New year, meh.

Edited version

In about six hours the clock will tick over and 2012 will be history. I could write a lengthy looking back post, but I won't. It'll only devolve into a rant.

Instead I will not promote a webcomic, cause it has turned into crap.


 Happy New Year or Guten Rutsch.

Coming up next year, my new years resolution, my favourite minis and a Cyberpunk story.


Vowing to bring about world peace, cure cancer and bang more supermodels than last year.
Fenris

The sorry state of German television

Rant inbound. Be aware.

If you watch German television you know that gamers are a strange breed of people, at best socially inept in a comical way, but mostly mentally damaged, hyper-agressive and on the brink of the next school shooting. And no, I'm not talking about the crap-spouting, brain-frying channels in private hands like RTL, but the actual national television. Any actual gamer, will know what I mean after one Codeword: "Frontal 21" (Yes, gamers have codewords. Spooky, isn't it?)

But there is something much more sinister out there!
Bad journalists and pseudo-scientists that want to steal all your money!
Oh, no wait. That was gaming companies. (They are the devil!)

What follows is a piece of garbage made up of semi-truths, quotes ripped out of coherency and actual, blatant lies. Including a 71 year old, self-professed gaming expert, a kid paid to read a moronic script, who I'll bet will use the money to buy videogames/electronics) and a lot of cheap tricks to make the gaming industry look like villains.
Guess what, game developers want to make money with their work! Just like DRUG DEALERS! (and everybody else...)

You can watch this piece of garbage >here<, but you shouldn't. Instead you should watch >this<. Beginning at 7:40 is a detailed look at everything that's wrong with what the ZDF calls "investigative journalism".
While I was just chalking this "documentary" up as the usual BS dumb people come up with, there is actually a purpose behind this. (apart from blatant fearmongering).

The good people from the KFN Institute, which produced this travesty in jorunalism, want to protect your money from evil game designers so you can give it to them via taxes, so the state can control the age restrictions on games. Which it already does in Germany. (ba-dumm-tssh!)

But the money goes to the USK, which occasionally do dumb things, like making every English version of a game 18+, because the game is totally different, when everyone in it speaks German. However the USK actually shows a bit of competence in rating games.

And to make the rant complete, Frontal 21 produced this with money from the GEZ. Basically all german television viewers paid for a fearmongering commercial. Glad I'm not among them.

Which reminds me. Could I maybe get British television instead of German? Not both, JUST the British channels. (Ohai, geographic pun!)
The times I actually switch on a TV (at my parents) I tune in to BBC. Or I watch BBC documentaries on the Internet.

I'd even pay a bit extra for that, if I had a telly.

Hell, I'd even wear a Top hat and drink tea while watching it.


I felt a bit polemic today
Fenris

Mustering the Steel Phalanx

A little work in progress shot of the first ALEPH model for Infinity. Meet Lieutenant Helena of the Steel Phalanx.

The original idea for this colourscheme came from the PC game Tribes Ascend and it's Diamond Sword faction, which my brother and I play quite excessively.

Speaking of brothers and Vidogames, we managed to snag this little achievement in World of Tanks twice in a row.
I think we took out half the enemy team in a close-ranged knifefight in the first one. Can't really remember the second one.

What never ceases to amaze me how people can stand the long grinds in World of Tanks. My KV-1S tank was a bloody useless piece of scrap metal waiting to be turned into a smoking heap of broken steel at the enemies earliest convenience.
Then I got the longbarreled 122mm gun and suddenly I can get into a scrap with a tank above my weight and punch their faces in. (if only rarely) But anything in my class better beware when the 122mm shells come flying.
Oh, and at least 80% percent of the players are utter, mouthbreathing morons with the IQ of slightly stale gouda cheese.

Holy crap, I'm turning into Totalbiscuit
Fenris

Big Draconic Gribblies

The promised Scythean to accompany Vayl got finished today. I like big eyeless beasties, they are easy to paint.

Rawr!

