New blog, who dis?

Weirdly, for me, this blog post is going to primarily consist of pictures!

It's been a minute since my last post, and I've been working (like, real job working) a whole lot, so hobby stuff has been just bits and pieces here and there.

First up, Warhammer Underworlds:

Some cool 3D printed terrain for the "blocked spaces" on the gaming boards that I painted up. 

My son's warbands! I did the basing on them for him (at his request) so that everything matches, but otherwise he painted these himself! Super proud.

Garrek, before I did the blood on the severed head and painted his base. I really wanted to focus on the skintones for these guys as their focal point, so everything else was just done to a level of "serviceable" for my standards.

Pic 1 of the completely finished Garrek's Reavers warband.

Pic 2 of the completely finished Garrek's Reavers warband.

In-game shot of our first fully painted game! I think the boy is just now starting to figure out that I'm a goofball, swing-for-the-fences style of player, so I'm always going to try for the high-value, high-risk objectives typically requiring all of my own guys to die in a blaze of glory. If I end up winning this way (like I did for this particular game) it's a huge swing at the very end, going from 2-3 glory points to 8+ in a single card. 

I've also been working on my Guild Ball Miners, and actually got in my first learning game with my good buddy Wargamer Ramblings against his Morticians. I have to confess, even just from the one game, I really like the structure of this game. I definitely want to play more soon.

The movement shenanigans of the Miners, I'll admit, is a pretty interesting thought puzzle for maneuvering across the pitch. We only played to one goal (because I'm slooooow while I learn, I'll admit) which ended up being the mighty Fissure (aka the tank) driving the ball up and dropping it into the goal from point-blank range. 

Shaft, pre-powdah

Shaft, pre-powdah

Shaft, post-powdah

Shaft, post-powdah

Mule, in progress

Mule, almost finished...

Mule, finished and running away!

Junkrat (I'm calling him that because c'mon, that's who he is), pre-powdah

Junkrat (okay, okay, it's Fuse) post-powdah

Junkrat's dirty backside

Fissure, in progress (still need to finish her up)

Spade, in progress (in the final stages)

So all said, I have probably 1-2 more nights to finish out the Miners, and then it will be on to the Word Bearers (finally) in preparation for NoVa!

Under the Worlds of Warhammer

It's been a minute, I'll admit. And yes, I've been working on stuff.

Is it stuff for NOVA?

No, of course it's not.

Aside from piddling away on other things, my main focus these past few weeks has been Warhammer Underworlds. A self-contained board game where each player has a team and a deck, each team is set without the trouble/need of constructing unique lists, and it has strict guidelines on deck-building... ? Hell yes!

While I've eyeballed the miniatures for over a year now, I never attempted to look past the surface at it, despite hearing good things. That is, until my son became interested, seeing something about it in a warhammer painting video on YouTube.

So we picked up the core box (the first one, called Shadespire) and split it, with him taking Steelheart's Stormcast Eternal team and me taking Gerund's bloody berserkers or whatever they're called. We've actually both been working on painting, too, with him painting the Steelheart team up in the colors of the Lions of Sigmar. I've been enjoying the palette cleanser, focusing my time on experimenting with painting flesh tones.

So buff.

So angry!

I started with a glaze basecoat of rosy flesh (vallejo colors) and have just been building layers of depth using glazes of purple (a vallejo color that is nearly identical to GW's old Warlock Purple) and the Army Painter Red Tone wash.

I haven't managed to get much further than that, though, because we've been playing too many games! I don't think I've played any miniature game this much in a decade.

The miniatures are the "push fit" kind for quick assembly, and come in different colors of plastic so you can play almost right away.

Another game I remembered to take a picture of, with the minis in varying states of completion. As you can see we picked up some cool 3d-printed, surprisingly cheap terrain on eBay to fill the "off limits" spaces. 

Naturally, since it's so easy to simply buy new teams, we had to expand our collection a bit...

The boy picked up the Stormcast Farstrider team, and I got the team of gobbos (Zarbag's Gitz), but we just built his immediately so we would be able to get a game in before dinner.

Unfortunately I foresee a sort of "collect 'em all" mentality creeping in for me. All of the teams are just so cool! 

