Another LunaMaria... and a painting goal finished

First off, let me show the world the most recent Lunamaria Hawk I received last week, sitting in her casual clothings and typical white `leisure hat'

And in the back, a hint of what I am going to start working on once my little `hobby corner` is completed at my girlfriends place ;-)

I also want to grab the opportunity that bar making pictures and mailing them to Clam, I have now finished all models for this years BSL, the next round will be my morally obliged mecha entry (being an anime nut, I owe it to myself to enter one at least in each online painting competition I participate in), the final round has as theme `Chaos Dwarfs` so that wasn`t hard to find models for hehee...

Let`s see if with the current round still running and those two upcomming rounds, I can maintain a spot in the top half, and if the paint gods are willing even aim at a top-5 finish, doubting that though seeing the work of some in there whom I luckily dodged so far...

Saint Seiya Myth Cloth: Saga of Gemini

BUY THIS

Now how is that for an opening of a Myth cloth post.  Saga, poor, schizophrenic Saga, is one of the strongest Gold saints, but has one fatal flaw.  Like the Gemini Constellation, he has a good and an evil side, and his evil side took over in a bid to take over Athena`s pledge to protect earth.

He failed to assassinate the baby when Aiolios stopped him, as he had taken over the role of the Pope from Mu`s old master. 

Finally seeing the light after being nearly beaten by Seiya and realizing the error of his ways, he threw himself onto Athena`s staff, only to be return from the dead in the Hades chapter.  Where his twin brother Kanon also played a crucial part, but that is a tale for another Myth cloth.

Now the model itself, even though being of the older generation, is well worth it`s money, as you get two models actually.  Saga and the Pope, so you can make any combination of evil and good armoured Saga (as I did here, without his helmet for once to show off the possessed look more, and the EX will be in my possession one of these days anyways), an armoured and unarmoured pope version with again both heads, and the `animated` cloth from when the saints entered the Gemini temple.

'Nuff said, great value!  And the throne is also included on top of that!

End of Summer and start of new goals

So summer holiday season has ended, and to be honest, I have been slacking like hell.  I managed to paint a measly dozen of models over the past two months, mostly for need in games I was going to play or are about to play.

Now this also means some changes and late goals for the year are switching. 

First of all, that means the planned 500 points of Hobgoblins.  I didn`t manage to get them done for the 500 pts tournament beginning of july, so I went to battle there with the Ravening Hordes list, and even with that ancient two piece of paper managed to come up third, but now the next TSA tournament has been unveiled.  Probably in november there is going to be a `Duo Tournament` in which each player has a 1000 points at his disposal, so I`m pulling up the `to paint` number from 500 to 1000 and see if I can get it all done before then.

Second is the Journeyman League comming up, in which I will be fielding the Circle Orboros for the comming 6 months.  Players start with the basic Battle Box of their faction, and the force is planned to grow to an army of 35 points, each time in steps of 10 points.  I`ll be adding a goal of xx / 35 to my sidebar for this progress, and as january sees the start of the large forces that means the 35 points need to be done by december.

This will probably mean neither the Gundam nor the Heroclix goals will be achieved...

Game wise it has been rather calm as well.  Apart from the tournament, I managed to play 2 games of Mordheim and one casual Magic event this holiday period, and that is about it.  A combination of not really knowing what to play combined with the move of the girlfriend and an `intresting` work period resulted in not much club attendances lately, but we`re starting to go more again.

The Playstation challenge is now as good as officially lost.  Blame Guild Wars 2 for that...  I`m Mesmerizing my way through Tyria once again.

League wise the Blood Bowl championship seems to have died down, due to the commissar getting a girlfriend and as such not attending often anymore, so it seems I`ll be ending on a clean 5th spot, right outside the play offs that probably will never be, not to shabby for a vertically challenged team unable to pick up a ball.  I will end the League with the records for `Most Caised Casualties in One Game` and `Players Send Off` though, and didn`t had a single casualty over the whole season.  Yay me.

