Hobby Update: Grimdark Future Warbands

As mentioned in basically every post over the last year and a half, the pandemic hasn't been great for my hobbying. To beat that dead horse, working from home really constrained my overall space in the apartment, and a tiny plot about the dimensions of a legal-sized sheet of paper is about all I could regularly muster for my intermittent hobbying.

One thing I haven't mentioned much though, is that the pandemic hasn't been great for my pile of shame. I rediscovered ebay last year, and picked up more than I probably should have since. One neat thing I discovered on ebay though, was the ability to get just a sprue of dudes, as opposed to a whole box. Often, this isn't economical (it's often at least few dollars cheaper to get the box, if able), but this was great for some small hobbying projects throughout the summer.

With an ample Kings of War collection spread over half a dozen armies or so, I decided to just hobby on various warbands this summer instead of more dedicated Kings of War stuff. I did not do updates at the time, but figured I may as well add these in to the blog history.

Most of these were hobbied on just because, but I eventually skewed towards building them for Grimdark Future: Firefight from One Page Rules. My girlfriend's little brother (who had gotten into 40k, then dropped out) had been coming over, and I figured a skirmish game like this could be a nice, nerdy activity for us (with some tweaking to make it multiplayer). Alas, it has not happened, but at least now I have some warbands, and learned a few new hobbying skills.

Space Regnum Warband

I had a small band of these going when messing around with Wiley Games and Fistful of Lead; taking some 40k stuff and adding my purple and white to it. One of my 2020 pandemic purchases was a used collection of old metal Cadian special weapon minis, so over the summer here I decided to ditch the marines and buff up the guardsmen. My intention was to run these more as some "Human Defense Force" for One Page Rules. 

No conversion work here, actually. All basic stuff.

While I built with the game in mind, I just built what I thought was cool, so I have no idea how effective the "list" would be, or hoe many of these would even make it in a typical list. I only used (looks like) 4 minis from the box, so I have room to expand later. Unfortunately, this box was bought a while before the new sprue was added. Alas.

Here, I wanted to play around a bit with my Regnum scheme, and try to improve on the basing a bit. I didn't come to any big conclusions, other than obvious one the paste is much easier to work with when you don't need to dance around the feet of the miniature... well, go figure.

Muunilinst Warband

I picked up a box of Clone Troopers and ARC Troopers from the Star Wars Legion game sometime in the last year or two. I was a huge Star Wars kid growing up, reading books nonstop, and I really liked the animated shorts by Genndy Tartakovsky leading up to Episode 3. It was one of the few DVDs I had back in the day. The series is packed with action, but I remember being floored as a kid when these troopers hit the screen for the first time. 

Not bad! I think the band around the helmet is supposed to be black.. but that's fiddly stuff I did not want to attempt. These are good.

The minis are mostly out of the box, with some very light conversion work to get the guy with the chaingun blaster thing. With all the white armor, I experimented with a zenithal highlight, spraying gray all over and then white from above. It definitely helped add a nice gradient, though I don't know how useful it would be in a more colorful army.  I shudder to think how long I looped the Jedi Temple March while painting these guys up. I tried to dirty up the bases without being oily or greasy, and that sort of worked, and went with a few thin layers of various grays and tans and yellows. I think that worked out to get a little bit of a grungy look without the grime.

I don't have a game to use these in (OPR didn't have the Clones added in when I did these up, and I don't know if there are plans to even do so) but they were fun to paint up nonetheless. 

Black Templar Warband

I really liked the Judiciar mini, and snagged that over the summer. I also liked the Easy Build kits from GW, and I have picked up a handful over the years. I had a spare Reiver sitting around from one, as well as some Intercessors, so I decided to paint these up for a warband too. I had just finished reading a book about the Great Siege of Malta, and figured some space templar would be fun to play around with.

Very light conversions. A few shields and head swaps. Gave the Retributor Armor paint a go, and I think it looks pretty striking on the sword guy.

