Year in Review 2020

I feel like most of the title should be in sarcastic air quotes .Well, it has certainly been a year, hasn't it? 

With the pandemic, the transition to working from home started in March, and saw me lose out on basically all of my hobby/fun space in the apartment as time went on. Though I did keep after some small hobby projects well into the summer, (and will have some catch-up posts eventually,) this lack of space largely put the damper on any additional significant hobbying this year.

Additionally, I got zero games in this year, which is a terrible record, even for me! With the return of Easy Army I was stoked, and earlier in the year I was making some inroads with folks to try for more regular games, with the new edition and all. Unfortunately, the pandemic quashed that, and the girlfriend didn't want to unwind with any wargaming at all during all this social distancing either. I don't typically have hours at a time uninterrupted, so Universal Battle games have eluded me as well.

Unsurprisingly, no games and no hobbying resulted in very little blogging as the year progressed. 

Looking to 2021 though, there could be good things coming... if the pandemic gets more under control here in the US. In the fall, an old WHFB player from the shop decided to start on an Abyssal Dwarf army, and I've been in contact with him already. And with various progeny being older now, some other friends were also thinking of dusting off old armies and playing more games occasionally. Here's to hoping I can get a game of 3rd in before 4th Edition drops!

I've dodged the worst of 2020 (still employed, pretty healthy and pretty happy here), but it has been an incredibly rough year for many. I hope this quick update finds you well. Hopefully 2021 will see us all gaming again swiftly!

Hobby Updates: Mounted Vampires

I ordered my second box of Perry Mounted Men at Arms mid-March from a local outlet (Noble Knight Games; they're rolling with a small staff and still shipping stuff! If you need nerding supplies, give them a look over Amazon). They were pegged to be Soul Reaver Cavalry, and I got to work assembling them the day I got them... and then promptly got distracted by other projects. The hobby table has cleared out substantially, so it's time to finish these up.


I've discussed the contents of the box pretty extensively in the WIP post, so won't rehash that. Suffice it to say, each box has 12 knights that really only handle headswaps well, 12 nice horses with lots of body/head options, and sadly only two barding options at 6x each. The second box was purchased so I could at least make two uniform, armored regiments.

The Italian-style barding was used for AOE2-inspired Cataphracts (KoM Knights), one of the projects that "distracted" me. The Germanic-style is going to be used for the Soul Reaver Cavalry, which will leave me with some spare models. The remaining models will be a bit mismatched (barding-wise), so was pondering using them unbarded, or maybe as troops for something... but I have no plan, so I'm content to let the spare models sit for now. Table-ready now for the nefarious Undead, is a Vampire Lord, and a Regiment of Soul Reaver Cavalry.


Mounted Vampire Lord
Their Defense was originally 6 in Second Edition, later moved down to 5 from Clash of Kings updates. The lower Defense sticks in Third Edition, and they got a few other changes with the new edition as well. Their Speed was decreased by 1 (down to 6, on par with things like speedy elves) and they lost their innate little Surge. In return, they got a points deduction and a lot of special rules, making them very fighty characters who can still pick up some spells for a price, should you wish. They're still a pretty expensive pick, so I wouldn't spam them on the table, but as a very powerful combat hero (great stats, lifeleech, Inspiring), I think they can prove useful in an Undead list.

Mounted Heroes are versatile as they can charge in any direction, which has been helpful in dealing with fliers. Undead have many Shambling units, which also counter Fliers pretty well (spend movement positioning, then Surge your way into the enemy flier), so their role probably won't be that kind of defensive support. Instead, I think they will be instigators and force-multipliers. 

With their small frontage, they should be able to sneak in alongside larger units and slip some extra damage in; being a mounted individual (with Duelist!),  they should be able to hunt characters, war engines and disrupt back lines pretty effectively; Mighty, coupled with their good combat-oriented stats should let them charge/pin/delay something in a pinch, setting you up for good charges on the following turn, as they are unlikely to yield. They are also Inspiring, so whatevever they do, if there are Undead around, there will be a bit of a passive buff thing going on too. Yeah, I think there is a roll for them. I still haven't gotten a game of 3rd Edition in yet, and haven't really followed the new scene or meta online much though... so hey, take this paragraph with some big reservations.

The vampires ride! I like the nosfaratu-looking guy in the front on the right. Just looks so jazzed to be a part of things! 

Soul Reaver Cavalry
I don't think I ever faced them in Second, though I did play against the infantry. I knew both hit incredibly hard and could stick around longer than I'd like with that Lifeleech 2. However, I didn't realize until now that the cavalry had Defense 6. Sheesh! Kinda glad I didn't hobby these up sooner...

With 3rd, the vampire cavalry got bumped down to Defense 5 and lost a point of Thunderous Charge. In return, they got a nice points reduction. Oddly enough, they are priced the same as their infantry counterparts, so you can make a neat decision between attacks and movement. The Regiment costs 250 points now, still quite a significant investment, but the vampire soldiers (particularly the cavalry)  are more manageable to squeeze into lists now if you so desire.

Glad these guys are done! My Undead collection is pretty spammy overall, so I'm glad I have another unit to add in. The whole army could still use some rebasing; and I still want to rethink their heraldry/colors at some point. My intention was to do this over the winter with my girlfriend's input, or have her do most of the touchups since she liked playing the Undead and did already paint up all the many, many zombies... but there ended up being zero interest over the snowy months. With stay-at-home though, she's starting to take a tiny bit of interest in hobbying again, so we'll see what happens! The Undead may have some reinforcements coming soon.

