My name is Paul and I have a problem, I’m addicted to
buying miniatures…
Winning, and buying things both feel great. This
combination of positive stimuli can cause disastrous results if I am left
unattended on eBay. I found a business seller who was listing a huge amount of
Games Workshop products at enormous discounts (an Imperial Knight for a tenner!). There were only a few days left
to run on their auctions and their listings didn’t seem to have attracted much
attention. So I added a few things to my ‘watch list’, including a brand new
and sealed box of Warhammer Age of Sigmar Stormcast Eternals Liberators.
I didn’t have a sudden urge to start collecting and
playing Age of Sigmar. I had seen some awesome conversions online where people
had used Stormcast Eternals Liberators to make Adeptus Custodes models. I
thought a squad of them would be a cool addition to my Heresy Era Imperial
Fists army, maybe as a bodyguard for Rogal Dorn, when Forge World make and
release a model for him.
Here is a link to the conversion that inspired me and
that I wanted to try and replicate:
Here’s a picture of one of his conversions:
Anyway, I sat watching the listing as the minutes ticked
down to the end of the auction, the bidding just seemed to stall at about £17
and this is a £30 kit we’re talking about. I thought I’d leave it until the
last moment and see how much the price shot up by. With ten seconds to go, it
was still at £17, so I put a bid in at £18, expecting to be instantly outbid.
But I wasn’t, I won. I instantly had an attack of buyer’s remorse. “I don’t need this kit!” “I already have
tonnes of unpainted models, I don’t need more!” “I’ve already spent a lot this
month, why did I spend another £18 on a whim?!”
"Oh well, at least
now I can make a fun project out of converting them into Custodes” I
thought. WRONG! There isn’t a bits seller on the face of this Earth selling the
High Elf White Lions helmets or the Grey Knight Terminator Nemesis Force
Halberds that I need for the conversion. Then, to add insult to injury I read a
rumour online that Forge World are working on proper Adeptus Custodes models.
So now I’m £18 out of pocket and stuck with a box of Stormcast Eternals I don’t
need. I might have to try and resell them.
Age of Sigmar.
A couple of months ago I had a sudden urge to start a
Warhammer Age of Sigmar army, but luckily the moment passed before I bought any
models. I like the idea of starting a new game, without a massive backlog of
models already waiting to be painted. I also like the idea of playing Age of
Sigmar as a small-scale skirmish game.
A couple of weeks ago there was a post on Games
Workshop’s Webstore Blog called “We love gaming events!” You can read it here:
It talked about a ruleset called ‘Battleplan – Clash of
Empires’ written for a Throne of Skulls event at Warhammer World. This ruleset
limits the armies taking part to thirty models. This is exactly the size game
that I’m interested in playing and the size army that seems achievable to
collect and paint. Also the models featured in the blog post were beautifully
painted, and they were Wood Elves. I was inspired all over again… and this time
I bought some models.
I am pretty much copying the army list described in the
blog post:
A Spellweaver; A spellweaver is a wizard who can cast
spells and resurrect fallen Wanderer models (Wanderers is the new Age of Sigmar
name for Wood Elves).
A Nomad Prince: A Nomad Prince allows you to re-roll
to-hit rolls of 1 on a D6.
Two Waywatchers; A Waywatcher gives nearby units an
ability called ‘Invisible Hunter’ making them harder for the enemy to hit in
the shooting phase.
Ten Sisters of the Watch: Sisters of the Watch are
awesome archers.
Ten Wardancers; (Although I am going to use Dark Elf
Witch Elf models to represent these) Wardancers are a fast moving melee unit.
Five Sisters of the Thorn; Sisters of the Thorn are fast
moving cavalry.
A Treelord; Treelords are massive monstrous creatures.
That’s my thirty model army planned out. It’s very
focussed on archery. I downloaded the Age of Sigmar rules and the war scrolls
for all of these units, printed them out and laminated them. I absolutely love
the approach that Games Workshop has taken with Age of Sigmar, a simplified,
and free to download ruleset.
I do feel a bit guilty about buying more models and
starting a new project when I already have so many un-started, and unfinished
projects. So this Age of Sigmar project has to be different. It has to have
rules so that it doesn’t become just another pile of models added to the
backlog. These are the rules that I have decided upon:
1. Thou shalt not
purchase a new unit until thou hast painted all units already in thy
possession.
2. Not a drop of paint shall be applied to the models in
this army direct from a pot. Every brush-stroke must be thinned with water or
mixed on a palette.
I am hoping to achieve two things by sticking to these
rules; to prevent the project running away from me and to improve my painting
techniques and habits.
