Warhammer Underworlds: Da Kunnin' Krew

 Time for the most recent warband for Warhammer Underworlds to be painted up, and it's a bunch of Orruk slavers, Da Kunnin' Krew.

 

Now, it isn't a top of the line band in the game, but it has Krookgrin, a Hobgoblin!

 

So it was nor more then fitting to paint them up in the colours of my Chaos Dwarf force, including my lave themed bases I use for that collection.  We all know the Chaos Dwarfs use enslaved greenskins as their agents, and the Hobgoblins are usually around to keep an eye on the matter as most trusted vassals for the Dawi'Zharr.  So far that a Dawi'Zharr trusts anybody of course.

 

To add some flavour to this fluff idea, I build a deck far from optimal, with all 0 upgrades available as you don't invest in expendables, as well as picking the two most suited decks, even though their is not an ounce of synergy between them: Pillage and Plunder because that fits Chaos Dwarf raiding parties, and Reckless Fury because of it's flaming bull art.

 

 

 

 

The models all are painted as my army, because that fits nicely and was the whole idea as I daid above, and this resulted in adding some nice contrasting magma with the large sculpted bases "flat areas".

 

And so Da Kunnin' Krew won't take up space on my Underworlds warbands collection shelf, but join the ranks of the Chaos Dwarf shelf as a result!  And let's see how they fare at the next tournament I attend, half of september...

 

For Hashut! 

 

 

A Working Man

 Sometimes, you just want some brainless action entertainment.

 

 

And that is exactly what the newest Jason Statham movie is, nothing pretentious, just sheer fun. 

Levon Cade is an ex-commando of the british army, who now works as a well-loved construction foreman, keeping a close friendship with the Garcia family that owns the company.  But he is also faced with a custody struggle for his daughter, after his wife passed from cancer.  One night, his boss's daughter Jenny, while out with friends is kidnapped by Russian mobsters.

 

The police unable to find her, they turn to Levon, who initially refuses as he wants to break with his old life.  But after consulting with his friend Gunny, he goes out to find her after all.  He tracks down the corrupt bartender of the last place Jenny was seen, when Russian enforcers arrive for the guy, resulting in levon killing all three.  He did learn they work for the crime syndicate Bravta though, and goes after their captian, Kolisnyk.  

 

He interrogates him, before drowning him in his private pool, as the capo of the syndicate sends two assassins after him, having spotted him on security camera's in the house, a trail he left on purpose to get closer to the boss and hopefully Jenny.  He infiltrates the organisation as an undercover dealer through Kolisnyk's son Dimi, but he is captured.  He kills the assassins, dumping their van and bodies in a river.  Upon hearing this, Kolisnyk summons the other high ranking officers of his organisation to exact revenge on Levon.

 

They hunt down his father-in-law and daughter, but Levon manages to save them, taking his daughter to stay with Gunny while he heads out to engage the maffia.   He tortures Dimi brutally, leading him to the compound Jenny is being held, before executing him, going in guns blazing to take down every criminal present.  Kolisnyk arrives when they ride off, and wants to call for backup.  However, he is reigned in by his boss, as they see how dangerous Levon is and the damage he could do to their organisation.

 

Jenny is reunited with her family, as Levon returns to his daughter and his friends for dinner.

 

So yeah, just another working's man day one could say, fight the mob, save the girl, have dinner with family... but that is also about all the expectations I had when sitting down for this movie after all.  Like I said in the beginning, sheer entertainment...

 

And sometimes, that is just all you want to view...

New additions to the trophy unit

 So not so long ago, I fought two battles of The Old World, bringing forth the followers of Hashut.

 

This was to test the rulespack for the upcoming 500pts event in September, Border Patrol in Ekeren, and give my feedback to the TO of things I might change.

 

Now, somehow I managed to actually win both games, first against the Beastmen, and then against the Tomb Kings, so to that end I can add some models to the newly started, and not so succesfull at the moment, trophy unit.

 

For the beastmen, I had this old plastic monopose model lying round.  Steven painted his armies Gors in a dark blackish brown skin, black fur and a green facial paint on their heads, so I did my best to copy his scheme.

 

For the Tomb Kings, he uses a sandy bone for the skeletons, with burgundy red for the weapons.  Now, my model, an archer from the Runewars range, has also some clothing to him, so I solved this to paint that a white grey colour to not deviate to far of his scheme.

 

Now to defeat more opponents and get that unit bulkingly big! 

Predator: Killer of Killers

 Time for some gory action in this Hulu exclusive animation movie, released last June.

 

And it has Michael Biehn!  So now he has been involved with Alien, Terminator and Predator!

