Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game 2025

 

Tundra Kruleboyz 2024

Necron Horde of 2021

 

 

How I Develop an Army Scheme - Case Study

Hello again friends,

Here’s a little insight into how I decide on what army to build next. After finishing my initial Kharadron force I’d been thinking about what vanguard-sized army to build next. I wanted to make a significant change from the satisfying-yet-slow approach of the extensive hand-painting I’d done on the sky dwarves.

My roommate and I moved recently into a lovely new flat that has allowed me to set up my first ever dedicated hobby table. Having all of my materials ready and available instead of needing to constantly set it them up and tear them down has been a huge boost for me in staying engaged with the hobby. This is particularly noticeable with the airbrush, which required a large amount of a setup previously that involve laying a canvas painting sheet over our kitchen table when no-one else was home.

So, I knew I wanted to make extensive use of the airbrush. I began looking online for techniques and tips and fell completely under the spell of Marco Frisoni. His youtube channel is superb, he’s a brilliant painter, and he’s got a great joyful vibe. I definitely recommend you check it out.

I particularly enjoyed his videos on:

• Blanchitsu Oil Washing
• Airbrush preshading and zenithal use
• Airbrushing with Inks to add color tones

Note that these videos are not exclusively about the above techniques, but provide strong examples of them that inspired me. I knew I wanted to try out some combination of these techniques so I dug out my old oil paints, and bought some inks to start experimenting with.

I felt that these techniques would work really well on models that have a lot of robes and metals on them. Robes in particular have always been a huge weakness of mine, as I’ve struggled in the past to know where to put highlights and how to push contrasts on large expanses of cloth. I settled on either Lumineth Realmlords or Sacrosanct Chamber Stormcast Eternals to experiment on, and got a box of each.

Before getting into the test models properly I slapped together some easy-to-build space marines I had lying around to see how the inks and my contrast paints would work through the airbrush, as well as how they’d interact with oil. It was very illuminating. Another thing to note is that for both the schemes below there were an additional 1-2 test models where I tried slight variations of the same thing, and the Stormcast I actually stripped before repainting them in a similar scheme to get what I wanted.

While it is a little exhausting, it is quite an organic experience to try out different things and make subtle alterations to how you approach different figures. It's quite satisfying to develop a strategy for an army-size project like this, especially when you’re pushing yourself and using new techniques. It saves you a huge amount of headache in the long run and means you can zero in on what you want and get a consistent looking force. One final note, make sure you write down every detail of your process so once you get the final result you haven't forget anything!

Here is what I came up with for the Lumineth and Stormcast test models:

This Lumineth scheme has a blue done with airbrush zenithal highlights using inks, and then I used a very heavy oil washing to make them grimy and grimdark. I really liked the idea of the typically-fancy looking Lumineth getting grimy and dirty, but I can’t say I loved the need to keep the colors bright silver and blue in order to show off the oil wash. I also didn’t really like the idea of having to do a really dirty or muddy base to give it visual continuity, messy bases don't really appeal to me.

This was my approach with the Stormcast, I didn’t use oils here but made extensive use of the airbrush where I did an initial zenithal highlight with a warm ivory tone, then sprayed a green contrast paint through the airbrush on the main robes which acted as a filter and kept the zenithal highlights underneath. After that I painted the armor by hand before airbrush shading everything with washes or inks from the bottom using sepia and earth tones. There were some final brushed highlights on the top portions of the robes/metals.

I really loved how all of this airbrush work accentuated the cloaks. It was the first time I’d felt like I’d done cloth justice, and had actually made a model look more 3D with my painting.

I also enjoyed the warm tones of the green/gold/brown color scheme and immediately had some strong thematic ideas in my head about where to go with it. The monk-like appearance of the Sacrosanct chamber led me to start thinking about flagstone bases that closely resembled the ones from these easy-to-build test models.

The finished test models.
Note that the white balance in this picture is off, and they are less yellowy than this.

I ended up finishing the models. and while I’ll likely tweak a bit of the shading to make it less heavy, this is pretty much exactly how I want them to look.