In the Brush Slave League I`m currently around 5th place, with two normal rounds and one theme round to go.  This month, which started today, I`m fielding the first models of an oriental themed Chaos Dwarf warrior unit, next month will be the obligatory Gundam entry.  No idea what the bonus round is, so not much to reveal already about that...

And I`m finally drudging through my own card collections and seeing the end of the stacks I need sorting, be sure to check the House of Cards header of this blog if your looking for cards of the odd game!

See y`all around soonish!

That didn`t go as planned...

Tonight I took the field at last in Mordheim with my Black Dwarfs warband I showed you earlier this week.  With 4 players turning up, I knew my novice band would be hardpressed with two high rating bands oppossing me, and a medium ranked band which was about my level.

This multiplayer would be a scenario in which heroes needed to go door to door to inquire information politely (like hell) or torture the residents (hell yeah) for information, the band with the most information points comming out on top of the game.

I was so heavily outclassed, I would receive an extra xp point each for actually just turning up, so the plan was to loose three henchmen and bottle out.

This is the village where the battle would take place:

The participating forces, ranked from low rating to high rating, where first of all my Dawi Zharr

A bunch of pirates led by a group of wild women of the seas:

A crusade of holy women:

and a very, very experienced force of misguided kinsmen

I started with some tortured information gathering, as did most bands who whomever choose mostly to use the more civilized method:

Turn two saw my Bull Centaur charge a lone pirate henchman, bend on an easy experience point with his 2 attacks, strong armour and strength and toughness 4... and then the title started to kick in as because after three turns of combat it finally ended with the Bull Centaur going out of action vs a lowly dagger...  160 gc of sheer uselessness and it would get worse, see at the end...

Even though one of my archers managed to shoot down a pirate henchmen, after both spearmen where knocked out of action I voluntarily bottled out, taking with me 5 information points (in the end, this actually managed to secure me second place though in gathered points...)

Next to bottle out where the pirates, after the Dwarfs beat them and the nuns up, and ended the game.

Things got worse when rolling for the injuries... both one of my spearmen AND the Bull Centaur didn`t survive the encounter.  I ended up with a lowly piece of wyrdstone I could sell for 35gc, and a rating that though even it had dropped from 83 to 82, my band is now only 7 strong anymore...  bad start for the Slavers, but as this are try outs, I`m sticking with them and I`ll see where I end up with lessons learned once the actual campaign begins.

And what did we gain skill and advancement wise?  RUBBISH, total and uber RUBBISH.  My Archer henchmen gained +1 Initiative and my Chaos Dwarf henchmen +1 Ld, and that was it.  The Bull Centaur would have rolled as well had he survived the encounter, but alas that was not to be...

Oh well, next time, next time...

House of Cards *update*

Okay, so the plan to get bulk cards to have trade material for the sets I`m collecting backfired `a bit`.  A bit being about 13000 cards left over after the current round of turn-in`s, so I am going to be busy the comming weeks trying to list everything on TCO and see from there, probably dumping the rest on the Crisis second hand or such.

Never the less, we`re still going strong (well, figure of speaking, being as sick as a dog again as the old brain is shortcircuiting again), and we sorted out and traded in some cards, meaning at current I`m looking still for the following cards from the sets I already shifted through, and also meaning for other collectors that I have a decent amount of still mint / near mind doubles to help someone out if he looks for a certain card:

Cards I`m LOOKING for for my own collection include the following ENGLISH games:

1. Knights of the Zodiac 

Mythological Forces expansion
K-076 // K-080 // K-081 // P-022 // T-062 // T-066

Promo Cards
EX-001 // EX-002 // EX-003 // EX-004 // EX-005 // EX-006 // EX-007 // EX-008 // EX-009 // EX-010 // EX-011 // EX-012 // EX-013 // EX-014 // EX-015 // EX-016 // EX-018 // EX-019 // EX-020 // EX-021

