Shin Ikkitousen

 Time for some harem fighting girls anime in this 3 part OVA Shin Ikkitousen.

And this time, it is the reincarnated spirit of Himiko, the former queen of Yamatai, that comes to Kanto.  And the ecchi side is a bonus hehehe.

 

When Nanyou Academy is savagely attacked by Himiko's ally Yamada, out to retrieve a sacred sword stored there, Hakufu's sister Chuubou faces them.  She awakens the dragon in her, but falls in a deep unconsciousness state as a result.  Hakufu arrives just in time to stop the assault, back from her trip abroad.

 

Chuubou's Chi has been used up from the dragon manifesting, Hakufu is set out go to a sacred training ground linked to the underworld in order to get her power back.  Meeting an elderly lady, and a female monk called Ganryu she starts training by fighting back the undead, together with another girl called Tamonmaru.  But she sees visions of her friends Mou and Kan'u in the underworld, and goes to save them. 

Mou faces the spirit of Ryofu, who engages her.  Tamonmaru finds an opening under the altar of the abandoned temple, running into Mou who has overcome the spectre.  But as the flood of undead starts streaming the land, the others have to make a run for ut while Hakufu needs to search on to help her sister.  Tamonmaru stays behind to slow down the tide approaching, being grieveously impaled as she fights the mass.  Ganryu also stops the ascend to the exit, passing her sword to Mou before going back to aid her comrade.  But they are overwhelmed, and with the old master buying Mou the time she needs, she escapes with the sword.

And then the story basically ends, with a lot of open ends and arcs to be resolved... hopefully that will actually happen, instead of becoming another Queen's Blade anime.

 

 

Warhammer Underworlds Tournament at Games Workshop Antwerp May 2024

 Announced as a "Rivals tournament... with a twist" the local Games Workshop store organised a tournament the 19th of may.

 

And so I went to play, taking along Elathain's Soulraid whom I just seem to be able to pilot the easiest, it's something in their manipulation aggro that clicks with me.  And I just love playing around with the Spinefish, not to mention it brought success in Halle.

The tournament had only 2 participants, and the twist was that they would be working with a sort of knock-out ladder system to victory as seen above from my Messenger with the store staff.  But as due to the event placed in the middle of a long weekend, and many out on family business as such, Phil, the store manager, added an extra layer and changed the twist.

Both me and Peter would play best of 3, BUT we each would face the newly released White Dwarf as well for a chance to win the special promo card.

The benefit was though, a lot of promo goodies where handed out, so a deck box, alternate art cards and the move / charge acryll tokens are now all in my possession.

So, time to go at it for the best of three then, in a rumble for the shard against Skabbik's Plaguepack, a warband I didn't fear that much with my Soulraid, except Rabidius Skench with his 3 damage attack and as a result my prime target.

Now, I had a bit of a benefit of having played against his Plaguepack already in the past weeks, albeit with Skaeth, but he never faced my Soulraid, not even when preparing for Halle.  Of course, he knows I'm, to put it mildy, an ABC player, but would he be prepared for the tidal flood that is the aggressive, infiltration aggro that the Soulraid brings?

Well, he wasn't in the first game, as some quick charges immediatly launched me out of the gates on glory, only to have it round out further, including a returning from the dead Tammael, during the later rounds, resulting in a swift 12-5 victory for the Soulraid.

It was then my turn to face the White Dwarf, and with his "bubble" of only getting one damage until he plays one of his abilities from your discard pile (I know, it sounds weird, but all the rules are in WD 500) I just charged headlong to face the storm of the old grumpy, 5 attack dice dwarf, and nibbled at his wounds.  I managed to bring him down (even with Spinefin dodging his attacks lol) in the third round, with only my fish and Tammael remaining, but scoring 6-3.

Then Peter took on the venerable legend, but unfortunatly he ran out of time with the White Dwarf at only a single hit point remaining.

Being able to defeat the White Dwarf netted me an additional promo card, namely Temporary Retrieve from the Hungering Parasyte deck, while Peter got the other one as picked winner for best painted.

After the lunchbreak, we went back at it with the second round in the struggle for the shard.  I launched again aggressively, but my first attacks failed to take out one or two of his minions, and as he started counter charging I lost Elathain before he had a chance to do something.

