LVO Army - Completely based and ready!

And that's it! My whole army is completely ready. I am so excited to take this there and play some games!

Lord Dunhill Behrunsson, Lord of the Forthammer Clan Throng. Warden King in Steamsuit

Drake Dunsson (master cogsmith), Norri Behrunsson (battle standard bearer), and the Unforged

Longbeards

Irondrakes

Organ Gun

Cannon

Lord-Celestant Hanzbur Anvilhelm, Lord of the Anvilhelms host, of the Forgesworn Eternals

Lord-Relictor Volstrad Runeseer, and Knight-Questor Quillon Stoneshield

Liberators

Retributors

Prosecutors

If any of you are attending the LVO for whatever, please swing by and say hi. I will be participating in the AoS grand tournament on Saturday and Sunday only, let me know you follow my blog, I would really appreciate it!

LVO Army Transportation

I have to take my army on a plane. And there is no way I am checking that piece of luggage! So I found for cheap a piece of carry-on luggage, with the sole purpose of being my army carrier.

With some cardboard cutting and hotglue-ing, I have made a couple sectioned model trays. I may line some of them with some thin foam material for extra safety, but this should ensure my models fit securely in the overhead compartment! Hopefully.

Only 2 trays deep. The Prosecutors are turning out to be very problematic for space, but definitely more manageable with the wings conversion I did to them.

Gamer A.D.D - Rogue Stars

I am a fan of the Song of Blades and Heroes game system. I've done a few posts on it before. It's a great little fantasy skirmish game that can be easily taught, picked up, and provides a dynamic gaming experience. When I head the creator, Andrea Sfiligoi, built a scifi ruleset that was published by Osprey Wargames (who also published Frostgrave), I knew I wanted to check it out. Also I learned the art within was illustrated by Johan Egerkrans who also runs one of my favorite blogs that I follow. So with some of my Christmas money I ordered a copy and read through it.

The game is advanced. It has a lot of rules and a lot of conditions. Your characters can have 3 different types of condition tokens on them at any one time, including pin tokens, stress tokens, and wound tokens. These tokens represent penalties for different types of rolls and bonuses for your opponent depending on the rolls. The amount of special rules available to making characters isn't as much of an issue as I am used to it with SoBaH, but the sheer amount of tables needed for referencing is pretty high. Attacking and damage alone has you go through about 5 different tables in a sequence. It's a little daunting, but you can quickly remember common roll modifiers and table look-ups to speed-up play. But a cheat sheet would sure help as I was flipping through the book quite a bit on our initial playthrough.

We were excited to play this game using my Zone Mortalis tiles, and it worked quite well on them.

However there were some aspects about it I really enjoyed. It borrowed a few key things from SoBaH which I thought were best about that system. It's still a bring-whatever-minis-and-stat-them-up type games. So I could use whatever scifi figures I wanted, and make their profiles to match the miniature. This is especially friendly to conversions as a lot of options in the book will cover most creative ideas I can think of for miniatures. The other aspect it took is the activations and initiative. Where you rolled on each figure to activate your minis, and your opponent got to react to them based on bad rolls and even attempt to steal initiative away from you, switching to your opponent's turn. The game experience can be active for both players, and that is very cool.

Some people are calling this a scifi Frostgrave, which I don't think it is at all. The model count per side is only about 4-6 models, and really can't go much higher with how activations and initiative is handled. It doesn't even feel like Necromunda. To me it feels closer to each player is bringing a team of  RPG Player Characters that face off against each other. Perhaps another good comparison is to GW's old Inquisitor game.

We didn't get through a single game as my brother, Jarom, and I played. We were both learning to play and things went really slow. We could tell though that it did start to speed up near the end as we learned about the common target number rolls and table conditions. But this game does take a lot of practice, so it's not as friendly to new players as SoBaH is, especially those new to wargaming. We do want to give it another chance. There may be a lot of rules to go through for actions, but it provides a lot of detail to them, like damage locations and weapon ranges.

My brother and I have had our own scifi setting homebrewing in our heads for quite some time. We had already adapted it to a simple RPG that I outlined on my other blog (which I don't do much with anymore). We were looking for a miniatures game that could do it justice, and this might be it. Our initial thoughts were for Deadzone, but that game is not as adaptable as this.

After a couple read-throughs, I made some useful reference cards for recording your characters. These are meant to be 3"x5" so they can fit into large card sleeves.

And here are a few examples of the cards in use. This is my 200xp team. The Oathbound. In our setting is a massive heavy world rich with minerals, and generations of Fairin (the common human-like race of the galaxy) have been working on the world of Urachbach. They formed the Urachbach Mining Guild. A people of hard work ethics and very dwarven policies when it comes to grudges and righting wrongs. One of the things they have are the Oathbound. When a group has wronged or shorted the Urachbach mining guild, the Oathbound are set out to track them down and get reparations, under threat of death. They can only seek this justice in neutral space, so a lot of it has to do with timing and investigation.

