Hobby WIP: Free Dwarfs

After several false starts over the years, I am finally making some real progress this year on my long-awaited Free Dwarf army! The Dwarfs are apparently in a bit of a narrative flux, and the Free Dwarves may not be the best idea to pursue for the longevity of my new army, fluff-wise, but hey, I am not a clever man, and so here we are.

MOST of the bases and unit tubs... it's a big project and I've even scaled it back a LOT.

I wanted to have the army be majority Mantic, though I did not want to deal with the stands the majority of their older models have. Oddly, most of the army legs are just a few sculpts, so snipping stands off has come to be the easy part, and the biggest hurdle to all this has actually been the basing...

With the adventurous Free Dwarfs largely living in isolated Holds or even above ground, I was set on a very lush basing scheme, in contrast with all my other armies, of all gaming systems to-date... but I am not great with static grass, and didn't want to have my entire army shedding grass everywhere. Good grass technique has been the hurdle. Fortunately, I have a two local players that do some great basing with grass, and I was able to pick their brains over the last year, and am making good progress recently on my own skills.

Grasses are looking good! About 90% done with the first batch of bases.

Being a brand new army, it would have made a lot of sense to slow grow this. Maybe do up a few test heroes for exploring the basing and painting ideas... and then expand to a demo or ambush list, and then add units bit by bit... but that is not really how we've been doing this. 

Gaming details be damned, the new edition kickstarted my motivation, and best guesses coupled with the rule of cool for decisions has been guiding me for many months now. The painting has actually been making steady progress ever since 4E was announced, and a lot of units are ready, or very nearly so. The results have been ok overall, though I am definitely lopsided with some slots. 

Basing is the bottleneck, and while I was trying to approach this a sensible manner, as suggested above, I spilled a ton of glue as I was prepping my test bases in March and April, and jumped right in on about 1/3 of the units. This was right at the start, right when I needed to figure out a good and repeatable process, which led to several weeks of spinning my wheels due to dry times. With both numerous mistakes and sensible adjustments made over the last month to my new basing process for grasses, we should have a workable army soon!

Hobby WIP: KoM and Herd Display Boards

Still in the early WIP stages are the display boards for my Kingdoms of Men and the Herd. While I have successfully hobbied up other three boards for my existing armies, I have been very apprehensive about both of these armies going into 4th Edition, and so equally hesitant to do much new hobbying for them or their prospective boards. 

The Kingdoms of Men had three camps of rumors. The first was the GW approach, with the army just quietly going away, since Mantic doesn’t make models and everything is so generic as to be uncopyrightable. The second camp was that they were rolled up into Basilea, with some human units technically surviving, but again mostly being voided. Third was that they were being rolled up into something like the League of Rhordia, an army that was mix of humans and Halflings, and launched with hefty helping of jest by Mantic years ago.

Thankfully and very surprisingly, it appears they are going with the League route, and from what I have seen so far, I am very excited for the army in 4th. Almost everything transfers over to some degree, though some playstyles, like my recent triple flying generals, do get pinched, since those fliers are very limited Warlord options. However, the army has a number of very cheap core regiments and a ton of variety. Assuming it’s not a typo, players coming from earlier editions, like me, are going to be very happy about our pole-arm unit options. 

Regiments-max MMU is definitely on the table, especially with the nerf to shooting, and I have been overwhelmed trying to figure out just what I want to test first. Very surprisingly, I even have a few more units on the “Want List” to hobby on now, despite having nearly 9,000 points of humans already! I am very excited for the humans and their style going into the new edition, as you can really lean into the human aspect, and not necessarily need the more fantastical elements. I can’t wait to get them on the table! 

Lots of work to do. Terrible coverage and numerous streaks.

The sandy board for the Kingdoms of Men needs a lot of work. The glue smears and streaks are obvious, but I think I can pretty things up with some diluted glue to get more gentler, rolling dunes. Unlike the other boards, where I was adding more and more features and points of interest, this one is going more minimalist. The intent is to try and do some simple things done well, and see if we can still make it look interesting. If not, that's fine, as the Men are usually numerous, and like the Undead, mainly need   s p a c e   for all their units, especially with how I might want to play them in 4th, really committing to flooding the board. More to come on this one, and hopefully soon now that my excitement for the army is rekindled!

The Herd was another matter. My biggest gaming regret for 3rd and the last year was simply not taking the Herd to an event. Admittedly, I just did not make it out to many events, and didn’t stumble into the Guardian Brute attempts until relatively recently. Alas. My other four armies all saw event tables though, so that feels good, we just fell a little short here.

