Some potential projects

The real world continues to inconveniently time consuming, and impeding my ability to spend all my time on random hobby projects. The tedious and complicated way our house move is happening continues to soak up vast amounts of time, but the little windows of delight in our new home show that it will all be worth it in the end.

I am actively champing at the bit to get to some hobby projects. It goes without saying Infinity is high on the list - that hasn't changed. But what else is catching my eye?

There's a pretty big Underworlds scene up here, and I do have a couple of warbands painted already. I do need to find the new edition cards I have somewhere. The matter is slightly complicated by my not having the current edition box for boards and tokens and whatever, and budget currently precludes fixing that.

But it seems likely I should be able to get a few games in once I've found the decks, and if I have fun with that, I'll look to get the latest set.

Quite a few people are also playing Age of Sigmar Spearhead. For this, I do have a whole Spearhead in the Skaventide box - but it's unassembled and unpainted. That's a slightly more chunky hobby project than "find a few things", but I do at least already own everything I need to do that. I've got both of the Spearhead scenery and board sets, too.

I'm getting quite excited by Heresy, as lots of other people are. A little audit of kits has shown that bits and pieces of other abandoned projects comes to about 800 points or so, but is heavily lacking in troops. One box of Heresy Tactical Marines would get me to a small playable force at about 1,000 points or so.

But I have no finished models! This feels like a good "get a couple out, get them done, then paint another kit" type project. If and when I've gotten everything else done and ready, I can grab the tactical box as my reward.

 

I am wavering on Old World, readers. While I have a bunch of Bretonnian kits, what is bringing me joy is the idea of Empire of Man. But I am definitely not in a place to be buying a huge new army.

Conveniently for me, the TSN Arena has put together some rules for playing The Old World at 500 points. This seems eminently more achievable as a goal for the Bretonnians, and perhaps once that's done, I can switch my focus to Empire?

What do you know, Malifaux is releasing a new edition! I was just getting into the local scene as part of a Slow Grow campaign when Covid hit - my last game got cancelled right as lockdown hit for the first time.

I haven't found anyone playing locally, but there is a pretty thriving national scene. I can't see it being too challenging to get some paint on my crew, grab the new cards once they come out, and sign up to a small event.

And finally, the low bar. This bit of resin from Fenris Games is intended for my photography set up. Once I find it, cleaning it, undercoating it, and painting it up with some simple techniques will be a pretty simple win to get something done.

These are a whole lot of projects. My current thinking is very much based around trying to set aside the time to get one pretty hefty hobby project done a month. I definitely have too much on in September, but I'm looking thoughtfully at October or November for being able to maybe start doing something that isn't unpacking boxes, or sorting things to be sold on eBay.

Having the space, both physically and metaphorically, is the reason we moved. I'm looking forward to being through the work that gets us there.

Some thoughts on my plans for Games Workshop games

 

With more than half the year gone, I thought I'd have a bit of a ponder about my plans for the rest of the year. For September, I thought it would be a good idea to try and get in a game of That There Warhammer 40,000 New Edition. I've got a Deathwatch force that I might need to fiddle about with to make work, but I'll put together an army and find someone to play down at the club.

I do have quite a few commitments in September already - so there's a small chance I won't manage to fit this in. If so, I'll do it in October and everything else can slip to the right by a month in turn . . .

I've still not played Age of Sigmar. This is completely daft, as I really like the look of it. October shall be the month of Age of Sigmar (except if it isn't), and I shall finally play a game of that there fantasy game, and see if I like it.

I had a learning game of Warhammer Underworlds a few years ago. I own a couple of painted Stormcast warbands courtesy of Squiggle's Studio. I have a big pile of unpainted warbands on top of that. Let November be the month I get in a game of Warhammer Underworlds with my own models and a Rivals deck.

As I mentioned, September is a busy month, so everything may slip a month. If it doesn't, I do have December free. So lets have a suitably "stealthy" bonus objective. The club has a Boarding Action terrain set, and I should be able to put together a boarding action team really easily. I'm keen on the idea of Boarding Action sized painting projects, so I'd like to see if it's as much my jam as I suspect it is.