Hobby Update: KoM Pike Conversion

I haven't followed much news in 3rd, but I've seen enough to know that most KoM players consider the Pike upgrade a must-have for spear hordes, and many consider it our best defensive unit now. I mean, Ensnare is quite good! Without experience, it's hard for me to sound off, but it does look like a very nice upgrade. 

In Second, Pikes were a little peculiar. Pikes still had Ensnare and Phalanx, but "Normal Pikes" were only Defense 3, giving you a pretty big trade off for that Ensnare, as lots of things will hurt something with Defense 3. From what I could tell, they weren't popular at all then, due to this trade off. Heavy Pikes did make some appearances, as they did get you Defense 4, 1 Extra Nerve to their scores and the Elite special rule; all good stuff, but they were pricey., the most expensive unit in our army, if I recall correctly. Most of the KoM unit costs didn't actually change going into 3rd, so we can do some limited comparisons... 

The best comparison is to the normal Pikes. In 2nd Ed, you could get a Horde for 225. In Third, it'll cost you 230, but you boost the Defense from 3 to 4... quite the buy for 5 points, effectively. And now we have Indomitable Will too! So, yes, it's a very nice upgrade and a very defensive unit.



After redoing a lot of spears, I was taking stock of the army. The Regnum is very well situated, with both a pretty varied and a pretty deep roster. However, I am lacking a few units, and Pikes are one of them. I had bookmarked a few boxes for consideration: Warlord Hoplites, Fireforge Byzantine Spearmen, and probably the best option, Warlord Macedonians are all on my radar. 

However, the last year or so I've really done well resisting the urge to buy new plastic. With the pandemic now, I'm extra leery to be buying things, particularly from Amazon. Fortunately, I still have a few regiment's worth of various Warlord Romans around, and I stumbled across 13 extra long knight lance bits from an old box of Fireforge Mounted Sergeants, and thought... eh, why not?

My army is Roman/Byzantine inspired, and one of the commonly accepted things about the Roman military was their willingness to adopt and adapt effective equipment and strategies. The lance arms have chain mail, which is odd for a Roman look... but some minis have Manica already, so I figured I could just roll with it, and attribute the odd configuration to this mentality of adopting different ideas.

The scale for the arm swap would work, but I felt like I needed to have a continuation of the segmented shoulder armor to look nice. I tried cereal box cardboard, plasticard, thin cardstock, a thicker paper... attached with pva glue and super glue... and nothing worked. Eventually I resorted to greenstuff and a flat edge rubber shaping tool. The plates are thicker than I what I was trying to go for, but ended up being the best option in the end, and I think it looks good on the table.

The last hurdle was the unit count... as I only had 13 lance bits. Banners don't go well with Pikes, and Pike and Phalanx don't do well with hilly or uneven terrain, so I was going to need to bump up my model count somehow...

I haven't seen the movie Alatriste, but it's on my list to watch, as I've seen this scene pop up again and again in online discussions about Pike and Shot warfare. Taking inspiration from that, since I can't field all pikes, the front line of this unit will be sword-wielding dudes trying to hamstring the enemy beneath the thrusting pikes. Many more upright pikes would be better, but working with what I have, this is the best I can do, and I think it actually works. Anyways, enough blabbering. Here's the new unit!

Not bad for a simple kitbash! I tried to get the different pikes in similar positions as much as I could.

Hobbying on it was no easy task, as the long pikes make things quite difficult! More planning went in to this than a typical unit of mine. First, was the varied weapon selection, briefly touched on above, with swords in front, and pikes behind. I had 13 pikes, but ended up dropping one, as I wanted this unit to be really properly ranked up in a 4 by 4 block. I'd have 12 pikes, and 4 swords.

Grids, and gluing the first rank.

I first hobbied up the individual units, but leaving the shields off. The shields are nice and big... and would make any basing or painting of the basing super hard. I decided early on that shields would be added as the very final step to the unit.

Individual models as done as they could be, I started on the unit by playing around and deciding on the arrangement of individual models.

A lot of extra pasting work...

To get a more ranked multi-base, I utilized a pencil and ruler, to get a nice grid going. I glued down a middle rank, and then pasted it. Then I painted it with a diluted dark tan color, as a kind of base coat. The paste itself is white, so if it's not painted entirely it looks pretty bad.

With the first rank done, I moved on to the adjacent ranks with the same process; gluing then pasting; then base coating the ground. The paste I've been using is finer than the paste I started with for the army, so this approach let me overlap the paste a bit to hide the stands of the models a bit better. Painting as well let me make sure everything had a good base coat so the basing had the best change to look good.

The final rank was incorporated using the same method. Lastly, I added more tan shades, then pva glue and real sand and rocks as a last step for the basing. Basing complete, I then glued the shields on, squirting a bit into the indentation behind the shield boss, and then maneuvering it in with my fingers or a tweezers. That part was a bit maddening given all the pikes, but I managed.

Another angle of the finished unit.

It's not a horde, but the regiment fits well aesthetically with the rest of my army and strategically well with my general approach of plopping a ton of regiments down on the table. With enough drops I should be able to set them up against something scary, and against most things it should be able to take the charge, allowing the rest of my army to do the offensive work. We'll see what happens; I'm not anticipating too many games anytime soon, though my girlfriend is slowly warming up the idea again just as something to do.

So, I have a unit of Pikes now. Should I want more, I'll likely pick up one of the boxes mentioned before once the pandemic is over. Since those are actual kits, those should be easier to assemble, likely look better, and would be cheaper than buying up more Mounted Sergeants just for lance-arms! However, this will be good for now.

Only one unit really remains high on my list of "wants" for the Regnum; Pole-Arms. I have a plan, but may be short on workable bits for a regiment, so we'll see what I can figure out. The project table is finally thinning out a bit, but still a bit more to come. All this social distancing is proving most productive!

