Planning some actual miniature hobby

 

With the realisation that I'd been too busy to use up my holiday allowance this year, I have the week off. The eBay clear out continues. The unpacking continues. I've got two games of Infinity booked, so we may see a battle report of some kind if I remember to take enough pictures...

But I also really wanted to start getting into getting some miniature assembly done. First up on my to do list is a Halfling Blood Bowl team. With the new edition out, I'm sure there will be some folk interested in getting some games in.

More experienced players of Blood Bowl may be asking where on earth the Treemen are in this picture. Well, I haven't bought any yet! The new rulebook and the team's Treemen will be the reward for getting the rest of the team assembled and ready for paint. I'm not daft enough to try and play Blood Bowl with a Halfling team without any Treemen...

I also could really do with getting my Dungeons and Lasers set off sprue and into a storage box. They're pre-painted, so it's not really an "assembly" job, but it's something that will take time.

As a potential bonus, I found this box of assorted Frostgrave sprues. I may be joining a Pathfinder campaign in the new year, so knocking up an assortment of generic baddies could be a fun little side project.

Now, where are my clippers?

Warhammer World New Year's Open Day - All The Gossip

Without further ado, I'm going straight into the assorted pictures and nonsense I managed to pick up at the Open Day. There's no real revelations here - there's prettier pictures over at the Warhammer Community site - this is more about what I saw and what I thought about it.

Lets start off with Blood Bowl. The new stuff here was some additional Goblin Secret Weapons, including one with wings, one with a pogo stick, and an 'Ooligan with a bunch of noise making gizmos. These are the sort of thing I expect my darling wife may pick up at some point...

There's also an alternative troll sculpt if that's your thing. This one seems to be wielding someone's leg, which is pretty cool. Some extra variety is really nice to see.

Helmut Wulf and Karla von Kill had already been announced (and can in fact be ordered from Forge World now) but it was great to see them in the flesh. Karla is a bad-ass female character whose background is simply that she's a great Blood Bowl player. That she's sensibly dressed is a relief. Meanwhile, Helmut Wulf is a lunatic with a chainsaw. What could possibly go wrong?

On to Necromunda. If this figure looks familiar, that's because it was formerly available for the now discontinued Forge World Renegades range. The discontinuation inconveniently made it a little harder to get a Rogue Wyrd for your campaign, so he's getting a repackage and rerelease into Necromunda. Which is kind of sweet.

The Am-bot is a robot designed to look like an Ambull that any gang can hire. It looks like either there's more than one way to build the kit or more than one version going to be available. I love these to death, they're great.

Wait a second. A Blackstone Fortress expansion . . . called "The Dreaded Ambull". Surely not?

Apparently so! The Ambull is back in 40K as a monster in Blackstone Fortress. I cannot foresee a circumstance where I won't be buying this. It's amazing!

They also had an early copy of "Urban Conquest", a new campaign system for 40K. I really like this, it looks well thought through and rather clever.

You make a "map" of the city by dealing cards into a five by five grid in a wallet. It's designed for four players, with different starting map layout options. Each "campaign" turn can be after any number of games, including none if you've missed a round! You rank the players depending on how they did, then they do stuff like capture territory, select strategies for the next round of games, and accumulate their victory points.

This would be a lot of book keeping if there weren't reusable stickers supplied with the back so you can just fold the map up and get it out next time, with all the player positions and stratagems all neatly laid out. The designer also said it should work quite well for Kill Team. I'm not sure if it's designed for it or if it would need a little modding.

The pack is designed to handle the usual campaign woes of people missing weeks, or getting a drubbing and ending up near the bottom - it's intended to be quite forgiving of that and give people who are significantly behind ways to catch up. It's not just a case of winning the most games - if you outmanoeuvre the other players on the campaign board, you might win the campaign without having won as many games as them.
 

There were a bundle of other releases - this was a Mechanicus who'll be in a Kill Team expansion box. I'm assuming there will be 40K rules for them as well. There was also a ton of Genestealer Cult stuff, an announcement of a Ghoul vs Skaven box, and various other things I didn't have time to find and photograph.

