Warhammer Gifts From A Friend, and Reset

A friend of mine did some house cleaning and came across old miniatures (mostly Warhammer Fantasy) he brought a long time ago. He brought them with the idea of making a fantasy chess board. At this point that project was never going to happen so he offered them to his gaming buddies (which includes me). I, of course said loudly I wanted them and he was more than happy to toss the boxes and blisters packs my way. Here is a picture of some of those gifts...

What to do with these new old models got me thinking. At first I consider using some of the collection for conversion projects but I couldn't think of anything they would be good for. Then I remember that I wanted an elven army eventually for Chaos Magic lore reasons and these miniatures would be a decent start. I'm not going to immediately put together the entire collection but I think I will work on the box of High Elves, the box of Dark Elves and maybe one blister soonish. This might even allow me to get in some Age of Sigmar games in.

Which leads into another decision about the models and even the blog itself. Am I going to build these miniatures so I can used them in both Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition and in Age of Sigmar or should I only keep AoS in mind? There are elements of 8th edition I like and do not see in any game I'm currently playing. That and along with the good memories I have of playing 8th is why I held out hope that I will get to play it again sometime. I really want to finish the Border Prince Campaign as well as play through the scenarios that were in the End Times books. However I'm beginning to realize it is getting unlikely that I will get to play 8th edition again and will probably never get to regularly play it. I only have one friend that I know of that still has 8th edition armies and has an interest in playing. That said, we never played one last year and even he has started selling of some of his armies. The final nail for me is that my friend is leaving soon for college. That means there is no hope for me playing 8th edition for at least 2 or 3 years from now. It makes no sense for me to work on new 8th edition armies, especially since I don't own any of the elven army books. There are lots of local players that play 40k and/or Age of Sigmar. I don't know how these models will fit into AoS but they along with my Bretonnians should be fun to find out.

I think it is time for me to remove the Border Prince Campaign page. I had a lot of story plans connect to the campaign but it doesn't make sense to have most of my blog's lore based on an unfinished campaign that will remain unfinished for years to come. As much as it pains me, at this point its better for me to reset my lore and start again with a new campaign or narrative tool. Age of Sigmar was made with narrative battles in mind and those are perfect for telling stories through fiction and gaming. Before I make any new plans for gaming fiction, I want to concentrate on getting more of my collection assembled and painted. I will need some time to decide where to take my fantasy stories and I have plenty of models to paint and even more to assemble.

Topic of the Week - Allies in Age of Sigmar

This week topic is related to the up coming General's Handbook 2. I'm not exactly excited about the book because I dislike buying books (just rather put that money towards more models). Also, personally it feels like I just brought General's Handbook 1 and seeing it replace is a downer to me. That said, I AM excited about Age of Sigmar getting allies. There is probably more details about it out at the time of my writing but I don't know it. I get the vast majority of my Age of Sigmar news from the Topic of the Week videos and the few times I get to watch Warhammer Weekly. My understanding is that in the General's Handbook 2 there will be the option to take up to 20% of your army from a different faction as allies and still keep your allegiance abilities. It is unknown to me exactly how this will work, including whether or not it will be possible to cross grand alliances. In any case, my response is that I'm all for it to the extreme. I certainly understand this can lead to abuses and realize this can bring a lot of headaches to the community. However I think the flexibility is worth the risk. I create my own lore and it rarely fits into the same boxes Games workshop sets up. I have two examples of armies that mixes alliances. To really understand why I mix alliance, I need to explain the lore and ideas behind each army.

Funny that I was just talking about my goblin army in my last article when before that I probably hadn't thought about it since a little after Age of Sigmar was first release. My goblin army is a mix of death and destruction and I got inspired to build it from the Diablo 3 expansion. The undead in that game were an eerie light blue. The lore behind my goblin army is that an Angel of Death made a bargain with a tribe of goblins. If the goblins devote themselves and worship him, the Angel bestow his powers to them, allowing the goblins to use it as they see fit. The Angel showed off his powers by instantly killing the Orcs whom enslaved them (and greatly weaken himself in the process). The "default" army would be all goblins. Two-thirds of the goblins would be painted green like normal, while the rest would be painted light blue. The blue goblins would represent goblins that had died and are currently being animated by the Angel's power (gamewise, there is no different between green and blue). Once the Angel recovers some of his strength, he would then be able to animated and summon powerful undead that would be under the control of goblin shamans. The undead would be blue in color, in the same shade as some of the goblins. The undead would be mostly skeletons with the potential of a few heavy hitters, outside of vampire/Tomb King characters. A side benefit to this army was that it was a "reservable" army. By that I mean it wouldn't take much to make it playable as a completely different army. Get a few undead characters, expand a little on the undead elites and use the blue goblins as ghouls and it can serve as a playable pure undead army. The Angel himself wouldn't appear on the battlefield with the exception as unit fillers under 8th edition rules. The unit fillers would have represent the ability of large groups of goblins projecting a ghostly image of him. All I needed to find were Demon Prince size Angel models. Probably would have been one of the few unit fillers that would have cost more than just buying more models!

I discarded the idea of building the goblin army early in Age of Sigmar because I had too many other games and armies I also wanted to work on. Which is probably for the best as it would probably get smash by anything remotely competitive. Since AoS split up goblins into 3 or more factions, I probably couldn't ever get allegiance abilities for it whether or not I included the undead. Its a shame as I really love the theme behind it and think it would have look cool on the tabletop.

