Hats Shirts off to Dina Meyer

So for the coming year I have a themed Warmachine list that I would like to build. Designed purely for fun, I have decided to go for the 75pt Man-O-War themed list, a contingent of men wearing heavy steam powered armour and wielding Hammers, Halberd and Chainsaws with Grenade Launchers.




Now, I have had a terrible history of getting figures painted. My only reason for it is that I'm really in it for the game. I love the game, I reckon it's fun and the setting is just entertaining in my mind, and a lot of the players I face up against are really cool guys. And as far as I know, they all enjoy playing me. I won Best Sportsman in Gencon Oz 2008 for a reason, apparently.

But as for painting, well I have a bit of trouble in that respect. It's not the shitty paintbrushes that I have which really don't help matters, it's not the Colours that I have a small collection of and will have to invest in a few others next time I go to Ace, and it's not the overhead lamp that I don't have and really need to invest in as well. It's the patience. I can be patient, but if I get into a job, I really have to get into the job until it's done. With painting it's good to have a rest after you've done a few layers here and there to let the paint dry, because if you immediately start painting on it again with a different colour, it'll mix up and make it look funny. With the colour Red, you have to put on a few layers because it usually looks clumpy when it dries up rather than just a solid layer. At least, that's what happens with the Games Workshop Reds. And to help make it look really good you scale each layer by brightness, such as starting with a darker red and each following layer gets brighter and brighter until you've reached a good point. That way it's harder to notice any stuff ups, and when someone does it'll still look good because it's just a darker shade of red.




Some other colours don't necessarily need to be layered, particularly metals. Metals usually come out solid, but you can always put on layers. One of the first metallic layers was a rust effect. A Bronze layer dry brushed with an Iron layer makes a very solid rust effect. There's always others with better effects, but hey, I'm only a junior painter.

So I know some of the basics to paint, and that's really all that I need to know to get an army completed. Man-O-War figures are reasonably easy to deal with as they have many flat surfaces and any particular details can be dry brushed with a dark metal. Faces will be a problem as sometimes the details are tricky to keep right, but overall it's pretty easy and I don't have too many to actually do. You cover the skin in brown, and then dry brush a skin colour over it on something like a 90 degree angle.




The other thing I wanted to do however was to have colours to differentiate between units. I'm not talking about having one unit with Red shoulder pauldrons while another has Yellow. I'm meaning the whole unit are a different colour. In particular, a Black and White unit in the guise of the Man-O-War Shocktroopers in the original Prime book, drawn by Scott Fischer. For those who don't know, I can't really help. I can't scan it in, and Googling “Scott Fischer”, “Warmachine”, “Man-O-War” or “Shock Trooper” doesn't really come up with the right images. Scott gives me his D&D art, Warmachine gives me one of the incarnations of Iron Man, Man-O-War comes up with the band, and Shock trooper gives me topless photos of Dizzy from the Starship Troopers film. Though I'm not particularly complaining about that last one.

I did have a funny idea at one stage, though. I was playing Sonic the Hedgehog one day and thought about the figures for a second too long and realised “I could turn them all into Doctor Robotniks. The leaders would have a moustache sticking out of their armour since their faces are visible, and the rest would simply have similar paint style. It would really be quite easy.” But I'm not going to do that. It's just asking for trouble. If I face a Blue army, I won't win. Because that's what Bad Guys like Dr Robotnik do, they lose to the Good Guys like Sonic. And Khador aren't Bad Guys, as such. They just have a very different train of thought. The pattern may be something along the lines of Homicide, but that's not bad! Just frowned upon.




So up until August, and possibly until September, I'll have between 28 and 34 models to paint. The list is simple and has a few variations, which explains the range of figure numbers. But it will happen. I have a graph that I remind myself of the progress, and lack thereof. I'll probably put the progress graph on here to show everyone my weekly progress. Game on.

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For those concerned, here's the potential lists.

Supreme Kommandant Irusk - Decimator - Destroyer - Spriggan Man-O-War Bombardiers (Max Unit) Man-O-War Demolition Corps (Min Unit) Man-O-War Demolition Corps (Max Unit) Man-O-War Shocktroopers (Min Unit) Man-O-War Shocktroopers (Max Unit) Man-O-War Drakhun (With Dismount) Man-O-War Kovnik Man-O-War Kovnik Total Figures: 29

Karchev the Terrible - Behemoth - Berserker - Decimator Man-O-War Bombardiers (Max Unit) Man-O-War Demolition Corps (Max Unit) Man-O-War Demolition Corps (Max Unit) Man-O-War Shocktroopers (Max Unit) Man-O-War Shocktroopers (Max Unit) Man-O-War Drakhun (With Dismount) Total Figures: 31

And if I do all the figures up, I have 95 points. Supreme Kommandant Irusk - Spriggan Karchev the Terrible - Berserker - Behemoth - Decimator - Destroyer Man-O-War Bombardiers (Max Unit) Man-O-War Demolition Corps (Max Unit) Man-O-War Demolition Corps (Max Unit) Man-O-War Shocktroopers (Max Unit) Man-O-War Shocktroopers (Max Unit) Man-O-War Drakhun (With Dismount) Man-O-War Kovnik Man-O-War Kovnik Total Figures: 36 I may have to consider buying a second Drakhun and dismount.