Upcoming campaign!!

My das was rummaging through our loft the other day and found a poster sized map of bretonnia which was divided into exactly 100 pieces. Perfect for a beginners Warhammer campaign. We havent got all of the details ironed out yet (like players and things) but when we get it going ill be sure to post battle reports and pictures of the armies as they grow and take over more and more of the battle map.

I’ll also post the rules that we used for our campaign incase any of you guys want to give it a try. All you need is a map (real or fictional). Divide it into 100 areas. And get a 1000 point army to start with. This is your expeditionary force and as you take over more and more territory your army will grow as your leaders send reinforcements. I’ll post more details when we have the rules finished and whenever a game tales place and I’m  going to try to get more painting stuff up on here too.

 

Thanks

miniature photo gallery

So its a little later than expected but I’m going to stop putting deadlines on my blogs and just update whenever.

These photos are just of my Nord army to make up for the ones I accidentally deleted. I’ll upload some of my space marine army when i next play with them.

descriptions are down below in a previous blog entitled Warriors of the North and Warriors of the north continued.

Enjoy

Hagrin Bloodmane leader of my Norse Army

Seer Urgrim, lore of death

Seer Gorazin, lore of fire

Thane Gottri, battle standard bearer

21 norse warriors (the other 21 are armed with two and weapons but arent painted yet)

5 of my 20 marauders with great weapons

Bezerkergang

1 of my 6 ogres with custom armour and weapons

thunderfoot my giant

 

So that’s most of what I have painted so far. hopefully I’ll be taking part in a battle tonight and will be able to write up a battle report.

thanks for reading.

 

Victory!

As most of you probably know, Games Workshop is running its 25th birthday of Warhammer 40,000 and running competitions and games throughout the day. I entered the painting competition at GW Derby (my local) and was lucky/talented enough to win (yeeeaaahhhh!!! guitar solo) with the below entry.

 

I will also be posting more pictures of my miniatures later on today or within the week. both my Nord army, my Space Marines and my bloodbowl teams

Thanks for reading and leave any questions in the comments

Terrain Renovation project.

 

Firstly, apologies for the update being so late. Had a few health problems that kept me distracted, also I own an xbox so nothing gets done on time.

Secondly, I know the pictures have all dissappeared from my blog, its something I’m going to fix soon(ref. xbox).

Finally, the pictures or this blog took ages to upload because there are quite a few. so I left the laptop on and went to bed so fingers crossed they all uploaded perfectly fine.

TERRAIN RENOVATION PROJECT!!!!

This week I’ll be looking at taking old terrain from earlier in your gaming years and giving it a fresh lick of paint and making it fit for your battlefield today. not all of the points will be applicable to your own terrain piece but im planning on doing quite a few of these so hopefully you will find something useful for one of your own projects.

Last week (it took me that long to post this blog update.) I found an old Games Workshop Mordhiem ruin in my loft. It was already built but it was also a bit battered from being squished in with the christmas decorations. As our current Warhammer table only features a few hills, some scavenged 40k craters and three very small trees, i decided a ruined building was exactly what we needed to renew tourist interest in our 6’x4′ slice of the world, and immediately dug out some old sprues and my bits box. I then proceeded to have a montage where I steadily improve over short time increments until I’m ready to take on the champion of the world at…something. However since I lacked the forethought to video the montage, I’ve broken it down into steps.

Materials. you will need……
1. an old piece of terrain.
2. assorted glues including super glue, pva or wood glue and plastic glue.
3. clippers or a craft/hobby knife
4. a file or sandpaper (file is always better)
5. sand or gravel as small as you can get.
6. paintbrushes (large and small)
7. paint. although i normally use games workshop paint for everything we happened to have some bulky pots of regular acrylic lying around so i used those. but feel free to use any paint that you think will work.
8. somewhere to work.

Optional.
9. Someone to play bitching electric guitar solos in the background
10. someone to film your montage
11. someone to do all this for you (not recommended)
12. spare plasticard or blister packs to cut up for bits (recommended)
13. an imagination. these are hard to come by but if you can find one its worth holding onto it.

STARTING OUT.

