Stevewren

This was an early progress shot on the Gaunt Summoner that I painted up for my Tzeentch army as a little break from all the terrain that I had been doing recently. I wanted to do a really fun and brightly coloured miniature, but the problem that this leads to is how do you balance all of these colours so it still works as a model? @Vincent Venturella and @StoneMonk talk a lot about colour theory and the colour triangles and this was something I wanted to try and emulate on the model. However I hadn't quite cracked it on here at this point. I sent Vince and @Thomas Lyons a message on Twitter to see what they thought. The main advice was centred around the top of the head: The guys talked about changing the colour of the blades at the top of the head to the blue/teal colour used on the staff as this would set up a triangle using the staff top and the feathers. The feathers were an interesting case as they allow you to sneak in the extra colours needed to complete certain triangles. Above you can see the three main colour triangles and how they all work together. When I broke this down I also saw another triangle that I should have made that used the yellow in the eyes, the feathers and I should change the eye in the staff to yellow as well to fully balance them out. I think I'll make that change later just as a sense of completeness. Looking at the completed model below I also think the blue tuft could be changed to the more natural colour of the the other tufts - the blue one is a little dominant on the eye.

You do - it's detailed in the main rules pack. Basically you get 1 for every one of your units that dies, and 2 for each unit you kill.

The first Chapter for Warhammer Achievements charts the journey of a young hero who has a small war band of loyal followers searching for an artefact that will allow you to control your destiny as it gifts you the power of foresight. Designers Notes: The scenario requires you to find the artefact on a 5+, but you get to add the turn number to this roll, so its possible to find the artefact on the first turn. Their is only one artefact so once its been found that hero becomes a target for the enemy to focus on. If you find the artefact early on you are in a strong position, but you cannot activate the altar until the end of turn 3, so you will have to defend it whilst also making sure that there is a clear path to get to the altar. It was important to make it at the end of a Battlerround as both players should have an equal number of turns to try and activate or prevent this happening. Heroes are important as they can find the artefact and activate the altar, but you will need more than one, and ideally you want them to be hard to kill. However the rest of the army is important as they can help generate the Blood Sacrifice points required to give your Hero enough points to activate the altar when needed. One of the dangers is losing your heroes early, but hopefully even if this happens you can use the rest of the army to prevent the enemy from achieving their objective. For those of you attending Warhammer Achievements there are also the game specific Achievements as well, which encourage you to attack with your Heroes, and also to try and control the artefact for as long as possible - can you balance activating the altar with keeping the artefact for three turns for example. The Test Game In this game we played 1600 points of Disciples of Tzeentch against the Blades of Khorne. The game started with the Khorne side advancing aggressively turn 1, but failing to find the Artefact. The Tzeentch forces responded by blasting away at the Blood Crushers, killing 2, and the Skyfires eliminating the Demon Prince on the left. This was important as he was a powerful hero and the Tzeentch forces didn't want to see him getting into the lines. However at the end of the turn the Tzeentch force also failed to find the artefact when the Chaos Lord searched for it. The Blades of Khorne won the priority roll, and again they advanced with a sense of purpose. The large unit of Bloodleters charged into the Kairic Acolytes, but he Wrath of Khorne Bloodthirster failed to get into the Lord of Change on the right hand side despite having the run and charge ability put on himself. In combat the Bloodletters failed to kill many of the Acolytes who had Inspiring Presence on them so they stoically stayed put. Due to the failed charge the Bloodthirster was unable to search this turn. In the Tzeentch players turn the Lord of Change put 7 mortal wounds on the Bloodthirster with Infernal Gateway, and the rest of the magic started to whittle down the Bloodletters in the centre. In the shooting phase the Skyfires put a major dent in the Bloodletters, killing 11, although annoyingly they rolled a 1 for Battleshock, so instead of losing models that actually gained a couple. The Lord of Change charged into the Bloodthirster and did another 5 wounds, however in return he missed badly, failing to do any damage. At the end of the turn the Tzeentch army searched for the Artefact and the Lord of Change found it! Tzeentch won priority Turn 3 and this was to prove to be a pivotal turn. However it didn't start in a particularly auspicious manner as the Lord of Change had his gateway attempt stopped, and the also the Herald of Tzeentch was also stopped from casting. This meant that the Tzeentch force would be held up for another turn. The movement and combat phases were used to try and kill more bloodletters, but really it was the combat phase that would be important. The Lord of Change went first and chopped down the Bloodthirster, and the Tzeentch army took down more of the Bloodletters. However in return the Tzeentch Chaos Lord was finally brought down by the Bloodletters. In Turn 4 the Tzeentch force again won priority and were able to push towards the altar. The Forces of Khorne through everything from of the army of the Changer of Ways, but couldn't focus enough damage on ethnic Lord of Change to make any real impact and at the end of turn 4 the altar was activated, giving Tzeentch the Major Victory. Designers Notes: the game played well, although the Khorne army suffered from some particularly poor dice at key moments. In hindsight the Khorne force could have done with some more heroes, but also the Tzeentch army really benefited from the Skyfires and the Lord of Change, two powerful units. It would have been more flavourful to include Enlightened rather than Skyfires, but we did not have a unit painted in time for the game. We played the game on the Realm of Life table and drinking from the Waterfalls to restore D3 wounds to heroes was useful as well for the Tzeentch player.

