Good evening, friends, and welcome back to The Collardhammer
Special! It doesn’t feel like it has been that long since my last post, but it’s
nearly two weeks. In that time, I have found time to complete some hobby work
and play some games, alongside seeing friends and completing a Chaos Dwarf
campaign in total war. Of course, I also continue to struggle with some deeply
questionable life choices and the realisation that the only reason I’d want an
academic job is to keep seeing my friends at Imperial, many of whom have left
anyway. Just your run of the mill existential crisis really. Also, hanging out
with the cat has been fun!
Moving onto the state of my hobby goals, I have shifted a few goalposts around, particularly regarding skeleton cavalry:
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| The list is actually starting to look a little sparse in the uncompleted columns |
I’ve removed the skeleton cavalry cohort and replaced them with a Royal Herald and a unit of 3 Ushabti that I have had primed on my desk for a while. Part of this is that I can’t face basing all the cavalry right now. My concept for what this army is has also undergone a few versions. Originally, the plan was to make the army move faster than expected and attempt to pin the opponent early on, making it easy for the dragon to finish the job. This seemed fun, but I think has a number of weaknesses. If magic doesn’t go my way, I’d be left with a lot of pieces moving around at quite disparate speeds, making them easy pickings. I think it’s therefore more interesting to build a list that anchors around the dragon and the aura of My Will Be Done generated by Royal Mantle. Against a gunline, the list can pivot towards a big rush, with extra movement from the aura and from the Desert Winds spell. Against melee lists, take extra weapon skill or initiative and Cursed Blades. The Herald can help by picking up an initiative debuff aura, shoring up the need to pick initiative on My Will Be Done.
With that in mind, I decided to paint the Royal Herald
standard bearer I’ve had sitting on my desk for a while:
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| The banner just does not sit right for me |
I enjoyed this, but I think I would have had more fun if he
weren’t made of resin. I painted the banner and the body separately and I think
that some parts of the banner have warped in a way that makes the model tilt
forward a little too much. I dry fitted this before priming and tried to fix it
by heating and bending the banner to a better position, but the fear of snapping
it and ruining the model meant that I probably under corrected. I would say
lesson learned, but Forge World resin has always been like this, and I probably
will buy more in the future (it remains difficult to collect the heresy and
still avoid it). One thing that I like about this is that he has ended up in
quite a different colour pallet to the skeletons, with skin rather than bone
and more pink than blue. I also enjoyed painting in the glyphs and the eyes
with Tesseract Glow, to make it all seem a bit more magical.
As well as painting the Herald, I also painted another Noise
Marine, this time with the blastmaster:
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| The Blastmaster is actually absurdly long for the size of this model |
I’ve rambled on enough about the Noise Marines as it is, but
painting these remains my happy place. The slow burn of them is great for relaxing
and I really think that they’re going to look great if I can keep this up. As
always, I still need to work out how I want to base them, but I have seen some
excellent tutorials for swamp bases and am very keen to play with some two-part
resin for a water effect. I just need to work out which products I want and if
I want to add anything else to the bases, although it is a little late for the Noise
Marines as they are already primed and on their bases. Either way, I am excited
to be painting these minis and very glad I bought the box.
Moving on to gaming, I played two more games for the
campaign. The first was a round of combat patrol, where I took the Agents navy
themed one against Grey Knights. This is a very awkward matchup because all
their attacks cut through me like a hot knife through butter, whereas most of
my attacks are 1 damage 0 AP against 2 wound 2+ saves. Despite this, I managed
to sweat out a win by a single VP, although this was mainly due to my opponent
failing to understand how the mission was scored. I felt bad, but I also thought
we were on the same page going into the last battle round. Live and learn. My
second game was another sweaty affair, with 4 player boarding action, taken to
the final turn over the course of about 4 hours.
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| The calm before the storm (and before the chaos marines turned up) |
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| The game essentially became an all-out brawl for the centre |
This game had some awesome narrative moments, with a Commissar executing the last Tempestus Scion just because they were getting in the way, the worst Tyranid Lictor in history and my Imagifier somehow walking away from combat with said Lictor and a Master of Executions essentially unharmed.
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| Ah yes, obviously the Imagifier will be the one to walk away from this unscathed. |
In the end, despite an uneasy Imperial alliance, the chaos space marines took the day, outlasting everyone else and getting a big score push on the last turn.
That just about sums it up for this instalment. I still need to work out how to move the crusade narrative along in a way that adds to the experience and gives people compelling reasons to play in a narrative way. I am of course aiming to get more painting done, hopefully at least another Noise Marine and some skeletons or Ushabti. The Old World army is feeling very close to making it onto the tabletop, so it would be great to get that finished. My Astragoth Ironhand campaign has also inspired me to take another look at the Chaos Dwarf Blood Bowl team that is unprimed on my desk, so that may be making the list shortly. Until then, have a great week of your own hobby and hope to see you next time!
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| The obligatory cat photo (and the only reason any of you are still reading!) |
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