Progress Report – December 2022

Well here we are, 2022 is over and 2023 has arrived. Hopefully all of you had a wonderful time over Christmas and New Year, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing! It’s at this time that I usually take a look back at the various developments that have occurred in this crazy hobby of ours, contrast them with my own efforts on various projects and generally take the opportunity to hold forth about whatever takes my fancy, to the (possible) delight of my readers. This year however that’s not going to be happening – try to contain your disappointment! Instead I’m going to be taking a final look back at the progress I’ve made on a project I’ve been focused on throughout the past year – namely trying to clear out my backlog.

First though, let’s talk a bit about how we got here. Like the vast majority of people who enjoy this hobby, I’ve built up quite a collection of unpainted models. The leadpile. The grey tide. The shelf of shame. The mountain of madness. Essentially it’s all stuff I was really excited about, but then never got around to actually getting painted before something distracted me. Attempting to get this amorphous mass under control isn’t a new thing, indeed it’s been a battle that has dominated my hobby time for many years, but in early 2022 I found myself giving it a lot of thought and changing my approach and attitude. Back in June, when I wrote about this I said the following, which I think still neatly sums things up.

Over the years my approach to the hobby has very much been a case of “this is for fun, paint whatever appeals in the moment, follow the hobby butterfly wherever it leads”. This has given me a lot of pleasure and has seen me paint a lot of models but whenever I look back at everything I’ve done I’m struck by the things I’ve still never finished and the models which I’ve been going to tackle “soon” for a very long time… In the past I’ve tended to view the backlog as a single entity which could be wrestled into completion through a combination of time and Herculean effort. All my projects would be completed as a side effect of this (that is to say, if all the models I want to paint are contained within the pile then by painting everything in the pile I automatically complete all of my projects). 

Like I say, this approach gave me a lot of pleasure, and I ended up with lots of models I was really happy with, but at the same time I found that no matter how many models I painted there were still lots and lots of projects that weren’t even touched.

Before I go any further I should define some terms, albeit loosely. A model is a miniature – be that a Blood Bowl playing snotling, a Karstark spearman, an Ork buggy or a greater daemon of chaos. A “project” in my mind is rather more loosely defined. Usually it’s a collection of models; a Blood Bowl team, a Warcry warband, a Necromunda gang. Sometimes it might just be a single model – Magnus the Red is a project in and of himself. “Completed” is probably the loosest term of all, but generally what I mean here is painted to a stage where I’m calling it done, at least for now. For example I would call my Orc Kruelboys for Warcry completed, because we’ve got enough to play some games with them – even though there’s some more that I still want to paint just waiting for attention. Here’s a picture of some of them which I painted in September here to break up what is otherwise turning into a real wall of text.

I’m pleased to say that my efforts to clear out the backlog have paid dividends as well. Between January and November I completed 348 miniatures, putting me well on track for painting a model a day (something I once regarded as an unachievable dream). In the last month I painted nothing at all, but I also moved house and became a father. Right now I’m much, much more interested in spending time with the tiny, wonderful, sleep-depriving, fascinating human being that my wife and I have created than I am in painting Orks (and you know that’s high praise coming from me!).

Of course I’m not going to stop painting miniatures. Fatherhood is awesome but it doesn’t mean I need to give up being me, just that I need to reappraise some things and think about how I’m using my time. Knowing this I found myself looking at my backlog and realizing that there are a lot of unfinished projects – and if I want to finish them I’m going to need to make some changes. I’ve tried to structure my approach and focus my efforts, looking for “easy wins” and projects that were already close to being completed. I’ve taught myself to be less perfectionist in my painting – I’ve never sought Golden Daemon wins or that kind of thing anyway – but sometimes “good enough” really is good enough, I don’t need to push myself with every model. Similarly a colour scheme may be a bit of a cliche, and similar to what everyone else is doing, but if it looks cool and its easy to replicate why not just go with it – it looks a hell of a lot better than grey plastic. Conversions are cool but am I cutting this model up just because that’s my “thing” – maybe it was fine to begin with. Some people have suggested that I’ve moved from “Convert or Die” to “Stop converting everything or you’ll won’t get half of this done before you die” and they may have a point…

The other thing I’ve been doing is writing these round up posts, one at the end of each quarter, in which I take a look back at everything I’ve managed to complete for a number of broad goals. This time I’ve not managed loads but I think between the new baby, moving house and giving over October entirely to trying (and failing) to thrash fellow blogger IRO at an Ork painting contest, I can be excused for letting a few things slip. However as well as looking at everything I’ve finished over the last three months I’ll also be talking about the progress I made over the entire year – meaning this post is going to be even more long and waffly than it is already. Are you still awake and reading? Excellent – then let us begin!

Warcry

A bit of a mixed bag here – in some ways I’ve succeed far above and beyond my expectations, in other ways I’ve rather missed the mark. Let me explain; one of my key aims for the year was to paint up some more of the “core” Warcry warbands – the ones designed specifically for the game rather than ported across from the wider Age of Sigmar range. We really enjoy Warcry and round our house we play it more than any other game but the Iron Golems and Untamed Beasts have seen a lot of action and we’d like to bring out some alternatives. On this front I’ve failed entirely, despite having made a start on both the Spire Tyrants and the Khainite Shadowstalkers (not to mention assembling the Darkoath Savagers) I’ve not managed to get anything completed. On the other hand I also wanted to have a range of warbands from across the range and this I’ve managed in style; I can now offer a total of 17 different factions – from the Kruelboyz to the Nighthaunt to the Thunderstike Brethren of the Stormcast Eternals – in addition to the aforementioned Iron Golems and Untamed Beasts. Alas after powering through lots of models in the first few months of year I managed nothing at all in the final quarter. Hopefully 2023 will see me back on the right track.

Terrain

Terrain sets the scene and breathes life into the world(s) inhabited by our little painted dudes, so in my opinion a decent collection of terrain is a vital component of any wargamer’s home. Once again though I didn’t add anything here since the last update. Partly this was intentional, terrain tends to be big and awkwardly shaped (a bit like me) and much easier to move if it’s unassembled, and with a house moving looming I was happy to just leave everything in its boxes and return to it in the new year.

Earlier in the year I did much better however, first finishing off everything from the first Warcry boxset and having a little ruined town for my savage scumbos to fight over…

… and painting up a collection of walls and fences which will be particularly handy for “rank and flank” games like Warhammer or ASOIAF.

I’d really like to expand my collection of terrain for Necromunda/Warhammer 40k and I do have plenty of kits to be working with so I’ll try to make that my focus next.

Warhammer 40k and Kill Team

Not an easy one to quantify here, I’ve got a lot of projects I’d like to tackle and really I should break this down a bit further and look at specific armies (the Chaos Marines, Death Guard, Imperial Guard, Adeptus Mechanicus and so on). Honestly though I think that would lead to a lot of things being listed as “no progress” from one quarter to the next – I can only spread myself so thin after all. Still, at least this time I have something to show here, with the Orktober painting challenge leading me to add all these gits to my Ork army.

I may have been thrashed in our painting contest by that notorious freebooter IRO but I still got a lot of things done that I’d been wanting to tackle so I’m damn pleased with the result. And remember, Orks never loose – next year I’m going to come back for anuvva go!

One of the key things I painted in Orktober was Boss Snikrot, one of my all time favorite miniatures, and yet one which has been sitting unfinished on my painting desk since whenever he was released (2009 maybe?).

With the greatest Kommando of all time so fresh in my memory it was interesting to spot this silhouette appearing in Games Workshop’s recent preview of 40k models scheduled for release in 2023.

It’s hard to imagine that this could be anyone other than Snikrot, so it seems that I painted mine just in time to see him replaced by a new version of the character. That said it’s hard to imagine that the new version could be any better than the old. More interesting is the possibility that this is hinting at a return to the planet Armageddon – where Snikrot stalks the jungles – and hordes of Orks do battle with regiments of Imperial Guard (who’ll be seeing a wave of releases early in 2023) and murderous warbands of World Eaters (who’ll also be seeing a wave of releases early in 2023). Could this mean we’ll be seeing more Orks (yes please!) before the year is out, perhaps alongside more World Eaters (something that there is currently a desperate need for) and perhaps even models for the Armageddon Steel Legion (possibly my favourite Imperial Guard regiment) – or am I just getting over excited about a silhouette and putting 2 and 2 together to make 22? I guess we’ll find out in the coming months…

That aside the biggest thing I managed to tackle this year was this bunch of Necrons that I worked on back in the spring and summer. They seem to have returned to their tombs for now but I’ve got plans to wake them up again soon.

Blood Bowl

Not a lot to show this time, but despite the last few months being busy it’s not nothing either – I managed to get a team of Skaven started and even recruited enough players for a game of Blood Bowl 7s.

Orctober also saw me add Varag Ghoul Chewer to the ranks as my first star player in my collection.

Technically I started the year with zero teams completed. My Orcs and Black Orcs were both pretty much done but at the time I still hadn’t painted that damn troll and I refused to call either team finished until I’d actually got paint on the blasted thing. As a result when I set myself the challenge of attacking the backlog the troll was one of the first targets.

Since then I’ve actually managed quite a few violent sportsmen and I now have 6 full teams match ready (the Orcs, Black Orcs, Goblins, Shambling Undead, Necromantic Horrors and Underworld Denizens) plus my small team of Skaven; the Lowdown Dirty Rats. Next year I’d like to return to my neglected Snotlings, get the Skaven up to full team status and add at least two more elves to the Elven Union team so they too can play at 7s. As usual I’ve got a few more ideas up my sleeve as well – we’ll see how things go.

Necromunda

Another year comes to an end and once again I’ve not done as much with Necromunda as I set out to. Partly it’s choice overload, I’ve got so many projects I want to tackle that, despite my enthusiasm, I just can’t get around them all. In the case of Necromunda however a big part of the problem has been something I’ve come to think of as “the Orlock knot”. All too often I find my painting process when it comes to Necromunda goes a bit like this:

1. I want to paint something for Necromunda! I am full of excitement! What shall it be today!

2. So many options! I am dizzy!

3. Well… I have been saying I’d work on my Orlocks since God was a boy, best start there I guess.

4. I don’t really feel like Orlocks today though.

5. I paint something else and Necromunda is left to slumber beneath filthy, toxic skies for a while longer.

That being the case I’m really pleased to started on the Orlocks at long last.

In a perfect world I’d have done more with them but I’m not going to beat myself up over that, my enthusiasm for the House of Iron is back to where it should be and plenty more Orlock gangers will be making their way to the underhive as soon as I find the time. Those aside I managed a few hive scum earlier in the year and again I’m planning to expand their ranks in the new year. The chaos cultists I painted recently will also be inducted in my old Chaos Helots gang (or perhaps found a new one), after which I’ll be looking around for what else the underhive has to offer.

Aeronautica Imperialis/Adeptus Titanicus

I love the idea of the Titans in the 40k universe and as a result have been very drawn to the idea of assembling my own collection of clashing God Machines. For a while the price of these kits really put me off but over the years a few really appealing deals have come my way and I now have a fair old stash of them. Have I painted any of them though? No, no I have not! Nor, for that matter, have I done anything about the Aeronautica Imperialis box I picked up in a sale a year or so ago. Ah well, maybe 2023 will be a better year for them.

Blackstone Fortress

Unlike Cursed City (see below) I’ve actually done pretty well here. With the great big mob of Chaos Cultists I finished recently I have the Escalation expansion fully painted, alongside Traitor Command, Deadly Alliance and almost everything from the core box (minus a couple of characters). That just leaves me with the Dreaded Ambull and Ascension expansions still to tackle so all being well it’s entirely possible I’ll get this one in the bag soon.