My Chaos Army is something I plan to get back to and has multiple narrative parts. Chaos has two separate storylines but the one that mixes alliances deals with the Chaos King Amirren. Amirren is pretty much my version of Archaon. Think I even use Archaon rules to represent Amirren once in a campaign. Powerful warlord, decent sorcerer, but Amirren's greatest gift was his charisma. With it he manage to convince 9 other warlords that were almost as powerful as he is to serve under him. Each of these warlords, which I called the Lords of Chaos, had their own uniquely looking armies (I very much didn't limited my imagination to what my budget could afford!). Half of the Lords of Chaos were sorcerers, some of the greatest in the world and each sorcerer was a master of something. There is the Master of Magic, a sorcerer with knowledge of nearly every possible spell in the world. When I have used him in 7/8th edition games, I've gave him the Third Eye to represent this aspect of him. There is also the Master of Fire, a sorcerer whom can bend flames to his will. Outside of always having lore of fire, I hadn't figured out how to show off his flame mastery on the table. I suppose I can use flamers to act as fire elementals he controls as part of his army. But the one Lord of Chaos I probably developed the most was Vikihra, the Master of Death. Amirren has ordered his Lords from time to time to temporary disband their army and wander the world alone to search for ways to better themselves. Vikihra, having completely mastered death magic, decided to seek the knowledge of undeath magic when she was asked to go on one of these worldly trips. Her goals were not only to gain more power, but also find a way to heal her body. Centuries ago she was burned alive and only survived due to her knowledge of death magic. However her burned body is a constant source of pain and healing magic have shown to have no effect on her. For decades she studied under various vampires and dark priests to learn necromancy directly from those whom wield it. Eventually Vikihra develop her own type of necromancy. In many ways it was inferior to either of the other necromancy magic, but to her, it was better because she made it. Her new fond powers and knowledge did nothing to heal her body. When Amirren summoned his Lords of Chaos and their armies, she shocked the other Lords and even Amirren himself when she arrived with a significant larger army that was bolstered with her own undead creations.

Vikihra is one of the few characters I brought a specific model for though I never got around to convert and paint it. I loved the look of the Queen Khalida miniature and once I decided to use it, it help develop some of Vikihra's history. Unlike my goblin army, I do consider this an active project. And since Vikihra is one of the most develop concept I have, I could see myself having this army on the table in a year or two. It would be also a lot of work. Vikihra's undead will require a lot of conversion as her undead doesn't look normal. Kitbashing Chaos bits with undead parts and making it look good and easily identifiable will be time consuming (and maybe outside of my skill set at this time). But when I do get to it, I would want to be able to travel the country to events with it and not be handicapped. I do see it being stronger than my goblin idea but I don't think its overly strong. But that is something further down the road for me.

What allies means for me NOW is less interesting. The AoS army I'm working on now is my Poison Army which is a mix of Nurgle Chaos Warriors and Clan Pestilens. I have a problem with battlelines. Nurgle Chaos Warriors is the only battleline I can/want to use. I don't mind warriors but they are too expensive to fill my battlelines ONLY with warriors. Plus I want the army to be more Skaven than Chaos. Allies will allowed me to add clanrats as battleline and still have the feel I'm going for. I suppose I could start looking for poison users in other forces and add them with allies though I can't think of any at the moment. Another thing I could do is have Chaos be my allies so I can have allegiance Pestilens. Since I want to use more than 20% Chaos, I'm probably not going to do that. But it is an option and having the option is much better than no option.

Vince's Topic Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-NH2cFuZSc

The Start of My Poison Army - AoS

I finally got the first 15 models of my Poison Army assembled. While I still have another 11 models to put together, I wanted to pause here to show off what I have and to test out a paint scheme. I think I want to do some combination of brown, green and yellow. I will paint the monks' robe and the warriors cloak the same color so it looks like it came from the same place.

I did some minor conversion to help make the army look like it is one force. I notice there were giant rats on the sprue when I was assembling the plague monks. I got an idea to put a few rats on warrior's heads so they might look like pets or at the very least to show the warriors were comfortable around rats. I don't want every chaos warrior to have a rat on his head but I think a third or a fourth of them should be fine. The rest I want to put a giant rat on their base. I decided it would be easier to paint the rats and chaos warrior separately since it didn't look like there was a lot of room for a brush if I had already glued the rat on the base. I've been thinking about other uses for giant rats. If I ever decide to add a character on a Palanquin, I can convert one being carry by a rat swarm. As interesting (and helping to unify the army) that would be, I wanted my Poison Army to be more Skaven than Warriors of Chaos. Of course when I decided to make this army I thought there were a lot more Clan Pestilens options available.

I also did some weapon swaps. One monk has a chaos axe and one warrior has a Skaven blade. I like how they turned out except the monk's robe is hanging in the wrong way. It is hard to see in these pictures though I suppose I could say it is like that because of the force the axe is being swung downward. When I get it painted up I will make sure I will have a much clearer picture of it taken. With there being people locally playing Age of Sigmar now, I'm really excited to play AoS myself again. And this was my first step.

My Warhammer Plans For 2017

Happy New Years! I've decide to start 2017 with some Warhammer news. At the time of my Winter Update I had no idea where to go on the Warhammer front. I've since settled on a plan that has multiple parts. The initial part is to build my Age of Sigmar Poison army.

The idea behind my Poison Army is Clan Pestilens Skaven mix with Warriors of Chaos Nurgle with some demons thrown in. One of the reason I'm going with it is because its both new and a continuation of what I already have. The Skaven is going to be a new experience for me, both from the aspect of painting "skin" oppose to my mostly metal force and for the first time dealing with something closer to a horde army. Also I have zero Skaven models so this part of the army will be all new. On the Chaos side I can fall back on stuff I'm more comfortable with and already have a lot of. But I will be taking my Chaos in a different direction. I will be doing a slightly different Nurgle paint scheme that will match my Skavens. I'm hoping for a balance between having the Poison Army look like a different force from my main Chaos army and yet have some of the Nurgle parts that could still fit into my old army. Not sure I can pull it off but that is my goal. Also if I do have Forsaken in my Poison Army they will be different from my original plans. My Poison Army won't have the corrupting nature theme of my current Nurgle force so kitbashing Chaos Warriors with Dryads doesn't really fit. Kitbashing Chaos Warriors with rat models would be perfect but all of the Skaven line is either too small or too big for that, I think. I have thought up of other conversion I could do, like a Chaos chariot being pulled my giant rats (or the wheels get replace by rats). Now that I've settle in for what I'm going to do, the ideas for conversion is overflowing.

