High tide
Wide eyed
Dread in monochrome
Denied in spite
Disliked in monochrome
Panic in their eyes
Rise
Dead and monochrome

Well now, that ‘once a month’ thing ain’t quite working out how it should be, but I have been busy, I promise. Check this out.

It turns out that being a lazy bastard and not painting your figures properly (under the pretence that it’s in some way artistic) yields positive results; I’ve cranked out about 75 points of Cryx including two warcasters at a fair old rate of knots.

The basic Mechanithralls follow a very simple process of strategic drybrushing, glazing, spot painting and green ink over grey primer. They’re a bit gash on their own, but the whole mass of them looks quite effective from four feet away.

Asphyxious, on the other hand, has come out looking boss. The idea behind this army is to paint the characters properly (as proof that I can actually paint), starting out with the same method as the grunt troopers and layering up the rest of the way. Asphyxious therefore has the actual colours, the glowy base and hand (I like to think he’s just used Consuming Blight and so the ground’s gone all manky around him), the metalwork done with metallics rather than glaze trickery, and some sort of attention to detail.

I’m not pleased with these two, as it happens; Deneghra seems to have ended up with stubble during her last bout of shading, and Saxon’s face is… I don’t even know what’s going on there. In my defence I’ve always been very hit-and-miss at painting actual people (for some reason humans always give me gyp even if it’s functionally the same as doing an Elf or whatever, just with a different base tone). He might or might not be getting a trip to the Power Spray tub.

The Stalker Murder Squadron looks about right though. There’s four of the leapy, stabby little buggers in there, since one of the lists I’m building towards can’t actually include any other light warjacks and I’ve grown quite fond of slotting one in to other builds as a crafty range finder (I’ll explain later).

The Withershadow Combine. I’m trying to make the character units’ bases look a little distinct from the rest, so they’re all treading on some odds and sods from a 40K basing kit. Tremulus (left) gets the cogwheels ’cause he’s all about intricate plans and stuff (his spell, Puppet Strings, hands out a reroll to its target model). Admonia (centre) gets the grating ’cause she stops you from doing things, like a firegrate stops your carpet from going up in smoke (her spell makes enemy debuffs go away from your troops). Maelvolus, the leader (right) gets a chunk of armour, ’cause the Combine as a whole are capable of ripping a warjack to bits and making a Cryx one out of the wreckage.

The Cankerworm and friend. This spare Coven Witch is proxying a Siren because, um, what else am I going to do with a spare Witch? The Worm is Asphyxious’ masterpiece, so I painted them at the same time and with the same palette of colours. Scuttle scuttle chomp chomp. He dies in every game but that’s probably because he’s quite dangerous in melee and hard to pin down.

So, that’s the painting side of things – now for gameplay. I’ve been pretending to play them in Dark Sphere’s current league – I say pretending because I was on holiday last week (and my arms don’t reach all the way from North Wales to South London) and couldn’t be arsed the week before (the last week of my old job and then a much needed day of blerching before setting off on my hols). You can keep track of my adventures in league play over on the House of Paincakes every Friday (plug plug) and there’s a writeup of my first two games there already.

Next up on the painting table are some extra bodies for the 25 point step of the league: Gerlak Slaughterborn and half a dozen Bloodgorger Trollkin – who says GW has the monopoly on stupid grimdark names for stuff? – plus repainting and rebasing some of my existing Mercenary solos to match the Cryx. I think I’ll do a tutorial post on the Bloodgorgers, so you too can learn how to phone it in like a good ‘un and disguise your lassitude with a decent job on a character piece. I also have to sort out the base edges on the current Cryx – I’ll be trying to replicate the dusty grey effect that some of them have, since bases need to be visible at a distance and I think black edges will make the models look a bit too dull. Oh, and maybe I’ll repaint Saxon Orrick’s face while I’m at it. As things to do whilst unemployed go, it beats the hell out of watching Top Gear.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eimy8u1qvD4]