Cursed City

Poor old Cursed City. Launched with such fanfare and lauded for the quality of its models it swiftly disappeared once more amid a flurry of contradictory social media posts in lieu of open, honest announcements. “It was going to be available for years”, “no it wasn’t”, “it was always supposed to be limited edition”, “we never said that, that never happened”. I guess the news media think they can get away with saying “You know that thing we said last week? Well it’s not true, we never said it and if you think you heard us say it you’re a conspiracy theorist!” and GW thought “I wonder if that would work for us”. Nah, sorry Gdubz, it doesn’t work for anyone…

In what may well be the ultimate case of nominative determinism Cursed City went from being one of the most highly anticipated games in GW’s stable to a byword for making a total arse of things. The expansions, long promised and finally delivered, were a very long way from what GW had hinted at and really only served to make people more pissed off; the kind of bonus content usually reserved for an issue of White Dwarf instead sold as extremely overpriced limited-edition content for the hardcore completionist only.

Now I tend not to care too much what GW, or any other company, are doing with the “official rules” or how well a game is being supported by its publisher. Still it’s hard to shake off the feeling that GW made a right royal balls of things here (and I’m sure there are designers up at GW HQ still quietly fuming that everything they had planned has been scrapped). It may be projection but it’s hard not to get a sense of bitterness even from the official announcements – no normal person wants to be responsible for peddling bullshit on behalf of an uncaring employer after all. They screwed up, then they lied to us, they tried to cover it up and then to rip us off, their (presumably awesome but sadly now unknowable) future content will never see the light of day and they just wish the whole nasty business would go away and us customers would just focus on the new exciting thing instead.

Against such a backdrop it’s sometimes hard to feel the enthusiasm I once did and this is reflected in the fact that I’ve still not got very much done, and nothing at all in the final quarter of the year. It’s not been a dead loss though, 2022 did see me making a start on the core of the rank-and-file baddies and getting two heroes ready for adventure.

We’ll see how things go but I’d like to rediscover my drive, complete the second half of the skeleton squad, paint a couple more heroes and then – buoyed up with newfound enthusiasm – power my way through the rest of the box in 2023.

A Song Of Ice And Fire

2022 was also the year I got into the A Song of Ice and Fire miniature’s game (that’s Game of Thrones for those of you who’re more familiar with the TV show). I actually discovered it in 2021, having been a big fan of the novels for many a long year, but didn’t get around to starting some painting until March. Being a UK based fan of the game can be a bit frustrating at times, with releases sometimes not appearing for sale here until years after they’ve reached other countries (I’m still waiting for the Lannister Red Cloaks to reach these shores for instance). The forces of House Martell have been available for a few months now, but not round here they haven’t, and so my temptation to throw my support behind the lords of Sunspear is stuck on the backburner for now. Still, given their slanderous treatment in the TV show supporters of the Dornishmen have become used to rough treatment, and if you’re not accustomed to waiting years and years for the slightest hint of a release then George Martin may not be the author for you – so perhaps those of us who are enduring the long wait for the Martells to reach the British Isles are the ones who are truly embracing the spirit of the game!

Anyway, at the moment I’ve got two projects on the go here; an army from House Stark and another from House Lannister. Of the two the Lannisters are definitely lagging behind and saw no progress at all in the final quarter of the year. Still, I’m excited about them and I like the colour scheme so I’ll try to return to them soon.

The Starks did a bit better and, with the addition of a squad of Karstark spearmen, now stand at more than 30 points (the minimum size for a game).

Of course I’m already thinking ahead to potential future projects as I explore the other factions in the game. Barbarian hordes and big monsters have always appealed to me so the draw of the Free Folk is very real, and the reaving Greyjoys have also been calling to me, as have the aforementioned Dornishmen of House Martell. In fact looking at the Martells has me wondering what other factions might be waiting to join the game in the future, and honestly despite the depth and complexity of the world described by George RR Martin the list isn’t long. House Arryn seems an obvious choice and I can’t help but wonder about the Brotherhood Without Banners or the alliance from Slaver’s Bay. However, and here I’ll need to speak carefully to avoid spoilers for those who haven’t read the books, the most obvious contender of all has to be the Golden Company lead by *cough* “Young Gryff”. Yet the Golden Company were released back in the summer as part of the Neutral faction. In some ways that befits their status as a mercenary company but hardly does justice to their role in the story so far, or their likely next moves based on the chapters from Winds of Winter that have been previewed. Watch this space I guess but if CMON don’t remove the Golden Company from the Neutral faction and turn them into a faction in their own right at some point in the future they’re missing a trick.

Hate

I’ve got no real plan or structure here, I’m just enjoying chipping away at the models (which at the end of the day is what this is all about right?). As a result I didn’t manage anything else over the last few months so here’s a look at everything I’ve managed to paint in 2022.

Goals and Summing Up

In previous round-ups I’ve talked a bit about the goals I was hoping the achieve in the months ahead. This time I’m not going to do that, and I probably won’t bother with a March 2023 round up either – my hands are just too full at the moment and setting myself targets is setting myself up for failure from the get-go. Obviously being a dad is eating up a lot of my time and energy at the moment but I’ll still be painting and I’ll still be sticking to my aims as set out above. This approach has worked really well for me in achieving a lot of these long held goals but I’ve still got plenty of ground to cover. I’m also looking at ways in which I can speed up my painting, and manage my hobby time differently, whilst still making sure I have fun with it. Of course much as I’d like to pretend that I’m just going to focus on the models I already own I’m sure I won’t be entirely depriving myself of new stuff – there are World Eaters coming soon, and more Warcry warbands and Necromunda gangers, so even in this cost of living crisis I’ll try to allow myself the odd treat. Right now though I’ve got a baby to bath, boxes to unpack and other survivors of 2022 to fight for food and fuel. Have a wonderful 2023 all!

Going Berserk

The forces of Chaos have always, by their very nature, been an eclectic bunch, their technology unrestrained by by the strict edicts of the Imperium and their bodies twisted and mutated by their daemonic patrons. Here Games Workshop has almost limitless potential to be creative, and us hobbyists can kitbash to our hearts’ content. Over the years however the degree to which this is reflected in the Chaos Marines’ range has waxed and waned. When I first fell to Chaos back in the mid-2000s there really wasn’t a whole lot to differentiate the followers of one god from those of another. If I painted my Marines green I was sworn to Nurgle, if you painted yours red you were a follower of Khorne. There were a few god-specific models kicking around as I recall, mostly still made of metal, but not many. What really drew me to the service of the Dark Gods was a combination of several factors; a mate gave me his old codex, I had no money to spend on new models and I owned a load of loyalist marines, a bunch of bits I’d scrounged up and an over-active imagination. The result was kitbashing carnage and a life sworn to the ghastly powers that dwell in the warp.

In recent years however things have improved a lot. The release of the Thousand Sons brought us a range of kits specific to Tzeentch’s chosen legion and, although I now think some of those could be improved a lot and expanding the range further would be well worthwhile, at the time it was a revelation. Then along came the Death Guard and really blew me away. With its huge range of unique kits all designed around the theme of a single god this remains, for me, the gold standard for a Chaos Legion. Needless-to-say I’ve been waiting with baited breath for GW’s designers to turn their attention to the World Eater’s and Emperor’s Children and, at last, the former has arrived.

After months of build up, Saturday morning saw the full reveal of Khorne’s legion and for me they were well worth the wait. We’d already seen some of the range of course, the Khorne Berserkers for example were shown off back in September.

These are really nice models, workmanlike and perhaps not the most surprising or creative but fitting the bill perfectly and demonstrating that a model doesn’t have to be fancy to be good. When I first saw them I thought “Yeah, these are fine, they do the job” but the longer I’ve looked at them the more I’ve come to love them. I always say that you can swap out specialists and leave characters on the shelf but if you don’t care for the core troops then the army isn’t for you.

Plus they certainly beat the hell out of the old kit, which has been kept going long, long after it should have been shuffled off to retirement.

Then in October we saw the appearance of Lord Invocatus, a special character who rides around on a thunderous juggernaut spreading carnage.

Now I think the juggernauts of Khorne look really cool and I’m always happy to see someone perched atop one of these mechanical bulls and laying waste to the followers of the corpse-emperor so you’d think I’d be a fan of Lord Invocatus but honestly he doesn’t do much for me, especially now that we’ve seen the very similar generic Lord of Khorne (below) which, for my money, is much nicer.

Like the Berserkers the Lord on Juggernaut just gets on with doing it’s job and looking cool. Lord Invocatus meanwhile feels like it’s trying too hard to stand out as something special whilst working with a limited range of options crammed into a small amount of sprue space. From what we’ve seen so far my assumption is that one kit can make either the Lord on Juggernaut or Lord Invocatus, in which case Lord Invocatus’ flaws become a bit more forgivable – there will always be limits to how much you can do with just one sprue after all. If Lord Invocatus proves to be an entirely separate kit I’m less impressed, a special character should have a lot more visual impact than this. Either way the head with the crest and yet another topknot just doesn’t work, and there’s nothing about him that feels particularly unique or cool. Go big or go home I would say – give him his own kit with an extra large, souped-up juggernaut, daemonic weapons chained to his arms and a few crazy mutations, or don’t bother. As it stands I can see the generic Lord on Juggernaut finding a home at the head of my army but Lord Invocatus just doesn’t look all that special to me.

However Lord Invocatus isn’t the only special character in this release. No discussion of the World Eaters is complete without mentioning the big man himself; the Primarch Angron.

Following in the footsteps of Magnus and Mortarion, Angron is the third daemon primarch to enter the setting and he looks outstanding. I do struggle a bit to paint these very large kits so perhaps I should restrain myself from rushing to buy him, and I sometimes feel GW are in a bad habit of making models that are bigger, and bigger still, but if there’s one time when being OTT is just fine it’s the daemon primarch of the World Eaters.

On Saturday Games Workshop revealed the rest of the range, the headline to the article even going so far as to promise “Hordes of New World Eaters Units”. What we saw was, for my money, some of the best things in the whole range – but “hordes” is stretching the truth a little.

First of all we have Eightbound, possessed berserkers who have been driven into a killing rage after discovering they have one of the daftest backstories in the setting. Chaos Marines which have been possessed by daemons have been around since the very earliest days and I’ve been hoping we’d someday see models which really reflected the natures of both the marine and the daemon doing the possessing (Death Guard marines possessed by daemons of Nurgle for instance, or in this case Khorne Berserkers possessed by the rage-filled daemons of Khorne). This would be more than enough to satisfy World Eaters fans but no, some silly eegit who probably communicates only in memes, decided that they should be possessed by not one, not two, but eight daemons of Khorne! Because OTT is cool right? Because eight is the holy number of Khorne right? Because everything Khorne should have something to do with the number eight right? Because I don’t know very much about the background and I don’t have anything in the way of an imagination but somebody gave me the job of writing this bollocks and nobody cares about “fluff” anyway!

As someone who turns from mild-mannered and easy-going Wudugast to a rage-fueled monster that Angron himself would tell to calm down at the mere mention of the word “fluff” seeing this kind of rubbish published has, in the parlance of da yoof, “triggered” me so let’s move swiftly on. The models, at least, are really cool. I shudder to think about the price but I want them anyway. Each one can be built as either a possessed marine…

… or an exulted version which has beaten the daemon within into submission and gained even greater power as a result.

