054 - The End Of The Stormcast?

Following  a problem with my last unit of Stormcast Eternals that ended up ruining my Prosecutors I have decided I am going to leave my Stormcast army as it is for the time being. The Lord Celestant and the Lord Relictor seem like amazing models but I think they will suffer from the same problems as the Prosecutors did with regards to assembly and me being a clumsy oaf. 

So I have fourteen big Order miniatures painted which is just under 500 points. This will be a large chunk of a decent sized Order Grand Alliance force. 

I will definitely add more Order dudes at some point and tie them in with the bases and colour scheme. I think Flagellants and a Warrior Priest may be a good choice but one of the great things with Age of Sigmar is that the choices are wide open. Did some one say Sylvaneth?

053 - Procesutor Pains

I had that really annoying moment when you damage a model so badly it can't be completed. I've been able to repair most of the damage I've done to models with dropping and such but the one I have just destroyed was the Prosecutor Prime from the Age Of Sigmar boxed set.
I have enjoyed assembling the Stormcast models and painting them. However I felt the Prosecutors were too flimsy and had to many details that could snap or chip. Especially those big old wings. They look great but are super delicate. Unfortunately I was rushing the assembly and messed up the gluing of the wings. They are all fused at the back and it's a shame I was unable to fix them.
I will probably turn the other two Prosecutors that went together fine into some scenery. I could do some pretty good statues with them. I don't fancy buying anymore to make a unit of five as I was dreading painting them.

They are great models but just not for me. I think I will stick to ground based units from now on. There are quite a few models in the Order Grand Alliance that I like so I have quite alot of choice to make a great army.

052 - More Liberators

I have completed my second unit of Stormcast Liberators for my starter set of Age of Sigmar, They were pretty good to paint as I like the slightly bigger models with lots of flat armour. The colour scheme really works with the weathering and is relatively simple to do. 

The bases are pretty good as I can add new troops from other Order factions and they will tie in with the rest of the army. I have my eye on some wizards, Elves or possibly even flagellants when I have completed the models from the boxed set. Watch this space!

051 - Stormcast Retributors

Next up on the Stormcast conveyor belt are a unit of three Retributors. They are great hulking models with their massive warhammers and bulky armour. I painted the backpack separately then assembled them and weathered the model as a whole.

In matched play they are not a full unit so until I get another two it's not optimising the points. However I will still take them as they are quite cool and are visually quite impressive. I am really enjoying the weathering process and can't wait to crack on with the next models.

048 - Knight Questor

I really like the new Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower boxed game. The models are fantastic and I bought a couple of White Dwarf issues just to get the rules for Age Of Sigmar. I particularly liked the Knight Questor and bought an extra on off Ebay just for my Stormcast army. This may seem a little excessive but I wanted the one in the game to match the box art colour scheme and the one in my army to match the silver and blue theme that I am using.

The story behind this guy is that he is a Knight Questor that has completed his quest and gone on to rejoin his brothers in the Stormhost.

I painted him like the rest of my army and really got stuck in with the weathering on his cloak. I could imagine it dragging through the mud.

To make him stand out a little I put a bit of blood along his sword blade to make him stand out. He is a great model and could be a fun hero to use as the army general in slightly smaller games.

047 - Muddy Stormcasts

The effect I used for the bases on my new Stormcast Eternals is the Mig Jimenez Heavy Earth Mud. This is an enamel based product so have to use cellulose thinners instead of water to thin them down.

I t was really good fun to slather it all over the bases. I used sponge weathering to add the mud and Typhus Corrosion technical paint to the models.

It's great to make my miniatures look beaten up and more real world than a parade ground finish. I'm really enjoying painting these guys and really look forward to doing more of them.

046 - Weathering Stormcasts

So on launch day last year I picked up the starter box for Age of Sigmar. I got it home and even posted about it here. However it just sat of the shelf gathering dust. So when Silver Tower came out and I wanted to get on board with that I made myself a promise. I would paint at least one faction completely from the Sigmar starter box before I started Silver Tower.

I decided to go for the Stormcasts as they are new and look amazing. There was a bit of a backlash against them but for me they hit the nail on the head. 

I went for a simple silver and blue colour scheme which kind of matches the Hallowed Knights Stormhost. They fought in the realm of life against the forces Nurgle so I wanted to give them a very dirty weathered appearance. I kept the armour and colour scheme quite clean and simple so the weathering really stands out.

I banged out my first unit in short order and really enjoyed the whole weathering process. It was quite good fun slathering on enamel mud and Thypus Corrosion on the models.
This seems like a fun project and I will have a small force and potentially add other Stormcasts as the whim takes me. For Sigmar!

