+ BOUND BY BLOOD +

Time to let this flesh hound out of the bag: I'm building a Kings of War army. Without having played a single game, nor watched it live! There are reasons - KoW has points + clearly defined list building rules, as well as a very liberal approach to choice of models; gameplay is familiar from WHFB, particularly the combination of blocks + dice - but we can gloss over those for now.

While I could use my Skaven as Ratkin in a heartbeat (and I'll likely return to them), and I've already whipped up some lists to get my Tizz Daemons on the table as extremely shooty Abyssals, it's easier to find hobby time than game time, and I do like building armies. You know what else I like? The new AoS Khorne dudes ...

So Varangur it is! Here's the initial list:

Reavers Regiment (20)
> Chieftain - Brutal
Reavers Regiment (20)
> Magus - Bane-Chant, Famulus
Reavers Regiment (20)
> Skald on Mount - Diadem of Dragon-Kind
-----------
1000

Packs of frothing loonies with some dudes to keep them in line, juice them up and/or kill stuff themselves. Maybe horrible, plus points may shift a bit when Uncharted Empires lands next week. Ignoring both of those inconveniences, I have the list planned out to 2000, and am excite.

At this point, I've summoned about 1200 points of Bloodbound ...

... scrounged up all the square bases needed for this first round, ordered fancy steel trays from Shogun Miniatures, and got the Chieftain and Skald cleaned and assembled:

Both need their gaps filled, and you'll notice Korgath is missing a shin! A packing mishap that is being rectified. Korgs has also lost his obnoxious KHORNE back banner - I feel like he's inspiring enough as is! I'll round out the characters with a converted bloodletter for the Magus. Because blood magicks don't count o_O


Early days yet. Moving apartments next week, so we'll see how much mold line scrapping I can get done in that time.

+ SKAVEN 2.0 +

My new skaven list has changed a bit, particularly after a disastrous game against dragon-led khorne mortals in which I managed to do everything I told myself not to do, including engaging with the vermin lord by himself and slamming the abomination into the frenzied dragon. Neither of those combats were pretty, with the a-bomb being 1-shoted and Vermy barely escaping the red knights with his life.

Here's where I'm at now. The biggest changes from the list against khorne is the inclusion of a BSB, who was sorely missed, and a 10th power die (the engineer was level 1 before). These came at the cost of 2 rat swarms, 3 gutters and the spikes off the HPA, all of which won't be missed too much.

L: Vermin Lord = 500
H: Plague Priest - foul pendant, flail, level 2 = 169
H: Engineer - dispel scroll, level 2 = 125
H: Chieftain - BSB, warpstone armor, shield = 102

C: 30 Clanrats - full command, shields, warpfire thrower = 225
C: 25 Clanrats - full command, shields, ratling gun = 187.5
C: 25 Clanrats - full command, shields, ratling gun = 187.5
C: 20 Slaves - musician = 42
C: 20 Slaves - musician = 42

S: 6 Jezzails = 120
S: 6 Gutter Runners - deathrunner = 84
S: 7 Globadiers = 70
S: 7 Globadiers = 70

R: Abomination = 235
R: Warp Lightning Cannon = 90
------
2249
10/6

Thoughts so far? The WLC is very hard to hit with, jezzails losing skirmishing is pretty huge, rolling to hit with ratling guns sucks (and both of mine misfired more often than got to shoot), the abomination is not auto-win, and the vermin lord takes as much finesse as I thought he would.

I've got a game against brets tomorrow, where we're both running 10 pd of magic for the first time in our warhammer careers. I expect mass miscasting ... but read all about it next year!

In the meantime, here's the BSB I smashed up last night:

He's got a marauder horsemen shield that goes on the arm holding the standard, but it'll be painted separately. Scheme will be mostly bleached bone armor, so I added that tatty loincloth for some kind of green on the model.

Happy New Year!

Painting: Nurglettes
Building: N/A

+ UPDATES: 40K RTT & FANTASY MADNESS +

Definitely don't want to work on this paper right now, so let's get you all caught up to speed on the little warhammer I've been up to that isn't forum surfing or endless list making ...

40K

Back in November I played in a 2000 point 40k tournament, which turned out to be 3 games of pure KP games, much to the chagrin of pretty much everyone. Here's an ultra-quick rundown of the event.

Me:

Deathscreamer Lord
Plasma Termi-ciders
Plasma Dread
Missile Dread
Melta CSM in rhino
Flamey CSM in rhino
Shooty CSM
1k Sons w/ warptime sorcerer
10+ Demons
Missile Havoks
Defiler
Oblit

Pretty close to 100% painted, and I'm really hoping to get them back to that level, particularly after the strong showing in the games to come ...