I've actually played very few games of Age of Sigmar and I've only recently began to digest the point system in the General's Handbook. I'm a little afraid of coming up with a list that isn't competitive. My first few games will be friendly matches with a friend so this won't matter at first but I eventually want to travel to events with my Poison Army and I don't want to get smash because I have a bad list (getting smash because I'm playing better players is a different story and that is fine with me). In any case I will be sticking to my theme and will try to improve my army in any way that doesn't departs from said theme. There are a couple of things I still haven't settle on. I hear that in the fluff every clan has clan rats but I'm not sure if I want to add them to my force. Beside going further to being a horde army than I want, clan rats can't get the Pestilens and/or Nurgle keywords. I don't know all the problems that will cause but I'm not sure clan rats will be worth the cost. They do have the benefit of still being sold with square bases. As I'm still a fan of 8th edition I want as much as my army to be usable in both systems. With the official end of 8th edition I find square bases are harder to come by, at least with Games Workshop models. This more than anything else makes the clan rats tempting. The other thing is that I was never a fan of Skaven warmachines (which is why I never collected them before now). However if I don't take warmachines that doesn't leave a lot left to fill my army with Pestilens stuff. I will probably have to just bite the bullet and pickup the plague warmachines.

My initial plan purchase is a box of Plague Monks, Plague Censer Bearers and a Plague Priest (or two). I also want to pick a box Chaos Knights fairly early on. Later on I want to pick up a second box of Plague Monks and the Verminlord Corruptor. This along with an unit of striped and repainted Chaos Warriors is going to be my core force. After getting some games in I will decide where to go from there. In my mind I want a rough mix of 50/50% even split between Skaven and Chaos, if not a little more Skaven. I am worry about the cost of getting that much Skaven plus I know there is so much more Chaos stuff I want to consider like a Warshrine, Forsakens, chariots and more. And I forgot to mention a box of Plaguebearers in there. The best part about this army is that it is easy for my to try out new things with it. I already own a lot of Chaos and my friend has a ton of Skaven and a 40k Nurgle army I could borrow to test out options. This is probably the one of the few armies I could build while play testing and not have to do any kind of proxies.

My Poison Army is only the first part of my Warhammer plans. Once I have my core force assembled and painted, I will start designing an AoS campaign. The other reason I'm going with the Poison Army is that I came up with a campaign to use it in. The storyline for the campaign is new as well as connected to my current World of Chaos plot. I need to finish some unpublish lore but I will deal with that once I'm actually working on the campaign. I'm sure between Phil and myself we have enough models to start the campaign immediately but I really want my core army to be painted first. I want any battle report pictures to look like there is a unified threat. Even using Phil models will still fit the narrative as they will represent hired on mercenaries. I plan on hiring mercenaries to be a big part of the campaign itself.

And those are my plans for Warhammer in 2017. Will start it off with a box of Plague Monks next month. Let is how it goes. Thanks for reading and I hope the new year will be a good one for you. Until next time.

Shieldmaiden Knights

It is not often that I can track an idea from initial concept to the point where I'm willing to put money into it. But this is exactly what happen with my latest multi-game project. Since it is still fresh in my mind I thought it would be interesting to write about the entire process here.

The idea started with me playing the game Bravely Default. One of the characters, Agnès the vestal of wind was raised by a coven female acolytes. As vestal, it is Agnès mission to tend to the crystal of wind, one of the four artifacts that are the life force of the planet. Since this was a job the require her entire waking moments, Agnès had almost no contact with the outside world. The coven did all of Agnès' necessities for her. This includes going to the city for supplies, cooking, cleaning as well as being Agnès' bodyguards. I know I've seen this trope in other media, though the only one I can think of is the movie Red Sonja. In that movie an order of all female priestess were guarding a world changing artifact. Of course in both these examples something bad happen to the coven. In Bravely Default's case, it force Agnès to face the outside world by herself for the first time in her life.

I took this concept and started playing with it in my mind. I toy around with some variables but at its core its a coven of all female warrior/priestess dedicating their lives to protecting something or someone. One of the things I thought about was if the coven was lead by someone like Lilith from the high fantasy setting of Anima. Lilith is one of the 4 Knights of the Seventh Heaven, each one said to have the strength to fight an army alone and win. To have someone of that caliber as leader would probably mean the rest of the coven strength would be much higher than the average small army. Going with this line of thinking, if the coven is protecting someone that is cloistered, like in Bravely Default, then that person wouldn't be aware of the power of the coven compared with other military forces. Now if an overwhelming force attacks and the person being protected escapes by herself, it would make sense for her to believe everyone in the coven had died.

This scenario can continue to play out in different ways. Where the protected will go, who she will allied with and how she learn about the survivors of the coven? I played out these scenes to figure out what would be the best way to tell a story. I soon realize my interest in this story idea is more than just a storytelling exercise. This seed of a story was now something I want to work on for as a long term permanent project. For that I need to decide whether to incorporate the seed into the series of novels I'm currently working on or make up a new short story/novel that is centered around the seed. At this point it still never occurred to me that any of this would be in miniatures. I took my time thinking about which way I wanted to go as both options had their positives and negatives. While I was thinking it over, I continue to play out various scenario in my mind. One of the variables I was constantly changing up were the side characters. Sometimes I used characters from my novel series to see how well the seed would work in them. Other times I use characters from other media to use as a blueprint for a new character if I went with the original story route. Eventually one of the characters I used was from my Chaos Magic mythology and that was when my prospective on this project completely change.

