Painted Blood Sisters

Here are small unit of Blood Sisters, part of the Daughters of Khaine force I’m gradually building up. They’re basically the melee equivalent of Blood Stalkers, trading a fairly trivial ranged element for more close-up stabbing action. We don’t play anything like enough Age of Sigmar for me to have any strong thoughts on how best to use Blood Sisters; I’ve generally just rammed them into something that isn’t already swamped by Witch Aelves and hoped for the best.

Just like the Blood Stalkers, the Blood Sister kit is great fun to assemble and paint. Blood Sisters are actually meant to have a sort of face mask and sensible hair thing going on, but I much prefer the ridiculous flowing manes so I used the alternative heads (that are meant to go on the Blood Sisters instead). In general I tried to keep the same palette as the rest of the force but went for a dark red on the snakey-bits as I felt that would be more fun to paint at the time.

I dedicate this post to Azazel‘s Scenic and Squaddie September challenge. Many thanks to Azazel for leading these monthly blogging challenges.

Next on the painting table: Gun Boar (again).

Painted Gun Boar (part one)

This is a Gun Boar, part of my growing force of Minions in Hordes. You can probably learn just about everything about the Gun Boar’s role in the game just by looking at it – a big gun for shooting people far away, and some fists for punching them (usually quite effectively) when they get closer. I usually just let the Gun Boar lurk around the edge of the engagement area and shoot at targets of opportunity. It is also cheap enough that I don’t mind pushing it to contest a zone for a turn, though of course that is almost inevitably the last thing it does in that game.

I wanted to give this Gun Boar the classic pink pig look from children’s books and I feel that this has worked out reasonably well. I was not sure at all how to approach the hairy bits around the face and neck. Real pigs (at least, the ones on farms in my area) tend not to have huge manes of hair anyway, and more importantly I thought it would look really weird to have the Gun Boar sporting some snazzy blond hair. So in the end I took the simplest option and kept it to the same colour as the skin; it still looks a bit odd though.

Next on the painting table: Blood Sisters

Painted Gatorman Soul Slave

This is a Gatorman Soul Slave, a Warlock Attachment for my Hordes Minions army. Warlock Attachment means exactly what it says; this chap has to work with my Warlock. He can cast one of the Warlock’s spells for free (albeit with a fairly terrible stat) and allows an upkeep for free. That latter part is almost worth taking the Soul Slave for alone; I usually run him with Jaga Jaga as she tends to run short on Fury all the time. The initial reason I included the Soul Slave with Jaga Jaga was to solve some order-of-activation issues for her Feat. The Soul Slave can cast Ghost Walk on my jamming unit (currently Boomhowler and Company) so that they can go into the most annoying places possible in their activation before Jaga Jaga activates and uses her Feat to blow them all up (hopefully to my overall benefit). Without the Soul Slave, I don’t get to move the jamming unit between casting Ghost Walk and using the Feat, making it much less aggressive.

The Soul Slave is meant to be some kind of zombie alligator. I don’t have the slightest idea how to paint alligator scales to look like they’re decaying, so after some consideration decided that just painting them green and enjoying myself would be more useful. The model is packed with character from the braziers across its shoulders to the manacles on wrists and ankles and I really loved bring him to (un)life. Sometimes a model just seems to want to be painted.

Next on the painting table: Gun Boar.

Painted Swamp Horror (part two)

Here is a second Swamp Horror for my Minions force in Hordes. There isn’t much to say about it mechanically that I didn’t already mention in the post about the previous one. So I’ll just repeat a little of what I wrote there: Overtake plus Pull plus a 4” reach on the tentacles is extremely entertaining to play with.

When assembling the pair of Swamp Horrors I had the idea that I would try to do some minor conversion work on the position of the tentacles so that they didn’t look identically posed. As it turns out, assembling these little blighters is quite annoying and in the end I was glad to get away without doing something stupid like drilling into my fingers in the process. So, here we have another Swamp Horror in a dance routine, matching its sister. Instead, I painted it very differently so it would be easy for me to track which one had taken however many wounds in a game. Real life octopuses come in all sorts of different colours (and even if they didn’t, I have no qualms about making things up for giant land-based magic octopuses) so I decided to go out on a limb and make the main body purple. I think that this simple contrast between the skin and the cream colour of the underbelly and shell (?) looks quite striking. It was also a nice quick win to get this one done and off the table.

Next on the painting table: Gatorman Soul Slave

Warmachine / Hordes battle report: Minions vs Mercenaries (75 points); 06Sep2019

Joe and I seem to keep missing each other lately with our schedules but finally we caught up to play some more Warmachine / Hordes.

