Hobby Update

I've been a bit quiet recently, but I've been working away on the hobby side of things. This will be a bit of a general update on what's been happening.

Working out how some of my armies need to adapt for Kings of War has been an interesting process. Some of my armies are really not where I would want them to be - for instance my Dwarfs, who simply don't have the right unit sizes in the right places, and currently have no models to use for Brock Riders or Earth Elementals. Clearly they need some work, but I've already earmarked them for attention during Duelling Paintbrushes, so I guess steps are already being taken there. 

My Orcs, Elves and Empire are in better shape, thanks mainly to the size of the armies. They cover most potential short-comings through sheer weight of numbers. There are still things that need to be addressed, however. The main problem for my Empire is the Horde unit size for missile troops. I didn't have a single coherent regiment of 40 Crossbowmen, Handgunners or Archers. This is not really surprising, given it's a completely impractical unit in Warhammer. Too many of the models in such a unit wouldn't get to shoot. Anyway, it's an option I now want. So I set about increasing one of my Handgunner units to a 10x4 formation.

40 Handgunners, complete with a 15-man unit filler.

A slightly more overhead view.

Pretty sure the guy standing in front drew the short straw during deployment.

The unit filler is another of my wagons. For this one they have dropped the side of the wagon and mounted a Helblaster Volley Gun on some sort of swively base. The cloth (flag?) next to it suggests that the thing was concealed until shortly before it was needed.

The master gunner and the ammo dude. Presumably the latter is kept very busy, given all the trays of ammunition all around him.

The back side of the model. It's pretty simple in terms of detail, and adds little colour to the unit. This time it doesn't even have a horse attached. I figure you probably wouldn't want a horse hooked up when you opened fire with the Volley Gun. And that helped keep the footprint down a little.

A few weeks ago we had a couple of friends from Germany staying with us, and one of them expressed interest in what was involved in painting all these models. It happened to be painting night, so she sat down and had a go at painting a Dwarf to match one of my existing schemes. In hindsight this was probably a really tough introduction to painting models, rather than just going with whatever colours and approaches she felt comfortable with. I'm used to all my 3-layer highlighting methods and potentially fiddly approaches, but it was difficult to explain some of them on the fly. Ultimately she did very well.

The guy on the right was what she was aiming for. I've seen a lot worse first attempts at painting a model. Well done, Tina! Next time I'll find you a scheme that uses more washes...

Whilst she was working away on the Dwarf (he took her a few hours to complete) I agreed to tackle something a bit larger, so knocked out an old Citadel Dragon. I have plans to get 5 or 6 of these little older Dragons together with riders to serve as a Horde of Drakon Riders. I guess the rider bit will come later.

A creature of the 1980s - the Dragon Master dragon. That's a 50mm base, so he's not tiny even if he is a bit small compared to a modern plastic version.

Speaking of modern plastic Dragons, do you think he bears more than a passing resemblance to the current plastic High Elf Dragon model?

Except this guy has more "dental attitude" than the more modern equivalent.

In truth I've found some of these older Dragons slightly difficult to paint. They often lack clear detail or obvious places to change colours. Whatever; he's perfectly serviceable for a 3 hour paint job.

In other news, Axemaster is coming up on the 12th and 13th of September. It had been declared to be an Age of Sigmar event when the new game appeared, however a lack of attendees has prompted a mad scramble to change it back to 8th edition. The change saw over 20 people confirmed in a rush of about 48 hours. It's unlikely to be a big event, but at least it didn't have to be cancelled (which is what would have had to happen if it stayed with AoS, it seems). So now I have about a week to work out what I am going to use.