Project Update: Dwarf Rangers

I finished the final unit for my Dwarf army. Here they are in all their glory, my Dwarf Rangers. They are painted in the same colors as the rest of my Karak Kadrin army. I am not sure if I will ever use them, according to other Dwarf players, they are not a good unit. Now if the rumors I hear about 8th edition missions having objectives are true,  then this unit may become more useful.

Now that this unit is complete, my Dwarf army is almost completely painted. I am down to six characters, 2 Rune Priests, 3 Engineers and an old Special Character. Once this army is painted I just have to decide if I want to paint my Vampire Counts, Beastmen, or work on updating the paint jobs on my Orcs and Goblins.

Well that is all for today. As always thank you for visiting my blog and please feel free to leave a comment.

-BJ

Tavern Talk: Fluffing It

Kuffy from The Trading Post has offered up the first in a series of collaborative blog post topics. This months topics is "Fluffing it" in which Kuffy wants to know how we feel about fluff as well as how we incorporate it into our armies.

I love fluff, it is one of the main things that has drawn me into this hobby. Fluff takes on various meanings for me, from army composition to background and various things in between. I started off in gaming through playing Dungeons and Dragons back when I was a teenager. I loved building a background for my characters, then when my D&D groups started using miniatures I got into painting them and converting them to be as I imagined my character to be. I carried this over with me into miniature war-gaming.

When developing fluff for my armies I usually start off with my characters, specifically my army general. To the left you can see the stalwart leader of my Dwarf army, Runstal Stonehammer. He is a Lord of Karak Kadrin and so he as well as his army sport that holds colors. Runstal and his Stonehammer clan have devoted themselves to the protection of their home. Instead of residing in Karak Kadrin, Runstal keeps his army on the borders of the Dwarf lands protecting it from the various Orc hordes in the area.

Because of this background my army list tend to be more troop heavy than war-machine. I figure that Runstal is constantly moving his army to defend against new orc threats, thus he needs vast amounts of troops to hold off the orc masses. I also figure moving large amounts of war-machines would slow him down, so he maintains only a few that are easy to transport. Other war-machines can be built on the spot as needed.

That was just a glimpse into my Dwarf fluff but you get the idea. I started off defining my general then explaining why his army is more troops than war-machine. Now to the right you can see my Black Orc Warboss, Grubak Skulzbusta. I just recently acquired an orc army that I painted for a friend several years ago. Over half of this army is already painted so as I think about my fluff, I have to make sure I incorporate things like the units that are in the army and why, as well as the color scheme. I am early in the stages of making the fluff for this army.

Much of this orc army is already painted, and the units all have the color red in them some how, be it dags, tattoos, or skulls painted on their armor. So I plan on using this theme in choosing a name for Grubak's horde.

A color scheme is a great way to unify an army but it is also a way to show some of the fluff of your army. Maybe Grubak likes the color red and makes sure all his boyz be wearin it. Maybe Grubak got his Skulzbusta name because his finishing move always involves a blow to the head. There is just a few mins of brainstorming while writing this post, I have got some fluff developing for the army. I have even got a potential name, the Bloody Skulz tribe. I got all of that because of how the two units below were painted.

Another way to make an army fluffy is through the units themselves.  If you take a look at the picture to the left, you will see my Dwarf Miners. This units fluff, as well as rules, allow them to come up from underground  and appear on any board edge. So with my miners, I took the time to convert the rear two ranks to look as though they are still digging out from underground. This is a way to add fluff and still play any type of list you like.

Another example is from my orc army. The Savage orcs use magic tattoos and warpaint instead of armor, so every savage orc I painted has tattoos or warpaint on their body just to represent this little bit of fluff. Other idea are placing bits from your arch enemy onto your models. My dwarfs constantly war with Orcs, so an orc head or two may be appropriate on their banners, or at their feet.

The final way I do fluffy list is my army composition. I believe that the core units are core because they are the most numerous units available to the general. My army list are always very high in core troops. Secondly, rare choices are for lack of a better word, rare. The force organization chart does limit the numbers fielded, but I further limit myself by rarely taking two of the same rare choice. You will never see two giants running around with my orc tribe. There is one exception to this for me and that is my Tomb Kings, occasionally I will field two Screaming Skull catapults.

As you can see there are numerous ways to add fluff to an army. You can even still use your ultra competitive list and have them be fluffy, it just takes a little extra work. In my opinion fluff makes me enjoy my army more and allows me to be even more creative with my army than just following the rules. Is it important to just play the game? No, but it makes the game more enjoyable for me and I enjoy seeing and hearing the fluff of other peoples armies.