Game 13 – Recon 2 vs Joe’s Mercenaries

https://conflictchamber.com/?cb201b_-2n13fy0M1d1d0L0L0L0YbOfCnd4c

Minions
[Theme] Will Work For Food

[Arkadius 1] Dr. Arkadius [+32]
– Battle Boar [7]
– Gun Boar [8]
– Road Hog [15]
– Road Hog [15]
– War Hog [14]
– War Hog [14]
– War Hog [14]
– Targ [0(3)]
Gatorman Witch Doctor [0(4)]
Hutchuk, Ogrun Bounty Hunter [0(6)]
Underchief Mire [4]
– Blackhide Wrastler [16]

The list itself remains static from the last iteration. My main intention here is to learn how to utilise the Adrenaline part of Dr Arkadius’s melee weapon along with the Road Hog’s Sprint animus to clear infantry more efficiently.

https://conflictchamber.com/?c6201b_-1_b_94929292phppnwiririqiqhXhX

Mercenaries
[Theme] Hammer Strike

!!! This army contains a pre-release entry.

[Ossrum 1] General Ossrum [+28]
– Ghordson Driller [10]
– Grundback Blaster [6]
– Grundback Blaster [6]
– Grundback Blaster [6]
Balthazar Bamfist [4]
Harlowe Holdemhigh [0(5)]
Steelhead Gunner [3]
Horgenhold Artillery Corps [0(6)]
Horgenhold Artillery Corps [0(6)]
Horgenhold Forge Guard (max) [16]
Horgenhold Forge Guard (max) [16]
Hammerfall Siege Crawler [18]
Hammerfall Siege Crawler [18]

Joe’s working toward representing a team in the WTC this year so the gloves are off. In some ways, this list is perfect for my specific game objectives (i.e. testing my infantry clearing powers) but in practical terms I have doubts about how I’ll fare against recursion on Forge Guard. Even if I do manage to deal with all the infantry I have to then handle all the armour of the battle engines and the Warjacks.

Joe wins the roll and chooses the board edge (due to the highly tactical reason of ‘I’m already sitting here’) so I go first. I put the Road Hogs next to Dr Arkadius for turn 2 Adrenaline shenanigans. I also helpfully forget to do photos for the first turn.

Turn 1: Minions
Everyone runs forward. Dr Arkadius puts up Aggravator mainly because I think that Guardian Beast isn’t going to do me any good then casts Forced Evolution on a Road Hog. Mire casts Weald Secrets on the Blackhide Wrastler. The Road Hogs make a convenient screen right in front of Dr Arkadius.

Turn 1: Mercenaries
Ossrum casts Fire For Effect on the left Artillery Corps and Snipe on the left battle engine. Most things run forward except for Holdemhigh who backs off to be sure of being safe.

Turn 2: Minions
I don’t’ think that I can get into anything useful so I’m just going to contest the edges of the zones and take what I can at range. All my spells are upkept. The Gun Boar shoots at the cannon on the right but it’s tough; the blast splashes a Forge Guard and actually kills him but that’s only a temporary inconvenience. Dr Arkadius stabs a Road Hog in the back (who also received Eyeless Sight from my objective) and it sets the Driller on fire. The rest of my stuff hangs back as much as possible.

Turn 2: Mercenaries
Ossrum upkeeps both spells. The left Siege Crawler puts a few shots into a Road Hog while the right one gets the critical Stagger on the Gun Boar. Forge Guard flood the zones on both sides and Ossrum swaps Snipe onto Harlow (but I didn’t note what he actually did with it). Joe scores his own flag; 1 – 0.

Turn 3: Minions
Again, all of my spells are upkept. I decide to try and wait the game out a little longer and so I won’t Feat. The Wrastler kills a couple of Forge Guard on the right and Mire puts a cloud in front of it (though this doesn’t actually help because of my placement). The Gun Boar strolls up to another Dwarf and kills him with a bought attack, mainly so that Dr Arkadius can Maltreat it off later. The Doctor casts Psycho Surgery to clear up some of the chip damage and stabs both Road Hogs from behind with the Adrenaline needle. The both use the combination of Assault and Lightning Strike to clear out a good number of Forge Guard from both zone and return to relative safety, while setting all sorts of things on fire. Bamfist, who is sitting on the flag, sadly survives as I roll low on damage for him. We both score our own flags; 2 – 1.

Turn 3: Mercenaries
A handful more Rhulfolk die to fire and then the full six Forge Guard get back up / emerge from the battle engines / appear from thin air thanks to the Siege Crawlers (yes, I don’t know the fluff for that rule). Ossrum upkeeps both his spells again. Ossrum Feats, puts Bullet Dodger on himself and retreats to safety. The left Siege Crawler and Artillery Corps shoot up the left War Hog and it is eventually finished off (exactly to the box) by Holdemhigh. Over on the right, the Forge Guard drop the Gun Boar (also exactly to the box) and badly hurt the Wrastler. Joe scores his flag and the left zone; 4 – 1.

