Miniature Monday: Mordheim Riekland Captain

I'm dabble with Mordheim from time to time, haven't played it in like ten years or so but really want to try it out again. Anyway, I have a lot of nice Mordheim miniatures which I'm considering was the golden age of Game Workshop produced games and miniatures. So expect some more Mordheim in the future.

This model however is a count as Riekland captain and is painted as an Ostermark captain. Always thought it was odd that Ostermark didn't get any warband considering that Mordheim actually was the former capital city of Ostermark. Don't know if the Riekland rules makes most sense but I went that route because I already had some miniatures painted which I bought from eBay.

This is such a miniature, painted up really nice as well so I didn't want to change it up to much. Repainted the cloak to Ostermark colors from Stirland, redid the metals, the shield and added some highlights and changed the base to make it work with my Empire army which I may have him in at some point. 

Happy with him in the end, a lot of character in the actual sculpt which I think we had in most of the old Mordheim sculpts. Anyway that is all for now, hopefully I will bring you more Mordheim stuff in the future. 

News: Space Hulk: Deathwing for Ps4

For those not familiar with the game, Space Hulk: Deathwing is a first-person shooter experience of Games Workshop's classic Space Hulk board game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Space Hulk: Deathwing offers players the chance to experience a desperate battle against Genestealers in the claustrophobic tunnels of a Space Hulk, as they gain skills, new abilities, and new equipment thanks to experience earned during perilous missions.

You'll take on the role of a Space Marine from one of the most secret and most feared Space Marine Companies: the Deathwing from the Dark Angels. Strap on your Terminator armor and equip the emblematic weaponry of the Space Marines to overcome the threats awaiting you in the Space Hulk. As a Librarian, you will also master the destructive powers of the Psykers. Your skills and performance in battle grant you Fervor Points, to spend on 4 skill trees allowing you to improve your abilities, unlock new powers, access powerful relics, and devastating new weapons.



Awesome I say and looks really nice so far, will most certainly buy when it'a released and I'm glad that I already have an Ps4. Best of all is that you are an Dark Angel and no Ultra Smurf.

Imperial: Trenchers Squad 1 finished!

I have almost full focus right now on painting up most of my Imperial force before everything else on my painting to-do list. And here's what I want to have painted and how my progress is:

Red = Just primed -- Orange = Painting started -- Green = Finished

2 Imperial Commanders
1 Brigadier Rist
5 Trenchers
5 Trenchers
5 Blood Berets
3 Golden Lions
1 Hurricane Walker
1 Greyhound Tankette

As you can see, not that much left. Sure after this I have another five Blood Berets, three Golden Lions, one Greyhound and two Imperial Doomtroopers to complete everything of my Imperial but I think with the above I have a decent painted starting force which I can play with (just might need to convert a Blood Beret custom hero or two though).

After all I have plenty of other things to paint up as well and after these are finished I will paint up some Warhammer models again, and probably WoC or Empire. I also want to paint up my Malifaux models as well as my other Warzone forces, so much to do and so little time. Oh well here's the pictures of my latest finished models, the Imperial Trenchers, really lovely models and so iconic for the Mutant Chronicles universe.

WIP Wednesday: Chaos trolls and Forsaken

Just as the Miniature Monday posts I try do to every Monday I will also try to do these showing some WIP photos of the stuff I'm working on at the moment.

Today It's some Warriors of Chaos models. I have come up with how I will paint my Forsaken and it will be a fairly common color scheme there, and with red torsos because I will usually use them as Khorne. However I want to use them as any mark really so I go with this Undivided look.

For the trolls I keep on my blue/grey theme but I painted these up using my Airbrush, which I really do need to practice on and these models are really nice to do that. Quite happy with how they look now but will add a lot of washes and highlights before these are done and hopefully they will look just as good as the ones I have painted previously.

So that's it for it today, now back to watch some Football and paint some models.

Miniature Monday: Warriors of Chaos repaint? and tokens..

Some of you might now I'm a real sucker for repainting my armies (I'm currently in the process of repainting my ex ungreenskinz for example). Until now I was content with how much of my WoC army looks. It is one thing that do bother me a little though, my blue warriors which aren't marked Tzeentch. I painted them blue anyway and did other things to mark them out as Nurgle etc. I where never sure about this route though and now I have decided to try something else.

