Another Warjack down...

More progress on the 2 player box commission.

So I know I have been talking about how busy I have been with the Ravenwing commission that I had come in to the studio... Well I have to take a break from painting bikes and Space Marines... and its for a good reason.

What reason is that you ask? Well its simple really. I had a new player to Warmachine and Hordes contact me about painting up the Warmachine 2 player box set for him and his son because they both were interested in playing. Like I am going to say no to a newcomer to my favorite game of all time. So I spent the last week cleaning up and assembling the models and getting them primed and I have finally got some real paint on the models. So here we go.

Thats right... pure MADNESS in the studio. Well actually not madness but busy busy busy. I am working on a Dark Angels/Ravenwing commission as well as an ongoing series of commissions for my Circle Orboros client.

On the bubble this month is also a possible Trollblood and Retribution commissions just have to wait and see what the community brings my way.

As for personal projects for the studio... well that is going to be taking a slight shift in what I am working on at the moment. I know I have been talking about the Trolls and the Convergence for the last few months. Well I have made some changes to the Khador that I have been playing and that means new units to get painted and added to the army. One of which will be a unit of Black Dragon Pikemen.

They studio is hopping at the moment... but its going to fun and interesting.

Like I said back in the February news post I was going to be painting up a LadyGoat for the guy that bought my Circle Orboros army off of me... well here she is. I had to go digging through my notes and old posts on there to try to remember how to paint the green tint on the gold armor. Aside from that and the two simple requests that a) she be a ginger and b) the goat be painted something other than brown. Well she is a ginger... and the goat... well he is white. So with those two requests covered and the green tint looked up I got to painting.

I could not help myself... I just had to paint up a Troll. This army has been sitting and waiting for me to sell my Circle before I could start on it. Well since I sold the Circle last week I decided to start with this model. Now I picked one of these up in a trade but it was not done up the best like none of the gaps were filled and it still had mold lines everywhere. So I set out do do one up from the start to (a) see how hard it is to clean up and assemble one of these, and (b) to show how much better things look when they are actually cleaned up and gap filled.

Now I know I have some touch ups that I need to do because of some overpainting but I will get to those shortly... like when I paint up the next troll model cause I will have to mix up the flesh tones for some of them.

Now if any of you have ever worked with the plastic heavy warbeast kit for the Trollbloods you will know how bad the gaps are around the piece that the back quills are part of, and if you look closely you can tell that I spent a fair amount of time filling those buggars in.

I will get a comparison post put up this weekend between the one that I did and the one that I picked up in trade.

Hey gang, to start off this news post I just want to say how great it is to have all of you as my followers and even some of you as customers. It really means a lot to me to get up each day and see how many page views I get on here and to know that there are a bunch of people all over the world get to see my work.

Now on to business... January ended with me finishing off a commission for one of my non-gaming clients, and I picked up a new client at the very last minute in January but the piece will be one of the February projects. More on that in a moment.

January also ended with me selling off that Circle Orboros army that I painted up last summer for the journeyman league that the FLGS did. One of the newer local players hit me up and made me an offer I couldn't refuse so they finally got sold. Now part of that deal requires that I paint up eMorvahna to add to the army... like I am going to turn down painting Lady Goat for someone. So anyway now I can start working on my Trolls once I get some free space on the calender.

So now you know what all I have ahead of me for the month of February at the moment... Lady Goat and some trolls... I do also have plans of writing an article on something seriously irks me. More on that later if something develops out of it.

Its Product Review time here at 2Ton Studios, and this month I will be reviewing the newly released Angry Sheep from Iron Box Games. Angry Sheep retails for $24.99 and you can pick your copy up from direct from Iron Box Games.

What you get for $24.99
7 White Sheep dice, 1 Black Sheep die, 35 White Sheep tokens, 1 Black Sheep token... all contained in a handy tube and super STURDY dice cup. You also get the rules of course and the rules are so short and simple that they take all of half a page.

Game Play
The rules for Angry Sheep are super simple and after a quick read we were off an playing. We did keep the rules handy so we could reference what the different images on the dice actually mean, but after a few turns you quickly pick up on what is what.

For our first game it was just two of us playing to get the hang of things and we played through a full game in like 30 minutes. So it plays fairly quickly unless you start using strategy and the dice gods decide to mock you then the game can last a little longer. And I say this cause a later game that we played where we added another family member into the Sheep fueled chaos we were at it for like 45 minutes or so but for the most of the game is was trading sheep back and forth. Still it was a lot of fun.

So it plays quick and it is a ton of fun to play. The more people you have involved in the game the more fun it can be. Also adding more people to the game (up to  the max of 4) depending on your game group you can learn interesting ways to screw over your neighbors to try to get all the sheep and win the game. With the three of us playing the goal was to get to 16 sheep and not be the holder of the black sheep and that is harder than it sounds.

Now I did have a couple rules questions that came up while we were playing but we were just having so much fun passing sheep around that we decided just to keep playing and that I would email Iron Box my rules questions later.

Now you ask "what if I have more than 4 people that want to play?"
The first answer that you might think of is just buy a second set and put the 2 sets together. Well this might be okay but here is what I suggest... just be patient because rumor has it that the crew over at Iron Box games are already working on rules for larger games as well as a "Sack O  Sheep" expansion that should be along shortly.

My Overall Impression of the game.
Angry Sheep has been a well thought out game. My family has found it to be very enjoyable even for those that are not regular gamers like myself. The packaging is rather genius and the fact that it does not take up much space it could easily fit into a backpack or other game bag. It is even a game that I would take to a coffee shop or other establishment like that to sit down and play and show its fun to new people. This is a game that I think should be in just about every home there is because it is a fun game and it is fun to get the family involved in. So if you are looking for a fun game that does not take long to learn or to play I highly recommend picking up a copy of this game. So start bugging your local game stores to carry this wonderful game and any expansions to come, and if that doesn't work you can get it direct from Iron Box.

Thats right people... I got my hands on one of these little gems. As some of you may know not only am I a commission painter and hobby blog writer I am also a member of the Privateer Press Press Gang. And this past year was the 10th anniversary for Warmachine and for the Press Gang. Well Mr. Will Hungerford our Quartermaster and the rest of the crew from Privateer Press set out to do something cool for the members of the Press Gang. That something cool was to come up with an alternate sculpt just for us.

For me this piece means coolness and competition so I decided that I needed to pull out all the stops and give this model the best paint job I have ever given a model before. And this also means that I had to make him look better than the standard Gorman that I have in my Khador army. This whole project was going to be a challenge so off to work I went.

The first hurdle for me was how am I going to base the model... well he is a pirate themed sculpt so he need to be on the wood planking of the deck of a pirate ship. And me wanting to do something more competition minded I decided that I would use a Resin Display Plinth that I picked up from Secret Weapon miniatures about a year ago. I was going to use it for a different project if I ever got around to it... but Pirate Gorman deserved it more.

So with the wood planking all laid out and lined up so that the gaps between the boards lined up on both the removable base and the display plinth. I set about scoring a wood grain into the planks and I just simply stained the boards using Sewer Water wash also from Secret Weapon Miniatures.

Now onto Pirate Gorman himself.

I set about painting him using mostly Reaper Master Series paints triads and I just thinned them down even further than they already are so that I would be working in more thinner layers so I could try to achieve more of a subtle color modulation. The blue on the cloak took over an hour by itself for example. I also decided to use a little OSL for the green glow on some of his alchemical grenades that he carries.
















So I really took my time with this model cause I wanted him to look good and I wanted to show off more of what I could do on single models and not just bulk painting. I am super pleased with how well this model turned out. And I think he will serve his desired purpose very well.