I really like the way each one can be tweaked to be more or less possessed so that you can dial up or down the level of mutation on display your own taste. Personally I like my marines to be twisted by the warp, but too much mutation is by no means a good thing so I’ll probably end up somewhere about halfway between these two examples. I also really like the way the armour is forming into a mouth that’s swallowing the marine’s head in a nice nod both to the battle against the daemon that’s occurring within and to the icon of the World Eaters (a fanged mouth biting down on a planet – they never were a very subtle legion…).

Lastly we have the cultists of Khorne, deranged mortals known as Jakhals.

These are ace, I’m a big fan of Chaos Cultists and this has been a good year for them. I will undoubtedly be looking to get my hands on some of these; to serve as cannon fodder for my World Eaters, as a berserker vanguard for my Lost and Damned cultist horde, as more recruits for my Necromunda chaos cult and to kitbash with my Necromundan Corpse-Grinders.

The preview also notes “If you think they look nasty now, wait until you see what they can do when they’re all juiced up on stimms” which makes me hopeful that there’s an alternative way of building of this kit still to be shown.

This appears to be the unit champion…

…however it’s this brute that has me particularly interested.

He’s bigger than the other cultists and referred to as the Dishonoured so could it be that we’re looking at a failed World Eater of some kind who’s been stripped of his armour? We can’t see the back of his head from this angle, if we could we’d be able to see if the Butcher’s Nails are there or not, so for now all we can do is guess. Either way he’s a damn cool model as he is, although once again I’m thinking about Necromunda and wondering if he might have a use as a Goliath champion with a bit of kitbashing.

Anyway, apart from Lord Invocatus and some very dodgy lore regarding the Eightbound, this all looks fantastic and I’m already cracking my knuckles and pacing, a low growl building in my chest as the Butchers Nails start to bite and command me to paint, paint, paint for the Blood God! However, I can’t help but ask “Where’s the rest of it?”. Your way of estimating exact number of kits may vary but there’s no denying, the Death Guard got a hell of a lot more than this. The World Eaters, like the Thousand Sons, lean very heavily on the wider Chaos range to bulk up the numbers with borrowed kits and daemonic allies. For a long time I’ve been feeling that Tzeentch’s legion was short changed in comparison to the followers of Nurgle, and now the World Eaters seem to have gone the same way. Based on this release the World Eaters will get six kits of their own (the Berserkers, Eightbound, Jakhals, Lord Invocatus, Lord on Juggernaut and Angron himself – plus the already released Kharn of course). The Death Guard got somewhere around twenty and are visually much more complete as a result. I recognise that GW do not have entirely unlimited resources, just as I don’t have unlimited money, time or energy to spend buying and painting models, but it’s hard not to feel that more could have been done here. This isn’t so much eating the world as taking a small bite. Where are the juggernaut cavalry to follow the mounted lord into battle? Where is the World Eater’s Lord on foot for those days he doesn’t feel like riding to war? Where are the daemon engines with which Khorne has had such a long association; the brass scorpions, blood slaughters, berserker dreadnaughts, blood reapers, doom blasters, death dealers and cauldrons of blood? Where are the Khornate beastmen, the Berserker Surgeons, the Ogryn Berserkers, Red Butcher Terminators, a new kit for the Mutilators or the Teeth of Khorne – the World Eater’s heavy weapons squads designed by Jes Goodwin all those years ago? These last are particularly missed I think as they’d bring something to the army other than just angry men who want to get into close combat and hit people in the face. Having a theme to an army is good, but – despite what the kids with the memes would have you believe – there’s no need to treat Khorne as being one dimensional.

Overall I’m really happy with what we’ve got and I’m sure some of it will be finding its way into my Chaos collection in time. Part of me hopes that this is just the first wave and, like the Sisters of Battle and other recent releases, we’ll see a second wave with a whole heap of new kits in a year or so’s time. Part of me however fears that they may end up like the Thousand Sons and left on the sidelines.

Anyway, I’m off to eat some raw meat and sharpen my chainaxe. If you have thoughts other than the hammering of an angry god stabbing painfully through the raw flesh of your mind and want to punch the keyboard furiously until it spells out a message then the comment’s box is the place to do it.

Wolves Of The Old World

In the early hours of this morning (UK time), when sensible folk were still abed, Games Workshop rolled out another of their big previews. I didn’t set an alarm for it but I did enjoy taking a look at it over a cup of coffee and needless to say, now I’ve given it all some headspace, I have thoughts ready to inflict on you, my gentle and long-suffering readers. We saw quite a mix of stuff too, from World Eaters (which I may – or may not – talk about in a future blog once I’ve got my ideas in order) and some walkers for House Cawdor which seem to be a real “marmite” release which some people (like me) love and others hate. However today I’m going to talk about the green lads and their good boys; the new Goblin Wolf Riders for the Gloomspite Gits.

Well would you look at that! Somebody stop the presses and hang out the bunting – Games Workshop have managed to sculpt some decent wolves at last! Well done guys, pity it’s taken you 40-odd years but persistence beats resistance and these shaggy beasts were worth the wait! (Pedants will currently be desperate to remind me of the existence of Rippa’s Snarlfangs and the Soulblight Dire Wolves – both of which are ok – and the two wolves which hang out with Belladamma Volga which are actually really nice, but still, GW does have a reputation for missing the mark with their wolves on a regular basis so it’s still novel enough to be a relief when they get it right).

These weren’t the only new Goblins to put in an appearance either. We also saw the previewing of Grinkrak’s Looncourt who for some reason have the exact same back story as the Flesh-eater Courts – that being that they believe, against the evidence, that they are in fact chivalrous knights. I know it can sometimes be tricky to think up new lore but this is a direct copy and paste, and much like with the ghouls it’s not really reflected in the models. I guess “identifying” as a noble knight is the new in thing in the Mortal Realms and we should go along with it rather than risk causing offense – what harm could a goblin or a ghoul do to a damsel in distress after all? Not naming the warband “the Green Knights” is a missed opportunity too – and if there’s one faction in the setting that can run with the puns it’s the Gits. At least the models are cracking.

More and more lately however I’m wondering if the Old World ever really went away. Were the last eight years all some kind of bizarre dream in which my fevered imagination conjured up magical realms and Stormcast Eternals whilst the Warhammer that was has rumbled on much as it ever did? Looking at GW’s release schedule you’d be forgiven for thinking so. The new Wolf Riders are a classic example of this – they’re awesome but conceptually they’re lifted straight out of the old Orcs and Goblins range without the slightest tweak to bring them into the Age of Sigmar. Now I don’t mind this – I liked old Warhammer – but wasn’t the point of Age of Sigmar to create a new world in which new ideas could be brought forth and explored? Sure, in the early days we didn’t have a whole lot to work with, it takes time to produce a whole new range of miniatures so models from WHFB were reused to flesh out the setting, but come on – it’s been eight years guys! In that time GW has churned out a lot of kits, many of them fantastic, and of those very few would look out of place in the “World That Was”.

By the time 8^th Edition came around Warhammer had a lot of problems. The size of armies had grown so vast that new players could easily find themselves looking to paint hundreds of miniatures before their collection was ready for battle. To survive it needed to become more flexible, and desperately required a skirmish spin-off to serve as a stepping stone. Meanwhile the lore was a strange mix of cliches and ideas which were uniquely Warhammer, which the writers had to wrestle into shape whilst desperately seeking to ensure they had their own voice and weren’t trading solely on nostalgia. The range of models had grown large, and needed plenty of resculpts to keep it fresh, and the constraints of making models that rank up on square bases was clashing with the posing potential of the plastic models and new sculpting techniques. By the time the End Times rolled around Warhammer was desperately in need of some kind of soft-reboot. However absolutely nobody was saying “I really love this setting, but wouldn’t it be better if it was set on floating magical space bubbles. Oh and the Lizardmen need a silly name. Other than that it’s perfect”.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those who’s still sore about the destruction of the Old World, it’s just that the more time passes the more I wonder what the hell the point was. Much of what we’ve seen since 2015 would have fitted into the previous setting. Old Warhammer was an odd mix of the very generic and the uniquely creative – Age of Sigmar was an opportunity to break away and do something really creative but they seem to have lost their nerve. Now with The Old World project coming it’s harder than ever to differentiate AoS from WHFB. If, for example, I wanted to start an Orcs and Goblins army for WHFB I could find pretty much everything I might want amongst the ranks of the current Orruks and Gits. Wacky spelling does not new models make! Things like the Stormcast Eternals, Idoneth Deepkin and Kharadron Overlords serve to demonstrate what they can do if they want to but in the main they seem to be afraid of pushing the envelope.

This isn’t just an issue with the goblins either. Today also saw the previewing of a new Beastlord for the Beasts of Chaos. Again, he’s a really nice model – although the beasts need a hell of a lot more attention than just one new hero – but he’s no different to the kind of beastmen we saw in pre-End Times Warhammer.

Likewise the new Slaves to Darkness are just a revamped kit for Warriors of Chaos – they look cool but there’s nothing different here.

Some people might be saying “So what?”. The Warriors of Chaos and Beastmen were cool before and they’re cool now. Why reinvent a perfectly serviceable wheel? If it ain’t broke and all that. Now that’s fair enough but the thing is, they did – dramatically and unashamedly – blow their old setting to bits, burn their bridges and declare that this was a whole new era in which everything you had known before had been devoured by daemons. This wasn’t gentle – this was as subtle as Angron. Soft reboots, GW clearly thought, are for wimps! Yet here we are, almost a decade later in the real world and tens of thousands of years in the timeline of the game, and half the old characters are still around and everyone still dresses the same.

Lately Games Workshop has been previewing concepts from the forthcoming Cities of Sigmar revamp. Except is it a revamp? Everything we’ve seen so far, and I’ll admit it isn’t much, is very similar to what we used to know in the Empire.

Now I’ve got nothing against nostalgia (although I’m pretty sure it used to be better) but if I’d slipped into a coma in 2014 and woke up now would I see any difference between the Warhammer of now and the one I used to know? Of course given the state of the world otherwise this might be comfort, at least some things don’t change for the worse, but if you told me it was a whole new setting I’m not sure I’d believe you.

When the End Times was in progress I suggested that what we’d probably see was a partial apocalypse, shaking things up ahead of a new and refreshed setting. Chaos would come close to destroying the world but, at the last moment, the Gods would withdraw, laughing, to their own realm, leaving the survivors to fight it out amid the ruins. GW would have the chance to change anything they wanted, old characters with old models could be killed off, new characters and factions could arise, new rules – even a whole new game system – introduced. It would give the End Times some kind of significance, without needing to wipe the slate clean. The bathwater could be poured away without needing to send the baby with it. Afterwards I was (mostly) willing to give Games Workshop credit and let them do their thing, hopeful that the passage of years would create a setting that I could believe in and which would make the whole exercise worthwhile. I’m still waiting. Of the 24 factions currently present in Age of Sigmar all but 8 of them are essentially unchanged since before the axe fell on WHFB. Sure, some things have changed – breaking up the Orcs and Goblins into two separate factions, and dividing out the Warriors of Chaos into five new armies (one for each god) has given them room to grow and the results have been well worth it. However that, and the new rules for that matter, could easily have been achieved without the wholescale destruction of the world.