The goblins, or "Gloomspite" were also out in force. Jes Bickham has been making an all troll / Troggoth army. I'm resisting things one for now - I had a few good talks about what I'm looking to get out of Age of Sigmar and I'm getting slightly more concrete thoughts about what I want to collect. I'm going to keep those to myself for now.

I'm pleased to say that a weekend away seeing amazing hobby stuff, and hanging out with awesome people has really ignited my hobby keen. I can't wait to get underway with various projects, and then tell you about them on here.

Daydreaming about future plans

While still not able to really do much hobby during the move, I thought I'd ponder some of the things I'm looking forward to getting into once we're settled in to the new flat.

Adeptus Titanicus

My darling wife is super excited about this, as she's always been a titan fan. We need to have a chat about who is going Loyalist and who is playing the Traitors, but otherwise I'm just looking forward to some nice meticulous modelling and painting. The game play demos I've seen also appeal, with resource management per titan, tracking sheets, and lots of lovely crunchy stuff.

Age of Sigmar

I've been meaning to get into Age of Sigmar forever. I think it probably merits it's own dedicated post at some point, as I probably need to rationalise the projects I've got and focus on something in particular. Right now, I've got Chaos, Order and Goblins, and that's probably too much. Working out what to drop is proving a challenge, though.

Warhammer 40,000

So, I love the look of the new edition. I haven't played it once. Part of the problem is, I think, playing Guard is proving to be a challenge in terms of storage space and getting stuff to a game. Originally, I'd planned to get over this by moving to a mixed Imperium force with tons of bits and pieces from all over. Unfortunately, the easiest way to get a balanced pick up game when you don't play very often is to use the matched play rules, but they've updated those rules to remove the ability to use the "Imperium" keyword to pick an army due to an assortment of abuses in tournaments. I'm left not really sure what it is I want to be doing in 40K...

Kill Team

While Warhammer 40,000 requires this big bucket of effort to get the army out, find time to play, and all that stuff, Kill Team is looking like an excellent low effort alternative. Less space to store, fewer models to paint. I hear it's pretty balanced too. Definitely one for quick games with my wife after work.

Necromunda

Basically, everything I just said about Kill Team above. Small units, I can use the same terrain for both, and you can get a game done in a reasonable time frame. It's mostly just a case of working out what gang I want to run and picking it up... I used to run Cawdor back in the day, but both Orlock and Van Saar look tempting today.

Shadespire

Again, a nice looking game with pretty miniatures, small cost of entry and minimal storage requirements. What's not to like? Once I'm moved, I'm keen to get a demo game in to work out how quickly to get it, but its definitely something I'm excited about.

Blood Bowl

The only real question is what team to get. I ran a Blood Bowl League in my school when the last edition was released. It's stood the test of time and I adore it. I still have my old Skaven metal team, but they may end up getting sold on - the new Chaos cheerleaders are tempting me towards a more fighty game than a running and passing one.

Warhammer Quest

I have Silver Tower, and the Hammerhal version also looks like it's Even More My Jam than Silver Tower is. Plenty of gorgeous models to paint up, though it's quite a few to paint in one go before you can start play, so likely to be something I do after getting one of the games with a smaller barrier to entry done first.

Aristeia!

Like Shadespire, but in the Infinity universe. I've been offered a demo game down at HATE, which I hope to fit in at some point. The base game comes with 8 models, and you need a team of 4. These are the sort of painting numbers I can feasibly achieve. Very tempting!

Malifaux

The announcement of Malifaux 3E has both excited me and persuaded me to pause on my Infinity stuff for now. The game had been suffering from bloat, and play had been dropping off a bit, too. I'm not painting anything up until the new edition drops, so I can decide whether to stick with my current faction or switch to another one. Collodi, my main master, has dropped from tournament play, which is where I get most of my games. While I realise most UK tournaments will include the "Dead Man's Hand" rules to allow the lost Masters to be played, this edition change would be the best opportunity to switch factions.