Black/grey Warriors of Chaos with added rust for Nurgle, extra brass parts on Khorne etc. And small edge highlights with "their colors" this makes them still stand out, look good together with my other blue Tzeentch warriors and monsters and make them look more like they should in my opinion. Another thing that is that it makes it less tedious painting all the blues all the time.

Please help me out here once again as you did when I was unsure about my ungreenskinz. Below are my first black Nurgle test model, repainted from the blue version. What do you think, which one looks the best and do you think that my ideas will work and still make it look like a cohesive army?

Also in this Mini Monday, two tokens in very different styles for Warzone: Ressurection!

Starting Malifaux and X-Wing!

You could have thought that when you have like a thousand or so of unpainted miniatures that you just can't get rid of other than to actually paint them, you should not get any more. You have plenty to do already! Well I'm not that kind of guy and even if I do paint more and more stuff each year, so my unpainted collection also gets bigger and bigger, there's just so much cool stuff out there!

One thing I had before though was that I didn't spread into different game systems, for many years it was just Warhammer Fantasy and Wh40k until some years ago when I also bought some Mantic Kings of War stuff. Then came the kickstarters, and even If I resisted many of them last year I could not resist Warzone: Resurrection, Deadzone and Robotech: RPG Tactics so I added three more game systems last year. And now it's time for two more!!

Malifaux

I have been checking this game system out for quite a while but could not resist any longer. In the end I bought a M2E Rulebook, a Fate Deck and the Open Graves box (punk zombies are just too cool). The reason I needed some models and want to try this game is because of four main reasons.

1. Really cool and unique looking miniatures.
2. No dice but it's based on normal playing cards, interesting.
3. Steam Punk Western setting? Yes please.
4. You don't need that many models for a game (I will buy much more though, they are just too cool)

X-Wing

Another game I have heard so much good things about is X-Wing from Fantasy Flight games. I finally did the jump into the game just some hours ago when I bought a package of several ships from an auction site (Tradera, swedish eBay) as you can see below. I follow my normal philosophy about these things, if you go in you go in big. Down below are the reasons I got into this game.

1. You don't need to paint them, hurray!
2. Starwars is Starwars, and well most of us have loved the ships since we where young.
3. Heard so many good things about the rules, and it sounds easy and fun but also tactical.

Yeah well what all for now, you will probably see some articles and post about these game systems in the future, so keep coming back ;).

Just bought it so I haven't received this lot yet. Eager to have it in my hands though. 

Imperial: Blood Beret Squad finished!

The Blood Berets are the best of the best, universally renowned military elite of the Imperial
Special Forces. The long history of the regiment started 1125 years ago when the Murdoch Clan resolved to muster a special force to counter the new threat of the Dark Symmetry. Time after time
the regiment has proven itself both fiercely loyal to the Serenity and all she stands for and highly
competent at dealing with all forces, human and otherwise, which threaten the interests and welfare
of the corporation and mankind generally. Their cold blooded effectiveness has made them
one of the most feared and well respected forces in the solar system; often, even, a warlord of the
Dark Legion shudders with annoyance and frustration when it becomes clear that the Blood Berets
stand between him and his goal.

From Imperial Corporation PDF

This was going to be a 'Miniature Monday' post but I could not manage to get them completely finished. Now they are though and I'm quite happy with how they turned out and how a whole squad of Blood Berets looks.

They take time to paint though and most probably that is because I'm still unused to paint camo patterns, but that is something I need to get used to now when I paint up a lot of Warzone miniatures.

Great looking miniatures for one of my favorite regiments in the Mutant Chronicles universe, and a treat to paint up as well. Almost no mold lines and easy to attach and detach the arms until I had painted everything I needed before gluing the arms on.

As always any comments are most welcome!

Guest Article: WZR Deck Building Pt 2: Deck and army (Symbiotic Evaluators)

Welcome back to WZR Deck Building. This is part 2 in my series of articles on deck building in Warzone Resurrection. I want to apologize for taking so long with posting this part. The article has been nearly done for a long time, but first RL intervened, and then I wanted to have a look at the updated rules for making your own heroes before posting. It's done now though. The next part won't take as long! You can find the very basics of deck building in part 1 of my series. Look at the bottom of this post for links to the other parts.


