War Eternal – Part 9

You may recall that during the summer of 2019 I chipped away at an Age of Sigmar skirmish warband dedicated to the Blood God Khorne. By the time I wrapped up the project I’d painted seven bloodreavers and if I’m honest I was never very comfortable leaving them there. The holy number of Khorne is eight and so leaving the squad on just seven members seemed like foolishness and guaranteed to bring down the ire of the war god upon my luckless head. However painting one bloodreaver seemed equally daft when I could paint three and round out a squad of ten.

Here’s the three new boys ready to start rampaging with their new mates.

And here’s the whole squad ready to reap skulls for their god’s famously uncomfortable chair.

Once again I’m not sure when I’m going to get back to this project but I do have more ideas, it’s really just a matter of time…

War Eternal – Part 8

As promised when I showed the flesh hound I decided to round out my Khornate warband – for now – with a small group of kill-crazy barbarian cannibals in the form of these three bloodreavers.  They’ve been knocking around since the release of AoS First Edition and this project was the perfect opportunity to get them done.

Together the three of them make-up another contribution to Azazel’s Squaddie September challenge – which calls for participants to paint at least three members of a squad or unit.

What’s more I’ve started to gather a proper little band of cannibal savages. With the group now seven strong I’m finding myself tempted to dig around in the various boxes of miniatures I’ve acquired and see if I can find some more – I know they’re lurking somewhere! It shouldn’t be hard to get the squad up to ten members, or perhaps even extend it further still…

With the addition of these recruits the warband has now reached the 250 Power target originally set for it and as a result I’m willing to call it “complete” for now. It looks like a much bigger group than I initially expected, but that’s mostly down to having four more bloodreavers in the ranks than I’d planned for. A big thank you is owed to Alex of Leadballoony, who first set out the criteria to which I adhered in putting the group together. If anyone else is thinking of trying out AoS Skirmish, particularly as part of a group of friends, I strongly recommend you give his suggested method a look.

For me all this has really focused my enthusiasm for the blood god. For one thing there are plenty of daemons that I’d like to paint which would fit in just as neatly alongside the barbarian hordes of the Mortal Realms as they would next to the power-armoured killers of the 41st millennium. Plus, as mentioned above, I also have at least some of the Khornate half of the AoS First Edition starter set sitting around somewhere. Who knows – this could be the first step towards a warlike horde!

War Eternal – Part 4

Time to cleave a few more skulls and run rampant in the Blood Gods name! This weekend sees the release of a new army book for the Blades of Khorne in Age of Sigmar and all the ensuing chatter from GW’s PR department has woken me from my fuge and reminded me that I’ve got a Khornate skirmish warband on the go, and as yet it contains only one model. Time to drum up a few bloodthirsty recruits.

For those new to the project, it’s the brainchild of fellow blogger Alex from Leadballoony, who’s been working on a Daughters of Khaine warband which I highly recommend you take a look at. He set’s out the framework for the project here and, rather than reiterate it all, you can find my thoughts on the matter here.

With that out of the way let’s take a proper look at the latest additions to my band of savages, three bloodreavers. I’ve had these models kicking around since the first edition of Age of Sigmar was released. Short of cash, firmly rooted in the Old World and disinterested in Stormcast Eternals as I was then, I let the box pass me by, although I did end up grabbing the Khornate side on ebay on the grounds that you can always use a few more bloodthirsty maniacs around the house. Alas other projects distracted me and, with no real purpose or plan for them, the angry barbarians were left to gather dust until the January 2019 issue of White Dwarf brought us the rules for AoS Skirmish and a seed of inspiration began to take root in my brain. Digging around in the bottom of a box I extracted the bloodreavers and set to work cutting and clipping them into shape.

Gathered around their leader, this crew of bloodthirsty maniacs take their first steps to becoming a proper warband.

As ever I’m aiming to add something else to the group soon but I’m being fairly relaxed about it so we’ll see what takes my fancy.

Public Service – Kairic Acolytes

Yesterday, fellow hobbyist Harrison commented that, in spite of their efforts, they was struggling to find any comparison pictures between the Kairic Acolytes released alongside the other Tzeentchian models for Age of Sigmar earlier this year, and those released as part of the Silver Tower boxset last year. Could I, they wondered, provide any images that allowed them to see them side by side? Naturally, as I’ve gained so much from all of you down the years in terms of support, encouragement and inspiration, I was more than happy to return the favour now.

Here we see Kairic Acolyte from Silver Tower (right) alongside one from the boxset (left, doing a fine impression of the Venus de Milo with his lack of arms). You may notice a very slight difference in height between the two but I’d put most of that down to the boxset model having been tacked together for the photoshoot whilst the Silver Tower model is cleanly stuck together with glue. Naturally I couldn’t glue the boxset model together as all the bits are needed for separate nefarious projects (watch this space!).

Certainly one could mix and match parts from the boxset to covert unique models for Silver Tower, or throw the Silver Tower models into a AoS warband to add a little more variety. However although they match each other fairly well fairly well for size there’s no denying these are big models. I’m keen to use some of them as Tzeentchian cultists for my forthcoming Thousand Sons, and have already had fun building a few for exactly that purpose, but it’s hard to overcome the fact that they’ll look oddly big in comparison to their power armoured masters.

Here the model from the Silver Tower attempts to get the attention of a stubbornly disinterested Space Marine who glares passive-aggressively in the opposite direction.

Indeed, for what should be skinny armed wizards, they’re almost as big as Khorne’s rank and file butchers, the Blood Reavers. From what I’ve been told about their background this is because they’ve thrown off their disguises and bloated their bodies into their warforms ready to do battle in the Changer’s name. There’s no denying however that with their bulging muscles and small heads they look more like beefy idiots than cunning wizards.

Once again, thanks to Harrison for suggesting I covered this, hope this helps you out and your own Tzeentchian scheme comes together just as planned. And of course if anyone wants to see a Kairic Acolyte posing next to any other model just let me know – if I own the requested models I’ll be happy to oblige!