The Magmahold

  Hey folks. I've been to a whole bunch of events since I last got round to blogging, so this month's blog is going to be a wrap-up of all of them.  A Crown of Salt and Shadows - AoS28 narrative event I did a full blog on this one already, which you can find here . It was a blast! I had a great time and would love to go to other similar events in future. As well as playing in the event I also had a lot of fun practicing my mini photography skills, I used my camera's macro lens and tried to get some atmospheric shots with very low depth of field, which was a good challenge. War in the Mortal Realms AoS narrative event This was a 2000 point AoS event run by Bad Moon Cafe back in June. I took my Living City army, which I painted back during lockdown but had never taken to an event before because it is terrible. But I figured a narrative event was a good opportunity to get it on the table. I'm still not sure how I feel about this one, it was great to see Bad Moon try to do ...

I have four AoS or AoS-adjacent events coming up over the next two months and they're all narrative events, so for May's blog (which was at least half written in May, we're catching up), I thought I'd do a forward look at what my hopes and dreams for these events are. Event 1 - A Crown of Salt and Shadow What is it?  An AoS 28 event with a custom ruleset loosely based on converting the Necromunda rules into the AoS world. Games will be played with small warbands, and it will have a very heavy narrative focus What am I taking? I've built a warband specifically for this event, they're mostly kitbashed from the Corvus Cabal Warcry warband with a couple of other kits thrown in for numbers and variety. I did a fairly quick slap chop paint job on them, but I'm quite pleased with how they've come out. What's the narrative? The lore for the event is based around a group of small islands, so the warband concept is that they're a gang of beach scavengers...

I've recently taken my ghost dwarf army up to 2000 points, so in this post I'm going to run through the army and show off a bunch of photos. I've previously blogged about the concept , theme and colour scheme , and lore  of the army, so go and look at those posts for more details of how the army came about. I'm incredibly happy with how the army has ended up, I've done more to make it my own than with any of my previous Age of Sigmar armies, and the army I've ended up with is very close to what I had in mind when I came up with the original concept for it. Quick lore recap Back in the Age of Myth, the duardin of the  Zhalgrad Hold waged war against the Sylvaneth of Rhweandryn Thicket in the Realm of Ghyran. A duardin host marched up the hill into the thicket at the heart of the Wildroot forest, and none of them ever came back. For many, many moons, nothing stirred in Rhweandryn Thicket. The duardin remaining in the hold moved away and scattered, and the forest w...

  I've not been great at blogging this month, but let's do a quick review of the last month's hobby, and what I'm hoping to get done next month. I didn't set myself any specific hobby goals for January, but I've ended up getting quite a bit done. I've painted a steam tank and a treelord for my ghost dwarf army. I'm really happy with these, I think they do a good job of conveying the army narrative, and also look cool. I've painted two thirds of the Bloodbowl starter set: all of the black orc team except the star player, and half of the human team. Nothing fancy here, but I think the colour schemes work well, and I'm pleased with the bases. What am I planning to do in February? I have an ambitious three goals for February: Finish the Bloodbowl starter set (ten minis remaining). Paint Khagra's Ravagers, the new Underworlds warband that's due out next week. Build all of and ideally paint some of the Ossiarch Bonereaper stuff in my shame pile...

I've written before on the blog about my ghost dwarf army, this post is going to cover my lore for them.  The short version is: they are the ghosts of dwarves and Sylvaneth who died fighting each other in the Age of Myth, and now their ghosts have risen up to defend the forest their bodies lie in against the encroaching forces of Nurgle. Read on for the longer version! I'm hoping to develop their story further by playing games with them once it becomes safe to play games again in the UK. Ghost dwarf lore Long ago, the duardin of the Zhalgrad Hold waged war against the Sylvaneth of Rhweandryn Thicket. The hold was set into a crag on the outskirts of the Wildroot forest, and the duardin mines ran deep under the wood, cutting through roots and scarring the ground. Many were the trees felled to fuel the duardin fires, and the smoke of their industry was smelt throughout the forest. But in the heart of the forest stood the Rhweandryn Thicket, and there the duardin dared not go. Th...

  Let's review how I did against the goals I set myself last month, and look at what I'm hoping to get done this month. Last month's goals 1. Paint a second frigate and repair my first one: complete ! I love painting Kharadron boats, so this was a fun project. 2. Paint 10 irondrakes for my ghost dwarf force: complete ! I even made a start on a second box, but ran out of steam on them partway through so they're sitting on top of my shame pile at the moment. 3. Plan my armies on parade board, and get together the materials I need to make it: partly complete . I have a rough plan (which I'll go into in a future post), but haven't picked up any of the stuff I need for it yet. I need to spend some time watching terrain tutorial videos to figure out how best to go about it. Not a bad hobby month though, all in all. This month the main thing I want to do is to finish off my Kharadron Overlords army. I have all the models I need, and they're all built, so I just nee...

 In my previous post about my ghost dwarf army , I talked about how I came up with the idea of an army based around undead dwarves and Sylvaneth that had fought a battle against each other years ago. Today I'm going to cover how I developed my plans for the army and worked out a colour scheme for them. I focused on dwarves rather than Sylvaneth for planning purposes, because since I wanted to run the army as Living City I’d only be able to have a few Sylvaneth units, and I wanted to start off by painting dwarves. The first thing I worked on was how to make the dwarves look undead. I considered both skeletal dwarves and ghost dwarves, but decided to go with ghosts because it would allow for a more interesting colour scheme. I wanted the scheme to have some interesting contrast, so I decided early on that I would paint the armour as ‘real’ rusting armour, while the weapons and any exposed flesh would be ghostly. Including the weapons in the ghost part of the scheme meant both tha...

  This is the first of a series of posts that I’m going to use to track the progress of my ghost dwarves army for Age of Sigmar. In this post I’m going to talk about the concept for the army. The idea behind the army came from a random idea that initially I had no plan to turn into anything. I had the idea that it would be fun to make a realm of death themed army based around two forces that fought a battle against each other years ago, and now rise from the dead to fight together against something that has disturbed their rest. I mentioned it to some friends and they were enthusiastic, so I started thinking a bit more seriously about it. Obviously one side had to be dwarves, because dwarves are the best. And I settled on Sylvaneth for the other, because I wanted to paint some, and also because it would let me run the army as a Living City army for Cities of Sigmar. At this stage I didn’t have a clear vision for what the army was going to look like, but some of the things I...

  This is a quick run-down of the hobby projects that I’m working on, or planning to start working on over the next month. The plan is to make this into a monthly series to document what I’m hoping to achieve each month, and then review how much of that I actually got done. 1.       1.   Kharadron Overlords My Kharadron Overlords are my third Age of Sigmar army. I’ve got around 2000 points painted up already, but I have some more I want to do before I’ll call them finished. My plan is that they’ll be my main ‘competitive’ AoS army for the next year or so (I’m not a very competitive AoS player, but I’d like to go to some events once covid-19 allows, and this is probably the army I’ll take). They’re a very vanilla army with no conversions or anything, but they’ve been fun to paint. Ambition for September: Paint a second frigate, and repair my first which has a broken flying stand. 2.       2.   Ghost Dwarves My ghost dwarves...