For the Realm of life table I wanted to add in a piece that called back to the Old World, so I thought that an Elven Waystone dedicated to Allarielle would be a nice way of doing this. It could be kept standing through the powers of the wanderers and have some magical effect that bolstered the Sylvaneths power. One of the challenges with making this from blue foam is keeping all the angles consistant. To solve this I b cut a rectangular block and then cut a wedge from a a second piece to make sure the angle would be consistent. Each time I made an angled cut along he long sides I kept the off cut and taped it back on so that I was always cutting from a rectangle. This meant that the shape would be consistent throughout. I cut the waystone and the square base together and joined these with cocktail sticks and silicon glue. I drew on a lot of the detail with a pencil to make the indented pattern and then glued on some half beads and the elven letters that I cut from a stencil. The top of the waystone was decorated with a small circular gourd that came from the lake town house kit from The Hobbit range. The Plinth was made from thin slices of blue foam that I laser cut. I was able to engrave on the stone shapes and runes which saved a lot of time. I had to play around with the power setting n the machine to get a good effect though. When this had finished I glued them all together onto a hardboard base. The edges were sanded and I cut the edges with a craft knife to roughen the stones appearance. I also cut some steps from cardboard that I could glue down. Painting was a quick job. First I gave the whole thing a coat of blue tester pot paint from B&Q before spraying it all with greys and browns. I did the waystone and the plinth separately. Then I drybrushed the whole thing with Wrack white and Terminatus Stone before spraying the half beads and the top gourd with a bright blue to create the OSL effect. Its a bit non specific, but it does the job. I then edge highlighted a lot of the stone work and drew on the cracks in the steps with a sharpie and white paint. The final step was to glue the whole piece together and add some flock, tufts and bushes.

