Thursday 28 March 2019

Warhammer World: Some Golden Demon Entries


More from the Warhammer World exhibitions - this time some Golden Demon entries. This Kal Jericho entry by Henry South won Silver in the Unbound category at the Horus Heresy and Necromunda Weekender in 2018.


This diorama by Michael Anderson won it's category at the Golden Demon Classic at WarhammerFest in 2018. Sadly, not really a great photo...


Another one from the Horus Heresy and Necromunda Weekender 2018 - this time an Escher Gang that won Bronze by Matt Wingrove - oddly enough, in the Necromunda Gang category...


And finally, the Silver from the Youngbloods category at the Age of Sigmar Open Day 2018. The skill level of the younger painters who enter Youngbloods blows my mind sometimes!

Monday 25 March 2019

HATE Infinity League 2: Frontline vs JSA


"But The Responsible One," I hear you metaphorically ask, "wasn't your last League game against JSA?"

It was indeed, but it seems there's quite a few people who've signed up to play JSA in the new League, so there will be a few games with them!


This time around, it was a game of Frontline, and my experience with this so far is that the ability to move zones in the second turn is really strong. So, when I won the Lieutenant roll I chose deployment sides, and made my opponent set up first. I had taken the Armand profile with Minelayer in the list too, so I was hoping, by holding him back, to increase the risk of deploying a mine somewhere really inconvenient for a ninja.


As it was, I was  little unlucky and Shinobu had deployed to counter the Druze link team. My sniper got a shot off as she approached, but she managed to win the face to face and while I passed my armour rolls, the Brawler failed their guts check and ducked prone, leaving the back of the team exposed.



What followed was several members of the link getting killed one by one with careful placement of smoke and so forth. The game then got even more involved and exciting and I forgot to take photos of the latter stages, so I'm going to keep the description out of line with the remaining photos of the early stages to break things up a bit.


My MSV2 Sniper shamefacedly came down from their perch to deal with Shinobu, manoeuvring to shoot her in the back. Seeing what was coming, she changed facing to face off against the sniper, but I then took the opportunity to have my Lieutenant run up behind her and shotgun her in the back. Unfortunately, I didn't quite have the orders to get her back into cover. I used my Hunzakut in the midfield to speculative fire a grenade to clear out some of the threats there, and managed to get rid of a Ryuken Unit-9 at least.


My opponent then manage to move his Lu Duan to see the Lieutenant and gun her down, leaving me in Loss of Lieutenant for the second turn. My Hunzakut managed to lay a mine to take out the Lu Duan, but the damage was done.


Armand had been locking down most of the JSA advance with a commanding view of the field from a tower on the left. The first plan required a Keisotsu to run and clear out a Warcor to make space for a Kempeitai with MSV2 to get rid of him, but they ran into a hidden Saito Togan. Armand's luck eventually ran out and he took a wound from a carefully placed mine, losing his Symbiont armour and ducking prone into cover.


A quite terrifying amount of JSA then advanced into the midfield, taking out Saito and re-syncing the Xenotech with the Lieutenant order, failing to place the Multiscanner marker with the very last order.


I had a handful of orders left and had a hard choice to make. I could try and kill a lot of things in the centre and try and claim the centre, or I could try and push forward to the far zone, gaining the far zone for the win - but I wasn't sure how far I'd have to go to get that zone, and the models left who could do it were very vulnerable to crits.

I decided to go for the centre zone. One at a time, I engaged models in the centre with my Druze Killer Hacker, and even my new Lieutenant, a Brawler Doctor with a rifle. The Brawler Sniper managed to draw a long diagonal line on a Ryuken-9... Every order and every shot was a kill, taking out five models worth around a hundred points, swinging the game from JSA to me. In the end, it was a 6-0 win to me, but in reality it was a lot closer - the last turn could have fallen apart with one unlucky roll, as I was definitely on the back foot. It was a really good fun game, and a good challenge for both of us.

Thursday 21 March 2019

Warhammer World: Some Figures at the Museum


While I was at the Warhammer World Open Day in January, I took the opportunity to potter around the museum, on the grounds of it being free during events. I took a few photos while I was there, so thought I'd share for those of you who can't get to Warhammer World.

This isn't the usual set of photos from the exhibition. It's not an coherent or representative set of photos, but rather bits and bobs that caught my eye as a repeat visitor. First up were these lovely old monsters on the classic goblin green bases.


If we're talking about contrasts, the Idoneth Deepkin Avatar, with the massive cloak turning into a waterfall and clever use of negative space is the other end of the scale to the old style monsters. I hadn't realised just quite how big this model is!


There was a lovely mini diorama of a Lord of Change stepping through a realm gate.


Here, some mounted Stormcast face off against a dragon.


Ghouls versus Seraphon...


A giant having a little disagreement with a Kharadron Overlord airship.


A lovely Forge World knight. Mostly taken as I'd like one of the Forge World knights in the future but I really haven't decided which one yet.

Thursday 14 March 2019

Warhammer World New Year's Open Day: Staff Displays


Remember that New Year's Open Day I went to? There was a ton of cool staff hobby there, and I haven't posted the photos yet.


This is Andy Hoare's Space Slann army, which is rather obscure and pretty darned cool.


I think this is an early Confrontation / Necromunda playtest figure.


Some models from Jervis' collection, I believe.


Annoyingly, I didn't make a note of whose figure this was at the time, and now don't remember. It's a nice conversion I still wanted to share, tho!

Monday 11 March 2019

CharlieTee Paints for me...

Photo by Charlie Tee


Long term readers of this blog will remember that around when I started I agreed to paint a friend’s Herald of Tzeentch. Many years later, it was still unfinished, so I resolved when I moved house I’d commission someone to finish it off so my friend could finally get her model back painted.

Conveniently, my friend Charlie Tee has set up a painting business and Twitch Channel called, surprisingly, Charlie Tee Paints. I sent it off a little while ago, and today I got this wonderful ‘before’ and ‘after’ comparison.

With the herald now winging its way to its owner, I thought my readership would like to see it. I can absolutely recommend Charlie’s painting business to people, and I hear they have commission slots available at the time of writing. (If you’re reading this in six months time, who knows? Write and ask them!)

Wednesday 6 March 2019

Slowing down in my old age


Last weekend I was in Birmingham for the Infinity UK Masters. This coming weekend I’m in Mallorca for the EIC tournament. I’ve still not written up CanCon in January...

While it’s reassuring I’m out having fun, I like writing the blog and getting behind is a bit of a warning sign. The hobby area in the flat still isn’t sorted as I’ve been running around Doing Fun Things...

As much as a reminder to myself as anything else, I need to remember not to overcommit to things. I’m rushing around doing immediately fun things but not committing the time to things that perhaps need a little bit more work but will be be really satisfying once they’re done. I’m not going to chance any plans just yet, but I need to be a bit more careful with booking stuff into my calendar in future so I don’t end up flat out all month. Everyone needs a rest!