Age of Sigmar background primer: Soul Wars

Between the final installment of the Realmgate wars books and the release of the new edition of the Age of Sigmar core rules a lot of background has been added to the Mortal Realms. As my last series of background primers was/is rather popular it seems an apt time to bring everybody who has not quite gotten around to reading all the background up to speed.

Undead play a rather large role in the latest part of the story.

Grot Rock Lobbers and Aelf Loremaster step up to the plate

My vacation started this week and before leaving for exotic Denmark (no plans to visit Yorick) I had some serious time to paint. I took part of this time to clean out my entire hobbyzone (King Augeas' stables had nothing on it). The rest was spent with the Silver Tower Tzaangor (mentioned here) and a lot of models and projects lounging around on the shelves. The first of these to be finished were an Aelf Loremaster and this battery of Goblin Grot Rock Lobbers.

Buying second hand models with missing pieces lowers the price, give you the chance to be creative and makes a dent in the old bits box.

Finished painting Warhammer Quest: The Silver Tower...

To be sure, I finished the models from Warhammer Quest: The Silver Tower, I've only played the first few missions of the game so far. I bought the game on the third of July in 2016 (so it only took two years ;)). I played The Silver Tower back in 2016 and had a lot of fun with it and I did actually finish most of the models around then, except for one familiar and five Tzaangor...man I hate the Tzaangor. First though, a colorful group shot.

My Warhammer Quest: The Silver Tower miniatures all sport a coat two thin coats of paint.

Painting Malign Sorcery AoS models

The new AoS edition promised to iron out some oddities in the original ruleset (suicidal archers ignoring the monsters in front of them to shoot at some target in the back). And that's nice. But the true fun starts with the expansion of the magic rules. A system geared towards cinematic moments and dramatic play needs some things that go boom with panache. After briefly considering scratch building, I finally caved and bought the box. To be quite honest I was planning to buy the Core Rule Book and the new General's Handbook and leave it there, but I caved so badly in the store, my wallet is still crying... Anyway between too many other projects I've started painting the Malign Sorcery models and here is the first batch.

Presenting some persistent spell effects that remind me of the classic 'vortex of chaos' that is just begging to be reintroduced now.

Age of Sigmar Campaign - The quest for the Starforge (part one)

The release of a new edition of Age of Sigmar seemed like an excellent time to set-up a small scale campaign. After a bit of a chat at my local gaming club (Sword Brethren Eindhoven) I was warned to tone my ambitions down to make it work (excellent advice, I tend to get carried away). In the end I proposed running three linked scenario's one-on-one, leaving all the more complicated multiplayer campaign planning for some other time...

Oldhammer fun with the Nightmare Legion and metal zombies followed by a dash of heresy

With the influx of new old models I decided to shove all the other projects aside and have a little Oldhammer fun painting the Nightmare Legion. Now I remember the day my friends and I bought this box set (along with Ruglud's Armoured Orcs, Skarloc's Wood Elf Rangers and some other stuff) at the only store we knew that carried GW in quantity. It was about an hour's drive so visits where confined to birthdays and special occasions. After the others left Warhammer I took over their miniatures only to sell them on years later. Now they are back in my possession. I love this unit, particularly the helmet of the unit champion, and I've been dreaming about repainting them for quite a few years now. Here are the results.

Welcome back to my collection Nightmare Legion.

Quick paint stripping update

I don't think this'll be the most exciting post in the world, but it'll be short (so that's worth something (I hope)). At the start of this week I pulled a bunch of old metal models out of a week long soak in acetone and discovered the ancient paint job wouldn't budge. I ended up tossing the lot in Biostrip-20 (these guys should just get over it and start sponsoring this blog ;) ). That is the environmentally friendly (but don't let that fool you) and extremely efficient goop that safely strips paint of metal and plastic miniatures. This was the result of the acetone (warning re-used picture):

I don't know what paint was used on these models (I know some have very old (Coat d'Arms tub) GW paints). As you can see acetone did not make an impression on them.

Rebasing and painting Moonclan Grots

Of the many Warhammer Fantasy starter sets over the years I have to admit liking the Battle for Skull Pass (7th edition) the most. It featured an intersting Dwarf army including some fences and a cart for the miners. On the Goblin (Grot) side it had a tied up Trollslayer and a Shaman's hut. It had a lot of miniatures (32 Dwarves and a cannon and 73 Goblins). Nicest of all: it frequently appears on second hand sales for rather reasonable prices. I have at least two Battle for Skull Pass sets (and maybe three). When Age of Sigmar came along the Night Goblins turned into Moonclan Grots (and the Spider Riders became Spiderfang Grots) and basing was left up to the person with the paintbrush. To save time sticking models on the table I based my Moonclan Grots like this.

Multiple models on a base speeds up play, but turned out to become a nuisance around terrain.

Stormcast, Ministorum Priest and old lead or how to keep busy doing many things at once

Almost two weeks have come and gone without posting. Time flies when you're having fun. I've actually been kept rather busy with work by day and happily smearing paint on unsuspecting miniatures by night. I just regularly forget to take pictures. Well let's have a quick run-through of some of my projects right now.

Now this guy looks grim enough to fit in the distopia that is the grim darkness of Warhammer 40K.