Season's Greeting everyone! Here's my December update and its a big one! The last few weeks have been absolutely manic hobby-wise. As my second Age of Sigmar tournament loomed closer and closer I started to worry I had bitten off more than I could chew in terms of the amount of new models I wanted to bring. As it came to the final week, I even considered taking some models half finished - but no. I wanted to win 'Best Painted' deep down and so persevered. A couple of late nights and painting at my office desk each morning before work meant I managed to finish everything in the nick of time!
This month I bring you some new models to showcase; My Hurricanum, Knights, a Battlemage and a Waywatcher, followed by a look at my tournament army and then a quick report on how it fared! Enjoy :-) (and please comment! I love feedback)
Hurricanum
My new centerpiece and a potent force on the battlefield. I am very happy with the finished result. I am going to say this model was a nightmare to paint. I hate sub assemblies but the burning sun inside the spinning cage has to be painted before the cage can be glued on, and on the flipside trying to paint the library shelves inside the carriage was like playing a game of operation with the paint brush!
As with my Steamtank I chose to magnetise the crew - not for any real game benefit but the models are absolutely gorgeous in my opinion and I wanted to be able to put them on their separate bases for Skrimish games and other fun scenarios.
As he is my new general, I need to come up with a story and name - so far I know I want him to be an Alchemist but the rest I still need to dream up :-)
Freeguild Knights
I don't consider my collection of Order models to be a single army, but instead a combination of smaller sets. These Knights are meant to be a set with my Hurricanum and I think together they look very striking on battlefield. I also wanted to distance these models from their Historical look and make them more fantastical and suitable for Age of Sigmar. For that reason I decided to go all blue on the armour. I think it makes them look very unique and they no longer strike you as immediately being historical looking miniatures.
Lore of Life Battlemage and Waywatcher
I didn't show the
WIP of these last month, as I really didn't think I would get these done, but hey-ho it all came together in the end! The Lore of Life Battlemage is an old Brettonian Damsel but I think the colour scheme really gives her a new lease of life. I don't often deviate much from the
GW studio paint jobs so it was nice to pull this off convincingly. I would say these two aren't my finest paintjobs ever. You can see they are perhaps a little rushed and as always green is still my weakest colour but I am happy enough with them. The Waywatcher is being used as the new 'Waywatcher' hero (replacing the old Waywatcher lord).
The tournament I went to was 2000 points but it was "dual list" meaning you could bring 2 lists and choose which one to play before each game. In this next section I will look at the army I brought and go through some of the synergies on the battlefield. If you followed my old blog you will have seen most of these models before, but I wanted to post pictures of the entire collection this time around.
Hurricanum - General - Master of Defense - Phoenix Stone - 320 Points
My Hurricanum was the formidable force I expected it to be on the battlefield throughout the tournament. It's potential of doing
4D6 Mortal Wounds a turn (including the Wizard's spell) made it a scary threat. It also provided a +1 to hit for all units within 10" of it making my army on the whole drastically better too. I chose it to be my general to give it the Master of Defense trait (a 6+ ward) and the Phoenix Stone to heal up a wound each turn.
Despite being the main target for my enemies it only died in 2 out of the 5 games I played. At it's strongest I could give it a 3+ armour save (+1 from a Mystic Shield) and three 6+ ward saves (from Master of Defense and two of my support wizards as discussed below).
Support Heroes - List A 200 Points - List B 220 Points
As mentioned before this tournament allowed you to take 2 lists. The Lore of Life wizard was present in both but the Waywatcher and the Archmage were in either list. Originally I was only going to bring the Archmage along to boost my painting award chances (I think it is a nice paintjob and stands out among my army). The night before however I glanced at his Warscroll and realised just how good it is. He grants a 6+ ward to every unit within 18"... which is usually my whole army! I bought him out in game 2 against a Beastclaw Raiders army as I was scared of the Mortal Wound output and I wasn't let down by his performance. He is going to be a regular moving forward.
The Lore of Life wizard was excellent too. She can heal D3 wounds and upon healing provides the third ward save (which can be stacked in
AoS). She kept my Hurricanum and Steam Tank alive at crucial points throughout the tournament.
The Waywatcher was fun. He can pump out 6-9 shots a turn, but by the end of the tournament I was much more sold on the Archamage.