When I found the ruin it was on a big square wooden base and unflocked, It had been given a coat of textured paint already (which is paint with and mixed in, very good on buildings). I rounded the edges of the base off and began making sprue rubble to fill in some of the emptier spaces. if you don’t know hot to make sprue rubble I’ll go over it at the bottom of this section. once I had a decent pile of rubble I blobbed liberal amounts of pva glue onto the areas where i thought it would look best and sprinkled the rubble on top to give it a natural collapsed appearance I left this for about 5 minutes to start drying before putting smaller blobs of glue on top of the existing rubble piles and adding even more rubble to give them some decent height. The windows looked pretty basic and boring so i snipped some long thin pieces of plastic out of some blister packs and glued them over the windows to look as though they had been boarded up. HINDSIGHT PRO TIP: Don’t assume that pva glue will work on everything as I used this to stick the plastic over the windows before I’d realised what I’d done. They all fell off during the undercoating stage. Use superglue! Once these were dry I spread pva over the rest of the base and sprinkled sand over the base and the rubble piles. I then decided this should be an inn and made a small swinging sign out of a T shaped piece of sprue and some spare plasticard. The finishing touch was a small spiked fence made from the 40k Chaos space marines spiky bits sprue

You can see in the pictures above how one of the walls is slightly bent from being sqaushed in the loft, but this just added to the collapsed appearance of the ruin. The sprue rubble was attached to this wall especially to help strengthen the wall and increase the contact to the base. leave this to dry for between and hour or an hour and a half depending on whats on telly. Once the whole thing is dry paint it all black. you can spray it if you like but i prefer to do mine with a brush for two reasons 1) I use polystyrene on a lot of my terrain and its just good to get into the habit of not using spray paint as it melts your finely crafted hillocks and bunkers. 2) painting it with a brush means that you have to go over every nook and cranny by hand. This sounds bad but it means that you wont forget to paint an area later on. HINSIGHT PRO TIP: Always paint the inside first because if you paint the outside first you wont be able to pick up the piece to get to all those awkward corners on the inside. Atleast not without getting your hands covered in paint.

SPRUE RUBBLE!
In case you didnt know, the ‘sprue’ is the big grey frame that your minis come attached to when you buy them from Games Workshop. To turn these into rubble, simply snip out some of the straight sections into roughly quarter inch pieces. file the edges flat so that they look like bricks and TA DA! you now have bricks. make lots and lots of these as they come in handy for terrain projects and decorative bases on your miniatures aswell. If you make enough you can even make collapsed walls, complete walls or whole buildings!!!

Now that we have the basics done we can move onto painting.Although i used basic acrylic paints I will be referencing GW paint names in case you want to use the same colour scheme.

STEP ONE. Basic colours.

Using an old brush I painted all of the outer walls and the top floor of the inner wall with scab red. I chose to paint the top floor inner wall red as this would most likely be where the inkeeper slept and he would want something a little nicer than his quest’s basic rooms. little touches like this really help terrain pieces show character. I’ll go over this more later as it does help but Isn’t essential. I decided when painting the buildings walls that they should look old and worn so instead of painting them solid red i stippled the paint on to give it a more aged appearance. If you try this method yourself remember to let just a tiny bit of black show through. I painted all of the building stonework and the dry-brushed the base and rubble codex grey. The roof (which the more observant of you will notice is upside down as the opposite roof side was crushed) was dry-brushed scab red.

STEP TWO. Interior and washing

   I painted the interior in a light cream colour somewhere between bleached bone and dheneb stone. this was used on walls floors and ceilings with the exception of the ground floor as i wanted this to look filthy and used and maybe even flooded in the past. i left about a half inch gap unpainted as you can see on the picture. i then mixed some brown umber paint with lots of water (ratio about 1-12 paint to water) to make a wash. this was spread liberally over the entire buidling including the base the walls and the rubble. This makes the building look dirty and abandoned and helps add depth to the walls as it will dry in patches.

