This weekend, I managed to get a 1500 point three way game in, using some of the new rules from the new Blades of Khorne Battletome. I’ve not got the right combination of models to field any Battalions yet so was simply using Blood Blessing Prayers, new Artefacts and Command Traits, and the new Blood Tithe system.
So my Khorne Bloodbound has begun to grow from it’s small 1000 points and last Friday I began to put together a second unit of Blood Warriors, though this time armed with paired Goreaxes (which allows me to re-roll To Hit rolls of 1 in combat).
My original intention had been to assemble five of the box and pack out my original unit and then use the rest for kit-bashing chariots and similar. However after some thought, I can’t see me adding chariots to the army anytime soon, so it just made sense to make the whole unit up for my 2000 points.
A slightly belated Happy New Year! In this post I go over progress on my Acastus Knight Porphyrion, putting together my AoS Death army and the plans I’ve got for 2017 – needless to say, I’m planning far too much!
I spent quite a bit of time not at home over Christmas, so though I made hobby progress, I didn’t make quite as much as I’d have liked
On the 15th October was Armies on Parade 2016 and I took the plunge and entered my Khorne Bloodbound into the Swindon Warhammer store. I didn’t place for a medal but did get 6th place out of 15 entries which I’m fairly chuffed about.
Having never been to an Armies on Parade event before I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when I rolled up at the Swindon Warhammer store just after 10am, lugging numerous bags and a Realm of Battle Board with me. The store had been slightly changed round and a number of the tables normally used for gaming had been re-arranged to cater for the anticipated 18 entries. Because the tables are all done on a two-foot grid it was simply a matter of picking an area to set the army up, writing your name on the back of a piece of paper which also had your voting letter on. Pretty straight forward in truth.
Painted by GW
This week has seen me start of painting up two of the Khorne Slaughterpriests I’ve got, which seems to be a common theme due to the one being given away for free on the September 2016 issue of White Dwarf. Because I’ve no real time constraints or pressures I’m spending a bit longer on painting them up rather than the fairly standard paint jobs I’ve done on the rest of my Bloodbound.
Now don’t get me wrong the Warhammer TV videos by Duncan which I’ve used are brilliant and produce well above tabletop quality models – they’ve allowed me to get a playable army painted in under six months after-all. What I’m not keen on is the finish on the flesh, which although fine for a rank and file model lacks the depth and tone I personally like for character models.
Because I’m spending a bit more time I’m going to post a few articles on what I’ve been doing and explain what colours and paints I’m using – thought it’s a bit more interesting than my usual procrastination 🙂
I’m very pleased to say that I achieved my goal of getting my Khorne Skull Cannon painted! I’ve got to varnish and sort the base out but in principal I’ve another unit to add to my Goretide – which actually would transfer over to 40k too.
So in a change from my regular procrastination this post will be a handful of photos and some information on how I’ve painted the various bits and how I’d suggest anybody doing one could go about it (learning from my mistakes).
Scarily we’re now a week into September and already the nights are noticeably drawing in and the temperature chilling down – autumn is well on its way and I thought it was a good point to go over my plan for the Goretide over the next few months.
Apologies that we’re a bit “picture light” too!
Regular readers won’t have failed to spot that July and August were fairly lean on posts, initially because I had too much painting to do in preparation for Seeds of Hope and then lots of real life chores to catch up on. My Skullcannon is making good progress but it’s not really changed very much so not “post-worthy” in my opinion and I’d rather not bore people with posts that don’t contain anything particularly exciting. However I do have a few things planned between now and the end of the year!
Firstly (and pretty obviously) I’m going to finish off my Skullcannon. I’m now onto all of the edge highlighting so with luck may get this finished over the next week, then just need to quickly knock out the Bloodletters and base it up.
Then I think, I may have a bit of a bash at painting up some more characters. I’ve three Slaughterpriests, a Bloodstoker, Skarr Bloodwrath and Valkia to do and the new Gorechosen game is released on the 23rd which will give me another four characters (magic eight). My intention is to get at least one Slaughterpriest painted for entry into a painting competition being run by Ben Curry on The Grand Alliance forums due at the end of September. The rest I’d like assembled and at least undercoated by the end of the month.
I’ve just booked off the last week of September and am provisionally planning to do some work on my Realm of Battle Boards – just some shading and drybrushing so they can be at least stored away again rather than lying on the floor. The end of that week I’m planning some games of 40k and Age of Sigmar at home so they’ll also be sorted for that. If one is good enough I may also pop my Bloodbound into Armies on Parade too.
With winter looming with its usual wet and cold friends I think my priority needs to be to assemble the remaining miniatures in boxes that I’ve got: six Skullcrushers, six Bloodcrushers and ten Blood Warriors. If I can then get these undercoated it will mean that I have miniatures to paint on the numerous grey soggy days in the remaining few months until Christmas.
My plan for the Goretide also includes a custom Hellcannon conversion based on a 40k Forgefiend and some type of large creature (Bloodthirster, Slaughterbrute etc), but as with my original thought, I’m not going to purchase anything else until I’ve got more painted.
