Twilight Kin: Pride of the Fleet

Whilst I am trying to minimise the number of Bound units in my Twilight Kin the Voidlurker model is very impressive. I picked mine up direct from Mantic during a free postage offer with £10 off due to my Mantic App subscription, so it was a cheap model to get. 

It's an all resin model which went together pretty easily, essentially you build up from the base by stacking tower sections one on top of the other until you finally stick the head and wings on. Unfortunately my model was missing one of the jaw pieces so rather than wait for a replacement I improvised a wounded look with a mutant arm and lots of blood effect.

As the only speed 10 hammer in the army list (Phantoms hit ok but are chaff) having a Voidlurker does add a much needed flying threat projection, but at almost dragon prices. Giving it Inspiring and the nerve bump seems like an easy choice, it can then lead a fast wing of your army until it starts hoping the lines.

It's a big model with a good amount of detail, I do worry about the wings though. Even pinned on I'm not sure they would enjoy a car ride to an event. The veins cast into those wings give some nice detail to paint and it was worth taking the time to paint them a different colour to the recessed parts. 

Having put a good amount of effort into painting it the Voidlurker feels like it should make most lists, I could also use as a second Goredrake. 

I had a spare Soulflayer as the 3D prints came out rather large so I thought I'd paint it up and chuck it on a large cavalry base. There isn't a Soulflayer hero you can take but I could use it as a Soulbane on Nightmare if I decide to run one as well as Mikayel. I do like a fast, nimble hero that's capable of picking up scenario tokens and getting into flanks.

As well as painted we've also been playing Armada with our Twilight Kin and Abyssal Dwarf fleets. This week we played the nautical equivalent of Capture the Giant from Vanguard, Capture the Kraken.

In this version as well as damaging units as it moves through them the Kraken also fights back if attacked at close quarters. This meant my TK who are more suited to boarding actions tried a more shooting orientated list. 

The Dwarves are more suited to shooting and in particular the Arbiter of Pain (their pocket battleship) is able to dish out large amounts of damage. It managed a good round of fire early on against the Kraken which propelled the AD into the lead which I couldn't claw back. It also sank a couple of my ships to further extend the VP lead.

I did manage to score a few points by sacrificing the Heart Seeker in close combat with the beast but the counter strike effectively took her out of the action and Mr T sailed away victorious.

The Faction with no Name

As well as painting up the Twilight Kin for this year I've also decided to paint up a new Deadzone force to take to events. This month's Mantic Vault releases included the Nameless so I decided to upgrade my Star Saga models to 3D printed resin. My order from Bristol Independent Gaming arrived in the week and also included a few models to use in my Twilight Kin. Next month's Vault should include the leaders for the Nameless so I'll be getting some more printed out then. We've signed up for an event at the beginning of June so I need to get them painted up by then and hopefully a couple of practice games in.

Speaking of the Twilight Kin I've been working away at some more units and have completed a second unit of Void-Skiffs. By only having two models on the base it means I have two left over to base up as hero options.

I've also completed a second Regiment of Fleetwardens/Voidwalkers to add to the two Troops I already had. The current perceived wisdom is to field your Phalanx units in Regiments rather than Hordes so building them in this way gives me the flexibility to field them either way.

We've also started playing Armada on a Friday night with my Twilight Kin taking on Mr T's Abyssal Dwarves. I've signed up for a three game event in March and hopefully Mr T will also be coming along to join the fray. At present we are still learning the rules and working out what looks like a good list.

The rules are fun and pretty straight forwards to learn with individual ships having special rules and upgrades adding to the depth. We are currently playing at 200 points which gets you around 4-6 units so you don't have many models you need to worry about at once.

The scenario we played this week was Flotsam & Jetsam which had nine loot tokens spread out across the table that needed to be collected. They ranged in value from zero (four tokens) to two (two tokens) and could be collected at the end of a ships activation. In the game Mr T managed to collect three of the zero value tokens (they are placed face down) and I scooped up almost all the rest of the scoring tokens.

Twilight Kin: Flying Horrors

I've been cracking on with the Twilight Kin and this week have some of their Bound Night Stalker minions to show off.

First up we have a Mind Screech which comes in either a ranged attack version or a healing version. I expect that most people will include at least one which will be the Planar Apparition (healing version) to sit behind their Hordes of either Fleetwardens or Impalers. 

This model is a 3D print from the Mantic Vault and I'd already painted one a few years ago for KoW: Vanguard. But I thought I'd do a new one to match the colours of the new army and as it's a fun model to paint up I didn't mind doing another one. It's job will be to sit behind the lines and keep everyone topped up with health.

The second bound unit are these Soulflayers, which are flying large cavalry. It seems the files in the Vault where slightly out of scale as these riders came out oversized, it does mean I only need two on the Regiment base so I can use the third as a hero model.

Again, these are fun models to paint and given how cheap the the 3D prints are I am slightly tempted to get a second Regiment printed off. But as I'm trying to go for a mostly Twilight Kin force I've resisted thus far.

The Soulflayers only come in the Regiment size but they do fly and have a decent nerve and should be looking for flank / rear charges to double/triple their twelve attacks. 

They also come with the Windblast spell to push your opponent around which I've not used before so that could be fun to get to grips with.

Looking at the Twilight Kin list one of the first things I noticed was the lack of a cavalry entry, which I think may be unique amongst all the KoW army lists. We do however have a knight equivalent unit in the Voidtouched Mutants. These are the melee version of the Voidtouched Weavers I painted up the other week. 

When you look at their stats you can see 20 attacks at 3+ with Thunderous Charge (2) makes this pretty much equivalent to a unit of knights and a proper hammer unit for the list. They do have a couple of downsides with only being defence 4+ and speed 7, though that is helped out by Wild Charge (D3). They aren't going to want to grind and will need some help getting off the first charge against other cavalry. Being height 2 also means they can hide behind chaff like the Bound Phantoms but also means they will find it mode difficult to see targets to charge.

Lastly we have another Horde of Impalers ready to take the field. I can see myself running two of these as solid defence 6+ centre to my line, I have one more Horde's worth to paint up so could expand that centre to three Hordes potentially.

Stranger New Worlds

Having received a new play mat as part of the latest Mantic Terrain Crate release I've been working on a new terrain set to go on it. I've also been basing up my new Twilight Kin in the same scheme so the army also has it's own matching terrain.

The rough ground toxic lakes are part of the Terrain Crate release as are the fantasy/sci-fi trees and the mouse-mat wood area markers.

The hills are blue (well black these days) foam on MDF bases which have been shaped and then covered with the Vallejo Grey Sand base texture and then hit with a variety of Army Painter Speed Paint colours. 

The walls come from Archon Studios and being hard plastic are super easy to put together. 

The ruin on the right is from a Games Workshop set I picked up at a wargames show a few years back and had to be chopped a bit to get it on the base.

The portal's I've been using are all meant to be used as D&D spells effects but they have been repurposed to act as gateways for my Twilight Kin to come through. I got them from Etsy and the seller scaled some up for me to make extra large ones.

So that means they fit right in with the normal sized ones I've been using on the unit bases, hopefully that helps tell the story of the army.