Trevy's Painting Table

These are just some musings I was having the other day about Lizardmenin 8th Edition. They've probably already been thought of and discussed,but I'm gonna throw them here anyway.

First off, in 7th edition, Skink Skirmishers were a staple unit in any Lizardmen list. They provided a relatively expensive screen orredirector that was very fast and flexible. Like all skirmishers, theyare now less flexible than they were due to the more rigid formationthat they have to adhere to. That, and the introduction of the True Line of Sight rules means that they cannot be used as LoS screens,merely blockers and redirectors, and even then they are lessmaneuverable than they used to be. I believe that Skink Skirmishers are now a more dangerous harassment unit than ever. With their new ability to March and Fire, they effectively have a 24" threat range with a possible 20 Poisoned shots from a unit of 10 Skinks. They can march quickly at the enemy, using cover to their advantage, getting behind enemy units and forcing panic tests that send units running away from them. Position them so that enemy units run off the board or into larger, block units and they start to be able to wreak havoc with enemy formations.

In my lists, the old role of the Skink Skirmisher as a march-blocker and a redirector now falls to Skink block units. With the new musician rules, small units of infantry are more maneuverable than ever. For 5 6points I can get 10 Skinks with a musician, and this unit is excellent at covering my flanks and slowing down units that get too close to my main blocks. More than that, these units can now pump out 10 S3 Poisoned shots per turn at a 12" range with no penalty for moving, meaning that they can threaten faster flanking units and fast cavalry. Combined fire from a couple of these units can also be enough to panic even larger enemies. Another strength of these smaller units is that they do have a rank bonus, and can therefore negate ranks if they flank an enemy that's putting the larger blocks in trouble.

Saurus Warriors are the mainstay of the army - not only are they excellent line-infantry with a 4+ Armor Save and high strength,toughness and attacks but they can also pack quite a punch in combat if supported correctly. I've been running big units of 24 Spear-armed Saurus for a total of 24 S4 Attacks when I get charged. Because of the Step-up rule, Saurus' low Initiative value is not so much of a problem because they are still getting a large number of attacks, and Steadfast makes them very survivable against small, hard-hitting strike groups such as Knights.

Temple Guard can now be viable in a smaller games without a Slann.  Because of the Step-up and Supporting Attacks rules, Temple Guard can dish out a lot of S5 attacks while maintaining a respectable 4+ save. Iuse them in my lists as a small strike team to support my Saurus blocks. Little units of 10 can easily flank an enemy in combat with the Saurus blocks, negate ranks and throw a lot of powerful attacks onto the enemy. If they are supported by a Lord or Hero, they can take smallor medium units in the front and win. In a recent game I charged a big unit of Ogre Bulls in the front with a unit of Temple Guard with an Oldblood. The Oldblood wiffed most of his rolls, but the Temple Guard cleaned up, broke the unit and ran it down.

Speaking of Oldbloods, this new edition makes Oldblood lists even more effective and reasonable choice than they were. With larger units getting Steadfast, taking the Slann for that Stubborn block of Temple Guard is less important. If the Oldblood is mounted on a Carnosaur, his Leadership bubble extends to 18", making Skink units able to be more flexible while maintaining a good Leadership of 8. Even Saurus can mitigate the effects of lower leadership through Steadfast and a combination of Magic Items. A Scar Veteran BSB with the Standard of Discipline can make a Leadership 9, Steadfast, Cold Blooded unit if it gets more ranks. Another character with the Crown of Command can bestow Stubborn onto a smaller unit or one that might be out-ranked by its enemy.

That said, the Slann is still an excellent choice. The Leadership 9 BSB bubble is now more effective than ever given that BSB allows all Leadership tests to be re-rolled. The Slann is also one of the most powerful magic casters in the game, and in 8th Edition becomes one ofthe most reliable. The Focused Rumination allows for a Slann to mitigate the effects of a Winds of Magic roll by effectively adding dice to his pool. With the new, devastating Miscast table the Slann really improves given his resilience to Miscasts. Cupped Hands of the Old Ones can transfer one of those massive Miscasts to an opposing wizard, hopefully doing significant damage to them instead. Slann areone of the toughest casters in the game with 5 Wounds, Toughness 4 and a Ward Save, and because of this they can easily survive most of the bad rolls on the Miscast table, and Soul of Stone can help when areally bad one (S10 large template!) comes up.

