Painted Blood Stalkers

Here are a unit of Blood Stalkers for my nascent Daughters of Khaine force in Age of Sigmar. In game I’ve found them a little disappointing as they’re quite expensive for a very low number of not-very-exciting bow shots, and their melee presence has never been able to make up for this. My experience so far can be summarised that they move up, shoot a couple of arrows into something, then immediately get overrun. As usual, I think that this is likely to be player error; notably Blood Stalkers have great movement speed so probably I should make more of that.

I really love the miniatures though, so I can forgive their performance on the tabletop. They call out to the Ray Harryhausen fan in me, who has not really grown up since watching Jason and the Argonauts etc in the mid 80s. I had all sorts of ideas for varying the skin tone of the snake part, but realised that if I wanted them to look like a unit then I’d need to have something more to visually link them together than just the hair (and fairly skimpy armour). So in the end I painted a nice bright green and cream combination for the snake part and tried to match the general approach of the Witch Aelves for the rest of the miniature. I’m very pleased with the final results.

I dedicate this post to Alex from Leadballoony‘s Fembruary Challenge.

Next on the painting table: Druze Shock Team with Chain Colt.

Painted Troll Axer

This is a Troll Axer, the last of the plastic light Warbeasts in my painting queue for the Trollbloods (though not the last miniature in said queue). There are loads of Axers, Bouncers and Impalers around because they are part of the faction starter kit for Hordes. As a light Warbeast, the Axer provides a modest melee threat at fairly modest price point. For me, the main draw is the Rush Animus to speed up my other Warbeasts. Sadly this competes with the Rage Animus (from the Dire Troll Mauler) which I find is often needed to get the Warbeasts to actually do something when they finally arrive. As with so many other Hordes matters, this is probably more indicative of my skill at the game than it is of anything about the Axer itself.

The miniature is another very slight variation of the sculpt for the Bouncer and the Impaler; it does not take a close examination to spot the shared legs and similar pose overall. I quite like the way that this works for the Axer though as it looks like it is meanly advancing on its next victim. As for the other pair of light Warbeasts, I wanted to stick to mainly neutral colours… apart from the skin of course.

Like the Bouncer and Impaler, I dedicate this post to Azazel’s Neglected Models February Challenge. They’ve been sitting on my painting table half-finished for about a year and I’m very pleased to get these polished off. Here is a photo of the three siblings getting ready for a night out on the town.

Next on the painting table: Blood Stalkers.

Painted Blue Horrors

These are Blue Horrors, part of the Chaos Daemons faction I’m gradually working on for Warhammer 40K. I’m kind of doing these in the wrong order since one would normally start with Pink Horrors (which I don’t even own yet) then they split into two smaller, weaker Blue Horrors instead of dying. The Blues then split themselves into a pair of Brimstone Horrors upon their deaths. They can all be bought and fielded separately too so there is no need to always put Pink Horrors in the army list. I’m not really sure how best to use the Blue Horrors though. If I just want cheap body blockers and tarpits then Brimstones seem to be way to go, whereas Pink Horrors are the option if I actually want them to achieve anything.

Anyway, the Blue Horrors were pleasingly fast and simple to paint up to my satisfaction. The whole lot got painted blue all over (the clue is in the name, after all) then I picked out the weapons and jewellery in silver. I chose silver since it provided a nicer contrast to the skin than bronze. Finally I picked out the flames, tongues and teeth to brighten the lot of them up. I’m quite happy with the results, especially considering the amount of time expended on them.

Next on the painting table: Troll Axer.

Painted Druze Shock Team with Marksman Rifle

Here is another Druze Shock Team to take her place in my Druze Bayram Security army in Infinity. She brings some slightly longer range firepower to the team compared to the various Combi Rifles and I’ve found the Marksman Rifle profile really useful for spot removal in the active turn. Otherwise (of course) she is much like all the other Druze, being rather reliable and hard to winkle out of good cover; a true professional.

This Druze Shock Team received the same colours as the rest of her team mates as I think that the white and green provide a nice contrast to each other and also to the dark of the weapons and strapping. Like the Heavy Machine Gunner, she is wearing battle heels which I find very silly, but I’m not about to reculpt her legs and feet just to ensure that she can go into battle in sensible shoes.

