WIP blood throne conversion

Hey all, getting back into the swing of things with updating this thing. Hope we're all good?

Recently, after the dissapointment of the new armybook, I began trying to get my mojo for warhammer back. I began looking at new armys but, in the end, Im staying with Khorne.

GW only seem interested in pushing new armies, and I've given them near £75 in buying skullcannons. Now I'm just going to add to my khorne army. It may be crap, but I like my models, I'm not shifting.

Here's my latest addition, a skull throne of khorne. Its heavily converted, replacing the from buck toothed face for a juggernaut. Juggers are just a staple of a khorne army, and I really wanted one pulling my herald along.

The herald has skull takers head and a cloak from the warriors chariot set. I added a chain for hos cloak and a spare shoulder pad from the skullcrusher kit. I gave the bloodletter body guard a bloody icon, I know its a fairly common bit but I havnt used it anywhere else in the army. I can now use him as a BSB.

Let me know what you think!

The new daemon armybook - Mourning the passing of the Khorne BSB

Howdy fellows. Unless you've been living under a rock you'll have noticed that the new chaos daemon armybook (and codex) has been released. And there are a few...rumblings, about it.

Now, sadly, this has meant my whole army of bloodletters need a drastic change.

Personally, I did the techno asthetic path they're taking with khorne. He out of the four is the major forgesmith, the worker of metal, like the dwarves he channels magic into weapons rather than individuals.

However, the points for the units have well, to be honest, gone a little batshit crazy.

Lets see what's changed

Core

Ok, Bloodletters were due a nerf. I'm actually happy about that. 14pts for none natural strength 5 on the charge may be a wee bit steep, but they seem to have balanced this by giving them a 6+ scaly skin armour save (which, personally, I don't think is worth the paper it's printed on).

Everyone ran bloodletters in a hoard. Honestly, it was the best way and a wee bit thematic. You all may know, I've got a raging hard on when it comes to running hoards. Nothing gets my blood stirred like the sight of 40 meatbags running madly at the enemy.

Now, Fantasy battle has tried to make things abit more tactic, it's about synergies, units need other units to bring out the best in them. Daemons have always been the same. Heralds give a locus to their kin, and really make the unit sing. Sadly, the locus were a bit bent in the last edition.

Here's the core I ran to a recent 1500 tournament:

Herald, BSB, banner of sundering (-2 to a chosen lore to cast), armour of khorne (3+ armour save)

43 bloodletters, Icon of eternal way (+D6 to first charge)

I added 3 bloodletters as I had the points spare and you cant buy  anything else for 36 points. This unit had hatred on the first charge, but was unwieldly, easily avoided. The whole thing cost about 750ish points.

Now, lets see how it comes in with the changes in the new book.

Herald, BSB, Greater gift, locus of hatred - This herald loses the ability to take an armour save, and instead may roll for a 1 in 6 chance to get a 2+ save, an extra wound or the ability to nibble back wounds he's lost in close combat. His BSB is no longer magical. He's now 250points.

43 bloodletters, banner of swiftness - can march 2 extra inches, charge an extra inch. 650ish

So, 900 points vs 750, and increase in 150 points. For a more killable herald (to the point he's probably not even worth taking), less magic protection and less charge.

Ok, lets ignore the bloodletters nerf, as we agreed it was needed and is actually fair. Lets look at the herald.

I'd actually say he's worth 250 if you could ensure his survivabiltiy. If you could buy him an armour save. If you could guarantee he wont be poked to death by s3 spearmen.

Sadly, you can't. it's 250 points wasted. Even with the frenzy locus, at 225, he's still very killable. Even elves will kill him before your unit even gets to strike, wasting the locus you spent 60 points on. You need the 2+ armour save or he's pointless. And on average you'll get that once in 6. Once a tournament.

What can you do? Well, giving him fencers blades can help a little, making him only hit on 5s. But still, 9 attacks hitting on 5s rerolling, wounding on 5s, then 5 up saves (maybe even 6+ armour if you're real lucky) -  you'll be lucky to keep him alive.

You could put him on a juggernaut, though that takes him away from his massive hoard and gives him an extra wound and 4+ armour, also making him immune to killing blow and a shedload extra attacks from him mount.