One of the things that I have wanted to make ever since the South Coast Grand Tournament was my very own Silver Tower as the centrepiece terrain feature or my Tzeentch table. I wasn't sure what to use as the start of the model though, until I came across this cheap (£6.99) lighthouse from The Range. I thought with a bit of tweaking it would work as the base for the model. The first thing that I did was remove all of the shells and nautical decoration. It had al been attached with a glue gun so a quick go at it with the hobby knife allowed me to remove a lot of the detail and then I could sand down some bits that were a little rough. However the lighthouse now needed to be AoS'd a little bit. To start with I designed a Tzeentch pattern that I got from the floor tiles from the silver tower game. I scaled them so they were larger at the bottom than the top and then I cut them out carefully. I needed three patterns to go round the tower as well as a couple of extra bits to hide the window and door openings. Once they were cut out I used spray glue to attach them to the lighthouse. I had to go round some of the designs with superglue to get them to stick securely. The next step was to cut away the central pillar at the top. I drilled two holes in the top section and the main piece that could be joined by some wooden dowel. I then drilled a hole through a table tennis ball which was going to act as the eye of Tzeentch. I then used the laser cutter to cut out the nine Tzeentch spikes that would go round the top section. For final decoration I glued on some of the bits and pieces left over from the Lord of Change kits to add some more flavour to the design. I I then made a new Tzeentch disc style base which I attached to the original wooden base. I drilled a 20mm hole into the bottom using a Forstner bit and glued a piece of clear acrylic tube into it. To make it look magically powered I used expending phone around the bottom and stuck a load of the spare Lord of Change heads into it. At this point I also made a base from MDF and lots of filler to give it some weight. I covered the pole with masking tape so that could paint the base. With all the building now finished I was able to get on with painting the model. I painted it in four sections - the base, the tower, the base of the tower, and the eye. The base was painted brown and grey, then dry brushed and flocked. I used a lot of blue and white spray paint to paint the magical cloud at the bottom, then sprayed the top silver. Some of the silver went onto the blue but I really wasn't concerned by this as it added to the mystical appearance. I then gloss varnished the cloud. I also edge highlighted all the silver parts as well. The eye was sprayed with shades of blue and then I quickly picked out a nebula pattern with white on the eye. Again this was given a glossy finish. I sprayed the tower with leadbelcher and then hit it with a silver spray to pick out details. I used the light blue to do the lighting effects on the tower. I used a little bit of gold on the top just for some contrast. Everything was then glued together using mitre adhesive. All I need to do now is to create some exciting game rules to go along with the piece....

At fist I thought you had used the 40K Promethium Pipes. The Hirst Arts molds have worked a treat. Looking forward to seeing how this progresses.

The Polluted Pools These are made from the old 40K craters. I picked a set up and they were cheap, but they were a bit broken up. Before I could do anything I had to fix the holes and clean up the dodgy centres. I did this by replacing a lot of the areas with bark and then filling in all the the remaining areas with the air drying clay (I'm becoming a fan of the stuff over filler for different things). Once this was done I sanded the edges and based them onto some hardboard to make them more rigid. Once this was done a i glued a Reaper Bones Pox Worm into the centre of each pool along with some hobby craft half beads. I then painted them with the spray cans. Again it was Caliban green for the water before the bright green went on. This time I poured some woodland scenics into the craters to make them glossy. After that dried I then quickly painted the worms and glued on the aquarium plants and the tufts and flock to finish off the pieces.

Thats very nicely done. Lovely colour scheme

My Nurgle table for Warhammer Achievements is coming along nicely. So far I have done some large slimy line of sight blocking terrain, a polluted Shimmerfalls, some Fetid Swamps, and a floating Island. All that is left is a diseased river which is currently under construction. The Bloated Growths I used expanding foam to make these, which makes for very quick terrain. I laid out a large sheet of grease proof paper and then squirted an entire can into piles of various sizes. I then left these to fully expand and cure, which takes about 24 hours. Once they were fully cured I ran them through the bandsaw to get a flat bottom and then glued them onto hardboard bases. I used PVA glue for this and then left the to dry with elastic bands around them to hold them firmly onto the bases. Once these had set I sanded the edges before base coating the slime with some random paint from a tester pot. Once this was dry they were spray painted Caliban green and then highlighted with a really bright green and some white followed by a coat of gloss varnish. The edges were painted brown and then dry brushed with Terminatus Stone. Finishing touches were done with Aquarium plants and some tufts just to add some interest. The Pollution of the Shimmerfalls. This was one of the cool images that are on the maps in one of the first Realm Gate Wars books. To make the Shimmerfalls I got a piece of 12mm MDF (could have been less thick in hindsight) and this was detailed with playback and air drying clay and then sanded. To make the falls themselves I took a sheet of perspex and cut it to the length I wanted, then I line bent the two ends. One end was screwed into the MDF base and the other was where I planned to put the pox cloud that was polluting the water. Once this was all attached I poured clear casting resin mixed with some Athonian Camo shade in to the pool. The waterfall itself was created using clear shower sealant that i piped on with a gun, and then textured with cocktail sticks to drag all the sealant down. I started putting the expanding foam on. This time i did it in layers, adding cocktail sticks to the foam so that the new layers had something to adhere to. Once this was dry I painted the whole thing with blue tester pot paint before spray painting it all the same a s the Bloated Growths above. To finish the piece off I painted a Plague Drone and stuck it on the top to show how the waterfall had gotten polluted.

