Twelve Days into the Deep End! (Studio Update January 2016)

It suddenly hit me today: we are almost two weeks into the new year! How time has flown already, and so much has happened already! I'm not exactly sure where to begin...

Firstly, let's talk about the models. As many of you now know, I have just handed in my list for the Over the Top WHFB 8th Ed: The End Times 2400pt tournament over Waitangi weekend in February. I am taking the Bronze Host, which shall be led by The Glottkin himself. So, as per my usual tournament hussle, I have purchased a few more models! I picked up two boxes of Plague Drones, courtesy of Elven Glades blogger (link to his blog at the bottom of this page), and will be on Thursday picking up the Festus the Leechlord and Gutrot Spume models. Although I am trying to avoid purchasing models around 8th Ed, and focusing on 9th, these are some pretty cool miniatures that I have wanted to own for a long time, so am glad to finall get my hands on them. I also managed to build a new BSB miniature, this one on a Palaquin. The conversion took me some time, and the painting side took longer while I tried to work out what colours I wanted to use, but I am impressed with the final product. I have shown pictures in a previous blog post while it was a WIP, but here's some pics of the final product:

I also took on a new army, and this one, is purely for 9th Age! It just so happened I was scrolling along TradeMe, and discovered some Beastmen models going for cheap. And then I found more. And then more. And all of them were the models that I would need for some lists I was writing for fun for Beastmen. So I hit BUY! So now I am sitting here frantically waiting to see a courier turn up with a big box of blood hungry beasts for me to paint! So, if you don't see me around soon, I am either head down painting up more models (the backlog ever grows) or my wife has finally had enough of my hobby, and set it on fire, or just killed me instead! lol.

I also purchased (yes I know, a lot of hobby buying this month!) an airbrush and compressor as an early birthday present for myself. The catch now is, to get it set up and going so I can use it to get my army finished for OTT in February!

Outside of the hobbing, painting and gaming side of things, the community side has just started getting busy as well!

At PlagueBearers, we have finalised the player pack and rules for the first of our events this year, The Reign of Fire WHFB Campaign, and are hard at work getting our 40k campaign set up and ready to follow. We haven't yet been able to set dates, however I do not believe the WHFB campaign will start any later then the first week of February. We also havem't kicked back into club yet, which should happen soon, and are still on the hunt for a potential new premise.

I also applied to become a part of the 9th Age Team. My application was accepted, and I was offered two positions to chose from. The first, was working as Armybook Support. This position didn't have a hand in the work on the army books themselves, the rules or the balancing, but was designed to work with the players to help communication regarding the books, answering questions and clarifying things where needed, and to collect data from the community. The second position, which was the one I accepted, was as Tournament Support. In this role I am to be the intermediary between The 9th Age Team and tournament organisers, help organisers with there events, and collect data based on tournaments and events. As it happens, I am the sole Tournament Support for New Zealand, and will potentially in time take on part of Australia also to help whoever takes on that region. There is a lot of other things that both of these roles also entailed, but those are the main points

If I wasn't busy enough, I have just applied this evening to join the New Zealand Hobbit League committee, that is in the process of being set up. There are four main positions available in this committee, being Hobbyists, Gamers, Painters and Organisers/Community. I am hoping to be able to fill the community role. Along with this, they are looking for a person/people, to head up and run the NZHL Merchandise team. As this sort of thing is something I have wanted to do for other hobby and non-hobby related areas of my life, I thought it would be a great opportunity for me that I would excel in.

Its a busy time of the year, and I do not see it slowing down anytime soon. What is it that they say? Grab the Rhinox by the balls and.........




My dear friend, the Elven Glades:
http://elvenglades.blogspot.co.nz/

Mirrors and Resolutions

It has come to the end of yet another year, and what a year it as been! It has been full of many ups and some lows, but a good year all round.

