I'M BACK FROM THE DEAD!!

Save your prayers, 

Don't bless my bones, 

Erase my name from my headstone...

It is fair to say that my 2023 did not have a very good start. 

There was a lot that went wrong over the new year, but one of the worst parts - and the part that's most relevant here - concerns a lady who was friends with my parents. We'll call her Sarah. Growing up, Sarah was pretty much the closest thing I had to an aunt. My biological aunt lived a long way away and did not really have that much presence in my life except for the occasional visit and a couple of trips to Christchurch. But I spent a lot of time with Sarah as a kid, not only from the frequent visits my parents made to her house but also day outings where she looked after me when my parents couldn't by taking me to the zoo. Most notably, she also gave me one of my deepest, closest and longest friends, Katy The Kakapo, who kept vigil over my bed for about a decade or so. 

Anyway, at the end of last year I found out that Sarah now has something the doctors called Cerebral Decay. My understanding is that it is similar to if not synonymous with Alzheimer's. 

Visiting Sarah to check up on her was... quite an experience. Sarah was even in her later years sharp as a razor. She had multiple academic credits, read a massive range of literature, and was until very recently learning both French and Arabic. To go from talking with someone like that to talking with someone who was... not... is a feeling that there is no word in Orcish, Elvish or the language of The Ents for. 

Then I also learnt that my Grandparent-in-all-but-name had also had a heart attack while I was occupied elsewhere (fortunately they survived, but still). This left me spending most of the new year staring down the barrel of mortality and a world that was vanishing even more rapidly than I thought. 

When Forest Gump found himself facing the concept of mortality, he responded by running a marathon across the United States. It turns out when I find myself grappling with mortality I respond by burying myself in model painting. 

The first project of this year was the biggest model I've ever painted thus far. A few years ago I purchased a Castle with the aim to painting it and using it for Warhammer games in the future. Last year I resolved to paint it in the coming new year as a Summer Project. 

It took me over two months, six times longer than I had originally anticipated. But by god, I did it. 

This had been sometime coming. Ever since I first got into Warhammer I knew I wanted to have a fully painted Warhammer Fortress set for use in games. You see, I have this sick perverted disgusting fantasy of one day playing map campaigns of Warhammer using the Mighty Empires tiles, with rules for constructing castles (again using the Mighty Empires castle markers) in territories you control, and a rule where if an army attacks a tile with a Castle on it then they play out a Siege game with the Warhammer Fortress castle on the table. 

But it was a revelation last year that expedited the castle's painting and assembly. See, there are a few people in the local area who are Warhammer 6th edition curious. Some even have armies built with an eye towards using them in 6th edition. This is of course excellent news, except that due to various factors most of these other armies are tiny - only around 1500 points in size, as they're still under construction. This leaves a lot of my regular 4000-5000 point Wood Elf force unable to be brought to bear in its full glory (ironically, this is the opposite situation to Warhammer 40,000, where I am the one desperately struggling to cobble together enough models to reach small scale skirmish size against much larger and more established model collections). 

However, towards the end of last year I had a realisation. You see, in 6th edition Siege games are asymmetric - the attacking army has twice as many models as the besiged army. That means that if I can get these other people playing Sieges as the defenders, I can match their 1500 point armies with 3000 points of my own and get a much larger portion of models on the table! The first step towards this is of course a Castle to besiege, so here we are. 

There was a cost to this though, as several planned features of the castle were sacrificed and never made it to the finished model. In particular the towers were originally going to be pinned on the upper story, allowing for metal arrow slits to be attached and interchanged with plastic door pieces to provide options for expanding the castle with extra walls and towers. As it was I was unable to source a set of GW Arrow Slit pieces, so that feature ended up being discarded to simplify the construction process and speed up actually getting the thing painted and on the table. 

The painting itself was a mixed experience. The actual painting work was simple enough, as the entire model is almost completely drybrushed, but the sheer scale of the model and volume of surface area to paint in very monotonous greys ended up dragging the process out much longer than it needed to take. The towers were particularly bad, given that they had almost twice as many faces to paint as the walls. I am very tickled by the result though, a lovely white stone effect directly based off the GW Studio castle model featured in the army book for this castle's future masters that will be moving in soon... 

