Iron Empire Mecha 2 and Mantic Musings

What's better than an Iron Empire Mecha?

Why two Iron Empire Mechas!  The second of three rolled off the line today after some major construction mishaps.... I managed to drop the thing during assembly and accidentally batted it across the room while trying to catch it.... making a small drop into a long journey.











The beast broke apart as expected but the bad impact angle caused half of the Halo to snap off and those tine little resin support struts were a booger to reconstruct.  Its together now so I'll try not to repeat that particular bit of drama in future!

Number 3 is coming along which will finish up the unit.











Here you see the pair escorting Hilda.










 I'm leaning towards calling these mummy driven mecha "Ushabti" in keeping with my Necrontyr theme.  These are great Tomb Guardians and life support systems animated by the will of Necrontyr nobles who have aged well beyond their normal span of years.  These heroes are trapped within the life-giving shells and have been maintained for centuries in the twilight land between life and death.

 Over the Holiday... and really a bit before that... I got involved in a ton of Mantic Kickstarters.  I've always been attracted to Mantic because of the price point but had been afraid to get much from them because I'd heard horror stories about the tremendous amount of clean up they required.

I bit the bullet and went in for Abyssal Dwarfs and then Regular Dwarfs and then.... Warpath and Deadzone... DoH!

 Anyway after looking over the minis I was very pleasantly surprised!  The minis were great quality, the casting was relatively clean, and certainly no worse than average... the material is solid and dry to the touch.  It took primer very well so I'm not anticipating any problems with paint adhesion..  all in all I gotta say these are ace models and a great value for money as well.








I got in about a dozen games of Kings of War second edition over the holiday and now feel like I've got a grasp of it.  The rules are very fast playing and easy to learn.  I think they are a bit too streamlined for my preference, but not a lot so and I think a few house rules would make them just the right amount of fiddly... for example there are no formation changes in KoW.  It would be pretty easy to add that to the game and bring the complexity level up to my comfort zone.  Also there are only about six spells in the magic system... its a very tight system and that would be harder to mess with in terms of balance.  I approve!  Mind you I'm a 3rd Edition WHFB player at heart so all of my fantasy armies are built with the idea that they'll be used in that game as well.

Finally... Our friend Ed let us know that we'd missed out on a pile of expansions for Firefly the Board Game!  For Christmas we got ourselves that big pile and are busily working our way through them!  Zoom Zoom! 

See it set up on a 6x4 table... lots of board and just enough room for all the card decks.


All is shiny in the verse!

The first Iron Empire Mecha strides into action!

 I'm back from an extended vacation with the family.  It was a blast, and I even got to play a lot of games, but I've been itching to get back to painting so... here we go!

Before I took off I'd almost finished the first of three Iron Empire Mecha.  Its shown here with I.E. Army standard Vera Kreabbenhoft for scale.  She's wasn't stable on her base so has been weighted with a metal washer.... nothing bothers her now!  But it does make her base slightly taller than usual.

 I use these for Necrontyr (precursors to the Necron) in my own little pocket universe... although I hope to one day use them for actual Iron Empire when Raging Heroes gets the game ready.

I continued the Purple and Cream color scheme here and most of the army will be in a similar scheme... with the exception of cyber zombies and maybe some shock troops/assault specialists.

The other two mecha are also pretty far along so I expect to have them up soon.  These models are completely ball joint in construction which gives a very wide range of posing options... but makes them just a tiny bit tricky to assemble!  I wouldn't have it any other way of course and I learned a lot about assembly from this lead model.

Holiday Shuffle!

Due to the craziness of the season I'll be unable to make any headway on the Dark Eldar Tantalus until after the New Year.  In the meantime I'm catching up on some reading.  Mostly Codices and rules but also I have a stack of novels that has been growing at an alarming rate during the past three months!

Today's Codex  was the Necrons.  I just finished it and was struck by the notion that they have at least one weapon, the aptly named Death Ray, that allows them to intentionally shoot at their own units.  My gaming group has had a lot of discussions over the years about various races for whom it would be thematically acceptable, and possibly even routine, behavior to shoot up you own cannon fodder but had always come to the conclusion that the potential game breaking tactics that could evolve from such an allowance would preclude its adoption.  Then, low and behold!  Necrons...  I'm wondering if there are any other such exceptions in this edition that I've missed.  I'm really a fluff bunny and so would be completely unsurprised to discover a rules mechanic that I've overlooked.

I'm finishing up a troll through the Ogre kingdoms with an eye towards starting on the new campaign book "Blood in the Badlands"  I'm still churning over what the Geekfest theme will be this year and am hoping for some additional inspiration from the reading.  I did finish Tamurkhan: Throne of Chaos earlier this week and was impressed with the art and layout of the book as well as the solid story and campaign elements.

I'm a little nostalgic because Fantasy Battle was what got me into the Workshop Hobby and I played it hard for many years but the last decade or so has been very tightly focused on 40k.  Oh, I'm still painting up Fantasy Battle armies but I haven't actually played a game of it in 8ish years.  I think the last game I played was 6th edition  Ogre Kingdoms against Wood Elves.  I've read the rules in the interim and like the look of 8th edition but haven't taken it out for a walk.  I may have to do an off-season WHFB thing kind of like the 40k Geekfest... but that is still more of a notion than a concept!

I'm also trending into Malifaux.  In part this has to do with the gaming community in my, currently, local area and in part with the wonderful atmospherics of the setting.  Truthfully if the required figure count and playing area (3x3!) were not so small I'd have passed this by but the portability and small time/space requirements allowed me to deceive myself into thinking that I had time for another miniatures game!  I'm enjoying my delusion at the moment and you can expect to see some modelling projects related to Malifaux appearing in the pile in the early part of the New Year.