10.04.08
Posted in Fantasy, Uncategorized
at 1:09 pm
I chose a dwarf engineer as he got to play with “things” and overall, I felt that a Dwarf had a good chance of surviving most combats (I was wrong on this, but that’s the nature of this kind of game.)
The boot up screens for the game are plentiful as they hide a long loading process. Take the time to watch the cinematics as they are nicely done. Once you get into the game, things work smoothly if your machine is up to more than the minimum snuff. I have a 3.2 Ghz proceser and 2 Gigs of RAM and am running Media Center XP 2005 (my machine is about 6 years old and seems sluggish now). Even so, I get through the game well and the only issues I have are when there are multiple people in combats. I have been using a trackball to play the game as a mouse causes me some pain in my right hand.
I have never played an online massive game like this, so I am coming at this from the standpoint of a complete newb.
Most of the game I have played solo. I have ocasionally gone off and participated in some of the realm versus realm combats, especially the Mourkain Temple one. In this scenario, two groups fight over the control of an artifact which can be picked up and moved back to a home area. The temple lies on a hill surrounded by swamps and rocky areas and the players start on high steep hills opposite each other. My experience has been that there are three areas where combat takes place on the board — on the flat, granite areas in front of the temple, on a hill in front of the Destruction entry area, and in the swamp in front of the Order area.
I have found that I am outclassed by most of the characters in the scenario, especially in the first few times at it. I am now level 14 and am the lowest of the levels of the participants. I find that my best tactic is to put my little gun turret in place, move away from it a good distance, and then start sniping with my rifle. When the fighting moves back to the swamp, I can snipe from the ridge in front of the deployment area and not get pummeled by hand to hand fighters as only wizards and archers can reachme.
All in all, I think the game flows well and is loyal to the Warhammer milieu. There is a lot to explore and do and I have spent *way* too much time on already. I don’t watch much TV any more, nor do I attend many movies, so the monthly payment of $14.95 is not a drain on the entertainment budget. I don’t know how higher levels play so I can’t say how long I’ll continue to be involved, but it will be good for another several months and I’ve gotten more gaming out of it than other computer games I have purchased. Highly Recommended!
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08.12.07
Posted in Fantasy
at 7:17 pm
This weekend I have been working on Dwarves. I have done my BSB, a unit standard, and a test job of one of the warriors. The BSB is straight from the Skull Pass set. I am using him as the BSB because he is different and he is cheap!
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Hmmm, I seem to have only taken a
single shot of this one, how awkward!
I’ll just add two shots of the dwarf warrior
from the Skull Pass set. |
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The unit standard is from the Dwarf Battalion box set. I chose to use a simple flag with the rune that stands for “W”. I’ll use the “I” and “L” for the Ironbreakers and Longbeards. I’ve color coded the units and the common color between them will be the GW foundation color.
Here’s a group shot.
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07.18.07
Posted in Fantasy
at 9:07 am
Now finished… the Bolt Thrower with crew! I finished the engineer last night and took a group photo this morning!
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07.17.07
Posted in Fantasy
at 12:43 pm
Last night I finished my cannon crew with the exception of two figures – the gunner for this cannon and the Engineer for my Bolt Thrower – I hope to finish them tonight. I have finished the CD In the Shadow of the Hegemon and have started In the Shadow of the Giant. Both have so far been interesting materials for keeping me painting.
I placed these on magnetic bases so they would travel easier. Since I had some room on the cannon base, I added the optical surveying device and the shells. Although the crewmen are probably pretty interchangeable between the Cannon and Organ Gun, I figured they’d look better crewing this piece.
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07.15.07
Posted in Fantasy
at 4:41 pm
Over the past couple of days I have had my painting mojo flowing again. I was listening to Orson Scott Card’s books on tape and maybe that helped. I now have my Bolt Thrower and crew ready for deployment.
I am relatively pleased with my camera and lighting setup. The only thing I *don’t* like is the poor depth of field I am getting. This kind of photography requires long exposure times and large f-stops and I can’t seem to get it set up on my Nikon. Back to the manual, I guess!
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07.13.07
Posted in Fantasy
at 8:37 am
This next figure is a West Wind Dwarf I just finished up this AM. I have not used any Dullcote on it to dull the protective sheen, but I figured I’d do that when I had more to do at once.
This gentleman will be the champion for my unit of Longbeards which the general will accompany, thus the gold and green to match the general shown below. I like the West Wind dwarves, 10 metal figures in a box, *every* pose is different!
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07.11.07
Posted in Fantasy
at 5:21 am
I switched back to the fine setting on my camera so I got (what I consider to be) better pictures of the dwarf.
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07.10.07
Posted in Fantasy
at 3:15 pm
As most who know me realize, I tend to have a number of projects going a one time. My latest, and thankfully, smallest, is my dwarf army for WHFB. The groups I play in don’t care what miniatures you use for your armies. If you think it’s cool and it is recognizable for what it is, then more power to you. I have just finished my Dwarf King today.
This is a Reaper miniature sculpted by Werner Klocke … aka “The Man”. I like his sculpting and what he does. I have three other characters in the army and two of them will come from the Warlord line. The other will be a GW plastic figure as I need a Battle Standard Bearer. One dwarf warrior unit will be Dwarf Wars figures by West Wind. The others likely a mix of Reaper grunts, Heartbreaker (now that’s an old line….) and GW. The army will be 2250 so that I can use it in Indy tournaments and I hope to have it finished by the Lonewolf in August.
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05.06.07
Posted in Fantasy
at 1:12 pm
Huzzah! The figure is finished! I took today while I was editing and saving some videos to finish off what I had left. I think I psyched myself out with how difficult it was going to be to do the face and horns, but once I got started, all went smoothly. Quit a surprise, actually, as anyone who has ever done this understands. No paint spills, no sticky spots, no inks running, just easy painting. This picture is the best one I have of the face. I took some time to try and highlight the face with several different layers. The eyes were outlined in black, then had the whites put in using … uh… grey, and then I dotted the eye with black paint. I had to redo the left eye as it wasn’t looking the same way as the right!
The second photo above shows another view of the eyes and a better view of the facial features. You can also see the serpent’s features better.
The photos above were taken with different camera settings. I used a higher resolution and did not modify the pictures other than to crop them. If you have any comments on which set looks better, I’d like to hear them….
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04.28.07
Posted in Fantasy, Terrain
at 6:00 pm
Here’s another couple of pieces I built recently. Both come from a resin terrain kit I purchased 6 or so years ago from Crusader29 (now out of business). This kit has a number of single and double story wall sections that can be combined in a number of ways to create complete or destroyed buildings. I have assembled five buildings from the kit and am showing two here (the other three are sitting on the painting table.)
The first is a two story ruin mounted on Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF). I generally try to put all of my terrain pieces on MDF as it makes them more sturdy and customizable. The floor on the first story is cut up cardboard square, the second is styrene sheeting gridded in 1/4 inch squares available from the hobby shop.
The second piece uses sections that were initially twelve inches long and as high as shown in the picture. I broke the segments up so they would fit on a smaller base. This is roughly nine by six inches. The floor is parakeet gravel available from discount stores.
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I chose a dwarf engineer as he got to play with “things” and overall, I felt that a Dwarf had a good chance of surviving most combats (I was wrong on this, but that’s the nature of this kind of game.)
