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Saturday, April 6, 2013

Blessings and Corruption



Hi,

It has been a long while I posted anything. It has been fairly quiet TK-wise,
for 2 reasons. I recently learn that I am gonna be a dad. I freaking thrilled about it and it implies me reorganizing a lot of things including hobby-time. Second, I won a lucky on eBay auction and became the happy owner of a all new Warriors of Chaos army. Today I am gonna talk about why and what.

I play WFB for over 15 years. I owned every flavored of Undeads from 5th to 8th (though I mainly painted through 7th, as much I respect Cavatore works the predictable aspect of the game became dull mainly because I did not like the power builds). Undead remains my first love in the game, and to be fair it is Nagash aspect that attracted me especially in the early days of his reign in Khemri. When they split I collected vampire counts and frankly I dig the bloodlines of vampire (Necrarch and Strigoi mostly), then TK came out and I collected them ever since. In this edition I really like the work of Cruddace. I very much enjoy how the list have varieties, weaknesses and synergies. Now on the warriors of chaos side of the story, I was never really tempted because the model missed something to aesthetically appeal to me and were shy of distinctive personality compare to beastmen and deamons. But recently GW brought their A game as far as releases go. I started to get excited about what WoC could be when I saw the Marines of Chaos. I am no  40k enthusiast but I really liked that MoC got real spirit to them now and not only SM painted black. About teh same time I thought that the shrine, the cruchers and the hellstriders were sexy as f***. I heard podcasters trashing the shrine but I never met a player that did not like its uniqueness. The key element is that even before owning the book I have heard that Robin Cruddace was the main author. Finally I won a massive auction for new in box WoC lot with most of the new toys and a batallion. At that point i was lost!

I decided to organize my buy after the initial one based on few big pieces I already owned an dcouple of model I really wanted to paint. I was never atrractyed to teh army as a whole but I have few models i really wanted to paint like everybody and most of thoses were not GW. So here it goes:
 nothing like GW

Lord:

Winged Nurgle prince daemon, aka Gluttony – Fantasy, LEGENDARY size from Raging Heroes

Besides supporting a French company (Cocorico!) the model is just spot on and what I imagine a Nurgle powerful leader shall be! I assemble it by now (soon there will be pictures) and comes together easily. Rougly $65 from there website with shipping and well worth it!

Now if you play WoC you need spare Daemon Princes: I don't like GW one at teh very excpetion of Bel'akor, which is just perfect for undivided prince (make sense since he was) but nowadays you cannot have non aligned prince, plus spare princes do not come with wings. I have in my collection a Kifaro from Studio McVey whihc looks like a rhinoceros humanoid and Minotaure from Figone which is well a mino but bros and very much so deamonic to me so here you go I have two spare so far and I am thinking of Bel'akor!

Chaos Lord... nothing planned so far and I think I will consider it only if princes really do not work as leader. In my mind daemonhood is the ultimate goal of all chaos followers so I want my general to be an achiever! and in truth painting-wise I am looking for central piece as the TK lack of it somewhat. I know there are sphinxes and Casket but you cannot go wild with color if you want your army to tie well (unless you are Mr "awesome" Wapel, but he is more of magician to me!)





Heroes:

BSB - well I will make two of them both Tzeentch .... at the point you can see I am not only paint driven. BUt that BSB is too good to pass and I have no BSB in TK so I am looking forward to try big banner freehand. One will be on disk and will be based on the new lord model on a disk (I like the one of teh tzeentch herald in finecast but we will see if I can get one). I saw Rhellion blog using similar concept, and i makes sense cause tis mode lend itself to it I think. I want my second one to be on deamonic mount and I will use Archaon for base. I never intend to play the big man; I am not big knights of chaos in my army. The model are sweet but much better options are in the list.

One Nurgle wizard Lvl2 - based on a kit-bash that happened during a games day in Chicago in 2010. This model is good memory and now I can use it.

Core:

12 Tzeentch warriors - I hav eth model from the batallion, don't plan to get more so at 12 strong hw/shld marked with Tzeentch seems a usable otption.... plus I toy with the idea to us eteh model of Vilitch a Tzeentch sorcerer and he would need a possy like all respectable sorcerer

5 dogs twice... 30 pts it is bargain.

5 forsaken twice, I think Slaannesh. Got the box in the lot and they are not so bad... very customizable but sadly very static. To be fair I assemble them with different alignment: you don't have really enough to build 10 from the same god.

1 new chariot (I think it is gonna end up Khorne) and one based on dark elf chariot marked with Slaannesh ( I used old mount of Slaanesh)

But on the long run I want a small block of Nurgle warrior (17ish + a character) and for those i went the road of alternative brand and when looking around one choice stood out: Corrupters of the Apocalypse of Avatar of War. Roughly same price than GW standard warrior plus shipping fees and you have unarguably the nicest sculpt currently available for Nurgle Warrior/Chosen)


Special

Well here I have to paint a unit of Dragon Ogre, I dig the new GW model and I am thinking 2 hand weapons. 

I have to make a spot for my Chimeara from late Banelegions, recently Mierce miniatures line (see previous posting). 

One Gorebeast chariot

5 Hellstriders 

Later state of the army will see 2 5 units of chosen and a shrine! So far no plan for trolls/Throgg or ogres.

Rare:

Big vortex beasty! I assembled the big boy so I can play both as the vortex and the back sword are easily swapable and I magnetized the faces. I also have a Banelegion/Mierce mutant called conjunct XIII; I was thinking to use it as a vortex beast or spinned chaos spawn from monstruous arcanum!


Cruchers, models are great and rules well rules... what s not to like! Moreover it is a compensation mechanism for my TK snakes!

In the long term I plan to turn a Maulerfiend or Soul Grinder a into a Hellcanon (not big on the model) if planning tournaments. Skills!

So overall I need to make a spawn in case of random generation event, but I have enough for two style of army: fast MSU (chariot, Dragon ogre, cruchers, flyers) and slower MMU (blocks with shrine).

Soon I will post picture of the assembly line and first painted unit!

Cheers!