Harlequin vs. Squats (Art Monday)

 Greetings, sorry about missing Art Monday these past few weeks, life* happens. Anyway, here's a piece I got kick out of creating way back in the mid '90s.  

I love a good action scene and I really wanted to show an Eldar Harlequin in action. This was submitted to Inquisitor Magazine but was not used. Despite my liking of the figures in it, I think the piece doesn't work how I hoped it would have. I blame the holofield effect I was going for and the lack of contrast on the image. If I were to take another stab at this I would probably half-tone the bricks in the background to help the foreground characters 'pop'.  I think Tim at Inquisitor Magazine saw this too when he passed it by. Or maybe he thought it was too violent? 

I started in this hobby back in '89 and the Harlequins only had the list that appeared in White Dwarf (#105?). And in that edition they were combat monsters and a single one was definitely capable of wading through a unit of Squats with little fear of them. They were nerfed in 2nd edition and marginalized in every edition after that until they became a true army in 7th Edition. But I fondly remember their formative years, and I hope this piece captures an aspect of that time. 

*My 2nd child was born on 11/28; it's been a busy past few weeks! 

Death Jester (Art Mondays!)

 Greetings. Today we feature a piece I thought had been printed in Inquisitor, but after looking through the two issues I did some art in, I can't find it. Regardless it's one I still like and I am happy to share it with you lot.  

The Death Jesters were absolute beasts in the Rogue Trader days (WD 105-106?) and I still fearfully recall them from that time. Many an ork was turned into goo by the fearsome bio-shurikans that they shot all over the battlefields old. Ah, good times...

Kill Team Launch Party

Kill Team Party!

Hello! This past Saturday my local gaming store, Hobbytown USA hosted a Kill Team launch party. It was a big launch for Hobbytown, probably the biggest I have seen at this location. They had plenty of Kill Team products in stock (which they sold a lot of!) And they had multiple tables set up for purposes of conducting demo games. And according to Matt, the man cordinating the event, they had quite a turn out for their first session. That session ran from late in the morning until 5pm, and the evening session ran from 6pm until 10pm.

The Kill Team event poster.

The event had some nifty give-aways: buttons (aka badges for my UK readers), a poster (for those who arrived early enough to snag one) and some really cool CP tracker dials. And pizza.

The Reaper's Mirth assembled before a dial.

I arrived at the 6pm session with 2 teams in tow, but I decided to run with the Harlequins since I never got to use them in the previous version of Kill Team. Matt gave me a super quick crash course on the rules, I threw together a team of 7 Troupers for 98 points, rolled up some quirks and background (fun but not game affecting), and I was ready to hit the table.

Racing towards the Skitarii.

Bob and Matt were already pretty familar with the rules at this point, so we decided to try the 4-way team battle. Bob had Dark Angels, Matt had Tyranid Genestealers, Jim and Chyanne had Skitarii and I had my Harlies.  One of the new (and refreshing!) changes to the game is the Iniative phase. All parties roll off each round to determine the turn order for that round. This added some variety to this game for sure and was especially refreshing in a 4 way match like this.

Genestealers pour into the Dark Angel wall of bullets.

I had a difficult time adjusting to how charging works now, but it was more an adjustment from decades of learned behavior than it was comprehension. This early mistakes caused some tactical blunders that surely cost some Harlequin lives, but my biggest foes were the dice were using. If I hit, I rarely wounded, but my armor save attempts were especially frustrating as I pretty much failed most of the ones I was asked to make. All well! LOL!

Look who  is charging who.

Multiple charges in the fight phase was an interesting thing to experience. In the pic above a Genestealer charged a Skitarii, the my Harlequin charged that Skitarii, then another Genestealer charged my Harlie. It was definitely a  crazy and swirling melee!

Slaughtered by Genestealers.

Once I got my Leader engaged with a foe, I finally got to expeience the joy of the Harlequins Kiss shredding a target to death. By the time this had occurred I was down to less than half of my force being alive. Most of the Harlequin had been shot to death by Bob's uncanny ability to roll 6s on Overwatch!

Harlequin Leader showing the clockwork guys how to dance! 

Ultimately this game shrank down to an area of a single building, the structure the Dark Angels were holding onto tightly! With a few marines left to defend the building from the invading xenos, the Dark Angels stood firmly in piles of dead clowns and shattered chitton.