042 - Attic Treasure!

I was in the attic looking for some important documents and lo and behold I found a Black Orc nestled in between my degree and my bronze swimming certificate. Turns out it was the 2000 Game Day miniature sculpted by the very talented Brian Nelson!

I must have painted him back when I was in university. I was quite happy with the paint job I did back in the day so this guy has gone into the display cabinet. It's brighter base makes it really stand out on the Age of Sigmar shelf.

Its great to see a model that I painted a long time ago. I may even dig out some models from when I was obsessed with the Inquistion and take a few photos. I just have to fight my way through some really old bubble wrap!

036 - Inside The Silver Tower

I got all excited and bought Warhammer Quest Silver Tower. I haven't had chance to play yet but wanted to do a few photos of what you get in the actual box.

So here is the front. Gorgeous art work with the Stormcast Eternal featuring really prominently.

The box is rammed full of contents. To save a copying a load of text down here is a shot from the back of the box.

I'm a big fan of the amount of miniatures you get and you can download warscrolls to include them in the Age of Sigmar which is a nice touch. You can get them here. My one criticism of the original Warhammer Quest is just using the models in the game as game pieces and not on the tabletop but this is a great solution!

First up are the heroes, the Gaunt Summoner and the Ogroid Thaumaturge . The Ogroid Thaumaturge is a fantastic new addition to the Chaos Grand Alliance and the model is a great sculpt. The heroes have alot of detail and some really nice touches.

The you get two sets of this sprue with the lower level gribblies on it. I'm looking forward to getting some paint on the Grot Scuttlings.

You also get some hero cards a couple of decks of really nice cards and a few different rulebooks.

The board sections look fantastic and they are surprisingly big and thick!

So that's a very quick run-down of the contents of the box. I will do some posts when I either get t play or when I paint some of the models. The quality is the usual high Games Workshop standard and I'm really happy with what I have got with this game. I can't wait to get stuck in!

033 - Warhammer Quest Silver Tower

Warhammer Quest is back! Whoop!
Games Workshop have dropped a trailer for a game that has been rumoured for a little while now called Warhammer Quest Silver Tower. The trailer is here.
I loved the original Warhammer Quest. It was released in 1995 and had a team of four heroes consisting of a Barbarian, Dwarf, Elf and Wizard fighting against a horde of different creatures in a randomly generated dungeon. The game was one of my favourite that Games Workshop has ever produced and even got some of my teenage friends who weren't into role playing or wargaming throwing some dice.
It also had amazing box art!

Warhammer Quest was also a callback to the Games Workshop and Milton Bradley jointly produced game Heroquest. 

Hopefully this new game will be just as fun as it's predecessors. I can't wait till the 21st of May!

032 - A Total Rebrand

I was in Waterstones and picked up some Warhammer fiction. I really like the omnibus editions. They are quite cheap and you normally get three novels worth of stories and occasionally some short stories as well. I got the Lords Of Chaos omnibus but noticed something really interesting about the branding. It's not Warhammer and it's not Age Of Sigmar. It's Total War Warhammer!

So I assume the old world is now under a total war brand. I suppose it makes sense as that's where the game is set. Hopefully there will be more stories set in the Old World to come!

028 - Deamons In Another Day

Continuing on my Nurgle Deamon army I have finished some more of Papa Nurgle's minions. 

As before with the Plaguebearers I used the ghostly technique of a white undercoat, a wash of Nilhiakh Oxide then a drybrush of white.

The first guy up is 1980s Great Unclean One. In game terms I will use him as a Deamon Prince as he is a little small compared to the more modern Greater Deamons. I stuck a spare metal Nurgling on the base for flavour.

The guy with the scythe is actually an old Epic model of Mortarion the Death Guard Primarch. I got this guy in the early 90s and used him as a Nurgle Chaos Sorcerer. However nowadays he is a Herald of Nurgle.

I had an Ebay splurge at New Year and got this Nurgle Champion. I love the face on this guy. Again he is going to be used as a Herald of Nurgle.

These are my HQ choices. I may add more in the future but I think they look great. Now I have to do a load of little Nurglings. Go team Nurgle!

026 - Freaking Warhounds!

