Turn The Page: "Monster Hunter International" by Larry Correia

The first thing I have to say is that I have read a lot if not all of Larry Correia's Warmachine fiction and I enjoyed it. His writing style is very readable and is free of annoying stylizations that might get tiresome while reading (this is directed at Ari Marmell). This book was on the long side for the story it was telling; however, I could definitely see the argument of the length developing the whole world in which the story takes place. I generally enjoyed the book but certain things kind of annoyed me.

First off, I tend to dislike "the one" stories in that I feel like everything comes very easily to the character and hardships/dangers aren't so bad in that you know the character will come out of it okay if not mostly okay. I think this is why the Song of Fire and Ice series has such mass appeal; no one is safe, which lends to a lot of edge of your seat moments and plenty of "what the fuck"s. This is a "the one" story. Even though things do get explained as to why he is so special, it still left me with the feeling of **yawn** by the end of it. I never felt, even when fighting the ultimate foe, that the main character was in any real danger.

The second thing that was irksome about the book was the main character reminding us how physically big and brutish he is. The character is obviously modeled after Mr. Correia, who is a large man and a gun fanatic, but I don't need to be reminded every 25-50 pages of how big the character is. You may be reading this with no familiarity with this book or the series and think that I'm over reacting; read it and tell me it doesn't get annoying.

All in all, I can't say at times I didn't feel like it was a chore to read; it had slow parts but was generally okay. I'm actually not interested in reading the rest of the series, in that I feel like it will just be this book with different monsters. That being said, I don't think I would really recommend this one. I would recommend his Warmachine fiction however.

Have Fun!

Please Don't Feed The Animals: Exigence

The smell of a new book is always a welcome aroma. I received my copy of Exigence the day after release and despite the fact I had all the models ruined for me from all the spoilers, I was eager to find out what was next in the story.

I'm going to try my damnedest to not spoil anything in the new fluff but if I do please forgive me. It seems that the involvement of dragons are becoming more frequent in the lore which makes me speculate that the next Hordes faction will be the followers of perhaps Charsaug or his twin. You will see a good deal of them as well as the involvement of another dragon, Blighterghast. All in all, I'm pleased with where the lore is going. Borka's story in this book is great but I have a trollkin bias. It is also interesting to see what Kreuger is up to as well as Barnabas finally making the necessary steps toward his final goal. It's all worth reading, is all I have to say after this mindless drabble.

As far as rules here are some of my thoughts and opinions on the factions I play. I'm an optimist about new model releases for the most part; I try to find use for the new things that come out. From what I have read on various forums and even on the different Faction Facebook pages, new releases are becoming more and more situational. People have complained about the lack of new auto-includes in these last few books. I think the game could be potentially ruined by always putting in the auto-include because it negates the need for some of the older models/units. I am very pleased with how PP does their releases; not only does everyone get something new relatively at the same time but making a new investment into recently released models is completely optional. Ok, enough of that, time to get into the factions that I care about.


Trollbloods:

Epic Borka is pretty sweet in my opinion. His initially reception by the community included some head-scratching and some "reallys?" but he seems super fun if built correctly. In my opinion, he also brings new life to that bearded bastard the winter troll, in that giving his Battlegroup immunity: cold, winter trolls have carte blanche to spray into combat without hurting their buddys.

I like both of the new units. The highwaymen seem okay but I am very excited for the fire eaters. That pig buddy sets them on fire and you get two boosted sprays with assault! Love it! Braylen also intrigues me me a bit and that model will most likely be awesome. I'm still trying to sort out her uses. Dozer and Smigg seem solid but I would have to do some play testing to really see if they are worth taking over some of my other choices for their position. Let's not forget about Horgle; I find him to be great even for just being a source of fury management. That being said, I don't feel that any of the lessees could really compete in the resource management with the Journeyman Warcasters. Blame the Fury mechanic.

Minions:

Jaga-Jaga is super cool in my book! Another caster that can actually get her force to do some damage is always very welcome. Her anti-spell tech is also pretty sweet, being able to circumnavigate defender's ward and arcane shield is great. She is most likely going to be a popular choice for list pairings.

The Sacral Vault will really help Blindwater's ranged game a good amount; it's not all about turtles anymore, but I could see the coupling of the two being pretty good. I'm pleased that there is another option now that can directly replace a posse pointwise and give a different kind of strategy.

I do have a pig army but I'll admit that I'm not well versed in them yet. The Efaarit Scouts seem like they will help the slaughterhousers out big time. Just have the scouts move up, use sniper to do one damage on a jack/beast and as long as you can get those housers into melee, you've already prepped the target for finisher. I'm thinking I could definitely utilize them in Trolls, as well as Maximus, who is just a deadly little 2 point solo.

The meat grinder is another model I might definitely invest in for my Troll army.  Love the bulldoze aspect and the knockdown/trash combo is really nice. This thing also seems like it will be a good method of taking out those pesky high DEF tarpits.

I like the releases that are relevant to my factions, even though I am slightly bummed that Blindwater only got 2 releases. I can only hope for more next time. That's it for now!

Happy Little Trees: Painting Tartans

I've been asked by a couple people how I painted the tartans on my trolls and how I picked the colors and patterns that make them up. When I decided to undertake this initially, I won't lie, I was intimidated. I was totally tempted to just go the route of colored sash wearing trollkin and call it a day. A lot of it too was laziness on my part. I imagined they were very time consuming but my dear ole' dad's bit of advice lead me to do it. The advice was: "You aren't supposed to rush hobbies; You're doing this for enjoyment and to create something that you take pride in. Why speed through it?" I don't think I could put it better; however, painting the tartans will become second nature after a little practice and will make your trollkin look awesome!

