hopefully eating up charges and also dishing out some of their own, particularly with the ability to sidestep (yay ridiculous UA!)

Souls: I guess this kind of ties into bodies, but my new Extoler Soulward will be hot on the heels of these guys, gathering souls, spitting out crazy boosted ghost-sight shots, and giving out magic attacks when needed to key units.

Feat Fodder: Makeda's feat will make these guys virtually indestructible for a round (especially if I throw Defender's Ward on them) and will pose a serious issue. Considering both games that I've played with this army has ended on the 3rd turn, that's 1/3 of the game that they are going to be a serious nuisance to my opponent.

Modeling And Painting

Almost nothing got done with these guys, which is upsetting, but they'll be getting the full treatment this week. I should be able to bust out 3-4 models per night, so I don't foresee any issues with getting them done in time for the end of Week 4.

The Sapphire Guard - Week Two

The List: (numbers link to close-up pictures of the model)

Archdomina Makeda (*5pts) [1][2]
* Cyclopse Savage (5pts) [1][2][3]
* Cyclopse Shaman (5pts) [1][2]
* Titan Gladiator (8pts) [1][2][3][4]
Paingiver Beast Handlers (Leader and 3 Grunts) (2pts) [1]

Preparation/Painting/End Product:

Wow! Just, seriously... wow! I am blown away by the fact that I painted these guys. I -love- the color scheme, they pop on the table and really look amazing. They're by far the best models I've ever done, and considering I'm painting them as fast as I can, I'm very happy with them. Due to a lot of different factors, I wasn't able to finish them up in the two week time period, but I'm only going to overshoot it by a day, and I'm happy with that. The next models are much smaller and should go much faster. As an example, all four of the Paingivers took me only two days. Makeda was about an hour. The Savage and the Gladiator took the most time, with the Gladiator taking a whopping 2 days of solid painting to finish. But, in total, he was still probably only 4-5 hours worth of work.

Battle Reports:

Battle 1 - Sapphire Guard vs. Shattered Kriel (Trollbloods of StarmanTTLB)

The pictures are a little hard to see, but we played this game on a board that had shallow rivers running through it, which we counted as rough terrain. Perfect for the swamp trolls, obviously. Deployment was fairly basic, across from each other, each of us deploying near the bridge that spanned a large pond. Starman went first, moving his Impaler up by the end of the bridge, the Mauler moving up in front of Grim, and the Pyre running off to one side to start a flanking maneuver on my army with the assistance of Cross Country.

I cast Rush on my Gladiator and Savage, running them both out in front of the army, the Savage to one side of the bridge, the Gladiator in front of the main force. Makeda put Defender's Ward on herself, Savagery on the Paingivers, and then moved up behind the Titan. Rest of the army moved up. [end of turn 1]

Turn two began with the Impaler throwing a spear at the Savage and boosting the attack roll, looking for the crit slam. Roll was super low and the spear wiffed. Next up, Grim moved up and attacked the Gladiator, hoping to get the extra 3" of charge range that his gun gives when it hits a target. Amazingly, he missed that shot as well, even though the Gladiator had only DEF 12. The Mauler moved across in front of Grim and off to one side, ready to intercept the Gladiator on the next turn. And the Pyre Troll lobbed his fire shot at the Gladiator, hitting and lighting him on fire, but doing no damage. The Gladiator would fail to remove this fire over the course of the game, but never took damage from it.

I began my activation by upkeeping my spells. The Shaman moved up and cast Rush on the Savage and shot the Impaler for a little damage, then the Paingivers moved up and one of them Enraged the Gladiator. Next, Makeda moved up and cast Carnage, making sure that every troll except the Pyre was in her control area. The Gladiator then activated, used his Rush animus on himself, and with the extra distance and pathfinder was able to slam the Mauler. Rolled a 3 for distance, and because of the Gladiator's bonuses was able to slam the Mauler 5" back, clipping Grim on the way and landing the Mauler about 2" behind Grim. The Gladiator used his follow up, but stopped once he was b2b with Grim, leaving the Mauler out of reach. Bought 2 auto-hitting attacks against the knocked down warlock and forced him to transfer the damage rolls to his Mauler and Pyre troll. The Savage ran around the end of the bridge and engaged the Impaler. [end of turn 2]

Turn 3 began with Starman attempting to shake knockdown on his warlock and Mauler. Grim stood up, but the Mauler was unable to because it's Spirit was out and couldn't be forced. All of the beasts that had taken damage ate whelps to get health back, and the Mauler moved up, forfeiting his attack. The Pyre charged the Gladiator in the back, hitting, but not doing much in the way of damage. The Impaler moved around and also attacked the Gladiator, taking out his Mind spiral, but not damaging him enough to kill. Grim couldn't walk away for fear of taking a freestrike that, even if transferred, could have possibly killed any of his beasts.