You could also put him on a skullchariot for an another 160points, making him near prohibitively expensive, vulnerable to cannonballs and slower than everyone else due to being unable to march. I've always been wary of putting BSBs (or any character) outside of units away from look out sirs. A T5 chariot isn't too bad, but is still a great risk, especially for going on 300points investment.

Of course, nurgle heralds have it much easier, and slaanesh and tzeentch have it worse. And again, I've so little experience with the new book. But I do have experience playing warhammer, and running BSBs, and I know from experience that they are vulnerable and to never rely on a dice roll. Therefore the age on the foot bsb, and perhaps the foot herald, is over.

My Khorne daemons

So, I've been upto quite a bit since the last time I update, approximately 9months.

What have I been doing? Well, I've finished 2000points and mores worth of khorne daemons. This was, at least, in the old book. Sadly, I'm rather dissapointed in the new book. Swapping a cannon no one wanted for being to buy your BSB some armour is not progress, in my humble opinion.

Its disappointing, to be honest, as I really enjoyed playing my army. I guess I'll have to adapt to the change. But this isn't an armybook review, you came to see the cool stuff.

My bloodletter scheme is an alternate - charcoal skin, with bright flame like secondary colours. Stands out far more than khorne red washed with nuln oil and bloodletter glaze.

A group shot

My flesh hounds, of "flounds" as I call them. Warhounds with the horns and tongues of spare bloodletter heads

39 bloodletters. You wont be seeing those much more.

My infantry herald of Khorne. Again, soon to be extinct.

The manibles are from the chaos possessed kit, adds a bit more edge to the head swap on skulltaker

My extinct fiends of slaanesh/ soon to be beasts of nurgle.

The old school scylla with a head swap...as I lost his head.

Belakor, standing in as a bloodthirster/daemon prince

The skillcannon, named as so because it takes alot of skill to use

My soulgrinder, Sally. I felt the forgefiend fitted the mad, daemonic forges of khorne more than the actual soulgrinder kit, and led to me being able to put a particularly brave juggernaut rider on him.

Now defunct bloodcrushers. 

Nice bit of freehand though.

And the beginnings of my second unit of bloodletters with a non BSB herald

My juggataurs, who are either unit fillers or mark of khorne ogres with my upcoming warriors army

And the big man, Krull.

So, let me know what you all think! I'll be back shortly to discuss the new daemon armybook.

A taste of 40k - HERESY!!!

Greetings from the white woods, fellow beastmeisters, vile daemonsters and 8 pointed urchins. Simonster is back in the game!

So it's been a damn long time since I've updated this blog in anger, and there's an excuse for that - I'm human, and I don't get paid enough! But I've been keeping my beady little eye on all you lot, and I like what I see. Keep it up fellow blogfacers:

Especially you, Mr Saturday, you fimir hugging bastard.

Especially you, Kuffy, and your rediculous skills at painting the vertically challenged.

Especially you, Max Pearson, professional slackarse and mispeller of my name.

Not you though Daz, no one likes Cruddance which means no one likes you.

Anyway, dissing Daz and his crushing tournament winning knight bus of doom aside, this blogs about me, as it's got my name in the address bar. What have I been doing?

My arms, crotch, and army, being pounded by some crimson fists

Well, real life is back on track, hurrah! Uni woes are very close to being behind me now, so clear sailing here on it. Only one thing is stopping me from enjoying my pure, unadulterated fantasy of warhammer.

40k.

Yes, my former muse, my 10year plus on-off wargamefriend seems to have reared her head after about a year being mostly quiet and letting fantasy whisk me away. So, obviously, like a tool, I wandered into town of 40k release day and dropped over a hundred pounds on daemons.

So, I've read the rules, assimilated the new fluff (trust me, there's hardly anything new, but just enough to whet my appetite. Beastmen in the back of the book!) and played a game.

I'm not sold. It's just not as good as fantasy! Psychic powers are just no brainers now - and I can see it ruining the game. My daemons took a major nerfing yet again, whilst the top tier armies didn;t get effected (Space wolves actually getting better!

Sadly,40k is still a flawed system. The rules may be fixed, but the individual books are still massively variable in power levels.

But this isn't a blog about that. Well, maybe in the future it will be. Capricious the four powers are. But for now, this is still a Beastman blog. And treats for you to enjoy in the future:

- A unit of Pestigor, including flavoursome fillers
- Complete army shots
- Some bloodbowl madness
- Some more battle reports
- Some terrain


But thats all to come, so stay tuned.

