Following up from last months introduction to the game, which mostly involved James, Neil and Trev singing its praises here are some painting progress and some more thoughts from the guys. I'm just about to start work on my season 2 Fisherman Sakana which is an awesome model. I'm also working on a wee commission for Jon Pugh, painting his Masons team over the next few weeks.
Trev Moffat
We all have managed to complete our teams and those other two have managed to get themselves along to some tournaments. I'll be heading to my first; Festive Balls in Bristol on the 12th of December which looks like it is going to be one of the biggest in the UK so far. I'll leave it down to the others to discuss the gaming side of things but on paper it looks like an excellent game for tournament play.
I've played quite a few pick-up games against all of the guilds so far and they all seem to play very differently. Even games against the same team can when you start mixing players up, not always successfully! Bit of a mixed bag of success on the whole, the skippy about teams like the Fishermen are much more problematic than the other fighting about ones such as the Brewers so far but there have been very few occasions when I've not been in the game.
I'll make this a bit of a painting and modelling blog to cover what I've been doing with the majority of my hobby time. Firstly assembly, the models themselves can be a little bit fiddly in some places. I had some issues with one of Shank's chains and one of Meathook's hooks but nothing some superglue and a pin vice couldn't fix. I've also heard the designers and company owners state on podcasts that they intend to improve the ease of assembly of their new models which is a very positive step. The team didn't have any conversion work a) because I really liked the models and b) because I'm not the greatest at it.
As well as the team it’s seen as common practice to make a custom goal and ball (not really the ball but I want this to become a thing). For my butchers I managed to collect a few bits and bobs together to make a cow themed goal the bits I used were from a variety of places: Warhammer Giant Kit, Reaper Bones Boxes and Barrels and some farm animals from a manufacturer whose name I can't remember. My football was also decorated with chickens from the same mysterious company. I'm pretty happy with the results.
When it came to painting I have a fairly odd style. It can be very cartoony in execution but I use a lot of natural and neutral colours. I have mostly been undercoating in a lovely chocolate brown from Plasticote. The cartoony nature is partly down to the Foundry paints system which I use and love. The best thing about it is the really high pigment levels. It is based on 3 colours (highlight, main and basecoat) which makes it very quick to use especially if you struggle to recreate tones. The books by Kevin Dallimore (http://www.wargamesfoundry.com/books/painting-guide ) will describe it much better than I will even be able to. Washes and inks (a mixture of GW’s previous range and army painter) are also used to shade basically all of the main colours, this is much akin to dipping but much less intrusive, I find it really good for bringing all the shadow areas together in tone.
I limited my palette for the models on this project to browns for leather and wood, creams for the cloth, iron like metals, a Caucasian flesh tone, bright red for the pop colour on other pieces of material, hair colours vary but I tried to keep the tones as natural as possible . Blood was added to some of the figures, this was a bit of a trial and error procedure and I went overboard quite a few times, nearly messing up one of my miniatures. The best effect I got was a mixture of gloss varnish, Tamiya X-72 Clear Red, Strong and Dark Tone Army painter washes, once this was applied to the deeper parts of the gore I added some Blood for the Blood God as an over layer so it looks a bit redder at the edges. I’m sure I can make this procedure a bit more efficient
On the bases I went for a sand colour with cork rocks painted in Foundry Stone, bright green static grass and some autumn tufts from Silflor. I think these differentiate the base from the models themselves, black edges always help to frame as well so I also went with that. I'm pretty happy with the result and they were surprisingly quick to paint up. I base in a bit of a weird manner (or so I have been told) I put on all of the sand and cork first which is then sealed then undercoated with the rest of the model. I find it makes the basing materials stay on much better. I also paint and highlight the entire base before even beginning to think about the model and do this whether the model is attached or not. I find it also makes it easier to see if your model scheme is working with the basing scheme as you go, the base is also much easier to fix if you make an error as well.
For my Union mercenary players I wanted to make them fit in but still are appropriately different. I think I managed this by keeping a fair amount of use of bright red and browns. In addition I went for black as a major colour for their cloth areas as it goes with most things and I think it suits the sculpting of the models with their shady backgrounds and flowing cloaks. I've also added a little gold and white where appropriate, these colours suit the slightly more opulent nature of the models. I intend to use some other splashes of colour in some of the more unusual models and also practice with different skin tones.
Already owning Gutter, Rage, Minx and Decimate as Union subs for my Butchers I think the logical purchases (well as logical as you can get when buying luxury goods like toy soldiers) will be the following guys which will allow me to field a Union team with a bit of everything too. Already having the scheme sorted out means they should also paint up quite quickly.
Blackheart
Coin
Fangtooth
Mist
Hemlock
The models as I said before are joys to paint, so as well as being super excited about picking up Fillet and Truffles for the butchers, I may even end up with more teams...
