That’s a fair amount of stuff

Got the stuff through, didn’t quite fully appreciate just how much stuff I’d actually ordered, but I’ve got it now.
Just need to stop playing Fallout 4 now…

The Transfinite Emergence projector is light on tiny bits, so that should go together very quickly, here’s hoping!

Getting stuff completely painted before next tuesday is impossible, so might have to take a couple of Scratch cards on the chin, but once I have everything done, I will technically have at least one of everything in the Convergence catalogue. Go me.

Oh, and the Perforators, 2nd Enigma foundry, and 1st Transverse Enumerator that good sir Alex held for a while with the intention to build, but being a parent generally got in the way of.

Something Something Fallout 4 Somethingother

Not done a proper post in quite a while. There’s a few reasons, the two main ones are undoubtedly the fact I’ve ended up having to wait longer than intended to get the next lot of Convergence through the mail.

Fingers crossed I get it around Tuesday!

This might of been a blessing in disguise: Fallout 4 has dominated much of my time, as it would given the circumstances.

Enjoying my time off work before the busy period as well, and they keep finding creative ways to increase the workload, for the same pay. I used to take great pains to make sure what I do was to a high standard, but I find the more I fret over the details, the more fatigue and stress I end the day on . I can’t bloody cope trying to remember 9 million things at 6 in the morning, not when I need to do that for 7-8 days on the trot. Catch 22 though: getting work round where I live is almost impossible because the town centre is a massive commercial dive.

I’m getting stressed just thinking about work, and my psoriasis has been responding favourably to the steroid cream during my time off work, so I don’t want to spoil the progress so far!

Got a titanic piece of Tupperware to transport the Prime Axiom, but not really had any bright ideas how I can secure the axiom while it’s in transit. I had a thought to use a large magnetic sheet that the base could then stick to, but then there’d be problems getting it off the sheet.

I COULD possibly transport the bases separately, but stick rods into the Tupperware for the colossal to sit on? I’m not sure yet, I’m just happy it ‘floats’ now; no more blu-tac here!!

Wax on

Wax off

Nice

Little by little, for the second time now, I’ve gotten all my current Convergence of Cyriss models painted, varnished and based. Woopee!

The Hover vector doesn’t look brilliant compared to the other models. It’s always stuff that hides in the netherworld, then pops out when the camera focuses and takes a snap shot. Oh well.

Rest of the stuff has turned out nicely, even if the photos have inexplicably turned out blurry (they looked crisp on the screen, but must of de-focused as I took the photos. The light has more or less gone even in the Sun room now…

I think it’s the wings: the Clockwork angels have turned out really well!

Steelsoul Protector has a well balanced feel to it’s pallete, very happy with her.

For a unit that will make 3/4 of my lists, these guys are relatively plain in comparison, but the Optifex Directive unit can save your clockwork army’s bacon from time to time.

I do love the Iron Mother Directrix model. Her servitors are alright I guess.

Speaking of servitors, it would be rude for me to not mention the Reflex servitors. Rare it would be for me to actually hire them into my army, but they’re not a bad option for the Prime Axiom to drop into play.

And the Hover vector. Probably my messiest piece of work really. Least, if you’re looking for faults in it’s paintwork anyway. The messiness becomes invisible when he’s at wargaming table height. Also magnetized, for options!

One minute he’s an Assimilator!

Or is he a Conservator?

Or is he really a Modulator?*

* no. The modulator is a hovering turkey with everyone except under Syntherion, who makes it passable. But there’s still better choices he could take, so it’s under certain circumstances that this vector becomes worth the chassis.

Happy with my painting so far, getting some stuff back off Alex, who graciously offered to help build some of my stuff couple months back.
In a good spot where owning both the whole range a Warmachine army has access to, AND having it painted is concerned. Couple months, reckon I’ll have everything prettied up. Then I can probably permit myself to indulge mindlessly in the best faction in the game. A faction where half the time the warlock selection doesn’t even matter, and the warbeasts can all become horrendously fast moving Steak Death Machines. The Bronzeback titan is Chuck Norris’s spirit animal. Makeda is so badass, Chuck sometimes gets the honour of buying her drinks; depends how pissed off Makeda is at the time.

The forge must never run cold

I’ve been pretty quiet the last few days.
Mostly been busy with work and wotnot. I was actually concerned that I wouldn’t have time to paint anything at all, but the clocks going back an hour last Sunday made a massive difference in my wellbeing.
Enough of a difference infact, to get some Convergence of Cyriss painted.