With the new rule that replacements for duplicate spells are chosen(not re-rolled), the Slann can easily get all the spells he wantswithout the use of the Focus of Mystery. A Plaque of Tepok can ensurethat the Slann gets most of the spells, and if he rolls a double he can choose whatever spell is most useful, making him that much more reliable.

Anyway, there it is! My initial thoughts on 8th Edition Lizardmen.

After a couple weeks of slaving away over this army, painting endless expanses of Goblin Green armor and little yellow insignia, I finally finished the Mantis Warriors project!

The majority of this army is Level 3, with the more elite options like the Command Squad, Sternguard Squad and the lower-level characters coming out at 4th Level.  The only Level 5 model was the Force Commander/Chapter Master model.

Like always, there are more pictures of this army in the Photo Gallery to the left!

Yesterday was my new employee's first day!  It was really exciting, because now I don't have to do a lot of stuff, and I hate having to do things.

That's him in the picture above.  I'll admit that he's one of my best friends, but I have plenty of best friends and I got hi in here because he knows his way around the end of an X-Acto knife, which is a necessary skill.  Hopefully, with his help I'll be able to get models out a lot more quickly!

Okay, I have the pictures that I missed earlier.  Sorry about that, but here they are...

Here we have the character models; two Vampires, two Necromancers and a Wight King.  These are all the equivalent of Level 3 models.

Again, this army and these models are up for sale for $200 US, which is an awesome deal considering what you get in it!  Send me an e-mail if you are at all interested.

A couple days ago I promised that I would put my Vampire Counts army up for sale.  Well, after some feverish repair of some broken skeletons (those new models are really cool, but fragile as heck!), I have gotten it up.  I did just realize that there are some pictures missing of the characters and the like, so those will be coming later on.

So what this army consists of is the following:

3x20 Skeleton Warriors

1x10 Skeleton Warriors

1x20 Grave Guard

1x7 Black Knights

1x10 Zombies

1x5 "Revanenets"

1x2 Spirit Hosts

1x5 Dire Wolves

1 Great Nightmare

1 "Faceless Necromancer"

1 Mounted Necromancer

1 Mounted Wight King

2 Vampires

This makes for a pretty rounded army, especially in games of around 1,500 to 2,000 points.  The masses of infantry make for a really solid force while the harder hitters such as the Black Knights can really bring home the pain.

When I painted this army, I was going for speed of painting rather than quality, so every model in the army is Level 2.  Only the characters are Level 3 models.

I do have some really weird models in this army, mainly because I like converting models for Vampire Counts, which is a really diverse army and can accept all sorts of models as stand-ins.

First of all is the "Great Nightmare".  When this army started it was meant to be a lot more cavalry-based with Black Knights and Blood Knights, but that never ended up happening.  The Great Nightmare was supposed to be my "cavalryization" of the Varghulf model, and it looks really cool as a stand-in, in my opinion.  It was originally a plastic horse from a toy store but was given all sorts of flames sprouting from its hooves and is standing on the shrine from the Battle for Skull Pass.

The other weirdo model in the army is the "Revanents".  I hate GW's Ghoul models, so these were going to be my skeletal answer for Ghouls, but I never got around to making more than five of them.  Right now they stand in for Wraiths, or Skeleton or Zombies if I raise a lot.

Like I said, more pictures of the characters and other models are to come.

I'm looking for around $200 US for this army.  That's an excellent deal for the amount of models that you get in it, so shoot me an e-mail if you are interested.  I will have this army up on some other websites as well for sale, so first-come first-serve on it.

Caveat Emptor on these models, however: Because of the fragility of Games-Workshop's new Skeleton Warrior models and the fact that many of them have been repaired multiple times, I can't be responsible for models broken in shipping.  I will take every step that I can to ensure than they don't break, but I can't make any promises and I don't want to be held accountable if they do.  Still, at $200 is a great value for a force this size!

I spent this morning working hard on cleaning out my studio for this coming week.  I actually vacumed the place, rearranged the furniture to accomodate my new gaming table (more on that later) and got rid of a lot of superfluous junk.  I also set up a workspace for my new employee.

Oh yes, that's happening.

