War, huh, What is it good for ?

Well making lots of bodies for starters, which is handy if you are looking to recruit the dead for your army.
The second of the Horsemen to be completed is War and his followers. Having painted a fair few more muted models for my other KoW armies and having a whole section only in grey scale for this army I wanted to add a real splash of colour with these chaps.

War is noted for carrying a sword so I grafted on a large sword I had left over from the Gnolls I used in my Herd army to give him a suitably impressive weapon. War is joined by the Lykanis who is a large infantry hero who under the current rules has the advantage of being able to claim objectives and carry tokens. Having a tough, nimble unit to be a ball carrier opens up some good options for keeping tokens safe and being a reliable dealer of wounds means he can also be used to lock down fliers and ranged units.

The rest of this section is made up of Revenant Cavalry who currently come in Troop and Regiment sizes, it has been leaked that a Horde unit is being introduced in v3, so that would make a hell of a frontage of unit. Cavalry Horde units are not common in v2 but those that are present seem to pack 32 attacks which isn't shabby.

The current plan is to use the Revenant Cavalry in Troops as chaff as they are fast, cheap and durable at Def 5+. Being Fearless also means that you will never get stuck behind a wavering unit of chaff and having Surge means they could be kept behind another unit and then moved through that unit and surged into the enemy.

The models themselves are made of restic which does not stick together with plastic glue so it took a fair bit of time and sticking of fingers to superglue them together. The do come with plenty of detail, especially on the horses who have bone, skin and exposed flesh so they where good to paint up.

For the painting I again used the GW contrast paints this time making use of the Gryph-Hound Orange as a wash over my normal Army Painter Bronze, this gave a really nice deep colour which jumps out from the table.

As I was working on these I also painted up some Revenant Infantry to fill out the ranks of the Undead Vanguard Warband. These are from Mierce and come mostly with spears so I converted some over to have hand weapons instead.

The Revenant's are a step up from the normal Grunt Skeleton warriors and are harder to kill, but are still only 10 points each so they can be taken en-mass to fill out a horde still army.

The other models completed for the Vanguard force are a couple of Soul Reavers who I completed with Death's contingent but had not based up.

These are Support troops and don't come with any fancy power using rules but do have three solid special rules to help them do lots of damage. At 20 points they look good value for the potential damage output.

The last model who has been completed is the Werewolf (Lykanis) who offers a fast tough Large troop choice who again is geared up to dishing out the pain.

Next on the army list is Pestilence with his crown and I am heading into the swamp lands for this Horseman, well nearly a Horseman any way.

A Tale of Two Forts: Capture the Giant

The final KoW: Vanguard game of the campaign saw both sides trying to subdue a Giant ready to use in the siege game which will round off the campaign. The board was pretty much setup from the night before when Mick and I played our first Blood & Plunder game so had a tropical feel.

Three victory points are awarded each turn to the side which scores the most wounds on the giant with one VP being awarded for killing support/command/spellcaster models on the opposing side. The giant makes a random move each turn after the first can cause damage to anyone in it's path.

The first turn saw my faster troops get uncontested attacks on the Giant so I got a quick 3 VP's.

But disaster then struck as it rampaged through almost all my army knocking down some of my troops and causing six wounds, this was a sign of a rough battle to come. I did however manage to score the most wounds again.

The Giant then reversed it's course and rampaged through my forces again this time killing a Phantom and causing more havoc.

I also started to lose models as my damaged forces got picked off by the untouched Basileans, once you start getting outnumbered in Vanguard then you tend to die pretty quickly.

So in turn three the Basileans got the most wounds and also killed a couple of support models so the scores where 6-5 to the Nightstalkers but with the NS severely weakened.

The next turn saw even more Nightstalkers killed and the Basileans again scored the most hits so with no hope of rescuing a draw or victory I conceded defeat.

Not a great last outing for the Nightstalkers who had previously proved very hard to kill but this time I lost over half the Warband, luckily it was the last game so I didn't need to do all those rolls on the inter-game wound table.

Marauders: The Complete Team

With Deadzone being a skirmish game you don't need many models to make a Strike Team which means that once you get stuck into the painting the army comes together nice and quickly.
After the commanders last week I only had a couple of models left to paint and with my second Grunt Bot Goblin arriving I managed to finish all the force off. I'd also been given a mercenary model by John who I play with so he/she got painted up as well.

For the second Grunt Bot model I painted him up as Bolts and left the helmet in the open position so you can catch a glimpse of the suit operator. Bolts is a force commander who specialises in melee combat and comes with a nice heal ability for himself and other Grunt Bot models.
The Survivor looks like a good close range tank with armour 1, Tough and a defense of 3+ making it a hard model to put down.

Lastly we come to the Guntrack which I don't think I would ever field but I built the indirect fire version with the mortar which I realised I had stuck on upside down once I had completed painting it. The unit is rather expensive I would say and indirect fire has a reasonable chance to scatter so I think this would only be included in a large scale fight.

So that's the team all done and dusted, I may have a look at a second force and some terrain so I can play at home as well but that is down the list of priorities at present as I want to complete the Undead and then the Mythic Battles models I already have.

Speaking of the Undead I have also been busy at work on the second section of the army with some models almost ready to be called completed.

Undead: The First Horseman

The first section of my Undead army to be completed (well mostly) is that lead by Death. I'm not sure if the four are ranked but I would suggest the Death would be first among equals if not the outright leader.

From the reference description Death rides a pale horse so I undercoated Death in Black and the horse in grey to help him look darker/the horse look paler. The scythe and hour glass he is equipped with are nods to the Discworld Death and I opted to add the barding on that comes with the Fireforge Knight kit to help make him stand out.

The second Regiment of Soul Reaver infantry have been based as Troops just in case I need to field them in that manner and I added a couple of the Undead dogs on so I could remove two infantry to use in my Vanguard Warband.

The only thing I am looking to add to the bases now is a tree growing from outside the wall and over-hanging the base. I've been on the lookout for a suitable model but haven't found anything yet I really like so have also been looking for a natural branch/twig to use, again no luck so far.

The next section I'm going to work on is that lead by War, who carries a sword, so that should be easy enough to arrange.