Godtear Ascended Pledge Painting by Lawnor

I won me a Golden Button this week for this project.  Thanks, OTT.

Community Spotlight

I got Godtear painted and table ready about 5 minutes before Covid and lockdown kicked in and I wasn’t allowed in the same room as another human for around 18 months.  This meant the game never got played.  I assumed it never would as it’s moment had passed and the world had moved on.

However, about a year ago a friend of mine who also backed the KS decided he really needed to give the game a fair chance to decide if he was keeping or selling his stuff, so we tried it and we loved it.  It’s a great game.  It’s simple.  There’s not much you can do, so that makes everything you do feel important.  In a full size 3 champions vs 3 champions game you only get to make 12 action per phase (2 per champion, and each champion has a unit of followers who can also take 2 actions), 2 phases per turn (Plot and clash.  The plot phase is about getting in to position, and setting up for the clash, and the clash is mostly about fighting and stomping banners), with a max of 5 turns in a game, usually ending sooner.  Despite this, it’s a challenging, fun game.  You get very few actions, so every action matters and you can get lost in analysis paralysis so easily.  It’s simple enough that my regular opponent is a 6 year old and he always poses a challenge and occasionally beats me (usually with a little help from me or his dad in the final round.)

Everyone should give this a go.  The starter boxes say they’re enough to try the game.  They lie.  They have 2 champions in, but a 1v1 game has nothing to it.  You’re not making any decisions.  You’re just doing what the stat cards say you can.  A 2v2 game is a full experience.  All the rules and stat cards are free online so there’s no reason you can’t mock up a pitch and proxy the whole game, or buy 1 starter set and proxy a couple of warbands.  The KS models often appear cheap on eBay.  I have printed up all the cards at double size for the 6 year old as he is still learning to read.

I picked up 4 new champions during Black Friday and got them painted over Christmas.  I’ve already used Jeen and Keera in a game.  Here’s my results.

I entered the weekend with one days work left to go, and an unexpected toddler wanting to play with me, so I was just about able to finish everything Sunday night.

And there we have it.  an 86 model Kickstarter fully painted in under 3 months since it arrived (First post Nov 25th 2019, last post Feb 17th 2020).  A new personal best.  And its done with enough time for me to do a project or two before 126ish Reichbusters minis arrive (Due in Antwerp Feb 28th, then being shipped to backers soon after).

Here are some group shots:

I tried my hand at fixing that broken sword.  I was going to put a pin down the middle of it to act as a scaffold for green stuff but the drill bit was wider than the blade.  I was able to pad some green stuff around the end, but I’m not very good with this stuff and the blade was too close to the body for me to work with.  As such he is now holding something of an iron sausage with a hilt.  I tried and it’s a learning experience at least.

I made more progress than expected this weekend.  Lorsann is all done except the base, which I’ll finish of when I do Finvars.  I made a good start on Finvar too.  I see dark leathers, and some bronze and iron in his future.  If I’m left alone I expect to have this Kickstarter fully painted this weekend.  Of course, it would help if there was a Weekender to paint to….

I was starting work on the elven flesh tones last night and I noticed this broken sword.  I was getting ready to email SFG about it but as I had this project I thought I’d check the pictures.  It appears the sword arrived intact and broke at some stage between removing the packaging and priming and I didn’t even notice.  Thankfully, everything else appears fine.

If you buy in to Godtear use this as your warning: The thin parts of this plastic are fragile enough to break without you even noticing.

On an unrelated note, here’s a Warhammer Underworlds question:

I bought Shadespire a long time ago, played a few games and haven’t had the chance to pick it up again, although I would like to give it more playthroughs.  For Christmas I got given two new warbands as fun painting projects (Underworlds stuff is great for trying new schemes/model types without feeling like you need to buy a whole army).  “Ylthari’s Guardians” has Nightvault on it and “The Grymwatch” has Beastgrave.  They both say all I need is any core box, but didn’t Nightvault add magic and new dice?  If I try to play as either will I quickly find I need the magic dice or anything not in Shadespire?

Also, does anyone else find it odd that there’s virtually no blurb on those boxes telling you who is inside?  I was looking at Ylthari’s Guardians trying to work out if they are ghostly or undead.  They appear to be ghostly dryads.  I don’t know AoS lore.  Are all dryads like this?  Are they special?  Are they part of the ghost army, not the elves?  It struck me as odd that they weren’t including a paragraph of fluff/lore on the box to help sell the product, not just inform the buyer.

I was able to finish Rhodri and Titus this weekend, although I didn’t finish varnishing until later than I usually pack up, but I refused to call it quits when I was so close to calling them done.

This just leaves these two last warbands.  I’m really not sure what colours to paint them.  Finvarr looks ninja-ish so I’ve been thinking of multiple blacks, possibly with some brighter accent colours?  Perhaps base them all loosely on the Knights of Ren?  As for Lorsann, I was originally thinking greens, but I’ve already got a lot of them in this game.  Perhaps I’ll base her on my GB Hunters Guild scheme?

Any suggestions?

I’ve had two birthdays and Second Christmas this weekend so not much time for painting.  I’ve still got the hair to finish and the iron will need recovering and touching up, but then Rhodri will be done.  I should get to focus on Titus this Saturday.  Reichbusters leave China this week and I want to have both these two done before I’ve got all that plastic washed and ready to prime.  I’d like to get the remaining two warbands done too, but I’m not expecting that, although I think I heard its 5 weeks for the cargo ship to get to France and I imagine at least another week after that before I get it so who knows?

I finished the current batch of warbands, and started work on the last 2 that got a core colour painted over Christmas.  That still leaves 2 more with just primer on them.

It appears my lightbox is loosing its Oompf.  Its not the GreenStuffWorld one OTT sell, but its almost identical.  It has a stop of LEDs glued to the top front.  Can they fade over time?  I assumed LEDs either worked or didn’t, no in between.