For this warband, I wanted to play around with a few painting things. The first was black armor, and I went with a black primer, black undercoat, and then tried some edge highlights and dry brushing with brighter and brighter grays. It all worked well enough? It's not amazing, but it passable in real life and breaks up the dark forms just enough on the table. Secondly, I tried to keep a desert-like barren base, but played around more with rocks and dry brushing layers of brighter sandy colors more; typically my colors were wet to get a variation going. This dry brushing worked well enough too. Thirdly, I tried to reinforce some layering basics, by adding layer upon layer of white. This was likely a mistake.. I think I should have done w gray or a cream base coat for a few layers, and then transitioned into white layers. Lesson learned. These are just about done... I have some cross decals, but misplaced them. When I find them again, I'll add them on.

Apocalypse Orks Warband

The last sci-fi warband I did up was Orks. My girlfriend had heard some 40k lore, and thought the orks sounded pretty fun. About that time, I was getting into ebay again, and I found a few Orks and Warboss for about $30, and then bought a box of Lootas/Burnas to help bulk them out. I think a few are still on sprue? Otherwise I did pretty good working through these. Not a lot of shame buildup in the pile.

Nothing to crazy with these either. Mostly I wanted to just paint new things, rather than dive into a bunch of conversion work. I was trying to keep things simple as I got back to some hobbying in June.

For these, I just wanted to paint stuff and reinforce to some hobbying basics. I played with some browns and tans for basing, including a sepia-toned wash for the first time. For the skin I went with a subdued green, and honestly, I'm quite happy with how subdued these look overall. Nice and grim and gritty.

With the exception of the Clones, the rest of these are passible skirmish groups for Grimdark Future. If I ever do get a game in, I'll do my darndest to write up a report.

Blabbering: Some Retrospective Wargaming Thoughts

Recently, I recommended another neat youtube channel I had been enjoying, with a gaming angle instead of a hobbying one. Watching Turin's videos over the summer and while writing the post though, I thought entered my head, and that thought was that the Total War iteration of Warhammer came across as a better version of Warhammer Fantasy than the tabletop game.

A lot of the video vs tabletop comparison in my head can be distilled down to a typical digital vs analogue debate, and are pretty bland observations (the video game is designed centrally (and not updated in static physical books), leading to better inter and intra-army balance and the ability to easily make balance changes to the game; combat math is all done by the computer, etc). I think many wargamers like their games due to the physicality of them; I know I find painting minis therapeutic to a degree. So I don't think these ideas in particular are all that interesting in exploring. There more "typical" thoughts did lead to some other thoughts I thought would be worth exploring a bit, and those are legendary lords, matchmaking, and builds, when it comes to wargaming

Legendary Lords

Warhammer Fantasy was full of named lords. The world's story continued on, edition after edition, and most generic lords (what what I saw in my armies, though I only played two) had at least one exemplary, or legendary version. With the exception of a massive End Times special scenario, I never fielded named lords. And I think that was to my detriment.

My Empire army hailed from Ostermark, a poor, agrarian province on the edge of the Empire. I liked that idea, and ran with it, choosing to field more units over flashy characters every time. When I switched to Warriors of Chaos, my Daemon Prince or various champion was always generic. The game had a big story, but I wanted to carve out my own narrative, and was jarred a bit when every Elven army, no matter the size of the army, had Teclis at the head, so I tried to balance that out in the lists I brought to the shop.

In Total War, most leaders end up being the named characters. Thinking on it, I think I missed the boat, and utilizing the named and legendary leaders was how Warhammer 8th may have been intended to be played too. Not running any, that may be a reason (I was still a pretty bad general) my Empire continually fell short against all those Teclis-led armies.

I picked up a Lady Ilona model, and was embracing legendary units and formations near the end of 2nd Edition. Kings of War continues to be different, and is balanced far better, but actually using unique, legendary units should be something I should be more open to I think.

Matchmaking

In Total War, for setup, you match with an opponent online, then select your faction, and build your army quick. Then you play the game. The digital setup runs contrary to typical physical wargaming, where you pick your faction and build your army/list, and then find an opponent, say at League Night at your Friendly Local Gaming Shop.

