Firstly, some apologies (damn I hate doing these all the time). Life has generally got in the way of blogging over the last few months. This is likely to continue for a bit, so please bear with me, or follow the Anything Worth Doing page on Facebook for slightly more regular updates.
Despite the work and personal stuff flying around my life at the moment, I have actually managed to do some hobby. I have already blogged about some of the Infinity scenery I’ve built (here and here), but the big thing has been the Warmachine Journeyman League I foolishly agreed to run.
Journeyman League
This was an interesting exercise. I have some experience running tournaments and leagues at a gaming club and national level from my days at the Sad Muppet Society and Gaming Club Network so I have some vague idea of what I’m doing, although it has to be said that Privateer Press having a complete system, on a platter so to speak, saved a lot of work.
The idea of the League was to encourage the two different clubs in the area to play one another, and encourage new players, and some old players, to play more. This was semi-successful, but as secondary benefit, we have a lot more painted models kicking around at the club I regularly attend.
The Journeyman system itself is really good at encouraging lots and lots of small games and the first three weeks of the league were the most successful. This leads to a lot of gaming points getting scored at the beginning of league. In our League the winner was in an unassailable position by the time we got to 35 point games. In hindsight some kind of bonus points for inter-club games would have also been useful to encourage those games.
Although I didn’t get to paint anything new, I did play lots of games with young Commander Adept Nemo, the first Warmachine warcaster I ever bought. At small points value he works surprising well, and Tactical Arcanist Core are amazing with him. I like having ten focus points almost every turn.
For those interested, the final results can be found here. A big ‘tack’ to everyone who took part!
Nomads
My little Infinity project is the current ‘thing’ on my desk at the moment. I might have gone flying down the rabbit hole as I’ve picked up a fair amount of Infinity stuff now. So far, I have painted the Alguacils from the starter box, a Lunokhod Sputnik remote and a Hellcat.
This isn’t particularly impressive progress but I have been putting a lot of time into these guys, and in the process I have added some new skills to my painting skill set. For example, all of them use Chrome and Gold Non-Metallic Metal effects andthe airbrush has been used for all of them. A certain super talented Ángel Giráldez is a bad influence.
Although I haven’t taken many photos yet, I did mockup the colour scheme in Photoshop from the sculptors 3D renders…
Of course, I have also have a new dice bag from KOed Design to store those strange twenty sided dice, and to store the Classified Objective cards I’ve made up. Actually these deserve a special mention.
Infinity scenarios use secret Classified Objectives, and while you can use the chart in the rulebook, and Customeeple do an official card deck, a chap called Captain Spud has put together an excellent deck that you can print out yourself. Better still, they are available in various colours!
Masterclass…
I have already reviewed Ángel Giráldez’s Masterclass book, however I have now had the opportunity to put some of those lessons into practice. If you want to start playing with Non-Metallic Metals, I suggest having a look at the Vallejo NMM Paint Set which comes complete with a short guide on how to paint NMM silver and gold, penned again by a certain Mr Giráldez.
This method is pretty easy to replicate and makes a good introduction to these more advanced painting techniques, just remember to use any glazes sparingly (this was my first mistake).
The NMM method described in the Masterclass book is a little more complex and uses an airbrush, but is basically the same. This has been the start point for the armour plating on my Nomads.
I have also been using Ángel’s recipes for highlighting reds and painting skin tones. Skin tones in particular has been a bit of a revelation although I have needed to expand my paint collection.
The Vallejo paints themselves fit somewhere between the P3 paints and Citadel paints in usability. The eye dropper pots are great, and the pigments are finer than Citadel paints, however some of the colours tend to separate and require more shaking than other brands. This is especially true if you want the Vallejo Game Colour paints to dry completely matt because some (notably Black and Gore Red) can be a little shiny.
All of this said, the range of colours available between Vallejo’s Game and Model ranges is HUGE; and their airbrush paints, which match many of these, are fantastic. Between these and Privateer Press’ P3 paints, most of my Citadel paints are going to the kids.
And finally…
So that’s been the last three months for me. On top of all of this, I have just signed up for Smogcon 2016 as well, which given the last few weeks been challenging, I am REALLY looking forward to.
Between myself and a friend, we are vaguely planning to play some more serious Warmachine games over the Autumn, possibly just after an Infinity Escalation League.
For the record, I have actually started to paint Nemo 3 so I might be using the old man when I go to England. Or I might use Major Prime Haley, because grandma Haley is super sweet!
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