This winter I didn’t spend a lot of time on Warhammer. The covid lockdown was once again on in full force and I decided to spend my time on my job, family and other hobbies. As the restrictions finally started lifting, warhammer activity once again blossomed a bit.
The first cool thing that happened was in december when the Horus Heresy group decided to organise a ‘secret santa’-like event but with Horus Heresy consuls. Each participant would convert and paint up a consul for another member in their legion colours. I ended up converting a master of signal in Iron Warrior colours for Arjan and was gifted a Raven Guard moritat by Naut (who normally plays Alpha Legion, so I don’t trust this moritat at all!). Afterwards we played a big battle that was as spectacular to play as it was to see.
January and february then saw some more battles. A casual AoS battle to try out the new edition against my brother and some zone mortalis at Arjan’s place to prepare for the first actual event we could go to since 2 years: Gurash Wars 5 in Assen.
The event was a blast and a great motivator to finally get some Word Bearers done. Here’s what I’ve finished of the army so far (not pictured: the 2 squads and characters I did earlier).
That’s about it so far. Since the end of february the local game store has opened again and I’ve been getting some more regular games in. 40k as well as Heresy. We’ve already seen some new people coming in and life is starting to slowly return to normal. So far we’ve planned a big mega battle for the summer to say goodbye to the old Heresy edition or welcome in the new one (depending on whether the rules will be out yet). My goal right now is to get 3k of Word Bearers finished by then. Hopefully my faith will see me through!
Febuary has come and gone and I’m glad to be able to report at least some progress on the goals I set myself this year. The skaven I was working on in the last post are done now so check them out:
Thanquol himself! Boneripper was difficult to paint, but I had a lot of fun with the big rat himself.
3 Clawlords, Rat Ogres and a mortar. These were the last plastics of regular skaven I still had to do. There’s still 80 clanrats on the pile, but I’m saving those for later.
I also worked on some very cool additions to my titanicus force. One of my titanicus playing friends (Rusty’s 3D Printing on marktplaats.nl) has been getting into 3D printing for the past couple of years and I bought some of his first experiments with epic scale space marines AND worked with him to make some custom nameplates for my titans. The epic scale marines were painted in word bearer colours and stuck on the bases. I wasn’t able to get a lot of detail on such small miniatures, but I feel like I did my best to create a cool scheme for them.
I’m most proud of the tiny banner markings.
After doing the tiny marines I also had some tiny vehicles from Michael’s 3D printer that found were a little too big for base decoration (they took too much attention away from the titan). I painted them up anyway and will maybe use them as titanicus objectives in the future or something.
So cute!
Next on the list is finally painting some actual 30k 28mm Word Bearers. Gods know how long I’ve been looking forward to these guys, so I hope they’ll be worth the wait.
Here we are, quite a bit in the new year already. My last post was from November in which I had just finished my warcry terrain.
Since then I’ve mostly been attacking my ginormous pile of shame again. Although the pile is considerably smaller now than it was a year ago, there are still several armies worth of unassembled mini’s waiting for me to get started on them. With that in mind I’ve spent the final month of 2020 assembling and priming a bunch of old Skaven from the pile of shame and also worked on organizing the pile into some manageable projects for 2021.
After going through the whole thing I’ve decided to go for the completion of 3 old projects in 2021. Hopefully I can work on these simultaneously to keep my interest.
1: Skaven
I have a lot of Skaven models stocked up from years past. Some of them are metal models from more than 15 years old, a bunch of plastics from around 10 years ago (mostly clanrats) and some stuff from only a couple of years ago when I bought some start collecting pestilens boxes. Would be really great to get this finished since it’s been on my list literally since the beginning. Worth it for the peace of mind alone.
2: Word Bearers
Now that I’ve managed to completely finish my Raven Guard army as well as my small Talons force, the next Horus Heresy project has been in the making for at least 2-3 years. I’m done with planning and purchasing now and want to really get paint on these models. If I don’t have a finished word bearer by the end of january I’m going to feel very sad. Getting everything in the box done by the end of 2021 should leave me with something around 1 to 1,5k. Which should be perfect for ZM games or small centurion games. Really looking forward to that!
3: Indomitus Space Marines
This is going to be a completely new project! But should be very fun. I received my Made to Order Indomitus box in November, so I can also feel like I’m working on a new project this year. I really liked the space marines in this box and I have a lore idea to theme them as a successor chapter to my 30k Raven Guard. Going heavy with the Vulture theme I’ve already tested the colour scheme somewhere last year and was quite satisfied. Going to save these ones as a way to reward myself in between working on the Skaven and the Word Bearers.
