Mike Newman Speaks...

Chaos Dwarfs

Part 5 - The UK Masters and K'daai Destroyer

This week, as its relevant to the time of year I though I would talk a little about the UK Masters.

For those that don't know, every year the top 16 individually ranked tournament players in the country (as ranked by www.rankingshq.com) are invited to attend the UK Masters tournament.

An invite to attend the event is an achievement in itself, with over 900 players competing in tournaments in the UK this past year!

Each tournament is assigned a quantity of rankings points based upon its size (both players and rounds) - with the maximum score being 100 - and you earn a set amount of points depending on how well you do. With your best four tournament scores being counted towards the rankings.

This year you need over 367 out of a possible 400 to make it into the Masters - an average of a top 5 finish at four 60 player 2 day events (the minimum for an event to be worth 100 points).

I started playing Warhammer again at an event on the 16th of October 2011 - and coming into this year I made the decision to set the goal of achieving a place in this years Masters event - not an easy task, as a lot of very good players were going to miss out, and at that point I had very little experience of 8th edition!

But I am very pleased to announce I just slipped in - finishing the year in 16th place! Which obviously I was very pleased about, even if it was a bit anxious waiting for the final placings to be announced. I'll report back on how I, and the Chaos Dwarfs, did early next year.

And finally, as this will be my last blog post, most likely until the new year, I thought we'd leave on a high, and show off my K'daai Destroyer. One of the biggest threats in the Chaos Dwarf army list, and probably one of the most talked about monsters in the Warhammer scene.

With no official models I chose to use Krull from the Banelegions Range (click the images to enlarge)

Most of the red skin colouring was airbrushed on. Using the airbrush to create simple shades and highlights is a great way of  both speeding up painting large monsters, and getting the smooth blends that large areas of flesh require.

From there I used mainly a collection of glazes and washes - thin layers of translucent paint - to create a rich depth of colour. I shaded the skin with both purples and browns, and carried these colours over when shading other areas such as the gold and brown leather - keeping the shading consistent is a good way to tie the different areas of colour together and give the model an more realistic, unified look.

I added an extra layer of highlight to the K'daai's facial features - this is a trick we use often when painting models. Faces are always a focal point, and the area the viewers eye is naturally drawn to, so giving them an extra layer of highlight really makes the model pop!

So until next time, Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year

Infinity Combined Army

I've just finished some CA in an orange and bronze scheme.  I'd like to share them.



I did a glowing monofilament in a turquoise to pop out from the oranges.



Here's a better view of the muddy swamp bases.  I shaded the recesses and pooled gloss in them to give them a puddly finish.  The reeds are made from a decorating brush.



And some good ol' Tamiya Clear for the Aswuang's entrails.

 

Chris "Curis" Webb 

Golem Impressive Miniature Painting Syndicate Month 3

Even hunched the Commissar towered over the Squat Command Squad. Flexing the fingers of his deactivated Power Fist, Commissar Gustav scowled at the enemy advance. Gustav had been reassigned from Imperial Commander Jordan's stable of Guard disciplinarians to an observational post with the Furnace Valley Brotherhood - and what he saw of the Squats' tactics would make for unpleasant reading.  

"Why the scowl Gustav?" asked Colt, one of the squad's veteran troopers. "Your brow isn't hairy enough to pull off that sour expression."  

"I'm troubled we're fighting Astartes Renegades so much these days. It's as though the entire galaxy is populated by Space Marines. And I'm troubled by today's choice of allies - Dark Eldar and Necrons."
   
"We're a pragmatic race Gustav, we do the job with whatever's at hand. Anyway, that's not what we called them in my day." Colt sighed.  "To us they're Eldar Renegades and Chaos Androids."

********

With the Golem Impressive Miniature Painting Syndicate in its third month we set aside an evening for a celebratory parade game. With uneven numbers we drew teams along the Golem/non-Golem lines. Matt Turpin (Blood Angels) and Si Jenkins (Shadow Scorpions) were on Team Collar - look at them with their proper jobs and fancy dress codes.

Team Golem was Chris "Curis" Webb (Squats), Luke "Hand Cool" Jordan (Dark Eldar) and Mike "Turbodanger" Mee (Necrons). You can tell they're commission painters based on the hearty caffeinated drinks.

With uneven numbers team Golem slimmed their 750 lists to 500. We placed six objectives across the field and assigned them random points (1-3) which we decided to leave hidden until the end of the game for maximum excitement. As we've all been painting Fast Attack this month, we decided Fast Attack choices would be scoring as well as Troops.