Mostly just minis this time

Yeah, fewer ponderances on life and attitude and all that, just gonna talk 'bout some minis this time.

Unless something creeps in, anyway.  It's a gamble.

First, I managed to finish off the trees that were the custom-build ones! Now all I've got left to finish are the... 9(?) smaller armature trees. I didn't get the other one I had completed out of the storage bucket for this pic, so it's the five I completed over last weekened with two of the finished armature ones in the middle for scale.

Overall super happy with how they're turning out, and they should help make a woodland/forest/ghur style of board really have some character without being cumbersome.

The metal washers worked out surprisingly well and the trees are quite sturdy!

Why yes, I did say "ghur" up there, glad of you to notice! My good buddy Dingar (who started his own blog called Mininomicon... check it out!) has been pretty amped on Age of Sigmar for a while now, and his joy and positivity has proven infectious to myself and Wargamer Ramblings so now, of course, we're working on armies for yet another game.  I actually already have a fully painted (well, like, almost fully painted) force of Ogor Gutbusters who reside in the Realm of Beasts - aka Ghur - but I've decided on painting up my forces of order now as well. I have some Stormcast Eternals that I am going to play as the Astral Templars stormhost chamber, as they also reside in the realm of beasts and thrive on honorbound battle with gigantic monsters and all that. 

I will probably take some liberties on the paint scheme once I get started, but overall this is their scheme.

Otherwise, I've been continuing to spend some time on NOVA prep, working on the beginnings of my 30k Zone Mortalis force and my Guild Ball Miners.  

For my 30k force, I've concretely decided on a Word Bearers squad with Zardu Layak, the Crimson Apostle, as its leader. A hardened taskforce of breacher marines and the Apostle's private retinue of relic reclaimers (a typical marine strike squad I am converting to look more cultish) accompany Zardu and his blade slaves and a Chaplain-in-training (run as a simple Centurion with the WB special rules to make him a psyker) to comprise the majority of the force, with the final piece being a unit of Gal Vorbak intent on screaming through the corridors and killing anything in their path. I'm trying to keep it very fluff-driven, so I don't think the list will end up varying too much even if it doesn't fair well in test games. I've also just learned a few days ago that summoning in 30k events is completely legal, so I'll need to get a unit of Pink Horrors painted up just in case I pull off a successful summoning in game.

Laying out all of the pieces for the Breachers and getting them organized. Yes that's a Monsterpocalypse mini in the background. Yes I have an addiction problem. 

Partially assembled; I was really surprised at the detail and number of pieces, kind of blowing my time estimate out of the water for their assembly. 

After several nights of assembly (about an hour each night) the Breachers stand ready for paint!

Airbrushed basecoat completed with the color Vallejo Air "Fire Red"

Now on to the Guild Ball Miners.

So.

Let's say this is a... mini review. 

As someone returning (though even that isn't a fair term, since I never really got off the ground in the first place) to the game of Guild Ball in general, this faction's release is difficult and frustrating.

First of all, this thing is only available to order directly from Steamforged games, even for gaming stores (at least as I've been lead to understand). And those gaming stores, when ordering it direct, are not given much of a discount on the item, which means they are not able to discount it from the "suggested" retail price of a steep, steep $80 USD. After resolving myself to spending the money on the box and having seen the quality of the miniatures in the Kick Off! starter box, I went to Steamforged's website to order. Nope, sold out. Too bad so sad no team for me. I began to look for options of sellers here stateside, and found only a single one (Discount Games, Inc.), and the price was still the non-discounted $80 USD. Gritting my teeth, I clicked the "Confirm" button and waited on my order to arrive.

Upon arrival, I found a very small box waiting for me. Like, Infinity miniatures boxes small. Confused, because I've seen the production quality of their other newer products, I pulled the sleeve off of the little cardboard box and popped it open to find a handful of unassembled minis in baggies. I'm clearly no stranger to assembling miniatures, and honestly I enjoy it quite a bit, but I will say the presentation was lacking for something I just dropped eighty-frigging-dollars on.

Pulling out the baggies, I found each miniature separated and including a resin base. 

