DARK AGE - Saint Mark and his followers.

Well, AdeptiCon can really take it out of you. Four incredible days of non-stop action and conversations about all sorts of toy soldier goodness. I have basically been drained by it all, until now.

So, getting back to the Dark Age goodness these are my latest models, painted up since the start of February specifically for me to take to the CMON Expo and the big, end of season tournament, the Immortals! The Immortals is the tournament where the winner gets to work with the design team to create a new model (background, stats, art, and model) for the world. It's a pretty big deal, so I've been playing a lot with this force to prepare.

This is my Forsaken - St Mark sub-faction force. The Forsaken are the "last bastion of civilization" (or at least that's how they present themselves). Cunning politicians that plot and scheme and use religion to rule over the masses, the Prevailer Council is in charge, and regularly sends its "Saints" - or generals - off on missions of varying difficulty and value. St Mark is the first "Saint", and plays the role of brash and skilled leader to a tee (all the while hiding his true motivations and cowardice).

He is also quite the womanizer, so I have surrounded him with a force that can be entirely comprised of female models.

Saint Mark (on the left) carries God's Light, a very powerful pistol, and is accompanied here by The Sentinel, one of his lieutenants.

His close-range support come from the lithe and deadly Shades, accompanied here by Mark's other lieutenant, Hephzibah (center). The Hephzibah model is currently undergoing a resculpt, so I converted this one from one of the Shade models. : )

These ladies might seem quite fragile, and not a particular threat, but you'd be wrong in thinking that. They are the very brutal reason I decided to try this list out : )

Saint Mark has a tendency for his gun to malfunction. Including a Weaponsmith is very helpful (allowing me to ignore the first three malfunctions), and the stock Weaponsmith is on the right. On the left you can see my conversion for a female Weaponsmith.

Keeping Saint Mark and his Junkers alive is very important. The Sisters of Compassion (in the red latex) and the Field Medic (front) will do just that. Although I won't be running all of these at once, it's nice to have the regular Sister (left) and the Limited Edition Sister (right).

Firestorms are a very popular choice with Forsaken players, mostly because of their awesome flamethrowers.

These Militia are the cheapest models in my collection at just 25 points a piece. They'll be good for filling those 25 point gaps at the end of list building.

And finally the Haniels. These are infiltrators, and I thought I'd spend a bit of extra time messing about with their cloaks. Do you think it was worth it?

Cheers
Dave

DARK AGE - The new 2-player starter set!

I started this "Month of Dark Age"because we're releasing the 2-player starter set this Friday (or Thursday if you happen to be at AdeptiCon). If you'd like to get a good look at the contents of the box, you can do so HERE. 

In preparation for the NOCF Raffle being sponsored by CMON, I've painted up the Saint Isaac half of the Path To Glory set. Jason Craze of Slowfuse Gaming is painting the Ice Caste half. 

Here are the St Isaac model and his two Centipedes from the set. They are all plastic models with incredible detail and crispness, they go together very quickly, and are very sturdy.

Here's a comparison shot between the plastic model (left) and the original resin model (right).

And here are the plastic Controllers from the Path To Glory set. Again, great detail.

Last year I painted a set of Saint Isaac (above) and Ice Caste Dragyri minis (below) to take to Beasts of War. We raffled these off and you can check out the detailed post on these HERE.

AdeptiCon starts on Thursday, so I'm not sure if I'll have time to post another set of minis before then, but I'll try : )

Cheers

Dave

WRECK-AGE - A Kickstarter for Post-Collapse Vehicles

I've been working recently with the guys from Hyacinth Games on their latest Kickstarter campaign to bring vehicles of various sorts to the world of Wreck-Age.

If you are into post-apocalyptic gaming, check out the Kickstarter and see if you're interested in the cool things they are working on.

DARK AGE - The Shadow Caste Dragyri

One of the cool things about doing work for a miniatures company is, of course, being able to get your hands on minis early. This is one of those cases. I was able to get a hold of some of the lovely Shadow Caste Dragyri miniatures that surfaced for the very first time last year. These are models that I painted up pretty quickly so that we could take them to Northern Ireland to use in some Dark Age videos filmed at Beasts of War last September.

