Clockwerk Warriors

Teeny Tiny Drukhari

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Thu, 04 Jan 2018 02:20:00 +0000

Teeny tiny pieces!

I can say with some experience that one has never experienced putting together a finicky model until one has attempted to put together a multi-piece 6mm one!

I received my Dark Eldar army 4 days earlier than I'd originally thought so this evening my wife and I retired up to to loft and we put on Crimson Peak while she knit and I set to begin assembling very, very tiny evil space elves.

I started on the Raiders first. Raider transports don't cost any points in the Dark Eldar force, so I figured I should capitalize on them as much as possible, free transports are a tremendous boon!

I ordered the Dark Eldar force from Onslaught miniatures. Branded as the Stygians, these are wonderful sculpts consisting of white metal. There was little flash on the models, so they required only a bare minimum of work prior to assembly.

The models though are 7 pieces including the base! So it takes a little while to put them together.

Raiders in fine form

I'm debating paint schemes. I debate whether or not to go with a traditional Drukhari theme with a deep green base tone and a blood red sail, or to flip the theme and go with a maroon ox blood base with a teal sail. We shall see.

I also debate about the basing for the models. The Raiders are easy enough, I'm using some old Warmaster bases for them, but the infantry I could use either round bases or long rectangle bases. The rectangle bases would provide a maximum frontage for the infantry, though I'll admit that the round bases do look amazing, even if the frontage is considerably smaller.

In the meantime, I absolutely enjoy the sculpts and the look of these models in this scale. I cannot wait to start painting these.

Of Mass Conscription and Plague

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Mon, 01 Jan 2018 17:30:00 +0000

Conscripts going through basic training.

Ugh, I'm sick as a dog lately. I've spent almost the entire holiday season completely nailed by some ugly cold thing and congestion the likes of which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

I'm sick of feeling crappy, so decided to really get into the groove of working on my DZC Shaltari. Today I managed to completely base and put the wash on them. I'm still not completely sure of what my list is going to be for Adepticon, but I've got a good idea. I know that I'll always have 2 units of Pungari (A gift from my mother-in-law, that she jokes that they are miniature mother-in-laws), and likely 2 units of Firstborns. But I also managed to get a Shaltari Spire, Fire Drake, Coyote, Dreamsnare/Leopard, Jaguar, 3 Kukri, 4 Yari, 3 Haven Gates, and 2 Tarantulas all done up.

I really want to do up my Firebirds but I'm having a really hard time finding room for them in my list. I just LOVE how they look; like 2 tailed wasps. We shall see. Either way, it'll give me a chance to get the vast bulk of my Shaltari core finished and I can choose from there.

Firing up the War Forge

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Sun, 31 Dec 2017 20:34:00 +0000

Gates! Pretty happy with how these look on the table.

Lots of activity over the last little while planning for Adepticon. First off, I placed my order for my Dark Eldar for Epic. I'm stupid excited about receiving those!

While I wait for them to come in I settled into painting up my Shaltari, mostly focusing on the ground forces for Dropzone Commander. In the end I decided to stick with a Fall kind of burnt leaves look which was inspired from the Blue Table YouTube video that they posted a few years back. I modified the paint scheme a little bit to add just the tiniest bit of flair but wanted to ensure that I didn't totally lose myself in the details, which I have a habit of doing. Afterall, I do have 3 whole armies to paint up in just under 3 months!

So with that in mind, at the encouragement of my wife (who was likely sick of hearing me agonize over this or that list detail), I started in on the core of the Shaltari stuff that I have that I know that I will be using every game; the Gates.

They painted up quickly too! With just 8 colours and 1 wash, I use four of those colours with my airbrush, which, at a stage, also gives me the opportunity to base some Shaltari DFC ships while I'm waiting for my wash to dry on my ground forces.

4 Eden and 4 Spirit Gates

In the end, in just a few short hours I did manage to pump out 8 gates! 4 Eden and 4 Spirit gates.

I was pretty concerned about using the dullcoat on them. Historically I've had absolutely terrible luck using dullcoat, as I'd talked about in my post in the Spring. This time though I stuck with the tried and true Testors stuff. It's worked like a charm.

Typically I enjoy using the Testors glosscote, which I receive no end of teasing about, but I don't care. I really enjoy that candy gloss, especially on stuff that has a lot of panel lines like the PHR. This time, however, I wanted to really show up the gradients in the shading up from deep red-brown up to a sunny yellow... Like a leaf in the Fall.

Here is the paint scheme for those who are interested:

Paint Scheme:

Airbrush Model Air 71.039 Hull Red

Wash with Dark Wash

Airbrush edging with Model Air 71.038 Medium Brown

Lightly Airbrush edging with Model Air 71.032 Golden Brown

Even lighter airbrush edging with Model Air 71.078 Gold Yellow

Paint the gem and canopies Game Color Electric Blue 72.023

Mix 50/50 Game Color Electric Blue and Model Color 70.951 White Stripe gem

Use Model Color White with a small stripe

Game Color Silver Detail lining

Small gem details Model Color 70.967 Olive Green

Lightly varnish with Testors Clear Coat/Dullcote 1260C

2018 Planning

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 23:46:00 +0000

Started with my Shaltari ground forces today. I decided in the end to go with a burnt umber kind of Fall theme. But first I desperately needed to clean my work space, and there is no time like the end of the year and with three major projects on the horizon.

So messy!

Now with 70% less mess!

Adepticon 2018 Planning

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Wed, 27 Dec 2017 15:52:00 +0000

Man has it been a while. I have been gaming, quite a lot. I bounced from minis to rpgs and back and forth.