I hope everyone reading this is staying safe. We've still got a long ways to go and have plenty of obstacles ahead of us (in the US for darn sure), but we'll keep at it, and hopefully we'll come out of all this better. Be kind. Be helpful.

Hobby Update: Ostermark Cannon

After hobbying up the Siege Artillery, I figured I should do up a cannon as well. War Engines got some big balance changes in Third Edition, and a theorycrafting post could be worthwhile in the coming weeks. But to discuss all three, and without game, I figured the least I could do before blabbering about is to have at least hobbied on all three of the options. So here we are.

I have a whole box of unclaimed and unused Empire models. Many were hobbied on in my early Kings of War days, and have since been put in storage as I've gone to explore and enjoy other ranges. In that box I probably have easily a 2-3k Brotherhood/Brothermark army and around another 1k in potential League of Rhodia conscripts, with a lot of hand cannoneers and pistoliers and such. The League definitely likes their gunpowder, so I plucked my two old Empire cannon out of the box, grabbed a few minis to crew it, and had a quick afternoon of repainting recently. My Ostermark League (League of Rhodia) will use these.

A little backup for the Ostermark League... whenever they take the field next.

In Second, the Cannon was a pretty straightforward war engine. One attack at Blast D6+1 and Piercing 4. You shot at something you could see, and hopefully not Stealthy or in cover (don't wanna try to hit on a 6 if you can help it), and if the dice were favorable, you could do a fair amount of damage.

In Third, the Cannon is looking pretty darn strong. War machines got some balance changes to make the damage output more consistent (now firing two shots, but with a D3-based Blast), and the Cannon got a lot of unexpected buffs to boot.

The Cannon now ignores cover, which is great. If you see something you want to shoot, you can shoot at it without halving you change to hit! With the balance changes, you should even have a decent chance to do some damage 

It now gets a Grapeshot attack (10 Attacks with Piercing 1 out to 12 Inches), that always hits on 6's. The last bit threw me for a bit, but I think the intent was to get around something like Stealthy, Individuals, or some magical protection. When you're firing a shot that's supposed to spray an area... you wanna reflect that in the rules! Lone mounted heroes can be great war machine hunters, and grapeshot will give the crew a fighting chance. Very neat buff!

Lastly, the Cannon also gets the "Shattering" special rule, which was previously known to me as "Devastating" from 2nd Edition's Historical Rulebook. The gist is a ranged version of the Brutal rule. If the target takes damage, their Nerve check roll is increased by 1, due to the unusually debilitating attack. Devastating showed up on particularly potent Historical gunpowder units, like the Ottoman's Dardanelles Gun, Arquebusiers and Conquistadors. While I never played a Historical game, I liked this rule in the rulebook, and glad Mantic brought it along to Third Edition.

The balance changes to war machines make them much more attractive in general, and the cannon's new buffs make it particularly desirable. The Ostermark will definitely bring (at least) one of these along next time!

Hobby Update: KoM Siege Artillery

A little oddball update here.

Way back in 2015, I placed a small order with Eccentric Miniatures. One of the items I purchases was his "Great Crossbow", which I would still recommend! It's hard to beat two war machines for $10. I typically over-buy just about everything, and this was no exception. Two Crossbows were used as Ballista in early games, but eventually were subbed out and then used as "light ballista" for my Beasts of War, a third was hobbied up but never really used for anything. A fourth is still on the sprue, so there's a chance another one of these will be built at some point...

The Regnum has plenty of Ballista, but while tidying, I discovered the old hobbied-up Crossbow, and decided I may as well do something with it. That old post says I was thinking of running it as a Siege Artillery piece... and I decided that that's not a bad idea! I had been considering a scratch build trebuchet (shouldn't be too hard... if it is there are numerous kits... but the dimensions would not work well on a 50mm square). I also my eye on this bad boy for a Siege Artillery piece... but it's $30 plus shipping, metal, made to order, and I'm still not looking to buy new stuff. So I'll stick with free for now!

I think he could use some decorative bits still. A few big arrows. Maybe a crate and another shield to make a little rampart? Just a little something extra. We'll see. But, this is ready for the table.

Not much to say hobbying-wise. We've already covered the war machine. The one-man crew is extra from the Warlord Legionaries and Scorpion boxed set, of which I have apparently purchased 5.  (Yikes!) I found a Scorpion sprue in a box while tidying, much to my surprise. I added the battered shields just for a little something extra. If there's a siege on, he'll probably want a little something to protect him and the machine should the defenders sortie out, or he set up within range of enemy engines or defenders. Overall, this is some very basic hobbying; nothing crazy.


I didn't field any Siege Artillery in Second, preferring the cheaper Ballistae for my war machines. It's gimmick was that it laughed at cover, firing in high, indirect arcs, and (potentially) dealing a lot of damage with a successful hit, due to Blast D6+2 and Piercing 3.

Second Edition has rebalanced the war machines by-and large. The changes are probably worth a lengthier comparison and post sometime, but to try and keep things simple for now, the New Siege Artillery is the largely same, but with some balance changes tending towards greater consistency. It still has Piercing 3, still laughs at cover, sill fires indirectly, but now has 2 Attacks at 5+, and a reduced Blast D3+1. I think these are all good changes. War Machines were a bit of a gamble in Second, and this a shift towards more consistent (and less potentially drastic) outcomes is welcomed by me. 

A Ballista or two will probably be my go-to war machine for most lists. They're still the cheapest option, and I have four of them already, after all. Depending on the list though, I could easily see this sneaking in. My KoM is pretty infantry-heavy, and they should be taking up a lot of space on the board. Having something that can ignore cover would likely be helpful... Time will tell what hits the table!

