Ravens and Skavens

It’s been a busy couple of weeks on the wargaming front!

First thing I want to talk about is the Horus Heresy campaign at my local gamestore. The campaign has kicked off in full swing and we’ve got a seriously large group of 18 gamers going at it. Freshly assembled Betrayal at Calth marines are everywhere. It’s an escalation campaign designed to help us build our armies and so my first 250 points zone mortalis battle was against Night Lords (courtesy of Peter Zuidgeest, check out his pro-painting service!). Despite going for the ridiculous option of fielding a land speeder, I actually won this. Because of a shortage of assembled models, I went with a single unit of 10 guys and a land speeder. Peter figured more bodies would be better, but in the end resulted in a victory for me due to my squad’s superior combat capabilities. We did a second battle afterwards where Peter took some different upgrades and I lost that battle completely. Biggest thing I took away from all of this though is to never use a land speeder in a zone mortalis game.

Phone shot of the second battle. Note the sad, useles, immobilised land speeder in the back.

With my first battles done I could return the focus on painting the army again. So, just last night I finally finished my first tactical squad! Next month will have 500 points battles and I think I’ll try and build a contemptor and the BaC chaplain to round out my army.

The finished squad. Not featured in this image: some extra grass tufts that I added later.

Now, because working on a 30k army is apparently not enough to keep me busy, I’ve also made my first steps on the road to the Age of Sigmar! Which basically means that I’ve bought a lot of stuff and I’m doing a lot of reading. As people might have noticed, Age of Sigmar has released Skaven Pestilens as a playable faction. Complete with their own battletome and black library love.

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Just look at that beautiful mug and tell me you are not hype for this faction.

Since I plan on playing Skaven exclusively to start with, I have picked up the battletome and the black library book ‘Legends of the Age of Sigmar: Skaven Pestilens’. The latter one is well on its way to being finished so hopefully I’ll be able to find the time to do a proper review for the blog some time as well as perhaps a future Skavenblight Radio episode.

Squeeking of the Radio, we released a new episode a couple of weeks ago. It’s most likely a lot better than the previous episode since I talk a lot less in it. Also, it’s episode #13 and that has to at least count for something on a Skaven podcast.

So that’s what I’ll leave with for now. Next couple of weeks should hopefully provide painted Skaven, progress on the 500 point Dust Vultures and a review of the Pestilens black library book.

Victory or Death!

It Lives!

First out the gate I have to mention a new thing I’ve been involved in:


I’ve been talking to SkavenDan through UnderEmpire.net for a while and I basically agreed to become a co-host to the show. The first episode I feature in (Episode 12 – It Lives!) went live last friday and so far I haven’t heard too much complaints. Personally, I still have some things I’d like to work on, but I’ll probably get there with practice. Big thanks though, to SkavenDan for allowing me to join in on this and I look forward to the next recording.

Also, as you might have heard on the podcast, I’m going to start looking into Age of Sigmar soon. I don’t think I mentioned on this blog, but I moved house last summer. There’s still a huge chunk of unassembled and unpainted Skaven lying around and AoS might be the perfect excuse to get started sorting that out.


Just a small sampling of the unassembled hordes inhabiting our new attic.

Now that the whole idea of an advancing storyline and ‘pointless’ gameplay have had some time to sink in I’ve re-examined my initial reaction. After reading some of the books I think I might actually enjoy AoS a lot. To me it seems like AoS is increasingly intended for people who enjoy gaming from a background perspective. I ramble about this in the podcast a lot as well, so I’ll leave it from the blog and just say that you should expect to see more Skaven models on round bases here soon.

Now for the real progress! The first 5 Dust Vultures have been painted and are looking mighty fine if I may say so myself.


Shit pictures, but you get the idea.

I’ve got the first battle for our local Horus Heresy campaign coming up next week, so next post will probably contain a small battle report with more painted miniatures. It’s a small 250pts zone mortalis style battle against Night Lords so should be fun to see.

Victory or Death!