With the announcement of the new edition, the army’s Facebook Group, administered by the legendary Master Keith Conroy himself, was renamed entirely, which was definitely not a good sign. Shortly thereafter, the army was rumored to have survived, and be rolled up into Forces of Nature, along with the Order of the Green Lady. So, some theme lists just rolling up into the Master Lists, like was done with a handful of other armies. This is indeed the case from what I’ve seen, and while I likely still have incomplete information, unfortunately the Herd offerings are almost entirely gutted. Despite the Herd and their use of “humble spears” getting shouted out in the fluffy army blurb, Tribal Spears were not an option in what I saw, and most of the Tribal and Herd-only units are entirely absent. My collection has gone from 10,000 points to ~6,000, with that being about 1/3 Centaurs, 1/3 FoN Elementals and 1/3 legit Herd units. It is, unfortunately, a precipitous drop.

The first, quick reading of the list while I blazed through my secret Pathfinder knowledge had me gutted, but unsurprised. The second reading gave me some hope, and the third reading of the list actually has me very excited. The new Traits (formerly Keywords, denoting sub-factions within the army or unit archetypes) have come to the rescue for the Herd, and my own approach to the army still looks like it has legs! Older players like me will really like the new Longhorns too. The Herd definitely lost a lot, and are unfortunately in a very similar situation to my incredibly diminished Varangur right now. However, very surprisingly, I think there is enough still interesting things around to salvage and have some strong games. It feels like kismet for me and I am excited.

Glued and drying, with plenty of possibilities.

The board for the Herd is unfortunately not even started! Well, a little worse than that actually. Our cats  somehow managed to pop the backing out of the frame. With glue and new staples, I should hopefully be able to start on it soon. I want to do even more here than the other boards, and add foam rocks along with the cork ones, and have some glossy, frozen-looking water pools and more felled trees to all go along with my army basing. We’ve had a lot of snow and some severe cold snaps, but I’m hoping to make some progress on this before the end of the year.

...And that concludes my initial takes on my armies going into the new edition. The Varangur are severely hobbled, but will see a game or two still; the Abyssals have some powerful options but are in a weird spot for me with disliking the core units; the Undead should be fun and super-strong despite losing the awesome CS Skeleton Warriors; the Kingdoms of Men miraculously survive and continue to be wonderfully versatile; and the Herd have been largely culled, but still have some gems and some appeal, given my recent particular playstyle with them.

I am excited for 4th Edition!

Hobby WIP: Display Boards

In preparation for the Northwoods GT in January of this year, I ordered some display boards in semi-bulk from Michaels. They did not get here in time, but over the summer I ordered a second batch to bring me up to 8 boards, which is enough for all my armies with plenty to spare for future projects.

Unfortunately, the intervening ~6 months looks to have hit the product with some good old capitalist shrinkflation. Despite going back to the same link and product, the depth of the frames for the second boards was about half that of the older boards. Fortunately, while I have a handful of armies, I am not fancy, and can easily get by with a shallow, very basic board for most of them. Over the summer, I got prepping, with the intent of trying to knock these out over the winter months for many of my armies. The easiest ones are all at least in-process now!

I have used a lot of cork previously in all my hobbying, and have a lot of edge scraps in a little container, and tried to put those to use in these builds. I wanted to try and match the army look as much as possible, so I did use a ~$8 tub of basing paste on these boards, which is more expensive than these probably need to be, but seems to be working out well enough so far. All of these were done a combination of paste and cork, applied and utilized to varying degrees, as these are my first display boards ever, and I wanted to explore some fundamentals.

The Varangur wastes.

The Varangur one is the first board done. This was the big test board for me, since I figured I could hide any imperfections behind the snow effect, and it turned out rather nice!

For process, I chunked up a cork board and spread it around. I then pasted lightly all over, not too worried about the coverage. I primed the edges and then took an unenthusiastic pass over the board itself in black using leftover, failing rattle cans as well. It was then painted the board black as a more uniform base coat, then a dark gray as a bit of an overbrush, then a light grey as a dry brush, all using basic craft paints. The paste coverage was spotty, but that was fine as wanted to hit the whole thing with a snow effect, as-mentioned.

The snow effect took four separate batches to mix up and apply. Thankfully, I realized this early, and spread it around in sections, rather than doing a harder one-side-to-the-other kind of application, to hopefully disguise any color differences from the different batches. I hit the board with a clear protective spray covering, and hopefully this is all set and sturdy. 

The other three boards in-process.

The other boards should all get roughly similar treatment, with similar materials. 

Abyssals on the right are getting some double-stacked cork and space for lava pools, but will be painted up much the same as the Varangur. The rocky ground is all done, I just need to pick up some yellow craft paints to finish off the lava. To my great shame, I only learned about sulfuric lava over the last year, so we've got normal-looking lava here. To anyone starting an Abyssals army, oh man, take that idea and do some color-swapping, it would look awesome.

Undead in the foreground got a deeper board, and are getting just haphazard paste coverage since we’ve got the muddy basing scheme. The rocks are done, and all the brighter gray patches will be covered with an assortment of browns. They are going to get a glossy finish for their protective cover, and then we’ll try the fog effect along the interior edge at least. Lots to do there.