Hobby Update: KoM Knights (AOE2 Cataphracts!)

Hands-down, my favorite game of all time is Age of Empires 2. It captivated young me. An RTS game, you started from practically nothing, building up your town, upgrading soldiers and commanding them in battle... every civilization had a unique unit and a different technology tree. It was a marvelously deep and complex game.

It was also my first exposure to the Byzantines.

Being a bookish kid, the word itself was just intriguing. I mean as a kid, how do you even go about pronouncing that?? It just so foreign compared to something like the Vikings or the Britons. In time, I would play more, read more, learn more... go to college for history and school abroad in Turkey to learn more, even seriously considering grad school for medieval history ... all stemming from this game.

I did not end up as a university professor, but the game obviously impacted me greatly.

While the Regnum is in a great place in terms of available hobbied units, I still have a few half-baked, ill-defined hobby goals for it, one of which being to build up a homage unit of sorts, in the style of the Byzantine's unique unit in AOE2: the Cataphract.

The cataphract!

Historically, the Cataphract was a mounted, armored warrior. In the game, the Cataphract is a tanky unit designed to counter the normal counter to heavy cavalry; Pikemen. A counter-counter unit is a neat idea.

The game was released in 1999, and we've since learned it had an interesting art direction, where 3D models were created, and than translated into the game's charming 2D pixel sprites to save computing power when rendering and tracking so many units.

Another Shot.

So this is what I'm shooting for. A knight wielding a sword and wearing a tunic. A helmet with a face/chin guard and horizontal eye slit. A feather plume on the helmet, and a teardrop shield slug across his back. The horse should have barding, but apparently not too much? Heaven forbid we protect the horse's neck you know.

Complicating my conversion is that a whole new version of the game dropped in recent months, with redone graphics.

New and Improved!

Building off of the old game, an "HD" edition was released on Steam in 2013, along with an expansion a few months later, and another expansion in 2015, and even a third expansion in 2016.

Now, a "Definitive Edition" launched late in 2019, revamping all the graphics, adding a bunch of features, and yes, adding even more civilizations. We're up to 35 civs now!

The marvelous cataphract has been redone too, more in line with it's historical image. The barding does further down the horse, protecting more, and looking far more "armored". The knight is also armored more convincingly; the chain veil looks downright menacing now!

The Fireforge Kickstarter, (which funded, and is still taking late pledges if you are interested!) embraces the chain veil look. I haven't settled on the boxes I want, but I'll probably be producing another unit or two of Cataphracts eventually (though iirc the pledge wasn't planning on shipping until December 2020... and that was before the pandemic. Fireforge is based in Italy, so we'll see what happens.)

Anyways, enough blabbering, here is my homage unit.

No quad pattern, so they seem a little dark. And the T-shirt approach does reduce the menace a bit. But these are pretty decent approximations.

Hobbying
The minis are primarily Perry Mounted Men at Arms. All the horses are from that kit, and I opted for the Italian-style barding, as it is the closest thing I have found to date. The horse looks a bit more DE than original, but I'm fine with that. The original look is just too hard to duplicate; it's like the horse is wearing an armored mini skirt than actual armor.

I thought the Germanic/Gothic barding could get me close to the original, but it barding just didn't quite fit, and I wasn't interested in doing much work to get it to work. The Germanic barding will look great on some Soul Reaver Cavalry though! Hopefully I'll have a regiment of those primed the next good weather day I get.

The knights are primarily from the Perry kit as well; each box contains 3 knights with tunics. So the boxes were enough to provide 6 of the 8 knights, with the other two being the very dynamic Norman Knights from Conquest Games. The arms didn't quite work there (the Norman kit has more cloth than armor), so I sawed off some extra arm bits from the Perry Foot Knights kit for some easy conversions. I really liked how those models in particular turned turned out! Helmets were from the various Perry kits as well, though two needed some green stuff face guards. And finally, feathers were procured from extra bits from the Fireforge Mongol Cavalry Box, who are my Mounted Scout troops right now.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with how this unit turned out. The only rub right now, is that I lost a shield somewhere... I think outside while priming. I've searched the area a half dozen times since to no avail.. so I'm on the lookout for a replacement teardrop shield for the unit leader. Other than that final missing bit, I'm calling the unit done.

The view that matters to me. I'm likely the only one fielding these, and the shields are what I think of for the AOE2 Cataphract. Looks like a few touchups along the edge may be needed, but overall, I'm pretty happy with these.

AOE2 Tangent
The unit is intended to stand in as a regiment of knights. I've already typed at length on knights elsewhere in the blog; and the unit is what you'd expect, so instead of blabbering more about knights and how they perform on the table, allow me a tangent to attempt to cross-pollinate some of my interests...

As mentioned already, AOE2 was a formative game for me, but the great thing is that people are still playing it! It has had an active community since launch (I even played some games in a computer cafes in Turkey in 2008), and the HD and now DE editions have reinvigorated the player base. If the pandemic has you stressed an you're missing the strategy of Kings of War games... allow me to suggest you watch some AOE2 matches on youtube (or twitch, if you're more "with it" than I am technology-wise)?

The game is unique when compared to other titans of the genre like Starcraft and Warcraft (never played too much Command and Conquer, so I can't speak to any comparisons there). Without getting too into the weeds:

• Since each civilization has the same basic tech tree, the huge fraction calculus prevalent in most other examples of the RTS genre is quite muted here. The approach here is more like a "master list" with Kings of War, particularly in Historical book.
• Maps are generated by script; the details (hill placement, resource locations) of each one is unique so each game plays out differently each time.
• Except at the highest-level, it's a slower game, more "macro" (strategy and economy) focused, than "micro" (unit control and mouse clicks). 