But today I want to talk about one of my favourite things that I did last year; going to Adepticon. I registered again and this time I'm going to play in 3 events; The DZC scenario event on Thursday, the Dropfleet Commander tournament on Friday and the Epic Armageddon tournament on Saturday.

I'm excited about these events but I do have a pretty ambitious goal of getting three different armies/fleets painted up for these events in just under 3 months!

This year for DZC and DFC I'm going to have my Shaltari painted up, which will round out both games nicely with 2 factions complete. That will make demoing either game a great deal of fun with fully painted fleets.

I am SUPER excited about playing in the Epic Armageddon tournament! I'm going to play me some Dark Eldar from the Onslaught miniature range. These minis are very modestly priced, gorgeous, and I have to say that the company owner Don is a really nice fellow.

The first on the painting table will likely be my DFC Shaltari as I've already started some of the models and just about everything is assembled for them. They have been a very interesting faction to start playing and a big contrast from what I'm used to with my PHR. I got OWNED last year by a Shaltari fleet when fighting for top table and I'm now curious as to how balanced they are with all of the (welcomed) errata changes.

I've definitely chosen some finesse lists here. Shaltari are like the Commander equivalents of Eldar and Tau combined. Lots of firepower, but relatively weak armour and wicked fast. They use their speed as a way of ensuring their survival. They also have some great mechanics on the ground with teleport technology that should be fun to pull some sneaky tricks.

In the skies the Shaltari feel like playing a wolf pack of submarines. With their very long sensor range and their quite small signatures, they can absolutely use a long arm kiting tactic to pummel the enemy from range while their Voidgates take the cities and objectives.

The Dark Eldar are the pinnacle of finesse in that they are incredibly fast and maneuverable and absolutely deadly in close combat engagements, but they have paper-thin armour and will wither under any concerted fire. I've only played the Eldar in the Epic range, so it should be fun to be able to lean even further into the Eldar finesse philosophy.

Iko Turso DFC Battle Report

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Sun, 30 Jul 2017 23:12:00 +0000

It's been a bit of a while since I've had a chance to update the blog, but I've had a nice period of gaming lately! I met a new group down in Hamilton that I get to game with, which has been excellent. I'll blog about those in a while.

Here I wanted to provide an update on the Iko Turso campaign that James and I have been playing!

We managed to carve out some time to play our first DFC game for the campaign; a cool 800pts.

800pts is a tough list to create! I got slaughtered pretty hard, which I blame squarely on my list building in this game; so far that seems to be a theme in the campaign because I have been taking unusual units and strange combinations. In this particular instance I did not take my beloved Echoes and did away with my bombers. I think that was a massive mistake, because very quickly James was able to pull ahead on the ground game while also owning the air with his Amethysts (this inspired me to build some of my own for my growing Shaltari fleet).

Anyhow, see the video above for the details. So far the campaign is 2 to 0 for Shaltari and both scenarios had me losing squarely because of a lack of attention on list building. In the DZC game I clearly didn't take nearly enough infantry and in the DFC game I ignored the PHR strengths and didn't take anything to handle Voidgates sitting in atmosphere.

Iku-Turso Mission 2: Take the Mines!

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 12:10:00 +0000

MISSION BRIEFING:

It took a lot of time and effort, but we've finally extracted and decrypted the memories on our fallen scientist's limbic implants. There's a lot of missing data, but from what we can piece together, the lab was taking some kind of mineral, or energy source, and using it to build a weapon - something so terrible it could very well tilt the whole war in the Scourge's favour if it is ever completed. We don't yet know what this weapon is, or how far along in the build process the Scourge are, but our scans of the scientist's mind were able to reveal the location of the source of the necessary material: Khonsu, Iku-Turso's own moon.

Our mission is to seize the mining facilities on this moon, and we need to do it quickly. Our sources tell us that the Shaltari already have a head start. They've sent in a scout party and managed to take over one of the defense cannons. That said, we believe the mining facility they've already depleted is They've sent a small fleet but if we get our butts in gear we should be able to get our fleet there in time to stop them. We need to claim these mines and figure out what they are about, and we can't let anyone else get ahold of them until we understand what's going on.

MISSION PARAMETERS:

Army Size: 805 Points

Scenario: Scenario 1: Take & Hold (Pg 76) with all rules as listed including the Variant where the two clusters on the sides are worth double victory points.

Special Rules:

The Shaltari player gets one infantry token on one of the ground defense sectors of the middle cluster.

Every other sector gets a random Scourge token (infantry or armour) on it.

When it comes time to fire defense weapons, the Scourge fires first. Each defense weapon fires its weapons at the closet available target.

When scoring clusters, count the Scourge ground units as if they are a player as well. The Scourge do not get points, but they can prevent players from getting points by control clusters.

Scourge tokens do not ever move, but will participate in combat if there are player units in the same sector.

DFC: After Action Report. 1500pts PHR vs Scourge

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Sun, 09 Jul 2017 16:11:00 +0000

Djinn made for a horrifying alpha strike!

I had a truly excellent game with my buddy Steve on Thursday evening. We met down at the Hamilton MIGS (Military Interests Gaming Society) clubhouse where they have a whole ton of terrain and tables for various scales of wargames.

We played 1500pts a side which is the largest I've played yet and fought a Take and Hold scenario. Scourge is one of my favourite factions to play against. Not only do they have an excellent background, but their playstyle is something that I enjoy very much playing against. The fact that they are supremely fast, built for up-close engagement, and typically are on the opposite end of the tactical spectrum from PHR makes for a very enjoyable battle.

Echoes respond to the right flank threat.

Steve had decided to perform an early game alpha strike by running his 4 strong Djinn frigate squad right up the right flank table overtop of the medium sized city I was positioning 2 Medea towards. It was a devastingly effective tactic and one that I hadn't expected at all, he managed to take them out in a single volley.