Kingdoms of Men board got a little experimental. Using basing paste all over it didn't seem like a good idea. The paste is a little expensive, and it's probably take a whole new tub of it; thick coverage with the paste is a little stretchy and might peel; thin coverage with the past would look too bland and too uniform. So I tried a variety of pastes, and also a variety of glues with normal sand. So far, I don't like the look of this. I'll blame the glue for now. I did not dilute it, and even spreading it around, it just contracted more into blobs than I'd like. I think diluting the glue should get me the more rolling dunes that I was hoping for. Even more yet to come on this one, and I'll need to figure out what to paint the edge as well.

We'll eventually try to get some little name plaques or something 3d printed or something, but I want to have 4th released before I worry about any of that, since so many of my armies are theme lists. But yeah, a big step here in a wargaming career with some display boards, even if they are rather rudimentary.

Hobby: All the Things, Part 2

I have been very mercurial in my hobbying the last few months, letting my ambitions run wild and doing a little of everything. Unfortunately, that's led to things spiraling out of control. It's been a few years, but I once again have just a ridiculous amount of things in process, and needed to spend a few days cleaning and organizing and packing and planning instead of getting much actual hobbying in, since my little home office space had no desk space, no shelf space and over a dozen bits boxes and project boxes scattered around the floor. Hopefully the cleaning efforts and this post helps me prioritize a bit, and some of these units will be done soon!

Kingdoms of Men Chariots

I had actually gotten through most of a WIP post last week for them. These are actually pretty far along. I need two more drivers with spears, and then prior to officially calling them done, I wanted to sit down and figure out how I could arrange the 6ish bowmen across the models to make things modular, in order to run stuff with and without bows for testing... and in trying to do so, I came to the realization that all that is a lot of work and I just don't care to do it.

WIP Chariots, very nearly there.

The bow upgrade has a minimal points investment, and their output on the table is correspondingly meager. I'll spread the bow models around the units and call it good enough. In terms of wysiwyg, hobbying too many bows and occasionally not taking the upgrade seems better than not hobbying them and then saying "ah, yes, surprise, but this unit also has a shooting attack." Rules change (I believe they originally had bows by default) and I don't really care if that situation happens to me, especially on a unit like this with such little output, but I am trying to be respectful to my opponents since I am running so many lists and different units and being wysiwyg helps. 

Thankfully, I got the last two drivers I absolutely needed primed recently. Since these were WIP but already seeing play on the table, everything was secured with PVA glue, which is still holding. I'll hopefully get the last two drivers painted up soon and these finished off!

Undead Ghouls

I knew I wanted to make a bigger pivot towards the Undead, and have been trying to bulk out the army's less-flashy options the last few months, with stuff like the multi-system Undead and such. I had some spare "muddy" bases from a wrong turn in that project, and wanted to try out mass Ghouls, so picked up some bundles on ebay.

A bunch of Ghouls to reinforce my two completed troops.

The models were previously assembled, and with 30+ minis attached to bases, this endeavor has been a little daunting, as I keep discovering bad clips and mold lines that I've missed on previous passes, which really messes with the quicker paint job that I was trying to give these. You really need to clean  the mold lines of your minis if you want to lean on washes or contrast / speed paints. I've chipped away at these, but these still need a lot of work.

Undead Smashy Skeletons

As part of the Undead pivot, I picked up some boxes of Oathmark Skeleton Warriors back in the early summer, and then won another box from Dragonfall, for a crazy 90 skeleton minis total. The intent was to hobby up some Skeletons with two-handers, for reasons that I'll get into on their Hobby Update post.

Oathmark Skeletons, plus bits.

I have a few units ready, but the conversions and weapon swaps are taking a lot time, and it'll be a lot of effort to get the others ready for the table. Thankfully, I finished up all the grip conversions work last week, so it's just weapon swaps on the remaining units, plus priming and painting. I think I'll need to split these into a first and second batch though, just in case the weather turns and really gets the better of me. Being better organized now though, we should have the first batch ready very soon.

Forces of the Abyss Nagarri & Abyssal Berserkers

Going into November here, I picked up two boxes of the new Abyssal Ambush kit, and I think this is what officially broke me with regards to hobbying. Very little of the Abyssal refresh really excited me, but I did want to try the new, shiny units.

Very chonky Nagarri with a lot of dumb-looking glaives.

I decided to build up two regiments of Nagarri and at least one horde of the Berserkers (who look to have a keyword / naming issue... sheesh), and so I started snipping and assembling about half the minis, but then just got overwhelmed. I don’t really like the weapon options on either kit, and felt like I should be doing some conversion work, which was going to take space and effort and planning. 

Great minis, abysmal weapons.

Running something brand new and sharing it in a battle report really appealed to me, and the new formation looks fun, but both parts of the kit is just too much work to tackle without wrapping other things up first.

Forces of the Abyss Lower Abyssals and Abyssal Ghouls

I hobbied up a neat Abyssal Ghoul regiment over the summer, and had plans to do up a second regiment. I had a lot of Ghoul torsos, but not legs, so the plan was to sit down and try a lot of green stuff and armature sculpting over the winter. I’m not quite sure about that plan now. 

