Runewars Painting 2 - Infantry Priming

Now I posted a little while ago about painting the two main creatures out of the Runewars 2-player boxed set - the Rune Golem and the Carrion Lancer. Now painting centerpiece models is one thing -what about the rank and file infantry?

The term "zenithal shading", or highlighting, or pre-shading (with zenithal in front of any of those) is a term that's used a lot at the moment, but it's not a new technique. Essentially this is a way of adding depth and definition to a mini before you start painting, and it can be a great way of either speeding up your painting or helping you along the way. I won't go into exhaustive detail here (there are plenty of tutorials and explanations on the 'net), but essentially all this does is prime your models so that undersurfaces are dark, and highlights light, as here:

This group of reanimates looks nice and bright, but that's because we're looking at them from slightly above - if we look at one from slightly underneath...

Here you can see the shade on the undersides, which presumes a light source coming from somewhere above the model. Here are the spearmen treated in the same way:

That's fine, but spray doesn't act completely like light, and I also like to wash the minis to provide a really strong contrast before painting, like so;

I think you can see both the gradation in shading, plus the high contrast provided by the wash - this makes it much easier (in my opinion) to paint the mini as we go along, and get a feel for how the highlights and shading will work later.

Let's show this on a larger model - the horsemen. Firstly, let's have a look at the zenithal pre-shading using just the primer:

Then let's see one washed as well:

Now some people don't see the point in this, as you're going to be painting over this anyway. For me, the trick going forward is using thin coats, which allows this effect to show through, and then this guides the application of highlights, which makes the process more simple and gives you more time to think about the wet-blending on the model rather than where to put your paint. Next I'll be putting paint down on these minis to get them ready for the tabletop....until then...

Fanstorm Armada - Developing the Game

Spartan are working on FA v3.0 right now, and I could be wrong, but I'm not liking the sound of what I'm hearing in terms of rumours and rumblings. Derek Sinclair, the rules designer who's primarily worked on DW, Planetfall and latterly Halo, is getting in on FA. I can't say this gives me a rosy feel inside. Derek was not involved in the development of the v1 FA, nor v2.0. I don't know about v1.5, but that was a clusterf*ck of copy/paste errors from DW v2 which was written at the same time.

Planetfall for me was a catalogue of how NOT to develop a game, with it evolving faster than The Thing on steroids in front of your eyes. I believe in a living rulebook, but not one where what I buy is invalid by the time it hits the shelves, or by the time the ink has finished drying on the 48 pages of PDF downloads that came out with alarming regularity - to say nothing of the shocking lack of proof reading, leading to more errors and re-writes than most Hollywood C-list films. Halo was much better produced, but I subscribe that this is down to 343s involvement, and not so much Spartan's change of spots. I find HFB a bit bland and far too dominated by boarding and Spartans, but that's understandable because of the Halo franchise - it's still not what I want to see come into FA.

"OK Alex" I hear you say "So you don't like what's happening at SG. So what? Are you just going to sit on your behind and moan about it? You're so negative....blah de blah de blah..." (ok, maybe not that last bit, but I wanted to cover myself!)

Well, I haven't been idle in this regard. Myself and a set of designers from across the world (now named "TheoryMachine") have embarked upon the project of Fanstorm Armada, to continue where the FFG left off, and continue the development of FA in a direction that preserves what we love about the game, strengthens those elements and tones down the ones we don't. As we're not a company and aren't in this to make money, suggestions and alterations from the community are more than welcome, and everything we suggest will be published for free distribution. We don't want to infringe upon what SG is doing, and we're not going after any IP, we're just fans of the game making suggestions about how to make FA a better game.

In a prior post, I mentioned movement. This is one of the largest chunks of time in FA - understanding that FA is a game of strategic and tactical manoeuvring is one of the greatest understandings that any player can discover about the game, and as such it should be preserved in the greater part, but speeded up. I discussed how to do this before, and mentioned some templates. Here is a PDF of those that forum member Ryjak made;

FA Movement Templates PDF

That's great, but we all want better gaming aids, right? As I have a 3D printer, this was something I figured I could cook up, so 15 minutes on Tinkercad and I produced the STL file. Printed at 0.2mm with 15% infill took just under an hour, and here are the finished articles;

They could do with a bit of tweaking on the print settings, and I might cut the longer ones down to 3" as well, to make them easier to get into tight spots (which is one of the issues with the SG 45 degree template). Here they are in use - I've set up a common situation in FA - the knife fight. In this example, the Dindrenzi Dreadnought really doesn't want to be so close, but it's decided to go for it. 

It has a 2" Turn Limit, so we use the Turn Rate 3 template.

So you can see two advantages of this method here straight away - firstly, the template is narrow enough for you to get it into tight spaces - you'll see that in the other pictures too. Secondly, you get an immediate idea of what is possible - where the model is going to end up, which reduces moving and then "backing up", which is one of the big slow-downs in many games. This also has a secondary thought-process speed-up, since you're concentrating more on actions rather than logistics of movement.

So we've moved, and can nicely line up the two Ba'kash cruisers in our dual rail cannon sights. Now let's look at the Ba'kash move (assuming they survive!)

