I’ve never painted squigs before, so this is somewhat of a milestone. I think they came out really well.
You can run these in units of 5 (plus a herder) or multiples of 5. I think when I paint more squigs, or if I come back to these, I’ll do something to make half of them a bit distinct from the others. I’d like each group of 5 to look a little bit different. Not wildly so; just some variation in patterns, highlight tones, whatever.
Here are the handlers!
I friggin love them, gang. Kinda bummed I couldn’t build the alternate versions of them where the musician is holding a pair of cymbals and the prodder has a mushroom-on-a-stick instead. I guess that means I have an excuse to acquire a second box, or perhaps pick up the new Start Collecting?
What’s next? Well, I was going to paint Hrothgorn’s Mantrappers because I want to start playing them in Underworlds. Then the local Age of Sigmar escalation league started up and gave me a big incentive to crack on with my Gloomspite Gitz. All my hobby plans were thrown into disarray, but now they’ve coalesced again and I have a detailed plan for how I’m going to get the Gitz done. So that’s what the next couple/few months will be filled with: more goblins, spiders, and squigs.
I am not ashamed to say these were a rush job. The painting time was quick - I estimate about 5 hours - and consisted of little more than a zenithal basecoat followed by a few splashes of Citadel Contrast paint.
Despite the low time investment, I’m really pleased with the results. There’s lots of contrast between colours, light and shadow. The colour scheme is unusual without being garish or too unnatural, and all the details are crisp and clean. Most importantly, the recipe is easily scalable for when I get around to painting more Flesh-Eater Courts models.
I had a busy weekend, taking part in two Warhammer Underworlds tournaments.
Dundee
The first was on Saturday in Dundee at Highlander Games. It’s about a 20 minute walk from the train station (nearly everything in Dundee is), but in this case I was walking into the wind, being pelted by sleet, hail and snow most of the way. But it was worth it. The tournament was in best-of-three format, and 8 people showed up.
I took Rippa’s Snarlfangs because I’ve been focusing on them recently and didn’t feel like running Skaeth’s Wild Hunt again. To build my deck I consulted a couple of tournament decks and Can You Roll A Crit’s recent article about the dog-goblins. I ended up taking all the flex out of the deck I’d been iterating on for the past few weeks, putting all the focus on aggro. I removed objectives that were pulling in different directions. I also removed all my extra mobility power cards. This was a mistake.
Match 1
My first match was a goblin-off against Zarbag’s Gitz. This was a good matchup for me because my warband and deck is all about killing things, and the Gitz have plenty of easy-to-kill, non-threatening fighters.
My dog-goblins got to work, hacking and pillaging, with Rippa quickly becoming a 7-wound beast thanks to Sudden Growth and another +1 Wounds upgrade. I underestimated Snirk the fanatic, however, who eventually managed to kill Rippa. Way ahead on glory, I still took the win.
Game 2 was more one-sided as I managed to kill Snirk early. Moonclan grots and squigs were deleted left and right, and I pulled into a strong lead.
Match 2
There were 2 other Rippa’s Snarlfangs players at the event. For my next two matches, I had to play both of them. In a aggro-off, when you probably both have very similar decks, it really comes down to the subtle differences in those decks, card draw, and luck of the dice. Fortunately in match 2 I managed to pull ahead in both games thanks to the power of crits, plus some lucky card draw.
Match 3
Going into match 3 I was pretty exhausted after the tension-filled rollercoaster of the previous Rippa-off. My opponent had chosen to add a little extra mobility to his deck rather than get rid of it all, like me, plus a lot more plink damage. This meant he could out-position, out-maneuver and out-damage me. When the dice didn’t go my way, I was defeated roundly.
Dundee Denouement
In the end I took 3rd place. In fact, all 3 of the Rippa players were in the top 3, with my opponent in the 3rd match taking 1st. A good day for dog-goblins.
Thanks again to Highlander Games for putting on a great event!
While I was at Highlander a trio of Dundee friends popped in and said hello, which absolutely made my week. I miss living in Dundee a lot and being able to see these folks more often.
Also, on the way back to the train station I met up with another friend who gifted me a bunch of unpainted terrain she wasn’t using anymore. I am lucky to have such incredibly generous people in my life. More on that soon!
Glasgow
On Sunday I travelled through to Glasgow for a tournament at the Drury Street Bar & Kitchen. This time it was a best-of-one format. I don’t think I’d have gone if it was best-of-three - two of those in one weekend would definitely have been too much.