As more information about 3E comes out, I'll pull together a few thoughts about which way I'm pulled to play, and what I'm considering.

Paint job by Aodhan

Infinity

In the language of the modern youth (I believe), Infinity is bae. It's my gaming love right now, and I'm really enjoying it. ITS Season 10 is around the corner in September, and my Druze Bayram Security will be taking the field for it. Expect more photos soon of Aodhan's brilliant paint jobs.

Decisions, Decisions

I'm not pinning myself down or committing to anything until the move is done. At that point, I'll pick up some small hobby projects and start working from there. If the blog is a bit quiet, the move will be eating into my hobby time, but I hope to try and keep semi regular posts up in the meantime.

A little bit of weekend painting

I got a little painting done this weekend. I wanted to see if Army Painter spray undercoat worked on Reaper Bones material, to which the answer is "it seems to be OK". The terrain isn't for much in particular - will probably see service as a piece of scatter terrain for Infinity.

I went with a bright colour scheme on the terminal because I'm trying to get out of the habit of painting everything in dull colours. It's a useful practice exercise for when I want to use it in anger.

A late Christmas present finally wound its way to me. I had a good sit down read and got reminded why I love Blood Bowl so much. I should really consider digging out my Skaven team...

I also got the Daemonhunter undercoated. He can now potter off into the "waiting for 40K to catch my interest again" pile.

This was a common problem with some old sculpts - he has quite a strong forward lean, and that can look a bit odd if you're not careful with assembly.

Warhammer World Open Day January 2017

Obligatory Death Roller photo

So, I pottered up to Warhammer World after the New Year for the Open Day. I wasn't particularly diligent with photo taking or anything like that, because Battle Bunnies just put so much effort into it, there'd just be duplication of effort!

So mostly, I just caught up with people I've met at events before and had a bit of a chat.

I did pick up a few bits of Blood Bowl news in the chatting, which I may as well share:

• Dwarf team should be out by the end of the month
• Plastic Dwarf team, resin Death Roller
• Plastic Ogre and Troll, resin Rat Ogre
• Re-do of the existing Skaven Star Player, and a couple of new ones coming
• Plastic goblin team coming
• Goblins will also have resin secret weapons (the ones we know, and maybe some new ones)
• Deathzone Season 2 will have goblins, Underworld and Chaos Renegade teams

I'm still faffing over Stormcast colour schemes for the few Stormcast I have, so took a photo of this in the miniatures hall to aid my thinking process.

I posted this on twitter and it's been favourited and retweeted no end...

One of the figures from the Pilgrym display. Absolutely stunning piece overall, but I get distracted by faded red, checker board and flame edging.

I was pretty restrained in purchases - a couple of limited figures, the Ironwarp Citadel exclusive book, the music of Warhammer World, and the Rogue Trader re-print.

WarhammerFest: Specialist Games - Blood Bowl, Lord of the Rings and Adeptus Titanicus

The news is all over the Internet, and the Blood Bowl Facebook page is definitely a thing. WarhammerFest (and later the Blood Bowl tournament at Warhammer World) had a load of information about what's coming for Blood Bowl.

There was tons of cool stuff on display. This was the beautifully modelled Orc board and dug out. They made up the full model, then took an image of that to use as the board - it wasn't computer generated!

These fancy templates should reassure old hands that not much is going to change rules wise. Questions asked of the guys working ont has also indicated that they're taking an "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach to much of the rules.

Here's a mock up of the final pitch - with an Orc board on one side and a human pitch on the other. There's a potential in the future for more themed boards if there appears to be interest.

Dice, cards, rulebook! The quality of all this stuff is already looking pretty amazing.

The stat cards will look pretty familiar to anyone who's played the game before.

Some people were freaking out a little at the first picture of the board and thought it didn't have squares - it does, but they're subtle - and obviously, the physical board they took the pictures from didn't have the markings. (This picture also shows the human board side.)

Again, the dug outs look familiar to those who played the last version of Blood Bowl. It's not going to be out a while yet, but it's pretty exciting already!

