Saturday, September 24, 2016

The Warband Assembles!

Waking up face down in the dirt, alone and naked, is the first thing Shak'nar the indomitable remembers with any real clarity. There are memories from the before, but they are hazy and dream-like. Memories like chopping wood and putting nails in show soles, but the colors are all wrong and the other people in these memories all speak a language he does not understand anymore.

After waking up, Shak'nar spent several days wandering what he find out to be the Chaos wastes. Eventually, he found a small camp, with several explorers sleeping around a campfire. In his feral state, the animal portion of his brain took control. After sneaking up on the lone guard and strangling him with his bare hands, he murdered the remaining men in their sleep. Afterwards, he feasted--first on the rations, then on the flesh. The next morning, Shak'nar was fully clothed and armed; albeit with weapons that were more laborer tool than fighter's armaments.

But those gave him the base to get better. He used these supplies to defeat others and loot their weapons and armor, slowly building up a better collection. After he killed a chaos champion, the Gods began to take notice. After taking the armor from his vanquished foe, it began to speak to Shak'nar, telling him that he would be special but first he had to wear the armor. After strapping on the armor, his flesh began to burn as it fused to his skin. It began changing color. That night, the Gods spoke to Shak'nar in his dreams and promised him glory if he would kill in their name and sow discord and chaos upon the kingdoms of men.

The next morning, the orcs came. They spoke only in guttural grunts that Shak'nar could not comprehend. But they seemed to recognize him as their leader so he did not kill them. Sometime later, Shak'nar was not sure how long since time does not flow evenly in the chaos wastes, he was joined by Scorpius. At first Shak'nar only saw a cloud of dust on the horizon. He and the orcs readied for battle. When the horseman arrived, he leapt from his steed and scuttled to Shak'nar and swore fealty. While Shak'nar does not trust Scorpius, he has seen his potency in combat and enjoys fighting with him. The hobgoblins were the last arrive. They promised to fight with him if he would protect them from the wolf-riders of the Hobgobla Khan.

The path to glory has begun!



I want to thank AirborneGrove26 at Give'em Lead and Urion at Madhouse Society for posting such great fluff for their warbands and inspiring me to do the same. If you haven't checked out either of these blogs, give them a go, but allot some time because you'll be hooked!

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Are you ready for some Bloodbowl?

The Royal Karaz-a-Karak Engineers' Guild Gunnery Division Blood Bowl Club

The Royal Karaz-a-Karak Engineers' Guild Gunnery Division Blood Bowl Club, affectionately known as the Gunners, are the longest standing team in top flight blood bowl. Initially founded to give the master gunnery engineers something to do in their free time that did not involve explosives, they became a full-fledged professional team within only a few years. Due to their location within the capital city of Karaz-a-Karak, the Gunners amassed quite a fan base ,which often got into fights with fans from the nearby North Gate White Roosters, a team popular with the more bucolic dwarfs in the city. Fans of the Roosters have even been known to spread false tales that the Gunners had to bribe their way into the top division of Blood Bowl.

The Gunners have enjoyed significant success in recent years under coach Joran Grahamson, who has perfected a very defensive dwarfish style of play that relies on 1-nil wins. Although often labeled "boring," Joran would much rather be successful than exciting. 

The Team

The Runners:


The Longbeards:




The Blitzers:


The Troll Slayers:


I've had this team for a while, at least a decade when I picked it up on the cheap. I've painted a few (more on that in a moment) but the team remained unpainted in Lisanne Lake wanted to run a Blood Bowl tournament at Oldhammer Day 2016. That was just the motivation I needed to finish the team. I'm quite happy with the way they turned out. I do have one more Blitzer and Longbeard, as well as the Star Player Grim Ironjaw. The Blitzer and Longbeard were painted a while back and I'm not happy with them. Grim Ironjaw was painted even longer ago as I picked him out of a used bin and glued an axe in his hand and stuck him in my dwarf army. All three will be stripped and repainted immediately after Odhammer day this year. Now, I just have to track down a Death Roller!







Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Murderous Hobgoblins Arrive!

The last unit of the warband for me to show off, individually, from the Realms of Chaos warband is a unit of 3 hobgoblins. When generating the warband, I actually rolled up 3 beastmen, but I felt like painting some hobgoblins, thanks to Chico at Oldhammer on a Budget,  and I didn't have time to complete the beastmen too, before Oldhammer Weekend in October. So for now, the hobgoblins have been drafted.

