A Tale of Four Gamers Episode 2: Spooky Boys and Sub-Assemblies

Hello and welcome back! Our second month of hobby sees me re-purpose some old Nighthaunt, Chris get stuck into Archaon, David into his Knights and some Stormcast, and Charles build even more tiny tanks.

Aytan

Hey All, following on from the review I did of the book HERE, this month I'll be starting to finish up my Nighthaunt. I do already have an existing army so I'll be working on a new list, seeing what pieces I can salvage, and doing some conversion work on some of the newer miniatures ill need.

I'll definitely be using my chainwrasp again

As I mentioned in my review article, I'll be looking to play a hybrid MSU'ish Bladegheist Revenant Scarlet Doom list with small units of Revenants and cavalry backed up by a chunky Chainwrasp anchor. With this in mind, the elements that I definitely want in the final list are the aforementioned Revenants and Chainwrasp and definitely Lady Olynder:

Lady Olynder: 340

Guardian of Souls: 150

Spirit Torment: 115

30 Chainwrasp Hordes: 330

10 Bladegheist Revenents: 175

10 Bladegheist Revenents: 175

10 Bladegheist Revenents: 175

3 Spirit Hosts: 125

2 Chainghasts: 95

5 Hexwraiths: 160

5 Hexwraiths: 160

I think that this gives a good mix of healing and utility from the characters, the possibility of a good amount of mortal wounds when taking advantage of the new Ethereal (flee and charge), Wave of Terror (massed debuffs) and Scarlet Doom (mortal wounds on the charge from Revenents) rules that the book now offers.

Starting with Lady Olynder, those eagle eyed among you will notice that I have already shown a sneak peak at her conversion work over on my Instagram.

I wanted to make her more spooky soul-eater but still keep the rose maiden theme from her thorns so with that in mind, I knew that I wanted to change the head as it's honestly my least favourite part of the existing miniature, and add a scythe to go with the overall 'death' theme of the army. The new head came from the Mymourn Banshee kit, which incidentally fits pretty well with the back of Lady O's existing veil with only a small amount of filling work to actually be done. Further pushing the link with the banshees, I (carefully) hollowed out her chest using my dremel tool and separated all of the roses from her existing vines to use elsewhere on the miniature.

The right hand and scythe is from the Ossiarch Bonereapers Mortisan Soulreaper which to be honest, is a little large in scale but using some of those roses I fashioned a corsage to hide the join. Once there is paint on the model I don't think that it will be noticeable. I dotted the other roses in strategic places about the miniature; a trailing bouqet for the left hand and 'sewn' into her veil and overall I think that the effect came out as I wanted. I did replace her handmaidens with the other two banshees that were otherwise unused from the box as I think the overall circular lines of the model benefit from the two and also to further tie in Olynder to the banshee theme. I unfortunately didn't have time to have her painted up for this month but she is primed and ready to go as soon as time allows.

The other hobby work I did this month on the army was converting some of the now, unuseable miniatures from my previous force into a new unit of Hexwraiths. Personally I think that the current Hexwraith box is quite dated in it's design and doesn't really fit in with the current Nighthaunt aesthetic so I wanted to do something different. From the previous army, I did hack apart a number of Dreadblade Harrows to make units of counts as Dire Wolves for a fast moving force.

Complete with the bonus nod to the Nightmare Before Christmas

Unfortunately after several house moves and clearances I no longer have the harrows themselves (as giving them scythes and grouping them into units would make pretty chunky cavalry models) but I do have a big 30-man unit of Grimghast Reapers that I'm no longer going to be using in full.

Whilst great on the tabletop, I don't think that I'll be using a full block of 30 Grimghast Reapers in the near future but even cannibalizing 10 for this conversion I can still run 2 small or one medium sized unit

With that in mind, and clippers in hand, I fused the two units to make spectral reaper cavalry. There was only actually a small amount of actual touch up work needed on these as they came out pretty neatly and overall I'm quite happy with the effect.

