And I didn’t regret that decision once.

I started out the day playing on another of the scenario boards with my roommate Shane.  I don’t have a good overall picture of the board but it basically consisted of a fortified bunker surrounded by trenches.  The attacker’s goal was to destroy the bunker, the defender’s goal was to kill the attacker’s Warcaster/Warlock.  I ended losing but after one of the best games I have played in a long time.  We used rules that very rarely enter play including structures and falling.  And I got some pictures.

Caine and his Gun Mages hunker down in the bunker

Did I say good pictures? Oh, I meant f’ing amazing pictures.  Especially this one:

The last thing the enemies of the crown see...

After that I went back to the store and got some miniatures for a few of my locals who weren’t able to attend.

I was feeling hungry as were some of the Utah boys so we set out in pursuit of a purportedly awesome hotdog from Dog In The Park.  I had heard of the place and was really looking forward to it, but when we got near, we encountered this:

I don't care if you are sluts, I just want a hot dog

The Seattle Slut Walk, in protest of some ill-chosen words from a cop to an alleged rape victim, had set up in the same plaza as Dog in the Park. And while I enjoyed the inflatable bee-hive hairdo, the near-naked ladies and the dude dressed as ‘Ronald McFondle’, there were a lot of self-proclaimed sluts in line for a dog and we didn’t have time to wait for them.  Next time I will have my hot dog, sluts be damned.

Back at the convention, I got a 100 point game with another of my roommates, Spencer.  He was having a bad time of it though and conceded after my Stormblades and Gun Mages took most of the punch out of his army.  He had a headache, apparently due to dehydration, and went back to the room to lay down.

My final game of the weekend was a team game: Epic Stryker and Phinneus Shae vs Calandra and the Butcher.  Freakin’ Calandra and her stupid spell Star Crossed.  I couldn’t catch a break this entire game.  Sadly for me neither could my opponent since he took the full force of the Trollblood assault and lost nearly all his models by the end of turn 2. I held out pretty well but when I went for the assassination run on the Butcher, I made a rookie mistake: I forgot to kill the War Dog first. Thus the Butcher’s defense was too high and Stryker missed his charge attack, pretty much guaranteeing that I would fail.  I bought a few more attacks with Stryker’s remaining focus but sadly nothing was going to save my butt at that point.

As we were finishing the game they started the closing ceremonies as well as the costume contest.  There weren’t many entries but those few entries were fantastic. I didn’t get pictures of the Winterguard trooper or the Gun Mage but I did get pictures of the following costumes:

Rhyas and Thagrosh

Lillith

The closing ceremonies were nice but I had to call Sarah before my phone died so I was out of the room for most of the festivities. But I didn’t need to be there to know that this had been a very successful convention. A million thanks go out to Matt Wilson and everyone at Privateer who made this an excellent event.

With Lock and Load officially closed, the entire Utah crew + a few others and I set out in search of a meal fit to conclude our weekend.  With there being 11 of us and the time being after 8pm in the business district of Seattle on a Sunday our options were limited.  We tried to go to the Rock Bottom, but they only had booths or some such nonsense and we were pretty much all in agreement that while Elephant and Castle was nice, we had all been there multiple times throughout the weekend and it was kinda played out.  On the suggestion of the hostess at the Rock Bottom we went a few blocks north to a place called the Tap Room. Upon passing through the door to what I was expecting to be a standard brewpub kinda place we were greeted with a long hallway filled with odd, expensive-looking furniture, lurid colors and NOT A DAMNED SOUL IN SIGHT.  We proceed down this strange hallway (even thought I was convinced that were were going to end up in a even more disturbing version of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ or maybe all wake up in bathtubs of ice with notes informing us about the various organs we were now missing) to some stairs. As we descended the stairs we saw that this was a pretty standard restaurant with tables, food and no Leelee Sobieski ushering us down the hallway for disturbing activities. What did catch my eye was the curved gold wall behind the bar with strange objects protruding from it.  Seconds later, I and several of my companions realized what those objects were: Beer Taps.  One hundred and sixty beer taps to be precise.

Unnamed hostess at the Rock Bottom, I owe you one.

After perusing the extensive beer menu and less extensive food menu, we all fell into talking about the convention, some of the new models in Wrath, our various online endeavors, politics, etc.  The food was good, the beer was excellent and the company was even better. This was the perfect way to end the weekend.

