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How To Train Your Pig


Treehouse

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Hello,

I've finally gave in and bought Ulix and a core crew to go along with him. I was thinking of buying him for a while now because I like the idea of a crew of mostly pigs and his mechanic seemed fun. When a friend of mine suggested we could start a mini Shifting Loyalties campaign, it was the perfect excuse to start and go down the the road to Porkville. The plan is to keep him my stand-alone Gremlin master (we'll see how that'll work out). If time allows, I'd like to spend some extra time on basing and writing up a little bit of background.

 

Anyway, here's my first pig, Agamemnon, the piglet with big ambitions.

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And his base. I'd like to add some water effect later, too.

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After a hard day in the Bayou and half a bucket of slop, Agamemnon gazes across the slough and dreams about conquering Truffles.

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Agamemnon

Not long ago, Agamemnon was a happy piglet. Born into a fine family of pigs, he had dreamt about becoming the mightiest pig of the slough. It could have been so simple, had not a hog whisperer abducted his brother Menelaos' wife, Helena, the most beautiful sow in the whole Bayou. Probably.

Helena was taken to Truffles, the mighty settlement in eastern Bayou. Agamemnon swore to help his brother get her back - and make his brother owe him. He wouldn't rest until Helena would be in Menelaos' hooves again. And if Truffles should stand in his way, then Truffles should fall.

So when the old Major came to his slough to rile up the pigs living there, Agamemnon happily obliged. For he knew he needed the strength of the biggest, meanest pigs to succeed.  And after all,  the Major was a close ally to Ulix, whose cunning and wit might prove invaluable for Agamemnon.

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Edited by Treehouse
Should read the Ilias again. Thanks thatlatinspeakingguy
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Thanks, and sure. Just note that it is a tad more pinkish than in the photo. And I have a mix of paint brands, but any similar colour would do. 

 

Base: P3 Thornwood Green (though any darker grey/greenish brown would do, I guess)

Then P3 Midlund Flesh (a fleshtone a bit on the dark side), added more and more Vallejo Basic Skintone, then Vallejo Pale Sand, followed by White. 

Glazed Vallejo Beige Red over the mid-tones.

Shadow: P3 Flesh Wash + Vallejo Beasty Brown (not exactly sure which brown, but I think it was that one) Second shadow with a bit of violett ink and and I think some black ink added to the mix. Very thin glaze.

Then sone washes with Flesh Wash plus Vallejo Warlord Purpl, plus maybe some violett again, not sure. Mostly the wash was for the main paets of the skin, not.the shadows. 

Then some touch ups here and there, especially the face (highlights, redrew shadows).

 

So, basically a dark skin tone, a light skintone, some light sand colour and white, plus reddish brown and purple tones for the shadow and washes. I experimented, so I can't.give any more of a detailled description, I'm afraid. 

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The Smell of Bacon

We played the first campaign game and, well, the title says it all. When the smoke cleared after Turn 4 (retreat) Joss and his crew had enough bacon for the next couple of months. But I liked playing a smaller scale game and I learnt some very valuable lessons about my crew and models. (And as I feared, without Ulix, the crew is hard to play)

For the first game, we didn't draw for a special event.

Strategy: Interference

Schemes: Claim Jump, Dig their Graves, Leave Your Mark, Show Of Force, A Quick Murder


 

Crews:

Arcanists:

Joss, Open Current, 1 Ss

Mechanical Rider

Oxfordian Mage

Angelica


 

Pigs:

Old Major, Corn Husks, 3 Ss

Slop Hauler

The Sow

2x Piglet


 

Summary:

I didn't protect Old Major well (could have moved the Piglets in front of him, but wanted them scheme running and scoring for Interference) so that the Mechrider and Joss were able to charge him Turn 2 with the help of Angelica. The Sow was slowed by the Mage. Not a nice Turn 2. Considered retreating for Old Major would definitely die next turn, but the piglets were young and needed the cash. On Turn 2 the Sow charged the Mage and ate him, while the Mechrider killed Old Major. The game continued and I tried to score as much as I could, but the Sow failed to kill Angelica (stupid ML 5) and a piglet and the slop hauler were killed by Joss and the Mechrider - the latter kept summoning Arachnids, of course.

