Just keep typing

I keep telling myself, "Update your blog." Also, I keep not listening. Like most of the things I do, I got inspired to retry it and then proceeded to let it fizzle again. So lets try this: Instead of only updating it when I feel like something noteworthy has happened, I will just update it with random shit. Like Donald Trump's twitter but less horrifying.

It's Friday. How many bald eagles did wind turbines kill today? They are an environmental & aesthetic disaster.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2012

I have a buddy coming in from out of town in about 10 days and he asked to play Warmachine. I was stoked. I love teaching people this game. So I told him to get on the web and pick a faction I have about a 60% of him picking a starter I own or can borrow. He comes back and says "Dragons!" Fuck. Perfect timing though, big sale at DGI. Get the legion set on Saturday. Opened it Monday morning because that's what the troops would have wanted. It kind of inspired me to make a newcomer's guide to building your battlebox. 

You should read it in her voice. 

Here is my progress:

Supplies: 

• Battle box. So key. 
• Hobby knife. X-Acto like. 
• Glue. I recommend Loctite ultragel. 
• Some sort of gap filler. I would recommend "Green Stuff".
• Sculpting tools or a blunted hobby blade. 
• Some sand is always good for a spiffy base. 
• Primer (the types are described below)

Step 1: Clip, snip, shave, and drip. 

I just came up with that. I don't know if it will stick around. Anyway, the key to some decent looking models is prep work. I have seen tons of really well painted models where the effect is just demolished because the person didn't prep the model well. Gaps down a torso or mold lines (small strips that run down the model left over from where the two pieces of the mold come together) through details can really make things look shitty. 

• First, clip any large hunks of plastic or metal left over from when the model was cast or from the sprue. 
• Then, snip off any pieces flash (small buts of metal that typically extend from metal models) and smooth out where they were. 
• Cleaning mold lines is simple. Examine all pieces, find that thin line that shouldn't be there, and use an X-Acto blade to shave it off. There are two ways of doing this and you will typically find yourself using both methods on a single piece. For larger mold lines or bits in tight spaces you can just use the sharp end of the blade. Just be careful not to use an angle that will cause any gouging in the model. The second method is to drag the back of your blade over the mold lines. This will shave off the lines but make it so you cant accidentally gouge or over flatten the surface. 
• After all this is done, take all your pieces and put them in a container, pour on some dish soap, and rinse the pieces. This will get any releasing agent off. Releasing agent is like an oil that is used to allow the model to exit the mold cleanly. Fun fact about oil: It blocks the surface of your model when you try to add glue or paint. I used to think this step was horseshit until I did it. Pieces that wouldn't glue together magically stuck. Paint actually adhered to the surface without a million passes. Birds chirped and flowers bloom. Clean your fucking model. And let it drip dry. 

Cleaned and washed. Ready to go. 

Step 2: Build!

Building the model is pretty straight forward. Dry fit 2 pieces. Once you see what the deal is, add glue and let it sit. You will find some gaps. That happens. No model is ever gap free. As an side, the Hellslinger Phantom was really fucking close though. To deal with this, you need to use some sort of gap filling compound. Usually its "green stuff". It's a two part compound you roll together to make a putty and then you jam it in where it needs to go and smooth it out. This time I tried using liquid green stuff. A few issues:

1. It isn't a fucking liquid. It's more like semi dry paint. It holds it shape. It does not conform to its container. It isn't a fucking liquid. WHAT THE FUCK. 
2. It is really hard to work with. It either sticks to your sculpting tool or becomes clumpy paint if you wet your sculpting tool. Then when it dries, it shrinks so you have to do it again. 
3. IT ISN'T A FUCKING LIQUID

Anyway, if anyone has tips for how to use this shit, I am all ears. 

So I filled my gaps and even though it looks weird now, when primer goes on you won't notice a thing. 

I don't get how the hell people think this is easier than green stuff. I HAVE to be doing this wrong. 

Step 3: Get your base in shape.

OK so this is a matter of preference. Some people do their bases after they finish the model, I set it up before.

First, cover your slots. I know it sounds like some really shitty sex ed from Sister Mary O'Toole but seriously. Cover any portion of the slotted base that wont be used for the tab on the model. If you plan to pin to the base, cover the whole thing. 

Option 1

Option 2. Amazing

Next, add your model to the base. Then throw some watered down PVA glue on there. Arts and fucking crafts time. 

Dope coverage, dope results. Just like Pappy used to say. 

