Fluff Part 2

My finished Banshee Katerina.  Highlighting is there, just impossible to see in the photo.

By the evening of the third day, Ivan Karamov was barely clinging to life.  He wasn't sure if the ethereal carriage that appeared before him was a result of his delirium or not.  The horses pulling it looked sickly, as if merely skin stretched thin over a skeletal frame. 

The Vampire Countess Tatyana Zlobin was merely passing through.  She had intended on consuming most of the inhabitants of Staraya upon her arrival, her thirst for blood was beginning to claw at the back of her mind again.  But there was nothing there, just smoldering ruins, and the faint heart beat of a single, sad mortal.

Custom insisted that Ivan show this stranger hospitality, so he forced himself to prepare food and shelter for her.  The Countess was moved by his attention, and by the story of his village and the despair Ivan felt.  That night, before disappearing back into the mists, before sinking her teeth into Ivan's neck, the Countess Zlobin whispered a wish into his ear, a wish that what she would do could provide him recompense. 

Painted and converted Vampire Ivan.  I'm worried the eyebrows are too cartoony, but he looks good IRL

From that day forward, Ivan Karamov did not want for food or drink or sleep or anything else that could weaken a normal man.  Ivan gained new strength, dark magic flowed through his body; the corpses of his home town of Staraya rose from the ground, curious necromancers gathered around him to learn from his dark power, and the spirits of the dead clung to his energies.  Among the spirits was Katerina, a soul ripped from her body at the wrong time, cursed to forever torment the living with her despair. 

Ivan mustered his forces.  His dead home marched to battle in his name, he would bring rest to his unending torment by punishing the Chaotic forces that destroyed his life.  Ivan Karamov became a member of the Vampire Counts, leading his shambling undead forces far into the North, where he will forever attempt to bring justice upon the evils that ruined him.

Ivan's back, to show his banner (no freehand...yet?) and with flash to show highlights.

Beginnings of a second necromancer.  Used Flagellant head and Empire Wizard body.

Finished Dire Wolf

This is the idea for my spirit hosts.  The old model is POOP, so this is ghoul+flagellant+skellie bits.  Will be three on a base.

Fluff Part 1

This is my vampire, Ivan Karamov.  He's based off of the metal Prince Althran model, and I quite like what's been done so far.  I replaced his sword, I filed down a lot of elvan markings on his chestplate and his shield (the second picture shows what I did with his shield, putting a bat wing on it from a Skeleton shield).  He should end up looking quite good.




While mortal, Ivan spent the majority of his life far north, on the edge of Kislev's civilization.  The small outpost town of Staraya, and more importantly, its wall, served as a last bastion of civilization, beyond which only horrible Chaos beasts and Ungol raiders could survive.  Ivan eked out a simple life as a logger, he married the woman he loved, Katerina, and she bore him a son named Dimitri.

He never saw Dimitri grow more than a year old.  The Czar's Navy pressed him into service, he was forced to become a mariner on a frigate to combat the ever-bolder Dark Elf and Chaos Marauder raids. 

Ivan served three years on that ship, and fought in countless, desperate battles for survival.  Finally, one day the enemy was too much for them and the frigate was lost.  Miraculously, Ivan survived and made it to shore. Katerina and Dimitri had never left his thoughts.  He braved the harsh tundra wastes, traveling for weeks to return to Staraya.

 But what he found in the town's stead was nothing but smoldering ash.  The tell-tale stench of foul warp-energies filled the air.  Unnatural flames of every color burned without end, and the scorched ground glowed with an unholy light.  Ivan knew it was too late, yet still rushed to his home.  He found nothing but the charred bones of Katerina, clutching Dimitri's frame. 

To the right is the Banshee Katerina.  She's unfinished, and the picture's shitty.  I wanted to see how the washed look could work for a ghost (my army will have a fair amount of spirits).  I'm not dissatisfied.  She still needs highlighting/drybrushing, and her hair hasn't been colored.

Ivan had fought his whole way home, thoughts of his family had kept him alive when others failed, and it was all for nothing.  He resigned himself to die right there, over the remains of his home, of his loved ones. 

Gonna leave it there before I become too long winded and confused.  Also, here's an extra picture of a Dire Wolf.  He's finished, except for the base:

Frozen Undeath

As many who post to this blog have heard, I've flip-flopped for the final time.  Vampire Counts called to me, and I made the plunge.

I have fluff that I will post about later when I'm more in the mood to tell a story.  I'm working on a list that caters to my fluff (because fuck being competitive...MATT!!).  I refuse to use zombies because they're so ugly, and I am instead going for a skeleton/ghost/fear theme. 

My fluff involves crusades up into the frozen north, which has helped a lot in making all of my scheme decisions for me. 

Here's a quick photo I took with my phone:

first blood for the Pitslayer

not to be outdone by Ryan, i'm here to give a battle report from the mercenary band of Ungish Pitslayer! i played a 4-way 750 pt battle against Skaven, Warriors of Chaos, and Daemons. I started out in a corner next to WoC and Skaven. my army consisted of a unit of 6 Ogres with full command, and a unit of 5 Maneaters with full command, plus my Bruiser. turn one started out with me shooting at the Skaven Doomwheel with my Poison braces of ogre pistols from my Maneaters, inflicting two wounds. the Doomwheel wheeled off the board the first turn, but then hit me hard the second turn: magic and the Doomwheel ran my unit of Ogres off the board. fortunately, my Maneaters were able to turn around and shoot it dead. whew! i then received charges from some rat slaves and some storm vermin, but no matter: the Stand and Shoot charge reaction and my big bullies' toughness and brutal swipes with their swords was more than enough to see the rats off without losing another Ogre! GET IN! since i had the most points left on the board, i won!

doomwheel destruct-o-matic!

with the doom-thing gone, the Maneaters chew on some rats

endgame: the WoC have charged the Skaven off, in the prime position to be charged,  but the game is over...