Blight-bred by Everblight (say that out loud) during the days, when he made his lair under the Iosan city of Issyrah, they are the perfect killers, needing no light to see int he tunnels and caverns.
I am unsure how you swing giant scythe-claws in a tunnel, but then I am not a dragon beastie and that is what lore says.

Ingame it brings two POW 17 attacks to bear, fueled by Legions excellent Fury management. (You can push you beasties as much as you want, but sometimes they need a hug to not flip out and Legion is best at hugging.)

It also brings a Chain attack to the table. If it hits with both initial attacks, it can do a swipe at everything unlucky enough to stand before it. I doubt that this will remove lots of models, because who will cluster his Infantry around something big enough to take two hits from a Scythean?

*generic Dragon noise*

Then again smacking something big with a third, free attack is always welcome.

Also it looks bloody awesome! All evil, spiky dragonmantis!


This has been my first plastic Everblight kit. It was much easier to assemble and feels quite light. Nothing like the solid block of pewter my Carnivean is. I tried to magnetise it, but finally was too lazy, so I now have a bunch of additional arms and heads lying around. Those should come in handy for an eventual Typhon conversion or to upgrade the Carnivean from the two player box.









Finally a groupshot of my painted Legion stuff.

Cheers
Fenris

Can't sleep, post minis

If you are a regular reader of my blog (hah, yeah, right!) you might have noticed the background of my blog has changed some time ago. I picked that because I was painting Freebooter's Fate miniatures. (and it looks cool.)
So have some Pirates:

Gunpowder Mary and Spitfire

Bringing up some heavy Firepower are these two girls. Some players may tell you the Imperial Armada has the ranged advantage. I tell you, I'm bringing a goddamn cannon! And a six-barreled musket to back it up, too.

Matelot aka "That Black guy that dies first"

A cheap Pirate grunt. Got shot by an Arquebus in the first turn of the game, today. And he even managed to survive. Which could not be said about the Arquebusier after Mary's retaliation.

Finally something for my Legion of Everblight. You can't see her awesome ice-base, because she is wearing such a big mantle. Apparently she is the essence of Legion play. I have no idea about that, but her spells and model looked cool. She is soon to be joined by a Scythean warbeast.

The better my Paintjobs get, the worse my photos seem to turn out.
Fenris

Tried Diablo 3 again, got fed up in 10 seconds flat

I tried to play Diablo 3 again. I quite enjoyed my first playthrough, but the always online thingy annoyed me.
So I try to log in and what happens: Error 3 Login Information incorrect.
After 2 1/2 hours later I had set up another admin account for my PC, had changed my password, deleted my cache multiple times, even trawled Blizzards annoying ticket system. (No, if I write "Problem with login" i do not mean "I can't take part in a promotion")
I decided to do post on the forums. Could not log in. Then I tried to detach my Authenticator. Didn't work via the account. Finally I managed to do it via phone.

And suddenly I could log into the game! I chose my Barbarian Korgar, ran into some sewers and shreddered my way through a bunch of snakemen. As I lept into a group of enemies, axes swinging wildly, the old Diablo feeling was establishing itself. I dropped to 30% health and Revenge popped up. I pressed the hotkey to use it and heal my self up and mighty Korgar ... stood there. Just stood there, while nothing happened for a second.
Then another one.
Then he keeled over and died, slain by lag. Tadadada!

Let's have a hurray for forced online play!
Hip, hip, fuck you, Blizzard!


At that point I shrugged quit the game, loaded up the next episode of Doctor Who and started painting my next Freebooter Amazon.

Be aware, be safe. Don't let a pile of cruiseships fall on you.
Fenris

Werewolves are better than Vampires

I wrote a little article on Kaya the Moonhunter for Lost Hemisphere. Have a look at it here.

More Infinity and a Spider

Found this little guy hanging around my balcony. May he destroy any gnat that dares trespass on my property!









And now more Infinity:

Line Kazaks

Hassassin Muyibs

Tankhunters

Tankhunters Back

Cheers
Fenris

Photodump: Clouds, Black Ivan WIP and a first foray into Infinity

Bought a tripod for my Camera. Turns out that it can hold it much more steady than I can. And then some clouds came along.