Score - 7 (A) / 5 (P)

Scrip earned: 4 / 3

 

Aftermath:

The slop hauler now has Twitchy thanks to a very lucky Red Joker draw for my single aftermath card. One piglet however will go on A Wayward Advendure the next games and will have to start the game on Turn 3. Guess who'll be the first to be made redundant in the crew built. Fpr barters I was eying with the flamethrower for Old Major but decided to flip again. Got a nine and chose to give the Sow +1 DF, which will be more useful in the long run I hope. The Arcanists now have a Joss with Critical Strike...ouch.

 

Lessons learnt:

  1. Piglets without Hog Whispering are damn hard to control and keep were you want them, especially when the size of the encounter is so low. Should have put a Hog Whisperer, or even better, Merris into my arsenal and leave a piglet out.

  2. Old Major is veeery slow when there's no model to push him around. And his slowness shows in small games.

  3. Old Major also dies quickly to beaters – my opponent pointed out I should have positioned a piglet in front of him (but how should I keep it there, see point 1). In later rounds and games.

  4. ML5 on the Sow makes it unreliable. Best to charge it in later in the turn when control hands have been emptied. If it survives till then.

  5. 'An eye on the young ones' is nice but also a drawback since you can't charge your own pigs with iglets to push them forward on a mask. Still, I will keep a piglet behind a big pig to bite it in the rear, that's still valid.

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Right now I am working on Patroklos, another piglet. I also kitbashed a McTavish proxy. I would never use a third Wild Boar and also had the guy holding a lantern that comes with the Bandersnatch laying around. And because I thought a gator wouldn't fit into the crew anyway and love actually using the models I buy - here you go:

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I was going to use the lantern-guy as my Extraction marker first. Now that's Mouse. Good ol' Mouse finally got a job.

He's not quite finished. Bend the right arm a bit and adjusted the the shoulder. A shame I am bad at sculpting, I would like his hand to lay on the boar's back - that's what it's supposed to look like. I might try...or just leave it be. Though that would be a shame.

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  • 2 weeks later...

A longer hiatus but I finally got some painting time.

 

Patroklos (eng. Patroclus)

Patroklos is a brave piglet but can be a little rash, picking fights he really shouldn't. Usually his friend Achilleus is there to bail him out, but Patroklos can't always count on that. Having followed the other piglets on their quest to raze Truffles, he found himself deep in the dung when Achilleus got mad at Agamemnon for calling him names and refused to fight (who has ever heard of that?!). So while his friend is rolling around in the slough pouting, Patroklos has no other choice than to try to keep his hooves out of trouble. But what self-respecting pig could stand aside and watch? Fate is fickle and Patroklos needs to take care not to end as bacon for the big pan in the sky.

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In the Iliad, Patroclus is actually described as a very able fighter, who can only be killed by Hector because Apollo intervenes (and because he first has been stabbed from behind by Euphorbos).

 

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Got some more work done on 'Count as Tavish'. Merris underwent a - what McMourning would call ' - minor surgery and donated her right hand. A swap wasn't possible, since Tavish's hand was much too small but Merris got a hand from a spare Alp. Here's a quick rundown of the parts used.

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After I tested the waters with the first two piglets, I'm moving over to a quicker painting pace. Wasn't able to do pre-shading before because of the rotten weather conditions so had to paint them without and overall I spent more time and care.  Pre-shading does speed up the process considerably, so does not using a ton of layers. Here's a WIP of Diogenes.

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1: Preshading, 2: Applied a mix of Thronwood Green and Midlund Flesh in the shadows, added more M.Fl. and painted the edges of the dark parts. 3: A wash of M.Fl.; basically this could already be called done for tabletop quality. Just needs to dry. Time so far: 3 min. 4: Highlight with Basic Fleshtone + White. 5: Another M.Fl. wash.

6: The other side: Basic colours 7: Cleaning up (applying thinned down M.Fl. over hard borders) 8: Some more highlights.

Still needs a couple of washes, but basically this is Ok. I think it took about 15 min. But I didn't have to paint the head :P.

