My first finished models since the move!

 o/

Huzzah!

I can't say that they're the first minis to be totally painted here in South Carolina, because I started them (and another half dozen of their Coftyran counterparts) while packing up in Tennessee. That said I did take some time off from unpacking (my new game room is a shambles currently) to finish these little guys up. 

All of the newly finished Crusaders from the front...

...and advancing to the rear. 

These are Quar Crusaders, and while I didn't like their old metal minis, I do like the new plastic sculpts quite a bit more than the Coftyrans, whom I preferred when buying the older metal minis. I think the new plastic Coftyran rhyfles are too spindly and likely to break. 

Another view of the squad's Yawdryl (Sergeant). As the Quar age, they get age spots on their snouts.

I have 2 days off coming up and while a good bit of that will be spent unpacking, I'm hoping to visit some of the local game shops in person to see who & what is out there around here. Also, this coming weekend we're going to a little get together at my wife's boss' house with several of her coworkers and their spouses/significant others. 

This little dude tossing the soup can grenade is the squad's only conversion.

I spliced two rhyfles (sans arms) together to stick on his pack. Its become a bit of a joke amongst the Quar's little community that any Quar tossing a grenade has lost his rhyfle.

One of her coworkers also recently moved here, and her spouse like me is also remote working. Also like me he plays mini games, and Warhammer primarily! I'm assuming that's of the 40K variety, but regardless I looking forward to this engagement more than I originally thought I would be! 

My Crusaders thus far, there are just three left to go.

That said, we went to another new friend's birthday party the other night and while no other gamers were present, the party was a hoot!

Its Grimsical out there!

o/

Normally at this range, there would be a bloody brawl of snout-to-snout combat in progress!

I haven't had a whole lot of painting time here of late. Real life has gotten really busy (and is about to get a lot worse!).  Nonetheless, I've snatched a few moments here and there and have managed to paint up the first half dozen Quar from my Clash of Rhyfles set. 

In the name of the ancestors, HALT!

I decided to forego the usual washes, drab colors and heavily drybrushed on layer grime (though there is a little bit of drybrushing on there), instead going for a brighter, more cartoony look. 

My Coftyrans muster out from the coastal town of Quoot.

My Coftyran, Quootish militia wears the traditional blue trimmed in the not so traditional purple. For two reasons: (1) purple is my favorite color and (2) it covers over blue far, far easier than yellow does! You can't really see it in the photos, but they wear purple trousers as well. 

Camouflage is for cowards. 

For the Crusaders, rather than the more militaristic OD green that has been a primary feature of so many of my armies over the years, I went with a much more vibrant green. That said, their uniforms blend very well with the grass in my front yard. Go figure.

Those traditionalist Coftyran idiots, who wears heraldic colors to war?

Battle reports are starting to appear online, so maybe I can wrap my head around the rules for these little guys. If I can't, I was thinking of making unit & upgrade cards on tabletop admiral and just using the Star Wars Legion rules instead. We'll see though.

Note, these are on 20mm bases rather than the standard 25mm ones that they come with.

 

These little guys again?

 

Yeah, not everything measures up to a Space Marine.  

This week my new Zombiesmith boxed game arrived! This time with the Quar in (semi) multi-part plastic minis rather than metal, huzzah! Produced by Wargames Atlantic, I've been waiting quite awhile for this set! You get enough for a dozen each of Royalists and Crusaders, along with a quick-start, skirmish only ruleboook. 

You can cut the box up to make basic terrain printed on the inside, though I don't plan to do so. I have other ideas for my Quar terrain...

The rules are as ever mystifying to me, especially as rules comprehension isn't my strong suit. That said, some folks are working getting some youtube battle reports posted up which ought to help. For example: I have a halfway decent understanding of Star Wars legion due to watching battle reports, despite never playing the game. 

At first these struck me as being even smaller than the old sculpts.

However after some side-by-side comparisons, they're actually bigger in all respects. Though still dwarfed by the Primaris Marine in the first pic above.

Proportionally, they don't gel too well with the old metal minis, though I'm sure folks will mix their metal and plastic forces. I only have a handful of older metals sculpts left, nominally set up for Bolt Action. As such They'll likely be kept separate from these guys. 

These three are a royalist Yawdryl with a Doru SMG on the left and two Rhyflers with Harlech (you read that correctly Kushial!) bolt action rifles to his right.

Note that unlike the Rhyflers, the Yawdryl carries only a food canister and light rucksack with two baguettes sticking out of it. If you couldn't tell by their rotund stature, the Quar like to eat!

These come with flat, 25mm bases akin to those of say Bolt Action, however I've ordered some 20mm bases which are in transit currently. I test fitted them to some of the old, gunked up 20mm bases that I still have and their little integral bases will fit on them just fine without any overhang. 