STEP THREE. Highlights

Once the wash had dried (this can take some time depending on your preferred water to paint ratio and you preferred painting to xbox/tv ratio) I mixed something similair to fortress grey and Drybrushed the stone work and the rubble. I only drybrushed the top edge of the stone work as this makes it look as though the top is worn from rain and sunshine and the bottom if damp and mouldy, perfect for a ruined building. I also very lightly dry-brushed the broken edges of the buildings walls as well as the bottom edge of each wall where the dust and detritus would have gathered when the building collapsed. The roof was lightly dry-brushed with macharius orange to differentiate it from the walls. i wanted the tiles to look more like the terracotta tiles that are sometimes found on old buildings.

STEP FOUR. Details Details.
During this step my uncle John was in the shed and kept pointing out that there was no staircase, and that the top two floors would be useless. Rather than explain a decent chunk of the Warhammer rulebook to someone who’s never played the game, I decided to take his advice and build a ladder from more sprue bits. I won’t insult your intelligence by assuming you don’t know how to make a ladder. I’ll let you work it out. I made mine from more Sprue plastic but a better alternative would be balsa wood or ice lolly sticks made to look suitably rugged and ladderly. I wanted mine to look as though it had been quickly bashed together from random planks and so didn’t take too much care positioning the steps and checking that it was perfectly level. i also learned from my previous mistakes and used superglue to keep the ladder in place. It was given a quick coat of calthan brown and left to dry. My uncle John continued to be concerned about the health and safety regulations of a war torn inn but i promptly ignored him.

STEP FIVE. Building character (get it….cus its a building…and its building chara…oh forget it)

Character is very important to me in my miniatures and it carries over into my terrain making. My space marines aren’t just space marines, they’re the Angelus Mortis chapter sent on suicide missions when nobody else can get the job done. My Nords arent just a weird viking army, they’re proud Nordic warriors battling to defend their home from all sides. And my inn isn’t just an inn, its an inn where brave soldiers made their last stand against (insert evil enemy here) and fought to the last man. So to represent this I added quite a few blood spatters (made from red gore mixed with devlan mud wash) I made small puddles of the paint in various locations before switching to a dry stipling brush and stipling the puddles out into splat shape with blood spraying in a certain direction depending on where the attack came from. So the defenders on the top floor would be fighting attackers climbing up the hole in the centre of the building so I painted the blood to spray away from the hole. The middle floor has a big splat in the middle followed by some drag marks to smaller splats and finally a huge splat on the ground floor. I imagined a soldier defending the ladder from a swarm of enemies until he takes a gut shot. he drags himself to the edge of the floor so he can fight the approaching enemy and they drag him down to the ground with a thud and a splat. i was contemplating putting body parts scattered around the inn but liked the idea of the bodies being taken/rising up as zombies to fight their former allies.

I also painted the areas around the windows and especially under the windows with more calthan brown. this would be where most of the rain (and therefore mould and scum) would accumulate and leave stains. I also added patches of calthan brown to the ruined edges of the walls for the same reason. Finally I dry-brushed the base, stonework and rubble very very lightly with skull white, making sure to only catch the very edge of everything. Once all of this was done I made a black wash with the same ratios as before and carefully applied it to the broken floor edges of the building interior to look filthy and burnt and generally in a state of disrepair. I also spread around patches of this black wash to look like damp and smoke stains, but be careful not to overdo it at this stage as you want the inside to look blotchy and broken as if there was a huge fight inside.

STEP SIX. finishing touches.

The final thing to do is decide on a suitably warhammer-ish name for your inn. I went for ‘the wobberly goblyn’ as its an awesome name along the same lines are ‘the sozzled snotling’ ‘the dumpy dwarf’ and ‘the surly sellsword’. I designed a basic logo to go on the front of the building (be sure to do this in on paper first as mistakes in this late stage are much harder to correct) i also painted the buildings sign with the same title and logo and added afew blank white squares to the inside to look like notices or wanted posters. Finally I painted the small iron gate with boltgun metal and coated the skull with calthan brown before picking out highlights with skull white.

FINISHED !!!