 

The movie starts with three short stories, The Shield, The Sword and The Bullet.  These serve to bring the three protagonists together, being the Viking Shieldmaiden Ursa, the shinobi Kenji from feudal Nippon and world war 2 pilot John Torres.  Each is faced by a Predator in their time, and manage to overcome the challenge before being taken to a planet to fight to the death.

 

 The leader, dubbed the Grendel King by Ursa, tells them only one can leave, but Torres quickly devices a plan to have them all escape by stealing one of the Predator ships.  But as they set it in motion, a harpoon is lodged into the vessel, causing Ursa to return to the ground and destroy the launcher.  Kenji and Torres fly off, as the Grendel King states a hunt is now in motion and a lot more Predator ships.

 

Ursa is put in stasis and brought to an immense room of other warriors, and the movie ends with a stasis pod that contains Naru, the Comanche hunter from the previous live action movie!

 

An enjoyable movie for sure, and it has great animation and a fantastic soundtrack, so make sure to have a look at it! 

 

 

Mythica: Stormbound

 The Mythica series is a labour of love, mostly funded through Kickstarter campaigns to bring some Sword and Sorcery to the screen.

 

And now we have the 6th instalment, taking place 15 years after the Necromancer was defeated by Marek and the Red Thorns.

 

Magic is fading, and a person known only as The Stranger comes across two marshal's that had hunted down old enemies.  His is on his route to find shelter before a heavy storm comes around, and finds a young boy injured on the road.  The lone survivor of a village burned down by a local crone, he takes him to a nearby inn where it turns out he was a slave of the owner.  The boy, Erid, is brought back to health with the other slave present, Arlin, who also seems to have a gift of magic.

 

As the storm hits, more people arrive at the inn, like the aforementioned marshall's and a large hunter and another survivor of the village burning.  But soon, the dwarf inn master is found murdered and an investigation begins.  The young girl from the village is revealed to actually be the old crone, but she isn't the one responsible for the burning of the village.

 

Instead, it turns out that Erid is under the influence of the late Necromancer, and the Stranger, revealed to be Egan, the apothecary aprentice from the earlier films.  The film turns actually into a fantasy version of the Hateful Eight, a western, and a who dunnit style of storytelling with some unexpected causalties.   Now, the special effects as can be expected from a lower budget film aren't top of the line, but it is okay for what you are watching, a movie made with love by and for fans of the series.

 

 So new heroes and heroes of old have gathered, and start to band together to face a rising threat, the question now remains if they will be having more screen time in the future.  I don't mind this sort of pictures at all, often showing more love from those involved then "yet another halfbaked high production mass produced Marvel release *cough Ironheart cough*" and hope a seventh part will be made.

 

For me this was a discovery, and now I guess it's time to seek out the older instalments and have a view! 

Into the Under-Ekeren III tournament report

 As august kicks of the second part of the summer holidays, it was time for the third edition of Into the Under-Ekeren, the Warhammer Underworlds tournament organised by yours truly at the Tin Soldiers of Antwerp.

 

The first time it is ran with the second edition edition of the game, and the format was Nemesis.

 

But there was more, I requested, and received, a Golden Ticket from Games Workshop for the event, making it the very first official World Cup Qualifier to be ran in the club.

 

Of course, when the actual ticket to give to the winner arrived back in may, I took the liberty of posing with it, that way at least I could hold one of them in my hands for real... 

 

But apart from the Ticket, I obtained some additional price support.  First off, like for all the events I'm running this year (the Spearhead from the beginning of the year, and a Lord of the Rings tournament near the end), all participants received a TSA 2025 d6.  For the player that managed to get the lowest amount of Glory Points during the day, a token organiser was there for future better plans.  The winner obtained, apart from the Ticket, also a warband of the new edition,  the Gardeners, while the Best Painted winner gained a first edition Primal Lair terrain set for more painting pleasures.  The player with the least glorypoints took home a token organiser, while a raffle price along "those that didn't win anything" where some Grymwatch dice.

 

And just in case I needed to play, I opted to take along my Cyreni's Razors, the same band and deck which I played Mines of Alost II with, because it will be amongst the final times I get to play the Idoneth.  Because we all know what is coming!

 

In the end, I did need to join and we where with 10 players vying for the glory.  We had 3 Emberwatch, 1 Grymwatch, 1 Ylthari's Guardians, 1 Da Kunnin' Krew, 1 Borgitz's Beastgrabba's, 1 Grinkrank's Looncourt, 1 Daggok's Stab-Ladz and finally my Cyreni's Razors in the pool.  

 

I also want to thank Mike, Johan and Steven for additional pictures, because as I was playing myself, I didn't get the chance to take to many during the event unfortunatly, toggling between playing and paperwork. 

 

So how did I fare myself?  For the first round, I was paired against Johan and the dreaded Grymwatch.  I managed to ping his leader in his first activation powerstep, get a glory for taking a ghoul down, and give Desperate Rage to Cephanyr.  The squid thundered in and using it actually took down his leader immediatly in my second activation, and my life suddenly was a lot easier.  From then on I didn't come into any problems anymore, and scored a solid 16-22 win.

