August Hobby

Filed Under: Hobby

Tagged: Claymore, Warhammer, Age of Sigmar, Gloomspite Gitz, Cities of Sigmar, Magewinds

August. Perfidious August. In August, Edinburgh goes mad. I go mad with it, and either go along with it or try to escape from it. This year I attempted a half-hearted escape, attending very few Fringe shows but not leaving the city entirely. I could have spent a lot more time hobbying, but instead I spent most of two whole weekends working on Magewinds. I’ll talk about that after talking about what I managed to get done hobby-wise.

Claymore

As is traditional, I visited South East Scotland Wargaming Club (SESWC)’s annual convention at the Edinburgh College campus in Granton. As is traditional, I wandered around for an hour or so and then figured I’d seen everything and left. I did buy some paintbrushes though.

Afterwards the kernel of a seed of an idea was planted in my brain: I could run a Magewinds table at Claymore next year if I put the effort in. Should I?

Games Played: 1

It’s hard to get everyone together for anything in the summer months. Consequently Path to Glory day was delayed til the last day of August following a hiatus, and we mustered only three people for it. (Ed did drop by briefly following his triathlon though, which was nice!)

Dave and myself played Storm the Land Bridge and, when Dimitrios showed up, allowed his Stormcast to drop into the game in battle round 3. This made what had seemed like a sure victory for my spiders into a headlong rout – all except one of my units was destroyed. But it gave the Stormcast a much-needed win which should help them catch up in the campaign.

It still amazes me that rules for 3 or more player games of Age of Sigmar are always an afterthought, something to be tacked on in the final months of an edition or in a quickly-forgotten White Dwarf supplement. Many-player games, be they team/doubles or free-for-all are super fun, possibly the best way to play, but they always have to be homebrewed.

Models Finished: 10

10 Executioners for my Cities of Sigmar army, finished early in the month. These are the silent but flashy shock troops of Nuloren’s Darkling Covens, dealing death with each mighty sweep of their draichs. Blood-red are their cloaks, in contrast to the mostly-green raiment of the rest of the army. The Executioners want the enemy to see them coming.

It’s a shame the current Cities rules favour reinforced units so heavily, because I’d be quite happy not to paint another set of 10, but if I want to put a unit of them on the table it really should be a unit of 20.

For some reason I don’t have a photo of them in their finished state. If I can be arsed I’ll add one in here.

Acquisitions: 2

Hachette restocked a few Stormbringer issues and before they were all gone I managed to snag the issues needed to build a Treelord/Spirit of Durthu and a Lord-Aquilor. Both excellent models which I’m excited to get around to painting someday.

In the same batch of Hachette orders I was also expecting to get the parts I needed to build a third Gargant, but I was BETRAYED and MISLED¹ into purchasing the wrong issue so I now have even more spare giant parts. Great.

Works in Progress: 12

I am taking an Oops! All Spiders list to Capital Punishment 2 (my first proper AoS tournament! (albeit a one-dayer)) in September. To do that I need to paint another Arachnarok, a Webspinner Shaman on foot, and 10 Spider Riders. As I write this the first two are basically finished (see above), pending some final touches, and I’m midway through the Spider Riders (see below).

I’ve no doubt I’ll get them done in time, but I’m a little bummed I didn’t power through it all in August.

Magewinds

I had originally intended my Summer Update to be an incremental, additive one, but working on it only heightened my frustrations with Magewinds as a game system and renewed the resolve I needed to make fundamental changes, so that is what I did instead.

I have rewritten the Core Rules, making big changes to the attack system in particular, and numerous other modifications which I hope are improvements. In response I also had to rewrite Tempest Crusaders, the fighter pack, and that was another opportunity to rethink a bunch of ideas.

I need to do some playtesting with volunteers to see if any of my changes are worthwhile, but unfortunately I think in September I’ll be quite preoccupied by the AoS tournament.

It is hard to keep up momentum on Magewinds.