Campaign – Daan of War

Covid Campaigns and the Ravens’ Flight

In the last few weeks of the summer I’ve still been getting in games where I can. The way that local gaming has been hit by the crisis is starting to become increasingly disheartening. Everyone I know is doing their best to keep gaming, but without an open hobby night at the local gaming store a big part of my reason for being in the hobby is starting to fall apart. Some people (myself included) have tried to counter this by organising campaigns. Even though we can’t all participate at the same time, we’re hoping that linking the battles online will provide at least a little more motovation to keep us playing. I’ve therefore included a few report stories with the pictures. One campaign is an Age of Sigmar campaign that I’m participating in with my Hedonites of Slaanesh and the other is Titanicus which I’m doing with my Legio Krytos.

Age of Sigmar: The Alabaster Host

*In the Seventy Fourth Palace of the Great Dark Prince*
~
In the seventy fourth palace of the great dark prince
We are waiting on the host
We don’t have to boast but we’ll make a toast
Bottoms up be sure to rinse
~
In the alabaster palace of the great dark prince
Where we like to take things slow
There will be a show we don’t have to go
We are easy to convince
~
In the silent palace of the great dark prince
A strange song always plays
Like a winding maze it goes on for days
If you heard it you would wince
~
In the neverending palace of the great dark prince
People like to settle down
Upside down they frown all around the town
And we haven’t seen them since

Two mysterious statues flew down from the skies above the realm of Chaos. Although a riotous war was waged between the Maggotkin of Nurgle and the Alabaster Host of Slaanesh, both warhosts left the field with only a single statue in their possession.

“The Seraphon of the Koatl’s Claw constellation clashed with the hedonites of the Alabaster Host over a formation of five nurlge plague loci. After quickly claiming the prime locus, Greater Daemon Minertia the Elegant was banished by the Koatl Saurus Guard. Arcane infection and disease caused havoc among the closely cavorting daemons and saurus in the center. Meanwhile speed of the slaaneshi godseekers pushed the battles for the flanks past the saurus knights to claim even more loci in Dark Prince’s name. Abandoning all concern for claiming the plague loci, the saurus army unleashed their full bloodthirst and started tearing through the hedonites in earnest. With only a few daemonettes remaining after the battle, Koatl’s Claw returned to ghur satisfied. The plague loci however, were thoroughly drained and subverted by the power of Slaanesh.”

Adeptus Titanicus: Legio Krytos

simulation XX.IX.011 – sub axiom maniple engagement – blasted barrens – single fortification – nemesis: legio gryphonicus – prime stratagem: encircle and close engagement – result: loss / chronomatic insufficiency – prime causality: unreliability reaver class machine spirit / overdefensive warhound class stratagem

The shitty thing about this phase of the pandemic in the Netherlands is that our group can only play 1v1 battles at the gaming store as long as we book a table in advance. Also, the gaming store now only has room for 3 tables max. Gaming at home is still possible, but dependant on who you’ll allow in your house, how much terrain you have and how much room you have.

The part that falls away is the spontaneous, communal, social way of playing games. Megabattles, teambattles, campaigns, lengthy painting table converations. These were the kinds of things that were, to me, the ultimate reason for doing this hobby. Even though I’ve enjoyed most of the battles I’ve played since lockdown. It feels like dry bread compared to the mighty feasts that I’ve dedicated myself to for the past 15 years.

Long story short: I’m having a tough time with all of this and I can’t wait for the pandemic to be over. If this keeps going long enough I’m going to have to rethink my hobby in a fundametal way.

As a final thing I wanted to show a quick shot of my two Xiphon’s that are now finally done. Over the next few days/weeks I’ll be varnishing the entire army and declaring it finished. Hopefully I’ll have some time to make some full army shots.

Finally. The Last of the Ravens are complete!

Thanks for reading!

2019 Part 2

This us the second part of a recap I’m doing of the period between blogs. Check out the first part here.

