Chatter Of The Squirrel

Book: Retribution of Scyrah

I’ve been promoting WARMACHINE in Malaysia for quite a while.

I earn points for my efforts. And managed to accumulate quite a bit of it. I can redeem these points for free products. Perks of being a PressGanger for Privateer Press.

Although I’ve been taking it very slow lately, I still have a quantity of points accumulated. The past year or two, every time I’ve tried to redeem them for products, the items had either been stolen, or been bounced back to the US. That had sapped my enthusiasm a fair bit, thus leading to my reduced efforts.

As they say, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” I’ve made a few repeated inquiries, and I finally managed to get my predicament heard. About a hundred points had been lost for good, but I managed to get some points charged back and I was able to place a new order 2 months ago. This time, I had it delivered to a good friend’s house, cos seemingly the postmen on that route aren’t the lowly, scum-of-the-earth thieves that had been taking stuff meant for me.

And finally, I have THIS:

Which contained THESE:

These are mostly blisters I needed to complete my collection of the Pirates of the Broken Coast Mercenary faction, as well as the currently available selection of the new, 5th faction of WARMACHINE: The Retribution of Scyrah. These are elves that KICK BUTT!

Here’s a closer look:

I even splurged on the hardcover copy of the Forcebook. WARMACHINE is entering its second age, Mark II, with a revamp of many of its rules. The prior 4 factions will also be republished in their own individual Forcebooks. The Retribution book I have in my hands now is a glimpse of how those books will be formatted later.

There is lots of fluff. ie. the stuff that drew me into WARMACHINE in the first place. There’s a lot of it.

There are many pages pertaining to the history and military structure of Ios.

There are Theme armies for each Warcaster. For each theme, there are 4 tiers of requirements you can follow to get added advantages to your army.

Retribution gives us 5 new Iosian Warcasters. 3 Light Warjacks. 3 Heavy Warjacks. 7 infantry units. 5 unit attachments. 1 weapon attachment. 1 cavalry unit. 1 cavalry unit attachment. 5 solos. 4 character solos. 1 cavalry character dragoon.

And finally ending with painting guides for the most distinctive features of the army.

It is a thing of beauty…

Must make the time to build and paint up my army as soon as possible.

WarMachine: Free for All Battle

Haven’t organised an event in ages and ages cos very few players seem to be interested. But I can’t let the game roll over and die like that. Also, been getting nagged by Wolf.

To make an eventful day, I would need something like 8 or so players. And I’m very skeptical about getting that many. Also, in memories past, multi-player games were the most memorable but games drag when players take too long to make a move. I had started a project to make a chessclock, but that ran into some trouble: ie my lousy soldering skillz.

But lately, Daiso opened at The Curve, and they sold tiny kitchen timers for RM 5. Bargain! I bought one to test, but they ran out of stock when I went back for more. >.< Waited months before there was a new shipment and I grabbed 10 of them. Now I can control the pace, and create a new format of games…

6 attendees showed up. So I came up with an unusual scenario… 4 players will deploy from the 4 corners. The remaining 2 players will deploy in the middle, and will be allied with each other for 1 hr. Everyone gets 30min on their timer. Out of time, means no more activations.

By some freak roll of the dice, the two brothers Khairul’s Kreoss and Arzmi’s Haley ended up in the middle. A circumstance that they’ll abuse during the course of the game -__-

Everyone started to move towards the centre. But the brothers turtled in behind Trencher smoke and Temporal Barrier.

Around the second turn, Geoffrey’s Darius noticed Alvin’s Madrak was trying to flank him so he diverted his line of attack and met the charge of trolls. Jefri’s swift Vayl was the first to get engaged with the turtles in the middle. Kuok’s Butcher lumbers along slowly, painfully, complaining all the while.

Darius’s Centurions poked trolls, but can’t hit their DEF 16. Madrak’s Champions hit, but can’t penetrate Centurion armour. The blood thirsty Butcher started pussy-footing around the edge of the battles. And only the fool-hardy Everblight was engaged in battle with 2 superior forces in the centre.

Eventually, Darius and Madrak got tired of their futile face-off, and agreed to a truce. Madrak allowed Darius to withdraw unharmed. But when Darius started pouncing on prey that Madrak hamstrung, that cheesed off the volatile troll. On his turn, he directed a charge at Darius’ exposed rear-end and decimated him with a few concerted strikes. Darius is going to have trust issues henceforth after this betrayal…

Everblight was getting worn down and making limited progress.

Haley turned her back and started delivering points to Kreoss. As a result of this shenanigan, Kreoss was catapulted to an overwhelming lead of 23pts.

