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Made in ca
Inspiring Icon Bearer




Canada

Hello there,

I'm a long-time wargamer hailing from Vancouver, Canada. I’ve been wargaming for a little less than two decades now, bouncing between games like Warhammer: 40K, Warmachine/Hordes, Necromunda, and more recently X-Wing. But my first and dearest passion has always been for fantasy wargames...specifically Warhammer: Fantasy Battles. Thus it was with great sadness that I marked the passing of that illustrious game last summer, and my existing Vampire Counts / Tomb Kings / Undead Legion project was thrown into an indefinite hiatus (project log for that army can be found HERE, for those interested).

Luckily for me, just as Sigmar’s hammer drove the last nails into Warhammer’s coffin, I caught wind of Mierce’s Metal Age kickstarter. Now truth be told I’d been following Darklands for some time at this point, holding off buying anything until closer to the actual shipping date once I’d gotten a sense of the rules and whether the game would be a success. But with Warhammer gone I had a hobby-sized hole in my life, and Darklands was screaming to fill it.

For those of you not familiar with either Darklands or Mierce, the latter is a company out of England that got its start creating alternate models to serve as centrepieces in Warhammer: Fantasy armies. More recently, they began leveraging the power of Kickstarter to flesh their line into a fully-fledged wargame of their own. Their Metal Age kickstarter, creating a set of entry-priced metal “starter sets” for various armies, was closing down just as Age of Sigmar was hammering the final nails into WHFB’s coffin. If you haven’t seen any of these Kickstarters you should check them out...the models are simply breathtaking (though expensive), and even the significant range of models that have been funded to date represents only a small portion of Mierce’s planned range. The quality and ambition of the project is frankly staggering.

After divvying up the various factions between ourselves, my friends and I pulled the trigger and went in on the Kickstarter together. Here’s what I got:





The two starter hosts will round out the core of my force, as well as a number of smaller pieces not pictured here.

It was a very tough choice between the various factions on offer, as all of them have some truly gorgeous miniatures. The Atalanteans were probably my second choice: I absolutely love the Greek aesthetic, and felt the larger bronze statues could easily be hammered out with a verdigris scheme I learned previously for my WHFB Undead army. Also high on my list were the Jutes (having painted 130+ skeletons to date, I have no desire to paint any more...as gorgeous as they are) and the Norse (LOVE those trolls and the Blood Maw, but the rest of the range didn’t inspire me).

At the end of the day, I decided the Ysians were enough of a departure from my previous armies to push me in new directions. My last two painting projects having been Deathwing for 40K and Vampire Counts / Tomb Kings for WHFB, I actually have surprisingly little experience painting exposed flesh...or really anything living. I figured it would be the perfect chance to grow my skills into some new techniques.

With the order locked in, it was then time to begin planning out my theme. I combed the internet for inspiration, finally settling on this amazing model by artist Sergey Popovichenko as the inspiration for my theme:
http://sergeypopovichenko.blogspot.ca" target="_new" rel="nofollow">

I didn’t want to go the traditional route of black or silver metal, and this tarnished brown-lacquered armour fit a more “marauder-esque” look that really appealed to me. I also liked the interplay between all the different browns on the model in the leathers, pouches, rags, furs, etc.

Settling on a basing scheme was a significantly more difficult task. I wanted to do something with water effects, and had originally thought that doing a swamp theme might be cool. I was even considering the “corpse field” bases from Secret Weapon Miniatures, but after playing around with a sample one I got in a grab bag at a tournament last fall I found myself actually rather unimpressed with the quality of the sculpt. Given the relatively low model count for this game I really want to push myself with the miniatures (especially since they’re so gorgeous and...well kind of expensive), and I just knew I would be disappointed with these bases once I was fully in the swing of things.

I also figured I should use the basing scheme to add a bit more contrast to the minis. After scouring the net some more, I settled on something like this:



My hope is that the cold blues and whites of the base will contrast well with the warm browns and flesh tones of the models. It will also give me some opportunities to embed cool things into the ice, adorn larger bases with icicles, broken ice, and all manner of other cool interest pieces.

