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NO! Years of work! The essence of who I am, reduced down to just one word by the MAN!

Who arguably did a good job

I am 9/17ths of the way through the argus swarm, so pics of them incoming. I might try and get eKromac done today too, but that might be a bit aggressive.

 RiTides wrote:
Oh man, without "Woad" in the title I totally couldn't find the thread

I like the hair all the same (or very close) color as you have it, sets off the other colors in the scheme nicely and keeps it looking like a unit! The assembly line painting was super effective, I am really impressed!

And I just got a good look at the new unit of stones, those look great! Always love your tattoo / markings painting.

Edit: Argh, still couldn't find this thread, so might have abused my power and edited the title to be "findable" (feel free to change it if you don't like it, if course!).

Oh. My. God.

Is that about the paint job, the abuse of mod power, or...

Really beautiful stuff here, will snap a few pics from our game tomorrow

Also looking forward to seeing the "argus swarm" take shape, do people actually field that many!?

Pics tomorrow morning after I slam some paint on the druids' bases and some flock/snow on them and the pups. Oh, I got a unit of druids + UA done today. I need some sleep

So, I haven't seen anyone run Argus swarm yet, I think because just about no body owns that many that are put together (as opposed to stashed in a box somewhere.) I just keep coming across starter sets and two player boxes, so I have 7 regular, 1 moon and 1 winter to run. Which are all now painted, never to see the table
Theoretically, eKromac can run like 16 argus at 50 points, with 3 Blood Witches to get to that tier level, and give eKrom 3 heart tokens to boot. However, "can run" should be read as "can't actually force to Run without causing Frenzy checks." I would probably pull 2-3 for Goraxes and 2 Shifting Stone sets maybe. And obviously take Ghettorix or a Stalker at least. Once the army can run first turn without Frenzy issues though, it is on its way to being good! It is just an amazingly huge amount of Def 15 Arm 14 meat, like 220+ boxes of that. Super obnoxious to remove, and backed up by eKromac and some other heavy to remove things. Seem legit, but I might just be wishing hard

Excellent, can't wait to see them! But yeah, I think a few Gorax plus shifting stones makes sense. Does Circle get access to the new gobber chef for fury management?

Circle does have access to the Chef, but not in eKrom's tier. In general though, I think Circle won't use the chef much due to a lack of truly cheap infantry (Wolves of Orboros are cheap, but not widely used) and the fact that Shifting stones can pull Fury off beasts within 1" for free anyway. So for 1 point more you get three stones that help with fury and can also teleport etc. Theoretically we could run enough beasts to need a Chef, but I don't know how many problems it really solves for us, given that our light beasts are generally not that hot (Rotterhorns are great, but can be run on Una for a points discount anyway.)

Models are drying and sealing now, pics in a little.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ok, quick outdoor picture of the druids. I don't have time to get to the basing and such before I head out for games today, so the druids and argus pack will have to wait for the really finished pics. Also, I kind of want to put one more highlight, or one deep wash, on their cloaks now.



Also, you'll note the strange base on the UA. He actually has a two part base, a 25 mm base with a ring to take it to 30mm. Ring not shown.

GAME!
Wednesday I met up with RiTides and Kyle, who I don't think is on Dakka, at Kyle's place for some warmahordes action and tacos. RiTides actually remembered that he brought a camera with him, so I will need him to provide pictures, but here's the two I remembered.

Lists were 25 points per person, with my having 50 + two casters.

eKromac + 4
*Feral 9
*Ghetto 11
pKrueger + 5
*Gorax 4
*Stalker 10
Blood Weavers 5
Blood Weaver Night Witch 2
Druids + UA 9
Shifting stones + UA 3
Shifting Stones 2
Lord of the Feast 4

VS

Harkevitch
* Mad Dog
* Rager
* Black Ivan
Mechanics
Demo Corps
Wardog? Doesn't matter.

Barnabus
*Wrastler
*Little Gator
2x Croak Raiders
Witch Doc Croc

They rolled first and set up, with each group on their own side save for some Croaks on the left in front of the Jacks. First turn, things ran forward, and pot shots were taken and missed.
Circle turn 1: ENGAGE BUNKER! Everything moved up, Druids clouded, leaving a stupid gap on the left which I plugged with Ghettorix. He is rocking Def 16/Arm 19 with Deflection, so he should be fine, right? Lightning Tendrils go on Blood Weavers who move up all spread out to jam and be stealthy all at once. eKromac is irritated I didn't give him a charge target and ambles forward with Aggravator up, also irritated I put the stalker on Krueger so Awakened Spirit is pointless. Off to a great start.

Harkevich is played by Irusk this game in the interests of having paint on things. Strangely, I was playing the least amount of "Counts as" with only the Nightwitch and a unit of stones not being official (although conversions take it farther).

Side view!

Kyle has nice curtains, and lovely hard wood floors. Rawr.
Yea... that is totally a picture of the ring representing the zone. Sorry.

So that is bottom of 1. Turn 2, the Gators start getting bored. How has no one died!? Barny takes matters into his hands/claws/paws (what do gators have?) and moves up to pop Feat, knocking down Ghetto, almost all the druids, the Feral, and 2 Weavers. The stones wonder what all the fuss is about, and make passing comments about how flesh is so unreliable.

Then the Croaks activate. The blue croaks on the left bunch up in the zone and proceed to light Ghetto the hell up. Even at Arm 19 he just gets torn to pieces. So, poop. Some random shots also kill a druid, along with Black Ivan scattering to kill a few.
On the right, the Croaks fail a lot. Not sure whether to advance into melee or back up, they pull an elaborate DDR routine of forward, back, forward, back. Eventually they decide to dance into a line and flick javalins at the 3 blood weavers that are not stealth. 2 die. Go team Def 14!

Other things happen, such as the Wrastler and Snapper realizing Barny is within 10" of a Feral sitting in a triangle of stones. They beasts, after snout palming pretty hard, trundle over to make a wall of meat.

So, Circle 2, and I have given up an 11 point beast and half my bunker. Great. Lightning Tendrils is upkept on the Weavers, and fury is leached, etc.
Night Witch activates, bit doesn't have a clear charge to a croak, so she runs up to be all leadershippy. Weavers activate, rocking killing spree, gang and reach. Oh, and electro leap. The 4 remaining girls proceed to Pacman through 7 of the orange croaks, clearing the zone. Rawr.
After hemming, hawing, and realizing I can't count, pKrugs activates, and walks forward. Duh duh DUHN! Ain't nobody ready for what happens. He cycles Lightning Tendrils to the Feral (RiTides believed Reach and Electro Leap was a base ability of the Weavers, despite my attempts to explain otherwise). Kreuger then Feats all over the faces of the blue croaks, killing all but 4, and killed exactly one Mechanic out of 4, much to my surprise. He then Primals the Feral.
Stones, predictably, put the Feral 10" forward across the bunker and on the flank of Barny's wall of meat. Feral activates, and the slaughter commences. Turns out Mat 9 Str 19 on 6 attacks (-1 Fury to shake knock down earlier) is really good against Barny. The electro leaps also wrecked the Snapper, while transfers killed the Wrastler. The Feral then turns his blood soaked gaze towards the Witch Doctor, in that unmistakable "Next turn, bub" manner he does.