I can’t take photos right now due to it being dark, but got my mini-lamp working again (just fresh batteries really), so been able to paint at night again.
Lot of my earlier Convergence I didn’t really highlight properly. I’ve been highlighting my newest pieces of work without really thinking, and so the quality divide between them and my older Convergence models is really quite sprawling…

Need to come up with a better way to transport my Prime Axiom, going to enlist Good Sir Alex’s guidance on the best way to go about that after I finish with this post, I reckon…

Came up with a witty name for our little painting pledge:

Pendrake’s Super Powered Painting Appaloosa

PSPPA

For those wondering, apparently an Appaloosa is a type of American Horse known for exhibiting colourful, spotted coats…

I’m going to batch-varnish, to save Airbrush cleaning solutions.
To do that, I want to finish what little I have on hand, before I get the bits I gave to Alex to build for me.
It does mean that technically, while stuff is painted, it’s not based, and I want to base my stuff before I call it ‘done’ for the purpose of the painting horse.

Stuff waiting to be varnished & based:
Iron Mother Directrix & Exponent Servitors
Hover vector (Assimilator/Conservator/Modulator)
Steel Soul Protector
Reflex Servitors

Stuff waiting to be painted:
Optifex Directive unit
Clockwork Angels unit

Omni Consumer products

Know what I missing in my life?
A poseable Ed-209 action figure from Hot Toys.

Been very busy at work, late finishes the past couple days, and more on the horizon it looks like. I don’t have any real time to paint right now, and I’m going to be so wiped out when I finally get a day off, a time when I can properly sit down and paint models. Feh.

Off for a shower then bed now infact: i’m falling asleep now, and it’s only my 2nd day back from my week off!

Prepared for Axis

A short post, reporting that I’ve now got:

30mm x56
40mm x10
50mm x6
120mm x2

One 40mm base is destined to be used by the Diffuser, which has a 360 degree front arc.

Waiting for my Convergence. It’s taken a few days to get them all in this state (partly delayed due to a SNAFU involving a Vallejo primer not deeing with whatever resin Fenris Games uses). I don’t like to think how long it will take me to get a 2nd walker kit magnetized, plus paint 30 small based infantry with attachments. Due to the skirmish nature of Warmachine, this is a bigger deal than in a game like Warhammer.

Time for a lie-down I think.

Urrfgh

Been trying to get the bases for my Convergence primed, but the resin, man the resin!

Initially tried to prime as normal and of course the resin on most of the bases started sucking the paint through a portal to Mars. So I naturally opted to attempt to seal the bases with pva glue and water. Which meant having to let all that dry. And I’ve came back to the bases, expecting the primer to adhere properly, and it still doesn’t!

Argh.
Vallejo Acrylic Grey surface primer: you are the worst primer in the history of primers. Clogs the airbrush like no one’s business, adding thinner slows that process (yes, it still clogs, even if constantly being sprayed through), but makes it impossibly watery. Brush-on is either too thin, or too thick, with no in-between.

The Tiger woods of Marriage.
We’re talking Nixon levels of presidential behaviour here.
I’ve seen better adhesion on a non-stick frying pan.

Going to head into town and get a can of the tried & true Halfords grey primer tomorrow. Assuming they’e open on a Sunday.

fifty-six 30mm bases, ten 40mm bases, six 50mm bases and two 120mm bases. That’s a whole lot of base. Thank you, Axis!

Respite

Finally got some time off work. With a bit of luck, I should start feeling more animated in the next couple days, and I might get some Convergence painted and finally based…

Not even really touched the Kingdom Death stuff: I need to be able to give it my undivided attention, and I can’t do that while there’s half-finished Warmachine stuff. Malifaux painting, I need to make motions to strip Leveticus, and fact he didn’t turn out very well is probably an indicator that Rusty Alyce may well not do either.

I also need a gratuitous amount of time off in order to concentrate on the sheer amount of Kingdom Death that I now have, and I can’t spare the time for it right now, much as I want to get my teeth into it…

Doesn’t stop me from actually playing Malifaux though!

Had a game last night against Marcus and his beasts, was actually a good run for me. I felt a need to hire the Desolation engine into my Jackdaw crew. I think the engine isn’t really hired much, due to the fact that Abominations can build one, and Leveticus’s crew has several means of making Abominations. But The Twist & Turn upgrade for Jack can make almost anything worth taking, provided he has at least one Guilty in order to mimic the ability to put torment on something and make it stick around.

I was just taking it because I wanted to, I didn’t expect it to do very well given I was hiring a 13-soulstone model into a crew that it doesn’t synergise with.