If you are missing out on a strategy fix from social distancing and no wargaming... maybe give some attention to AOE2? To start you off slow, I'll suggest this video, where one of the more analytic but casual AOE2 youtubers takes on an AI with my Byzantines. The video even has Cataphracts! If you like that, the Reddit has lists of channels and streams, and there was a very good tournament recently with a really fun premise. Lots and lots of content to explore, should any of this pique your interest

Social isolation has produced another unit! The hobby table is still pretty full tough... we'll see what comes off it next!

Hobby Update: Redone KoM Spears

Spearmen were some of the first Roman units I was hobbying up back in 2016, and around July back then, I had 4 Regiments worth of little dudes ready for action. I have been meaning to revisit them for quite some time, and working from home, I've been fortunate enough to have the time to do so now!

Ready for action!

I hadn't really gotten the hang of multi-basing when I first hobbied on the spears. I experimented a tiny bit with one of the regiments at the time, with a few larger bases (the first one pictured). I have since touched up that regiment and "rebased" it, that is, gluing everything onto an infantry MDF. I don't think I posted about this unit previously, so here it is as a little bonus. One of my first larger multi-base attempts.. from a year or so previous.

It appears I still need to repaint the edge... but other than that, good to go!

For the majority of my spearmen models though, I had opted for a few clusters of three models on 40mm squares, with most of the minis being individual models on magnetized bases, as I had done in WHFB. This makes for a very full-looking unit, but can also make for some potential spacial issues, if models have bits extending off their base, like GW Empire Halberdiers, or GW Bloodletters. These guys turned out just fine, though the backward-reaching thrusting/throwing arm bits can cause some trouble. 

The general intent with these was to individually base a lot, in order to be able to swap things around to fit various unit sizes, as I was still new to the game and didn't know how I wanted to run my army. I've since gotten better with my army concept and with multi-basing, but here I opted to keep going with their original basing premise out of ease. I'm still just getting back into semi-regular hobbying, and didn't need to punish myself with a huge project rebasing two entire hordes... plus I didn't have the MDF bases to do so even if I wanted to.

I had around 50 models ready, but they looked bad as units. Fortunately, I still have a fair bit of extra Roman minis around, and was able to up the count enough to mirror the unit (multi-based twos and threes on the sides, and a multibased command in the center), and then duplicate that, allowing for two hordes of spears. It all worked out, and I'm pleased!

The Base
For the base, I opted for an MDF unit tray from Ironheart Artisans, and magnetic tape. I had used such tape before, in my WHFB days, and oh boy does it want to curl. That's what happens when it is shaped into the roll, I suppose! I opted for rubber cement and used some binder clips to hold it all together overnight, and that seemed to do the trick. Nothing too special there, but worth mentioning, I suppose.

On the Table
I know enough to know that Pikes are the new hotness for Kingdoms of Men. These are not them, but I'm fine with that. I think the KoM can excel at fielding decent but numerically superior units, and these are 30 points cheaper that a Pike Horde, and should still be pretty solid defenders. While I'm not big on hordes and still want to emphasize and explore a more MSU style game for the Regnum when I can, these do look nice and imposing all ranked up, and will be nice to have in the roster. We'll see when they happen to hit the table!

Hobby Update: KoM Mounted Scout Regiment

These models have been sitting around for years. I originally picked up two blisters of 4 Fireforge Mongol Heavy Cavalry Archers after ordering directly from their site in early 2016.

Originally, a few were done up as unit leaders for my Mounted Scouts, but eventually those units were legitimately multi-based, and the leaders were just retired and put into storage. While perusing the 3rd Edition rulebook... I realized that you could can take Scouts as regiments now! I decided to dig them out and get to work on yet another little project...

Ready to move around! And maybe shoot stuff. Maybe. Still only 5+ from afar.

About the Models

Very brittle. Missing two tails and a helmet decoration...

As mentioned in the other posts linked above... I would not recommend buying these models. The material is very, very brittle and quite easy to break. I'm currently short two horse tails and a helmet feather. The person models don't fit all that well together, and the horses are chonky messes with lackluster sculpts and very obvious and unsightly support bits. I just cannot recommend buying these... but I have them already, so I'll use them.

They are also not great for wysiwyg. They have horses, and bows, which is good, but both riders and horses are pretty heavily armored. They look better than their rules, that's for sure!

On the Field
Mounted Scouts are going to play a little differently in 3rd Edition. Their range got reduced from 24" to 18", so they're going to need to be closer to pink away at anything. Fortunately with Speed 9, they should be able to get to where you want them... but, for a ranged unit, this range reduction isn't great! It'll be harder to protect the Scouts from many speedier cavalry units like Elves (Speeds 9 and 10) and faster fliers, particularly with the 3rd Ed changes to how units measure charge range.

Fortunately, their Melee state got bumped from a 5+ to a 4+... but without TC or CS or even piercing... they are not damage dealers. Still, without buffs, 14 Attacks should be enough dice thrown around to hopefully get a point of damage in per volley, and they should be mobile enough to hit what you want to improve their chances.

It took me a while to get comfortable with the Scouts originally; given the range changes mentioned already I think I'm going to be in for another period of adjustment. I'd predict that my first few games, my Scouts will die sooner than desired! Nevertheless I am very interested in seeing how a regiment of Scouts performs on the table. 

