On the Painting Desk 340

 Late evening posting this week, as today I ran my yearly Underworlds tournament at the club, into the Under-Ekeren.

 

But more on that during the coming week, when I will be uploading a full tournament report.

 

On the painting front, it has been a good week, with the unit of Sneaky Gitz completed and whom I'll show off in detail soon.  And as such, I have started work on the next additions to the Chaos Dwarf force, with a hero on a Taurus and a Magma cannon, this time on a square base for some tournaments near the end of the year.

 

But I also have been making very good progress on Da Kunnin Krew, the warband I'll be taking middle of september to Mines of Alost III.   This will be one of the last times I'll be taking along a non Chaos Dwarf warband, though I'm molding them to fit the army and colourscheme to start paving the way for when The Blood of the Bull arrives...

 

Check back next week for the final update before I leave on holidays! 

White Dwarf 485

 

 Time to have another look at an issue of the Games Workshop in home magazine, White Dwarf.

 

At the beginning of the year, at the Aalst Underworlds tournament, I obtained a nice stack of older magazines for nought, and been flicking through them on and off.

 

Now, let's have a look through it after reading them, and have some opinions.  I do say, I am not into the whole 40k universe thing for years, so those won't be getting to much attention on my part for the reading, but the things that caught my intrest I read of course. 

 

A Khorne Berzerker graces the cover, as they star in a battle report to liberate Kharn himself.   

 

And so we first kick of with the community articles as usual, before World of Warhammer tells about setting scenery in your games.

 

And then we go to the Mortal Realms at first, with Flashpoint Rondhol and more rules for this campaign.  We then get a look at Gods and Monsters in a showcase.  Rules of Engagement takes a look at playing two player campaigns and the charms this brings along, before we get a fun article of Warcry to bring Gloomspite Gitz to the system, including Bladeborn rules for Grinkrank's Looncourt from Underworlds into the fold and with all their needed cards included.  Glory Points look at the formats in Underworlds (well, still the first edition back then), as we get then a look at a Tale of 4 Warlords over the years. 

Moving on to the 40k setting, more material is included for the Arks of Omen setting and the Herald of Misery flashpoint as such.  This includes a big lot of scenario's, and thoughts on playing Boarding Patrol games.  This leads to the battle report from the cover as Imperial forces try to hold off the crazed followers of Khorne.  The magazine also includes the first part of a new Necromunda campaign, the Aranthian Succession, together with a painting gallery of the models in the range.

 

So no, not really a magazine down my alley, even though the Warcry stuff was fun, but not my army that I'm playing.

 

 

 

 

Thunderbolts

 Based on, but very unlike, the comic series of the same name, Thunderbolts is about a team of the most unlikely superheroes.

 

In the comics, it was Baron Zemo who saw an opportunity when he wanted to reform the Masters of Evil to step into the void the Avengers and the Fantastic Four left, presumed all dead, to get to power through public apporval.  And those weren't D-rank villains like the Suicide Squad...

 

But probably to avoid confusion with the DC team of convicts, the movie instead goes to unite some of the side-characters from previous Marvel MCU movies and bring those together.  The "new" Black Widow Yelena, Red Guardian and Taskmaster (also both from the Black Widow movie), US Agent (Falcon and the Winter Soldier), Ghost (Ant-man and the Wasp) and Winter Soldier are brought together due to circumstances.  

 

Bar Bucky and Red Guardian, they are all secret agents working for Valentina De Fontaine, who is trying to cover up evidence for the OXE "Sentry" project.  She sends them all to the same facility in order for them to kill each other, and Taskmaster is shot in the head by Ghost.  They find a guy named Bob there, and make their escape right before the room is incinerated.

 

When her troops arrive to take them out, Bob draws fire and is shot, but seemingly unharmed, before flying high in the air and crashing back to the compound, taken in by Valentina.  Her new headquarters, the Watchtower, is the former Avengers building in New York, where she figures out the Sentry project worked on Bob.   The group, now led by Bucky to stop Valentina and bring her to trial, face her, but are quickly overcome by Bob, now called Sentry.  As they manage to get through to him, his dark alter ego, Void, emerges and starts transferring people to a dark dimension made up of their trauma's.

 

Yelena enters his consciousness by stepping into this void, slowly getting to him and making him come to his senses.  His Void alter ego tries to stop them from getting out, but the others arrive to save them, and with their help Bob overcomes his inner darkness, restoring the city to normal and freeing the trapped people.  The moment they want to arrest Valentina though, she quickly flips it around in a publicity stunt, introducing them as the new Avengers to help protect humanity now as the newest superhero team.