Quality of the resin aside for a moment (but I'm coming back to it, don't worry) let's just say this to be clear: the included bases are bullshit. They're weirdly flat/low compared to normal lipped bases, they have no interesting or uniquely sculpted detail, and they have little depressions in them for the models to fit down into during assembly. That last part is only a problem because the models themselves have little bits of extra height attached at the bottoms of the feet and the tank treads to sit down in those depressions, and it's got to be addressed before using a different base. At least half of mine were warped and would have required me to heat them up and bend them to make them sit flat on the table, had I found myself willing to use them. You'll find this to be a common theme here, but lemme just say it one more time... this was an $80 box! That's U.S. dollars, not AUD. I understand price comparisons between companies in this hobby is a fool's errand, but a box with six models and tiny piece of terrain or two that costs eighty dollars should have sculpted bases. 

So, back to resin quality. I'm going to give it an "It's Fine I Guess" out of 10. It's not as great as, say, Privateer Press's resin, but the detail is still pretty good. Is it $80 good? No, not even a little bit. It's soft and reminds me of a #2 pencil eraser, and it has a lot of flash and places where the gates need be trimmed delicately so as not to destroy the cool details. Mine had a couple of ugly mold lines, too, which I found needed to be cut down (eww) because the resin did not take well to being filed. I have concerns about the lifespan on the smaller, thinner models, too. At least it was relatively bubble-free.

I really wish they had just kept their nice metal models if they weren't going to make something in the awesome plastics from their other (cheaper!) box sets.

Okay, some pictures:

Super irritated that this little ball of joy is sculpted into his shitty base. Look at that terrible mold line around the lip!

His base isn't perfectly round, either. I've done no trimming whatsoever here, it came that way. 

The Word Bearers champion might look like he's engaged in a fierce battle, but he's actually just being a bro and holding the weight of the drill in place while the glue/greenstuff dries.

Oh neat, look at this cool wood detailing in the prominently visible shoulder piece on the coolest model in the set... and the big mar in it from the resin gate being in the fucking middle of it. Who thought that was a good plan when designing the mold!?  

I mean let's be honest, I still love the set. I'm excited to get to playing Guild Ball, and these guys are definitely the faction for me aesthetically. But this should not be an $80 box. $50 would be a much more reasonable price point for the quality/quantity presented here, and $60 would be pushing it. At $60 I'd need to see like a couple of cool custom dice in the box, or maybe some friggin cards (yeah I know, I know, available online, but that just means I have to print them and cut them and deal with it and that frustrates me), hell maybe an art card, I dunno. Something more than just a cardboard box with baggies in it.

Overall super rad models, but would have much rather had them just be metal.

Oh, that reminds me. One more thing, while this rant train is a-rollin'.

Look at this badass thing:

Oh hey there coolest model for the Miners that isn't actually in the starter box.

So that's Colossus, one of the existing players for the Engineering Guild, and one of the two players that can be used with the Miners. That is an alt sculpt for him, designed to go explicitly with the Miners... and you cannot buy him. That's fucking stupid.

If you're a diehard Steamforged defender and you're reading this, please don't be offended or take this to mean I don't like Steamforged, or Guild Ball, or even just that model. Quite the contrary, actually. I love the shit out of that Colossus model.  It's actually one of the reasons this faction interested me and was able to pull me back to Guild Ball in the first place in this article reveal of the faction!  But he's only available, I'm told (as per the Facebook group), in the OP event kit. Seeing as this game has no scene in my area, no stores around here sell it at all, and I only have one other friend locally I can play it with... I cannot get this model without significant travel and effort. That is super frustrating. Do not like.

Okay, so bitching aside, that's pretty much the last couple of weeks for me outside of mega busy life stuff. Looking forward to trying to get more built and painted in the days to come, lord knows I have a lot to work on!

Warhammer: Age of Sigmar ...let's talk about it!

I mean shit, why not talk about it right away?  Second blog post, let's piss some people off! 

Very first thing, I want to start with this image:

This artwork is incredible.  Hate all you want.

That image was the first thing I saw in relation to Age of Sigmar (AoS hereafter). 

That image is fucking phenomenal.  And frankly, I feel like it sets the tone for how I feel about AoS in general.

But let's back up a minute.  "Who's this yay-hoo [because you'd probably use that term] actually liking a GW release, and what point of reference does he have for doing so?" is just the sort of question you might be asking yourself.  Well, I'll tell you!