As you can see there’s quite a difference between the old inn and The Wobberly Goblyn. (yes the fence did change places as it broke off and i decided i liked it better on that side)

Hope you find something useful in this blog. I’ll update again soon when I’ve got something worth updating about

 

 

 

Terrain renovation project coming soon

So the next proper blog that I post will be about fixing and painting some terrain for your battlefield. if you’re anything like me you have a few early attempts at terrain knocking around, so rather than bin them and waste the time and materials spent building it in the first place, I’ll show you how I fixed mine and hopefully give you some ideas towards fixing and painting yours too.

It’ll probably be posted tomorrow around 7-8pm so keep an eye open.

Thanks.

 

Warriors of the North continued….continued

SPECIAL…….(lord hero and core units are in the blog below)

3 x Mountain Trolls (chaos trolls

IDEA: Legend says that Grandking Thorgrim Bloodmane once stopped a hunting party from slaughtering an infant mountain troll, instead he had it chained and collared and ordered that it wasn’t to be harmed. The following day he climbed the peak of mount Graanum Kah leading the troll by the chain and climbing for three days to reach the herdcave of the trolls parent clan. The troll clan approached cautiously as the king stood with axe in hand and a mewling trollbabe at his feet. With one swift swipe of his axe he severed the chain and slowly walked backwards leaving the babe to stumble into the cave. The herdleader approached the king and their eyes met. The gigantic beast stared into the kings eyes for a long time before reaching into its shabby white fur and producing a huge trollfang. The king hollowed out the tooth into a horn to be passed down from ruler to ruler. Whenever it is blown, fierce mountain trolls come to wage war alongside the Nordic tribes.

PARTS: I’m going to use the Ogre kingdoms Yhetee models as they fit the mountain troll look perfectly with their wild fur and ice weapons.

10 x Storm riders (chaos knights)

picture coming soon.

IDEA: The personal Bodyguard of Highking Wulfrik Bloodmane. These are the most prestigious warriors in the Bloodmane tribe and have the honour of being armed with legendary shard blades. each one formed from ancient magic and ice. They ride to battle on mighty steeds to trample the enemy beneath their hooves and are tasked by the king to kill the mightiest enemies at every battle.

PARTS: for these i used the chaos knights box set and space wolf heads. It did take absolutely ages to trim all the spiky chaotic bits off of the knights and the horses and i had to fill in a lot of chaos symbols with green-stuff. I also green-stuffed a huge animal horn which wraps around the musicians body like a tuba. Iwanted it to look as if they had slain some great beast in the kings honour and taken the horn to prove this fact.

6 x Bezerkergang (forsaken)

IDEA: The Bezerkergang are feared amongst the enemies of the Nords. The battle fury of these warriors is borne from their insatiable bloodlust. These are warriors whose mind has been snapped from the countless battles and the endless slaughter until all they can do is kill and maim without concern for their own safety. their head are enclosed in iron helms to stop them from injuring themselves, such is their rabid fury. They wield huge spiked flails which crush enemy bones and armour with ease.

PARTS: These are basic marauders with a few exceptions, they all wear helmets scrounged from the the chaos knight kits, the chaos warrior kits and on is from the maruader horsemen box but has two huge goring horns stuck to either side. the flails are from the marauders kit but stuck straight to the hands to make it look like theyre just holding the chains and swinging wildly. they all wear huge shoulder pads and are liberally splattered with blood. In the chaos warriors army book i use these guys as forsaken, which are supposed to be mutated monstrosities with tentacles and claws (hence the flails).

6 x Ogres (chaos ogres)

picture coming soon as I was building these today (they look awesome!)

IDEA: these ogre mercenaries have chosen to fight alongside the Nordic tribes in exchange for their superior steel and a plentiful supply of ale and meat. they all wear thick furs and huge steel shoulder plates made by the Nords. They have sworn to fight for the Highking aslong as there is someone to fight.

PARTS: These are just six regular ogre kingdoms bulls with plasticard shoulderpads in various armour styles. the leader has a helmeted head from the mournfang cavalry kit to mark him out as a leader. I haven’t green-stuffed the furs on yet but im going to give them big animal hides on their shoulder so that they fit in amongst my warriors. im also going to model some beards, muttonchops and maybe mohawks to make them look more Nordic. I also carefully cut and filed the lumpy foreheads to smooth ones to make them look more like professional mercenary ogres rather than just huge fat thugs. I made two plasticard axes for the ogre leader by cutting down two of the stone clubs and sawing a groove in the top so i could slot the plastic axe blade inside the groove.I’ll post pictures so you can see what I mean when I get chance.

