THE WORKSHOP Blog

Finally got my copy of Metamorphosis!  Also ordered were Sabol Army Transport foam trays for my new Legion army, of which I still need to finish assembling.  I was glancing through the Legion section and noting at how cool everything was.  When I started reading the Strider unit attachment, I remembered – I had also ordered them!!  I dug through the box I was about to throw out to pull out the blister.  That was a close call.  Those models are pretty cool, but they do seem larger than regular Striders.  Didn’t have any normal ones on hand to compare.

So, what’s left to assemble: 5 Raptors and a Strider UA (2 models).  I plan on using my bought-painted Striders, but if I have time, I will assemble a new unit so that my army can retain its consistent bare-metal look (unfortunately :P).

Drama, birthday party planning, partying, bedridden illness… it’s been a long week.  I’m still sick, but I’ve been spending my evenings finishing my Incubi and finally started on my Raptors (just the mounts).  I tried to sculpt fingers on one incubus, but it just looks dreadful and non-proportionate to the rest of the model.  I let it be.

My raptor mounts were just simply glued together, with the idea that I’ll green-stuff the gaps later.  I had broken out one of my tiny clamps to hold a blighted archer upside down so that gravity would glue his broken bow shaft.  I thought, hey, I can use these to glue to mounts securely!  One mount was already drying, lying on its side to use gravity while I was struggling to find a way to make the second one snug.  Anyways, I hope to have Metamorphosis and my Strider UA in next week.  Just a week away from the tournament, and not a single drop of paint.

I assembled, mostly, my squad of 5 Incubi.  I was expecting to simply glue and base single-piece models, but no… there are 3 different sculpts and each one consists of 4 pieces!!  My finger is raw and sore from holding the tiny pieces so that I could pin them.  I gave up on pinning and just started using glue and Zip Kicker.  I will be leaving off some parts off of one of the Incubi (the Nyss arms that are falling off the corpse) and instead I’ll try to sculpt little Nyss fingers on the claws (to show that the arms are turning into the claws instead of the arms falling off while the claws are coming from someplace else).

Anyways, these little buggers are super sweet looking and will be fun to paint, granted the kneeling ones have hard to reach parts so they are not glued to their bases yet.  I had not expected such simple models to require so much work!?

Angelius done (after 2 nights).  Deathstrider done (after 2 minutes).  Epic Lylyth done (except one arm is unattached to make painting her chest easier :P)  Lylyth is such a beautiful model with her leaping pose.  I attached mine to a cork base to simulate her leaping off a cliff edge.  Well, cliff edge it isn’t, but more like raised ground.  Oh well, I’m still very excited about getting ready to paint her.

I was retinkering with my list because I wasn’t sure that I would get the 2nd unit of Striders done in time.  Lots of questions came up: will the Gobber Bellows really help this army?  Can the Bone Grinders keep up with Lylyth?  Are 6 more Strider shots better than 10 more archers?  Should I replace them with Swordsmen instead?  What’s with this runny nose?

Well, since whatever unit I choose will be replaced by Raptors in March, I shouldn’t bother with assembling another unit of Striders and just stick with something else I have – probably the Swordsmen so that I have more of a tool box army instead of all ranged units.

The Bone Grinders are much slower than Lylyth, and the only thing they’re adding to her is 3″ to her only useful spell, making it 13″ instead of 10″.  I’ll keep them in the list for this weekend at least since I had gone through the trouble of putting them together.

The runny nose persisted this morning and I’m feeling like I’m coming down with something – I got the chills now.  Hopefully I don’t feel too ill where I cannot attend Strategicon this weekend.

Filed and cleaned up my Angelius!  It’s getting a boring base (due to time restraints), but it’s got numerous pins to the base, and one long pin to keep its slender upper body attached to both the lower body and base.  The wings connect pretty well, so I’ll be relying on simply glue (and putty to fill the gaps).  The glue I have (an old Citadel one) takes forever to dry, so I’ll have to break out the zip kicker tonight.  Didn’t get much else done because of errands.

While cleaning my Angelius, I was catching up on Fell Calls.  I was on episode #154 (August 2008) and they were coincidentally talking about epic Lylyth!  I learned from that podcast that her feat only affects one model/unit, and that disappointed me greatly because I had planned on taking numerous ranged models/units to capitalize on her feat :(  After cleaning up my desk, I reviewed her card (which I had just gotten) and didn’t see how her feat only affected one model/unit.  It said “models/units”.  I checked the No Quarter where she was previewed and there was the difference!  In the preview, her feat only said “model/unit”.  What a relief!

In other news, HORDES: Metamorphosis is scheduled to be released at the end of this month (2/25) instead of March!  I’ll have to make a special request to Neal at The WarStore (www.thewarstore.com) to see if he can get the goods to me by release date :D