AWESOME New Primers (by AK Interactive - Go figure)

Hey folks - Here we go again.  Life has stabilized a bit, my family has moved in with my parents until my new house is ready and we have found some consistency and routine and things are starting to feel normalish again. With that I have decided I am finally ready to get back at blogging and putting together some hobby articles - Hooray!

This week I have an amazing new product from my favorite hobby company AK-Interactive. In the past I have shown several of their washes, their sand and gravel fixer (If you haven't got this yet you are just cheating yourself!) and some of their paint effects sets.  Well Mig, Iain and the rest of the crew have stepped up once again and are in the process of releasing a whole paint line. As a part of this is a product that i think is going to be a mainstay of my painting process - AK Primers.

These are airbrush ready primers that come in a variety of colours (yeah we spell color with a U here in Canada - no I dont just keep making the same spelling error here.....). So far I have the Dark yellow primer and the grey primer and I decided to give them a spin. This can be really handy as your primer and basecoat can all be a single thinner layer as opposed to one one over the other.

I started with a tank model - the enormous 1/35 scale Maus by Dragon models (comparable in size to a Baneblade but with very large flat surfaces that will show flaws in finishes pretty easily). This model should likely be painted in a dark yellow (dunkelgelb) paint scheme. The student who build the kit primed it Chaos black to start with, which in many ways undermines my test of this as a "primer" and how well it bonds to surfaces (I will address this further down in this article) but I figured it would give me an opportunity to check the opacity of this primer coat, particularly in thin coats, and to check the consistency across large smooth surfaces and see what the tooth was like.

It covered like a dream. The paint coats flashed quickly (drying across the surface) and blended passes together seamlessly with virtually no effort. The tooth of the paint was very fine and very flat. This is a HUGE advantage over the Army Painter line of similarly coloured primers as they often have an overly slick surface that can be a challenge to paint and weather over and has a much glossier look.

The closest comparison to the finish that I can make is Tamiya paint thinned with lacquer thinner. The true difference here is NO LACQUER THINNER. Completely water based it lacks the solvent smell &need for additives and harsh chemicals. So good it has to be seen to be believed. The coats go on extremely thin and cover to opacity quickly and easily.

I switched over to some Warmachine models that needed some new paint. I have a PMagnus battlegroup that were in various stages of painting when I purchased them and an additional Talon that I had for the club's other Merc forces. This meant a combo of repaints and bare metal. GREAT! Now we would be able to see how it binds to bare metal and plastic as well as how it covers a variety of colours and older paints (I didn't feel like stripping these first - just refreshing them for the club).

Once again, nothing but awesomeness in a bottle. The coats went on easily, flashed completely smooth and hit opacity without obscuring any further detail. The finish is rugged enough that it will hold up well to further painting and weathering without and worry.

The same can definitely be said for the bare metal talon that I primed in Grey (I will now use this as the primer and base colour for McBain's battlegroup). The paint clung extremely well to the metal surfaces and, while not as durable as Chaos Black, it does seems rugged enough to use as the base for a gaming mini without fear (airbrushable paints are generally a much more fragile surface - easily scratched and damaged. This seems as strong as a brushable coat when I attempted to scratch/stress it).
All in all, a really successful first outing for a new product that will quickly become a staple of my painting kit!

Coming soon: More Beastmen, More Magnus, More Terrain, More Reviews (Impudent Mortal Laser Cut Gaming trays!), More Khador (Battle engine), and Learning to Use Retribution!

Anomaly Battle Report: 18 points Rahn vs Baldur

Hey folks. Started into Anomaly with a mostly new faction - Retribution.

The club members chose this one for me as it is the faction that I had the least understanding of and a limited choice of. They felt this would give them the most advantages and opportunities for laying a whupping on me. Fair Enough! The faction I had the most concern about was Circle. With so many of my elves toolbox abilities/spells being anti-warjack in specific or reliant on my stealth+pathfinder abilities to allow me to outmaneuver and come from any direction, the Circle seemed to be a natural foil to my lists.  This meant I was going to have to think outside the box.....

The target and his bodyguard...

When we revealed our list choices I found that my opponent switched up his expected list (I had expected he would have some reeves and/or woldstalkers with shifting stones to combo shoot and rock block me!) and chose something more streamlined that he thought I would have an intensely hard time cracking with a nasty fast surprise support element.