Where I'm at with different wargames

 

I spent last Sunday having a bit of a re-organise of the hobby room after being unable to find a particular box of Space Marines for a whole month. This got a little out of hand. I ended up getting everything out to organise and repack it. In turn, this got me thinking about what my priorities are right now.

Infinity is still my main game. I've been playing Shasvastii primarily, but I've got a few games in with White Company as well, and am keen to get some more games in with them once I get the next batch of them back from That Mr Shy. Meanwhile, I've just had the latest batch of O-12 arrive, and they're the utility pieces that will mean I have some solid tournament list options.

After my learning game of 9th edition Warhammer 40,000 I'm pretty relaxed about the idea of waiting for 10th edition to drop and playing some learning games of that. I've taken a pass of my existing models for stuff I'll definitely sell off, and everything else has gone into a dedicated Box Of Uncertainty for me to make a decision on when 10th edition drops. I definitely want to do some Boarding Action games, but I'm assuming they'll work just fine in 10th edition as well as 9th.

I will finish the Horus Heresy test paints, then paint the Plasma Gun Support Squad I have for it, but the Audit Of Doom has definitely shown I have plenty to be getting on with without over-committing into another game just yet. Of all the Warhammers, this is the one I think I'd most like to be playing at a mass battle level, but I simply don't have the models for it right now.

Age of Sigmar and Warhammer Underworlds . . . 

I want to be keen for both of these games. I have painted playable forces for both. But I'm just not finding the time to book in a game to try them out. I definitely want to get a game or two in before I make a decision on each, but unless they jump out at me, maybe I need to find something to better focus my time on?

Malifaux is also in a weird place. I'm deeply keen to get some models painted for it and play some games, but I've been focusing on finishing half done stuff "before I get onto my Malifaux Crew" recently. I'm definitely suffering from the "I want to do it well" problem so I don't want to pull them out and slap on a low quality paint job. Currently top of my "do this next" mental list when I finish the half finished stuff lying around.

Battletech is suffering from one thing: mould lines. My goodness, are they terrible. Trying to clean up ten whole mechs has absolutely stalled out. I've split them into smaller groups, and now have three cleaned up, and one undercoated and ready for paint. I could probably arrange a one on one mech duel to learn the rules a bit, but it would be nice to have a full Lance to take if I get through the one on one duel OK.

D&D style RPGs are the other significant thing on my hobby time at the moment. Not needing to have a consistent paint scheme helps stop me panic about how a force should look and fail to paint anything. And outside that, I'm working towards the goal of an in person game with miniatures, which helps give it some structure.

Conversely, I've accepted I'm not getting around to Stargrave any time soon, and I've added most of the models I'd bought specifically for that to the eBay pile. I do intend to play it one day, but I can buy the models when I get close to that point, and not hang onto them forever in the meantime!

Future Friday - What's Caught My Eye

I've been looking thoughtfully at a few different game systems of late, so I thought I'd have a little ramble about them. First up is Battletech, where I've already painted up a local militia Wolverine, and am planning to paint a bunch more as Lyran Guards. Once I've got enough painted up, I'll find some folk to get a game with. They don't take up much space and it will be a nice thing to dip into now and again.

The new Games Workshop release of Horus Heresy has been mega tempting. Rather than buy a billion miniatures, I've assembled and undercoated these two characters a friend gifted to me. I'm going to paint those up first, and if I enjoy doing that, I'll paint the various bits and bobs of Heresy suitable stuff I already own before I get anything new.

I've had some realisation about how much stuff I have lying around that I'm not using and I want to really start cutting back on buying stuff up in advance. I'll spend a lot less money if I buy stuff just as I'm wanting to use it, and the overhead of managing a pile of boxes is quite significant!

I did play a game of Warhammer Underworlds a while ago, and quite enjoyed it. I then decided not to get into it because the idea of keeping up with that many card decks really didn't appeal. With the new Rivals format where you can just have a warband and a set deck of cards is much better for being able to dip in and out. I have some warbands commission painted from my Stormcast and other warbands are a nice "dip in" painting project size.

So I'll probably find a couple of pick up games of Underworlds to give it a go, I don't need to buy anything new to make that happen.