I dedicate this post to Alex from Leadballoony‘s Fembruary Challenge; it is a worthy reason to dig out female miniatures as they’re very under-represented in our hobby.

Next on the painting table: Blue Horrors.

Warmachine / Hordes battle report: Minions vs Mercenaries (75 points); 14Feb2019

When I first started this blog I wrote up a lot of battle reports but as time went by I found that I was only doing tournament reports. So here is a one-off report for Warmachine, a game I love to play even though I’m quite awful at it.

I’ve had a hankering to run Minions again in Warmachine, but this time we were using (mostly) the correct miniatures so I thought I’d set up another thread to document my ineffectual flailing through this wonderful game. Joe wanted to try out some of the CID Pirate stuff so we threw down.

Invasion (scenario 4) vs Joe’s Mercenaries

https://conflictchamber.com/?cb201b_-0PjP4cjNjNjWbM7y7F4njD7g

Minion Army – 75 / 75 points
[Theme] Will Work for Food

[Jaga-Jaga 1] Jaga-Jaga, the Death Charmer [+27]
– Blackhide Wrastler [16]
– Swamp Horror [15]
– Swamp Horror [15]
– Gatorman Soul Slave [0(5)]
Brun Cragback [16]
Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor [0(5)]
Rorsh [15]
Totem Hunter [0(6)]
Farrow Valkyries [8]
Greygore Boomhowler & Co. (max) [17]

The basic idea of the list is to leverage Rage-d, Signs and Portents, Overtake Swamp Horrors because that sounds quite amusing. My main dilemma was what infantry to take for Jaga Jaga’s Feat turn. In the end I settled on Boomhowlers as they have decent armour and could possibly contribute in a jamming role even if I couldn’t get a good Feat turn out. I probably slightly prefer Nyss in the role but in this case the high defence / low armour is obviously less helpful. I had a Dr Arkadius list as a back-up that I’m also quite excited to try out but never really intended to use it here. Thanks to the extensiveness of Joe’s collection, Calaban is a proxy for Jaga Jaga and a pair of Trolls are representing the Swamp Horrors.

https://conflictchamber.com/?c6201b_-0QnTnV8jnQnQnQnM8SnPnPnP8Mca

Mercenary Army – 75 / 75 points
[Theme] The Talion Charter

!!! This army contains CID entries.

[Rahera 1] Captain Rahera, Terror of the Wailing Sea [+28]
– Blockader [35]
– Freebooter [9]
– Swashbuckler [8]
– Swashbuckler [8]
– Swashbuckler [8]
Bosun Grogspar [0(5)]
Lord Rockbottom [0(4)]
Powder Monkey [0(2)]
Powder Monkey [2]
Powder Monkey [2]
Lady Aiyana & Master Holt [8]
The Commodore Cannon & Crew [7]
Scharde Pirates (max) [14]
– Scharde Pirate Officer [4]

I think almost everything here is in CID one way or another. I’m not going to comment on any CID game balance matters because a) I’m terrible at WarmaHordes and b) I have no idea what the Pirate stuff did before so any change is meaningless to me. Needless to say, there are a ton of proxies here but I think that most of them are quite straightforward; notably the Scharde Pirates are represented by some of my old Press Gangers and the Commodore Cannon is played by a Road Hog.

Turn 1: Mercenaries
Captain Rahera casts Escort and Rough Seas, then pretty much everything runs forward. Slightly to my surprise, Joe has the light Warjacks screening his Scharde Pirates and not the other way around.

Turn 1: Minions
I also run my stuff forward, though I’m a bit more circumspect about it in order to respect the threat ranges of Joe’s front line. I’m not so worried about the shooting elements as that has me outranged anyway. I’ve deployed the Totem Hunter in a stupid place so it has to run over to the middle to get Grave Wind (I’d planned to start with it in the centre and run to hassle the flanks). Battle Host is also cast.

Turn 2: Mercenaries
Rahera upkeeps Escort and allocates one Focus to the Swashbuckler on my left. The Commodore Cannon slams Lug back and knocks it down. Various Powder Monkeys Empower the left Swashbuckler and the Blockader so they’re both full. The Blockader saunters forward and vaporises the poor Totem Hunter (100% player error on my side) and a couple of random Boomhowlers. The Swashbuckler charges through the Blockader and kills another.