The Plan Here you can see the original drawing I did and the image from the Blades of Khorne book that Inspired it. The first piece I wanted to was a Blood Altar of Khorne. Building the Alter Base I've wanted to build a lava table for a while and running Warhammer Achievements has given me the option to do it. One of the centre piece items I wanted to build was a big alter that is dedicated to Khorne. I set out by cutting out some blue foam to make the main base and the steps. I angled the cuts and then went round the top with a craft knife to just rough up the edges and make it not too regular. I then drew out the base on hardboard and cut this to shape to match. Next I had to get a bit more technical. I drew out the Khorne symbol in 2D Design and then cut it out on the laser cutter. I did two parts so that I could have a recess that I planned to fill with some sort of blood effect. I cut these from Hardboard as well and then glued them together with PVA glue. I then attached this to the blue foam with silicon glue as this glues better than using PVA. The next step was to run some filler around the edges and then add sand onto the base. I decorated the Khorne symbol using sticky half beads that you use to decorate cards. I bought them from Hobbycraft. I did find that they needed some superglue to hold to the hardboard though. I also used a hole punch to cut out all the small circles that I could use as rivets. I cut out squares of card and glued them on as steps. The altar model in the middle is from the Reaper Bones line, which was a nice find and it works well in the middle, I didn't know quite what to put round the edges, but I ended up using cocktail sticks and some dowel which i sanded into points. I then used hot glue to hold them in place, I felt like these finished off the alter quite nicely. Painting the Altar I started off by painting the blue foam blue again! This was just to give it a good coat of something so I could spray paint the whole thing. I hadn't been happy with some of the previous Khorne stuff that I had painted, so I went with a tried and tested method. I spray painted the whole thing dark grey then light grey, then I sprayed a load of brown on the sandy bits followed by light brown. Once this dried I dry brushed the whole thing with white to detail it up. The Khorne symbol was based with Balthasar gold and then washed with purple. I used a sharpie pen to pick out the corners and lines as the terrain is so big this doesn't really matter about the quality of the highlights too much. The spikes were painted black and then gloss coated. I did consider that they should have some skulls stuck on them, and I might go back and do this later. The blood was interesting to do. I used Mephiston red and then stippled on some purples and oranges and whites. I made sure that the bubbles were gloss coated too. Then I had to do the resin. I mixed some blood for the blood god into the resin which totally didn't work - I should have used Caroburg Crimson instead. However the pour went well and i waited a few hours and then swirled in the blood for the blood god which worked much better. Building the Realm Gate The realm gate required quite a bit of chopping and cutting. I removed all of the swirly bits, and then had to chop up the gap in between the two halves to make space for some polypropylene sheet. Once this was glued in place ai assembled the realm gate as normal and then glued a few of the swirly bits back onto the bottom. I then had to assemble the Bull Demon (restic - yuck!) before slicing it up on the bandsaw. I then used super glue to glue it onto the polypro sheet. Painting the Realm Gate Again this was done with spray paints. I used the greys and browns first to do all the stone and the minotaur. I then blasted it with Mephiston Red to pick out the top parts of the demon. This also oversprayed the stone with some red glow which looked effective. Once all this was done I swirled on some purple ink and then glossed the realm gate before quickly painting the Demon. Because its a terrain piece I didn't spend a whole heap of time. It was just quick base coats, a wash and a n extreme highlight on the reds and golds. Overall Finished Piece In the end I am happy with how this has come out - its a nice playable piece of scenery that you can run figures over the top of. Combine this with some rules for sacrificing and becoming crazy fighters I think this should work well. Next up for this table will be the Fortress...