What's more is the display of power was such that I would ignore them at my peril; I had to do
something about them.

Since we were playing a scenario that had a Column approach type, it meant that in the early game I had to commit a sizeable degree of my fleet towards dealing with the Djinn problem lest I expose my right flank and encourage him to start harrying more important assets in my fleet.

Thus, I responded with my 4 strong Echoes, an Orpheus troopship as well as my Scipio battlecruiser with Calypso ECM frigate in tow.

Admiral in the Scipio watches enemy right flank attack crumble.

I had some extreme concerns that if I didn't deal with them very quickly that I would end up sacrificing the left side of the battlefield and potentially giving Steve control of 3 of the cities on that side that we were fighting over.

Meanwhile I ran my Pandora frigates up the left side flank in hopes that I could respond to his own troopship as well as the bulk of his fleet that seemed to be deploying on that side. I hid behind a dense debris field to mask my approach, though he did manage to send some bombers on me in the early game.

I got lucky however, I managed to get a full volley of VERY effective burnthrough laser fire onto his troopship and destroy it in one action. This of course painted a HUGE target on their heads as a good portion of Steve's fleet started to focus fire on taking out that threat.

Meanwhile, I did manage to take the right most city with 2 Medeas even though they were getting

Pandoras focus on taking out the Chimera.

pummeled by bombardment fire from Steve's Charybdis frigates. I wasn't overly concerned about the ground game; Steve had taken 4 Gargoyles and a Chimera troopship which I had already taken out. Conversely I had 2 Orpheus troopships and 6 Medeas. That being said, Steve had some seriously concerning firepower in his heavy cruisers and Hydra fleet carriers, so I had to be careful about the orbital game, lest I end up getting destroyed before I was able to get to turn 4 for scoring.

By turn 4 it looked as if I had the game pretty handily. I believe the score was somewhere around 21 for the PHR to 11 for the Scourge.

However, in the bottom end of the game Steve's fleet was able to get into its optimal range and started just wreaking havoc on my fleet. My Scipio battlecruiser and Orpheus troopship were destroyed quite quickly even though my Calypsos were star performers. There is only so much that the Calypsos can protect against. By turn 6 the deadpile on both sides was quite heavy, though I think that Steve had a

Scipio and Shenlong trade blows, much to the Scipio's demise.

considerable advantage in the end. I was able to hold onto the objectives in the end though and by my count the score was 36 for the PHR to 21 for the Scourge. Not a bad victory, though certainly a pyrrhic victory what with all the dead cyborgs floating in space. :)

A great game!

The three things that I learned out of this game about the PHR fleet were:

Calpysos are worth their weight in gold. If you have a heavy investment in any particular assets, definitely find the 37pts to field one to protect them. I had 2, one with the Scipio and another with my 2 Bellerophons. They were absolutely worth the points.
Pandoras: Fielded in 4s they are expensive, yes, costing 200pts for the squad. But good god, they have an absolutely devastating alpha strike.
Scipio: I see its value now. Having a launch capacity of 4 along with 12 light calibre broadsides, it can field a decent degree of threat. In my opinion though, the real advantage of the Scipio is it's speed. Having 10" movement a turn allows for a tremendous increase in possible threat range for my bombers. While I LOVE the Bellerophons, having a movement of 7" means that they are typically relegated to backfield firing and don't have a great capability of repositioning. The Scipio's movement can address both of these issues.

Fleet Parade

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Wed, 05 Jul 2017 03:54:00 +0000

It is a happy thing to reach a milestone when involved in a large painting project. Today I feel as if I've reached a decent milestone.

I now have enough versatility in my painted PHR fleet that I can field a variety of options, including more frigates and different configurations of troop landing ships.

I do feel a bit short on Medeas though, really I do need two more to round out the fleet number to a healthy eight.

1500pt PHR Dropfleet Armada!

I managed to get 2 Calypsos done in 2 days during the work week, so I'm pretty happy with being able to have that progress. With the Scipio that I completed last week, I'm now able to field a 1500pt fleet for the gaming session that I was invited to on Thursday. VERY much looking forward to being able to play!

I'm horrified at the thought of how many damned gravity nullifier panels I have painted in this fleet.

I'm also thinking on whether or not I want to get a pack of the normal Echo corvettes. I am not in love

Close up of the Calypso

with the aesthetic of them, kind of preferring my weird Alien-esque scratch built ones but I'll admit, they are a horrific pain to build and the thought of building another 2 to 8 of them just exhausts me.

What do you guys think? Do you like the weird Echoes or should I be a conformist?

The Scipio is a nice centre piece model, which I'll admit, I feel like I was lacking a little bit in my Adepticon list last Spring.

What are you guys interested in seeing me paint next? I have the following on my plate:

Finish the PHR fleet.
Start the Shaltari fleet.
Start the Shaltari ground forces.
Start the Warhammer 40k Tau.

I'd love to hear your comments.

Thoughts Regarding Fleet Expansion

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 21:12:00 +0000

Scipio Battlecruiser ready for launch.

With my Scipio Battlecruiser finished I am now closing in on the finishing touches of my PHR fleet, which is great. I've hugely enjoyed painting this fleet but am very much looking forward to it being finished and being able to concentrate on some other projects (like my Warhammer 40k Tau and my DFC Shaltari).

I LOVE the look of the Scipio, it's big, nasty and has launch capacity and there is just something about carriers that I truly love. That being said, I think it's fair to say that it is not as good as it's cousin the Leonidas which is 15pts cheaper.