Why all this glue? To add sand of course! I use some fine sand and course shit mixed together. It always looks decent and is super low effort to make it good looking with a dry brush. I usually have it in a container so I can just dunk it in, swish it around and then tap out the excess. Shown here is a blister I use. Bonus: You can seal it back up so this shit wont spill everywhere. And it will go everywhere.

I forgot to take a picture of the Legion model taking a swim so here is my Hellslinger Phantom. I had to buy this because Will Pagani did not tell me under which rock in Bellevue he hid my prerelease.

Step 4: Prime time. Time to prime. Amazon prime. Prime directive. 

Pick a title but all of them say prime. There are a few different options for priming. 

• Brush on primer. This stuff is ok in a pinch and functional for touch ups. That being said, I don't recommend it. Either it goes on too thick and you lose detail, or you thin it and then it has a very weak adhesion to the model, or you prime it and don't wait the 48 hours a lot of brush ons take to cure. 
• Rattle can primer. This one is tried and true. Relatively cheap. Fairly easy to figure out. You can spray on a few thin coats, let it dry, and paint that day. The only down side: Weather. Spray cans are toxic as fuck and you don't want to use them inside. Now, I have lived in Chicago and Seattle. When it is cold as balls out (Chicago is below 40 half the damn year) or humid as hell (that would be another 3 months in Chicago) your primer will either be dusty, flaky, or will not stick. Seattle has the humid thing but also just standard rain.
• Airbrush primer. This is the best. I cannot recommend it enough. It goes on exactly how you want, you can do it indoors without killing your girlfriend, you have way more control, and there is only one downside. It is fucking expensive to get an airbrush. A good airbrush set up with everything you need will be around $200 when everything is said and done. Now that is a one time cost and it gives you a lot of money saving options (I spend wayyyyyyy less on primer now) but it is a pretty big barrier. 

Anyway you choose to do it, hit that model with 2-3 thin coats. Some people like black primer, others white, and sick individuals gravitate to grey. I use black because it is forgiving. If you miss something, no one will see it probably. White is awesome for making colors pop and ensuring you paint everything. Grey is like the worst of both. Dull colors and your going to miss things you don't notice the first time but will drive you up the wall later. 

There is another method call zenithal priming. You start with a black primer. Then move to grey/white but only from where you determine your light source to be. This is really cool and takes some serious practice to make work but the results are super dope. That will be a post later. 

Anyway: Prime it all and get ready to paint!

I see a shred-door and I want to paint it black. 

I will track the progress on painting the battle box in my following posts. If you want to see anything specific or have tips or questions, just leave a message or tweet me.

Surprise! Mox had a tiny tourny!

So Mox Seattle (formerly Card Kingdom) had a tournament. It was quite the shocker. I think I found out Wednesday night. So naturally I ask management if I can go. She says yes but only if I win.

It was like this except I have less hair and my beard looks like that of a feral Appalachian 14 year old. 

Ok! Im going to a tournament this weekend! Yay! But first I need to make sure I have some opponents. The tournament was being run by the events coordinator there since PG's are now extinct. He didnt know about the common facebook groups for our meta. I posted around. It was actually kind of funny watching people think the tournament looked shady because it sort of came out of nowhere. Like we get there with all our shit and they knock us out and steal our heavily worn livers. 

There's a steamroller at Candy Mountain!

I didnt get to prep much before the tournament. Shortly after the dramatic nodding, my girlfriend became very ill. Totally hosed my night keeping her from dying. Friday I just didnt do anything. I dont know why. I think I got drunk and posted to this blog so Zach didnt out do me. Saturday morning rolls around and I decide to run the lists from the weekend before because they were in my bag. I made a slight change to the infernal machines list. Taking Jeff's advice, I dropped Agathia in. 

Bane Witch Agathia - WJ: +29
- Skarlock Thrall - PC: 0
- Deathjack - PC: 23 (Battlegroup Points Used: 23)
- Defiler - PC: 8 (Battlegroup Points Used: 6)

Darragh Wrathe - PC: 9
Warwitch Siren - PC: 0
Pistol Wraith - PC: 0
Machine Wraith - PC: 2
Soul Trapper - PC: 1

Mechanithralls - Leader & 9 Grunts: 10
- Skarlock Commander - PC: 3
- Brute Thrall - PC: 2
- Brute Thrall - PC: 2
Mechanithralls - Leader & 9 Grunts: 10
- Brute Thrall - PC: 2
- Brute Thrall - PC: 2
- Brute Thrall - PC: 2
Carrion Thralls - Leader & 9 Grunts: 10
Soulhunters - Leader & 4 Grunts: 18

Dropping a necrosurgeon for the skarlock thrall enabled some out of activation ghostly spells. My thinking is this helps either spread ghostly over my whole army or save Agathia 2 focus on her assassination run. My other list was the standard Denny1 Ghost Fleet.