 

In the post credits scene, they are discussing a trademark issue with the Avengers name with Falcon, when a signal from an extra-dimensional spacecraft bearing a large '4' signal comes in... 

 

Apart from the fact Florence Pugh is a joy to look at, this was a fun movie.  You can already feel the Thunderbolts are going to take the role of the Guardians of the Galaxy as the "comic relief" movies in the mCU, and with Sentry an absolute powerhouse has also been introduced into the franchise.  And we all know with that post credits scene who are coming as well... 

Hobgoblin Cutthroats

 Roight, I finally painted up a full unit for my large Chaos Dwarf army, and this time it's some Hobgoblins.

 

Well, except it actually aren't Hobgoblins, but bear with me...

 

A while ago, and with this project in mind, I obtained 6 boxes second hand of Oathmark Orcs, with second hand being an overstatement, they had been opened once to have a look at the sprues and that was it.

 

But as the Oathmark models are 28mm and not the bulky heroic orcs of Games Workshop, think more Lord of the Rings Mordor plastics in size.  Apart from that, they also have a very human build, like in various fantasy books, and Dungeons and Dragons back in the day, how Hobgoblins are actually depicted.

 

That meant they would be perfect use to make the big blocks of cheap, expendable infantry for the Dawi Zharr, and with a Border Patrol tournament at the club coming up at the end of august, I decided to paint up one of my blocks of these just for that.

 

I went for earthen and leathery tones for them, like I did with the metal Legends of the Five Rings a few years ago, and tied them into my army by painting the shields the dark blue and gold colours I use on my Dawi Zharr armour. 

 

The flag was made by printing out one of the old Hobgoblin banners, orientate it to single side downwards position and then cutting some openings and edges to fit with the skulls on the banner and the relative short flagpole. 

 

And while I will need only 12 on the day itself, I made it myself easy and just went for a full regiment of 20 for them in one go...

 

Now to still assemble three more boxes of them, guess it's nightshift time for that... 

Shardspeaker of Slaanesh

 Time to start slowly painting on the Slaanesh Spearhead, and of course that means the general of the force is the first to get some paint.

 

And she was great fun to do with the eldritch energies around her staff and the flowing robes.

 

A Shardspeaker is a seer, and his biggest role on the field of battle being adding Depravity points to your pool, as it is not a close combat general at all. 

 

Now, I painted her as a first model this time for my Spearhead, in order to get set on a colourscheme before tackling the rest of the exstatic Hedonists.  Of course, purple will be the dominant colour on the force, and I aim for a heap of pastel's for the steeds of Slaanesh, but need to think on those first.

 

Now to move on to the next unit of the set, probably some Slaangor... 

On the Painting Desk 339

 Okay, the Chaos Dwarfs are here, so putting time in any other army is not happening anymore.

 

That is the result of living on Copium for decades... so expect nothing else but Dawi'Zharr models on this desk as we work through them in eager awaiting of the new Age of Sigmar line.

 

But as I also have no least then two 2k The Old World tournaments still on the calendar, three if you count the Border Patrol event, I'm going to be painting up the required baggage train, along with probably some additional war machines that go on the required 50x75 bases.

 

First things first though, and this week I want to finish the final Sneaky Gitz to round out the unit this month, as well as make some good progress on the Da Kunnin Krew whom I'll be taking with a "fluff deck" as a slaveforce of Hashut to the Mines of Alost III, to pave the way for when the The Blood of the Bull warband arrives.

 

Time to get painting the coming weeks, as half of august I'm away on holidays and that will cut in the available paint time! 

 

 

The Old World 500pts battle: Chaos Dwarfs vs Tomb Kings Royal Host

 So after a game of Blood Bowl, and waiting for the announcement video on Games Workshop's stream tonight, it was time to fit in a game of The Old World.

 

This was mainly to try out for the Border Patrol tournament in september, which has a 500 point limit with a whole set of restrictions, more on that in the relevant post when the tournament comes round.

 

But this will be the force I'll be taking along, the Cutthroats (Oathmark orcs) and Sneaky Gitz painted in the past two weeks.  I'll feature them in detail when I painted up the remainder of their units for the collection, but at the moment I just went for the models I will be needing.  My Darkforged weapon came up as having Life Bane, that might be handy if I managed to get to his general.