In the mean-time it will be under the protection of whatever armies my Wood Elves will be opposing. Eventually. I'm still not quite fully ready to play Siege games yet, as I still lack siege equipment for my own army. 

What my own army does have though, is its first two fully painted Rare choices, a pair of Great Eagles. 

 

The Great Eagles have always been one of my favourite Warhammer units. I have always been very fond of birds of all kinds, and Raptors have held a particular place in my heart since I was a kid (not the same central place as parrots of course, but close nonetheless). So when one day I happened to be browsing the wall of blister packs at the local GW store and happened upon the Warhammer section with its distinctive red blister packs, and my eye fell upon a blister pack for a High Elf Great Eagle I was immediately intrigued, because the idea of a fantasy army with giant eagles in it did seem a lot cooler than the fantasy offerings I normally found. And the more I thought about it the more right it felt to have giant eagles as a monster for the Good Guys to have on their side against the Trolls and Giants and assorted Big Scaly Things that the Bad Guys always seemed to have. 

Of course, as history shows, it still wasn't enough to get me actually invested in fantasy stuff, but it was another little signpost along the way. And when I started up with Wood Elves, I was only too delighted to learn that they too could take Great Eagles as a support unit. 

These guys are of course the classic 6th edition Warhammer eagle, released in 2005-2006 in glorious solid metal for the 6th edition Wood Elf release. If you were to purchase one, this is what you would have got: 

They were a dream to paint. The hardest part was getting the undercoat on, which took several days to get all the nooks and crannies on the sculpts covered. After that and a basecoat of Dryad Bark, it was just a series of dry brushes. The body and forewings were drybrushed with... well basically every brown in the Citadel Paint range from darkest to lightest, starting with Rhinox Hide Scorched Brown over the basecoat, followed by Doombull Brown Dark Flesh, then Mournfang Brown Bestial Brown, then Skrag Brown Vermin Brown, followed by a final dusting of Steel Legion Drab Graveyard Earth to mellow out some of the more vividly bright hues. The inner wings were done with Dawnstone Codex Grey over the basecoat followed by Administratum Grey Fortress Grey, and the wingtip feathers were painted with Ungor Flesh Bronzed Flesh and Ushabti Bone Bleached Bone over the base colour. 

These are also notworthy for being the first Warhammer models where I've really bothered to paint the eyes. Normally for the other Warhammer models I'm content to just leave the eyes shaded in the base colour, or an occasional dot for monsters and creatures, but that just felt like a disservice for animals that are legendary for their fantastic eyesight, so after studying some reference pictures of real life Raptor eyes, I picked them out in yellow and then put a small circular dot of black at the centre of each eye for a pupil - it helps that Raptor pupils are completely perfectly circular, which is an easy shape to paint at small scales. 

Finally, I decided to give their bases a little something extra and populated them with some spare doodads from the Glade Guard sprue, most notably some skulls and a Spite each (Haast's is from the Glade Rider sprue). I had wanted to use the larger Gor skulls that come with the Dryad sprue, but I appear to have used up my entire supply of them elsewhere, so I had to resort to multiple Ungor Skulls from the Glade Guard kit to showcase the healthy appetites and superb hunting skills of these majestic predators. I then tried to place the Spites foward to suggest them becoming startled and scattering before the diving and swooping eagles as they make their attack. 

And so here they are, ready to rescue any of my Wizards that end up captured and imprisoned at the top of a very tall tower. 

Moonbathing

If you were reading the last post on here, you might have noticed that I mentioned it had been delayed by a few weeks because something came up. That something was this:

A trip to the other side of the Pacific Ocean where I spent a week in the lost city of San Francisco. Aside from one rather nasty incident towards the end it was quite enjoyable, but this is a hobby blog, not a travel blog, so I will spare the details of my holiday here, save that the Americans of the Bay Area appear to have through some diabolical nefarious sorcery stolen the Southern Hemisphere's climate - despite it supposedly being in the middle of Autumn when I was there, the weather was routinely at summer levels of warmth and lack of cloud. I was told that they were going through an Indian Summer, but I suspect that the truth is something far darker and more insidious...