I decided today that I needed to put all of my Legion of Nurgle down on one table, and see how much is there. Well, as you can see from above (with many WIPs and some fixes to be done) my Legion has far grown from just an army but to a collection. And it's nowhere near finished!! There is a fair amount yet to be painted, and from a collection point of view, I plan to convert some chosen and forsaken for it, along with getting more plaguebearers too. The small additional with the Cygor (or its counterpart, cannot remember) was due to a prize I won in Auckland, and was never intentional to be apart of this, however, now I would like to add some Minotaur to this collection too, and maybe a few other Beastmen models!

High point for me this year would have had to be how WarBanner turned out. It was my second year running this WHFB event, and after the release of Age of Sigmar, I was concerned about how much attention I could draw to the tournament. Nevertheless, we hosted 16 players. It was a great event, filled with laughter and drinking, and a lot of poor dice rolls by everyone. I am really looking forward to hosting it again next year, and expanding it to cover at least one other platform.

The low point for me this year was a difficult one. At first while thinking about it, I really felt that AoS coming out and taking WHFB place as a GW game would be it. But we have all had our rage fits and dice-throwing-tantrums at GW about that, and I realised that there was one thing that bugged me more. My first tournament this year, Equinox, was a great tournament. However, food in South Auckland is not so much, and after having a questionable pie purchased at a store there on the Saturday, I was up all night sick, and missed most of Sunday's games. This was really disappointing, as I was really looking forward to the games.

Nevertheless, the past is the past, and we must look towards the future....

So what has 2016 got in store for me? Well lots!

First and foremost, we are moving to Tauranga about mid year! Time for a new scene and new adventure. What this means is I will be changing club, meeting new players, and rolling more dice! It also puts me in a more central position to other centres, making games more accessible.

As for game wise, I will really be looking at continuing to push Ninth Age as it comes out of Beta into a fully fledge game, and will hopefully be able to promote more events for it. I am also really enjoying 40k at the moment, and have just started toying around with some X-Wing (Yep, the Star Wars buzz has hit me too!). I would like to look into Maulifaux and Saga, but that is dependant on time. I am also set for at least 3 tournaments already for next year, with the plan to get to as many as time and money will allow

In regards to hobby, well there is lots to do! Firstly, I have my Legion of Nurgle I would like to have completed by the end of the year. Secondly, My Tau all need to be striped and repainted. But I also have a 300 themed Warriors of the Dark Gods army to convert and paint for The Ninth Age, and Dwarfs that need........oh look! Something shiney!
But seriously, as every hobbyist knows, there is always something to build or paint or convert, and always many new and cool ideas floating around in your head.

So that is me for the new year. I can't believe it is that time again already, I really can't.

Have a very happy New Years guys and gals, and safe travels on your holidays. Eat heaps. Drink heaps. Laugh heaps. Cry heaps. And throw lots of dice!

An Empire Fallen, over and out for the last time in 2016!

Hobby Update December 2015

Hey hey!

So, I know I have been quiet on the blog front for the past month, so I decided I needed to spend a few minutes and tell you what I've been up to!

First things first, they released the Beta version for The 9th Age!  This was a massive step towards the continuation of Warhammer 8th Ed, and contains an incredible ruleset. So, I have been nose deep in the rules, trying to learn them as quickly as I can, and try out a few different list combinations, and snuck a game or two in also!

Then there was the Hawkes Bay Regional Warhammer Championship 2015. I managed to come out of the heats with the most points out of all the competitors, only losing on game with a 9/11 loss. After the heats, the top four proceeded to the semis, with the winners of each pair proceeding to the finals. My semi final game was quite tough, with my Dwarf list not being optimal against his Warriors of Chaos. However, after a very rough start to the game, and me not expecting to make a come back, I managed to turn the tables by surrounding his main units and crushing them, while picking everything else off one by one. A close victory, but a victory none the less. Then came the finals, and what do you know, I was up against my best friend and his Dark Elves, the player who I lost my only heat game to. His list was the list my Dwarfs were designed to handle, and I went in there ready to take the glory. Well, lets just say, the dice gods had decided that first place was not for me. With a lot of extremely bad rolling, and a few bad judgement calls, I took out second place over all. Lets just say I am not complaining, it's nice to have a shiny thing hanging on the wall!

