Battle report: Stormcast Eternals vs. Orruk Warclans (1000 points)

Few weeks ago, I played my first game of Age of Sigmar after a while. My friend Nemanja, with whom I have played Warmachine for years, finally decided to give AoS a try, so he assembled a 1000-point Ironjawz army. I played my Stormcast Eternals army - actually, this is the first time I am playing them! Also, my army was almost fully painted, so that was additional motivation for choosing Stormcast over some of my other armies. 

Since this was Nemanja's first game of AoS and my first game after a long break, we decided to use only battleplans, battle tactics and grand strategies from the Core Book (in order to reduce the complexity as much as possible).

Here are the lists:

ORRUK WARCLANS (IRONJAWZ)

LEADER

Orruk Megaboss (140) - General, Mega Bossy
Orruk Warchanter (115)
Orruk Weirdnob Shaman (90) - Arcane tome 

BATTLELINE

Orruk Ardboys (170)
Orruk Brutes (160)

OTHER

Ironskull’s Boyz (80)
Orruk Gore-gruntas (170)

STORMCAST ETERNALS (KNIGHTS EXCELSIOR)

LEADER

Lord-Imperatant (175) - General, Shock ad Awe
Knight-Vexillor with Banner of Apotheosis (160) - Arcane Tome

BATTLELINE

3 x Annihilators (180)
3 x Annihilators (180)
5 x Vindictors (130)
5 x Vindictors (130)

ROUND 1

I have the priority and I decide to let Nemanja go first. He moves up the board and scores his chosen battle tactic - "Seize the Center". On my turn, I choose battle tactic "Break their spirit" and I put Arcane Shield on one unit of Vindictors. Annihilators arrive at the end of movement phase, dealing enough damage with Blazing Impact to kill one Gore-Grunta. Lord-Imperatant shoots and deals single point of damage to another Gore-Grunta. Both units of Annihilators charge: one fails the charge, but the other one deals just enough mortal wounds to kill the wounded Gore-Grunta and the last member of the unit is killed during combat. 

End of round 1

ROUND 2

Nemanja wins the priority and decides to go first and chooses battle tactic "Broken ranks". He then casts Arcane Bolt on Annihilators (dealing 1 mortal wound), puts Mystic Shield on his Boyz, but fails to roll good range for Green Puke. Warchanter gives 'Ard Boyz "Get 'em beat!". Boyz charge Vindictors and use All-out Attack, while I use All-out Defense. However, despite many successful attacks, Boyz score only a single wound on Vindictors. Meanwhile, Annihilators kill two Brutes, but loose one of their own as well. On my turn, I choose "Repel" as my battle tactic. Both units of Vindictors and Lord-Vexillor attack the Boyz, but manage to kill just a couple of them. Annihilators kill one more Brute, while the second unit of Annihilators runs, trying to get to somewhere relevant. 

Lord-Imperatant and his trusty gryph-hound observe the battle

ROUND 3

Nemanja wins the priority again. His battle tactic is "Repel". Ironskull's Boyz charge the Vindictors and join the melee in near the center of  the table. Shaman decides to charge the Annihilators. Ironskull's boys actually roll very good and kill 3 Vindictors, while Shaman does nothing (no surprise there) and is then beaten to death. On my turn, I return all 3 of the slain Vindictors using Knight-Vexillor's banner. I manage to kill most of the 'Ard Boys, while Annihilators take over one of the objectives on the other side of the table (which was my battle tactic as well - "Conquer"). 

End of round 3

However, at this point we had to finish the game. We counted the victory points, and Stormcast won with the score 11 - 6. Despite Orruks ending up in a tough spot by the end of turn 3, both Nemanja and I were really satisfied with the game. I like that the Stormcast are versatile army and can provide multiple playstyles, but most of all I like the fact that I can play a lot of heavy infantry in a single list (it's obvious that Trollblood bricks were my main choice back when I played Warmachine :D). Annihilators are great and with a bit of luck, the turn where they arrive from Azyr can be devastating (and having  Lord-Imperatant helps them quite a bit).
 
UPDATE: Soon after this game, we played a rematch with the same lists and it was a very different game - Nemanja had a much better understanding of his army now. Stormcast managed to win again, but the game went back and forth and we both suffered heavy casualties. Megaboss is a real beast and as soon as he kills a unit or two things get very nasty! We will probably add a bit more variety in one of our next games with some of the scenarios from latest General's Hadbook. Stay tuned! 

Painting Stormcast Eternals Annihilators - alternate scheme

Few months ago, I have decided to build a small Stormcast Eternals army. As I have mentioned in one of my previous posts, I really like the look of Thunderstrike Stormcast, so I based the army primarily on those models - or, to be even more precise, on Annihilators. When I realized that you could play Annihilators as Battleline troops in Knights Excelsior army, it was easy to choose which Stormhost to play. So I ended up with Stormcast models from Dominon set and several units of Annihilators on top of that :D 

I opted for gold armour on most of the miniatures because since I painted Custodes, I was very confident that I could paint similar colour scheme fairly quickly. However, for my general (Lord-Imperatant) and one unit of Annihilators I wanted to do something else - I wanted them to be different from the rest of the army. I wanted the general to stand out anyway, but then I got the idea of him having some kind of "honor guard" or his most trusted warriors. Since I did not like the original Knights Excelsior colour scheme (the one with bright white armour), I experimented a bit until I found alternative scheme that I liked a lot. You can see the result on the pictures below.

