Entering the Nightvault

I got a chance to play with the new Warhammer Underworlds edition the other day. Def gonna be picking that up as soon as I can manage it.

I didn't think to take a pic until our last game, when I was playing Magore's Fiends, instead of the one when I was playing the Thorns

Each of the three of us got a chance to play as the Nighthaunt Warband, the Thorns of the Briar Queen, and we were all very pleased with how they worked, even just using a deck that consisted of their Faction-specific cards and a few very generic ones to round it out. Varclav's ability to spend an Activation to Push all the Chainrasps 2 hexes each is amazingly powerful, the ability to move through anything is cool, and they have a bunch of cards that are both flavourful and strong. On the flipside, getting them Inspired can be difficult, and will generally result in a couple of them getting taken out, and the number of Models can be very difficult to manage, especially if someone manages to take Varclav out.

Model-wise, they're fantastic sculpts, but even more fragile than the Sepulchral Guard. Be very careful handling and working with them, and there are a number of bits I'm almost certainly going to have to reinforce with brass rod/wire.

The Sacrosanct Chamber Warband, Stormsire's Cursebreakers, we were less impressed by. I didn't bother playing them after watching the other two each spend a match fighting more against their own deck than the other Warbands. We do think there's some potential there, but they're definitely a Band that's going to need some experimentation and careful Deck-building to get to work. Just tossing all their Faction-locked cards into a deck with a few generically useful fillers is not a workable option here.

They also fall down a bit compared to the Thorns Model-wise. They're still cool Models, definitely better than Steelheart's Champions, and far better than the first Stormcast we saw, but when they're set next to the Thorns, the latter unquestionably steal the show.

The Rules updates didn't all come into play, but those that did were mostly very good. The clarifications about how a Charge Token restricts further Activitions is my fave. Lethal Hexes are a cool addition, adding a nice middle ground between the extremes of open and blocked hexes. Not only do they open the possibilities for being able to take certain paths, but have them hurt, but there is also definite potential in Pushing your Opponent's Models into them for a bit of extra damage.

Spells, we were less impressed by. The ones that require two successes, even if they're Channel (the more common of the two, the lightning bolts), are pretty hard to cast, with even a level two Caster having less than a 50/50 of succeeding. Some of them are certainly potentially very powerful, but they're very unreliable. There are bonuses available, but from what I've seen so far, they're currently very limited. We'll see as the rest of the Warbands for the second season come out whether or not there's enough support to make magic a viable strategy.

We also had the new Terrain pieces around to mark Blocked and Lethal Hexes. They work well for Blocked Hexes, but less so for Lethal ones, since few of them allow a Model to be easily placed in the same Hex. I like all the sculpts, myself, but the throne with all the imagery of Nagash was kind of divisive among the group. Also, while I don't really care much one way or another about coloured plastic in general, the specific shade of teal they chose for these is pretty questionably. But really, they are intended to be painted, so that shouldn't be an issue for the most part.

Overall, it all seemed really cool, and a good start to this wave of expansion on the foundation laid by Shadespire. I'm glad someone brought it by, and I'm very much looking forward to picking it up myself at some point here. Until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Neglected Model September

As with so many of my plans, my goal of breaking this down into multiple posts over the course of the week got derailed. In this case, when my camera's batteries died on the very first Model of the lot, and then that snowballed into all the other things that tend to derail my intended posting schedule. Anyhow, it was quite a productive month thanks to this challenge, and I'm really happy with the results, so I've kept all the pics at full resolution, just cropping and adjusting the colour levels. This means that this is going to be absolutely huge, so I'm putting most of it behind a cut. Let's start with Spiteclaw's Swarm:

Dreadtober Pledge

Quick and simple. Priming at this time of year sucks, so instead of building and painting a single Dread from the start, I'm going to paint up two that I've already built and primed. Or, well, one Dread and one Armiger, but the Redemptor Dread and the Armiger are fairly close in size. Anyhow:

The Redemptor is for my (mostly) Primaris Theta Chapter force, same as the Contemptor I did last year. The Armiger is going to be done up to accompany The Vindication of the Devine. And it's not stuck like that. I've made it somewhat flexible, so there's movement in the shoulder and elbow joints, and I can swap the weapons out if I find a cost-efficient way to get extras. I just put it like that because it seemed like the best pose for priming it. Eventually, I hope to get a second Armiger done up like that as well, so I can field a proper Super Heavy Detachment.

And yes, I'm going to brush the cat hair off the Redemptor before I start painting :3 Until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Oh, FFS

https://www.instagram.com/p/BoZxpK4lUbl/

I mean, don't get me wrong, it looks fantastic, and I'm looking forward to the release, it's just that once again, I have the worst timing ever.

Azazel's Neglected Model September Wrap-up Post

Basically just a proof of completion with just a few minutes left in September. I'm going to go back and do better individual shots of all these in the next couple of days,  but I wanted to get something up to mark the end of the month.

As is usually the case, all of these could use a little more touch-up, or a couple more details picked out, or another layer of highlights somewhere, but they've hit my personal point of "Fuck it, they're good enough." I feel I should note that all of these were at least started, and some of them (particularly the Skaven) were quite far along, and just needed some final touches. Even so, 16 Models completed in a month (and not just slammed out to three colour minimum, even if it was a pretty decent 3-colour minimum for all those Daemonettes in August) is very good for how my productivity has been trending these last few years. My original plan was to stagger the finishes throughout the month and give them each their own post, but instead, I ended up bouncing around between the various groups, and getting them all done right at the end of the month.