ONE:

IG w/ Creed, infantry blob, melta vets in valks x2, plasma vets, outflanking demolisher, russ, basi, etc, etc

Essentially I crushed him to pulp, gaining a staggering KP total and giving very little away. His dude messing with my reserves was irritating, but otherwise I was able to hold my points well and just smash away. We actually ended turn 4 on time, but since other people kept playing we could have continued, which would only have given me more of a KP lead over the other players. This was the only IG player at the event - and again, no one knew it was all KP all the time - and there was some bitterness at my early KP boost.

+14 KP

TWO:

CSM w/ 2x lash princes, greater demon, 5x melta plaguers in rhinos, defiler

A great and incredibly bloody game, where his plague marines proved their resilience in spades. My 1k Sons also showed what a 3/4+ save with fearless can do, as the tizz boys + deathscreamer locked down 2 plague squads round after round, deathscreamer reaping away. I didn't play as well as I could, throwing my dread plasma cannon away early and not popping a single rhino despite those being far and away the easiest KP available. He eventually beat me by a couple KP, but I didn't do so bad considering I went for the hardest targets possible.

+8 KP

THREE:

CSM w/ tizz sorcerer + tizz possessed in raider, 2 big CSM squads (1 rhino), berzerkers in rhino, 10 demons, 2x vindis

Ironically I had actually designed this list for the guy, out of the models he had available ... Despite being very very afraid of the double vindis, I was able to start stunning or destroying them fairly early on, letting my rhino squads perform a heavy flank of his force, with deep strike troops adding their weight in timely fashion. My dreads deserve commendation for this game, as they were able to lock down units that literally couldn't hurt them - possessed + sorcerer, demons - and grind them apart. Another fun game that turned my way once the wall of steel was cracked. The berzerkers proved to be a real thorn, costing about 14 CSM to put them down.

+9 KP

All told I earned 31 KP, which handily nabbed first place and $90 in gift certs (!!). I was well chuffed, though a comment on the IG player and my 4 turn brutalizing of him. It's not like the dude quite or changed his army or something after me - 2 other players got to go up against him (including the CSM I played final round), and nobody walked all over him like I was able to. So there.

Special commendation goes out to the deathscreamer - 1 jam all 3 games?! - and the dreads, who tenaciously held up through all games, often needing to be completely disassembled before giving up a KP, and were able to get some real stomping in due to judicious use of reserves. Very happy to see my weird toys work for me.

FANTASY

Rather than start more blogs I won't keep up to cover my fantasy exploits, expect to see some squarebase content cropping up here, as the new skaven book and a new escalation league at the FLGS have me really buzzing. Last week I finished the modeling for my skaven army redux, which mostly involved building some big bads:

VERMIN LORD




ABOMINATION




TRETCH CRAVENTAIL


Unfortunately the coming of winter means I won't get these primed and painted until probably Spring, barring I borrow somebody's basement to spray in ... But expect to hear of some exploits, I'll be painting to 1k once the semester ends, with just the big dudes waiting for the thaw.

Painting: Nurglings
Building: ???

+ SEVERUS GAAL 2.0 +

Finally found the time to bash together the powerfist version of my chaos lord, Severus Gaal:



Not a super crazy conversion (Huron + chaos lord head - iron halo on power axe), but I really like the Huron sculpt, with its "shattered soldier" bionic deal and the badass "stride forward and demand my money, ho!" pose. I'm torn on what backpack to give him when I get to that point, cause I don't think it will be Huron's. I like the huge iron halo (good for the 4+ MoT inv), but I dislike how giant the pack is, and the height clashes with the horns of the headswap. I may simply use a CSM backpack, though maybe chop the stalks off to create a faux-RT era pack ...

Here Gaal 2.0 is next to the increasingly infamous deathscreamer lord:



And some more shots of Mr. Minigun:





I do love the hell out of this model, and I like the concept of the demon weapon in more mundane form, as minigun + power axe + some insane(ly masochistic) combat skills. This model is also my fastest turn around from idea to build to paint to table, taking I think 2 days from inception to battle. Makes me even more proud of how he turned out.

Funny thing, had another game against the Sisters today, and the deathscreamer seemed to sense his possibly imminent replacement - he rolled just one 1 for number of attaks (and wounded himself), but otherwise was hammering 4-6 shots at range and 5-9 attaks in combat. Nicely done Gaal, maybe you can hang around ... until 2.0 gets painted!

