List Theory - The Caster

When creating a list for Warmachine or Hordes the best place to start is the caster/warlock, being the most important model in your force he/she we determine you tactics during the game and what other models complement this.

There are many way to decide which caster/warlock to take normally it's the caster that generally determine which faction you want to play but not always as style and look of the army can play a part, I know I wanted Retribution because of the different look they have to other warmachine factions.

Here is a great article from Rot & Roll blog site (Great Minions Site - tactics and painting)

http://rot-n-roll.blogspot.co.nz/2013/02/what-makes-great-caster.html

JS has created a nice break down of what to look for when selecting a caster, I'll repeat it here:
(With my own thoughts and examples)

1. Movement buff - Being able to project threats, use unexpected angles and out threat range an opponent.

2. Damage buff - this is what the games all about, can I hit it? Can I kill it? Can my caster make this happen?

3. Denial / Control - Part of the game I hate the most, can I take controll of the game and stop my opponent doing what they want to do.

4. Answers - If you’re in the middle of you first or second turn and you think "I don't know how to deal with that" - "or my army cannot stop that model/unit it’s just too good" this is probably an example of not having the answers (or in my case needing more practice)

5. Survivability - this can be looked at in two ways

a) My caster can take a hit or is really hard to hit

b) My caster needs plenty of support to stay on the table

6. Metaskew: the Unknown Factor - This is really interesting, in Australia are meta changes slowly, it's not a dig at Australian players it's just the size of the meta and the lack of influence from other groups.

I get many great ideas from podcasts and Blog sites but by the time I get a chance to put a metaskew list down on the table it usually old hat.

Right now big heavy armor seems to be big internationally but in my meta we are still building infantry jam armies or shooting galleries armies.

So some examples from our slow grow tournament

Aris is playing Captain Phinneus Shae

1. Movement buff - Yes and more yes (Coup de main and Godspeed) and this isn't a slow force to start with, it's really hard to image the pirates not getting an alpha strike (Veil of mists as a possibility)

2. Damage buff - Maybe, "Blow the man down" to make the hitting part easier and "Storm rager" on an individual model for more damage but it isn't really his thing (but pirates have other answers, practically when facing infantry)

3. Denial / Control - No not really, the army can jam and the Commodore Cannon is scary but hard control? no. Not from Shae.

4. Answers - He provides the answers to infantry jam type armies and can deal with shooting galleries with the speed but heavy armor (No) or Hard Control (No) I'd say 50/50 and look to you second list to help with these match ups.

5. Survivability - Maybe, his personal defense is excellent but no stealth. Storm rager and Ground work will make it hard to hit him but Shae cannot take too many hits.

6. Metaskew: the Unknown Factor - In my meta no we all got a good understanding of what he does and how his tier list works (It’s brilliant) but in the larger community this can be a nightmare match up - especially a noob "the pirate move how fast now?"

So how does Shae stack up? Few too many Maybe's and No's, good players can mitigate this with practice but what to do when facing the double Galleons or Stormwalls type lists?


I’m playing Ashlynn Delyse

1. Movement buff – “Quicken” nice spell but no other movement abilities.

2. Damage buff – Ashlynn covers the hitting part better than most but dealing out the damage can be a real issue and your army should provide the muscle (Look for critical effects to use with her feat)

3. Denial / Control – Yes the feat is real option for taking control of the game, one of the best defensive and offensive feats in the game. No help really from her spells but that would be too much to ask for.

4. Answers – I think she creates more questions than answers, her tier list loves high defense or stealth type forces but she can suffer against high armor, I think she can take on the control caster by being one herself but I haven’t tested this myself.

5. Survivability – Yes but like Shae above don’t let her get hit!

6. Metaskew: the Unknown Factor – She brings mercs and cygnar together in her tier list and this can be very scary to face.

So how does Ashlynn stack up? I’m too much of a fan to objective, she is my favorite caster and I never feel it’s her fault when I lose games playing her, normally it’s me making a noob errors. Many sites rate her very high in the caster ratings.

One of the most important things about this game is take something you enjoy playing – Practice and understanding your force is the most important factors IMO.