With Mike Mee in charge, Team Golem elected to set up and go second. The Marines drove a tanky spearhead forward.

But instead of chewing up the Dark Eldar and Squat infantry immediately in front, the Baal picked on the Necron Wraiths on the right flank - to Luke's delight.

Simon looked on unimpressed, taking the game all very seriously.

Mike Mee's Wraiths weathered the storm and were ready to mete out some vengeful destruction.

The Squat gunline blew up its plasma gunner trying to harm the Baal.

But the Wraiths were unharmed and charged the Baal, blowing it up in a way that was meant to look smokey and fiery but just looks orange and fluffy.

Shadow Scorpions reserves arrived with outflank, and the Master Jeridian's personal Rhino proceeded to crush trees and add Friend of the Earth to his long list of enemies.

The Blood Angels counter-counter-charged with their Assault Squad, wanting control of this central objective (blue barrels and green fuel can). But the Squats counter-counter-counter-charged with their Command Squad. And then the Death Company counter-counter-counter-counter-charged and it became a big ruck in the middle of the table. Ahhh, 40K.

Jeridian's Rhino had decided to join in, but unable to disembark and assault he felt very left out (you can see it in the corner in the above photo). Jeridian's Rhino was counter-Rhinoed by the Squat Berserkers and their plethora of special weapons. Melting, burning and shurikening Marines down, they dared the Command Squad to charge into them so they could take some overwatch fire with their arsenal.

Luke's Eldarites mercilessly gunned down Simon's lone Chaplain. This Chaplain has a long history of getting caught out while running around unaccompanied.

Meanwhile, Luke's racks were being slowly mangled by Captain Games Day Captain in the Forest of Colour.

 

Mike Mee was failing Reserve rolls for his Necrons something chronic, and his Lord and Immortals in a Night Scythe had yet to appear. These Jonny-Come-Latelies attempted an eleventh hour push to battle Jeridian's Command Squad off the corpse-strewn barrel objective. A challenge was issued and the opposing commanders duelled atop the tree-crushing Rhino. 

Sadly, the Necron Supreme Commander was killed and his Immortals lost the combat and were mercilessly chased down. The Night Scythe, in hover mode, was then taken out by a lone Death Company. Team Golem were looking thin on the ground with just Chris' Exo-Armour to cause objective problems.

With few models left, Chris used his time to construct a Keytar (half keyboard, half guitar) to intimidate Simon. Unfortunately he got a bit mixed up with the name of this hybrid instrument and labelled it a Keyano (half keyboard, half piano). Simon adopted an ignore strategy.

These Hearthguard wiped out the Angels Tactical Squad on the objective, meaning at the end of seven bloody turns (damn those random game lengths) there were no Fast Attacks and no Troops anywhere on the board, with the exception of a solitary fleeing Shadow Scorpion. No primary objectives for anyone.

Chris was massively proud of his paintjobs so that's why there are loads of photos of them. So with nothing left alive to claim primary objectives it came down to secondary objectives. Team Golem had killed the Shadow Scorpions Chaplain (1), Captain Games Day Captain (1) and had got First Blood with the Baal Predator.

Team Collar had killed Squat Warmaster Curiz (1), Luke's Dark Eldar Warmaster (1), Mike Mee's Necron Warmaster (1) and had also had Master Jeridian's Command Squad in the Golem deployment zone. Victory for Team Collar 4-3. Cue Captain Games Day Captain from Matt and Simon sighing at all the energy and idiocy he's been enduring while trying to play tactically.

Mike Newman Speaks...

Dreadball

Humans

As some of you may be aware we've been working on the Dreadball Kickstarter Teams in the studio recently.

As parter of the Mantic Games Kickstarter for Dreadball, we pledged to paint some gaming standard versions of the teams for customers as a way to help raise funds for the Dreadball project.

This was going to be  alot of models, so to get us in the mood we've been watching the fantastic Friday Night Lights TV series in the studio while painting the models (this may later inspire some Dillon Panthers Dreadball teams)

There was a number of people very interested, who put their money where there mouth was - mainly for versions of the studio colour scheme, in the case of the humans, the silver an blue of the Trontek 29's. We had no less than seven Trontek teams to paint!

Interestingly though a lot of people have requested custom versions of the teams though, following their own colour scheme's, - based mainly off references to real life NFL teams, or comic book super heroes. This is a strange throw back to the original colour concepts our graphics department came up with when we were first approached by Mantic about this project.

And so, here's what we've come up with so far.