I was on the backfoot, and unable to do anything, in the end only Spinefin remaining and a 16-11 loss tossed my way.  It would all come down to the final game.

And here, I opted for once to take it a bit more slowly as he deployed aggressively, boosted by the success of bringing the fight to me in the second game.  Fuirann launched her usual kamikaze run, taking down Poxlix, while Tammeal immediatly dispatched Rikkit, but I remained on my half this time, even foregoing scoring some objectives like having three on his half.  Elathain dispatched the infiltrating Skritter, denying him the glory he could possibly score.

In turn two, I ganged up on Rabidius, taking that threat out, though Fuirann traditionally fell, before striking on Itchitt, first with some Spinefin Toxin before a charging Elathain took that one down, scoring more points.  The Lurelight also helped increasing my total at this point. 

In the final round, all I did was chase his leader with Duinclaw, to round out the game with the juicy Dead or Doomed, and a 15-6 victory on the table.

The shard was mine!!!

Thanks to the people of the store for organising the event, Peter for the fun games (and additional pictures) and Phil for joining in with the White Dwarf for some lovely gaming time!

I love my Elathain, two events in two different formats, yet he brought me the glory home two times now.  He will definitly be honoured with an Underworlds tattoo after the summer (and I already drew the concept of what I am going to be placing)!

The Haul Report 396

Time for another, long due, update, and this is because I'm sitting on more orders to arrive then I care to.

I still need to get to the local scale model shop to get paints, varnish and thinner.  I'm still awaiting a restock of Wintermaw to obtain my copy.  And I still am praying one day my Rivals of the Mirrored City will come.  And in "only" 195 days my White Dwarf 500th issue model will be coming.

At least, I managed to get to the hobby store, and brought back "maybe some extra stuff" as you can see.. weak flesh and such... but that deck does look like a heap of fun to try out!  Especially if coupled with "swarmy" undead bands that often have additional move mechanics, like the Grymwatch, Kainan's Repaers or the Exilded Dead, whom I have all three (albeit unpainted).

 

 

This also means, this isn't really a weekly update, as a lot of other stuff also came in over a period of about 3 weeks, but I was waiting for any of the titular items before publishing this overview of stuff added to the collections, to no avail.

I also obtained the Warcry Rot and Ruin book for the cheap of Vinted.  With the newest edition just released, I actually only bought this for the Horns of Hashut lore, as an avid Chaos Dwarf lover.

Another little Vinted find are these PVC tokens for Underworlds.  I thought these older season GW promotionals are is a fun little thing to have.

 

 

Even more Vinted finds, as I grabbed this french edition of the Stormbringer magazine for 6 euro.  Not that I follow the series, but this issue came with the scenery set from Beastgrave. 

A final Vinted find, this time for 8 euro, is the 2nd edition Idoneth book and the cards.  While obsolete (well, in 3 months or so) I picked this up for completeness sake and to compare the lore evolution with it's first edition whom I also acquired a few months ago.

From TokyoCatch the loot arrived, and this is one I am keeping for the collection, Break-time volume 8 Himiko Toga.

 

 

Finally, I also obtained two additional cars to complete my Date A Bullet line...

 

So that's a nice pile of loot this time around!

 

 

On the Painting Desk 282

 Another week has passed by, and I must admit, with far less progress then I hoped to achieve last week.

And this for no other reason then for the first time in like 8 months, we had a sunny weekend, meaning some well deserved family time with the little guy.

None the less, I did get some painting done, with minor work on both the Akhelian King with his second layer done, as well as on the Horns of Hashut Shatterer's by adding their first colour.

 

 

Garrek's Reavers though are no longer in the videoclip, as those have been finished the past week, and of course that means a fresh warband to be put in the starting block for some attention.  And I opted for a warband in numbers this time, and not because I lost to them past week.  The Exiled Dead are a fun electro zombie bunch, and they will also boost my Battle Against the Gray numbers a fair bit over on Chaos Dwarfs Online as it is a 7 man warband.

 

And knowing myself and my current focus, probably end up being painted before the other two projects...

Warhammer Underworlds: Garrek's Reavers

 A bit unexpected that I painted these up quite recently, but as things would have it while working on other projects, these would just be sharing a lot of common colours.

So as they say, two birds and one stone...

