Merijn's Chaos Dwarf host (70 points)

Rank & File #3 

In touch with the ground, they're on the hunt. They're after yooooou.

I initially planned to add a unit of spider riders as a proxy for hobgoblin wolf boyz. Unfortunately, I found out I ran out of cavalry bases so I painted up some old marauder wolf boyz that I had already based. With a bit of luck, I'll receive my bases soon and the creepy crawlers will join next month.

Which is just fine because can you ever really have enough of those wonderfully nippy goblin fast cavalry? Racing across the table to thwart your enemy's plan before they run away giggling. Or screaming. It's usually screaming really.

This unit brings my points total up to 994 points.

Merijn's Chaos Dwarf host (529 points)

Leader month!

 I read once that the 4th and 5th edition intended it to be a game of mighty heroes, powerful wizards, and titanic monsters, with the armies just playing the role of their retinue. And boy did the model line support that. Herohammer has some of the coolest, most characterful hero miniatures in the history of warhammer.

And those monsters! They might not be big by today's standards but back then there weren't that many large models in an army so a monster really was the centerpiece of your horde. And what a lineup of monsters, noble griffons, vicious wyverns, towering dragons. But one of my favorites was the exotic lammasu. It's crazy looks aside, who doesn't love a monster that is likely smarter than its rider?

Conveniently, chaos dwarfs are allowed to bring a sorcerer lord as their general and the lamassu provides a bit of much-needed mobility to the army.

This massive points sink brings my point total up to 924 points.

Merijn's Chaos Dwarf host (187 points)

 Rank and file month #2

Puuull... KABOOM!

Everyone plays chaos dwarfs for the same reason, right?  Hats, bigger hats, the biggest hats! And once you have a hat that is the envy of the whole 'ol world, you gotta be able to defend it. Luckily, chaos dwarfs like their guns like they like their hats (that is, made by green slave labor).

I'm used to painting the savage hordes like beastmen, chaos and greenskins so an army of cleanly uniformed dwarfs with hats full of details is challenging. But I'm good with what I'm managing to do. I'm done early this month which is nice, very relaxing. I've decided to use the extra time to do some work on other projects.

For this month I've added 9 blunderbusses and a unit champion for a total of 187 points. That puts my total right now at 395 points.

I'm really enjoying the extra effort people all over the hobby are putting into their pictures these days. I've literally seen people do Bob Ross tutorials making background images. Today's image is made possible by my girlfriend holding up my yoga made for clear blue skies.

And proof that there are actually 10 models total.

Merijn's Chaos Dwarf host (208 points)

 Rank & File month #1

They used to say that the early bird catches the worm. Well, I say stay in bed until well after the sun chased off those blasted night goblins.

I'm doing a mixed Chaos Dwarf and green skin host this year. Both armies have that lovely zany vibe that I love so much about the 4th and 5th edition. Those big hats are pretty daunting to paint though so I'm easing myself in with one of my favourite units in the O&G army, squig herds!

What unit better embodies the sheer bottled chaos of the Waaagh than these angry mushrooms being herded about by a pair of loony night goblins who are clearly enjoying their vicious job? That's the thing I love about goblins really, they have absolutely no morels. Just look at those smiles, they're clearly fungi's.

I usually run much bigger mobs of goblins but in order to ensure I finish this challenge I wanted to stick with manageable monthly additions. And let's face it, at 20 points per squig, 200 points just doesn't give you mush room.

Anyway, I won't spore you any longer. I just want to say how glad I am to see so many other squig herds during this month by my fellow OWAC participants. They must be coming together to form a proper unstoppable horde.

So to my fellow greenies... remember guys, we are the champignons! This project is going to be a trip.

Merijn's Chaos Dwarfs

 The best part of the fourth edition for me was how flamboyant it was. Everything was just that bit more over the top, the colours, the sculpts. I loved it and I still do. And who embodies that flamboyance better than the chaos dwarfs and their giant hats?

2020 has been a crazy year. I ended up dropping out of the last OWAC quite early and even this year my entry comes in at the very last moment. Half my army is still without bases but mailman hasn't come through yet.

2021 still looks like a mystery so I figured I'd keep this OWAC modest to make sure I wouldn't have to drop out again. Those ornate hats can be a pain to paint after all. The nice thing about chaos dwarfs is that half their army consists of greenskins so really a lot of units can pull double duty.

So without further ado, this year I'm painting a modest 1007 point segment of a larger chaos dwarf army I'm using for the 9th age.

