Introducing the blog, Tomb Kings progress and a campaign game day

Greetings friends, and welcome to the first post of The CollardHammer Special! I have been considering writing a blog about my experience and progress with the Warhammer hobby for some time and have finally decided to take the plunge for the new year. The motivation for writing in this way is to help me understand how I am improving over time across all areas of the hobby, to force me to get hobby work done (there can be no blog without content after all) and to help alleviate the sense of anxiety I feel sharing my hobby with other people.  My principal idea is therefore to use this blog as both a diary and sharing platform. I am aiming for posts to consist of short updates, limited to 1000 words, accompanied by plenty of pictures. Other topics in the general area of tabletop gaming, for example RPGs or Magic the Gathering, will probably also appear sporadically. I hope to publish one of these posts every week, generally aiming to do so on Sunday.

With the motivation and format of the blog introduced, let’s jump into the current state of my hobby and some targets for the year ahead. Currently, I have quite a wide range of army projects across a number of different game systems:

·        Sisters of Battle

·        Imperial Agents

·        Drukhari

·        Flesh Eater Courts

·        Sons of Behemat

·        Tomb Kings of Khemri

·        Night Lords (Horus Heresy era)

My main targets for the year are to clear some of the backlog in these projects. For 40K, progress is likely to be driven by the ongoing narrative crusade campaign that I am both GMing and playing in. I am aiming to be able to play a 2k Penitent Host list, which will mean painting more Arcoflagellants, Repentia and Mortifiers, alongside possibly more Rhinos. In addition, I would like to be able to field a 1k Veiled Blade Elimination Force, requiring several Imperial Agents infantry units to be completed. The Drukhari project is really on the backburner, and I will consider reducing the scope by moving on some of the backlog I don’t feel I am realistically going to complete.

Moving on to the other game systems, in AoS, I do not have that much work to do to finish painting everything I own. Additionally, since the army books for my factions do not appear to be coming any time soon, I’ll likely complete models for these factions as and when I get fed up with other project and want a change of pace. Two of my main goals for the year are to complete my Tomb Kings and Night Lords. These are a priority because I do not have an active army for either game system, and I would very much like to try both systems out. My goal here is to get a 1250-point Royal Host army and a 1500-point Terror Assault list on the table respectively. For the Tomb Kings, this will involve painting a lot of skeletons, while the Night Lords require a handful of Terror Marines, a Praetor and a Terminator Sergeant. Overall, this feels like a realistic set of goals for the year, and I am excited to make a start.

Speaking of making a start, January has mainly been occupied by assembling and preparing my Tomb Kings for painting. This month, I have assembled all the skeleton horsemen and chariots from the army box and most of another skeleton infantry cohort. Once the cohort is complete, I am intending to convert the remaining 16 skeletons into skirmishers, possibly by modelling them emerging from beneath the sands. Although these kits are definitely showing their age, one of the things I love about them is that they’re much more interchangeable than a lot of modern GW minis (I am looking at you, Sisters of Battle…). I have therefore had a lot of fun doing some minor conversion work between the different kits. After basing and priming the chariots, a Liche Priest and a Royal Herald standard bearer, I managed to finish painting a single chariot and get started on the other two. One aspect of this project I am particularly enjoying is the dichotomy between the bright, regal reds and blues coupled with the dusty bone of the skeletons and the heavily oxidised bronze pattern, which I think has come through particularly nicely on the chariot wheels.

Master of Arms with head and body swapped from the chariots kit and Master of Horse with hand-swapped cavalry spear.

The first completed skeleton chariot.

Close-ups of the chariot wheels, with the Nihilakh Oxide pattern and sand weathering. 

On the gaming front, this week has been the January meetup of my narrative crusade campaign. I am running out of space for this post, so will be talking about the campaign in more detail in later blog posts. For this session, of the six players, there were four of us, with my Sisters of Battle squaring off against Chaos Space Marines and the Imperial Guard facing down a Tyranid incursion. Since the last balance dataslate, I have been feeling a little down about playing Sisters, particularly given the negative discourse on social media about the faction. However, my opponent picked out a character focussed Hallowed Martyrs list for our game, giving me the chance to test out some units I hadn’t played before, namely Arcoflagellants and Celestian Sacresancts. The Arcoflagellants performed exceptionally well, soaking up a considerable amount of Rubric Marine Warplfamers before tarpitting the unit in melee. Overall, it was fun day out and the narrative progressed in some unexpected directions, which will be a discussion for next time.

Pictures from my game against CSM, my highlight being the Immolator running over a Master of Executions.

Pictures from the game between the Astra Militarum and the Tyranids. The Imperium had a more unfortunate day on the battlefield here.

Thank you for reading my first blog post! This one has perhaps been a little wordy compared to the number of images, due to it being the first. Over the next week, I am hoping to get the other two chariots painted and write up more of the narrative campaign. Until that time, I hope you have a great week of your own hobby!

Ben