Ado

Wood grain the easy way by Ogrebane

Making Wood Grain by Ogrebane

I like the effect of wood grain on things like banner poles or the floor of a chariot or even on the house I make for terrain pieces but I’m not a good enough painter to paint it on. I tried a few methods until I can upon this particular method.

It takes about 10 minutes to do and is quite affective.

So what do you need.
First you need a piece of round sprue or plastic rod or what ever you want the wood grain on.

The next is something to make the wood grain. You could try a sharp pointy thing like a compass needle but I’ve tried that and it doesn’t always work. (Depends on how steady your hands are. Mine are shocking.)

So first pic is bits of sprue I used as example.

Second pic is the tool I use.

I got this saw from my local hobby store but Ive used fret saw blades (The thich ones not so bendy) to do the same thing.

So what you do is run the blade along the sprue in a continuos motion to make the wood grain. Its better not to go too heavy but depends on the result you want.

Heres an example. I went heavier than I usually do just so you can see the effect.

This really only works on thin strips say 1cm or ½ inch or less.

So now to paint it. There are a couple of ways to do it. The fastest I find is to paint it black and then drybrush with Snake bite (or what ever your favourite wood color is) I water down the paint 1 for 1 and lightly dry brush. I do about 3 coats one after the other and go heavier towards the center. You can finish here or mix some bone in and do another coat. Making the center lighter gives it a more “realistic” look IMHO.

Heres a couple of pics of the process.

The last pic has had a light wash of brown ink to redefine the grain.
The Flat piece is a bit of sprue. I have used 5 or six of these to make a chariot platform or a door. Just glue them to a flat piece of plastic after you have done the grain and then paint them all at once as above.

And that’s it takes 10 minutes tops.

How to sculpt chain mail by Ogrebane

Chain Mail Tute by OB

There are several ways to do chainmail. Since I first posted this method I have found several more. So here a few of my favorite ways to do chain mail.

OK lets start. I am using GS but this works with any sculpting medium.

There are several ways of making chain mail. I use a couple of different methods depending on what I want as a final result.
Heres a few examples.

CHAIN MAIL TOOL METHOD

This tool was made by drilling a .5mm hole into a piece of round spru. Then a 1.5mm hole then a piece of wire was inserted and a part of the side was cut away. As you can see I practice on blu tac to get the hang of it before I start on GS. 

 I rushed this and wasnt happy with the results but the aim is to push the tool into the one before to simulater the link interlocking. As I have done I practice on blue tak. It is by far the best looking method if done right but this tool was a little too large and the results probably show. Still I would recommend this method if you can get hold of the right tool.

Heres how my chain mail turned out.

You could just as easily use the pin method and come up with alot better results. Unfortunately I didnt take my own advice and rushed this so its not as neat as I would like. But I think it still turned out OK.

PIN METHOD

This is probably the most common method used. This one is done with a piece of sharpened spru. You can use a needle, piece of wire or anything small and round.


The trick with chain mail is to take your time and try to be neat. Cover the area you are going to do with GS and make all the fold etc. Then very carefully start making your chain mail. The neater you are the better the result.
An example of the pin method

SPECIAL OB SECRET TOOL METHOD

This is by far the best tool I have in my arsinal of sculpting stuff. If you dont have 1 I recommend you get one and get one fast. I use this thing for a plethora of different things besides cuting stuff. It can be used to make wood grain or make horns look more realistic.

My son actually worked out this method so my thanks go to him. I was using the pin method and he was watching and mucking around and picked up my saw and said wouldnt this be quicker. And yes it was. If i was to do this with a pin it would take about 2 hours. with the saw it takes about 10 minutes.
 

Another example of this method.

Anyway hope that helps. Let me know if you need more of an explaination of just to heckle.

Cheers Aris.

 

Greenstuff cloth, robes and surcoats by Ogrebane

Cloth Robes Surcoat

I would like to show you how I make the surcoats for my ogres. If I was making this any bigger I would mix milliput with the GS (like with my rhinox's) as it makes it alot stronger.

Anyway you start with these items.

A plastic sheet. A roller some plasticard and of course some GS.  