For the bases I’ve decided to try out Green Stuff World’s textured rolling pins with some sculpting material from a local arts store and so far, I’m very impressed. I'm planning on having them look like they're part of a monastery of some kind.

Given how much I liked the scheme, and the strong thematic impression that came out of it, I’ve decided to continue with the Stormcast army rather than the Lumineth. I’m looking forward to giving you more updates as they come together.

Thanks for reading!

Kharadron Overlords Update - February 2021

Hello Friends,

My hobby has continued to thrive during the COVID-19 pandemic as I’ve had lots of extra time to work on various projects. The most prominent of these since my last update has been the completion of a solid Vanguard-sized force of Kharadron Overlords.

I continued the approach that I took with the test models, and all of the infantry models were done with an old-school handpainting and layering approach. No contrast paints or airbrushing to be found! I also really enjoyed the cohesiveness of the neutral palette I’d selected.

However, when it came time to do the boats I decided to make use of the airbrush because I’m not a total masochist, and I also found the need to add one more colour to the palette to employ on the huge swathes of their hulls. I went with a dark turquoise based on Citadel’s ‘Incubi Darkness’ that I think works really well and ties into the sea-theme of the bases.

The beach bases were a lot of fun to do and help to make the army quite distinct. I used Vallejo water textures and exactly followed the excellent guide on water bases by Tsukuru_Paints that can be found on their Instagram here.

My personal favourite of the water bases.

I continue to really enjoy cracking out these small 1000 armies. It is particularly satisfying with the Age of Sigmar range, as something about the brilliant level of variety between the AoS sculpts and the flexibility of their potential color/basing schemes is super satisfying to me. A Vanguard force is also a manageable number of models that seems to be around the perfect amount for me to paint before I’m ready to move on to something else. I get to focus new techniques, styles, or material, and after a few test models get to see how they play out on an army-level scale across a variety of models.

A frothy boy!

There’s been lots more going on with my hobby lately, with many more exciting posts to come! Thanks for looking!

-Tom

Women Sculpts in Age of Sigmar

Howdy Friends,

Given my previous article on here discussing women sculpts in miniature wargaming, (part 1 / part 2) I thought it would be a appropriate to revisit the topic in light of Games Workshop's recent push to include female miniatures in new releases for the 'Stormcast Eternals', the flagship army for it's Age of Sigmar fantasy game.

With the release of Soul Wars boxed set, an overview of how GW is working to incorporate women into the Stormcast Eternals range might offer a focused discussion on how they are trying to change their sculpting practices when it comes to female representation.

I think we can now definitively conclude that GW is making a conscious effort to include women stormcast characters given the content of this box, we get the Knight-Incantor character as a hero, as well as the Castigator-Prime. Recently announced follow-up releases to the Soul Wars box offers numerous female sculpts in units associated with the newly released Sacrosanct Chamber, a major faction of the Stormcast Eternals. Women sculpts in units of Castigators, Sequitors, Evocaters and Celestar Ballista represent the first woman figures from the Stormcast line to be part of a standard unit and not a hero or named character. Additionally the cover art for standard core book for AoS 2.0  features a lone battle-hardened woman stormcast eternal.

Knight-Incantor

Castigator - Prime

The female representation within the Soul Wars box and subsequent Sacrosanct Chamber releases seems like a natural extension of GW testing the waters for women Stormcast models with Neave Blacktalon from the Blightwar box, as well as Angharad Brightshield from the Shadespire starter.

Angharad Brightshield

Neave Blacktalon

So how problematic (if at all) are they as depictions of women figures?  How do they conform or subvert larger trends in depicting women in fantasy?  How do they appear in relation to other representations of women in the GW range?