So with the nearing of my fleet's completion I start to look into where I can round out the holes in my fleet. I've started working on getting some Calypsos finished, with the new rules changes to them they are now one of my favourite ships not only from an aesthetic standpoint but also because of what they can do in game.

The only thing that I love better than carrier ships is ECM ships.

After the two Calypsos that I'm working on I will finish my Heracles battleship and I have a full 8 more PHR frigates that I can complete.

So with this in mind, here is what I'm envisioning to finish to complete the fleet in its entirety:

2 Calypso ECM Frigates
1 Heracles Battleship
2 Medea (to add to the current 6 I have)
6 more modular Frigates
1 Agamemnon Battlecruiser
2 Theseus
2 more Echoes

Hmm, well that's 16 more ships, 2 of which have to get scratch built to go with the rest of my Echoes but I think that will be doable.

The two main strategies that I want to be able to use with this flotilla composition is to be able to field fleets that are either traditional in design (with a healthy segment of Capital and support ships) or be able to field a Frigate horde fleet. With no less than 20 Frigates at my availability once the fleet is finished, as well as the Theseus in support, I should be able to field whatever little horde I want.

I'm SUPER excited about acquiring an Agamemnon Battlecruiser once they are available. As much as I do enjoy the special edition Kickstarter variant of the Battlecruisers, the new sculpts of the Battlecruiser class is just gorgeous.

Frigates

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 23:25:00 +0000

Just a quick update.

I managed to finish off the 4 frigates that I was working on for my Dropfleet PHR. This will allow for a nice degree of versatility in my fleet. I have another 10 to whip up, I know that 2 will be Calypso and will likely do up at least 2 more Medeas so I can run a nasty little frigate horde.

Now that I'm talking it out I'll likely need to do the remaining frigates that aren't Medeas in a modular format as well, that way I can field whatever I like. It takes a bit longer but is well worth it in the end.

I'll need to get a few more cruisers at some point to round out the fleet. The troopships are amazing, but if I was to reposition the fleet to be frigate heavy, I think I'd rather have some lighter cruisers
available to me as I fear the troopships would get lit up and nuked in no time. Better to go with something cheaper points wise, I think.

Paint Brushes Maketh the Man

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 02:55:00 +0000

I always enjoy getting new paint brushes. Even if they are the shitty ones.

Actually, I have to say, I do prefer crappy paint brushes to nice ones. The cheaper ones hold an edge just fine, I find and more often than not, even if I have a decent set of brushes I invariably end up cutting the points with an xacto-knife anyhow.

Sure the nice paint brushes are better quality but when you can spend upwards of $30 or more on a brush, do you really want to do anything by way of lining, drybrushing, blending or anything that's going to cause some wear? I don't!

Europa configuration

With the cheaper brushes I don't really care. I can use them for whatever I want and at $2 a brush I'm not worried if they don't last through an entire project.

So I've taken a small detour on my Warhammer models to complete some of the PHR frigates that I have for Dropfleet commander. Since my frigates are at a premium I decided that it would make sense to go ahead and magnetize the weapon types. It's a bit more work on the build time and
painting but well worth the effort.

I got the first frigate done in about 3 hours which I think is fairly respectable considering that 1 frigate is now 3 essentially. :)

Pandora configuration

I'm really not sure yet what kinds of frigates I like, I can see uses for them all. Initially I REALLY loved the Andromedas. Just something about pocket carriers really made me excited and reminded me of my Eve Online days when I'd run around in an Ishkur drone frigate.

The Pandoras are gods though in numbers with their small signature and absolutely deadly burn through laser.

While I dismissed the Europas for having somewhat mediocre broadsides, I did see how they can essentially almost drop a heavy cruiser in a single, well placed volley if fielded in numbers, so we'll need to test those further to see if they continue to perform.

I'm enjoying painting the frigates, mostly because I can bust them out relatively quickly, but I'll be

Andromeda configuration

happy to get back to my Warhammer figures and start chipping away at that new projects.

Oh! Also, I've been using Trello as a way of keeping all of my painting projects on task. I highly recommend using it! I might do a blog post and show some screen shots on how I'm using it soon.

Iku-Turso DZC First Scenario: Battle Report

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 04:16:00 +0000

I'm not great at doing after action reports but this one was a super fun game to play! James and I have been meaning to get together for weeks now to start our Dropzone/Dropfleet Commander campaign and we thought that we would start it off simply with an 800pt scenario for Dropzone Commander.

The idea is that the winner would gain some small advantage in the Dropfleet game that came after this initial kick off!

The battlefield setup. Buildings in the middle and forests
surrounding.

Overall, I was pretty happy with how I played, it really came down to list building in my opinion. My opponent rightly took 3 squadrons of infantry whereas I only took 2 of the Immortals, which are kind of known for withering under fire, or more accurately under falling masonry.

The PHR Force

Pretty quickly on I determined that James' Shaltari were going to occupy and possibly be able to search for one of the scientists long before I would even be able to respond, and I was outnumbered by way of troops. As luck would have it the rampaging Bullhorn ended up knocking out half of the building that James was occupying with an objective so I figured it was a good move to just blow that building up and force James' Shaltari to bunch up and focus on 2 objectives. After all, there was no way I was going to outmaneuver him and it let me, for the most part, ignore the Bullhorn on my right flank and focus on the task at hand.

The Shaltari Force

Unfortunately, it turned out that I did end up blowing up the building that had the PHR scientist in it but in the end I suppose that the scientist would just get resurrected back at base in a new body ala Cylon style.

I was quite happy with my anti-tank stopping power, I did manage to take out his Gharial, however

The Bullhorn enters the field

not before it totally cleared out my Immortal squad in a single blow!

In retrospect I wouldn't have relied so heavily on anti-tank stopping power, traded in my Helios for walk on Phobos instead and cashed in the Janus for another squad of infantry. Live and learn.

