Four-eyes plus five!

  I'm so focused on trying to get my Chaos marines painted that I don't have time to paint other projects right now.  And Emprah knows I have a ton of projects.  My wife decided to help out and picked up one of those projects for me.  Of course it had to be for her favorite game...

  When my buddy came down to visit, we played a ton of Underworlds.  Like, a ton.  And now he's coming down for a visit in a couple of months again, so we have to get more painted!  With almost all the Shadespire warbands painted (only the Skaven and Vanguard left), we needed to get to some Nightvault going.  Luckily, I haven't built most of those, so it was an easy choice.  Remember that focus on Chaos?

  This warband is one that my son showed some interest in and so did my wife, so it was definitely on the docket already.  Because of their fantastical nature and the magical foundation, the Eyes of the Nine definitely got some attention.  Being a follower of the pantheon in general, I don't know a whole lot about Tzeentch's representatives, so I'm curious to see these guys in action.

Eyes of the Nine
  This warband, dispatched by one of the nine Gaunt Summoners, is trying to build a magical portal back to its own realm to escape from the clutches of Nagash's punishment.  Their magical nature gives them some fantastic abilities, including the ability to summon a Blue Horror back to the battlefield each round!  They have speed, but very little defense and so depend on a ton of glory-point grabs based on objective points and casting spells.

  The warband's leader, Vortemis the All-seeing, is a wizard with the ability to cast spells and even has a range 3 spell attack.  His melee weapon is no joke either, with a range and damage of 2 and rolling 2 dice for hammers!  With four wounds and a 4 movement, he's definitely the most powerful member of the band as far as causing damage.  He also has the ability to use an action to summon a Blue Horror daemon back to a starting hex, so he's got some definite utility on the battlefield.  

  Those daemons, including the Blue Horror and Brimstone Horror, are very fragile, but they have the ability to cause a great deal of damage very quickly.  And killing the Blue Horror spawns the Brimstone (which attacks twice in his activation), allowing Vortemis to summon the Blue Horror right back!  It's a really neat little 'evolution' mechanic that really capture's the magic.  

 Now for the 'beatstick' part of the army- K'charik and the two Acolytes.  The daemon monster has a very powerful great blade and gets inspired by being near a caster when they cast a spell (Tzeentch!), plus a shield defense for toughness.  The two cultists, on the other hand, have few wounds and barely any defense, but they come with the ability to attack up to range 3.  The cultists and leader all get inspired by successfully attacking at range 3- a strange inspire condition for a daemonic warband, for sure!

  I can't say that this warband is very confusing.  In fact, it still fits very well with the theme set by Garrek's Reavers, another Chaos Warband.  But it is interesting to see the Tzeentchian habit of fire and range where the Reavers are all about smacking and slashing.  

  I really love the wife's work on this band.  She didn't think that she would do it justice and still pulled it off amazingly.  I keep trying to tell her that she's better than she thinks, and this warband (not being bones or boo-sheets) proves it.  And I really want to play them now too!

Let me know what you think or what you're working on in the comments below.  As always, happy hobbying!

Tons of games of Underworlds

  I spent a great deal of time painting over the last month-and-a-half trying to get the Underworlds warbands painting in time for my buddy to play with painted models.  I didn't get to put in the work on Magore's Fiends like I would have preferred (painfully slow), but they're done and still look good on the tabletop.  I can always go back later.

  My mission was complete.  My buddy came down and we played a bunch of games.  Let me quickly cover them below, but I was proud that every model we used was painted.  The visual appeal, even in a board game, can be very rewarding...

Game 1
  My buddy played the Chosen Axes against my Stormsire's Cursebreakers.

  He built his deck to increase wounds, get inspired and gain glory points quickly for holding objectives, and healing all the time.  My Stormcast are typically very dangerous, thumping out skeletons, ghosts, and even Blood Warriors with confidence.

  It did not go well, as the lightning warriors found that they couldn't do damage fast enough to do any damage.  They luckily sacrificed themselves to keep the dwarves out of their zone.  This gave them the game-winning glory points at the end, but it felt hollow.


Game 2
  We still had to find the best 2-of-3, so we played the same warbands.  This time, the boards were set very diagonal with only four hexes to limit interactions.  In addition, most of the newly-named "Feature Hexes" (objective markers) in the dwarven area, by strategy of my buddy.