Blu tac the Plasticard to the plastic sheet. This will give you the thickness of the Surcoat.

Mix GS and place like so. Then roll it flat. Remeber to wet the plastic card and the roller or the GS will stick.

And you should end up with something like this.

Heres a shot of how I apply the gs. I like to keep the folds already on the ogre mini cause Im not so good at doing cloth yet.

And this is what it should look like.

Plasicard weapons by Ogrebane

Here is a step by step pic of how I made the swords for my ogres

1. Cut hand holding sword to make handle. You can always make the handle yourself from plastic rod.

2. Cut a rectagle of 1.5 or 2mm plasticard slightly larger than the blade you want.

3. Shape the pointy end.

4. Use a knife or a file to make the edge. Hold the file or knife on and angle of approx 20 degrees and run it along the edge. Make a cross piece if the one from the hand doesnt have one.

5. Attach and add some deco's as desired.

My Maneaters all have bretonnian Bastard swords which I made myself

How to sculpt chains by Ogrebane

OK so I stole this from somewhere but Ive added a few of my own pics to prove that it can be done. I like sculpted chanis better as they sit flush on the mini. Anyway each to his own I say so heres the article.

HOW TO SCULPT CHAINS THE *EASY WAY*
Tools Needed:
Putty, Pointed Tweezers, Dulled X-acto Blade, Dulled Bent Pin

1. Roll out a thin snake of putty and apply to your figure. For the sake of the tutorial I'll leave my snake on a piece of plasti-card.

2. Pinch snake with tweezers at equal intervals. Keep the tweezers at a 90 degree angle to the snake of putty (straight up and down or *perpendicular*)

 3. Press the dulled X-acto blade down flat a quarter of the way in on each side of the snake. This flattens the tops of the horizontal chan links and defines the vertical chain links at the same time. The picture at the bottom shows what it should look like when you're finished.

4. Press holes in the center of each horizontal link.

5. Here's the finished chain. After pressing the holes in the center of each link, I squared off the horizontal links by pressing the X-acto up against each side very gently. Five simple steps and you've got very realistic chain that's castable to boot!

These are two of my maneaters that I prepared earlier.

Takes about 10 minutes to do. Its best to let the GS cure for 1/2 hour before you stick it to your mini. Anyway hope this is helpful.

Snow Bases by Ogrebane

This is how I do snow bases. This can be used for anything tho. At the bottom of the tute you will see an igloo with snow on it that was done the same way.

OK this is how I do snow bases. You've probably seen this before but this is how I do it.

1. This is what you need

I use a very small amount of blue paint in the mix to stop yellowing (Havent had any yet) It has to be a very small amount or you end up with a blue slushy mix. Hopefully you can make out how much I use.

2. Next mix equal parts of bicarb white glue and water with the blue paint mix (which is like a real thin wash approx 3-4 drops of it)

3. Use a shape tool to add the snow mix and pack it a little higher than you need as it will shrink when it dries.

4. To finish of I use a mix of white glue water and a small amount of white paint on the snow to give it some protection.

OK so heres the finished product

Also used on terrain here is an igloo with snow on it.

Tutorial Menu

I wanted to pull all my tutorials into one place so this will be it. This part will just be a menu to link to all the tutorials in this blog.

Tutorials

Painting

I am going to give this a go. I dont paint to golden deamon standard but I think I paint a solid 6-7 in Coolmini speak

• Gems
• feathers
• wet blending
• Painting with washes
• 2 Brush method

General

• How to make wood grain
• Snow bases by Ogrebane 
• How to sculpt Chainmail by Ogrebane
• How to sculpt Chain by Ogrebane
• How to make Plasticard Weapons by Ogrebane
• Greenstuff Cloth, Robes and Surcoats by Ogrebane

Terrain

• Crystal terrain

Series

• How to build best painted army part-1
• Part 2: The Theme
• Part 3 Show pieces
• Part 3a center pieces
• Part 3b Eye Catchers
• Part 3c Tayloring your list to match you theme.