 

And a teaser pic of the crew so far (including a WIP Wild Boar and a preshaded McTavish):

teaser1.jpg

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Diogenes

Diogenes has long since decided that all he needs to be happy is food, mud to roll in and his beloved barrel (ideally filled with food and mud). So it came to no surprise that he refused to join the other pigs to listen to Old Mayor's speech. Curious to find out why the piglet would not take the opportunity to pay him its respect, the Mayor visited Diogenes, who was sunbathing in the mud in front of his barrel. When he told the old hog to move aside because he was blocking off the sunlight, everyone expected Diogenes would be turned into field rations. But Old Mayor has a sense of humor and instead ordered that Diogenes should be rolled along on the march while sleeping in his barrel. Unwilling to leave his barrel behind and realizing that there is a lot of food and mud where the Mayor's army gathers, Diogenes has accepted that he is part of the campaign now, if not the most active one.

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Diogenes has nothing to do with the Iliad, of course. I'm making this up on the go, so there isn't alot of planning ahead. I thought the third piglet kind of looked the same like the second one and got the idea of putting its head into a barrel I had lying in my bitsbox. And greek names + barrel just screamed out 'Diogenes' to me. Diogenes is not a mythological figure, though most of what is written on him is based on anecdotes. He was a philosopher who basically proclaimed that one can only be happy if free from everything not essentially important to live - which in his mind was food, clothes, shelter and sex. He was a pretty crazy dude all in all, if you care to read up on him. There is a famous anecdote where he supposedly told Alexander the Great to 'Move aside a little, you are blocking off the sun'.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Herakles

Being quick to anger and gambling don't go well together, especially when a lot of 'Shine is in play. That is a lesson Herakles had to learn the hard way. After he 'accidently' trashed the Moonshine supply of his local gambling den after losing his last - and only - shirt, trouble was brewing for poor Herakles. In the brawl that followed in which the landlord took the phrase 'an eye for an eye' too literally, poor Herakles was only saved because a drunk gambler had the idea it would be funnier to make him do stuff instead of throwing him to the gators. In the heated debate that followed, one suggestion won the laughter of the most Gremlins present. Herakles was told to clean after Ulix's pigs, and only when the whole pigsty was clean, Herakles would be free to go. That was four years ago. He is currently working on it.

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The inspiration here comes from the 12 labours of Heracles and the cleaning of the Augean stables in particular. Herakles was a demi-god who later ascended into Olymp. The illegitimate offspring sired by Zeus had to take a lot of crap from Hera, Zeus' wife, who hated him with a passion and tried everything to make his life miserable, causing the death of many innocents, including Herakles' wife and children.  I tried to add additional fluff to the miniature to give it more character.

The paining scheme becomes evident here, mostly browns (and greens, duh) with a bit of purple to add contrast. I might add yellow flowers, the green is a bit dominant, but I also don't want it to become to colourful. I am happy how the barrel turned out. I painted it first in metals (Scale 75) and then drybrushed Vallejo Rust Effect (a reddish light brown wash) mixed with Vallejo brown pigments on top of it. I also tried to add texture to the trousers.

 

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  • 1 month later...

Cerberus

When Ulix found the three-headed piglet surrounded by the corpses of the rest of the litter, he fondly named it Cerberus and locked it up in a shed. Having an ultra aggressive pig is only fun up to a point where you have to close your farm because it ate all the other animals. With time passing and the help of Penelope, Ulix was able to tame Cerberus enough so that it would follow his orders (most of the time) and even taught it a couple of tricks - though it refused to roll over and play dead, sadly. Now, Cerberus is one of the main reasons Gremlins and strangers don't linger aroung Ulix's farm for too long, except for that one incident where a demented young Gremlin called Orpheus thought he could lull in wild pigs by playing his banjo. Ulix actually welcomed Orpheus braking into Cerberus' sty for he learned that banjou music could be used to enrage pigs so much they entered a killing frenzy. And he got a free banjo.

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@Purple Mist  Thanks! I like working on bases, though it can become a bit tedious if you have to repeat the same steps over and over again. 

@DonCheadle  It would work that way, too. But I've restricted myself to Greek mythological characters as a topic. On the base, Patroklos is supposed to pick a fight with a swamp monster / octopus thing.

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6 hours ago, Treehouse said:

Thanks! I like working on bases, though it can become a bit tedious if you have to repeat the same steps over and over again. 

At least you do not have to paint hundres of minis like when building up a classic old Warhammer Fantasy Battle Army. :lol:

Your last bases suggested me how to work Colette Crew. I was searching for some stage bases without luck. Now I know how I can create them.

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