The left was less exciting. Gorax slips up to toe the zone and the forest and primals the Stalker. The Stalker charges up, smashes the Mad Dog (shield guard jack) and a croak, then makes peace with his Wurmy god. eKrom moves to dominate the right zone, while the few remaining druids move up to block charges on the Demo Corps, and the Lord of the Feast wonders why he even got out of bed.

Blind-Khador Turn 3 is not exciting for them. Harkevitch charges the Stalker and maybe feats, putting some decent damage on the wolf. RiTides moves the Witch Doc to be more easily eaten, fails to Croak things (get it?) and gets a delicious taco. The Rager finishes the Stalker, while Black Ivan fails to do serious damage to the Gorax in melee. Yea, I don't know either.
Playing the "Killing the Lord of the Feast is like winning, right?" mini-game, Kyle, after being convinced by RiTides that it was a good idea, charges a Demo Corpsman at the LotF and soaks a Pow 10 free strike. Which rolls up to 25 damage, killing it in one shot. eKrom dominates, and we call the game.

After more tacos were had by all, RiTides packed up his army of SHAME and left, and Kyle and I threw down some 35 point action. I rolled a similar eKrom list:

eKrom
*Ghetto
*Stalker
*Feral
Druids
Stones + UA

Kyle rolled the Butcher 3 tier, with 3 light jacks, 4 wardogs and a warwagon thing. It was a quick game, with the same board and zones.
Butcher forward!
eKrom up the middle! Form bunker, HO!
Butcher FORWARD! Dominate the right zone asap! Accidentally snipe out 2 druids with warwagon (WTF?!)
eKrom.... uhm.... my bunker. Stalker and eKrom left zone! Everyone else, try and bunker right, with Ghetto toeing the zone and Feral sort of helping.
Butcher... can't see to the right due to druids, ambles to the left side of the right zone, slaughters everyone, going down to 1 Focus. Importantly, the jacks can't get between him and eKrom.

Kromac. Dear, sweet Kromac. Measures control; Butch is 11" away. (He also has his back to Krom, but I forgot that.) Kromac feats to go to Str 19 and auto hitting charge attacks. Kromac charges. [POW] 10 damage. Buy an attack, 5 more. Buy an attack, dead Butcher. Good times!




In hobby news, I am going to work on a unit of Skinwalkers here next, and write up a mini-article on assembly line/speed painting in the process. So more pictures, and lots more words. I know, I am surprised that there could be more words too. So that's upcoming!

Oh man, I got owned so bad! First game with the gators and it was a real learning experience. Need to not clump up my frog units, and putting my caster all alone on the center of this hill somehow seemed like a good idea at the time......



Even though I then tried to screen for him, it wasn't enough - his warpwolf easily teleported right next to my beasts below, and reached right by them with a reach spell he put up to kill Barnabas:



Very good learning experience, and it also showed me that I think even though he can be very good with the frogs, I don't really like Barnabas' style and will go with the warlock I had been craving running - Calaban with a Sacral Vault and Blind Walker

Btw Wehr, maybe you could size down your pics a bit, they don't shrink to fit the screen size for me so when there is a lot of text like the battle report under them it makes it hard to read with all the side scrolling! You can just select "medium" if you upload them to the gallery, like this:


Or for my pics above I just resized them in paint (saving as a .png) before uploading, and kept them full-sized but smaller than their native resolution.

Looking forward to seeing the skinwalkers! And arguses (argii?)

Ahh, thanks for putting those up RiTides! Your phone takes much nicer pictures than my 7 year old camera

Also, I failed to give a shout out to Kyle for providing a very nice table of terrain with all the fixin's (I just brought the stump forests there), as well as his wife making very yummy tacos. It was a very nicely hosted event!

(Are the pictures still huge? They are normal re-size on my screen.)


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ok, hopefully that fixes the pics!

Hi again! This is part 1 of a two part article/tutorial I am going to do on assembly line painting. This first bit is about the planning and theory behind things, and the next part will be working through the process on a unit of Skinwalkers and the UA. I am halfway through painting them today, so probably tomorrow or Monday I will have them done and get the pictures in line. Not too many pictures in this part, just walls of text, sorry.

Speed Painting/Assembly line painting.

Painting models can be a problem. On the one hand you want your models to look really awesome, but on the other that can take a really long time, so the end result is many people have one or two nicely painted models and a lot of bare plastic and metal, with maybe some primer. The best answer to this problem I think is to learn to paint many models pretty well, pretty quickly, as it is better to have a fully painted table top quality army than an unpainted but potentially amazing army. The best way I have found to do this is what is called assembly line painting, going through a set of models and painting every part that is color A, then every part that is color B, then all the highlights in color C, etc. A lot of people avoid assembly line painting, thinking that the results will be sloppy and mediocre, and their army will look poorly because of it. With planning and practice, however, I find that assembly line painting will produce results that look quite good, certainly better than bare/primered models, and in fact serve as a good base for really making the models shine, if later you decide to go back and add some details. In other words, with a little planning and practice one can produce models that are table top quality in very little time, without making those models impossible to improve later.
This tutorial is going to focus on how to improve one’s assembly line painting by applying some principles of process design and industrial engineering to make the process more efficient. The key idea is that usually the act of painting models, like many human activities, is comprised of relatively little actual putting of paint on models with a lot of secondary activities like getting the paints, washing brushes, fixing the model you just broke etc. mixed in. To get the maximum efficiency out of the time you spend painting we need to plan the process such that we maximize the paint applied per unit of time while also minimizing the amount of paint we need to put on models. I am going to break this into sections, Planning, Tools and Techniques and the Process itself.

Planning
Like I said before, much of this comes down to planning. This is a nice thing to do in your car, on the bus, etc., as it can drastically improve the speed of your painting all while you are far from your brushes.

1: Plan the models: Certain models are better for this process than others, and certain groups are better than others. You want models that are similar in terms of colors to be used and general locations for those colors, as well as models that are not too blinged out (see color choice below). For instance, a unit of 10 regular space marines is great, as they are all relatively simple and relatively similar, even if some have special weapons or something. Adding a basic character model to those marines, like say the old captain model, isn’t too bad either, as he has only a little bit of bling that isn’t on the tac marines, and so you can still get him ~90% done along with the boys. Putting in a blinged out chaplain model with different colors and lots of other stuff won’t work well. Likewise, if you are painting a unit of Tharn Blood Trackers with all the browns on them, you might be tempted to throw in a few horses in the mix, but that probably would be a bad idea as even though the horses might also use the brown, the patters of highlights and shading might well be different enough to throw you off. In a nutshell, this works better for units of similar models, and characters/solos whatever should be done by themselves. These 5 Skinwalkers plus their UA will work fine for this, as they are all very similar, don’t have tons of fiddly details, and importantly the UA is also very similar to the base models. By comparison, Nuala the Huntress looks rather different from her Tharn Blood Tracker unit, and so is awkward to try and paint with them.

Don't try to do too many models all at once. As the models are not going to be getting done quickly individually, we are fighting boredom a little too. It is one thing to paint 10 pairs of blue pants in a row, quite another paint 30 or 50. Breaking things down into manageable batches where you don't find yourself thinking "If I have to paint one more belt I am going to murder someone," is important, and very much down to personal preferences. I like to do 5-10 at a time unless the models require very little care in painting and I can watch a movie or something.

One other thing to think about is whether or not to fully build the models. I almost always put them together because I am stupid and really like building things. I then deeply regret having to work around shields or weapons in front of the body, etc. In this case some of the Skinwalker’s halberds are a real pain. Ahh well.