In December, the only game I played was against Dirk’s new Thousand Sons army. It looked amazing, but the game was lost quickly when I threw everything at the blade occult, but failed all of my wound rolls on an orbital bombardment (6 ones on 8 dice).
I did manage to kill the Knight as my sole accomplishment during the game.
I also had a game in the new year already against Alpha Legion:
Once again I lost the game badly, but enjoyed using my new flyers again. Killing the AL warlord was a highlight for me (maybe I killed Alpharius?!).
The last game I played only recently against Dirk’s ogor army. Was a fun game and a real smash fest. We made a mistake on the objectives which, combined with Dirk’s double turn, swung the game heavily in his favor. I probably would have won if we had played the objective rules correctly.
Slaanesh army also looking gorge as usual.
Final thing I want to mention is that I spent some time last month looking into some foam and bags for old projects (Empire, Warmachine and Chaos Space Marines). Now 3 of my old armies are fully painted as well as safely packed and stored, which is a pretty nice feeling. Hopefully I’ll be able to do the same for my Slaanesh and Raven Guard as well soon.
So, that was that for the first 2021 update. Hopefully lots of progress in the next post!
Well, here we are. Smack in the center of the second wave of the covid pandemic. I’ve still been getting games in since we’re still allowed a maximum of 2 visitors at home, but work has become superbusy due to everyone falling ill. I find myself with increasingly less time to devote to writing blogs and keeping up with the hobby online. So here’s a simple post with a few cool foto’s and some super short battle reports.
The Alabaster Host once again enters conflict with Itiklik’s Starhost. Foiled in their attempt to defile the Seraphon Realmshaper, the Hedonites nevertheless cause a lot of pain and misery in the badly lit jungles of Ghyran.
The during the last battle (we were allowed to have) at the FLGS, the Raven Guard were out-infiltrated by the Alpha Legion and though the bloody battle on the ground was lost by the Ravens, the XIX dominated the skies with their twin Xiphon aces.
At the height of the raging pandemic, Legio Praesagius moved out on Legio Krytos as they were walking a retreival mission for a fallen titan crew. While the warhound Rubblemaker extracted the crew, the guns of the Praesagius titans faltered in the extreme atmosphere of the combat zone. Legio Krytos, perfectly at home in caustic environments, stole the victory as the reaver titan Warrior’s Scorn ambushed it’s counterpart. Legio Krytos only lost the warhound Ruinstalker in return as Rubblemaker left the battlezone with it’s objective intact.In need of some better Age of Sigmar terrain for home games I got this Warcry battlefield set. Maybe I will even play some warcry games on it sometime.
Final battle of this blogpost saw the Skaven of Clan Thikket move against a newly grown Sylvaneth force. Clan Thikket’s grey seer was unable to prevent the magical advance of the living trees, losing a warp lightning cannon and a doomwheel early in the battle. As the Treelord Ancient stood unmovable on it’s chosen place of power even the brave sacrifice of over 80 clanrats could not turn the tide in favor of Grey Seer Kreukel. Realising that these places of power were unvaluable to the Skaven cause anyway, Grey Seer Kreukel and Clawlord Hitskink proudly and safely exited the field.
The past weeks since my last post I’ve been deliberately taking it a bit more easy on the miniature painting front. Having finished my veteran squad, I’ve finally left myself with only a couple of projects in storage.
In the meantime I’ve been keeping busy with games. It’s been difficult coming to terms with the Covid rules effectively cancelling most of my favorite things about the hobby such as events, megabattles, communal painting, etc. I’ve tried to cope by organising more games at my house as well.
Classic dinnertable game against Niels’ Seraphon.Slaanesh and Skaven VS Chaos Dwarfs and Seraphon on the big table!And a Hesery game in the gameforce against Bart and his World Eaters/Iron Warriors.
In between the games I’ve spent some time on things that are not completely new models, but rather more cosmetic updates and chores that I’ve had on my list for a while now. Painting black edges to the bases for my Skaven army was one (they look a lot nicer beside my slaanesh army now) and magnetising my Storm Eagle was another. I also really quickly did some warp portals for my Slaanesh army in 30k.
Repainting the bases of 120+ skaven was quite a bit of work.
There is one new project I’ve started up. I’m currently painting two Xiphon interceptors for my Raven Guard. They’ll be the last project for that army and the finishing touch before I can start my new Heresy army. Hopefully next post I’ll be able to show them!
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.