Ghouls, per the label. I need like, 8 sets of legs (plus heads)

The new Abyssal refresh combined the Ghouls and Lower Abyssals, removing the former unit entirely and dropping the latter to Melee 5+. I had come to appreciate my two-handers, so am a little gutted. The shielded, more tar-pitty version of the unit might be the better pick on the table now, since it’s just around to hold ground, but it’s a lot of minis to work on at once.

24ish loose Lower Abyssals.

I had actually started on the shielded unit over the summer, and the got a good pink base coat, but motivation left me the closer we got to the refresh, as I had other things I wanted to hobby up and run sooner. I’ve got a good start on these, but they are looking like a winter project now. 

Varangur Draugr

I haven't played the Varangur much this year. It's a neat army, but other things kept taking priority. I scrapped all my old lists, and got in a pair of games recently, but was struggling with what to run with them next, as the army is just so darn elite.

New sprues to recreate the previous kit bashes.

I have three regiments of Draugr, hobbied up back in January 2023. The regiments are great units, but I decided I need at least one more regiment, so that I could get two cheap hordes for the numerous unlocks, which should hopefully let me run some more-interesting and less-elite builds to help me find  my footing with the army again. 

Along with the Abyssal Ambush boxes, I think this new project broke me as I really want to do it, but just don't have the capacity for all the conversion work needed without finishing up some other stuff first and creating the space to spread out all these bits. 

Herd Flaxhoof & Great Chieftain with Horn of the Great Migration

I ran the Herd a lot this year, and have just a few more “weird” lists to explore and triple down on an idea before I put them into a more normal rotation. A few of those weird lists are Centaur-focused, so I wanted to do up a Flaxhoof character for the full experience.

I had concepts of a plan for conversions for both a Flaxhoof mini and a Great Chieftain with the Horn by sawing a Gor body in half, but the conversion bits have been sitting in a little project box for months and months.

The Chieftain might need to wait while I figure out if I want to hobby up wings for him or not (the Herd is not popular, but the older go-to was taking Wings of Honeymaze with the horn to provide a mobile bobble of both Inspiring and Dread), but I think I can get Flaxhoof ready soon. We'll see.

Herd Lycans

The Lycans were, almost to a model, all casualties of metal minis and a flipped storage box over the summer in the Great Stampede of 2024. Most were knocked off of their respective unit bases, and many have broken bits here and there. The unit has great speed, but with just CS1, will struggle to be an effective hammer for the Herd, and so I have struggled to find the motivation to get them rebased.

Still broken. The old Brutox / Beast of Nature is here too.

As long as I needed to redo most of the bases, I want to reorganize the units to be able to run a second regiment. Thankfully, the basing work doesn’t depend on the weather, nothing needs to be primed, and the repair work should all be easy work to do. This seems like a winter project.

…So that’s the gist of all the big things I had spread around my little room. Instead of being spread across shelves and desks, everything now has its own little project box. We'll try to knock a few of these out in the coming weeks, but I should have a good amount of stuff to keep my busy for a while!

Hobby WIP: Old School Archaon

I gave myself an early Christmas gift this year: Archaon the Everchosen. 

If you've spent much time reading through my ramblings over the years, you know that Warhammer Fantasy Battles got me into wargaming, and that I played Empire for a bit at the start before picking up Warriors of Chaos to close out Eighth Edition. While I had some success as the edition wrapped up, I would argue that I never quite "got" proper list building in the game, and never really picked up any legit centerpiece models.

However, I may have timed this purchase a little poorly. Apparently GW had reset him in late November to be "made to order", an event which I missed entirely since I don't follow their announcements. Instead my "new" Archaon popped up on one of my ebay searches, and while I was mulling it over, the seller offered him at a discounted price, and so I took it. So, oddly enough this may have been an instance of a used ebay mini being more expensive that a new one, but I can't seem to find how expensive the new GW model would have been. So I'll count this as a win.

 

From the front. 

The paint job is actually passable for the tabletop, with multiple colors and such, though I will obviously be redoing it. It's now my little commemorative centerpiece model after all. Not sure yet if I will strip it down the the metal and start completely fresh or just repaint it or how best to approach this all yet. So far I've just scraped around and freed it form the plastic base, and given the model a light rinse to clean it up a bit. We'll take it slow and see how much we need to undo.

From the side. Scraping and separating the base got be down to metal, so I'm not even sure if this is primed or what. I'll need to figure all that out before I start. If I need to re-prime, this will probably turn into a longer-term project, as it is winter and generally bad weather for priming with my rattle cans.

I have only seen the model in person once before, when I borrowed one for an Mega Battle that our local Warhammer Fantasy group ran to conclude a our lengthy months-long End Times narrative campaign. Our  old "club" forum is now defunct, but I did find a recap of that event over in the WiscoDice blog archives, written up by the player across from me. 