  This time was so much worse.  Everything that the Stormcast tried to do meant nothing as the Chosen Axes just racked up the glory points and easily defeated any of the gold boys that came near.  With upgrades and wounds to spare, it became a losing battle.  And none of the objective cards really helped, so the Cursebreakers had to settle for very few points and be outgained by more than one.

Game 3
  Two games down, each side with a win, and now it was time to get the third.  Having won the board phase, I set it up to be a long setup with as many obstacles to the dwarves as possible.  The Stormcast have upgrades to go through blocked and lethal hexes, so it wouldn't hurt them.

  Unfortunately, none of that mattered.  The distances were so great and the cowardice of each side being too strong meant that there was very little damage done.  It was not an exciting game and resulted in no scoring at all for the Cursebreakers.  The Axes got points just by standing on objectives.  I had to concede the game because there was nothing, and I mean nothing that the Stormcast could do to score points, cause damage, or even present a threat.

  In all three games, the dwarves scored 6 or 7 glory points.  They were very consistent in scoring points, regardless of the other side.  The Stormcast, on the other hand, were foiled in every legitimate way.  With speed-based ploys and upgrades, the Chosen Axes shared the same speed, defense, and offensive power.  But they are based on claiming objectives, so they score easily and quickly which allows them to upgrade and heal.  I found myself COMPLETELY outclassed.  It was horrific and I HATE those dwarves!  Credit to my buddy for building that deck- especially considering he doesn't play unless he comes cross-country to visit me!  Wow.  Victory to the Chosen Axes.

Game 4
  My buddy wanted to use Magore's Fiends and I chose to use Ylthari's Guardians.

  His deck was built around causing damage.  It wasn't anything terribly advanced and included upgrades that increased damage, so it was pretty obvious.  I can't really remember anything about his deck that was especially exciting- I'm sure it was pretty good.  But playing the trees requires a bit of focus and it was already late at night.

  My buddy was worried about my warband's speed.  I assured him that it was pretty much the same as him, that is until they're inspired.  And they get inspired by healing.  And they get reactions with crits on defense and attacks.  And they get movement shenanigans to bounce about the board.  It was frustrating for his Fiends and he got to feel a bit like I was feeling last series.  The Guardians scored a bunch of points and denied the Fiends scoring any themselves.  My buddy questioned his deck.

Game 5
  This happened a couple days later, and had to be the chance to settle the best-of-3 for the Fiends and Guardians.

  This time, the board was placed in a diagonal way again and even had an objective in no-man's land.  That was going to be advantageous to my both forces...  This was the same problem as the last game, except that all of Magore's Fiends focused on the defensive-based tough tree and took him out.  Without that unbreakable defense pumping out wounds and defying all damage that comes his way, the Guardians were suddenly vulnerable.  In this case, they used their unique gambits to destroy objectives and maneuver to deny the Blood Warriors their glory points.  The frustration was unbelievable and resulted in a scant victory for the trees.

  By this point, it was obvious that Ylthari's Guardians are a very powerful force, if played correctly.  I still fear for warbands that are able to shift the advantages to their side.  My buddy believes that his Magore's Fiends deck is terrible.  He even figured out that he was using the Khorne-dog wrong- putting him out in front and presenting him as an easy target.

Game 6
  My wife had built a pretty good deck for her ghosts and wanted to give it a run, so she brought the Thorns of the Briar Queen and my buddy went with the Chosen Axes (if I remember correctly- I was studying and taking a quiz, so I was a bit distracted).

  I remember hearing my wife cackle a number of times and my buddy exclaim how crazy it was.  The ghosts simply 'pushed' their way to surround the dwarves, get inspired, and then get glory points in nutsy ways.  The Thorns are extremely fast!  With a couple of healing powers and extra wounds, they attacked like a swarm and forced the dwarves to react in a non-beneficial way.  My buddy didn't like it and the ghosts easily won.  Like, easily.  I'm rather worried to play my wife now.

Game 7
  My son challenged my buddy to a game a day later.  My son used his Magore's Fiends against my buddy's Chosen Axes.  My son was already very worried, having heard my own experiences.