SALUTE 2016
I got back from Salute 2016 at the ExCeL in London on
Saturday night. It was an awesome weekend. I mentioned Salute on Facebook
before Christmas and my brother asked me if I was going and if I’d mind if he
went with me. I don’t get to see my brother very often, in fact the last time
was four years ago, so I was more than happy to go to Salute with him. In fact
I was more excited about going to Salute than I was about Christmas!
I seem to remember booking the time off of work to go to
Salute last year, but I didn’t go. I wasn’t sure that I could handle the four
hour travel time there and back in a single day. My brother suggested we stay
in London on the Friday night before the show, and then booked us rooms on the
super luxurious Sunborn Yacht Hotel in London. It’s basically a really posh
cruise ship moored right outside the ExCeL centre. I’ve never stayed somewhere
so fancy before.
On the morning of the show I saw an update from Carl,
host of the ‘Independent Characters’ podcast on Facebook. He and some friends
were queueing for the event about 9am, an hour before the event opened at 10am.
I had heard rumours of huge queues in previous years. But after we had
breakfast on the ship, (with a view of the Thames, the O2 Arena and Canary
Wharf!) we wandered over to the ExCeL just after 10am, and walked straight in
with no queue at all!
On entering we were given Salute goodie bags, which
contained a guide book to the event, a special die with the South London
Warlords logo on it, the Salute 2016 exclusive miniature and two free models
from a new tabletop wargame called ‘Maelstrom’s Edge’. The South London Warlords
are the gaming club that host and put on the Salute shows every year. The theme
of this year’s Salute was Steam Punk, and the exclusive miniature is a Steam
Punk woman called Mam’selle with a long rifle.
The first thing that struck me about Salute is how big it
was, occupying three exhibition spaces within the ExCeL, one for queueing and
two for the exhibitors and traders. This is the third tabletop wargaming
convention I have been to now, and it dwarfed the others, many, many times
over. The ExCeL too is a shockingly huge building, you can barely see one end
of it from the other inside.
We decided to do a cursory sweep of all of the traders
and exhibition games, and then come back and focus on the ones that we were
really interested in. Unfortunately the show was so big and had so many traders
and games on display that even after the six and a half hours we spent walking
around the show we had barely scratched the surface. A show of this size
desperately needs longer opening hours, or even to cover two consecutive days.
The Forge World stall had a huge queue at the beginning
of the day, so I waited until just before we left to collect my Forge World
order. I’m glad I did, it came in quite a large box. But here it is, my
Fellblade Super-Heavy tank, tank crew and Imperial Fists doors.
The Forge World stall also had a selection of Black
Library books and I was able to pick up book five and an advanced copy of book
six in the ‘The Beast Arises’ novel series.
I was happy to see that Element Games had a big stall at
Salute this year. Even if I hadn’t wanted to buy anything I would have liked to
go and meet those guys. I buy a lot of my models from them and their service is
fantastic. As it was I had had my eye on one of their starter airbrush bundles
for a few weeks before the show. I nearly ordered one from them to collect at
Salute, but I thought better of it. Airbrushes and compressors are expensive
items and qualify for free delivery anyway, so there was no sense in lugging
one home from London. I’m glad I waited, Element Games were offering a further
discount on airbrush bundles bought or ordered at Salute. So I ordered an
airbrush at the show and got a 20% discount instead of 15%.
I didn’t spend anywhere near as much at Salute as I
thought I would, and I actually regret not spending more. Forge World were
offering free shipping on orders placed at the event, and as anyone who has
ordered from Forge World knows, their shipping costs really sting. I should
have picked up a few other models I want from them and saved myself a tonne on
postage. But I did buy a souvenir t-shirt, and some dice!
There were so many traders there and games and exhibitors
that I’d never seen or heard of before and I would have loved to have picked up
a whole range of diverse models to paint, but I kept getting put off by the
combination of prices and fear of spending money. Which is ironic for a guy who
ordered a £123 airbrush kit and collected a £170 tank at the show. Maybe next
year I’ll buy more, smaller and cheaper items!
I was hoping to bump into the guys from ‘Beasts of War’, ‘The
Independent Characters’, ‘The Overlords’ and ‘The Masters of the Forge’ and
just say hi. But the event was so huge you could easily spend opening to
closing in there and miss someone entirely. I did see Warren from ‘Beasts of
War’ walking around though, he’s a lot shorter than I thought he’d be. I did
see Jason from the ‘Overlords’ though and I even saw industry legend Michael
Perry.
Overall it was an awesome weekend and an awesome
experience. I would definitely love to go again. You can see a few of my
pictures below, or view the whole album on my Flick Account here:
Current Size of the Unpainted Legion: 311 models.
Currently Reading: (Non-Black Library) ‘Just A Geek’ by
Wil Wheaton.