In my view all of these stormcast figures, from the shadespire box onwards, do a few things well that I think really make them stand out in regards to depictions of women in miniature wargaming:

• Muscle-mass and size. I love that the women depicted here are the same size as their male stormcast brethren and are huge hyper-muscled badasses. Is it realistic? Not really, but then again neither is every guy looking like Hafthor Bjornsson. Is it cool as hell? Abso-goddamn-lutely. This is exactly the type of unrealistic power-trip depictions of bodies that men have been enjoying in their fantasy and sci-fi representation for decades. Yet I would posit the idea of having a really powerful body is in no way a specifically male fantasy, and there is no need to contain oneself within the limits of what is “realistic” given the completely fantastical nature of most miniature game settings. I like this idea of equalizing powerful bodies and making sure that whatever body types are being depicting are done so across genders. I also think that, in general, having everyone be muscly is a much more practical and less problematic choice than trying to “make male figures sexy too” and apply the male gaze to both genders. Special mention goes to the cover of the Core Book with its lady stormcast who looks seriously intimidating.
• No boob cavities. The boob armor is definitely still there outside of the cloaked Sequistors, but at least it is a uniform piece of armor that doesn’t have a cavity in the chest to better accentuate the breasts. I know this doesn’t sound like much but this is actually huge in women miniature designs. Individual “boob slots” in female armor is ubiquitous within wargaming miniatures across most systems. Now, I'd still posit that there really isn’t any actual need for armor to clearly depict breasts to imply a figure is a woman. I'd refer you to the excellent "Bikini Armor Battle Damage" tumblr which has been pointing this out effectively for years. Androgyny is a hallmark of properly-equipped combatants, and sculpts can make use of proportions to clearly communicate a combatant is a woman without relying on noticable boob armor. Despite this I still feel the stormcast women look a lot better than other sculpts with a pronounced chest cavity. Although unfortunately the artwork for the Core Book seems to bring this cavity back, which is my only criticism of said art.
• In general I think that the amount of armor stormcast eternals wear works well to communicate the combat-readiness of the women sculpts, there is almost no skin on display with any of these figures beyond Blacktalon and the Knight-Incantor having their heads exposed. (and blacktalon has a helmet option which is awesome)
• All the posing is good, these ladies are clearly fighting and not trying to draw the eye to boobs/bums/etc. Post-2012 GW is pretty good about posing women figures appropriately across the board,  even when other parts of the sculpt might be more problematic
• The Castigator-Prime model, and subsequent box of Sequitors that feature numerous women sculpts, are easily some of the best female sculpts i’ve seen across any game system. Specifically because they manage to make effective use of non-sexualized proportions to clearly communicate that a given figure is a woman without revealing (any!) skin or employing weird armor design. They are clearly a part of the Castigator unit, armored and equipped in the same way, and there is no boob-plate to be seen. I also like that each is part of a standard unit and isn’t singled out as a named character or hero figure, it suggests that we might see more women amongst the ranks of human-like AoS/40k armies and I’m all for it.

Conclusions: I’m very positive about these figures and what they indicate in regards to GW trying to make their systems more inviting to women players. They aren’t perfect but they are a big leap forward for GW and compare favourably with general depictions of women in fantasy settings across films/books/rpgs etc. Given how big GW is as a company, and the way it sets trends and precedents within the miniature wargaming industry, I really hope this is a sign of things to come.

Caveats: While I think the women stormcast eternals are the best of what GW has to offer in regards to women figures across all of their ranges (with the possible exception of the Tau who are very gender-neutral in appearance), that doesn’t mean we can ignore their other women sculpts that are less positive. In particular i would single out the Daughters of Khaine and the Adeptus Ministorum (aka: Sisters of Battle) as ranges that remain, at best, ambiguous in regards to how problematic they are in their depictions of women. None of the post 2012 sculpts for either of these ranges has been deeply problematic, but none have struck me as being particularly great either. I think with the stormcasts we are seeing GW get the opportunity to set new standards for how they want to depict women, whereas with the DoK and SoB they are struggling to break out of the orbit of earlier highly-sexualized design choices. I really do think that the Sisters of Battle plastic releases are going to make-or-break my thoughts as to whether GW is genuinely pushing for better representation or is fine with  just being “okay” when it comes to depicting women in their sculpts.