I enjoyed the warhammmer weekly show. There were some fun insights especially as I don't play stormcast at all so it's nice to get some thoughts on particular units.

I think it needs an oasis and a few palm trees to finish it off though. Looks a bit bare still for AoS, but I'll see what I have left time wise.

Table 1: The Endless DesertsThe first job I set myself was making some themed terrain for the project. I wanted a bunch of small scatter terrain pieces, so I had a quick root around in the bitz box cupboard to see what I could find. I came up with half an Arcane Ruins kit that the wife had bought me and a bunch of Battlefield terrain resin crystals. These, I decided, would do nicelyI glued all the bits of arcane ruins together so I had a selection of pillars and columns and then I went to work with a hack saw cutting them into fallen chunks. Some 3mm MDF soon followed fo the bases. I cut these on the bandsaw and rounded off all the edges with sandpaper. I have to admit now that my inspiration came from the White Dwarf that featured the Tomb King release. They had a really good article all about building Tomb King terrain, so I nicked a lot of ideas from that. Once I had cut up a lot of the terrain I glued it all down using a two part epoxy resin, and I glued the crystals to the bases as well with the same glue. I then started covering the base with wood filler to build up the ‘sand.’ Once dry this all got a good coating of PVA and was covered in different grades of grit and sand. Again, I left it to dry, then gave it the obligatory PVA and water mix all over the top to seal it all. The pieces all got sprayed black. The paint scheme was very simple. All the terrain was painted Chardanon Granite, dry-brushed grey, then given a light Bleached Bone dry-brush. The sand was done Calthan Brown, Vomit Brown, then a 50/50 Vomit Brown and white mix. Any detailing was done in Hawk Turquise, with the gold detailing picked out in Shining Gold. This was then washed with Agrax Earthshade. The crystals started out with Catachan Green and were highlighted up to Goblin Green then gloss varnished. All in all the painting took about an hour or so. That’s the one thing I love about Terrain – it’s very quick to do compared with miniature paintingOnce these were done I took a quick trip to Pets at Home – supplier of fine miniature wargames terrain, and picked up an Egyptian statue of a cat and a sphinx. These would look very nice in my terrain collection, so I painted them up in the same scheme and based them. Boom! Jobs a good’n!Here are some shots of the finished pieces. \\\ The lava pits were made from the old (and now annoyingly out of production) 40K craters set which I filled with filler and smoothed down. The bubbles are made from sticky half beads that you can get from Hobby Craft and the whole thing was painted red, orange and yellow and then gloss varnished. The big temple was made from blue foam just cut into squares and glued together with PVA and then just dry brushed. I used the laser cutter to make the hieroglyphics and the egyptian head was from aquarium terrain. The pillars were just cake pillars from M&S that I had to order. Here you can see the final table laid out and ready to be played on

These look really cool. Can you post up a picture of the drill attachment and the hot wire cutter you have used? I'm really interested about terrain making at the moment and am looking for fun new toys.

Great idea and a top quality result. I think terrain is really important and this kind of day is really inspiring.

