The Pilgrimage

Not a painting or gaming post, just a few pictures from my recent visit to Warhammer World, somewhere I've not actually been to in over ten years.

The last time I went there was just the gaming hall, Bugman's Bar and the shop. It was interesting to see that the gaming hall was about half the size, Bugman's actually had plenty of space and you couldn't get anywhere without going through the shop twice

There's some subtext to unravel about the development of Games Workshop in those changes, but I'll leave that for your consideration.

On top of this was the exhibition, which, if you were unsure, is well worth a visit. The opening section covers the development of their games and settings and features a number of classic miniatures.

It's a bit weird seeing models that are still in my painting queue in what is essentially a museum. There's subtext in that too.

It was a shame there wasn't more of their older ranges on display, I feel they could have done some interesting demonstration of the development of things like Terminator armour or a close up look at how sculpting has changed.

But maybe the museum aspect isn't what they were going for.

Having said that, this section included classic dioramas that I remember seeing in several publications, such a this piece by John Blanche, which I thing was in the 3rd edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle rulebook.

Or this one inspired by Warhammer Quest. There was actually much more to it but it was quite hard to photograph in a way that captured the way it was put together on different levels.

What was very noticeable with these older dioramas, particularly with what came later, was how small they were, despite looming so large in my memories.

For example, this classic piece by Mike McVey based on art from the Realms of Chaos: The Lost And The Damned, which is (I think) the only representation of the Emperor in miniature to appear in the pages of of White Dwarf.

It's about the size of a shoebox.

In contrast there's the newest diorama in the exhibition is this massive scene done to coincide with the launch of Warhammer: The Old World, which is essentially the Battle of the Pelennor Fields but in a desert, with Tomb Kings and Bretonnians taking the parts of the forces of Mordor, Gondor and Rohan.

The diorama was packed with detail, such as these Tomb Scorpions and Necropolis Knights (or are they the other ones?) emerging in a market square within the city.

On the subject of Tolkien inspired wargaming, it was reassuring that the fantasy area of the exhibition had a healthy amount of Lord of the Rings miniatures and dioramas on display.

As I was accompanied by Mrs Cheaphammer and the Cheapling, these scenes were a great access point for them to see things they could relate to and make sense of more easily, especially when surrounded by Age of Sigmar displays which I have only the most tenuous and out of date grasp of.

In a real turn up for the books, this particular scene from the Shire evoked some interest from Mrs Cheaphammer in making some similar terrain.

She's never that keen on the violence inherent in this hobby, although she was impressed with the dynamism of the newer Age of Sigmar sculpts.

We didn't spend too long on the Age of Sigmar displays, although they are impressive. I was able to handily explain the four Chaos gods in terms that the family understood with visual references: disease and despair; change and magic; pleasure and sauciness; ANGRY!

The Cheapling showed some affinity towards Nurgle, although this was more than likely related to the massive Nurgling plushie in reception.

I'd suggest that the exhibition at Warhammer World is a really good place to explain certain aspects of the hobby without having to go into boring detail.

For example, in the 40k section, Mrs Cheaphammer spotting that "those red ones are like yours" allowed me to quickly explain that Space Marines come in a variety of colours which allow players to paint them how they choose.

I'm fact, in one corner there is what amounts to a Dulux colour chart made up of different chapters.

I'm terms of setting, scenes like this provide a neat shorthand to convey to overwhelming totalitarian nature of the Imperium and will potentially offer context in future exchanges.

I was at one point asked what 'lore' was and I explained that it's what people who take this all too seriously call backstory, what used to be referred to as 'fluff'.

The Horus Heresy sections being placed next to the 40k displays helped explain why I needed two apparently similar armies and what the difference was, and also allowed me show how much of a reasonable person I am by having 'red ones' in both settings and being able to use some of them in both.

Perhaps the best outcome of the tournament was the fact that, at least for the GW aspects of my hobby, I was able to clarify which game was which along with why and how they were different.

Finally there was the offensively large Battle of Angelus display. At which point I opted to point out that, no, I don't have 'a lot' of models...in context.

