My Steampunk Minis

Jules Vern, Captain Nemo, King Solomon's Mines, just a few literary friends from my youth.  With my kids, I've seen several movies like Steamboy or Stardust and felt again the stirrings of wrought iron, steam, and a touch of magic. I have been a fan of Fullmetal Alchemist, and Brotherhood of the Wolf(and Leon the Professional and the original La Fem Nikkita) have proven that I can watch and enjoy French Films. This brings me to Cygnar and Privateer Press.
The Gun Mages, slicks and tricorns, casting magic and blazing away with pistols. Trenchers, gritty muddy trenchers, leather and rifles and full of all the details that remind of WW1. The warcasters are a pretty solid group too. From the stoic, honorable Coleman Stryker, to little Haley who has more toughness in a petite frame than anyone should, and my favorite...Lt Allister Caine, a maverick(like Han Solo).  A disreputable rouge who has been up and down the chain of command, but is nasty in a fight, and has friends in both high and low places.
My wife knew I was looking at them, and when my friend Dave sprung for a Pirate band, she allowed me to collect ONE force. One force because as a wargamer and friendly sort, I like to have at least two forces in case somebody should wish to play. I bought every last bit of this force on EBay before they became cost prohibited. I hate to pay more than they'd cost in a shop, and I really hate to pay full cost for a model somebody else assembled, and slapped paint on( like the pro-paints that are worse than my own!) Still I found and won a few auctions where the price was good and got this nice bunch of a mostly finished force.

"Mostly?" you ask. Well I do not own the new trenchers, or trenchers or trencher commandos, the trencher cannons, more long gunners, more gun mages and the gunmage captain, and the newer plastic jacks, or the character jacks like old rowdy or Thorne. But this crew is pretty good as is and has even withstood horde armies...and it only needs a few detail bits on the paint, and paint and flock for a few bases.

 A tidal wave of Blue!

 Coleman with storm blades, storm knights, thunderhead, ironside, and centurion.

Cain with his gunmages, long gunners and a few Jacks

 Haley with grenadier, hunter, Hammersmith, and the trenchers

 the gunmages...but I hate the scale diminish for the black 13. They are anemic if compared to the two gunmages pictured. It is almost as if Privateer Press went true 28 instead of heroic 30!

 The big squad of trenchers with Lt, sniper, grenadier, and grenade porter

 Coleman with the thunderhead and an ironside.

a poorly taken photo of the knights. Blue, Gold, Leather!


I really enjoy this army. Dave and I have not played many games with them, so I haven't figured out all the combos that are possible. Even after all the games, my favorite figures are the trenchers and gunmages. I am getting fond of the storm knights as they can generate a lighting field between one another and literally clothesline opposing troops with electricity. The Lt of the trenchers can give basic orders to a warjack which makes the grenadier perfect for him. being with trenchers, the grenadier can issue a lot of grenade punishment and really beefs them up for charging.
The Hunter gets my vote for favorite mech as it really punches above it's class and is perfect to compliment Haley. The Thunderhead is a devastating war machine that I do not use often. It generates lighting and is really powerful. It is also too much for the battles we fight....but still tesla coils, lightning, blue and gold...why it IS Cygnar!
I can keep them as they are, but I do have a list of needed to complete this army.
TRENCHERS. I love these guys. I was going to get two more squads, but apparently the commandos and resculpts have been released while I was overseas. I will succumb to the new shiny and add a squad each to the three battle forces, Haley gets the commandos and the trencher cannon. Cain is going to get some warjacks more suited to him. Which is an excuse to get those nifty new plastic kits I've seen. Cain will also get another unit or two of gunmages with a gunmage captain. Stryker is going to get another stormblade unit via the new sculpts, and some warcaster upgrades with a squire and stormsmiths. a couple of units of long gunners too, cheap and effective in points!
This is the first army I have ever owned to where all the troops get mostly painted before I get new.
Granted all but the Thunderhead were used( some paint or primer and sorta assembled). Although the cost was right for me, some, like the captain of the storm knights, had damage. But these guys are great, and I have yet to lose interest in them. They also lead me into papermodelling, but that is a post for another day!

My new electric minion!

My wife surprised me Friday with a new computer. Unfortunately I'm a night shifter, and had to work that night, so the excitement was less than what she had hoped for when she woke me early! I had to work Saturday too, so Sunday night I got to kick the tires!
It took me awhile to figure out basic operations, as my last machine was an eight year veteran. A lot of bells and whistles to adjust to!  But, I finally finished required online computer training with only a few headaches.

To celebrate a few photos!

            A platoon of Defiance Games UAMC. these fellas were sent to me while I was gearing up for deployment to Afghanistan. They were also the first mini painting I did when I got back home!

