Cybertronic vs Legion battle report

Shortly after recent unexpected meeting of Cybertronic and Dark Legion patrols, noise of another battle has shaken the surface of Mars. Cybertronic drones have spotted column of flame bursting among rock formations not far in the south of the base, which might be sign of gas or oil deposit the corporation has been looking for. Therefore strong patrol led by one of clones of doctor Diana has been sent immediately to examine and secure the discovery.

A.I. patrol arrived with no delay, but just after cyborgs spotted the burning flame shambling horde of undead legionnaires emerged from behind the hill and rock formations. Apparently also Legion's tekrons found that phenomenon worthy examining...

So we had another Warzone game on dedicated battlefield. 

This time we were supposed to test some more home rules my opponent made up recently, but instead of simple modification of 1st ed. rules, he brought statistics from Ultimate Warzone mixed with old mechanics and "booster" cards you can see on the table. All units got statistics reduced so even once-powerful single models became quite pathetic. 

Because of rules modification the game was nothing like classic Warzone match but it also was breath of fresh, martian air. We will give this project a chance for sure.

Forces of Cybertronic: 

-    Eradicator Deathdroid, 

-    dr Diana,

-    cuirassier Attila,    

-    1 squad of mirrormen, 

-    1 squad of machinators, 

-    2 squads of chasseurs. 

Forces of Legion:

-    nepharite of Algeroth,

-    ezoghul

-    razide, 

-    2 squads of praetorian stalkers,

-    2 squads of necromutants, 

-    2 squads of undead legionairees.

Both sides emerged from the deployment zones trying to catch cenrte of the battlefield. We agreed to play 6 rounds and the winning condition is securing the burning crater after 6th round ends. Crawling undead formed a wide line keeping most of infantry in the middle, while ezoghoul rushed forward to lure out deadly Eradicator Deathdroid from the cover. The cuirassier took careful aim at advancing ezoghoul, but none of bullets managed to penetrate exoskeleton from such a distance.

On eastern side squad of mirrormen supported by chasseurs advanced trying to secure flanking position, but they for under praetorian stalkers' deadly supressing fire. Despite having best armour Cybertronic could provide - two mirrormen were hit and destroyed.

Necromutant commando advanced trying to find some cover against chasseurs' fire and greet Eradicator with a flamethrower. Deathdroid moved forward to get as many deaders as possible within range of gigadeath chainripper and built-in flamethrower. Dry deaders burn better then logs of wood...

Since Eradicator showed it's position, ezoghoul was ordered to move back to capture the objective after situation in the centre is clear. At the same time praetorian stalkers once again opened deadly fire towards advancing cyborgs, gunning down 3 chasseurs.

Cybertronic force advanced to get the positions around the crater. They managed to take down few legionnaires and necromutants but this definitelly wasn't enough to stop or even make slow crawling mass undead. In responce Nepharite ordered to open fire from all guns available. Salvo of 30 or so assault rifles must have taken it's toll: a few more chasseurs and two machinators were taken out of action. Even Eradicator got it's armour plates scratched!

The next turn started with Eradicator: the death device advanced to torch whole squad of necromutants! The first salvo scorched 2 mutants, another salvo took 2 more out of action.
Eradicator was close now, so both units of undead legionnaires were ordered to advance and open fire at closest range possible. Unfortunately about 20 shots managed to cause only a single wound: 

thick armour supported by life-saving mechanisms make deathdroid almost unstoppable!

Seeing what happened to necromutants, the nepharite commander ordered ezoghoul to charge Eradicator, hoping tear it apart or at least engage in close combat for long enough so the remaining forces can open fire once again. Seconds later nepharite also charged deathdroid from behind the smoke screen, but combined attack caused only 2 more wounds - Cybertronic was still deadly!

On eastern flank operator of Tormentor flamethrower has finally reached the target: 2 chasseurs were burnt to death within seconds which caused blind panic to the survivors.
Since the flank has just been secured, the other squad of necromutants advanced to the centre of the battlefield to support core of Dark Legion force.