So that's my initial thoughts on these figures. I'm extremely happy to see this sort of work coming from Games Workshop and I'm hoping that they continue the trend across their own line and have an influence on the industry as a whole. Thanks for reading and i'll leave you with some of the other fantastic women sculpts from the new Sacrosanct Chamber range!

Sequitor Leader

Sequitors Unit - excellent stuff here!
I also like that we're seeing a combatant of colour in the official studio schemes as well!

Evocaters

Lord Arcanum

Celestar Ballista - more great design work here!

What's New: Gundam, Shadespire, and Arkham Horror!

Howdy friends,

It’s been a while! I’ve now moved to Toronto and am trying to figure out what to do with my life. Hobby has taken something of a backseat since my return to Canada and I haven’t been playing any systems at all. However I remain extremely interested in Gundam models and have built several Bandai kits. The engineering and plastic quality on these models is superb, particularly for anything released from 2012 onwards.

So far I’ve worked exclusively with “high grade” kits, which are the cheapest and most extensive scale for Gunpla kits. See this link for more detailed description of the different scales. They cost between $15-$35 Canadian, and produce a mech figure about six inches tall.

I was rather frustrated by my attempt to do a full paintjob on the Kotobukiya Frame-Arms model before I left the UK, even with the airbrush, and am now just painting small portions of kits using some paint-on surface primer to pick out mechanical details and the like. I’ve also started using enamel panel-liner to pick out etched on details in the plastic that help separate and distinguish parts. Currently I’ve built three such kits so here they are in order...

Frame Shiden – Gundam Iron-Blood Orphans

This was my “test” kit with Bandai and I haven’t done any detailing on it whatsoever, this is as it appears assembled directly out of the box. I just went with a design I liked knowing nothing about the product but was extremely impressed.

 As you can see the articulated poses these kits are capable of is uhhhhh... extensive.

Gundam Barbatos – Gundam Iron-Blood Orphans

As I’ve always been one to devour the ‘fluff’ behind whatever models I happen to be building at a given time I’ve started working my way through some of the Gundam anime series to get a better sense for the figures I have the choice of building. There’s a huge number of series taking place in various timelines (see this link for detailed descriptions) and while few of them are truly brilliant there is a lot of really enjoyable viewing throughout.

“Iron-Blood Orphans”, one of the most recent series, has been a personal favourite. This is a totally new story/setting focussed on a group of child soldiers who form a mercenary group. I liked the small-scale but brutal combat encounters, complex political manoeuvring in the background, and the focus on family bonds.

Naturally I wanted to make my first “proper” build the lead Gundam unit in the series. This is a very recently released kit and is a joy to build, although it does make relatively extensive use of stickers, which I opted to paint details for instead. I also painted some mechanical details on the inner frame that shows beneath the armor.

After a varnish I did some panel-lining enamel washes using Tamiya panel liner, which is essentially a pre-thinned enamel paint that runs into the recesses of the details on the kit very easily, and can be cleaned up neatly with some enamel thinner afterwards. I’m quite impressed with the product and it definitely felt a lot easier than any of my previous attempts to tidy up detail-work with acrylic.

Gundam Barbatos before the use of Tamiya Weathering Powder

Another varnish layer and I added some weathering by sponging Vallejo ‘heavy charcoal’ on areas that would see a lot of wear, and then added some Tamiya Weathering Powder ‘Gunsmoke’ in the same areas to further dirty it up a bit. The weathering powder acts a bit like a pigment with a mild adhesive in it so it doesn’t get removed as easily. I’m relatively pleased with the overall effect!

Zaku II – Gundam "The Origin"

 For my second kit I wanted something that was a little less time intensive and closer to a straight assembly. I loved the retro-futurist look of the original Zaku’s from the original 1979 Mobile Suit Gundam animation and there were some new high-grade kits recently released to coincide with the “Gundam the Origin” movies that act as prequels to the original animation.