KGK SG League table for feb 2013

KOOINDA GAMING CLUB

SLOW GROWTH LEAGUE TABLE

Febuary 2013

┌───┬─────────┬───────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┐
│Pos│Name     │Faction│Games│Games│New  │ New │Paint│Castr│Total│
│   │         │       │Ply'd│ Won │Playr│Factn│Pnts │Kills│     │
╞═══╪═════════╪═══════╪═════╪═════╪═════╪═════╪═════╪═════╪═════╡
│ 1 │Kortez   │Cygnar │  7  │  5  │  3  │  3  │  7  │  4  │  29 │
│ 2 │Parfiet  │Legion │  8  │  3  │  4  │  4  │  1  │  3  │  23 │
│ 3 │Aris     │Pirates│  4  │  1  │  4  │  4  │  0  │  1  │  14 │
│ 4 │Ado      │Mercs  │  2  │  2  │  2  │  2  │  2  │  2  │  12 │
│ 5 │Eddie    │Cryx   │  2  │  1  │  2  │  2  │  2  │  1  │  10 │
│ 6 │Foster   │Ret    │  2  │  1  │  2  │  2  │  0  │  1  │   8 │
│ 7 │Matt-Man │Khador │  0  │  0  │  0  │  0  │  0  │  0  │   0 │
│ 8 │Alan?    │       │     │     │     │     │     │     │     │
│ 9 │Sam?     │       │     │     │     │     │     │     │     │
│10 │...      │...    │ ... │ ... │ ... │ ... │ ... │ ... │ ... │
└───┴─────────┴───────┴─────┴─────┴─────┴─────┴─────┴─────┴─────┘

Post your games here or add them to the comments and I will update the table. BHmer is The BeerHammer club at the Centenery Hotel
KGK Is Kooinga Gaming Klub at my house in Ipswich.


17 Feb 13  Aris (Ogrebane) Played a game at BeerHammer. Cant remeber the guys name but he had an impressive Moe. he played Pigs. It was a tight game that had me with my caster and the commodore cannon. My caster had 4 points left. he had his caster with 1 point left. I got his caster with my caster. So points for the game were
1 for playing a game, 1 for playing a player I hadnt played before, 1 for playing a faction I hadnt played, 1 for wining, 1 for killing his caster, 5 Total

Jan 13    Jay and Aris play a 15pt SGL game. Jay is playing Legion and Aris is playing Pirates.
Jay gets 1 point for playing Aris for the first time, 1 point for playing a game, 1 point for playing against pirates. As he won he also gets a point but no point for painting as he has got a fully painted army. Total is 4 point
Aris gets 3 points as he has all the above conditions but didnt win a game. He should also get a 1 point deduction for bitching the whole time about the 3 minute turn and violating page 5 but luckily he made the rules so it doesnt count.

Jan 13 Ok I saw this game played but I cant remember much about it. Im pretty sure Kort won but we taped it so we can check the result later.
Jay is playing Legion and Kort is playing Cygnar.
Jay gets 1 point for playing, 1 point for playing Kort for the first time, 1 point for playing against Cygnar for a total of 3 points.
Kort gets 1 point for playing, 1 point for playing Jay, 1 point for palying legion, 1 point for fully painted, 1 point for winning, and 1 point for a caster kill for a total of 6. Puts him in a good position after 1 game.

Jan 13 Ok I am totally making this one up but we did record it so I can check the results later.
Aris played Eddie. I think Eddie won this but not 100% on this.
So score for Eddie. 1 for playing, 1 for playing Aris, 1 for playing Pirates, 1 for winning, 1 for painted and 1 for caster kill for a total or 6 I think.
Aris gets 1 for playing, 1 for playing eddie, 1 for playing against Cryx for 3 points. Puts him at the head of the league table so far.

Ado - 2 games to update,
Jan 13 game against Jay, caster Kill Victory to me in turn two (Mule's are broken :0)
Feb 23 game vs Eddie, Caster Kill victory to me - Late game down to the last few models.

Kort played jay three times: won 1 by caster kill 1 by scenario and lost 1 by caster kill.

