The Magmahold

 It’s time for the obligatory end of year blog when I look back at the hobby goals I set myself at the start of 2024 , and think ‘oh gosh, I did mean to do that, didn’t I.’ Finish painting a useable 2000 point Kruleboyz army I think I can just about say I did this one. I started the year with around 1500 points of Kruleboyz and I did go back and paint some more bits to take it over 2000 points, but then AoS 4 came along and I was suddenly woefully short of Gutrippaz. I then forgot all about Kruleboyz for a while as I was focused on my OBR army, but there are twenty Gutrippaz on my painting table at the time of writing this, and I’m planning to start using the army in matched play in early 2025. Paint a Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game warband and play a few games with them This one I definitely did, no generous accounting needed. I painted a bunch of dwarves for the Army of Thror, and played some games with them. I enjoyed the system a lot and would have liked to have played m...

During the pandemic, I wrote a blog post about how to play Warhammer Underworlds over webcam. Since then I still play most of my games over webcam, because my regular group are quite geographically dispersed and it works well for us. I know a lot of people play on Vassal or TTS, but I like being able to use the actual minis for the game. So here’s an updated post on how to play the new edition over webcam. What do you need to play Warhammer Underworlds: Embergard over webcam? Everything you'd normally need to play Embergard - your own models, dice, tokens, board, and cards. Some spare models to proxy the opponent's warband. It's easier if you have the actual models for the warband they're playing, but you can make do with any models. A webcam, or a phone you can use for video. A reasonably reliable internet connection. A friendly opponent. It's just about possible to play a game if only one of you has a camera...

Yesterday I went to my last tournament of the current edition of Warhammer Underworlds (1 st edition? Shadespire edition? Original Underworlds? I don’t feel like we’ve settled on a community name for it yet). It was a five game best-of-one, 25 player event in Redhill run by the Agents of Sigmar. I’ve been to several previous tournaments run by the Agents and they’re always well organised and fun events with a great group of people, so I had high expectations for the day. It was also very well timed, with the new edition of Underworlds due out next weekend it was great to have the chance to say farewell to the old edition in style with a tournament. The tournament was Nemesis format, I ran Xandire’s Truthseekers with the Hungering Parasite rivals deck. Xandire’s are a four fighter Stormcast warband with three Stormcast and their bird friend. They all have quite different fighter stats, and their standout mechanic is that they inspire when one of them dies, and they all get a differen...

 I’m going to my first AoS 4 th edition tournament next weekend, so I thought I’d write a short blog about the lessons I’ve learnt from my first few games with the Ossiarch Bonereaper list I’m taking, in the hope that writing about the mistakes I’ve made drums them into my head enough that I don’t make them again at the tournament. The list I’ve been running is: General’s Regiment Katakros (500) Kavalos Deathriders (360) -           reinforced Regiment 1 Mortisan Soulmason (160) -           Lode of Saturation Mortek Guard (260) -           Reinforced Mortek Guard (130) Regiment 2 Liege Kavalos (210) -           Diversionary Tactics Kavalos Deathriders (180) Kavalos Deathriders (180) The artefact on the Soulmason is a 5+ ward, and the heroic trait on the Kavalos is -2 to ...

Another Underworlds tournament, another blog. Yesterday I went to a Nemesis format Underworlds Grand Clash at Warhammer World. It was six rounds of best-of-one, which I think is the first Nemesis event in this format at Warhammer World. I’m going to run through my games as usual, but also talk a bit about the current meta. I have no idea what’s going on This was an interestingly timed tournament, because there has been a shedload of new releases for Underworlds recently. In the last month, we’ve had seven new warbands released (three brand new ones: Zondara’s Gravebreakers, the Skinnerkin, the Brethren of the Bolt, and four re-vamped warbands from earlier seasons with updated cards and abilities: Zarbag’s Gitz, Mollog’s Mob, Spiteclaw’s Swarm, and the Thorns of the Briar Queen). There have also been three new Rivals decks: Rimelocked Relics, Hungering Parasite, and Rimewyrm’s Bite. To top it all off, a few days before the clash we got a new FAQ that included some significant nerfs ...