Let’s take a quick look at the eight new factions. Could any of them have existed in the World That Was? I would argue that all of them could. The Stormcast Eternals are perhaps the most iconic AoS army – and the one which, I suspect, precipitated GW’s decision to go through with the whole exercise. Space Marines sell – so why not have Space Marines in fantasy too? Double your money! It’s an understandable decision for a business to make but I reckon it could have been done just as well in a post-End Times Old World with nothing more than a few tweaks to the backstory. The Bretonians were in dire need of a range refresh and with Game of Thrones dominating screens around the world people were excited about knights. Most of the Stormcast concepts are not a million miles from a re-envisioned Grail Knights, granted superhuman power by the Lady to restore the realm.

The Kharadron Overlords and Fyreslayers could easily have been part of a re-envisioned Dwarf range, especially if some of the concepts were dialled back a little. Dwarves in Warhammer were traditionalist to a fault and extremely resistant to change but with their holds smashed and ransacked by daemonic hordes and many of the old guard killed and strung up by their beards a few young upstarts might be able to promote new ideas (ready to be patented by GW of course) onto a suddenly less recalcitrant population.

Fishmen were rumoured for years – apparently springing from a design studio in-joke that spread to tinfoil-hat-wearers and online theorists and never really went away. They too could have come to the surface in the form of a slightly tweaked Idoneth Deepkin. The Kruelboys could well have been lurking in the swamps and caves of the Old World, the Lumineth Realmlords tweaked into something closer to the High Elves and the Nighthaunt added to the undead ranks commanded by the Vampire Counts. Aesthetically speaking the Ossiasrch Bonereapers are the faction most unique to AoS – although ever here there are similarities to the Tomb Kings of old. Are they enough to justify the risky, and still controversial, decision to destroy a well-loved setting and start over from scratch? Those aside absolutely everything else from the mightiest Son of Behemat to the smallest gobbo could have been released in the old setting without stretching the lore one inch.

Ultimately I’ve got nothing against Age of Sigmar, it was a bold move and an opportunity for great creative strides, but since then their courage seems to have deserted them and as a result the whole thing starts to seem unnecessary. The wolf riders are amazing models but when it comes to their fantasy settings Games Workshop are living in the past.

Progress Report – September 2022

Oi, watz dis den? Fort dis was supposed to be Orktoba – what chew doin’ talkin’ abart fings from ova mumfs den?

Settle down greenies – because before we sink our teeth (or should that be “teef”?) into Orktober it’s time to take a look back at everything I’ve managed to paint over the last quarter-year. Back in June I talked a bit about my efforts to clear out the backlog of unpainted models that I’ve accrued over the years and the way in which my attitude towards it has changed in 2022. Rather than reiterate everything here I’d recommend going back and seeing what I have to say for myself by clicking here.

Usually August and September is one of the most productive times of year for me on the hobby front but lately life and work have been kicking my arse a fair bit and the time and energy needed for painting miniatures has been in short supply. Still, you know what they say – the cost of living may be high but it’s still better than the alternative! Anyway, I’ve not been entirely absent from the painting desk so let’s take a look back at everything I’ve managed to achieve towards my various goals.

Warcry

Since last we looked back we’ve had a new edition of the game and three new warbands so, given that this was where I achieved the most in the first half of the year, you’d expect the hype from GW to have translated into more models ready for the tabletop at my end. Well you’d expect wrong wouldn’t you…

Terrain

Last time around I think I made some rumblings about working on some 40k/Necromunda terrain but alas that’s still to happen. I did however knock out this ominous shrine to the Dark Gods…

…and a whole load of fences too.

Warhammer 40k/Kill Team

Next to naff all done on this front, although with the coming month being dedicated to all things Orky hopefully I’ll be able to redress the balance a bit.

Blood Bowl

I’m pleased to say this is where the real progress was made over the last few months, with four new teams hitting the pitch.

First of all we had the Necromantic Horrors…

…followed swiftly (or at least as swiftly as they could manage being dead and all) by the Shambling Undead.

Then just a week or so ago I finished off my mob of rambunctious Goblins as well.

And finally, with the month almost out, I surprised myself by cannibalising my Goblins – and various others – and putting together a team of Underworld Denizens as well.

Necromunda

Despite bold claims that I would get my Orlock gang painted, or at least started, over the last few months the brave lads from the House of Iron are still notably absent from the underhive. All was not entirely lost though, I did make a start on a gang of outcast hive scum, disreputable down-and-outs ready to scratch a living on the fringes of society by any means necessary.

Aeronautica Imperialis/Adeptus Titanicus

I’m rolling these two into one because I’ve made absolutely zip progress on either. Battles between mighty titans would be so damn awesome wouldn’t they? Alas, the god-engines – and the tiny planes for that matter – must wait for another day.

Blackstone Fortress 

With just days to go I finally got myself in gear and painted up the Zoat from Blackstone Fortress. This means we now have a whole new expansion we can play through, Deadly Alliance, and a galumphing alien quadruped to help us take on the sinister creatures that haunt the fortress. There’s still plenty more to do though before I can call the game, and all of its expansions, complete at last.

Cursed City 

Less progress here than I would have liked (that’s becoming a bit of a recurrent refrain this time around isn’t it) but all is not entirely lost; I did manage to complete the creepy wizard Octren Glimscry. Better than nothing right?

A Song of Ice and Fire 

I’ve got two armies on the go here; one for the Starks and one for the Lannisters. My plan is to get each of them up to about 30 points then keep building them up in 10 point increments. So far progress on the Lannisters has been slow, but I did manage to get the Mountain’s Men ready to march out under the command of the brutal Ser Gregor Clegane.

The Starks have managed to drum up more troops however, perhaps the men of the north are a bit more loyal to their liege lords or perhaps they’re just easier to paint. Either way we’re now just one squad off making that 30 point target so I think that, no matter what else the rest of the year holds, I’d like to try and get that done before 2022 is out.

Hate

I didn’t manage much from the world of Hate, but then it wasn’t really a priority. I did however manage to knock out a couple of tree-zombies from the tribe of Sarrassa, and a giant from the tribe of Um’Kator, which you can see in all their close up glory here.

Goals and Summing Up

Back in June I set myself a bunch of goals for this quarter so the last thing we have to do is take a look back and see which I managed to achieve – and which I failed at entirely!

Necromunda – get another gang up and running, most likely the Orlocks. More if possible.

I’m going to be generous to myself and count this as a win. I may not have painted any Orlocks but my little gang of scum are ready to take on whatever the Underhive can throw at them.

Warcry – get at least one of the “core” warbands painted, the Spire Tyrants look like a good option here.

Failed. Despite my very best of intentions the Spire Tyrants still sit looking forlorn and unpainted and the fighting pits of the Varanspire remain ominously quiet.

Blood Bowl – get the Necromantic Horrors team finished. As that only needs 2 ghouls I’m going to aim for getting another team up and running as well.

Smashed it! Not only did I get the Necromantic Horrors painted but three other teams as well. Consider my back patted!

Blackstone Fortress – complete at least one expansion.

He may only be one model but that Zoat is enough to allow us to play the Deadly Alliance expansion so this one is definitely a win!

Cursed City – make significant progress. Hard to quantify on this one, I’d love to get it finished of course but I’m not going to try to bite off more than I can chew. A squad or two of mooks and/or some of the heroes would count here, whereas a single corpse rat just isn’t going to cut it!

He’s got slightly more panache than a corpse rat but Octren Glimscry is still just one model so I’m going to say I failed to make significant progress here.

ASOIAF – make significant progress. Again I’m not going to put an exact figure on it here, just that I want to get something done and again one model isn’t enough!

With two squads completed (the Stark Bowmen and the Mountain’s Men) I think I can call this one a win with significant progress on both my armies.

Overall then it’s been a bit of a mixed bag but despite having a lot less time to work with than I’d hoped I still managed to get a fair bit done so I’m happy enough. So, how about my goals for the final three months of the year? Well to be honest with you, I’m cautious of setting myself up to fail so I’m going to avoid putting myself forward for anything too demanding. There is a hell of a lot going on in “real life” for me right now (as demonstrated by how long it takes me to reply to comments here – let alone read and comment on the work of all my blog-buddies out there. Love ya anyway guys, keep up the good work!). Over the next few weeks I’m going to be all about Orktober and after that, who knows? The list of projects above remains my priority so I’ll keep chipping away at them as and when I can. There are two tasks however which I’m going to try to give special attention.

Necromunda

Get some Orlocks painted. Even if it’s not a full gang. Even if it’s just one dude with a handlebar moustache and a devil-may-care attitude lets get something done here at last.

A Song Of Ice And Fire

One more squad will get me a 30 point Stark army up and running so that would a nice thing to achieve. Let’s send a clear message to King Joffrey that the men of Winterfell won’t bend the knee to him or anyone else!

Of course in a perfect world I’ll paint much, much more than this but I really have no idea how things are going to go over the next little while – I might get quite a lot done but equally I might manage next to nothing, it’s that kind of time. Watch this space I guess. In the meantime though, it’s time for me to paint some angry green dudes!

June 2022 Progress Report

Early in 2022 I found myself thinking a lot about the way I’ve been going about this hobby, and the things I have and haven’t been painting. I think I’m a fairly prolific painter, admittedly not as much as some but I churn out a lot of models and on the whole I’m happy with the quantity and quality of what I produce. Despite this however there are a lot of projects that I’d like to see completed but which, for whatever reason, never seem to get done. By “projects” I mean sets of miniatures; an army, a Necromunda gang, a Warcry warband, a Blood Bowl team, the contents of a board game – you get the idea. By “completed” I generally mean; painted to a stage where we can get a game with it or where I’ve painted all the models in a particular set. So for example my Daughters of Khaine for Warcry is a completed project, even though I have some “bonus” models like a Medusa that I’d like to add to it. Blackstone Fortress on the other hand I’d call partially completed; I’ve painted enough models to play a game with it but I’d still like to paint up the rest of the box so we have plenty of options when we decide to get a game in. I know this criteria is a little vague but the key thing is, it works for me. If you’re thinking of attempting something similar with your own backlog then work out what works best for you and go from there.

Over the years my approach to the hobby has very much been a case of “this is for fun, paint whatever appeals in the moment, follow the hobby butterfly wherever it leads”. This has given me a lot of pleasure and has seen me paint a lot of models but whenever I look back at everything I’ve done I’m struck by the things I’ve still never finished and the models which I’ve been going to tackle “soon” for a very long time. So, over the last few months, I’ve been trying to do something about that. 

Partly this is about changing the way I look at the “pile of shame” (or as I now call it, the “Mountain of Madness”) and my efforts to tackle it. In the past I’ve tended to view the backlog as a single entity which could be wrestled into completion through a combination of time and Herculean effort. All my projects would be completed as a side effect of this (that is to say, if all the models I want to paint are contained within the pile then by painting everything in the pile I automatically complete all of my projects). 

This bias in my outlook cosied up neatly to the tally of models purchased and painted that I’ve been keeping in recent years. New models excite me and so I buy them – but the growing number in the “bought” column doesn’t look so bad if there’s a large number in the “painted” column too. Thus if I had the choice between painting 100 models and completing 2 projects or painting 10 models and completing 10 projects I’d have chosen the former – up until recently that is. The interesting thing is, by changing tack to this more “project focused” approach I’ve actually ended up painting more models than I have in previous years. My current tally stands at 191 miniatures painted so far this year – that’s more than a model a day and vastly outnumbers the 83 I’d painted by this time last year. In fact it’s more than my total output for the entirety of 2020.