The kit went together really nicely, the only details I added outside of its included sticker sheet is some panel lining. The level of the detail etched into the plastic was extraordinary and the panel lining process really made the kit pop. Overall it was an extremely pleasant build experience!

Currently I’m building another Iron-Blood Orphans kit that will include some detailing and customization, and then probably another Origins one. I’m really enjoying the process of gradually figuring out what to do with these model kits rather than jumping in the deep-end as I attempted to with the Frame Arms kit. I’m also trying to get figures of various colors so that they will look great together on display!

While I haven’t been playing stuff very much I did get a chance to play a few games of the following! So here are some impressions after spending a few hours with some new collectible systems!

Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire

This is a really elegant little system that feels fun and competitive. It’s balanced in quite an interesting way by introducing small amounts of luck along multiple axes. Between drawing from a customized deck, rolling dice, and randomized objectives it feels like you always have some degree of flexibility/control even if you get unlucky in one of these areas. Games are also wonderfully quick and efficient as they never last more than three rounds. So even if you get stomped it won’t last more than 30 minutes and doesn’t leave one feeling too salty.

The miniatures are superb and I like the way the game is costed. Overall I’m really impressed and feel like it’s the best skirmish game Games Workshop has put out so far, with obvious potential for continued support and development.

While I don’t feel like I’m making it out to a hobby shop often enough to justify diving into it quite yet, the next (inevitable) instance that I feel the itch to pick up a GW system this will definitely be what I go with.

Arkham Horror: The Card Game

This is the latest Living Card Game (LCG) from Fantasy Flight games, although it has a couple major differences from my previous experience with their Game of Thrones LCG. It is a co-operative game in which each player takes part in an extended campaign with a strong narrative focus as you attempt to stop eldritch horrors in various settings/scenarios. It includes a campaign book for each scenario and you build customisable decks for your chosen investigator.

If that sounds like a lot for a card game to handle that’s because it is, but I am extremely impressed with AH’s ruleset and system. The way in which the game is organized means that you are always have a lot of control over your choices and the co-operative nature of the game is executed extremely well. The narrative elements are incorporated very and do actually make the game feel like a focussed story. Outside of the scenario itself each card drips with flavour text and mechanics that appropriately reflect their use. Each of the investigators plays really differently, and it also offers a pretty solid solo play experience. For more details you can check out the Shut Up & Sit Down review that sold me on the game here. The replayability of these scenarios/campaigns isn’t too much of an issue, as I’ve run through the base set campaign about 3 times in quick succession without feeling bored. Although I do feel like to continue enjoying play I’ll need to either take a break for a while or start to purchase expansions.

A scenario set up and ready to play!

That leads me to the only significant drawback to the game, which is the amount of potential money involve. As with all Fantasy Flight ongoing games there is an aggressive expansion schedule that will provide new campaigns and scenarios, but it will cost you to keep up with everything. This has stopped me from purchasing more than the base set so far but I’ll mull it over more and see how I feel down the line. Additionally the game can sometimes feel very punishing, although in almost all cases the narrative/scenario can proceed from failure and therefore failure simply becomes part of the ongoing game rather than an end condition.

Overall I’m extremely impressed with the design work that went into the Arkham Horror card game and I will likely end up picking up some expansions down the line.

Hobby Thoughts: Warhammer 40k's Eight Edition

Hello friends,

So with the arrival of the eighth edition of Warhammer 40k my gaming group is officially hot for the grimdark. There are multiple people building and painting new armies and Element Games has been so overwhelmed with orders that I ended up doing a day of work for them to help out. The hype for the new system has been absolutely wild and I've definitely got caught up in.

I was sorely tempted to start a new army but I made the more responsible choice of coming back to the Ork army I painted in the first half of 2016. I'm working to finish some backlog in a unit of Meganobz and Gretchin I assembled and airbrushed last year before stepping away from 40k. I've also purchased another trukk and some more boyz to make a unit of Tankbustas.

Partially completed Meganobz from last year.

A rokkit pistol conversion for a unit of Tankbustas.

Some initial Tankbustas that have since expanded into a unit of 10.

