Age of Sigmar - Crypt Hunters

I recently ordered a copy of Crypt Hunters, and it arrived today. This is a little stand-alone game from Games Workshop using existing miniatures from Warhammer Underworlds and Age of Sigmar. Board Game Geek lists it as a reimplementation of Lost Patrol. 

It's... a long and convoluted story... 

Crypt Hunters

In the TV show Supernatural there are some reoccurring characters that have a webseires called Ghostfacers and whenever I read the word Crypt Hunters I hear the theme music from Ghostfacers... but with "Crypt Hunters" instead of "ghostfacers"... 

This is something new for Games Workshop - or, new to me, at least - a storage tray included in the box... 

There is even spaces for the miniatures... though I doubt I'm ever going to store them in here... I guess the Casatigators could, as I already have two other sets!? The Chainrasps, though... they're just going to be stored with the rest of my Nighthaunt forces as they are a complete unit of Chainrasps!?

This is the THIRD copy of the Storm of Celestus warband for Warhammer Underworlds that I now have. The first I bought when it was sold as a separate Easy-to-Build set of Castigators. I ended up with a second when I bought the first Two-Player Starter set for Warhammer Underworlds (which included reprints of Shadespire/Nightvault boards, the Storm of Celestus and Drepur's Wraithcreepers - another Easy-to-Build set repurposed as a Warhammer Underworlds warband). Not sure if I should do these are Hammers of Sigmar, Anvils of Heldenhammer, or some other Stormhost? 

I'd really, REALLY hoped to be DONE the Marines and Genestealers from Lost Patrol before this arrived lest I get completely distracted by THIS game and Lost Patrol fall by the wayside before I ever get around to playing it... 

Alas... SO CLOSE!!

I was distracted this week and didn't quite get them done... partly by that Chaos Lord in the background of that picture above... 

... and partly by the sudden need to reorganize ancient Greeks... AGAIN, for some reason!?

I'll probably assemble the Chainrasps, but will try and push through the Genestealers and Marines... 

Work-In-Progress Wednesday - 7 August 2024

 Welp... Having finished up the Blades of Khorne Spearhead Army... what was I do do next!? MOAR KHORNE!? A new Spearhead Army? Build some terrain? Back to Warhammer Underworlds or Warhammer Quest!? Something entirely different!?

Obviously, I tried to do a bit of them all!? 

And the workbench is a bit of a mess now?!

I started clearing things off after taking this picture... 

Taking up a lot of prime real estate on the workbench are all these Khorne Dogs that I am rebasing. They are the last of the Khorne Daemons I'd originally based on Warhammer 40K Sector Imperialis bases, Which I've been slowly re-basing to the flagstone and rubble bases I've been putting all the Khorne stuff on so hopefully the Daemons can pass for fantasy or far future... 

Because they're taking up SO MUCH SPACE and will be relatively easy to finish up, these will be the first things off! 

There were also these to Hounds of Chaos... I also rebased, but kept them on 40mm round bases as the larger oval bases just looked too huge for them... the could have been stuff onto 32mm bases... but that looked a little cramped... 

Gorechosen of Dromm - Warhammer Underworlds warband - I was working on these a little but as I was working on all the other Bloodbound for the Khorne army... I decided to stray from the dusty desert bases I've done all the other Khorne stuff for Warhammer Underworlds and tried to do something more like what I've done for all the other Bloodbound... I'm not sure it's worked out. I may just put them onto new bases with flagstone and rubble... 

As with the above, took the opportunity of working on Khorne Bloodbound to try and finish these off... I think I might just pop these off their bases and put them on Flagstone and Rubble bases as well...

The Melusai Ironscale has been joined by a unit of Blood Stalkers in preparation for working on the Daughters of Khaine Spearhead army! 

I'd bought the Arena of Shades Battle Box because it had the other two units I needed for the Daughters of Khaine Spearhead army... but when I went to assemble the Witch Aelves... I discovered it did not have the assembly instructions for Witch Aelves, only the Sisters of Slaughter (the sprues included can be assembled as either... but as the background fluff for the box only concerned Sisters of Slaughter, it only included instructions for those!? 

So, instead of assembling Witch Aelves I started assembling all the terrain from the Extremis Starter Set... But they were taking up TOO MUCH SPACE on the workbench so I've mostly moved them off to shelves nearby... 

Then I decided to assemble all the Stormcast Eternals Heroes from Skaventide!? 

AND I rebased a few more Heroes from the Blades of Khorne army... 

And these guys are still there... (I did do a little work on them this past week...) 

Then there are all of these still haunting the corners of the workbench, which I am loathe to move off because they're all so close to being finished?! 

And I also decided to start painting some control markers for the Spearhead Armies I've already finished... 

and... that's about it... 

WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING ON THIS LAST WEEK!?

Age of Sigmar - Gryph-Hounds

In addition to the last of the Kairic Acolytes, I finished up three Gryph-Hounds - the bestest hounds in all the mortal realms - over the weekend!

Three Gryph-Hounds

They almost look like they could be a family!? 

I know they're called "hounds" but the bodies look more feline to me - as Gryphons usually are - hence the pseudo-big-cat markings! 

Two of these are from Warhammer Quest games - the smaller one from Silver Tower, and the one with leopard spots from Shadows over Hammerhal. The other is from a bonus copy of Storm of Celestus Warhammer Underworlds warband that I have. The rest of the warband remain unpainted... I just figured since I was doing these other two gryph-hounds, I might as well do the one from Storm of Celestus while I was at it... 

Warhammer Underworlds - The Chaos Gargant Hunt!

I recently finished up my Stand-In Chaos Gargant, so of course we needed to try out the Chaos Gargant scenario from the December 2018 edition of White Dwarf! 

The scenario pits multiple Warhammer Underworlds warbands against a Chaos Gargant! In the scenario Objective decks are not used, instead Glory is only gained from dealing damage to the Gargant or taking out Enemy Fighters - so, good to play a hard-hitting murder-y warband! Until the Gargant is at half wounds, warbands get One Glory for EACH POINT of Damage dealt! After it's down to half wounds warbands recieve One Glory each time they deal damage to the Gargant, regardless of how much damage they dealt. 

The Gargant itself is treated as an additional player which always goes first each round. Each turn, the players roll-off to see who controls the Gargant. On it's first turn each round, the Gargant goes on Guard. Thereafter the Gargant moves (if it can't move it does a Furious Bellow action - dealing One Damage to EVERY fighter on the table). Then it kicks an adjacent fighter, dealing one damage and pushing it one hex. Then it does one of it's attacks - Smashing someone adjacent, or throwing a boulder at someone up to 3 hexes away! 

Instead of playing three rounds, up to four rounds are played. If the Gargant is dead at the beginning of any End Phase the scenario ends and whoever has the most Glory Points wins. If the Gargant is still alive at the beginning of the fourth End Phase, the players ALL LOSE!!

I'd mentioned planning to play the scenario on Reddit and someone mentioned they'd played the scenario and it was fun... but they rarely made it past TWO ROUNDS! Modern Warbands are much more powerful than the warbands of the Shadespire/Nightvault era - when the scenario was written. 

Because the rules were written BEFORE Stagger was a thing, we just said that the Gargant could not be Staggered (otherwise it would just be two easy if Cyreni's Razors showed up. Cyreni's Hammertide action would just BREAK the Gargant's AI)

(I think maybe after the first turn or two, we forgot to 

Nic and Orion joined us to try out the Gargant Scenario. Orion brought she super-deadly Hexbane's Hunters. Nic decided to try out Ephilim's Pandaemonium. Amanda decided to try Storm of Celestus - because it's a shooty warband and they wouldn't have to get that close! I rolled out with Magore's Fiends! 

Just because of the way the boards worked out and where the Gargant was in relation to my starting hexes - I started with Zharkus the Bloodsighted adjacent to the Gargant. As the Gargant spent it's first turn going on Guard, I figured I'd get to hit it first and deal some damage and not even have to charge... 

Zharkus missed... 

Fighters started moving in - mostly shooting the first few activations

Conveniently, I controlled the Gargant the first turn it did things and I moved it forward, Kicked Apo'trax and chucked a boulder at Flamespooler. I was a little concerned that flamespooler might just start throwing it's flamsplash attack every turn - which splashes all adjacent fighters with warpfire... which deals a damage to each at the end of the round (I did not realize at the time, it just deals ONE damage, regardless of how many warping counters are on the affected fighters... still...) 

It was kind of funny watching all these fighers that would normally be fighting each other chasing after the Gargant, side-by-side trying to bring it down. 

Hexbane got thumped good at this point - but survived! 

Started getting a little crowded... when Orion blocked my path to the Gargant with Aemos and a dog... I just starting hitting who ever I could get to!

Once Aemos was in there, Orion started racking up the Glory! 

SMASH FLAMESPOOLER! 

Once the Gargant has taken damage equal to half it's health it inspires and gets MEANER... 

We probably COULD have ended it by the end of Round Two... but I think Nic had snuck just ahead of Orion for points.... 

So pretty much everyone that was NOT WINNING just started hitting other fighters to keep the Gargant from dying off, giving us all another round to get points from the Gargant - AND taking out a few fighters... 