I'm a bit more confident at my skills in Dropfleet Commander, I seem to have a knack for naval based wargames, so I'm hoping that I can tie things up in the second game. Either way though, I'm very much looking forward to playing our next mission!

Gharial and Hera get into a pistol fight

The Problem with Army Painter Spray Can Varnish

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Sun, 04 Jun 2017 19:49:00 +0000

Notice the milky varnish on the helmets and gun points.
Fuck you, Army Painter!

Oh man, I'm royally disappointed.

In my last blog post I talked about how rarely I ever use a dullcoat varnish but that in the case of my Tau painting project that maybe I should break tradition because I didn't like how the gloss varnish was taking away from the weathered look of the models.

The truth is I got burned pretty hard using a matte varnish at one point where I spent almost an entire year painting up a Flames of War British desert themed army. If any of you have painted any kind of desert camo you know just how invoved it is to bring a model up to a nice cream colour that isn't ghosted by whatever you have as the underlayer.

Anyhow, I used an Army Painter spray can and almost immediately could see my models starting to fuzz up. In the end the entire army was ruined.

Flash forward about a decade and here I am looking for matte varnishes and I again got myself an Army Painter Matte Varnish thinking that it was surely a fluke last time.

The moment I started spraying I figured something was up and unfortunately the varnish came out all super milky and inconsistent on the models.

While they aren't completely ruined this time, the detailing on the models is very much lost. Truth is that at tabletop level they'll look just fine, but I certainly wouldn't enter them into any painting competitions now and again I find myself wondering why the fuck I went with Army Painter brand again.

All my crisp, clean lines are lost for the most part. So I think it's back to using Testors brand, which has been such a great and consistent brand for me.

Given this setback, I think I'll wait on finishing the rest of the Fire Warrior squad for now and instead work on something fun, like the Stealth Suits.

The part that really pisses me off is Army Painter looks like they've raised their prices on their varnish to $17 Canadian a can! If I'm paying $17 fucking dollars for a can of varnish, I expect some quality!

First Fire Warrior Done!

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Tue, 30 May 2017 22:30:00 +0000

First Fire Warrior fresh from training.

How exciting! A new painting project! As with all painting projects, getting the first model finished takes a hell of a lot of time I find. Figuring out colour schemes, what exactly do you want this or that part of the model to do? It takes some time!

In the end I did a modification of StrikingScorpion82's Tau scheme. In this first test model I followed the majority of his scheme, though I did gloss over the weathering stages quite a bit with the Seraphim Sepia and now I kind of wish I hadn't.

I also did some of the paint chipping, which I think helped bring up some of the details in the lower parts of the model. I liked his scheme because you can bang out quite a few models in a relatively short amount of time while being conscious of attracting the viewer's eye to areas that you want to highlight as focal points. This is perfect for me because I've managed to acquire a decent chunk of a starter army with a nice starter boxed set, a pathfinder set, stealth suits and a firewarrior squad that a buddy of mine was getting rid of!

Another angle of the Fire Warrior.

I really don't want to fall into the trap of playing with unpainted models, so choosing a scheme that looks good but also paints up fast is very important.

For the first time in forever I'm really not sure if I like the glosscote on the model. I think I'll end up
going with a dull or a satin coat. Likely a satin because I wouldn't want the metalics to get lost underneath a dulling varnish.

I also opted to go with a fairly heavy style of base. In my mind I liked the contrast of the model's orange with a swampier looking base full of green mosses and bull rushes.

Anyhow, I will modify the scheme a bit I think, find places where I can speed up the process somewhat and focus in on the areas that will make the models look better. All told though, I'm pretty happy with the look! Let me know what you think in the comments!

Iku-Turso Mission 1: Distress

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Tue, 30 May 2017 21:00:00 +0000

Iku-Turso. Haven't heard of it? Few have. Small, with a few cities, and even fewer defenses, the Scourge took it swiftly, and those UCM fools haven't even taken a second look at attempting to take it back. To be honest, it wasn't even showing up on our starcharts, metaphorically speaking, until today.

We just received a distress signal from some of our scientists, claiming to be captured by the Scourge. This in itself is strange - the Scourge typically turn all captured lifeforms into hosts, who are then just hollowed husks of their former selves. To leave them intact is unheard of. To add to this strangeness, we have also detected Shaltari and UCM messages sourced from the same location on the planet. They're encrypted, and we have yet to decipher, but at this point we are assuming that they are similar distress calls.

We need you to go in and investigate. This could be a trap, and we could have Shaltari or UCM visitors as well, so we need a small team to in, to reduce the risk. Extract our science team if possible. If other teams are there, feel free to "liberate" them as well - any intel we can extract from them will be most useful.

MISSION PARAMETERS:

Army Size: 800 points

Scenario: Targets of Opportunity (Page 55, core rulebook), with the following changes:

There is a base in the middle consisting of 3 buildings. The rest of the area is woods and rocks.
There is one objective in each building - one is a UCM science team, another is a Shaltari science team, and the third is a PHR science team. "Liberating" any and all teams can be helpful, but obviously our own scientists will be a lot more open to share with us what's going on. When an objective is revealed, randomly determine which team you found. Holding or extracting your own faction's science team is worth 1 extra VP.
There is a Bullhorn in the area (Reconquest Phase 2, page 45), who will come on the scene starting in Round 2. He follows the normal rules, but will also destroy any trees it runs through.
Round 6 - The Scourge Respond!
In Round 6, before each activation, a single Scourge unit (randomly a Hunter or a Reaper) will arrive via a random side of the board at full MV value, and attack the closest Shaltari or PHR unit.