This Harelquin and Dark Angel fought each other for 5 rounds! 

I had one Harelquin that charged one of the Dark Angels on the 2nd storey of the ruins way back on turn 2. That fight carried on until it finished on the ground level on turn 6. The Harelquin trouper finally surrendered to the beating it had been taking.

Finally it ended, with Bob hanging on steadfastly against my sole surviving Harelquin and Matt's remaining Genestealer.

The grand finale.

It was good, fast-paced fun and once we master the rules it should go even quicker for us. We hope to run a campaign at some point to as to experience the leveling system as well. I haven't gotten the book yet but I had really good look through it. I'm definitely looking forward to making some more Kill Teams as the diversity looks very appealing to me. Also, those numbered counters that come with the boxed game will be really handy in future 4 way games for keeping up with whose turn it is.

Alpha Legion vs. Dark Angels.

While we played our game there were other KT games taking place as well as a massive Chaos vs. Dark Angel 8th ed battle.  I think the Dark Angels won, but it appeared to have been an bloody good game!

This looks like a fun party, yes?

Mime Time

Mime Time! 

Back in May of last year my Harlequins took to the field of battle for the first (and still only) time. It was my first (and still only) game of Shadow War: Armageddon). In that game I had two "juve level" models called Mimes. It bothered me that the models were not WYSIWYG and I set about correcting that problem. After acquiring the models I wanted to use, in this case two of the passenger models from the Shadow Weaver kit, I kit-bashed them with a few Dark Eldar bits, most notably the mirror heads from the Wyches box set.

Kitbashed.

After some time I picked these clowns up again and began painting them in the Reaper's Mirth scheme that I have selected to paint my Harlequin force in.

Base coats.

Happily I can claim that it didn't take very long to complete these two.

Already finished?

 I will note a few changes to this scheme: The backpacks on the plastic Harlequins are a bit more dsitinguished then they are on the really old metals, so following the guide in the Warriors of the Laughing God paint guide I opted to paint these in a metallic color. I did this with Bolt Gun metal, Nuln Oil and a highlight of Mitheril Silver.

Back pack units. 

 The mirror masks, sword and knife were painted in Mitheril Silver, then a glaze of Drakenhof Nightshade, the highlighted slightly with Mitheril Silver again.

Final Highlights.

After that, I drew their icons onto their knee pads using a micron. I deviated their placement with the justification that these are 'juve-level' Harleys and this is a another way to distinguish that.

I have also started on another model used in that Shadow War game, but I will include him in a future Clowning Around post.

For the future.

Clowning Around (Part 5)

The Reaper's Mirth rebounds!

Goodness, it has been a good while since I posted about these mirthful clowns huh? Well, over the course of a year I have dabbled and poked on some of these miniatures but it was done in a random and chaotic manner. While doing such an activity I noticed that this particular miniature looked...odd.

Something is wrong...

When I got this miniature it was primed black, which hid the issue surprisingly well. It just appeared to be in a dynamic leap and stretching his back to the extreme as it is doing so. But when I sat down and started applying basecoats a problem became apparent: it had a broken spine! There was no way this thing was assembled correctly, so I pried it appart.

What the heck kind of glue is this?!

It was glued together using the strangest of glue. I don't know what this stuff was but it was stretchy and did not want to come off of the metal.

Seperated at last!

After getting it seperated I went about scrapping this goopy stuff off of the miniature to reveal the proper joins.

The glue is removed.

I decided to paint the miniature almost all the way before reassembling him.

Rejoined and mostly painted. 

And with just a bit of focus I completed thia miniature. The icons were the hardest bit, of course, but I am OK with how they turned out. Especially the triangular Prism icon which I liked so much I decided not to fill it in!

Finished with icons. 

I was tempted to add some diamonds to this model but I decided that the white was such a harsh and punchy color that it was best to let it be. Maybe I will do that on some of the other models as I get around to them.

Diamond free.

 I chose to go with green on the gems with this Harley for the sake of contrast. Like I did with the Death Jester.

Green gems, truly outrageous!

As I worked on this I was also working on a few of the other Harleys, particularly the three from the last post. But will hold off for now and will instead show you those, and perhaps more, in the next part.

The Shadow War begins...

Harlequins in the Underhive.