While there however, I did make an effort to hit up the local hobby stores over there. They were... well I guess they were what I'd expect them to be. There were only two model retailers I could find within walking distance of the hotel, and of them only one was really a hobby store in the tabletop sense, and it wasn't really that different to the few in Auckland that I've been to, save for slightly more artwork on the walls. In hindsight I don't know why I was expecting them to be noticeably different.

As I predicted though, they did still possess some examples of older models in stock, and so I was able to return home in triumph with these spoils.

Three blister packs of models (One Fantasy, two 40k), a box 'O' skeletons and two books - the 3.5 edition Codex: Imperial Guard and the 7th edition Beastmen army book. A fine haul to be sure, especially given the limited budget I had to spend on mementos.

The full gaming store that I visited possessed quite a few old blister packs still available, but after some thorough searching I found three that were most desirable for me. Fortunately being older stock meant they were massively discounted, and so I was able to get them all. They include a classic metal Tau Pathfinder Shas'Ui, which was the one metal Pathfinder model I never got around to getting - I decided to paint up a standard Pathfinder model as the team's Shas'Ui instead as I liked the pose better. Because of this I was determined not to pass up this rare second chance, and the model will make a fine leader of my future Pathfinder team(s), though I'm still working out the specifics of integrating him (or possibly her). The most promising solution I've thought of so far is making the model a higher-level Pathfinder commander and simply attaching him (or possibly her) to the Pathfinder teams when needed (AKA putting it in charge of a Pathfinder team in games every so often when it takes my fancy).

Perhaps even more valuable to me though was the classic metal shield drone bits that were included in the blister pack (by the way, have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE the old blister packs? Because they are amazing and I still hate GW for switching over to those infernal clam-packs). Again, shield drones were never really something that I stocked up on, since I always worked under the assumption that if I ever assigned drones to characters that gun drones would offer more bang for my buck (pun intended). This changed when I began to read up on the utility of shield drones in keeping Broadside Teams alive (this was back in the dark days of late 5th edition 40k, where railguns were kind of the only thing Tau still had going for them so the survival of anything with a railgun on it was sort of a priority) while freeing up a support system slot for target locks to maximise the number of targets one could shoot at with a Broadside team, and since my Tau army could only affort a maximum of one Broadside team that was somewhat important. While I improvised in games by using weaponless gun drones as proxies, that was only ever meant to be a temporary stopgap until I ordered some extra shield drone bits from GW online. Unfortunately the classic metal/resin shield drone bitz pack was discontinued by GW before I could get around to purchasing one, and the newer plastic version they brought out as a replacement is not only woefully less cost-efficient, yielding only one shield drone compared to the four you could make with the old bitz pack, but also produces a noticeably different shield drone design, with different antennae and a considerably redesigned shield generator. Since I consider the newer shield drone model to be totally lame compared to the cool older version, this leaves me in somewhat of a dilemma, and so any older shield drone components I can get my hands on is welcome.

They also include a Bretonnian Mounted Yeoman for Warhammer Fantasy. Given the rarity of these models (they were, I believe, among the first Bretonnian models from the 6th/7th edition range to be discontinued and never reappeared for the rest of Warhammer Fantasy's time as an official GW game) I'm still amazed I was able to get one for so cheap. I was somewhat expecting to find three of them in the blister, as I dimly recall GW selling them in threes at one point on the website, but in hindsight that was probably a small white box number like the 5-strong units of Eternal Guard and Wardancers. Speaking of which, there was also another incredible find there - one of the special release Wardancer models (I believe it was a Whirling Death if I recall correctly), which I also never ended up getting. I was deeply tempted to pick it up, but unfortunately it was a little bit outside my price range, and I figured multiple blister packs for different systems would give me more value for my money. I doubt I will ever see it again in my lifetime, so I can only wish that whatever lucky bastard manages to buy it fully appreciates and cherishes the treasure they own, and does not squander it.

Anyway, back to the yeoman, it may have been a letdown to only get one, but at least I got that one. He will make a fine addition to my small Bretonnian army, especially if I can find another 2-5 friends for him.

