22 February 2011

Recent WIP and ramblings....

Greetings,

I do apologise for the lack of posts recently. It is not for a lack of gaming, modelling and painting though.

Retribution of Scyrah


I have been looking at getting a Retribution army since I went back to England for my extended furore. I like the idea behind them, I just wish they weren't Elves!
At the moment I only have Rahn and two Phoenix Myrmidons. Rahn is probably the best caster from the faction in general. He has a huge pool of Focus and a good selection of spells. He can throw people about through his telekinetic spells and his feat helps any spell-casting Retribution unit with increased range, accuracy and damage.
The Phoenix Myrmidons are the most expensive in the Retribution list at the moment. Each Phoenix also have a shield system that can regenerate for free so long as it isn't broken and it can be forced to heal even more. I can potentially heal 2 to 9 shield points out of 10 in a single turn if I need to. They also have a shooting attack, two melee attacks, a close range AOE (Area of Effect) flame attack and it is also an arc node. So these things can do range, close up work, close up anti-horde, have regenerating shields and they can increase the casters influence by increasing his spell threat range. What is wrong with them? Well they only have 24 damage boxes. With the regenerating shields, this is mitigated, but if that system is destroyed they are up a creek without a paddle. As well as losing the shield it can't shoot any more. I really need to get one of the Retribution mechanics to run after these guys., but that is a bit down the line. As it stands I have 14 Points of them ands 25 is pretty much the smallest that is played at Orctown.




Oh, and yes, I know I have another eye-searing orange army. There was no way in Hell that I was going to do a white force though!

PIGGIES!!!!

Danish bacon, Danish bacon, Danish bacon, yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy, yum, yum, yum!

*ahem!*

Here are the current non-character Pigs and my two main Farrow casters. I have had four games with them and I will say that the Farrow are interesting. Carver can definitely deal with a lot of threats with a limited arsenal and Arkadius is a headache to play and apparently hard to deal with.
I am currently painting up the War Hogs and Rorsch and Brine, before I do the last gun Boar. This is because I'm kinda tempted to make the Gun Boar look like Miss Piggy from the Muppets...



Infinity

Knights running around with lightsabers? I'll take 17 please!

For those who don't know me, I grew up on tales of Robin Hood and King Arthur with a dash of Star Wars thrown in. I think it is one reason why I click more with Warhammer over 40K from an aesthetic point of view. The main issue that I am having with Warhammer at the moment is the sheer number of models needed for an army. Even my Ogres are bordering on the ridiculous! I wanted to have a skirmish game that was full of gorgeous models, supported by the parent company and had multiple cheap starting boxes for each faction. A German friend of mine meandered into Orctown about a year ago for the first time and asked if we played Infinity here. At that time we didn't. For the past month and a half we have been playing Infinity a lot. Getting the rules down and when the boss at Orctown got in the starter boxes they literally disappeared in a week! the only issue we have at the moment is the relative lack of terrain at Orctown, which is being remedied though.

My faction is the PanOceania Military Orders. Knights with lightsabers and guns! Und dey have zer PANZERFAUST!!! *ahem* I apologise for my totally stereotypical English attempt at a very strong German accent. I only have 'Allo, 'Allo to work from.
These guys are hard in close combat. The Koreans are having issues thinking past the fact that a Ninja and Samurai is still seen as the epitome of Eastern close combat. They have also ascribed to the view that anything that the West did in the same period couldn't cope with the martial art skills. I have been trying to disabuse them of that notion by giving impromptu history lectures awhile playing the game. It has been rather fun getting a reply of, "So they didn't just swing it and hope that it killed him then? They had training?" albeit in much more fractured English.
I really like the system, although it does feel weird throwing a handful of d20's though... It is a lot more cinematic than most other games that I have played with. One of the most cinematic moments that I have had was my Magister Knight running from cover to cover taking an automatic reaction shot against a stealthed missile launcher guy. I needed a 5 or less on a d20. I rolled the 5 and then we found out what happened. My shot ignored armour and caused automatic wounds. The guy was toast and my opponent wasn't angry because of how hard it was to pull the shot off. He lost, but even losing in Infinity is more fun that in 40K or fantasy. The sheer choice of tactics and randomness in it is amazing.
I will say that we have played about 30+ games as a group, we still aren't using all of the rules. It is a hard game to get into rules-wise, but if you want a totally different mindset for a game give it a go.

I painted up my Knights with a similar colour scheme. red and Blue tabards, Knights get blue at the bottom red at the top, while other minions get the reverse and they get the Korean ying-yang (taeguk or 태국) on the face plate and on their base. The minions get this reversed, because I messed up...
Here is some prior warning, although the miniatures are gorgeous, they occasionally have weird points for their moulding and they are damned fiddly.




Hopefully I will have at least one more post before February is out... Apologies for my ineptitude of taking photos and making a post on even a semi-regular basis.

Regards,

English Pillock

05 February 2011

BAAAACOOOONNN!!!!!!

Greetings,

Here is the first of the War hogs that I have finished painting. He needs basing, but it;'s not bad considering it is about 12 hours work since I bought them on Wednesday.





Regards,

English Pillock