Ulric War Altar Finished!

Well I may have been delayed by the tournament over the weekend (I'll discuss this in a later post), but the War Altar is now finished. I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out, and I will have the satisfaction of knowing that I'm using something unique when I put it on the table. Now I have over a week to paint a Celestial Hurricanum. It's a pretty fancy model, but how hard can it be..?

All pimped up and ready to go!

A very different tournament

On the weekend we will be running the Warhammer World Series, which (despite the grandiose name) is a small 1500pt one-day tournament with a difference. There will be no comp scores, nor will there be any painting scores. Neither of these things are applicable, because players are not turning up with their own armies. Instead, the armies are already allocated to the tables, and the players arrive at the table and play with what they find there. The scenario is also pre-determined for the given table. 

This is not a concept I have ever seen tried before, but I think it's quite exciting. I was looking forward to playing in such an event, but in the end I've put my hand up to run it instead, to try to ensure everything goes smoothly. There are a number of advantages and potential pitfalls for a tournament using this approach:

Pros
Players don't need to worry about making armies, and there are no comp restrictions or scoring required. Entering an event like this couldn't be simpler. This is a particular advantage for those who don't like the underlying game of writing competitive army lists and trying to "beat the system" as some might.

Armies and scenarios can be balanced in advance. Not all armies in a tournament like this need to be of a similar strength. All that matters is that they face off well against the force on the other side of the table. You can even field unusual, unbalanced armies that would be a serious liability in a normal tournament, because you know what they will be up against. You can make it work.

Players will be tested in ways they never have before. It is a rare player that has used every army in Warhammer - many tend to focus on one or two. Entering a tournament where they could find themselves with a different unfamiliar army each game will test their versatility and overall game knowledge. It also adds variety for the players - no chance of getting bored with the using the same list all day. For players who are looking for a new army to collect, this offers quite the opportunity to take a few for a test drive.

Cons
Organising an event like this can be problematic because you need a sufficient supply of armies that people are willing to let other people (potentially strangers) play with. With the amount of time and care that goes into preparing armies, people can be quite protective of their work. You also need a wide variety of armies available, or the whole point of the exercise is somewhat lost. If everyone just brings along a Daemon army, you haven't gained much. In our case we have every army represented except Tomb Kings, so we're doing well. some armies are more numerous than others, but that's partly my fault - I'll be contributing 15 of the armies (not looking forward to setup)...

Whilst it's all well and good for players to try to adapt to new things, it will inevitably slow things down. In our case this promises to be a particular problem because we've ended up with a very tight schedule. Combine that with people picking up a new army every round, and we may be headed for problems. I'll be trying to keep on top of that, but people can expect to be hurried up. Under different circumstances, the learning process could be better accommodated by allowing extra time for each round.

Being able to pick the armies that will face each other round after round and choose an appropriate scenario is definitely an advantage when it comes to game balance. However, there is still the requirement to get this bit right. An unbalanced match-up could see one player on the table with a disadvantage each round. Of course, in a normal tournament you are relying on a comp panel to get the scoring right (or a set of caps to level the field), so the element of risk may be no greater overall.

The Armies
So, having looked at the potential advantages and pitfalls of this unusual tournament, let's have a look at the armies we have lined up. Ideally with more preparation you could actually playtest the pairings to determine how well they stack up, but we will have to make do with the analysis of several experienced players.

Empire War Altar progress

So, I have finally stopped putting off the construction of an War Altar, and progress is now going well. I talked previously about being an inefficient fool who ignores a perfectly good plastic kit in order to make something unique. This delayed me in the past, but no longer! Construction is complete and painting has commenced...

It always amazes me how much a project comes together visually when the undercoat hides all the bits and modifications.

Lores of Magic: The Lore of Vampires

Magic used to define the Vampire Counts army in much the same way as it did the Tomb Kings. The primary difficulties an opponent faced was the prowess of the Vampire characters, and the fact that the generally modestly powerful units could regain lost models (or even grow beyond their starting size), spring up from nowhere, and charge in the magic phase. 