  Funny enough, my son still lost but he did a much better job with his deck than me against those dwarves.  He caused damage, had the speed to get in and lay down some smack before having to take the return attacks.  With his objectives, my son still scored some glory points and made a good showing of himself.  But he was not happy with his deck and my son instantly thought about revamping his deck.

Game 8
  It was time for the heavyweight matchup, taking place on his last night in town.  My buddy brought his Chosen Axes and I brought Ylthari's Guardians. 

  This game was very interesting because the trees were too afraid of the dwarves to directly engage.  But the objective cards cooperated and it allowed for the glory points to stack up.  Better, the board setup was advantageous and allowed the trees to use blocked hexes to their advantage.  The Chosen Axes were able to kill a couple of the trees and be generally frustrating, but it wasn't anything near effective and they couldn't score enough points to win.

Game 9
  Best-of-3.  Unfortunately this was a foregone conclusion.  From the board phase all the way through the beginning of round 2, everything was stacked against the Chosen Axes.  Their cards did not come up right and the objectives that they needed were either too far away or contested already.  To make matters worse, the trees simply ran as far from the dwarves as possible and taunted them.  Destroying objective markers and keeping everyone at arm's length (very Eldar-like tactics) made Ylthari's Guardians unbeatable.  With frustration oozing, my buddy had to concede.

  All in all, we found that his Chosen Axes deck was ridiculous and very well designed.  Impressively and enough to rekindle my hatred of dwarves (I've always been partial to the elves, of course).  Unfortunately, it's weakness is that it didn't have the ability to score enough points.  Getting up to six or seven wasn't really going to achieve a alot of victories for the dwarves.

  We also found that Ylthari's Guardians are very capable of scoring tons of points and, when used correctly, can frustrate opponents past even resignation.  They seem to be 'tricksy' in a way that's very dependent on dice rolls and extremely stressful for both the player and the opponent.  If crits come up, it's going to be a bad to for the opponent.  If they are rare, the trees are going to find themselves outclassed.

   It was a packed weekend of gaming.  I'm very proud to have finished painting the models in time and gave my buddy that experience.  Better, I'm very happy that he actually got to play the game!  It's also possible that he can come down later this year, with newly designed decks in hand and a mission to beat me.  I'll be happy to meet that challenge, hopefully with a Stormcast deck that can do anything...

  As always, Happy Gaming!

Even the trees walk!

  In case you haven't been keeping up, Underworlds is our favorite game for this family.  It's the one that requires the least amount of setup and has the least amount of rules, and models are really cool.  We know that I'm into anything GW, and that I will recruit anyone I can to play, even my poor innocent children.  

  My son obviously plays all the games with me and he's already picked up and used a good number of the warbands.  My wife is all about her Death armies and that definitely is represented in both the setting and the two warbands that she forced me to pick up (it took so much convincing...).  But my daughter had not yet gotten into these games with us and, well, I just couldn't let that stand.  

  Owning all the warbands (and cards and White Dwarfs that even mention the game), I laid them all out in front of my daughter and asked her which one looked like her favorites.  She was stricken by the tree-ghost thingies.  Ylthari's Guardians it is!

  So I went to work furiously trying to paint these things and get my daughter interested in playing.  Maybe if there was some color on the models, she'd be able to understand what the warriors do and how to use their special abilities.  When the models were done, her mom and she played a game using all painted miniatures and it was much easier for her to keep up with everything.  Admittedly, I did not have a fun time painting these models- too many spindly details overlapping too many other spindly details!  But the final result was awesome and accomplished the purpose.

  Before I get to the pictures, I must disclose that I dusted off the old digital camera.  You see, the camera in my phone finally succumbed to years of drops and stopped working.  Unfortunately, I became spoiled and forgot how to use the real camera, so please forgive the poor picture quality...

Ylthari's Guardians

I forgot to turn the flash off...

And then I forgot how to focus...

  And that's it!  It took me a few weeks to finally finish them (and really about five days) because of some experimentation that didn't quite work out.  But they're done and great models to boot!  As far as their strategy in the game- 

  It's best not to put these warriors too close to the enemy's territory as they aren't the most resilient tree-stock around.  With some range and magic, plus the ability to cause additional damage and wound repeatedly, these is a 'rope-a-dope' warband in that it's made to wear the opponent down.  Few in number and requiring crits on the dice rolls to do anything, they aren't immediate masters like the Chaos and Stormcast warbands.  But some cunning and timing and they can be outrageously frustrating for the opponent.  