Turn 2: Minions
The Soul Slave upkeeps Battle Host on Jaga Jaga’s behalf. Lug stands up and runs toward the action. The Soul Slave puts ghostly on the Boomhowlers; four of them run deep in preparation for their untimely death at the hands of their employer (they’re mercenaries, they knew what they were signing up for) and the rest move to get in the Blockader’s way. Boomhowler himself sings Cacophony. I have a slight activation order issue in that I’ve blocked Jaga Jaga from moving forward so the Wrastler puts Rage on the right Swamp Horror and takes a nice chunk out of the Freebooter. Jaga Jaga casts Signs and Portents and Rages the second Swamp Horror. She also Feats on four Boomhowlers, killing Aiyana, Holt, Lord Rockbottom and putting a little damage onto Rahera. The Swamp Horrors go in with crazy dice; the one on the right finishes the Freebooter and drops the Swashbuckler while the one on the left kills its Swashbuckler and smacks the Blockader a little. Finally, the Valkyries ding up the last Swashbuckler and Brine finishes it off. Sadly, I’m an idiot and don’t move the third Valkyrie into the right zone which would have allowed me to score. 0 – 0.

Turn 3: Mercenaries
Rahera allocates nothing but upkeeps Escort. The Monkeys fill up the Blockader again and the Commodore Cannon slams Lug to the ground again. Rahera Feats, charges Boomhowler through the Blockader and sprints back behind the house where she started. The Blockader repositions slightly and kills the last Boomhowler, Lug and the Swamp Horror. The Scharde Pirates use No Quarter and slam into my front line. 0 – 0.

Turn 3: Minions
Battle Host is upkept. Jaga Jaga casts Signs and Portents and backs nervously away from Rahera and the Blockader. The Valkyries begin the process of clearing out the Scharde Pirates (and are careful to all end up in the right zone this time) and Rorsh contributes too. Brine charges across and kills Bosun Grogspar and overtakes nicely around to deal with some more of the Pirates. The Wrastler kills even more to heal up and clear the Swamp Horror. Orin hits the Objective with Chain Lightning and the electroleaps kill all three Powder Monkeys. One of them kills him in return after falling from the sky from halfway across the board which was quite surprising. The Soul Slave puts Rage on the Swamp Horror and it goes all in on Rahera [edit: actually this isn’t allowed. Oops!]. Sadly for me she toughs the last attack and I have nothing left to finish her with.

Turn 4: Mercenaries
Rahera drops Escort and stands up. She then charges Jaga Jaga and burns through all my transfers. The Commodore Cannon slams the Swamp Horror but I’m less annoyed this time because at least the Horror has Steady. The Blockader walks round but can’t finish Jaga Jaga. 2 – 0

Turn 4: Minions
Brine annoyingly Frenzies into the Wrastler, taking out its mind. We discuss whether it is worth casting Signs and Portents and eventually decide that it is not. So Jaga Jaga kills Rahera on the first attack; she doesn’t get tough this time. Minions win by Assassination.

I really enjoyed that game, and of course each time I play Joe it is a pleasure. The Swamp Horrors were just as entertaining as I had hoped, though the dice were really on my side in my turn 2. Things I learned:

• Lug is probably best when he is actually standing up instead of being constantly knocked down and slammed back. I’ll try him again.
• My deployment and positioning need a lot of improvement. In particular it cost me the Totem Hunter before it could do anything more useful than waste some precious Fury casting Grave Wind on it.
• Boomhowlers were adequate as Feat targets in this list; they were good enough to contribute while also being high enough armour to make the Feat effective.

Painted Troll Impaler

Here is a Troll Impaler for my Hordes Trollbloods army. Being a light Warbeast, I will admit that he suffers from the same lack of motivation to paint as the Bouncer so I ended up painting them (and an Axer who is still in progress) more-or-less together. As light Warbeasts go, the Impaler is quite expensive but in a few test games I can’t get him to do anything very useful (though I’ll freely note that this is probably due to my lack of skill at the game); he just throws a couple of spears at people from down range until I’m forced to engage with him. Then he pokes uselessly at a few fools and dies quite easily. The Impaler does bring along the Far Strike Animus which is handy for letting ranged Warlocks like Jarl Skuld shoot from further away. On the other hand, the Dire Troll Bomber has the same Animus and has generally been far more amusing to play.