The Goretide are going to have a bit of a holiday. For the first time in three years I’ve actually got the Christmas break off and intend to start building and painting all of the models I’ve got for an Adeptus Mechanicus army (including finishing off my Knights). All being well Fires of Cyraxus will be released by then too so I’ll know what Mechanicum units I can pull over to 40k which would also kick off my Horus Heresy army too.
“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry”
I think this saying pretty much sums up my progress over the past week for my Khorne Bloodbound. I had originally planned that from last Friday when I got home I would have a pretty clear run of hobby time with nothing to stop me simply cracking out my Wrathmongers. Sadly real life threw the proverbial spanner in the works and resulted in me loosing a chunk of Friday afternoon, a chunk of Saturday and all of Monday evening. I had to take a couple of hours out of Sunday too as my eyes decided they didn’t like me and I was struggling to focus. This has then been compounded by the fact that tonight (Tuesday) I’ve also ended up having to work some of the evening (though it does mean I get this post written).
So what does this mean with my Khorne Bloodbound progress? Well my Wrathmongers aren’t finished and I’ve only just started to tidy up the last unit of Bloodletters. I’ve at least another two evenings worth of work to get the Wrathmongers finished as there is quite a bit of edge highlighting to get completed. Quite simply it’s going to be tight, but I think I’ve a few things up my sleeve that should help.
Although I’m losing time this evening I’m hoping to be able to knock off early than normal on Friday with the extra hours I’ve put in. This will give me a nice long weekend where the only commitment is a hair cut on Saturday. I’ve also heard on ‘the grapevine’ that the managers meeting being held next Tuesday evening is going to be moved to the day so I’ve a little bit of contingency there. Finally I managed to pick up Mephiston Red as an airbrush paint. This should mean that once I’ve tidied up the Bloodletters, getting them painted should be a relatively speedy job. That said they’re bloody horrible to tidy up with quite a bit of mold slippage.
So it’s not doom and gloom for my Khorne Bloodbound, but it’s certainly going to be a bit of a challenge! I’m also really happy with how the black has come out, I’m certainly going to be using Corvus Black a lot more when I need to paint up black armour!
Hot on the heals of the Forge World Open Day, the next bit of excitement has been the release of the Age of Sigmar Generals Handbook! I headed over to my closest Games Workshop store (Swindon) and managed to pick up one of only 12 copies the store received. I’ve said it before, but I really don’t understand why the stores aren’t sent quantities based on their average footfall, Swindon is a very popular store – by the time I left (spent an hour looking round and talking to staff) they’d sold all of the copies they had…
Saturday was coincidently a birthday weekend for the store, who had laid on cake, balloons and various events during the weekend. Really impressed – there was a queue waiting outside for the store to open too, proving what a popular store it is. In addition to the Age of Sigmar Generals Handbook, I also picked up a box of Wrathmongers (as at that point I had almost finished my Mighty Lord of Khorne) and a compulsory pot of paint, because of the amount I spent I got a birthday grab bag consisting of a GW bag, black Aquila pin badge, wristband and a 4Gb memory stick – really nice little surprise.
Well what can I say – it was worth the wait! The internet has been awash with points values and battleline units for weeks now but I’m happy to say that this is only a portion of the content of the book. The rest of the pages are full of how to play in different styles, running campaigns and how to get more out of your games of Age of Sigmar. You also get allegiance abilities for each Grand Alliance, equipment for your heroes in the form of Artifacts and a few extra rules for tournaments. There are also a load of new Battleplans for playing scenarios that fit particular play styles.
I’m still reading through everything but I can see this being really moving the game system forwards. Adding points is likely the biggest change and I see old school “Open Play” going by the wayside a little, however I think points are simply going to level the playingfield when it comes to casual games rather than being a massive straight jacket. I just think we’re no longer going to see somebody placing a load of monstrous creatures against two units of Night Goblins.
All in all I would recommend anybody serious about playing to pick up the Age of Sigmar Generals Handbook
As I alluded to earlier my Mighty Lord of Khorne is now finished and his hound successfully glued into place. I took a punt and used a different colour scheme for the hound than Duncan did on WarhammerTV. It’s actually come out really nicely but I’ve had to order the orange Edge paint for the final highlight as the ones I have are too bold in my opinion.
This has put me at 720 points in total – so 280 points off what I need for the game in August. After a bit of questioning on The Grand Alliance forum I’ve gone for Wrathmongers as my next unit in the hope these will give me a bit of anti-monster punch.