I’ve found Guildball swiftly push other games out of the way and become my primary system so I plan to involve myself in it quite a lot in the next while. I want to take part in a league one of the other Edinburgh guys has offered to run, build some themed terrain for a Butchers table, paint more stuff (including learning new techniques with glazing and washes), run a one day event and as always coerce more victims people into playing.
P.S.
If you want to stay up to date with Guildball please listen to the following podcasts and look at this stuff.
· Guildball Tonight http://www.guildballtonight.com/gbt/
· Who Cares Who Wins http://www.wcww.co.uk/
· Smashed Shins http://smashedshins.podbean.com/
Websites and blogs
· Official Steamforged forums – games designers that participate with their customers J http://forums.steamforged.com/index.php?/forum/9-guild-ball/
· Muse on minis http://museonminis.com/
· Doc Bungle – for beginners guides to all of the guilds https://minimusingofabear.wordpress.com/
James Esland:
“After several weeks of work and intermittent Twitter updates, I finished my Alchemists team (all 7 available models) ending with Compound. I really enjoyed painting the big guy - the exaggerated scale meant swathes of flesh and fabric I could get a lot of tonal variation in, so I think I levelled up my skill with glazes and filters (basically what I’m calling washes mixed with Lahmium medium) as well ‘inventing’ a new technique (for me at least) for doing veins (paint blue lines, cover over with flesh coloured glazes).
· I’d started experimenting with coloured filters while painting gold armour on a blood bowl team; I find if you layer metallic paints too much you get diminishing returns, they feel a bit gloopy/oily and are hard to water down right before they bead up, especially when painting over other metallics. An alternative is to get a nice base metal on, sepia washed (god I love Sepia wash) and highlighted, then lay in shading with filters. I’m partial to purple and crimson on gold (nice warm colours) and tend to a yellow glaze as well for warmth (though a glaze will tend to unify a surface, so I do this before the final edge highlights). Just pop them in shadowy bits and curves, and mix it up - you can use different coloured filters on different parts of the armour. You can do some before and some after the glaze - as you are barely changing the model and only applying a very thin layer, you can really go back in as many times as necessary - if the armour looks a bit flat, go and add some more. Flask is basically all metal, just washes/glazes/filters over gold, I’m pleased he doesn’t come across as ‘flat’.
· You can do the same thing on steel armour too and can go for cold colours (blue, green) or warmer (crimson, orange) to add subtle interest and depth.
· A strong brown mixed with a bit of water and/or medium can be popped in with a thin brush for ‘blacklining’ and re-asserting joins/cracks etc. ‘Brown-lining’ sounds a bit off. If you add more water you can put a bead on rivets etc too – the curvature will make the brown flow off the top and around the circumference of the rivet (though still best before highlighting).
· I extended this technique to the apron on Compound, first painting it green and highlighting, then adding a series of Carroburg crimson filters to get a colour variation in the folds, then using a nuln black/medium mix to darken the underneath of the folds. I finished up highlighting with a series of green/bleached bone mixes then finally white. A glaze of green/medium was blended on where I wanted to soften a gradation over the curve of a fold between the whiter and blacker areas. I was aiming for a sort of chiaroscuro effect to match the lovely concept art, but without too harsh a transition between the light and dark. I’m pleased with the result (though painting a freehand geometric symbol on a curved and skewed apron was nerve wracking… be very sure where the centre line should be first, folds and all, or it will look weird!). I think doing it this way is slower than ‘just’ blending (did you know you can buy blending medium from art shops which keeps the paint fluid for longer?) but allows for more colour variation. You can keep adjusting it too, adding a bit of filter or glaze here or there or re-highlighting as required.
· There are two greens on most of the alchemist models and both are ‘warm’ to my eyes (yellow glaze over the highlighted scorpion green before the final white highlight). Three on Compound is the most greens I’ve ever painted on anything. I’m pleased they all play together well!
· I also made a point of trying to highlight everything to white, which also helps give that ‘realism’ and tie the models together.
· The bases were my Will’s idea - I ordered some laser cut circles and put a cement of sand/glue/stuff on them (thanks Rich for the tip here). Clear primer to seal, then a quick re-buff of the edges post painting so they keep that glow. The colour is ‘acid green’ and I think it matches the chemicals nicely. These and the bright green set off the muted scheme nicely (same as warpstone in a skaven army), and add that dangerous feeling.
