Thorns of the Briar Queen

Last week my friend John dropped off two copies of Nightvault and asked I paint the miniatures for him in one and keep the other for myself. New stuff is shiny, so, of course, I dropped EVERYTHING and painted up some murder-ghosts to stalk the Mirrored City of Shadespire. 

Unlike most other warbands that were brought to Shadespire to plunder the place, as I understand it, these servants of Nagash, the Great Necromancer, wander the streets at his behest, hunting down those that would invade his realm for plunder. 

Thorns of the Briar Queen

The Briar Queen

Varclav the Cruel

The Ever-Hanged

Chainrasp

Chainrasp

Chainrasp

Chainrasp

At the same time I was painting this warband for myself, I was also painting one for John.

John's Warband

Can you tell the difference? I did something so we could tell them apart! 

(I added MOAR SKULLZ to mine!!) 

I also brought Lady's Horrow's Mournflight back to the desk (which I'd picked up a month or so back, started, and then shifted off the desk as part of a plan to get "more focused!"). but I'll post pictures of those in another post. 

I'm excited to try these out. I'm not sure how a larger warband is going to work out. Weak as they are, seems like it will be a challenge for an opponent to wipe ALL of them out?! They have a funny inspire condition: If they are adjacent to an enemy fighter at the beginning of their player's activation. Seems easy enough... Just have to move them into contact... Not totally kill an opponent (doesn't seem like much of a challenge as most only do one or two damage - assuming they can even hit anything on the one or two attack dice they have!) and then survive a turn in contact with them... Should be super easy, barely an inconvenience, right? Though they ARE super weak... 

One interesting thing about the warbands in the Nightvault box is they come with pre-constructed decks. The ones in Direchasm came with decks of their own cards and then some extra generic cards that can be added in or substituted once you've figured out the game a bit. The decks included in the box labelled "Play With These First" are a mix of the warband's own cards and some easier to understand/score generic cards and the deck of "extra" cards includes a mix of generic cards and cards for each of the two warbands included in the box. I think I will try out these ready-made mixed decks.... curious to see how they do against the nigh-unbeatable Morgwaeth's Blade Coven! Perhaps I'll get a chance to try them out TOMORROW!!!