6 x Dragon Ogres + 1 Dragon Ogre Shaggoth (rare choice)

IDEA: at the dawn of a particularly hard fight and badly outnumbered by filthy Orcs from the valley, Highking Wulfrik sends his son Hagrin upto the peak of Darr Neth, home of the Fabled dragon ogres, seeking their aid in the coming battle. As his men are besieged on all sides and many lay dead about the battlefield a mighty crack of lightning splits the sky and strikes the enemy lines, dark clouds gather over the battle and thunder peals from the mountainside, but there is also another sound, a tremendous din fills the air as dozens of huge Dragon Ogres and no less than three Dragon Ogre Shaggoths lead by Hagrin smash into the flank of the Orc lines slaughtering hundreds.

PARTS: I Haven’t built these yet but i hope to purchase 6 regular ogres and six cold ones and remove the relevant halves to create my Dragon Ogres. I’ll update this when I’ve built them and can show them off a bit

RARE…

Giant Thunderfoot

   
IDEA: Thunderfoot has been a part of the Bloodmane tribe as long as anyone can remember. The Highking keeps him well fed and on the edge of sober and in return he fights the kings enemies. his two heads constantly bickering about which enemy to eat next and his arms swinging huge blades and tree trunks ripped from the earth.

PARTS: This is just the normal Giant kit but with more parts used than the instructions recommend. although he does have a lot of bits to him I didn’t want to overdo it and stick everything on so i only used bits that he might pick up after the battle and keep for eating later.

Werekin (chaos spawn)

IDEA: In the deep forests of the darkest valleys live the so called ‘Were’ shape shifters of incredibly ferocity. They come to battle alongside the Nords and demand no pay, nor ale nor food. only that they can slate their bloodlust on the flesh of the king’s enemies.

PARTS: this model will be completely green-stuff. I’ve never attempted this before so ill keep you up to date on any progress. so far I’ve done the main body and the right arm and leg in detail but they still need a little work. I am by no means an expert sculptor so the results will be a surprise for both of us.

 

So that’s my Norse Wulfkin Army for Warhammer fantasy battles. If there are any questions about any of the units or parts used etc just leave them in the comments and I’ll be more than happy to answer them.

Next blog will be about something else since you’re probably sick of reading about these guys by now. I’ll either do a battle report, a painting guide, or a conversion guide. We’ll just have to wait and see

 

Warriors of the North Continued

Hey everyone, I’ve had some people asking for more details about the bits and pieces I used on the models. So I’m going to go over the models again detailing the idea behind the model, the bits used and the army list entries themselves. Some of what is Written below is copied straight from yesterdays blog so skip any bits you’ve already read and enjoy the rest.

The army I use is a Nordic barbarian horde based on the warriors of chaos army. essentially a chaos army without any chaotic elements. The idea was to have a horde of warriors who were disgusted with their northern cousins for turning to the dark gods and had stayed worshiping their original god Ulric. They’re essentially a neutral army fighting to defend their homeland from the encroaching empire of soft south-men and the rampaging marauder hordes of the forbidden gods.

Think an army full of Conans and you’ve got the idea.

Firstly i changed the name of the rule Will of chaos to Will of Ulric (re-roll failed panic and break tests) to reflect how they would believe that he was watching them during great battles and taking only the worthy to his drinking hall upon their heroic deaths.

I also completely dropped the the Eye of the Gods rule (unit champions and characters randomize special abilities upon winning duels, some good, some bad) , it didn’t suit my army plan, and dropping it seemed fairer than changing it as it meant I wouldn’t suffer any of the bad results, but I wouldn’t benefit from any of the good ones either.

I made sure to use neutral magical items from the Warhammer rulebook as opposed to the chaos specific magical items since they all sound much too evil to be wielded by my vikings.

I made a decision not to include daemons of any kind in my army, I thought of using them as long dead warrior spirits but they all had very specific rules and backgrounds and they didn’t fit into my plan so i ignored them altogether.

