Age of Sigmar Duardin - Unforged mini

The Unforged is the new name for the old Slayer hero model. It is part of the Dispossessed faction in Age of Sigmar. The Dispossessed are more accurately duardin who seeked refuge in Azyr right before Sigmar shut off the mortal realms as Chaos took hold of them. The Duardin within built up their strength and helped prepare the factions of Order for the coming war. Within the Dispossessed is what is known as the Unforged. We know little about the Unforged, but we do know they were changed by their encounter with Choas, and not in a mutation/conversion way, but in a crazed vengeful way. They are still deadly and suicidal, but instead of trying to atone for their sins, they now seek to end their life bringing Chaos down with them.

I was perusing Ebay (this is something I need to stop doing, seriously) and found the Silver Tower Fyreslayer Doomseeker hero model going for about $5 ($8 with shipping) and could not resist. I wanted to make an Unforged for my Duardin army, but instead of paying $21 for the real one, I was able to make this:

The stone pedestal he is standing on is a leftover from my Talos project. I had to cut off his feet, repose them, and greenstuff some better ankles so it appeared like he was naturally standing on it. Otherwise it would have looked like he was on an invisible plank. Also I cut off any little icons and doodads that looked too fyreslayer-ish. And his weapon heads were replaced by Longbeard great axe heads. I think I successfully converted him to look more like a traditional dwarf slayer-type. The fyreslayer models have metallic runes embedded into their flesh. While it's a cool idea for fyreslayers, that's not the way of the traditional duardin. So when I paint him up I am going to do all those fleshrunes in regular flesh colors so they look more like tissue scarring.

Unboxing Warhammer Quest Silver Tower... sort of...

I am sort of cheating when it comes to getting into Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower. When you research this product you find the trend that people tend to put more value into the game's models and miniatures than the actual game itself. This is not uncommon for GW boardgames, and Silver Tower (after said research) is looking more and more attractive to play. The advantage of people putting more value in the miniatures, is that you can generally get the non-miniatures game components for cheap. Then with some creative or simple proxying, you can have yourself a fully playable copy of the game. So here is my unboxing of Silver Tower - on the cheap.

First off I found an empty shirtbox and reinforced it with tape and did my own little logo on the top for storage.

All parts held in ziplock bags, just like all your other 'official' boardgames at home!

This is the real meat of the game. All this stuff here I got for about $25 at hobby titan. It's the game tiles, tokens, destiny wheel, rulebook and adventure book, and all the cards (Except the hero cards, but more on that later). With this and the proxy minis and some dice I can play a perfectly functional game of silver tower!

As it turned out I had quite the collection of old pre-painted D&D minis that I had forgotten about. Some of them I had bought during my more frequent RPG era, but others I got in bulk second hand. I searched through my collection for the most suitable minis, generally only finding those that are loosely suitable, but can work in the context. The bonus here is I will be playing with painted minis (haha) and using these may bring in more of a traditional D&D dungeon crawl feel to it.

As you may notice there is nothing here for the hero characters. Well that's what's nice about the Silver Tower app, but also I have made a few myself. More on that next time.

Commision - Ork Stormboyz and Boss Zagstruk

I commissioned my brother, who is quite an artist, to illustrate me a 6 page comic book that tells the story of my Haemonculus Covens army. The plan is to make a neat little black and white booklet that I hand out to my opponents and the TO's at the tournament so they can catch a glimpse of the army's backstory, and on the back of the comic will be my actual army list. So hopefully you will see that soon, as it gets done I will post the pages here.

As a trade for his work, I am painting a couple squads of his Orks. First are his counts-as Zagstruk and Stormboyz, then are a bunch of Lootaz. I haven't started the Lootaz yet, though.

Boss Zagstruk. My brother likes to loot a lot of toys, to put it mildly. Much of his force comes from various anime toy lines to fit the theme of a Mek force. There is also a lot of Tau tech looting as well. Zagstruk here is quite a big model, that he stands out among the rest of the stormboyz as a centerpiece, but not too big to completely dwarf them.

As well as the orks looting their tech, Jarom likes to loot other kits. All of these boyz are just Assault on Blackreach boys and from the regular boys kit. The nobs in the center of each squad are made from the nobz kit, with looted old Crisis suit parts. I am also a fan of his flying stands made of nails. The idea with his army is a lot of it is in this blue and khaki color. The story is that is a Tau sept color they got a lot of their tech from, and with them being of the Deathskulls clan, blue is kinda their color. They find themselves lucky to have stuff already painted blue.

The whole lot of them.