2: Plan the colors: There are two components to this, knowing your scheme, and limiting your scheme. When it comes to knowing your scheme, you want to know which paints you are going to use, and where. Even your choice of primer is a part of this step, with dark primers being inappropriate for bright schemes, and being able to airbrush primer that is the base color really helps. What you don’t want to do is get halfway through painting a unit and decide that those paints just do not work with that cape, and have to start all over again. To this end, taking one model and doing a test of the scheme makes a lot of sense. Better to paint and strip one model a few times than the entire unit. In my case here, I have been painting this general scheme for like 8 years, so I am really comfortable with what browns go where and which greens to use, but I am not 100% on the skin/hair tone on the skin walkers, so I am going to paint one guy’s skin entirely before doing the other 5.
While doing the test run on the scheme it is a good time to start thinking about what is the minimum amount of different colors you can do on the model. This is important, because if you are doing a pattern of “base + highlight + wash” for every different base color, you are probably doing at least 2-3 colors per base. So if you models have 13 different base colors on them, chances are you are going to have 26-39 steps in the process. That is quite a bit! For instance, the first Blood Tracker test model I did had 13 different base colors on her, 6 of which were brown, 1 unique highlight (although sometimes the highlight was also a base somewhere else) and there were 4 different washes . Needless to say, she didn’t get finished! The end scheme I went with had 7 base colors, 3 of which shared highlights and all of which shared a wash. The process went from 13+10+3 = 26 color application steps to 7 + 4 + 1 = 12 steps.
Now, there are hard choices to be made here. First of all, note that I am assuming a single highlight per base color. That makes some fancier techniques out of the question (although clever washing makes up for it as described later.) Another important issue is that some little details like necklaces, trophies, little bling things might be a whole set of colors to themselves, and that might be bad. For the Blood Trackers have lots of little dangly bits, some of which might be bone, stone or metal, who knows. At the time of painting I decided that they were all stone, like their spear tips, to save time. Later I went back and amended some, but the idea is that when they needed paint on them the simplest way was best, even if it means ignoring some details. After they are painted, sure pick out little bits to make them prettier.

In the case of the skinnies here, I expect to use 7 color sets:
Armor & Axes – Light grey -> Black Wash (Debating on making the ax heads metallic)
Cloaks – Black Green -> Turf Green -> Maybe Turf + Dark Sand if it needs it ->Brown Wash
Cloak Fur – Sky Grey -> White -> Maybe Brown Wash
Lacing – Dark Sand or Orange Brown
Skin – Cork Brown -> Dark Sand -> Sky Grey – Light Brown Wash
Leather bits- Saddle Brown -> Cork Brown -> Brown Wash
Horns/teeth/claws – Ivory + some wash as appropriate.

So 6 base colors, some of which are used as highlights, and 2-3 washes. Not too shabby. The skin/fur is a little more complicated because I like living bits to be more detailed, especially with skin. I might add some blue woad as well if I can figure a place that makes sense. The little tassles on the axes, I haven’t decided on yet either. I might do a dark red to add some warm colors. As this is a minor part and depends a lot on how the rest of the scheme looks, I am going to put it off till the end. I primed these lads a long time ago, before I had the airbrush, and when I got that I played around with putting greens on their cloaks. The cloaks are a lot of their surface area, so accidentally that was probably a good move. The priming job isn’t so hot though…

3: Plan your equipment: This seems silly at first, but it is worth thinking about and having everything ready ahead of time. One of the biggest time wasters in industry is switching between tools, and having to search around for a specific brush or little cleaner for the paint nipples will soak up a lot of time and focus. So know what brushes you want to use along with whatever other random bits you will want and make sure they are all there, clean, and ready to go. I do 90% of my painting with one GW Medium brush that is ~13 years old, and then 5% super detail with a tiny brush, and then a somewhat larger brush makes up the difference. Lately I have been using pill organizers as palettes, although I use a wet palette when I am painting fairly regularly (more on that in the Tools and Technique section).

4: Plan your time: This is non-obvious, but really important. There are certain things you are going to need to do before and after every painting session: clean your brushes, find your brushes, gather your paints, find the model your toddler ran off with, take a leak, get a drink, find a movie to watch in the background, etc. You will do these things whether you paint for 30 minutes or 3 hours, so it is better to paint in larger blocks and minimize the time you spend doing things other than putting paint on stuff. If you are like me and your hands stop working well when you are tired, don’t plan on painting late in the evening; I waste lots of time screwing up when tired and then more time fixing the mistakes later. You gotta work with the time you have though, so you try and fit things to that time. I apply washes that go over a large area when my hands are shaky. If I know I only have an hour or so, I plan on getting a color done that doesn’t take too long per model, etc. Something to keep in mind is that washes need to be applied all at a go because you can’t let them dry and apply more to a spot you missed without leaving lines, so you can’t rush. Similarly, after applying the wash you need to give it a few hours to dry before touching it or getting it wet or it can screw with the coloring and finish.

Tools and Techniques
The tools and how you use them are about what you would expect, but planning on how to use them and when is important. Plus I want to go over them just in case I use terms that only exist in my head 

Brushes & Palette
When it comes to brushes, the general idea is to use the largest brush you can handle without making mistakes like getting paint where it shouldn’t be. This hits both the maximizing paint per unit time by putting more paint on the model faster, as well as minimizing the amount of paint that needs to be applied by cutting back on mistakes. Every brush stroke is an opportunity to screw up and get paint where it shouldn’t be, so fewer brush strokes leads to fewer mistakes that need to be corrected.
Now, over time the optimal size of your brush will change. I used to use a very small brush for just about everything because my brush control meant that was what maximized application while minimizing errors. Over time I moved to a larger brush that still had a fine point for most of my strokes. The important thing is to find the brushes that work for you while practicing using bigger brushes to be able to use them over time.
Another nice sort of brush to keep around is one you don’t care about much that you keep wet to wash off any mistrokes. You won’t see them before they dry all the time, but if you do that brush makes a nice little eraser along with a paper towel bit.
For a palette, anything you like works, although something that either seals or has some other method for keeping paint damp over time is good. It is nice to be able to make a quick correction with a previously used color, and the less time spent dispensing paint to replace dried paint, the better.

Paints
Whatever brand you use, it is worth getting colors you like as is, and don’t need to mix. Mixing takes time, and if you have to correct something later it will be tough to get the color right. If you do want to mix for a specific color, the best bet is to mix it in its own container, making plenty and dispensing it like any other paint.
Another thing you will want is some thinner. Thin your paints until they flow off the brush well while still covering nicely. Hitting that point without over thinning and getting them runny takes practice but it is a really useful skill. Too thick and you clog up your detail and take a lot of strokes to get paint down because it doesn’t flow off the brush, too thin and it runs all over and needs fixing.
Washes are something else. You can mix your own, buy GW ones or whatever, but in general washes are going to be a big part of the process in terms of effect, while being a small part in terms of time.

Techniques
There are 3 basic techniques I am going to mention, although I really only use two.

1: Base/highlighting – Normal consistency paint (thinned). Base coating is just getting the whole area the right color. Highlighting is adding normal consistency paint in a color a step or two lighter to certain points, edges, high spots etc. to make the details stand out a little. Edge highlighting, using the edge of a brush to apply paint only to high spots is a good trick to develop. Generally for this process the base colors and especially highlights are going to be a good bit brighter than what the final result will be, due to the washing process. Be sure to plan for that.

