Eventful

Still quite sombre I'm afraid. I felt a lot of pressure to provide updates to this blog, whilst also feeling a lot of the time like I was talking to myself. On top of some recent things that have happened, this wasn't really helping.

Going forward there wont be any structure to posts, I'll just add something when I feel it's worth writing about.

I'm attending two events in May:
Infinity - Northern open 13 in Leeds May 19th.
Dark Age Nationals at Element Games May 12th.

I'm going to be focused on getting both painted and ready for the events and will share progress here when I have it/feel like I can share. I've set up a Trello board to try and use my time better and plan out the painting required etc.

Dark Age is a game I've admired the miniatures for for a very long time, but my gaming buddy of nearly 3 decades has 'only got room in his life for one skirmish game'. It's also not something my wife is really interested in, and none of the guys at work really need a second game whilst they are getting into Infinity.

Anyway, I decided to do something other than regret never playing this game, even if it is only a few games a year or something. I reached out to the community on Facebook, and there is a decent player base in the UK but the play space is being refurbed at the moment. The UK rep for the game got in touch and told me about the Nationals event in May, and that new players would be welcome, and I wouldn't be the only one with few to no games played before then. It took me a long while to get off the fence and sign up after deliberating transport and model costs. The Event organiser said I would be able to borrow models for the event but I decided to spend some of my recent pay rise backdate pay and grab everything I would need to play, which is hopefully coming before the event from Element games! There are some issues with EU supply of the models i'm told.

I chose the Kukulkani (K3) as my faction after spending a lot of time considering the Prevailers/Forsaken. The models are really nice, and distinct, and some of you may know how much i hate playing human races in fantasy/sci-fi/roleplay. I'm already a human, where is the fun?!
The list I have is below.

Kukulkani Faction Starter
- War Captain
- Honor Guard
- Warrior*3
- Harvester *3
- Ah'Chu'Kuk
Cabrakan
Devoted Priest

I fully intend to expand this force eventually so that I'm not reliant on one powerful model, but playing a few games at the event will help me decide what I would like/need next.

I'm hoping to put my airbrush to good use here but after recent experiences i'm a bit skeptical. I will probably end up buying airbrush dedicated paints at least to rule out my own thinning methods as a problem causer.

The Cabrakan is a large 80mm base model centerpiece, and also handily 200 points which allows me to get to the 750 point requirement a bit more easily with the 500point starter and ironically more cost effective than buying unit boxes of lower point value.

The infinity event came about after some coercing from my friend at work, and I decided 'why the hell not', as it will be a day of games even if I place poorly, I enjoy the game and seeing other peoples models, and it will be a great learning curve.

Below is the list of models I will be using and want to be fully done by the event. There may be some extras done alongside these, but at a lesser priority.

Lastly I have assembled my Orlock gang and have started teaching my friends the rules in preparation for our campaign. I'm also looking forward to the new Forgeworld extras for gangs and will be expanding my crew in the future.

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Wednesday Warzone

This is it, what we've (I've) all been waiting for.
300 points of Infinity. A full game.

We are playing at the house of the chap that is teaching everyone at the moment after work tomorrow, and my friend who recently picked up nomads is joining us as spectator to hopefully learn something :)

We decided on Frontline as a mission, as it's relatively straightforward and kill based, but also has the simple extra of controlling zones further up the board. I ended up with the below list after some feedback and further tweaking:

The second group will be relatively autonomous due to all the orders they are generating between impetuous and irregular, and the other combat group will have a Morat link for order efficiency, allowing the TAG to rambo a bit more.

It was a whole lot of fun. I did a lot of second guessing myself during deployment etc. I ended up deploying my Hungries link in a good position only to have an MSV Nisse sniper staring down at them, I should have picked deployment order better. Needless to say, as smoke couldn't save them they got picked off before being in anyway effective.

Raicho and Dr Worm were MVP by a long way, the former for being an all round tank/damage dealer and the latter for stitching his arms back on! I didn't use the Kurgat at all, which is annoying as he is an expensive order generator, and the link team didn't achieve much due to my lack of ability to utilise cover effectively.