As soon as models entered the equation I knew the best fit for this story seed was in Holy Moon/Scarlet Nights. The focus of my thinking now shifted to rules and models. What game system can I use a coven of female warriors? I thought I would have more options but really Age of Sigmar is the only thing I'm interested in that fits. Since the coven is not a full size army, it doesn't fit into classic Warhammer fantasy. It probably could fit well into Kings of War but I'm not that familiar with the setting and I don't see myself playing it in the near future. Private Press's Hordes is a game I've been thinking about for a while. But that game is really more about monsters with very few (usually one) humanoid. Not how I envision the coven. Now that I'm thinking about it, there is one more game I'm interested in that I think might be a good fit. BattleLore! I still haven't gotten around to picking up the second edition box, or even playing it but from the reviews I've seen (and I enjoyed the first edition game) BattleLore is still something I really want to have. Unfortunately I will probably be unable to get the game any time soon. And with every other game I'm into being the wrong genre, Age of Sigmar is the system I need to plan for. I will be using both round and square bases so I would have the option to use the models in different game (since it really doesn't matter in AoS). I still haven't decided what warscrolls to use. Due to their background they should be from the forces of Order. Stormcast Eternals is close to what I'm envisioning but at the same time they are still off. To use a 40k reference, they are too much like Space Marines when I need Sisters of Battle. (On a side note, it didn't occurred to me how close the coven idea was to Sisters of Battle until after I started writing this post.) On second thought, if I can find large armored female models, I might have a couple coven members use the Stormcast Eternals rules. But for the majority of the coven I need to look at Bretonnian and Empire rules. Or maybe just wait for more human Order releases. That will probably be my best bet as I also envision the coven being mostly if not entirely on foot. As for models I will be starting with a couple of Reaper Minis that I like to use for commanders and a box or two of Mantic Games Basilean Sisterhood miniatures.

And that is as far as I've gotten on this idea. Initially I thought I would start on the Shieldmaiden models after I get 100 points of US in Team Yankee done and have assembly all the models in the Bretonnian Battalion box. But it has just been announce that West Germany will be in release for Team Yankee in July. So I guess after I get the West German book and Tornadoes (if they are in initial release) I will then start on this Shieldmaiden Knight project. At least that is the plan for now. I have a lot going on right now. In my next post I will discuss my Summer plans, some of which has already started, like being apart of a Team Yankee campaign. Until next time...

Return to Sigmar

It has been many months since I've done anything with Age of Sigmar. I've been listening to some of the conversation in the Age of Sigmar community but overall I have gone dark on AoS. The reason for this is due to the local negativity towards the game. Its really hard to enjoy something that my friend refers to as "just a beer and pretzel game" while we are playing it. I cringed every time he says it and I can't make myself speak up about it. When giving the choice between playing 8th edition and Age of Sigmar, the thought of playing Sigmar gave me a panic attack. I could only think about Age of Sigmar's faults ... or rather things AoS was NOT that I wish it was. There is nothing in the rules about how to balance forces against each other among many other "issues". I did come up with my own system but I've never tried it out. It was always at the back of my mind but I was a little afraid to play Age of Sigmar again.

Eventually my desire to test my system overcame my fear and last month we played Age of Sigmar again. While I didn't enjoy the game we played (which was due to other factors such as being exhausted and playing too big of a game too soon) it did renew my interest in the system. I can still see why many don't like the game. It takes a lot of effort to make it work, much more than any other war game I've heard about. But now I see the potential in the system if you are willing to put in the work. From browsing forums I know many people played 8th edition with home rules. But the differences in those games pale in comparison to how Age of Sigmar is played in various communities. Some use a point system while others go by wound totals. Some limit a force by armies in the old world while other go by the 4 grand alliances. This almost makes Age of Sigmar a wildly different game depending on how you decide to fill in the blanks. I normally would be worry about how house rules are splitting up the community but in this case I don't think it will be an issue. For one the official rules is to make up your own rules. That of itself makes playing with house rules much more acceptable. Second, it is much easier to adapt house rules to Age of Sigmar for narrative and campaign play than it is for 8th edition. AoS structure (or rather lack of one) lends itself towards that kind of gaming style. I can even see tournament play being done with AoS. Again it would require a lot of work and I have no interest in it at this time, but for a system many said tournament play would be impossible, I can certainly see the potential in AoS.

I want to go into more detail in each of these gaming style and explain how I can see AoS handle them, starting with narrative gaming. Narrative gaming is by far the easiest style for Age of Sigmar to emulate. Age of Sigmar was practically made to do this kind of gaming. A narrative battle is one that tells a story thru the game either by retelling a story from a book, history or some other media, or by the players crafting their own tale. Most war gaming systems trying to do the former requires some finesse. Usually taking a scenario from a book and trying to apply it directly into a war game is a disaster waiting to happen. A story isn't written with game balance in mind. An interesting conflict in a novel could a boring, lopsided affair if played as it in a war game. Age of Sigmar was probably design with this kind of lopsidedness in mind as a possibility. This means you could take almost any scenario as is and having an interesting game in Age of Sigmar. This doesn't mean the game would be balance in any way. Only that an uneven battle in Age of Sigmar can be still interest and fun to play for all involved.

Campaigns. Age of Sigmar works really well with campaign play. While I love playing in campaigns with 8th edition, there were a lot of idiosyncrasy with the campaign rules due to having a mostly balance game trying to represent real war which by its nature is very unbalance. The campaigns I've been apart of can be characterize as either abstract or concrete. Abstract campaigns are ones that the causalities of the battle doesn't matter. Battles start with preset point totals that other factors may adjust up. So regardless of how many casualties are sustain in combat, a force will always have a baseline in the next battle they play in. Army composition is also usually allowed to change battle to battle. In many abstract campaigns the number of banners a player has is base on the amount of territory they control. Concrete campaigns on the other hand keep track of the exact army composition and causalities matter. Any loses a banner sustain in combat remains in the next battle. Learning to limit and manage loses is an important aspect of this type of campaign. Even with the ability to resupply throughout the campaign, a force needs to be careful not to have their loses out pace the rate they can replace them or they will find themselves quickly eliminated from the campaign. I enjoy concrete campaigns because they mimic the feel of war closer than an abstract one. The downside to them is that they require a lot more paperwork and one single devastating loss can be crippling. Age of Sigmar is a perfect fit for a concrete campaign. The system can handle partial units which is important when the causalities starts coming in. Similar AoS can easily adapt a recruiting system that allows the purchase of single models for the same reason. Abstract campaigns are harder to fit with AoS because Age lacks a normal list building method. It can be done but I think the concrete style suits AoS much better.

