Nighthaunt Fortress

 Bubbling with spirit magic welling up out of the ground, the Nighthaunt fortress stands as a secure base for assembling processions.

Don't be fooled by the open gate. Your soul will be ripped from your body should you be foolish enough to enter.

Mwah, Ha, Ha, Ha.......gurgle.

Review: Warcry Catacombs Khainite Shadowstalker Models

Khainite Shadowstalker Warband

Warcry is possibly my favourite game to have emerged from the GW stable in recent years and it goes from strength to strength with the release of the new Catacomb 'complete game in a box'.

Shadowstalkers are the first non-chaos unique warband for Warcry, given that Morathi's Khainite goon squads are on the side of Order - theoretically, at least.

Khainite Shadowstalkers are Morathi's Double Ohs. They wear the mircath cloak that gifts power over shadows but binds the wearer to the Queen's psychotic will.

Assembling the eight models was a bit of a pain because the bits were arranged like 3D puzzles and the parts involve very narrow brittle plastic weapons and connections. No matter how I tried, I ended up breaking pieces as I tried to fit the fiendishly designed components together while getting everything covered in glue.

And no, dry fitting first doesn't always help. You get two odd shaped bits to dry-fit after a titanic struggle involving odd twisting motions like masonic handshakes. Then you get them apart, add glue, repeat and they now wont go together...gibber.

I chose a fairly vanilla weapon load-out, following the box art: there are plenty of options on the sprues.

The finished models, though, are amazing...with the one proviso that I worry how they will stand up to travel and repeated handling.

Shroud Queen

I decided to use dark purple-blue shades that I think reflected the zeitgeist of the collection. Silver is the contrasting spot colour because I associate 'silvery' with the moon and moonshadows.

The enigmatic Shroud Queen is, of course, the warband leader.

Shroudblades

These are the warband's sword-fodder. The one on the left has cursed swords and on the right, an umbral spear.

I love the 'Spy versus Spy' look of the right hand model.

Darkflame & Shroudblade

The Darkflame hero has repeater crossbows - all very Dark Elf.

Slaughtershade

Another character armed with the whip of, er, something or other nasty.

Shroudblade & Darkflame

The Darkflame character is armed with a flaming hand...must be good....right?

 

Review Splintered Fang Warband, Warcry

The Splintered Fang

Warcry has become one of my favourite GW games. A great advantage is that all a new player actually needs is a warband and the rulebook.

My long time opponent, Shaun M, gave me some Warcry Bands for my birthday last year and I have used the lockdown to paint them.

I used mostly contrast paints, notably the turquoise and orange.

Go Left

The Splintered Fang are vaguely Atlantis-Hoplite-Gladiator looking troops whose main gig is their poisoned blades. They are snake people.

The models are excellent, as are all the Warcry bands. These are more durable than some of the others: Warcry bands can be a bit fragile.

I can see them appealing to anyone wanting an ancient-fantasy skirmish group.

No, Right

The only disappointment is that ridiculous snake model with a half doz tiny snakes on. I mean how frightening is that? Why not a decent sized serpent?

Nevertheless, great kit and good value for £30 including Warcry cards.

Oh and you can also use these as a chaos unit in Age of Sigmar.

Nighthaunt Banshees

Woooohhhhhhh!

The lockdown continues and I am so bored I have taken to weeding the drive.

Meanwhile, the latest output from the sausage factory.

Still Wooohhh!

As an experiment these were entirely painted with contrast paints except for matt white.

Review Warcry: Unmade

Unmade Warband - click to enlarge.

Warcry is, in my view, a much underrated fantasy skirmish wargame from The Evil Empire. It uses doubles and trebles, etc, from the roll of a set of dice to allow pieces to undertake actions of various complexity. The background is of small chaos warbands, not drawn from the usual factions, roaming the Eight Points realm trying to carry out great deeds to impress The Everchosen of Chaos. Mostly this involves beating up other small warbands.

The Unmade are one of those bands from the Realm of Shish (Realm of the Dead). They worship chaos in the form of pain and to be in an Unmade warband you have to cut your own face off and wear it as a belt buckle decoration - yes, even by GeeDubya standards this is really gruesome. Such a warrior is known as Awakened.

Yep, you really have to suffer for your wokeness in Age of Sigmar.

Moving up in status, a warrior is allowed to cut an arm off so as to permanently attach a weapon. These are the Ascended.

The second in command get to cut both arms off - an honour indeed - which is presumably why they are know as Joyous Ones.

But the leaders are the pièce de résistance. They are known as blissful ones because they get to cut off their legs as well as their arms - and become bladerunners.

The models are some of the best Citadel have made. Really, really beautiful .....in a sadomasochistic sort of way. My only criticism, and it applies to all the Warcry warbands, is that they are a bit delicate as playing pieces. Gorgeous models for a diorama set in an insane world, though.