2. Gundam MS War (bar the OZ corps starter box)

3. Gundam War 

Booster 1 (Now and Forever)
White: U-S010 / U-S011 / U-S012 / U-S013 / U-S014 / CH-S004 / G-S003 / G-S004 / U-W011 / CH-W004 / CH-W006 / C-W004 / C-W005
Blue: U-E006 / U-E010 / U-E011 / U-E012 / U-E013 / CH-E005 / C-E003 / O-E002 / O-E003
Green: U-Z001 / U-Z003 / U-Z004 / U-Z005 / U-Z006 / U-Z007 / U-Z009 / U-Z011 / U-Z012 / C-Z006
Black: U-T005 / U-T011 / U-T012 / U-T014 / CH-T001 / CH-T006 / C-T003 / C-T004 / C-T005
Red: U-N002 / U-N003 / U-N005 / U-N009 / U-N010 / U-N011 / CH-N001 / CH-N002 / CH-N004 / CH-N005 / O-N001 / O-N003
Brown: U-A004 / U-A006 / U-A007 / U-A009 / U-A010 / U-A011 / CH-A002 / CH-A003 / CH-A004 / CH-A005 / O-A008 / G-A003 / G-A004 

4. SD Gundam War

Explosive Victory expansion:
SD-104 // SD-114 // SD-120

And the cards I`m looking for from JAPANESE editions of Saint Seiya and Gundam series: 

1. Saint Seiya Crusade 

Twelve Golden Temples Chapter
 Blue U-006 / Purple C-001

Chaos Dwarf Mordheim warband

Even though I`ve learned and saw with the recent Blood Bowl League that nowadays club campaigns are fickle business due to that thing called real life getting in the way, the plans are for a Mordheim campaign to start somewhere at the end of this year, beginning of the new year.

As it will allow a lot of extra non-official bands, I of course duely selected the Black Dwarfs list from the excellent Border Town Burning fan supplement, to be found here for example.

Long before, and ever since, the twin tailed cometh struck the city of Mordheim, the evil masters of Zharr Naggrund have set out raiding parties into the Old World.  Always led by a Sorcerer, these bands roam the country sides and raind small outposts, villages and hamlets to look for more unfortunate souls to be thrown onto the furnaces of Hashut.

One such warband is Sorgal`s Slavers

Now, the Chaos Dwarf list is rather different in play `concept` in that it is not for the pure wealth gaining your into the game, but to try and capture models of the opponents and sacrifice them to the Father of Darkness.  Several special rules, like the free extra spell `Sacrificial Ritual` or a Gaolers Mancatcher represent this, but it is almost mandatory that you gain about 200 gold crowns together asap to try and locate, then buy an Engine of Chaos, a sort of armoured chariot cage powered by a bound deamon, as this machine `unleashes` the potential of all those special rules to the fullest.

My band is as such led by the mandatory sorcerer, Sorgal the Firehand, a model produced by Titan Wargames who so far had been leading my forces as I still needed to finish another sorcerer for them until recently.  As he has no ambition at all to fight in the front lines, he is only armed with a dagger.  His job is to slid throats of any models captured after the battle.

Accompaniying him is his faithful bodyguard K`hruzz the Cruel, a noble Bull centaur I equipped with heavy armour for extra protection as these blokes are darn expensive.  Surely, you have a S4 M8 monstrosity, but unfortunatly it also counts as a large target making it a darn tempting target for anything shooty.

The third initial hero of my band is a Gaoler, equipped with dagger and axe.  This fellow is actually one of the Hellcannon crew members. He also has the nice special rule that his reputation causes fear in all opposing humans.

Henchmen wise, I have of course two `regular` Chaos Dwarf warriors with axe and shield, both again from the Titan Wargames range.  These will be the linchpin my force, joining the Gaoler and the Sorcerer in a small wall of T4 models to try and hold any `base` I might set to launch the attack from.