We did finish off the Gargant in the third round.... Actually I think it finished itself off, by backing into a hazard hex and dealing itself one last point of damage 

The last few activations were spent trying to finish each other off for a few more points... but no one really had any chance of catching up to Orion at that point... Maybe Nic could have, but the Pandaemonium wasn't really positioned to strike at anyone they could potentially kill... 

Orion ended with 13 Glory points! Nic wasn't too far behind with 11 (which was pretty amazing, considering they were playing the warband for the first time without ever having looked at the cards - and playing with a Rivals deck!). I had 7... and Amanda only scored 4!? She just could not get fighters positioned to shoot and the few times she attack, she just missed (also she was playing with a Warband she'd never played before and their rivals deck that she'd never even looked at - and there weren't a lot of Power Cards that were particularly helpful - most were for positioning to get the warband onto Objectives and help them hold them - which are useless in this scenario)! 

It was a super fun scenario to play, though!! Definitely looking forward to trying it again. I really want to get my Gen-u-ine Games Workshop Chaos Gargant finished up and take it out to the Warhammer Store to play on a Friday - as I think it would be a fun one to play as a four-player game there! 

Storm of Celestus Enter the Nightvault

Some time ago, I bought and painted up a set of Castigators, thinking I'd be able to pair them up with some of my other Stormcast Eternals to make a Warcry Warband. Through they never saw any action in Warcry, they did form part of a small Stormcast Eternal force that Finnegan used in Age of Sigmar. 

Earlier this year, Games Workshop released a new Two-Player Starter Set for Warhammer Underworlds. It included two warbands that made use of previously released Easy-to-Build sets that hadn't been used in Warhammer Underworlds - the Castigators and the Glaivewraith Stalkers. The set reprinted a few of the boards from Shadespire and Nightvault and the decks included with the warband were designed to be playable, as is, and the box included NO EXTRA CARDS!? 

I picked the box up a few months back and STLILL haven't painted either warband (the Glaivewraith Stalkers are almost done - just have to finish the bases). But since the Stormcast Castigator warband uses miniatures I've already painted... I can just use THOSE!? 

On Sunday evening, Amanda and I decided to play one of the four games of Nightvault we need to play to get in ten plays this year. I thought I'd try out the Storm of Celestus - I had a look at their deck, briefly, in the afternoon, and it didn't look too bad at all. Seemed like it could totally be played as is... 

THE GAME

Starting things off, I actually won the roll for board placement - as Amanda has figured out how to place boards to her advantage if she goes second! 

Objectives and warbands were then set up and we were ready to roll! 

This past week we did, finally, get a radiator reinstalled in the Game Room. Unfortunately as it is the only one in the basement and the thermostat is at the bottom of the stairs, it would make the room VERY warm before the thermostat ever registered that it had warmed up to stop the heat running... so we will just have to turn on the heat a bit before any games are to happen down there. As we are not in the habit of this, as yet, we forgot to do so and it was still a bit cool while we were playing... Amanda's wearing a toque I found at a hallowe'en costume store recently that I thought was funny. (If you can't read it, it says: "BASIC WITCH").

Kind of works... since she is playing Witch Aelves! 

ROUND ONE

All set up and ready to roll. All three of the objective cards i started with were onces involving control of Objectives. 

The first, Crucial Objective, was a surge I could score after an Enemy Activation if I was on either  Objective Number Two or Four. This would be easy peasy - Objective Number Four was in my territory!

The second, Bold Claim, was a similar surge one that required that I held two of Objectives One, Three, or Five. Number Five was the other one in my territory, and Number Three was the closest one to my territory that was in Enemy Territory... but they would be wanting to grab those objectives too!  

The third, Great Purification, required that I hold THREE Objectives at the end of the Round. If I managed to do the second one, and holdit to the end of the round, though... 

I won the roll off and went first. 

Mellisan moved onto Objective Number Four.

Lethyr jumped onto Objective Number One.

At the end of their activation, I scored Crucial Objective for holding Objective Number Four. +1 Glory for me! I then upgraded Mellisan with Cool Head (Allowing her to re-roll one die in any of her attacks!). I drew a new objective to replace the one I just scored and drew Point Blank - a Surge objective, scored after an activation in which a friendly fighter made a successful Range 3+ Attack action which targeted an adjacent enemy fighter.

Amanda played Catechism of Murder and inspired Khamyss. 

Aphus The Brave moved up on to Objective Number Five - half way to scoring that next Objective Card! It also brought him next to Sleek, which has this interesting ability - Warning Cry - a reaction when an enemy attacks within two hexes, they can put a Guard Token on any Friendly Fighter within 1 hex - so if anyone tried to charge any of these warriors while in this position, sleek would put a Guard Token on them! 