In trying to overcome the backlog in this way I had to work out an inventory of how much I’m up against and compare this against how many models I can reasonably expect to paint (I know many of my readers are also fond of spreadsheets – really is there such a thing as a problem that can’t be solved by a spreadsheet? I think not). This gave me a reasonably accurate idea of the scale of the task and unfortunately it’s a biggie. If my goal is to just paint everything I have, I don’t buy anything else (some hope!) and I continue to paint at the current rate (doubtful – for various reasons) it’ll still take me several years to get it all done. Realistically though the more time passes the more likely it becomes that any given project will never be finished at all. And even if things do turn out exactly as the spreadsheet predicts do I really want to wait that long to get around to my Delaque gang, painting up Cursed City or whatever other projects find themselves falling to the bottom of the list? 

Since I first wrote about this back in February I’ve put together a list of projects and started trying to focus on them. From there I worked out how many models were needed to complete each project and how close to being fully painted said models were, and then started with the ‘easy wins’.

So how did I decide what to paint? After all, any way I slice it there’s still a lot of stuff in the heap to be tackled. The journey of a million miles may well start with a single step, but which step should it be when there are so many to choose from? To answer this I applied three key criteria.

• 1. Inspiration and enthusiasm. At the end of the day I’m still very much a believer in the idea that this is for fun, it’s a hobby not a job. I’m here to enjoy myself, not to saddle myself with extra chores. Plus I’ve always found that if I’m excited about painting something I get in the zone and power through it, and if I’m not then I really am better off leaving it for another day – the process will be dull and the end results uninspired.

• 2. How many models did I need to paint? I made a list of all my projects and worked out how many models each one needed to be called complete. The fewer models needed, the further up the list it went. If a model counted for multiple projects so much the better. My Khorne warband for Warcry needed just two models so I decided to tackle it ASAP. My Orc and Black Orc teams for Blood Bowl both needed just one troll (and better yet it was the same troll!) – they too got fast tracked. My WHFB Dwarf army needs around 130 models – needless to say it’s not currently a priority (another insult to be written down in the great book of grudges..!).

• 3. For my third criteria I used a little mental exercise. Imagine that I discover that I’m going to live a very long, healthy and happy life (hopefully this part is true!) but that I’ll never be able to paint a miniature ever again (hopefully this part is not true!). What models will I look back regretfully and wish I’d painted for my collection? In some ways this covers similar territory to criteria 1 but the fact is there are quite a few models I’ve been really wanting to paint for ages – and yet every time I look at them I think “Not today, there’s something else I ought to paint first”. Well why not today? It’s my hobby and I’ll do what I want damn it! Time to stop putting off fun and get them done. And don’t worry; it really is just a mental exercise – I’m not going anywhere!

Up to now I’ve not really talked about what specifically I’m planning to tackle so the aim of the second half of this post is to lay that out and look at what I’ve managed to complete so far. It’s a living list, things will undoubtedly be added as and when inspiration strikes, but I’ll be aiming to look at it and talk about how I’m getting on every quarter or so – and as we’re now at the end of June this is a perfect moment to take a look back and see what I’ve managed so far. 

Warcry

Let’s start with somewhere that significant progress has actually been achieved already. I find Warcry is a great excuse to work on little skirmish warbands from all over the Age of Sigmar setting, putting together small groups of models that appeal without bogging myself down in painting large armies. Warcry is one of the few games I actually play on a semi-regular basis and I really like the idea of having a range of factions to call upon. This is an area where I’ve already made great strides and even before I started on this challenge I had warbands from 13 different factions in my collection. The forces of Order were represented by the Daughters of Khaine, Death by the Nighthaunt and the Flesh-eater Courts, and Chaos by the Daemons and Mortals of Nurgle, as well as Skaven borrowed from my WHFB army, and the Iron Golems and Untamed Beasts which were released specially for the game. The forces of Destruction have been particularly busy, unleashing three types of Orc (the Bonesplitters, Ironjaws and Kruelboys) alongside mighty Ogres and scheming Gloomspite Gits. Over the last few months I’ve added Soulblight Gravelords…

…Stormcast Eternals in Thunderstrike Armour…

…Sylvaneth…

…Warriors of Chaos…

…and Khorne Bloodbound.

Speaking of Khorne I also painted this Bloodmaster (that’s a herald of Khorne if you’re an oldster like me). The range of Khorne deamons for Warcry isn’t all that extensive (just bloodletters, flesh hounds and juggernaughts) so I had planned to just take a relaxed outlook on the rules and include a few daemons alongside my mortals rather than putting together a warband that might feel a bit “samey”. However now I’ve got the Bloodmaster painted up I’ve got options, so once I’ve retrieved my bloodletters and flesh hounds from storage I can unleash an entire band of Khornate daemons should I feel the need to do things strictly by the book.

As well as all these factions borrowed from the wider Age of Sigmar setting there are a number of warbands which have been created specifically for the Warcry game. In many ways I think of these as the real Warcry warbands and I’d love to paint all of them, each one is weird, exciting and unique. As things stand however I’ve only managed the aforementioned Untamed Beasts and Iron Golems, both painted back in 2020. I’d very much like to add to that list before the year is out.

Terrain

Another major project has been to complete all the terrain from the original Warcry starter set and with the completion of this building that’s done at last. 

By adding it to all the other terrain I’ve finished we now have a small ruined town to fight over should we so wish. 

Of course this is just the beginning, I’m still planning to work on all the terrain from the Catacombs and Red Harvest sets as well. On top of that I’d like to expand my collection for Warhammer 40k and Necromunda, and with a solid start made to the fantasy side I’m hoping this will take the drivers seat over the next few months. In the meantime I’m calling this goal achieved – although there’s still plenty of room for bonus “stretch goals” yet to come.

Kill Team/Warhammer 40k

I’ve lumped these two together for now as they essentially cover the same territory – one at the skirmish level and one at the army level. As a whole the 41st Millennium is a setting that I love and for which I have a whole heap of models, both painted and unpainted. As games however these two leave me cold, for a range of reasons that would take a blog’s worth of text to elucidate. Thus when I first sat down to address the clear out back at the start of the year I thought I would probably give them only the minimum of attention. To begin with my only set goal was to complete this Death Guard kill team, something that required only a minimum of effort. 

Now I’ve heard that a plague marine fire team now runs to 3 models which, if true, only serves to illustrate one of my key objections to these games – GW’s constant tinkering with the rules which means that nothing stays the same for more than 2 minutes before an errata is released for the FAQ of the designer’s notes that explain the latest changes in the codex that’s just arrived for the game’s 170th edition. 

However, rules be damned, I love the models and I have a lot of them that I’d like to get painted – many of which are already half-done and lurking in boxes. This situation is nothing new, I’ve not played 40k in any serious way since the early days of 5^th Edition and it’s not stopped me painting plenty of them in the years since. However without a rules framework it’s harder to describe exactly what I’m planning to do here. Looking through the pile I find plenty of Orks, Chaos Marines, Death Guard, Thousand Sons, Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Necrons, Adeptus Mechanicus, Genestealer Cultists and Eldar, plus a few Sisters of Battle. Plenty to be getting on with in other words. Of these some command large numbers of fully painted miniatures, and others are a little more sparse… I’m aiming to at least get together some small armies for most, or if possible, all of them – think something akin to a “combat patrol” (i.e. a couple of squads, a vehicle, a hero or two and a dreadnaught) but as goals go it’s deliberately ill-defined. Obviously some of these factions have already exceeded this goal, in some cases by a considerable margin, but I’ll still be adding recruits to them here and there because I want to, damn it, and all work and no play makes Wudu a dull boy (see also Criteria 1 and 3 above). So far my attention has been focussed on the Necrons and I’m pleased to say I’ve shaken a few of them out of their dusty tombs – enough that I could probably call this goal achieved in their case if I was feeling generous (and I am). Plenty more androids to come in the next few months though!

Blood Bowl 

This feels a bit like cheating (but that’s Blood Bowl right?) because I’m counting one model towards two projects, but I’m going to call it efficiency. I’ve been promising to paint this sporting troll for absolute donkey’s and so when I started this project I fast-tracked him to the front of the queue. 

This completes both my Orc team…

…and their even tougher cousins on my Black Orc team. 

Since then I’ve been been chipping away at a team of Necromantic Horrors and a heap of Snotlings, neither of which have achieved full-team status as yet.

I also have a number of other teams I’d like to paint up so hopefully we’ll be looking at a whole load more Blood Bowl by the time we get to September’s round up. 

Necromunda

Ah, my beloved Necromunda – my home away from home amid the overcrowded hives, the stinking sumps and toxic ash-dunes! I have so many projects I’d like to tackle here but alas the last six months have seen bugger all done. I shall mend my ways by the September round up I promise – and if I don’t you can sell me to the Guilders.

Aeronautica Imperialis

This one is nice and straightforward to describe; my goal is to paint everything in the Wings of Vengeance box and so far I’ve completed none of it. Just to prove I’ve not been entirely idle though here’s my first assembled Ork Dakkajet. Who knows, I might look to complete the whole Ork half of the set in Orktober. 

Adeptus Titanicus

Picture it – two armies of tiny titans, one sworn to the God Emperor, the other to the Warmaster, beating seven bells out of each other as the Imperium burns. What have I done to make it happen, aside from snapping up a few models when they were going cheap a few years ago? Not a thing!

Blackstone Fortress 

We played a fair bit of this a while ago and it’s one we’d like to get back into, so completing all the unpainted models is one of the key projects on my list. Previously I managed to complete most of the miniatures from the core set, minus one or two of the heroes, as well as both models from the Traitor Command expansion and all the heroes from the Escalation expansion. My next goal is to finish up all of the other expansions and the heroes from the original set that I never got around to. 

Cursed City 

Sticking with Warhammer Quest we move from the far future to the grim darkness of a city overrun by the undead. My aim with Cursed City is nice and straightforward; paint everything in the box. So far this year I’ve been working my way through the various baddies that roam the haunted streets and crumbling thoroughfares,  starting with ten zombies (borrowed from the wider Age of Sigmar range)…

… and two mighty ogres of the Kosargi Nightguard.

I had hoped to get a few more heroes done by now (so far only Emelda Braskov is complete) and finish off at least one more squad of baddies but it was not to be. I’ll see what I can do about that over the next few months.

A Song of Ice and Fire 

At the moment I have two projects on the go here; a House Stark army and their rivals from House Lannister. My aim is to get each of them up to 30 points (enough for a small game) and then keep expanding in 10 point increments until I get to at least 50 points each – enough for a large game or to mix things up in smaller games. Beyond that I’m tempted by some of the other factions in the game but that can wait until I have these first two armies up and running. 

So far I’ve been quite focused on the Starks and, as well as various characters and the beginnings of several squads, I’ve got a whole unit of Sworn Swords fully painted. I had hoped to have at least one more squad done by now and put together a nice group shot of the army but alas it was not to be – I promise to do better before the September round up rolls around.

My Lannisters meanwhile are a little further behind, but the Mountain is well on his way to summoning all of his men so I’ll aim to get this squad completed in the near-ish future.

Hate

At the moment I don’t have any set goals that I’m working towards here, I just really like the models so I’ll keep chipping away at them whenever I feel like it. Expect to see the odd one pop up whenever I fancy painting some crazy barbarians. 

Summing Up

I’m feeling pretty chuffed with everything I’ve got done this year, especially as the past few months are always the busiest at work (and this year has been no exception on that score). By the end of July work will be getting a little calmer but other commitments look set to take over so how much time I have for painting as the year progresses remains to be seen. That said I’m going to list a few key targets that I’d like to achieve by the time we get to the end of September and the next quarterly progress report.

