Tag: Skaven

Playing Warhammer with Midgard Heroic Battles

Midgard Heroic Battles, Warhammer: The Old World

I’ve been talking a decent amount about Midgard Heroic Battles over the last few posts, and that’s unlikely to change as I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the game. Part of what’s made it fun for me has been the flexibility and general simplicity of the ruleset. It’s meant that for the last few weeks, units that I haven’t put on the battlefield for years have been taking part in some really fun games.

While most games we’ve played so far have been Lord of the Rings themed, we’ve been wondering if the rules would work well for games in the Warhammer setting. While we enjoy the new Warhammer the Old World rules, they’re quite complex and don’t necessarily make for a beginner friendly game. We have a few friends in our gaming group that are not wargamers (board games and roleplaying games are their usual fare), and haven’t really been interested in playing Warhammer before. They have however been enjoying the games of Midgard we’ve been playing, and have been happy to play more, which is great news for me!

This week I had a few of those friends over and we played a big game involving four armies: a loose alliance of Skaven and Undead against Dwarves and Bretonnians. Two of the players were wargaming novices, one is relatively new, and one is an enfranchised wargamer. I was running the game as a games master. Despite the lack of experience of most of the players, and the relatively large size of the game, we comfortably got through the game in an evening which is a testament to the rules.

The scenario I set up was as follows: the Skaven and Undead armies needed to hold onto a warpstone meteor while the Dwarf/Bretonnian alliance needed to get them clear of it. To spice things up some, I placed four isolated trees on the board (i.e. not on the forest bases), and after turn one revealed them to actually be treemen who were generally opposed to the idea of big battles being fought in their forests and went after whatever unit was closest. Despite this extra chaos the game was extremely close and ended with both sides within a single reputation point of each other (reputation tracks your force morale, if it’s at or below 0 at the end of the turn, you lose the game). The Skaven/Undead forces won the day, but it really could have gone either way.

Overall, the game was a success I’d say, all the players enjoyed themselves, the game was fun, and it generally felt like playing Warhammer without the big rules overhead. What was missing however was some of that Warhammer atmosphere that is generated by things such as wizards miscasting and Skaven wargear blowing up. Midgard as a low-fantasy/historical wargame does not really cater for this out of the box, but it is easy enough to add some house rules to capture this, and I’ll be doing that going forwards.

After this successful foray into playing Warhammer with Midgard, I’ve been excited about the possibilities. As I said in the opener, Midgard is a very flexible game system, and looks to be able to cater for some of the more esoteric things that can be found in the Warhammer setting and are not catered for in the normal Warhammer rules. With that in mind I’ve been reading through the late 80s/early 90s Realm of Chaos books which are probably about as esoteric as Warhammer gets (I’m sure I’ll be shown something more esoteric in the comments!), and having a great time imagining what that could look like in a game of Midgard.

Needless to say some of this energy was redirected towards miniature painting, and in this case towards this Chaos Sorcerer that I found in a case while scrounging for Chaos models for my Midgard/Realm of Chaos plans.

This is a really cool model that was released for Games Day 2010, and that I bought back then. It’s therefore been undercoated in a case for 15 years, and I was well past time I got some paint on him!

I had some fun with the skin (especially the parts with the extra limbs!). I’ve been trying to work on painting darker skin tones and I’d picked up some of the Duncan Rhodes/Two Thin Coats paints made for this purpose (Druid Flesh and Bard Skin). I really like how they worked, although I did feel they needed a touch of extra warmth so I glazed some Citadel Contrast Wyldwood over the top which did the trick.

The model has a lot of nice little details on it which were great fun to paint, the small hand holding the key to the book being my favourite.

I’m sure we’ll see this Sorcerer lead a Midgard contingent at some stage!

Battle Report: A Rat in the Woods

Warhammer: The Old World

As I mentioned in my last post my friend and I had planned a gaming day to play through a scenario of our own devising, pitting my Skaven against his Wood Elves in a game of Warhammer Fantasy. Well the day has come and the scenario fought out! I took a bunch of photos during the game with the hope of pulling together a battle report, and while they’re not amazing I think they do a decent job of capturing what happened during the game!