He played Baldur+Wold guardian+Lord of the feast+Megalith=18points
I brought Rahn, Phoenix, Manticore, Two Arcanists and Eiryss2=17points

We rolled the Anomaly season scenario with the prisoner cages which was a waste as neither of us had single wound troops to free - so we agreed to ignore these.So I went toe to toe with Andrew and the great blockhead known as Baldur. This was to be a pivotal battle for the local league as Andrew is arguably the best player. My biggest issue was that I knew he would be bringing a Wold Guardian and that my normal Ravyn lists would have a darn hard time busting up the big rocks at only 18points.

We set up across from one another - him first. He put Baldur and the Guardian on one side of the powerplant and Megalith on the other. After I placed centrally around the 'Jack repair shop with Rahn on the ramp for elevation bonuses and cover we squared off our advance deploy models across from each other. It was funny how much the lists really mirrored each other!

I gave Eiryss a TK bump out of cover and charged her at the LOTF. This was a POOR matchup. I hit and did a small amount of damage only to get complettely eradicated in responce the next turn. This seems like a waste of such a useful character but it held up the LOTF for a whole turn and allowed me to shift my weaker models a little to avoid any easy opportunity to use his teleoprt into combat ability. In the end it would turn out to be a crucial move....!

Eiryss Eradicated

As the Circle moved forward I TK bumped and moved my Myrmidons forward, taking a few shots at Baldur. This went extremely well as my boosted phoenix rolled 6's on all three damage dice! This was of course transferred to the guardian but that was a great chunk to take out of the big rock. 

Baldur tried to use his instant forest spell and Wold Guardian to block some lines of sight and charges while readjusting his lines to address the positions of my forces. He tried using some earthspikes etc but little came of it. The LOTF boldly ran forward behind the crates putting himself in a good position to make for an assassination run on Rahn. Rahn in response moved further away and put a sacrificial arcanist between him and the Lord. The Guardian got moved (an spun backwards) just enough that with another TK bump the Manticore had a clear charge on Baldur (man I LOVE TK!!) I laid into him pretty good (arcanist assisted combo Strike) and Baldur found himself wishing he had kept a fury to hand the damage off to the Guardian….. He was still barely alive, however. The Phoenix finished off the Wold Guardian and things were starting to look pretty good.

If a Wold falls in the forest.....

Megalith in turn slammed the Manticore out of the way and the LOTF once again maneuvered forward to try and take a shot at my arcanist. This would allow him to close within reach of Rahn as well. He was just over a half an inch short! Ooooh so close! Baldur moved back out of the way and healed himself up as best he could.

Rahn TK’d megalith 2 inches and turned him backwards to exclude charging. The Phoenix was then TK’d around so his facing put the LOTF straight in the Phoenix’s front arc. Unfortunately as I moved up I forgot to fire the Phoenix combustion ability and my attack roll was insufficient to kill the circle model. Standing back up, the Manticore moved back into Baldur and took a few more swings but failed to fell the warlock.

In a last ditch attempt to secure victory, the LOTF moved out of combat with the Phoenix (who promptly missed his free strike) and moved into the arcanist and Rahn. His thresher like attack killed the arcanist (damn it - I was hoping for the season unlock where I lose no models in a game!) but he failed to harm my warcaster. He then used both of his soul tokens to no avail failing to even hit with each roll.

The Phoenix prompty charged and ended the LOTF, while the Manticore pummelled Baldur and ended the game. 

Game Over

What did I learn?

1) I LOVE TELEKINESIS 2) Even Wold Guardians die if you do enough damage to the warlock 3) Warlocks REALLY need to be holding a fury for handing off damage even if they think they are safe. 4) I LOVE TELEKINESIS 5) Trying something completely different can be really rewarding and fun.5) I LOVE TELEKINESIS

If I was playing the same game over I would also drop one arcanist in favour of a mage Hunter Assassin and a full 18 point list. I think the addition of this would really help in that I would have one more throw away unit and would also have greater opportunity to keep the pressure on his warcaster or LOTF early on.

Bottom Line: I will definitely be trying Rahn again, which is great because prior to this I really didnt have any interest in using him (or for that matter actual understanding of how he was meant to be used ) and had instead kept myself firmly attatched to Kaelyssa and Ravyn.

Thanks for checking this out - hope you have as much fun in your next game!