All in all it was a very fun first game, and not as one sided as I anticipated that it might be!
Here's to many more

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Air of Authority

Had some more mixed airbrush results recently. I was working from home on Friday so I had some time after logging off and chose to get as much of my Combined Army as possible undercoated with the blue colour I've chosen to start from.

No matter how thick I had the paint mix, it seemed to not be sticking, and pooling on the miniatures... This of course was after I filled the reservoir with a whole heap of blue, only to realise that it was the wrong blue... I persevered, thinking maybe another coat would do the trick once the first was dry but it didn't seem to help at all.

Later that night I tried to salvage some of the models with a mix of the blue base coat and Lahmian medium to attempt to make the finish a bit more matte.
In the cold light of morning the next day, the salvaged models looked fine. Great news. So did all the others though, so they never needed salvaging in the first place.
There are a number of things I think that went wrong here -
Poor light while airbrushing
Wrong temperature - I had the window open to vent the airbrush booth, maybe too cold
No glasses - They don't fit on my face with the respirator mask

I was completely downtrodden when I packed everything up on Friday night, but seeing the basecoat dried on those models I managed to undercoat makes me feel like I will do this again at some point to get everything undercoated, and some blending on larger models too perhaps, and OSL

We played our weekly Malifaux game on Sunday, and I think Titania finally clicked for me. Supporting Barbaros and Nekima is easy! They both had Fears Given Form which i felt a little bad a bout. At one point poor Cojo had to test for Titania's friendly scheme marker rule, and two lots of fears. He didn't make it...
We played Mark of authority, which was a lot of fun as well. Good game all around, including a couple of new scenery pieces :)

I'm currently planning out 300 points of Morats for a game after work on Wednesday so watch this space!

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Weekend WIP

I finally got around to painting some Infinity stuff. I've been nervous about painting them for a while after chatting with the guy at work who encouraged me back to the game as he is pretty handy with his airbrush. With my experience so far and what turns out to be pretty shaky painting hands I'm not sure I'm going to achieve the same results for a while... I'm happy to use it for mass basecoating though to save time and work from there.

So I got a 'test model' painted. Vanguard hacker who I wouldn't have minded having to strip the paint off as I can't see it being very commonly fielded. I really like the way it has come together, other than wanting to start from a darker grey to highlight up next time.

The backpack, and power nodes on larger models will get the OSL treatment from the airbrush, which I'm going to practice on something else next time I get everything setup :)
I'm not sure if anything else needs doing to the base, like a different colour in the gaps between hexes, but I will be coming back to do some weathering at least.

Which leads me onto the next picture.

These are the two bases for the remotes which I'd never be able to paint once when were based :) I originally had them quite a blue grey which I wanted to shade down, but decided on a contrasting colour for the blue armour, and plumped for the yellowy brown. I've added some scratches and sponged on some dark brown weathering type effects. I will highlight some of the dings and scratches and maybe add some rust or something similar as well :)

I'm looking forward to translating the colour scheme to the larger Morats and adapting it for the Unidrons etc as well. Hoping to get some airbrush time in either on Wednesday evening or at the weekend to get everything blued up

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

The Living Infinite - Payload

I feel like I was quite restrained on Payday:

After a pretty good weekend of assembling and base prep, I got to the below stage with Unidrons ready for magnets, Vanguard weapons team ready to be pinned to bases for detail to be added, and Sogarat, Doctor Worm , and Raicho Pilot all ready to be attache to bases and then detailed.

I did take a look at the Drone box, but there are a lot of components in there and I couldn't face it after cleaning and assembling the rest so they are a project for this week.

Thanks for stopping by

Lofty

The Living Infinite - Drop it like its hot

We played our second Lunchtime session on Tuesday, but this time it was me versus the spectator from last week, who has since gone on to buy the Nomad starter set! I'm obviously such a great opponent, how could anyone resist getting into the game after that :p

The formats were repeated from the previous game with one round of three v three which I lost, and one round of 6 or so guys versus the same. I used the Morat starter set plus a Fraacta drop troop as I had just finished and based it to bring. The drop troop did very well, and I like the model to boot so this was great. I lost heavily to a Morlock rampaging down one side of the board and chain rifling with abandon, and my Morats were lined up along the back of the building just asking to be template weaponed to death :(

I really need to think about deployments, I could have been prone on top of the building that I was hiding behind. I don't really mind for starter games where I tend to play 'in character' for the Morats anyway, but this will really hurt me when I start playing 'real games'.

