The Magmahold

 I didn't get round to doing a hobby round-up post in March, so this is going to be a bumper post covering two months of hobby progress. Last month's goals 1. Paint the Mortek Crawler: done. This felt quite tricky to paint, because it features a lot of areas of bone colour which given the fairly dark scheme for my OBR could easily have been quite boring. I ended up introducing a second bone colour of dark grey tinted purple to try to make it a bit less plain, and am reasonably happy with how it came out. 2. Paint the Underworlds Seraphon warband: done. I'd been looking forward to these, but the colour scheme I'd planned didn't work out as well as I'd hoped, and I ended up painting them pretty quickly. They're probably my least favourite of the Direchasm Underworlds warbands I've painted so far, but at least I'm still on track with my goal of painting each warband before the next is released. 3. Convert and paint a Celestial Hurricanum for my ghost dw...

 On the Saturday of the Easter bank holiday weekend, I played in the ‘Straight Outta Shadespire XIV’ Warhammer Underworlds tournament, a best of one championship format event played over webcam, with a special highlander rule that meant each entrant had to take a different warband. As the name suggests, this is the latest in a series of webcam tournaments that have been running since the pandemic put an end to face to face organised play. It was the time I’ve played in one, I’d been tempted before but put off by worrying that my slightly spotty internet connection might not be up to it. Having recently got a new router that excuse no longer applied, so I figured I’d give it a go. I ended up taking the Godsworn Hunt, which is probably the Underworlds warband I’ve had the most experience with, though less so in recent times. I’d probably have gone with Khagra’s Ravagers had they been free when I signed up to the tournament, but someone had already taken them, and though that player...

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...

While I’ve only played one real life game with my Kharadron Overlords (KO) army so far, I’ve now got six or seven Tabletop Simulator (TTS) games under my belt with them. In this post I’m going to talk about my experience of learning how to use the army. The list I’ve used for most of my games is below. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s not a very good list, and I’ll explain why later. But it’s been fun to use, because it gives me a lot of options, and has given me experience of using a lot of different warscrolls. Allegiance: Kharadron Overlords - Sky Port: Barak Zilfin Aetheric Navigator (100) - Artefact: Svaregg-Stein Illuminator Flarepistol Endrinmaster with Dirigible Suit (190) - General - Command Trait: Great Tinkerer - Artefact: Staff of Ocular Optimisation 6 x Endrinriggers (200) 6 x Endrinriggers (200) 1 x Grundstok Gunhauler (130) - Great Endrinworks: Zonbarcorp 'Debtsettler' Spar Torpedo 1 x Grundstok Gunhauler (130) - Great Endrinworks: Coalbea...

 It's time to look back at how I did against last month's hobby goals, and what I'm planning for the next month. I've had quite a productive month, and have finished or am close to finishing a few projects. Last month's goals 1.   Finish the Bloodbowl starter set: done. I've painted everything except Griff Oberwald, who is getting a new career as a freeguild general and thus I've decided doesn't count towards this goal. I'm happy with the Bloodbowl set, I painted it up pretty quickly but I think both teams came out well. 2. Paint Khagra's Ravagers, the new Underworlds warband that came out in February: done. I'm really pleased with these, the models are superb and I think my colour scheme worked well. I've also got quite a few games of Underworlds in with them, with mixed success so far but they're a fun warband to play with. 3. Build all of and ideally paint some of the Ossiarch Bonereaper stuff in my shame pile: done. I got everythi...

I thought I’d do a quick blog on how I’m finding Season 4 of Warhammer Underworlds so far. I’ve been playing at least once a week via webcam since it came out in December, mainly using the Dread Pageant warband. I’ve not played in any tournaments, so these reflections are going to be based on experience from fairly casual play. What do I like about it? The models are great. I really enjoyed painting the two starter set warbands, and the Ravagers are on my painting table at the moment. The warbands they’ve previewed all look good too, especially the vampire models. This isn’t a surprise, the quality of the models has always been a strength of the game, but I’m particularly enjoying the painting this season. The warband specific mechanics/playstyles are interesting. Each of the warbands released so far has felt quite technical, with either distinct mechanics (aetherquartz, desecration) or an inspire condition with interesting trade-offs (the Dread Pageant need to have 6 wound counters ...

Yesterday I played in the Hammertime 7 Age of Sigmar (AoS) event using Tabletop Simulator (TTS), so I thought I’d do a blog on how I got, and what it was like playing in a virtual tournament. The Hammertime TTS tournaments have been running for a while now during the UK lockdowns, and as the name suggests, this was the 7 th one. I watched some of the coverage of the previous one and it looked pretty fun, and since Christmas I’ve been playing a fair bit of AoS on TTS, so I thought I’d give it a go. It works much the same as a real life tournament would, except that all the players are in their own homes, so it’s organised over Discord and the games are played on TTS. My list I ran Kharadron Overlords, using a list based on my real life Kharadron force. I didn’t have a huge amount of experience with it – I’ve played one real life game and three or four TTS games prior to the tournament – so I didn’t expect to do very well. My list was as follows: Allegiance: Kharadron Overlord...