Nin Win

As 2000 point games get more competitive a smaller and smaller subset of armies and unit combinations within those armies can compete. I think this will be no different, it just might happen that if you are building to win, then a summoning focused list is the way to go. Although, it is possible given the smaller table size that good places to bring them down can be hard to come by. Especially with many missions forcing your opponent to keep more of the table covered just because of when and where the 2nd and 3rd waves might arrive in each scenario. It's entirely possible that summoning aggressively forward won't work as well as on a larger table and that another unit in among the three waves is going to struggle to get to grips with the enemy. I would like to think they tried playing against summoning focused FEC and Seraphon during playtesting for GHB19.

This looks like an amazing general's handbook. The more videos and podcasts from the preview mechanic the more hyped I am to generate some armies and play some campaign games in Alixia. I'm even going to start doing matched play as a regular thing with a meeting engagement league that's starting up nearby. I'm sure I'll get stomped by anyone with a more competitive gearing, but I'm still going to just take the stuff I wanted to paint.

We do this some times when we do a hybrid mode of play. Open War cards but with points or whatever. Just divide the points totals by the number of models and take what you want. I can see the issue with more pitched battle matched play though where you'll get tons of tweaking of units just so to make everything fit and be as optimized as possible.

I don't play matched play at all, and I like all the companies for death. You have a mortarch who specialises in infiltrating and corrupting mortals. I think it would be a fairly simple task for a nulahmian vampire to ensnare the mind of an engineer and some crew and cement the relationship with a bit of coin. From a game experience perspective, there is something to be said for having at least a little something in each of the phases of the game. I think having some guys with pistols on horseback or a cannon or two will be a good way to let death have every phase in the game. And with Nagash's generosity, armies without wizards of their own can hire a necromancer. Though I think most of those armies technically already had an ally wizard option. I can't really comment on taking this stuff to win as I play with things like the Bloodseeker Palanquin.

The scenarios in the path to glory book are great fun for small games even if you aren't using the larger path to glory army building system.

I put Reaper and Army Painter at the top of my list of paints to recommend for anyone who just wants to paint miniatures for gaming. Reaper has free shipping to North America at a really low minimum. One of the reasons I like Reaper is have some of the very first Master Series paints ever made from the very late 90s and early 2000s and they are totally and completely fine. The only thing I don't like about them is their new labels are ****** and the names of the paint can rub off too easily. I've taken to putting a ring of clear tape around every bottle as soon as I get it. Army Painter has a glob of medium on top of their paint so you have to shake them like mad. I've taken to adding 10 drops of water and flow improver and an agitator as soon as I get them. I'd also recommend P3 and Coat D'Arms but lately I've been transferring mine into dropper bottles.

For some a bottle of contrast paint will replace buying a base paint, a shade and a layer. For those people the high price will be worth it. For those of us with a good paint collection already and who already can paint reasonably quickly, less so. My hunch is that the contrast medium is a special combination of flow improver, floating medium and drying retarder. When they cautioned about adding too much water giving tide marks, I was like "that's the same thing decorative painters say about float glazing. Hmmm..." and as well the nature of float medium in terms of being smooth and liquidy without being runny so you can use it on vertical surfaces sounds a lot like contrast paint largely staying put compared to shades that run and pool more. I'd be interested in checking out whether or not something like folk art float medium could be substituted for the contrast medium. I think I'll grab some the next time I'm in Michael's. One of my gaming buddies plans on getting at least a handful of contrast colours as well as the contrast medium, so I'll be able to compare at one of our regular painting nights.

From Pete the Wargamer: Contrast over zenithal priming of wraithbone over black. You can really see the grey and black through the contrast paint. I like it, but some will find it too dirty looking. I bet you could zenithal prime white/wraithbone/greyseer over a dark brick red or a dark purple instead of black and then contrast the red over that. Full video:

So on their citadelcolour.com website they have a video on going from "battle ready" to "parade ready" with a drybrush followed by an edge highlight. Might I suggest an alternate/supplemental process. Do all the battle ready stuff with contrast and then take a shade (nuln oil or agrax are likely your best bets) and recess shade wherever one colour meets another. You might find it useful to keep a small drybrush nearby and feather away any mistakes as soon as you make them. Then do the drybrush and edge highlight if you still want to. I'm also thinking block painting with contrast and then varnish and then an oil or enamel wash and cleanup like scale modellers do might be pretty amazing if you're willing to put up with the drying time.

If you're going to cut your own definitely also get a file and make sure none of it is sharp.

I've left miniatures sitting in LA's Awesome for weeks and they never melted. Do you mean the acrylic ooze was from paint? As for your first point, I think that might be the thing I need to think about. There might be some issues with damage from assembly and storage.

I'm thinking about buying some nighthaunt from a friend, but I'm worried about how their fragile and spindly nature will come into play with the stripping process. I usually strip models by putting them in an appropriate cleaner (LA's Awesome, Simple Green or Superclean or something like that) and then taking a toothbrush to them. Is this going to result in a lot of broken models? Will there be paint I can't get at in the inside of the more hollow ones? Am I going to be taking forever to get the paint off of them, having to hold each of them super carefully to not break things?

AoS2 has been pushing more and more of a faction's special abilities and flavour into allegiance abilities, command traits, artefacts, battle traits and so on. Much like how in 40k the stratagems can contain a lot of the theme of the army. Or the tactics or whatever the equivalent is called in Killteam Skirmish not having those except for the grand alliances definitely stands out a lot more than it did when the first skirmish book came out. And since we like those elements we end up having to house rule and tweak and whatnot to get them to work. In the end we decided that the flavour and fun of the allegiance abilities was more important than the individual model activation and low model count of skirmish and we just sort of stopped playing skirmish. Like Kill Team, skirmish needs faction specific elements rather than just grand alliance based elements.

Winnipeg - There's a GW store that is actually a decent size with more than one table for customer use and is usually busy on Saturdays. GameKnight has tons of table space and terrain and on Fridays they are open til midnight. On Facebook there's a Winnipeg War Council group that has a monthly thing as well as running AoS "Bunker Buster" events that are capped at 12 participants. There's also a group of us that mostly do Narrative/Open at people's houses. A friend rents out the multi purpose room in his building once a month for some gaming. PM me if anyone ever wants details on that sort of thing.

Dark Crystal is so good. Maybe my tzeentch beasts of chaos need some skeksis as great brey shamans. I wonder what the size of the board game miniatures are?

Locally we're playing a house ruled mix of the AoS booklet, these rules (mostly the scenarios and playing on the smaller table size) and Hinterlands, so we've been doing the Hinterlands way most of the time. Sometimes we don't worry about it like if a player was really excited to paint something and didn't quite paint enough normal troopers in time for the club day.

For me the extra points for champions and special weapons was like "what?" As I play stormcast 5 points here and 5 points there is no big deal relative to the cost of the members of my warband, but my opponents who play cheaper things are paying the same 5 points for the gor champions, ungor halfhorns, nightgoblin leaders and so forth. Their warbands went up tons in points compared to mine and others who play more elite stuff. So we're sticking with no extra points for that stuff so everyone pays the same proportionate cost (zero). It really should have been a proportionate cost.

About the same. It's fine content wise, I guess. Going to smaller table size is probably good. Splitting it across two volumes is annoying. Hopefully it inspires some 40k readers to give AoS a go through Skirmish.

I'm probably going to edge highlight the metal, but I'm still enjoying painting in a block colour and black line method like the late 90s.

It's fine. Does what it should but isn't amazing. The rules changes to make skirmish work are so small that I'd say the real content is the campaign scenarios. Playing through the six scenarios against the same opponent is fun. I've done it with three different people so far. The points lists in the back as well as in this thread are pretty uncessary. Just take the normal points and divide by the number of models and figure out the points per model. If you want it in "renown" just divide that by five. The things to watch for in the game are things that dish out mortal wounds to every unit within so many inches. I'd recommend either not taking those or do something like Hinterlands did where any mortal wound i in a single turn beyond the third is a wound with a normal save and no rend.

inchschlät? inchshlat? inch-slat? Let the 2nd Zalbo War begin! I liked the second episode 10 more than the first episode 10.

The four wizards in the back are all reaper bones. So the detail is acceptable even on most of their smaller models. Though the left hand of the celestial mage is actually an old dark elf fist as I wanted him to have a metal storm gauntlet that was glowing blue. I had accidentally damaged the fingers of the original hand removing the mould line there.

Reaper has a huge selection of fantasy miniatures. They're widely available in North America as they are made in Texas. They also ship from within the UK if you select the correct currency. And I believe some UK based resellers stock them. They sell in both metal and in a slightly flexible PVC material. The white "Bones" miniatures are decent but the details can be a bit soft on the smallest models with the finest details. They also sometimes need straightening by submerging in near boiling water and then into cold water to set it once straight. The larger miniatures are very suitable for the bones material and are often a ridiculously low price. http://www.reapermini.com

I find Kronos' creations to be downright terrifying. All the various stock AoS monsters type kits that you can buy are all big and rawr and all that, but if you actually saw one emerge from the darkness, they'd be far, far less shocking than anything in this thread.

Well, I'm not going to use the Depraved Drove battalion. I don't really dig the whole "get treasure and then sadly break it and have to go look for more" theme and the rules are all about going after the artefacts of power the enemy has. I think I'm going to stick with just Gavespawn and maybe use the generic batallion in larger games.