For materials I picked up a clear, self-levelling liquid resin to do the ice itself, and some transparent crackle paste for more textured, broken-up ice. My original plan was to pour the liquid resin then carve out portions to replace with crackle paste. Unfortunately, in my tests I noticed that the crackle paste has a significant amount of shrinkage, making it rather difficult to align properly with the level of the ice. It’s going to get some more experimentation to get right, and it might be that I will need to manually place broken ice shards in with some transparent gel water effects instead. Either way, there is going to be some experimentation. I will probably do a post on the basing shortly down the line, once I have a better handle on the materials and techniques.

And now, without further ado, here is my test mini for the scheme:





He’s the “Marauder Champion” model from Avatars of War, intended for use as a D&D character for a campaign I joined recently. I’m still working on his base, as I’m rather unhappy with the Galeforce 9 snow flock that I grabbed from my local hobby store. The flakes are a bit too harsh for my liking.

As for this model, the plates are done with a series of reddish browns, washed with devlan mud and spot-tarnished with Typhus Corrosion. I picked out the edges with Mithril Silver to give the impression of nicks and scratches, and to differentiate the brown armour from the brown leather. His weapons are leadbelcher darkened with a mud wash and edged/drybrushed in Mithril Silver.

You also can’t tell from the picture, but his right hand and head are both magnetized so that I can swap them out as needed. His shield arm and bare head are not pictured here, as I’m still doing some greenstuff work on them.

That’s all for now, though! Next up I begin work on my Ax-Drunes themselves, which are the first batch of my models from the Kickstarter to arrive.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/03/03 00:02:17


 
   
Made in ca
Inspiring Icon Bearer




Canada

Update the 2nd!


The first of my Ysians to arrive was the Ax-Drune starter host, sans the Brutes which were delayed for some reason. They actually arrived a few months ago but it took a while to get around to getting my hobby space set up in the new apartment. Finished that a month or so ago, and after much filing, sanding, shaving, greenstuffing, and gluing I finally got these bad boys together!

...unfortunately, that “together” didn’t last all that long. These guys basically broke every time I looked at them. Even with scoring the surfaces and trying to strengthen the bonds with greenstuff, it was pretty clear that the joins just plain weren’t going to hold. So I started pinning….

…everything…



And by “everything” I do mean everything. Every single joint on these models required pinning. The horns into the helmet, the arms into the shoulders, the arms into the hands. This is how much material I took out from just the first half.



Lucky for my I was given a fancy new Dremel for Christmas. This thing is an absolute godsend. The models get really hot if you use it on anything but the lowest speed, but I was still able to do in hours what would likely have taken daaaays with a hand drill. I probably would have given up and just shot myself if I had to do it that way.

Note the mask and goggles, kids. Safety first. The safety glasses actually aren’t so much for the dremel…more for the bits of wire that kept flying around as I cut them for pinning. You’d think after 20 years of doing this gak I’d have learned how to cut wire without it flying at my face.



Since I had the dremel out anyways I figured I might as well magnetize the models as well. May be a bit excessive, but given the popularity of Kings of War in my club I figured I might as well dual-purpose these boys so that I can pull them off their rounds and stick them onto a unit base if need be.



Finally ready for priming! Just using GW black spray, which I still have kicking around. I bought some brush-on primer but I’ve never been much of a fan. I do find that the spray-on rubs off metal a bit, so I’m going to seal them with matte varnish just before I do all the metallics.



I started by base-coating their armour and cloaks. For the cloaks I’m ripping off some other Ysian painters (notably JerzyK from this forum) and doing them in a sort of “motley” assortment of different shades of brown.



After basecoating I washed them with a Devlan Mud alternative. I have both Army Painter Strong Tone and Vallejo Umber Wash for that purpose. Used the Army Painter variety here and really wasn’t a fan of the texture. Makes the models look…sort of plasticky? Really not a fan. I hid the bottle in a drawer so that I won’t make this mistake again.



Final picture for the evening, with my first four completed cloaks. The top-most and right-most are the ones I’m most happy with. The other two are a little…clean for my liking. I think I will likely go back over with a coat of Umber Shade to mute down the colours a little bit.