Highly Recommended (the game ain't bad, either)

On My Painting Table: Nurgle's Lord of Blights

Mostly spend today writing a book on skirmish wargaming, but I did get to do a quick paint job on my new Lord of Blights model for my game tonight with Shaun.

He has this humongous fly-shield complete with pawn-balls.

Looks almost as good going as coming.

This is a great model and should buff up my Blight Kings nicely.

Recommended.

Reaper Bones, Varghulf Courtier Substitute

I fancied adding a Varghulf Courtier to my Flesh Eater Courts Army. Now the GW model is very nice but too rich for me at £20 for a single model.

In this situation, I often turn to Reaper Bones and discovered this gargoyle model for £7, which I felt fitted the style of the army well - and fitted my wallet even better

.

I added some 'fur' on the back using Milliput and a modelling needle to bulk out the model and more closely mimic the style of the GW mini.

The RB fig is slightly smaller than a Crypt Flayer but not ridiculously so.

It's a nice mini and I'm pleased with it.

It came yesterday so I did a fast paint job last night so it would be ready to take on Dr Simon E's  bloody Lizards after lunch.

Age of Sigmar: Flesh-Eater Courts Starter Set Review

Abhorrant Ghoul King On Terrorgheist

My first reaction to AoS was decidedly negative because of the terrible launch decisions but I started wheeling out some of my old fantasy armies, when the General's Handbook came out and I could build a fair army to play an opponent,  and discovered the game was great fun.

But I had no intention of buying any new models, none whatsoever ye ken, under no circumstances, and then I wandered into my flgs and saw the starter set and the models were Oooooooh and the price was reasonable and.........

 Abhorrant Ghoul King On Terrorgheist

Centre piece of the army is a monster kit, that can be assembled as a giant undead bat or dragon. I chose the bat and used it as a mount for my Ghoul King.

Abhorrant Ghoul King On Terrorgheist

The paving on the base is scratch-built from plastic card, fish-tank gravel and sand. I wanted to give a ruined ancient city look to match the fluff in the Battletome, that I also sorta bought (but second hand on ebay - honest).

Crypt Flayers

One also gets the bits for three 'small monsters' that can be assembled to give a variety of running or flying characters of 'heavy' troops. I chose to build them as Crypt Flayers.

Crypt Ghouls And Crypt Ghast

Finally, you get some cannon fodder, ten crypt ghouls let by a Crypt Ghast or you can upgrade the ghast to an independent character, the Crypt Ghast Courtier.

Against The Seraphon

The box contents are a playable army of around 600 pts or so, depending what options you choose to build.

You are short of ordinary foot, so I use 20 Oldhammer Zombies as ghouls to pad out the army. These are crummy models - too big for the stands so they stand shoulder to shoulder in a ranked army more like Guardsmen than Zombies - but fine as fillers for my Court.

Crypt Flayers Kill A Lizard Monster


So what did I learn about the army in its first tryout against Seraphon.

Weeell......

Advantages
You have some highly mobile units that can be across the battlefield in a flash of wings.
Your units hit hard on the attack.

Disadvantages
Crummy armour save, you need to use your unit's advantages to take out the opposition before they wear you down

I also learnt a few things about AoS
We already have 'codex-creep': (i) 'new' armies like Seraphon and Courts are much tougher than old armies like Slaves to Darkness and (ii) winning the initiative can have a sizable impact on the balance of the game.

So there we are and, of course, I shall not buy any more.

No really, I can give this up whenever  want....

Age of Sigmar - Oldhammer, Slaves to Darkness

Lord Frak the Faithless, Chaos Lord on Daemonic Mount

Age of Sigmar has, since they sorted it out a bit, given me an excuse to make some of the Oldhammer armies in miniature that I always fancied but couldn't afford. One of them was Slaves to Darkness: I give you my 'Despicables'.

All the units but one were bought for reasonable sums second hand from eBay.

My Chaos Lord is assembled from spare bits that an eBay seller kindly bunged in the box for free.

Drok the Dumb, Exalted Hero of Chaos

This is a new Reaper Bones model purchased for two of our Brexit Pounds.

The Dark Knights of Destruction, Chaos Knights

The Knights of Baneful Blue, Chaos Knights

The knights are the heavy hitters of the army.

Chaos Gorebeast Chariot

Very useful on the charge as a follow unit to the knights. This was a well made and painted model that I only had to blend in with the rest of my army by freshening up the colours.

Chaos Chariot

This model had been coated in araldyte so required cleaning and disassembling in paint stripper: horrible job but the results are good.

Chaos Chosen

In Humbrol 'multicolour' metallic green.

Chaos Warriors

The cannon fodder for holding ground.