Something that is not necessarily in every campaign (but can be applied to either abstract or concrete styles) are outside of combat magic. To give the campaign more of a high fantasy feel, some campaigns I've been apart of had custom rules for doing magic outside of a normal battle. I like the idea but it is hard to get a custom magic system right. It always felt like something just tack on. AoS has a mechanic that would work well with an outside magic system and in turn help balance an issue people have with AoS itself. Summoning! Using a limited resource magic system to fuel both summoning and outside combat magic will make everything feel like its the same game and setting. It will also make mass summoning in a battle or two have trade-offs that are not present in one-off games. Another interaction campaigns and summoning can have is to have unique summoning options as rewards for winning key battles. I didn't think so when it came out but I now think Age of Sigmar can have a much more satisfying campaign experience than 8th edition.

I will be brief on tournaments as it is not a strong point for Age of Sigmar. On second thought I will wait on that for another time. After a May update I will post my long overdue article on my design philosophy (which has change some) and will include my thoughts on tournaments.

As for the game that re-ignited my interest in Age of Sigmar, there are a couple of concepts from it I want to discuss. We used the system I discuss in here to pick our armies. Though it needs some fine tuning, overall I was happy with the balance of our forces. It did produce a MUCH larger game than I thought it would. I don't mind large games but not when I'm learning a system and expecting to play something smaller. The game ended up being somewhat lopsided but that was a result of the armies we decided to play with. Phil played a Lizardmen force. He more or less just took one of his 8th edition armies and put it in Age of Sigmar. I went with a concept I called the Plague Army. I made my decision before I looked at the war scrolls so I was surprised that I ended up with an all Nurgle army. I had no idea ahead of time that Skaven Clan Pestilence models had the Nurgle keyword. (I'm using the old war scrolls so I don't know if this was changed. I don't have access to the new ones.) That gave my army far more synergy than I thought I was going to have. This meant very little as Phil brought a lot of skinks which had an interesting interaction with half of my force. And by interesting I mean hard countered. My "core" troops were Nurgle chaos warriors and plague monks. Skinks can start the game hidden. At the start of their turn they can appear near the enemy and shoot a lot of shots. On their next turn they can hid themselves again, even if they are locked in close combat. As far as I know there is nothing the opponent can do to stop them from doing this. Now these shots tickled my chaos warriors but my plague monks has no armor so they died in droves. In two turns I lost half of my army because of the skinks. My initial reaction was that the skinks ability was broken and overpowered. But as the game continue my feeling towards them changed. Instead of having a static list made ahead of time, if we played with a system that allowed the players to pick their force during deployment then the dynamic of our game would be vastly different. I wouldn't have deploy the plague monks and in turn the skinks wouldn't have had the game change impact that they did. When I first looked at Age of Sigmar I figure there was going to be this type of hard countering but this was the first time I saw an example of it. I don't mind this aspect of AoS if it allows more units to have a purpose on the battlefield. It is something to keep in mind when deciding what structure your Age of Sigmar games will have.

The next few Age of Sigmar game I want to play are link narrative games. No army creation system. Just coming up with a simple story and giving each side a force the story says they should have. Find a few scenario that fit the story and start playing. I will write about how it goes. In my next post I will discuss a new but short project idea I will work on shortly and will probably see some Age of Sigmar use. Until next time!

Narrowing Down Armies for 8th and AoS

Earlier this week I've played my first game of 8th edition Warhammer in while. It felt like months though it most likely hasn't been that long. I played Bretonnians against Orcs and Goblins. The vast majority of my 8th edition games have been with Chaos so it was rather refreshing to play something different. I didn't get a chance to take a really good look at the Bretonnia book before I made my list and played the game. I had an idea of how I wanted to play Bretonnians and created my list around that. I expected to lose but I actually crushed my opponent. Part of that probably had to do with my friend making a "soft" list and being really lucky with magic. The fewest amount of power dice I had to cast spells were 8. Magic by itself wasn't auto winning the game, but having that much certainly help. I learn a lot about Bretonnians from that game as well as me reading more of their army book. I've recently been thinking about new armies and my new found Bretonnia knowledge will be useful towards that endeavor.

With the release of Age of Sigmar I now have the urge to collect and play armies outside of Chaos. From when I started playing Warhammer Fantasy until recently, Warriors of Chaos was the only army that interest me. Other armies had models that I like but I try to think of ways to convert them for my Chaos army oppose to actually starting a new one. One problem I have with my Chaos army is that I never form an over arching story line with them before I started collecting. At first I just brought random boxes, mainly choosing what was the best dollars to point values. I develop multiple story lines later but they were not based on stuff I own or wanted to pick up. I let my imagination run wild and now I am slowly trying to turn those visions into something on the gaming table. I really don't want to repeat that process with another army.

Fortunately, the story I have crafted with my Chaos forces already has background references that can base new armies on. They are an elven nation, a holy knightly human nation and a goblin force that worships a death angel. The elves are the ones I have developed the least. Storywise I have two chaos characters that are elven maidens (Vanacyr and Zifa Winters) and a future event that involves the Chaos King invading the elves and that's pretty much it for now. I have a general feeling on how I want my elven army to be on the table but at the same time I've never read any of their army books. While I have a box of Mantic archers I got as a present, I think I should probably wait until I've develop more of their story before trying to build their army. In the meantime I can use the archers as practice for potential color schemes. As for the holy nation, that has a stronger case for me starting an army for. There is a lot for it I also need to develop (among which is an actual name), however I have a general idea who they are and where I want to take them. With that as a foundation it will make further development much easier. The holy nation's story is very light for now. They are enemies to the Chaos King and are a threat that my other forces need to keep in mind. Bretonnia is probably the closest play style to what I envision the holy nation to play as. What I will bring to the game table might look weird for a normal Bretonnia list, but I live and die by my themes. The other army option is the goblin one. This idea came about me combining End Times' Lore of Undeath with a pure goblin list filled with wizards. I like the idea as it will be vastly different from what I normally play with Chaos. I have a very rough draft of a short story that explains how the army came about lore wise. When I think about how I want to paint the army up, I find myself with an overwhelming urge to also paint up a "normal" goblin army. I don't know why other than its my ADD trying to take over. Now that I think about it, it could very easily be a non-chaos Arkyrian Cabal force. As attempting as that sounds I will wait on an Arkyrian goblin force for the time being. With that decided, my next step is to work on some Bretonnia, undead and goblin models.