Two Crusader Rhyflers (one could be a Yawdryl, as they're equipped the same) with semi-automatic Bogen rifles, and one gunner with what's called a Ryshi. Its basically a cross between a Bogen and a WWII Boys anti-tank rifle!

Crusaders tend to carry less gear on their backs than their Royalist opponents. That said, extra Ryshi ammo is spread across the squad. This is important as each squad can have up to three of them!

So why 20mm bases you ask? Because once mounted on 20mm bases, combined with their short height and stooped stature, these Quar will be perfect for some skirmish-styled tunnel fighting in my caverns terrain! Since nobody that I know of locally is even remotely interested in 15mm gaming (admittedly, they're not interested in the Quar either...), my caverns have sat boxed up in the basement, untouched for well over a year now. 

Stay tuned, there will be more about these guys to come!

Returning to the realm of the living...

 o/

They're just a little side project...

Yes, I alive again and as such I managed to get in a little bit of hobbying this past weekend. First up: I assembled my new squad of Demiurg allies to go with my Tau army. These will be used as an auxiliary support detachment which will cost me 2CPs and a bunch of special rules that I forget to use 99% of the time anyways. 

Droid on the left and some dude with bionic feet on the right. 'Hey, remember the day that Bob tried to dive to safety thru the airlock, but he didn't jump far enough because he's short and the blast door cut him off at the ankles?' I'm sure that there's some sort of story like that to account for his bionic feet. 

I've armed them with Ion Blasters which teams up nicely with the Tau allied theme, not to mention they pack a lot more of a punch (in exchange for range and rate of fire). The support troopers have an HYLas auto rifle and an L7 missile launcher. Plus there's a scanner dude and a medic. The leader is holding a plasma knife which sounds cool but has no stats as like the Tau's bonding knives, it's purely ceremonial. Because reasons. 

I also painted up another 15mm tank for my Quar. I intend to use the Bolt Action ruleset with these at some point with Frankie as my 'guinea pig' opponent (unless somebody else wants to try it out). They'll be fighting in my caverns terrain which ought to be interesting. 

It's a neat little self-propelled gun not at all outta place in a WWII-like army. It remains to be seen as to how well it'll work in a cave...

lol, with the hand on the head of the guy in the middle, it's almost like he's saying:

'Fuck, where'd that shot land?' 

Yes, I had to paint the crew separately and then glue them in place afterwards.

Fat little bastards barely fit into their uniforms it seems. 

They'd better correct their aim quickly, only 5 more shells left...

Dreadtober 2022 sidebar

 o/

Much like Neverness, Westrider and no doubt others, I too worked on other projects and minis amidst working on Dreadtober project of Commander Firestorm. 

One cargo is toxic and the other is radioactive, it'd be best to just pass these two containers by...

Most noticeably were the second and third of the 3D printed munitorum containers that provided a backdrop to Firestorm throughout the month. These two along with the much earlier painted Smurf container are all from the same set. 

Apparently Smurfs are radioactive too!

I also have a bunch of ammo crates and barrels that came with these three that I've yet to do anything with. I also painted up a pair of Star Schlock Astro-Guard, one as an Inquisitorial acolyte and the other...

The Lavender armor matches my still half painted Ordo Hereticus Razorback. Note the one on the left whose face and purpose are both shrouded in darkness. The lower half of her face looks more feminine than masculine (not that you can tell in this pic) which is why I'm referring to her as a female.

Iggy backpacks work well with these minis. The canteen in the other pic above covers up a missing strap from the sculpt's combat webbing. 

I'm not quite sure what I'll do with the one with the sword. She could be an acolyte, Mistress of Ordinance/of the Fleet, or possibly an Inquisitor in her own right.

Possibly a radical Inquisitor escorted by some Men of Iron dating back to the Dark Age of Technology perhaps? 

Oh sure they look harmless enough, almost 'cute' even. However if they were fielded as 'counts as' Spindle Drones...

The robots are from Zombiesmith.com and were purchased along with some more 15mm Quar. I was thinking of using them as unaligned spindle drones, albeit 3 for the price of 4 (not that 65 points evenly divides by 3 or 4 models in any case). 

So there you have it! These, along with Commander Firestorm total out my total painted minis for the month of October.

Thankfully September has come to an end...

 o/

Loren succumbs to the lure of Chaos...

Yeah, September wasn't a good month for me. It started out alright, however at about the week following my last post a coworker who thought he 'just had a cold' instead gave me covid. Which I in turn gave to my fiancé, who inadvertently gave it to her best (in the pic above), and its a 50/50 as to which of us then gave it to my stepson Frankie. 

We've all since recovered, but there was a lot of suck in those last two weeks (and that's just on the covid front, I'll spare you the rest). 