Now, going back to the 9th Age, Equinox tournament in Auckland in April has said that it is most likely going to be 9th Age. This is great! If they do go with 9th Age, they will be at the forefront of bringing 9th Age to the competitive scene in New Zealand. So, what does this mean? I have an army to prep! However, it also coincided with me wanting to create a new Warriors of Chaos army based around 9th Age rules, with a full Spartan theme (and yes, the inspiration is mostly from the 300 movie!). What this means, is I now have 4-5 months to build an army from scratch, an to convert a lot of marauder models into Spartans!

Oh, and talk of tournaments? Let's talk about what's happening on Waitangi Weekend! Over the Top tournament is on again, and this time it is taking a full on End Times spin with Warhammer 8th ed. Now, I will neither agree nor disagree that writing a list that I am happy with for this tournament was easy, or that I lost 4-5 nights sleep with ideas and lists running rampart through my sleepy brain, however I finally settled on a list that I felt was not only competitive, but kept with the End Times feeling for the tournament. Hey Glott, ready to take your Bronze Legions to war?

This also meant that I have work to do, and with only 2 months to go, got right on it. While waiting on some Plague Drones and special character models to arrive, I started with my BSB on Palaquin conversion. Here is the work in progress photos, with a lil bit of paint as I figure out how I want it to look.

And to top it all off, because of OTT, I picked up a commission from a friend of mine who I painted a unit of Phoenix Guard for earlier in the year. Only this time, it's Teclis and 30 odd Lothern Sea guard.

Teclis has been completed, and I have started working on the seaguard which I will hopefully have finished by mid next week (more sleepless nights!).

So that's a little bit from on what has been up as I gear for a huge year a head, both in my personal life and in my world of wargaming, and a lot of changes are instore for both, and for the PlagueBearers team. But change is always good, almost as good as a holiday. ALMOST.

So if you do not hear from me before the new year, I am sorry, but I shall be drinking and eating and festing my way around a very full on painting station. Christmas? What's Christmas? I don't have time for that!!!!! 

Merry Christmas to you all, and have a happy holiday! 

Bye for now.

The 9th Age: We Played a Game!

As many of you know I have been fully supportive of the progression to the Ninth Age for Warhammer Fantasy. Well with the rules out in Beta, it was time to give it a go. It took a lil for my mate and I to be able to juggle the time to get the game in, especially as we knew it would take longer to play then normal, but tonight we finally managed to do so.

And it was interesting.

Firstly, we both took the list writing part in a different direction, and this yielded some interesting results for us both. We wrote 2100pt lists, which was a weird number, but worked for this playtest.
My mate (who played Ogres 'Khan') took the style list that he was used to playing in 8th edition, ad re-worked it into Ninth, making changes here and there. The biggest of these changes was he took the Mark of Rage (Khorne) all across the board on his Ogres (this was awesome!). He was really happy with what he was still able to fit in at that points level and with the change of armybook.
I wanted to try out a wide range of new and different things (I was played my Dwarven 'Holds'). Keeping my units smaller to be able to fit in more of this and that, I was able to learn the new units and some of the new army rules. And although the list was not competitive, I was not disappointed with the result (even though I lost the game in the long run).

The game took us longer then expected/planned. Now this was to be expected, being the fact that we were learning as we went and there were all these new rules and changes. For me personally, I think I got quite frustrated with the pace of the game. I realised that although my mindset was that this is a game I know, I have to look at it as learning a completely different game, because in a way it is. Its something new and something fresh.

Overall, the game was a bloodbath with very little left on the table (this is what happens when you put an almost full combat built dwarf list against an ogre list), and it was glorious (the Dark Gods would have been gleeful). Although it took a while to play, we both really enjoyed it, and most importantly, the rule set felt natural in its progression.

