Warhammer 6th Edition rulebook and a return to Oldhammer

During the past few months, my work was a lot more demanding, which meant that I had a lot less time for hobby activities (or I was simply too tired). What little spare time I had, I used mostly for reading some books and slowly painting my Lord of Change (and I'll cover that in another blog post). 

However, during this period a new edition of Age of Sigmar was also launched. I did not expect a new edition of the rules at least for a year (or even more), so I was a little surprised when it was announced. So, I read the core rules as well as the army updates and I realized that I have a lot of mixed feelings about the new edition.

Now, I enjoyed playing Age of Sigmar since 1st edition (as well as my friends). However, I think that there were certain parts of the game (like line of sight and targeting rules, for example) that left a lot of room for improvement. But, when I read the rules for the 3rd edition I realized that the game went in a strange direction: more complexity was added to the game but in the areas that were either completely new, or that were working fine; there were several aspects of the game that could be improved that were left intact. I always had the feeling that Age of Sigmar could benefit from more complex core rules - especially when it came to terrain and line of sight (there were some other things as well, but I feel like these two are the most important ones). Instead, the core rules maintained low level of complexity over the years, while model and army rules became more complex. Now, with the latest edition, core rules did become a lot more complex (which I think is good) - but the same problem areas still remained. I'm not saying that heroic actions, monster rampages, new command abilities or new ways of scoring victory points are bad changes - not at all! I think they are all very interesting changes and I can't wait to play my first game of the new edition. All I'm trying to say is that it was not the kind of complexity that I wanted to see the most - and that is is probably the biggest "flaw" of the newest edition (at least in my opinion). For example, I think that 9th edition of Warhammer 40K did a pretty good job with rules changes and I expected to see some of those changes transported to Age of Sigmar.

In the same time, during the last few months I started to think about playing Warhammer Fantasy Battles again. I'm excited about The Old World, but I also feel a bit nostalgic about the old WHFB editions, especially the 6th edition. I played old WHFB for a short time: I started playing Warmachine early during the MK1 and that was my primary game for many years. Later, I switched to playing Age of Sigmar, but I was always looking back at WHFB. Part of the reason was that I played WHFRP and I loved the setting, but I also missed certain elements of the game. Not only that - I missed the spirit of the game. Age of Sigmar is wondrously diversified and the minis are great, but the setting still lacks identity as strong as the one that the Old World or Warhammer 40K have (or even Warmachine/Hordes, for that matter). All these feelings, combined with the fact that due to pandemic and lack of free time I didn't play a lot of games, together with what I wrote above regarding the new edition of AoS, resulted in a decision to finally bite the bullet and start "Oldhammer" (or would it be "Middlehammer"?) project. One of my friends liked the idea as well - even better! This way, I could still enjoy Age of Sigmar, but in the same time I could "scratch that itch" when it comes to playing a different type of game.

And so, a few days ago a package arrived on my doorstep - the rulebook for Warhammer Fantasy 6th edition. I managed to find a copy in a perfect condition in one of the Facebook groups for selling and trading Warhammer stuff (and the price was great as well). Here are some pictures: 

Right now, I am working on a short narrative campaign, that involves Hordes of Chaos and the Empire. I will play Tzeentch Chaos army - however, I will be mostly using new models and I won't rebase them. I know that this can lead to some issues, but my friend is fine with this, because nobody wants to have his minis ripped from the existing bases and glued to the old, square ones - especially if they are painted. 

So, in the following weeks/months I will cover the whole campaign and my Tzeentch force in the series of posts.

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.