  Let me know what you think below and what warband you play if you play this game. 

Happy Hobbying!

Death is also Ethereal in the Underworlds

  In my last post, I mentioned the Nightvault game.  Being a huge fan of the undead, my wife absolutely had to get that new set and the ghostly warband it contained.  Because of course she can't just be happy with skeletons.  She also had to have the ghosts.  I dread the day when GW releases the ghouls and vampires and zombies for Underworlds...

  What's interesting about this warband is that I also picked up a couple of the technical paints for her to try out.  Hexwraith Flame and Soulstone Blue were made to paint the new ghostly Nighthaunt models and she was excited to give them a try.  Not being a professional painter like me and my ilk (although she is artistic and her mother teaches canvas painting courses for a living), anything that makes this easier was great in her book.  In addition to those colors, she also took advantage of the Ryza Rust dry color for obvious reasons- undead aren't exactly cleaning and oiling their blades after every battle!  And better yet, it took her just a few hours to get the whole warband done. 

  Just like last post, I took pictures of the models in front of a black background and a white, curious to see which one I like better.  The black background makes the colors pop more, but the white background shows off the detail more.  I just can't figure out which one I like better...

Thorns of the Briarqueen

  I'd say her results were great no matter which background I chose.  I love my wife so much...  I just hope her playing all these death armies isn't giving her any ideas- I don't have life insurance!

  Again, let me know which background you like better.  I invite advice in this as I'm still learning.  Otherwise, as always- 

Happy Hobbying!

Stormsire and skills

  Shadespire is the first 'edition' of Warhammer Underworlds, and the second is known as Nightvault.  This came out a year ago and, by the time you're reading this post, will be out of print and setting up for the third 'edition' called Beastgrave.  Thank the Emprah that I've kept up with everything and have purchased every warband as it gets released.  I need all those cards! 

  Anyway, the starter box for Nightvault came with two warbands.  Last November, my buddy came down and we planned a trip to the Warhammer Citadel.  We were under the impression that we could only use fully-painted models (it turns out we were wrong), so the three of us (my wife, my buddy, and myself) all pulled out the paints and got to work the night before.  I spent all my time finishing my Reaver warband while my wife finished both her undead bands (more on her ghosts next post).  My buddy, on the other hand, started completely fresh and painted up the entire Stormcast warband from this kit. 

  Let's talk about my buddy's skills for second.  He's as skilled as I am at painting, working for the Emprah for a while and being trained by Golden Daemon winners as well.  But he's more experienced than me- he paints all the time and has a few more finished armies than I do (but not by much- he likes gaming more than painting).  The reason this matters is because I had a very poor time with the primer on these models and couldn't find my proper colors (like the expensive Retributor Gold spraypaint I had bought not long before the visit).  So my buddy was saddled with some poorly primed models and hand-painting method that he likes to avoid.  As you can see in the pics below (black background), the fuzzy primer still showed through and could have really damaged the professional appearance we both appreciate. 

When primer goes wrong

   As you can see, he did an absolutely FANTASTIC job painting these models despite the obstacles.  He wasn't happy with them, but a single night's work and terrible primer still led to models that would look good on any tabletop. 

  I decided to give the models another series of pics with a white background to see if that would improve the appearance.  This is where the darkness shows through.  My buddy likes to paint in darker tones (it's called "grimdark" for a reason!), but it was also the quality of my phone camera.  While not bad (every pic you see on this blog is taken with that Galaxy S6 that's been dropped enough times that the camera now vibrates), the white background really mitigates the color-strength (there's a word for that but I can't remember it right now). 

Stormsire's Cursebreakers

 

 

  I'm always learning and trying to get better and the lesson for this post is that I need to choose which is better- white background to mute the texture or dark background to pop the color.  Hmmm...  Otherwise, this shows how amazing my buddy's skills are when it comes to painting.  Oh, and we didn't even use them at the Citadel the next day as we reverted to our former careers and got into hobby conversation and sales mode.  Plus, the Citadel makes great coffee and that may have distracted me from pulling out the game.  Whoops!

  Let me know what you think is better- the black background showing the fuzzy primer or the white background losing the color.  Your advise is always appreciated.  And of course-

Happy Hobbying!