The game ended with a nice cinematic of my Sogarat shrugging off ARO fire to climb the steps of the objective building, missing all his HMG shots and getting pretty much cut in half by a Brigada with boarding shotgun (he needed 19s to hit me at that range!)

I'm going to keep on reading the Infinity wiki to learn more rules, and I've started ordering the rest of the tokens I want in lieu of payday tomorrow :)

Lastly, and with no small amount of shame I'll admit to dropping my entire box of models (all my assembled Infinity mans that I'd taken to choose from that day) on it's top when I was taking it back upstairs to the study/game room :(
I was very nervous of opening it to check the damage, but more than luckily the only damage was a few chips to basecoats.
The irony though is that the Fraacta that I was so impressed with in the game took a real beating to it's wing/drop pack and this needed snapping off , filing down and pinning...
All's well that ends well I suppose, but I feel beyond stupid!

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

The Living Infinite - Morat Supremacy

We had our first lunchtime games today as a (re)introduction to the game. It was a load of fun, but I forgot to get any photos :(

The first game was just 3 grunts v 3 grunts on the Mototronica scenery from Icestorm. I took the first turn and managed to knock out two Fusiliers, leaving me an easy win on my second turn.

The system & rules started coming back to me quickly, so the second game we did 6v6 using my Morat starter versus 6 PanO guys, which I think is the vanilla starter set for them.

The second game we added an objective which was to control the building in the centre with the most points by the end of the third turn. I chose to take the second turn, and had some helpful tips for altering my deployment so as to use cover and not lose too many models.

I managed to stand my ground, and then in my turn use my Oznat to good effect, as well as my Sogarat soaking some sniper shots with his high Armour and 2 wounds. I got into the habit of making shots with AROs instead of dodging with the Morats high Phys stat which wouldn't be modified... I got a bit carried away/trigger happy but learned a valuable lesson :)

PanO turn two saw a couple of vanguard go down, and the drop troop came down on the side that my Oznat had made a brave advance down and unfortunately subsequently be sniped off with MSV.

the drop troop didn't last long after taking a heavy flamethrower to the face. I have to admit i made some remarkable dice rolls in this game, frequently declaring 'Super Morats!'

I decided to go hell for leather with my Sogarat on my second turn and diced down the lieutenant and a fusilier, leaving me able to claim the objective with my Raktorak and Sogarat. The Sogarat went down to the irregular sniper but was saved by his auto med kit in the last turn as I finished his forces off :)

I had a massive amount of fun, even though I stumbled over the plus/minus to rolls quite a bit, but we are definitely going to play some more intro missions with different troop types, and arrange a 300pt game for after work at some point.

I'm very motivated to get some painting done on these guys now and get some more troops ready for the table.

I also bought some order tokens, and will try and work out what other types of tokens are necessary for the models I have/like/will use and order those too :)

Thanks for stopping by

Lofty

Fresh Air

I promised that I would get some airbrushing done over the break. I tried talking myself out of it for various reasons like the time taken to set it up, finding all the bits and bobs, etc. In the end I managed to see through my own weak excuses and got everything plugged in, sorted and ready to go.

Although it's still a temporary setup, and goes away again after use, the booth & compressor setup easily and without a great deal of fuss to be honest.

The newer of the two airbrushes works just fine with whatever needle/nozzle combo it ended up with, and in general is a more pleasant tool to use than the first cheap brush I bought.
I wanted to at least make a start on the Morats, and after touching up the coat of black primer with VMA Black, I went ahead and primed a mix of VMA black Primer and VMA Grey primer from 45 degrees to help with shading. I mixed this originally for the Titania crew models I wanted to include in this session. I then basecoated the blue I had picked out for some of the armour panels on the Morats and used the rest on the Gorar from the Titania box before the heat cutout on the Compressor stopped the whole thing short.