This mighty fortunate find was found at a different place, a collectables store in the Japantown centre (oh yes, there's a Japantown in 'Frisco as well as a Chinatown). Their assortment of GW models didn't feature as much in the way of older stock, making this one a much easier choice to purchase - it was either this or a classic metal Chaos Dreadnought, and I figured this one would give me more value for my money, again. It is an older (5th edition vintage if I'm not mistaken) box set of Skeletons for use in either of the two Undead armies in Warhammer Fantasy (in fact depending on when it was first released they may still have been just one Undead faction). Eventually it was replaced in the Vampire Counts model range by a newer Skeleton box, but apparently from what I gather the kit soldiered on in the Tomb Kings range, albeit with a repackaging and some extra bits like more Ancient Egyptian-styled shields. The box was in fantastic condition too, the damage in the bottom right corner coming from being crushed in-between other suitcase contents on the trip home, which is great because it means I can enjoy the fantastic artwork on it (if you remember I tend to be fascinated by model box artwork).

A lot of people apparently aren't fond of this Skeleton kit, but I've always really enjoyed it. It helps that I'm quite fond of a lot of classic Fantasy tropes, and I'm very tolerant of technical shortcomings when it comes to models; it's aesthetics that I really value, so if I'm given a choice between a dynamically posed, perfectly realistically proportioned plastic model with tons of options that I can't stand the look of and a static, exaggerated metal monopose model that I love the aesthetics of, I will pick the latter every single time. As a result I've never really understood the hate for this Skeleton kit, especially as it contains a full 20 Skeleton models (which is twice as much as the later kit contained) which is enough for an entire complete unit that's a NORMAL size rather than those gargantuan 30+ strong abominations that people were obsessed with in 8th edition.

This means that I also actually have an Undead infantry unit for my Vampire to lead when I eventually get around to painting her, and ironically fits with the Lahmian theme perfectly. I still want(ed) a Vampire Counts army that was mostly if not entirely, well... not skeletons, but hey you can never have too many Skeletons in a fantasy adventure and they'll work well with the other handful of Skeletons I got with another purchase - I have some ideas for how to use them in games. I was going to name them Gashadokuro. on account of getting them from Japantown and all (plus still being blown away by Kubo: Legend of the Two Strings), but a quick spot of research on wikipedia suggests that they'd probably be too small for that, so I'll have to default to plan B and give them a unit name that has something to do with barrows. Y'know, given that barrows are basically hills you bury dead people in, and I got them in San Francisco which is notorious for being full of hills.

As well as old blister packs, I also discovered a cache of older books, including a copy of the 3.5 edition Codex: Imperial Guard. The Imperial Guard books weren't the highest on my list of old gamebooks to get, but finding it there, combined with the repeatedly-slashed price, made this a target of opportunity that was too much to pass up. It continues the trend of concentrated weapons-grade EPIC that is common to all 3.5 edition era books I have come across, with a fantastic piece of cover artwork by Karl Kopinski and a beautiful inside cover illustration that really captures the anachronistic grandeur of the Imperium in relation to its mainline standing army. One thing I found unusual was the book's layout. Most 3.5 edition codexes I have seen all share a broadly similar pattern of: Background > Army List > Colour Hobby Section > Extras, but the Imperial Guard codex instead has the colour section towards the front, just after a few pages of introductory background. I guess this was so that they could consolidate the rules material all into one place, but then the even more rules-heavy 3.5 edition Chaos Space Marine codex still had the colour section in the back, when you'd think it would make sense there too. This also marks the second 3.5 edition era codex I have encountered that doesn't include a special scenario in it somewhere, putting the total tally at 50/50 between ones that do and don't have scenarios in them. Come to think of it, the 3rd edition Tyranid codex never had one in it either, which is very weird because you'd think that it would be the perfect place to drop in a special 'Tyranid Attack' scenario. I'm starting to think that special scenarios in the codexes and army books might be the exception rather than the rule, which is sad because I always thought including a special themed scenario was a really neat idea.

Also of note in this codex is the legendary Doctrines system, perhaps best described as a kind of Chapter Tactics for Imperial Guard regiments (and by Chapter Tactics I mean the earlier version where you could pick and choose from a bunch of different options that could be combined, rather than the rigid version 6th edition 40k introduced). There weren't quite as many Doctrines available in the codex itself as I was expecting, so I imagine a lot of the ones people tend to reminisce over were included later in White Dwarf. Even so there are some pretty cool ones included - Light Infantry seems particularly kick-ass (Infiltrate on everyone? Giving one infantryman in any squad a sniper rifle instead of using up two to make a heavy weapon team? Yes please). All in all I think I know exactly which ones I'd take for the regiments I've invented.