Obviously this is my little Deadzone Forge Fathers collection, which I am looking forward to painting soon. I like this game because it encourages you to give each model its own style and personality, while keeping with a theme for your force as a whole. There is no 'generic footsoldier', they are all named characters. Undoubtedly you will be seeing more about this game sometime in the future.

Tau Plans and New Stuff

Of course with a new year, I am already thinking about what I plan to bring to the next Harvester of Souls in October. I need time to prep for these things. And I feel the pull of the Tau again, after taking a break from them for so long.

Now I will be using the latest Codex edition, which will be allowing me to run a type of list I have dreamed about for a very long time. A list consisting entirely of battlesuits and drones, thanks to using 3 formations. It consists of a Commander, 9 Crisis Suits, 3 Broadsides, Riptide, Ghostkeel, 6 Stealthsuits, and a whole bunch of drones.

As I always want to feature my conversions whenever I can, I will be building some new suits and well as using some old favorites. I will be using my XV86 conversions for 3 of the crisis suits, and my XV9's for 3 more. In that case I will be magnetizing their twin-linked burst cannons and replace them with missile pods. I will also need to re-base them onto 50mm bases to make them legal as XV8's, as the new XV8 kit (which is one of my favorite model kits now, btw) comes with 50mm bases.

On top of this, with my lovely wife gifting me the new Crisis kit for Christmas, I made 3 more suits. This is a conversion I have been wanting to do for a long time now. The idea is give them a more tacti-cool 2-handed rifle hold pose. Each fusion blaster is long-barreled which will count as a twin-linked fusion blaster, to account for accuracy and precision. I also went for a different head style, using a support system bit (commonly represents Target Lock) with some other bits.

Also with some of my winnings from the last Harvester, I bought the Commander kit. I have some semi-radical plans with it. I have thought about what if an Ethereal piloted a battlesuit, and that will be the focus of the conversion. More on it in a later post.

My brother, Jarom, got me a small gift for Christmas, which I appreciate. He has been working on a Gue'vesa themed Tau force lately, and gave me the DS8 Tactical Support Turrets from his Fire Team kits he had. I built one normally (right), and a one to represent how I believe it would look like while hovering (left). The story with these turrets is they follow the strike team around in hovering, and the team can plant theirs to deploy the weapon. Only when it is planted the weapon can be used. In this case I prefer the Smart Missile System.

And finally, this may have nothing to do with my Harvester list, but I have always wanted to add Tetras to my army. I faced them in one of my games at this last Harvester, and they were effective and looked like a lot of fun. My opponent also used the official models for them, where I commonly saw people use stripped down Piranhas as proxies, which are generally much bigger. The Tetra is deceptively small, more close to the size of jetbike models. So that gave me an idea. How would I go about making a Tau Jetbike? So with a bits order I got the core parts of the Reaver Jetbikes, and tried on the drone and Coldstar Commander thrusters (which I will not be using on my Ethereal Commander). This is just a preliminary stick-together concept of course, so things will likely change, but I think with these core components I can make a decent Tau jetbike Tetra counts-as.

2017 Year Goals

Here are my goals for the new year. I really hope this year will be just as productive as the last.

HARD GOALS
These are goals that I must get done this year.

• Finish my AoS LVO army. This includes finishing the basing and creating storage trays for carry-on luggage. If there is room, perhaps create a simple display board. This needs to be done before the end of January.
• Tau Suit Spam for the Harvester. Our yearly trip to the Harvester will so far happen again, but I can feel the call of my Tau. So far I have an idea of a list idea that is very suit heavy, something I have always wanted to be able to run. Thanks to the formation in this latest edition, I can do it. This of course assuming the rumored 8th edition doesn't shake things up too much (which I am honestly hoping it does). For my list some new suits will need to be built, and some existing models painted.
• Heavy Gear Blitz! I really want to get a chance to play this game, so my goal is to get some of my new shiny plastic minis assembled and painted. So I can finally play one of my most beloved game franchises.

SOFT GOALS
Things I would like to get done before the year's end, but generally only to break the monotony of the Hard Goals.

• Deadzone Forge Fathers. Keen observers will notice in my last post that my Forge Father minis were on the painting handle-pots in my deadzone minis photo. I have been anxious to get them on the painting table since I built them, but the Covens and LVO armies have been taking priority.
• Dark Eldar Space Pirates. I have a lofty idea in mind for a Codex: Dark Eldar army to run alongside my Verminlord Skrax. The idea is going full space pirate theme with them doing some converting. I will talk about my plans in a later post.
• More Deadzone armies. These are great scifi minis I could use for Deadzone or other scifi skirmish games. Primarily I like the Plague and Enforcer minis. My Reaper BONES scifi minis could use some paint on them as well.

LOFTY GOALS
Things that will most likely not get done before the year's end, but maybe depending on how the moods strike me.

