Painted Satyxis Blood Hag

This the Blood Hag, the command attachment for the Satyxis Blood Witches in my very-slowly expanding Warmachine Cryx army. As a command attachment, it’s not actually mandatory to take her and the Blood Witches can get on just fine without her. Having said that, I almost always do bring the Blood Hag along as she has the Dark Shroud rule which decreases the armour value of enemies standing near her. This really increases the value of plinking attacks such as the Satyxis models tend to specialise in, or otherwise enables my army to bring down big, tough models more practically. She can also dispel upkeep spells on miniatures she hits; obviously this can be useful to knock an armour boost off an enemy Warjack but it can also come in handy to strip crippling de-buffs from my own side. Finally, the Blood Witch grants Side Step to her unit which allows them to get to annoying places that other beers cannot reach, either to contest scenario elements or apply Gang where it is needed most.

I felt that I had to keep to more or less the same colour scheme as her unit of Blood Witches which rather limited my scope here. On the other hand, I think that the Blood Witch somehow wears the pink and red combination rather better than the girls so perhaps it isn’t such a problem anyway. She does have an overhanging hood which, while very fitting for the miniature, makes her a pain to photograph nicely.

Here is the Blood Hag leading her unit of Blood Witches. She becomes the leader (taking over from the pointing one just behind her) if taken.

Next on the painting table: Slaughter Queen.

Painted Jaga Jaga, the Death Charmer

This Jaga Jaga, the Death Charmer. She’s a Warlock for Minions army in Hordes; the first one I’ve put paint on. As a Warlock, she is the leader of my force and losing her is game over for me. On the other hand, she’s got loads of cool spells and abilities; I’ve heard Warlocks in Hordes compared to both King and Queen for chess. For me, her main two draws are her Feat and her spell Signs and Portents. The former allows you to blow up your own infantry to (hopefully) kill enemy models; this obviously sounds counter-productive but it is an auto-hitting attack so can be quite handy for taking out high-defense annoying models like Kayazy Eliminators. My general approach has been to get the Soul Slave to case Ghost Walk on a jamming unit, have them get as deep as possible and the blow-up the ones in my way to take out key models in the other army. Signs and Portents means that every attack my models make (when within Jaga Jaga’s Control area) gets to add a die to both attack and damage rolls, then drop the lowest. This is amazing dice manipulation and means that Jaga Jaga often gets dropped for me when I’m worried about whether I can hit anything on the other side of the table; for example swarms of light infantry.

I started off rather overwhelmed by the sheer amount of detail on Jaga Jaga’s miniature as she’s very busy with jewelry, snakes and other bling. As I worked though the painting process I enjoyed it more and more as the whole miniature came to life under my brush. I had a bit of a challenge finding suitable colours for each part that didn’t either overshadow another part or clash but in the end I think that the whole thing works rather well and I’m really pleased with the result.

A bit of trivia – Jaga Jaga’s melee attack is with a poisonous snake. However, the big purple one is actually a Tatzylworm (head crest, lots of eyes) and so presumably it is kept around for decoration and she fights people with one of the smaller snakes.

Next on the painting table: Satyxis Blood Hag.

Painted Hag Queen

This is a Hag Queen, another hero choice for my Daughters of Khaine army in Age Of Sigmar. She’s a cheap support character who has mainly found success in my games by staying away from actually fighting the other side and instead by encouraging everyone else to do the fighting for her (which they do, apparently with glee, considering the number of dice rolled per model). Whenever someone has managed to pin down my Hag Queens to combat, that pretty much is the end of the story for them.

The Hag Queen was a quick easy model to paint and get out of the way (especially after how long it took me to get through the Bloodwrack Shrine). I’m not over enamoured by the sculpt but it’s an easy enough process to slap some colours on her and call it good in the name of completing a project; I will admit that this goes double for miniatures that in reality I will hardly ever use on the tabletop. In general I’ve found the Witch Aelves and their associated characters to be pretty quick to get through, though I would still pale at the thought of dealing with 3 units of 30 which I understand is a tournament staple. After the Hag Queen, I have just one more Daughter of Khaine to finish (the charmingly named Slaughter Queen) before I have finished the whole lot… for now.

Next on the Painting table: Jaga Jaga, the Death Charmer.