Wednesday is his first day.  He'll be taking care of assembly, basing, priming and packaging models - basically everything short of painting so that I don't mess up my groove.  I'm hella excited, it's gonna be great!

I have some Vampire Counts that I spoke about earlier that are going to go on the block shortly as well as some Lego armies (yes, Legos).  I just need to repair a couple of those delicate skeletons before I start with that.

I also have some models that I completed earlier for the Mantis Warriors.  I did some Land Speeders, and I have to admit that I don't like the old ones as I do the new ones.  They look like Harley-Davidson motorcycles, but the multi-melta on the top is really cool looking.

I also did a Devastator squad, and unlike the Land Speeders, I really like the oldschool weapons on these models.  The missile launchers are especially cool looking, especially the one with the blast shield.

The rest of the army is ready to paint, and so I should have those done by the end of the week with any luck.  It's a little after I had planned to have them completed, but they'll be done.

Hey, I got back from another weekend away.

June 19th was yesterday, so as of right now I am taking projects again.  So, shoot me an e-mail if you need a quote.

I got my primer in yesterday - so have no fear, I will begin work immediatly!

I spent the down time magnetizing some Thunderwolves for another project - pictures as soon as I finish them, I still have two to go!

I received a Citadel Realm of Battle board the other day.  In a little sidetrack of non sequitorial action, kudos to Neil at The War Store - he basically shipped me this giant gameboard for free, and within two days I had recieved it; before my payment even cleared!

I spent a good portion of my weekend a couple of weeks ago building a game-table to host my new Realm of Battle - it's a 8x4 board with little 1/2 inch edges to keep the board from sliding off that sits on top of a smaller, 6x30" table.  My plan was to spray paint it with a gloss spray, but I ended up getting about 1/10 of the table done before my can ran out!  I have to run to the store today to get another one.

Today I have an interview with a new minion of mine!  Well, not really an interview - the word interview is scary, more of a meeting, maybe even a breifing.  That's exciting because he starts next week, so I'll have a little gremlin putting together even smaller gremlins for me!

Remember, folks - the day after tomorrow is June 19th.  I expect to be bombarded by a flood of emails.

It was pretty poor planning on my part, but I am going away on the 19th - I will be present that morning and I'll be coming back Sunday afternoon, but I will be incommunicado for the interum.  Pretty stupid of me, I should have thought a little more before making plans.

Because of my blatant sillyness, I will be available to take projects today and tomorrow as well, so if you want something done you can e-mail me now rather than later to avoid waiting.

I have more bad news.  I hate bad news, but I seem to bring it all-to often lately.

Friday I spent the day cleaning my house for some guests that were coming over on Sunday, so I didn't get much work done past a couple of Land Speeders for the Mantis Warriors.  Yesterday I spent with said friends, and so got no work done.

Today I had some other real-life commitments to attend to, but this afternoon I sat down and told myself I was going to get cracking on those Space Marines.  I still had about half of them to spray, because earlier I had sprayed most of the basic troopers and when the can I was using ran out, I stopped for a while.  Everything that I had primed was painted, so I prepared all the models and went to get my primer only to find...

There wasn't any.  The can that I had thought was my last one of black spray primer was actually a gloss-coat.  Needless to say, I can't prime with gloss-coat.

...

I'm really f**king things up lately, aren't I.

Anyway, I basically can't paint until I get re-stocked (the shipment should arrive sometime around the end of the week).  I'm really, really sorry!

I promised these pictures yesterday, so I am very sorry for the delay - they really should have been here weeks ago.

My studio is in a state of chaos right now with the re-organization project that I am busy working on, so digging up all the little peices that make my camera work was harder than I anticipated.  Again, I am sincerely sorry for the delay!

Anyhoo, onto pictures!

First up is a number of Night Goblins that I am working on as part of a set.  As of right now, this is only about half of the buggers and there are some other models thrown in as well, so expect more of these in the not too distant future.  These little guys are all Level 2.

I have a Mantis Warriors Space Marine army in for Warhammer 40,000 right now which I'm working on diligently as of late.  This one has a fairly quick deadline, so I need to get up and get it out the door as soon as possible.  That's not too hard, because I have about half of the army completed right now!

These are all really old models, which is really great to see.  I love some of these older forms of the Space Marines (those Dreadnoughts are simply terrifying - much more so than the walking shipping crates of today!) and it's really just cool to see and paint them!