Update Incoming

I hope everyone had an excellent Thanksgiving. I know here at the DTP I was able to get a couple things painted up for the Tanksgiving event incoming tomorrow (Sunday). Pictures will follow this week but the DTP has added the completed Phoenix pictured earlier and a new Night Spinner to the vehicle ranks. I also have a host of clowns primed on my desk, waiting for brush.

Dead Tau Project ..... with 70% more Dead Tau

Yup, thats right.... only 70% more. I am working the mix back to 100%, and will be satisfied when we start hovering around 80% for sure! Regardless, I am loving my new Light Tent, and have been snapping a number of pictures with it.

So, the rumor in the title indicates there would be pictures of more Dead Tau. Well, I would not want to be called a liar, so lets get on with it. First I took a couple pictures of the Avatar I put together a while back. Just a refresher, but I really wanted some better pictures to put in the photostream.

Not to bad if I do say so myself. I am happy with these pictures and feel they are far better than the previous ones. It definitely reminds me that I have some touch-up to do on the gems and should get to that.






















After taking those pictures, I figured it would be good to get a few pictures of the Phoenix Court of Khaine.

 I also may have mentioned at some point that I was "done" with the titan base. I do not believe I have posted the pictures of the final product, so this is as good of a time as any. The pins in the picture (on the base) are marking where the feet of the Titan will set into the base and glue down. It is hard to find the holes without these markers, so I kept them in.

Four posts in a week, I am wearing myself out.

Gaining Ground Malifaux Tournament - After Action

Lets see, its Wednesday now so its been 4 days since I ran my second Malifaux tournament. Not bad, only 4 days and so far a post every day on the blog. So on Saturday, November 6 I ran the local Gaining Ground Malifaux tournament at Huzzah Hobbies. Overall the tournament ran smoothly, with 7 players showing up.

Let me provide a bit of context to start out, then I will get to the pictures and after action reports. To start with, Wyrd is currently working on putting together an official tournament system. Toward this end, a test system was provided to a select group of people in order to get feedback on it and help improve the overall system before its released broadly and officially. I was one of those select few, and this tournament provided a solid chance to give the rules a Beta run. I have to say that the rules are solid with (in my opinion) only a few area that could use improvement. While I will not likely run all my tournaments using this system, it is certainly a solid system for competitive tournaments.

So the basics are:

• Each player chooses a faction at the start of the tournament. 
• Games use Standard deployment for each game (6 inch deployment zone per side)
• Players flip strategies at the start of the round. There are 4 strategies possible, and if the same strategy is flipped by both players then its shared
• Players "buy" their crews at the start of each round, within the faction they picked.
• Players pick 2 schemes each round. 
• Round Matching is determined by Victory Points
• Awards are given for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place based on VP
• In the case of an odd number of players, a bye (buy?) system is in effect

Now, I will happily say that the "pick a faction, buy your crew each game" system worked out in the tournament on Saturday. I am still unsure if I like this system overall, as I truly believe it gives the person who has the most models in his/her faction a distinct advantage in the games. To be fair, the winner of the tournament played the same crew all 4 games. Second and Third place each changed their crews every game. Last place switched his crew up, and the middle of the field guy played the same crew all the way through. As such, the results do not demonstrate my belief in an advantage.

The biggest challenge we had with the games was the time-limit in the current Beta system. The time limit was set-up for 1 hour games, with a 15 minute window at the start of the game to determine strategy, schemes, crews, and deployment. 60 minutes of play time was not enough time for players to complete their games. We had some very experienced players who were only able to knock out 4 turns before time was called. This being the case, I strongly recommend 90 minutes of play-time for the rounds. I think solid players can knock out a good game of 6 turns in 90 minutes. On the other side, I believe the "start of round" time of 15 minutes could be brought down to 10. In our case, the first round took up the full 15 minutes as people learned the system, but after that the average was around 7 minutes before people started playing.

One other addition, which I really liked and received some solid positive feedback on was related to schemes. In Malifaux, each scheme (you pick 2 per game) is worth 1 point if accomplished, and an additional point if announced. In this system, if you announced your scheme and did not accomplish it, then your opponent scored a bonus point.

All in all, the day was a success and there were great games played throughout. The end of day standings were:

1. Resurrectionists (Kirai & fixed crew) - 29 points (our of a possible 40)
2. Guild - 28 points
3. Arcanists - 26 points
4. Neverborn (Pandora & Fixed crew) - 20 points
5. Resurectionists - 14 points
6. Outcasts - 14 points
7. Resurectionists - 11 points

 Here are some quick shots of the boards. I did not grab pictures of 2 of the boards, the Bog board from the previous tournament and a new board set-up as a "Religious Village" board.

We had a new Scrubland Board (all fixed terrain board)

The Ruins board

And John's very excellent City of Malifaux board

Players Choice
Even though it is not an official part of the Gaining Ground format of the tournament, I did include a separate prize and contest for Players choice. I asked that any of the players with a fully painted crew from within the faction they were playing display thier crew for a players choice vote. 6 f the 7 players set their crews out.

