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!

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!

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!