It is still in Beta, and I do believe there is still room for improvement, in both the rules and points cost, and a few areas of balancing that needs to still happen, but all in all I am quite impressed and more than ready to give it another round.

Later in the week I will do a section purely on my beloved Dwarfs, and on their rulebook for the Ninth Age. I do not know yet if this will be in written or video format, but we will find out!

Thanks again for reading!

Hard Choices: Letting go of the Despair

'In the burning embers of a world almost lost, a land lain asunder by the fires of chaos, in the end of the end, the darkest of days, when all hope had been lost, rose a warrior from the darkness, and in the grim steel of his resolve, took the step towards the resurrection of all that was lost'.

Since I have known about the release of the 9th Age, a player/community based continuation of Warhammer Fantasy, developed and updated by the teams behind ETC and Swedish Comp, I have fully supported the idea. Age of Sigmar and Kings of War both failed to grab my attention, whereas the 9th Age still held the flavour and complexity that I enjoyed from WHFB.

The only concern that I had, which I knew many players had about it, was how well a community based game that did not have a gaming company who produced models to back it and drive it, was going to be a sustainable gaming system that would not only hold the interest of players, but flourish and grow. But as time went on and I followed updates from the 9th Age team, and read blogs of other supporters of the community built game, this concern grew less and less, and my love of the idea for a game that was all about us as gamers grew.

Grimm Burlocksson leading the Dwarven Throng at the Battle of Panzershriek 2015

And then today happened. A day of mixed feelings of despair and dread.

The 9th Age Ruleset and Army books were released into Beta, not yet confirmed rulesets, but a good idea of what we are to expect. So I sat down to look at what had been produced for my favourite army, my Dwarfs, which was the army that drew me into this game so many years ago, and I have loved and 'mained' ever since.

At first, I was quite mixed in my feelings towards what I saw. The huge change and drops I saw the runes available suprised me. Many of the were the same or similar, but with less versatility. In particular, I was a bit distraught in the drop to 3 runic banners the dwarfs could take, all adaptations of what the 8th edition Dwarf rulebook had. Now all 3 of these are standards that I would happily use, but not the ones I would most commonly use. I also started to worry that some of the feel and fluff was forgotten about for Dwarfs when I noticed that you could take magical standards from the common magic items section of the main ruleset. I also felt a little worried when I noticed that Dwarfs only had +1 to dispel as opposed to their current +2. However, I pushed this aside and carried on reading.

In the next areas, covering unit entries and capabilities, my hopes started to rise. Points costs of units seemed to be very similar, or in the aspects of units that were previously overpriced, had been dropped. The new version of Slayers gained a much needed (however still only token) 6+ ward save, and the new Hammerers went from having a 5+ armour save to a 4+, which made so much more sense with the fluff around the unit (Games Workshop let us down in this area). The cost of warmachines and copters had also dropped, making taking some of those once more expensive warmachines (ie, flame cannon) more viable.

A Dwarf Slayer preparing to fulfil his oath against The Glottkin

The I decided to look more indepth at the new version of the Gyrocopter, the SteamCopter. And my heart dropped lower then ever. It was not long ago I really found a love for this flier, and had invested a lot of money and time to be able to run 5 in a list. But reading the new rules, I realised that this dream had come to an end. The SteamCopter are a base of 80pts for a single model. This is fine. You may now take them in a unit up to a max of 3 at 70pts per model extra. This is kind of cool. However, the Steamcopter is not armed with a steam gun using a flame template anymore as standard kit out, and you may only upgrade a gyrocopter to do so (which is a free upgrade) if the gyropcopter is running as a solo model and not in a unit. Okay so that's fine. However, you no longer have the ability to run up to 6 of them, and now follow the standard 3 Special Choices cap. This was where my dreams of running a flier list was dashed.