Now you are probably thinking that its crazy to start two separate Warhammer armies at once and you will be correct. I do have two counters to that point. I do plan to go very slow and small on both armies. A single character and a few models here, a single war machine there. I tend to bounce between projects a lot which leaves most of my models partially or unpainted. For these two armies I plan to work on each unit until I completely finish it before moving on to the next unit. Even though this will be a slow process, these armies will be made with both Fantasy and Age of Sigmar in mind. That means I will be able to use completed models as soon as they are done in Age of Sigmar since its playable with a lot less miniatures. And that is just using my own miniatures. My other point is that I have a friend with complete Bretonnia and Goblin armies. While I build up myself force, I can use his stuff to test and play games in the meantime. This is not exactly a perfect option as what I want to do with these armies is quite a bit different from what he owns. For now it will be enough in our practice games. For campaigns and other events I will make an effort to collect the unique elements of my armies ahead of time.

I think I have ramble on enough. I will end on what will be the initial elements of my armies, most of which I already own. For Bretonnia round 1 will a damsel character and a few peasant bowmen. I have a Reaper model that I will use for the damsel. The model, Sarah the Seeress, is perfect for what I need as I plan to have a fair amount of characters on foot. My friend didn't get any damsel characters with his Bretonnia so it is lucky I already had a miniature I could start working on immediately. The bowmen on the other hand might be a while as I will need to purchase them. The peasant bowmen were one of the units I really like from my previous game. Perhaps a lot of that had to do with the fact that I'm use to having nearly no shooting attacks and was really happy to have something to do in a game phase I usually skip on my turn. It probably doesn't that they are even better in Age of Sigmar. What I am not sure of is if I want to pick up the peasant bowmen box or the Bretonnian Battalion box. The Battalion has everything that I want but its a lot more expensive. A single bowmen box is a lot easier for me to purchase. I suppose I can wait on making that decision after I finish work my other round 1 items. Round 1 for Goblins will be three Fanatics and 3 skeleton archers. I have a box of Night Goblin Fanatics already assembled. They just need to be prime and painted. I also have several packs of Reaper's skeleton archers. I will paint up at least one pack of them. I brought a bunch because they were cheap and I plan to use them in two separate armies with very different paint schemes. From here I'm not sure where to go with the Goblins. Unlike Bretonnians, the 8th edition and Age of Sigmar versions of Goblins will be quite a bit different. But I think I can wait on that discuss. No need to consider round 2 options before round 1 is done.

Age of Sigmar, Round 2

I've played my second game of Age of Sigmar. Vampire Counts vs Goblins. We decide to go with 100 wounds per side. This game was even more of a disaster than the first but amazing I had more fun playing it.

Vampire Counts had 4 vampire lords, a tomb banshee, a Black Coach, 5 hex wraiths, 2 blocks of skeleton warriors and a unit of six vargheists. I had a goblin shaman, night goblin shaman, a unit of 31 goblins, 3 nasty stalker, goblin spear chukka, a unit of 20 night goblins, 3 night goblin fanatics and 14 forest goblin riders. You might notice my opponent had way more firepower and I had little chance of winning. That said this was the first time I've played with goblins and it was a learning experience for me. Also my opponent played a little loose so we could see some things in action. The forest goblin riders shot up and charged the hex wraiths. They nearly wipe the wraiths out, much to my surprise. Unfortunately for them the banshee move up and screamed at them which prove to be devastating. That and their bravery was well, goblin-like. Nevertheless they did remarkable well against the charging skeleton warriors ... well until the warriors got vampiric backup. On the other side of the battlefield the normal goblins fired their bows at the incoming vargheists. Being enhanced by the magic of the shaman, their arrows did work on the vargheists, just not enough damage to stop the vargheists from charging in and wiping them out. Did I mention the vargheists had the help of the Black Coach as well? It was not pretty. The nasty stalkers popup and said hi, but the undead just ignored them. The goblin spear chukka after 4 turns of doing essentially nothing, finally killed one of the vampire lords, and that was all it did all game. So that leave 2 shamans, the night goblins and their fanatics to face the remaining vargheists, Black Coach, 3 vampire lords, a banshee, and 2 units of skeletons. So yeah, I surrender soon afterwards but at least I got to see what the fanatics can do and it was glorious.

As I said, this game was more of a learning experience than anything else. My opponent and myself both agreed that making army list base on wound totals alone is not a good method. It hurts multi wounds models like the forest goblin riders unless they are really really good for its wound totals. Vampire Counts brought way more value per wounds than I did. That is okay because I didn't think wound totals was a good method in the first place. More importantly I learn important details how I can play a goblin army in Age of Sigmar. I was surprise at how fast the forest goblin riders were as well as the amount of damage they can dish out. They also die fast so they are a powerful but delicate tool. The key to their use is to know when to retreat with them. On the "core" front" I found myself liking normal goblins a lot more than night goblins. Night goblins has more unique tools that I did not utilize that should increase their worth but the sheer power of normal goblins' shooting is immense. If I had a warboss along with the shaman, my goblin shooting probably could have deleted the vargheist unit in one round. Their only problem is that they are worthless in close combat while night goblins seem to be more capable in hand to hand. Now when talking about these units, I also have to talk about what can be hidden in them, the nasty stalkers vs night goblin fanatics. Nasty stalkers are better to counterattack with since they can go first and their damage is decent. However I think fanatics are better in nearly every other way. They have no save but the damage they do is insane. In my game I had them charge the Black Coach on the Vampire Count's turn to prevent it from charging my night goblin unit. The safe play for my opponent would be to start combat with the Black Coach and wipe out the fanatics. But he wanted to see what they can do so we did another combat where he crushed my forest goblins instead. So the fanatics got the chance to attack and obliterated the Black Coach. Then the fanatics move across the board and charged a vampire lord. It was my turn so they got to attack first and obliterate the vampire lord. After that they just died but the thought of how much damage they can do makes me giggly. While I don't have to hid fanatics in a night goblin unit, its far too dangerous to start them in the open unless I'm facing someone like Vampire Counts with their limited shooting. That means fanatics and normal goblins are going to be fighting each other over who I am going to pick up for my own army. There is not much to say about the shamans other than I forgot about the mushrooms ability. They did well and I will use them when I used their goblin type units. The last unit I used was the goblin spear chukka and its results were disappointing. Reading its stats I thought it would be pretty nasty on the table but it was actually quite tame. The goblin spear chukka is only going to be useful against a handful of units and its going to take me some time to learn when to use it. I was really hoping more out of it because I have plans to pick up 6 for my 8th edition goblin list.