After leaving the exhibition we obviously stopped by the shop, it's my birthday next week and so purchases were made; more on that when I actually get my hands on them.

Also, the Cheapling and I spent a while painting together and potentially piqued her interest in the hobby (albeit in Age of Sigmar) in a way I've never been able to. The staff throughout the venue are excellent, especially the guy who was overseeing the painting area (although the brushes were atrocious), and they really made everything welcoming and accessible to people who weren't already immersed on the hobby.

If you have more than a passing interest in GW stuff, I'd highly recommend going to Warhammer World, especially if you haven't been recently. I was really pleasantly surprised and even without gaming, there was enough there to fill an afternoon.

Also, the food's pretty good too.

A Short Interlude

Sometimes I need a palette cleanser. A break from my many and various projects to just paint something for the hell of it. For...you know...fun!

These are some Games Workshop Dwarf Villagers, first released in 1987, but probably purchased by my a couple of years later.

I've no idea why I bought them, but given that I'd enjoyed painting some nostalgic Ratskins, my mind turned to other ancient metal miniatures I had lurking in my backlog.

These appealed because they are really simple sculpts, as can be seen by the labourer and the peasant, and I've generally kept to simple earthy colours to reflect the fact that they are just villagers.

They are a nice reminder of the charm of the Warhammer Old World; most people aren't mighty heroes or eldritch horrors, they're just ordinary folk trying to get on with their jobs.

The models have bags of character, from the closed eyes and buck teeth of the drunkard to the comb-over and innane grin of the town crier.

The drunkard's chainmail means I could probably sneak him into a unit of Dwarfs (if I had one). I went with bright red and yellow for the town crier as a nod to the ornate dress of ceremonial town criers that still exist.

The faces amuse me as some of them remind me of famous people, and I've leant into that in my colour choices.

The thinker has more than a little Billy Connolly about him, whereas for the lady I can't shake the idea that she sits somewhere between Eddie Izzard and 'The Nature Boy' Ric Flair, with a torch of Warwick Davies thrown in.

Sadly, I have two copies of the jailer, one of the issues with random blister packs, and both of them have the same weird hand, suggesting that it's not a miscast, just bad.

Obviously I need to explain this as I've cunningly hidden their similarity through the ingenious use of different colours.

I have no idea what I will use these for, they were clearly designed with the more roleplay element of early editions in mind and really don't fit on the battlefield, although I could conceivably stand a couple of them (the drunkard, the labourer and a jailer) next to a Dwarven war machine and get away with it.

I do really like them, so I will find a use for them. I'm also going to explore more of my oldest miniatures as I'm really enjoying painting these older models.

Acquired: 10

Painted: 236

Lead Mountain: 829

Going Downhive

After so long spent plodding through tidying my armies for Warhammer: The Old World, I fancied a bit of a palette cleanser. More specifically I was keen to paint something from scratch and finally make some inroads into the Lead Mountain.

Therefore, with a Necromunda campaign (the original version, not that new-fangled thing) being mooted in our group, I turned my attention to a group of models that have sat unpainted for over 25 years: the Ratskin Renegades.

The Ratskins are absent from the current incarnation of the game, probably because Games Workshop are a much more globally aware company than they were in the nineties and returning to this somewhat ham-fisted reference to the western tropes of Necromunda could probably lay them open to more than a few accusations of cultural appropriation and insensitivity.

These Native Necromundans are the tribal remnants of the original inhabitants of the underhive, fiercely guard their spiritual sites, raid settlements, wear bone totems and even have warriors called 'Braves'. Although not ostensibly presented as 'bad guys', clothing them in the hides of Giant Rats really wouldn't help GW's PR department, especially as the internet just won't let them forget the sins of their past... for example, the Pygmies...

To put it bluntly, I don't expect these guys to return to Necromunda any time soon.

However, I do not have a shared price to worry about and lazy 'it was a different time' 90s stereotypes aside, these are really lovely miniatures. There's a real joy to be had painting older metal sculpts from this period as there is a charm and character to the models that I find to be missing from GW's more modern, cad-designed and (in theory) better plastic miniatures.