We have:

• A sorcerer general on a lamassu (259 points)
• 10 blunderbusses (140 points)
• 10 blunderbusses (140 points)
• 12 allied squigs and a herder (248 points)
• 5 goblin spider riders acting as hobgoblin cavalry (70 points)
• 2 death rockets with their crew still in a bath of paint stripper (150 points)

For a total of 1007 points.

And since I so rudely robbed our overlord of his tithe the first time around, I'm offering up two models this time:

A night horror werebear from my previous army and a nightmare legionnaire.

Merijn's brass band - January - Empire (195 points)

January's mostly dedicated to figuring out the uniforms. Blue and yellow? Purple and yellow? Something and yellow at least.

Ended up settling on a classic red and yellow uniform. The goblin green bases will make sure this army will be a great counterpart to the undead army I painted last year.

Profit through superior firepower!

empi

WHY ARE YOU WHIPPERSNAPPERS WHISPERING?

This brings my starting score to 195 points.

1 great cannon (95pts)

1 helblaster volley gun (100pts)

Make the Empire Great Again! - Merijn's Imperial Crusade

"There is too much evil!" cried the lord of the realm suddenly. Reindolph startled awake. Bits of the night's feast cascaded from his beard as he sat up.

The province's poor were faced with starvation. After paying their tithe of grain to the church. Their tax of grain to the lord. And their tribute of grain to Reindolph's lodge of knights for their protection, there was little left for the peasants to feed themselves with. Reindolph never understood why they didn't just grow more grain.

 "Choose anything but chaos." his lord continued to lament drunkenly at no one in particular. Reindolph started to grin, he knew where this was going.

Whenever the peasantry started to voice irrational complaints and make unreasonable demands on the province's grain supplies, it was time to illuminate who was really to blame. From across the room, Holbert, the fat, bald priest locked eyes with Reindolph, clearly thinking along the same line of thought.

It was time to burn some heretics. Reindolph idly wondered what heretics look like this year.

Another year, another challenge! It's a bit of a mish-mash this year. I really wanted to paint some of the large Empire mini's I had lying around. The war wagon, the altar of battle, an old steam tank. But honestly, I don't care much for playing those piddly, weak human infantry.

So how do you fill out an army when you don't want to paint too many humies? Knights of course. Big, shiny, expensive, knights. So I quickly came up with the idea of doing a crusade.

Troop wise, the core of the army is a big unit of 14 of the xenophobic Knights Panther led by their lodge master Reindolph. Since joining the chapter, Reindolph has achieved a lot of good for the Empire. For instance, killing foreigners has kept Reindolph far away from his father's business interests.

These buggers are heck to strip. Still working on most of them with a dental pick.

Of course, every crusade needs an angry rabble. That's why 30 flagellants are following Reinhold with fervor. Toughness 4 and unbreakable. I refuse to play baseline cowardly humans! And any rabble needs rabble-rousers, that's why I included a generous smattering of witch hunters and other exemplars of critical thinking. Yes, the paint stripping is ongoing.

Leadership tests are for micromanaging weenies

Aside from my main block of knights, I needed some... lesser knights as a character bunker. War is good money is you can find a safe job. Enter the mounted cooks on cocks.

Cock jokes!

I bet you thought the double entanders... entandredres... dick jokes were over? You can't have a crusade without demonstrating that my religion is bigger than yours. That's why we're bringing a giant gold freedom bird ready to hammer the religion into you until it takes. Thank the faithful for their donations to make this monument to me*cough* Sigmar possible.

We also have a war wagon that will be pulling duty as one of them modern magic cart thingers from the 9th age. What's the point in being rich if you can't show off with a sweet ride?

Finally, we have Hanz and his grain alcohol-fueled conveyance. Hanz is the province's most entrepreneurial inventor and patent holder to such inventions as the Hanz self-propelled grain planter. The Hanz automatic harvester. The Hanz fully mechanical masseuse. And of course, the Hanz grain fermenter that turns grain into fuel for all his automated inventions. Everyone agrees Hanz has done great things for the economic stability of the Hanz family.

Hanz feels his vehicle is exceptionally effective in securing the trade agreements that ensure liberated sovereign nations fairly compensate the crusade for their liberation efforts.

Anyway, that's it for now. The other armies in the challenge this year look absolutely fantastic. Working along with you guys last year has been inspirational. Let's repeat the experience!

Merijn's league of legendary liche's (200 pts)

A bit of a rushed ending I'm afraid. Lots of personal stuff happened this month that kept me from being hobby productive.

Ultimately this army intended to be played in the 9th age game since nobody plays oldhammer around here. As such there's plenty of stuff waiting to be painted still.

