A "small" diversion...

 BATTLTECH!

This was my first miniature game. As I mentioned in my last post, Battletech holds a dear place in my hobby heart. I remember doing odd jobs when I was 12-13 to scrounge the money to buy the starter box:

 Funny story about that. Despite being release in 1985 I first saw this back in 1988 when I was 12 and fell in love with the box art and the description of the game. When I finally had enough cash (I want to say it was $20?) the local store was sold out!! With no online shopping options for a 12 year old in 1988 I instead turned to the only other box they had:

I still have Citytech to this day. But Kickstarter has changed it. In the past year Catalyst Game Labs has "re-released" Battletech and I joined in day 1 of the Kickstarter despite having not played the game in a long, long time. I received the Battletech Kickstarter just over a year ago (I know, grey plastic shame on me!) but decided to wait until the Clan Invasion (Wave 2) came out this year to open it all up and paint it. Here is what I accomplished:

20 Inner Sphere Mechs painted

12 Clan Mechs w/ 2 stands of Elementals.

I am awaiting Wave 2.5 which will basically see my forces double with the addition of all new mechs for both sides! Until then here are some sample pictures of how I painted them all up.

The "core" generic mechs for the Inner Sphere have been painted up as the 8th Lyran Regulars (House Steiner) with 2 lances painted up in Guard colors:

8th Lyran Regular Marauder and Urbanmech

Urbanmech

Marauder

Lyran Donegal Guards Battle Lance

For the Clan side I went with my personal favorite clan - Clan Ghost Bear!

Clan Ghost Bear Heavy Striker Star

I planned to do some insignia work but found a spot online that sells scale decals for all the different units in the Battletech universe so I will be ordering those. Until then I feel this meets my "Play it painted" standard for a few games to reacquaint myself with the rules and system. 

My eyes are also drawn to the Alpha Strike rules for Battletech as it plays in a more "modern" way with open movement and simplified management of your mechs. I will be trying it out for sure! The beauty is the game can be played either way and you don't have to pick one and stick with it - a great idea!

Now that all these mechs are painted I am looking at a massive heap of plastic sprues that are my Ogor Mawtribes army for AoS and I think that may be my next project. As its over 3000 points worth I feel that will qualify the Ogors as my #newyearnewarmy project. So I will start assembly now, in the hopes to start putting some paint to plastic over the Christmas holidays.

Stay tuned for some more Battletech distraction along with more Games Workshop and Star Wars Legion content!

Cheers,

Ca$h

More Star Wars and....live streams?

 Hello again!

It's been a busy October on the painting front, and especially related to all things Star Wars Legion. Matty and I have been getting games in a couple days a week and I have been painting up furiously to get new Imperial units on the table. I have added 3 new units and a smattering of characters to my force and I wanted to update you all with some pictures.

Before I start posting beauty shots, I also wanted to note that we have built a Dice Devils YouTube channel and are starting to try our hand at live streaming our games. This will improve over time as I get better cameras, set ups, overlays etc. so please bear with us while we learn. I have added a direct link to the menu bar across the top. For now the channel has a few of our recent Star Wars Legion games but the plan is to include any/all systems I play - mainly AoS (Age of Sigmar) and 40K along with Legion.

Here are the units I have completed in the past 2 weeks:

Director Krennic

R4 Astromech

Medical Droid

More pictures after the break of the Death Troopers, Imperial Special Forces, etc!

Stegadon Number 2 and some Noise Marines?

 It is done! I finally managed to complete my second Stegadon. This one is built out as the "Engine of the Gods" featuring a Skink Priest and strange Slann magical contraption/portal on top :

 I ended up choosing a more "ancient" look for the stegadon. The red and grey really helped convey the age of this elderly beast. I think it turned out well.

Click on after the break for some more pictures and what I am starting to work on next!

1 done, 1 to go!

 I completed the first of two Stegadons! This one being the base model with Skystreak bow:

I am very pleased with how this came out. Being painted to a "table ready" or in my words "good enough" level I think I am happy to call it done.

Here are some more beauty shots:

I am still trying to figure out the coloring for the next one as its the Engine of the Gods so I feel it should have a more unique coloring for its skin and armor plates. Stick around and I will post some wip shot next week of the next one!

Ca$H

Stegadon - Part 2

 The summer has caught up with me. That is to say, I have been out enjoying as much time as possible up at our trailer on the lake, so painting has slide some. Couple that with my airbrush breaking (irreparable) and it has impacted the amount of hobby I have achieved in the last month. I have managed to get some things done though!