Despite being billed as a ranged unit, I think the new 4+ to hit in melee will be quite consequential. Typically, I'd want my scouts either running interference and screening, or running along the table edge, taking what shots they could from afar. Now, outflanking your opponent with these could be a real boon, even without any combat benefits like Thunderous Charge. Scouts, particularly a larger unit like this, really seems intriguing to me and I can't wait to see how a larger unit performs!

Hobby WIP: Vampire Lord on Horse

I've been fortunate enough to be able to work from home for two weeks now with no issues. If you're in a similar situation, consider donating to local charities or seeing if your favorite restaurant is doing no contact deliveries or curbside pickup or selling gift cards to keep afloat. As someone who is interested in both economics and history (my two majors in college), this is going to get much, much worse before it gets any better, particularly in the US. Be kind. Be helpful.



Being at home, and with some nicer weather finally breaking through here and there, I've been able to prime some things and start hobbying again. I'm starting small with this post, but I've got many more minis on the way... much to the terror of my clutter-averse girlfriend the table is covered with projects at the moment...


The Perry Box
I'm working this guy up as a no-stress test model for some Perry Mounted Men at Arms, which I picked up a while back to run as some Soul Reaver Cavalry, since I liked the Perry Foot Knights as my Soul Reaver Infantry so much. This is pretty far along, but not quite there. The kit has some peculiarities, which I figured I might as well tackle here, rather than bloat the final posts.

Horse-wise, the box comes with 4x of a 3 horse sprue, and plenty of heads. The Perry link actually gives great sprue shots, if you are interested and want to follow along. All the horse parts are mutable, so you can mix and match to your heart's content! The only downside of the box is the barding, which is a bit of a shame, as the armor (in general) was the reason for buying this kit. The box comes with two options: a pointier "Germanic-style", and a blockier "Italian-style"... but only has 6 of each. Care must be taken when clipping both, as the armor is very thin and easy to break, particularly the front parts of the Germanic armor. Also note, that the Germanic style hangs down a bit on the haunches; it doesn't cover the top.

Knight-wise, the box comes with 3x of the knight sprue. The bodies are a little on the small-side; a GW headswap looked downright ridiculous when I was exploring a possible headswap. Like GW, the head bits had a little neck bulb to connect to the torso, unlike Fireforge or Warlord or Mantic Zombies, which include the neck on the torso and the head bit is just a skull.

Each set of armor on the knight sprue is unique, and the non-weapon hand is fully part of the body. No easy arm or hand swaps to be had here! Each body has three possible weapon arms, so you must match them up to get a good look. The arms also include the back of the hand. The weapon-bits come with the the grasping digits, allowing you to take any weapon and just slot it into the arm bit. It's neat, but not great for conversion work. Headswaps and extra bits are about the best I'm going to do with customizing these minis I think.

See? The rear barding doesn't go the the top; the straps on the mini have it hanging down a bit to protect the sides.

This Guy
The lordling is pretty well along, but he still needs a little more work. I'm going to give him a few extra sword bits I think, to have on hand if the mundane warhammer breaks with the Lord's mighty swings. Being a lord, I already added some flair in the form of a neat armor collar thing from the GW Demigryph box, and a furry cape from somewhere (I think the GW Empire Knights kit maybe). The cape looked more like a lion, so I tried a more tan scheme there, rather than my usual gray pelt. I like how it turned out.

My Undead army is currently painted up like the Regnum, with purple and white. I still want to redo them at some point, but unsure what colors they should be, so I'm am trying out straight red for the cape underside and feather. It looks ok, but I'm not convinced full red is the way I want to go, so I'll continue to experiment.

I also tried some glowing eyes for the horse, so play up the evilness. It's supposed to be an Undead Horse after all. Not sure what that entails, but I lack the skill (and will) to convert a normal horse mini into a zombie or skeleton or anything, so evil eyes was about the best I can do. I think the unit will have the eyes, and maybe a greener tinge to the mounts, a nod to rot and reanimation? We'll see. 

Red is pretty striking, though I don't know if I'd like it across the whole army. Alternatively, I'm considering just adding a glossy blood effect to this, like the lion was a fresh kill. "Blood Cape" seems like a neat phrase, though I'm not sure the end result (very bloody cape, back, and horse haunches) would be pleasing. We'll see...

Overall, I'm pleased with the progress so far, and generally like the kit, even though the lack of barding took me quite by surprise. Fortunately, I caught this shortage prior to deciding to quarantine myself!

Since deciding to work from home, I haven't placed any Amazon orders, and would suggest you avoid them as well for the time being; I can't bring myself to risk their lives for my hobbying. Their workers are very vulnerable right now, so be kind and avoid ordering non-essentials.

Instead, look to support your local shops if you can. A few in Madison were offering orders by phone and curbside pickups, for example. If there's nothing local, may I suggest Noble Knight Games for anyone in the US? (They also ship internationally... though I don't know how speedy that will be nowadays.) They have quite the selection; books, minis, and even accessories like primer and paints. They opened up a store in the Madison area, which I have yet to actually visit. However, I have ordered from them a few times over the years, and once more when I decided to start working from home, ordering another box of these guys in order to get more barding bits.

I've got 12 of each type of barding now, and 24 Perry Knights. Well, 23 now, excluding this guy. More knights are definitely coming soon!

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.

Cataphracts!

No new hobby progress has been made nor surprise games played to report on. That's as essentially as expected. I am still quite busy with other things, and for better or for worse, have not had the time to pursue much Kings of War.

I did have something exciting come across my dashboard today though, a notice about a Fireforge Kickstarter, for more Byzantines! They released some surprise spearmen a few years back, and followed up quickly with some archers and auxiliary soldiers. At the time I wrote to Fireforge, asking them if there were any plans for cataphracts minis... and never heard back. But it looks like they, along with light cavalry, horse archers, and Varangian Guard, are all coming later this year, which is pretty awesome. I've been interested in picking up some cataphract models for some time, and these look great. Heck, all the kits look great. Check it out!