I can't say I'm thrilled about the prospect of painting another 20+ models for a GW system again, but I did get a game of the new rules in and I was impressed enough that I feel it will be worth it. I'll be temporarily putting my Infinity JSA army on the backburner as I wasn't enjoying painting them nearly as much as the Haqqislam forces, which will continue to be a priority for me in tandem with my 40k army.

The game I had was against a friend's Mechanicus army and I got absolutely slaughtered, inflicting a grand total of three wounds for the entire game while he wiped my whole army of 50+ orks. (to be fair I caused about five wounds on some Kastellan's but they kept getting fixed) Even though the game was pretty brutal it was largely down to my own player errors, and also not realising just how differently everything plays now. This was particularly noticeable in the way in which characters have changed, as I flung my warboss away to no benefit quite early in the game.

The rules are definitely very streamlined and the game ran very smoothly. They've taken the best aspects of Age of Sigmar and kept the nuances inherent to 40k, and overall i'm very impressed with how it played.

Deployment. I ended up with the first turn.

My warboss and biker buddies failing to charge a unit of Kastellans.

My warboss subsequently getting absolutely krumped by said Kastellans.

This image pretty much perfectly sums up the game...
hordes of useless small arms fire against an unstoppable group of big buff robots.

Some shooting and a charge later there was nothing left.

Here are some general first impressions about the new edition:

• The game is quick, streamlined, fun, and still really nuanced with a lot of depth. The system is solid and I enjoyed playing it far far more than anything I'd experienced in 7th edition.
• Lists need to be a lot more focused. Since most units are quite viable with the current indexes it feels like you can no longer take a random assortment of your 'best' units an expect a win. My army didn't feel synergistic and I didn't have a plan and it really showed.
• The 'battle points' system didn't feel very balanced. We used the BP system in order to set up the game quickly and my opponent had 69 points while I had 70. However in practice it felt somewhat unbalanced, as Orks don't have a lot of weapon upgrades to take advantage of for 'free' using this system whereas my opponent had some horrific firepower. One gun would have caused over ten wounds on my trukk in a single shot were it not for a lucky ramshackle roll to make it only eight. I will definitely only be playing with proper 'matched play' point values moving forward.
• Characters are fundamentally different both in terms of how they play and how they are positioned on the board. The new targeting rules means that even combat-focused characters will want to be 'bubble-wrapped' with screens of units in front of them, and in general I noticed less overall damage output from characters. The way that their command auras work is a lot more reminiscent of AoS now and it feels like there's a stronger emphasis on them as supporting units. For example my warboss now has a 'waaagh' buff every turn but it only affects units in perimeter around him, rather than having an army-wide buff that he can only use once per game. It makes for a hugely different unit!
• I've seen a lot of people talking about how Orks have been 'fixed' in this edition after being relatively weak throughout 7th, and there are aspects of it I agree with and aspects I don't. The new mob rule definitely makes an enormous difference in improving our moral, but at the same time it also felt like my overall damage and surviveability was significantly reduced. It looks like huge hordes of boys is going to be a really viable strategy but that's not the type of army I want to build or paint so it might prove challenging to produce a viable alternative. I'm optimistic about Orks in the new edition but I think we may struggle against heavy armour lists.
• In terms of defence: the elimination of jink saves, and the nerfing of cover saves to providing a flat +1 armor bonus means that all of the Ork footsloggers and fast attack options are much more fragile.
• When it comes to offence it appears that Power Klaws are nowhere near as efficient as they once where, which was previously my go-to method of taking out anything bigger than infantry. The new rules for "rend" regarding armor saves means that elite units will still be getting decent saves when they're getting hit with a klaw, despite them having a relatively high rend of -3. For example the Kastellan's in this game were buffed to have 1+ armor saves so they were still getting a 4+ armour save when my bosses and nobs were hitting them. It looks like Big Choppa's will be the new hotness, as their damage output is just as consistent for less of a cost.

Anyways those are my initial thoughts. I look forward to getting some more games in soon, and until then thanks for looking!