When it can to painting I adopted an approach of using contrast paints as a base coat and then applying dry brushes, washes and highlights.. this has allowed me to get a wider variety of different browns on the models than I would had achieved previously.

I've gone with yellow as a spot colour for the gang mainly because I'd bought some Nazdreg Yellow contrast paint and wanted to experiment with using it as a yellow base. It's been highlighted with Averland Sunset and I can confirm that it works and will be an approach I'll use again.

When it came to basing, I used AK Terrains Muddy Ground. I have recently been enjoying using Stirland Mud, but it's a bit pricey if you're going to use a lot of it, and with the AK Terrains texture pastes you get significantly more for your money. In case you are wondering, the Muddy Ground has more green in it than Stirland Mud, but fundamentally that achieve the same effect.

I've topped that off with pools of Nurgle's Rot technical paint, as the Ratskins inhabit the gooey end of the Underhive, and it provides a nice contrast to all the brown.

Whilst I was in a Necromunda frame of mind I also took the opportunity to rebase my old Orlock gang, The Core, ready for the campaign. They had previously been moved onto 30mm bevelled bases, and so they've returned to the classic 25mm round bases to allow more of them to be blown up by a grenade whilst clustered behind some barrels.

Once rebased it was time for The Core to take on Matt's Orlocks, the Tunnel Snakes (apparently these are named after the tutorial mission in Fallout 3) in what would become known as the 'battle of the bandanas'; an attempt to prove once and for all that purple is a better sartorial choice than orange.

Two very similarly armed crews lined up for this gang fight and, as is traditional, hugged whatever cover they could find.

I had a narrow advantage in terms of longer ranged weapons, but Matt had a swarm of Juves ready to get up close and personal.

Look at how many of my gang can cower behind that bulkhead now that they're on smaller bases.

This group were tasked with getting up close on one flank, whilst my lasguns and autoguns held off the Juves on the other.

My Heavy Stubber, Drake (the gang is derivatively named after the colonial marines from Aliens), was positioned at a vantage point and sprayed bullets at anything that appeared. He didn't achieve a great deal, but I think the Tunnel Snakes took longer to engage whilst they were hiding from him.

Conversely, Matt's Heavy Bolter only managed one shot before running out of ammo. However, he did take Crowe, my Lasgun guy, out of the game.

The main part of the battle was my close assault team taking on Matt's terrifying (he has a Melta Gun) leader and two other gangers, and we both took advantage of whatever cover we could find.

Fortunately for me, Flamers and Shotguns ignore cover and so I was able to gain an advantage and down several of the opposing gang, however Matt passed his bottle checks and, despite being set on fire, his leader stayed in the fight.

Hudson did manage to get in close with the Tunnel Snake ganger with a shotgun to administer a coup de gras. The obligatory war cry of, "game over, man, game over!" was issued.

Matt had sought to bring reinforcements into the fight and covering fire began to spray down from above, repeatedly pinning Frost (Flamer) and Hudson, but failing to take them out of the fight.

Although he'd been flamed twice and survived, the real turning point was Matt's leader needing to stop, drop and roll, allowing my Juve, Spunkmeyer, to rush in and raise his status in the gang immensely by capturing the enemy boss.

Although the battle was by no means one-sided, this meant that when my leader, Apone, finally wone the ranged duel he'd been having, Matt's bottle check was taken on a lower value and therefore failed, giving victory to The Core.

Purple bandanas are best!

Somewhat appropriately for an 'in-house' fight, nobody was killed. An amicable prisoner exchange resulted in everyone back where they should be and me getting a Grapnel Gun for my trouble. Hicks (Shotgun) lost a point of Initiative but most of the gang gained advances. Spunkmeyer got three and is almost a fully fledged ganger.

This was a reminder of just how much of an enjoyable game Necromunda has always been. I've never played the newer version, but I've never felt the need to switch up, as the original always delivers.

Acquired: 10 
Painted: 228
Lead Mountain: 837

Call of the Hunt: A Tale of 4 Armies

This journey back into the nostalgia of my Warhammer armies has brought home to me how much I've changed as a collector, gamer and painter.