The only thing I managed to 'finish' this month is the zombie dragon. And only sort of finished at that. somehow the pictures immediately revealed a large unpainted muscle on it's neck that escaped my notice the entire month. Oh well.

I used a roller from greenstuff world to put some cobblestones on the base because I figured such a massive base with just some goblin green sand would look a little iffy. The base also includes my last night horror, the little zombie rising from the grave as if summoned by the dragon.

Merijn's League of Legendary Liches in May (480 points)

"Quit your bellyaching, you know... you can't get under my skin" Ignatio cackled and wheezed at his own joke. Harold rested his face in his hands and sighed in exasperation. "I don't care how many more of your little horrors you wished to raise, we attack by the next muuhnn!". Ignatio waved his sceptre dramatically but the effect was somewhat ruined by his jaw coming unhinged before he finished speaking.

Harold let his shoulder sag and wandered back to his horrors. He'd joined forces with the old liche in hopes of increasing his knowledge. For the most part, all he obtained was a deep seated hatred of the old liche's puns. Still, it was hard to argue with the effortless way the old bastard raised his skeletons."

I think this month has been my favourite in the challenge so far. Not just for my own project but now that we're nearing the end I'm seeing all kinds of cool generals pop up in all of your blogs. Fantastic stuff.

My blog is no different and this month I present the old Warhammer Quest Dread King model that I'm using for Ignatio, the liche leading the League of Legendary Liches. For me, this has always been one of those dream models. You know, the one you never owned but you still think about decades later.

I joined this challenge because I finally splurged and bought the dread kingfrom someone on the Facebook group. I figured the challenge would give me the motivation I needed to paint him and everything else just came together around that.

So without any more of my ramblings:

El Jefe, the undad, the legendary liche

I already painted up some infantry but I hadn't gotten around to properly finishing up the unit. 10 more skeletons including a command group and the original Nightmare Legion characters round them out quite nicely. If I ever need some wight heroes, they'll do quite nicely.

I just noticed I forget the sunburst yellow drybrush. Essential.

Anyway, that brings the points total up to...

80 pts (10 x 8) skeletons

20 pts (10 x 2) spears

30 pts (10 x 3) heavy armour

350pts (1x350) liche

Total this month: 480pts

Overall total: 1044pts

And just because it made me laugh with how improvised it is. My photo studio. Did you do any of those "always-wanted-to-paint-this-one" models for the challenge this year?

Merijn's League of Legendary Liches in April (176 pts)

"Connect ogre femur A to crossbeam C and you're ready for reanimation" Harold mumbled under his breath as he read the instructions on the piece of parchment he taped to the mouldering construction in front of him. The instructions were of little use and the little diagram Ignatio had drawn only added to the confusion.

He took a step back to admire his handiwork. With a sinking feeling, Harold realised something looked off. The ranks of skeletons stood in silent judgement. "You connected ogre femur A to crossbeam B" a ghoul helpfully pointed out. Hissing in frustration Harold kicked the contraption which promptly collapsed, sending one of it's wheels rolling down the hill towards the distant village of Beeckerhoven. 

Gloomily Harold stared at the ghastly mob of onlookers as the affable ghoul slunk back into their ranks. At least the horrors had worked out great. Haunted by the ghouls and ghosts, the peasants of Beeckerhoven suffered dark dreams and restless nights. Feeding off their night terrors, the ranks of the horrors had more than doubled.

This month was spend bulking out the night horrors. With a lot of help from the nice folks in the Oldhammer Trading Company on Facebook I managed to get their numbers up to 20. They're starting to look like a proper regiment.

I'm not much of a painter but I think the simple paint jobs and group effect really works. I've noticed that as I get older and my eyes get worse, my paint jobs get brighter and brighter.

A mob of night horrors

From up above

It's been a pleasure painting a regiment where every model is unique. Not a single one of these guys feels generic. The wraiths, for instance, are entirely ethereal, no skulls, not even hands to hold their weapons. Just a shapeless cloak.

I find ethereal creatures surprisingly difficult to paint well. Not a fan of GW's glowy green.

This devil might be my favourite out of the bunch

This miniature is labelled as a ghost in the catalogue but he gives me a strong insane hermit vibe

Werewolves seem surprisingly rare in Warhammer's lore. I always wondered why.

Utini!

Big fan of the candy coloured wraiths that were prominent during the 90s.

Tried to go for a Japanese Oni kind of demon

Love the cliche of a vampire rising from a pool of blood

All in all I added 12 night horrors to the roster. As mentioned before, the night horrors will be used as ghouls. To make up the extra points, I also added a screaming skull catapult.