And there’s Butcher. Pussy footing around the edge of battle until he saw the Temporal Barrier coming down. By this time, everyone’s almost out of time, and Butcher was still sitting on 19 minutes.

The blood bath begins.

The mad Khadoran started the end game with 2 points, and proceeded to cleave his way to 24pts and victory.

For a horrible tactician with ADD, the Butcher seems to win quite a number of tournaments through sheer persistence.

Confrontation by Rackham

Wolf brought in Rackham products to Malaysia several years ago. They had an incredible line of fantasy miniatures, all beautifully detailed, and their studio painters did an incredible job with the minis, making them all instantly recogniseable whenever you see them. (Note: The use of the past tense was deliberate.)

People still call it the Rackham style, and buying a Rackham miniature puts you under tremendous pressure to at least aim higher than your skills otherwise permits. Ends up, many players leave their minis primed, but unpainted, cos they’re always waiting until their painting skill is worthy enough.

But at the time the game started in Malaysia, I was already commited to WARMACHINE, and didn’t feel like supporting another game, however fine the minis are. Then finally the english rules came out, (Rackham is a French company), and I flipped through the rule book and see if anything might pique my interest. A large hard-cover book, and it was BORING AS HECK!! From cover to cover, it was just rules, and nothing else. Did they have to make the gameplay so complex that it takes a whole book to explain it?

Eclipsante

Where’s the fluff?? Where are the stories that flesh out the miniatures! So many different races, two human factions with incredibly beautiful armoured knights, two elven races, dwarves on steam-powered pigs, un-dead dwarves, goblins, an undead horde, barbarians with minotaurs and centaurs, Amazonian warriors with gravity defying mammaries, orcs, Wolfens (the race that identified Rackham), and S&M Wolfens (seriously, with black leather bondage gear and all). So many characters and heroes from each faction, there should be tons of background on many if not all of them.

The minis are brilliant. But the stories aren’t accessible, they’re only published in their rather expensive magazine, Cry Havoc. After being spoilt by Privateer Press, I expect good fantasy fiction with every metal soldier I purchase.

Despite my gripe, Rackham WAS an amazing company. They MADE consistently good looking sculpts. I’m not very familiar with their entire line, and have only scrutinized the Orcs of Bran-o-Kor. A single unit type, the Jackal Warriors, can be armed with your choice of swords, clubs or axes. And Rackham manufactured two sculpts for each weapon profile. It was a testament to the company’s commitment to quality.

But then they started going the Games Workshop way.

Changed the game from being skirmish encounters, to regiment battles. What this means, is that you’ll need to buy TONS more metal soldiers to play a game. Business logic : force the customers to buy more, then company makes more money. They even started going plastic to reduce cost of manufacture and shipping.

Consequence : Players quit.

Rackham players wanted to play with beautifully painted, heroic characters. Not hordes of shoddily painted nameless soldiers. Also, the expense of owning so many figures was prohibitive. And many of their molds were coming to the end of their life-cycles and the transition to plastic took too long, production & distribution problems. New players couldn’t get hold of stuff they wanted. Even the promotional paint-jobs went from Golden Demon standard, to Mage Knight level.

A friend recently went manic and started hunting for Rackham minis everywhere. Especially for the OOP (out of production) pieces and limited run clan boxes. He was placing huge orders from online stores all over, buying as if the game was going out of style. Which it is… The minis are heavily discounted all over.

Brandon kept bugging me to join in, but I resisted. Still, I guess I could see myself grabbing a nice cheap mini just to paint. Especially since I’ve bought the Painting Tutorial DVD from Miniature Mentor, I’ll just grab a Wolfen Prowler, and try to follow along with the DVD.

Wolfen Prowler

The Prowler is a masterful piece of work.

Even the sword will be challenging to paint. Using many shades of grey to simulate the shine and reflection on a metal blade. A technique called Non Metallic Metals.

So I had my heart set on painting this piece, the defining representative of Rackham in my collection. Then suddenly came news that the store didn’t stock the Prowler. Rackham products were getting scarce all over.

So I asked Brandon if there’s another nice mini to do. And he pointed me to this:

Animistic Shaman on Brontops

The Animistic Shaman on Brontops.

How can you say no to a big green orc, riding an armour-clad dinosaur, and waving an axe fashioned from a large femur? It’s sooo majestic!

And since I’m getting this orc already, what’s a few more to round out a small force so that I can also use to play with my friends?

I’m unimpressed by Confrontation’s gameplay. Their rules went through several revisions, and some of the earlier rules were just odd, like the random unit activation… And they’ve made so many different armies, so one force isn’t balanced against another. There are a few obviously powerful armies, some are mere annoyances, and the newer armies have too few unit types and lack tactical options. And Orcs fall on the latter category, it appears. But what the hey, that only means that they’re the most common stock that’s still left on the shelves of online merchants, and can be bought at steep discounts up to 75% off. Quite a bargain.

