Custom hero for the narrative campaign

One of the options that Age of Sigmar 2.0 rules provided, and that I think was really good, was The Anvil of Apotheosis. I really liked the idea of building heroes for narrative games, and since I started collecting Disciples of Tzeentch this year, I decided to build my first custom hero - the loyal servant of the changer of Ways.  

I knew what I wanted - a warrior-mage, armed with a warhammer, riding a steed of Chaos (or some kind of daemonic mount). Since I really like Varanguard models, I used one of them as a base for the conversion. As you can see on the pictures below, the conversion is pretty basic and requires just a small amount of work - all you need to do is to swap the Varanguard head with Tzaangor (or Tzaangor Enlightened) one, and that's it. You might have to do a bit of work in order to make the Tzaangor head fit properly on the rider's torso, but that should be fairly easy.  

 

 

And here's a warscroll I created for this guy - the hero is 200 points (DP), with mount and all additional abilities/upgrades:

 

The good thing is that I can always use this model as a regular Chaos hero on Daemonic Mount and it also fits nicely with my Tzeentch WHFB army (I know, it's not on square base, but rebasing is something that I just don't want to do at this point).

Trying out new colour scheme

Finally, after almost six months, my Tzeentch models arrived! I wanted to start Tzeentch army this year, and purchased several kits back in January, but for some strange reason the order was going back and forth until it finally arrived last week. And I immediately assembled the miniature I was very excited about - Lord of Change:

Since I wanted this army to be my new "pet project" (because Sylvaneth are almost 100% done) I was thinking about the backstory and the characters during the past few months. I will write a blog post about that as well, but for now it is sufficient to say that I wanted them to be the main enemies of my Sylvaneth force in Ghyran. I also wanted the colour scheme to be very bright and vibrant, so I experimented a bit this morning. Here's the result (I used one of the extra parts from Lord of Change set for testing):

 

Here is the paint scheme that I used:

• GW Ahriman Blue as undercoat
• All-over wash of Vallejo Game Colour Blue Wash
• Drybrush with GW Calgar Blue
• Drybrush/edge highlight with GW Blue Horror
• Paint feathers with Vallejo Game Colour Squid Pink
• Apply wash of GW Druchii Violet to feathers
• Highlight with Vallejo Game Colour Squid Pink
• Highlight with GW White Scar
  

I am very satisfied wih this test turned out - and I can't wait to start painting the big guy :)

2021 hobby goals: progress so far

In January, I have posted my hobby goals for this year. Here's a small update on how it is going so far. The original January post can be found here.

When it comes to assembling miniatures, everything is going great and I am confident that not only I'll manage to achive my goal, but beat it completely and finish this year with no unassembled miniatures. Since January, I have built: 

• Start Collecting: Slaves to Darkness set (16 miniatures)
• 20 Kairic Acolytes
• Ogroid Myrmidon
• Custom Tzeentch hero (built by converting one of the Varanguard models) 
• Khagra's Ravegers WHU warband
  
• Unit of Kurnoth Hunters (3 models)
  
• Unit of Tree-Revenants (5 models)
  
• Converted Branchwraith out of the Branchwych model
• Abaddon the Despoiler 
• Unit of Havocs (5 models)
  
• Hellbrute
• Unit of Allarus Custodians (3 models)
  
• 2 units of Custodian Wardens (10 models total)
  
• All miniatures for the "Cursed City" board game (around 60 miniatures in total)

In my post back in January, I was not considering building Custeds models - however, as you can see, I have built a lot of them, so the only remaining Custodes unit at this moment is Vertus Praetors. I am still waiting on my Tzeentch stuff to arrive (the order got misplaced and has been lost in the Warp since February, but hopefully I will get it somewhere in June). At first, building that many models seemed a bit initimidating, but I spent 20-30 minutes almost every day to build a few smaller models or continue assembling a larger one. I did this usually during my break at work, or early in the morning, while the rest of the family were sleeping. As you can see, A LOT can be done in multiple small sessions.