"Scourge Respond!" Fine Print:

- Scourge Unit will go after target closest to side it's coming in on.

- Scourge Unit will go minimum distance required, and then fire available weapons at it.

- If no unit in range from that side, will attack building in range. If no building in range, will go full Mv distance towards closest unit, and will go into "overwatch". It will fire once with +2Ac against next available target (whether land or air.)

- Reapers prioritize Air targets, then buildings, then ground targets.

A New Project: Robots of a Different Make

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Sun, 28 May 2017 14:20:00 +0000

Starting with some Fire Warriors. Always a good choice.

It's been a good while since I've updated the blog. I went into a bit of a busy period just after Adepticon having changed employers and we had a garden to build.

Now that the dust has settled though I have a chance to update you all on some things that I'm doing:

Adepticon: It was amazing! I'll definitely aim to go back next year. All told I came in about middle of the pack for both Dropzone Commander and Dropfleet Commander. At one point I was competing on the top table for Dropfleet but got my ass handed to me by a (Ahem) fairly beardy Shaltari list that really focused on gate spam. I met some really truly great people though and had some excellent games! Well worth all of the effort!

In the end I got Best Sportsman in both tournaments! So I'm pretty chuffed about that!
Dropzone/fleet Campaign: My friend James and I have decided to make a little bit of a campaign for ourselves utilizing some of the campaign rules for Dropzone/fleet. We play our first game on Thursday. I'll post separately on this as James has written the first scenario and it's pretty awesome! We're starting off small and then escalating into full scale tiny war!
Robots of a Different Make: I LOVE DZC/DFC but I'll admit, it's pretty hard to find a community of regulars and I miss the hell out of being able to drop into a store and get a pickup game on the fly. After doing quite a bit of reading and hearing some seriously good things about the new 8th Edition coming out for Warhammer 40k I have decided to pull the trigger and get back into the hobby! After quite a bit of deliberation I opted to get back into one of my very favourite factions: The Tau. I LOVED the Tau when they first released and seeing their range of models now has only solidified that for me.

I have started off with the basics: Troops and transports. Since I don't know what the options are going to look like for the Tau going into 8th, I figured that you can't really go wrong with painting up a bunch of troops and Devilfish. One would presumably always want abundant amounts of both! Plus troops can really wear on a person after a while so I figured I would get a head start and work on them in earnest while my enthusiasm is high. That way I can reward myself with the cool robots later.

It's always such an agony picking out colour schemes. In this instance I have opted to do a variation of StrikingScorpion82's scheme. I'm still undecided if I'm going to go with an orange or a turquoise scheme at this point. My original Tau way back in the day were turquoise and looked fantastic but I've also never really used orange as a main colour before and in keeping with my projects over the last few years I've been trying to use colours that I don't usually use.

Dropzone PHR Army Finished!

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Sat, 18 Mar 2017 20:41:00 +0000

1500pt PHR Army for Adepticon

Well it was a bit more down to the wire than I'd initially anticipated but I finally got my PHR Dropzone army done for Adepticon.

I'm pretty happy with it, I did manage to at least get one game in with one of the best players that I've faced since I started playing DZC.

What I enjoy about this list is it has all the toys I want, more or less. 1500pts is a point limit in Dropzone where you still have to make some hard choices in your list; at least that's what I've always felt with the PHR at least. I imagine that Shaltari will show a similar meta when I start painting them.

This list essentially allows for a nice, solid brick of anti-tank assets in the Command squad to jump around, throwing some decent railguns at targets up to 36" away. It also has a strong anti-aircraft core in 3 Phobos to put up a back and mid field anti-air umbrella, and 2 Helios to either go hunting or plug up gaps where they might crop up in the umbrella.

Command Squad: Hera, Guardian with 2 Apollos in escort.

My Mercury Drones, a unit that is often fairly under-appreciated, can provide me with 3 potential
objectives:

Aid my infantry in searching for Objectives or Intel markers.
Provide ancilliary AT support in the Triton's indirect fire Sky Hammer Missiles and,
Scout for my 4 Thors.

The Thors are beautiful. In a group of 4 those Thors can do decent amounts of damage to a building (The Njord that transports my Heras and Apollos can help, if not firing at targets), but also threaten a decent number of tanks, infantry and the like.

Decals on the Hera demark Commander's
and Guardian's Walkers.

While I find the PHR chronically out-matched by other faction's infantry, I do have a decent core of Valkyries, Sirens and Immortals to go grab objectives and bring them home. Obviously the Valks occupy Scout slots in my army list so they can also help scout Thors, through this is a distant secondary objective to finding objectives.

You'll notice that I put some decals on the Commander's Hera and his Guardian companion in order to differentiate between the two.

All in all I'm pretty excited about Adepticon! So soon!

PHR Fleet Finished!

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 21:00:00 +0000

The PHR fleet in its entirety.

Huzzah! I'm quite happy to say that I was able to finish the last bits of my 1250pt Adepticon PHR fleet for the Dropfleet Commander tournament!

I am pretty happy with how quickly the fleet came together. Typically my painting progress is usually fairly slow. While I don't profess to be a terribly good painter by any stretch, I do get lost in the details when I'm painting models of this scale and that can greatly elongate the time it takes to finish a project.

Close up of the Bellerophons and Launch Assets.

Tournaments are a great motivator for me though and, since I'm headed down to the States in a little while, I wanted to make the most of it with a fully painted fleet and army. There have been times (as is the case with many gamers) where I've had to pull some all nighters in order to get an army done in time for a tournament. Given that I was able to get this sizeable project done in the time I had, I can turn my attentions towards rounding out my Dropzone Commander army in a little while.