Gorkamorka - Gorker Trukk and Driver

Along with the bike, the flagship of my Gorker mob will be a trukk. The beauty of Gorkamorka is it definitely encourages kitbashing and home building of your mobs. So I went to my local Hobby Lobby to peruse their selection of cheapish model kits. I examined some military vehicles not sure if they would be big enough, but I found what I thought would be perfect. This snap-tite old firetruck kit, which I got for about $16. I liked the look of the front, and could see it being long enough to fit lots of boys.

So I got to work on it, tearing the bits apart and doing cutting and ruining to it that would probably make the original designer sick. Add to that lots of use with plasticard and many different bits from my collection, and I get this:

Da Hukkatrukka

"HONK HONK"

In case you are wondering, that emblem on the driver's door there is the ork glyph for "ZOG OFF!"

I painstakingly armored up the wheels. Rubber tires likely wouldn't last very long on the deserts of Angelis.

The driver area is just a floorboard so I can easily just stick the driver with his base on there. Also those 2 round mounts in the middle are magnetized for operators, who will be controlling the future gibbins.

A nice long trukk bed that comfortably fits 6 orks on bases. Add to that the 2 gubbins points in the middle, and a driver, I can fit a mob of 9 models on this trukk alone. That's key with Gorkamorka.

The spanner, and driver, for the Hukkatrukka. His one arm is holding the steering wheel. That was an aspect I liked about Mad Max: Fury Road, that the drivers pretty much used the steering wheels as the keys, of sorts. The other hand is holding a pistol grip. Just the grip because right now I didn't have enough teef to give him a weapon.

The whole mob together. Once I get some paint on these guys, then the sands of Da Skid will know the brutality of Nob Ugthug, an' Da 'Ard 'Eads!

I also have a lot of gubbins which I will not show yet. You will see those as our mobs progress. The trukk does have several hardpoints I planned ahead for mounting the gubbins I made up.

Zone Mortalis Tiles Project - Doors and Doodads COMPLETE

A huge wave of relief is upon me as this Zone Mortalis tiles project is complete. But really there is one more thing, to figure out a means of transporting the tiles. But there's no casting or painting involved in that project so I am comfortable with it.

So here are some more pictures with the new doors and doodads in action, but this time with my Deadzone figures. I built this project with that game in mind too.

8x Large Doors, 8x Small Doors, 2 double doors for the cell, and a Core with 4x gangplanks that lead to it.

The planks lead to the core where a Forgefather Engineer begins working on it.

I wonder what lies in Cell 13...

Oh no...

This can't be good.

I have 3" squares gridded off with subtle black lines. The idea is so these tiles can be used for Deadzone as well as whatever else, like 40k.

Forgesworn Eternals - Knight-Questor

Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower looks like a pretty cool game. I'll be looking into playing it sometime. The good thing is people are taking the box set and splitting it up and selling the individual minis and parts. This means I was able to buy the Stormcast Eternals hero mini, the Knight-Questor, for only about $12 on ebay. I couldn't resist adding another member into my custom stormhost.

For this Forgesworn Eternal, the quest never ends.

Along with the usual Irondrake headswap, I also added horns to it to show its rank as a hero, gave it a new belt buckle, replaced the sword with the Longbeard Old Guard two-handed axe, and added a rune enchantment to the shield.

knight-questor conversion

Zone Mortalis Tiles Project - Tiles COMPLETE

A HUGE portion of my Zone Mortalis tiles project is complete. The tiles. I am really happy with the way these turned out, so I took out some painted minis and my phone and did some action shots to show the potential of these tiles.

All 18 tiles!

Warplord Tich has found a vital part of the hulk's systems.

Tau expeditionary force find a defensible position.

This main control panel show the hulk's orbital and internal schematics.

A skirmish breaks out in front of the main pump control station.

Warplord Tich meddles with the stasis tanks.

An Inquisitorial retinue sniff out heresy and whatever knowledge they can recover.

Dare the long corridor to get to your objective.

The Acolytes encounter the Verminlord's minions in one of the ship's many many rooms.

Navigate the twists and turns to make your way through the hulk.

A possible view from your force in starting position.

It's not all claustrophobic corridors. Some rooms open up to large areas.

Control panels dot the many corridors of the hulk. The one is locked under Inquisitorial control.

This one has been captured by Verminlord Skrax' minions.

This has just been in the warp too long.

A possible escape hatch, or a lead to more of the hulk.

Through the viewglass there lies commotion...

Thankfully it's locked in the prison cell.

The vigilant servo-skull continues to document and scan the mysterious hulk. This is only the beginning.

I am almost done with the entire project. Next I just have to finish up the many doors and doodads for the tiles. More on that soon!