The last couple of weeks have flown past in a flurry of painting, gaming and real-life commitments. I’ve completed all of the models I was working on, had a weekend full of Age of Sigmar games, sorted out a large portion of my garden, visited one of the Amazon fulfilment centres, listened to a talk on happiness with Professor Robert Winston one evening and had new patio doors measured and quoted for… This has meant that some things have had to be put on the back burner and last week’s blog post has sadly been one of the casualties 🙁
Last weekend myself and a few friends managed to get together and crammed in four games of Age of Sigmar round my house (plus a game of Silver Tower). We used a 4ft x 4ft board which fits comfortably on my dining table and I have to admit that I’m really impressed with how well the game plays. The rules are simple enough to grasp in a single game and pretty fast. Unlike 40k, you don’t develop that “brain ache” from playing for more than an hour either. With a bit more planning, next time I can see us easily getting three games in within a single day.
I am also really impressed with what a nice game Silver Tower is. Although I was a bit dubious about Warhammer Quest being moved into the Age of Sigmar realm, it actually played out really well and I can see it becoming a regularly played game.
My Goretide performed pretty well overall and has certainly helped me decide on the next step of the army, which is to slowly replace the Blood Reavers with more durable units. I’ve decided that a unit of ten Blood Warriors is going to be my next step, so have just ordered them from Element Games. I expect I’ll paint the Blood Reavers up at some point when we increase the number of models in use and I fit in a Chaos Warshrine (which can give them a much needed 6 save).
After discussion following the weekend, we’ve all decided that adding a Monstrous Creature to our 30 model armies won’t be too overpowered. We’ve clarified Monstrous Creatures as any model that has a wound table on that changes their performance. After much deliberation I think my only option is a Bloodthirster. Longer term, I want to add a Mutalith Vortex Beast and Chaos Warshrine but I believe that these work better in larger armies. What I do need to think about is how to handle this as the Battalion Warscroll I’ve been using requires a fairly large fixed component (minimum of 19 models), so it’s quite limiting.
I also need to start building up a bit more scenery, although it doesn’t cause as much of an impact as it does in 40k, having a selection of scenery does make the game more interesting and means when you’re playing a lot of games, each one can be visually different to the rest.
Before my next game, one thing I want to do is to get all of my Warscrolls onto crib cards, so I’ve a quick and easy reference system. Flicking between books and A4 printed sheets is a complete pain and it’s quite easy to miss or forget something (which we all did). I also think doing the same for specific scenery pieces would make sense – for example the Chapel, Walls and Fences or Temple of Skulls. Making them around 15cm x 10cm in size means you should be able to fit a whole unit on one card without the text becoming illegible.
In a similar vein, I also want to create a load of tokens so I can easily mark units that have received buffs or suffered wounds and any game wide effects such as from Battalion rules. The Khorne Bloodbound has a massive number of abilities that kick off and do various things which can be a nightmare to track, so I’ll make a token for when the Bloodsecretor plants his banner ( 1 Attack to friendly Khorne within 18″ and immune to Battleshock to all Khorne within 18″), three tokens for the Gorelord Command Ability (roll 3 dice for charge and pick the two highest) and so on. A stack of Empowered tokens which can be placed within any Mystical scenery so it’s nice and easy to remember to roll for units with 3″ and so on.
Overall things have been fairly quiet on the Games Workshop front and only a couple of things of interest. The first has been the announcement of a “Muster for War” summer campaign for both Age of Sigmar and 40k (although I’ve only seen one advert for 40k so may be a hoax). From what we’ve been told this campaign is the end of the “Age of Chaos” era, the results from games submitted will determine the shape of the next era, what armies receive new models and generally affect the storyline. Currently it appears that you need to go into a GW store to register game results although you won’t have to game in a store. This has angered some people who don’t live very close to a store, but I can see the logic as it will ensure that people don’t submit fictitious results en-masse.
I have read a rumour that the Age of Sigmar Generals Handbook is due for release on the 21st July but stores will have a copy around the 8th (or possibly the 1st). Not entirely sure if I believe this although stores having the points system in time for the campaign does make a huge amount of sense and would encourage people to go into stores.
Secondly Games Workshop announced yesterday that White Dwarf is once again going back to a monthly publication, which has universally been approved of. They’re also offering a special price for quarterly, six-monthly and annual subscriptions. This is really good and even with a cover price of £5.99 it works out cheaper than the weekly publication. The only frustrating thing is that it means I won’t have nice binders to put them in!
Sadly this weekend isn’t entirely free for me to crack on with hobby things; I’ve got a load of rubbish to sort out in the garden in preparation for collection plus family over on Saturday evening. My hope though is to continue work with my Khorgorath, which I potentially could finish if I get enough time on him. I do want to get the gaps on my Mighty Lord of Khorne filled and then undercoated as I think the weather is meant to be dry again and who knows how long it will last! My new box of Blood Warriors should also arrive tomorrow or Saturday so that’s another modelling project if I want a bit of variety.
- Continue work on the Khorgoroth
- Fill gaps and undercoat Mighty Lord of Khorne
- Assemble Blood Warriors
I expect that I’ll start painting the Blood Warriors once I finish the Khorgoroth and save the Lord of Khorne until the end, sorting out all of the bases in one hit. Once they’re done I’ll think about picking up the Bloodthirster and looking at getting some scenery and my Realm of Battle boards painted up.