This year at Blood and Glory @Ben has generously donated some space for me to run the latest iteration of Warhammer Achievements, a little tournament that I've run on a somewhat irregular basis due to the birth of my children. This will be the 5th running of the event and I really wanted to do something different so this year I've decided to take a leaflet of Steve Herner's boo and make terrain for all sixteen tables. I quite enjoy a bit of terrain building and when the mood hits its quite easy to get a lot done in a short space of time. Over the last week I have made some good progress on a number of different pieces that I want for some of the tables: REALM OF LIFE: These are the start of the floating waterfalls that you find in the Realm of Life. I made these from some clear 3mm acrylic that I line-bent and screwed down onto some 12mm MDF that I cut and shaped. Once done I then unscrewed the whole thing and spray painted the MDF blue. Still to do: I'm needing to make the water effects to run down the acrylic and pool at the bottom. I'm planning to use the Woodland Scenics water effects for this so that I can make the falls and then attach them. I'm still not sure how I'm going to edge the pools though, so that is the next problem that needs solving. REALM OF DEATH This is finally the chance I've been looking for to finish this rather large mausoleum that I've had sitting around in the garage for a bit of time. I made it for some end times stuff years ago and never finished it. I attacked it with some spray cans this afternoon in an attempt to get some basic colours onto the piece, and then I can go in and start to pick out a few details just to finish it off. I have t say that once I got a few more bits of colour on it its starting to look pretty sharp. REALM OF FIRE These two pieces will be going on a table set up for Khorne. I found that the mats we are using aren't actually black with the lava. Instead its a kind of dark green so it needs a heavy green dry brush over the top, The craters took some time to repurpose them and fill in all the cracks and dints. I then bought some adhesive pearls from the paper craft section of Hobbycraft and superglued them down to represent lava bubbles. Once again the painting so far is all spray can work. I kept them black and dark grey, but I think the lighter grey will work a lot better. REALM OF LIFE - Nurgles Garden I've always fancied doing a gurgle terrain set and this gives me a great excuse. The pits will be a key part of the rules as well so to represent how truly dangerous they are I got some reaper bones pox worm models and glued them into the centre. I have no idea how these will look when they are painted but they should certainly look menacing coming out of the swamps. I'll probably be positing a lot more terrain than models for the next few months which will be an interesting change of pace for me. If you have questions about what I've done feel free to post them here.

This is just a quick work in progress post. I've decided I really want to get some more varied terrain for my games so I invested in some second hand craters off Ebay. They are quite damaged, but I have based them on some hardboard and I plan to go in and fix the gaps and holes with filler and play bark. Once undercoated I have a few ideas for different fillings. Three will be lave pits for a Realm of fire table, one will be a Nurgle Swamp and the other will be a Tzeentch themed piece of dangerous terrain.

This was an older model that I had rebased but not painted, so I spent a few hours earlier this week getting him finished so that I could use him in some games. I still have a load of chariots that I need to do so they will have to get finished at some point soon as well. The conversion was not too complex - I took the wings from the High Elf Dragon kit and just stuck them onto the Slaughterbrute body. The whole model was spray painted silver and then the purple and green was airbrushed on and the mottling pattern was painted in. The model looks a lot better on the circular base as previously it looked a bit ridiculous perched on a 50mm square one!

I had this conversion knocking around my painting desk for a while as my Budget of Sigmar 2 Army got shelved as I worked on the Tzeentch army for the South Coast GT. I had always planned on it being the leader of the force. It is on a big 60mm base with the mystical rocks hanging around him. The conversion was done with the 40K Cult Mechanics hero and mixing it with Blight Kings parts. The most challenging part was drilling out the head to make the space for the Blightkings head. As I started painting it I was not very happy with where it was going which was why it never got finished earlier. However I was happy with how the overall scheme came out with a couple of provisos. The green rocks are probably too distracting and need to be smaller, but this is a change I am loathe to make because of the fact that they are metal and it would be a pain to do! The other is changing the colours of the tentacles under the model. The white is too bright and distracts from the rest of the model. I had some good feedback from Vince Venturella of Warhammer Weekly about changing them to a green, and I think he's right so that will be something that I will go back and sort out shortly. Otherwise I am pleased to get another Budget of Sigmar 2 model finished.