Believe it or not, this is Bonn, not rural Germany. In fact this is the view from my window.
Also, I'm getting into Infinity, so here is a Scotsman of the Ariadna faction...

God, Infinity miniatures are tiny. But awesome sculpts!

and a Jannissary of the Haqqislam faction.

Damn Camera stole the accents from the blade and gun.

And finally something Warmachine:

WIP Black Ivan commands me to paint for the Empress and the Motherland!

By the way studiying for semester finals sucks when it's so hot andhumid that you start sweating from reading. I'm contemplating moving to Khador and becoming a Greylord, just so I can cast Blizzard on myself. (Bonus: Fuzzy hat!)

Cheers
Fenris

PS: Tartans are a bloody horrible lass of a dog to paint. Excuse my poor attempt at Scottish.

RPC 2012 - Pictures

Yesterday I visited the RPC in Cologne with my Cousin. Weather sucked hard, lot's of light rain and quite cold. Buuuut, have some pictures.

Upon entering we immediately saw a sign pointing to the kids area.

 Lots of LARPing stuff to be had.

We headed through the Hall with the PC games where a loud man with a fake lightsaber was yelling stuff about Star Wars: The Old Republic Online to the tabletop area. We were greeted by a woman with a slightly wooden demeanour.

 The Freebooter's Fate booth was awesome as always. I really need to get into that game. It has no dice, but works with cards, very attractive if your average on 3d6 is a five.

 My Cousin playing a demo game, while I ran around taking pictures.

 Awesome Costumes, awesome tables. I want to build a bay with a ship wreck as a gaming table now. And a sunken Aztek temple. Which fit none of my Wargames factions. *sadpanda* Just means I don't have enough factions. *dangerous thought*

 

Dun dun dun ....

Highlights of the demo game: I. Goblin Pirate climbs up to a Pirate Musketeeress (Is that a word?) and promptly gets pushed down the tower by her, landing squarely on his face. II. Pissed of pirate gal runs at a bunch of goblins to skewer them with her sword, but is beset by Polly the Parrot looking for a cracker, making her flub all her attack rolls/draws(? you can't roll cards...).

After the game we returned to the PC games hall, because Malte had to play Aion. A free to play MMORPG. Why you have to do that at a Con eludes me. The guy with the light saber was now demonstrating some game, where you picked nicely colored symbols from circles to make your guy stab and whack stuff with your sword. Graphic sucked, so I guess it was some Console game. But if you stand behind someone and whack him with a two-handed sword he takes more damage. Wow, Id never guess that!
Seriously, is it so difficult to come up with good sword fighting in a game? Skyrim did it, but in most fantasy first person games I click people dead. Lame!

Soo, Aion. The game with the wings. I have it on good authority (the blond guy in the picture) that it sucks. And though the banner in the background might suggest it, Khorne did not have a booth this year.







Costumes!

I did not expect the Imperial Inqisition. Actually I did. There is always someone with a cool Witchhunter costume. I don't think they found any witches though.

Someone might have misunderstood the roleplaying involved in this con. But then, she was giving out flyers for the Warhammer card game Invasion. Cue Archaon: "I'm going to invade the realms of men by playing a CHILDREN'S CARD GAME!" Ever watched Yugioh: The abbriged series? Well you should!

 If the world ends, I'll stick with these guys. They are cool. I saw their awesome stuff last year already, but this time they had really upped the ante with two vehicles and a tent.

There were also a lot of Airsoft players running around in full combat gear.

 This time its the Empire, not the Imperium. (Distinction only makes sense in English)










Lord Vader. Badassness incarnate. One of the few characters whose voice actor I like more in the german version.
Looks like he is recruiting.

That's how you look cool when fencing.













Back to the tabletop area

 "Stell dir vor es ist Warhammer und keiner geht hin." That's how that would look.

 Still nice gaming tables. Though my Imperial Guard might run into problems with their 9+ tanks and AFVs.