The paint scheme here is largely the same as the Bouncer, being a mix of browns for the clothes and metals for the armour and weapons. The Impaler is meant to have a quiver of spare javelins attached to his back but I couldn’t get it to look quite right and it kept falling off in transport so in the end I just left it.

Like the Bouncer, I dedicate this post to Azazel’s Neglected Models February Challenge; hopefully I’ll sort the Axer out in time too and just share a single photo of all three.

Next on the painting table: Druze Shock Team with Marksman Rifle

Painted Brimstone Horrors

My good friend Gareth had a bit of a hankering to get back into Warhammer 40K, and so I agreed to join him. I do have some Harlequins to use but I realised that since I already have pretty much one of each kit that exists for that force, it would be hard to expand much. We might not go to big games anyway, but I took the opportunity for a new project anyway. After some discussion, I have ended up with Chaos Daemons, and my recent birthday present included a box of Blue Horrors and Brimstone Horrors.

I don’t even think that Brimstone Horrors were in the game or the story the last time I touched Warhammer 40K, but they seem like quite cute little chaps. They are dirt cheap (the ten pictured barely cost more than a single Space Marine) and have stats to match. I guess that their main purpose is to get in the way and hopefully soak up some bullets intended for bigger and more dangerous part of my army.

As befits a unit of probably the cheapest models in the game, I didn’t spend too long on this lot. A yellow coat was followed by orange on most of the raised parts and then red on the highest sections and the tips of the flames that the Brimstone Horrors are made up of. I then picked out the eyes and teeth, mainly because otherwise they looked a little too much like they were only fire (i.e. and not little imps) at a distance.

Next on the painting table: Troll Impaler.

Painted Troll Bouncer

This burly chap is a Troll Bouncer; regular readers (if there are any) will recognise him as a part of my Trollbloods force for Hordes. He is a light Warbeast, which for some reason I just find less interesting than their heavy counterparts, and since I’m less keen to play them, I’m also less likely to paint them. In the case of the Bouncer, he makes a pretty handy bodyguard and I can certainly see cases where I’d want one in my army. On the other hand, in this role he rather overlaps the same job as the Warders; there are of course advantages and disadvantages to either approach.

I took a fairly simple approach to painting the Bouncer. I think that in the story Trolls (as opposed to Trollkin) are not much more intelligent than tool-using animals so I wanted to represent this by keeping to plain colours on the clothes. I figure that the Trollkin wouldn’t waste fancy bright-coloured dye on the functional armour they use for the Trolls. Visually, the counterpoint to this is the bright blue skin so it still meets my personal requirements for looking OK on the tabletop.

It took a while for me to get started on the Bouncer as it is covered in belts and different bits of cloth and armour and generally coated in bling; somehow it felt almost intimidating to start considering my lack of enthusiasm for the project. Indeed the Bouncer sat partially painted on my table, along with an Axer and an Impaler, for almost a year before Azazel’s painting challenge prompted me to get them finished up. As a result, I dedicate this post to Azazel’s Neglected Models February Challenge; thanks as always to Azazel for being the impetus for so much blogging.

Next on the painting table: Brimstone Horrors

Painted Druze Shock Team Hacker with Combi Rifle (second sculpt)

This is a second sculpt of a Druze Shock Team Hacker with a Combi Rifle to join my Druze Bayram Security army in Infinity (the earlier one is painted here). Luckily, the miniature being labelled as a Hacker doesn’t really mean any more than having one hand up in a slightly silly pose (and indeed, not even that in some cases) so I expect to use one of these Hackers as just a regular Druze Shock Team. On the other hand, there are a couple of different ‘flavours’ of Hacker, so presumably I could find some excuse to use both – I would still need to differentiate the two somehow though.

Painting-wise, this is just more of the same for the Druze Bayram Security army, with principally white and green armour leavened with black kit. I actually do slight highlights in grey on the metal stuff and blue on the fabric (belts, pouches etc) but it all seems to come out remarkably similar in the photos.

Next on the painting table: Troll Bouncer.