First up I finished the "crew" for both the regular stegadon and the Engine of the Gods version:

They follow the same paint scheme I've been using for regular, champion and priest skinks - yellow, blue and orange respectively. I guess I'm still caught in the old school lore of specific spawning pools growing specific role based skinks. 

I do plan to buy a new Iwata airbrush soon, but I did some digging and found an old Paasche airbrush I bought at least 8+ years ago and NEVER used! It's an entry level but great quality so I figured "Why not?" and busted it out to start on the first stegadon:

It offers surprisingly great control and fine spray lines! I know the picture isn't the best but there was literally zero over spray! I didn't mask any of the areas an was able to get the base colors down just fine! It's easy to clean, but I am not a fan of the under mount reservoir. I prefer the top down models. This will get me through for now and allow some time to really research and choose the best new airbrush for my needs. 

I plan to keep working on this purple/green stegadon over the next week or two and finish it up before moving on to the next one. This will be the regular skystreak bow stegadon. I'm excited get one on the table soon! 

-Ca$h

Stegadons Work in Progress

Good day all!

This will be a short update on the pair of Stegadons I am working on. It has been a busy July and with the great weather I haven't been spending much time working on models in my basement. I have build two Stegadons. One is the base behemoth with the Skystreak Bow and the other is the Engine of the Gods.

I have focused on getting the skinks done first as my old, well used, and cheap airbrush finally packed it in so I want to wait until I pick up a new one for the beasts themselves. So here is where I am:

I have added a small piece of paper clip to one foot on each skink to allow me to pin them down to the Stegadon howdah once they are painted. This also allows me to pin them to small pieces of trim to spray and paint them in batches. I will complete these skinks this week, and move on to the Stegadons and howdahs next week.

Here is the a picture of the zenithal primed Stegadons awaiting the airbrush:

You can expect an update early next week with the completed skink "crew" along with any more work I manage to get done on the Stegadons themselves.

Work on the army is slowing down over summer as I expected it would, but I will keep getting small achievable steps completed and the army will continue to grow. I really am still enjoying the building and painting of this army. I am also excited for the resumption of in-person gaming and having many many games to learn how to play these guys effectively!

Thanks for following my progress - stay cool out there!

-Ca$h

Sneaky Skinks!

Hi all,

This is just a quick update as I have been busy on a short family vacation and work. I have completed a small unit of Chameleon Skinks. These came in the large lot I picked up and had base coats already done so I just finished the job - highlights, shading, touch-ups and basing etc:

More pictures after the break!

Salamanders

Hi again! This is just a quick update as to what I accomplished this past week. I assembled and painted up 3 Hunting Packs of Salamanders. I even got to test them out in a quick 500pt game against a buddy (he was playing Stormcast) and they performed pretty well. They managed to shoot and charge a unit of 5 Sequitors and wiped them off the board.

The next round they died very quickly to his Celestar Ballista. It fired 4 shots (Rapid fire 18") and he got lucky - all 4 hit, doing 4D6 wounds! Suffice to say that -2 rend and so many hits dropped by Salamander unit down to 2 models, that he then charged and removed off the table hah! Not really a fair trade in points but for the first showing of the Salamanders I can't complain. Hopefully we will get a chance to video the next small game and I can start uploading more content that way too.

Here are models I completed this week:

Next weeks plans : Small unit of Chameleon Skinks and 2 Stegadons!

Until then,

Ca$h

Reinforcements arrive!

With the quick side project of re-basing and touching up my old Empire force to make it into a Cities of Sigmar completed, I have shifted back to working on my Seraphon. Of note I completed the first of 3 Slann I will eventually paint. For now, with the smaller games we play, 1 Slann is more then enough! Here is a nice picture of him :

I also picked up two huge lots of models from a friend who is moving and needed to decrease his piles of plastic shame in his closets. Seraphon and Ogor Mawtribes!


Skip on after the break for some more pics and a list of what I got:

Thunder bolt of lightning...

It's very very frightening that there are now Stormcast Eternals in the house! The kids decided on that faction and I committed to assist with the assembly and some of the painting. Looking through the battletome they decided on the purple and gold of the Lions of Sigmar:

So with this paint scheme chosen we set to work to put together a simple step by step for the kids to follow to achieve the desired look. I modified the belt/skirt area to make it black (to break up the gold better) and here is where we stand with 10 Liberators completed to a basic tabletop standard :

Click on past the break for a couple more pictures and our planned next steps!

An unexpected pause...