2: Dry Brushing – Applying dryish paint off a dry brush by swiping it over an area. The dry paint rubs off onto the high spots, leaving natural highlights. The problem is that these highlights are often rather dusty looking, and they tend to get all over the place. As a result, I almost never use this technique except on clothing and hair/fur, and dirt/rocks. It should not be used on smooth, consistent surfaces.

3: Washing – This is probably where most of the work really gets done. Washing is an application of a very thin paint, usually thinned with special thinner and some matte medium, over an area. The paint flows into cracks and crevices, adding lots of color to those lower spots while simply staining higher surfaces. This creates gradients of color that tie together even pretty sharp highlights to their bases, and gives the appearance of lots of blended colors on a surface.
I think of this as an additive process, as the wash doesn’t replace the original color but changes it in degrees. There is a huge amount of flexibility to be had here, as different bases and highlights will combine with a single wash to give very different effects, and likewise two different washes can make two areas painted the same colors look very different. Both save you time! The Blood Trackers mentioned previously are all washes with the same dark brown (Devlan Mud) which ties them together while still retaining different colors across their bodies. Often I will use multiple washes on a model, one for cloth in that color, one for skin, one for leather, and one for metals, as they go on quickly and add a lot of color variation and pull out details (assuming you didn’t fill up those details in the base stage by using too thick paint!)
One thing to bear in mind is that some colors are better for washing than others. Specifically, black is not a color you want to be washing with much, as it really sucks the warmth and brightness out of things, making them look flat and dull. It can be fine for grey metals, but anything with color will be hurt. On the other hand, a dark brown looks pretty good on just about any color, as does a Payne’s Grey (dark grey with navy blue). But seriously, don’t wash your skin tones with a black, they will just be ruined.
You can also wash small areas to give a hint of a color. This is generally called glazing, and won’t really be touched on here.

Next up: the Process itself!

That's a very good overview! Hope part two has lots of pics (and the size of them are fixed now )

Hella tutorial, +1 to call for more pics! Document those skinwalkers!

- Salvage

Ok! Sunday turned into EPIC PUTTERING Day as the wife and I reorganized/purged the basement. Got a lot of stuff put away, crap thrown away, and things found. Today I am planning to finish up the skinnies who probably only have 2-3 more hours of work (for a total of ~6-7)
First up, what happened Saturday as we start

PART 2: THE PROCESSESSING

So we had the plan set up the other day, what models, what paints, where things were going to go. Saturday I sat down to apply paint and take pictures.



Here's the primed and a little airbrushed skinnies ready to go, with the paints on the left there as described in part one, and the two washes I intend to use (Badab Black and Devlan Mud**.) Spoiler. in some ways they are going to look MORE primed before this is over, due to the use of a light grey that is close to the primer (which is why I liked that primer.)

** I do want to put a link in to Les Bursley's wash recipes thread. It is an awesome recipe for basically recreating the consistency and function of the GW washes with different materials. Big money saver, and the added variety you get is really nice. I still have a half dozen little bottles of the GW stuff to burn through, but I have used Les' recipe for a light tan color for my Rackham Stalker from a few pages back, and it was wonderful. So check that out!

As you will recall, I wasn't too certain about what I wanted to do with the skintones when I started, so I wanted to try a quick pre-wash scheme to see if it is roughly the colors I want. I used Cork Brown -> Dark Sand -> Sky Grey. Here's the result:



It is quite light, which is good since I plan to put a dark wash on it, and has some depth. Note that it is mostly the dark sand now, but I did put cork over everything first. This makes missing a spot with DS less of a problem, and more importantly allows some Cork to show through the thin spots and add depth.
Any road, I am pretty happy with the result, and now know what colors I am doing the skin in.

Now that I have the colors fixed (save for the tassels that don't really matter) I can plan out the order of the colors! You might have thought we were done with planning, but HA! You are never done! The order matters a lot here, as I am using the same color in multiple roles to save time, so whenever I can I want to do ALL the spots that need that color at once, whether it is base, highlights or clean up. On the other hand, some types of application are going to be messier than others, so I need to take that into account. The fur trim on the cloaks will take a lot of dabbing to get the paint into the recesses, and the skin is going to take some working around corners to get it all.
So the rough plan is this:

Skin - Cork then Dark Sand
Armor / metal - Sky Grey
Leather - Saddle Brown
Cloak - Black Green, Turf
Fur trim - Maybe some white highlights?
Leather Highlights / Skin Cleanup Cork
Stitching /Skin Clean up - Dark sand
Top Skin Highlights & Armor/Fur Trim Cleanup - Sky Grey
Washes forever.

So Step 1: get the first two layers on the skin:
Base


At this point on the Alpha I realized that backs of their legs were not covered by armor, so I went back and added the few bits of skin tone to the parts of their legs you can see.

Highlight


The camera didn't pick it up well, but there is still cork in the depths of the heads there. The camera apparently color corrected that as a shadow? I guess that is a good sign... photography isn't my thing.


Step 2: Armor and fur bases, which I apparently forgot to take a picture of, but they get a lot more light grey, as can be seen in

Step 3: Leather base


So this is where I left off Saturday. This took longer than I wanted due to fumbling with the iPhone camera and having to work around those damned axes, but it wasn't a bad bit of work for having a toddler and dinner in there. They look very far from done, but do not despair! This method tends to look bad till they are done and look good. An observant reader will see that there is paint is spots where it shouldn't be, and that's fine; it will all get cleaned up at once towards the end. I don't want to spend time cleaning up an errant brush stroke or two every few minutes when I know more are coming. Better to get them all at once.

Today/tomorrow I will finish up the cloaks, stitching on same, highlight the leathers and skin touch-up, correct the fur/armor mistakes with skin highlights, get to the washes and be done! I suppose I will also do the color on the bases... I usually leave that for the very end and hadn't thought about it so far.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Derp, forgot the Ivory for the little horns, and I think I am going to highlight the fur trim with that. I knew I had it out for something.

Alright, time to wrap this bad boy up! I got delayed there with holiday and family stuff, but I got it all done! Let's see!

As I mentioned, things needed tidying up before I get to the wash step. So some tidying, and some little highlights. First the Cork on the leather and to touch up skin:


Then a little dark sand on the skin to clean up.


I decided against more grey on the skin, as these were getting plenty grey as it is.

Next up, did the stitching on the cloaks. I used an orange brown instead of the dark sand, as I never really use orange brown and it looked so lonely there on the table.


Finally I filled in some little details like the ivory on the horns, some cavalry brown (a very red brown) for the tassles to tie them in with the hair on many of the other models in the army, and teeth, tongues etc.


And we are go for washing!

That's the brown wash just after application. Important things about washes in this process:

1: They take a long time to fully dry. Don't get them wet or you will have patches without color. Don't paint near them or they will flow into your area and mess things up. DON'T put on a second coat after the first starts to dry, or it gets all hosed up; either put all of it on quickly, or wait for it all to dry. Do not taunt Happy Fun Wash.
2: Washes (GW ones especially) look very different when they have had a lot of time to dry than when they do while wet. I don't know why exactly, but probably has something to do with the pigments still moving around a bit while damp.
3: Don't wash another area while one area is still drying. See point 1. Washes are really easy to get in spots you don't want, and you can screw up two areas of color at the same time.

All this makes washing a good thing to do right before bed or some other reason you need to stop for a bit. So I went to bed, and here is how the brown looked the next morning.