First up here’s the scenario:

Here are the armies, first up the Skaven:

And the Wood Elves:

The board was set up according to the instructions in the scenario:

If you’re familiar with Warhammer Fantasy you’ll note that is quite a dense table, but as the Wood Elves would do most of the moving around that shouldn’t cause too many issues.

Deployment

Here was the state of things after the deployment of both armies:

I’ve initialised the units as it’s a bit hard to see what everything is in those top down photos!

Thanquol started the game perched atop the warpstone, ready to use its power to blast away any elves straying too close.

While the rest of the Wood Elves were confined to the board edges, the Waywatchers scouted ahead and found a good position to start raining arrows down on unsuspecting Skaven from.

The Highborn knew that taking out the Warp-Lightning Cannon was critical and positioned himself and his dragon as close to it as possible.

Wood Elf Turn 1

The wood elves spent their first turn approaching the Skaven, with most notably the dragon swooping down next to the Warp-Lightning Cannon ready to unleash it’s poison breath on the unsuspecting ratmen. You’ll also notice some of the woods moving around, the result of the Wood Elves making good use of their tree singing magic.

Those missile troops that hadn’t marched fired arrows, with the Waywatchers making short work of the Warpfire Thrower. The dragon breathed poison gas at the war machine to no effect, but some Skaven from the neighbouring regiment collapsed.

Skaven Turn 1

The start of this turn was rather horrid for the Skaven, with the presence of the dragon terrifying the crew of the Warp-Lightning Cannon to such an extent that they cut and ran straight down one of the burrow holes! I had great hopes for the cannon and it never even got to fire!

The clan rat regiment closest to the dragon turned to face it, and the Warlock Engineer and Thanquol blasted all they had at the dragon in the hopes of preventing it from rampaging through the tightly clustered Skaven army. The barrage of magic grievously wounded the highborn leaving him on a single wound, but the dragon was miraculously untouched, its tough hide impervious to the warp lightning. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valour, Thanquol used the Skitterleap spell to teleport behind the dragon, where it could not charge him in the next turn!

Thanquol also commanded Boneripper to move to intercept the dragon in the hopes that it could at least provide a bit of a road bump!

Wood Elf Turn 2

The dragon charged Boneripper and the closest tunnel entrance in the hopes of collapsing it and crushing the rat ogre, while the rest of the army closed in further. The Glade Guard on the right of the table discovered the hard way that the Storm Vermin were equipped with a banner that magically shielded them from shooting and the rain of arrows fired at them failed to achieve anything.

During the ensuing close combat, Boneripper was torn apart by the dragon, and the tunnel collapsed.

Skaven Turn 2

Once again the terror caused by the proximity of the dragon took its toll, with the clan rat regiment closest to it also turning tail and fleeing down one of the passages. Unfortunately for me that regiment was sheltering the Warlock Engineer and unbeknownst to my opponent was also hiding the Assassin! In one fell swoop I’d just lost a regiment and two heroes, ouch!

It did mean I got to use one of the scenario special rules and bring back on a fresh regiment of clan rats from the leftmost tunnel to block the dryads that were threatening it. Thanquol was more successful this time, finally killing the Highborn with magic, but still failing to wound the dragon.

Wood Elf Turn 3

The new riderless dragon charged the clan rats facing it, while the dryads charged the newly emerged clan rats below. The Waywathers rushed forwards to collapse the leftmost tunnel. On the right side of the battlefield the Wood Elves were much more weary, staying well clear of the Stormvermin. At the top, the Treeman turned to face Thanquol, ready to deal with him.

In what turned out to be a very eventful combat phase, the dryads defeated the clan rats and sent them running down the tunnel just in time for the Waywatchers to collapse that tunnel on top of them.

In the other combat however, clearly disturbed by the loss of its rider the dragon failed to do much damage to the clan rats and was forced to flee from the horde that faced it. As it turned to run, the rats saw their opportunity and dragged it down by sheer weight of numbers! Finally the dragon that had done so much damage was gone!