The paint jobs are designed to suggest a non-specific Chaos Army but sinister, with lots of glossy black, dark metallics and various multicolour sprays - highlighted with bright metallic green and blue.

The army works out at about 1000 pts which I think is optimum for AoS.

Taking the objective.

We played a three-objective scenario where one got a victory point for each objective held uncontested at the end of each turn, with one unit coming on each turn. First one to 12 points wins.

Drok grabbed the objective nearest me, which was fine but I made the error of moving on my slow units first with a vague idea of keeping my army together.

Contesting the middle objective.

That tactical mistake allowed my opponent, Simon E., to grab and hold the middle objective for two turns (as well as the objective on his side of the table) before I got mobile units in to contest.

I never recovered from that initial two point disparity and lost by 12 points to 10.

Fun game.

Blight Kings

I recently decided my Nurgle Daemon Army needed more punch so acquired some Blight Kings.

At a pinch, they could also serve as Nurgle terminators, assuming I ever play 40K again.

I like these models: they are full of character.

Of course that rather depends whether the next edition of 40K cleans it up and turns it back into a playable Fire and Manoeuvre wargame as opposed to a bloated monster.

IHMN Venusian Self Propelled Artillery/ AoS Oldhammer Stegadon Mash-Up

I acquired an Oldhammer Stegadon howdah without the stegadon off eBay, stripped it clean and painted it to match my AoS skink/IHMN Venusian army.

Now, as it happens, the Oldhammer Stegadon is more like a Triceratops and, as it happens, by chance I have a few very old Natural History Museum Triceratops knocking around. :)

'Twas but the work of a moment to respray the hard plastic dino toy, stick on the howdah, add a skink Mahout and stick it to one of my Venusian swamp bases - lot o' swamps on Venus, don'tchahknow.

The 'Stegadon' has stopped to munch on a giant Venusian swamp flower.

And off we go.

IHMN Venusian Heavy Cavalry/ AoS Troglodon Mash-Up

I use GW skinks for my IHMN Venusian Native Army. These are available second hand for a song and are reasonably priced when new.

The Troglodon is, however, one of those wildly overpriced large-but-simple plastic kits that GW specialise in.

However Carnegie Collection dinosaurs are available prepainted for around a tenner and are gorgeous models. This is their Spinosaurus. All I did was reposition the feet (using boiling water) to tilt the body forward into a more accurate pose - bipedal dinosaurs did not walk upright - add a couple of skinks, and put it on a Venusian base.

I am really pleased with the result and the fact that it only cost me a tenner plus some spares I had sitting in store really appeals to my skinflint soul.

Review: Reaper Filth Beast, aka Beast of Nurgle

This is a Reaper Bones Dark Heaven Filth Beast which I have painted up as a Beast of Nurgle.

It is one of Reaper's polymer models retailing typically in the UK for about £2.75. To give an idea of scale, the model is mounted on a 50mm base.

Reaper Bones miniatures are made of a soft, light polymer but unlike polyethylene it is not greasy so it sticks easily with superglue and does not resist paint. The material is very robust but not easy to cut or shape. However the molding is excellent with no obvious  lines.

I vastly prefer this mini to the official GW model, which is currently unavailable and I doubt if it will sell for £2.75!
I love the disease/reproduction pods along the side.

It comes without a base: I modelled this one with milliput and GW slime paint or Nurgle's Rot, as they name it.

Highly recommended

Review Age of Sigmar: Skull Keep - A Curate's Egg

Chaos Dreadhold: Skull Keep is a Games Workshop plastic kit retailing for £45.

First Impressions: when you open the box are of a typical Games Workshop terrain piece made of chunky bits of plastic.

Manufacturing Quality: Pretty crummy, as I've come to expect from GW Terrain pieces. Nothing fits together properly. If you blow up my photos you will see that the walls almost touch. I deliberately didn't use plastic filler on this build.

Design Quality: Very good, there is nothing quite like this in plastic from any one else. It looks great with lots of nobbly bits. An imaginative piece to act as a great centre piece in a variety of scenarios.

Suitability For Wargaming: Excellent, it is tough, light and has plenty of room to get models on. And it breaks down into halves to put models on the first floor. All this makes it easy to store and transport.

Value For Money: Sigh, about average. £45 is a great deal of moolah for a cheaply produced,  simple kit of dubious manufacturing quality, even if it is nicely designed and well thought out as a wargame piece.

Recommended?: Hmm, depends. If you really, really fancy it then go ahead but be prepared for a lousy build and a hole in your wallet.

Note: I used the 'Red' (second from left) Humbrol multi spray to get a shimmer effect on the model. It doesn't really show up in still photos but the colour changes depending on the angle at which sunlight reflects off the surface. I assume this is a variant of a 'structural colouration' effect - like a butterfly's wing.

The painting technique is simple: Spray with black primer, coat with black gloss, and then spray on the multi-effect.