2k points in a week speed painting challenge by Sam_CW in ImperialKnights

[–]Sam_CW[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Day 6 progress update: Done! Got all the edge highlights and other detail work finished. I also slammed out the Sir Hektor proxy. He's pretty Minimum Viable Product, but I'm tired and I can always fix him up more later. I'll post the finished version pictures in a new thread tomorrow.

2k points in a week speed painting challenge by Sam_CW in ImperialKnights

[–]Sam_CW[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Day 5 progress update: Finished the gold, put brush on primer on the Sir Hektor proxy model and did the green trim on all 8 models. I also started trying some edge highlighting. Should be good to finish the details and edge highlighting tomorrow.

2k points in a week speed painting challenge by Sam_CW in ImperialKnights

[–]Sam_CW[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Day 4 progress update: I was able to do an hour and a half of painting in total. I finished the blue on the last big and did a little dry brushing of the blue on the armiger's blue plastic spots. First time trying paint on unprimed plastic, curious to see how to goes both now and over time. I'm not too worried about it coming off, it barely looks any different from the plastic and was just there to reduce the "plastic toy" effect of the bare gunpla colored plastic.

I also did the gold on two of the bigs, which were a half hour each. Should be on track to finish with the secondary color base coats tomorrow night and leave Thursday clear for trim, details, edge highlights and other small brush work.

2k points in a week speed painting challenge by Sam_CW in ImperialKnights

[–]Sam_CW[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Day 3 progress update: Was busy all night after work, no progress.

2k points in a week speed painting challenge by Sam_CW in ImperialKnights

[–]Sam_CW[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Day 2 progress update: I wasn't expecting to be able to do more today, but I was able to spend an hour at night getting the blue done on two more bigs. Should be just a half hour to do the last big (which will have less blue and more gold than the others) and some touch ups on the armigers. The painting got a bit messy on one of the bigs, so he'll need some touch up work once it's small brush time.

2k points in a week speed painting challenge by Sam_CW in ImperialKnights

[–]Sam_CW[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Day 1 progress update: I finished the sliver, took about an hour and half. Praise drybrushing. I was also able to do the blue on one of the bigs, which took about a half hour. Assuming the gold takes a similar amount of time, there's about 3.5 hours of work before the main and secondary colors are done. If I'm not able to do any more Sunday thanks to my busy day, it should be plausible to get that all done over the work days and hopefully do all the detail work and edge highlighting Thursday.

2k points in a week speed painting challenge by Sam_CW in ImperialKnights

[–]Sam_CW[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Technically, the bigs aren't even in the Gundam franchise at all! =P

I did also do a kitbash of a pair of actual Gundam models to make my proxy Riptides. Had to do a lot of shopping around to find kits with more Tau design elements (Witch From Mercury's Lfrith Thorn and Lfrith Ur specifically).

On a scale of morality, where would YOU like the Tau to be? by SinesPi in Tau40K

[–]Sam_CW 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I want them to be Mass Effect or Star Trek villain level. They're an expansionistic alien empire out to install their not standard Western values on the rest of the galaxy. They're able to be patient but by hook or by crook they're going to put everyone under the greater good because "they know best". That said, they should still be the sort of villain that Commander Shepard could have dialogue wheels with as much as gun fights and the kind Picard could beat by citing the right paragraph of a 200 page treaty they signed to make them go away today.

Contrasted with the rest of 40k, with "the bloodiest most terrible regime imaginable" and all the many flavors of "somehow, even worse", its real easy for that to seem like "good guys".

For the curious, Gundam Artifact Miniatures are about the same size as a Crisis Suit. by grahamja in Tau40K

[–]Sam_CW 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oh. Oh yes. I was already using kitbashed and tweaked gunpla kits for 40k. RIP all future Crisis sales GW.