The following morning, the roommates and I all packed up and said our good-byes. I stopped in the event hall to say some final farewells to the Privateer folks as they continued to clean up after the convention. Then I hopped on the light rail to the airport and home.

I am currently on my way back from this fine event, held in Seattle on June 18th and 19th.  My connection in Kansas City is delayed so I thought I would put the time to good use and give a brief recap.

I flew out of Baltimore Washington International at 6am Friday the 17th.  I was actually supposed to meet up with another Press Ganger, Faultie, for breakfast. Sadly, the trains coming out of Washington DC were running late and he didn’t get to the airport until I was just about to board.  Everything worked out in the end, however, since he accepted a bump from his overbooked flight and ended up with a $400 travel voucher.

The flight went well, a little bumpy at points, but otherwise uneventful.  I ended up sitting next to a precocious little girl on the second leg of the journey who was really excited about flying and wanted to know all kinds of stuff about turbulence, clouds and our current altitude.  This actually made the flight a little bit of a parenting drill since I imagine that Ronan will probably be a lot like her at some point in the future, so I got to practice talking to such a child without talking down to them.

Arrived at SeaTac and upon advice from PG_Annichka, I took the light rail instead of a taxi.  Clean, fast and $2.75 each way, can’t beat it.

My roomates, who I had never met, were driving in from Utah and weren’t scheduled to arrive until about 3 hours later so I left my bags with the Bell Captain, and got some lunch. Technically, by hobbit reckoning it was probably afternoon tea, but my time zone transition required something be eaten at that time. And drunk, thus beer.  While it would have been fine to sit in the restaurant drinking and consuming various cakes (both crab and cheese) neither would have made the time go quicker nor me any slimmer so I headed up to the meeting rooms to see if I could lend a hand with setup.

I did fun things like set up terrain, lift heavy glass cabinets and make pleasing arrangements of the prizes to be given out during the convention. Basically, I got to seem helpful while having fun and hanging out with my friends from the Privateer staff. Jen, the volunteer coordinator, even had my most recent Press Gang order on hand, including a hardcover copy of their new book, Wrath, that Jen had gotten signed by the entire staff. Winning!

Oh, and this:

Ironclad at Lock & Load

Right around 6PM the Utah Posse arrived at the Red Lion hotel. After waiting an hour and a half for them to get our room ready, some of us gave up and went down to the Unofficial Press Gang Dinner at the Elephant and Castle underneath the hotel.  It was a fine collection of some of the best people I have met as a result of my association with Warmachine and Privateer Press. To name a few: b00ts, Faultie, Annichka, Tamwulf, Kelmor, Hacksaw, Jen, Grimsnik, Ravyn, Geist and TheGreatBlah. Real names are for saps, internet handles are 3133T.

After the party we finally got to go to our room.  The nice thing about the earlier wait was that I got to know my new roommates.  Mike (Grimsnik), Shane, Spenser, and Jason were all great guys and further reinforce my belief that the Warmachine/Hordes player community is on the whole is composed of some of the friendliest, smartest, funniest and most interesting people I have ever had the privilege to meet.

Due to my body still running ECOS (East Coat Operating System), I was up pretty early. After breakfast at one of the 1.3 million Starbucks in a 3 block radius we returned to the hotel to register for the convention.  Through a fluke of alphabetical providence, (they split the line by the first letter of your e-mail address) I was registered in about 3 minutes and then got to wait in line for the on site Privateer Store.

This line was in addition to being a great place to meet new people was a better source of gossip than an old ladies’ sewing circle.  Everyone was speculating on what we would be seeing that weekend, both on the convention floor and in the store itself. The biggest buzz was about Epic Alexia, a character who appeared in the Iron Kingdoms Role Playing Game before Warmachine even existed.  She had been brought over to the tabletop game a few years back and now they were releasing an new model and rules based on the same character.  Sadly as it turned out, Alexia had not risen her undead, rotting steed to the hotel that day, so a bunch of people were a little disappointed.  They did have some other awesome unreleased stuff however including:

Gallant, a character warjack with holy enhancements

The new Cygnar battle engine, The Storm Strider

As well as a bunch of stuff for other lesser factions that don’t warrant mention here.

My initial shopping complete I set about finding a game.  My roommate, Mike, was also looking for a game so we set up on one of the only tables available: the Siege of Caspia.

