Thursday, July 28, 2011

Hiss of the Chimera

Storm of Magic was released, and I was instantly excited.  If it wasn't the DnD player in me, it was the Warhammer player that wanted monsters that jumped for joy.  I play Empire and High Elves primarily, and both those armies are light on the monsters.  Empire has cannons to combat monsters and HE ride dragons into battle next to Iggles.  But all in all, the Beastmen, Dark Elves, all the Chaos books, and even the undead started to make me a bit jealous.  I wanted to use massive beasts too.

Now I can.  Now I can bring up to a quarter of my army points in monsters!  I can take Giants in my Empire (especially useful if you play Ostermark- famous for having regiments of 'agreeable' giants in their armies), I can use Cockatrices in my High Elves, and I can even use a Dragon!  Anyone that's not excited about this is a Momo.

I went out and bought the Storm of Magic book and the Chimera post-haste.  The wife made the fatal mistake of 'allowing' me to spend the money and I pounced.  I bought the monster and went to work.

The steps are easy.  There are only three and they totally make sense.  GW certainly made this kit with the novice modeller in mind.  The whole model is contained on one sprue.  The advantage is that there's no risk of lost parts or mispacked boxes.  The bad part is that there's no extra bitz.  Usually, GW overfills the boxes with as many extra options and bitz as possible, but I suppose a Chimera is a Chimera. 



Step 1:  The body
Very simple, very few parts, totally intuitive.  The only advice I'd offer here is that you should pin the tail.  It's long and thin and that makes the tail vulnerable to breaking.  I broke it twice before I decided to pin it. 

Step 2:  The wings and such
No worries on this step.  I really like the wings.  I hope GW offers them as bitz the same way as old Dragon wings and Balrog wings.  By this point, you'll notice that you might want to fill the gaps and make the joints less obvious, but the model looks good without it.  I didn't do anything to clean it up and I'm impressed with the results.

Step 3:  The head[s]
Watch out for the tusk-and-tongue assembly in the 'beastly' head.  I almost assembled it upside down, but it felt right the other way.  The two flanking heads were a little difficult to position on there, but plastic glue is malleable and I finally found the 'sweet spots'.  It's all a matter of feeling the model. 

And there ya go.  Slap some primer and paint on that sucker, and you'll have yourself a badass monster to use in Storm of Magic.  Remember, it's only $42 here in America, and a good one costs upwards of 225 points.  Add a couple of Giants, and that's 25% of 2500 point games!  Sensing my plan yet?

To finish, here's my almost-done Chimera.  I recently inheritted my old He-Man tiger toy, and I wanted to copy that on this model.  I don't think it's coming out too bad, but I definitely need to put more work into it. 

Happy Hobbying!

Captain Goldfish at work!!!

I have not been able to keep my focus in the hobby for the last few months.  I haven't been able to complete a single project, if not for a lack of time then certainly for a lack of discipline.  But I have been working on stuff, and rather than not post anything and let y'all get bored with me (most of you probably have and I don't blame ya), I figured I'd post some WIPs and what I've been tinkering on.

Since the release of Storm of Magic, I've been trying to paint up this Chimera.  I based it loosely on the same color scheme as He-Man's tiger mount, but I'm just not 'feelin' it.

So I jumped to the Shaggoth.  Unfortunately, I'm not happy with the way the skin is coming out, so I stopped.  Unfortunately, I haven't really thought about how I want it to look when I'm done...

I decided to start working on some characters.  I pulled out my old Huron Blackheart model and started to work on it.  I got bored.

So I pulled out my Empire army again and decided to change my color scheme.  I had originally chosen Ostermark as my home-province, but I've since changed my mind.  I'm going to paint them all to match Ostland (black and white, with red bull-heads), and I've started to rip the shields off so I can shave them flat.  That turned out to be alot of shields, so I quickly lost my motivation and decided to try something bigger.

While I was working on the characters, I decided to update my BA captain.  I have to start putting chapter insignia and squad markings on that army, and he was the first to get done.  I planned to paint his thunderhammer the same as power weapons in that army, but I got distracted.  Also, I'll show you more details on this guy when I do the blog showcasing my Blood Angels at tourney standard...

That bigger thing that I wanted to work on turned out to be none other than the cursed Stormraven gunship.  I have to get it done, one way or another.  I successfully shaded in the lines and corners and now I've got to do the second basecoat. 

But I decided to drybrush my Dreadknight instead.  Still needing to be washed with blue ink, I almost thought about dumping the other nine models I have to paint into this step.  Sadly, the news that the NFL and PA had settled completely unsettled my painting mojo again and I forgot about this mission.  PS- football is coming back!!!  Thank the Emperor.

Unfortunately, I started to work on my Chaos Sorcerer Lord again.  If it weren't for Storm of Magic, I wouldn't even be thinking about my Warriors of Chaos army.  But this model is really cool and looks like alot of fun to paint.  Let's see how long it is before I flake out on this one...

All these projects, so little time.  No, that's not true.  I have a ton of projects, but I also have all the time in the world to do them.  I just lack discipline.  Every time I start something, hey look!  A castle!


Monday, July 25, 2011

Rumours from someone else

This post comes from Imperius Dominatus and seems to be pretty comprehensive.  Check out the new Sistas and let me know what you think!

Here's the link:
http://www.imperiusdominatus.com/2011/07/news-sisters-of-battle-info.html