I activated, casting Carnage with Makeda again and camping the rest of my fury, then moving my paingivers up and getting one close enough to the Gladiator to cast Medicate. Gladiator healed his Mind spiral, then activated. I attacked Grim with a Headbutt and boosted the attack roll, succeeding and knocking him down. After buying two more attacks, Grim was out of fury to transfer with, and had lost about 2/3's of his health. The Savage activated, moved up to Grim, and killed him with his first attack. [end of game]

Thoughts: This list is fast! As a Menoth player, I'm not used to being able to get speed like this, and from what I've read this is a new experience for Skorne players as well! Definitely enjoyed the synergy of the models and felt I played extremely well.


Battle 2 - Sapphire Guard vs. Circle (played by PPS_Mod:Garvin!)

Grant was kind enough to oblige me with a game against his Circle, and it was a fantastic game. I won't give the play by play, as I did above, but the end of the game was truly epic. Grant brought Kromac, a Pureblood, a Gorax, and a min unit of Wolfriders. We also played on a board that included a bridge in the middle. By the end of turn 2, the Wolfriders had swept around the bridge to engage my Savage, and the Pureblood charged straight across the bridge to finish it off. My paingivers stripped the fury off of the Pureblood before it ate a charge from my Gladiator that killed it fairly quickly, leaving the Gladiator at the mouth of the bridge. (This is important)[pic from right about this point]

Kromac beasted out and charged the Gladiator with 4 fury, tearing into him and buying attacks, then feated, getting 7 more fury, and continuing. after all of this, the Gladiator still had 8 health! The wolfriders tried to move into a position to finish off the Titan, but my paingivers were blocking that with their reach weapons. Two of the wolfriders managed to do 7pts of damage to the Gladiator, and one ate a freestrike from a paingiver that did just enough damage to box it instantly (go whip dudes!) The Gorax couldn't move up far enough to attack the Titan, so he was sitting at the end of the bridge with 1hp and engaging Kromac, who only had 1 fury to transfer with!

I activated, attempted to Medicate the Titan, and rolled a 1! I could only heal one spiral, so I healed his Spirit, and the last remaining health had been in his Body, so he was currently rolling 1 die for attacks. Knowing I couldn't hit Kromac reliably, I attempted to two-handed throw the wolfrider next to me point-blank into Kromac's face! Boosted the attack roll and failed! The Titan bought an attack at that point and boosted, killing the wolfrider.

I now had only the Shaman and Makeda left to go, but the Gladiator was blocking the way! So, what would I do? Thinking like a Menoth player: attack my own guy! I declared that the Shaman was going to shoot the Gladiator in the back, I hit, and on rolling damage I rolled a 20! I only did 1pt of damage, which -didn't- kill the Gladiator because of the 1pt I had healed on him!

So, now it was Makeda's turn. She charged the Gladiator in the back, killing him easily, then attempted to use her sidestep to get to Kromac, but couldn't make it! So, I instead side-stepped her to a Paingiver, killed him, and side-stepped from there to Kromac! Bought extra attacks and... took Kromac to 2 health. Grant activated and killed Makeda. [end game]

Thoughts: Well, if I had rolled anything other than a 1-2 on my die roll for Medicate, I would have won. If I had charged my Gladiator with the Shaman instead of making a ranged attack, I probably would have killed it and Makeda would have had a direct charge path to Kromac, and I would have won. If Makeda had upkept Defender's Ward and cast Carnage before charging the Gladiator (I would have reaved 4 fury off of him when he died, putting me back to full fury) I would have been a +2 DEF, +2 ARM, and +2 on my attack rolls, and probably would have either killed Kromac, or survived the next turn and killed him on that turn. So, I had a few planning errors and some bad luck on dice rolls, but again the army played very well. Circle is superfast and I wasn't ready to have his stuff attacking me that fast, which was an error on my part.


Expanding To 25 Pts:

I've already ordered the models to do so, and my 25pt list will add the following:

Praetorian Swordsmen (Leader and 9 Grunts) (6pts)
* Praetorian Swordsmen Officer & Standard (2pts)
Extoler Soulward (2pts)

The full Swordsmen unit plus the UA is just insane. 11 models with 2 attacks that can auto-plink beasts/jacks, a mini-feat that gives them Anatomical Precision for a turn, granted side-step, and tactics ranked attacks. All for 8pts. Phenomenal. The Soulward will follow behind that unit, collecting souls and spitting them back out with boosted ghost shots and the ability to grant a model Eyeless Sight and Magical Weapon for a turn. The Swordsmen will also be great with Makeda's feat, which is currently fairly useless for the 15pt list, only keeping the Paingivers alive for a turn.

Very excited to continue this!