Introduction.

Today, we are going to be building an entire army and deck around the synergy provided by a single strategy card that is set to work well with a certain factions troop type. The card we are going to build an army and deck around is the following;

First of all, I'm going to post the army, then the deck, and after that I'll go into detail explaining what each part of the army and deck brings.


The army.

WARLORD: HOTSS Psychic Warlord - 155
+1 Wound, Banishment of the Steel, Bringer of Dark Tools, Transmorphication

TROOPS: 10 Dark Legionnaires - 152
NM Leader Upgrade, 4 Vulcheck

TROOPS: 10 Dark Legionnaires - 152
NM Leader Upgrade, 4 Vulcheck

TROOPS: 10 Dark Legionnaires - 152
NM Leader Upgrade, 4 Vulcheck

TROOPS: 5 Dark Legionnaires - 86
NM Leader Upgrade, 2 Vulcheck

SUPPORT: 2 Razides - 150
Nazgaroths

SUPPORT: 1 Razide - 75
Plaguedealer HMG

SUPPORT: 1 Razide - 75
Plaguedealer HMG

TOTAL: 997

Activations: 8

Resource Cards: 12


The deck.

This is the -core- of the deck. I've intentionally left a few slots open so you can tailor these cards due to local metagame (more on meta in an upcoming article) and personal preference.

Strategy Cards:

3x Symbiotic Evaluators
3x Unnatural Advance
3x Symbiotic Bioscopes

Gear Cards:

3x Blessing of Algeroth

Tactical Cards:

5x Moment of Clarity
5x Blood-Lust
5x Corrosion
3x Ripped from Reality

Total amount of cards: 30 (5 slots still open)


In depth army and card examination:

The army explained

As you can see, the army is based around Undead Legionnaires and the phenomenal exponential value of the Symbiotic Evaluators card. As such I have included almost as many of these zombiefied fellows as I could, only cutting a few in the fourth squad to include some supporting units adept at handling more situations. The aim with each unit was to maximise Vulcheck numbers, and I believe I have. There is 14 Vulcheck HMG across the army. In itself, this gun is not very lethal (St:13, RoF: 3, AV: 1), but when combined with other parts of this army, it becomes an incredibly lethal instrument.

The Warlord is a simple Rulebook Heroes of the Solar System Psychich Warlord (thats a long name...). I briefly considered using a DIY Heretic from the new rules, but a quick glance show me he's not nearly worth it for the points. You would lose IA and a whopping 5(!) WP, and that's only 30 points. So, a generic Warlord it is. I would still paint and model him as a Heretic, as he will be playing extremely cowardly, hiding behind his men in a manner unbefitting of a more brutal creature. His one and only job is to provide support and buffs to his men. He should at all times be in some sort of cover and have his two Plaguedealer Razide bodyguards around to soak wounds and kill meddlesome humans. His Psychic powers have been chosen very carefully; 
* Banishment of the Steel is crucial for your anti-armor capabilities. The army does not have any especially high AVV values, but what it does have is 14 Vulchecks with AVV 1. Why is this important? Because AVV 1 means no reroll of failed AV rolls. Banishment of the Steel's effect is permanent, it "rails" and, best of all, it stacks. Get it on whatever vehicle you want to destroy asap, and then leverage enough Vulcheck and Nazgaroth fire to destroy it.
* Bringer of Dark Tools is excellent. It is especially good when used on either a large unit of Undead Legionnaires, or the two man Nazgaroth Razide "sniper team". Whats that? You have two Razides with 30" range, ignoring any intervening cover, hit on 15 or below (on first shot, with aim) dealing 19 damage and having Critical Force (3)? That's silly! Get em in a dominating position and be prepared to hunt characters who stray. That is, if they are not being used to deal the coup de grâce to vehicles already weakened by the above hailfire. Jokes aside, this power is best used on units with many models in them, as it gives a boost to all, no matter how many they are.
* Transmorphication is the least useful power, but can be used to "tarpit" with your Undead Legionnaires in a pinch. I added this as a points filler, feel free to change it to whatever you feel is better.