LORDS…..

Highking Wulfrik Bloodmane (chaos lord)

IDEA: The armies general is Highking Wulfrik Bloodmane, Leader of the Northern Tribes and king of his mountain peak home. his kingdom is beset on all sides by vicious ogres, rampaging marauders and the so called ‘men’ of the southlands. After many an hour thinking in his vast throne room, Wulfrik Bloodmane has decided to gather his bravest warriors about him and strike back at the men who would otherwise choke the life from his lands and his people. He leads his men from the saddle of his Ice Drake Shardstorm,

PARTS: Carmine dragon (www.forgeworld.com) for the mount because its one of the best dragons in the right scale range and by calling it an ice drake it fits the character of the army perfectly. The Highking himself will be scratch built by cutting up a regular chaos warrior and green-stuffing the missing areas with fur and armour plates. He’ll also have a customised Obsidian Sword and some badass armour to be used as the Armour of Destiny.

no picture of this guy as of yet but soon, hopefully soon……

Highseer Belegrom (sorcerer lord)

IDEA: Highseer Belegrom is the King’s advisor in all things magical. as a wizard of the lore of the heavens hes able to summon storms and hurricanes at will and rides to battle on his mount Swiftwind. He can usually be found at the forefront of the fighting blasting his enemies into oblivion.

PARTS: he will eventually be made of the master of the white wolf model with extra green-stuff furs and his hammer modelled into a staff.

HEROES……

Thane Hagrin Bloodmane (exalted hero)

Hagrin Bloodmane

IDEA: Hagrin Bloodmane (hence the red hair) is the first and only son of Wulfrik Bloodmane. He fights for his fathers honour and to prove that one day he can he will be both brave enough and wise enough to be Highking. He prefers to be charging headlong into the enemy amidst a group of his best warriors rather than on the back of a mighty steed like his father. He loves nothing more than defeating enemies in duels and therefore wields a pair of duelling axes (Fencer’s blade’s user is WS 10) he also carries a great weapon for dicing up monsters and monstrous infantry.

PARTS: Gamesday 2002 chaos champion model with left axe of a metal chaos lord and the right axe, hand bracer and elbow guard are from plastic chaos warriors boxsets, The Huge belt buckle and awesome head are from the Warhammer 40,000 space wolves armies. The Greatweapon is from the Dwarf warriors kit and he also carries a shield from the same kit.

Seer Urgrim (level 2 sorcerer lore of death)

Urgrim

IDEA: Father Urgrim leads the burial processions of the brave fallen warriors. He is also the spiritual leader of the tribes and guides the warriors and their families through the harsh winter months. On the battlefield however he saps the life from his enemies and withers their bodies before the eyes of their allies.

PARTS: the body is a regular chaos warrior and uses the standard bearers right arm with a mace from the chaos knights kit acting as a staff top with a spiked skull glued to the top. The vulture is from the giants kit and the head is yet again from the space wolves kits, they have suitably viking like heads and i use them a lot.

Seer Gorazin (level 2 sorcerer lore of fire)

IDEA: Seer Gorazin is always welcome during the colder months among the mountain tribes. His ability to summon anything from a raging inferno to a tent warming glow with the simple wave of a hand is the envy of junior seers in all the other villages.

PARTS: I’ve actually changed the fire seer model for one similair to Urgrim. a regular chaos warrior body with the standard bearer arm and a modified banner top forming his staff. he wears the skull faced helm from the warriors box and green-stuffed ghost rider style flames coming from the top of his helm.

picture to come soon (when the green-stuffing is finished)

CORE…..

33 x Barbarians with hand wpn and shield (marauders)

IDEA: Every tribe must contribute a set number of warriors to the kings tribe, this number is decided based on tribe size, the warriors prowess in battle and the will of Ulric. to fight in the king’s own tribe is a great honour and many blood duels have been fought for the right to fight and die alongside Wulfrik Bloodmane. These brave Barbarians form up in 3 ranks of 11 so that they pile into any fight and all get to attack.