So I ended up buying a moderately sized force of the Orcs of Bran-O-Kor. Got all the different Orc Warrior Mages. Some random fighters. And whatever hero that was on discount. (One of the heros arrived without the head).

And since I’m already making a sizeable order, I also got a few beautiful pieces of Wolfen just to paint. Just when I though I can stop, my friend placed yet another order and tempted me with an OOP box of Goblin Pirates.

Goblin Clan - The Skimmers of the Oceans

I have a lot of work cut out for me…

GenCon 2008

Someone asked me, that if I had all the money in the world, where would I want to go?

Everyone will probably start thinking of walls, tombs, or falls that they must see. Dead things. Or dead things made by dead people FOR dead people. Me, I started thinking of life, especially where people are teeming with PASSION.

My first answer: I will want to be in Indiana this weekend.

This is the GenCon Indy weekend. Probably the most important event for gaming all year. Where game companies show off and release new products. Where unwashed geeks flock to see the latest cool games. Games. Demos. Panels. Tournaments. Painting competitions. Painting classes. LOTS.

Where I will be able to see things like THIS first hand.

Now THIS is a thing of beauty. A Slayer Helljack, crouching over a girl holding a teddy-bear. Beautifully sculpted, fantastic pose. Here’s an art piece that tells a story! It inspires terror, menace, and a tiny sliver of hope! Will this mechanical warmachine powered by necromantic energies show mercy to this hapless human, or will it reason that it will reap more suffering from letting the traumatised orphan live.

It brings a tear to my eye, and makes me glad that Cryx is my chosen faction when I started this hobby.

雞狼毫

While walking around Muar, killing time… I came across this big shop that specialises in Chinese calligraphy brushes. Hundreds upon hundreds of brushes, in many dozens of varieties. It was fun just looking and poking at everything. Except for the lady boss hovering behind me, making me feel like a tourist who’s aimlessly browsing and not really buying.

Which I was…

Rabbit hair brushes. Sheep hair. Goat hair. Pony hair. Etc.

Then I saw something called 雞狼毫. Literally, “chicken wolf hair”. That’s, interesting… Never heard of a .chicken wolf’. Asked the lady what animal hair is this? She says chicken wolf hair. I can read the words on the brush just fine, thank you very much. But there’s no such thing as a chicken wolf. Is there?

Could it be some kind of chinese fox? Or, dare I hope, a kind of sable ??

The most desired painting brushes are made from Siberian sable.

I have bought a pair of Winsor & Newton Series 7 brushes for my miniature painting. They were around RM50 each. For very very few hairs of Kolinsky sable hairs. Price of different size brushes increases rapidly proportionate to the amount of hairs used. For best quality, only the the hair from the winter coat of the tip of the tail of the male kolinsky sable is used. These are fantastic brushes, and well worth the price I think. The tip is sharp, and STAYS sharp for years. Nylon brushes will begin to hook within half a week of moderate painting. I’ve put these hairs under the microscope, and every hair is Sharp! It’s very springy and will snap back into shape every time. They’re wonderful.

And these 雞狼毫 were only about RM2 each? Might these be the same sable? Even found a series of smaller art series brushes that was pure 狼毫. So I bought like 3 of these brushes.

Did some Googling. Well no, for ‘Chinese’ knowledge, it’s better to use Baidu.com.

So it seems that there is no such thing as a ‘chicken wolf’. Those brushes are a combination of the neck hairs of a cock, and the 小黄鼠狼, ’small yellow mouse wolf’.

They’re quite adorable. And that reddish brown fur, is VERY familiar. More Googling. Found it’s genus name, Mustela sibtricus Palias. That’s the Siberian Weasel. Commonly known as the Kolinsky Sable, but the animal is not a sable.

This. Is. AWESOME!!

Sable brushes for PENNIES!! Relatively…

Then further research showed that there are TONS of fake 狼毫 on the market, which uses dyed pony hair instead of weasel hair. And the way to tell the fake, is that it’s many tens of times cheaper than the real thing.

D’oh!!

I tried out the brushes anyway, at the last Legio club meet. And the brush does not perform as well as a W&N. Softer, not as much snap. But the brush can hold a lot of paint and it’s pretty good for RM2. Until bits of hair starts frizzing, or breaking off and sticking to the model.

GAK!!

That’s chicken hair for you!

I wonder if I’m the first person to review using chicken hair brushes for miniature painting.