Things have been shaken up a bit under the latest Vampire Counts book, including the loss of the ability to charge using Vanhel's Danse Macabre (continuing the trend we have seen across all new magic lores under 8th edition). The book has seen a number of new units added, many of which fight well enough that they don't necessarily need magical assistance to get the job done. 

So then, the army has reduced its reliance on magic (assuming the player builds his army list correctly). What does this mean for the new Lore of Vampires? Let's take a look.

By the power of technology!

Axemaster is approaching (it's now about 3.5 weeks away), and this time I managed to settle on an army list well in advance. One of the things I need to assemble and paint as part of this army list is an Arch Lector on a War Altar. I've had plans to build one of these for a long time, however it has taken until now for me to actually act on those plans.

Recently I seem to have developed a nasty habit of making things harder work than they need to be. I have overlooked things like the normal Demigryph models and instead converted my own, opting for theme and style over practicality. The War Altar continues this theme - there is a perfectly adequate plastic kit available nowadays, but of course that would have been too simple. Besides, I don't yet have any Sigmarite priests in my army - they all worship Ulric. Another conversion was the order of the day.

The War Altar as sold by Games Workshop

After a lot of fiddling and dithering, my plan is to use a number of parts from the official War Altar kit, but the end result will be quite different. For instance, I will not have horses pulling my Altar. Nor will the statue at the back be a Griffon. I don't really fancy the small house and ridiculously elevated position of the Arch Lector, either. So really, I will be using the chassis and that's about it.

I have started work on this project, although I don't yet have any pictures of my work in progress. As I was assembling it however, I ran into a problem. My statue needed to be elevated well above the chassis of the Altar, and I couldn't work out how best to do this. I also wanted to leave a central section of the chassis visible, as I had carved off a couple of the Sigmarite symbols and replaced them with wolf heads - I didn't want that to be wasted effort. So I needed a plinth, but it couldn't just be square. At painting night I was making resolutions to build the thing out of plastic bases before covering them with greenstuff and trying to make them look like a construction of wood and metal when Pete (one of the painting night regulars) said, "I could print you one."

This offer may not make much sense without a little bit of context. Recently Pete bought one of those fancy newfangled 3D printers you may have read about. Actually, he bought all the bits to make one, and then set about the laborious task of assembling the thing from a confusing jumble of wires and bits of metal and plastic. Once this was done (and it didn't happen overnight), he set about trying to calibrate the thing so that it would actually make what he wanted, rather than a strange, blobby, slant-wise version of it. This involved battling printing speeds, different temperatures, extrusion rates, and other things that I may or may not be making up. Eventually though, this is what he ended up with:

Pete's 3D printer waves its magic wand and creates something out of (almost) nothing

Lores of Magic: The Lore of Hashut

By now I would imagine that most of you would have come into contact with the Tamurkhan: The Throne of Chaos book. For anyone who has not, it contains a lot of story and rules for many of the weird Chaos monsters that Forgeworld are well known for. It also includes a full, stand-alone Chaos Dwarf army list called the Legion of Azgorh.

Chaos Dwarf sorcerers can use the Lores of Fire, Metal and Death. The lord-level Sorcerer-Prophets have another option, however. They can use the Lore of Hashut, which is included with the army list. Many people probably only have a vague idea of what this Lore does, so I thought it might be interesting to take a closer look.

Adding a little more character

As part of my preparation for Book of Grudges, I had a small amount of painting to do. I knew I wouldn't have that much time to work on things (turns out the jet-lag got to me a bit too, which made things harder), so I planned my list to require fairly minimal effort. In the end I needed to paint 4 infantry characters - 2 Light Wizards, a Witch Hunter and a General of the Empire. However I had a few different plans for what I wanted to use for Light Wizards, and ended up painting an extra one whilst I was at it. This is how they all turned out. There are one or two small things I need to do to them - an extreme highlight on some gold and eyes for those that need them - but they're basically done.

My General of the Empire. I have realised that I probably need a lot more General/Captain models on foot for all my infantry units, so this guy is the first step toward that.