Not only do they fit in better with the new Nighthaunt aesthetic, they are also much more imposing on the tabletop when compared to the standard Hexwraith miniatures. Much more fitting for a unit that is supposed to be able to do mortal wounds on the charge.

Of course at the moment I don't actually own any Bladegheist Revenents. However, they were included in at least two issues of Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Mortal Reams magazines by Hachette so I've got a bunch of these on order which should arrive in the next month so I'll try to get some of these on the go along with a painted Olynder. Next month I'll also be revisiting the bulk of the converting work for the Necron army that I've got going in parallel so here is a sneak peak of what's to come.

(Very) tall destroyers

Chris

So here we are one month into to this new journey with all the guys and what can I say? Well what I know for sure is that this is one big model…. Nevertheless, a great looking one! I have spent much more time than I was expecting just trying to get Archaon built and at a stage where I could start with the challenge of painting him up.

When it came to start building Archaon I had to think what the best way was to make it easier to paint him. Therefore, I build all of Dorghar (Big Dragon thing with 3 heads) apart from them three heads as they would be easier to paint as a sub assembly as they are all different colours, etc. I also decided to keep the main man himself (Archaon) separate as he will take quite a lot of time to paint up and it’s much easier to get to all the little details that he has this way.

Having built a Dorghar myself for what was probably a way too expensive dragon-demon conversion I can attest to the fact that sub-assemblies are the way to go ~ Aytan.

When it came to start with Dorghar I started with a black undercoat so nothing  to special. Then a dry brush of the the area I know I want to be black on Dorghar with Eshin grey just to get an idea of what I would like to stay that dark black/grey as for the tail and body I have gone for Rakarth Flesh to get me a good base for Dorghar’s flesh tone. Hopefully next months post you will be able to see much more progress then I have been able to do but I’m still happy how it’s getting along. The lesson I’ve learned is that big models take time to build :)

Charles

Due to the unseasonable weather painting has not gone as planned, I managed to get an undercoat on the forces that have been built so far using Army Painter Uniform Grey, which would have been fine for the main colours on the Infantry and Guns for a more Early to Mid War force if I wanted to be historically accurate, but it still works fine as an undercoat for painting a more Mid / Late War force which uses a lot more cammo with a Green/Grey base colour.

I have used Games Workshop's Contrast Militarum Green over the Grey spray and I feel that this has given me a good base colour for the uniforms. The 7.5cm gun was given two coats of Contrast Iyanden Yellow to try and make a colour similar to Dunkelgelb (German Dark Yellow) which I think it may have done an ok job, and once the other details are done it should look nicer.

I have focused on building more units while the weather was hot as there have been another couple of events that I may be able to attend. As part of an ebay lot I got 3 Marder Tank-Hunters which are part of a kit that makes two different vehicles but only includes one set of track components so a friend 3D printed me some new tracks. The quality was not fantastic but it will do as I can paint them up as mud/grass covered or use other spare parts to add side skirts, which while not accurate I'm sure would be fine.

We have the start of my Half-Track transports for my infantry, the yellow plastic one is from Battle Front and the grey plastic one is Plastic Soldier Company. There are a few minor size differences between the kits but once painted and on the tables they should blend into each other nicely.

Bearing in mind that I have absolutely no idea about this game, it looks like you can use any miniatures as long as they are the right scale (a definite advantage of being historically accurate as opposed to fantasy/ science fiction Games Workshop based) ~ Aytan.

Next we have to Panzer V Pather tanks. These are both from Battle Front, they are great kits which go together really easily for their size and feature a good amount of detail and options. These are currently assembled with out side skirts though I may add them before painting.

This is my first Panzer IV. there will be another 5-6 of these being built shortly to allow me to field a HQ unit and a Tank Unit. Again these are the Battle Front kits but I have a few other kits coming from Zvezda, who also make 1/100 scale tanks, and I can provide a comparison to these once they arrive.

I'm finding the detail pretty good on these despite the smaller scale that we are used to ~ Aytan.

With the Tank Units the main Cammo / Colour scheme for the periods was a base of Dunkelgelb (Dark Yellow) with Dake Green and Dark Brown Cammo Stripes which I hope to try and achieve.