And no unit has done this more than the final unit for my Wood Elf army: the The Wild Riders.

Yes.

You're right, they're not Wild Riders, they are actually kitbashed from the Glade Rider box. This was a time when money tighter, Glade Riders were rubbish and the metal models were unappealing.

I don't think converting Wild Riders from the Glade Rider kit was an original idea I had, I'm sure I saw it on a forum somewhere, but as the plastic box contained swords, spears and other assorted weaponry, all that was required to 'convert' the Glade Riders into Wild Rain sets was making a few appropriate choices when assembling the models and filling in the holes in their backs where the cloaks (with moulded on quivers) were attached.

The less-than-skillful filling with blu-tac (yes, you read that right) was inexpertly covered with either spears or some of the millions of small blades that came on the different sprues strapped across them.

All in all, they are a passable job that is clearly different from the Glade Riders (especially with the different colour palette) and has never caused any confusion on the table. The only slight problem is that in Warhammer: The Old World someone has had the bright idea to give them shields rather than have them getting extra attacks on the second round of combat, so at some point I'm going to have to find a way to add those.

I'm terms of painting, I did very much the same thing as I did with my Wardancers: softening the orange of the robes, evening out the leather, giving the wood some variation and adding vibrancy to the skin, hair and stitching.

The horses were done the same way as the Glade Riders: darkening the hair and adding a coat of Apothecary White contrast paint over the somewhat scratchy drybrushing I'd done to smooth it out.

As I was doing this it became apparent just how sloppy I was when building these models. Lots of plastic tags needed trimming properly and the mould-line police would have a field day. I was also scruffy with my painting and had left plenty of details unattended.

I think this is because I wasn't yet using magnifying glasses when painting and hadn't quite worked out how bad my eyesight had become. It was blogging and the associated photographs that brought this to my attention and these were done pre-blog.

It's scary to think that I just didn't see the issues; or maybe I was just more chilled about such things then. At tabletop range they looked fine.

Barring a couple more Wild Riders (to turn the one unit of 8 into two units of 5), a kitbashed Spellsinger and my Grenadier dragon, that's they whole army ready for action. I've also got a couple of Great Eagles that were switched over to Lord of the Rings that can come back over to square bases, but I'm going to take a break from The Old World for a bit and leave this army where it is.

Importantly, what I now have is an army that I can use against people outside my regular gaming group as it has the official base sizes.

I'm toying with the idea of trying out a tournament for the first time in many years, although I must admit to being a bit nervous.

I'm the very definition of a casual gamer these days, skipping backwards and forwards between systems and the events I'm more used to are 7TV events where the rules are treated like guidelines at best -and that's by the designers.

Warhammer events are a different kettle of fish. People actually take them seriously and there's league tables, standings and the sort of stuff that makes people act weird.

I might dip my toe in by trying to arrange a game with someone at a FLGS over the Easter holiday and see how I feel going forward.

I'm really pleased with what I've done with my armies, it's been a proper nostalgia hit. However, observant readers will have noticed that in this Tale of 4 Armies, I've only worked on three of them.

The Skaven currently remains untouched for a few reasons. Firstly, I've been busy with the other three, but I also know that Skaven armies are big and will be a lot of work. I'm tempted to move in a different direction with them as I'm tempted to give Age of Sigmar a try with the new edition coming out in the summer. By chance the models I have are almost an exact replica of the units in the current Vanguard box so I know I have a viable force.

In their place I'm considering cobbling together a Chaos Army from the old models I reclaimed. Something in the vein of the weird and wonderful offerings in the original Realms of Chaos books.

Alternatively, of my old armies the only one missing is my Lizardmen army which got sold about a decade ago. I don't really miss them as they were from my 'drown it in ink' phase and so didn't look great. However, I do actually have some 5th edition Lizardmen and Skinks knocking about, so revisiting them could be an option.

Anyway, these are decisions for another day. I need to paint something else for a bit, bring back some variation to my life and actually start lowering that Lead Mountain again.

Acquired: 10
Painted: 216
Lead Mountain: 849