 

The second round saw me against Joep and the Emberwatch.  Like with Domitan in the days, the plan was to use round 1 to do some damage across his figures to get that Healing Potion out, then start picking his band apart.  I immediatly pinged one with a Hammertide... and then missed every attack.  So doing only a single point of damage over the whole round, I was steamrolled for the game and lost a heavy 22-9, it doesn't help that you can't score nearly anything in the end phases for 2 rounds...

 

Game three saw me face Vincent and Ylthari's Guardians, a warband I don't really fear and I went to my regular battleplan.  Ylthari almost immediatly bit the dust and from then on it was playing on control, trying to score while denying where we can and took along an 18-17 victory.  A bit to close for comfort, but the points where taken.

 

For the fourth round, I faced Maximillian and another band of Emberwatch, and this was bloody frustrating.  I actually managed to table his entire warband (the theory works) but because Wreckers showed up only in round 3 and my Cata counter on 3 by then, lost never the less with 20-18 due to this, otherwise it would have been a win on the tiebreaker.

 

And that brings us to round 5, and yes, more Emberwatch for me again.  Again I stuck to the plan, but as I now had Wreckers in the opening hand, I could quickly score it together with Stay Close in round 1, building a safe lead and take a 20-17 victory home.

 

So this saw me go 3-2 and 9 tournament points, but as the massive defeat from round 2 saw me end lowest of the group of 9 pointers (glory differential was the first ranking tiebreaker, then scored glory) for a 5th place overal.  

 

And that brought us to the various awards to be handed out.  Now as I said, I was busy as hell all day, so I forgot to take the traditional little video of the painted warbands, my appologies, and snatched the winner's warband of our Discord server from Warhammer Underworlds Belgium...  The system used let all players vote on the warbands, handing out 5, 3 and 1 point respectively for their top 3.  In case of ties, the times the 5 points where awarded was the decider, then how many times they received a vote.

 

1. Peter with Borgitz Beastgrabbaz, 25 points, 3 top votes, 7 votes received

 

 

2. Nico with Grinkrank's Looncourt, 24 points, 2 top votes, 8 votes received

3. Patrick with Da Kunnin' Krew, 17 points, 3 top votes, 5 votes received

4. Maximillian with The Emberwatch, 14 points, 1 top vote, 4 votes received

5. Tomsche with Cyreni's Razors, 7 points, 1 top vote, 3 votes received

6. Vincent with Ylthari's Guardians, 2 points, 0 top votes, 2 votes received

7. Johan with The Grymwatch, 1 point, 0 top votes, 1 vote received.

 

Next on the Order of Merit, it was time for the consolidation price of Least Glory Points obtained.  It was actually Peter again on this one, as he scored only a measly 71 glory during the day.  But unless you win the event and best painted, our houserules are no "double price" and as such the player with the second lowest glory amount received the organiser tray, being Vincent.

 

I also run a participation raffle, as I prefer this over sportmanship (if you are acting like an ass, we just throw you out, simple as that), which is also a system I often find silly when multiple players end with the perfect score.  So with the above "no double price" policy, and excluding myself as TO, that meant we had 6 people eligible for the set of Grymwatch dice.  An innocent hand tossed the dice, and it came out on Wouter, who took home the little gift.

 

But then we finally are at the most important of scores, the result of the tournament itself.  The Glory Differential was the first tiebreaker, then scored glory, so here is the result of the day!

 

1. Joep Nijssen - The Emberwatch: 15 points

2. Maximilian Bernhardt - The Emberwatch: 12 points

3. Johan De Ryck - The Grymwatch: 9 points

 

4. Nico van den Winckel - Grinkrank's Looncourt: 9 points

5. Tomsche Murrath - Cyreni's Razors: 9 points

6. Wouter Beckers - The Emberwatch: 6 points

7. Patrick Neven - Da Kunnin' Krew: 6 points

8. Peter Vanden Bossche - Borgitz Beastgrabbas: 5 points

9. Peter van den Broeck - Daggok's Stab-Ladz: 3 points

 

10. Vincent van der Meiren - Ylthari's Guardians: 0 points

 

And that is it, the dust settled on Into the Under-Ekeren III, the Golden Ticket was handed out and now it is time to sit back and relax with a good craft beer, unpack the deck and shelving my loved and great fun Idoneth warband, and prepare mentally for the arrival of the followers of Hashut.

 

Oh, and you know how I always try to couple my smaller game events to the fantasy battle day at our club?  Well this time round we had a "modest" game of 8th being run, so enjoy some eyecandy of that as well!

 

Thanks to all the people present, and until the next event!