Well it's the last day of the month and I'm happy to say I met my quota this month, with an extra model to boot. And it's a good thing too - with this Mordheim campaign coming up, and one of my buddies being a slacker who does not paint his own models, there's not a lot of time to spare!

After starting my Norse warband last month, I wanted to start the Nurgle troops this month. Now I've got a small group of freshly painted troops for each warband, and I can spend next month finishing off both warbands. The only model I'm concerned about is the Plague Cart (he's running a Carnival of Chaos list). I don't have a great model for it, and I'm concerned that any model I do use is going to be a pain to get assembled/painted! Oh well that's next month's problem...

For now - here's the start to the Nurgle warband.

First up, the leader:





I ended up not washing his robes because I thought the color was a bit darker than I'd like and didn't want to have to start over from square one after the wash. I did use washes with the other troops though, so they'd be in a different painting style than the Norse who are all done with layering.

Here are the "Tainted." These two are heroes. I am not sticking with the "carnival" theme for the look of the warband, but I did want to stick to the idea that these guys are diseased and rotting (they can give you Nurgle's Rot in the campaign! Eew!). The fluff for these guys says they are usually hooded to mask their disfigured rotting faces, so I dug through the lead pile to find something appropriate... Although I tried to stick with GW models for the warband, I couldn't pass these up, they were too perfect. Two cultists from the last Frostgrave expansion. I still haven't painted any up for Frostgrave, but some day!







I think I need to hit them with some more dullcote, there still appears to be some glossiness in the folds of their robes that I didn't notice until I saw the photos.

Here are some more henchmen - a group of Brethren. Just your basic run-of-the-mill Chaos Marauders. I used mostly Army Painter washes on these guys but I was disappointed with the Flesh Wash. I originally started using these AP washes because I heard that the Strong Tone wash was a good substitute for the old Devlan Mud GW wash (it is! It's awesome!). I'm still mad at GW for discontinuing that wash... but Strong Tone AP wash is an almost perfect substitute.












Anyway - I bought the whole set of AP washes, and they are good - however I noticed on these guys that the flesh wash tends to dry glossier than the rest. This is bad!

I have the newer GW washes too; I should use them more, they're great.

Finally - here are the last of the Nurgle troops I painted this month: the Nurglings!









You have no limit on the number of Nurglings you can take in a Carnival of Chaos Mordheim warband (other than your total warband size limit), so I might have to paint up a few more of these.

Next month, I need to work on the two Brutes (the other hero choices), the Plaguebearers, and a couple more henchmen. Also gotta go back to my Norse and do a few more henchmen.

On top of that... terrain!!! So many terrain projects I'd like to complete in time for the campaign! But the warbands have to be the priority; after all, I DO have a ton of jungle terrain from the last Lustria campaign we played.

Mordheim test game

Wanted to try out one of the Lustria scenarios I've never played before, so tried it today with my boy.

Adding this one ("Island Hopping") to the big tournament style campaign in November.

It was also an excuse to take some more pics of my new aquarium decor shipwreck terrain!

Pics below.




















Also took a few test shots of it with some actual pirates on board instead of Warhammer models, for the Lead Adventure Forum.

New Terrain

I was recently lamenting the fact that a lot of the cool pieces of aquarium decorations that are useful as 28mm terrain are only available in Europe/ the UK. This has been a problem for me over and over again as I see pictures of cool stuff on other people's blogs, only to realize that I can't get it myself!

However, sometimes it works the other way around and we actually get some great stuff over here. This week I received a package of some new terrain I ordered for my Mordheim campaign and boy is it a doozy.

I had ordered some new gaming mats, one coastline and one ocean. There's also a green grass mat that goes with the set - they are each 4x4, and connect to make a 4x12 tabletop. I'll show more pics of the mat itself when I get some mats from Frontline to do a full comparative review (these are DeepCut).

Anyway, since I now had the water board which I had always been lacking, I needed to get some ships. I actually have a large collection of model ships that I can get away with in 28mm, anything from 1/72 to 1/50... but they are kits and will take a long time to build. No way they'll be done in time for the November campaign.

I thought aquarium shipwreck decorations would be cool, if only I could find one big enough that didn't look so insanely out of scale...

I found this one on Amazon. It was the last one in stock, and no one else in North America seems to have it available any more! This happens to be the only reason I kept it, since it arrived broken and in multiple pieces. I glued back together what I could and stuck it on the table; not bad. There's a 28mm Viking on there for comparison.



    

The paint job is crap but it's a quick piece of terrain that doesn't require any work - perfect!

But here... HERE is the pièce de résistance. I found this bad boy on a random web site and took a shot on it because it seemed like a great deal. It was $59 for the whole set of three pieces. You could also buy the pieces individually, but I got the set.

Wow! What a piece of terrain. That is the same 28mm Viking on there for comparison. It's on a 4x4 table in the picture, so as you can see, this thing could take up the entire length of a 3x3 table even without spreading out the pieces! That is cool. I am going to use this for one of the scenarios in our campaign, can't wait! Crap paint job again, and I might want to touch it up, but I can throw it on the table "as is," which is always a good thing.























I think it was a great impulse buy, since just this week I saw it listed on the "new arrivals" section of the PetSmart web site and they have the pieces listed at 36 bucks each, with no option to buy them as a set... SCORE!

Gaming interlude

Lately all of my free hobby time has pretty much been spent on preparing for the Mordheim campaign I'm running in November. But last night I managed to get in an intro game of Kings of War with some of my local gaming buddies... good times! I got this game last Christmas and have watched a couple of games, but this was my first time trying it out.

I had some beginner's luck and the dice were with me - I played Salamanders (my WHFB Lizardmen) against a Kingdoms of Men (my buddy's WHFB Empire) army. Totally wiped the floor with him! It was almost comical actually - by the end, I wiped out every one of his units, without losing a single unit of my own.

I wish I could somehow figure out how to recreate this wargaming luck in future games!

We played at my buddy's place but I brought two of my mats over to play on; one from UrbanMatz, and one from DeepCut Studios. I'm planning on ordering a couple from Frontline Gaming soon too (whenever they get the Frostgrave mats back in stock!), and I'll do a comparative review once I have mats from all three companies.

Here are some pics from last night's games. And the best part is, the fun I had last night totally inspired me to paint all day today, so I made a lot of progress on a Nurgle warband I am painting for the Mordheim campaign. Woo Hoo!