This small force is 700 points, and it wouldn't take much to bring it up to 1,000. A standard game of Dark Age is 500 points, so you have a bit of flexibility.

The Death's Device of Shadow and the Gatherer.

The Naedrae and the Keeper.

The Goliath

The Shadow Caste Dragyri have quite a few trust issues, so they don't make use of slaves like the other castes (but not because of thoughts of morality, they just don't trust them). Instead they have subverted a couple of CORE robots to use as manual labor. These include the Shadow Menials (above) and the Shadow Finder (below).

DARK AGE - The Fire Caste Dragyri

While I was painting up the Salt Flat Nomads from my previous post, I was eyeing up a couple of other factions - primarily the Forsaken (as I love my "humans against the fantastic" but also the Fire Caste Dragyri as they seemed to suit my play style.

The Dragyri are an alien race brought to Attr (the planet Dark Age is set on) thousands of years ago as a slave race for the more diminutive Alteghrans. After a revolt, the dragger formed a new society, with various castes devoted to the different elemental forces, including Fire. Over time, each caste evolved to mimic the key qualities of their element, which means that the Fire Caste are the embodiment of the raging inferno, barreling down on you with incredible ferocity before moving on, driven by incredibly fury. When I'm new to a game I find it best to try out something familiar, comfortable, to help me get my grounding. The "rush forward and try to beat up everyone" approach worked well for my Ogres in Warhammer, so I figured it would ferrety well with these 10' tall killing machines.

First up we have the Spirit Lord and the female Volcanic Phalanx models (above and below). The Dragyri society is fairly chauvinistic, but the Fire Caste does value the contributions of females in their ranks. Almost all of their unit types have a male and female version, with male characters leading the warbands. I currently don't own the male Volcanic Phalanx, but will be correcting that oversight soon. 

These two models are resin, and came with resin spears. I replaced the hafts with brass rods, and added a small bead to the butt of the spears to give a visual sense of balance. 

These are the male and female Volcanic Helots. They are the bodyguards of the Fire Caste leaders, ready to step in the way of incoming fire and also deal out quite a bit of damage with their bardiche.

These are the male and female Pyres. They excel at hit and run tactics, using their scimitars to slice apart those wounded and disoriented by their flam bombs.

These are the male and female Brimstones. No, they aren't wearing much in the way of armor. Yes, they are carrying dual flame throwers : )

The outfit worn by the male version reminds me quite a bit of the mechanic in Beyond Thunderdome.

This is the male version of the Inferno, one of the elite troopers of the Fire Caste. I will also be purchasing the female version very soon.

This is the Greater Fire Elemental, and incredible beast of a model/unit. This one is the version cast in translucent yellow resin (available from the CMON booth at conventions) that I painted up the afternoon before driving up to see Ash Barker of Guerrilla Miniature Games. He and I had been doing quite a bit of trash talking the week prior, and when he revealed he had painted up a Cabrakan for his Kukulkani (pretty much Death on legs), I knew I needed something to try and counter it.

You can check out Ash's Dark Age videos HERE, and our Fire Caste/Kukulkani battle HERE.

Then I have a pair of Embers. These are only brought into play when a model with the Emberspark ability kills an opponent, that's why it looks like they are rising from burning corpses : )

And finally, for my currently painted Fire Caste, I have three smaller models. There's the Artificer of the Alteghran on the left, He's now a slave to the Fire Caste and he uses his technical skills to ensure that the ranged weaponry and armor of the Fire Caste stays functional. The other two models are Razor Slyths, subterranean creatures enslaved by the Dragyri to do their bidding. These models are fast, reasonable in combat, but are primarily used for completing secondary tasks.

So there you have it. If you'd like to learn more about Dark Age, click HERE to check out the site, or feel free to ask any questions in the comments below!