I wasn't certain how I would enjoy going with the stock colour scheme, but now that they are finished
and I can see them 'in the flesh' I'm quite happy with how they turned out. I was even able to get all of the flight stands and launch assets complete as well.

Enjoy the pictures!

Dropzone Commander Tournament List for Adepticon

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Thu, 16 Feb 2017 22:30:00 +0000

With my Dropfleet list almost finished, I've started to shift my focus over to Dropzone and consider what I want to take for the ground game on the Friday.

Even though everyone (myself included) is focused on Dropfleet lately, Dropzone is in its golden years, in my opinion. There is a healthy amount of units to select for each faction, lots of tactics that people can choose from, and the Critical Locations mechanic has really fleshed out the game from a competitive play aspect.

The original list that I wanted to take wasn't going to work out points wise. I've never had a chance to use the Erebos walker, especially with the new rules they got and anything ECM kind of gets my nerdy engines revved.

But in order to invest those kinds of points in that walker, I felt like I also needed ot have something decent to protect, I knew that I wanted to field a Njord and also make the Odins work viably. In the end though, with 4 Odins, Njord, 2 Erebos and their Neptune the unit was quite expensive. I also wanted Thors because they're fricken sweet, but there was just no way I could cram all of that into 1500pts.

So in the end I opted for some tactical flexibility. I invested in a Hera and a Guardian backed up with 2 Apollo As in a Njord as the main anti-tank block. I also invested in a healthy amount of AA assets in the form of Phobos and Helios; these are always performers for me.

Walk on Thors were a must. 4 Thors can throw out a punishing amount of damage and I know that they will be a focus for anyone with Fast Movers, so I dedicated a walk on Phobos to keep an AA umbrella up for them.

Thors need scouts to designate targets so I ensured that I had 2 Valkyries running around to get eyeballs on targets while they are occupying buildings and causing my opponents to groan.

Valks tend to be the focus of attention though, and I'm asking them to do double duty so I wanted a bit of redundency. I know that people don't like them but I've always had my Mercuries perform quite well for me. Not only can they scout for the Thors, but they offer another Indirect weapon for me to surprise opponents with as well as providing a much desired +1 to check for objectives or a reroll on 1s rolled for Intel. Both of those abilities can really help protect my valuable troops. Since I only have 4 infantry units, all the help they can get will be a good thing.

Anyhow, so this is what I'm thinking for my list. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Echoes Complete

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Sat, 11 Feb 2017 19:50:00 +0000

Echo squad in all its glory.

One of our favourite things to do in my home is to go upstairs into our loft on a cold, wintery day and watch Star Trek: The Next Generation and my wife will knit while I paint. It's wonderful to be able to hang out like that.

So this morning my wife said that she wanted to go upstairs and knit.

I was able to complete the rest of my Echoes this morning which was an unexpected and happy surprise. I even had the chance to complete assembling the rest of the launch assets as well as base the last Medea and 2 Orpheus in the fleet.

Officially I have 2 cruisers and 1 frigate left to complete the fleet, so I'm WAY ahead of time! Which is good because it's looking like I have some painting to do with my Dropzone Commander army for Adepticon.

Since Echoes have the Stealth characteristic I wanted to add
the ECM suites from the Calypsos.

The final touches to the fleet will be to paint the bases as well as the launch assets, I imagine that I should be able to get those done in an evening though.

I figure 9 more evenings will complete this fleet. I'm very happy with the progress.

But as far as my Echoes are concerned I am very happy with how these kitbashed ships turned out. They are exactly what I imagined the corvettes looking like.

Echoes

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 04:25:00 +0000

Test Echo supported by double Bellerophons in the back.

I got a lot done this evening.

First off I've gotten it down that I can complete a heavy cruiser inside of 3 nights of light painting. About 2 hours to black the models and do touch ups to the cream on the hulls. Another 2 to silver and do broad details and a final 2 to touch up details and do some shading.

Which meant I was able to finish another Bellerophon tonight! So I've got 2 painted in my fleet. With 4 cruisers done and 5 frigates, I decided to give myself a bit of a reward and paint up my Echoes.

The normal PHR corvette is a problem for me; it looks for all the world like a derpy dolphin. While it does convey speed and maintain some design principals of the overall PHR theme of sleek lines, gravity nullifiers and a sub-light engine, the execution of it is something that I'll just never field in my fleet.

I wanted something that paid a bit of homage to the kind of Alien-esque design of the PHR fleet.

The fleet grows!

Something that almost looked drone-like, or animal, in a technological kind of way. So I opted for a kitbash for the 4 Echoes I plan on fielding.

It's pretty simple with just 7 parts. First I take the hood of the Andromeda frigate and turn it upside down on top of a Calypso underslung ECM systems. I make sure to turn them backwards however and align them so that they are more or less perpendicular with the hull.

I then knocked off the sensor array on the prow of the Calypso underbelly to create a flat bonding surface where I glue a cruiser prow mass driver to represent the Echo's Medium Calibre Turrets.

On the back end I flatten off the round part of a frigate fin, turn it upside down and nestle it in the natural pocket that forms between the Andromeda canopy and a light cruiser's underpaneling that has been cut in half. That will form the aft of the ship.

They look pretty good, I think!

Bellerophon

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 04:55:00 +0000

The first of my Vanguard ships was completed tonight. The Bellerophon is a key player in the PHR fleet and the current meta is such that having them is practically (in my opinion) pretty essential.

The reason is PHR bombers. They are just so good. Hitting on 2+ and causing criticals on 4+ they have the potential, in numbers, of causing a truly massive amount of damage.

Sure, point defense is an issue, especially considering that it is a defense mechanism that is usually affected by hull damage in other games, but given that you can critical so easily, it's also relatively easy to overcome PD.