Doesn't even look like a repaint, just don't look at the other side of that gun shield!

The Drakes were strong with this one as it took multiple attempts (and decals) in order to get that icon to properly affix to his pauldron!

Another view from the business end. They're not in any of the pictures, but two more assault intercessors are also in-progress

Like my first time with the 'rona, once I started to feel better I started to paint minis during my enforced quarantine (unlike the last time, the quarantine wasn't 10 days, and I no longer live alone meaning I didn't paint 10+ minis this go round). 

First up I partially repainted the Firestrike Servo-Turret since the rest of my painted Silver Drakes have redeployed to the Connecticut subsector. The lack of availability in acquiring the needed metallic blue paint led to that army's demise. Given that the vast majority were unpainted, my Smurf army just got a BIG boost in numbers!

This is probably the equivalent of a Renault FT.

With the Quar equivalent of General Patton riding in the turret.

Space marine belt pouches for stowage.

The Servo turret added to the background for scale.

On a whim, I also painted up my 15mm Quar tank. I was so enamored with it that I then went on the zombiesmith website and ordered another one (different type) along with some other cool little vehicles. I'm thinking that I'll introduce Frankie to Bolt Action's rule set using the 15mm Quar in my caves terrain.  

Moving onto October...

...and it's DREADtober! My paltry entry into this year's event is my Day'lth Tau's Sub Commander Firestorm. Firestorm has thus far led my Tau infantry horde to a string of costly defeats. No doubt these were if fact diversionary assaults, drawing forces away from the actual invasions rendering said defeats into victories For the Greater Good! 

Coming to a close combat near you!

I've outfitted him/her with 3D printed, twin-airbursting fragmentation launchers (mortars) a shield generator and a prototype Thermoneutronic Projector. I thought the frag launchers looked cool and opted for them before I realized that mortars were the meta (ooh how I hate that term) weapon of choice. 

However, both pre- and post- mortar nerf, they've accomplished little. Most likely because this guy has a penchant for suicide charges into close combat where that projector is pretty much cheese on a stick! Suck it Farsight! 

No idea whose Rhino door it will be that Firestorm is striding over.

Whilst less than effective versus Neverness whose Termies all choose to hide behind the one guy with a storm shield when making armor saves, yet not when making their attacks (speaking of cheesy), Firestorm has sent a fair few of Rob's plague marines to their unexpected deaths! 

I doubt a proper paint job will improve his/her leadership capabilities, however it's high time this mini was painted since it leads and army that has 40-50ish painted models already, and is by far my most painted of armies. 

The Tau Muppet Auxilaries enter the fray

"Kids, today's letter is "G'. 'G' is for the Greater Good..."

Or rather they would have last weekend, but everyone else bailed ceding whatever planet we would have been fighting for to the Tau Empire with nary a shot fired. 

Scraping for enough points to bring my Dal'yth Tau list up to 1k., I rediscovered these Muppet Auxiliaries (I dropped the 'f' in their name, thus they are simply the: Jaloo) in a recently unearthed box from the move. 

No doubt there are educational PSAs continually scrolling by on their packs' little screens

Like my Hogziliaries, I'll be fielding these critters as another counts as strike team. With downgraded stats of course. Their strength and toughness has been reduced to a 2, though they'll not be doubled out by bolter fire thanks to their guardian drone. Their pistols and smaller carbine-esque guns have been reduced to strength 3, whereas the longer guns are stock Tau Pulse rifles. 

I experimented with this little bot's paint by forgoing primer and applying yellow contrast directly to the bare metal in hopes of making a metallic yellow. However on the finished mini, the 'metallic' torso just looks duller than the head and bottom. Experiment result: FAILURE.

Clearly the Jaloo's antigrav technology isn't as advanced as that of the Tau, meaning it only keeps this top heavy little drone upright, and still needing its little legs to move around. Thus I reduced it's speed to the squad standard of 6", and removed the Fly ability.

These painted up quite easily thanks to the yellow contrast paint. By the time I finish their squad I'll no doubt have painting yellow technique perfected and will be ready to start on my squad of ANGRY MARINES!! Mwuhahaha!

In a fit of stubborn nostalgia, rather than wear appropriate camo as the rest of their allied Tau brethren do, the Jaloo insist on only wearing colors that would blend in on their home worlds (prior to being devoured by the Nids). 

Disappointed by this, the Tau have simply vowed to keep them out of the vanguard so as not to give away any positions. Once battle is joined, Fire Caste commanders are resigned to the obvious conclusion that the Jaloo will inadvertently draw fire due to their ridiculous, brightly colored uniforms. 

Ultimately, it's all For the Greater Good, and thus is accepted.

The entire squad on the workbench.