I swapped out Pit Trap (1 damage when an enemy is driven back) for Tracking (+2 move), learning a lesson from being outmaneuvered the day before. It also makes scoring Gathered Momentum easier because I don’t have to rely on Inspiration to get up to 5 move. You can see the final decklist here.
14 people attended the tournament, which is an excellent turnout for Scotland. It feels like the scene up here is growing!
Match 1
My first game was against Paul, the tournament organiser, and his Zarbag’s Gitz. Once again I went into this matchup feeling confident, but I was schooled on a few rules and subtleties of how the Gitz work. They’re very complicated! I would not recommend them to people starting the game. For example, Snirk’s inspire reaction shares the same reaction window as the Snarlfang’s extra attack, so can be used to block it once per game. I’m glad he didn’t gotcha me with that!
Despite managing to keep the pressure on him with my wolves I wasn’t able to stop him from scoring most of his objective-grabbing objectives and get glory from keys (and key-like things), so we ended up with a quite close 23-19 finish to me.
Match 2
Grymwatch. Finally time to let rip. The deck excelled against them, able to turn all those little 2-wound fighters into glory bombs. At one point I got 5 glory from a kill: Amberbone weapon, Trophy Belt, Tome of Offerings, plus a surge. It really is a very fun deck to play when these big swings happen.
Meanwhile my opponent had a very disappointing opening hand and was never able to get his machine started. I hope it wasn’t too bad of a game for him :s
Match 3
The nasty nasty Wurmspat. I was a little bit worried going into this - when your deck is built around turning enemy fighters into exploding glory bags, a warband with only a few very tough fighters is hard to profit from.
My opponent deployed very defensively, I deployed aggressively. It was clear very quickly that he was going for a Temporary Victory or Supremacy, so I attacked and put the pressure on, managing to deal 3 wounds to each of the 2 Blightkings by the end of the first round. I was also able to get Stabbit onto one of the 3 objectives in his territory, locking him out of his early glory swing.
At the start of round 2 stabbit killed both the blightkings with a spinny attack and a wolf chomp. What a hero! The rest of the game consisted of Fecula sitting in the corner, becoming impossible to kill with a few upgrades. We finished 10-4 to me.
Awoo!
Somehow this meant I won the tournament, taking home my first trophy. I don’t really go into these things expecting to do well, let alone win - I mostly just try to have fun games for me and my opponent - so I was very surprised!
Thanks again to Paul for running a great tournament. I’m already excited for the next one.
I was pretty worn out after such a busy weekend. Thankfully I had this Monday off work, and got some rest.
I want a whole army of wolf riders but I cannot have one! These are the only 3 wolf riders currently available in AoS! It’s Kurnothi all over again! A terrible shame.
These came together really well. I started off with a zenithal basecoat, but hadn’t made up my mind about what colours to use until I grabbed a pot of yellow Contrast paint and tried it on the plume. That bright yellow dictated the rest of the scheme and it all fell into place. Blue, green, yellow.
They were quick, too. Contrast and washes allowed me to get good results on the fur, leather, plumes and wrappings really quickly, with just a little drybrushing and layering at the end to add highlights.
I’m particularly pleased with the metal, another successful test ride for Vallejo Metal Colors. Look at Stabbit’s shield:
In one smooth coat of Copper I was able to lay down the base. Next, I worked a bit of Aethermatic Blue into the grooves (looks cool as heck). Then a little bit of Nihilakh Oxide in places where I thought there should be stronger oxidization like around the bolts. Then I just highlighted up a bit with Gold and, finally, edge-highlighted with Silver right on the top of the shield. Very fast, very simple, very fun.
For the blades (e.g. Rippa’s sword) I used Burnt Iron followed by a dark green-blue wash, then highlighted up to Silver.
A note about the rims of the bases: Some people don’t like base rims to be anything other than black or dark brown. Now, my opinion is that the rim is as much part of the model as everything else, and it can be used to contribute to the overall effect. In this instance, the sky blue on the rims contrasts with the yellow ground and suggests the desert sky under which the Snarlfangs ride. To choose black instead would be a shrug. In fact, I think it might detract from the final result, because nothing else on the model is black enough for it to match with, or white enough for it to pop against. I’m not saying you should never paint rims black, just that you should probably be able to justify it artistically.
I made these by roughly following this tutorial by Terrain Tutor. Instead of spackle I used modelling compound and instead of slate I used bits of foam for the rocks. The trees are from Woodland Scenics, and while they’re a bit diminuitive, they’re not so small that they look entirely out of place next to 28mm-scale minis.
This was a great way to start making terrain and I gained a lot of confidence. I’ll make a few more, with bases of different sizes and shapes, to scatter about the battlefield.