I keep saying goblin army because I am not a fan of orcs and I will not be using them. Of course this means I have few choices for a front line. Goblin archers are nice but I need a tough unit to screen and guard them. Fanatics are too much of a glass cannon to be of use for this job. That leaves for my choices either trolls or mangler squigs. I have 3 trolls that I need to finish up and will probably need to pick up a few more. I love the rules for the mangler squigs but I am not a fan of squigs concept. So I need come up with a replacement monster to use in place of the mangler squigs. I have started my goblin army with a pack of fanatics. I am slowly assembling them and then I need to decide how I want them painted.

I've been thinking about how to balance my third game. Just going by model or wound count doesn't work and I am still against using anything like points. I ran into another friend when we played our Age of Sigmar game. He mention he played a game of Age of Sigmar and it was completely unbalance because he plays Ogre Kingdoms. That got me thinking. Anything I come up with I want to make sure it would work with Ogre Kingdom as well. And I think I finally came up with something that might work. I still need to propose my idea to my friend but I want to do a game base on war scrolls. Each side gets an army of 20 war scrolls worth of units, of which there can only be 10 unique scrolls. There is a "limit" of three hero war scrolls and two monster/war machine war scrolls. War scrolls that has multiple models (non war machines) can take up to twice their minimum model count as a single choice. If the war scroll has no minimum, then it can take 5 models as a single choice instead. War scroll sizes can be increase at a cost. A war scroll can take up to three times their minimum model count at a cost of an addition choice. A war scroll can further increase it size to four times their minimum model count but this reduces the number of unique war scroll the army can use. Again if the war scroll has no minimum then 10 can be taken at a cost of an additional choice and 20 at the cost of the reduce unique of 1. Additional heroes and/or monster/war machines can also be taken at the cost of an addition choice. Heroes that are also monsters count as both.

My system does not deal with the issue of summoning yet. It does form the backbone of my ideal way to play Age of Sigmar. I still think what models you bring compare to what you use in the game needs to be consider with any comp system and will handle summoning problems but I am ignoring this concept for now so my friend and myself can concentrate on learning the other aspects of the game. In my next Age of Sigmar topics I will go into my design philosophy, why I am against using a point system and example armies using my comp system. Until then, stay positive and have fun.

My First Age of Sigmar Game

I played my first game of Age of Sigmar earlier this week. That first game both maintain my excitement for the system and slightly change my opinion of it in some ways. We played Bretonnia vs Warriors of Chaos. We decided to go with 50 models a side. He made a list ahead of time and I just brought a sample of my collections and just deployed units until I got to 50. My idea was to adjust what I would used on the fly but it didn't matter in this game. Partly because I didn't bring enough different options to have a choice and partly for another reason I will discuss at the end. I believe what my opponent brought to the battle was a Bretonnia Lord on a Pegasi, Damsel of the Lady, Grail Knights, another cavalry unit that I can't remember, a unit of Peasant Bowmen, 2 units of Mounted Yeomen and a Field Trebuchet. I brought 2 Chaos Sorcerer Lords, 2 units of Warriors of Chaos, 1 unit of Marauders, 1 unit of Forsakens, Dragons Ogres, 3 Chaos Spawns, a Hellcannon and a Chimera. The game started out fairly even for the first two rounds. On the west side of the board the two heavy cavalry units, the Lord and Lady face off against Warriors, Forsakens and a Sorcerer Lord. On the east side had the Mounted Yeomen trying to shoot to death the 3 Spawns, Dragons Ogres and the second Sorcerer. The other Warriors unit was also on the east side but their presence did not matter until the end of the game, which was around the time I remember the run option. The Bowmen and Trebuchet rained death on the east side from their comfortable position in the center of the map. The Hellcannon tried to rain death right back on the Trebuchet and took way too long to do. The Chimera sat next to the Hellcannon looking pretty. And the Marauders were immediately deleted by the Trebuchet before my first turn.

As the game move to the later rounds, I quickly found myself getting grinded into a slow painful death. The Warriors and Forsakens were not a match for 2 heavy cavalry units. Even getting the assist from the chimera didn't stop my west flank from disintegrating. Once my chaos forces were gone the heavy cavalries that only took modest casualties ran into the Hellcannon. Probably should have ended the game here but we kept playing until I got tabled. Th east side fared much better at first. The Dragon Ogres along with the Chaos Spawns murdered the Yeomen but then got shoot up by the bowmen. The final Dragon Ogre tried the charge into the bowmen but died before he could do much damage. Heading into the end game I had 2 Chaos Spawns, 1 unit of Warriors and a Sorcerer Lord. My opponent had the 2 heavy cavalry, the Lord and Lady and the bowmen. The second Warriors unit and friends didn't fair any better against the dual heavy cavalries. The Sorcerer Lord did manage to snipe the Bretonnia Lord on a Pegasi with Arcane Bolt. I consider this a minor victory due to how much damage I threw at him and him just not dying. But in the end I got tabled with the majority of the Bretonnia force still being on the table.

