The Road to Axemaster

Oh my. How long has it been? No wait, don't look at that - you'll go blind. Let's just say that it's been a while. I have been a naughty and neglectful blogger, but I'm still here. Lurking quietly in the shadows or something.

In terms of gaming, the club has recently seen a bit of a resurgence of interest in Mordheim. It's never really been a big focus for me - I think the best thing about the game is the tables some people create for it - ones you could never really use for a battle game like Warhammer. Anyway, I've joined in with a Sisters of Sigmar warband. About half my models have been painted up previously as Warrior Priests for my Empire army. The rest are running around wearing nothing but their undercoats. It's disgraceful, and I'm sure Sigmar is judging me and colluding with the dice gods against me as some sort of punishment. If I get around to fixing the situation, I'll provide an update here.

Progress has been slow on the hobby front in general. I have jumped around between a few different model projects, but in the end I managed to focus long enough to get another one of my wagon unit fillers done. It only took about a month longer than it should have. Well, maybe 2 months...

A unit filler for my Ostland Swordsman regiment. The wagon is a 3D print from Highlands Miniatures. I think the Swordsmen might be as well, but the arms are GW and the shields are old custom resin ones I've had kicking around for years, like the rest of the regiment.

Uprising 2023 - Part 3

This is the final part of my report from a recent 6th edition Warhammer Fantasy tournament. You can find the previous part here.

With only one game to go, my apparently mighty Cult of Slaanesh army had still yet to taste defeat. I seemed to be surrounded by Vampire Counts, however...

Game 3 - Pitched Battle
Jake Campbell - Vampire Counts (Necrarchs)

• Necrarch Vampire Count (Level 2, Lore of Necromancy) with Book of Arkhan, Nehekara's Noble Blood, Ring of the Night
• Necromancer (Level 2, Lore of Necromancy) with Dispel Scroll
• Necromancer (Level 2, Lore of Necromancy) with Staff of Damnation
• Wight Lord on Nightmare with Heavy Armour, Great Weapon
• 5 Dire Wolves
• 5 Ghouls
• 15 Skeletons with Shields, Full Command
• 20 Zombies with Standard, Musician
• 11 Black Knights with Barding, Lances, Heavy Armour, Shields, Full Command, Banner of the Barrows
• 3 Fell Bats
• 20 Grave Guard with Heavy Armour, Shields, Full Command
• 3 Spirit Hosts
• Banshee
• Black Coach

This game would be interesting, as it was the first time I'd run into another player with some real muscle in the magic phase.

Nice-looking terrain, although I could have done without a river. I won the roll-off for sides, and elected the one with a hill on it.

Uprising 2023 - Part 2

This is the continuation of my report from a recent 6th edition Warhammer Fantasy tournament. You can find the first part here.

I had won my first game rather emphatically, and propelled myself onto what I believe was the top table for the second round. This was not how this was meant to go. Oh well, these things have a way of correcting themselves. 

Game 2 - Hold the Line, Kill the Boss
Jack Norman - Vampire Counts (Blood Dragons)

• Blood Dragon Vampire Lord (Level 3, Lore of Necromancy) with Full Plate Armour, Shield, Sword of Striking, Obsidian Amulet, Master Strike
• Necromancer (Level 2, Lore of Necromancy) with Book of Arkhan
• Blood Dragon Vampire Thrall with Battle Standard, Flayed Hauberk, Biting Blade
• 5 Dire Wolves
• 5 Dire Wolves
• 24 Skeletons with Spears, Light Armour, Shields, Standard, Musician
• 20 Skeletons with Spears, Light Armour, Shields, Standard, Musician
• 5 Black Knights with Barding, Lances, Heavy Armour, Shields, Full Command
• 3 Fell Bats
• 20 Grave Guard with Heavy Armour, Shields, Full Command, Banner of the Barrows
• 3 Spirit Hosts
• Mercenary Cannon
• Mercenary Cannon

Cannons? In a Vampire Count army? Can't say it's to my taste, but hey what do I care? Good thing I didn't bring any chariots. They wouldn't have been happy...

Uprising 2023 - Part 1

On the weekend I drove to Ballarat for Uprising 2023, which was a one day, 3 game tournament for 6th edition Warhammer Fantasy. In the end there were 36 players. I still don't fully understand where all these people are coming from in order to play a long-dead version of an abandoned game. Every person I ask seems to have a different story. Some have returned after a long hiatus, some are new to Warhammer, some have clearly been sucked into a time vortex and have no idea what year it is... Anyway, it felt like a lot of people for an event of this kind.

I talked previously about my Cult of Slaanesh army list, but here it is again with a family photo so you can see what I was running:

• Druchii Anointed (Level 2 Dark Magic) with Great Weapon, Shield, Blood Armour, Quickening Blood, Pendant of Slaanesh. Tome of Furion
• Sorceress (Level 2 Slaanesh Magic) with Mark of Slaanesh, Dispel Scroll
• Noble on Cold One with Chaos Armour, Shield, Great Weapon, Seal of Ghrond
• Sorceress (Level 2 Dark Magic) with Darkstar Cloak
• 9 Cold One Knights with Full Command, Banner of Murder
• 14 Devoted of Slaanesh with Full Command
• 10 Warriors with Mark of Slaanesh, Repeating Crossbow, Light Armour
• 10 Warriors with Mark of Slaanesh, Repeating Crossbow, Light Armour
• 5 Mounted Daemonettes
• 2 Reaper Bolt Throwers
• 10 Daemonettes 
• 5 Chaos Furies

As usual, I managed to take a good number of photos, which should hopefully help me remember what happened and talk you through my games.

On the path to Uprising

This coming weekend, I am heading to Ballarat for a one-day 6th edition tournament called Uprising. Seems like about 40 players will be attending, which is a good number and about all they could fit anyway. I toyed with the idea of taking High Elves and using it as motivation to try to get some more silver helms painted, but in the end I decided to take Cult of Slaanesh instead.

Cult of Slaanesh is a variant Dark Elf list from the Storm of Chaos campaign book, and uses certain Dark Elves blended with a selection of Mortal Chaos and Daemon choices (all with a Slaaneshi flavour). It was a pretty exciting list when it first appeared, and I think a lot of us considered trying to make an army without actually managing to make it happen. Well, this is my moment. I had just enough painted Dark Elves and Daemons lying around to make a viable list - I just need a couple of extra characters. I've already painted up a Druchii Anointed, and have started work on the Sorceress to lead my army.

My Druchii Anointed, who is basically an angry sorcerous Daemon Elf with the offensive stats of a Chaos Lord.

Updated Dwarf Army Photo

It's not that long ago (well, a couple of years, but in my terms that feels recent) since I took an updated photo of my painted Dwarf army. Since then, the army grew substantially as a result of our slow grow league and my "updated" army photo now feels... not at all up to date. I'm probably done with painting Dwarfs for now, so I figured I should get another updated group photo before I move on to other things.

Again, due to the limitations of Blogger I've got the photo here at "extra large" size, and then I've included it at "original" size in order to upset your browser window...

More Gyrocopters

 <Ride of the Valkyries intensifies>

It's been a while since my last post, but I've finally pushed the Gyrocopters off the painting table. Technically I didn't quite achieve what I set out to, as I had 4 of them there in the batch and only completed 3. The other has only had the metals painted, but I felt like these were really starting to get in the way of making progress elsewhere, and given I now have 5 painted Gyrocopters, there was not a lot of urgency with the last one. So I caved and moved him out of the way so that I can move onto something more relevant.

3 more Gyrocopters, all of them on thick resin bases for a bit of stability and brass rods of different heights for a bit of variety