I'm somewhat of an anomaly in the field of "seasoned gamers" because I didn't actually start playing games with GW stuff.  Now we could go off on a tangent here about how gamers like to wave their metaphorical dicks around about how many years they've been gaming, typically doing so by stating what edition of Warhammer Fantasy/40K they started with, and then spouting at least one reason why that edition was better than anything GW has released since then.  But I won't.  ;)  I started in on the miniatures hobby somewhere around 1995 with the X-Men board game "Under Siege", which came with these little 2" tall plastic figures that I decided would be fun to paint. 

Quality was surprisingly decent.  I need to find this game again...

Alas, I never got anyone to play the game with me (so why did they buy it for me?  So weird...) but I DID enjoy painting the figures so much that I continued on that trend.  And I did that by purchasing this box from the local comic shop:

Dat halfling!

I wish I could find my painted barbarian (he was my favorite) just to have it as a point of reference, but oh well.  Fast-forward a bit to high school, where I picked up the 3rd edition starter box for 40k (the Black Templar vs. Dark Eldar one) and promptly proceeded to get nowhere with it.  I assembled a few things, painted a few others, but never played a game.  No one else I knew was interested!  Go figure.

Cut to 2004.  Working part time at Toys R Us while in college, my good friend Kevin brings a new game to my attention, and alters the course of history.

We're *almost* to the Age of Sigmar stuff, believe it or not.

We played this game every chance we could get.  Many waaaaaay late weekend nights were spent with a case of Natural Ice, bags of homemade crazy spicy beef jerky, and rolling dice while laughing maniacally at games of Warmachine.  This was where the obsession began, for me.

That said, we were an insular group.  We didn't branch out to find new players (other than the couple we adopted into the hobby from work) so we didn't experience the shift in playstyle and the typical type of gamers this particular game brought in.  We weren't competitive, so much, and we played the game to have a good time.  No models were allowed on the table without having been painted first, even.  But eventually, as time moved on and situations changed, our scope had to broaden in order to play.  And while Kevin managed okay in the more competitive environment at large (because he plays Cryx and seriously fuck those undead cheaters) I stopped having fun playing the game.

During the next couple of years, I picked up quite a few different games, all of which I'll detail at a later time.  Because seriously, this post is still about Age of Sigmar.  I'm getting there.  It's all about the build up.  Or something.

So, while I've played a multitude of skirmish games in the interim, and actually collected decent armies for both 40k and Fantasy (and actually even played TWO games of Fantasy!... though no 40k...), I'm a bit OCD about my consumption of information.  I've kept up on the fluff/narrative of GW's systems, I've read some of the books, I've played some of the video games.  While I'm not a person who played WHFB and only WHFB, which would make AoS a reeeeeally big deal to me, the impact of what's happened isn't lost on me.  This is some serious shit.  The line has been drawn in the sand, and there appears to be no turning back.

And now, we're back to this:

Look at it again.  It's so pretty.

The Age of Sigmar, for a nostalgic-yet-skirmish-system-gamer like me, is kind of the coolest thing GW has ever done.  They've taken a product that carried 30+ years of baggage, with a fucking library of tomes of rules, and they've condensed it down in this new game system that allows for people to play with all of their old toys, bases don't matter, use whatever you want, and designed in a way for you to create fun stories and scenarios and battles with your friends.  There's no system in the way with the intent to set up a "balanced" game, because the hordes of Khorne aren't going to set up a meeting with the Lord Celestant of the Sigmarites before the battle and make sure it's a fair contest!  Because heroes are to be born on the tabletop, rolling that 6 eight times in a row and cutting a swath through the enemy forces, blocking their path to the objective at hand!  Because dammit, play toys!