Not an Elder Scrolls mini

I've been seeing a couple of YouTube videos of people playing Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms, and it's been tempting me to get into it. I've got the core box without any miniatures, which will be enough to play a test game with my own miniatures. To do that, I'm going to need to finish finally tidying the hobby room, which I should get done by the end of the year.

So, Elder Scrolls can be a nice "reward" game for me. I want to give it a go, and have been trying to move towards "no models without a storage solution" for a while now. So I won't be getting this until I've cleared the hobby room sufficiently that I can make that work - and right now I've still got a bunch of models I already own with nowhere to store, so that will need sorting first!

Not a LotR mini!

Finally, I've been looking really quite thoughtfully at GW's Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. I'm hearing quite a few positive noises about it being reasonably well balanced and fun. They've also recently released some nice starter boxes, and the new models look really pretty too.

That said, I currently have enough on and I don't really know anyone who plays. So for now, it can stay as something I daydream about and look at wistfully from time to time. It's clearly the game that got a bunch of people into the hobby, so I think a lot of this is "someone else's nostalgia" feelings. I'll be keeping an eye on it for the future, though.

Warhammer Underworlds Beastgrave Scenery Pack

My regular readers will have been spotting different pieces of this scenery pack for Underworlds in the background of various other work in progress shots of my painting table, but after more time than I can remember, they're all finished!

The paint job is a simple one - zenithal undercoat, then contrast, then a drybrush of Karak Stone. This has kept them relatively consistent colours and looking like part of the same landscape.

With a couple of Stormcast Underworlds warbands that have been painted up by Squiggle's Studio as part of my wider Stormcast army commission, as soon as I dig out the cards, I should be able to get some games in...

A few different things

 

I've been pottering along with the painting, getting started on these two geese watchmen from Northumbrian Tin Soldier. They're fun little models and not too complicated, so should get done soon.

I'm also nearly finished on the Beastgrave Scenery Pack, and you can also catch in the background that I'm getting much closer to done on three Nox Troopers and a Cadmus I've had half done for a while. I'm going to be glad when these ones are all finished, and its feeling like I'm into the home stretch.

I've also fitted in a practice game of Infinity for St Albans Smackdown, an Infinity tournament which you may be able to guess is held in St Albans. I also attended St Albans Smackdown, and will put a report of how I did up a little later.

All in all, it's been a good week. With a long weekend coming up next weekend I'm hoping to finish off a couple of painting projects to leave me in a good place as we enter into September and the autumn...

Work in Progress Wednesday - Warhammer Underworlds Terrain

 

With the weather improving a little recently, I was able to get the Warhammer Underworlds Beastgrave terrain undercoated over the weekend.

Now, the terrain is definitely one of those completely unnecessary extras you don't need for the game, but I got it in the "Supply Crate" blind box that Games Workshop did, so I thought I might as well get it painted up.

I was quite impressed with how cleverly they fit together to get interesting shapes that still fit cleanly and snugly onto the sprue.

I doubt I'll even use them in all that many games myself, but they might be useful for making it clear where impassable hexes are.

I'll likely just do a quick and simple paint job for them in between other projects.

There's a lovely variety in them that give you the opportunity for fun paint effects if you fancy it.

I particularly love the big "two hex" piece for it's ambition. I may have made a tactical error in gluing it all together before painting...

Work in Progress Wednesday - Teasing some projects for the New Year

 

First up, I've gotten these Micro Art Studios crates cleaned up ready for undercoating. I normally undercoat before I photograph this sort of thing, but I'm planning on undercoating these black and then drybrushing up, so you wouldn't see much otherwise.

I grabbed these crates from a clearance bin at some point and I wasn't quite prepared for just how large they are. Here they are next to a Gwailo, which is one of the larger Shasvastii models. They've got some heft to them.

I also undercoated up this Stormcast Liberator who came free with White Dwarf when Age of Sigmar first came out. The plan is to use him as a test model for a colour scheme . . .

And this is what it's a test model for. I'm planning on trying some Underworlds when the world is open again, and I managed to pick up a good deal on a couple of Warbands from someone who'd assembled them and was looking to offload them.

I have spotted a couple of gaps I'll need to green stuff, but it's nothing disastrous.