• Necromunda – get another gang up and running, most likely the Orlocks. More if possible.
• Warcry – get at least one of the “core” warbands painted, the Spire Tyrants look like a good option here.
• Blood Bowl – get the Necromantic Horrors team finished. As that only needs 2 ghouls I’m going to aim for getting another team up and running as well.
• Blackstone Fortress – complete at least one expansion.
• Cursed City – make significant progress. Hard to quantify on this one, I’d love to get it finished of course but I’m not going to try to bite off more than I can chew. A squad or two of mooks and/or some of the heroes would count here, whereas a single corpse rat just isn’t going to cut it!
• ASOIAF – make significant progress. Again I’m not going to put an exact figure on it here, just that I want to get something done and again one model isn’t enough!

Really though this is the bare minimum I’d like to achieve. More would without doubt be merrier. Keep an eye out over the next few months and let’s see how I get on.

Scum’s Thoughts – Part 7

After years of fighting for survival in the claustrophobic depths of the Underhive it’s time at last for Necromunda to head into the great outdoors. This year’s Adepticon saw the full reveal of the new Necromunda: Ash Wastes box, in which gangers from the House of Iron do battle with Ash Waste Nomads in the toxic desert beyond the hives. To help them get around in the wide-open spaces of the wilderness the Orlocks have brought along a couple of nifty looking buggies…

…whilst the Ash Waste Nomads, not to be outdone, will be scurrying out of the dunes on the back of giant fleas. 

Now it probably goes without saying that I’m very excited about this announcement. For one thing the new Ash Waste Nomad gang looks very cool, if a little challenging to paint, as does the new terrain for building desert settlements.

However I’m also coming to realise how excited I am about vehicles appearing in Necromunda. I don’t think Necromunda needs vehicles per se, but I sure as hell need Necromunda vehicles in my life all the same. Plus, if we’re going outside the hives then really they become a must – the distances are too vast and the environment too dangerous to be tackled on foot. 

Having seen the beasts and buggies included in the new box my imagination immediately began to run through possibilities for the other gangs in the game. After all it’s safe to say that all the other Houses will be following the Orlocks out into the wastes and when they do they’re going to need wheels of their own. In this article I’m going to try to guess what those vehicles will look like then – in a year or so’s time – we can all come back and gasp at my Nostradamus-like powers of prediction/laugh at how wildly wrong I turned out to be. 

Goliath

Let’s be honest, the Goliath buggy will be unsubtle. I’m imagining a big spikey ram with a powerful engine and no reverse gear. 

Escher

At first I was a bit stumped by this one as I couldn’t quite picture what kind of vehicle the Eschers would drive. Then I spotted what should have been abundantly obvious – the Ash Waste Nomads aren’t driving but riding, preferring a living steed to anything mechanical. The Eschers, great bio-manipulators that they are, will surely do likewise. What we need is a horse crossed with a tiger to make it more predatory and with feathers and crests and spots and stripes so that everyone can see how damn glamorous it is. Now give it big claws, and a poisonous sting, and make it run really fast and spit acid! Sorted – now the girls can ride in style! 

Van Saar

The obvious choice is something similar to the Grav Cutters, but a little bit bigger. 

Frankly I’d be perfectly happy with that, although I’m equally open to creative alternatives. Whatever they make it’s bound to be high tech, sleek and fast, and I’m going to bet it flies too. 

Cawdor

Make a pulpit out of scrap from which one can preach to the heathens of the wasteland. Mount it on the back of a gigantic mutant rat. Remove anything which might remotely be classed as a health-and-safety feature and replace it with FAITH! Garnish liberally with candles and you’re ready for your next crusade. 

Delaque

As with the Van Saar the Delaque already have a model which I think could give us a lot of clues as to the shape of whatever they end up driving. 

That aside though I’m not going to try to pin down exactly what it will look like, just that I’m confident it will be very alien and almost certainly look the least like a traditional vehicle or steed of any of the factions. And it’ll probably have the brain of some poor psyker wired in there where sane people would have put an engine.

+++

Now we could leave things there, I think it’s a fairly safe bet that we’ll just see vehicles for the gangs of the six Great Houses, plus any new gangs like the Ash Waste Nomads. That said however it’s fun to speculate so let’s have a think about the other factions as well, starting with the most likely. 

Enforcers

Heavily armed and armoured, dark, sinister and brutal – when Helmawr’s Finest head out into the wastes they won’t be messing around. A blue flashing light on the top is optional. I’m also wondering if this one will be able to fly, or at least glide along above the ground on some kind of anti-grav engine. Some people have already suggested something like the Lawmaster from Judge Dredd but, cool as Dredd is, I think Games Workshop – and especially their legal teams – will want to keep developing the Enforcers identity as their own thing rather than rehashing someone else’s ideas. Remember kids – it doesn’t have to be something you already know to be good! (Incidently I just noticed I’d typo’d “Lawmaster” as “Lawnmaster” – presumably that’s for when Dredd takes up gardening).

Genestealer Cults

I know I just said that Enforcers are the most likely of the factions outside the Great Houses to get vehicles but that overlooks the fact that the Genestealer Cultists already have the Atalan Jackle bikers, the Wolf Quads and perhaps even the Achilles Ridgerunner and Goliath truck.

Seeing these added to the game, even if it’s simply via a White Dwarf article, seems inevitable. 

Corpse Grinder Cults 

Find a wrecked buggy in the wasteland. Control your hunger and rage long enough to weld bits of scrap, lots of spikes, chains and razorwire all over the outside. Stick a great big circular saw on the front so you can carve open land trains and wagons to get at the fleshy good stuff inside. Decorate with bits of your last meal/victim. Impale yourself behind the wheel and go hunting! 

Redemptionists

I very much doubt that the Redemptionists will get a vehicle of their own sadly but will instead be allowed to borrow one from House Cawdor. That said I’d love to see a mobile pyre with massive flame throwers on the front, pushed into battle by the faithful. 

Hive Scum

Maybe I’m wrong here but I’m not convinced that Hive Scum have their own vehicles. It seems a bit resource intensive for these down-and-outs so I reckon, if they do ever venture out onto the open road, they just steal something off a better equipped gang. So my prediction is that a Scum vehicle will look exactly like an Orlock vehicle, with the addition of an angry Orlock ganger running along behind, who at some point is going to have to give up and explain to the rest of his crew that he left the keys in it. 

Ogryns

Much like the Scum I don’t think there’s much chance of Ogryn vehicles; they just don’t have the wit to build, maintain, fuel or even drive them. Plus they don’t really have any need for them, other gangs need to get from safe shelter A to oasis B as quickly as possible before the wastes kill them, whereas Ogryns probably think the rad-storms and lethal wildlife reminds them off the old country on whatever death world they originated on. Maybe they’d have some kind of servitor-beasts that escaped from the factories alongside them? Maybe the nearest thing to a vehicle they have is an Ogryn hitting people over the head with a tire whilst shouting “Free da peepol!”. 

…And that’s our show! As usual if you grease monkeys think you have any better suggestions the comments box is the place to be!

The Parasite of Mortrex Returns!

Well how’s about that! Flapping down out of the spore filled heavens (or more accurately being previewed by Games Workshop) comes that dread Tyranid beast the Parasite of Mortrex. 

The Parasite of Mortrex first appeared back in the Fifth Edition of Warhammer 40k, emerging (appropriately enough) on the fortress world of Mortrex. Swooping out of the darkness it implanted tiny Rippers in hapless guardsmen who then played unwilling parent to swarms of the ravenous little predators. Rapidly maturing the Rippers would soon do exactly what their name suggests, bursting from their hosts in a manner familiar to anyone who has seen the film Alien before turning their savage attentions on the rest of the squad. Within weeks Mortrex had fallen, whereupon the Parasite vanished – both “in universe” and in reality as Games Workshop never made a model for it and dropped it from later codexes. Guardsmen however have been fearfully keeping an eye on the skies lest the Parasite return… and now it has! After years in the wilderness the Parasite has at last received a miniature, announced a couple of days ago to accompany the forthcoming new edition of the Tyranids codex. My first thought on seeing the new models was that it’s pretty cool. The back is a bit weird but that aside it’s a very creepy alien monster – just how the Tyranids should be. 

I’ve never really got into the Tyranids and I can’t quite work out why. On the surface of it they should be exactly the kind of thing I enjoy; hordes of alien monsters set on devouring the galaxy. There’s something about them I’m not sure about though and I can’t seem to put my finger on it. Usually when there’s a faction I don’t like I start trying to work out how to fix it, and it turns into a mental challenge from which crazy conversions spring. With the Tyranids however this has yet to happen. It doesn’t help that I really don’t like the studio paint scheme but normally I can see beyond that. Maybe it’s not a bad thing though – after all I don’t have a shortage of things to paint! 

The Parasite isn’t going to change this, it’s a nice model but it’s not enough to win me over to the faction or send me rushing out to buy it. Hopefully any Tyranid fans out there are pleased though, they’ve not had much attention for a long time and they deserve something cool. 

The one thing I don’t particularly like about the Parasite is the fact that it’s a special character. I know many people have an aversion to special characters on general principle and that’s fair enough, everyone should enjoy the hobby as they see fit. In the main though I’m in favour. We are all human beings and our history and mythology is stitched together from the deeds of other humans; kings, emperors, generals, heroes and so on. What would the Greek myths by without Achillies, Odysseus or Heracles? Seeing some of the characters that live in the setting help to bring it to life, and even if we don’t choose to use them in our own games it’s good to know they’re out there. Without them these worlds would seem a lot less real and believable. Try to summarise the events of the Second World War (or any other period of history that you are familiar with) without reference to any of the individual people who were making command decisions or developing strategies. It’s not easy is it, and it’s certainly not very engaging. 

They act as points of reference too – does my Chaos Lord serve Abaddon, do they have any pacts, or are they enemies? Is he sworn to one of the Dark Gods and believes that if only the big man would focus on serving Nurgle or Slaanesh then the destruction of the Imperium would go much more smoothly? If they are enemies; why? If they are allies; why? 

However despite being on Team Special Characters I draw the line very firmly at Tyranids. Tyranids, I believe, should not have special characters. I’ve never liked the idea and it would take a hell of a lot to change my mind (although if you want to try the comments box is the place for you, just don’t be disappointed if you fail to win me over). 

For one thing the Tyranids are defined by their huge numbers. To be the most famous Blood Angel in a chapter one thousand strong is no mean feat, but at the end of the day someone has to do it. To be the most famous Tyranid in a population of hundreds of billions however? Just by existing Tyranid special characters make the hive fleets seem smaller. 

‘Perhaps the Tyranids are a punishment for all the galaxy’s warring races, we who could not see beyond our reckless hate. Perhaps, in a final twist of irony, we shall be consumed by a force that feels no enmity at all, merely a cold and insatiable hunger.’

Farseer Zonayen of Alaitoc

For me special characters also sit poorly with the “alien-ness” of the Tyranids. At the end of the day the other xenos species in 40k aren’t that different to us. Despite their quirks the Orks, Eldar, even Necrons are much like the aliens in Star Trek – in that they are basically humans with some  cultural and physiological difference. Not so the Tyranids. I’ve heard it said that if the other xenos are like humans the Tyranids are like lions but I’d go further than that. A Tyranid is like an immortal lion, which eats planets rather than gazelles, lives in outer space, is smarter than the sum of all human geniuses that have ever lived, is made up of billions of separate bodies from the microscopic to the continent-sized and which is really, really hungry. Surely the point of the Tyranids is that I can’t put myself in their shoes anymore more than I can an oak tree or a gut bacteria. 

That’s not to say that the Tyranids aren’t intelligent. It was once put to me, and I wholeheartedly agree, that a Hive Tyrant could beat a grand master at chess. The hard part wouldn’t be teaching it the rules but explaining why it shouldn’t just bite his face off. 