I strongly suggest to go to Google, pop "tartans" into the search box and look at what pops up under images. Literally hundreds of patterns will appear before your eyes. This is where you will want to decide on your line layout and your end target. I came up with my own color scheme and line layout (or I accidentally recreated an existing one without knowing it). It is totally okay to dumb down one of the traditional patterns, in that this will be on a miniature and even a simple version will look great.

Colors(Left to Right): P3 Beaten Purple, Iosan Green, Frostbite

First step is to pick that base color. You want your tartans to pop on your model, so that means choose a color that is directly contrasting to your armor color or the predominate color on your models. If you are using a metallic for armor, silver is usually bluish and bronze/copper is in the red family. My trolls have orange armor, so I chose purple. After painting a couple models with the purple scheme, I also decided that some future models will use a green tartan pattern that you will see to the right of the purple scheme. The bluish scheme to the far right was just me playing around. 

In the picture above, the smaller lines on the bottom is what you will see and actually paint on the model's tartan and boxes on top are what the tartans would look like if they were unfolded. I'm doing this so you can see why I put lines where they are on the model's tartan and I strongly suggest you do this little exercise prior to attempting it on a model. Lay a base coat on the tartan and shade it, so it looks like a colored sash.

Colors(Left to Right): P3 Ironhull Grey, Cryx Bane Base, Exile Blue

Step two is to paint broad vertical stripes as in the above picture. The color should be darker than the base tartan color. Usually a darker shade of the base color works, like the green scheme above but grey seems to work for just about any.

Colors(Left to Right): P3 Ironhull Grey, Cryx Bane Base, Exile Blue

In step three, I use the same color to make horizontal broad stripes. This step is where you will see your pattern begin to emerge. 

Colors(Left to Right): P3 Menoth White Base, Underbelly Blue, Murderous Magenta

Step four, aka The Hard Part, requires a thin brush, a steady hand and patience. Choose a color that will stick out from your base color. You probably want to pick anything that will be visible to be honest. The layout of these lines is completely up to you. On my purple scheme I decided to make the small lines doubled and on the green they are just single lines. You will notice that most of the time, you will not actually see these secondary lines bisect on the model.

Colors(Left to Right): P3 Heartfire, Khador Red Highlight, Necrotite Green

The final step is to choose a color that is nice and bright. This last color is the one that will make you say "wow." It is import to make it completely contrast your base color. As you can see on the blue example all the way on the right, I used green which is close to blue on the color chart. It doesn't have the same effect that a yellow, orange or red would have had. Once the color is chosen, paint the squares in the middle of the crosses that your first broad stripes created. Viola! Tartans!

While doing the last step, if you feel that some of the little squares are too bright just use a black wash and dull them out a bit. 

I also noticed that my green tartan has one thing I need to change. My little squares are orange and  my armor color is orange. You will want to avoid this, trust me; it won't look right. I will most likely use Menoth White Base for them. 

I hope this has been helpful and I will always answer questions. Enjoy.

Please Don't Feed The Animals: Trollblood Memes

After getting a Meme maker app on my phone and growing bored of making memes that featured pictures of my friends; I decided to make some Trollblood ones. Enjoy.

Fennblade Fun:


Borka Rides Again:







The Disgruntled Kriel Warrior:

These Thumbs Were Made For Gaming: Hyrule Warriors

Let's go back roughly one month ago. While playing some League of Legends with some good friends, I was informed about a game called Hyrule Warriors. I went to look it up and ended up watching video after video about it. It looked awesome! It was like Dynasty Warriors but with Zelda characters instead. It also had all my favorite button mashing, room clearing, mindless bullshit that I love.

Now, bring it on back to today. I got a copy and have been glued to it all afternoon. I am a huge fan of the Dynasty Warriors franchise and Zelda isn't too shabby either. Needless to say, I'm really digging this title. It plays like Dynasty Warriors except, dare I say, faster and with more in each map to keep you from going comatose. I'm going to put the disclaimer out there that this game may not be for everyone. It can get monotonous. However they have put in a cool crafting/powerup tree for every character that makes adding more attacks keep things interesting. The other thing I noticed is that in "Story Mode" you play as all the different characters rather than just watching Gan Ning's ass for 7-8 stages. I'm about 13 stages into story mode so far and it doesn't seem like the story is close to an ending yet. The story itself is alright to say the least, but I'm more in it to kill swathes of baddies lone wolf style.

The graphics are pretty good for WiiU and I have yet to experience the good ole' "too many soldiers on the screen" lag or "there's too many people on the screen, I'll just disappear till you kill someone" trickery that Dynasty Warriors players have grown to disdain. I don't expect anyone to pop this in and say "I'm so amped about these graphics that I'm going to wrestle a giant squid;" but they are better than bearable. I think the real showstopper for the Audio/Visual department in this title is the music.

Take all of your favorite Zelda tunes from over the years, call up the studio band that did the rockin' signature Dynasty Warrior soundtracks and WA-BAM! You get one of the most kick-ass Zelda music lineups yet. I'm super pleased with tunes.

All in all, the experience has been pretty damn good. It almost seems like the characters of Hyrule are better suited for this type of game than ancient Chinese men. I can't vouch for replay value as of yet but I'm at least not dreading the purchase. I guess one big downside is that it is on WiiU and that would necessitate buying one; hey, can't win 'em all. If you have the system, like Dynasty Warriors and Zelda then I would ask why you haven't gotten it yet. Otherwise, I wouldn't give you the "Dude, its totally worth buying WiiU for."