The Mega Battle was one of the first events I had a real hand in organizing and running. Things didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped for on the day, but I learned a lot and generally speaking, I had a great time. I think this will be a fun hobby side project to remind myself of that mega battle, how I got into wargaming, and how far I've come as a hobbiest. Typically I paint to what I would call a decent tabletop standard, but I think I'd like to try and push my hobbying a bit here, and make this a legit centerpiece unit. Things like adding more highlights and such. So, we'll take it slow and see how I end up doing on hobbying up the ol' Lord of the End Times here.

More to come!

Hobby WIP: All the things

I had a small outpatient surgery performed recently, and was looking forward to having a few recovery days away from work and painting minis. In preparation, the week leading up to the procedure was filled with sprue clipping, mold-line removal, gluing, and priming. I knew I was going a bit overboard, but also knew that these would be waiting for me over the winter as well, so was definitely ok with that. 

This isn't even everything I prepped.

Unfortunately, I didn't factor in the pain during the recovery period. Sitting up for more than a half hour was basically a no-go for the first two days, and I've been moving pretty gingerly since. So I haven't really made any hobby progress on my little break.

Fortunately, like I said, alllllllll this and plenty more is all prepped now! And getting in some semi-regular games has got me motivated. Hobby Updates coming soon for a variety of armies!

Hobby WIP: Multi-System Undead

As mentioned back in June, my next army-sized projects will be individually based and hobbied on and will be using movement trays for Kings of War. Most of my coming additions to existing armies will continue to be multi-based, but I decided to make some exceptions with some new Undead. 

The Undead are a pretty ubiquitous faction in fantasy settings. Most of my army / collection thus-far has been more "elite" units, like Wights and Wraiths and a lot of Vampires. These are all things more unique to Kings of War, and so have gone very well with multi-basing. However, I felt like I needed some fodder units to balance things out in the collection and make more balanced lists, and decided to finally get around to painting up some more skeleton units, and do them up in this manner so I can use them for skirmish stuffs or D&D. I made a pretty good dent in my undead pile of shame! These all aren't quite done, but I am down to a literal handful of lingering Mantic skeletons and looks like an old box of GW Skeleton Warriors from the Vampire Counts army. We'll see when those last minis all get hobbied on, but I am thinking they might get some similar treatments to the units that follow here! I am reasonably happy with how these are all turning out so far.

A very simple unit. I think I used a greater variety of paint on the bases than the minis...

The first unit up now are some Skeleton Warriors. Back in the day, GW sold a 5-pack of push-fit Skeletons, and I apparently picked two packs up long ago. Probably for D&D. They were never built, and I apparently lost their arms too, as they weren't in my little bits box... It was for the best though. Their shoulders looked far too broad, so I snipped down those push-fit pins and mixed in some other generic GW skeleton arms in for a slightly more natural look. Filling out the unit to the "full" 12 are two "late risers" from Mantic. This is a nice extra bit in that kit, and I was happy to find a use for them here. Overall, this unit still need a few touchups, and I am debating whether or not to add in shields. I like the "bare-bones" look with just a weapon, but enough have clenched fists with the shield arm that shields might look better.  I will need to revisit my bits boxes before calling these done.

I need a banner (or another weapon) for one of the skeletons in front, but this unit is also coming along.

Then we have a unit of Mantic skeletons, who will also be used as a regiment of Skeleton Warriors. A single, combined horde would arguably have been better, but given the available minis here, separate regiments will have to do for now. Mantic's skeleton sprue comes with 3x skeletons with weapons (1 axe, 1 sword, 1 hammer). I liked that (gluing weapons to hands can be a real pain), and built them up for D&D years ago, as I like giving monsters different weapons as a simple way to mix things up for combat encounters. This unit got a simple blue for their colors, but I'm debating on an accent color or maybe even decals for the plain shields. These are close but something is missing.

Like I said, gluing weapons to hands can be rough. After three separate attempts, one spear is *still* not cooperating in the unit on the left.

Then, we have a bunch more Mantic skeletons, to be used as a horde of Skeleton Spearmen. While not a competitive unit, I really like the "at the ready" look of skeletons with spears, so these have been primed for maybe three years now? They ended up with red cloth and dark gray shields. I think I need an accent color or decals for these shields as well, but am pretty pleased with the unit so far.

My older Undead share colors with the Regnum, as my old fluff was that the Undead were the ancestors and slain human armies, raised to fight and usurp the current, living kingdom. But I'm trying to get away from that. I want to explore more painting schemes and don't want to repeat a scheme across two major armies. So I think a lot of touchups and small repaints are in my future for this collection. I think my general goal will be to have the units share colors, but keep the army as a whole a bit jumbled and ununified. I think these units are all steps in the right direction for that jumbled effect, and I am happy with the look and progress of all of these units so far. 

I also have a small assortment of bonus things for the Undead, which is actually what started me hobbying all these other units. I figured the rats could be following units to denote the army's "Giant Rats" upgrade to lifeleech, or even swapped in if the unit is using trays like these are. The gravestones, tablets and small undead critters were just me messing around with some undead-themed loot / objective tokens. 