Ok, the difference is swamped by the lighting differences... but it's there! Really!

Now, I didn't take a photo of this really, but I was really messy with the brown for... reasons. So I had to go back and touch up the armor a LOT. Washes go a long ways towards defining areas and doing a sort of lining in, but get them into adjacent areas you don't want and that all goes to hell. So, after that dried it was time for BLACK.



I blacked in the armor, and added a dark streak down the middle of their wolf pelt things. Then I let that dry for a LONG time.

Lastly, all there was to do was fix some of the little things. I put some Scarlet highlight on the tassles, some Ivory dry brush on the fur bits to bring them back up to nearly white, as well as Ivory on teeth and bone bits, and Scarlet on the eyes. Cleaned up the bases, and boom!



Not too shabby! Especially for about 7-10 hours total. Hard to say because I didn't get as much time to just sit and paint forever as I might have liked, what with a toddler and holiday stuff, so how much time I spent painting as opposed to sitting near the models playing Heroes of the Storm is tough to say. All in all though they look pretty good and it was pretty easy. Some Dullcote (and decorations on the bases) and I think they would be in the top 50% of all painted models at any game store. More importantly, they are in a good spot to gussy them up later if I want to, maybe by highlighting the cloaks a bit to make them pop more, some woad... somewhere, and little things. The only regret paint wise is that maybe I should have done a true metallic on the ax heads, but the look fits the cast iron aesthetic the army has.

One thing that does bug me is the dusty primer job on the Alpha. I think the first time I drop him and something breaks he is going to get stripped and redone. It is kind of minor, but bad enough to really frustrate me that I didn't take care of it earlier.

So yea, that's that! Quick assembly line painting of a unit of large guys to a good table top standard. So get those models painted! GO! NOW!

Anyway, here's what's next on the painting table: Red Box Games Craven, which will be used as Skulks in my Kings of War Orks that look like Celts army.



Merry Christmas!

The step by step was great, could we see a pic of just one of the final product to see the detail?

And Craven!! That's awesome . I got the Jotunn from Tre just a few weeks ago finally, could you use it in that army? It is huge! If so just let me know, would happily send it your way in exchange for future services

I need more practice so am going to be seeing if the local Hordes night at the store right next to me (Family Game Store) is legit. Do folks play Hordes at Huzzah at all or is it more other games? I really enjoyed our game but realized I have no idea what I'm doing!

Merry Christmas and all the best to you and your family going into this new year

 Wehrkind wrote:
Anyway, here's what's next on the painting table: Red Box Games Craven, which will be used as Skulks in my Kings of War Orks that look like Celts army.

Damn but those Craven look the business! And I forgot you were messing with KOW too. Someday in the bright, shiny, time-filled future our hypothetical KOW armies should roll some dice at each other - currently lining up my first matches with my 'Abyssals That Look lIke Daemons of Tzeentch' army, as I backburner my 'Varangur That Look like Khorne Bloodbound' project and stupidly contemplate a 'Trident Realm That Looks like Cthulu Cultists' force

Cheers for the pro tips as well, particularly for washing. I may pass some of that on to my friends who are just getting into painting minis.

- Salvage

@RiTides: Thanks for the praise, and YES I will show some final pics here probably within the next few days. I might put another wash of black on their armor as it is a little lighter than I wanted, a bit lighter than the average armor in the army. I think it is due to a really old bottle of wash, and hitting the dregs of it.

I don't know what the jotun looks like, but I can always use more big dudes I have some giants from Rackham I mean to put together soon and use for... something.

@Salvage; Yea, as usual Tre hits them out of the park. Very sneaky and clever looking, even if I broke off like everyone of those daggers by accident We really do need to play some KoW! It isn't the perfect mass fantasy wargame I want, but probably the one I deserve at the moment. And it lets me put neat stuff on the table, so I will take it I even bought another 40 celt infantry, some archers, wardogs, naked druids and a chariot over Black Friday, so when I get the horses and all that put together I will have quite a large kingdoms of men army to field, not to mention paint.

Also... craven might get pushed for BIG MAC. Due to events I had sort of forgotten about him in my army bag, but he is now rocking the paint table, being all 3 times taller than the craven

Battle REPORT!
(no pictures, sorry :( )

This evening I was lucky enough for my buddy to come down for Late Night Warmachine at my place: after his kid goes to bed, and just before mine. Having just gotten my Argus Recon Guerrillas painted and based, it was time for a silly list showdown!

eKromac, 50 points Tier 4
Kromac +4
- 6x Argus 18
- Argus Moon Hound 3
- Winter Argus 5
- Gorax 3
- Stalker 10
Blood Weavers 5
Shifting Stones x2 4
- UA 1
2x Nightwitch 4
Sentry Stone Mannikins 3

His list:
eeButcher Tier
-Ruin
-Kodiak
-Kodiak
-Some damn heavy
3x Wardogs
Winter Guard Infantry + UA
Kov Joe
Yuri the Ax
Battle Wagon Engine thing.

Scenario was Incursion (3 flags). Table had some forests on the my left flank, a wall near the center flag, and a big hill on most of the right flank. I won the roll and elected to go first, and put my 3" forest near the hill on the right, about halfway between the two flags, intending to use it as a base for the Sentry and a hiding spot for Kromac in a pinch. Butcher apparently gets a 4" area of rough terrain, and he put it basically opposite my forest.

I set up Kromac dead center, flanked by 3 argus on each side, with the gorax behind them, Stalker on the left flank with the trees, the moony and winter argus on the right, and blood weavers + solos just behind Kromac on the right.
He deploys in a sort of refused flank, with the Winter Guard mini-star on the left only, stretching between the flags, the battle engine centered up, then Butcher on the far right directly across from that flag on the hill, his 4 jacks between him and the battle engine.
AD, my non-stealth stones go on the right, stealth on the left, and Sentry between right stones to hop into forest. Yuri goes on the far left by the WG.

C-1: RUN! I should have practiced my opening; having 10 beasts on the table is sort of a new thing for me. First thing I would have done differently was to run the argus' in the clear forward, then have Kromac activate and put the pathfinder animus on those that needed to get into the woods, then activate them. Instead the left flank Argus' put their own animus on and I had a lot of fury on the table. Plus side, I was 20" away from my deployment edge first turn, with the stones among them to pull some fury off with Serenity NOW. The Stalker seeing all the big stuff on the right, sighs and runs across. The Blood weavers, seeing all the little stuff on the left, run to the left. Kromac, after fixing some of his mistake by applying animi, drop Awakened Spirit on the Stalker, puts up Aggravator and charges the battle engine. The sentry stone, safe now in its little woods, has a manikin explode next to the forest to create a little line in front of the stones, while two manikins move up to the hill ahead of the argus (who went a little slower due to the woods and not really being able to put the stones where I wanted them.
K-1: The Winter Guard, hearing the howls from across the snowy expanse, and the answering howls from their own flank, grumble something about how they just wanted a quiet life, chopping wood and eating turnips, and trundle forward. Kov Joe threatens to shoot someone to toughen them up. All in all, they are a little concerned about how close the dogs sound, and don't really plow forward.
Yuri, on the other hand, has heard that dogs are good eating, especially the two headed ones on account of having double the amount of cheek meat. He charges at an angle at one of the Argus in the woods. He is, alas, about 2" short. No dog for you!
The battle engine moves forward to the edge of the rough terrain and wings a shot at a treeman. It misses, far off the to flank. Its second shot misses but moves into the middle of the right argus knot, putting two damage on the Winter Argus. I forget Hyper Aggressive, but probably for the best. The Jacks advanced at a "run", and Butcher mounted the hill will the flag, his two argus in front blocking LOS and 3 dogs behind.