So, in the last part of the previous post I explained that during the whole divorce period I was still able to run and finish a Horus Heresy campaign. It was a really fun campaign and with our dedicated group of players it really helped me have some fun days to look forward to. There are too many battles to explain in detail, but I made a point to really take some nice pictures this time. So first up, here’s a gallery of some of my favorites:

Now, as I said in the previous post, I had been painting up Sisters of Silence to not only clear some backlog but also to take a really cool, unusual army to a bloodstorm event. I have long had the ambition to expand my Raven Guard into a company sized force, supported by Sisters of Silence, Knights and Militia. Basically, a small expeditionary fleet. This bloodstorm tournament was the first time my army started looking the part:

The rest of the Bloodstorm tournament went really well. So here are some more cool pictures:

I even won the Players Choice award for my army!

After Bloodstorm, it was straight on to preparation for Armies on Parade. I had promised to participate with a combined board built by Dirk, Stephan and myself. We would all build our boards seperately but they’d be able to ‘click’ together for the show. Here are some WIP pictures:

It was the most ambitious project I’ve ever done with scenery building, but it looked amazing on the parade day itself.

All of this was going on during the renovation of my new appartment so, needless to say, this was a very busy time for me. When the time came to attend the Gurash Wars in Groningen in oktober, I was truly spent and decided to stop attending events for a while and focus on getting my life back together and finally start painting that pile I was all on about way back in January.

Finally at ease in my new crib, I got myself a new car and started taking some vanity pictures of my titanicus as wel as adding a knight banner to the collection.

During the rest of the year I tried to spend some time relaxing and painting up a random assortment of stuff from the pile. Didn’t take a lot of pictures of most of it since a lot of it belonged to projects that I had basically completed already. It was a very productive time though and set me up nicely to have a great time 2020. I was super motivated to get back into dating as well as just enjoying life. I made plans for a trip to warhammer world as well as to attend a music festival again. Here are some final pictures of 2019 and I’ll leave the rest for the 2020 recap.

Thanks for reading!

2019 Part 1

This is the first part of a recap of what I’ve been up to in the period in between blogs. Second part will be coming up soon.

In january I posted ‘the year of the pile’ where I vowed to start clearing out my backlog. Terrain was to be my first challenge but first I had to spend some time on the Horus Heresy campaign I started running back in 2018. It was going to be the halfway point in january so I organised a massive megabattle:

Small selection of the many awesome pictures we took.

After the megabattle there was also another Bloodstorm Heresy tournament early february which was again an absolute blast.

Dutch Heresy scene is quite small, but everyone there is an amazing army builder. That’s why heresy remains one of my favorite game systems.

Then I finally finished the terrain I said I’d build in my post and a miniature for the dungeons and dragons campaign I was participating in. However, this was going to be the last hobby I was going to do for a while.

March and April 2019 were completely dominated by the divorce for me and I was not able to do any painting at all during this time. The heresy campaign kept running and I played some games here and there, but it wasn’t until early May that I was able to pick up a paintbrush again.

With all of my warhammer in storage, I wasn’t able to work on any of my existing projects. So much for the year of the pile… Nevertheless, around this time I was starting to recover a bit and I treated myself to a starting box of titanicus as well as an eternal guard box to make myself another D&D character.

During the rest of the summer, the titanicus helped keep me going until I finally had the time to dig up some stuff from the storage box. There was a new bloodstorm tournament coming up so I decided I was finally going to paint my Sisters of Silence.

I finally finished my last Sisters model in september and that brings me to the end of Part 1. I’ll spend one more post to show some stuff from the campaign that finished around this time and the bloodstorm tournament I had prepared for. Because by september I was done with most of the mess from the divorce and I had even bought myself a new apartment that I had to spend time redecorating. So, I’ll end this post with some postive new home pictures and continue with the warhammer in the next post!

Thanks for reading!