Coming up next, I've got a couple of possibilities for DreadTober, and most of what's left of the Silver Tower box will qualify for the Unit-ed October Challenge, as well as (hopefully) a significant chunk of the Rogue Trader box. It's not likely, but it's also not impossible that I might manage to squeeze in a little something for Orktober as well. I'll hopefully have some preview posts up for those soon as well. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Alternate Fiend of Slaanesh and Flesh Hound Models from FFG

Fiends of Slaanesh are a really cool design and concept, but with only a single sculpt available, in resin, at US$25 each, they're kind of awkward to fit into an Army, and they look sort of wimpy next to their counterparts that have been updated to plastic kits, like the Beasts of Nurgle and Bloodcrushers. Flesh Hounds are in somewhat better shape, with 5 sculpts in the box, and a couple of plastic ones teased along with Korghos Khul and Magore's Fiends, but are still US$10 each on their own, in resin only.

A while ago, I stumbled across the Uthuk Y'llan for FFG's Runewars Miniatures Game, and was struck by the potential in some of their options for use as Chaos Daemons, particularly the ones I'm discussing here. It's not entirely surprising, as the Uthuk Y'llan make use of a great many summoned daemons (tho they call them other things), and almost certainly took inspiration from some of the same places GW did.

First up, we have the Spined Threshers, which feel pretty much perfect as an update for the Fiends of Slaanesh. Not as much of an improvement as I might like in terms of variety and price, since the two available sculpts are designed to be built one way, and the plastic used is very hard, but they are still an improvement in those regards, and their size and presence are vastly better.

Apparently in the Runewars fluff, they're made from multiple summoned daemons bound together into a single form, which is why they have multiple mouths all over the place. One mouth remains for each daemon that was bound into a given Thresher, I guess so they can individually feed or something. IDK, I haven't actually paid much attention to Runewars except for the Models.

Now, as I've mentioned, and as shown in the pic at the top of this post, they are much bigger than the current Fiends. But they are about the same size as the current Beasts of Nurgle, which were formerly close to the Fiends in size. So I feel like they'll make a pretty good alternate. I plan on knocking half an inch off any measurements where the larger base would benefit me, and since they have no shooting attacks, the greater height and profile are pure disadvantage. They can actually just barely squeeze onto 40mm bases, but it looked stupid, so I put them on 60s.

Flesh Hounds, as I said at the start, are in better shape, but can really suffer from lack of variety, especially when running multiple packs at once. I like to use a ton of them in minimum-sized packs, so I've made a practice of getting as many possible varieties as I can, to help keep them sorted out. The Flesh Rippers summoned by the Uthuk Y'llan seemed about perfect to form up another pack, since they have an aesthetic that's entirely compatible with Khornate stuff, but are distinctly different from any of the specific GW designs. They also cost about 60% of what the GW ones do.

Unfortunately, there are again only two sculpts, but they actually mix up fairly nicely when not ranked up, and it should be less noticeable when they're one of 8 Packs on the table. The other disadvantage is that they come attached to the rectangular bases you see here, but those are much softer plastic than the Models themselves, and so relatively easy to cut away. In terms of size, they match up quite nicely with GW Flesh Hounds.

Thinking about it just now, they'd probably also make good alternatives for Drukhari Khymerae as well. I'm looking forward to getting both lots of these painted up, but since (as usual) I have far too many projects going on, who knows when I'll get to them. When I do, I will put pics up here.

I have a couple more of the Heroes from Silver Tower ready to go, and several of the monsters very close to completion, so hopefully I'll get them wrapped up and photographed soon, and then I'll do another post of those to wrap up Neglected Model September. I'm also working on building and priming the stuff from the Rogue Trader boxed set and the Heresy Girls Kickstarter, so those are going to be my major goals for October. Until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Neglected Model September: Mistweaver Saih

For Azazel's Neglected Model September Hobby Challenge, I'm working on finishing up my Silver Tower boxed set, which I halfway painted within a couple of days of getting it, and then never put brush to it since. First one finished is the Mistweaver Saih:

I decided to go for a very restricted palette here, using only light greys, off-whites, and the brightest silver I have. I wanted to really double down on the idea that she can just fade into the mist, and be effectively invisible in there.

I also decided to go with a more covering garment, so she's got those little blades or trinkets or whatever they are dangling from her sleeves rather than being extreme piercings.

You're going to notice some variation in the bases as we go through these. My original plan was to do them all like this, maybe paint in some tiles and cracks, but basically do something just painted, that would look like it could be flooring in the Silver Tower. The square bases tied in to that, being flagstone-shaped. Then GW brought out rules for a bunch of them to be used in AoS and/or 40K Armies that I have. So many of those got re-based on round bases, and have sand and turf and such. I still really don't know if I'm going to unify them all or not, and if I do, which way I'm likely to go with it.

Most of the other Heroes and the Pink and Blue Horrors are coming along pretty nicely, so I'll hopefully have them ready to photograph in a few days, and post shortly after that. I've also got another post in the works, about some third party Models I found for Fiends of Slaanesh and Flesh Hounds. One or the other of those should be up fairly soon. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!