New Cygnar Light, the Firefly

The forums are down for the weekend (what kind of sneakiness is PP up to?), but I gotta talk about this little guy. I just thought I'd check the front page in case anything new came up, and saw this

"The light warjacks commissioned by the Cygnaran Armory set the standard by which all light ’jacks are judged. The original Charger chassis has proven an excellent platform for versatile and deadly machines. The Firefly is the most recent variant of the Charger chassis and possesses cutting-edge electro-mechanika capable of frying opponents to a crisp."

As far as I can tell, no one was expecting Cygnar to get anymore jacks in MkII. I didn't see a leak anywhere, which is odd. But I'm overall very happy and excited about this jack.

First off, it will have reach. It has a spear and has to. We have no need for a light with a ranged weapon and .5" melee. Second, I think it is going to be a spray weapon, though it's description makes it sound like it may have some kind of melta-esque feature. I think Spray, Phill thinks Assault. Both are viable.

I think this jack cannot be more than 5 points. The Charger and Sentinel are both 4. If it costs 6, you'd just take a Lancer. He has reach and, when not engaged, will be an arc-node. So this thing needs to be 5 pts, if not 4. I'm most excited about this Jack because it looks like the Swordknights now have their auto-include. The Centurion is too expensive to be marshalled and too slow to be an effective escort. Marshalling (or even just getting into melee with) the Lancer is overcosted due to the arc node. So now, the SKs will have a melee 2" jack that is cheap enough for marshalling. Very exciting, because I love the Swordknights.

Judging from the look, it is clearly a new mold, which makes me wonder if this is Cygnar's first plastic light jack. No indication shows that it is a 3-in-1 kit, but it could be possible.

The only complaints I have are about the shoulders and the name. The shoulders are comicly round! I mean seriously, this isn't the '90s. Stuffed shoulder pads, on a jack?!? lol. I may have to buy the weapons and head and throw them onto a Charger chassis (since that is what this is supposed to be). But there is very little similarity here.



And what's with the name? We've got Ironclad, Defender, Centurion, Hammersmith, Stormclad, Charger, Sentinel, Lancer, Hunter, Grenadier, Thunderhead... and Firefly! This jack gets beat up a lot, from both sides. I think I'm gonna have to check out PP's parts store and get some suitable wings. Fairy wings.

Joking aside, I am looking forward to this jack. I'll gladly take two of them, and can't wait to find out its price and release date!

Menoth Battlegroup

My gracious friend Greg was kind enough to take some photos of my minis tonight. He's got a nice photobox setup and the pictures came out really good.

Here's my Menoth battlegroup. I should of had the Repenter facing a different direction as you can't see his duck bill head.


Here's a better picture of my Vanquisher.Thanks again to Greg and I hope you like them.

Revenger - Before and After

I'm finally finished my before and after painting project, it only took me 6 months to do it. At least its done and here's the final product. The pictures are again washed out by the flash and my lovely wife told me she could help me make a photo box. Lets hope I can take some better pics after that.

Here's the model the first time I painted it. It wasn't that bad of a paint job but I really didn't like the grey on gold. I much prefer the grey on brass in my current scheme.





The second pic has a little photo editing in it to try and bring out some of the detail. I hope to have a battle box group pic later next week with better photos. Let me know what you think.

Fully Painted

I just finished repainting my Revenger and it got me thinking, will I ever have a fully painted army? Probably not, but the best I can hope for is to have a 50 point army painted to a nice table top standard. Sometimes I look at all the models I have that are unpainted and get a bit overwhelmed. Then I have to realize, I play this game for the fun of it and it shouldn't be a chore or something I'm a slave to, rather than, a fun laid back hobby.

As of now, I have 52 Menoth models and 23 of them are completed painted. As for my Mercs, I have 12 models and only 3 are painted. At this rate, I'll have all my models painted by 2011. I've considered dipping my Menoth but I want to keep a consistent look to my army. Dipping half way is not an option for me but could be for my Mercs.

This gets me to thinking, I'm tempted to trade my Mercs away and finish collecting Menoth. For me, Menoth has enough variety in casters that makes playing them fun and not stale. Another thing to consider is playing time, I get to play maybe once or twice a month and this lets me play a caster a couple times and then move onto someone else. If I were to play weekly or bi-weekly, then I would consider keeping my Mercs.

It's nice to have options but I think I want to have a nice big army with more options rather than two mid size ones that I would switch back and forth on. I actually got to play my Mercs this past weekend and while they were fun, they weren't Menoth. I missed my faithful soldiers.... how sad.

Hordes!

So with the Hordes Field Test only 3 weeks away, I lucked out on Bartertown and picked up the Battleboxes for both Circle and Legion, along with Rhyas (Legion lock) and a Seraph (Legion light warbeast), along with a huge Cygnar lot. While Phill and I rarely get enough time to play our main faction as it is, we are going to be making a conscious effort to try out the four Hordes factions during the Field test.

I already know I will be going with Legion. I picked up the Circle battlebox for my wife, who likes the furry creatures and wants to try painting them. Since she will not likely play with them, I'll have a small Circle force on the side that should end up seeing as much playtime as my Searforge army (Wait?! You collect Searforge too? See... In other words: No playtime)

I'm not sure what direction Phill is leaning in Hordes, but we'll be switching through all four factions' battleboxes, proxying Trolls and Skorne, and figuring out the Fury mechanic.

I'm looking forward to this. We're planning on a paint-and-play escalation campaign in 2010. Playing the Hordes FT in between games may give me the extra weeks I need to get my army painted. Phill (the wiser) already is nearly finished. Barrett (the buyer/postponer) is still resting on his accomplishments of 1 painted Centurion (out of 3), from a year ago. Oh yeah!

Ranking Menoth Casters in MK II and Brainstorming

Ok, so there's a thread ongoing in the Menoth section on the big boards, about who is going to be the best caster in a competitive tournament setting. Now, I don't play in a lot of tournaments and for the most part, I'm a casual player so take this into consideration when I rank them.

Tier 1

High Reclaimer
Amon
Reznik
pSeverius
eFeora
eKreoss
Feora
Testament
pKreoss
eSeverius

Tier 2

Harbinger

As you can see, I think all of the Menoth casters are more than capable of doing their job. The only reason the Harbinger is Tier 2 is because of the immensity of putting together the model. It might take someone longer to do this and cut back on playing time.

When people see caster rankings it sometimes sways an individual to not even try to play a caster. That's why I have everyone at Tier 1 save the Harbinger, which is just a joke. It's a good way to encourage people to try out all the faction casters and increase your gaming skills.

Let's not think of reasons why one caster is the top dog but try to come up with new strategies for them instead. It will help broaden your knowledge of models and help come up with the not so obvious combos. In the end, it'll be more rewarding for you as a player. That's my 2 focus for the day.