At this point I had seen enough, and needed to walk away and think for a while. As I was doing a load of dishes, I was listening to a youtube video from a guy whose name I cannot remember, but he was talking about whether the game was dead or not, and what the term dead meant in context with this game. And it was then that it all suddenly dawned on me....

3 of my completed Gyrocopters ready to rain fire 

It's a new day. It's a new dawn. It's a new challenge. It is the same as when changing book editions and the things we once loved not being as good as things that were once worse. A time to come up with new plans and ideas, new strategies and synergies. A time for revival in the game. And yes, maybe your Gyrocopters too have been made less effective, but now those Slayers you have had sitting there collecting dust have just become that much better. It is a time not to despair over what we see and read, over changes in rules that we may or may not like, but a time to find new rules and concepts that we do like, and to use them to the best advantages we can for our forces.

It is a time to find new excitement and thrill in the game that we all love and play.....

Hawke's Bay Regional Warhammer Championship 2015 - Part 1

This year, PlagueBearers are running the first ever Hawke's Bay Regional Warhammer Championship (HBRWC for short), a two part championship covering Warhammer 40k and Fantasy 8th edition. Although the 40k Championship is yet to begin, and Fantasy Championship is well on its way.

So, I thought I would share my progress in the championship so far, my list and why I took it, and my outlook at the 40k Championship coming up. Firstly, let's talk about how the Championships work.

It starts off with heat matches. Each player is matched up against 4 other players from across the region, and are given 5 weeks to complete all games. These games use the 20/0 system, with the total number of BP used to determine who then proceeds to the next stage.
This is then followed by the semi finals, where the 4 players who gained the most BPs in the heats battle it out for a chance to make it through the finals. However, each player is only given one match up and a timeframe of two weeks to complete this game. The winner of this game proceeds to the Finals, while the loser proceeds to the 3rd place playoff.
Then it comes to the Finals and the 3rd Place playoff. At this stage the plan is that both of these games will be played at the same time in an openly available space for spectators to come and view should they wish. The two players who won their semi final game, will be matched against each other, with the winner taking 1st place and the loser taking 2nd. The two players who lost their semi final games will play for 3rd place, with the winner of that game taking the placing.

As for lists, you are required pre-Championship to submit your list, as per tournament rules, and the same list must be used across the entire championship. There is a light comp on them, nothing too major. Fantasy is played at 1500pts, wile 40k is played at 1200pts.

With the 40k Championship yet to begin, it is not too late to register for it. You can contact the guys at plaguebearersnz@gmail.com for more information.


To be continued....

WarBanner 2015

A few weekends ago, I got the honour to host the second PlagueBearers WarBanner tournament in Napier, a 2400pt WHFB 8th edition tournament. And what a great weekend it was!

The sun came out for us, as 16 competitors took to the tables at the Taradale Club to fight it out for the top title. With using the FOB-Lite Comp, with a few additions, we saw some interesting lists come out. Glottkin, Malekith, Helebron, Elthorian and Caradryl lists were only a few of what the players presented. And these lists did not disappoint!

However, there could only be one victor, so here are the results:

1st Best General: Kelly Gragg

2nd Best General: Richard Barby

3rd Best General: Tom Hale

Best Paint: Phil Comins

Best Sports: Brian Smith

1. Kelly Gragg (LoC)

2. Richard Barby (WE)

3. Tom Hale (DE)

4. Brian Smith (DE)

5. McCrae Loudon (CD)

6. Peter Williamson (TK)

7. Phil Comins (DoC)

8. Tom Davis (HE)

9. Caleb Chandler (DE)

10. Adam Richards (WoC)

11. Alex Powrie (WoC)

12. Neil Williamson (O&G)

13. Ethan Phillips (EMP)

14. Erdem Oguz (HE)

15. Chris Stewart (UL)

16. Aaron Paul (OGR)

A huge thanks to all of our competitors for making it such a great weekend, and to our sponsor Jambo Hobbies and Games for providing support and prizes.

Here's some photos for your pleasure:

 The calm before the storm