PARTS: Just regular marauders with the chaotic symbols scraped off and space wolf and helmetless heads favoured over the traditional horned helmets. chaos symbols that take up the majority of the space on shields have been covered over with green stuff animal hides (no filthy chaos worshippers in my army, oh no sir)

20 x Barbarians with great wpns

IDEA: same as above but specifically tasked by the king to take on the deadliest foes. These few are the best the local tribes have to offer.

Parts: Same as above but with modified flails acting as great weapons.

10 x Wolfhounds in 2 groups of 5

IDEA: Wolves are hunted for their furs and their meat. Any wolf that slays a hunter is captured alive and trained to fight alongside the warriors, they’re well fed and grown to tremendous sizes so that they can take down a man in a single bound. (this is regularly tested on poachers)

PARTS: Warhounds of chaos with the odd spiky bits snipped off (painstakingly i might add) and green-stuff ears and tails so that they look more like regular wolves.

42 x warriors in 2 units of 21 (chaos warriors)

 

IDEA: The best Warriors of the Bloodmane tribe have access to the best armour and weapons and train relentlessly to become the fiercest men for many leagues around. Nordic steel is crafted into fine sets of armour and weaponry and most warriors carry a huge tower shield along with a thick wool cape spun by their families to keep them warm on campaign.

PARTS: Regular chaos warriors with the symbols filed off of the shields and weapons. The armour remains mostly unmodified, all have space wolf heads (starting to notice a theme here) and the banner top is the axe from the 2002 golden demon chaos champion. I’ve included a picture of a single model as you cant see much detail on the group photo.

5 x Barbarian Horsemen (marauder horsemen)

IDEA: the best hunter and trackers in the nordland tribes travel for miles to bring down the biggest prey in order to feed their villages for weeks. Experts with both the thrown Javelin, able to bring down a target at 25 paces, and the frontal charge bringin their spears to bear in the enemies delicate flanks.

PARTS: This is just the bog standard marauder kit with green stuff animal furs covering the shields and shoulders and lots of spare javelins attached to the saddles ready to be hurled. I also reversed the javelins in the hands to look more like spears and have the pointy bit on the right end (very important).

So that’s the core for the army ill update tomorrow with special and rare units. I’ll also be following up with more army profiles from the people i play regularly and some other blogs about things that aren’t just my Nords. Promise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Warriors from the North

So below is the army that I use for Warhammer fantasy battles. I’m also going to try to include some pictures but never tried it on here so don’t hold your breath.

So the army I use is a Nordic barbarian horde based on the warriors of chaos army. essentially a chaos army without any chaotic elements. The idea was to have a horde of warriors who were disgusted with their northern cousins for turning to the dark gods and had stayed worshiping their original god Ulric. They’re essentially a neutral army fighting to defend their homeland from the encroaching empire of soft south-men and the rampaging marauder hordes of the forbidden gods.

I only had to make a few changes to the Warriors of chaos army list to make it work for me.

Firstly i changed the name of the rule Will of chaos to Will of Ulric (re-roll failed panic and break tests) to reflect how they would believe that he was watching them during great battles and taking only the worthy to his drinking hall upon their heroic deaths.

I also completely dropped the the Eye of the Gods rule (unit champions and characters randomize special abilities upon winning duels, some good, some bad) , it didn’t suit my army plan, and dropping it seemed fairer than changing it as it meant I wouldn’t suffer any of the bad results, but I wouldn’t benefit from any of the good ones either.

I made sure to use neutral magical items from the Warhammer rulebook as opposed to the chaos specific magical items since they all sound much too evil to be wielded by my vikings.

I made a decision not to include daemons of any kind in my army, I thought of using them as long dead warrior spirits but they all had very specific rules and backgrounds and they didn’t fit into my plan so i ignored them altogether.

And I changed the names of some of the unit types, so Warriors of Chaos become Warriors. Marauders are renamed Barbarians, the Lord has been changed to a High king and the Heroes are called Thanes. Sorcerers are now Seers and High Seers and the Knights are called Storm riders (at the moment). All my unit champions have convincingly Nordic names and the musicians are called Bards for that extra viking touch. I also renamed chaos armour as Norse armour to keep in theme with the army.