So what did I learn from my first game? You might gather from my tone that I was a little bitter and I would be lying to say I wasn't. At least at the time and I tried to kept it to myself. I knew my negative thoughts were just excuses to protect my bruised ego. So after digging a little deeper into how the game went I finally realize two important points. One was that I had answers to the things giving me problems. The two heavy cavalry units with support from the Lord and Lady was what wreck my army. This was due to their high save and me not able to generate enough wounds. If I had concentrated the Hellcannon and chimera's range attacks on them I probably could have turn the battle around as they both do mortal wounds which means the cavalry would not have gotten any saves. It would also help if I realize the chimera had a range attack earlier in the game. This is one of the many mistakes we both made in terms of forgetting what our force can do. The other thing I realize is that I am playing a different game. This should have been obvious as Warhammer 8th edition and Age of Sigmar rules are nothing like each other. Nevertheless I found my thinking that since I'm using the same models with the same name as 8th edition, they will perform a similar role in Age of Sigmar. If my first game is any indication then that line of thinking is very wrong. I'm use to my warriors having really good saves but in Age of Sigmar they only have "decent" saves which means more failures than I am use to. Their balancing factor is that now they have 2 wounds each which is nice if it wasn't for the fact that the cavalry also had 2 wounds each. Also my shields were worthless because my opponent didn't have any attacks that did mortal wounds outside of Arcane Bolt from the Damsel but she had better spells to cast. Another factor was that I had no synergy in my army while my opponent had some. Nearly my entire army had a chaos mark but in Age of Sigmar they do nothing unless I have something that specifically affects them. For example Glottkin has a command ability that affects friendly Nurgle units. Its going to take a while to wrap my head around the fact marks does nothing by themselves. This means when I plan out future lists I very much need to keep what synergy options I have available.

There is no telling where Games Workshop will take Age of Sigmar but I now have a few guesses what the future holds. I think competitive games will be compose around balancing what models you bring to the game and what models you use in the game. In essence you will have two "list" instead of the traditional one. I know some in the community want to make single lists like what we did in 8th edition but I think this is a flawed approach to Age of Sigmar. It doesn't take advantage of Age of Sigmar's unique elements. Instead I think the following example would be a better approach. You and your opponent agree to play a game with equal number of models per side, such as 50. You and your opponent both brings models in excess to the agreed total such as 200 to 400 models each with the previous example. You both deploy one unit at a time from this pool until you reach the agree upon total and the leftovers can only be used if summoned as well as you are only able to summon models from this initial pool. Additional composition restrictions might be needed to be applied to the agree total though I need to play more games to see if this is really needed. With a system where you bring more models than what you use on the table allows for an environment to have healthy counters. 8th edition has it share of counters but I don't think it was very healthy. You had to factor in potential counters to your army when you make your list and if you left something out and had to face it on the table you had to either work around it or you were just screwed. With Age of Sigmar, as long as you have the models, you can adjust your play against potential counters on the fly in similar ways that real-time strategy games work. This is what I attempted but failed to do in my game because I lack the models and the knowledge of the new way my and my opponents armies play. However this style of game is what gets me excited about Age of Sigmar. All that is needed to for Games Workshop to balance their armies and not in ways most players are use to.

My next game of Age of Sigmar will probably be next week. I'm looking forward to a Skaven vs Goblin match. Until then try to stay positive!

Age of Sigmar

Age of Sigmar has created such a wave in the miniature wargaming community that I feel I need to throw in my input. First for those of you who don't know the significances of Age of Sigmar or was curious why its cause so much rage in the community, this is my narrative version of what is going on.

The setting of Warhammer Fantasy is around 30 years old and its lore has a rich history. The Warhammer Fantasy game is currently in its 8th edition of the rules. Last year Games Workshop started a major event in the setting called "The End Times". The event came to a conclusion with an apocalyptic final battle that was publish earlier this year. In the end evil won and the world was destroyed. Games Workshop has said they will no longer support Warhammer Fantasy and eventually all Warhammer Fantasy model lines will be removed to make room for their new game: Age of Sigmar. The story of Age of Sigmar is that Sigmar, one of the setting good gods escape the destruction of the Warhammer Fantasy world and took a few surviving remnants of its population with him. They found a set of new worlds to settle in. After a time the Chaos Gods found the new worlds and started corrupting people again because that is what they do. At this Sigmar basically said "Oh no, not again!" and created a race of divine angel-like warriors to fight against this new Chaos threat. Thus the Age of Sigmar begins!

Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition and Age of Sigmar are two vastly different games. I can understand the rage fans of 8th edition have with the destruction of their favorite game and setting but I also see why Games Workshop went with a reset in the first place. From a narrative point I like having an advancing metaplot. If a major element of your metaplot is "the end of the world is coming", at some point you really need to do your world changing End Times like event. You don't have to have evil win and destroy it all but I digress. Story aside the real reason Games Workshop is doing this reset is because they want a setting with stronger intellectual protection and I can't fault them for wanting that. Warhammer Fantasy has a rich history but at its core its really just European history mix with generic fantasy tropes. To be fair Warhammer was one of the pioneers for fantasy tropes but now these concepts are everywhere. I can fault them for the ideas they decide to go with but that is another discussion.

So what are my thoughts on Age of Sigmar? I have read the rules but I haven't played a game yet. The person I would most likely play with went on a family vocation around the time the rules were release. Now that he is back we will be getting our first game in later today. What I can say is the I like the theme of the rules and where Games Workshop may be taking them. That said there are only two official armies out. Games Workshop release rules to allow everything in 8th edition to be play with Age of Sigmar rules. However I consider this to be giving the community a taste of what is in store with Age of Sigmar. I'm sure over time these rules will be phased out as the meat of the new setting comes out. Overall I like the new direction GW seem to be taking this. The rules are free online and a spokesperson has said GW plans all future game rules will be release for free. They want to make the game easy for new player to get into and I can respect that. As I said 8th edition and Age are vastly different games that will probably scratch a very different itch. Unless I end up utter hating Age, I foresee myself playing both games for years to come. I will not be consider any of the community built "8.5" nonsense. For me I will either play vanilla 8th edition, 8th edition End Times or 8th edition modified for specific campaign rules. One thing is that I will probably be playing with a different force in Age of Sigmar. What force I am not sure yet but Age is just beginning so I have time to decide.

In terms of my projects I can see Age of Sigmar having little affect initially. I will finish Border Prince with the exact same 8th edition rules that it ended with. My Dragon's Fall campaign will be using modified 8th edition rules if its gets off the ground in the next few months. After that I may consider having Age of Sigmar projects.

Now I need to leave to actually play Age of Sigmar. I will have a lot more to say after I have real gaming experience with it. Until next time.