Most embarrassingly, I managed to assemble the darn thing wrong and it took me far too long to realise what the problem is. On the upside, metal mini's disassemble easily. So no harm done.

The knee bone connects to the... uhm

Add caption

That puts this months points at:

96 pts (12 x 8) worth of ghouls

76 pts (1 x 76) screaming skull catapult

Total: 172 points

Overall total: 564

Those of you keeping track will have noticed that I'm consistently short on points. Well, that changes next month as it's time for me to get to work on some characters. Those Liche's don't come cheap.

Merijn's League of Legendary Liche's part 2 (194 points)

Octarine fog billowed around his gauntleted hands as Harold gestured theatrically while chanting the leaden words. Strictly speaking, neither the colourful fog nor the flailing hands were necessary for the ritual, the incantations alone would suffice. When you got right down to it, there was disappointingly little magic to all this spell casting business. 

Harold eyed the drab skeletal spearmen assigned to guard him with distaste. Ever the pragmatist, Meraldus had simply raised the skeletons from the nearest barrow hills for the purpose. No art, no imagination. Night after night, Harold had spent on the hill overlooking Beeckerhoven, rifling through the dreams and nightmares of it’s inhabitants.

The children, in particular, proved to be highly imaginative and Harold had spent his days crafting tiny pewter figures of the ghosts and ghouls that tormented the citizens of Beeckerhoven in their sleep. With a sweep of his arm, Harold scattered the miniatures like Hydra’s Teeth and watched as misty shapes started to coalesce, glowing silver under the moonlight.

To his left, a ghoul balefully glowered at the village below while sliding a finger along his throat in a threatening gesture, before loping off into the night. To his right, a black-robed creature bared its fangs and soundlessly stalked away. The insufferable child whose nightmares Harold had plucked the vampire from must have been colour blind. The silent creature was completely devoid of colour.

One by one the night horrors slipped into the darkness. With a thought Harold commanded them to haunt the village and the surrounding fields. By the time the main force of the League of Legendary Liche’s arrived, Beeckerhoven’s defenders would be terrified, ready to break and run at the first sight of the undead army.

Want to make Nagash laugh? Tell him about your plans. In my last post, I mentioned planning 10 infantry and 5 skeleton horsemen. But much like the weather, plans change.

Long before we could afford mini's when we were kids, we'd pass around the Red Catalogue and dream. Amongst all the different sets of miniatures on those hallowed pages, one spoke to my imagination in particular.

I just loved the sheer mad diversity of the Night Horrors. Every hammer horror monster, every nightmare cliche, every fairytale villain, they're all there. So when our intrepid administrator dragged up long-forgotten memories of ghouls and ghosts with his blog post, I resolved to track down some of my own.

I'll be using this ragtag group of misfits as a regiment of ghouls.

Byron had some good advice last time around and I've painted my skeleton's rags in the same shade of purple as the Harold the liche's tabard to tie things together a bit more. I'll be touching up the rags on the skellies I already did as well.

Anyway, this month's batch consists of:

80 pts (10 x 8) skeletons

20 pts (10 x 2) spears

30 pts (10 x 3) heavy armour

64 pts (8*8) ghouls

Total this month:194 pts

Overall total: 392 pts

I tried doing some diorama pics of my own but unfortunately, I don't have time to take pictures in daylight tomorrow. This'll have to do. At least I got some snaps under the painting lamp as well.

Merijn's The knee bone's connected to the...(198pts)

Not quite the 11th hour but too close for comfort. I originally planned to eat the frog and start this challenge by painting a big block of Nightmare Legion, get all the repetitious stuff out of the way. Maybe the powers that be got upset I didn't choose Nurgle, I spend most of 2019's precious free time so far in physiotherapy.

Still, even if I'm not in it to win it, I do want to go the distance. So I set a more realistic goal and painted Harold of Beeckerhoven with a minor cadre of well-equipped skeletons. Unfortunately, their shields are still in the mail so I'll leave it up to our arbiter to see if I make the cut.

Painting wise I kept them basic. Eventually, these will be the back rank guys since the Legion has enough leaders, champions and other command staff to fill up a front rank. Some red for their rags because I fondly remember the red period.

The bases took a lot of hemming and hawing but ultimately I started this project because I wanted the army I never had back in the 90s. So I committed to goblin green bases with a sunburst yellow drybrush.

Harold himself was fun the paint. A clean and simple sculpt but full of flamboyant character. The Skeletor inspired colour scheme seems popular for this guy.

Next month I'll probably try for another 10 skeletons and some cavalry.