Speaking of painting things for this army, here's a quick snap of the last thing I painted for the boys, for Games Day Baltimore back in the summer:



Kringa, the Greater Demon! The idea of that beasty climbing out of a chaos champ's chest is pretty excellent :D

Painting: Irongut
Building: N/A

+ EMP'S KIDS SCOUT TITAN +

Viscount Vash over on the Emperor's Children forum blew my mind earlier today with his 40k-scale Questor Scout Titan. Here's some shots of where the titan was at of May 26:






Hopefully he had a chance to finish and/or paint the big guy up! Check out the rest of the thread for the buildup, the way he sculpted the thing is IMO pretty intense.

Painting: Irongut
Building: Powerfist Lord

+ REDUX: WIP II +

Here we go!



RIOT, having been captured and re-fabricated no less than four times, houses a paranoid but suitably homicidal machine-daemon ...



VOXX stands tall after the acid bath used to scour off the caked gore and fuchsia heraldry of his service with the Emperor's Children. Time will tell if the incipient insanity of the other Anarcho dreadnoughts infests the newest murder machine.




GurG joins Cithorax in bringing ranged death to enemy armor, and the triple-melta shown manifested here certainly looks promising. [Unfortunately I got the angle of the arm wrong when puttying it in place, so if he's indeed killing tanks they're standing about ten feet away ...]



The enigmatic aspiring champion Huntsman is joined by Seven, one of the original Iron Hydras upon which the Anarchonquistadores were built. Huntsman served in The Reaver's brief-lived mutant uprising, while Seven had previously been assigned to havok bullet-soak duty before the squad was trimmed down due to budget cuts.



Heinrich and Wilhelm, the squad meltagunnners, appear courtesy of the Iron Warriors, though little else is known about the Germanic tank killers.



Din and Fader bring the heat with dual-wielded boltguns - note the internal magazines and lack of suppressors on Fader's customized sidearms. With their reduced weight and length the chaos marine is able to wield them in combat to great effect, removing limbs at point-blank range.



Tex has recently had his stalwart service rewarded with a demonic bone overgrowth on his power armor's torso, while Sinne enjoys a brutal clawed gauntlet for his battlefield atrocities. Sinne also carries a captured greenskin shoota that fits him perfectly - loud, obnoxious and undisciplined.



Killer Bunny and Gläd, the third of the fallen wolves, make up Huntsman's combat specialists. Rumor has it that Bunny hasn't fired his boltgun in the last half dozen conflicts, preferring to bludgeon his enemies to death or fall back to his trusty knife when things get serious. While he lacks Bunny's ferocity, Gläd's raw skill and relentlessness make him an equal threat at close quarters, amputated arm or not.



The boys spill out of their ride and deliver hell, while VOXX provides covering fire. GurG has apparently already succumbed to return lascannon fire at this point.

Painting: Ogre Maneaters
Building: CSM backpacks

+ REDUX: WIP +

Snapped some quick-n-dirty webcam shots of what I've been working on yesterday and today ...


Rhino #2 - Years ago was built as a generic spiky chaos rhino, then had its top chopped to drive my GorkaMorka gang around in, then went back into storage to be resurrected yesterday. Robo-combi-bolter + smoke launchers + AL front plate I had lying around and voila! Sweet salvaged ride, indeed!


Oblit #2 - Bought this dude with his bro years back, but lingered until today. Originally he was slated to ride a "Throne of Obliteration" (counts as Silver Tower) for APOC games, but I'm happy to have him stomp the yard in more sane games. Loads of GS work goes down tonight, to integrate that triple-melta arm.




Dread #4 - Top pic shows what this Empy Kids dread looked like when I traded him off my brother for a leman russ executioner I had from an old army. Two soaks in the simple green hot tub and he was mostly clean, though some scrapping time and general clean up still had to happen before reassembling to the state in the middle pic. Note that the plasma cannon is stuck on there good, so I won't be able to paint it separately as I usually would. Bottom pic shows the rod spacer I'm trying to get to the right length to give the dread his waist back - he previously had a magnet in place of his waist joint, but I tore that off in favor of something more secure.

Looking forward to getting some GS onto that oblit arm, lots of gribble ahead of me tonight!