More sucky photos of gorgeous Freebooter miniatures.

 Le sigh. There was a couple dressed up as the Vodoo guy on the left and the creepy rat lady (not shown)

Can't see shit, Captain!

The cats (Oncas) had an espeacially beuatiful paintjob. Spider Amazon? Mantis Amazon? Crocodile Amazon? I think I just found my faction.









Back at the Tabletop testing area I played demogames of Dystopian Wars and Infinity.
Dystopian wars was nice, though my dice kept exploding. (If you roll a 6 you get a succes and roll again. If you get another 6 repeat. Guess what happened.) Now I want a fleet of war Zeppelins.
Infinity was great fun to play. Now I get why it is a shooting game. One of my line troopers blew away my opponent's strongest model in a round of shooting with his rifle. My opponent had problems to wrap his head around the fact, that his miniatures could react to moves made by me. He just tried to shoot back every time and was pasted by superior firepower.
I also watched a game of Mercs. Looked interesting, but I think I understood barely half of the game.

After the games I decided to have alook at the medieval market outside. Luckily I had my raincoat. It was a wash. I was looking to get a horn, not to drink from, but to make noises with. But there were only ones with the annoying plastic things inside that goe "FWEEEEEEE!" to be had. The food however was good. Meat on a stick and bread. Can't go wrong with that.

Speaking of charred meat:

Hang over your fireplace for that unique Dragon Slayer look.

Some more random stuff:

No Creepers to be found, except the one on the Tshirt. Whew!

They are lying! They spoke perfect German! I felt rather dumb adressing them in English and getting answers in German.

They say dress for the job you want. What if I would want this job? No, not mannequin.

After drifting around a little, I went to collect my cousin. We just wanted to leave, when they started a Live Raid on the buffed.de booth in SW: The Old Republic Online, so we had to watch that till the first boss. It looked like World of Warcraft with slightly smaller, glowy swords and a lot smaller shoulderpads.Roleplay seems to be quite good however, as my cousin told me. I might try it out if I should suddenly  have hours upon hours to burn on it.
And apparently the cool guys play the evil side again.

Also played 10 Minutes of Risen 2. Looks nice. Pirates and Voodoo are cool.

Finally we left. My Cousin with a metric ton of dice (won't roll well, everybody knows only dice you get as presents roll well) and me with a hand-and-a-half sword, some Freebooter minis and a boatload of flyers.

Next year, I'll have to buy a ticket for both days.

Fenris

Shooting flowers

cause they don't shoot back. Or move. Which can get annoying, when you just want to try out your camera.

Some red flowers.

Some white flowers.

Some blue flowers, not that good a photo. Still getting the hang of it. Also the colour isn't really correct, but you won't notice unless you visit my parents garden.

Tried to get a picture of the full moon. Didn't work so well because it was at night. (duh!) But the result still looked cool.

Cheers
Fenris

Where now the horse and the rider?

I have always been a sucker for cavalry. I absolutely loved  Tolkien's depiction of the Horse Lords of Rohan in Lord of the Rings. Elves, Dwarves? Not for me, Vikings on Horseback it is! This  often lead me to pick factions with a focus on cavalry in video games. I swept everything before me with my Ritterbrüder cavalry in Medieval 2: TW and my heart soared everytime my artillery had weakened the enemy enough to order an all out charge with my Cuirassiers and Hussars in Empire: TW.

Knights who don't say ni.

Sadly this did not expand to the tabletop. In Warhammer 40k I played the Space Wolves and while they had cavalry in the form of bikers, I ran them once and they sucked. I never really got into Warhammer Fantasy, so that was that. (I still have an Idea for an Empire list but that would probably cost more for the core troops than two Warmachine armies)

Then I started Warmachine and lo and behold. My faction Khador derives from ancient Khardic horselords. Though this was not my primary concern when choosing the faction, I soon noticed I could run lots of cavalry. One unit of Uhlans and three solos. There is even Vlad's theme list which allows you to run 11 cavalry models at once. I was in the process of building this theme force when Privateer Press dropped a bomb.