• Paint my Gorkamorka armies.
• Build and paint more of my AoS Nurgle army.
• Paint some of my fantasy Reaper BONES minis for Song of Blades and Heroes.

2016 Year in Review

This was an exciting year for me with a lot of completion on a lot of projects. Very productive. So here is a wrap-up for the year, as well as an update on my many projects.

Zone Mortalis Tiles
I spent countless hours casting the bits, gluing them together, and painting these tiles. It's a total of 18 tiles with doodads, and they have gotten some play time. Our local game store had an event where my tiles handled about 4,000 points between 4 players. I am surprised at how well they handled the punishment, and the players were all impressed with the table. They are a little brittle, but that is due to the material used, where I went a little cheap. A lofty goal in the future will be to create a fantasy themed set of tiles, but I may splurge for the good dental plaster if I can find out where to get a hold of some nearby.

The Coven of Verminlord Skrax (Warhammer 40,000 - Dark Eldar Haemonculus Covens)
This was quite a project that yielded a proud achievement for me. A lot of effort when into the modeling and painting and display board, not to mention the wonderful comic illustrated by my brother. It was all paid off when I won Best in Appearance at the 40k GT Harvester of Souls. A trophy which is still proudly displayed in our living room.

Jarom's Orks Commission Here and Here
The undertaking for illustrating my comic was no small feat, so I gladly paid in painting small portion of Jarom's Orks in exchange. Jarom also took Best in Orks at the same tournament.

Gorkamorka
My brother and I haven't really acted on our plans to run a little Gorkamorka campaign yet. Both of us live a distance from each other, and he has been busy with a job enough as it is. So Gogmagog's Questing Knights (Mutiez) and Da 'ard 'eads (Gorkers) will remain unpainted for now. I am looking forward to fielding Da Hukka Trukka on the table sometime in the near future.

Heavy Gear Blitz!
My Heavy Gear plastics kickstarter delivered this year. I now have a lot of plastic sprues of tiny mecha. I have been a very long fan of Heavy Gear's setting, but never got a chance to play it in any form. This game seems pretty solid, and my brother has expressed a desire to give it a shot. I look forward to that sometime next year.

Deadzone
My addiction to small skirmish games continues even still. Deadzone is an example of my enthusiasm that builds in a game in intense bursts. Then it dies out. I am still up for playing games with it though. So I have several small armies built for this game, but the beauty of most small skirmish games I own, a lot of the figures can be used interchangeably. So even when I am not playing Deadzone, I can still use the terrain and minis for something; like Rogue Stars... but that's another post for another day.

Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower
The three of us (Jarom, Timo, and I) have been slowly working our way through the trials of the Silver Tower, and watching the story unfold and our characters progress. Jarom is playing an Orruk Warchanter, Timo is playing a Chaos Lord, and I am controlling the Order side with a Cogsmith and Lord-Relictor. What's even sweeter about this is how little money I have invested in this game and we are getting a lot out of it.

Censers and Tocsins (Warhammer: Age of Sigmar - Nurgle Rotbringers and Clan Pestilens)
This project will likely be set on the back burner. I love the idea of a Nurgle themed fantasy army, but until I get that burst of inspiration for it going again, I won't be doing much with it for now. I do believe I have some good ideas for the Nurgle Rotbringers at least. The Skaven, however, I can only think to make everything as-is. Which is fine for most, but I become passionate about something when I can think of a unique angle to take with it.

Forgesworn Eternals (Warhammer: Age of Sigmar - Stormcast Eternals)
I am proud to say my entire Forgesworn Eternal army is completely painted (barring some basing I still have left to do). Not something I can say much of for my big armies. I really don't plan on adding anything to this. I feel I have gotten all the minis I am interested in. I was considering some Dracoth Cavalry to make more dire bear riders, but the problem is finding variations of suitable bear heads, of which I have only really found the one. But for now I'm good.

Forthammer Clan Throng (Warhammer: Age of Sigmar - Dispossessed and Ironweld Arsenal)
Not all of my Warhammer Duardin are among the ranks of the painted, but a good portion of them are. I experimented with a unique paint scheme for dwarfs that I think has paid off to a color that complements my Forgesworn Eternals. All I have left for this LVO army is some basing, and maybe a display board. Carry-on luggage restrictions are becoming an issue.

That sums up this very awesome year. In the new year I will outline my goals for 2017.

Forthammer Clan Throng - Warden King in Steamsuit (Painted)

The master of the duardin clan, Dunhill Forthammer, is complete. It is this Warden King who will lead the throng, and with the aide of the Forgesworn Eternals, will reclaim their lost holds in Chamon.

This marks the last miniature in my army to be painted. All that's left are the bases (which I will be putting this guy on a bigger base) and the display board if I can manage it. This is going to be tight because I have to make sure this all fits merely in a carry-on piece of luggage, which may mean my board will be too small. I'll have to see what I can manage. I also need to build miniature storage trays that fit in that same carry-on. There is no way I am putting this stuff through checked luggage.