Ungish Pitslayer!

Ungish Pitslayer

so, first game for the Ogres is a win. huzzah!

Island of Blood Box: Assembly

So with a large legal assignment finished earlier this week and my homework done for the upcoming week, i ran out of things to do by mid afternoon Sunday this weekend. Like any sane person i decided I would bust open my Island of Blood Box and start assembling!

As I pointed out in my previous post, the sprues come inter-mingled with pieces from both High Elves and Skaven. This is extremely annoying. Even more annoying is that pieces between individual models were sometimes on different sprues (i.e the pieces of one of the rat ogres were spread between two sprues). I understand that in order to maximize the value with the least impact on their profit margin GW has to utilize as much space on those sprues as possible. However, it's really annoying.

The last gripe i have with models is the little pegs GW used in order to make them 'easier' to assemble. Each model comes in two or more pieces and GW put little pegs and holes in each of the pieces so that people new to the game could assemble them without glue. This is done, supposedly to make the assembly easier. Maybe I'm just no good with plastic models (a very real possibility), but i was struggling to get the pegs in their respective holes. Often the peg had additional plastic that made it so it didn't fit very well in the hole, or after test-fitting the models the peg fit so well i couldn't get the pieces apart to then glue for a more permanent fit. Ultimately I found it easier to just cut the pegs off and glue the pieces like normal. The pieces otherwise fit together perfectly.

An arm Peg.

An arm Hole.

The gap between the arm and the torso is the problem I saw with this method of assembly.

With that said, I can discuss the positives! The models themselves are really well done as far as aesthetics go. The molding and flashing were not very obtrusive to the models themselves. I've noticed that sometimes (with my little experience with plastic models) the flashing will be in a spot that is not easily cleaned, and by cleaning up the flashing some of the detail gets destroyed. The Island of Blood models suffer no such plight.

Additionally, these models rank up very nicely. Perhaps this is just a convention of the modern Skaven, but the older models seemed to NEVER rank up correctly. Again, no such problem with these newer ones.

Overall, I'm still very much impressed with the Island of Blood Box. Plus, the Rat Ogres are awesome! If i can get the rest of this box assembled (Only the Clanrats are left), Perrin and I should be able to get a WHFB game in sometime soon with a battle report to follow.

Been there, done that.

This post: Maneaters, bitz style. Maneaters have been around the world, and they each have a unique set of skills and the personalities to match. Thus, they have the special rule "Been there, done that.", where they get to choose two standard special rules from a list of them. These boys are all armed with a brace of ogre pistols (they don't actually have two... maybe in the future this will be remedied...), and their rules will be Poison and Sniper, so I can be a cheeky bugger and snipe special characters away!

Since the meaneater models produced by GW are prohibitively expensive, I made some from mournfang pistol bitz and ironguts bitz! Pictures, away!

the glory boys; with a space for their fearless leader (a bruiser)

maneater champion

maneater bellower

maneater standard bearer

i only used one magnet on the standard bearer this time.

Ungish Pitslayer (the army general) forthcoming.

Island of Blood Box: Unboxing

With the 8th edition rulebook read, and the Skaven army book read, I struck up conversation with one of the salesmen at the Bunker today about wanting to maybe do WFB in the near future. I propositioned him into showing me the basic mechanics of how the game is played using the Island of Blood starter set that the Bunker has assembled. We played all the way through a turn relatively quickly because I had read the 8th ed. Rulebook already. Since the Salesman devoted some time to me I decided to buy the starter kit then and there, as opposed to the following day.

Here it is:

I knew that there was alot of stuff in that box (check the full listing here), but after opening this bad boy up, you really get a sense of how great a value this box is. From what you can see in the above picture, the box includes: five sprues with all the units, a sprue with templates, some books, some dice, two rulers, and the bases.

It's finally nice to have the artillery dice i need in 40K.

The unit sprues have mixed skaven and High elves, which is kinda annoying. Additionally, they come in VERY easy assembly methods, i.e. two or three pieces for most individual models. The cavalry for instance is split down the middle, all you need to do is glue the other half and add an elf head. The clanrats just need another arm. I would like a little more complexity in the unit assembly (at least on par with the normal boxes of the respective units) but i understand why GW did this.

More Sprues. The latter is primarily Skaven.

I got an up close piucture of one of the rat ogres. One of my favorite models from the box! The only other Skaven model i like better in the box is the Warlord, it's such a sweet model!

This is the Griffon for the High Elf Prince that comes in the box. It's an AWESOME looking model, easily the best in the box.

The templates. I already have all three, but I guess it's not a bad thing to have more, right?

These are the fantasy rulers. If i hadn't played WFB them for meassuring back in the day. Though i'm pretty sure the 40K starter box has these rulers too, but who buys the 40K starter? If i remember correctly, these rulers always seemed to knock down models even more than your standard tape meassurer. I'm pretty sure i'll continue to use the tape meassurer.

The books that come with the Island of Blood set. The book on the right is the mini-rulebook which almost every 40K player I know has learned to love. This one is a little bit more hefty than the 40K mini-book but is still very nice. One really nice thing about the WFB mini-book is that it is in full-color. The diagrams and pictures look amazing. The thing in the middle is a little Rule clarification insert for the victory point rule. It looks like someone accidentilly a whole paragraph [they deleted it]. The book on the left is a "so you decided you wanna play WFB and sell your soul to GW" book. It's very nice for beginners and has some really cool pictures. There is also a description of all the units that you can make using hte Island of Blood box. Additioanlly, there is some short little descriptors of all the other armies in the WFB universe.

Next time I'll post pictures of modeling the Skaven force :)