This "backwards" approach leads to match-up dependent choices and you are highly encouraged to field different lists for different games. (Generalizing some examples: spears are great against monsters and cavalry, so hey, maybe don't bring them against dwarves; handgunners pack a punch, but are outranged by bows, so don't bring them against elves...) Sure the matchups trend to optimal choices too, but that is for just that match-up; you the player are encouraged to try out new choices as you encounter different opponents and different armies. Coming from tabletop wargaming, that's a wild approach.

One of the replays I saw from Turin early on was Bretonnia vs the Empire. There wasn't a local Bret player back in the day, but I knew they were cavalry-based, and in the replay, the Bret player ditched the knights; deciding to "go wide" against the Empire, doubling and tripling down on masses of usually undesirable peasant infantry and archers to fight the swarming State Troops. I don't remember who won, but that "meta-dependent" decision led to a sprawling slugfest and was intriguing.

I don't think the "backwards" approach is sustainable for games at the FLGS, as people still need to bring collections around. But it is making me rethink the idea of list tailoring. In a game like Kings of War, where the intra-army balance is way better than Warhammer Fantasy, more tailored lists could produce some neat games I think.

Builds

I most often think of "builds" when I think of real time strategy games; how to navigate the precious opening minutes of a game. But a build can be more general, and thought of as "how do I best allocate limited resources?" The resources could be real time, in-game resources, or points. Points efficiency would definitely apply to wargaming, though usually comes up on a unit-by-unit basis (this unit is better than that unit, for the points paid), and not how a list fits together as a whole (am I allocating enough points to anvils over hammer units, etc).

Builds are likely not news to most experienced wargamers, but this thought did catch me off guard. I am not a competitive player, and even when I was getting regular, weekly games in during Eighth Edition, I was mostly learning (my units, enemy lists, various scenarios...) and was never making big strategic decisions with my lists. While I felt I grasped the mechanical basics of Kings of War better, I feel like I was still always just experimenting and running what I wanted to run, rather than any deep strategic insight.

For Total War, the various builds generally flow from the lord choice. Is the leader mounted? Flying? Can they cast spells? Are they a decent fighter? Can they heal? Whatever you pick, some things are omitted, and your future choices start stemming from that lord choice. If your lord is fighty and mobile, you need defensive infantry to hold so the lord can hammer away; if the lord can't heal, you better take a life wizard; and so-on and so-on. This was not how I built my Warhammer armies... but again, maybe it should have been.

Build consideration is also not how I've built for Kings of War... The balance is better here, but you can go pretty "all-in" with lords riding dragons, or gunlines or cavalry. I got into some list-centric thoughts before, and will probably return to them again at some point. I know nothing about the scenarios nor the metas for 3rd Edition to pontificate much on this, and as always, am not a competitive player, so my musings aren't terribly worthwhile to any serious wargamer, but build-thinking was a bit of a paradigm shift for me; crystalizing an approach to list building that had not really happened before.



I don't think any of these are terribly original ideas, but things did *click* for me on the above in a way I was not expecting, so figured they would be worth highlighting here in a post. More hobbying to come soon, I swear!

Recommendation: Turin (youtuber)

My hobbying has been scatterbrained this summer, so while I continue to chip away at things and not post, I wanted to point you fine folks towards a youtube channel I have been enjoying very much over the summer: Turin. He largely plays and casts the Warhammer Total War games, which as a Warhammer Refugee into Kings of War now, I have very much enjoyed, and thought some of you might enjoy as well.

While I was aware of the existence of the various Total War games, and have obviously played Warhammer Fantasy, I have never played anything from the Total War franchise. Thankfully, Turin's commentary during his casts is quite insightful, and he is very good at  distilling games. He explains everything from basic game mechanics to general army tips, to the meta strategies for each match up. His meme-game is pretty strong too, which adds to the entertainment. He's been doing the youtube thing for years, and has a deep catalogue of Warriors of Chaos and Empire games, which helped draw me in as those were my armies back in the Warhammer days. Check him out!