Then there’s the fact that the Tyranids after all are the ultimate bio-manipulators, capable of breeding whole armies of precisely tailored organisms to fit whatever circumstances they find themselves in. If a Tyranid does in fact emerge which is powerful and awesome enough to achieve special character status then surely the Hive Mind would simply think “Wow! Look at these stats! Check out these special abilities! This gribbly dude is awesome – clone a few thousand of them before we reach the next planet”. (Of course a degree of abstraction is required for gaming purposes, after all the Hive Mind might also think “I see the opposing force is a balanced 2000 point army. Excellent, that’s very sporting of them. Deploy 8000 points in response, compel the slave bioform to paint more Termagants!”)

Now some gamers, especially those on the tournament scene, might argue that having special characters has a big impact on the rules and that if, for instance, players could “spam” the Parasite of Mortrex the game would be “broken”. For all I know they may well be right. Let’s be honest though, miniatures stay in circulation for decades whilst the rules will probably be FAQ’d before the book sees publication (and then FAQ’d again after the first big tournament, and then updated in White Dwarf, and so on…). Plus this is an easy fix for a rules writer to overcome. 

“To the relief of Imperial commander these creatures remain rare in the armies of the hive fleets… for now! You may only include one in your Tyranid army”. 

There – fixed it for you! 

I do follow the logic that these are experimental creations, bred by the hive to solve a problem and then either mass-produced or abandoned. However surely that makes them very circumstantial? Unless we’re actually playing a game set during the siege of Mortrex then surely the Parasite will either be part of the range of biological blueprints available to the hive (ergo no longer a unique character but an off the shelf tool to be bred and unleashed as required like a Carnifex or a Gargoyle) or it’s abandoned, a one off genetic experiment never to be repeated. Frankly I’m not convinced that it would ever be reduced to the latter status, a fortress world like Mortrex is hardly unique in the Imperium and the Parasite was so extremely efficient in bringing it to ruin that the Hive Mind is never going to bin the idea forever more. 

Now I think about it more however, could it be that this is exactly what has happened? Just because the Parasite was a unique character back in Fifth Edition when it first emerged doesn’t mean it still is. The article published by Games Workshop doesn’t really specify one way or another. The final paragraph hints that “You’ll soon be able to add a Parasite of Mortrex to your flying broods…” (my emphasis) so perhaps my complaints are unfounded? At this stage it’s hard to be sure and reading too much into anything GW says is a risky business. Personally I hope it is though, not that I’d want to include multiple Parasites in the Tyranid army I don’t have but because it would bring things nearly full circle, demonstrating that the Hive Mind can and does learn from its experiments and in time each of these “one offs” can become the blueprint for a new bioform through which the consumption of the galaxy shall continue. Hell maybe every edition GW should introduce a new Tyranid special character, and then change it into a generic specialist unit with the next iteration of the codex. 

In conclusion then the Parasite probably won’t be finding it’s way onto my painting desk any time soon but I still think it’s a cool model. I just wish there were more of them! Plus it’s great to see the Tyranids getting a new miniature, frankly that’s something else I’d like to see more of. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Kill Team is the perfect platform for new genestealers. Come on Games Workshop, you know it makes sense and it might just be the thing to tempt me out of the Genestealer Cults and into a fully fledged hive fleet to boot! 

Fembruary 2022 Round Up

Well here we are at the end of another Fembruary and it’s time to take a quick look back at everything I managed to get painted. Last year I surprised myself by powering through 21 miniatures in the month, whereas this year I managed a more modest 11 of which just 9 came under the Fembruary banner (by virtue of being ladies).

Once again however I managed a fairly eclectic mix of models of all shapes and sizes, from an Orc cheerleader…

… to woodland dwelling witches…

… to vicious-looking ghosts…

…and my first ever Sister of Battle.

Meanwhile the Stormcast Eternals saw the most attention, gathering four new recruits.

My aim at the moment is to bring my backlog under control (isn’t it always!) but lately my focus has shifted away from simply flailing haphazardly at the mountain of sprues under my desk and instead I’ve tried to tighten my focus, concentrating on those projects I’m most keen to have completed rather than wandering wherever my fancy takes me. I suspect that from the point of view of my readers of course, this will be entirely academic and my output will continue to look much the same as ever – a random-appearing bombardment of models from all angles with no apparent theme at all but trust me, as the Lizardmen would assure you, there is a Great Plan behind it all! This is something I’ve been chewing over a lot since the start of 2022 and essentially what it boils down to is this; there are many things which may curtail a lot of my painting in the future (lots of them good!) and so I ought to focus on finishing those things I’d like to complete now whilst I have the time. I’m not planning on going anywhere, I don’t intend to quit the hobby (heaven forbid!) or anything like that but I am very conscious of the fact that I have a lot of part-painted projects, and a lot of gangs and warbands that I really want to have painted but which have been left unattended for years. I often find myself thinking about projects and realising that I’m still as excited about them as I was on the day I bought them, but that a lot of time has gone by and they’re still untouched. I don’t want to look back in a decade, or even just a year, and find that most of them are no further forward than they are now. Looking to the future I suspect that the best time for getting things painted is now and for a lot of reasons the longer I leave something the less likely it is to ever get painted. So for the next little while prioritising and getting things done is the aim of the game.

This also applies to cutting out some of the faffing I’m prone to. Take colour schemes for instance and look at the Sister of Battle above or this band of Chaos Warriors. 

In the past I would have agonised over finding a combination of colours that was both original and looked good, and unsurprisingly these often proved incompatible. There are far too many models in my “pile of shame” which stalled between these two pillars and never got started again. With these examples however the colour scheme used by the developers for the studio models is great and I’m pleased with the results so I’m happy to copy them, call that a win and move on, putting the time into painting something else rather than stressing over perfection. It’s a lesson I’ve had to learn several times over the years and sometimes I still need to remind myself; the perfect really is the enemy of the good.

Anyway, that’s enough waffle from me! Here’s a group shot of everything I managed to do in Fembruary instead (click on it to see a nice big version instead of giving yourself eyestrain). 

….And with that Fembruary is over for another year. The scattershot assault on my backlog however will be continuing apace!

Alpharius: Head of the Hydra

I am Alpharius. 

This is a lie.

As opening lines go those take some beating don’t they? I don’t normally do book reviews here, at least in part because writing them is bloody hard work and although I take my hat off to those who do it, it’s something I very much struggle to pull off. I do however read a lot of books and, as a fan of all things Warhammer, plenty of them are from Black Library. Black Library novels can be a bit of a mixed bag, some are excellent, many are a bit duff if I’m honest – Space Marine fan-fiction with dubious plot lines and turgid battles of blazing bolters. This is one of the good ones though. In fact this one really deserves a bit of gushing praise and so that’s exactly what I’m going to give it. 

Alpharius: Head of the Hydra by Mike Brooks, tells the story of the Primarch Alpharius in his own words for the first time. The ultimate in unreliable narrators Alpharius is known to all 40k fans as the Primarch who lies a lot – or as he describes himself to Leman Russ “I’m the one who keeps secrets”. Given this fact it’s hard to be sure if this really is a behind the scenes tell-all from the master of dishonesty, or if we’re being spun a load of nonsense. Most likely it’s a bit of both. 

There is the official story of the Imperium’s early years and the finding of the Primarchs, and then there’s the version laid out here. Thus in many ways the reader is drawn into the universe to the point where we almost become actors in our own right. Now this has always been true of 40k, with the “head cannon” story behind my army no less valid that which is laid out in a codex or Black Library novel. However what I’m driving at here is that, in the end, only a comparatively tiny number of 40k fans will read this book and so hear this side of the story. All the rest will stick with the version which has been laid out in codexes and novels for over three decades. Are those of us who do privileged members of a fraternity to whom deeper truths have been revealed or are we dupes taken in by a narrator famed as a master of lies and manipulation? 

Writing Primarchs, particularly in the first person, is a tricky business. Almost inevitably authors who attempt it fail to pull it off. These are gene-forged demi-gods, far beyond us frail baseline humans in every way, yet all too often they come across as tall space marines with quirky personalities. For Alpharius however it works perfectly. After all you can barely trust the words spilling from the serpent’s mouth, so anyone else trying to narrate these events second hand would become so tangled in misinformation as to be not worth reading. How could anyone but Alpharius tell his story when he takes such pains to keep everyone around him guessing and ensure that no-one ever knows the full truth? A book in which everything is false or guesswork wouldn’t be worth reading after all. No, the joy of this book is trying to guess at which points he’s lying – and concluding at the end that it’s all true.

Some authors seem to struggle with the Alpha Legion, putting Alpharius himself at the core of every mission as though he’s the only spy the Imperium has (Deliverance Lost I’m looking at you here), turning him into a one dimensional mustache twirling scoundrel (“I would have got away with it too if it wasn’t for Rogal Dorn!”) or bogging everything down in so many triple-crosses that it’s hard to remember who’s currently betraying who. Again however telling the story from Alpharius’s own perspective helps to get around this, rather than us readers trying to keep track of how many seemingly innocent people in any given room are actually Alpha Legion agents with conflicting agendas (hint: it’s all of them) we’re walked through events by the man who masterminded them. Does it make sense for Alpharius to be involved in every mission? It does here because this is his story, whereas all too often in the Horus Heresy we’re “surprised” to discover that every Alpha Legionary we encounter is really the main man himself rather than one of his – supposedly self-reliant and independently-minded – underlings. There are nods to the Alpha Legion’s reputation for overcomplicated schemes – a tech-priest asks how a top secret mission can be used as cover for an even more top-secret mission (and yes, there is a good reason for it) – but on the whole we avoid all the doubling-crossing the double-crosser (cross squared?) that can at times make Alpha Legion stories near impossible to follow.

As an aside I’ve always enjoyed the fact that there are several in-universe official accounts of Alpharius’s death, leaving the reader guessing as to which, if any, are true. Between being able to disguise himself as his own legionaries, encouraging his legionaries to pass themselves off as him, and having a hidden identical twin, is it any wonder that he has been “officially” killed off by at least two of his brother Primarchs? My own pet theory is that Alpharius/Omegon never could stick with the limitation of having two bodies. It is already cannon that Fabius Bile successfully cloned all of the Primarchs – including making dozens of versions of Ferrus Manus, a young Fulgrim and a reborn Horus. Those wondering how Games Workshop might someday bring back Sanguinius or one of the other dead Primarchs should look no further. If downhive Esher gang-queens and low-ranking Dark Eldar kabalites can bring themselves back to life as clones there’s no reason for the Primarch of the Alpha Legion to stay dead a moment longer than he chooses to.

In writing this I’ve steered away from talking too much about the plot, and quite deliberately so. I went into this knowing next to nothing about the story and I think I enjoyed it all the more as a result. However one thing I will say is that the more familiar you are with the 40k canon the more you’re likely to enjoy this. If you’re completely fresh to 40k then this really isn’t the best place to start, a degree of familiarity with the big players of the pre-Heresy era is vital to save yourself a lot of frustrating head scratching. If on the other hand you’re well versed in the story of how the Imperium came to be, the Great Crusade and the finding of the Primarchs, then prepare to enjoy having some well established “facts” revealed as falsehoods, key events turned on their heads and major players re-examined from a uniquely insightful perspective. After hearing things from Alpharius’s point of view I don’t think I’ll ever trust Rogal Dorn again!

Of course, it could all be a lie. Hydra Dominatus!