The tournament wound up being only 5 people due to poor publicity. The next one should be larger. But as a result it was 2 rounds. Round one was against a dude I had never played before. He doesnt play a whole lot but still seemed pretty good. He played Menoth and dropped Kreoss3. This list had the Avatar, Blessing of Vengeance, a devout, one other heavy, vengers, Gravus, and the choir. I dropped the Infernal Machines. Both of his lists were just to beefy for Ghost Fleet.   

I went first. Ran up aggressively so I was in both zones and threatened anything to get near. On his turn he used his cav to shift to my left, hoping to overload one zone and then turn on the soulhunters. My next turn I ambushed into his devout and surrounded Gravus and Kreoss himself with zombies. A  machine wraith charged the avatar. This is where my ignorance of Menoth will show. At the time we played it as though he had a cortex. Looking at his card now... Fuck. So I walked him up and turned his back to DJ. A unit of mechanithralls moves up and one of the brutes bops him from behind. DJ charges him in the butt and kills him. Soul hunters ran up to jam and do some damage to the Blessing. I through the birds out to jam and kept Agathia way back. 

End of my second turn. Everything is in a very small area. 

He crevasses a lot to unjam. Takes out the chicken jack with a pony. Kills a few zombies. Passes turn. I clear the zone on the left of ponies and his objectives with DJ. Zombies push further in. Agathia moves up and vanishes into the zone on the right. Pops feat. Jam further. 4 points in one turn.  By cheating. He couldnt get to the other zone the next turn so I got a shady win. I will never forget that Avatar doesnt have a cortex now so... silver linings?

My cheating piece of shit face when rereading the Avatar's card while writing this.

My second game I did not cheat. I didnt need to. I was playing Zach and he dropped a list with no magic weapons. His list was Naaresh, hydra, mammoth, gladiator, paingiver beast handlers, agonizer and a feralgeist. I dropped Ghost Fleet and the Blackbane's became a timer. I got sloppy with my arc nodes for no reason other than hubris. Had he kept lamentation up, things may not have gone my way. But as it stands, I was able to charge Denny in to cast scourge on Naaresh. The ghost raiders charged in and made short work of him. He is now, and forever will be, removed from play and part of my Ghost Fleet. He is mine now, Zach. 

For. Ev. Ver.

I think my next task is going to be getting some CID games for banes. I really want to try the new riders and knights. I love spooky ghost warriors and they were the first unit I painted upon getting into cryx at the beginning of MK3. We will see how it goes. I leave you with a picture of my spooky leader. 

Spoopy

You win some, you lose some. Not me though. I just lose some.

So there I was minding my own business at Mox Boarding House when Jeff, Brendan, and Andrew all pointed at me, did some sort of lasso move with their other hand, and shouted "FUCK THAT GUY" at me as though they were under the direction of a budget j-pop choreographer.

Like this but more sexual. 

I then proceeded to make some mistakes against players you don't want to make mistakes around.

A few things happened last Saturday that I can definitely learn from. The first is that I didnt think out the actual logistics of playing in a tournament. Fun fact, if you play attrition lists in a small tournament you will not get a break between rounds. That means no food. No water. No bathroom break. This made me very grumpy and very stupid. By the last game I had a pounding headache and was short tempered. At least Andrew was pretty gracious about me being a cock. So a big take away is bring snacks and a water bottle. There was a timely podcast that I listened to the following night about how to care for yourself in general and with tournament play. Stupid chain-attack and their day late insight.

The second thing I learned is I am very, very bad at list selection. My initial ignorance to an opponent's list guided me to a poor selection and actually resulted in 2 bad matchups. I am not a fan of dnc.

At least I'm in good company.

Ok so on to lists. One is the standard Ghost Fleet. The other is an Infernal Machines list. I like it. It is fast, aggressive, a ton of bodies, does well against some armor. I have it under denny3 but have been tempted to try it under gaspy1 and Aggy. Jeff was big on using Aggy but I just wasnt emotionally prepared.