Finally we got in a game of Shadow War: Armageddon. Warfrog and I have been itching to play a game together for...well, way too long now, and we finally managed to get our schedules to align. Both of us are veterans of the 2nd edition era of Warhammer 40,000 and the 1st Edition of Necromunda, and Shadow War speaks that same language but with a few subtle variations. So we agreed to give it a shot.


I decided to give my Harlequins a go as they haven't hit a gaming table yet and the equipment they come with (Flip Belts and Holo Shields) gives them a special in game edge in the type of environments we tend to encounter in these Underhive games.  I pulled together a Harlequin Kill Team from the models I have been clowning around with off and on. I was a bit shocked with how quickly the points were exhausted during list building and with some of  the sacrifices I had to make as well. I arrived with a Leader, the Troupe Master,  with a monomoleculer  sword and a shuriken pistol, a Virtuoso with a Neuro Disrupter and a mono sword, a Trouper with a Harlequins Kiss and Shuriken Pistol and a Mime with no additional equipment other than his concealed knife and wicked ability to walk against the wind. -That's just 4 miniatures!

Warfrog had a similar challenge while creating his Tyranid Kill Team and ended up with only 3 models, however they have a total of 12 Wounds to my 5 Wounds. His Leader had q Bonesword and a Lash Whip, a Warrior with Scything Talons and a Devourer and a Weapon Beast with a Venom Cannon. Note that Warfrog's miniatures were not physically armed as he hasn't managed to get that far with his magnetizing project yet, but with the list this small we had no problem remembering these details.

Warfrog brought some of his old Necromunda terrain which we set up into an appropriate underhive themed kill zone. We chose the first mission in the book which is pretty much a straight up fight. I deployed and went first.

The Underhive and Deployment.

Zipping through the Underhive, dashing up ladders, across cat walks while avoiding incoming fire from the Tyranids, the Troupe made it's way into the realm of the 'Nids.

Maneuvering through the Underhive.

The Virtuoso took the first wound off of a Nid  using his Neuro Disruptor only to have it fail it's ammo roll. The Tyranid Leader and the Warrior jumped the Harelquins on the cat walk, and removed the Trouper with the Harelquin Kiss from the game. The Virtuoso and the Troupe Master soon joined the fray and the dance of death began and continued for many rounds.

Warfrog and I had a lot of fun re-engaging with these particular Assault rules. In the Necromunda games we played since 40k 3rd ed came out, the Assault phase was usually over in a round with combatants not being as specialized as our Tyranids and Harlequins in this fight were.

Melee on the catwalk.

Somehow, and in time, the Harequins eventually overcame and defeated the Tyranids, only to find the Weapon Beast, who had been shooting up the Mime while the others where locked in combat, waiting for them with his Venom Cannon primed and pointed in their direction.

"Now Space Elves, you face your final trial!"

The last few rounds of the game were quick and ammusing. The Sustained Fire Dice kept providing the Venom Cannon with many shots, that ment the Harlequins could do nothing but stand up at the end of their turn due to the pinning. Eventually the Troupe Master went Out of Action.

Crawling towards cover.

The Mime eventually rushed over to aid the Virtuoso only to fall victim to the same trap!

Finally, after many rounds of both of us passing Bottle Tests on or just under the number, the Harequins decided they had enough and fled the field.

Anyone familiar with Necromunda, Gorkamorka or Mordheim can attest to the post-battle phase where you determine if anyone gets stat advances, new skills or lingering injuries. Shadow War uses a similar, although stream-lined, system. My Troupe Master ended up with a head wound that resulted in him now having Frenzy. Reading over that rule this maybe more of a benefit for him than a hindrance but we'll see if this Team ever gets a 2nd game. I used my 100 points to buy some extra gear and to get my Troupe Master that Power Sword I wanted him to have from the get-go. Now it's just a matter of seeing if the locals only want to do one-off games or if we're going to allow a loose campaign to happen or not. Time will tell in regards to that, but for now, I can say that Warfrog and I had fun romping around the Underhive again.

Clowning Around (part 4)

After taking a small break from doing much with the hobby, mostly because of the holidays, I decided to pick things back up a bit by painting some more Harlequins.This time I decided to do more Troupers so I can have a minimum squad size of painted models. Perhaps with maybe getting them into a Kill Team mission?

As I stated way back in Clowning Around part one, my Troupe is based on the Reaper's Mirth from the Harlequin Codex. In part 2 I broke down how I painted these models but I decided, for my own reference anyway, that I needed a slightly more in-depth guide. So 'ere we go:

I started out with a black base coat. The white areas I used a very dark grey. The red areas I used Scab Red. I used an old rust color from the old Citadel Range called Tin Bitz on the areas that I will build up to gold.