At the end of the voting, there was a tie between 2 crews. After a tie-breaker judge was brought in, this was the second place choice:

 And Dan with his Kirai crew took the Players choice award (along with 1st place in the tournament)

Dan has a good writeup on his blog about the day, I recommend checking it out.

I want to close out this post with a couple action shots I took through the day:

These were cool, as one if the Witchling Stalker in the building looking toward the Onroyo, and the second is the Onroyo waiting for the Stalker to charge through the building, and meet up with all the other spirits outside!

Pictures Pictures Pictures

I recently picked up a light tent from Amazon to use when taking pictures. Its the one on the side here, and I have to say that it is great. The very simple addition of the diffuse lighting and the backdrop has improved my pictures overall. Well, to be fair I am also using a new camera (my wifes point and shoot vs our SLR), but I have used that before and these pictures are better.

So, toward that end I have snapped some new pictures in the light tent. Some of these are the new models I have painted up which have not been seen widely. Others are new pictures to replace the old ones I took previously. At the end of the post I will also have a peek at one of my new models thats in progress (mostly complete).

So here we go. First we have the Masters collection. We will start with Lilith, who is newly painted. She is part of one of the Demo crews I am painting up, as well as the goal for my October Malifools Painting challenge.

Following her we have my favorite, Lady Justice with her totems. My picture of Lady J did not come out as nice as I liked (a little blurring from an unstable camera) so I will be retaking her picture with a tripod.

Next we come to Rasputina and Lilith. Lilith is from my wifes crew, although I am starting to consider playing her as I also have a Dreamer/LCB crew to paint up. This would give me a nice Neverborn faction (Dreamer/LCB, Pandora, Lilith) to play for tournaments.

Then we have a group shot of the Ortega Family. This is the Ortega box set, which is my other "Demo Crew" that's painted up. This was my painting challenge for the September Malifools painting challenge, which I did not complete on time. The crew does make a nice addition to my Guild set, which is the primary faction I plan to use for tournaments. My goal is that post-January I will have Perdita, Lady J, and Lucius as my masters, with a full contingent of Guild to back them up. Here are the Ortega's.

Overall I am very happy with the light tent. The simple change to diffuse lighting and the backdrop makes a big difference to the pictures, as I mentioned in the opening. With that in mind, and after the 3 month break I mentioned previously, I have my first pictures of a 40K model in a while. These are still work in progress, but the Phoenix is mostly complete. My plans are to do one more layer of white on the panels, clean up the green edging, highlight up the gems, and put transfers on the model. Its really only an afternoon of painting to be complete. Here are some peeks at the WIP.

 

Thats all for now. I have a Mature Nephalim to paint up, then its on to completion for the Phoenix and starting my Titan.

40K, Malifaux, and Hobby in general

Its been three months. I was doing a quick update tonight on my painting status, adding in the points for the Malifaux Lilith model I just completed and I realized it. Its been 3 months since I painted any Eldar or 40K models. Now, thats not entirely true. I worked on my Eldar Forgeworld Phoenix a little ways back/ Its still not done, although I did take a couple pictures of the progress tonight. I switched over to some P3 paints and one of the whites is now being used on the white panels of the Phoenix.

Now I realize I have spoken about burnout in the hobby. I spent a great deal of time discussing it on Gamers Lounge Ep. 16. I have also spent a great deal of time playing and doing things related to Malifaux. I am now a Wyrd henchman, which means I get cool little sneak peaks, access to the back-end Henchman community, and get incentives to run tournaments and events for Malifaux. Thats been very cool, its been a very long time since I took part in a program such as that. On top of that I have been just ENJOYING Malifaux more than 40K. It comes together for me in a weird way that 40K just doesn't. I also find that I am preferring the skirmish size games more than I did 40K games in general.

The Dead Tau project is not dead however, have no fear. It felt nice to pull out my Phoenix last night and touch it up some. It was nice to take pictures, which I hope come out. I also have a Thanksgiving event coming up that I am kind of looking forward to. Its a Tanksgiving event at the local hobby shop (Huzzah Hobbies if your in the area) and I have committed to bringing out my Titan and my Phoenix for the event. I am fairly certain my Titan will not be "completed" within the next 3 weeks, but I will have it at a place where I am comfortable putting it on the table. I plan to take my airbrush to it this week or weekend and get things started. As for my Phoenix, I expect it will only be a bit more work to get that complete. The trouble will be creating a nice flying base for it after I complete the plane.

Overall, I will have some new pictures up in the next couple days. I am also starting to look at a 1500 point, travel friendly, Eldar list to pack up and take out to California in a couple weeks. I am headed out there for work and will be meeting up (if things go well) with the Independent Characters (Geoff and Carl) along with Big Jim! I am looking forward to getting a couple games in!