The List: This weekend just gone was the South Coast GT in Portsmouth in the UK and I was there with my Tzeentch Disciples (clearly the new powerhouse) so I thought I would give a quick rundown of how the army performed in the different games and what I thought of the list and the battalion. So first up I took 27 Skyfires and..... Actually I didn't do this! Instead I based my list around the Omniscient Oracles battalion, which for those that don't know is Kairos and three more Lords of Change. The battalion gives you reroll 1's for hits, wounds, saves, as well as charging and running. The Lords of Change will hence forth be known ad the Red One, the Yellow One, the Green One, and Kairos. Originally I picked the list as I was inspired by @Ben Johnson and the 5 Star Drakes that he took last year and I wanted to be the one with the cool monster mash build. However Ben one upped me by taking five blood thirsters this year Obviously this was the majority of the list, but it was rounded out with two 10's of marauders and 10 pink horrors which was the battlleline element, and then, because I had the points for it I was able to add in 6 sky fires and a tzangor shaman, just to add a little punch! Artefacts and Traits I used the 27" Dispell as the command trait on my general (the red one) and this was brilliant. I often find that being in range to dispel is tricky playing AoS as a lot of the spell casters tend to sit towards the back, allowing them to buff their army whilst being safely outside dispel range. With the extra 9" range as well as +1 its quite easy with the Lord of Change to shut down an average magic phase. For Artefacts I took a Phantasmal Weapon on the green one so that I had an extra attack with the sword. This gave me some real punch and when needed I used the destiny dice to ensure something got hit when I had to clear things out. As my second artefact I took the Well of Arcane Might to give all my spell casters re roll 1's when in range of the yellow ones. This was mostly useful for some of the buff spells when I didn't want to use destiny dice to ensure that the spell would go off. for example getting an Arcane bolt off I only needed a 2 (with the +1 ability) so having the re roll 1's just mitigates that annoying roll of three or four. Destiny Dice I used these a lot for ensuring spells went off. 3's and 4's were pretty much exclusively used for this. I tended to use 5's and 6's to ensure successful charges or armour saves when needed. as sometimes big rend or damage weapons (like Durthu) could really frustrate opponents if you save them on the destiny dice. Magical Output The magical output from the army is quite frankly bonkers! However you have to be in range as the magic is pretty short range and there is no chance of sitting a LoC on a bale wind vortex. I spent the majority of the games having to make a decision about what to do in terms of sitting back and seeing what will happen or running forward to get into range. The army allowed me to take all the Lore of Change spells if I wanted to, although I swapped one out for the Destiny Dice shield from the Lore of Fate. If i ran the army again I would definitely not bother with this as I don't think I used it to any great effect as generally by the time I was really needing a boosted armour save I had used the majority of the destiny dice for damaging my opponent. The Games Mike with the Blades of Khorne Mike had put together a BoK list from the models he had available and I think was enjoying the experience of testing the new rules. We only made it through three turns, but as he moved towards me he suffered the full wrath of Tzeentch's magical output. The game looked like it was going to ending tie however, until I managed to move a Lord of Change into position to break through on one flank. In the end I had to make a 5" charge to get onto the objective and kill the hero there. However I failed the charge, and my Kairos dice had been used up earlier. Luckily I had another Lord of Change 10" away, and through blind luck I rolled the 11 to get in which gave me the minor win. I had managed to get my objective as well though, which pushed me to the major win. Some of the things I learnt was that with good dice rolling the Lord of Change with the sword could be a real monster as he killed a unit of thirty blood letters in a single round by himself through magic and combat. Chris with the Pheonix Council Chris had borrowed Martin's Phoenix Legion army and worryingly for me it contained 3 units of 20 sword masters. We were playing the Silver Tower scenario which required units to be close to the silver tower. You could also put units into the tower so I knew I was going to struggle to win this. Chris ran forward to get into the tower early which meant I was able to put the full brunt of the magic, sky fire shooting and combat into a single sword master unit. Unsurprisingly I was able to smash through the unit and then move on to the next one. I was also able to focus enough magic onto the two dragons to bring them down as well. After three turns I had eliminated all of the Aaelf forces, but the Silver Tower decided to stay where it was for a turn meaning that despite the fact that I killed all of the opposing force I still lost on the scenario. I did manage to do my hidden agenda though which pulled the game from a major loss to a minor loss. Jon with Sylvaneth Jon