David

Welcome again wary internet traveler to the ramblings of my last months hobby, so make sure you’re comfy and I’ll begin.

The Goals

So normal I’m very easily distracted by other hobby projects or the many other distractions one can find to occupy themselves when looking to procrastinate, with this in mind I set my self the goal of doing at least an hour of hobby activity each night as a minimum. Normally I would convince myself that if I wasn’t in the “zone” I’d make mistakes and ruin something so I wouldn’t do anything at all. The last thing I want to do is to turn my hobby (the thing I use as escapism from the stress of daily life) into a chore but I persisted with this schedule. I also set myself a rough deadline based on what I thought I would be able to achieve but at the same time push myself a little bit. I normally use a painting schedule to get an army ready in time for an event and it’s something I have used many times. It’s not a strict schedule this time but allows me to have a goal to stick to and personally find I them useful. So what did I get up to?

You dig giant robots! I dig giant robots! We dig giant robots!

So the first thing I’ll start with is the giant big death mechs. I had pledged my loyalty to house Raven as the Knight household I wanted to paint my Knights in I also wanted to try and recapture some of that nostalgic feeling of collecting and paint models because they are cool not based on how well they perform in a hypothetical tournament that I’ll never actually attend. So with this in mind I started building and painting my first Knight for this collection a Knight Errant. This made sense to me as this Knight along with the Paladin are the mainstay of House Raven.

I have built and painted Knights before this and absolutely love building them. As I have done previously, I built the frame first and left all the armour panels and arms off so they can be painted separately. When approaching the painting I wanted to go for a battle damaged look, I think this better reflects warmachines that could have been stomping around before the Great Crusade. Once I’d finished painting I got to a stage I really enjoy which is applying all the transfers, this allows me to personalise the Knight adding to its backstory and truly making it my own.

After the transfers were finished I moved on to adding battle damage, the last finishing touch by making its base. This is where I hit a snag. Whilst I’m happy with the effect, I just really don’t like how I’ve done the rocky outcrops. I’m not sure if it’s the colour or the finish of the cork. Either way I’ll probably redo these and replace them with actual slate. So here he is my first Knight for house Raven. All I have to do now is come up with a suitably flamboyant name and get started working on his buddy, a Knight Gallant.

Like a leaf on the wind watch how I soar

The second project I’ve been getting along with, albeit at a much slower pace, is my Stormcast Eternals focusing on the Vanguard units and heroes that can ride the winds aetheric. I settled on the Astral Templars for my Storm host. Not only do I think the background fits the vision I have for the army but I really like the colour scheme as it’s definitely outside my normal pallet. So with a colour scheme in mind I wrote a rough idea of the list I would be planning on using. As I mentioned before, I was able to snag a Start Collecting Stormcast Vanguard box which by itself is a large chunk of what I need. I also have six Vanguard raptors from the Mortal realms magazines which is more than enough to be getting on with.

I started with the Raptors. They didn’t take too long to clean up and put together then I set about painting them up. I haven’t done batch painting in a while and it was strange getting into that way of painting again and if I’m honest I’m still trying to get back into the groove of things. I’m happy with the results so far even if they are still a work in progress. One thing I really did enjoy was taking a break from paint Raptors and thought about how the base would look.

There’s something about modelling bases that I really enjoy, I find it quite cathartic and it was a great pallet cleanser from painting lots of purple.

Now when I started this project the aim was to build and collect an Age of Sigmar army to take to a tournament. The list that I have in mind is by no means “optimised” and add into the mix a new Generals Handbook and I’m left pondering if I should look at another army. For now my resolve is holding true and I’m resisting the temptation to start a different project, after all it’s not like Games Workshop are going to release other armies I collect like Nighthaunt, Sylvaneth, Slaves to Darkness, and Blades of Khorne. Or bring out a giant big box full of Heresy era Imperial Fists and awesome plastic tanks or an Emperor update to the first army I ever collected Chaos Space Marines. I’ll just need to keep reminding myself that I can resist anything, except temptation...