Skaven Turn 3

The Stormvermin finally managed to find a target, and rushed to meet the dryads that were trying to get around them.

Meanwhile another fresh unit of clan rats emerged from the last tunnel remaining open to close the way to the glade guard that were threatening it.

Thanquol moved back close to the meteor to be able to draw on its power, and using it managed to destroy the Waywatcher unit. In the combat phase, the Stormvermin broke and ran down the Dryads, ensuring they could no longer try to collapse tunnels but unfortunately that pursuit moved them very far from the tunnel, making it very unlikely they could get back in time to protect it from the other approaching Wood Elf units!

Wood Elf Turn 4

The Wardancers charged the clan rats closest to them, while the remaining dryads advanced towards the last tunnel entrance. The Glade Guard were checked by the clan rats that had just appeared in front of them and resolved to just stand and shoot them. The tree man came towards Thanquol, ready to unleash its roots on the unsuspecting Skaven.

Unfortunately for Thanquol, the Treeman’s strangle-root attack was successful and inflicted enough wounds on Thanquol to kill him outright! Gone was the chance of a Major Victory for the Skaven!

As consolation however the clan rats in combat with the Wardancers beat them and run them down after forcing them to flee! That clan rat unit had now slain a mighty dragon and a troupe of elite fighters!

Skaven Turn 4

At this stage of the game I realised that I had no way of stopping the Treeman from reaching the last tunnel entrance on its next turn. My units were either too far away or facing the wrong way! I therefore decided to risk a few charges and take the noble way out, which with hindsight was clearly not very Skaven of me!

The unit of clan rats facing the Glade Guard made short work of them, but the other clan rats after the attrition of fighting the dragon and the Wardancers succumbed to the Dryads. With that, the game was well and truly over!

Wood Elves Turn 5

In their turn 5, the Treeman and the Dryads advanced on the last tunnel and collapsed it, achieving a major victory for the Wood Elves with a turn to spare!

Conclusion

This game was a ton of fun to play. It was the culmination many months of planning and work from the two of us to prepare the scenario, the terrain, and of course painting the armies! Getting to finally play it after all of that was extremely rewarding. While the Wood Elves ended up with a convincing victory over the Skaven, it was pretty close for most of the game, with the requirement to close all three tunnels and kill Thanquol looking far out of reach for a fair few turns. The scenario then seemed to work quite well which was uncertain going in as we’d done no play testing.

We enjoyed ourselves so much that we’ve already started planning the next one! If you made it this far I hope you enjoyed reading this, and by all means send me suggestions on how I could improve this format. I’d like to make more of these in the future and do them as well as I can.

Mines and Meteors

AoS, Terrain, Warhammer: The Old World

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted anything, almost a month! A few local events in the card gaming sphere have gotten my interest lately and regular painting sessions have been replaced with card gaming and deck building! This is all mostly over now and the paintbrushes have been dipped in paint once more.

A few months ago I planned a narrative game with a friend pitting my Skaven against his Wood Elves. The game would be centered around a chunk of warpstone falling into Athel Loren (the forest the wood elves mostly live in for you non-warhammer fans!), and the Skaven tunnelling up into the forest to seize it!

The scenario requires me to make some terrain to represent the meteor and the tunnel holes dug by the Skaven, and the date for the game being set to mid next week it was about time I got to it!

This was a relatively quick project, and like most terrain a lot of fun to put together! The meteor was made from polystyrene that I roughly shaped with a knife and then sprayed with a spray can right up close. Aerosols melt polystyrene when blasted up close which is really undesirable usually, but I thought it might give some interesting texture here, and I think it worked out nicely!

The tree stumps are just interesting looking sticks from the garden, and the whole thing was brought together with some sculptamold for modelling of the crater and give some form to the ground areas.

The tunnel holes were also done using sculptamold, with some planks made from balsa wood added to show that lovely Skaven craftsmanship!

I’m now all ready for the game next week, and will try to remember to take photos to post up!