As many may already know, Games Workshop closed down their warehouses, web stores and factories due to Covid-19. This impacted my next purchases for my Seraphon as I wanted to pick up a Stegadon and Slann. With all the local (and some not so local) sold out and not able to restock, I have started to shift focus until I can order the kits I want. So what to work on next? Well, I started by following a tutorial on Lustria Online about how to kit bash an Astrolith Bearer out of the eft over parts from a Seraphon Start Collecting box. This is what I ended up with :

More pictures after the break and a link to the tutorial!!

First Blood and a Skink Starpriest

The first battle for the new Seraphon between two tenacious commanders. My kids! At 11 and 7, they are primed to enjoy the game now and honestly they are excited to try their wits against each other. Both have obviously been exposed to my longstanding table top gaming hobby so it comes as no surprise that as the self isolation and social distancing continue, they are more keen to try different things with their time. I am more than happy to oblige ;)

But before we get to the game, I did finish another model this week :

 Skink Starpriest

More after the break!

Realmshaper Engine discovered in the realms!

The new Seraphon Realmshaper Engine terrain piece is so interesting. Feeding off the story of how the "Old Ones" left temples behind when they departed the now dead Old World, the new Seraphon army terrain piece really ties the Lizard Old World lore into the updated Age of Sigmar lore for the Seraphon - and it has neat rules to boot!

Coming in at 0 points, it's a "why not" addition to my army. By that I mean I can choose to play with it in some lists, and leave it out in others as my fancy takes me. It's the first time I've bought a model for an army that literally has zero points cost. It doesn't directly help me expand my army into higher point ranges but it definitely adds a coolness factor - both to the army and to any table I play on.

So without further ado - here it is:

My thoughts in the build and rules after the break!

Return of the Carnosaur

You read it right - another Carnosaur for my burgeoning Seraphon army! This time around however, it features a Saurus Scar-Veteran instead of the Oldblood on the first one. I approached it the same way, using bright colors through my airbrush to get its foundation colors started. Here is an in-progress shot of the initial coloring:

Click on in to see some more pictures of this mighty beast all finished!

From the skies.....oh, and giant solar lasers on lizards

The progress with this army has been astounding. By focusing even 30 minutes a day on something related to the force (building, basing, priming, painting etc) I have witnessed it grow steadily over the past couple months. It helps that we are still in COVID-19 lock down, but really I had already built the habit as a "new years goal" if you will and it's really bearing fruit.

First up are my new Terradons swooping in to drop their deadly cargo:

I again turned to my airbrush and used it  to pretty decent effect in blending the Terradons from red to yellow. I am still undiminished in my enjoyment of painting bright vibrant colors. Here are some more close up shots of the Terradons:

Pandemic update #1 - Roar!

Pandemic. Never thought I'd lead with that but we are all experiencing crazy times. I want to wish anyone reading this the best health, and I hope you and your family/loved ones are safe and in good health. The one upside of this "social distancing" and "stay home/stay safe" shutdown means I am working from home, and it affording me more time to focus on hobby time. This is significant for me as I have always turned to hobbies to reduce stress, clear my head and lower overall anxiety. There's always a silver lining....sometimes you just have to look harder for it.

With all that said, here is were I am with the Seraphon army:

Completed and Painted:

15 Saurus Knights with Lances
20 Saurus Warriors (23 total with 2nd full command) with clubs and shields
20 Skinks with Boltspitters and shields
1 Skink Priest
1 Skink Starpriest
1 Scar-Veteran on Cold One
1 Oldblood on Carnosaur


Did you notice the last entry?

Here he is underway - first model to get the airbrush treatment:

 I didn't base him initially so I could easily get to his underside and legs.

Sponge is for cleaning the airbrush tip/nozzle while spraying to prevent buildup - game changer for preventing spatter!

The Knights who say....

I got nothing.... I tried to come up with a Monty Python/Seraphon pun but it went nowhere. Needless to say I got my knights completed! All 15, painted as 3 units of 5 with full command. I also completed a Scar-Veteran on Cold One! So with no delay, here are some pics:

 Scar Veteran

Returning to where it all began...

Well, not exactly. My first war game was Battletech. Bought my first Ral Partha pewter mechs in the late '80s when they looked like this :

I have kickstarted the recent reboot of Battletech along with Battletech: Clan Invasion by Catalyst Games (I will cover more on that later) but this isn't exactly the "roots" I am speaking about. The first war game I really got into, played in stores, and collected and built many armies for was.......


Wait for it.....