Cygnar marches toward the invading Mercenaries

Mike wasn’t fully painted, which was requirement for playing on the table, but it was the only board free and we would have vacated if called on it. My only regret in this game, other than forgetting the scenario and thus loosing is that I didn’t get more pictures.

After that, I grabbed some lunch at Potbelly’s with Jen. She was glad to get a break from her responsibilities at the con and it was nice to get some one on one time with her.  We haven’t really had much of an opportunity for that since she became the Quartermaster (aka Volunteer Coordinator) at Privateer.

The rest of my afternoon was dedicated to seminars led by some of the Privateer Staff.  First off I had Rob Hawkins excellent terrain class. He covered so much and I tried to cover it all in my notes, but the afternoon caffeine had not kicked in yet and I was feeling the jet lag. Next up was sculpting with Brian Dugas. Imagine taking a class with a slightly more serious, slightly more sedate Jack Black. It was a blast.  Brian was completely candid about why he chose the tools and materials he did, including some pretty self deprecating stuff about how he cannot deal with some of the more industry standard methods.  I have never really had an interest in becoming a miniature sculptor, but I am fascinated by the process. Third in the lineup was Army Painting with Ron Kruzie.  There are some of my notebooks from college that have less info in them than my notes from this class.  Ron is not only a truly gifted painter, but also an excellent lecturer and quite possibly insane. He covered more than just painting large amounts of figures but also some advanced techniques that I had known about but never truly grasped until this class. Finally, I had Advanced Painting with Matt Dipietro.  Matt is more classically trained and has some really unique insights into applying classical techniques (underpainting, color negation, etc) in miniature painting. Unfortunately, since I read all of his articles in No Quarter Magazine, there wasn’t much new here for me. Also the caffeine levels were dropping rapidly by this point.

After my classes, I met up with Les, another Pennsylvania Press Ganger and we set out in search of food. We ended up at Shucker’s, a really nice, if pricey, seafood restaurant near the hotel.  We had excellent service and excellent food and caught up with each other in a far nicer atmosphere than my Steampunk Abe Lincoln T-shirt deserved. When we got back to the hotel, I played a 75 point game with Les including pretty much every storm-themed model I had in my bag. I lost again but it was a hard-fought battle on both sides with neither of us dealing well with the terrain dense board we chose.

To round out the night, Jason and I went down to the bar talked about Warmachine and some mutual friends and closed the place down.  For those of you keeping track at home: Last Call at 1:30am in Seattle is 4:30am EDT. Blessed slumber came quickly upon return to the room.

To be continued in the next post…

I have awesome kick-ass plans (e.g. to live blog events) and then something goes wrong and I just can’t get past it. Three things happened since that last update that really f’d my blogging chi.

Numero Uno – The WordPress app for iPhone completely failed on the day of the Mid Atlantic Team Tournament. It’s been so long that I don’t remember the details exactly but it involved my password, a new version of the IOS and the fact that the WP apps are kinda flaky (being generous here).

Too – Some spammers got ahold of the address for the blog and have been regularly sending non-sensical comments at me for about 6 – 8 months. In preparation for this post, I had to delete about 250 pending comments: all spam.

C. A tiny human burst out of my wife’s stomach on November 20th. He has refused to leave the house and seems to have endless needs and no sense of self preservation. To make matters worse he is funny, charming and utterly adorable. Due to me not adapting quickly to this change of life, I hadn’t painted much in the last 6 months.

That seems to have changed, and I am hoping to make regular updates to the blog documenting that change.

In the past few weeks, in preparation for Privateer Press’s first convention, Lock & Load, I have finished models that have sat untouched for over 6 months.

I finished and sealed:

• A unit of Arcane Tempest Gun Mages
• An officer for the Arcane Tempest Gun Mages
• Two Gun Mage Captain Adepts

As you can guess I like gun mages. I like them even more now that I have 2 full units + 3 captains.

I also flocked and sealed my second unit of Storm Blades (+ Officer and Standard) as well as my second StormClad Warjack (featured in a previous post).

Things are looking up for the little dudes on my painting table.

Until yesterday.

10 hours in the studio with appropriate breaks for nature and noshing.

Is anything done?  Not really.  But the majority, of my Mage Hunter Strike Forces are painted to some degree.

The Nearly Complete Posse

Mage Hunter Strike Forces

2 Gorgons and a Chimera 95% done

They aren’t done but I’ve still got time left this weekend.