· This is typified in the ‘destructive/self-destructive’ tension of Compound and Katalyst. Note that neither has faces – the masks dehumanise them (are they hiding from the world or from themselves?). I found this a challenge initially, faces usually provide character to a model and a focal point. The anonymity of Compound meant I needed to add character elsewhere (his seeping sores, fat, veiny belly etc), but I didn’t want to unbalance the model and have the focal point be too low. The lack of the face is compensate for by the fact the tubes to his respirator are the chem-green. Now his head is the focal point again, but because of the chemicals rather than the face as usual. The mask probably hides a horrifying reality now best left to the imagination…
· Wanting to keep the focal point in the face is the same reason the freehand is muted. I thought leaving off the circle round the sigil both leads the eye up, echoes the fact that his head is reminiscent of a fly, and the top of the triangle better complements the chevrons on the kneepads.
· I think this is the longest I’ve spent painting just one model, and I’m super pleased with the result. As a whole, I like the juxtaposition between the subtlety of colour variation between the majority of the model - the olive green, bone, flesh etc, and the stark saturation of the scorpion green ‘chemicals’. Sepia wash was a massive help giving the majority of the model a consistency - and crimson/purple filters add interest to the green trousers, brown boots, gold bits etc while also tying the model together more.
· I added a leather respirator to Katalyst to better match his concept art as well as removing his hairflop, stripping him back to a bare shirt rather than armour over a shirt, and repositioning his legs into a physically feasible arrangement. I’m not sure what the bomb thing is he is carrying though. His sprint/hand off pose has an urgency which speaks to the desperation described in his fluff, and the unblinking lenses of the mask have both urgency and madness…. I think I’m reading too much into the models. But being able to focus on a smaller number of individual models really helps you get to grips with who these guys are and try to reflect that character in how you paint them. The concept art is so simple but very evocative nonetheless, so I tried to capture that as well.
Here are some shots of the other models and then the whole team to finish
Vitriol: Best player after Midas, worst model. The o’erhead kick is about the only way to make sense of her. Hope there’s a brisket-esque version coming (chebs out, watch the knives):
Mercury: 7th best player post Katalyst changes, but the coolest cheerleader model you’ll ever see:
Calculus: Like a mediocre version of Hemlocke (even post nerf). Her posed indifference is apt - she’s super blah as a player. Good character plays, terrible playbook.
Midas: Wearing correspondents (a type of two tone leather shoe) and a waistcoat to play a bloodsport. Bro. There’s nothing more infuriating than a smug a-hole that knows he’s better than you at ye old guildy-ball and shows it - here’s ‘I’ll take 7 influence and do whatever the f*ck I want’ Midas (aka: ‘A$$hat’)
Neil Peckett
After an arduous painting schedule (I can't believe it took me that long to paint 8 models), I was finally ready for my first Guild Ball tournament – a full 2 days ahead of schedule (this is almost unheard of for me – at the Mersey Meltdown earlier this year, I was still painting a Warpfire Thrower 12 minutes in to the first round).
The Tournament in question was Winter War in Dunfermline, a mega charity event that really gives back every year. The Guild Ball part of the tournament was small enough that we were put in to a room that had nice lighting – this was a real bonus!
The event had originally been intended as a 4 game affair, however, given we only had 8 in attendance, everyone agreed to drop it to 3 games, to ensure no issues occurred in identifying the 'true' winner. This also meant I got home early for my tea – winner!
I played against Masons, Brewers and then, just for good measure, some more Brewers. I got a 12-0 win, and then something like a 2-12 loss and a 6-12 loss. Certainly that isn't a million miles away.
Things I learned with my Fishermen:
- Gutter is great. A real Momentum Factory. This probably isn't a surprise to anyone who has used her. I have struggled to generate momentum with my Fishies – this really helped the situation.
- SquishyFishy. I game two particularly, I was up against a chap who really knew what he was doing – this showed in the way he systematically took me to pieces, the resilience (or lack of!) the Fishermen really working to his advantage.
- I have been playing the wrong game. I have historically been quite an aggressive player in the games I have played, liking to get right up into my opponent's grill. This really hasn't been working well for me when using the Fishermen. It has taken a while, but I finally realise that is not what they should be doing! I should be going for goals, and doing it down the flanks, using my speed to my advantage.
- Getting knocked down is rubbish. Really takes away from the Fishies game plan. Brewers are VERY good at knocking people down – really need to try and keep them at Arms' Length.
- Kraken might not be worth it. In my earlier games I have really liked this guy – the momentous knockdown he can bring out is especially great. However, only a 2+ defence really is an Achilles heel in the team – I am going to try experimenting more with Jac.
I don't actually know where I fished in the tournament (I would guess 6th), but plenty has been learned, and I have been *trying* to apply this to my games going forwards. Think it is a steep learning curve for my Fishermen, but I am keen not to give up and go for a smashy team!
Next Tournament is down in Bristol on 12 December – I hope I can do slightly better this time round!