Hobby Update: Varangur Display Board and 4th Edition

I was hobbying on the other boards and writing up posts for them, and felt like I had glossed over the first board. We'll circle back before continuing on. Here is the Varangur display board, finished up in late October.

The board.

As mentioned in the WIP post that also kind of unveiled this board, this one was the original, with my trying to figure out the basics. We used big chunks of cork in the center, and then lots of flat edge scrap pieces to fill things in. It was covered haphazardly in paste, then primed black, then painted black, and then dry brushed with dark gray and light gray. The other boards utilized this darker ground cover as well, so were all painted up at the same time. 

The Northwoods Melee army, again.

The paste coverage was haphazard, as I was going to hit this with a bunch of my snow effect, and did so, over many batches. Overall, the snow stuck, but the board felt a bit visually "busy" when I took it to the Northwoods Melee. I think I am being a little too hard on myself though, and this would probably look fine with a larger army. With about half my army for the event was tied up with 50mm square-based things, the board is bound to overpower the units.

I'm backtracking here, as I am taking the opportunity with these display board posts to briefly touch on my initial 4th Edition thoughts and plans for each army. 

The rub here is that I don't actually know what 4th Edition is going to hold for the Varangur. For now, we are essentially squatted. The Northern Alliance can technically take a new, allegedly ground-only version of Magnilde, and use her to unlock Fallen and what I believe are renamed Mounted Sons unit... but that's it, and that's probably around 1000 points. The mighty Kruufnir is gone, as are Horse Raiders, Conclaves, Magi, and the very useful Draugr. While the Fallen are still around and generally fun, I feel like the Draugr and their cheap source of unlocks were a main reason to play Varangur, so this definitely hurts, both for fluff and for builds.

The Varangur are allegedly being given the Twilight Kin treatment, with the squatting only temporary, and will be revamped and spun out as a new, distinct army in the coming years, as the story for the new edition progresses. Unsurprisingly, I would have preferred them to spin them off now with a light touchup for 4th, and then getting the more intense revamp down the line, but perhaps their revisions are too drastic, like the Twilight Kin. The strength of the Northern Alliance list comes largely from it combined arms and the non-human aspects, which I lack with my older Varangur.

Thankfully, the Northwoods Melee was a pretty successful event for me. Despite failing to remember Kruufnir's rampage against many Gur Panther units over multiple games and combats, we came away from the event with a winning record and apparently 4th place. With half the attendees having been to Masters, that is not a bad personal showing, and was a nice way to see the army off. The Varangur will definitely see the table in 4th, just to properly explore them a bit and say I did, but regular appearances do not seem likely as things stand currently.