Here the Ba'kash cruiser turn (using the Turn Rate 2 marker) would cause problems with model placement, and not be good for a port broadside shot, so instead the model moves 1" forewards...

and we can see now that a turn will clear the model nicely, and set us up for a nice broadside of drive-by boarding assault...

One more inch of turn...

...and we're aligned.

With 4" moved, there's plenty left to cruise alongside, probably setting the scene for a rear-arc shot next turn!

I hope you can see that this is pretty liberating for FA in a couple of ways, yet preserves a VERY important part of the game, since movement is a central and critical part of Firestorm's feel. Given that Spartan Derek isn't even considering movement mechanics yet, I'll be adopting this movement system and then moving onto other areas first - after all, you don't build a house and THEN work on the foundations, do you?

Runewars Painting 1 - Rune Golem and Carrion Lancer

In a prior blog post I mentioned picking up Runewars at Salute 2017, and pledged not to play the game until I'd painted the minis. Inspired by Sorastro's painting guides (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmGwuoxuJ4U & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvtB1z1-cH0), I set about painting the two largest minis in the box.

The Rune Golem I painted pretty much exactly as the guide, just to adapt my painting style and learn from Sorastro's technique. I'd highly recommend his videos, they're very east to follow and produce great results. Here the work in progress:

Here is the finished Rune Golem - Overall I'm pretty pleased with the result:

The Carrion Lancer is a bit more involved - I also wanted to adapt some of the colours from Sorastro's work, since I wanted a cooler palette for my army, using steel and purple as the main colours, and I wanted the maw and boils to be more "realistic" - or perhaps "organic" - than the bright green used in Sorastro's work. In any case, I started exactly as per his guide;

Here you can see I was using a blue for the cloth, which I decided to change to purple as I wanted to adapt the blue for my humans - I thought it would tie them in with the Rune Golem well and I didn't really want too much of a Spartan theme for my army as Sorastro had.

So here you can see the subtle blue-green on the carapace, the washes and initial highlights, plus the colour change from the nice bright blue to a more dark, sinister undead purple. I also based the maw and rear (rectum?) in a flesh washed with red. Next was to build up the highlights across the model:

Here most of the highlights are done, with just a few to go on the lance, reigns etc. I also have the base to do, the varnish on the carapace and maw and a few other bits and bobs. They didn't take long to do, just quite a bit of time between steps (for the base to dry etc). Here's the finished Carrion Lancer:

I really enjoyed painting these models - they take paint very well, they have great detail and  are very striking models to put down on the table. I'm looking forward to the challenge of the rest of the box now!

Fanstorm Aramada - The Privateer Gunship

Hello people!

Well, Adepticon came and went and proved to be a bit of a damp squib as far as SG and Firestorm goes - they showed some stuff, but not everything that was planned or promised (nothing for you poor Planetfall gamers out there, for instance). The FA tournament had 17 players from a planned cap of 32, which also seems low, and one of our intrepid Brit gamers was pretty disappointed in the experience - which doesn't bode well after travelling thousands of miles for the event.

One of the highlights were the STL (which look great) but also the Corsairs, Pathogen and the first Leviathan. This should have been a bit of a coup for SG, but somehow it felt lacklustre and poorly executed. From all the ships that already have stats and no models, we also got a new ship - something SG often do - in this case a Gunship for the Corsairs. Now apart from the fact that the Corsairs don't really need a Gunship (the cruisers are flexible enough to take that kind of role if needed), myself and the TheoryMachine group (our independent name for members of the old FFG) thought it would be fun to stat this for v2.0 as we would have done previously.

So here's what we did;

Corsairs Privateer Gunship

Now this is the ship we would have created having been landed with the model shown - which is what happened with some ships, but in general we came up with ships factions needed, and then they'd be sculpted. So in the case of the Marauders, if we were looking for any gap to fill, it would probably have come in the form of a destroyer - something sneaky and able to infiltrate, allowing ambushes and traps to be set. We may well stat one up in the near future - who knows?

Anyway, the Privateer is limited in having a squadron size of 1-2. We generally tried to stay away from this, since the power fall-off and general vulnerability of such a squadron is higher than 3-4 ship squadrons. Needs must sometimes, however, and it was the case that production costs forced the hand or we were just presented with that as a non-negotiable. As such, we're used to working that way too.

So the Privateer is a beefed-up cruiser, trading some flexibility for greater weapon potency and longer-ranged strikes. Torpedoes take a hit but have the option for Torpedo Spook to make then more effective - either late game or against smalls (especially in reduced squadron sizes). You can build quite a bruiser of a ship - up to DR6/CR9 on the approach - but it gets slow and turns like a shopping cart. Still, seems appropriate for its designation and the other ships in the Corsairs arsenal - you can imagine this as the slow meat-shield bruiser at the back of the thug pack!

Anyway, enjoy the ship and we'll be in touch again soon :-)

The Hub Systems Podcast Episode 23- Shattered Void

We meet up with Alan & Mark from White Dragon Miniatures to talk about their Kickstarter campaign Shattered Void, a starfighter combat game with some really interesting mechanics. In Hit or Miss we discuss the Sylvaneth releases for AoS, and GW pricing strategies in general, together with X-Wing, Forgeworld and some really pretty dice!

Listen & Enjoy!