In other news, it looks like after Blood Bowl, we'll be getting Adeptus Titanicus. Going back to the original game set in the Horus Heresy, they've already taken the CAD for the Warlord and scaled it down - and the guy working on stuff like the Death Roller is also working on titans, I'm guessing the Reaver and Warhound, which pre-date Forge World doing CAD.

The scale is also likely to change slightly - probably to around 8mm. This is mostly on the grounds of looking at a few different scales and what titans look most awesome in...

This is a way out - it's after Blood Bowl, probably by at least a year - I'd say back end of 2017 is optimistic, possibly a 2018 release.

Also being shown at Warhammer Fest was some new Lord of the Rings stuff. That isn't really my thing, but I thought I'd show this "Fall of the Necromancer" table - I think it was actually borrowed from someone.

There's definitely a whole lot more coming for Lord of the Rings - there's various pictures of the new resin models doing the rounds, and there's also been a bunch of old metal models re-released as well.

Shopocalypse: Overlords Bring and Buy

I regularly listen to The Overlords Podcast on the way to work, and when I heard they were having a Bring and Buy event, I decided it was time to overcome my recent slackness with ebay-ing off old stuff I'm not using any more and have a bit of a clear out. My wife was also super enthused about the idea of offloading stuff, so also headed over.

As my wife was cycling there, I had the unenviable job of lugging everything else to the venue - a scout hut somewhere between Barking and Dagenham.

My wife and I laid out the stuff we had to sell next to a chap who was selling off some Horus Heresy stuff. My wife only smacked me a few times for looking at it covetously.

I popped into the hut itself to see the "Haven" event which was going on in the main area. You can find more and better pictures of the event itself on the Overlords Facebook page.

Wait. What just happened? I'm going home with more than twice as much stuff as I took. Where has all my money for change gone? And the money I made selling things? I haven't been robbed - I just have poor impulse control (and so does my wife). She managed to pick up some more bits and pieces for her Dark Eldar and her Orks. So, what did I pick up?

One Dark Vengeance set of Dark Angels, less the Librarian, which I swapped for a box of Al Mukhtar's Desert Dogs.

I picked up this Rhino as part of a bulk deal. I'm undecided as yet as to whether to use it for my Dark Angels or my Inquisition. I'm mildly tending towards the Dark Angels at the moment.

A whole bunch of Elysian bits, and one kitbashed heretic using Elysian and Chaos Renegade parts.

Also in the bulk buy were four Servitors - two with Heavy Bolters, two for the fixing of things.

Five metal Squats. These will be going into an Inquisitorial Warband, and make me inordinately happy.

And the final part of my bulk deal - six Rogue Trader era metal Space Marines. I think one has a Heavy Bolter. I was originally planning on using them as Fallen, but plans may change base on my future whims.

This chap wasn't actually bought at the Bring and Buy, but I found him in with a bunch of other bits and pieces I picked up second hand the previous week at a model railway shop. I do have a Skavenblight Scramblers team sitting around, so I'll add him to them - a spare lineman is never a bad thing!

I also spotted a bag of lasgun cartridges which I thought my friends who run a 40K LARP would like for props. They did, the price was right, so they'll be hopefully winging their way up to Scotland shortly.

Two Necromunda gangs from the previous week's shopping were swapped for Xenology. It's a nice source book for ideas and stuff, and generally hard to find these days. Sadly, the Inquisitor Sketchbook went before I got to it!

A lovely gentleman gave this to me for free, as its missing from my RPG book collection. It was definitely appreciated.

You can never have too many dice, right?

I've also picked up three old metal Chaos Dreadnoughts, which I'm going to run as a Mayhem Pack. I'm not planning on running Nurgle Chaos Space Marines, but I decided that the Iron Warriors I am running would be totally cool with keeping some quarantined horrors in a teleport bay ready to drop onto someone as a way of breaking a siege.

Finally, I spotted that the Terminators next to the Helbrutes were old metal Rogue Trader miniatures, which I am a total sucker for. I have no plans for them, but I'm super pleased to have them.

So, now to ebay to try and offload some of the things I failed to sell this weekend...