Thursday 31 December 2015

Suddenly Firestorm!

So after another long absence I return with a new game I've been getting really into.
I've avoided Firestorm Armada for a long time. Dystopian Wars was always more appealing to me at uni aesthetically.  But in October, with no local DW players, a growing loss streak at Infinity and a really fun trial game of Firestorm Aramada I realised how much of a mistake I'd been making.
Now I have 4 fleets of varying sizes- Ryushi, Hawker, Sorylian & OmniDyne. A lot of them have actually got painted at this stage too!


The majority of my painted Ryushi- the main patrol fleet box of Onnisha Carrier, 4 Hokita Cruisers and 6 Akkarai Corvettes, plus SRS tokens.


A close-up of the first Hokita I painted.


The Onnisha with Hokita's in accompaniment.

For the Ryushi I primed in Halfords Grey Primer; the yellow is Vallejo Yellow Ochre followed by Golden Yellow. Metal is Citadel Boltgun Metal. The yellow received a pin-wash of Vallejo Dark Yellow Wash, everything else a wash of Citadel Nuln Oil. Everything was brought together with a dry-brush of Karak Stone. I think the washes & dry-brushing help make a very bright scheme still look rugged & roughly weathered.

Next up are the Hawker, a nice tanky addition to the Ryushi. A nice change of pace from the nightmare which is painting large expanses of yellow too!

Excelsior Battleship


Resolute Cruiser


The gang all together.



And finally, after rummaging for some old Tau flying stand and stealing some rocks from a Frankie & Benny's flower pot, I now have some asteroids!


All in all I'm really enjoying Firestorm Armada. The ship designs are great, even if there's quite bit of mold slippage which needs tidying up on some ships. Nonetheless Spartan are still masters of resin. And , very pleasingly, FA 2.0 is the best laid out, smoothest running rulebook Spartan have ever made, way surpassing DW 2.0, which in itself was a vast improvement on all that had gone before. Spartan have always been about fun rules, it's pleasing that they've now finally nailed down a rulebook.
FA plays very similarly to DW, but there's enough fluffy differences (mostly simplifications thankfully) to really make it a different, but still very fun experience.

Friday 22 May 2015

The Azra'Illest

Apologies for the prolonged absence dear readers, I'm definitely planning on updating with regularity once more!

What spurred me on to finally right a new blog post was my recent purchase of the new Azra'Il for Infinity. I was a massive fan of the old sculpts, so I was a little miffed when they became redundant (fortunately the Panzerfaust Azra'Il was reborn as an Ahl Fassed proxy) but my love for massive HI quickly overcame this. And when the previews for the new sculpt went up I fell in love again.

The kit itself is awesome. CB's new CAD sculpts have some great detailing and feel nice and solid, and with a Silhouette 5 model the Azra'Il really exemplifies this.

The Azra'Il logo on the right shoulder took me off-guard. Great sculpting!

Once I get him built I'll put him next to some standard Infinity guys to show how massive he is.
And don't worry, I've started working on the Rook again, plenty of Infinity to paint and a batch of super-rare 1/76 Ma.K kits inbound. Plenty of blogging to be doing in the not too distant future!