Easy Army Returns!

Oof. After posting the other day, I got all excited for hobbying this week, only for there to be snow on the ground the following day, and rain and low or even freezing temps for the near future. No priming then...

One bright spot has been the return of Easy Army, which can now be found here:

http://mantic.easyarmy.com/

Easy Army was fantastic for me in Second Edition. I cannot overstate how fabulous a tool it was, and I am glad to see it return.

List building for war games can be tedious. Being based on units (not individual models, like WHFB, for example), Kings of War is different, and a little less tedious, but it can still be a bit of a chore. Do I have enough unlocks? Did I run too many monster slots? Did I run too many duplicate choices? Did my basic math add up? There are a lot of potential pitfalls! Easy Army tackled each and every one wonderfully in Second.

The cherry on top was that in addition to calculating and enforcing your unlocks, and doing all the math, all the rules your list needed were automatically tacked on at the end. This was awesome for me, where basically every game I got in doubled as a teaching/intro game, as I don't have a local community. Forget what Blast does? Right there, same with Phalanx, Individual... you name it. Kings of War has wonderfully accessible general rules, so to put all the applicable minutia and only the applicable minutia in one spot was amazing for running games.

I've only explored a little bit so far, but am very happy. All the old functionality exists, as well as a few quality of life inclusions, like Height of the unit in the list. All great stuff. 

The only downsides are.. you do need an account, and I think you actually need to pay this time. (I set myself up and didn't check the functionality w/o paying, sorry.) Previously, it was freely accessible, funded by ads and donations, but this is fine by me. I like exploring rulebooks, and have "dabbled" in a number of other systems, and nothing comes close to this level of support. This is great. I did the $20/year option as I'm an optimist, but you can dip your toes in for as little as $2.

Truth be told, I've been waiting anxiously for this. Third Edition dropped months ago, and I haven't gotten in a game because of life, but also because it's a ton of extra work for me, being the only one reading the rules and building the lists, and bringing the models to throw down. Folks like the game, but no one seems crazy enough to bite one buy their own rule book and play even semi-regularly. It is what is is. Easy Army and all it's functionality will definitely help me when the stars align and a random game manifests. It's great. Go check it out!

Hobby Update: Redone Wights

We've actually had a few nice days this past week. Almost all the snow is gone now, and it was even briefly sunny enough and warm enough one day recently to sneak out and prime a few things! Not much is queued up yet for 2020 hobbying, but I did prime a few bases, and then was able to repaint my Undead Wight Hordes over the weekend.

Finished group shot first.

I really liked Wights in 2nd Edition. They had a lot of things going for them! They played well with Surge tricks. They were very tanky and with CS3 they could also chop through all sorts of things! Well, in 3rd they fell victim to some changes. They are now irregular, and lost a point of Crushing Strength. However, they are Melee 3+ instead of 4+ now, they gained the Phantasm keyword.. and the Fly special rule, which is, well, good! Overall, sounds like a good trade to me. 

The updates brought them more in line with the Barrow Wights, a special flying Wight unit from a Clash of Kings update. I already had a unit of those, painted up all spookily. I really like that paint job. The Undead are a popular army for guests, so I decided that my old Wight Hordes needed some touching up, in order to be wysiwyg on the field.

The Wights were some of my first multi-basing attempts. And they were bad. The models are Warmachine Bane Thralls. The models had slots, so I built them up on their round bases, and tried (poorly) to then just incorporate those bases into the multi-base. The base was on MDF, with a bunch of milliput and cork board to make it interesting. Removing the models too quite a long time, as they had to essentially be dug out from all the basing materials. 

No cuts. Though I did warp a pair of old clippers.

Once removed from their old bases, I clipped the round base off, then sawed off the slot stand. The models would be glued right on to their new base, something I really like now. Dealing with stands on minis can be so frustrating.




I really like cork board in my bases. It's cheap and adds a lot. Previously, I would massage some milliput or green stuff out to make the mud, and then paste around all that. I hadn't hobbied in so long, I couldn't find the little storage container before my patience wore out, so I decided to experiment. I cut out a variety of shapes from a cracker box, and glued them to the base. I then pasted around them like usual. After priming, they seemed to have help up well, so I continued my usual process painting everything, and then adding a thick layer of acrylic glaze to get a glossy effect for the mud.

The models suffer a bit from mono-pose syndrome. The box comes with 3 copies of three poses and a leader mini, but you can mix it up enough. The ripples of the cloth made it harder to do a straight dry brush on these guys, so I ended up with a few layers of green and attempting a highlight of sorts on the robes. Not my finest work, but it's been a long time since I hobbied, and I haven't done much highlighting previously.

One guy is hiding in the back. Five models for each horde. The mud turned out pretty good.

The leader, pointing which way the axes should go.

These were great models back in the day. They seem to have gotten a little harder to find, but I would definitely recommend them if you need some cheap Wights. The group shot does them justice and I think they'll look just fine on the field.

That said, I think my Undead could all use some touching up. I think some withered plants or something would look cool. That was on the agenda to get to over the winter... will try and pick that up this summer.

Much of my nerd time the last year has been dominated by Dungeons and Dragons. There's uh.. a pandemic on now so most campaigns and my usual game nights are on hold. I think I'm a little shy on hobby projects, but it was fun to paint a bit again, so we'll see what I can lazily churn out in the coming weeks.