Turn 4: Minions
Well, this is going to have to be a good Feat turn. I drop Aggravator. Mire puts Rage on a War Hog and heals the crippled aspects on the Wrastler before smacking the nearest Forge Guard. He ends up on the flag and empty on fury because I need to get some points and I can’t see any realistic case where I don’t lose Mire and Wrastler easily. The Wrastler itself chews through a nice number of Forge Guard, Overtaking off some and Snacking a few others. The Battle Boar makes a total mess of dealing with the lead Forge Guard and I eventually have to rely on a Feat attack from a War Hog to deal with him. The remainder of the Feat is mainly used to line up nice charges where possible. The right Road Hog goes into the left [BE], doing little more than scratching the paint but lighting up an amusing number of Rhulfolk behind it. Annoyingly, low damage rolls leave both Holdemhigh and the Steelhead Gunner alive and kicking (albeit also ablaze). Both War Hogs on the right use their Aggression Dials but a lot of low damage rolls plus the armour boost from Ossrum’s Feat means that they don’t manage to kill it. Looking at the board state, I offer my hand in defeat and Joe accepts. I don’t actually prefer to give up when all is not over, but in this case we had gamed quite late into the night and I felt that the result had become an inevitable win for Joe. Minions lose!

It was really nice to play Joe again, he’s always so relaxed and encouraging even when I’m making suicidal decisions throughout the game. Indeed, I need to up my skill level a bit to give him a chance to practice his WTC lists by doing more than strolling forward and effortlessly crushing me. On the plus side, I did feel that I was getting the hang of the Road Hog yo-yo, so in that sense I did achieve my objective for the game. Things I learned:

• I should have used Dr Arkadius’s Feat one turn earlier. The board position wasn’t quite so good but the impact of attacking into Ossrum’s Feat really blunted my offensive.
• I’m not getting much value out of Targ. I might consider swapping him for Kwaak & Gub (especially since I’ve just painted them).
• Hutchuk is just not performing well for me either. He didn’t even appear on the board this game, but that wasn’t because I forgot about him (though I will admit that does happen). In this case, there just wasn’t a time that I could have done more than stop Joe from scoring his flag for a single turn before he would be killed off. I’m not sure who to replace him with though. Orin has been quite effective in my Jaga Jaga list so that is one option (and of course, I own the model so that’s a mark in his favour).

Painted Troll Basher

This is a Troll Basher, a light Warbeast for my neglected Trollbloods army in Hordes. I will admit that I only picked up the Basher as it happened to be exactly the right number of points to fit in the army list I was using at the time, so it’s quite funny that I’ve only now painted it since I’m even really playing Trollbloods at the moment. It turned out to be quite handy in the game, generally being somewhat cost-ineffective to kill and handy for contesting scenario elements. Since I generally had low expectations for damage output from the Basher I often ended up quite pleased if it could swat a couple of infantry and delay my opponent from scoring a zone for a turn before inevitably being smashed by a strong counterpunch.

The art for the Basher uses a strong ice and winter theme but I decided that I wanted to retain the overall blue and red colours common to the rest of my Trollbloods. Hence the flowing beard (which I think is uniquely hairy compared to, for example, Mulg’s rocky growths) got a bright red colouring rather than the white and pale blue palette used by PP’s studio paint team. Instead, I tried to give the idea of a frozen background by making the pelt he’s wearing have white fur so it looks like it comes from a polar bear or something. I feel that this helped to break up the overall blue-and-red-ness of the Warbeasts as a whole.

The sculpt has one oddity in that he has a necklace of rune-y, stone-y things.  But because the lower part rather merges with the beard, especially when viewed somewhat from above as is usual when gaming, it looks like it’s a strap for a fake beard.

Next on the painting table: Swamp Horror (again)

Painted Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor

Here is Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor. He’s part of my Hordes Minions army (strictly speaking he’s actually a Mercenary and not a Minion but there is some cross-pollination), so apologies to any Warhammer 40K fans who expected either a Rogue Trader or an Inquisitor from that setting. I’ve tended to use Orin as sort of magical defense near my Warlock as he starts with some magic tokens that can be discarded to nullify spells cast at targets close to him. Otherwise he has a fairly standard lightning zap attack from his magical stick; most often I end of shooting my own Warbeasts in the back and letting the Electroleaps take care of any jamming infantry. Orin is one of the biggest victims of my inability to correctly judge enemy threat ranges as frequently ends up getting killed by something that he would have avoided by being millimetres further back from.

I loved painting Orin as he’s such a classic fantasy wizard trope with his flowing robes and fancy stick. He’d be quite nice in non-WarmaHordes settings as he would fit in almost any D&D game as a baddy (or a goody, I suppose, but he’s definitely a baddy in WarmaHordes).

Next on the painting table: Troll Basher.