3rd Edition: Thoughts on the Varangur

Going into 3rd Edition, I was pretty worried about my Varangur. Most of the minis in my collection were from GW, and the army fluff from Mantic leaned pretty heavily on GW's Chaos Warriors, with violent and sturdy human tribes in the frozen north vying for the favor of a dark god... There was some concern on how the army would be handled with Mantic trying to blaze their own unique fluffy trail, concerns which only increased with the Northern Alliance releases in 2019. Fortunately, Mantic has done a great job all around!

The Northern Alliance is a little awkwardly named (why not go with the Frozen Pact or something?), but fabulously executed as an army. They are a a bit of a jumble of other Mantic products (Elves/Naiads/Dwarfs ... and now a human line as well), making them a great way to showcase Mantic's product line and be pretty enticing for casual folks to pick up and expand over time. (Hobby on a unit of dwarves, then elves, oo neat! frosty merfolk, then wow bear cavalry?!? Oops, I have an army now...) Fluff-wise, the Alliance is good-aligned, with lofty ideals.

The Varangur are still around; a theme army building off of the Northern Alliance list. They exist in parallel, but reject the kumbaya approach of the Northern Alliance, opting for violence and service to Korgaan, their ancient, malevolent god.

I missed this entirely in the original Second Edition fluff, but Mantic also has the Varangur rejecting the Abyssals with vigor, for they oppose Korgaan too. In Third, they spell it out a little more, and the Varangur cannot ally with Abyssals, Abyssal Dwarfs or Twilight Kin. This obliterates the fluff for my evil triumvirate plan (Tanky Varangur; Speedy Herd; middle-of-the-road Abyssals), but that's fine by me. I'm likely never going to see all three evil armies on the table at once anyways to make the triumvirate an actual "thing", so making them more unique is fine by me. It's good fluff.

So, design-wise, very interesting choices with Northern Alliance and the Varangur. Most of my sprawling Varangur collection (a little upwards of 7400 points, excluding the old Ogre allies) successfully transitioned into Third Edition, which is very nice!

The Casualties
With Mantic's tweaks, some things didn't make it. Horses are largely absent in the Northern Alliance. The Varangur have some, but Lords and Skaalds don't deign to ride such fragile creatures in the frozen north I guess? Very nice fluff choice, but obviously it's a bummer that a Chief and several Skaalds have been made obsolete. Fortunately, the heroes can be run as a Cursed Son on a horse now. It won't inspire, but I can still use the model if I wish, we'll see. The Skaalds were fantastic to have around for cheap Inspiring, so it stinks to lose those sources, but I still have several Lords mounted on Direfangs and some Lords and Skaalds on foot.. I should be fine. (edit: the Lords do have a horse mount as an upgrade option. I must have missed this originally.)

The Warbands also don't look to have made the transition (though I could easily ally them in as KoM Shield Wall and Pole-Arms Regiments). It's a bit of a shame. I wasn't a big fan of the GW Marauder models, but being from Wisconsin, I really liked the idea. After a frigid winter... I've seen dudes bust out shorts en mass and college girls sunbathing juuust as the snow beings to melt. We're a weird bunch here, so I did like the idea of a bunch of lightly-clad soldiers running around because it was just sooo warm. In game, they functioned as my chaff, so it stinks to lose them. The Varangur may try to go full-elite mode and play without chaff in 3rd...

Lastly, the Devourer doesn't look to have an entry. The Varangur were a little heavy on the monsters... so I'm ok with this. They still get the Cavern Dweller (via the Northern Alliance list), and their own Jabberwock. I'm fine with this. The Dweller and Devourer were pretty similar design-wise, and I'll find another use for my big worms. The Jabberwock still has the awesome Frenzy special rule, and can now take a small ranged attack reminiscent of the old Devourer options, so it'll be a solid choice.


Into 3rd Edition
All in all, about 1000 points of stuff didn't make it into 3rd. While that's a big chunk in terms of points, and about 1/7th of my army in context, and includes several sources of Inspiring... it's not too bad. The bulk of the army is still intact, and I have dozens of units of evil armored guys to field still.

One of the interesting things to me is the large points reductions across this army. The Mounted Sons (and our Lords) in particular got huge decreases, greatly offsetting the handful of units (Direfang Hordes; Fallen; Reavers) that went up by a handful of points. Fielding more things in-game is great! All in all, I'm saving a few hundred points, and my collection of viable units sits juuuust over 6000 points going into 3rd Edition. 

Previously, Mantic went with something similar to GW's Marks of Chaos: Gifts of Korgaan. Worthy units were able to pick from several options, each granting a keyworded special ability. Unfortunately, this didn't seem too balanced internally, and taking the one granting Fury was the overwhelming favorite from what I saw online, even after it was nerfed to only grant Fury and not both Fury and Headstrong.

In Third, Mantic is taking a more intricate approach. While the gift options are still there and still varied, most units are only able to "choose" from gift; take it or leave it. It's a neat approach honestly. It seems a little subjective (which units get which upgrades; which unots can even take them), and will be hard to balance, but overall I like it. Korgaan is one god (as far as we know), so it would be nice to see a mix of gifts on the field. We'll see how it pans out as Third progresses!

