NagoyaHammer.com

(The old one is here - it's both pretty old and mis-named, so I thought I'd start a newer, more-general one.)

After a good while where all my painting has been dipping goblins, a planned game of Epic got me to break out the little dudes and start some painting:



Nothing particularly exciting, just the beginning stages of my (Forgeworld) Fighta-Bomma squadron for my Orks. That's a black undercoat, a heavy drybrush of Chainmail, a heavy wash of a 2:1 mix of brown and orange ink, and another lighter drybrush of Chainmail. Next will be painting most of the plates over with red, leaving lots of bare metal around the edges.

(Incidentally, you can also see what caused me to put off dealing with these guys for so long after I bought them - the extremely thin resin of the flight-control surfaces led to a lot of warping of the resin. I did a lot of manhandling under hot water, but this was about as good as I could get them to stay. I'm 75% certain there will be lots of wing and tailfin casualties over time as I transport these fellas to and fro.)

In the bullpen are a squadron of Phoenixes for the Eldar.

Got me fliers done.

The Fighta-Bommas in their go-faster red glory:


And a squadron of Phoenixes for the Eldar:


This gives me at least rudimentary air support for all my 4 armies, which means I can include fliers in demos without worrying about balance. Woo!

Which clears off my painting queue for the moment. What to do next? I'm still not in the mood to return to goblins... Dust off the 6mm Napoleonics, maybe? Hmm...

very nice stuff. I never cease to be impressed by your yellow. very pingy, yet warm.

I keep looking at all my Epic stuff and thinking about painting it. I could start with the Aeronautica Imperialis planes and the titans, and work my way down. Those Eldar planes look rather spiffing, I must admit.

AndrewGPaul wrote:I keep looking at all my Epic stuff and thinking about painting it. I could start with the Aeronautica Imperialis planes and the titans, and work my way down. Those Eldar planes look rather spiffing, I must admit.

Epic's a heck of a game! You even live on a landmass with more than two or three other people who play it!

Incidentally, I've found the AI stuff (well, all I have from that range is what you see here, but still) to be really warpy - both the fighter-bommas and the phoenixes spent quite a bit of time under the hot water tap, and they're still fairly bent. Wings and control surfaces are just too thin to come out true in resin, I suppose. I was toying with the idea, for a while, of replacing my Imperial T-bolts and Marauders with the FW models, but after putting these guys together I don't think I'll bother. I still have no clue how I'm going to transport them.

@MIJ: Thanks! 'Course, it doesn't stand up to really close scrutiny, but then it's not supposed to, heh.

A couple more things off the workbench:

A little scenery piece I made with some bits I got off Primarch - a generic industrial refinery / power plant / chem tank, with some Fire Dragons for size reference.


And some more of them skinny eldar: some Fire Dragons, an Autarch, and a Wind Rider Host. The focus came out a bit screwy, but I'm too lazy to reshoot it.


I took stock and realized I only have a pretty small number of stuff to paint before my Epic collection is 100% completed. This means two things: 1) I may as well power through and paint 'em all up, and 2) maybe it's time to snatch up some old-fashioned plastic Falcons off e-Bay, so the one I have rattling around won't feel lonely.

looks good man

A couple pictures from my game this afternoon - I always set out to take a bunch, but then get caught up in playing and... don't. Ah well!

A blitz brigade advances on the Eldar position. Note the mekboy gunwagonz with soopaguns! Also note the titan in the background. Frikkin' frakkin' holofields...


A wider shot of the Eldar position.

Oh, oh waaagh, I wish we could field soopagunz in 40K! BOOM!

A few thoughts on the game, while I'm at it - both Eldar and Orks are (relatively) new armies to me in Epic, and it was neat to really get to see how they played.

Orks are great until you start taking heavy casualties. Big Ork units are hard to break, shrug off blast markers like mad, and are awesome in an assault through sheer force of numbers. They roll enough dice to shoot that, even hitting on 6's or 7's, they can soften up an enemy formation pretty nicely, but assault is really where they're at. Once they're below 5 units, though, they just will not rally - this was especially evident with the stompas I brought. 4 was just not enough - even with reinforced armor they broke pretty much instantly and never recovered. Bringing along all 6 I have, and adding a Mekboy Supastompa (a war engine with a good high number of damage boxes) will probably be necessary to really make use of 'em. Jury's still out on the Gargant - shooting isn't especially accurate and it's so slow that it's not hard to avoid getting into an assault with it.

The Eldar are typically Eldar. Very slippery, very shooty, very specialized. Vehicle formations attack from range (and slice things up), infantry formations assault (and - yes, even the guardians - put the hurt on the enemy pretty nicely). Their special rules are quite nice - running and gunning is good in any game that allows it, and the ability to keep the initiative and activate 3 formations in a row with pretty good success is excellent for controlling the flow of the battle (and activating before getting fired on, while putting blast markers on enemy formations before they try to activate). Their air support is hella good - Phoenixes, though expensive, are good enough to fill both an interceptor role and a ground attack role quite well indeed. Lack of armor is a problem for the whole army, and the Eldar have trouble standing up to concentrated shooting, but fortunately Orks aren't so good at putting out concentrated shooting.

So it was good fun. As always, if anybody ever wants a game, I have enough armies that you don't actually have to have any models, and I'm always happy to walk someone through the rules.