Do you feel that fluff is important?
How do you add fluff to your armies?
Do you enjoy playing against fluffy armies?

Project Update: Casket of Souls

Just a quick post today to show a pic of my completed Casket of Souls. I painted it using the same colors as the rest of my army. If you notice I have no priest on the Casket. This is intentional so that I can give the casket to any one of my Liche Priests depending on the army list I am running.

One other thing you may notice is the Tomb Guards are not the models that came with the casket, instead they are just of the Skeletons that come with the chariot kit, with weapons and shields from the warriors it. I did this so that I could use the Casket Tomb Guard in the front ranks of my actual Tomb Guard unit. You will get to see pictures of this unit in a future blog post

With this model I now have a completely painted Tomb King army. I am in the process of photographing the whole army for a future post that will show case my Tomb Kings. As always, thank you for taking the time to read my blog. Please fell free to leave a comment.

Sisters of Battle: What do I do?

Well there have been numerous rumors floating about on sites like Warseer, Librarium Online and BOLS relating to the Inquisition and their possible release this summer. The one rumor that has me concerned is the rumor that Sisters of Battle will no longer be included in the Inquisition codex. I don't consider this a bad thing as I would love to see the Sisters get their own codex again, but it has brought up so questions about how I want to proceed with painting my army.

My main problem is what do I do with my Inquisitorial units? I haven't painted any of them yet. I usually prefer to run an all Sisters army on the field so I am feeling less and less motivated to paint them at all, especially if the rumors are true. So I think my new plan is going to be focusing on my Sisters units and just setting my Inquisitor units aside until I see come confirmation from GW on what the Inquisition book is going to contain.

The good news is by removing my Inquisitorial units I am almost done with my Sisters army. I will only have a few vehicles to paint. The bad news is I really have no interest in an Inquisition army, so I will have a bunch of minis with no use, I guess maybe I can throw them up on the Barter Bucket so that other gamers can get a use out of them.

What rumors have you heard about the Inquisition codex(s)?

How will this effect you if the Sisters are no longer included in the Inquisition codex(s)?

Creating a unifed theme for your army (FTW Collaborative Post)

Ron over at From the Warp has posed this as a collaborative post for the FTW Bloggers Group. I have not been able to post on the last few collaborations so I just had to jump at the chance to write up an article for this one.

In general there are 3 ways that I create a unified theme for my armies aside from using army composition. The first is when selecting the color scheme for my army. The second is when deciding how I am going to base the army. The last one is using some form of iconography or other extra detail that can tie the theme together.

In the image above I am showing two different ways of how I achieved a unified theme with 3 different units from my Dwarf army. The first of these unifying elements is the use of two colors, a burgandy red and polished gold. If you notice these two colors appear on every model in each unit. They can be used on small or large section of the model. For instance the heavily armored Ironbreakers in the middle have both colors appearing on their shields. Similarly, my dwarf lord with shield bearers had the red appearing on the shield but it also seen on the bearer's helmets, while the gold is used on numerous details as the entire model. Lastly with my bolt thrower crew the red makes a dominant appearance in the color of the war machine as well as the crew clothing and the gold once again shows up on many of the details.

The second method I have used to unify this army is the material and colors used to base the models. When doing an army I will stick to using the same material and colors throughout. I also will take down notes so that in the future when I added models to the army I know exactly what material I used to get the bases looking the same. With my Dwarfs I used cat litter that was based in Chaos Black then drybrushed with layers of codex gray, fortress gray and finally skull white.

With some armies, especially in 40k, you may already have a unified color scheme, but that doesn't prevent you from making your army stand out from others of the same type. This is where I will use Iconography or other extra details to make armies like my Black Templars look unified but still stand out from other Black Templar armies.

The image to the left is the heraldry for the Kilburne Crusade, otherwise know as my Black Templars army. I tried to keep it very simple so that I could easily duplicate it on my models with paint or decals. Throughout my entire Templar force I have used the iconography to tie the army together in a unified theme.

In the image above you can see how I managed to get the heraldry on several of my vehicles. While in the image below I show examples of how I fit the heraldry onto my Marshal as well as a crusade squad unit. The round knee pads are particularly good for using the heraldry colors on.

I have also used a similar technique on my Orcs and Goblins for Fantasy Battles. There I used red tattoos as well as red war paint to unify the army. I plan to do the same with my Orks for 40k only using blue tat and warpaint. The option are only limited by your creativity.

Well there you have it, those are the three main ways I choose to use to give my army a unified theme. I would love to hear or see some examples of how other accomplish this. As always thanks for taking the time to read my thought. I welcome any and all comments, so please feel free to leave them.

Till next time,

-BJ