Base Coats

The mid coats followed, I used a dark blue on the areas that will be black to make for a "leather" sort of look. I painted a lighter grey on the areas that I am building up to white.

Mid Coats.

The leather areas were next highlighted with a light grey. I used that same light grey on their mohawks, painting both sides in this fashion. Evil Suns Scarlet was built up over the Scab Red.

Light Grey on their pants and hair.

This is where I decided to deviate from the steps I showed in Part Two. Instead of washing the black areas with Black Ink, I chose to wash them in Drachenhof Nightshade Wash. I liked how this turned out a lot better, I will still add black ink some places but the areas that are building up to the final highlight will be left like this. Also, I used  Carroburg Crimson on the read side of the mohawk, and Nuln Oil on the other.

Inks applied.

Next I dry brushed White Scar over the white side of the mohawk to bring it out to white. I also used White Scar to complete the White areas of their uniforms as well.

Scar White for the white bitz!

And this is where I am at with them so far. In the next part I will be touching them up and applying details. See you then!

Clowning Around (Part 3)

After painting all those earth-toned Brits for Bolt Action I needed the color fix that only painting a few Harlequin minis can give you. So I decided to clown around a bit more. Picking up exactly where I left off in December, I began with some dark gray mid-coats on the black area of this Death Jester

Mid-coat on armor and hair.

Next I applied even more red ink to the hair until I was satisfied with it. Then I used an even lighter gray for the highlights on the black areas of his suit.

With light gray highlights. 

You can see that the other Harley in the background is getting some color added to her mohawk as well.

While thumbing through the Harlequin painting guide, Warriors of the Laughing God, looking for inspiration I came across an alternate painting technique for the rock and ruins that most of the modern eldar figures are often modeled on. Basically you paint the rock/ruin a dark gray then wash it with Druchi Violet and highlight with Russ Gray. It's looked cool different in the book, and since I really am just clowning around with these models, I decided to give it a try...

Rocks washed with Druchi Violet.

So far so good, kind of a neat effect so far...

Russ Grey added to the rocks.

...and I'm not sure, but I think I hate it. They look OK in the photos, but in person it looks like I stuck cheap aquarium rocks on their bases. They don't appear right to me. So I am going to apply gray drybrushing to them to see if I like the result better. It's that or repaint them entirely to look like the traditional wraithbone look. I did like the look of the rocks with the purple wash, so we'll see what I can do to salvage this look...

The Reaper with the golden gun.

I decided my gray highlights on the black suit were just too intense and toned them down a bit with a wash of Nuln Oil. Then I painted gold onto the gun.

The rocks are corrected.

I decided to dry brush those funky rocks with Apple Barrel Pewter Grey and it seems to have done the trick. I can tolerate them now as they are no longer as distracting .

Next I decided to try another technique from Warriors of the Laughing God. This idea was to wash the weapon with Druchi Violet then highlight it with whatever they call Mitheril Silver these days.

Druchii Violet wash on rhe gun.

Mitheril Silver highlight on the gun.

I was very pleased with this effect and I will probably try this on some more Harlequins and maybe my Dark Eldar (whom I am considering for Kill Team).

Next up I finished off the mask and the gemstones that are all over this (and damned near every Goodwin Eldar) model. I changed his main soulgem from a red one to a green one just to break up the monotony.

More details done.

While working on the Death Jester I also completed this trouper by highlighting the red on her mask and adding some Mitheril Silver highlights to her gun and Harlequin Kiss.

Finished, front view.

On her back I finished off her gems and she was done.

Finished, rear view.

The rainbow hued mohawk came out fairly well. This was an experiment as well. I used inks on white to achieve the look of intense hair coloring. Also it's a bit of a call-back to the original paint schemes for these models from so many years ago...

Finishe Death Jester, rear view.

It's always fun to find a use for my old colored metallic paints, especially the Purple one. Here you can see I used it on the lightning bolt effect on the side of his cannon. Also I hand-painted the prism icon onto his right leg.

Finished Death Jester,  front view.

With exception to flock, these first few Harlequin models are done. I was having a lot of fun working on these and decided to prime up some more for the paint queue... coming eventually I guess... ;)