STILL more Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire miniatures for my friend John. He dropped these off for me to paint for him at the same he dropped off The Chosen Axes (about two years ago)...
Spiteclaw's Swarm
Skritch Spiteclaw, the leader.
Krrk the Almost Trusted - Spiteclaw's Bodyguard
Most Warbands in Warhammer underworlds seem to be made up of named characters - I'm not sure how the fluff in Shadespire worked - but I imagine it is much the same as the fluff for Beastgrave - a cursed place where one can never truly die - you can be killed, but the mountain just keeps bringing you back to fight and be killed over and over again...
The rest of this warband, however, are actually just "generic" skaven - totally disposable/replaceable minions that don't even get a name...
I am tempted to pick up Beastgrave or Direchasm for myself to give it a try...
The next batch of things for John will be a bunch of Frostgrave miniatures. Twenty-Two of them, to be precise! (a box of 20 plastic ones - to be assembled and painted - and two metal minis just needing painting)
What are these things? The Rat Patrol? Super painting, Tim.
ReplyDeleteHa! Sort of... but with less desert and jeeps and more rat.
DeleteThanks!
More great work as usual.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure how you would take to Warhammer Underworlds, with your non-GW gaming background. You might get a kick out of the deck building and action economy, or you might think they are all very derivative.
The figures are great though, and as you said, perfect for building a warband around. The cards are "worth" about $10 when GW sells the warbands for the game for $35, and without cards for $25.
I bit the bullet and bought Warcry last month and started trying to put together warbands and figuring out what happened to the Old World and how Age of Sigmar came to be in the fluff. I picked up the Direchasm anthology or short stories - to get a bit more into the fluff (and ordered the Warcry Anthology). I watched a how-to-play video and had a brief look at the rules and figured - Eh, I could give it a try... and if it's a bomb, well... I have some miniatures I can use in Warcry (or Song of Blades and Heroes... or Frostgrave... or join some Dragon Rampant unit... or show up in some role-laying game - if/when we ever get back to playing them in person!?).
DeleteIn theory, I like that the game has a very small footprint (can be played on the kitchen table and have spare room to spread things out - could have multiple games going on in one room - or even at a bigger table - always a consideration when looking for skirmishy/miniature games that I could use to host weekend miniature skirmish campaigns or tournaments) and the short playing time (easier to get family buy-in and again, multiple games in relatively short period of time).
The one thing I'm a LITTLE turned off by is the deck-building aspect - especially when all the cards are not in a base set - that you have to buy ALL of the expansions to get ALL of the options for building decks - effectively giving an advantage to anyone willing (and ABLE) to buy EVERYTHING!? I won't be hosting open tournaments! Maybe small, invitational ones, involving close friends who AREN'T power-gamey dicks that buy ALL the expansions just to put together a killer deck..
We shall see. I'm not running out to get it JUST yet...
There seems to be a market for the pieces of Direchasm on Ebay if you hate the game... obviously the miniatures are pretty great either way!
DeleteAnd at least there are no boosters to chase, the 12 "official" decks worth of cards (two seasons) are comparatively easy to find, and there is no blind aspect. Still annoying though.
Great painting!
ReplyDelete(I'm a fan of the old Rat Patrol series - used to watch it when it originally aired and have it on dvd. I've thought idly about trying to sort of do something along similar lines, but using sci-fi dwarves and orcs. Not sure if I will ever get around to that though.)
I watched a lot of the Rat Patrol as a kid! I also picked up the DVDs of the series and even watched a few... they have not aged well... Still, I thought I might binge watch the series at some point and mine it for scenario ideas, regardless of how far-fetched they are.
DeleteI even bought the Rat Patrol minis (mounted and dismounted) and put the mounted crew on SAS jeeps (with WAY more equipment than they ever had in the shows!). I thought it might be fun to sneak them in on some SAS raids... See if anyone noticed...?
Great looking Skaven! Good to see you painting figures again, your ECW campaign sounds really interesting!
ReplyDeleteBest Iain
Thanks, Iain!
DeleteNice Skaven :) I have a few of these sets. I wanted to build a group of players but no one got into it so now they are just show pieces really. You should know they do sell all the general use cards from a season at the end of a season in a single box, so you can get them bundled nicely. It is a competitive game primarily though, kind of their encroachment into the MtG player base. You will find that some war bands are better than others and that a bad draw can really cripple you.
ReplyDeleteThanks Art!
DeleteI have not seen bundled general use cards... I'll have to keep my eyes open! I'm guessing it's like all cards from GW - they put them up for pre-order and they sell out before they even make it to stores...? Can't even find any on ebay? (which isn't surprising, as you can't even find any Necromunda cards - except for the occasional pack that someone wants $200 for!?)
I know one guy that has it, that i'll be able to play with (when the plague ends). Amanda and Finnegan have said they'd be willing to give it a try... but I'm not so sure how keen they'll be about deck-building...? I'll probably have to build them FOR them - or just use the pre-built ones that come with the base game..? We shall see... haven't even gotten the base game, yet!
Yeah, it is a problem, the low runs for accessories compounded by the scalpers make it unbearable. It is enjoyable though, and the online deck builder has all the cards, and you can probably (wink wink) make your own with some sleeves and old magic cards. ( https://warhammerunderworlds.com/deck-builder/ )
DeleteThe deck building isn't too bad. Honestly it's so small deck wise (30 and 20 cards) there isn't much building as there is making sure you have cards to fight well. You can get all previous war band models from GW in the various AoS factions. Don't pay stupid scalper prices.
Cool! thanks!
DeleteGreat work as always Tim! From what I saw at the club one night, the system allows for a fairly quick game 'for 2'. Not sure if it's feasible for multi-player. I think these are the initial 'glueless' figure fit series that GW started doing. Though whenver I get to mine, I will likely glue them, as I did the Blackstone Fortress figures.
ReplyDelete