When it comes to painting, there's a lot less progress here, because the recent job change and the day-to-day dynamic leaves me exhausted (and I tend to prioritize free time on excercise and reading). However, there is still progress and it's likely that I will hit my goals for this year. Since january, I have worked on the following models:

• I've finished one Varanguard model and I'm very close to finishing the first unit (out of the two). For some reason, while I like these models a lot, I struggle a lot when it comes to painting them
• I've finished unit of 3 Allarus Custodians! This wasn't among my goals for this year, but since I really love Custodes models and they are so easy to paint, I managed to paint this unit quickly.
• Kurnoth Huters are progressing nicely and I think I have nailed the new colour scheme.

I expect that I will struggle a lot less when I finish this first unit of Varanguard, because I've been working on them for a while and I now just want to have them finished. But in the same time, I don't want to do a half-assed job, but maintain the consistent quality (similar to my other minis). It seems that I have picked up a colour scheme that I really do not enjoy painting that much - this is a clear sign that I have to choose something else for the scond unit. Allarus paintjob was nice and easy, and I enjoyed it a lot (and it helped out to paint some WH40K minis, because I am working on Age of Sigmar models most of the time). 

So far, I am really satisfied with how everything is going. I played only one game of WH40K and a few Kill Team games so far, but I hope that will also improve during the rest of the year.

Warhammer Quest: Cursed City

 Last week, I got "Warhammer Quest: Cursed City"! I managed to get one copy from my local game store and also managed to get a few promo goodies - art cards, a badge and cool pen:

I really like these art cards, so here's a picture of them (personally, I plan to use them as bookmarks):

I have read the rules, watched "How to play" video and assembled almost all of the miniatures (only zombies need to be assembled at this point). The minis are really good - I especially like Vargskyr and Qualthis the Exile. The game looks very interesting and I will probably play my first solo game this or next week, and then post about it here. I will probably play the whole quest in the next few months, and turn that into a series of posts - so expect to see more "Cursed City" content on the blog. 

First miniatures I have ever painted

Recently, during a visit to my parents' house, I found these two old miniatures, which are the first miniatures I have ever painted (back in 2001, I think):

I bought these minis (and a few other ones) from a man who was visiting illustration & comic book workshop that I was attending back then. That workshop was a magical place where (besides learning how to draw comics), I met a lot of interesting people and learned about many cool games (including Warhammer). So, this person was selling recasts and he mentioned that these miniatures are used in a game called Warhammer (and basically, that's how I found out about the game). He also agreed to show us how the game is played.

So, next week he brought a fully painted 6th edition starter set (the one with empire and Orcs) and a bunch of us played a battle on one of the tables in the studio, with artbooks and comics used as hills and obstacles :) I really liked the game, but at that time, it was very hard to find Warhammer miniatures in Serbia and they were really expensive (and the country was recovering from economic sanctions and bombing campaign, so the whole economic situation was not very good). So, I bought a dozen of recasts - I understood they were not the "real" miniatures, but they were cheap and it was a first step, anyway. At that time I also learned that there was a set of fan-made rules in Serbian, called "Sword & sorcery". These rules were used for playing small skirmish games with just a handful of miniatures (much like Age of Sigmar Skirmish or Warcry rulesets). I managed to find copy of those rules as well and played a few battles with my brother using these miniatures. 

Some time later, I learned about the "White Dwarf" magazine - also from a guy that visited the studio from time to time. As far as I remember, he was not collecting Warhammer miniatures, but he liked the miniatures in general and he liked the magazine as well. So, I borrowed a few issues from him - one issue every week. I would look at the pictures of miniatures and battlefields for hours and I started reading lore articles, rules articles and painting articles. I carried the WD to school as well, and read it with a firend of mine during the breaks between the classes. 

By reading painting articles in the magazine, I actually learned the basics of miniature painting. I found a bunch of oil paints that my mother used while she was painting and decided to paint a few miniatures using them. Both of these miniatures on the picture above were painted with oil paints, using some god-awful brushes (and I did not wash the brushes properly, so I destroyed a few of them while painting these Orcs :D). I remember that I tried to make my own washes by diluting paint with water and applying it in the same way as wash (actually, it somewhat worked) and I also used tea and sand as a flock for the base. 

I am glad that I found these two miniatures, because they remind me on those days when I discovered this beautiful hobby (and how amazed I was with all the possibilities it offered). Today, I have several armies for multiple game systems, but back then, when I was a teenager - it was a distant dream. And I also love them because they remind me on my first attempts at miniature painting - so I can see how my skills have progressed since then.