The necromancer has been primed forever; and is the human wizard Leisynn from Reaper. He was primed before I knew you should really wash Reaper minis before working on them, and so has been sticky for years, languishing in a box. That stickiness has gone away now, so I finally painted him up like a good old Warcraft 3 necromancer. The variety of robe colors was what got me thinking about the other units, and I'll likely lean on the robes to help guide my future color choices as I touchup the army.

The last thing to note in this WIP post is the movement tray approach. It is neat and working ok for these units, but I think the pictures here already highlight its biggest shortcoming, namely that naked MDF is not a good look! I think I will need to hobby on the trays a bit to make them come off as more legitimate, and I'll need to keep this in mind on my future army projects, which were going to lean more heavily into the tray approach. More thoughts to come on the trays after some more fiddling!

Hobby WIP: Stormcast Ogres

While Age of Sigmar didn't really click with me, I did end up with a handful of Stormcast models from the Easy Build Kits. My original intention was to use them as a faction of zealous Goliath Paladins in some 5E D&D campaigns, but both of those original campaigns fell apart due to scheduling issues and then Covid and then to more scheduling issues, and well, that use was just not meant to be it seems. 

My goals for 2022 were to 1) build up a few new learner armies to add to my collection and 2) use them to try and run intro games to generate some local interest in Kings of War.

However, at some point in 2021 I realized that regiments of Ogre Warriors and such could unlock heroes for Kings of War. I was pretty sure that was not possible when 3rd launched, and I am still not sure when that happened (if you know, let me know, maybe I am just a fool and missed this since I didn't follow Ogres news closely). So, this (presumed) change to Ogre unlocks made them viable as a small learner army, and so I started picking up some second-hand Stormcast models on ebay, and ended up with a decently-sized force of about 60 models, all infantry.

I hobbied on these a fair amount in April and May leading up my wedding, so I think all but a dozen or so minis have been hit with primer and some base coats of paint at this point? Nothing is quite finished  yet, but a few units are getting pretty close. I'm hoping to have a good chunk finished up by the end of the month, so we'll see how that goes.

Test model for use as a Warlock. Just touchups left.

This use for the Stormcast models is not my idea. "Fancy Ogres" has been an idea in the community for about as long as there have been Stormcast models around. I do like this an awful lot though. The Stormcast are equally large (base-wise) to ogres, and so make for easy translations from one game to the other. They are also quite armored, and generally look more "Def5" than even the Mantic Ogres. All in all, this is a great use for these minis. 

Most minis thankfully came assembled and second-hand. This was part of a very late purchase to turn my duo of Easy Build Retributors from Sergeants/Warlords into a unit of Warriors. Probably Warriors with a Brew of Strength since they look so tanky still? Anyways, point being here that this range comes in way too many pieces and I do not like this approach to building miniatures. If I had to build this army up entirely myself, I would not have embarked on this project. 

Everything came assembled or got assembled one way or another, and I went to work cleaning up some of the gaps and mold lines of the second-hand minis. Once tidied up, everything got blasted with a rattle can of Retributor Armor Spray, as I wanted to try and make the army a unified color, and did want to go with a traditional golden color for this army.

I ran out of spray can near the end. Left is grey primer with the paint pot and right is the spray can. Different colors and noticeable, with the can being a lighter color.

Unfortunately, the rattle can color doesn't match well with the paint pot. Everything that got sprayed also got a layer of retributor paint as well. This is my first real outing with either, so can't say whether it's an odd can, an odd pot, not shaking/mixing one or the other enough, or if this difference is normal. 

The only Speedpaint test so far. Citadel's Zamesi Desert base coat with AP's Zealot Yellow Speedpaint.

Another "first" on this project is trying out the Army Painter Speed Paint. I picked up the smaller starter set back in March. I had planned to test out several AP colors on my test mini's robes, then repaint the cloth white and then test a few more, but my first haphazard experiment gave a nice vivid orange on the first sleeve, and I really liked it so it stuck. Having accidentally settled on a scheme, I've really only played around with the one color so far. Oops. I'll get around to trying out the other colors soon I hope!

I'm trying to keep this army really simple for my hobbying efforts. I think if I get a few good hobby sessions in, I should be able to get most of these table-ready in July. The month is already filling up fast though, so we'll see how how I do. More to come!

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!

Hobby WIP: Winter Projects

Though it was a bit damp and drizzly over this past weekend, I was fortunate enough to sneak in some late-season priming, which let me add a few monsters and some Ogres to my winter hobbying pile. Ready to go as the snow falls are:

2 Hordes of Ogre Siege Breakers
3 Varangur Magus Circles
1 Varangur Sons of Korgaan infantry regiment
1 Varangur Jabberwock
1 Halfling Iron Beast
1 KoM Berserker Regiment
1 KoM Crossbowmen Regiment
1 KoM Knight Regiment
Plus a handful of KoM and Ostermark League characters

I am also hoping to get in some games this winter, as I have my folding tables and a rolling battle map in hand now too!