This is the first post of the restarted Daan of War wargaming blog where I explain what I’m doing here and why I’ve decided to restart. Posts from my old wargaming blogs will occasionally be editted and posted retroactively under the [Classic] tag.
Hello again reader!
Welcome to the restarted Daan of War wargaming weblog. I’ve had my own wargaming blog since 2010 and this year I’ve decided to come back to it after more than a year and a half of inactivity. There’s been a good reason for this inactivity and I’ll briefly go into it further down in this post. First though, I want to welcome any new people reading this by telling a bit about myself and what I hope to achieve with the Daan of War weblog.
Hobby History
I started wargaming around the beginning of 2004. Someone in my magic: the gathering / dungeons and dragons high school friendgroup brought along some fantasy dark elves and that immediately set the rest of us off to the local warhammer stores. My friends had called dibs on Brettonians, Dwarfs, High Elves and Dark Elves, which left me to peruse the 6th edition rulebook for something unique. I found Skaven.
The Legendary Clan Rikket in it’s full glory.
In the early years I not only became very active in my local scene, but also online as a member (and eventually administrator) of UnderEmpire.net. Working on my Skaven soon became my favorite thing to do at home and having a fully painted army was my top priority. I got the hang of army building after my Skaven and by 2008 I had also built an Empire army and started cautiously getting into 40k with Tau. After 4 years I was also regularly attending tournaments and even organising international meet-ups with friends I met on warhammer internet forums.
The Knightly Order of the Grey Veil. A raggedy bunch, but already looking a lot better than the rats that they’re hunting.The full Tau army right before I sold it. Tau just didn’t turn out to suit my playstyle.
The struggle between my Skaven and Niels’ Seraphon is as old as time itself.
Megabattles are still one of my most favorite things to do in the hobby.
Dirk at a local gamestore tournament
Local tournaments used to be very busy!
Battle of the Clubs and GT’s were my bread and butter back in the day.
The Eindhoven Wargamer state of being: painting up your squad markings for extra points AT THE TOURNAMENT.
The mythical crew of the UnderEmpire get together of 2008.
My armies have seen so many battlefields like this I quite honestly lost count.
Despite my love for warhammer, 2008 was a difficult time for me as I had to drop out of university, work a part time job and move out. This eventually led to me spending less time on the hobby for a few years. I still did the odd tournament in between and that was also the time Warmachine and Hordes really kicked off in my area. When I was done with my first warmachine armies I sold my Tau and started up Chaos Space Marines to get back into warhammer. By the time 2011 rolled around I was much happier and in a way better place. My Chaos marines were in for a serious repaint (I speed-painted them earlier), so I deleted all my old blogposts and started writing this one.
My Magnus the Traitor army.And my Cygnar army.
The early beginnings of perhaps what was to be my best army yet.
I was able to get almost the entire army with store credit from my participation in GW’s Outrider program.
The Gap Year
So, from the summer of 2011 until the start of 2019 I have been blogging intermittently. These posts will all be reposted in the following weeks and I will also begin adding new posts on a regular basis (weekly I hope). As to why I haven’t been active during the past year there’s a simple explanation: I went through a divorce.
It was just me and my cat, back at my parents’ home.
Only a couple of weeks after my first ambitious post of 2019 (Ironically titled: The Year of the Pile) I was starting to realise my relationship was failing. The decision to divorce came soon after. These were hard times. I lived with my parents for a time as I went through the legal shenannigans, sold off our old house and made arangements for a new appartment. 2019 became a terrible year for me, but at the end of it I felt a lot stronger and better about myself. At the start of 2020 I was feeling very optimistic again and was all set to make 2020 one of the best years yet.
Life apparently had something different in mind.
But then of course: COVID-19 happened. Normally, you’d say you’d get a lot of hobby done when the world is in a lockdown. As it happens though, my job is one of the ones that got busier during the crisis and I also just started dating again. Which basically means that only now, during the summer, as things are slowly beginning to normalise, I felt compelled to start blogging.
The Plan
I have to admit that if it werent for this hobby, and the friends I’ve made through it, I would never have been able to handle last year the way that I did. That’s why I want to continue this weblog as my way of celebrating the hobby.
The next posts are going to be very big updates in which I’ll try to collect everything miniature related I’ve been up to in the meantime. From then on, I hope for this to be a place where I can post occasional hobby updates without too much fuss. Mostly with the aim of entertaining myself and maintaining a diary through the years. Hopefully concentrating on typing some english every once in a while will also help with keeping up my writing standard.
Daan of War 