These are just a couple of my Games Workshop Squats, they were in a very handy box when looking for my packed treasures, I also used them in play testing Combat: Alien Wars.

A poor photo of my Blood Axe Kommandos also by Games Workshop and also victims of play testing.

A much better shot....But I did warn you about the bad photography!

These fellas were special built just for play testing...now they are my go to nameless evil mercenary force. They are Wargames Factory with a lot of conversions and bits added throughout.

I do have my other minis mostly found, and I will be starting my next post with either my steampunk Cygnar, my Crimson Fists, or something still on the painting table. I have yet to locate my boxes of ACW and Napoleonics. All that is available for now are the Perry and Victrix that I have been messing with but have yet to see a paint brush.....and my dwarven horde that needs basing and two more units that need painting.
See! wargaming ADD!
My next post WILL be more structured. I have BIG hobby plans for the year to include a photo-shoot of my sewer and trench board designed for all eras of skirmishing! For now I am content with my new machine and this first experiment with adding photos to the blog.

trudging onward

It's been a grueling week. Work was work, honey-do's extensive, and of course the last of the holiday/birthday bonanza had to be completed...my three girls had the audacity of being born from early December to mid-January which makes me a popular fixture at stores! Thankfully, my girls and son were adept at helping me clear out more stuff from storage. My Cadian 7th Cav, Crimson Fist Space Marines, Fantasy dwarf army, and Cygnar Force have all been excavated from the shed. I was bouncing around between them and my ACW 28' before deployment. Now,they are safely back in the home and except for the shoulder decals on the marines, they survived storage intact.I now have them arranged around my hobby area with my Space Wolf army. Why are they there?...Hobby AAD! I bounce and flit from project to project and all of those forces are close to being finished. It does bring up a deja-vous of paint schemes. All of them feature blue and gray! Blue- Crimson Fists, Cygnar, Cadians, federal ACW. Gray- Space Wolves and Confederate ACW. The Dwarves were different and use both colors! Replenishing my paints in the fall, I noticed my grays and blues were very low. I have been determined to fix this in the side projects I started with my kids. I'm supplying the villians in the super games,ergo I have given the main villian green and red for colors and his number one heavy is in yellow spandex! ;) The Western set has all the cowboys in various browns and greens. The various scifi COBs( civilians-on-the-battlefield) have benefited from red and orange spot colors as well. So, where is this heading? This is a real rough synopsis of my hobby goals for the year with the above forces expected to become finished as near as any army can be. None except for the ACW can expect additional recruits till 2014! I am also going to be counting on my Napoleonics to break up the gray and blue scheme too. Of course, the three regiments of French Infantry will HAVE to use blue. But the British should consume a lot of red which will be a big difference! As for pictures, my wife is already gearng household finances to ensure a proper laptop by the end of the month. Hopefully then I can show off work being done and also include shots of the Defiance Games Germans. I got my boxes last week,and I really like them. I should have the first box painted next week and once my laptop is rigged up;I'll detail them and assembly of the second box. For now though,I'm going to sign off and finish painting my Reaper Nova Corp squad...they are very striking in the blue and gray colors I selected for them! ;)

The scout is out

Ok,so I have a newish toy...a NOOK color given to me by my wife and four kids. Lately it has been my sole connection to the web. My desktop died while I was away on military deployment, and my laptop did not make it for very long after my return. With the Army going more and more into the digital fronter, and since my little NOOK is hardpressed to keep up with my AAD of gaming, movies and history searching....well I gotta get a new laptop. With my kids getting older, they will need a computer too, and my wife will get a laptop all to herself-what's good for the gander..! ;) I have already given this little device hiccups in trying to upload photos, so this foray into the bloggsphere will be a bumpy ride. This well improve once my new machine arrives. I shall endeavor to torture the web with poorly taken photos of my mini minions and use this space to show the progress as I chip away at my mountain of plastic and metal. HOUSEHOLD-6, or she-who-must-be-obeyed, has decreed that I must show progress or future purchasing of reenforcements will be denied. To prevent this, I am going to attempt to document my work here. Due to drill constraints, work as a night security officer, and herding the four kids...I may be overreaching in my ambitions. I do plan on keeping track of my friends and look forward to the not quite so far future where I may actually have a chance to meet a few cyber friends and chuck dice at some of the wargaming conventions I read so much about. I can't attend them yet, as I still have a bit less than a decade to go before I will have earned a military retirement...to those in uniform, I strongly encourage you to ponder retirement before you quit the service and do not, as I did, allow nearly 20 years of seperation to disect the career. If my service was uninterrupted, I'd have been out in 05 and not be a 45 year old grunt At least I can still outlast the kids...the wonders of tiger balm!Ok