Undead Legionnaires are the bread and butter of your force. Cheap, unrelenting and slow! Not as slow as some people would think though, read more about it under the card heading below. They are very straightforward. There to put bodies on the board, and use their Vulchecks and Kratach to greatest effect. They are meant to attack at range, but if you feel there is an advantage to engaging with them, by all means, go ahead. Your cards, their Necromutant Leaders (raising extras!) and Transmorphication means they are at least not hopeless in CC. Also, their Corroded Blades have AVV2. It's great. Use it to stab machinery that is annoying and close. Brainless is a problem, but not as big as you might think. The NM Leaders help of course, as do the cards Moment of Clarity and Unnatural Advance. Remember that "aim" is not an advanced action, so aiming and firing with your krataches is a good choice. It is the run move that is the biggest problem, and you have 8 cards in your deck to counter that. You are also, thanks in large to these guys, probably going to outnumber your opponent by a lot. This means you can contest objectives and the like over a much larger area. I will talk about the Legionnaires more when I go over the cards below.

Razides are your support of choice. You have two kinds, with very different jobs. The two solitary Razides with Plaguedealers have the job of guarding your coward heretic warlord. One Razide should always be close enough to soak wounds through Shielded. Thats why (in addition to activation purposes) they are split into two separate squads. You can then do a staggered move with the Warlord, where you move one Razide first, activates the Warlord next and move him up to the Razide, then activate the last Razide to follow. This way, he will always have a bodyguard near. One of these two should try and be on Sentry at all times that an opponent has RD forces in reserve. Preferably both. This will allow them to attempt to gun down any threats, or move into CCWR, if they would choose to deploy near the Warlord. Remember, he is a feeble and puny human. Your Nazgaroth Razides have the job of long range support. Both to deal aimed killing blows to wounded vehicles (see above under Banishment of the Steel part) with Critical Damage 2, and to kill any enemy important targets that stray into their line of fire. Also see the part above about snipers with Bringer of Dark Tools.


The deck explained.

Here I'm going to explain how I made my choices as to what cards should be included, and how to use them.

3 Symbiotic Evaluators
The card that this entire army and deck is built around. You should always try to have one of these in your starting hand. Knowing when to use it is crucial. It raises the effectiveness of 31 of your models by a ton, and 14 of those even more. This is a very good card, consider throwing away most of your starting hands if they don't contain this card. Note that while the main use of this card is for ranged, it also works in CC.

3 Unnatural Advance

This is a great card for your opening hand, and for having towards the end of the game. It's a very simple yet effective card. It allows your Legionnaires to run, which they normally cant.

3 Symbiotic Bioscopes

This is a filler Strategy Card. It's not terrible, but it's not exactly gamebreaking either. It's there so you can prevent your opponent from casting a Strategy Card should you win initiative, and not want to use (or have) one of the others. If you would rather use a different Strategy Card that you like better, feel free! Perhaps your local area has a lot of vehicles? Then by all means replace this card with Flow of Symmetry for example.

3 Blessing of Algeroth

This card gets played on one of the three large Undead Legionnaire units. You have three of the card, there is three of the big units. This means your Legionnaires have to be killed to the last man to get at the heavy weapons. Just remember to keep extra UL close to the heavy weapon handlers.

5 Moment of Clarity

This should be pretty self-explanatory. Your UL are quite cheap as they are brainless. You can ignore brainless for the measly cost of two resources. This could be a game-winner if played at the right opportunity.

5 Blood-Lust

This is one of those "dual use cards" that I was talking about in my first article. This will primarily be used to shut down enemy squads and units which can kill your Legionnaires fast (example: units with 'Blast' type weapons that have templates of one or another kind). It can however, also be used to boost your legionnaires should they get stuck in CC. Remember those AVV2 Corroded blades? With this card, that's 18 AVV2 attacks in CC (and I do hope you used Banishment of the Steel...).

5 Corrosion

This card is nowhere near crucial, it's just a good card for draining your opponents resources. Play it on a unit you know he wants shooting, and he's down one extra resource. Becomes even better if he has already spent all the resources earlier in the turn, or his resource generating units have gone down. That being said, feel free to replace it for something else should you like another card better.