Thanquol and Boneripper

AoS, Warhammer: The Old World

I previously mentioned that I’d been reading the Gotrek and Felix novels while painting my Skaven, and as a result had an eye out on eBay for the models of the protagonists and of their nemesis: Grey Seer Thanquol! I managed to get a pretty good deal on the models and have had them for a few months now, ready for a coat of paint. A few public holidays lined up nicely over here and I decided to get the Skaven side of that equation painted.

I had a lot of fun painting these models, they’re classic metal Games Workshop models with their exaggerated features, and are really satisfying to paint. While the rest of my Skaven have some blue greens on them, I wanted Thanquol to stand apart so I painted him to match some of the art that graces the book covers. The basing was done to match the army however, and I find that usually does a good enough job of making a model belong.

I decided to go for a classic Warhammer green crystal sword on Thanquol. It could have come out a little smoother but I’m happy enough for an army model.

I’ll have to paint up Gotrek and Felix themselves at some stage, but for now at least my Skaven are bolstered by the most infamous Skaven of them all!

2000pts of Skaven

AoS

Well I don’t often (maybe ever?) post twice in a day, but I ended up with a few hours of spare time I wasn’t expecting so decided to tackle the last model I needed to paint for this army (for now!).

This is the Warlock Engineer from the Island of Blood starter set. A cool little model (love the blunderbuss with a scope on it!) that was really quite fast to paint. I’d planned on just doing the basecoats tonight, but got carried away.

Once again not much to report on the painting front, he was painted much like my other Skaven, although with a little more care than the rank and file!

Once I’d finished him, I couldn’t resist setting up the whole army together for a photo!

So there you have it, the 2000pts of Skaven I’ve been working on for quite a while now, arrayed in front of my unfinished fortress, with the Dreadfleet mat hanging behind it for a very mystical looking sky! This feels like a nice achievement, as while I’ll definitely paint more Skaven models in the future, my goal at the start of this was to get to the 2000pt mark. It’s also taken me a while to get here, as my first post on the army was back in October last year, so almost a year ago.

I’m not too sure what I’ll be painting next, I have a couple of other projects on the go but I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up using this as an excuse to kick off a new one!

Clawlord

AoS

Back this week with another Skaven model, this time a Clawlord! This model was a limited Skaven warlord that came out around the time of the Island of Blood set, paired in a duel with a High Elf Noble. Both the elf and this Skaven are really nice sculpts and as I bought both at the time I’ll have to paint his elvish counterpart at some stage.

Not much to write about from a painting point of view, he’s painted much like the rest of the army although I did spend a bit more time on him than I would a regular trooper. His main new feature is the fact that I painted the pupil on him rather than just the red iris I did on all the other models in the army.

The tail is quite a prominent feature of this model so I made sure to spend a fair amount of time on it, adding a bit of colour variation, and picking out all the lovely (🤢) details. Overall though a really fun model to paint!

I’m currently in the process of rewriting the army list as a result of the new Skaven rules being released a month or so ago, but so far there is a good chance he’ll be the second to last model I need to get done for 2000pts which is rather exciting. I do love finishing projects! This also means that next post on the army is likely to features shots of the entire army together which should be fun to do.

Warpfire Thrower

AoS

A quick one this time round, I painted another model for my Skaven army, a Warpfire Thrower, a cool (or not as it turns out!) little weapons team.

I really like painting weapons teams, whether fantasy or historical, as they always represent a little vignette. This makes for interaction between models that is often absent in armies of individually based models. Here we have a hapless rat that was clearly wandered too close to the last jet of warp fire!

There is a fair amount of detail on this model considering it was a starter set model from back in the day and must have been 2-3 pieces at most. The fire on the rat was fun to paint, if a bit challenging as I’m used to having a bit more space to try and get some fiery gradients happening! The smoke billowing out of the reservoir looks a little rough in the photos but seems to work well enough on the tabletop, so I’m happy with it overall.

This gets me one step closer to finishing the original 2000pt list I’d put together, only two characters left now, although with the new army book having been released a few weeks back it’s likely it would have to change if I ever decided to play it in a game.