These three murderous hobgoblins joined the warband while on the run from the wolf clans of the Hobgobla Khan. These particular hobgoblins made the mistake of double crossing one of the Khan's generals in a power-play that failed and were forced to flee for their lives. They figure best case scenario the rest of the warband can help them kill anyone that comes looking for them, worst case scenario the rest of the warband dies in their defense while they sneak off to safety.




As you can see, the flesh tone on the first is a little bit different than the other two. He was done third while I was still playing around with the recipe. Any future hobgoblins will look much closer to him than the other two.

Monday, September 19, 2016

A-Case Review

So I've been promising to do a review on the A-Case (formerly Feldmaster) for months now, but various things have gotten in the way, so now I can shill it on my new blog!

I picked up the A-Case (http://army-case.com/) for my epic armies. I wanted something that was reasonably small and had magnetic trays. And to top it off, I am way to lazy to build something myself. I had seen their indiegogo campaign shared somewhere, maybe Facebook or Bell of Lost Souls, and bookmarked it and forgotten about it.  Getting a case for my epic was on a backburner. Then I took everything to an event in the tacklebox set up I had only to see how much my models were smashing around on each other. After that, I began seriously researching magnetic tray carrying cases. It came down to this and the Tablewar small case. I went with the A-Case for two reasons: I dislike hard cases and the Tabelwar tray system required more effort to think about that I wanted to deal with (like I said, I'm lazy!).

First thing to mention, I ordered this on a Sunday, mid afternoon EST. The owner responded almost immediately. I'm not sure the exact time difference, but it was way later than any normal person should be working on a Sunday night. It arrived from Poland to the USA by Wednesday. I can't get domestic mail delivered that quickly! In other words, the customer service is great.

Once it arrived, I was able to assemble it pretty quickly, it has a neat system where the metal frame goes together without any fasteners, it's held together by the bag (I'm an engineer, I nerd out for stuff like that). Once assembled, the models are simply placed on the metal tray and stay with magnets in their bases. Pretty simple.

There are several videos already online showing people doing dangerous things with their cases to show how sturdy it is. I'm not doing that. I trust the case, but I am still not willing to risk damaging my models! If you want to see those, they're not hard to find. But, I did take pictures of all the epic models I can fit into it.

Here is the case, fully loaded:
One of the best things about it, that you may not be able to notice from the above picture is that each tray has three sides that are folded so it slides into the tracks. I have the top two trays with the fold down, while the bottom tray has the fold up, that's to give me a few extra millimeters in height for the titans. 

Below are pictures of the three trays individually so you can see how much I fit on them. The epic infantry is on the standard 40mmx10mm, the vehicles are on 20mm square or circle bases depending, bikes are on Warmaster bases at 40mmx20mm. The planes and titans are all on specialty bases.




I don't have an exact total of the points (again, the laziness thing) but I'd estimate that to be around 10,000 points or so of epic. That's quite a lot and much larger than most games. 

So, because this is for my epic, it leads to my one and only criticism of the case, I would love for there to be additional sliders for an extra tray or three. I understand that most people are probably using these for skirmish level games and need the height, so I get why there are only three trays, but I still really wish I could fit even more epic in it (because there are always more models)!

Anyway, if you need a case with magnetic trays, I highly recommend the A-Case. 

Saturday, September 17, 2016

Scorpius is Complete!

I present to you a complete Scorpius. He is a member of my undivided Realms of Chaos warband (more information on that will come in later posts) and has risen to the rank of Marauder Horseman. Scorpius was gifted a chaos steed by the gods. Which is a good thing, because when on foot, he scuttles like a scorpion (silly walk, -1 Fear Point). Scorpius' helm has mutated into a scorpion tail as well, oozing a potent looking venom (evil eye, +1 Fear Point).




Thursday, September 15, 2016

Welcome to my new (only?) blog! I used to keep a running project log on Warseer with photos of the models I've painted. Since Warseer is dead now, I decided it was time to create a blog. This also puts the pressure on me to take photos more than three times a year! This week I took lots of photos that I'm going to slowly release over the next week or so, so it looks like I actually update my blog! Until then, here's a teaser of a mostly completed Chaos knight:



And if you want to peruse my older stuff, it's all available here: My Photobucket Gallery