+ Violators Fleet 1500 +

Finished up the 500 point jump to 1500 today, pretty proud of the fleet. BFG is simple and fun to paint, this is probably the quickest 'army' I've gotten together for any game, ever. Fluff-wise it's a fleet under the command of the Violators traitor marines, Slaanesh-flavored CSM who seal their baby-blue armor and end up oozing, uh, gunk out of the seals (see the novel Daemon World for the source). Tried to carry it over to the ships, but admittedly my last ship, the Acheron, turned out waaay bright as I kept cleaning up the ink and not letting it pool or get oozy looking :P






Styx "Blistering Excess" - Lord Devour w/ MoS + reroll, CSM crew
Acheron "Bass God" - Lord Pharron w/ MoS + reroll, CSM crew
Carnage "Cacophonic"
Carnage "Distortion"
Devastation "Pleasure Throes"
Slaughter "Masochist"
2x Iconoclast + 1x Infidel "Slaves to Torment"
-----
1500

I suppose that when I do a battleship it'll be 100% icy blue ...

Painting: Demosaurus
Building: N/A

+ July Happenings +

I like to make schedules for painting and such, to stay organized and hopefully push me to get things done. July is looking like a bit of a slacker month, like the last weeks of June were as well, but at least I know that the few things on the schedule will get done. What's really killing me right now is the humidity makes priming my newly built stuff ... highly undesirable :(

WEEK 6/29
[X] Paint 1000 point BFG chaos fleet
[X] First game of BFG in 9 years
[X] July 4th, etc.

WEEK 7/6
[X] Build 2 gorefiends & dread #2
[X] Prime dread #2
[_] Paint disruption beacon
[X] Fiancee's birthday celebrations

WEEK 7/13
[X] Build BFG fleet to 1500
[X] Prime BFG upgrade
[X] Paint some on dread
[X] Play more BFG
[X] Rampage Richmond

WEEK 7/20
[X] Paint dread
[_] Paint BFG boost
[X] APOC IV

WEEK 7/27
[_] Build, prime, paint Dakka Painting Challenge entry

WEEK ???
[_] Spray Khorne Demons brass

Not too rushed on the hobby side, but a couple personal events make gaming time tight. Then there's our fourth APOC game looming 7/26, need the dread and beacon done by then, and finally the DPC model at the end of the month where I get to see what my painting skills are actually up to.

Building: N/A
Painting: Disruption Beacon

+ Nurgle Skaven +

Figured it would be worth posting a shot of what I spent all of May working on. These models make up the redux of my 2000 point Eshin Skaven army, counts as Nurgle as far as modeling goes. The old list wasn't doing it for me, so I retooled and added a load of models. Excited to see how the new army works on the table (hopefully it works at all!), but I've still got basing to do for these guys next week.

Painting: Nurgle bases
Building: Khorne heralds

+ The Girls Are Famous! +

Four of my demonettes appear in the newest issue of Firebase magazine! About to be molested by Snikrot and his posse, no less! I am truly a proud papa.

Painting: Defiler
Building: N/A

+ Termi Drop Team Is Go +

Not as fresh as the biker, this termi plasma trio was painted in the last weeks, sealed with a LOT of gloss varnish and then dullcoted back to sanity. Still shiny, but I can handle it, they're just that special.















3 Terminators - IoCU, 3 combi-plasmas, 2 powerfists, 1 chainfist

Occasionally the chainfister is an AC if I have the points. They just have plasma pistols because a) it looks cool, and b) I figure their lifespan is so short that they will nearly always strike down, plasma something, then either die to return fire or be assaulted and fist something.

And I agree, the tusks are really unsatisfying. I tried inking them, and tried drybrushing them, but the detail on the model and my skills weren't up to it, so plain whitewashed tusks it was. A pity, but ah well.

Painting: Land Raider
Building: Dread 2

+ Biker Lord Rides At Last +

Pics are pretty poorly lit, but the man is done and awaiting dullcote ...






















Painting: Land Raider?
Building: Dread #2?

+ VID CAPTURES +

The ANARCHONQUISTADORES were arrayed for maximum kitchen destruction last night, leading to the least shoddy webcam pics currently possible:

All 1500 points.
And another pic, with cultists at fore.



The Reaver, speed lord and small arms magnet.

One of the two units of demonettes, loathed by my gaming group. Note matte black skin and bright green tentacle hair (hotness).

Scout cultists, who should be painted next, but I didn't like the test model and aren't really feeling it.




Cithorax, the lone obliterator.






Dreadnought VORN, with glowy green chainfist, flamer, plasma coils, exhausts, powerplant, top hatch, etc.

My webcam is too crappy to pick up much of the CSM, so no pics of those for now.
But what's an army without accessories:

Matching dice! Good at rolling The Important Rolls - deployment, first turn, etc - but pretty marginal at hitting, wounding, penetrating ... though that may be me :P

She keeps my boys (& girls O_O) company in their army case, and also stays safely hidden from the girlfriend.

Painting: Rhino, 20 assassin cultists, 10 scout cultists.
Will To Paint: Not much.