Warhammer Age of Sigmar musings and playing it with my son

Age of Sigmar...

Been following the game develop and have read commentaries and watched youtube videos of it during the past two years. They made you feel Age of Sigmar was a terrible mistake from Games Workshop and an atrocity against everyone that were playing Warhammer Fantasy Battle, which was "murdered" by the corporate vampires.

I've been playing Warhammer on and off from the beginning of 90's, mostly around 2001-2005. You could say I'm of the generation, which grew with the game (as well as with 40k), but for some reason  AoS never offended me. Maybe the "big move" didn't concern me, because of so many editions making the old ones obsolete, I dunno.

On the other hand the game didn't much interest me either. Originally I thought it would be great "rules light game" to play with kids and family, but the price's of the AoS miniatures put me off big time, so I kind of forgot about it. Then few months ago I bought the AoS basic set because... I don't know sometimes you just buy stuff :)

Another ongoing thing that has been going on for about 15 years now, is my attempting to get my wife play miniature games with me. She is very much into games (RPGs, board games, computer games etc.), but with miniature war-games I totally botched right in the beginning.

Around 2003-2004 after about a year of cajoling, I got her to play Warmachine with me. We played two games where I totally annihilated her force (you know you got to lose and learn) and she basically declined every request to play for like 12 years after that. I have made it a habit to ask at least once a month.

This fall (after I bought the AoS set) I got her to read the rules and she said YES. Apparently 2 pages of rules are somehow better than 250 pages, go figure. And then we played and I lost :( BUT she agreed to play again. So last tuesday we did. And I played with my son too, and they both liked the game.

With 2-4 units per side the game is set up in 15 minutes. With players, not experienced in war-games, it lasts for around an hour or so. The rules are simple, but you get to make meaningful choices all the time. The new miniatures are "too expensive" I think, but since I have about 1000 old citadel miniatures of various factions, it makes not big difference. I have and probably will buy the new miniatures as well because they're really sweet to paint and if you don't need to invest in a complete army, the cost is not so important.

I don't know if Age of Sigmar was a good or bad move on GW's part, but I can tell you if they would have churned out 9th edition, I would for one would not be playing it with my wife and son. In my mind this is something to do home and since I get out every once in a while, I can play "more serious games" with "serious gamers" who have read the 250 page rulebooks :)

Brave AELVES deploy to defend against the beastly beastmen

A MASSIVE melee between the Witch king's guard and the Broo ensues

AELVES spread goat blood all across the field

AELF knights finish off the remains and AELVES win

Gaunt Summoner of Tzeench - Warhammer Age of Sigmar - Miniature

Yeah I know the Descent project is still not done, but I'll get back to it right away. It was necessary to take a one night break from painting game pieces and what would be better than a miniature from the company that makes the best in the universe (at least if you ask them). What I'm talking about is Games Workshop (naturally) and their most exclusive Age of Sigmar miniature miniature collection (with rules).

I randomly chose a figure from my FLGS - Gaunt Summoner of Tzeench. Actually they sold it to me because this guy is going to participate in their painting competition (monthly I think). I never took part in painting competitions before. Lets see how it goes :)

 Its some kind of daemon mage flying on a daemonic disc. He's waving a wand and a dagger while reading a book and being a total bad ass. Even though the attempted sarcasm at the previous paragraph, I must admit that this model is amazing and I love it. I have no idea what to do with it though because I do not play the game and being plastic, it's too light to be a proper paper weight?!

And some images:

The face reminds me of the "death" character from Hellboy 2

Most painful thing to paint was the book and the feathers on his back. They had to be painted separately and were so small it was hard to hold on to them

I'm slowly improving my photography. I tried to print this grey background, but sadly my printer ran out of ink. I think the mousepad against monitor is almost professional setup

Disgusting in a beautiful way :D

I heard his name whispered to me in my dreams. I'm pretty sure Simo is going to posses the miniature and wreck havoc in the real world. I just hope I get rid of him before that happens

Descent 2.0 - almost done

Ok I got the most important miniatures done (YAY), which is all the basic box miniatures (minus the dragons) plus the player characters from "Oath of the Outcast" - box. I still have to paint the monsters from the OotOc, the dragons and the Goblin king, but I'm pretty sure that's not gonna be too much trouble to get them done before New Year.

I forgot to mention, that my paint scheme is basically from the images of the game art, I found from the net and the rest is just copying this guy. So thank you for the article, without which I couldn't have done this.

My friend came to collect the 1st patch yesterday and he seemed happy with the minis, which is a load off my heart. Here're some pictures:

Groupshot

I really liked the elementals. I know I painted the flames wrong (red in yellow out), but its just too hard to make them look any kind of good if you do them like you're supposed to. This softer plastic is kinda ok with larger minis

Backchat of the elementals. They have all 4 elements in them although the water can only been seen in the back under the flames

Ettins. Boring minis if you ask me. Just your basic 2 headed giant

I have no idea what these are, but they are by far the coolest minis in the whole patch. Some kind of Cthulhu Shark thingies. :Thumbs up:

Mandatory backshot

Descent 2 - Miniatures

Haven't been writing for a while here, because I've been busy painting miniatures. I fell into the age old trap of miniature painters which is, I begun several projects and haven't really finished any. The real reason for not blogging is the guilt I feel for not finishing the Barracuda and Dreadfleet projects.

They are on hold because a friend had an urgent need to get a load of descent 2 miniatures painted by christmas. In a weak moment I said I'd do it and now that they are halfway done it's beginning to seem like I will maybe even deliver them before the big day.

Here's some images of the minis painted so far:

The forces of E-vil

I guess these are zombies

These were called Barghests, which I recall are some kind of demons, so glowing eyes should be ok

Good guys

Good guys again

The mandatory elven archer

Elven archers - they make killing look cool

Short santa claus...

...is hiding an axe behind his back!

For some reason one of the characters is an ugly young child

"Mandatory image text"

More heroes: green shaman, red headed archer babe and elf paladin

Shot from behind