On the eastern side praetorian stalkers have disengaged mirrormen and advanced opening deadly fire consuming some chasseurs and the last machinator. In exchange one of stalkers has been mortally but it was fair price to pay for Cybertronic losses.

Eradicator recieved one more wound, but it was still standing!
It managed to leave close combat and then spat burning napalm on surrounding zombies. Few survivded only because they were out of range of the scorcher.

In the last turn ezoghoul and centurion charged barely-working Eradicator, hoping to inflict the final wound and take that beast out of action. At the same time Scorpion tried to lay smoke screen to cut off praetorian stalkers, who alrady moved on firing positions:

it missed and shortly after it's been torn apart by concentrated machine guns fire.

In the very last moments of the battle, necromutants fired at remaining squad of chasseurs making them panic, but it couldn't change the game result: 

whole centre of the field has been dominated by Dark Legion's spawn, and there was absolutely nothing barely-active Eradicator could do about it. The battle was over. 

As I wrote it after the previous game - it was great to see old models in action once again. Apart from the fact Warzone game is just fun, we're pretty nostalgic about it here - hobby started for us because of Warzone around 1996/1997. 

Because of severe rules and statistic modifications the battle was nothing like Warzone 1ed - no more overboosted characters and one-man-armies. Instead of initiative rolls we used "booster cards" which could help activate faster but also boost statistics during the game: it wan't the fastest way but it brought some tactical thinking at the beginning of each turn. This element is yet to be tested.

Hope you enjoyed the battle report - especially whole that FX-fung-fu by opponent performed on some the the photos. Can't wait to paint some more Dark Legion's bloodthirsty servants to throw them on Cybertronic once again! 💀

Camera test

This time it's just technical post.

Recently my trusty camera started acting weird - files started missing or were corrupted somehow, which was even more frustrating given the fact I also take photos for my "normal" job. Serviceman told me it's most probably because camera is running on it's last legs (it's like 11-12 years old). So I was forced to change it for it's modern successor 😕

I'm afraid it might take a while before I get used to the new gear and find proper adjustments for taking pics of miniatures. I can set white balance, I can find autofocus options but I don't think the result is what I am expecting. Judge fr yourself.

Below - Dark Legion's Ezoghlul and Tekron. Some more will follow. At least I can take fresh photos of old models (especially those lost because of Photobucket action):

Warzone Ezoghoul finished

Hey again,

Not much surprise this time - the title has spoiled content of the post: old Warzone Ezoghoul has been marked as painted and placed into the glass case among other Dark Legion's slaves. It's great to see this ugly bastard finished at last!

But first I'd like to share little (and ~18 years old) surprise I got last afternoon.

Old buddy of mine came back from the wedding travel just like 2-3 days ago and dropped in my place with something to take the curse* off the gaming table. At least that's what he texted me. He appeared with Angel of Death model - open top Brotherhood vehicle.

I never was the fan of the model, probably because I was Dark Legion player only (despite the fact I have still unpainted army of Brotherhood). But when I opened the box, put the clumsy pieces together I changed my mind: this thing kinda sums up style of most early Warzone sculpts. It fits really well junk I've been painting recently and should look fucking fine on the battlefield if painted in original colors. 
So here it is, another piece of wargaming history. Should probably be stored in some sort of museum, but it found new home among other old timers in my collection.

Now we're getting on the topic!

Painting Ezoghoul also created the occasion to finish some undead legionnaires. 

These guys were quite unique: they were released in 1999 while original legionnaires are from 1996, they seem to be better sculpted and Cthulhu knows why - there were only 3 models in blister instead of 4 as usually. I'd prefer to see them standing on separate bases but in the end the decision was made to base them together with pony of Algeroth:

I painted them with bright tones (contrasting nicely with Ezoghoul) and besides they are slightly smaller than other deaders so Ezoghoul looks even bigger.

Nice and pleasant work: these two is just some flesh and a gun, so finishing each of corpses takes ~2 easy evenings, with a cold beer in the True Detective in the back (got to find myself other series to play during painting, any suggestions? Sth creepy? Dark future?)