Unique to the list are Informants.  This list doesn`t use the Hobgoblin or other Greenskin slaves one might expect from a Chaos Dwarf list, but instead uses humans captured.  These dregs of society have chosen to serve their slavers in exchange for not being sacrificed, and to add an extra touch of exotica to my band, I went for models that look as though they where caught in the wide world and now followed their masters to the Old World to serve as further fodder.  Their special rule also prevents them from ever becomming heroes.

Two sets of 2 models are selected for this, the first being two Araby archers, called the Desert Wind, and which are Black Tree saracen models, and the second being two Cathayan spearmen called the Sting of the Dragon and are drawn from the historical chinese range from Curtseys miniatures.

Kaya the Moonhunter and Laris

Okay, so I ment it when I said I needed to paint like hell, so today I finally finished painting Laris, almost a year after his mistress Kaya.

I really like the Circle models, and Kaya in particular, though a tat pitty that she is an animal caster opposed to all those cool construct models in the warlist.  I also didn`t like basic Kaya, so I bought her epic version.

Now it seems for the Journeyman League you need the basic version, so now I ordered her alternate form model, which looks better in my opinion battle box version.

But here some more pictures of the finished lass and her puppy dog:

WarmaHordes Journeyman League

Okay, so come september we're apparently starting a Journeyman League on TSA for the War Machine / Hordes game system of Privateer Press.

I dabbled with those rules a little pre 'mark II' and after nigs and nags of my buddies decided to step in, with the Orboros faction I have lying around.

First problem: it has to be started with a basic faction box, and guess what I never bought... I have all the beasties though; but I didn't like the Kaya model (love her as a warlock though) as I got the epic version model, so I ordered the basic version alternate edition, she looks way better in that version...

Epic Kaya is also the only model I painted up so far...

Second problem: probably time issues and selling it to the missus, not to mention the entries for Brush Slave and my Mordheim band that have to get finished asap now.  This are going to be loooong paint nights the comming weeks...


The 'good' news, I'm getting motivated again after the summer recess :-D

Saint Seiya Myth Cloth: Shura of Capricorn

Ironically, the Saint to be said to be the most loyal to Athena was also the Saint that slayed Aiolios, who tried to escape the false Pope with the infant Athena.

Misguided by Saga`s schemes, Shura hunted down and defeated the former Sagitarrius Saint with his fast and deadly weapon: Excalibur, a very powerful slicing attack housed in his right arm.  Only when he was launching towards the stars with Shiryu of Dragon, did he realise the Bronze Saints where indeed fighting for the real incarnation of the godess and as a way of remorse loaned his cloth to the Dragon Saint to help him re-enter the atmosphere before burning up himself.

His spirit later revealed that he had also granted Excalibur to Shiryu, helping him defeat Krishna of Chrysaor in the Poseidon arc, before he came back as one of the three resurrected Spectres that attacked and apparantly killed Shaka by means of the Athena Exclamation attack to give the mightiest of the Gold Saints a way to enter Underworld with Saori.

He is also one of the already 4 revealed new generation Gold Saints in Omega, where the cloth is worn by the principal of Paleastra, Ionia, who is serving Mars knowingly.  The first of the new cloth bearers revealed (okay, bar of course Sagitarrius Seiya) before Leo and Libra (not Shiryu!).

In the Lost Canvas OVA`s, the cloth was worn by El Cid who defeated no less then 3 demi-gods in their own spirit realms.

The model, like all the Gold Saint models is clearly showing it`s age compared to a lot of the more recent releases, but never the less is still one of the better ones in the range.

Not to difficult to assemble, his face is rather correct and he comes with the fully closed helmet as seen in the anime, as well as the open-topped mask of the anime.

I found this one on ebay for only 25 euros and shipping, and must say I found that quit a bargain and he is worth a spot in a collection as one of the better executed models.