Point's wise we're looking at a total of 198

68pts (1 x 68) Necromancer (4e liches only come at very pricy lord levels)

80 pts (10 x 8) skeletons
20 pts (10 x 2) spears
30 pts (10 x 3) heavy armour

Merijn's League of Legendary Liche's

Fair warning, brevity is not my thing. With that out of the way... hark back to the early 90s. Halcyon days before the advent of the internet lifted the shroud of mystery from this world. On the first day of high school I befriended a British boy, far away from his misty island home. He introduced me to many wonderful things from his home. Terry Pratchett, The Young Ones, Black Adder, discovering what you enjoy is a wonderful feeling.

Most importantly, he introduced me to a world filled with all the creatures I'd spend my childhood reading about in novels and mythology. A world filled with adventures, horror and surprisingly... a fair bit of humour.

I became a scholar of this world. I devoured his archive of White Dwarf magazines, I delved into his big brother's army books. I poured over miniature catalogues memorising creatures. At some point I was sure I knew more of the geography of the Old World than my own country.

And we played, gods did we play. We didn't have any money so those early days were filled with pieces of cereal box cardboard with grids drawn on them. As paper routes started to bring in money, command groups were purchased to identify our cardboard grids. Golden summers that led to a lifetime of wargaming.

Breakfast of armies.

Alright, enough wandering down memory lane. These days time is short and frankly, warhammer isn't what it used to be. Happily, that just means many of my projects are nostalgia projects. Which is how I found the oldhammer challenge.

What do I want to do for this challenge? An undead army firmly founded in the colorful and somewhat humorous style of 4th edition warhammer. The League of Legendary Liches is an undead army planned around those wonderful old characters. I like to think of it as an uneasy alliance of liche's where each thinks himself greater than his companions save for perhaps their ageless leader. Since this challenge aims for a 1000 points total, most of the liches will just be generic unit leaders for the purposes of this challenge.

Tempted to go all in and do the goblin green bases too.

So who do we have? Let's start with the head honcho. The big cheese. Lord of the liches, the deacon of the deceased, the big daddy of death. Ignatio de la Vega is the first amongst equals in the League. Though the other liches are forced to admit that Ignatio's power outstrips any of them,  he is easily the most disliked liche in the League. Obsessed with retaining what little is left of his humanity, Ignatio insists on entertaining an insufferable sense of humour. Many a sacrifice bled out their life blood forced to suffer through Ignatio's trying to cheer them up with terrible puns.

Tremble before the undad.

Ignatio uses the absolutely gorgeous Dread King on his throne miniature from the Catacombs of Terror Warhammer Quest expansion. I might build him a little levitating piece of graveyard earth to make sense of his throne appearing on the battlefield.

Accompanying Ignatio to the battlefield is a unit of wights. In the 4th edition, wights were 3 wound models closer to a unit of heroes than battle line infantry, making them a whopping 37 points each. Which is just as well because I'm using the Catacombs of Terror tomb guards for this unit and it was difficult enough to scape up 10 of these lads over the past few years. Now I just need to remember where I stored these lads, so no picture yet.

First of the lesser liches is Harold of Beeckerhoven. Harold grew up listening to the stories of Dieter von Helsnicht's assault on Beeckerhoven. Secretly idolising this master of death, Harold spend years delving into necromantic lore. Even after transforming himself into a liche, Harold's romantic notions about necromancy and a misplaced sense of showmanship persisted. His flamboyant costumes and theatrical gestures are a constant source of embarassment for his fellow liche's.

Cracking resculpt of an old classic.

Harold's miniature technically isn't oldhammer. It's a resculpt of the old Hero Quest sorcerer by James Sheriff. The sorcerer's 80s cartoon outfit and dramatic pose is just too good to pass up.

We are legion Literally, so many of these nightmare legion guys.

His abilities are not quite as impressive as his showmanship though so Harold is accompanied by a modest Nightmare Legion worth of skeletons since I still had a bucket of these guys in the attic.

Lastly, we have Meraldus, the cantankerous old liche. The frivolity of Ignatio's jokes and Harold's antics is a never ending source of irritation to Meraldus. Never the less, he can't deny the effectiveness of their combined horde.

Meraldus, love this classic.

Meraldus is represented by a 4e classic, Heinrich Kemmler, the liche lord. Just like Harold, he's accompanied by a Nightmare Legion worth of skeletons.

To round things out, I ordered some Mirliton skeleton horsemen. I'm still looking for some suitable bat swarms. Preferably big silly individual bats so if you have any tips on that front, I'd love to hear.

Newly bought but the base says 1988, that counts right?