As well as the Imperial Guard codex, I also found a copy of the 7th edition Beastmen army book for Warhammer Fantasy, which  was high on my to-get list. As I understand it this book was the last army book to be released for 7th edition Warhammer Fantasy, and it definitely shows. I mentioned in the last post how I thought the 3rd edition Tyranid codex felt like a prototype 3.5 edition book, and if that's the case then this book feels like a prototype 8th edition army book in a lot of places. There's still plenty of cool black and white artwork in it, mind, but there are a lot of times where the writing has a particularly 8th edition, dare I say even Wardian style to it - one piece about how Beastmen Warherds often take down castles in Bretonnia by goading something called a Ramhorn into charging the castle gate (and how a lack of widespread Ramhorn numbers is apparently the only thing stopping them from overrunning Bretonnia. Y'know, because it's not like there's any heavily armed Knights that can fight back or anything) stood out as particularly egregious to me, It also has a disturbingly similar layout to the 8th edition books, right down to the formatting of the bestiary section and a colour illustration of shield and standard designs at the end of the colour hobby section.

On the positive side, this book also includes a selection of magic items that I enjoy much more than the 6th edition magic item armoury. The in-game effectiveness of a lot of them is up for debate, but some of the background descriptions are exactly the sort of creepy side of Chaos that I look for - particular standouts include the magic weapon Everbleed, the Chalice of Dark Rain and the Manbane Standard. Not only that, but this book includes the Lore of the Wild, a unique spell lore for Beastmen armies that I've always been really fond of. I've always loved unique spell lores, and the background behind the Lore of the Wild is fantastic, not to mention the thematic side of it making an excellent dark and twisted mirror to my favourite Warhammer Fantasy spell lore of all time, the Lore of Athel Loren in the Wood Elf army book. On top of all that there are rules for Jabberslythes, which I've always liked, and a host of what are actually some very interesting special characters with really fascinating backstory ideas.


And in other news, I experienced a stunning revelation the other day when browsing the GW website. In the distant past GW went through a phase during the 1990s that is known to many as the 'Red Period'. It is often remembered with scorn by many Warhammer grognards as a time of childish background, poor model designs and a general dumbing down of everything by GW, as well as garish colour schemes that frequently made use of the colour red (hence why it's called the 'Red Period'). I was just thinking about this as I looked through the GW website when I saw the new Horus Heresy Custode models. And then it hit me.


We are living in GW's Gold Period.


No, seriously, think about it. This era of GW that we're living in is a brand new 'Red Period', only this time with gold instead of red. All of the parallels are there. Juvenile, one-dimensional background? Check. Poor model designs? Oh yes. General dumbing down of rules? Depending on how you view AoS, you betcha. And I'll tell you what, over the last four years, GW has started using a lot of gold in their studio paint schemes. The new Custodes and Sisters of Silence, the Sigmarines, the Tempestus Scions, and those are just the examples that immediately come to mind - the GW studio schemes today have just as much gold in them as the GW studio schemes of the 90s had red.

Will we see a 'Bronze Age of GW' afterwards, the same way that the Red Period heralded the legendary Silver Age of GW? That is the question, but I have my doubts. Even assuming GW survives that long, I have a feeling that the current trends aren't going to stop anytime soon.

Man this time I'm spending out in space is really helping me clear my head and think about these things. I think I'll stay up here just a little while longer...

Lousy Zogg'in Squig-thiev'in Sunuva'Grot only sold me 'alf a Krooza!

SPACESHIP!! SPACESHIP!! SPACESHIP!! SPACESHIP!! SPACESHIP!!

It took months longer than I planned, but I finally did it. I finished the Custodian class battleship for my Tau fleet, the Zelbinion.

This model was utter hell to paint. I used the last of my ancient cache of Tausept Ochre paint for it, to save costs on a whole new pot of paint and to tie it in with the other Kor'O'vesh ships in my fleet. After painting the Emissaries I was sure that it would take only a few weeks, getting the right coverage of colour with just two coats, three at most.


I was wrong. So very wrong.