BTW I owe a huge debt to George Hrab of the Geologic Podcast.  The backlog of his show that has been building up since about May has kept me focused and entertained through this entire process.

Most of the models are primed. I had been hoping to have all of them completely prepped and primed but it isn’t the end of the world at this point.

On the painting table at the moment:

• 6 Soulless – 2 base coated and shaded, the other 4 are about 50% base coated
• 5 Mage Hunter Assassins – 50% base coated
• 2 Ghost Snipers – Base coated and shaded
• 2 Arcanists – Base coated and shaded
• Epic Eiryss – Base coated
• Narn – 90% complete

Now the astute readers of my blog might notice something odd.  There are about 6 figures listed above that aren’t in the original list from Friday.

There are 2 reasons for this 1) Those figures were already primed and assembled when I started this project. 2) I am a freak and am secretly harboring a belief that I can finish not one but two armies for the tournament.

These are the kinds of thoughts that kept me out of the good schools…

So in the midst of this, I made what could be charitably called an interesting decision.

On October 9th, Showcase Comics in Media, PA will be hosting the Warmachine and Hordes Middle Atlantic Team Tournament (MATT). The basic concept is that teams of 3 players from all around the eastern seaboard will compete against one another for one of three prizes:

1. Best Team – the team with the highest overall score will take home the team prize until next year’s MATT.

2. Best Individual – the top 3 individual players will get 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prize coins.

3. Mage Killer – the player who dispatches the most army points worth of spell casting models will win a fully painted 35 pt Retribution of Scyrah army.

When I heard the third one, a crazy lightbulb came on in my head.

So, because I am a fluff junkie and have been in love with the idea of Mage Hunters ever since I started painting and playing Warmachine, I am starting an entirely new army with the goal of playing it at MATT.

So in a little less than a month I hope to complete:

Garryth
Nayl
2 Gorgons
A Chimera
18 Mage Hunter Strike force grunts
1 Mage Hunter Strike Force Commander
6 Soulless Escorts
And 5 Mage Hunter Assasins

The attached picture shows the unpainted sum of this modest goal.

I hope to be able to update my progress pretty regularly.

The unpainted but still deadly Assassins of Scyrah

Commander Coleman Stryker and Ol'Rowdy

Sometimes warjacks who have seen a lot of action develop ‘personality quirks’.  Ol’Rowdy is an Ironclad series Warjack who has over five decades of service. He’s cantankerous and often charges into battle without prompting from his warcaster.

Coleman Stryker, unlike most warcasters, actually appreciates Rowdy’s enthusiasm for combat. The two of them together are nearly unstoppable.

This version of Commander Stryker is actually an alternate sculpt of the character. The original model suffers from what I call “sword on face disorder”.

Original Coleman Stryker Model

I painted the alternate sculpt a few years after the first one.  I like the new model sooooo much better than the original.  He’s dynamic and actually looks to be in the middle of combat and not doing some sort of weird kabuki dance.

Dominic E Darius, Cygnaran Warcaster

Darius is Cygnar’s premiere mechanic.  His ability to repair warjacks on the battle field is legendary, but he isn’t able to do it alone. While his Half-Jacks aren’t really mechanics in their own right, they can often make quick, often vital repairs in areas too dangerous for Darius to enter.

Warjacks – aka- Steam Powered Robots with Magical Brains.

Warjacks fill the role tanks do in the real world. They are heavily armored weapon platforms designed to bust through enemy lines and destroy hard targets (walls, cavalry, other warjacks)

Cygnar, the army I play, has an excellent selection of Heavy Warjacks.  But none is as near and dear to my heart as the Stormclad.

The Stormclad, a Cygnaran Heavy Warjack

A hulking monstrosity adorned with patriotic symbols, a huge banner, and a massive lightning sword.

I’ve painted up this model before in a more standard Cygnar color scheme.  This one, however, is being painted simultaneously with the squad of guys he will accompany on the battlefield, the Stormblades.  Basically, imagine medieval heavy infantry wielding lightning swords.

I really like how the addition of the gray/white sections look. While Cygnar blue is a fine color and all, it gets a little monotonous.

As for color recipies:  These are all straight out of the book Forces of Warmachine: Cygnar.  I am bad at mixing colors, especially in large quantities so rather than reinvent the wheel I just followed the painting guide in the back pretty much to the letter.