The mat is from Melee Mats; apparently a vinyl print, and what looks to be their moss option. I don't know much about mat types, but this was about half the cost of a neoprene mat (from what I was seeing), so... I went with it. Cheapness prevails for now; we'll see how it holds up!

Hobby Update: Varangur Chieftain

A last quick update for the Varangur here... A Chieftain on foot. I don't normally name characters, but this guy looks like he'd make a good MANDALF, to reflect his resemblance to a certain wizard as well as his general burliness... we'll see if the name sticks.

"Something, something you shall not pass."

Not too much to say about the guy himself. Being infantry (with only average speed, the larger infantry base size, and likely limited line of sight), getting him into sneaky combats will be hard to achieve. He seems more like a blatant supporting hero; keep him nestled in between a few infantry units and he'll do the best; keeping them inspired and charging in alongside.

When it comes to marks/gifts, I've generally succumbed to what I consider orthodox thought: Headstrong and Fury is generally the way to go. But I think characters are the exception to this rule. I think the Varangur characters could get a lot of mileage out of taking the Brutal gift, particularly this chieftain. As mentioned above, he is a supporting melee character; meant to be charging in alongside other units; contributing to combat while keeping everyone inspired. Brutal makes him that much better at his job of being a force multiplier.



By now, I've worked through the majority of my old Warriors of Chaos plastic, transferring tons and tons over into Kings of War, and coming out with over 7,000 points of stuff (including the Ogre Allies). Not bad! Only a handful of old things remain sitting around in storage:

• Half-built custom War Shrine
• Half a dozen chariots (2 Gorebeast, 4 Core Chaos)
• 10 Hellstriders, plus a hero on Hellstrider
• Chimera
• ~30 Warriors
• 6 Nurgle Ogres with Great Weapons

I may sit down and figure out a way to convert the Ogres over. I cannot think of anything else to use them for, and some Siege Breakers could be useful in my little allied force...

The War Shrine is a chariot chassis on a bunch of green stuff tentacles. I was aiming for the Great Wave of Kanagawa, but with mutated, writhing tentacles instead of water. Sadly, this was started just prior to the End Times, and never really finished up as originally intended. No plans to do anything with it right now. There isn't a great KoW equivalent, so it's likely to sit around for a while.

The chariots need just minor touchups, and would be pretty easy conversions at two to a regiment, but I couldn't settle on a good way to include them. Already having a bunch of Mounted Sons, I didn't want to just proxy them as just more knights. And I couldn't really get a good fluff reason, not could I find the right ally unit I wanted. Even asking the community, I couldn't settle on a good reason, so those are likely to sit around in storage for a while too.

The Hellstriders are neat, and I was generally happy with their old paint job, but I don't know what to do with them. I already have Horse Raiders on real plastic horses. With their weirdness they could almost be Abyssal Horsemen... but they don't really match up with wysiwyg, since there is virtually no armor on the models to represent the 5+ defense in the stats... Plus, the marauder bodies and heads would look weird in an Abyssal army, so this group would likely require repainting and probably headswaps too. That's a fair amount of work for something I'm not entirely sold on.

Definitely needs some touch-ups (and a new base, AND a rider), but not a bad place to start.

The Chimera was my first big purchase for WHFB (big in terms of size of the model, not cost! GW is expensive, and I was several battalion boxes in at least at this point...). I was actually pretty pleased with my old painting. If I can find a kingly-looking rider for it, I'd actually be pretty happy to convert this over into Kings of War. The Varangur could use a bit of a centerpiece model, and fluff-wise, could definitely use an imposing main leader! The painting would need an update, but this isn't a bad place to start.

Lastly, I do plan on converting over the remaining warriors. I need to do a final inventory on the models, but I should have about 30, and should have enough weapons and shields for them to do up two regiments of Sons of Korgaan infantry.

If I paint up the Warriors and Chimera and Ogres... I think that would do it for the existing models I still want to work with and net me another thousand points or so. Unfortunately, temperatures have dropped here recently. I did manage to get a few things primed, but no more Varangur. I think I'm out of good priming weather, so all these final units will likely be more of a spring project.

Hobby WIP: Second Beast

Those that have followed my handful of actual games might recognize this as my ballista-carrying Beast of War, and you would be wrong, but close. This is my second Beast of War!

Still needs work, but I like the expression/pose of the gunner.

Same models, same howdah build, same paint scheme... but a slightly different orientation so that it hopefully doesn't look like a cookie cutter copy of the first Beast when they are on the field together.

I had been planning this addition for a while... I probably picked up the second ankylosaurus model about a year ago or so? It just took a really long time to reach fruition, as I am lazy, and the howdah required a few intense hours of work that I only recently got around to doing. Two massive logs is still probably not the best way to secure a howdah... but I did it the first time, and felt I should do the same with the second model.

So, why a second Beast?