Now that that’s out of the way, I’ll get onto the actual units I use in my 5000 point Army.

The general will be Highking Wulfrik Bloodmane (Chaos Lord) who is yet to be scratch built. I’ve kitted him out with the Obsidian Blade (no armour saves) and the Armour of Destiny (the heavy armour is useless since Norse armour is better at 4+ but it does come with a 4+ ward save). he also has a shield (just in case). and i cant have my Highking walking around the battlefield like a wandering hobo so he needs a suitably bitey mount. One Carmine dragon from http://www.Forgeworld.com should do nicely.just paint it white and it becomes a suitably impressive ice drake.

the only other lord choice in my army is a High Seer (Sorcerer Lord) he is safe-guarded by a Talisman of Protection (4+ ward save) a Feedback scroll (to pop some enemy wizards) and stuck him on a barded warhorse. He will be represented by the master of the white wolf model since he’s the only Empire model bad-ass enough to fit into my army.

Thane Hagrin Bloodmane (Chaos Hero) is the son of Highking Wulfrik and fights by his side in his father’s honour. The mini is a gamesday chaos champion with the axes switched for one from a chaos lord and a plastic one from the warriors of chaos box, he also has a dwarven battle axe on his back and a small wooden dwarven shield which is just to hide the joint for the battle-axe. the head is a space wolf but I don’t know which box set it’s from. I use a lot of space wolf heads as they look suitably Nordic.

Hagrin Bloodmane

He uses Fencer’s blade’s (which are duelling axe’s). He also wears a Talisman of protection (6+ ward save) so that he gets a discount on his life insurance. I’ve also given him a great weapon in case he goes up against a monster or anything ogre sized.

My level 2 Fire Seer Gorazin is an old Games Workshop mini that has had the staff top replaced with a flail end from the marauders sprue and painted to look like its aflame. he uses an Earthing Rod and a Dispel Scroll and he usually manages to completely explode at least one enemy unit per game.

gorazin fire seer

My other Seer is a Level 2 Death Seer called Urgrim. He is made from a basic chaos warrior with a space wolf head and the banner arm cut short to make a staff. The staff top is a mace from my bits box with a skull spiked to the top. I painted his armour blue to make it look enchanted somehow. In battle he uses a Powerstone and a dispel scroll.

Urgrim

They’re the leaders of my Nordic, viking, barbarian horde from the north. Tomorrow ill post the rest of the army list and pictures of the models that I actually have and which are painted so far.

p.s sorry for the photo quality, they’re taken from my phone.

first of many

As some of you may have guessed from the title, this blog will be centered around wargames, war, games, and the gaming of war, more specifically the wargames set in the Warhammer fantasy battles and Warhammer 40,000 universes designed and produced by Games Workshop. a lot of what I will be writing about will be their property and more details about their products can be found at their website http://www.games-workshop.com. I guess what I’m trying to say in no uncertain terms is….. don’t sue me.

Now that that’s out of the way, I made this blog to share the fun side of my hobby with the world. By that I mean that this blog wont feature articles on how to make unbreakable armies or legally bend the rules in your favour or any of that meta-game nonsense. What it will feature is short stories, battle reports, Warhammer fantasy and Warhammer 40k campaigns, tips on running your own campaigns and how we run ours, photos of the armies we use and how we painted them, terrain building tutorials and all the other random things that I think will help (or more importantly entertain) other wargamers.

“but who are you?” I hear you ask……you weren’t asking that? well this is awkward. ill tell you anyway, my names Tim, I’m 25 and live in jolly old Engerland (britain), I play Warhammer whenever I get the chance, in a custom battle shed which was built by my dad (who also plays) and myself. its pretty bitchin I’ll be honest. I’m pretty good at painting and not nearly as good at actually winning battles. we have a few regular players who will be featured in this blog quite often. most of them are new players so you might notice us making mistakes so feel free to comment about what we should have done in that situation etc, I do however reserve the right to completely ignore you if your comment is a) stupid b)primarily composed of a list of my gramatical errors or c)both.

That should do for an intro and ill post whenever I think I have something worth saying. thanks for taking the time to read this and let me know if there’s anything specific you’d like me to blog about.