C-2: Huh... so that's a lot of fury sitting around. Being a little rattled by that, I serenity off 6, leaving me at 5 to leach. Whoops. I don't count well after a long day. Kromac cuts for 2, and upkeeps Aggravator and Awakened Spirit. At this point I decide to go for scenario; I have dogs on the left that can hold the objective with the help of the Blood Weavers (the solos can probably eat the whole unit of WG I figure.) There are 3 dogs in the middle that can stall there, and a trio of argus flavors on the right that can slow down Butcher, at least for as long as it takes to dig his ax out of their spines. So on the right, the Sentry puts a manikin between butch and the flag to make trees, and the other moves past it a bit and pot shots a spray at one of Butch's argus. Silly in retrospect, but he missed. An argus moves to the far side of the flag from the forest and Butch, out of LOS, while the winter and moony back him up a bit. The stalker moves up into the woods with the sentry within the shifting stones, within port range of the flag (and thus within range of Butcher if he goes B2B with it to dominate.)
On the left, the woodland argus burns 3 fury to eat Yuri, because it hadn't occurred to me to cast Carnage with Kromac first. The other argus walks up to the flag, while the blood weavers run forward to block the WG advance.
In the center, I get a little risky and move Kromac forward in front of the wall and cast Carnage, sitting on two transfers. The 3 middle argus move ~4-5" forward to block access of the battle engine and jacks. Gorax moves up to cuddle with Kroms, and the stealth stones move up to prepare to toss Kromac somewhere, while being outside of 5" from potential battle engine moves. At end of turn I am poised to take at least 1 point unopposed, and possibly 2 (turns out the flag was knocked off position and Kromac wasn't in B2B, but whatever.)
K-2: At this point my opponent had gotten 2 texts from his wife that his boy was back awake and coughing a lot, so this had to be the last turn, and it had to be pretty quick. Starting from left to right, the WG moved up into a line and through weight of spray fire managed to drop all the Blood Weavers and one Night Witch. How about that... The battle engine charged an argus, putting it at 6 hp, then missed arguses left and right with its guns. Butcher (having put 1 focus on each Kodiak and 2 on Ruin) tries to remember what units do. After some suggesting from me that he probably doesn't want to move and attack with one argus before moving the rest of the unit, no... really, stop picking up dice... moves the argusi up to the right flag, while he energizers for 3 (moving the jacks nearer to my dismay) then walks 3/4 of the way around the moony and feats. He casts Impending doom, and my half planned brilliance reveals itself: the moony is pulled up, but there is not enough space between moony and the flag for the flag sitter to move past it, so he just stops. The winter then bumps into him, and not much else happens. Butcher, still trying to figure out just what the hell is going on, decides to kill a dog. Pow: 12 damage. He casts Flashing Blade, splinters a manikin and .... rolls 5 to hit Moony. Hmmm... casts again, rolls 4. Casts again, hey a 7! Rolls 8 damage. Casts again, rolls a 5. Moony it seems has learned to duck. Butcher sits on 0 camp, with a two headed dog sniffing his crotch.
Measuring control, he sees he can't quite get a jack into Kromac by about 2-3 inches, Ruin charges a central argus, getting a second in reach range. 3 Fury later those two are dead. A kodiak charges the Moony, rolls an 8. Whoops, just mat 6, try again. No, sorry, another roll of 6 won't do it. The last kodiak tries to kill the argus in font of the battle wagon, but also misses. (The last jack was so far out of position it never did anything.)
I get a point, battle wagon contests mid. I think Butcher's dogs contest right? Not sure how that works.

C-3: Well... time to close this out. I measure control, and yup, I can put Kromac 9" away and be in reach of Butcher. First though, silly things. The flag sitting dog on the right rotates around and sprays Butcher. Rolls a 10. After we try and figure out what Butch's def is (16 with wardogs I guess?) we realize that with Moony there in melee, a 10 + 4 Rat + 2 moony = hit. Butch is now Def 7. Kromac, scratches his balls, hefts his ax, and glimmers as the stones teleport him to Butcher.
"Wait, so Shifting Stones teleport within 8", not completely within 8"?"
"Yup... so effectively 10" for a large base, threatening 12" with reach. Like Kromac. Or the Stalker there."
"Well... that's really good."

It takes Kromac 4 boosted damage rolls after Feating to seal the deal due to poor rolls, but Butcher becomes just one more corpse token.


Thoughts:
1: 3 point Argus are kind of great. Def 17 on the hill makes them almost impervious to shooting, Def 15 makes them really tough to actually kill in melee. I think the best bit is that one never really knows how much to commit. The binary nature of Def means that a fully loaded jack can miss too much to kill, or splatter it in two shots and leave some Focus remaining. Which is nice for...
2: Sentry stones are ok. Kind of. I didn't teleport it early due to needing the stones forward to serenity, but it was ready to pull 1 focus off Butcher, had he left any. The forests were really nice, though the first turn one probably wasn't necessary as the battle engine didn't move as fast as I had hoped.
3: A whole army that moves Spd 7 save for 3 models is scary.
4: I originally thought that a better list would have removed 2 argus and put in a Rotterhorn and a second gorax. Maybe. Maybe I could pull the weavers for another solo to remove one argus for those two. On the other hand, I didn't really feel like I needed it. Argus are hard to remove and really claim some ground. With so many he could have killed 3-4 (no small task apparently) and I still would have won on points.
5: 4 jacks is too many on Butcher 3, no matter the discount. And he shouldn't have refused that flank so hard. He said that he was stunned at how far my army made it turn 1, and a little more on turn 2.

So, that list was a lot of fun! I need to try it in more serious/awake games, but it does seem to have a lot of potential. I didn't even get to do slam-bots or auto-hitting Pow 20 combo-bites.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Note: It has since been pointed out to me that my list was 51 points, not 50. Damned inability to count! I am shamed :(

 Wehrkind wrote:
Note: It has since been pointed out to me that my list was 51 points, not 50. Damned inability to count! I am shamed :(

Hahaha Oh man. You have the genius issue (for reference, Wehr is working on an economics PhD) - can solve crazy hard problems but not count!

I remember you mentioned your wife needed to count out bits for you when you cast them... and I've certainly been the recipient of over- and under- counted things from you . So, I would say this is normal, and that I will be counting your points next time we play

*L* Yea, my ability to count to 5 repeatedly is really questionable

By the way, I took the opportunity to snap a pic of the based models, like I promised like 4 weeks ago.


Not a great one since the light in my dining room is bad, but there you go. I will try and get another one downstairs at the painting table sooner or later, but man, that is a packed space now!

Ooh, really like the snow!

And is this eKromac's theme force? Someone commented on the PP Errata thread that it had survived the "culling" that just happened through PP's rules updates, which is good since I haven't heard about it being overpowered.

I may be running this as my second list, although it likely wouldn't normally be against Circle it might be fun to try as a dogs vs pigs matchup

Carver
8 x Battle Boar
4 x Splatter Boar
Gobber Chef
Bone Grinders

No, that's just the stuff I had painted over the holidays. eKrom's tier is up there in the battle report, the kicker being 1 point off light beasts. It would LOVE to be run against that piggy list I have no idea how that would work out, but probably not to the dog's advantage. I suspect that Battle Boars are too good at killing Def 15 with their boosted everythings.