Adding inside geek references as the basis for paint jobs is something we really enjoy doing. Not only does it bring us a sense of amusement and self satisfaction, but its a great way to help people relate to a completely new reality! We call these original sparks of inspiration "jump off points" that help lead to final colour schemes. How many "jump off points" can you recognise across the human teams, both concepts and final?

Plus keep your eyes peeled for more as we continue to paint the expanding Dreadball realm - especially with the cool new MVP's

That's all for now

Chaos on the Gridiron

An interesting challenge hit my workbench recently, in the form of a request to create a totally unique Chaos Dwarf Blood Bowl team.

I knew I had to start with Forge World's Infernal Guard; these guys could have been designed for Fantasy Football. A few weapon snips and the core of the team were ready for action:

The Hashut Ironfist Blockers prepare to cage up...

 For the Hobgoblins,  I opted for Greebo's lovely Volmarians, which have plenty of character. Check the Scrooge gloves!

Here come the hobnobs! One of them may even manage to get the ball, eventually.

Next up were the Bull Centaurs. I knew I wanted to use the Infernal Guard for the torsos, but needed suitable bull bodies to complete them. Eventually I settled on Mantic's excellent Half Breeds, which had the advantages of being plastic, and therefore very easy to convert, and also a very good size match. A bit of greenstuffing to create belly guards and rebuild the beards, and these guys were ready to rumble. I was particularly pleased with how the chainmail on the Hthark the Unstoppable came out, as it's something I've never felt quite comfortable sculpting previously.

Hthark the Unstoppable leads the Bull Centaur blitz.

All that was left after that were a couple more stars. Zzharg Madeye was made from another Infernal Guard, with the additional of a Blunderbuss made from a swivel gun from a GW scenery set, modified with plasticard to look appropriately meaty:

Reloaded and ready for a drive. Just the one mind.

Last but not least, Rashnak Backstabber was created with the simple addition of a Skaven sword to represent his poisoned dagger.

So that's those guys put to bed and ready for some competition! I need to make them a display plinth, so I'll pop a full team picture up once that's completed.

For now, keep your balls safe and mind them dirty players.

Mark E

Mike Newman Speaks...

Chaos Dwarfs 

part 4 - Tournaments and Hobgoblins

Hey guys,

This week I wanted to talk briefly about a couple of warhammers tournaments I've been to over the last couple of weekends.

First up was the Bjorn Supremacy at the North West Gaming Centre in Stockport

This was a smaller, more relaxed tournament, using the Swedish Composition Pack - a series of restrictions on building your army, which lead to a wide variety of unusual unit choices and army lists. This event marked the first time the Swedish Pack has been used in the UK for a tournament, and, while a slightly complicated system, it went down well and I fully expect to see more tournaments using it in the future.

To view the restrictions in full go to https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7619038/Swedish%20Comp%20Pack.pdf

Personally I took a variation of a rush Chaos Dwarf, based around a Lord on a Lammasu, 2 Tau'ruks, some Centaurs and a K'daai Destroyer. Had a great time and was very happy to finish 6th - especially as I had to play 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th and 8th places - a tough schedule indeed.

And then last weekend I went to Winter Incursion at the newly re branded Maunsfeld Games

This event was more of a standard UK tournament - and with 56 players, it made it (almost) the last maximum ranking point event of the calender year. I will talk and explain more about that next week, but it made it important, personally, that I came away with a good rest.

And thankfully, after 6 hard fought games, I managed to come away in 1st place. Which obviously I was overjoyed with.

I also managed to pick up Best Painting Nominations at both events - another achievement I was very pleased with.

Onto this weeks unit pics then - and as promised I've got some pics of the Hobgoblins. These were the very last unit I painted for the initially army list I talked about in part 2 of the Chaos Dwarf series. But one I thoroughly enjoyed.

I went for a dark brown shade on the cloth of the Hobgoblins, rather than using the blue/grey I'd used on the Chaos Dwarfs armour - to denote them more as slaves, an make the Blackshard armour on the Dwarfs stand out. I brought the blue/grey colour back in slightly on the armour for the command group, marking them out as separate to the rank and file. This is a good example of how small changes, while sticking within a limited palette range can really add character and emphasis to an army.

 And thats all for this week folk, next week will be the last entry before Christmas, I plan to talk a little about the UK Tournament year just gone and the UK Masters (a tournament of the best UK warhammer tournament players over the past year) - as we find out this week who has qualified. I also plan to celebrate Christmas by showing off my K'daai destroyer.


Till then....