I'll come right out and say it as it's no surprise for most people in this hobby. Games Workshop kits are amazing. They seem to get better year on year. They have extra bits to convert your models. The CAD design process has helped them get more detail on each sprue.  They are a cut above other models available.
However some kits are a little "meh".
I recently bought five plastic Warhounds off Ebay and then bought some of the new oval bases that have been released for Age Of Sigmar. Thinking they would be a quick project to get a small unit on the table which I could expand with a ten model box set if they were quite fun to assemble and paint I set to work.
The models were quite easy to put together but as they were in two pieces there was a line running straight down the centre of the model. I had similar problems with the fur lined capes of my chaos warriors with a massive gap in quite a prominent location. I had to get the sculpting tool  and green stuff and fill in the gaps. To be fair this is a slightly older kit and the more recent efforts from Games Workshop have slightly more clever  pieces so things like fur and armour detail are not interrupted by a injection mark or a mould line.
This is how they turned out:

With the Warhounds I got them finished in the end but it was definitely a case of  finish them to a decent standard and hope nobody looks too closely. It's not my best work but sometimes you just have to push through the pain barrier to get a unit done.

025 - Beastlord Addition

One thing that I really like about the Age Of Sigmar is the army selection. With most armies in 40k and 30k it is very structured but you can just choose what you want in Age Of Sigmar. it's quite liberating at first. I'm a big fan of the size of the armies. It makes it easy it to finish an army. You don't have to have  a certain points value in mind you can just say enough is enough.
With my Tzeench war-band I wanted to add some Beastmen. I was a big fan of the old Chaos army where you could add Deamons, Beastmen and Warriors of Chaos to a whole army. This was brought back in The End Times but can easily be adapted to Age Of Sigmar by just sticking to the Chaos faction.
I had a hunt on Ebay and found a bargain of a Beastlord. I think it makes a great hard hitting alternative to the more magic focused Tzeench heroes which will be in the Tzeench contingent of my Chaos army.
Here he is in all his beastly glory.

I quite like the pose of the model although the way the axe is positioned I had to paint the model in it's component parts. The colour scheme is a little wacky but I wanted the skin tone to match the Tzeench Sorcerer Lord that I have already painted.
I am already looking at adding a couple of Beastmen units to the army as the Beastlord's contingent. As a whole I am enjoy the Age of Sigmar army build experience because I don't have to worry about any of the constraints of the Warhammer Fantasy Battles army selection so I can basically pick whatever I want and in the future I want Beastmen!

019 - Chosen Of Tzeench

I wanted to start a new Chaos army for the Age Of Sigmar. I started a Tzeench Army as I have always like Tzeench because he is a scheming git of a god. It has a little more depth than the other gods whose motivation consists of killing, rotting or sex respectively. I had a box of Chaos Warriors that I was going to use as Space Wolves conversions that never panned out and a Tzeench Sorcerer Lord that was going to be another conversion but was sitting in my bits box. This gave me a great basis for my warband.

The Warriors of Chaos have blue capes which will be a running theme throughout the army. I shaved off the horns of the helmets to make them look a little different to the normal warriors. I have given the hero horns sprouting out of the side to make him stand out.

One of the really liberating things with Age Of Sigmar is the way you can build an army. It seems pretty mind blowing after years of percentages of Core, Special and Rare choices that you can just pick what you want. I could have an army full of Warshrines if I really want or ten Bloodthristers. The only real restrictions is making it fun and fair for your opponent so that you will get a second game!
I have limited myself to Tzeench choices over the Mortal, Daemon and Beast categories and will grab the models that catch my eye rather than the ones that are super effective. I have always loved the Chaos Wastes (which I suppose now is conveniently the Realm of Chaos) and the Warbands that are constantly being tested there. Some of them will fight for years and never see the lands of men due to them trying to get the attention of the Chaos Gods.

I had some of the Famous Familiars which I had for another project (see a theme with models being from another uncompleted project) which I dropped into the army as backup for the Sorcerer Lord. There is some concern from the community that they wont support their current range of models with rules but these models came out in 1988 and have new rules. I think if a model is popular and fits in with the design ethos the studio is going for then I believe they will have some kind of support for them.

With an addition of  a Chaos Spawn that I did in the same kind of colour scheme as the Sorcerer Lord I think I have the start of a really characterful warband.
Now I have a few mortal units I think it's time to add some Beastmen!

018 - Daemons In A Day

I've said it before and I'll say it again I am a really slow painter. I've been getting better and have been cracking though my Space Wolves at a decent pace. However I needed a little pallet cleanser.
I have quite a few metal Nurgle Daemons from the late 80s and early 90s. This was due to a combination of Ebay purchases and old models that I found in a box that I didn't open for a good 15 years. These guys were sitting on a shelf in the hobby room waiting to be painted as a Nurgle allies contingent for my Iron Warriors.
However I kind of knew that I would never get them painted. There was far too much power armour in the painting queue. I needed an easy method to get them done, Luckily I spoke to the manager of the local Games Workshop and he showed me a method of how he painted his Spirit Hosts for his Undead Warhammer army using Nilhiakh Oxide. Thus the idea for my Nurgle Daemons was born!