The Sapphire Guard - Paingivers

The Paingivers are done! Here's a pretty good idea of the color scheme and what I'm going for, hope you all like it! Tomorrow the Savage is going to get done. I've realized that whether I paint fast or slow, I still end up with a similar end product, and it's definitely good enough from a table distance, so I've come to terms with that and I'm happy with my skills. Feedback is welcome, and click the pictures for bigger versions!

The Sapphire Guard - Week One

Sadly, I don't have much new to report. I -did- finish the first paingiver completely today, but I didn't have a chance to take a picture, and I'm way too tired right now to do that. What I will do, though, is get a good picture on Wednesday, when I hope to finish up two more of them. With Mother's Day this past weekend and a number of other things, painting was just not the top priority.

I'm excited about the list, though. I hope to get it all done by Friday, and I think I can if I really focus each night on painting as much as I can. Now that I've dusted off my painting cobwebs, and now that I've got my color scheme down pretty good, I think I'll be able to fly through these models a little faster. And I'll definitely need to, since I'm going to be adding a whopping 13 models to the next tier of the list! If I can get into the "two models per night" mode I'll be totally fine, but I'll have to keep that up while also going to a bachelor party and a wedding in there somewhere. Fingers crossed!

The Sapphire Guard

So, what do you think of the army name, huh? Pretty sweet, amirite? I know, I know, I'm some sort of genius, it's crazy.Anyways, let's get right to the nitty gritty. No work on the table today (yet again *sigh*) but that's not the priority. Table honestly won't take long once the cross braces are in. No, the priority is definitely my models, because I paint super slow and poorly in general. I enjoyed today's painting, though. It started out boring because I was doing my usual "paint all of one color on every model then move on" technique, and finally I said "FUCK THIS!" because I wasn't going to have anything to show you guys tonight. Before we get to color, though, let's look at the primed and based models! I base my models with regular Elmer'sglue and then dip them into some ballast, the kind of stuff that is sold at hobby stores for trainsets to simulate the gravel under and around the train tracks. Works great as sand!
And here's some of the greenstuff work I did to help hold the banners on the back of my beasts.

First, the Cyclops Savage. This was easy, just two bits of greenstuff over the top of the banner at the points where it was glued to the back of the cyclops, then I sculpted it a little bit to square it off. This will get painted metallic so it looks like it's part of his armor for holding the banner on. (Click for big and slightly easier to see.)
And here's the back of the Gladiator. This was a little harder. I drilled into the bottom of that banner and also into the hole it normally goes into, pinned it, glued it, then used greenstuff to create a similarly shaped holder as the Savage had. Unfortunately, due to the banner only touching the Gladiator at this one point, I couldn't reinforce it any more. I'll just have to be super super careful with this guy. (Again, click for big.)

And finally, colors! Here's one of my paingivers that I finally decided to start slapping the full color scheme onto. This is only the base colors, and they're not all on yet (his pants won't be staying that awful bleached bone, it was an idea I had that I immediately didn't like) and there's no shading or highlights or... well, you get the idea. It's the rough draft!
Hope everyone liked it, and I'd love to hear what you think of the colors! Until next time, same Gemini time, same Gemini channel... man that sounds way better for Batman.

Banners? BANNERS!?!

Seriously, who thought putting banners on everything in Skorne was a good idea?!? I mean, I know I could leave them off, but I don't wanna. That would just be a cop out. I attached them to my Savage and Gladiator, and greenstuffed little "holders" for them to reinforce the joins. I think they look pretty good, I'll take some pics tomorrow. I also primed everything that I didn't greenstuff today (Makeda, Shaman, Paingiver Beast Handlers) so they're ready to start painting immediately tomorrow. I'm letting the greenstuff cure for 24 hours before I prime the Gladiator and Savage. With the bit of spare time I had, I also assembled some of the pieces for my 25 point list (I'm not telling you what they arrrrrrrre!) so that I don't have to worry about that when I roll around to that time frame.

So, from the current votes, one scheme is winning by such a landslide that I'm going to call a mercy rule on this one...

MY SKORNE WILL BE PAINTED SAPPHIRE!!!

Thank you all for your input! Truthfully, that's the color scheme -I- liked the most too! So, I'll really enjoy painting these guys up now! I would have been happy with any of the other color schemes as well, but this was my first thought. I'm planning on going for a bit of a "cell shaded" look for it, i.e. not trying to create seamless blends. I think it'll look good with the intensity of the colors I'm looking to do.

No work on the table today, sadly! I got caught at work doing... dumb things. I'll just leave it at that. Hopefully there will be great strides made tomorrow! I'd like to do a post about the planning I went through and scan some of my iterations of designs (yes, I really went through iterations, this thing was going to be intense) and show you what I finally landed on. The final design is actually incredibly simple and almost anyone can do it as long as you have the desire! It can definitely be made without doing any of the angled cuts (but where's the fun in that?!?).