Ghorros Warhoof and A minimalagor

I return! Well, the last week or so I've been wracking my brains over new projects - Mantic chaos dwarves, chaos warriors of khorne and even 40K orks - But, in the end. I decided to go with finishing a few more beastmen models!

So here's wha tI've done today, lets start with the perviest, seediest centigor in the game, Ghorros RapeWarhoof.

This model has been languishing in my bitsbox for about 3 year

s, since I bought him to represent my Centigor with club in mordheim. As such, I lost his left hand, belly plate horns and unicorn horn. This put me off making him - until today. I got my shizzle together, pillaged some spare horns, and stuck a shield on his left arm, as I'll be using him as a champion for my other centigor more often than not. Also helps him look like he earns that 4+ armour save. This needed a bit of greenstuffing to bulk out/smooth the elbow join but I think I pulled it off.

I also decided to turn him so he was actually looking forward, so I chopped off the tab and pinned him to a new base. His right foot was slightly warped so I stuck in some rocks to help him look like he's not standing on one foot.

Malagor...yes, I recieved this cheeky chappy pro bono from my friend Mike at the club. Although I don't need a new mage, I thought I'd give him a play with as he's a nice sculpt and extra wizards always come in handy for storm of magic. Well, he was a wee bugger! I greenstuffed the hole in his back after I removed his wings, gave him a new beard and he somehow lost his pinky from his left hand. Not hanving enough spare left hands which look quite wizardy, I ended up greenstuffing a new finger.

I can honestly say this was one of the most taxing drains of my skill I can remember.

In the end, I got him sorted, then painted and - well, I just didn;t enjoy it. I don;t know if it's just the texture of the material but I just really found it a pain to paint. In the end I just left it about 75% complete and gave it an angrax earthshade bath hoping that would hide the multitude of painting sins.

How he came, but with an extra beard

Pre stick cloth painting

Post wash bath

Finally, I'd like to thank you all who made my total views upto 20k in the last month, and hopefully now, real life permitting, I'll be able to upload a bit more frequently.

See you all soon!

Ungor raiders

Here's 8 raiders I've had knocking around. They took about 2 hours in total to paint, a relative quicky. I didn't want to spend hours on a unit which cost 42pts but also didn't want to do a rubbish job on them. I'm happy with them, I used the new argax earthshade instead of devlan mud on them. Not as good, but it does the job.

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A change of pace, a new Games Workshop and new paints

So my exam and essay are out of the way for my post graduate course, meaning some free time is on the horizon. In celebration, I went to games workshop with crazy thoughts - starting bretonnians.

I've toyed with the idea of bretonnians for months. I've never done a "good" army, their range is majority plastic (and still very good!) And to top it - no one else plays them. So, I decided to test myself and paint them in my club heraldry of yellow and blue, and I'd get some of the new paints to help.

Well, I popped into the new games workshop,which moved last week across town to a far less beneficial place for me. After the obligatory blue shirt pressuring me to buy kits and talking to me like I've not been in the hobby 15 years, and actually flat out lying about the bretonnian battleforce componants ("individually that would cost you over a hundred pounds!"...my maths calculates it at £70 so a saving of £15... Alevel maths w/ mechanics for the win.). I won't say that cost him the sale, but not listening to me when I said I wanted to test my schemes first one a single unit and ploughing about how you can play a game straight away out of the box didn't help.

So I bought a box of knights, some trees and a shedload of paint. They'd helpfully taken down the nice old paint-to-new paint conversion chart, so I had to do some guess work. The wonderful GW chap was also no real help by telling me the paints were wonderful, I should buy a dry and it worked great on his skaven  and they're working on reflective surfaces. That's nice, but I asked what a good skintone for dwarves was...

Dark flesh is now improved to rhinox hide, which I actually now prefer. I think I picked wrong with the graveyard earth equivelent as my new colour makes the horse I based look like he's running through a hot chocolate.  Warpfiend grey and slaanesh grey are literally the same colour and have a purple tinge which wasn't really put across on their display. So finally we have averland sunshine and the yellow glaze. The glaze is really nice actually and gives yellow a nice clean finish.

Now, I'm not saying yellow is easy now. Buti t's a damn sight easier.

So please, let me know what you think of my Brets. The errant knights will have white shields, showing they have to earn their heraldry and basically help identify them on the tabletop.

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