Well, my KoM army is really infantry-heavy, and in the handful of games I've been able to play, I've been deploying a bit back in the hopes that I can buy some time to maneuver around against anything unexpected, and maybe score a few early wounds with some Ballista shooting.

My singular Beast has fit in quite nicely with that plan of attack. The Light Ballista upgrade is a steal too; those shots add way more versatility than you'd think! I struggle a bit in melee though, as my Roman models aren't running things with CS (I have some some unit conversions in mind though). When the time comes for melee, the Beast is still a big bad monster, with a good stat line all around. Supported by some durable regiments, they should be able to grind out enemy units. I need to theory craft some lists, but I think I should be able to fit both Beasts in for a 2000 point game.

A few touchups are still needed here, and I'd like to redo the bit/chain with a thin jewelry chain or something for both models too, but I'd field both models without being embarrassed at their progress. More to come soon.

Hobby WIP: Evil Triumvirate

I've been on a bit of a hiatus. The end of 2017 saw the Halflings hit 2000 points. With winter in full swing, and nothing primed, I was hoping to transition more to gaming for Kings of War. That hasn't happened. I have half a dozen locals express interest, but apparently not enough to get things going. So life continued, and I occupied myself with other things.

The "spring" weather has been wild in Wisconsin, but I was lucky enough to have a decently warm day about a week ago, and I was able to prime some things. Hobbying for 2018 begins!

I've stated here before that I want to have a kind of "Evil Triumvirate" thing going with some of these evil army collections of mine, and incorporate some light faction calculus for flavor. The Varangur would be the elite powerhouse; the Herd the speedy glass-cannon swarm; and the Abyssals the more varied and balanced force.

Getting this triumvirate up and running is my hobby goal at the moment.

The Varangur

The Varangur are "there" already, with over 5,000 points of stuff painted up last year. Around 2000 more points of old Warriors of Chaos stuff is still sitting around, ready to be hobbied on as desired. I hope to get hobbing on some Fallen soon, but with so much else finished, there's no rush. Up now are just a few characters for the Varangur.

Three half-done amigos.

Nothing too special about this trio. The Skaald will be a cheap source of Inspiring (the big baddies lose a bit of their intimidation factor when they rout easily), and the Magi, particularly the mounted one, will give a little ranged damage to the collection, and versatility to smaller lists.

The Herd

The Herd got their start in 2017. They are quite short on their unlocks though, and despite having around 1000 points painted up for them, fielding an effective list is difficult at the moment, and they max out around 750 usable points.

It's not a blog post without a blurry pic! Clearly my dusty monitor stand was more important than the models...

Up right now is another Centaur Chieftain, and on deck is a monster repaint, which will probably end up as a Brutox. These... don't help my situation any, but it is a nice way to reacquaint myself with the colors I was using. Up soon are a bunch of Lycan units, which should solve my unlock problem.

The Abyssals

The Abyssals will need the most work in 2018. Since I haven't gotten any games in recently, I'm hesitant to really buy anything new right now, so I'm trying to work with what I have for the immediate future.

For units, I have a horde of Mantic Lower Abyssals purchased, and some GW Bloodletters and Daemonettes that I can repaint for Kings of War. Resale seems like a waste of time, and I think I can turn them into decent Abyssal Guards and Succubi units.

Lots of work to be done on the Abyssals....

I'm still noodling out model counts and unit sizes. For characters, I have a flying Archfiend, a walking Archfiend, 2 Efreets, a Champion and a Temptress... that's around 1000 points in heroes, so I think I should be set for my character needs for quite some time! The plan is to hobby these characters up soon, and settle on a color scheme before starting in earnest on the units.

More to come soon!

Hobby WIP: Vacation Edition

I just got back from a splendid little vacation. Being gone a little more than a week, I decided to bring along a box of things to potentially hobby on. As it turned out, I ended up making a ton of progress on a bunch of models across a variety of armies. All told, about 1500 points is now ready for basing. Add to that number the projects that got a little paint, and also the nearly complete Bloodsworn horde I left at home... and close to 2000 points of things will be appearing in the blog as "updates" relatively soon.

Most of the progress. Some KoM Foot Guard got some paint after I snapped this picture.

Most of the progress was due to a curious girlfriend. Near the end of our respite from jobs, we were due to meet up with another couple for some 5e Dungeons and Dragons. As the DM, I kicked around a few character ideas with my girlfriend, as she was new to the game. As a hobbyist, I picked up a few models to potentially represent those ideas. In the end we went with a model from Reaper to for rascal soldier known as Lareo Qindi. While I hobbied on some other things, she set to work on her model, and as she worked, she found that she really liked painting minis.

Lareo and some zombies. Not bad for your first models!

Fortunately, I had brought along just the thing for her to cut her teeth on: Zombies! I picked up a Mantic Horde probably close to two years ago, quickly assembled them... and let them sit in a box since. With the exception of a few test models, she did all the painting work, and did an amazing job. Now, I just need to figure out how to base them... I'll think of something. Anyways, much, much more to come soon!