2021 – For Anyone Who Didn’t Feel Like Showing Up

Well, that was 2021 was it? It’s been a funny year in some ways, as I look back I realise that quite a lot seems to have happened yet at the time it was over in a flash. Maybe that’s just a sign of aging and you’ll have me pensioned off and stuck in a home before I know it! At times it’s easy to look at the world beyond the hobby and fear that globally things are getting worse and worse.

But let’s not worry too much about our increasingly uncertain future and instead, gather round for a rambling and self-indulgent look back at my year in miniatures. Truly I spoil you all! Over in Games-Workshop-land the decline and fall of civilisation continued to bugger up the release schedule, although to be honest they release so much stuff, and at such a frenetic pace, that slowing things down a little actually helped me catch my breath. As the year began, Slaanesh – that most long-neglected of the Chaos Gods – received a well deserved boost in the form of new mortal followers. Time to indulge in some outrageous hedonism! As with any Chaos release I got quite excited and tried to budget for how to buy and paint absolutely everything. And as so often happens the limitations of having just 24 hours in each day and only 2 hands to work with slowed me. I did manage to paint up a Myrmidesh Painbringer though and I still absolutely love most of the new models so expect to see more of these appearing in the months ahead.

Hot on the heels of these party animals came animals of a different sort – specifically marsupials. The Lumineth Realm-Lords, released back in 2020, received a second wave of releases – bolstering the ranks of the range nicely. With the first wave of models falling into the odd position of being almost – but not quite – High Elves the second wave shifted them firmly into a new and creative direction. To be honest most of the new models aren’t really to my taste and I still think – despite many of my readers disagreeing – that it looks as though some of them are bouncing around on kangaroos, but there’s no faulting their originality.

April saw the arrival of one of Games Workshop’s biggest, and most heralded, releases of the year; Cursed City. This latest addition to the Warhammer Quest series launched with enormous fanfare, proving an instant hit with the fans, and continued to be talked about and hyped for months afterwards… Oh wait, scratch that last part, apparently Games Workshop suddenly decided just after it was released that it was only intended as a limited edition and started feverishly airbrushing it out of photographs and rewriting the history books. Naturally we mere mortals amongst the fanbase respected their sudden desire not to talk about it and didn’t indulge in wild speculation… Then, just before Christmas the saga took another unexpected twist when Games Workshop proudly announced that the game was coming back after all.

Anyway, as it happens I was one of the lucky ones who managed to snag a copy, and I’ve started chipping away at the models. At one time I planned to have enough painted to get in a game over Christmas but as so often happens my eyes were bigger than my stomach. Still I have managed to make a start, finishing the first few models from the set.

As it turns out however Cursed City was just the beginning and a whole wave of very cool-looking undead followed. So far I’ve not done very much about them apart from writing another enthusiastic editorial but given time I suspect a few more of these will be making their way onto the painting desk to join the ones I’ve already done.

One of the most controversial – not to mention biggest – models to appear this year was Kragnos, the End of Empires. Needless to say he inspired me to a great deal of pontificating and I stand by my assertion that he’s one of the coolest things that GW have done over the last few months. That said I doubt I’ll be painting him myself, and as things stand he really looks out of place alongside the orcs and goblins that make up the rest of the Destruction grand alliance. 

As it turned out Kragnos signaled the beginning of a new phase in the Age of Sigmar story and the dawn of the Era of the Beast and this summer saw the launch of a new edition of the game (the 3rd for those keeping count), spearheaded by a boxset of Stormcast Eternals battling a new type of Orc, the Kruelboys. Again I didn’t miss the opportunity to share my thoughts with the world, and rattled my keyboard enthusiastically whilst indulging in some wild testiculation (that is to say, waving my hands around whilst talking bollocks). Now Stormcast Eternals aren’t really my thing but I was never going to resist new Orcs and managed to snag myself their half of the set from which I’ve so far assembled this little warband. 

Nor are these the only orcs that I tackled this year, I also got around to painting up a bunch of Savage Orcs.

As for the Stormcasts I’ve managed to shock everyone, not least myself, by painting a whopping 2 of them. Wonders will never cease! Again though expect to see a few more popping up in the coming year.

As autumn rolled around we saw one of the biggest and best releases of the year as the Orks joined their cousins the Orcs and got their well deserved moment in the sun. When it comes to 40k Orks really are my first love, and my greenskin horde has been smashing its way through the 41st Millennium for many years now. Needless to say I’m over the moon about all the new models and even managed to paint some of them during the Orktober painting challenge (more on that below). Here’s all the Orks I painted this year (minus this Nob because I already had a group shot I took at the end of Orktober and I’m too damn lazy to dig everything out again to take another).

The final big release of the year for 40k came in the form of the return of the Black Templars. These are one of my all time favourite factions in the setting, and close rivals of the Blood Angels for being the best Space Marine chapter. The models didn’t disappoint and so needless to say I’ve been pouring over pictures of them with rabid enthusiasm since day one.

So far however I’ve remained strong and kept my wallet closed (for once) – I do have quite a lot of Space Marines to paint already after all. How long I maintain my resolve however remains to be seen. Then again it’s looking very likely that new Chaos Space Marines are looming threateningly on the horizon, with a few of them having already been previewed. Chaos Space Marines stand alongside the Orks as my favourite 40k faction (I just love a horde of angry barbarians!) and so it came as a bit of a surprise to me to discover that I didn’t paint a single one this year. I know, I’m as shocked as you are, I’ll change my name from Wudugast to Flabbergast! Still, with models like this soon to be released I reckon I’ll do better in 2022. 

And whilst the ordinary Chaos Marines may have been neglected their Nurgle-worshipping cousins in the Death Guard were… well, they were neglected too to be honest, but they did at least enjoy enough attention to bring them up a (un)healthy 50 power. 

Nurgle also got his greasy foot in the door over in the Mortal Realms as I put together a couple of warbands for Warcry, one of mortals sworn to the Plague Lord…

…and one made up of his daemons. 

I started working on a duo of Tzeentchian warbands as well, and then got distracted and never managed to finish them. Still, change is always in the air so maybe next year will turn out better for them.

Necromunda remains one of my absolute favourite GW settings and this year we saw books released for the remaining Clan Houses (Cawdor and Delaque), expanding greatly on their background. The Delaque also got a new set of models, the Cawdor however were not so lucky. Instead of new champions and specialists that the other houses have enjoyed the House of Faith got a new kit for Redemptionists instead. This is something I’ve harped on about a lot this year so I won’t go over it all again, in summary my feelings are that the new Redemptionists are amazing but for me they will always be a separate faction to the Cawdor and the latter deserved new models of their own. Still, it is what it is and I’ve had a lot of fun kitbashing Redemptionists so all being well I’ll start getting some of them painted up soon.

As the year drew to a close we also got a new set of miniatures for clanless Hive Scum, and again I’ve been having fun putting these together so expect to see them appearing in due course. Both these and the Redemptionists can be fielded either as part of another gang or as a gang in their own right. That aside however 2020 and 2021 have been very much focussed on bringing new kits to existing factions – time well spent in my book, although I’m hopeful that 2022 will see new players taking to the stage on the polluted hive world.

As for myself I seem to have spent more time writing about Necromunda this year than I have painting or playing, my main contribution being these three House Escher ladies. Again hopefully I’ll do better next year.

Meanwhile Blood Bowl suffered an oddly quiet year. After all a new edition of the game was released at the tail end of last year, with all the fanfare that entails, I expected to see a few new teams appearing but in the end we only got the one, made up of the berserk warriors of Khorne. Still I didn’t do all that much better, I claimed that by now I would have painted up a Human team and an Elven Union team yet as things stand I managed just these three elven ladies. Of the humans there remains no sign…

On the other hand not all was lost, I did manage to paint a second greenskin team – the Black Orcs – which I managed to complete just a few days ago.

It wasn’t just about Gee-Dubz either. I may not have painted as many things from the wider world of miniatures as I have in previous years but there were still a few that managed to stick out their elbows and push their way through the Warhammer ranks. A Witchling Stalker from Malifaux snuck through like a sneaky ninja…

Meanwhile Corwyn the Hunchback was the first Drune Kelt from Confrontation I’ve painted in a decade. I’ve dug out the rest of his tribe from the box in which they were lurking so expect to see them popping up sooner or later. 

Speaking of barbarians however one of the projects I’m most excited about at the moment are the savages of Hate. 

I’ve had an uncomfortable relationship with CMON over the years, and after falling foul of their business practices one time too many I swore I’d never buy anything from them again. Time however has softened my youthful idealism. In recent times I’ve come to realise that by stubbornly boycotting them I’m only really punishing myself and as they make some damn fine miniatures it’s really only me that’s missing out. So, as well as the Hate barbarians I’ve decided to treat myself to some models from A Song of Ice and Fire, and started listening a bit more carefully to those mates who’ve been encouraging me to give Zombiecide a look. Expect to see something in this vein appearing in 2022. 

One of the real highlights of the year for me was the Orktober painting challenge that arose between myself and my fellow warboss IRO. Here’s what IRO had to say about it in his own round-up of the year. 

The Ork challenge in Orktober with fellow hobbyist and all round cool dude Wudugast was an absolute standout hobby thing for me in 2021. I liked trying to keep up with him. I like that we are both mad Ork fans. I liked that it was a draw, 37 all. Haha. Great fun and I’m really looking forward to doing exactly the same thing in 2022. Hopefully others might join in the fun too.

I honestly couldn’t have put it better myself; I really am an all round cool dude! For that matter IRO isn’t a bad bloke himself. Here’s a reminder of all 37 greenskins that I managed to complete in the month. Needless to say I’m already looking forward to the rematch in 2022. 

With one painting challenge under my belt I headed straight into another one. I’d already set myself the task of adding something to my Adeptus Mechanicus collection every month of the year. In November however I decided to up my game and painted up the contents of the first Start Collecting set. 

Added to everything else I managed to paint this year (and the few models I managed the year before) and here’s the state of the army as things stand. 

Once again, I’ve still got a few more of these to paint so expect to see more recruits for the legions of Mars appearing in the new year. 

Nor was that the only painting challenge I tackled in November, I also threw myself into the Movember painting challenge being run by Roger from Rantings From Under The Wargames Table. Here’s the mob of hairy gents I managed to paint, and I really do advice you to check out the rest of the participants if you haven’t already.

Of course no summary of the year would be complete without looking all the way back to Fembruary, the annual challenge to “for us to collectively challenge the male domination of our collections, and commit to painting some… kick-ass ladies” run by my blog-brother Alex of Leadballoony. This year I really threw myself into it and managed a total of 21 women covering everything from the Underhive to the Blood Bowl pitch, and the war-torn battlefields of the 41^st Millennium to the Chaos Wastes.

One of the key challenges I set myself for the month was to paint up a warband of Daughters of Khaine, the savage she-elves of Age of Sigmar. Not only did I succeed but since then I’ve managed to add a few more, and I’m planning to tackle even more of them in the coming year (so expect to see an influx of them in Fembruary 2022!).

And if that wasn’t already enough elves to make people think I’d lost my Orky way and turned into some kind of flower-picking, daisy-tripping, tree-hugging, pointy-eared wimp I only went and painted a bunch of Sylvaneth as well. Don’t these fairy-folk just look delightful!

Anyway, that’s been my year in miniatures. Once again keeping the blog and reading about what other hobbyists have been getting up to has been a huge source of inspiration and motivation for me. Now with 2022 looming over us all in dramatic fashion there’s just time to wish all of my readers a Happy New Year and I’ll see you on the other side!