The Deathmaster and the Word Bearer

AoS, Horus Heresy

I’ve had a bit of a rocky few weeks hobby wise, as I’m getting married in a couple of weekends and wedding prep trumps painting models! I’ve still managed to fit in a few painting sessions however and here’s the output of that!

First up we have this Skaven Deathmaster, a really cool model from the Old World times that made it through to the current era (loosing his special character status in the process!). I wanted to tie him in with the rest of the army while keeping that cloak as black as possible, hence the teal highlights on the black.

The second model is one of GW’s representations of the Space Marine Primarchs during the Horus Heresy period. This is Lorgar, the Primarchs of the Word Bearer Legion, probably the most treacherous character in the stories. Cool model, he’s fairly big (probably more like a 54mm model), but not as big as some of the other Primarchs. I’m happy enough with the paint job overall, but really chuffed with how those flaming skulls came out!

He was painted to celebrate the release of the new edition of the Horus Heresy game. My local hobby store Beyond Odyssey (Go see them if you’re in the Perth region!) organised for a few local painters to paint up Primarchs for the launch.

Anyway that’s it for this update, not too sure how much I’ll be able to do over the next few weeks, so may be a while between posts, but then again the if odd dull moment does crop up I might get something else painted!

Verminlord

AoS

Back with more Skaven, this time the big cheese himself: the Verminlord!

Specifically I built the kit as the named variant Screech Verminking, and he is by far the tallest model in the army at 6.5in/ 17cm. Ever since this kit came out right at the end of the old world Warhammer I’ve wanted one, so it’s nice to finally have an excuse to buy and paint it.

It’s a fantastic model, but I found it quite daunting to paint, because of its size and the amount of detail all over it. I’ve been practicing techniques I knew I would have to use on this model on other models in the army, refining my big model skin on first the Stormfiends then the Hell Pit Abomination.

The skin was painted in multiple stages, alternating airbrushing and brush work to get a nice mix of smooth gradients and nice texture all over the model. The early airbrush work set the overall tones (darker reds below, light skin above), followed by layering and highlighting by brush in three stages, painting in detail where the model was a bit flat (painting the rings on the tails took some willpower!). Finally I used the airbrush again to add some more tones in, with some dark reds and purples to enhance the shadows. A final brushed on highlight took care of any areas where I overdid that last airbrush pass.

Overall I’m very happy with it, I painted it roughly over a week and a half, in a few paint sessions scattered over the period. It makes a nice centre-piece for the army.

With that, I only have a few heroes and a small weapons team left to complete my 2000pt list. Will I have the willpower to stick with this and see it through, or get dragged back to the North African desert or some other project entirely? I have no idea and will find out over the next few days!

Gnawholes

AoS

I’m getting rather quite close to having finished my 2000pts of skaven, so the last stretch motivation is kicking and and I painted some more models for the army tonight: the gnawholes.

These are terrain pieces you can place as a Skaven player after the gaming table is set up. They are effectively magical tunnels that allow your Skaven units to pop up in fun places, such as right behind enemy units.

It took me a long while to get around to painting these models, I just really struggled to get motivated. I knew I was going to have to paint them in sub-assemblies as all the scaffolding is intermingled and it would have been hell to paint fully assembled. However I really dislike painting in sub-assemblies and often put off models where I just have to do that. These models also live in a weird space for me, they’re terrain but also part of the army in a way, so I couldn’t decide if I should paint them like terrain (i.e. quick and dirty), or army models (a bit more care involved). In the end I split the difference and went for somewhere in between, taking a bunch of shortcuts to make sure I could paint them in the one evening.

This mostly meant relying on the airbrush as much as possible, dry brushing where it made sense, and some fairly harsh highlights where it didn’t.

At the end of the day I’m happy with them, they look quite cinematic with all the glowing and fit nicely next to the army. I’m down to characters (including one that is probably the largest model in the army) and a little weapons team, so overall not too much more to go to get these all done. This is just as GW have announced a new Skaven army book which might require me to update the army – oh well!