Vlad: My horse better be amazing!

A cavalry caster!

Coming out in July. What's my birthday? Oh right, July. Thanks PP. Gone are the days of envy for the Swans cavalry caster. Now what to run with him? Since whe know next to nothing about his spell list, the prudent thing would be to hold of on choices, analyze him when he comes out and then run the most competitive choices.

F**k prudent, f**k competitive! This is what I will run:

• Vladimir Tzepesci, Great Prince of Umbrey
• Drago
• Full Iron Fang Uhlans
• Uhlan Kovnik Markov
• Manowar Drakhun
• Fenris
• Gun Carriage Battle Engine
• Min Steelhead Heavy Cavalry
• Stannis Brocker, Steelhead Commander of Ternon Crag
• Alexia Ciannor, Mistress of the Witchfire

Assuming Vlad still has 5 Jackpoints, this adds up to exactly 50 points. 16 models, 14 of them heavy cavalry, one a Battle Engine that behaves like cav. *insert mad scientist laugh here* There's also some room to cut and adjust. Lose Alexia and max out the Steelheads. Since we might even get light cav in colossals, maybe switch those in.
It's the time of the horselords come again! So how much cavalry can I paint till July? And why do I not have Fenris yet?


I'm on a horse!
Fenris

"But a force of Iron Fangs would also look really cool with Mr Giant-Shoulders." SHUT UP, BRAIN!

Putting the Steam in Steampowered: A lazy man's guide to smoke plumes

Have you ever looked at any Warmachine artwork and noticed the smoke plumes on the 'jacks, only to look back at your minis and notice they are not the steambelching monstrosities you imagined?

Fear not, with a little work you can turn your Jack into a smokespewing Juggernaut! (Any similiarities to actual Khadoran Juggernauts coincidental)

Step I: Materials

• A volunteer, in this case my Black Ivan
• Super Glue, I like the gel type
• a Paper Clip
• a Piece of Cork
• Hedge and Bush foliage, I use Javis Countryside Scenics, look for big roughcut pieces
• (not shown) a drill for pinning
• (not shown) Black Primer (P3, Army Painter, GW, pick yours)
• (not shown) Grey Primer

Step II: Prepping the model

Drill two holes into the smokestack. These will hold our pins, to which the smoke plume is later attached. Since the standard Khadoran Juggernaut Chassis has only one big smokestack it is easier on this one. Other chassis may require less or more holes drilled.

Step III: Prepping the Plume

Find a piece of foliage that looks like a smoke plume. You can easily tear it into shape by hand. Plumes bent backwards can make your 'jack look like it is running forward.

Step IV: Pinning the plume

Cut the paper clip into two long, straight parts (from now on to be referred to as pins). Put one of the parts into the hole in the smokestack. Do not glue it in, yet. Put the foliage onto the pin in a Position you like. Remove the foliage again. The pin will leave a hole. Now cover the upper end of the pin in super glue and glue the foliage to the pin.

Step V: Priming

Use the pin to attach your smoke plume to the cork. Give it a good spray of black paint. Let it dry. Repeat till the plume is black and no green or brown shows (left). Then spray with grey primer. Focus on the top of the plume to give it a more realistic look. You can also add yellow and red to the plume's underside to get a furnace glow effect.

Final Step:

Now glue the second pin into it's hole and cut it to size. Cover it with super glue and slide the smokeplume on, aligning the first pin with the other hole. Depending on the smokestack on the model you might want to put some superglue there, too. Whatever you choose to do, you should get something like this: 

'sup?

I did not glue Black Ivan's smoke plume on yet, because he obviously has to be painted first. Also, I missed a spot while spraying, but I think you get the picture. This is obviously only the bare bones of the method and much more can be done while painting the smokeplume. I suggest looking at 'jack artworks and photos of steampowered locomotives for inspiration. Oh, and I do realize the smoke coming from a Warjack's furnace would look different in reality. This is strictly rule of cool stuff.

I hope I could help you to get some steam into your hobby.

Cheers

Fenris