The picture above also includes my 4 objective markers - (originally made as treasure tokens for my Hinterlands games).
Duardin Artillery - 460 Points
Grimburloksson and 2 Duardin Cannons - the reason my opponents always chose to go first despite risking me double-turning them next round. Grimburloksson allows the cannons to reroll misses, combined with the Hurricanum +1 to hit and almost every shot was hitting home. They felled a Frostlord on Stonehorn in one game and demolished 20+ High Elf spearmen in one round in another! The hardest thing with cannons however is to keep the crew alive (as they can be easily sniped). A tactic dawned on me mid-tournament with my next unit...
Steam Tank - 300 Points
The Steamtank! Most people agree he is not quite worth the points, but as a striking centrepiece alongside my Hurricanum, he was a must-have for me. Although it is extremely gamey - I also realised I could park it sideways when deploying and hide my cannon crew behind it to avoid them being killed on Turn 1. This filthy combo got some comments at the tournament for sure!
Cavalry - List A 280 Points - List B 140 + 140 Points
The Cavalry I bought along varied in each list. Either 10 Knights (in the list with the Waywatcher) or 5 Knights and 5 Outriders (the list with the Archmage). By the end I was sold on the Outriders being included a little more.
I knew the Knights weren't going to be very choppy in games from looking at their warscroll, but they are fast and tough (with 4+ rerolling 1s armour and 2 wounds each), and so I found them incredibly useful in my games. Either as a speedbump or for capturing objectives in Border War. The Outriders too proved their worth in my final game by securing the final objective on the last turn of the game.
Fyreslayers - 160 Points
In my last tournament I decided that 10 Vulkite Bezerkers where not a very optimal choice. I now retract that decision. While they don't kill much they can be incredibly hard to shift in terrain gaining a 3+ Save and a 5+ Ward. They felled a Slaneesh demon prince with their throwing axes too in one game which was pretty epic.
Also this unit get more compliments than anything else in my army!
Freeguild Infantry - 260 Points
The last part of my list is a block of 20 Freeguild Swordsmen and 10 Archers. The swordsmen are incredibly tough to shift if I can get them into terrain and with a mystic shield to boot. I love this unit to hold my battle line. Miniature wise you'll notice I mixed my old swordsmen with some of my militia as well as demoting my two Generals to be a Champion and
BSB (sorry Siegfried!) - that's because my swordsmen are the oldest models in my army and starting to show it on their paintjobs!
With the 10 Freeguild archers I again thought this wasn't a great choice last tournament, but again I was proved wrong and have just learnt to use their strengths a little better. In one game the won it for me with a run move onto the objective, and they almost did it again in another. They snap like kindling when anything so much as looks at them, but with other juicy targets in my army they are often completely ignored!
So how did my tournament go? Well firstly I had an incredible time and met loads of great people (my opponents were all fantastic, and it was great to meet Chris from the Black Sun Podcast who was helping in organising it).
I had two goals for the tournament:
1. Win at least one game (last time I went with 4 losses an 1 draw!)
2. Win best painted
So let's see how I did! (This will be a quick summary rather than a blow-by-blow account).
Game 1 - Take and Hold
This battleplan is notoriously hard to win a Major Victory on with just a single objective on each side and needing to eliminate all enemy models from both + have 5 of your own at both to win.
Well, I won a Major Victory... and not only that I tabled my opponent giving me 2000
VPs...
So my opponent was Chris, who was a great guy with a very cool Slaneesh Demon army and everything just went wrong for him and right for me. He took the first turn to try to minimize my shooting. He failed a few turn 1 charges and got double turned by me. The resulting return fire from my cannons, Steamtank and Hurricanum took a heavy toll and while he swamped my objective early on, as it was in terrain my Swordsmen and Vulkite Bezerkers were impossible to shift whilst the Knights held up the fiends long enough to negate their effect on the battle. On the final turn my archers ran onto his objective (which the cannons had cleared of demonettes) and won me the game.
I was the only player to win this scenario and get the Major Victory and that catapulted me onto Table 1 in the lead! I knew it wasn't going to last but I was happy to be doing better than last tournament already!