is a fabulous hobbyists and he had a really stellar Gnarlroot Wargrove Sylvaneth army. As well as being a terrific painter Jon is a pretty stand out player, so this game came down to my superior mortal wound out put vs his better generalship. Jon pressed one flank hard and managed to make my general retreat off which gave him an early lead that looked like it was going to secure him the game, but as the game progressed I was able to push my army across to his objective, leaving models in woods as I went to stop him teleporting the tree lord ancient away from his objective. In turn four I was able to kill him off and secure the two points that pulled it back to a win to me. However Jon forgot about, or didn't see, some Kurnoth hunters that were behind a large piece of terrain and they could have had a big impact on the game, so although I got the win I don't feel like to was a true reflection of how the game could have gone. Hopefully we will get a chance for a rematch as I'm sure Jon feels like he could get a win against my force. Jay with Mixed Order Mr Hopkinson turned up with a mixed order gunline that was really four hellstorm rocket batteries, a hurricanum on a balewind vortex and 'stuff.' He also had some really well 'themed' line of sight blocking terrain that he could sit the rocket batteries behind as they don't need line of sight. All in all, I knew this was going to be a tough game. Fortunately Jay is a top dude to play, and we've known each other for quite a while so it was also going to be fun. In the end it turned into the best game of the weekend from a tactical perspective. The key error I made was not using a Destiny Dice to blast OxyOttll (or whatever he's called) turn one with Gateway (I rolled and failed to cast ), which allowed him to teleport round and score points all game. I tried a cunning plan by burning my agenda to run a lord of change across the board and charge, but Jay burnt his to stop me. This was the right choice as I think had I gotten into his rocket battery I would have been able to secure the win. As it was Jay outscored me, the game went 5 turns and I came away with my second minor loss of the weekend. Ian with Bonesplitterz Ian is a bit of a character - he is one of the Cheltenham Warchiefs and plays a pure Bonesplitterz army with all the different Rukks, and lots of supporting magic. I've never played the army before so I had no real idea about what pieces needed to be removed and Ian played the game very well. I think he was excited to play a monster army so that he could go Big Game Hunting. Ian pushed forward hard with the Boar Boys which I took off over a couple of turns, but this allowed Ian to bring up the harder hitting parts of his army and begin surgically removing my army. I pushed forward piecemeal which wasn't the right tactic I think, and eventually the Kunnin Ruk got involved along with some Big Stabbas and they were able to clean up my army. I didn't achieve my agenda and Ian managed his which gave him the comprehensive 30-0 win. Matt with Sylvaneth I've known Matt for a few years now, but never had the pleasure of playing him so it was great to get a game in at the end of the tournament. Matt had the pretty standard Gnarlroot wargrove so I felt quite confident in this scenario as I had 5 heroes to his 3 and mine are generally tougher in the match up because of the mortal wound output and the fact that the Sky Fires can out range the Kurnoth Hunters. Also the scenario played into the hands of my army as I could stand all five heroes in the box and outscore Matt, which forced him to come forwards. In the end I'm not sure I played very well. I lost two Lords of Change as well as the Tzangor Shaman to a cheeky 11" charge from some Tree Revenants. However Matt and I did a lot of fighting in the centre of the board with all our units, and the Kurnoth Hunters with Scythes made a real mess of my Green Lord of change (the combat one)! Once again the mortal wound output from the magic dispatched a Treelord Ancient, Kurnoths and Durthu which gave me a big 30-0 to finish and propel me to the heady heights of 46th overall.

Very nice. I love an army that has a theme like this. I hope it plays out well too.

I completed a bunch of terrain yesterday to go along with the rest of the Tzeentch army I've painted over the last few months. I've yet to put it all out on the table, but here is the list: Lord of Change x 3 Kairos Tzangor Shaman 10 x Marauders (x2) 10 x Pink Horrors 6 x Skyfires Omniscient Oracles Battalion 2000/2000 Its quite exciting to think that the army will finally come out to play tomorrow.

This weekend is the South Coast GT and I have finally managed to complete all of the models for the Omniscient Oracles Battalion. It was a fun painting challenge and I developed quite a few cool tricks to help get through them in the time span and keep the models to an acceptable quality level. I used a lot of spray can work to get the base coats done and then dry brushed and washed a lot to get the variation in texture. I then went over the top with the brush to pick out specific details, but only in key areas. I discuss the techniques a lot more with Ben and Mark on Ep 153 of Bad Dice if you want more details. Link is here As ever if you have any questions put them in the comments and I'l be happy to answer them!

I have a lot of the list built and painted so I might try this out