A couple of learning points from the whole thing. First being that if I have a list of models which I want to get done, with relevant colours, I can be more efficient. The amount of primer I had mixed was more than enough for what I wanted to get painted so I was looking for more models to undercoat in order to not waste it.

The second is that I want to get 'proper' airbrush versions of colours which I will use often through the airbrush. the dilution of blue I used for the Morats seemed fine on them (although it maybe wants a second coat) but when I used it on the Plastic Gorar, it seemed to run off a bit? this is possible due to using flow improver rather than airbrush thinner/water but isn't ideal nonetheless.

All in all, a successful attempt, and promising for future uses. I don't think the airbrush I have is really suitable for anything other than basecoats really, or my use of it isn't at any rate. I want to speak to my Infinity buddy at work when he is back off leave to see what his airbrush is like :)

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

The Living Infinite - Carbon Dated

I've set a date with the guy at work for our first lunchtime intro/refresher game. This means that I need to get some specific models ready by then, which helps me focus rather than doing random bits of random miniatures when I sit at my desk :)

January 4th

I'm pretty much going to be taking the starter set for the first couple of games, with hacker/TAG added later as these each have specific rules to learn in addition to the standard stuff required to play the game.
All that is left to do currently to get them playable is to pin the weapons onto the Vanguard models. Hopefully though, I can get some paint on them before starting to play. I've been thinking alot about a colour scheme, and I think it will look good, close to the stock scheme seen in this picture:

I want to go with the grey and dark blue, but without the red accents. I like the stripe detailing and I'll use Orange for that. As for the glowing orbs on the armour (energy source? no idea really) I'm looking forward to some Airbrush OSL. To be honest, if I can get the grey/blue done with the airbrush, the rest of it should come along poretty quickly :)

I broke apart the Raicho the other night and started scraping out all the olkd superglue from joins and removing mold lines. I will be re-pinning and airbrushing in separate parts, so hopefully the airbrush is easy ebnough to use under the skylight in the new attic study, with the booth hose venting out of there :p

I managed to salvage the old wooden boards from our old makeshift gaming surface, and it'll certainly work as a game table until I have the money/time/motivation to sort something nicer/more permanent.

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

The Living Infinite - Breaking Ground

After speaking to my friend at work about Infinity, I decided it was high time to stop procrastinating and get my models at least based. In the light of some of the newer released models as well, I need to get painting before I can add to my collection (oh hey, TAGs, Avatar and Charontids in time for Xmas?!).

I retried the basing pads I got from Kickstarter, and had a lot more success this time around. I think mainly because the texture is completely flat, unlike the rocky/mountain surface of the last one I tried. I couldn't bring myself to break apart the base I put so much time into for the Sogarat though so he's staying on his lovingly crafted base.
This week I will pin the arms on the grunts, as I don't think it'll make a huge amount if difference to painting them really.

Just a small update for now, planning continues for gaming room, and Bloodbowl team is based now.

Not sure when I will get a chance to prime anything anytime soon as the weather has taken a cold snap here recently, but we have just cleared out the basement a bit so maybe I can get down there at some point...

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

The Living Infinite - Aggression Force

A new blog category!

Yep, you are correct I didn't have enough different things to keep on top of at once :P
I wasn't planning on making any headway into Infinity until later in the year if I'm completely honest, but I posted out of curiosity on the Facebook of our new local games store asking if anyone played Infinity locally, and the person responding from the shop wants to learn how to play so I guess we will be learning together once he has gone and looked at rules/minis :)

I had a look at what I have, and it looks as though I sold all of my 2nd edition miniatures, and have only since bought the new Morat Aggression Force starter. I remember putting a load of effort into the larger base included in the boxed set, for the Sogarat with Feurbach, who I had also pinned together. I glued him to the base ready to be sprayed alongside some other miniatures this weekend just gone but I of course forgot to spray him...

I've decided to go with a modified version of their concept colour scheme, with more dark blue, less grey and maybe orange accents? I had also hoped to be able to airbrush this project but I think more and more that this will never happen.

I'm trying to resist buying any more infinity miniatures until I know for certain that anyone is around to play. I'm still getting a definite 'No' from my regular wargaming buddy :P
If it all works out, I'm hoping for regular Wednesday evening for Infinity games at the shop.

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty