James McPherson

Been working on a board and some objective markers. bought a (badly) painted skullvane manse off ebay for some scenery.

Hey I will head up from Exeter for this put me down, have sent $$ . Will try and get some of the Rygas guys to come too

Yeah we are lucky to get to use it , they are super supportive and nice!

I forgot to mention the scenery is all unpainted/base coated because we only just started up! Expect some better looking tables over the coming months (hopefully!)

I've been living in Wellington NZ on and off for a while now and have been thinking about starting up an independent gaming club for a while, and decided to finally get it going recently. We play tabletop wargames, boardgames and RPG's and are 100% free and all inclusive. I co-founded it and run it with my friend Tim who is helping to keep it going while I'm back in the UK on a break. The venue we use is a beautiful local art deco cinema down the road from the film studios where they make the LOTR & Hobbit movies called The Roxy. http://www.roxycinema.co.nz/ It won best cinema in NZ in '13 , has a beautiful restaurant downstairs which is empty/not used on Monday nights, and features a pretty sweet adjoining bar with super friendly supportive staff. It's owned by the guys who produced LOTR (Jamie Selkirk) and founded Weta Workshop (Richard Taylor & Tania Rodger) . It has a bronze statue of Gandalf the grey outside, and loads of cool memorabilia and decor inside, it's def one of the coolest places to have a gaming club! We are a mix of Weta employee's and locals. It's been running about 6 weeks now and is going well so far. Nobody has played LOTR there yet which is a shame, but I'm working on building more links with the local community and getting the word out there. The boardgamers are always out in full force, Weta have recently designed their first ever board game, called Giant Killer Robots so we are hoping to get a copy of that to play at some point, and maybe also the Labyrinthe game which contains mini's sculpted by local legend and one of Weta's senior concept artists and sculptors Johnny Frazer Allen (who also happens to have one of the worlds most impressive LOTR collections so I'm told) We had our first RPG game there this week which is pretty cool, and we are running our first club competition for International Tabletop day at the end of April for which Johnny FA will be a guest judge. We have had one or two games of AOS going every week since starting which has been great too. In other AOS related news, I stepped in to TO for the first time ever at an AOS tournament in August at Call to Arms, which is Wellington Warlords large annual wargaming weekend. For now I'll leave you with a few pics from our brand new games club, The Miramar Freebooters, Monday nights 6 'til late in Miramar, Wellington! follow us on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheMiramarFreebooters

Its Dwarves!

2017 Kicked off with Valleycon in the greater Wellington area, a large mixed system gaming convention with everything from Historical, FOW, Bolt Action through to Infinity Wars, Warmachine, LOTR, and of course AOS. Wellington is split into two wargaming clubs, one with a more historical focus and one with a more modern/younger patronship. Valleycon is the large annual event for the former. There were around 120 players there which is the largest it's ever been I think. AOS was well represented with 22 players, making it the largest AOS tournament to date in NZ I think, with some guys making the trek all the way down from Auckland to the current capital of Age of Sigmar in NZ. Timothy Lind aka @Tronhammer NZ and @Primez were involved in organising things and the excellent local GW Wellington manager Nathan Smith supplied some terrain from his private collection. The boards looked great and it was a really well organised day of gaming. A more detailed report can be found here http://regimentnz.blogspot.co.nz/ In the end I took a mixed Skaven force with Skyre and Pestilens and lost every single game and came last. I won't bother going into the reasons why or posting any long bat reps, suffice to say I sucked really really badly and it was a frustrating weekend. I had fun though and got to play some games and get involved which is good enough for me. I have a curse currently at the larger events where I cannot break my duck, I still haven't won a game yet in the larger competitive tournaments, and this was the 3rd 20+ one I have attended so far. I took some photos though so at least I managed something useful! BCR won in the end, with Sylvaneth and STE placing high also. Second tournament of the year was OTT organised again by Timothy Lind @Tronhammer NZ and was a little bit different and special. It was a no restrictions narrative event, with no allegiance or battlefield role restrictions. Games were standard scenarios from the GHB but with extra narrative layers added. This event is a regular on the calendar and is held by the Hamilton Immortals Wargaming Club who are a great club based just south of Auckland. We had about 10 people attend over the course of the wknd ranging from the reigning NZ champ right through to new players playing their first games . It was a great laid back weekend of gaming. James Page, reigning NZ No.1 and Hamilton Immortal club member achieved a perfect score of 5 Majors and 2k kill points for all 5 games with his Tomb Kings army, the first time that's been done in NZ by anybody. I managed to steal a 2nd place somewhat undeservedly, and got some painting awards too which was a nice touch. Next tournament is Equinox in Auckland in March, then I'm flying back to the UK to visit my family for 3 months and will be going to GT heat 2 @ WHW and SCGT in April, Will keep using the pure Pestilens allegiance. I'm up to over 40 games now with them, since last May/June, almost a year and still enjoying it, I just find the games are hard to complete in the allotted time because you have such a large army, so I am currently looking at ways of streamlining my play whilst still playing to the maximum ability. We have a good group growing in Wellington and are thinking about starting a club night soon. A slow grow grass roots league started recently too in Welly with 20 or so players organising games around each others houses. I am also organising a small weekend event in August which I will blog, at the Call to Arms weekender in Wellington.

Skaarac was just a recycle of the old K'daai Destroyer model for Chaos Dwarves that never got released as it was mid-way through a re-design. I don't know about this guy's background but I did meet the designer who made him at the AOS open day. He said it was fun to sculpt some organic material by hand and combine it with some CAD for the hard edges/hard lines, so what you are seeing is probably a hybrid sculpt of hand sculpted work and Zbrush/CG that is 3d printed for the armour and hard bits. That's probably why it's a bit confusing aesthetically. I think the designers are slowly trying out new techniques and learning new ways to make minis. I think you have to look further than the mini's appearance at face value. With HH dominating FW they don't get to make a lot of stuff, the best way to see more come from them is to support them with your wallet, the more they sell the more they will put resources into AOS.

nope, not mentioned back them, just a new Khorgorath kit which was mentioned last summer coming from GW. I'd imagine they will go through all the existing ones and update them though, what was the first one out? Must've been STE right? Seraphon and Pestilens were pretty early on? Wasnt it something like this...correct me if I'm wrong Stormcast Khorne BB Seraphon Pestilens FLE Courts Everchosen Extremis Chambers BCR Sylvaneth

If it's both combat phases, which it's kinda worded as, ie your opponents and yours, then yeah it goes up to a possible 14 attacks that hit on a 3+ wound on a 3+ and do 3 damage, so by the end of the game that's like 42 damage!

I guess we need to see his points cost. Skaarac was kinda here nor there as well. The designers at WHW open day said a multi part Khorgorath kit was coming for Khorne too later in the year , still waiting to see that.

I'm coming back from Weta/New Zealand to help my mom move house for a few months, so should be there, looking forward to it already =)

Happy New Year to everyone on TGA, anyone at Rygas Roughnecks in Exeter, Exmouth Imperial Wargames Club, anyone I met up at at WHW, and to all the Kiwi's out here in Aotearoa. It's been an interesting year for me after a 20 year break from GW and the hobby, and I'm stoked to rekindle my love for Warhammer Fantasy and gaming! Here's an overall group WIP shot of what I got done in '16 Games wise here's a look back at how I did with my pure allegiance Pestilens army as I learned how to play AOS this year UK 6 club games , L4 W2 9 competitive games L8 W1 Organised Events attended - 2 , Season of Hope finale & Warlords (87th) NZ 3 casual games L3 W0 11 competitive games L6 W5 Organised Events attended - 3, Guardon Battlehost (2nd) Inepticon Battlehost (1st) Warhost (last/ withdrew due to illness) I'm up to about 30 games or so now with AOS so still fairly green with it and to wargaming in general. My original aim for this year was learn to play the game and the rules to such a level that I am not having to constantly to look up or read the warscrolls , and to be able to give someone a decent game competitively without being a total walkover. I feel like maybe that's been achieved now and I've managed to win a few games along the way which has been nice, and meet some great people and make some new friends along the way. So '17 will be about taking it up a step and playing more games and trying to start to win more and work on my overall gameplay and understanding of tactics and winning games. My arm is slowly healing up from the Shingles, still got some nasty scars though. I needed some time out to get well again but have been back at it recently over Christmas with some extra hobby time. Over Xmas I've added Epidemius, a GUO, 30 PB's, 6 Drones, 30 Marauders and Tamurkhan as allies to my pool, and I have 16 Plague Toads hopping their way over to NZ as well. In 2017 I've decided to start experimenting with adding bits into my Pestilens army, starting with a small 1 day tournament tomorrow at a friends house. I've decided to keep going with the Pestilens stuff for now, and look at using them as the core for a summoning army, or possibly a mixed alliance with Sayl and Epidemius. I'll be play testing both at tournaments here in NZ and casual games over the next few months. Not sure if I'll use Tamurkhan much, I mostly just wanted to paint him...

On WHTV live they were asked this in a Q&A about the new Tzeentch Disciples book. The answer was time has moved on enough since the events of the summer campaign for the free peoples to leave Azyr and start rebuilding and re-populating the realms with new cities and growing and building new buildings, but not long enough for major characters to have died out and passed away. So if you have to put a number on it then at least a few years yeah.

It's probably the Khorne Daemon Prince we saw at AOS open day.

a few of us will be watching from NZ i expect!

It's getting there...Papa Nurgle bestowed the gift of Shingles upon me and It was one of the most painful things I've experienced in my life! I think I'll be back in January work permitting

#MakePestilensGreatAgain

Better clarification for the rules around using multiple versions of the same arcane items ie Crown of Conquest. At WHW and in the GHB its fine to take multiples, and I designed my army around this, and the book alludes to it as well, but in a vague way and am finding a lot of the independent tournaments here in NZ don't allow it.

Work has ramped up now and things are getting busy at Weta so I am finding myself with less time on my hands over the coming months. I went to the final tournament of the year this weekend, but I injured my arm in the run up to it so I only got to play a couple games before withdrawing which was disappointing. I felt like all the elements have been against me a bit recently so have decided to call time on gaming with my Pestilens army for now, and maybe hope to get the odd casual game in on a Sunday. I'll start a new blog next year when my next army is getting going, but for now thanks to everyone for the games we've played and for contributing and reading and giving me somewhere to share my progress throughout 2016!

ah ok damn, think we might have been playing that wrong then not sure. If we did at least it was consistently wrong all the way through and for both opponents and not just in one game, but still wrong nonetheless!

there was a rumour before AOS dropped about new scenery, which had its own rules, and that turned out to be true, and also that the old kits were going to come back around. I'm expecting to see Skullvane Manse, Witchfate Tor and all the old ones make it back...

ah yeah good point will edit that out. I thought I'd read the same in the Warhost pack but I'm wrong. Yeah it would've been good to see you there man, my buddy from the UK who's at Weta too came to spectate and ended up buying an entire death army at the bring and buy tables so he'd be very interested to meet you and get advice! I found I could exploit it by using bigger models to block LOS for my weaker characters, so behemoths suddenly became duel purpose and super valuable pieces of LOS blocking/moving terrain, which was nice for my plague furnaces as they don't have much combat potential and are best served just sat around not doing much casting prayers or blocking off charges. In the final game against Shaun I used my furnace to advance a unit of no save Plague Monks up close enough to his general (whilst also blocking LOS to my general as well) so that they got close enough to get a final turn charge off and win the game on a minor. Kind of like a trojan horse thing. You can also exploit the facing direction and just sit a behemoth sideways on, on its oval base, so in the case of my plague furnace it's base has a bigger footprint/cover benefit, cheesey but totally legal. I have two plague furnaces, and with these rules they suddenly become worth their points whereas before they were pretty useless.

Hot on the heels on Guardcon was Inepticon, a narrative event run by the excellent Nicholas Jebson of the Kapiti Wargamers club. This was a whole weekend event, with the Saturday games @1k and the Sunday games @2k. We had 8 on Saturday and 6 on Sunday, and played at a local college. I made both days, Saturday taking a fluffier list to the 1k games and Sunday playing a more competitive one. I wont best painted both days and also won the 2k tournament on the Sunday with 2 majors and a minor in the final battle which played out with Shaun Bates aka @Primez. @Primez had won the 1k tournament the previous day so it was important to not let him clean up! I placed 2nd to last on the Saturday 1k event and didn't have such a great day but still had a lot of fun and enjoyed the narrative content and cool scenarios. This particular tournament had a house rule to say if more than 50% of a unit is covered then there is no line of sight, so I used this to great advantage by making my plague furnace into a giant wall/shield for the weekend which helped a bit. There was also no duplicate Allegiance Artifacts so I couldn't spam Crown of Conquest which hampered my battleshock tests a lot and meant it was harder to play my list, so the two house rules evened each other out a bit. Next up is NZ's first exclusively AOS only event with approx 20 players coming from all over NZ to my home, Wellington. That is on the 11th Nov and is a 2.5k, 4 game, 2 day event, which everyone is looking really forward to! My Sunday list was 1990pts Corruptor, General, Dark Avenger, Crown of Conquest Plague Furnace , Chaos Talisman Skrolk Plague Priest, 30 P.Monks 30 P.Monks 30 P.Monks Plagueclaw Plagueclaw Plagueclaw Foulrain Congregation Pestilent Clawpack

that was never released in the first place, that's the whole point, it was 'unreleased' which is what makes it so collectible. I've got a couple cheaper 3rd party versions of it if you want one.