That's all for today, pics tomorrow of what I did today and what it eventually looks like when it's all said and done.

Chipping away...

So, time to start this thing! For starters, here's the army list I've decided to go with:

Archdomina Makeda (*5pts)
* Cyclops Savage (5pts)
* Cyclops Shaman (5pts)
* Titan Gladiator (8pts)
Paingiver Beast Handlers (Leader and 3 Grunts) (2pts)

The first step was to get the models together. I received all of these in a recent purchase from a friend of mine who decided he wasn't going to start playing this game after all, and -he- had gotten them from a previous person for the same reason. The first owner apparently enjoyed using an entire bottle of Zap-A-Gap per joint, however. These models were literally caked in glue! A few hours of chipping away at them with a combination of a pin vice, exacto knife, file, and eventually a straight up ice pick did the job! I had to rip the Gladiator's head off and pick out a bunch of glue before reapplying it, and did the same thing with one of Makeda's arms. I pinned a few things, and kept the banners off for now. I think I'll be attaching them with a combination of greenstuff and glue. At the top you can see the current state of Makeda and her retinue.

I'm excited about the way this list is going to play. I did a small amount of testing the other day with some of the beasts in the list and I really enjoyed the way they played. The Gladiator hits like a Mac Truck, and Rush is a fantastic animus. My Shaman is able to also cast that while sitting in the back, using his ghost shot ranged attack, increasing range of Muzzle for Makeda, and being a useful beast to transfer damage to. The Savage I have yet to use, but I think he'll work well in conjunction with the Gladiator. He's fast, also hits hard, and Rush will be a nice animus on him as well. I'm going to run him and the Gladiator up front, Makeda/Shaman/Paingivers as a nice second wave, just behind. The Paingivers will let me run my beasts a bit on the hot side, and if one beast dies they become a great harassing unit against my opponents by stripping fury off of enemy beasts to deny to their warlocks.

Overall, looking forward to more work on this later in the week! Tomorrow night I have no time to do any more on the project, so Wednesday will be the next increment and update. Remember, please vote below on the color scheme for my army! It's looking like I won't start the actual painting until Thursday now, so I may leave voting open until then.

A Palette, A Palette... My Archdomina For A Palette...

Whenever I start a new army, there's that sense of newness and wonder that comes along with it. If I can be an IT nerd for just a second, it's like when you've just reinstalled your OS onto a computer. So fresh, so clean... so much potential. Of course, as anyone else who does IT knows, eventually it will be a slow moving, out-of-date piece of crap. But, for the moment, it's a beautiful blank slate!

And that is what I find myself faced with at the moment, looking at the Skorne models that I'm going to paint up for this Gamers Journal that I'm about to embark on. I have a few goals in mind:

• Become a better painter.
• Finish some models. My roommate/longtime opponent can attest that I am notoriously bad at finishing my models. We had a discussion about it today. I get nervous that I'm going to screw up the farther along I get with each model, and I eventually shelve it and start a new one. I have probably 60 points of Menoth half painted, and another 80 points half assembled and primed, all due to my fear of finishing a model.
• Create a badass list that will rock some socks off.

So, with my very first post, I am already asking for help! Having painted my Menoth a fairly standard paint scheme, and with my absolute hatred of painting red, I've decided I'm going to do an alternate scheme for my Skorne. And I have a few ideas. I want your votes to help me decide which scheme to go with. Below are my three ideas, based off of some of my favorite gemstones. Jade, sapphire, and amethyst. I'm going to leave voting open until Wednesday, when I will actually start the basecoating process. Between now and then, I'll be assembling, basing, and priming my models, so I'm not losing any time. But, please, help me choose my paint scheme! Just comment on this post with your vote, and whichever scheme receives the most votes will be my new armor color. (Obviously it goes from upper-left to lower-right with basecoat to highlights. Hopefully I can match paint colors better than the jackass at Home Depot today, our living room wall is about 3 different shades of red right now...)

Online Gamer's Journal #1

At first there was darkness, and then Naahz said let there be an Online Gamer's Journal challenge, and there was an Online Gamer's Journal challenge, and it was good.

Naahz over on Privateer Press' forums proposed that PP fans mimic the No Quarter Gamer's Journals and document a slow-growth league online. This blog will follow myself (StarmanTTLB) and my roommate (GeminiX6) as we participate in the challenge. We have three goals set between the two of us for the challenge:

1) GeminiX6 will create a 35pt fully painted Skorne army.

2) StarmanTTLB will create a 35pt fully painted Trollblood army.

3) Together we will build a WM/H-sized table for our place of residence.

All three goals will be documented here (and likely cross-posted on the PP forums).

Welcome to 2 Gamers 1 Table!