 

Facing me was the tournament organiser Steven, and his army of  Tomb Kings, and I felt severly outnumbered.  His army contained the following:

 

Tomb Prince with Language of the Priests and Armour of Meteoric Iron

A single chariot.

A unit of 3 chariots.

22 Skeleton infantry consisting of 10 archers and 10 spearmen, champion and standard.

5 skeleton horse archer Chariot Runners.

 

The scenario from the tournament pack was on regular kill points, and the relic in the middle of the board gives Hatred and a lot of immunities to the unit controlling it.

 

The lines where drawn, and as I won the first turn roll off, by the scenario I needed to take first turn.  Both sides as such advanced towards each other, with the single loose chariot taking off on an encircling movement.

 

 The Sneaky Gitz arrived on the field, taking down two horsemen, before everything clashed in a huge cluster around the relic.  In his turn the skeletons and the chariots clashed into the Infernal Guard and Hobgoblins to poor results, my warriors winning the combat but my general failing to hit his.  Then the gitz fell in the back of the chariots while the Fireglaives clashed in his side.

 

These large numbers proved to be to much evem for the binding will of the Liche Prince, and the chariots, who where downed to one chariot with a single wound left crumbled to dust.  Note: my opponent refuses the "second regeneration" and will take this up in the tournament pack as well.  Clearly that is something mistakenly worded in the 1.5 FAQ and not intended to be there.

 

The light chariot crashed into the back of the warrior unit, but the little tanks held on, while the skeleton horsemen moved to be in the way of the Fireglaives, preventing them from going in the flank of the big skeleton unit. 

 

The Senechal, again failing to hit the Prince, fell to the blows of the undead lord, and his Helshard only exploded for a single hit, which to add insult to injury failed to wound.

 

 Both units held their line, the Fireglaives charging the horsemen and the Sneaky Gitz smashing in the flank.

 

 This was now my 4th turn, and the Chaos Dwarfs decisevely won the combat with the skeletons, the chariot falling apart and the big unit needing to take so many crumbling casualties only his front rank would remain.  Steven called it there, we didn't even fight out the horsemen combat as they would already start at a negative combat resolution and would totally crumble as well.  Wihtout any freak things, his entire army would literally fall to dust by the end of his fourth round, so we didn't count the exact points, but it would be my Senechal versus his entire army...

 

And so the forces of Hashut took away the victory against the forces of the Tomb Kings, now to find a skeleton model to add to the ranks of my enslaved trophy unit... 

Warchief

 Movie time with this 2024 UK made fantasy movie!

 

Now, this is the kind of low budget barely B-movie level movies that seem to be made by a group of friends and their LARP community, and I like those, they radiate a certain love and pureness for the material.

 

The movie opens with a raid on a village by Orcs, whom we don't get to see by the way.  A trio of warriors, consisting of Orion, Griff and Arlo, accompany a mysterious cowled man called the Messenger, with a message for the king's ears only.  It doesn't take long though before they run into trouble as they stumble upon a group of plague victims, resulting in the death of Arlo.

 

When they hear the Orc warchief call to his soldiers, they try and make haste.  During their flight, we often look back at Orion's early life, from a little village boy to becoming a Guardian, who are a caste of warriors tasked with safely bringing their charge to their destination, no questions asked.

 

But the Orcs catch on to them, vastly outnumbering them as they learn the Messenger wants to double-cross the humans.  In the ensuing battle, Griff gets to explore on the spot some of her nascent magic abilities and manages to kill the Messenger, while Orion is brutally decapitated by the Orc Warchief, who is an actual fighter and not a barely trained farmhand who never been into the world.

 

The mission as a result becomes a total failure, and the Orcs start their war on the human kingdoms, as we see another village being burned to the ground as the films comes to an end.

 

So yes, an open and not-so-happy ending, which I thought was actually a nice twist, instead of the guy that paid for all of it saving the day as often happens in these types of movies.  Will it ever get a sequel to see how the war plays out?  Doubtfull to be honest.

 

But I would watch it though!

 

 

Efteling Fotoboekje 2021

 The third aspect of my Efteling collection, these little yearbooks are basically pictured catalogues of the amusement park.

 

Released every year, they tend to go in the souvenir shops for around 4.00 euro, so I'm scrawning through second hand markets to look for them at a decent price range.

 

And the first I found for my collection is the 44th booklet they released, the 2021 edition.  In this clip, I'm having a flick through it, so join along to have some excellent insights into the Efteling theme park!

 

Now to try and collect the other ones as well, which won't be an easy task for sure!