Bolts from the Blue - Cygnar Join The Fray

My pledge is a straightforward one - paint one Warjack. This will be my newly assembled and magnetised Heavy who can be an Avenger, Hammersmith or Centurion depending on how he's feeling.

Despatches from the Workshop

A lot of people have been complaining about the mold lines on their models - touch wood the Cygnar seem to have avoided the worst of this. However, it's a fact that I only notice mold lines after I've painted things so we'll just wait and see on this little issue for the time being.

Now, I like to think of myself as a painter and hobbyist as well (probably more than) a gamer and so have decided that I will use this project to really try and learn some new skills. First up, magnetising.

I got the various little bits of plastic out of the Avenger box and it was immediately clear that I could make the model up so I could swap between Jacks with relatively little effort. The torso (bar the shoulder pads. Why would shoulder pads be different? Aesthetically I liked one set more than the other and so went for those) and legs were the same between builds, it was only the head (I guess heads are more important than shoulders but this may have been a bit of a waste of 4 magnets!), right hand and the left arm/hands that would need to be swappable.

Step 1 - Drill holes in things.

Being in my thirties, I own a number of power tools. These are supposed to be used for fixing furniture, hanging pictures and so on and therefore live an undisturbed existence in a cupboard, unbothered by the need to actually do anything. Until today! For today, armed with an electric drill and a 2mm drill bit, I put holes in things I'd paid good money for:



The 10p shows the scale (and is also a handy place to keep your magnets).

Step 2 - Stick magnets to things

The hand options all had a little nub of plastic, meant to fit into a recess in the relevant wrist. I drilled out the wrists, clipped away the nub with some sprue cutters and glued a magnet in place.



Step 3 - Er, nope, all done.

Once those parts were magnetised (a grand total of 3 heads, 3 right hand weapons, the Avenger's gun, one left arm and two left hands) I let them dry and the job's a good un.

Here's my jack in Centurion mode:



I'll showcase the other variants once there's some paint on the plastic!

One week into my first pledge and...er...my Warjack has some base colours on. Still, a week to go, plenty of time. IN the interim, here's my first painted model, a Gun Mage:



I didn't paint the cat.

Couple of alternate views:





I'm happy with the theme, the blue is Necron Abyss, layered with Mordian blue, Agrax Earthshade wash then highlighted with Fenris Grey. The white trousers and sash are Bleached Bone, White, Agrax and another highlight with white. Metas are jusT Auric Gold/Leadbelcher with Chainmail highlights respectively.

I'm toying with the idea of glowing blue eyes for them. Might look good, certainly makes the painting easier!

More cat pics please

Ok. So, Pledge 1 = Fail. Like a very bad version of many a poor action film I have 24hrs left to achieve my task and without a very good montage, it ain't gonna happen.

I have managed to get a game in, paint up Squire & one of my mages, decide on my theme and there is paint on the Warjack...he's just a long way from ready. I mean, it'd be tournament legal in a three colours kind of way, but...no. Just, no.

The game was against Gareth who had 3 shades of gribbly and a caster who promptly brought the one thing I managed to kill back to life. Sigh. Anyways, I did actually get quite a lot out of the game, I got to see how ineffective POW10 shots are against big gribblies, how easy it is to under and over stock focus on jacks and indeed how important deciding your unit activation order is.

My list was pretty straightforward:
Seige, Avenger, Squire
Journeyman Warcaster, Defender
Gun Mages w/UA

The plan was to use the mages as a screen for the big jacks to blaze away behind. As it turned out, G's flying gribbly had rather high DEF and my guns didn't make much of a dent. My mages failed to dent the gribbly they went against and in the end my army collapsed over a couple of turns. On reflection, I think the heavy jacks may not be that suitable for my style of play at this point in time. The problem of having a big gun and a melee attack is choosing which to use. Next game I will proxy some light jacks and concentrate far more on the shooting side. I also need to use the Gun Mage UA as a jack marshal for something shooty.

So, onwards and upwards, I pledge to play a couple of games and try and actually get to grips with these tricksy, seemingly underpowered Cygnars.

Good summary of our match I think, and I'd argue that we both achieved a little something towards our goals in that I had my stones used the Fury removal, a little healing, and a teleport to move the Feral into combat with your Hammersmith instead of leaving him just outside range to charge your gunmages again, and I feel like I had to work a little for the Siege kill, so he didn't die to stupidity even if he still died!

I'd question the slam/charge issue you ran into with Chris though, as page 52 of the rules says "Any effects that prevent a model from charging, such as a penalty to its SPD or movement [...] also prevent the model from making a slam power attack". Not sure if that only applies to effects on the model trying to slam/charge, but I'd assume it includes whatever you had on your guy since it does say "any effects".

Are you liking the caster though Tom? For me the first few games were all about finding out if I liked the style of the caster.

Lovely write up as usual and hopefully one day we whil all learn when some things do count as other things and also when sometimes they do not.