3 Ripped from Reality

Your card for making sure Symbiotic Evaluators lands when it should, even if your opponent has won the initiative. Remember that your Warlord is quite fragile, so don't remove any other cards than those absolutely necessary. That is also why I have chosen to include only three of them. This can be increased to up to five, if you would feel better about it, but I would worry that the cards are "dead" (there is no use for them) in your hand a lot of the time.

5 Free card slots
This can be spent on anything you would like. The deck is very light on gear cards, but I have not found any more that I feel are more or less necessary. Gaze of Algeroth is really good if your opponent plays a bunch of units with Camouflage, but I feel that is very situational, and better suited to combat metagaming, as it is utterly useless if the enemy has no units with Camouflage. Heigthened Senses could be played on Razides going into Sentry, but you would rather have Algeroths Blessing on Undead Legionnaires anyway, as Sentry is an advanced action and they are brainless (most of the time!). There are a number of anti-vehicle cards available to DL that would be good to check out, especially as this army has no vehicles at all for itself, but for the same reason as Gaze of Algeroth, I decided against including them. Your friend rolling you with a Sharkspam army though? Add 5 Dark Technology Warp and 3 Flow of Symmetry (cutting Symbiotic Bioscopes). This is much more of a personal choice.

Synergies to consider:

Undead Legionnaires + Bringer of Dark Tools + Symbiotic Evaluators
Razides w Nazgaroths + Bringer of Dark Tools + Aim actions (RS:15 R: 30", Str 19, Critical Force (3) and no negative cover modifiers on the first shoot.)
Vulcheks + Banishment of the Steel + Symbiotic Evaluators vs Vehicles
Undead Legionnaires + Symbiotic Evaluators + Blood Lust + Transmorphication in CC


Cards that were considered but ultimately cut:

This part will be brief, just so you can follow my thoughtprocess when constructing a deck. I won't include pictures of the cards here. If you want a picture of a card from here, you can check it out in the Visual Card Spoiler thread.

Insalubrious Detonation: This is a decent card, but you are a ranged army. Not a CC one. If you remember what I talked about in the first part, using cards to cover for an army's weakness is usually worse than using cards to expand what an army is already good at. Now, this cards requires your Legionnaires to both be in CC AND die, which is not something we want. Thus this card was not included.

Black Liquid Grenade: While on paper this looks quite good (extra Legionnaires created from range, to be used with Symbiotic Evaluators, is good right?) you have to look at what it is you are actually getting. This is a one use item, that hits one model (no template) for quite low damage, and IF you manage to kill the enemy, you get a Legionnaire. This costs you 3 resources. Those 3 resources could be used to give your Legionnaires 3 extra RoF during Symbiotic Evaluators, extra actions for aim/engage etc etc. On top of this, the NM Leader can't use his RoF 2 rifle. I can't think of nearly any situation where I would want to include it.

Dark Puppetry: This card is of course good, but it has a major problem. It's bonded to Alakhai. Taking Alakhai means you can't take as many troops, can't take psychic powers (this is a big one) and you have to actually assault with only one unit in a predominantely shooty army. The card is good, there is no doubt about it, but it requires an army built around Alakhai and to extent this card. Probably using flamers instead of HMG's, some necrobeasts and cards such as Thermo Instability to make the flamers better. And then you have a completely different army.


Closing words.

This army was constructed with a few other things in mind. 

* I choose the Dark Legion as it is, to all intents and purposes, the "enemy" faction. Most gamers will have at least one friend who plays this army, or, as in my case, a second army made up of DL to introduce friends and others who don't have any armies of their own.

* The theme of a horde of shambling semi-intelligent zombies, aided by otherwordly demons and commanded by a corrupted, necromancer style, heretic is a cool one! If they can unleash a hailstorm of bullets, all the better.

* It's straightforward to use and contains few different units, thus making it an excellent starting point for new players. New players don't have to consider to many units types, and don't have to worry to much about Advanced Actions on the normal troops (oh this guy, he can just move and shooot!).