The paint was on its last days, and so refused to dry evenly, either producing ugly splotches of discolouration or even uglier 'blisters' of solid paint, and for the next few months I went through a gruelling process of applying and re-applying an endless cycle of see-sawing coats and touch-ups that I can only describe as the painting equivalent to trench warfare. It was horrifically demoralizing, as I poured in countless hours of work while never feeling I was making any real progress on it. Eventually though I got it looking.... presentable at least, the highlights went on and now I feel like it was all worth it in the end. I'm particularly pleased with the engine-glows, my neatest yet.

In a clever bit of conversion work, I also pinned the keel section to the main hull rather than gluing it down, allowing for the two pieces to be separated.

No backstory this time folks. Ordinarily I would, since my Battlefleet Gothic background isn't on hold at the moment, but I simply haven't had enough time to write any between university work and actually painting this thing. Next time there probably will be though.

What there is, however, is some of my latest acquisitions. With the latest disturbing rumours about the imminent demise of Warhammer Fantasy, I went and got myself a castle like I always wanted. Now, I have a modest force of Bretonnians (that I also always wanted) to live in it.

All-up, that is 24 Knights, 40 Men-at-arms, 4 Peasant Bowmen, 3 Pegasus Knights and two characters, to go along with the small handful of Bretonnian characters I already had. It isn't much, it's somewhat plain and certainly a far cry from the vast army of them I originally envisioned, but it has all the essentials of a small force and is definitely better than nothing.

I also picked up a Vampire on foot, another model I always quite liked.

I had intended to get a full Vampire Counts army one day, but I simply don't have the resources for it, so it seems I will have to settle for just one character for it.

Perhaps the most astonishing new arrival, however, is this.

It's an order of old GW publications I got from Noble Knight Games. The rules mechanics in them might not be entirely up to date, but they still have plenty of fantastic background and hobby material in them, and they are all real treasures to have.

Battlefleet Gothic Magazine issue 17 was my top priority with the order - being a giant enthusiast of Battlefleet Gothic and with the Tau being my favourite faction of both Battlefleet Gothic and Warhammer 40,000 it was a must-have for me. I was actually surprised by how small it was in size and length, I was anticipating something like an old White Dwarf magazine, but as it turns out it's not much bigger or longer than the new weekly White Dwarf. Even so it still has a fair amount of content in it, including assembly guides for the Kor'vattra Tau ships (which would have been really useful if I had had them at the time I assembled my Kor'vattra Tau ships!! grumblegrumblemuttermutter) and rules for extra celestial phenomena, including black holes, useful since there's mention of them in my Battlefleet Gothic background.

The two White Dwarfs, 261 and 262 (US), October and November 2001, represent a particularly historical landmark to me as they were the main two White Dwarfs to cover the first ever release of the Tau, which like I say is my favourite faction of Warhammer 40,000. I always knew that White Dwarf had gradually featured less and less content over time but my god was I surprised to find out just how much used to be packed into them! I thought the first few White Dwarfs I got from around 2005-2007ish had a lot of stuff in them, but these two feel like they have almost twice as much stuff in them. It took me the better part of a week to work my way through both of them, and even then I ended up staying up until 4:30 in the morning to finish off the second one. They really do have a bit of that old early-2000s era GW magic in them, and it was great fun reading through them.

The final one is a copy of the original Codex: Sisters of Battle published towards the end of 2nd edition Warhammer 40,000. My Ecclesiarchal agents discovered it when I went to order my copy of Codex: Witchhunters and my holy conclave of ministers quickly concluded that I had to have it. I noticed that the three other publications were much cheaper than anticipated so I figured now was as good a time as any to snatch up a copy.

According to the publication date inside, this book was written when I was just 3 years old.


Once again it was a lot smaller than I thought it would be. After hearing legends about how the 2nd edition codexes contained vast amounts of background and hobby material, I was expecting it to be a massive, hulking tome of information but in truth it isn't much bigger than either of the 3rd edition codexes I have, or the 4th edition one I have for that matter, and contains only slightly more background (and less hobby material). I still consider it worth getting though, since a lot of the background inside isn't repeated in Codex: Witchhunters. Some of the old rules were fascinating to see too (vehicles seem like they were absolute death-traps in 2nd edition!).

That about covers everything I think. Now back to my eternal tasks of painting and background writing (and university assignments)....