If you are interested in painting the armour on your Stormcast (or some other miniatures) in a similar way, here's how to do it:

• the miniature was primed with white primer
• an all-over wash of GW Nighthaunt Gloom was applied (for bit lighter colour, you can also apply a mix of Nighthaunt Gloom and Lhamian Medium)
• apply a light drybrush of Vallejo Wolf Gray all over the armour
• add edge highlights to armour plates using GW White Scar

Lord-Imperatant will share the same colour scheme, but he is not finished yet - as soon as that happens, I will post the pictures. 

Be'lakor, the Dark Master

Last month, I started painting Be'lakor, the Dark Master and I also posted an update about it. Well, it is finished now and I can proudly say that this is one of the best paintjobs that I've done recently. During the past few months, I have managed to paint a lot more models than I thought possible and I am very happy because of that. In the span of 5 weeks, I've painted Be'lakor, Yndrasta and almost finished my Knight-Vexillor with Banner of Apotheosis. I still work in smaller batches (from 30 minutes to 2 hours, depending on time available) and I try to keep it consistent as much as possible. The results are definitely showing - and I think I will be able to finish quite a few miniatures by the end of the year.

As for Be'lakor, I really like the model and paintjob itself was fun and very enjoyable - especially because I was able to paint most of the model using drybrushing (my favorite technique). The colour scheme I chose is a bit different from the original one - as I mentioned in the previous update, I think that the original scheme is too dark and you have a hard time trying to visually separate the different parts of the model. In the same time, I tried not to go to another extreme and make model too bright, because Be'lakor is, after all, the Dark Master (so I tried to keep it "dark", but not too dark). Below are the pictures of the fully painted model.

And besides looking great, Be'lakor can be included in several of my Warhammer 40K armies, so I look forward to fielding it (I really want to try Disciples of Be'lakor list). Unfortunately, seems like the most interesting list that I wanted to try in Age of Sigmar - Legion of the First Prince - will be completely changed in the new battletome, so I won't be able to run demonic legion in AoS once the new book is released. Ah well, Be'lakor will now have to hang out with my Chaos Warriors, Knights and Varanguard (and that should be a pretty good company after all :D )

Yndrasta, the Celestial Spear

In one of my previous posts, I mentioned taking a break when working on a particularly complex paintjob and painting something completely different during that break. This was an advice on miniature painting that have read somewhere long time ago - but started using it only recently. Now I wish I've done that earlier!

In the past, I've struggled a lot with some of the models that I've painted, because certain phases of the process were either very complex and demanding or easy but time-consuming (and usually, utterly boring). Also, there were situations when I had time to paint, but I simply did not feel like it. In all of these situations, I usually pushed myself to continue working on the model - but, on multiple occasions, that led to the results that I was not happy with. And it's really bad f you take a look at the model later, knowing that you half-assed it. It's normal to burn out a bit when you work on something demanding for a longer periods of time, but forcing yourself is really not the solution. What I should have done was taking a break. And during that break, you either do something else and leave painting aside, or (if you still want to paint) you work on a different model. There is a good chance that you will feel refreshed and motivated when you return to the model that you were originally working on.   

And that is exactly what I did when I decided to make a break from painting Be'lakor, the Dark Master.

As I have mentioned in my previous post, I really enjoyed working on Be'lakor. I have also painted most of the model very quickly (which motivated me a lot), but when I needed to paint his wings, I had to stop and think on what exactly I wanted to do with them. And because I liked the model a lot, I did not want to hurry. And so - I made a break.

During this break, I did a bit of research on how to paint demonic wings (by looking at a lot of pictures of not only Be'lakor, but other similar models as well) and I kept momentum when it comes to painting by working on Yndrasta, the Celestial Spear. I knew from the start how I wanted to paint Yndrasta and I also knew that I could finish the model fairly quickly. The whole paintjob took 6 - 8 hours (done as multiple smaller sessions over the course of the week) and I was very satisfied with the result. In the same time, working on something entirely different kept the painting (as an activity) fresh and fun. It is important to note that, if you want to do something similar, this "plan B" should be a less complex/smaller model - it may not be a good idea to switch from working on one complex model to another. I would aim for something smaller in scope, that would shake the things up and give you an opportunity to actually finish something. The worst possible scenario is to start working on two difficult models - and give up on both of them out of frustration.

 

So, here's how my Yndrasta looks like:

And since I have figured out how I want Be'lakor's wings to look like - I can't wait to finish the model now!

Painting Be'lakor, the Dark Master - WIP update

Two weeks ago, I started painting Be'lakor, the Dark Master. I really like this model - not only because it looks great, but also because it can fit in multiple armies I play for both Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40K. However, I think that the paint scheme on the box cover is not the best one, so I decided to paint it in a bit different way. My main complaints regarding the box cover paint scheme are lack of contrast and the model being too dark. In my opinion, certain parts of the model could be much more emphasized (base, sword and parts of the armour, for example) but instead, they are not easily distinguishable from everything else. Wings are particularly problematic, because they are a large surface with not much going on (except for the chains). So, with that in mind, I started working on the model. It's still far from finished, but I am really satisfied with the progress so far. Here are some pictures:

I tried to address all of the mentioned issues. I opted to use gold for the armour and the anklets/bracelets - because I think it works much better and it was also used on the old Be'lakor model. From the very beginning, I knew that I wanted to paint the sword in very bright colours (and match it with the eyes) so I opted for this "green warpflame" effect that I used on my Lord of Change. When it comes to wings, my plan is to paint the membrane in some lighter colour and then add shading and maybe spots (similar to ones that the reptiles have on their skin). 

So far, I have really enjoyed working on this model and I can't wait to have it fully painted and put on the table. Of course, I'll post some pictures here as soon as it's finished :)