Ah got it . And sounds good, we'll try it! Won't be for a bit though as they're in the queue, but I do have another (hopefully better, or at least easier for me to play well) gator list to try next time we meet.

Sounds like a plan! I also have a "good" eKromac list I can run too I might try out my Grayle T4 list. You know, before I really commit to building 32+ ____s of Orboros.

Well right now I don't think you need your "good" list since so far I have been pretty much a pushover. I would like to see the dogs vs pigs matchup but could face whatever you like for the next gators game!

Sounds like a plan! Who can bring more medium bases? WE SHALL SEE.

DOGS vs FISH!

IT HAPPENED. IT TOOK A LONG TIME!

Like 3.5 hours or so. I'll summarize; RiTides will have to provide pictures because he took them.

eKromac Tier 4
Kromac -4
- 5x Argus 15
- Moonhound 3
- Winter Argus 4
- 2x Gorax 6
- Stalker 10
Blood Weavers 5
2x Night Witch 4
2x Shifting Stones 4
Sentry Stones 3

Best list ever? No. It does make wins happen, inexplicably.

FISH
Rask
- Swamp Horror
- Bull Snapper
2x Croaks
2x Gatormen
Bokor + shamblers
Witch doc
Pendrake

That's a lot of sea food. Are frogs sea food? Are alligators? I don't know, but there are a lot of them across the table. Should be fine, right? Argus are good at clearing infantry... wait.

SCENARIO: Incursion (3 flags across the middle of the board)
So Kromac rolls a 6 like the beast he is, and takes first turn. There is a forest sort o near the middle flag and a wall by the flag to my right. More importantly, I happened to be standing in the middle of the 6' table, so I deploy pretty heavily on the right half the board. 2 argus, moony and the winter argus go on the right side of the woods to go after that flag supported by a gorax, stalker and kromac behind the woods with the blood weavers in front of them, the remaining battle group of 3 argus and the gorax towards the middle flag. One night witch goes out by herself by the left flag, another sticks the middle with Kromac. Stones are forward, Sentry sitting just touching the back of the woods. My Tier woods goes to the left of the woods by the middle flag.

RiTides, being more aware of where the play surface actually is, deploys pretty centrally, with Rask and his battle group in the middle, Pendrake behind him (oops) Bokor behind them (oops) witch doc back there somewhere. Each flank then had a posse, and croaks AD'd in front of them.

Circle Turn 1: So here's my problem: I don't know what to screen with, or for whom. Blood Weavers have stealth and Def 14, and are less valuable to shoot to death. However, there is a lot of good Killing Spree attacks there that can just pac-man a unit down. Argus are Def 15 with 21 boxes, but if they do get hit it will hurt, and all that boosted dart action will get its money worth. I opt for distance and a mixed approach; I figure if I can survive the bottom of 1 I can jam some croaks and see what happens.
So argus, moonie and winter get behind that wall, another goes in front of the woods. On the left some argus move foward and toe the tier woods. Weavers move up between some, with some behind. Tricksy bit, sentry stone sends two mannikins forward to pop woods around the dogs/weavers in the open. Now everything out front is between Def 16 and 19. Goraxes run up, stalker trots into the central forest, Kromac with him, stones move around to try and deal with all the fury on the table. 9 Fury sitting out there, ouch. The stalker has Awakened Spirit on him, and Kromac has Aggravator out.

Gators 1: RiTides realizes that Pendrake is on the wrong side to help the Croaks on the right. Things shift a bit, Fury goes on the right Gators, Inhospitable ground goes up. Which is actually a good spell, since only the infantry, Moonie, Stalker and Kromac actually have pathfinder standard. Wheeee.
Croaks on my right, the Pendraked ones, move up a bit, with 3 going forward to gourd. Gourds get thrown, and after drifts do a lot of nothing to the argus in the woods, but one pops over the three behind the wall. Darts fly! Darts miss! Def 17/19 is REALLY hard to land hits on, even boosted. One does tag the Winter Argus for like 14 damage, breaking his body.
On the left similar things are attempted, but without boosts nothing happens. The Gators then trot up to support croaks. Support in the 'You guys get hit in the face, we'll totally have your back' sense.
Rask had also feated, which was a good move.

Circle T2: So, that was nice. Croaks are scary but did little. Argus defense is pretty handy. (Last game Moonie soaked an attack and 3 flashing blade shots from Butcher 3 and lived... Def 15 is no joke!) Serenity from the stones pulls off the crazy amounts of Fury, leaving Kromac to top up and upkeep Awakened spirit.
Trouble is now that I am limited to running to engage, with some pointless sprays otherwise. I do a little of both. Weaves sent three girls into the middle of the lines while the rest hang back to counter charge next turn. The left most argus flings himself in, while the other two on the left play it a bit more cagey. The super left most Nightwitch makes a bad life decision and runs to engage two croaks. The gorax plays it safe and trots forward a bit into the woods over there.
On the right, the moonhound runs forward to engage and sit on RiTide's side of the flag. The argus towards the center moves up and engages. Kromac activates, heals a pip off the Winter argus, and does something or other to spend a handful of fury and moves to the front of the woods. Stalker walks up as well, stones move to have him and Kromac inside. The two remaining manikins move up and make a forest wall in front of Kromac.
The winter argus then moves up and sprays. First one catches two croaks and a gator. 6,6 to hit both croaks, kills them, 2,3 on the gator for 4 damage. Second spray kills two croaks, no gators. Final argus on that side moves over a bit behind the wall to counter next turn. Gorax trots forward, glad that he isn't likely to get smacked to death.

I think I also caught the bokor with an argus spray.

Gators 2: Turns out even with rerolls to hit, gatormen posse have a bit of a tough time hitting argus on rerollable 8s. I need to rely on pictures from RiTides here, but I think I only lose one argus on the right, and the ones on the left all lived (although the one that ran to engage got mauled pretty well). I lost the Night witch on the left as well, along with 2 blood weavers in the middle. Speaking of the middle, the horror and the bull snapper were pretty far forward, with Rask right behind about 2", and the bokor back there as well. Important plot point.
Also, Bull Snappers don't have Spiny Growth, one of the best defensive animi in the game, and so have to rile like, all the time. Don't know if you knew that.

I think the winter argus died too, but I will need to see the photos to confirm.

Circle 3: So, the problem as I see it is that I need to kill a HUGE amount of people to cap a flag. On the plus side, I think I can actually remove a lot of people this turn. But man, I wish the regular argus had a damaging spray.

The argus on the far left settle for some biting, while one takes the opportunity to spray the horror and Rask. Hit the horror and paralyze down to 7 (which was promptly forgotten). Basically other than that, the left just stays jammed. Stone try to teleport Kromac into the middle of some gatormen, but does not have space for him to land. I settle for the other side of the flag, but that does make the left side of the board a bit out of control.
There are two shamblers sitting in front of my blood weavers that need to go... in a small fit of cleverness the gorax walks up and double hand throws one into the other. Somehow only one dies, but better than nothing.
Kromac activates and Feats. Puts up Carnage, kills some gators and a croak, heals two on moonie, and camps 1 fury and one corpse. (It should be noted that at many times during the rest of the turn I forgot either the +2 Str from the feat or the +2 Mat from Carnage.)
The argus behind the wall charges some croaks and kills them, while Moonie charges a gator and kills then fails to kill another (whoops for forgetting.)
Blood Weavers charge in and kill a bunch too, with one putting some damage on the Bull snapper. On the right there is now 1 gator on 4 hp and 1 croak within 4" of the flag. Drat.
The stalker, however, now has a clean run at the horror and bull snapper. He puts his animus up for free, warps strength and POW! 3 fury later Horror is wrecked, bull snapper is wrecked, and Stalker sprints back to safety. Rask now has 5 fury and no beasts. But damn... there are a LOT of bog trog shamblers back there. Like, 15?