I also got the Thorns of the Briar Queen in the same purchase. I haven't quite worked out how I plan to paint these ones yet. I may try something new. That's one of the things that's appealing about Underworlds - the ability to try out different painting techniques on a handful of models.

Trying out Warhammer Underworlds (AKA Shadespire)

I've mentioned trying out Warhammer Underworlds in a previous blog post, but I thought it merited its own dedicated post. For those who haven't encountered it before, Shadespire is a 2 - 4 player skirmish games played out on a hex board. You use a fixed set of miniatures, but use two decks of cards with objectives and tactics that you can change to vary how the models play and what you're trying to do to win.

For the purposes of the demo game, I borrowed our tutor's "Chosen Axes" warband, who are Fyreslayers. My opponent had put together "The Farstriders", one of the Stormcast warbands.

Before you even start the game, you need to set up the board. You play over two sections of board, and you roll off to have one player and then the other place a board section each, which can lead to a long, thin board like this one, a more traditional square, or even an off-set S shape like board. You then take it in turns to place objectives.

My opponent and I both quickly cottoned on that this stuff was Important. The roll meant my opponent placed his board second, so he created a long thin board to balance that his warband had lots of ranged shooting compared to my tough and stabby group. Similarly, the rules around objective placement meant you could do interesting and clever things to place objectives where they are useful to you or to prevent your opponent placing objectives where they would be useful to them.

This is an example of one of the cards you can play. It added a bunch of move to one of my models so they could really rocket up the field.

Here you see me pushing up the field to claim objectives and try and beat up some Stormcast. Meanwhile, they skulked away like the cowards with ranged weapons they were shooting me full of holes.

You'll notice a couple of my fighters standing on objectives. That's not because I was trying to score using them (you need a card for that) but ending a turn on an objective meant that my fighters "Inspired", which means you turn their fighter card over and get a cooler stat line.

Other warbands inspire by different means - so a Khorne warband might inspire due to people dying (no matter whose side they're on) while the Skaven warband inspires by successfully playing sneaky trick cards. The Fyreslayers, obsessed with finding treasure, get inspired by staying on objectives (presumably to give them time to search them for loot).

Unfortunately, I was out-manoeuvred and started to lose more of my brave Dwarfs.

Slowly but surely, they were whittled down by the Stormcast, and I simply hadn't acquired enough Glory to win.

You get Glory for completing objectives. You can then spend it on cool upgrades. Whoever wins is the person who collected the most Glory overall. There's no benefit for having it unspent - you want to score early to get cool stuff. You can see the six glory the treacherous Stormcast amassed here - with five spent on upgrades and one left unspent.

Meanwhile, I amassed a mere three (the other four tokens are activation counters, unrelated to the game score). You can see an example of an objective card here, with an upgrade below it to the right.

As I said before, this is a really cleverly designed game that's easy to pick up but hard to master. It needs a few tokens but they all come in the starter box, along with the special dice with weird symbols you can see in a couple of the photos that you need to play. I hope to get a few more bits and bobs painted soon so I can pick up a starter set and start getting some games in.

Holiday and game demos

We had a week off this past week, and wandered the country doing relaxing things and catching up with friends and family. As part of this we spent a few days in Nottingham and had a little time in Warhammer World. I managed to get a little hobby assembly done, starting on the Warhammer Heroes models I have.

We managed to fit in a couple of demos. I’d also previously got a demo of Warhammer Underworlds in. So, what’s the report?

Blackstone Fortress

We got a lovely demo with me playing the Rogue Trader and Sim playing the stompy robot. Sim found it a bit too fiddly for her liking, but I loved it, and the solo play means I’ll still be able to get in a campaign of it. Firmly on my “to purchase” list.

Adeptus Titanicus

We had a stripped down demo of two Warlords blasting seven bells out of each other. Definitely a longer game, but the core mechanics are simple and easy to remember. Likely we’ll be able to justify setting up a game table and playing a turn a night over the course of a week. Will be getting more Titans and Knights, definitely.

Warhammer Underworlds

Played this one without Sim, but also been reinforced to pick this up. A well balanced game with slick mechanics and a low model count. This one is a good quick “get a game in” option.

Only managed to assemble one Marine in Bugmans in the end due to catching up with various people. Still, it was good to catch up with various folk and my hobby keen is strong!