Hobby Update: Abyssals Display Board and 4th Edition

Thanksgiving was relatively quiet, and a monster snow storm afterwards delightfully slowed things down for me, allowing for some extended hobby time. I chipped away at a number of projects, including the display boards. The first board was for the Varangur, was finished in late October, and was the big test for me. I tried larger pieces of cork and spotty applications of basing paste, painted up and then covered with a snow effect. It all worked, but is a little visually busy with the high contrasts between the snow and dark rocks. We're trying to learn and improve upon things, so up now is the display board for the Forces of the Abyss!

The board, with lava.

This one used smaller pieces of cork, but still made use of many edge pieces, allowing for more interest along the board edge. Everything was painted up with cheap craft paint alongside the other dark boards, with a black prime, black paint, and then dry brushes of dark gray and then light gray. The basing has a stronger coverage here, with some untouched spots for lava pools.

Giving up and using Citadel paints.

The lava pools proved difficult to duplicate. I had used hobbying paint for all my Abyssal units, which was a little daunting for a big board. The edges got Deathclaw Brown as usual, and then I spent a few days trying to adjust yellow craft paints to be the right colors, but to no success, so the next layer for Zamesi Desert, like the units. 

Ew, too bright and jarring, not enough layering yet.

I then tried again to tweak the basic yellow craft paint into something similar, and again failed over several days. About half a bottle of Army Painter's Demonic Yellow was then used as the next layer.

Finally, the bright yellow craft paint I had could be used, covering up all the pools. It is quite bright, and actually really pops in person. The bases for most of my Abyssals stopped on the previous step with a basic, strong yellow color. Needing to mix in white for the pop previously was a little too work intensive. But now that I have a bright yellow right out of the bottle, I might be going back and touching things up.

I have not hit this one with any kind of sealer, so the last step here was to go back with a large, straight brush and repaint the boarder a nice solid black. We are good for now!

The board with some Pathfinder units.

For fun, I went and staged the board with some units from my Pathfinding army. If one looks closely, one might see that the units all lack the super bright yellow color, and some of the pools hitting the edges of the units look a little off since they go nowhere, but what can you do. I was not thinking about display boards way back when, and overall, I still really like this. The board has some nice pops of color, but isn't as busy / overwhelming as the snow on the Varangur board. The boring, empty, rocky space lets you put units where ever, which was harder to do with the Varangur board and the big pieces of cork dictating where units needed to go.

I'm feeling better about the Forces of the Abyss than the Varangur, but we'll see need to wait and see what is in store for the Abyssals in the new edition. Unit-wise, apparently my favorite Abyssal Guards are going away, and without the durable Guard, I think my MMU approach with the army is probably off the table. We allegedly have Succubi, Flamebearers, Lower Abyssals and apparently Hellhounds for our main Core options. Those are all just ok in my book, as each of them has a big drawback currently, but we'll see how any stats changes might shake out and shake things up on my opinions. A lot of the other units are getting tweaks and buffs, and it sounds like the Horsemen might be TC3, and the Nagarri might get CS2 now, along with some other buffs, so I'm sure we'll be able to run some fun lists once we figure out how we want to handle the new Core Tax. 

Hero-wise, I often used Warlocks and Despoiler Champions for my usual heroes in 3rd, which are already on larger bases and so are already ready to step up as Champions for me. My terrestrial Fiends look to be shifted over to non-inspiring Support units which is a bummer though, as they have been good performers as well. The Warlord slot for the army looks interesting, and should have plenty of competition between Archfiends, any legendary picks, and promoted Seductresses and the like. From the little spoiled so far, these Warlords don't look to be changing the unit categories at all, but I haven't been following anything closely and could be wrong on this count. Right now, without the full rules and lists, the army just feels a smidge off-balance, but that could just be to the army units feeling a bit more fragile. Regardless, with my cruch unit of Abyssal Guard voided, no builds or ideas are jumping out at me yet, so likely no hobbying on these until the full book and rules are out.