Wow, almost a month since my last post. My apologies for that. It's not like I haven't done anything though. I have been busy, even with hobby stuff.
What has happened is a little odd though. I got some paint on my Baleful Realmgates, and some of my other Age of Sigmar stuff as well. I am enjoying painting and building those models, I must say. But I have also been playing the
Privateer Press card game called
High Command. It's a drop dead fun card game set in the
Iron Kingdoms. It has a very good mechanic and is boatload of fun. This, of course, got me interested in Warmachine again...
That's when the fun began in earnest. I had a whole bunch of
Convergence of Cyriss models, as well alot of my old
Cryx stuff that was unbuilt. I set out to build up the Convergence stuff, and almost immediately put them back down.
(Writers note: I am not trying to drag Privateer through the mud here, but I am going to point out some real differences between them and GW. If you're a foaming flag-waver for Privateer, this may be hard to read :)
Why put them down? They are horrible. When I was playing warmachine regularly (a few games???) the models were metal and had the level of detail you would expect from metal minis. Not great but acceptable. One of the reasons I liked the new Cyriss was that they were all plastics. A lot of Privateer's models are plastic now. 'This is a great step up', I thought to myself...
Boy was I ever wrong. Their version of plastic is a crappy resin that has terrible detail and a crap ton of mold release on them. The detail pieces are so small as to be flimsy, and there attachment points are virtually non existent. Using super glue on them was chore, at best and what should have been an easy night of model building turned into a frustrating exercise. <sigh>
What's worse is that the battle pack I got had no assembly instructions in them at all. I thought perhaps my pack was just shorted the assembly sheet, no big deal. I would go online to find them. HAH! Nope, they don't put sheets with any of their models.
So, I had this ~$50 battle pack, with lots of parts in bags, but each bag has parts from all the different models in them. The only thing online is an after-the-fact blog post with pictorial assembly guides. What kind of crap is that? Would the 15 cents it took to include a diagram of the parts really cut that deeply into their bottom line?
So, here I am with horrible models that lack detail, come in many tiny parts and have no assembly info. Online, I find out that this is the norm for their models and packs.
I step back and think to myself, maybe I'm just too curmudgeonly. Maybe I need to just knuckle down and do this. After all, I've got 30+ years of modeling under my belt, I can do it.
Then I think... why? Why should I blindly accept mediocrity in exchange for my hard earned cash? In these days of high prices of models and the 'entry cost' for the miniatures hobby is always rising, shouldn't I expect better? I have the right to expect damned good models, with great detail and good instructions inside the box for these prices. The level of detail on these models is quite acceptable, for 1978. This is 2015, I expect, nay, I demand better.
In reading the forums and blogs that are dedicated to Warmahordes, I noticed this certain air of superiority from the modellers who build and convert Warmahordes minis. They seemed to exude (and in some cases state overtly) that this is what separates the 'men from the boys' (Sorry ladies, but all the posts I saw were men...). I say bullcrap to that.
What this does is simply separate those who accept mediocrity from those who do not.
Yes, I built the minis, and I primed them, I knuckled under. But I didn't enjoy it, not like I do when I build some other company's miniatures. I will paint them and I will play warmahordes again. It's a good game, with good people writing it and playing it. I just wish people would not accept less than they should for their money. Someone has to compete with GW, and I thought PP would do that. Unfortunately, after being away from Warmahordes for many years, I don't see that growth. I still see a great, fun game, with alot of involvement and care from the company, but I don't see any real growth. And that makes me a sad panda!
<ahem... page 5 alert>
Come on Privateer, manufacture and produce like you got a pair!!!!
<page 5 off>
Again, I'm not riding them down, They're a great company, with a great game. But they can do better!
So, guess what happens when you swing your arm around and clip the side of your paint booth with your airbrush! Yeah, you guessed it.
Well, with all those new Tau moving walls running around, I thought I would cobble some together for my Age of Sigmar and Warmachine games. Super easy to make, the process is actually in the Warmachine rulebook. You just cut a small piece of insulation foam, I went with 1/2" by 6" and 8". They are, of course, 1" tall. Then I rolled up some tin foil into a ball, to get a nice textured surface. Press that into the foam, then use a ballpoint pen to draw in the 'mortar' lines for the stones. For the base, I just cut some dollar store foam core board into shapes, peeled off the top layer of paper, cut a 1/2" groove in it and removed that foam as well. Then used Elmer's glue to put them together.