The method to painting these guys was very simple. Firstly I undercoated them white.

Then gave it a liberal wash of Nilhiakh Oxide.

Then a drybrush of white and based them to match the rest of my armies.

And they are done! 

These models are very different to the look of my other models but the basing is the same as my Iron Warriors and my Age of Sigmar Chaos army so they can slot into either. I like the idea of ghostly Daemons materialising from the warp in the middle of the battlefield.
I was very happy with how they turned out and I was very chuffed with completing a unit of twelve within a day. Normally it takes me a week to do five models!
Now I have had an easy win it's back to painting Space Wolves!

012 - Age Of Sigmarines

The big talking point of the launch of The Age Of Sigmar (well apart from the round bases and four page rule book) was the introduction of the new faction The Stormcast Eternals.

I am a big fan of the amount of models that you get in the Age Of Sigmar starter set. Just on the Sigmarites side you get a Lord-Celestlan on a Dracoth, a Lord-Relictor, two units of five Liberators, three Retributers and three Proscetuors.  So that is one monster mounted character and seventeen infantry. These are big models, a little bigger than Terminators armoured sized models so I you get quite a good small army. Games Workshop have also released a warscroll to use the force as a detachment.

I like the new models. I get that everybody's first impression are that they are fantasy space amrines but I think that Games Workshop have done really well to get a new faction with a unique design asthetic. However one thing I'm not such a fan of is that the models are very busy with details. Some times I like my models a little simpler to paint but I suppose that extra detail is quite a  nice problem to have! I may just keep the boxed army and paint it and then see where I am. I could expand it with other Stormcast Eternals or just add some other factions such as Elves or Dwarfs in a similar colour scheme to get a nice Grand Alliance army.

I haven't decided what colour scheme to do as I'm not sure about painting gold! The Age Of Sigmar book has a few different colour schemes including a snazzy turqiose one. As I have a pot of Swooping Hawk Tourquize from 1989 that is still viable I might have my scheme right there!

As you can see the I have a little bit of work to be getting on with!

008 - Trying Something New

After being 40k focused for most of my hobby lifetime I decided to try something new.

I said I wouldn't but I got caught up in the hype over Warhammer: The Age Of Sigmar and ended up pre-ordering a copy. I don't know what possessed me to do this. Maybe it was playing in a fantasy setting again, maybe it was getting in at ground level with a new game, it could have even been the fancy new models kicking about or it could be the fact I walked into a Games Workshop store and panicked!
When I got back into the hobby properly in 2014 I never felt inclined to buy a copy of Island of Blood. I think I fell into a category common with alot of Games Workshop fans that I liked Warhammer Fantasy Battle but not enough to want to play it.
Fluffwise I loved the setting. Everyone was living in a magic infused world which I felt still had some real depth to go into with Nippon and Cathay. But sadly with the End Times done we don't have to worry about those places popping up. The ranks and ranks of almost historical looking soldiers appealed to me. The world seemed huge with the massive World's edge Mountains and the Chaos Wastes that had infinite possibilities.                                                              
In the 1990s when I was a young impressionable lad I devoured the background. The dark and barbaric fantasy world really touched something in me. I read quite a few of the novels and when White Dwarf did short fiction I hoovered that up too. The Gotrek and Felix books by Bill King are some of the best fiction Games Workshop ever produced and some of my fondest memories of the Old World.                                            
The Empire was my favourite good guy army. I even had an Empire Army at one point when I flirted with playing in 6th Edition. I think I was always a a bit more casual because my favourite game fantasy wise was always Warhammer Quest. It was very individual and I even got my none gaming friends to have a short campaign with me.
Alot has been said about the over-simplification of the rules for Age Of Sigmar what with them being released as a four page booklet but I think that is misleading as they released hundreds of pages of rules in the form of the warscrolls which is where I think that the meat of the game will lie.
As a new gamer the simple rules and the much lower model count really appeal to me. I have started to plan out a new army from some of the warscrolls which can be as big or as small as I decide. I feel like before you would have to have quite big armies to play but now a couple of boxes and you have the start of an army. Not that the box isn't short of models anyway!

Now I have my grasping little hands on a copy I'm going to have a good look at the rulebook (all four pages of it!) and digest what it has to offer.
Keep on gaming!