Gators 3: I am getting a little forgetful at this point, forgive me. On the left an argus dies and the other two get mauled some, but the lines stay where they are. The Witch Doc runs to get close to the left flag (4", we were thinking that he could control from 4" out.) Rask, now a little concerned for his well being, moves a bit and shoots the closest argus to immobilize him.
Bokor and company then go to town charging to kill all but 1 blood weaver, and I think Moonie (that might have been the gator man). Pendrake gave boosted rolls to the croaks on the left, but they fail to do much. Def 15: the struggle is real!

Circle 4: Upkeep awakened spirit, have some argus frenzy into shamblers/croaks. Fair enough. The stalker though has a good shot at trampling to Rask. I just need to get that damned single gator man out of the way, and make sure enough bog trogs die to leave him no call to sacrifice targets. The poor last Bloodweaver then needs to get out of the way... eats a free strike. The gorax then can stroll into the gap, and proceeds to punch the gatorman and two shamblers into the ground. Now the stalker can trample and only take one free strike from a shambler.
Stalker warps berserk, puts his animus on himself, and tramples over 4 shamblers. The free strike misses, and he proceeds to squish all 4 shamblers (needing 3's to hit due to them having Fury). His berserk attack kills one nearby shambler. Only one now is within 6" of Rask. Next berserk attack into Rask, boost to hit. Hits, rolls... 6 damage. Seriously? Dice + 1? Fine. Buy, boost to hit, hit... 6 damage. (or so... Rask has 1 hp left.)
Here I get a rare flash of cleverness, and have the stalker sprint around behind Rask (free strike misses). Why? Because now Kromac activates. He turns a little to smack the cheeky last frog who walked around behind. Kromac now has 6 fury 2 corpses. Primal Shock time! I can cast 3 times, boost twice. I need 6 to hit (point of origin in back arc) and a 6 to kill on damage (Str 10 vs Arm 15).
First shot, I decide to roll a hard 6 then boost damage if I hit. I roll a 7! YAY! Boost damage: enough! last Bog Trog dies (again).
Second shot, ok 6 to hit, then boost damage if hit. 5! Oh no...
At this point I am having flash backs to two previous failed assassination attempts chronicled above... I just don't have an answer if Rask lives, as I am running out of bodies and he will just swamp me with Bog Troggs....
Last Primal shock. Boost to hit. 3 dice.... 6! POW! Damage roll = enough.

Whew! That was a rough game, especially because it is just not the kind of list I would run mine into on purpose. Too many infantry, not enough high value targets to slam/combo bite. Key thoughts:
1: I gotta get better at not getting Kromac jammed behind my own stuff. That large base is really tough to move around while trying to also keep him screened.
2: I probably should have used the Sentry stone manikins more for sprays than forests, though that first turn forest set was key. Still, Rat 4 sprays with a moonhound could have done some work. I am still torn on the stone though, as teleporting it forward to facilitate sprays/enough manikins means my stones are not moving themselves forward, which means my dogs are probably not getting all that first turn fury serenity'd off. I might be able to work around that by taking Kromac to zero camp (he's Def 14 Arm 18... probably fine?) but it's risky.
3: I need to practice my opening more. This list is weird, and I shouldn't be noodling over how to handle the fury load and with whom to screen on the drive home from the game.
4: Argus are REALLY hard to kill if you can't boost on demand, and even when you can sometimes. 4 points hard to kill? Probably not, but at 3 points, yea that's pretty hot. Dodging gator posse rerolls like champs.
5: In the end, I got lucky to catch Rask out with no beasts like that. If he had played more cagey and danced more towards the middle it would have been a long slog to clear out the bokor and all the bog trogs before the left flank collapsed. I might have been able to win by domination before he did, but it was not going to be clear cut.

So, all in all, great game! Great opponent! Great looking armies on the table! Kromac is mostly done, though I am tempted to toss him in the Simple Green and start over due to being a little unhappy with his skin tone. My second gorax is only ~3/4 done, but is not too shabby already. And of course RiTides army is awesome on the table, a really great collection of models there.

He should totally upload pictures into this thread so you can see!

 Wehrkind wrote:
He should totally upload pictures into this thread so you can see!

HE REALLY SHOULD!!1

Then awesome report would only get more awesomer. Thrilled to hear about doge list in action, 'grats on the win! Take that you beautiful possibly-not-fish people!

- Salvage

Okay, here are pics of my demise but at least the armies looked good while doing it! Here is my favorite pic from the battle, with the rest shown chronologically below:







Deployment:




End of Turn 1 - Both armies ran forward, Croaks tried unsuccessfully to shoot Def 17 - 19 Argus (19 behind the wall). Rask feated to protect the gator army:




Circle Turn 2 - Argus ran forward to jam, killed quite a few of the orange Croaks on the left:




Gators Turn 2 - This picture is what has had me leaning heavily towards trying Maelok next time (that, and I love him!). The jammed Croaks stayed jammed, Posse tried to kill Argus with reach attacks over the Croaks but couldn't kill most of them. Maelok could have made everybody incorporeal and get the Croaks out of dodge!




Circle Turn 3 - Kromac aggressively teleports forward and almost clears out everything by the left flag, threatening to dominate it next turn. Right side continues to be a mosh pit! But what happened to the Gator beasts in the center? I forgot / ran out of fury to put up Admonition leaving the Swamp Horror and Snapper to both be taken out by the Stalker, who sprinted back afterwards:




Gators Turn 3 / Circle Turn 4 - This pic was taken just after Circle's next turn had started, and some shamblers were deleted. Rask had gotten a little too cute and moved down to shoot an Argus, leaving a nice 50mm-sized base opening nearby! See his predicament here:




Wehrkind very nicely trampled the Stalker in, killed enough Shamblers to keep Rask from sacrificing them, and almost killed Rask on his own. A few primal shocks later, Wehrkind rolled exactly what he needed to kill Rask on his last roll - a 6!

It was a fun game, but honestly a bit too much infantry for me to manage... I think Maelok's incorporeal on feat turn could really help me get unjammed. So, I'll be trying that next possibly against our Khador friend. Wehrkind has so far beaten my gators every time, but I'm slowly getting back into the hang of things! Thanks for the game and it's really great to play against a painted army

Awesome, thanks for the pictures and summaries! It really was a close game, with questionable decisions and dice on both sides. I suspect your favorite picture is largely due to the fact that you are about to erase a lot of my over committed army

Something the pictures make me realize is that I could easily trade an argus for a Rotterhorn gryphon, losing only a little jamming for a LOT of infantry clearing. Being able to fly up and delete 5/6 croaks there either before or after argus jam sessions would have really helped, and if he lived doing the same to bog trogs would be great. 4 argus + a moonie and winter argus is probably plenty!