The last noteworthy change going into Third is a new unit for the Varangur: the Draugr, which I was quite surprised to find was a thing in Nordic folklore. These guys are subbing in for the old Warband, serving as the light infantry for the Varangur. They seem very cool. Fluff-wise, they are atypical zombies; disgraced dead raised to fight again, rather than whatever was just lazily sitting around the cemetary. Their stats are slightly worse than your typical zombie; the usual 5+ melee and 3+ Defense but only 4 speed. That said, they do not have the Shambling keyword, and even gain both Iron Resolve and Wild Charge. Very unusual and very cool. I may need to pick up some new minis!


Overall, the Varangur are looking very good going into Third! They should be fearsome opponents on the battlefield, even more so with all the cheap Mounted Sons I can bring now. Despite the minor shifts, the core of the army is still around, and they continue to be a tanky, formidable army. I can't wait to see them in action!

...And so wraps up my thoughts on how 3rd is impacting my armies. As stated in some recent posts, KoW has proven to be quite difficult for me to get consistent games in over the years and I'm in a bit of a hobby slump with the edition change coupled with winter weather and other responsibilitues. However, as mentioned throughout the blog, Kings of War is a great game, and here's hoping for a vibrant 3rd Edition for the community! I'll do what I can to contribute. 

3rd Edition: Thoughts on KoM

...and we've come to my second-to-last army to cover regarding the new edition; my second largest collection and namesake of the blog, the Kingdoms of Men, my Regnum Aeternum.

Leaving Second Edition, my collection was just under 5000 points. It's a little lighter entering Third Edition, but not by too much. Most of my units didn't change in cost at all, though the army did receive a number of tweaks.

First, their special rule changed. They keep their Very Inspiring leaders, but many units also get the possible Indomitable Will upgrade. For a cost, a unit can momentarily self inspire, become Fearless, and turn a Waver into a Steady. That seems quite versatile, and I'm really interested to see how it plays.

Second, they got an indirect buff from the measurements change; we tend to take a lot of soldiers, so measuring from corners makes our more numerous units more dangerous and harder for an opponent to avoid or screen every charge. All good stuff so far!

I won't rehash tons of stuff; most of our units do exactly what you'd expect and a KoM general ends up with a wide variety of options. The Wizard even gets to swap out Fireball for Lightning Bolt still. There are some edition changes specific to my collection worth discussing though.

Unit Sizes
The Militia and Pole-Arms lost their troop option, which really stings. The Militia were a fantastic chaff unit (cheapest in the game in 2nd iirc); the Pole-Arms troops were also pretty great, as they were an easy way to get lots of Crushing Strength on the table. Spears also lost their troop option... but for some reason the Shield Wall got to keep theirs. All this jostling around makes Shield Wall troops our best infantry chaff on paper... though with higher Nerve and Defense than their (former) Militia counterparts... I don't know how reliable they will be in dying and getting out of the way; the vital role of chaff. They very well might be too survivable to perform this role, depending on your meta, or it might be worthwhile to dismiss infantry chaff for just taking more regiments to gum up the battlefield. The latter is going to be my approach. 

Mounted Scouts
Their special rules have been subdivided a bit, but no biggies there; they can still move and shoot without penalty. They can now be taken as regiments (but are irregular). This is a neat change, and seems to be lifted in some part from the Historical Book. Cool!

Their stats changed slightly, and Scouts now hit on 4's in Melee, making them far more versatile on the field. Very cool! Though this boon comes with a trade; their shooting not nerfed somehow. Their bows have been shorted, giving them a shooting range of 18". Now that charges can measure out from corners, they're going to be vulnerable to a lot of cavalry. Generals will need to be careful!

Still, the spirit of the unit (ranged harasser) persists. They'll be showing up in my eventual lists with an eye to pincushioning some infantry.

Ballista
Ranged combat is rough, and I advocated for using Ballistas over most of our other shooting options. They couldn't really hold ground, but most KoM players bring a lot of other units to do that, so these could just sit back and shoot. They hit about as often as my other shooters, but a lot harder when shots actually connected. They were our cheapest shooting option, so point-for-point they were a fantastic pick for anyone looking to do damage at range.

In 3rd, their points have gone up and they've lost a point of Piercing... but have had their attacks boosted from 1 to 2. For a 15 point increase... they still seem like very good takes to me!

Beast of War
This is the biggest change to my army. The Beast was... well... a certifiable beast in my previous lists. Great combat stats all around, a very cheap ballista upgrade, and the Cok2019 buffs of Strider and Steady Aim... this thing was amazing. In Third Edition, it has been re-branded as a Mammoth, and while it kept it's sturdy base stats, it has also lost the ballista upgrade. Both these changes hurt.

The re-branding is an odd decision, given the huge variability of the Kingdoms is supposed to represent in the fluff. The "Beast" was a great nondescript word, which would let folks run wild with their hobby, like I did with dinos. Zeroing in on the Mammoth, and actual animal, as their designation is just an odd decision, and I can't figure out why they chose to go this way.

While the re-branding is odd, losing the ballista upgrade just plain hurts. It gave such great versatility for such a tiny cost! I don't know why they chose to remove it. Again, the Kingdoms are meant to be hugely variable, so I would have rather have seen the price get bumped up to make it more of a commitment to run the upgrade, or better yet, give out several more options (like a howdah for a few bow attacks, or built-in banner for Inspiring or Rallying, or armor upgrades or optional fearless... who knows). It's be harder to balance, but more rewarding for folks I think, as you end up with a very personal model, and a nice centerpiece unit for the army amidst all the cheap soldiers. Alas.


The changes to my trusty Beasts are going to have a huge impact on my army going into Third Edition. Previously my lists functioned a little like carrier battle groups: everything revolved around the Beasts, protecting them in the early turns, and then supporting them when it came time for the big melees. Shelving them will be a bit rough, but I'm excited to get use out of my Roman Giants! We'll see if I can get them on the table again soon.