I'll digress for a moment, here, and step down from my soapbox of excitement to clarify some things.  Yes, I fully understand that with this "system" in place, it's possible for folks to horrifically abuse it.  The guy who has buckets of disposable income can show up with 10 greater daemons and just win win win, while the average Joe can't compete in the arms race to match it.  It makes random games tougher, to a degree, because you can't just find Random Gamer X at the store and say, "35 points?  Okay go." and play out a game.  HOWEVER!  I fully believe those are arguments of laziness.  I'm sorry, but I do.  Let's take the horrifically outmatched forces example: Did you, as a kid, ever play action figures with a friend?  Did that friend maybe have a favorite character, like Wolverine or something, that would just never die or lose?  This example isn't that far removed, but hopefully we've grown into adults who have learned to compromise.  When I played toys with friends like that as a child, usually I didn't play toys with that friend again if it was too annoying.  Things haven't changed.  If I show up to play and my opponent sets down an annoyingly unstoppable force (that isn't part of a story we're trying to play out on the tabletop, because overwhelming-odds-last-stand-style stories are fun sometimes) but remains unwilling to compromise so that we can both have fun... I'm not playing toys with that person.  Simple!  And as for the other example, of being able to meet and play Random Gamer X... it's still profoundly doable with AoS.  It's just more of a conversation.  It requires me to talk to that gamer, make legitimate friends with that gamer, decide on what story to tell on the table with that gamer.  I will remember that gamer's name, probably friend them on Facebook, and in all likelihood play more games with that gamer for the foreseeable future.  If Random Gamer X is a douche who is uncompromising and anti-social... well damn, we're not going to play! I don't want to be friends with that guy.

Back on point.   

Age of Sigmar is rad, yo.  It's brought in a borderline GW gamer like me, and it's gotten me really excited.  The game is designed around making awesome models and having fun with your friends... not a win/loss ratio.

I know people have been upset about the state of the world and the story for it, but quite honestly, this is some well-written shit.

Well.  Written.  Shit.

The story picks up close to 1000 years after "The End Times" and the destruction of the Old World.  When the destruction took place, multiple deity-level entities survived, hurtled through time-and-space to what appear to be lands existing in the realms of magic (where the winds of magic actually came from in the Old World).  It's unclear, as of yet, whether that means this is essentially a new planet that exists in eight different dimensions (where the Gates allow travel through the dimensions), or if it is eight literal realms side-by-side and blocked off from each other.  But anyway, once cast into these realms, the deities and the handful of survivors they were able to save rebuilt civilization, more or less.  It was small, but they did it.  Chaos, bored as all hell in its respective 9th realm, saw the people having a good time in the other 8 and invaded, with all of the Chaos gods united in the endeavor.  The realms fought bravely, but ultimately lost, with Sigmar himself retreating to the Realm of Heavens, aka Azyr, and sealing off the Gates to it.  He stole away the best surviving warriors from the other realms as he did so, and in Azyr he "re-forged" them into the superior beings that are the Sigmarites.  (Yes, you're right, they are totally Space Marines.  They look similar, they act similar, they're the same.  But you know what?  People love Space Marines.  They're fucking cool.)  Now, where the story starts again for us, Sigmar is sending his superior army of Sigmarites back into the 8 realms to take them back from Chaos.  The Chaos gods have grown complacent in their overall victory, once again bickering and battling for strength against one another, and Sigmar is taking the opportunity to strike against the disassembled foe.  With the Sigmarites leading the charge, the remaining holdouts of forces in opposition to Chaos that have been on the defensive for many years come out in full force to strike while the opportunity presents itself.

This first big book, as pictured above, details the first attack of the Sigmarites (which is what the starter box is, by the way) in narrative form, and then picks up the story in the Realm of Life (Ghyran) where the tree spirits (Treemen, Treekin, Dryads, etc.) are fighting with the forces of Nurgle.  The book has some wonderful story in it, and details several scenarios for playing out the current battles in the Realm of Life (because the starter box book has the scenarios for the first battles of the Sigmarites).  The book also provides some details on what the other races are up to in the other realms and/or their motivations, setting the stage for future stories and army releases.  Personally, I'm most looking forward to these guys:

The dwarfs return... and so do the chaos dwarfs!

 The Age of Sigmar has a living, progressive narrative.  The Old World was rich with stories and tales, which are just as worth reading now as they ever were before, but it's overall progression was halted.  That's not the case with AoS.

Overall, at least thus far, I'm very happy about the state of the game and its world and where they're taking it.  Obviously I'm not the most concerned individual about rules, and balance, and boring technicalities... because seriously, if you and your friends can't work those out and play with your toys, what are you even doing?