Here are the specific lists:

Infernal Machines with Arcane Wonder

Deneghra, the Soul Weaver - WJ: +27
- Deathjack - PC: 23 (Battlegroup Points Used: 23)
- Deathripper - PC: 6 (Battlegroup Points Used: 4)
Darragh Wrathe - PC: 9
Soul Trapper - PC: 1
Warwitch Siren - PC: 0
Pistol Wraith - PC: 0
Mechanithralls - Leader & 9 Grunts: 10
- Brute Thrall - PC: 2
- Brute Thrall - PC: 2
- Brute Thrall - PC: 2
Mechanithralls - Leader & 9 Grunts: 10
- Skarlock Commander - PC: 3
- Brute Thrall - PC: 2
- Brute Thrall - PC: 2
Machine Wraith
Soulhunters - Leader & 4 Grunts: 18
Carrion Thralls - Leader & 9 Grunts: 10
Necrosurgeon & Stitch Thralls - Necrosurgeon & 3 Grunts: 0

___________________________________________________

Warwitch Deneghra - WJ: +28

Nightmare - PC: 18 (Battlegroup Points Used: 18)
Deathripper - PC: 6 (Battlegroup Points Used: 6)
Deathripper - PC: 6 (Battlegroup Points Used: 4)
Reaper - PC: 13 Pistol Wraith - PC: 0
Captain Rengrave - PC: 0
Pistol Wraith - PC: 0
Blackbane's Ghost Raiders - Blackbane & 9 Grunts: 17

Revenant Crew of the Atramentous - Leader & 5 Grunts: 9
-Revenant Crew Rifleman - PC: 2
-Revenant Crew Rifleman - PC: 2
-Revenant Crew Rifleman - PC: 2 

Revenant Crew of the Atramentous - Leader & 5 Grunts: 9
-Revenant Crew Rifleman - PC: 2
-Revenant Crew Rifleman - PC: 2
-Revenant Crew Rifleman - PC: 2 

Revenant Crew of the Atramentous - Leader & 5 Grunts: 9
-Revenant Crew Rifleman - PC: 2
-Revenant Crew Rifleman - PC: 2

I am going to give really basic overviews of the games now. I have to prep for tomorrow's tournament. 

Game 1 Vs. Jeff. 

I got the bye round so I played Jeff. He brought Grissel with 2 units of Toughalos, MK, Axer, 2 fell callers, and the stone. I dropped D3nny into it because I needed the practice. I go first. Run everything up. He goes, runs some stuff up and kills a few zombies with a spray. 

I start by moving my arc node and feating. Mortality a bunch of stuff. Grave wind D3nny. I then ambush my thralls into one unit of toughalos, shoot the leader with the pistol wraith to freeze him. Charge the second unit of thralls into the toughalos. Kill 1. Charge the soulhunters into the second unit, kill only 2. Move DJ out a half inch too far and pass turn. 

He feated. His MK charged DJ. DJ died honorably. I misjudged the angle so he was able to get to him. His toughalos wipe out half my zombies, most of the soul hunters and a lot of birds die to horthol. 

My next turn I bitch and moan and just try to kill his cav. None of it went well. Pass turn. He fails to kill D3nny with MK. Grissel is out there. I go for the caster kill and come up short. He finished me with the MK. 

Im fine with this. Still working the kinks out. I like to test in production. 

Working as intended.

Game 2 Vs. Brendan. 

This is where I fucked up list select.  He had Caine3 and Ossrum. I dont know why but I was convinced he would run Caine and I had never gone against gun bunnies. Well, he dropped Ossrum and I dropped D3nny. 

He went first. Set the line. I was eager to match. Ran zombies in to engage thanks to death ride. Everything else ran up to engage. I thought "Oh I can stop the guns and now he is screwed." Yeah. I am an idiot. Bulldoze to all models in control and boosted sprays wreck face. He wiped out, and I shit you not, over 45 points in a single turn. The only reason it wasnt more is because my other unit of zombies was waiting to ambush. I spitefully trudged on taking out a few jacks out of spite. He wins the day. I cant remember how but it was probably in a hail of bullets. I did get a selfie after the game. 

Not my best look. 

Welp. By now I am tired. Discouraged. My head is pounding. I see Andrew and realize I am list locked. Ghost Fleet under Denny1 is effectively useless against Wurmwood. I have played this match, against this player, already. I was not a good opponent. I tried to get something going but rfp, eyeless sight,  and a stealthed, armor 21 warcaster with a durable, stealth yoyo arc node was just too much for my tilted brain. I lost. And not in style. I tried to grind it out but I really clever hellmouth pulled Denny into range of a crippling grasped Loki.

Andrew was cool enough to show me some tips on how to deal with hellmouth but all you need to do wit GF is rfp the unit leaders. But even outside the leaders, rfp on the troopers makes it so they cant come back. Once the recursion is neutered, you are pretty screwed. And with CMD 7, hellmouth can always take a toll.

Ah well. On to the next tournament. I may try the same pairing again and try to select my lists better. Comment, question, or berate below. You can hit me up on twitter @ABigOleTater