* It's designed around the new Dark Legion Starter. Buying 3 Dark Legion starter, an extra Undead Legionnaire unit and an extra Razide, and you have all the cards and all the models you need to make this army, if you convert one of the spare NM leaders to the warlord shown above.

I hope you enjoyed the read, you can find the other articles in the series in the links below:
WZR Deck building Pt1: Introduction

Written by: Anders Hedvall aka Kollar

Warzone: Imperial Hurricane Walker finished!

I have worked on this model for a while, I started with the airbrush to prime it, and paint on the came. I had some mishaps with the blu tac I used to cover when I did the camo (when I removed it some paint came along). But in the end this model was a big learning experience, not just by using air brush (for the initial steps) but to paint a vehicle and add some dirt, damage, soot and what not.

So a lot learned and in the end I'm also very satisfied with the result, it is a really cool model and I hope you guys think I did it justice.

Miniature Monday: New Dwarf Gyrocopter finished!

I finally got around and finished this model, and I don't really know why I had such a long break really (well it my focus on Warzone obviously) becasue even if I didn't really rate the model at first (as being an Gyrocopter, the Gyrobomber looks awesome) I started to learn to like it more and more as I painted it up. And now I actually rally like it. It was fun to paint, but it's a lot of parts so it takes time but in the end It's well worth your effort in my opinion. Hope you like it, this is the first Warhammer model in a long while and I will be getting more Warhammer stuff out in the near future hopefully.

Warzone: Heroes of the Solar System free PDF released!

Finally today Prodos Games released their latest PDF (still Beta) of how to do your own heroes for your WZ:R force. We already have this rules in the rulebook but these are much extended and lets you customize your hero so much more. That's not all though you also get new units, heroes and squad commander upgrades, with fluff and everything. You see that a lot of work has been put into making this and I'm very eager to try and make different custom heroes.

Here's what you get besides the different Hero making tables.

Mishima
Shiryo-X (Warlord/Lord)
Tatsumoto (Lord)
The Screaming Devil (Crimson Devil SC upgrade)

Imperial
Timothy McGuire (Warlord/Lord)
NCO Sergeant Benjamin Taylor (NCO upgrade)

Dark Legion
Nepharites of Algeroth (Lord)
Praetorian Goliath (Praetorian Stalker Squad Commander upgrade)
Nasca Razide (New Support squad)

Capitol
The Iron Lady (Heavy Infantry SC upgrade)

Brotherhood
'Lukas' The Sacred Initiate (Brotherhood Trooper or Sacred Warrior SC upgrade)

Cybertronic
Pieter ‘The Shield Dimond - (Mirrorman SC upgrade)
Exterminateur ‘Attila’ MK.I ("New" Light Vehicle)

Bauhaus
Baron von Jaeger III (Bauhaus Artillery Korps upgrade)

So go and take a look for yourselves, but remember it's still Beta so things is subject to change in the future.

Download it here!

Unboxing Warzone: Bauhaus Etoiles Mortant

Another box that got updated from the Kickstarter version is the Etoiles Mortant models. The first ones weren't bad at all, but was little bit tricky to clean and assemble and also had quite odd poses.

The new box I got has the same design but much better poses, especially for an CC orientated squad. Much more dynamic and overall better design.

All the things you get in the box, the how to build instructions are for the old models though, this will probably change in the future.

Enough parts to do five mortants with or without an Gehenna Puker. 

The details are nice and crisp, like all the new Prodos kits. 

Six cards as per usual for these kits. 

They where very easy to assemble and not much cleaning was needed.

Compared to some of the old Mortants.

And here I see for the first time a difference in scale, the old models look like amazons compared to the new one. This is extra strange since I thought Prodos where trying to up the scale (28mm to 32mm) and has done so with the Imperials and new Cybertronic Chasseurs for example. 

I needed to do another comparison, and well the new one (middle left) looks like a dwarf compared to the rest. Especially against the Blood Beret.

So to summarize. At first I loved the new kit, better details, less moldlines, flash etc. and much easier to assemble. I really like the kit and thought they would look even better mixed with some of the old ones I have. I actually got a little bit shocked when I realized the scale difference,  and I don't really know if this is a mishap in the process or if the models should be so tiny. It does look odd with them together and this made me not as happy with this kit as I first where I'm afraid.