High Reclaimer

It turns out that I never thought once about using the High Reclaimer as a Menoth player. After a year and a half of playing and with Bastions on the way, I thought to myself "man, what a great time to pick up the High Reclaimer". Then I thought, I have a lot of canon fodder troops that would go well with him, Cleansers, Deliverers, and to a lesser extent, TFG.

This is the one of the cool play styles of Menoth, throw sub-par troops to their death and revive later on or just blow them up and then revive them. Either way works for me.

With the upcoming field test of MKII, CptCalvinus and I are going to run a escalation style campaign of Menoth vs Cynar. The format is similar to the Paint and Play campaign in No Quarter and Lost Hemisphere's Warmahordes challenge, but it differs in one way. We're going to play two games at every point level, using the old rules in the first game and the new rules in the second. I'm pretty certain a lot of other people are going to be doing this and I find its a great way to see some of the differences in the game.

With that being said, I finished painting my High Reclaimer and will be using him during the escalation campaign. I'll dive into why I'm using him and not my favorite monk later on...

I'm going to go back and add some badab black wash on his left forearm and touch up a few spots on the robe. In looking back, I should've used green stuff on a couple of places but I'm content with the results.

Here's the 350 list that he's leading in the MK II Escalation Campaign. First game will hopefully start this Tuesday using the current ruleset.

High Reclaimer 347/350 VPs: 15
*Hierophant
Cleansers x 6
Temple Flameguard x8 with UA
Visgoth Rhoven and his Bodyguard
Gorman di Wulfe
Ruphert, Piper of Menoth
Wrack

The basic strategy is to throw as much smoke as possible and hope I can get into melee pretty quick. I'm anxious to see if the new MK II rules will allow enough free points for a Devout or Revenger. Only time will tell.

Schemes

I found out the hard way what a good scheme can turn out to be. It means various test figures and a lot of time, not wasted per say but time invested. Whenever I was reading through one of the No Quarter magazines that had the paint and play challenge, I remember one of the guys' entry about a consistent scheme. This got me thinking that, I myself, have a lot of models painted to a different scheme and based differently.

My first Warmachine model I ever painted was the Crusader. I like the simplicity of the jack and the front parts of it but I'm not a big fan of the steam furnace. Unlike the other factions, it seemed a little bland for my taste. But I digress, the point is, I primed all my models white thinking I was going to go with the traditional Menoth colors. I found out very quickly how hard it is to paint white good. After doing some searching online for some other Menoth paint schemes, I found a nice dark red that I thought I could do. Take in mind, the only other miniatures I painted before this were some Tau from GW. Here's a look at my first scheme for my Menoth.

My original white scheme that I ditched quickly. The flash really makes it hard to tell that there's a cream colour painted on it. You can also see the traditional Menoth base that I was trying to do.

Here's the same Crusader painted Vallejo Gory Red with GW Shining gold as the metal.

Now onto my Guardian that was primed with Black and painted with Gory Red, Cold Grey, and Brassy Brass. I used cork for the base and flocked it with Woodland Scenics fine turf green grass. The rocks are drybrushed with cold grey along with a little white mixed in.

You would think this would be my final scheme and the paint part is, just the base has changed in this last picture. Here's Kreoss with his base painted a little differently but flocked with the same green turf.

I really hope this is my final scheme or else I'll be wasting a lot more time figuring it out. The base is done by using the following:

1 layer of Tierra Earth
1 layer of Worn Wash - my own creation (4 parts brown Ink, 2 parts smokey Ink, 2 parts thinner, 2 parts water)
1 layer of GW Green Wash on rock part
1 Drybrush layer of 2 parts Tierra earth and 1 part white
1 Drybrush layer of 2 parts white and 1 part Tierra earth
Possible drybrush layer of 4 parts white and 1 part Tierra earth.

And with that, its time to do some more painting....

Back to the Bases

This past Saturday was the last week of the CTA league I was playing in. I ended up winning the Eliminator award and overall, the league was pretty fun. There was some pretty good scenarios along with some ok ones to say the least.

I played all my games with Reznik, except for the first one, and the big guy did alright. I tried to incorporate Cleansers in my list and I found they're a better second wave unit than first strike. I also really like Reznik's spell list, I find he doesn't have one bad spell, in my opinion.

One last thing to note, epic Kaya's threat range is pretty nasty. I found out the hard way when I played in my first 1000 point game against her and Krueger. The little hippie girl had Lightning Tendrils on her and managed to scrap Reznik sitting on 4 focus. Needless to say, I'll try to avoid that next time, if that's possible.

Here's a glimpse of my painting table and all my precious tools and paints. Its nothing to brag about but I like the simplicity in it. I have all my stuff at arms length and don't have anything really getting in the way. Although my wife's cat likes to sometimes taste the water cup, I haven't had any real disasters on it.

You'll see the current set of bases I'm working on for my future models. Yes I said future, with the upcoming release of the Bastions, I'm stoked to start working on them already. It takes me forever to complete a miniature and there's no better time then now to start on them. By the time June comes around, I should have all their bases completed.

Here's waiting for June and the infamous and awesome Plastions!

Last week of CTA

This week is the last week of league play at my FLGS and I have to say it's been a fun ride. I had the chance to play against armies I don't regularly play against and I'm hoping the trend will continue. I'm out of the running for the total points award but can still capture the Eliminator award. I failed this past Saturday to up my score when I totally forgot about Brand of Heresy with Reznik. I know I know, how does one forgot a great spell like that but I am still learning to play the guy.

With the hopes of capturing the Eliminator award, I'm going to be playing as many 500 point games as I can with Reznik. I'm also going to be trading away some of my Tau from 40k for a Avatar and Reckoner. In the past, I was using the Castigator as a fill in for Zealot's Rage and it did ok. With Reznik's Perdition spell, I was able to charge the Black 13th last game and take them out with combustion. I'm hoping the Reckoner can make short work of a jack with Zealot's Rage and Brand of Heresy and then move on to another target.

I'll be using the following list this Saturday for my games.

Reznik 500/500 VPs:22
*Hierophant
*Revenger
*Devout
*Reckoner
Choir of Menoth - 6
Vassal of Menoth
Reclaimer
Cleansers - 6
Paladin