Game 2 - Border War
This is my favorite of the Pitched Battle scenarios, and it turned out to be the most fun I had at the tournament and one of my best
AoS games ever. I played Beastclaw Raiders for the first time and was scared to play such an infamous list (2 Stonehorns, 1 Thundertusk + Mournfang untis and Yhetees).
What made this game so much fun was how close and messy it became. I rolled very well first turn with my cannons and got his Frostlord on Stonehorn down to a single wound (and killed him the turn later). The knights and Archers took the objectives turn 1 to give me the lead, and then kept me close in the game once he overran my flanks at started to score heavy.
I even swung the Knights round the back and scored on his own objective turn 4, but with my centre slowly collapsing the game fell away from me.
My opponent Donal got my best game vote for this!
Game 3 - Three Places of Power
This was the final game of Saturday and it was the scenario I was most scared of. In fact, I had never played this one before because I knew how difficult it would be for my army. There are 3 objectives in the centre and only heroes can capture them. With my squishy 5 wound humans I knew I was in for a bad time. When my opponent lined up Alarielle, Spirit of Durthu and Hamadreth ready to score one each I knew it was going to get even worse!
So yeah, it was brutal. I got tabled on turn 5 and had only managed to kill the enemy battleline units. Alarielle caused mass destruction, doing an epic 10 damage to Grim Burloksson in one round and taking out my poor Hurricanum. My opponent Aaron was a great guy, and it was fun to play all the way through to the end (I didn't want to concede despite looking hopeless early on).
This is the scenario I need to work on for my next tournament methinks!
Game 4 - Gifts From the Heavens
Another game against Sylvaneth, but I took everything I learned from the game before into this. This was a very very close game that got my second favorite vote. My army smashed face, and by the end I had scored 1400+
VPs to James' 300-400 odd. But I lost on the scenario. This game has two objectives that land randomly on turn 2 and score every turn after. A unit of Kurnoth hunters with Scythes denied my objective on turn 3 to take the lead. I had a turn to swing it around at the end - with only a few models left I had the chance to clear his objective and score with my archers. The cannons rolled badly on their damage rolls (3 from
2D6 when I needed 5+) and the Archers failed to get close enough with their run move...
If only!!
Game 5- Blood and Glory
The final game of the tournament and with 1 win and 3 losses I was once again quite low down (what's the opposite of a "submarine"?). For this game we had an old school match up, my Empire and Dwarfs vs High Elves!
And it went really well for me... The cannons obliterated units through the game, my Steamtank went on a rampage down the board and my Hurricanum refused to die. I scored the win on the final turn when a reckless charge by the Outriders onto the last objective and a very lucky bravery roll (1 for me and 6 for my opponent) meant I took all four objectives and got my second tournament win.
Aftermath
So I finished up with 2 Major victories, plus the painting scores and a good sports vote (I got 18 meaning 3 people gave me their best game and 1 gave me their second) put me in 11th out of 20. Certainly better than last time so I was very pleased!
And the painting?
I didn't win
haha. The winning army was insane however and got my vote (as well as a landslide of others!) It was a nurgle army where every beastmen had been converted to have a cyclops eye... think about that for a moment.
Every model with greenstuff work on the face... incredible!
And apparently I came second!!
So that's good enough for me! I got lots of compliments for the army that made me really proud of all the hard work I have put into them and also got a few pointers to improve on.
What's Next?
So, I've found that after tournaments I usually have such a buzz all I can think about is my next. Now, next time around I want to win best painted and also do better on Three Places of Power. Looking through the Order Warscrolls I found a model that should help me accomplish both...
A Freeguild General on Griffin!
Let's hope I get some Christmas money so I can buy one in January
And in other news, I am beginning to work more on my Hinterlands project. This time on the role-playing, narrative side. He is a sample Heroic Warband:
More to come...
This looks awesome!
I was very happy to get 3rd place on the monthly contest with it in the end. All I can say is take part!! The competitions ran by Paradigm are such a great way to get small projects around your army done, and I honestly think the miniatures I get done for them would still be sitting unpainted in a box if it wasn't for the deadlines the competition sets. It doesn't detract from your main projects at all, in fact it provides a necessary bit of escapism for the hobby magpie in us all!
If you can't believe in yourself, believe in me! Believe in the Dakka who believes in you! 
black legion 2000pts
Kabal of the shattered soul 1000pts