A warband of the original box, that means they have only been waiting 10 season boxes or so to finally get a paint job, and now these ravaging barbarians are ready to take to the field of battle.  Being your typical ABC warband (Always Be Charging) I plan on using them with either Breakneck Slaughter or Hungry Parasite, both very aggro orientated universal decks.

 

 

Because face it, this warband, which I'll be nicknaming "Grandpappy Aggro and his boys" is the original headlong rush band after all, because Khorne cares not!

 

Now to get them on the table one of these months.

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: The Scarlet Bond

 Released in the gap between the second and now running third season of Rimuru's adventures, this movie marked their cinematic debut.

And the story takes place immediatly together with the beginning of the third season, after Walpurgis has ended, and the defeat of Falmuth and Youm and Diablo being send their to negotiate a treaty.

 

The story begins with an Ogre deserting from the army of Clayman, and Yamza tracking and seriously injuring him and his companions.  He is found by the people of Raja, a small kingdom west of Jura forest, and after being named Hiiru makes a recovery.  After ten days of healing, he travels to the Ogre Village, finding it destroyed by Orcs, and as he is out to seek revenge he swears loyalty to Towa, the queen of Raja.

 

 

Rimuru, now one of the Demon Lords, is informed that Geld is under attack together with his fellow orcs.  It is Hiiru, but he is stopped by Benimaru in his tracks, and the two recognize each other from the village, and he reconciles with Geld and the orcs after hearing what happened from the other ogres.  He tells Rimuru he was actually send there as a messenger when he spotted the orcs, and he is tasked by asking if the kingdom of Raja can cultivate a part of the forest to help feed the kingdom.  It used to be famous for a large gold vein they mined, but this has since dried up, and that queen Towa is suffering from Curse Poison due to a magical tiara she needs to use to cleanse the waters of the kingdom from poison leaking out of the old mines.

 

Rimuru, Benimaru, Shion, Shuna and Ranga travel to the kingdom to help out Towa, and he discovers the poisons are not from the mines, but from an old magic circle at the bottom of the lake, destroying it.  This angers Lacua, a merchant behind the poisoning, who craves to earn respect from the ancient demon Violet.  As he repoisons the lake, the queen uses her tiara severly draining her health.  In the meantime a neighbouring country is preparing to attack Raja for the gold they have stored, as Rimuru mobilizes his allies while Diablo goes to negotiate with Violet as only he can, learning how and why she created the tiara just for the sake of having some fun.

Hiiro is tricked by Lacua to ingest a Curse Orb, under the false promise he can switch souls with the queen to save her, but enraged he transforms in a demonic ogre bend on destruction.  As Diablo brings Violet to heel, she realizes Lacua disobeyed her orders and severs all ties with him, while agreeing to end the curse and the contract with the Raja royal bloodline.  Lacua is defeated by Rimuru, while Towa's royal doctor, who is actually in league with Lacua, is taken out by Ranga.  Hiiro manages to remove the orb from himself and destroy it, coming back to his normal senses.  Towa saves him from death once more, but in doing so she starts to vanish as she absorbed all the power of the Curse.  However, Violet interferes and brings her back, appologizing for the caused harm, and a deal is struck with Tempest to buy the iron ore recently discovered by the people of Raja in order to help rebuild the kingdom.

This was actually a pretty fun movie, with awesome visuals.  While not needed to follow the storyline of the main anime series, it might be worth checking out and sit back for some good, typical slime fun.

 

Warhammer Underworlds Casual Gamenight: the last minute call-up

 Well, I didn't plan on going this week, and as they where in an even number to play anyways I would be spending time listing some second hand stuff and working on Garrek's Reavers.

 

Until in the afternoon before the gamenight, someone dropped out, and I went never the less to fill in the numbers again.  

Getting some extra games in with Skaeth's Wild Hunt was an additional bonus, as sunday it is tournament time.

 

 

But we started with a game of Nemesis first, putting my Force of Frost Cyreni's Razors versus Peter's Beastbound Assault The Exiled Dead. So a swarm of electro zombies, who all move as one, this will be a challenge.

The boards had been layed down, and the game was on.

The Exiled Dead started with forming a conga-line in order to protect their leaders aka puppeteers from my infiltrating Idoneth.