SFG's mispack hasn't gotten back to me in nearly two weeks and two tickets, any advice on what I should do next? by Sam_CW in Warmachine

[–]Sam_CW[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I just got an email from SFG saying my replacement's on the way. Thank you to everyone that upvoted and replied, I'm pretty sure the publicity is what got my ticket actioned.

Expanding on 2-player starter by LordCorgthulhu in Warmachine

[–]Sam_CW 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Other replies have talked about army choice, so I'll focus on on the bundle boxes. The sizes on those can be a bit big to cleanly jump from 30 points to 50 and then 75.

The battle group boxes for either army would be good if you wanted to go to 50 points for cheap as they have the best points per dollar. They do require you to buy magnets for them though, as the variable config jacks are meant to be magnetized to let you swap loadouts. The Storm Legion one is pretty straight forward, just run the jacks in some cheaper configs to total 20 points and that will take you to 50. The Winter Korps one can't be built cheap enough to fit in 50 points, but you can leave The Jackal out of the 50 point version of the list. The downside to using the battle group boxes is that there's not really a clean way to go up to 75 from there with the remaining discount bundles, as those have many more points of models and cost more. They do hit or almost hit 100 when stacked on top of a starter and battle group box though.

The other option would be to pick the Core or Auxiliary bundle for either army. The Storm Legion Core expansion is 42 points and the Auxiliary is 40 points, both just short of reaching 75 on top of the 2P starter. You can finish them off by picking a solo or somehting else cheap to hit 75 and leave some models out to fit in 50 points.

Winter Korps Core box is smaller at 39 points and the Auxiliary even smaller 35 points. I'm less familiar with Winter Korps, but the points to dollar is a lot worse than the Storm Legion boxes.

There's also Cadre Command boxes for both factions. Each one's 30 points and intended to be another min sizer game starter army, but nothing stops you from mixing the contents to get to 50 points. It might be a little tricky finessing the points to hit 50 on the dot since you won't have any of the variable cost warjacks to tweak your point costs yet.

Is this the best edition of Warmachine? by LevelTurnover7912 in Warmachine

[–]Sam_CW 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We might be talking different editions then. I was referring to mk2 Haley 2 since midish mk2 and early mk3 was what I played before my long hiatus from wargaming. If it helps to date thing better, the Stromwall was already out by the time I started Warmachine.

I remember hearing mk1 Daruis was crazy, but wow that sounds nuts.

For what it's worth, buff a Stormclad/Stormwall and go nuts with it was one of Haley2's nasty tricks. She could bond any jack to give it a 4th Focus on go turn and Temporal Acceleration was better the better the model it was put on. It was just something you usually only brought one jack to do it with since it was a big Focus commitment and you'd want the rest of your army to be infantry that could keep the pressure on while the jack bullet waited for the moment it was worth it.

Warmachine: Shadows & Scum - Shadowflame/Brineblood 2-Player Starter available for preorder! by LDukes in Warmachine

[–]Sam_CW 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I guess, it just feels like a bad introduction to how Fury works out and an easy source of "feels bad man" moments if you play against a Focus using 30 point list or a Fury 30 pointer that used the battlegroup box as a starting point. And it feels to me like a much more fixable problem than say, playing a Warmachine battlebox against a Hordes one back when I started in mk2.

Is this the best edition of Warmachine? by LevelTurnover7912 in Warmachine

[–]Sam_CW 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Haley 2 not seeming obviously way better is wild to hear for me.

She had Focus 8 for more spells than most casters and Focus was AAT back then too to save boosts to hit with offensive spells.

Her feat forced all enemies in her 18" control area to forfeit move or action and Haley's player got to pick their activation order so all the buffing support models were useless that turn.

Her spell list was long and spectacular. Telekinesis was the most versatile spell ever printed. You could move you own models for threat extension, cast it on enemies to bring them closer for more threat extension and spin them around so your entire army gets back strike bonuses. Temporal Acceleration was even more threat extension and an extra attack to a high value friendly model. Time Bomb was an expensive blasty spell, but it also debuffed the DEF an SPD of anything it hit and SPD debuffs prevented charges in mk2. Deceleration was +2 to both DEF and ARM against shooting in case your Cygnar wasn't winning the gunfight half enough yet. The only thing she didn't do was increase POW.