When paired with a twin burn through laser on the prow the ship is a damned fine one!

I love carriers, always have. Doesn't matter the genre really. The idea of massive amounts of fighters
and bombers has always been cool to me.

I decided to make the highlighting colour of the gravity nullifiers a bit more white. They look a bit more 'anime' but they pop a whole hell of a lot more.

Anyhow, enjoy!

Thoughts About Designing Fleets

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Sun, 05 Feb 2017 20:48:00 +0000

Medea doing what they do best.

I've been thinking a great deal about designing fleets lately for Dropfleet Commander.

What with the Adepticon tournament coming up soon, I've been working hard to get my fleet painted in time. It's a bit of a challenge, life is hectic right now so getting dedicated hours to paint is always an exercise in extreme scheduling.

That being said, I was at the halway point for my 1250pt fleet which featured a very sweet looking Heracles battleship as my centrepiece model. As beautiful as the Heracles is though, I initially had a pretty hard time justifying the 285pt expenditure in my fleet. The folks on the Hawk forums did manage to convince me to give it a try though and I centred my list around it.

I managed to get a game in yesterday against a Shaltari opponent and I've got to say, I was incredibly underwhelmed by the Heracles' performance.

I started off the game with everything in my favour, to the point where my opponent had all but given up, but I'll admit, I completely shit the bed in the last half and in the end the score was somewhere around 44 for my opponent to 8 for myself.

The list was solid, my critical errors were that I ignored his Diamond class battleship, which waltzed

How to Shit the Bed: The Naval Edition.

right through the centreline of my fleet and gutted everything in its path, including my Heracles.

However, the Heracles' whopping 12" signature radius coupled with the Bloom characteristic on its famed Dark Matter Cannon meant that I was projecting an absolutely eye-blisteringly bright signature at 18"! With Shaltari on the board, that meant that they were firing at the battleship from up to 30" without factoring in movement! As awesome as 22 hull points seem, they wilted under the focused fire of the Shaltari fleet and in the end I felt that, even though my positioning was pretty terrible, the utility behind the Heracles left something to be desired.

The Medea and my Echos have continued to be star performers and while my troopships and Bellerophons did become casualties of war against the Diamond, I have seen what they can do under normal circumstances and have recognized that they are key performers.

So after much though, I have decided to double down on my original list philosophy which is to overwhelm the ground game and present a strong presence in prow mounted Burn Through Lasers.

When their carrier and battleship are sitting above your
hometown, things have gone wrong.

I took out my battleship and have added in 2 more Orpheus; they're SO good with 12 Light Cal broadsides on the port and starboard sides and a BTL on the front. I also had points enough to add an additional Medea.

In all honesty, I do debate whether 4 troopships with 6 Medea is overkill and have wondered if I shouldn't take out a troopship and Medea to find the points to add a 3rd Bella and a Calypso, but I'll stick with this list for now and see how we fair.

Here is what that list looks like now:

--------------------------------------
Task Force B - 1239pts
PHR - 8 launch assets

SR20 Vanguard battlegroup (360pts)
1 x Bellerophon - 180pts - H
1 x Bellerophon - 180pts - H

SR7 Line battlegroup (213pts)
1 x Ganymede - 135pts - M
2 x Medea - 78pts - L

SR7 Line battlegroup (208pts)
1 x Orpheus - 130pts - M
2 x Medea - 78pts - L

SR7 Line battlegroup (190pts)
1 x Orpheus - 130pts - M
2 x Echo - 60pts - L

SR7 Pathfinder battlegroup (190pts)
2 x Echo - 60pts - L
1 x Orpheus - 130pts - M

SR2 Pathfinder battlegroup (78pts)
2 x Medea - 78pts - L
------------- dflist.com -------------

I do have to say though, while I was at the halfway point for painting my fleet, with the additional ships now I have not a small amount of painting to get through now with a half a Bella and his brother, 2 more Orpheus, 4 Echos and a Medea to complete.

Not to mention that I need to look at what my Dropzone Commander army will look like for the ground game tournament... There is some comfort in that I have just a bit shy of 7 weeks before the tournament to get everything done in time.

So long as I keep a decent pace, I should get everything done, so long as I don't get ambitious and put too much to paint on my DZC list...

A Njord/Odin wrecking ball could be fun... <looks at unpainted pile of minis...> Hmmmm...

Dropfleet Commander: PHR Orpheus

clockwerks77@gmail.com (Clockwerks77) — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 02:16:00 +0000

Completed Orpheus.

I've been as sick as a dog lately, but I did manage to spend some time tonight painting another troopship for my Adepticon fleet. This time I painted an Orpheus. A cheaper cousin to the Ganymede, the Orpheus is a very nice troopship because it comes with no less than 12 dice of light broadsides on each side as well as a burn through laser on the prow.

Decent prow weapons are a rarity on the PHR ships, so I capitalize on them where I can. A part of the philosophy behind my fleet is to saturate the opponent with burn through lasers on the prows of my fleet while I overwhelm them with superior launch assets. PHR bombers are the best in the game, hence why I have no less than 2 Bellerophons in the fleet.

I am assuming that the Shaltari will be my most difficult opponents and it is my hope that I'll have enough saturation of either BTLs offset with bombers. The idea is that I'll force my opponent to make one of two difficult choices: Either take the BTL hits directly with the weaker armour saves or choose to take the passive shield saves but then sacrifice their superior point defence dice under waves of bombers.

So where does this troopship fall into that? With the addition of the BTL on the prow as well as the essential needs of bulk landing capabilities, this troopship covers both of those needs quite well. In addition, the broadsides allow me to hunt frigates either in the orbits or possibly in atmosphere.