Renglaith however infiltrated the lines and took one of the zombie minions out.  But in turn, the other minions quickly surround him, and even though Alathyrr tried to reduce the number of opponents to no avail, he was overwhelmed by attacks and fell.

This ended the first round at a 4-4 each on the scoreboard.

In the second round's opening phases, Regulus is send in by Markov and he dispatches Alathyrr before she has a chance to defend herself, leaving Cyreni who moved into enemy territory prepare for a magical offensive.

This went horrible though, her Pelagic Blast, as she was now inspired, needed a lightning, and rolled two swirlies.  Then she cast Absoloth's Avalanche, needing a swirlie and rolling a lightnings, and then a Freeze-Thaw Finish needing one lightning ended up with again two swirlies, meaning she failed every casting roll with the opposite of what was needed, and to add insult to injury she fell herself by returning blows.

This left only Cephanyr on the table against a whole tide of zombies, and a 7-8 benefit for the Exiled Dead.

My third turn was based around getting the squid back to my half and chase off the zombie there, in order to hark some more glory and then equip the Chasm Key for an extra point.  To activate a whole lot of upgrades on him for defence, he did have to use a ranged attack first that gave the needed ice counter, taking out a zombie.  But there the plan ended, as Regulus immediatly took him down before he could flee and wiping out my band.

Some card cycling was as such all that could be done, but the result was an 9-12 defeat, not the greatest of differences but never the less we went down to the undead numbers.

 

 

Setting up for a second game, it was time for Skaeth's Wild Hunt to get in their last training miles against other Peter and his Skabbik's Plaguepack, both bands set to battle for glory coming sunday.   

And I made a grave playmistake in the opening rounds.  I went after Skritter who had infiltrated in my lands onto an objective, first with Althean, and as she missed with Skaeth himself.  While this took the beast down, I made the mistake of thinking while he did not give bounty, he would gain me the Run Through and Ritual Kill objectives.  Which it did not, as it doesn't go out of action but removed from game instead.

In the meantime, a combined assault by Rabidius Skench and Poxlix, together with some ploys, had already dispatched Sheoch and Lighaen, this wasn't going well at all.  

Karthaen and Skaeth went in to face the threat, Karthean wounding Rabidius as Skaeth made himself ready to attack the second in command Skaven by using Pounce.  While hit and pushed back, he threw his javelin and took down Skench, now scoring the two cards from the rat after all.

But the Plaguepack scored heavily, and where already 3-8 in the lead after the first round.

The second round began with Karthean being smacked down by Skabbik, ironically of course as I had just drawn a hand with a heap of spells for my now level 2 wizard and Karthean related objectives...

Skaeth charged round to the two minions, his scything attack wounding Rikkit but missing Poxlix. 

Althean then came into the fray, using her Rapid Shot upgrade she first hit and pushed Skabbik into a lethal hex to score an objective, then shooting the last wound of Rikkit.

But the scores didn't catch up, as I was still 6-13 behind, this was looking hopeless.

With the board looking like this at the beginning of the final round (yes, we still had to remove the counters, I know), I had objectives I had traded in (like having three members with upgrades), and some with a minimal chance (get to all objectives in one players territory).

I began by charging Althean to Skabbik.  This had a reason she came so close, as I had the ploy that increased damage if supported, for Skaeth later on if needed.  But the skaven leader also had upgrades that mitigated damage by one, and 2 wounds left, so Skaeth wouldn't be able to one shot kill him.  However, if both arrow shots for one damage each would hit... One duly did, but the second was unfortunatly blocked.

Althean payed for this brave attack with her life though, leaving Skaeth to throw his retrieved javelin and taking the enemy leader down at last.  All he could do now was charge to sneaking Poxlix and take the rat out.

Thanks to some last activation objective cycling, I scored my full objective hand, but it was not to be as even with the soldid glory, I still stranded at a 13-17 defeat against the contaminating rats.

So, that is two defeats in the pocket tonight, and while in game one it could have made a huge difference if Cyreni's casting round had went at least normal, not per se exceptional, while in the second game the early play mistake cost me dearly, and two members of my warband to boot without them doing anything.  

Now it's getting ready for the tournament sunday, the report coming afterwards, before Skaeth will retire and be replaced with something completely different (and low ambitions of actually achieving anything) for Into the Under-Ekeren, but more of that will be revealed in the next causal meet-up!