No one charged, though. Kyrssa moved onto Objective Number Two and Amanda scored Hidden Purpose (+1 Glory for holding two objectives). She then upgraded Morgwaeth with Duelists Speed (gets to push one after attacking an enemy - allowing her to disengage or follow up!) 

Since no one was standing on it, Celestus charged on to Objective Number Three... all I had to do was hold it for ONE activation. Also, as part of the charge he shot Morgwaeth - If I'd just hit her, I'd score an immediate Glory Point for the Objective Card I'd just drawn... AND Celestus would be inspired, as his inspire condition is simply that his crossbow attack action succeeds! AND when he's inspired he CANNOT BE DRIVEN BACK! 

Of course I didn't... Things WERE looking up when I rolled a crit AND a success on my two attack dice! (14% chance of that happening...). Of course Amanda can't NOT roll at least one crit... so she did the same with her two defence dice (8% chance of that happening). A tie is not a success... but I did push her back one hex. She could still hit me from there, but at least couldn't count as support if someone else attacked Celestus. 

I played a gambit called Great Bow Block - which meant that any damage to any of my warriors other than Sleek done in the next activation was automatically reduced to one... I'd hoped this might be an enticement to go after sleek and leave Celestus alone... 

So Amanda shot at Celsestus with Kyrae... because her bow only does one damage anyway... 

And hit him... knocking him off of Objective Number Three. 

I SHOULD have also played Lightning Flare, which I was also holding, which meant no attacks could be made from 2+ hexes away... no one would have CHARGED and attacked if they could only do one damage... alas... 

For my final activation I moved Sleek onto Objective Humber Three. THEN I played Lightning Flare, for all the good it would do... 

And Amanda played Distraction... allowing her to push and Enemy Fighter one hex... and knocked Sleek off of the Objective!? GAH!? 

Morgwaeth Charged onto the Objective! 

Then she stabbed Celestus causing two damage and scoring Bold Conquest, scoring +1 Glory when your leader mase a Charge action and is holding an objective....

I played Healing Tempest which removed the two wounds from Celestus... But pushing Sleek off the Objective denyed me being able to score two Objective Cards worth FIVE Glory... 

End of Round one... Morgwaeth's Blade Coven holding three Objectives. Celestus has taken one damage. 

ROUND TWO

Amanda actually WON the initiative roll... but actually let me go first - because she had cards she wanted to play before taking her first activation. As cards are, generally, only played in the Power Step following an activation, that meant I'd need to go first. 

I totally wanted her to go first, for the same reason! I was holding a card that gave +1 dice to a range 3+ attack... Alas... 

Aphus the Brave shot Morgwaeth. He had TWO Support! 

He actually hit, did two damage, and pushed her back, off of the Objective! 

Amanda then played Forward Planning and upgraded Lethyr with the Formless Key and played Headlong Fury, allowing Khamyss to make a free move action without putting a move token on her. 

On her first activation, Khamyss killed Sleek...  +1 Glory 

Damn... 

So I played that Aetheric Channelling, giving my next attack an extra die... But, despite that extra die.. I STILL only tied her... pushing her back one hex. 

On Amanda's turn, she moved Morgwaeth back onto Objective Number Three... played Regal Vision - inspiring Morgwaeth - and then played Jealous Defence - allowing a fighter, without a charge token, standing on an objective, to make a free attack. She attacked Celestus and killed him.... +1 Glory 

Yikes... 

Holding Objectives was no longer useful, so Aphus moved off and charged Khamyss... I'm not sure why...? She is a bit of a glass cannon and, I guess, if I DID get lucky, he could still kill her with one attack... and if it were point blank, he'd get that bonus Glory Point for that stupid Objective Card I was STILL holding... 

He missed.... of course... because crits... 

Then Khamyss attacked Aphus and Killed him... +1 glory

Mellisan moved off of the objective she was on, hoping to get a shot in and be in a slightly better position for the final Round... as she would be the ONLY fighter I would have to use... for, potentially, four activations... She shot at Kyrssa... the only one in range with only ONE Defence die.... and missed because crit defence... one ONE DIE?!

Khamyss charged Mellisan and actually only wounded her with ONE of her attacks... 

And then pusher her back... Yay...? 

AT the end of the Round Amanda scored more Objectives... Dug In (+4 glory) and Dominant Position (+2 glory)... bringing her total to... TEN!? 

ROUND THREE

Amanda went first and Kyrae shot Mellisan and hit her and did one damage and then played snare which did a second point of damage and finished her off... 

Yeah... 

Fun times... 

Amanda scored some MORE Objectives and ended with a total of FIFTEEN GLORY POINTS... to my ONE!? 

Also, she tabled my ENTIRE warband of Stormcast Eternals, while only taking two damage points in the whole damned game...