It ended up nearly single-handedly killing the entirety of Marcus’s crew, with the turn counter the only thing stopping it from completing that dark deed.

Thanks to it’s generous 3″ melee reach, a helpful push from the upgrade that can push tormented models around when near Jack, the Engine was able to throw itself into melee with Marcus. Nearly all his crew then spent the rest of the game trying to bring the engine down, but the Engine consistently flipped high for defense, like some sort of ninja Frankenstein-from-Hell, while healing from the weak slaps he was giving Marcus.
And his ability to force multiple DF duels really made him the ‘Attrition engine’. Eventually killing Marcus with his claws and turning him into an Abomination as a final insult, and nearly killing Miranda, Cojo and the Sabertooth Cerberus just through his DF duel abilities/action. Good way to break up having my butt regularly handed to me by Alex’s Lucas Mccabe crew 🙂

Jack and Montresor got a couple hits in between them, but they couldn’t hold a candle to the carnage the Engine was inflicting by itself. Ligeia was a nuisance, as she always is, and the guilty kind of milled around waiting for the Razorspine rattler to try and make a move.

In other news…

I’ve put a call to Alex, for us to paint at least a single model each week.
Can be an infantryman out of a ten-man unit, can be a warbeast/warjack, solo, colossal, etc. As long as it’s a model that’s been painted. Progress is progress at the end of the day!

Not sure if it may work, but it’s a suggestion I suppose. I should get the new wave of bases ready for priming and painting…

Finished Legacy of Kain: Soul reaver earlier. Had the game when I was a kid, but never really figured out the Silenced Cathedral. Damn son is that ending a cop-out. Bad camera, clunky combat, hammy voice for Raziel’s brothers. Yet it’s an amazing game overall. I think it may be the story, and voice for Raziel, Kain and the Elder god, that saved the game from total dissolution. Tony Jay was a baritone marvel; almost a White Morgan Freeman really. I was devastated to find he’d died nearly 10 years ago 😦

Good grief!

Without warning, my Kingdom Death: Monster pledge showed up today!

This complicates things a little bit: I daren’t attempt to build any of this stuff until I get holiday off work, and even then…

Doing so badly on Leveticus was somehow enough to put me off trying to finish his crew box, I don’t plan on attempting him again anytime soon. Malifaux painting is on the backburner.

There’s also a ton of Convergence to paint and practice with. And now I have Kingdom Death to think about. A lot of Kingdom death.

Been super tired as well: to the point that I’m making mistakes at work now. Pretty grim when I ponder whether or not I’m actually losing my mind, or something to that affect. Hitting the Jackpot on the National Lottery would just make things so much more straight-forward. I could sleep for a hundred years or so, and occasionally get up to go to the toilet, and eat whatever I please, at any time. My metabolism is a bit warped from being beaten so much, and lack of sleep is most certainly a major factor in feeling this way. Damn early-morning get ups.

And he will walk the red carpet sugared, and glazed.

Having realised that Smogcon isn’t THAT far away, I need to begin taking steps towards building, painting, basing and practising with The Axis theme force: Sustained attack.

Its party trick is having access to massive amounts of recursion and disposable troops, driven by a hammer wielding maniac dressed like a cross between a metronome and an elephant. Cool. The list is less about stacking absurd amounts of ARM, and more the fact that while a lot of Axis’s infantry die, his foundries are bringing back those same infantry on their turn. Riding eternal; shiny and chrome.

It’s a lot of infantry, too much infantry some might say. I dislike the Convergence small-based clockwork units (except angels, they’re proven to be 100% legit). 30 small based grunt bodies to be more on point, plus trimmings (support and the like). That’s going to be a pain in the backside to build, paint and base…
Four Enigma foundries, each being able to bring back three small based clockwork unit models a turn. The opponent needs to theoretically remove twelve bodies from the board before their efforts even begin to bear fruit (unit formation permitting). A metal wall surging forward, not really giving a toss what happens next turn. Because they’re all red, shiny and chrome.

Haven’t really got anything to show for where painting is concerned; not been in the right frame of mind, and Leveticus needs to be done at some point…
I’ve not played any games with him, but he’s got to be done! I cannot leave a Malifaux crew box half-painted. I haven’t even took the wrapping off Jakob Lynch’s crew box, but I’m content knowing that I own The Hungering Darkness. Malifaux’s most ludicrously huggable warp spawn.

A bit of tidying up, then I think I’ll try to settle down to Leveticus and Rusty Alyce…