Game 1 Kort gets 1 for played, 1 for win, 1 for painted, 1 for caster, kill total of 4

Jay game 1 gets 1 for played

Game 2 Kort gets 1 for played, 1 for win, 1 for painted total of 3, Jay gets another point

Game 3 Kort gets 1 for painted and 1 for played, Jay gets 1 for played 1 for win 1 for caster kill so 2 - 3

Kort vs foster: 1 for play, 1 for new player, 1 for new faction, 1 for win, 1 for painted, 1 for caster kill should be 6 points, Foster gets 1 for played, 1 for new player, 1 for new faction dont think he gets paint points for 3 total,

Jay vs foster: Foster 1 for play, 1 for new player, 1 for new faction, 1 for win, 1 for caster kill should be 5 points, Jay gets 1 for played, 1 for new player, 1 for new faction  for 3 total,

27Feb13 Jay vs Kort. Jay wins by caster kill and has finally painted his army. He gets 4 pts. Kort gets 2 pts.

Sunday in Feb. Kort vs Aris. Kort wins by caster kill and earns 6 pts. Aris gets 3.

More rules for the Slow Grow League

OK we have kicked of the slow growth league this year with at least 6 players showing interest and a further 4 or 5 with a Meh? that I took as a maybe.

So you all know the rules, pick a faction, blah blah see the other posts for that heres a link <<Slow growth link>>

To make it a real league tho we need a league table and some cool rules for scoring. So here are some rules I will impliments and a tally of the games I remember being played so far.

1. Must be the same faction you selected at the start of the year.
2. Points played are as stated in the rules see above link.

League scoring is as follows.
1. 1 point if you play a game.
2. 1 point if your army is fully painted.
3. 1 point if you play a player you have not played before.
4. 1 point if you play a faction you have not played before
5. 1 point if you win.
6. 1 point if you kill a caster.
7. 1 point for playing in a tournie. (You have to play all the games to get the point)

So here are a few examples of the scoring.

Jay and Aris play a 15pt SGL game.
Jay is playing Legion and Aris is playing Pirates.
Jay gets 1 point for playing Aris for the first time.
             1 point for playing a game
             1 point for playing against pirates.
             As he won he also gets a point but no point for painting as he has got a fully painted army.
             Total is 4 point
Aris gets 3 points as he has all the above conditions but didnt win a game. He should also get a 1 point deduction for bitching the whole time about the 3 minute turn and violating page 5 but luckily he made the rules so it doesnt count.

So rather than show all the games played here I will start another page called the league table with a list of games played. If you have played a league game or would like to play in the league then message me or post a responce here.

NOTE: You do not have to play league players to score points you just need someone to witness you played the game (Probably your opponent)

So get out there and play some games and post the results here for all to see.

Terrain Placeholder

Over the last few months I have been updating my terrain. When we changed from warhammer to warmachine it seemed that the terrain we were using just didnt seemed to work for usa anymore. Also it was a little dated and drab.

So I am going to post some of the terrain I have been building and maybe do a few tutes on terrain at a later date.

As we play tournies at my hoiuse my aim was to have 5 tables worth of terrain and I wanted to have 5 different theme. At the moment I have snow/ice nearly sorted and have a fair bit of swamp terrain. Here are a few examples

Some ice crystals

I build this tp prove a monolith doesnt have to look like a penis.

This is the symbol for the God of trollkins gobber and other such in hordes.

These were made from Maccas slushy lids. The middle piece was all the left over snow I made.

So this igloo was suppose to be a chieftain hut but from the top it looks a little sus. I had to make the entrance shorter.

This is a failed attempt to make a frozen lake. It seems PVA glue isnt a substitute for water effects.

Theres about 8 of these things. I put a few dead bodies in the swamp to make em look more creepy.

  

I made a few river sections for when we play SAGA. I also did a few bends so it can be used for warmachine as well. I used pva for the water. For the choppy water I user hot glue. I need to use water effects to make the water look more realistic.

A church that I made with menoth decorations.

This is my desert terrain. I want to do some dunes for hills baut not sure how they will look. Otherwaise I have some smaller mesa's I can use for hills.

This started out as an objective marker and got a bit out of hand.

I will post some more soon.