And here's mister superstar.

If I haven't mentioned it before: I am very glad to see it painted after the thing was saved from the junk-tomb. It's a bloody miracle during years of hibernation and 3 movings no parts are missing and the only damage is the barrel (I screwed it with my unskilled, early drilling and therefore replaced with placcy meltagun's) and sword's crossguard.

I was trying to paint it similar to original artwork - with natural colors (if we can say anything in this monster is natural). After taking the pics I can clearly see the highlights should be much stronger - it's necessary if you use heavy supermatt varnish. But I like the final effect a lot - hightlighted properly or not and not going to change it.

On first pics the beast is standing alone but later you can see it with undead handlers / pooptakers (Algeroth likes to have his grass clean). We have planned the game for tomorrow night so we will see if Ezoghoul is anything more than just bullet magnet :)

Seeya!

*oh yes, curses actually work, haven't realised how to dispel them yet though.

Warzone Ezoghoul and some other oldies

Heya!

So once again I've been dealing with piece of old Warzone history - the younger brother of Mezoghoul (still haven't figured out what was the point of producing such a huge model in metal, check it's base for the scale!).

Anyway I remember I got the model for 35,00 zł which is now ~$11, have no idea what was relation between polish and american currencies in late 90s' though. It really wasn't big price for such a large model.

I also remember my Ezoghoul hasn't seen many battles - the reason was I had terrible problems with assembling it (no driller, no greenstuff...) and also this unit was just medicore in combat: easy to hit from almost any place on battlefield but offering not much in return.
As it's easy to notice the sculpt is not exactly Rackham standard but tastes differ and mine seems to differ a lot from most painters I know.

I really had a dillema what paints I want to see slapped on model.
Haven't seen any Ezoghoul painted cool enough to make the choice for me so decision was made to use idea from the official artwork: olive-like flesh and brighter exoskeleton / armour / whatever it is. Some green tones were added to bone color to keep it coherent with flesh but I also might paint it just rotten. I want to see some brighter elements on the flesh - the olive is bit too dark for me and also want add red glaze so the flesh welds nicely with muscle tissue on the belly. At this moment red tone can be barely noticed.

For the base I used 60 mm placcy one from EE dreadnought - it's already slightly elevated and makes the figure much more stable: it's gaming model so I don't want to risk it falling down every time shit hits the fan in the heat of battle. Since there's still plenty room on the base I think I might place there spare necromutant or zombie solider: it will show true scale of the beast and besides it's another good reason to finally paint some old lead soliders.

Here's the wip shot of the pony...

And here's the same pony but in bit more advanced stage:

But there's more!
About week ago postman delivered small parcel from Holland. Inside the box there were some models traded for painted Supreme Necromagus from my collection:

The story behind it started few weeks earlier:
I mentioned on official Prodos' Warzone forum I'd like to trade some of my painted models for missing toys and Malebolgia replied. You might know the guy from Frothers or Lead Adventure Forum (whole that so-called web world seems to be smaller than I used to think).
I was offered some oldie models to choose from so in the end I got these:

I chose some missing sculpts from Warzone range (still looking for Immaculate furies variants btw) and also some pretty interesting sculpts from other manufacturers. And since we're at interesting miniatures theme - recently postman delivered small parcel from Germany: this time there was copy of wicked moon plaque + 2 small models from Hamburger Tactica event. All sculpted by Vikotnik, really cool person I met on Lead Adventure Forum. If you don't know him by the name you might know him by his works: Shadow of the vampire and just amazing monochrome Nosferatu gaming board.

The vampire and moon-head fella came as the bonus, what I found really useful is the plaque. Some time ago (like year ago?) I was trying to assemble small Mordheim based greenskins band. I don't play the game but painting themed stuff is more fun than just random models for display base and besides - Warhammer 5th ed gobbos are just fucking cool :)
I only managed to paint 2 models of the chosen 9-10, that's all I had the steam for. But now I think I can come back to the band by building display plinth for them - big moon on dark background should be quite eyecatching piece in the glass case.

Cheers!