January Hobby

Filed Under: Hobby

Tagged: Warhammer, Age of Sigmar, Underworlds, Warcry, Warmaster, Magewinds

In January I didn’t do much hobby or gaming for a very good reason: a trip to Paris for non-holiday purposes. I may write about that in another post, as it was quite an experience, but for now I’d like to catch up on some blogging about what I managed to accomplish creatively in spite of the disruption.

Games Played: 2

I played only two games in January, both in the office. The first was a lunchtime game of Warhammer Underworlds played in the week before I went to Paris and the second was an after-work game of Warcry.

Underworlds continues to entice, so in February I’ll see if I can get more games in.

The Warcry battle reinvigorated my appreciation of the system, but also highlighted how keen I am to see it iterated upon properly by Games Workshop rather than haphazardly supported with ever-increasing amounts of badly-delivered bloat. My opponent was a newcomer to the game and expressed frustration at how dispersed the game’s rules are. He had already learned about Divine Blessings (optional paid-for upgrades you can add to your fighters) but not, of course, through any of the game’s official materials – because they were added in a White Dwarf issue – he just happened to stumble upon them in Warcrier’s Rules section. I find it heartwarming that the game’s community has stepped up and produced such a great resource and warband assembly tool¹, but it makes Games Workshop look bad – it should be them producing the best rules resources and tools for Warcry, and those should be easy to find for new players thanks to full first-party support. Oh well, we’ll see what the year brings in terms of official support for the game.

I can provide photos of neither of these games because we are strictly no-photography-allowed in the studio. Sorry!

Models Finished: 11

I was in a bit of a hurry to get some painting done before the Paris trip so I bashed out quite a few things.

TODO: Take a good photo of the Knights.

I began the year by quickly painting up 4 Drakespawn Knights. I then spent a little bit of time touching up my already-painted Drakespawn, of which there were 15 (one of them being a Dreadlord on Cold One who will be used as a champion of these 4). I doubt I’ll ever run 20 Drakespawn Knights, but it’s good to have the option.

Next I felt like painting Stormcast Eternals so I grabbed the new warband from the latest Warhammer Underworlds box and got to work. I very much enjoyed painting these as I always enjoy painting Stormcast. It’s fun to iterate on how I paint them – some of my first painted models were Stormcast and so you can see a lot of evolution across the range I’ve painted over the years. Looking back at them I’m not sure I quite made the right colour choice on their furry shoulder bits. Perhaps I’ll go back to those. I’m also not sure about Ardorn’s face, but maybe he’s meant to be kinda ugly.

The Rockgut Troggoths have been waiting to be painted for ages. I originally wanted to make them all mossy, but opted for a quicker scheme instead. I’ll do my second unit all mossy like. I’m very pleased with them anyway.

The Loonboss came out really well with some delightfully simple object source lighting (OSL) on the mushrooms on his base.

I’ll hopefully circle back and write some more about how I painted these miniatures in February.

Purchases

Having decided on some hobby goals for the year I quickly pivoted away from them. I’ve been having fun playing, painting and thinking about Cities of Sigmar aelves (AKA Dark Elves, in Warhammer Fantasy speak) and am keen to paint and play with the models before they inevitably go out of production or end up back in the Old World. Meanwhile a friend is having a clearout and was selling an entire unpainted Ogre Kingdoms army for Warmaster for quite cheap. It was too tempting, and now I have a 2nd Warmaster army to paint up.

Works in Progress

I have a half-painted Guardian on my desk, for Magewinds. They are a kitbash of a few North Star kits. After they’re done I have a few more Magewinds models I’m hoping to paint up.

I also made a start on the War Hydra I purchased.

I have a half-finished blog post about the custom Orruk Warclans terrain piece I made for my friend Rich for Secret Santa. Expect to see it soon.

Conclusion

Not a bad start to the year.

Looking ahead, there’s a Rollmodels Roll Out (RMRO) meetup right at the beginning of March, so my hobby time this month will be spent working towards whatever I’m planning to play there: definitely some Age of Sigmar, probably also some Magewinds – a great reason to make all the updates I came away from the Magewinds Meetup eager to work on!

I haven’t much hobby planned for this weekend but I’m off to play a game of Age of Sigmar this afternoon with my Cities tanks-and-aelves list. Wish me luck!