Still…pretty happy with the results. Next step is finishing the armour and then moving onto the flesh and horns. As I mentioned before, I plan to hit the whole thing with dullcoat to seal it before doing the metallics. I find that dullcoat dampens some of the contrast in the colours, but I really don’t want the paint rubbing off the metal during prolonged use. I’m absolutely terrible at picking up my models in the worst ways and I don’t want that to wear off the paint. Will just mean I might need to touch up the shading/highlighting afterwards.

Thoughts on that? Would also love to hear any feedback on the cloaks themselves. Do you think this will/won’t work with the brownish armour? Or is that too much browns. Hoping that the bases will add a bit more contrast, beyond the different hues of brown.

Anyways, thanks for reading! Will probably get another update early next week.
   
Made in gb
Pious Palatine






Wow. What a post. They're so pretty cool models, but the amount of pinning sounds like a real pain. It was was fortunate you had that Dremal .

EDC
   
Made in ca
Inspiring Icon Bearer




Canada

 evildrcheese wrote:
Wow. What a post. They're so pretty cool models, but the amount of pinning sounds like a real pain. It was was fortunate you had that Dremal .

EDC


Thanks!

As for the pinning...yeah, that's unfortunately just the reality when working with metal models. You forget how spoiled we are nowadays, working with so much plastic.

These guys also come in resin, which I think would be easier to work with. The metal was cheaper though.

And yes...they're absolutely spectacular miniatures. Pictures don't really do them justice. They're true 28mm scale, so slightly smaller than one would expect coming from 28mm "heroic" minis like WHFB, but the detail is incredibly high even still. The metal is very good quality as well, holding the detail well without being overly soft and pliant like some other companies' metals (thinking Avatars of War primarily, which is highly detailed but also very soft). I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Mierce makes the highest quality miniatures on the market.

I'm willing to put a bit more effort into pinning and prep for that.

Next update will probably be early this week. Hoping to get the rest of the cloaks finished, and started into the armour.
   
Made in ca
Plastictrees





Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Awesome.
I've been buying the resins and now metals for a while and have managed to assemble one giant wolf, so I'm jealous.
Stayed away from the Ysians but its good to see them being worked on.
Did you pick up any of their bigger beasts?
Please post some battle reports if/when you start getting some games in.
   
Made in ca
Inspiring Icon Bearer




Canada

 plastictrees wrote:
Awesome.
I've been buying the resins and now metals for a while and have managed to assemble one giant wolf, so I'm jealous.
Stayed away from the Ysians but its good to see them being worked on.
Did you pick up any of their bigger beasts?
Please post some battle reports if/when you start getting some games in.


I've got a Hound Abberant and a Death Brute on the way, and a Conjunct X that I agreed to buy off a clubmate who....well, put lightly has a bit more enthusiasm for Kickstarter than his budget can truly afford Not a super huge fan of the model, but he's been bugging me to buy it for a while (steadily dropping the price) and now has a baby on the way, so I took pity. Thinking I'll do it crashing out of some ice or something.

As for assembly, oddly enough it's actually my favourite part. I really like gluing, pinning, sculpting, and especially converting (though I've promised myself that this army will be mostly stock, given how over-ambitious my Undead Legions project got). Even though I actually enjoy painting as well, that's the part of the process that I struggle to motivate myself with. Right now I only have a few miniatures on my workbench so it's easier to keep motivated with the end in sight. Once my KS order comes though, things will be tougher.

Will definitely do up some battle reports once things get going. My girlfriend actually threw her lot in with us too and is picking up a Jute army as her first foray into wargaming, which I'm pretty excited about. She's a huge fantasy nerd and wargamer, so it wasn't much of a stretch. Also a huge Skyrim fan, and the Jutes are pretty much a draugr army...really didn't take much arm twisting at all I suspect that once both our armies are assembled we'll be getting a decent number of games in against each other. I also have 3 close friends with armies on the way, two others who are on the fence but increasingly interested, and a half-dozen guys at the club with armies as well. I'm cautiously optimistic at the prospects for our budding little community.

...hopefully the game plays well too, and we can convince others to join. I've only seen the couple official battle reports, and have a theoretical understanding of the rules from those and a single read-through. I'll be pissed if the game is gak after all of that
   
 
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