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Welcome to Idle Hands, my weekly segment where I discuss conversions, painting, and strategy for the Warhammer tabletop game…
THIS WEEK
This was a weird week where I felt like I was spinning my wheels and sitting in place, there were real world concerns that were inevitable. My wife had to take her sugar test this week, so we made a day of it. Had lunch with my dad and came home through the rain, that was Friday. And when we got home I finally received the answer to the bigger problem, 2 boxes full of parts, bases, and green stuff I needed to get moving further with the army. It’s an unfortunate truth, if you don’t have the necessary parts you can’t go forward with your plans. I kept myself busy, but it was mostly refining the work I had done for the display board backdrop, work that would only be done a bit at a time with a long wait between steps. In other words, the whole thing was frustrating and unsatisfying (over the short-term).
OF MICE AND MEN
With all of the sitting on my hands I had to do this week, I had a lot of time to consider my current position and my direction. First, it’s painfully obvious that I can’t accomplish everything I want in such a rigid timeline as I have set for myself. I will continue to work within guidelines I set for myself, but ultimately I have to find a way to improve my flexibility so that during those inevitable times where I just can’t work on the unit I want to because the store has run out of the textured bases I need, I can switch to something else and feel like I’m making some meaningful progress. So, I re examined my army.
Now, it is important to note that right now I do have models to represent everything in the list. Some are more finished than others, and some just aren’t quite to my satisfaction. That said, I have decided to repaint, re base, or completely redo some units in the army. Last week for example, I repainted and re based my Sorcerer Lord and now I am much happier with his appearance, he certainly fits in better overall with the army as a whole.
Additionally, I want to re base my Warshrine, I’m redoing my Warhounds and Chariots entirely. And my Marauders required a little bit of a rethink, I’m still deciding if I want to use the textured bases from Scibor or if I want to do my own bases. Largely, this is because I ran into a problem getting enough of the textured bases that I needed for these two units. And yes, I decided to redo both of my Heroes. I think they both turned out fine, but they don’t match my current vision for the army, I’ll be remaking those so now I’ve got that to work on too.
So, I decided to make a list of things I need to complete before the tournament. As I progress, I just mark out another item and move on. My goal is to finish at minimum one item from the list per week. But in some cases, multiples will definitely be finished. I need to complete all of this before November so that I have plenty of time with my family when my son is born, and so that I also have time to get more practice in with the army before the tournament in January.
ARMY CHECKLIST
■ Sorcerer Lord of Tzeentch
■ Exalted Hero of Tzeentch (BSB) on Daemonic Steed
■ Exalted Hero of Tzeentch on Disk of Tzeentch
■ 10 Warhounds
■ The Pleasureseekers, 5 Marauder Horsemen of Slaanesh (Flails, Spears, Mus)
■ 24 Chaos Marauders of Khorne (Flails, Mus, Std)
■ 24 Chaos Marauders of Khorne (Great Weapons, Mus)
■ 15 Chaos Warriors of Tzeentch (Halberds, Shields, FC)
■ 11 Chosen of Tzeentch (Shields, FC)
■ 2 Chaos Chariots
■ 3 Dragon Ogres (Great Weapons)
■ Warshrine – Needs to be rebased.
■ Trumps of Doom, Lore Cards for Warriors of Chaos
■ Harry the Turn Counter
■ Display Board – This will be an ongoing project, I’ll be working on it throughout the weeks to come.
As you can see, I’ve got a lot of work to do. But ultimately, it’s work I want to do and work that I can do. Both of those points are very important in a project like this. Now, let’s talk about some of the practical application of all of my planning…
GAME ONE OF PLAYTESTING
Friday night was a night of firsts, it was my first game with the tourney list and my first time playing against Tomb Kings. My opponent had a large force consisting of 2 Colossus, 2 small units of Knights, Scorpions, a Catapult, several units of archers and spear wielding blocks of skeleton infantry. I was more than a little surprised to see no Chariots, I was also mildly concerned about the magic phase going in since I only had the Sorcerer Lord while he had a level 4 and 2 level 2s. Fortunately, I managed to psyche him out in the first turn – he went all in to dispel my Infernal Gateway and I followed with an uncontested Pandaemonium.
My Dragon Ogres proved to be an all star here, they managed to demolish a Colossus and two units of archers while only taking a single wound. I lost a chariot early, as well as one unit of hounds, but those were the last wounds I took in the game. One of the level twos blew himself up with a miscast thanks to Pandaemonium, the rest of his spells failed to cast before the Disk Hero dispatched the level 4 (Blood Curdling Roar did an excellent job of tenderizing him before the charge).
After the general was gone, it was really pretty much over for the TK player. It was a surgical strike toward his general + Pandaemonium that really did him in.
MALEVOLENT CREATIONS
Time for the metal, I did a bit of work on my Chosen and Chariots. There was a sizable amount of conversions to do – burnt fingers and cuts were worth it in the end…
CHOSEN OF TZEENTCH
Here’s 11 Chosen, I only had 10 actual Chosen models so I used a Pink Horror in place of the last one. And of course this is the bunker for my Sorcerer Lord. In my experience, this unit armed with Shields and Hand Weapons with support from the Warshrine makes for a tough nut to crack.
CHARIOTS
I got several (6) pewter Chariots in a job lot from eBay, I decided to use two of these for my army to replace the converted ones I made a few months ago.
THE BOARDENING!
Work on the Display Board continues, this week I didn’t have much else to do while I waited on parts so I knocked out a few odds and ends with the backdrop. Specifically, I got the electronics installed and finished the spackling on the core of the mountain backdrop. There will be smaller hills to either side on the board, and there will be 2 decorative plates added to the lower front of the mountain itself, but it’s coming along nicely.
I hit the piece with some black primer between coats of spackle, this gave me a quick look at any places I missed before as the foam in those areas shriveled and fumed. I was then able to go back and touch up the missed points with spackle before sanding and priming again. Now dry and with the electronics installed the core of the mountain weighs a whopping 2 lbs, sounds heavy but the thing is almost 2 feet tall and 2 wide, and 6 inches thick. It’s a sizable piece that will definitely do a lot to fill out the back end of my display board.
Here are the electronics I mentioned earlier, this is a cheap fire kit from a model train website, as you can see from this pic it does a good job of throwing off some light. I think I may add a second LED kit though seeing it hooked up to the mountain. In the dark it’s sweet looking, but in normal light conditions it’s very subtle.
COMING SOON
I’m still on the fence about my Marauders and Warhounds, I’m stuck between doing “stone” bases or using the Ruins bases from Scibor. The problem is that I can do the stone bases quickly, or I can wait for the Ruins bases to be restocked – which might take a while. So, for now I’m working on other units. Unfortunately, it feels like procrastination.
Meanwhile, I am already well underway with my unit of Chosen. As of this writing the unit is halfway painted, then I’ll move on to my Chariots. I should have both the Chariots and the Chosen finished for next week. And who knows, maybe a surprise or two.