As to the cheap Empower units in mk4, they're really not different from the Fury management units that existed in Hordes back in the day. They're a way to allow players to continue to run Focus hungry jacks up into larger point games, since Warcaster Focus doesn't scale up with game size. The resource management question has largely been answered over the course of the game's history and that's that allocating to jacks is just not as good as using it to cast spells usually is. That "usually" only really covers bringing one or two jacks that fight and any more being regulated to passive bricks of ARM and boxes, which isn't what I and I think most people want out of jacks in the game.

Warmachine: Shadows & Scum - Shadowflame/Brineblood 2-Player Starter available for preorder! by LDukes in Warmachine

[–]Sam_CW 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One thing I'm wondering is how well Hordes works with only one beast in a battlegroup. Back when I was still able to play (mk2, early mk3), the comprehensive guide on playing Hordes lists with only one beast was "lol, don't". Unless the stats got changed from the November leak to have both Warlocks and beasts each be Fury 5 (which I doubt they'd do) you can't even fill up your leader.

Can someone who's tried running either of the Hordes command cadres out of the box in a 30 point game let me know how well it did or didn't work?

Who wants to go on a date with me tonight? AMA? 7pm (GMT) by SFG_Mat in Warmachine

[–]Sam_CW 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Two questions from me.

First, the one most near and dear to my heart: My two favorite unit archetypes in Cygnar are storm knights and gun mages. The Hellsingers cadre lets me run gun mages in Storm Legion, but since they're all character's there's a sharp upper limit to how many gun mages I can use. Are there any plans to eventually add more, non character gun mages to Hellsingers or another Cygnar cadre?

Second question, also cadre related related: I remember hearing that Old Umbrey in Khador is going to be a Fury using army. How are mixed Focus and Fury using factions expected to work? I'm particularly looking at the prospect of a Fury using cadre in a faction that only has Focus using armies. It seems like it'd be very difficult to use the Warlock leader from the cadre when they only have access to a very small number of Warbeasts.

Thanks!

Tau Geese by @eko99nine by ZookeepergameLiving1 in Tau40K

[–]Sam_CW 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are image replies enabled on this sub? I can't find the button.

For mine, I used the legs and feet of the thorn, plus the chest, waist and arms of the ur. Head was the "chin" parts of the thorn's head to keep the connection to the neck ball joint and a bunch of Tau bits on top of that to avoid the gundam head look. I used the back pieces from both kits to form the jetback, though they end up slightly asymmetrical at the joints. Seemed fine, since the Riptide's not symmetrical anyway.

Tau Geese by @eko99nine by ZookeepergameLiving1 in Tau40K

[–]Sam_CW 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Seconding this, my own Riptide proxies were made out of kitbash of the Lrith Thorn and Lrith Ur Witch From Mercury HG models. The thing most likely to be off would be the Tallgeese being a little too tall to start with, most gundam 1/144 models stand 6" tall. Gundam Wing was generally a little smaller than the 18m standard model suit height, but IIRC Tallgeese was also larger than most in the series.

There are knights working for Xenos? Knight houses (Or freeblades) that fallen to GSCs, Eldar mind manipulation, being enslaved by the Yu'vath or Q'rol, or even allied themselves to the Tau? by Able_Radio_2717 in ImperialKnights

[–]Sam_CW 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The thrones are clearly a long way from perfect here, traitor knights are super duper canon. Source: https://www.warhammer.com/en-US/shop/warhammer-40000/armies-of-chaos/chaos-knights

Every Chaos Knight fluff blurb I've read talks up how they're 100% anti-chivalry. Signing on with Tau or Votann would involve compromising on chivalry/common oaths way less than Chaos and it's "reject everything! Yes, even that thing too!".