Daveman

The game keeps going even if your warband has been eliminated. You still get to take activations (although without fighters on the board you'd only be able to draw cards) and play cards after in the power step, play cards as reactions, play cards during their power step, etc.

More speed painting! Maybe a little too speedy, wound up slicing a finger off Vortermis. Nine fingers for Eyes of the Nine?

Ghostly parts are just white base with Nikhalak Oxide. Was going to drybursh some white on top too but thought they looked good enough as is. The grey is Celestria Grey with Agrax Earthshade.

Nightvault warbands are coming along, knocked out the Cursebreakers and Thorns. I'm still a "lazy amateur", just a basecoat, wash and cleanup the details kind of guy but I like the results for the time spent:

There's one ploy for the archers, Volley something or other, that lets two archers attack if they're adjacent... you could wind up pushing two targets for some extra/free damage with Shattering Terrain.

Just making sure, but Sourtongue + Shattering Terrain would mean: 1. Targets that get hit/pushed would take 1 extra damage, but only 1, even if they get hit/pushed multiple times. 2. Sourtongue would only take 1 damage.

Ack, serves me right for skimming the rules before just diving in on the painting! Thanks, I thought scatter was rolled one die at a time and was much more random.

The wording on Sourtongue's ability is a little odd. Do I have this right? 1. You roll to scatter 4 hexes but then push him 3 hexes "along the chain". I initially envisioned this as him moving, sequentially, along the scattered hexes before him but why would you bother rolling a 4th hex if you only push into 3? Do you instead choose 3 of the 4 hexes, but still sequentially? For example, maybe there's blocked/lethal terrain or a friendly unit in hex 2 you want to avoid so you push to hex 1, then 3 and 4? This gives you a little more control over where you're going and explains why you'd roll to scatter 4 hexes yet only push to 3 of them? 2. It goes on to say that if you would push to an occupied hex, before you push, that figure takes 1 damage and is then pushed 1 hex, which must be further away from Sourtongue. Since you push the opposing figures first, can you push them into a hex further "along the chain" and hit them again? That would still put them farther away from you at the time since you have to push them first before Sourtongue pushes into the target hex. This seems pretty strong, so much so I thought perhaps the intent was that you have to push targets out of the "chain".

New preview is up for Zargab's warband: https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/10/03/3rd-orkt-warband-focus-zarbags-gitzgw-homepage-post-2/ This is a very diverse warband and I love it.

Unless there's some detail in the rules we've yet to see, I'm a little sad to hear that the spells appear to essentially be power cards that rely on dice results. I've avoided those cards so far in Shadespire. Granted in this case if you have a caster with 2+ skill you're rolling more than 1 die so you've got better odds of getting a good result, but it still gives me pause.

Wow, the Briar Queens lieutenant, Varclav the Chained, can push all chainrasps 2 spaces as an action. That plus Drifting Advance is an awful lot of figures moving 4 hexes for one action. Doesn't look like there's a reanimate mechanic (unless they have an action card) but I'm excited to try these guys out.

From the article: Looking at Averon's card there's a new icon next to his name, I'm guessing that marks him as a "sorcerer". The number 2 after it... just some guesses: 1. For the total value of "sorcerers" in your team you can add X many spells to your deck? 2. Spells are treated as upgrades that can only be played on "sorcerers", in Averon's case no more than 2? Love the chainrasp miniatures! Happy to see it looks like we're getting a Stormcast team that's slightly diverse (1 sorcerer, 2 guards?) but don't like how similar the 2 guards look.

For what it's worth, I initially thought the same thing about the Farstrider's inspire condition... "an action phase" vs. "the action phase" for the Chose Axes kind of sounded like they meant "activation" instead. But it's not, it happens at the end of the action phase, which is after both players have gone through their 4 activations that round. The game sequence is shown pretty clearly on pg.14 of the rules, and summarized on the back cover too. There are 3 rounds, each made up of an action and end phase.

I'm thrilled they're putting out more content to help tide us over until whatever they're going to call the next "wave" comes out, but I'm not sure why I'd choose a board with hostile terrain on it as "my" board. Maybe if I'm playing defensive, but even then I'd be hesitant to have dangers close to me. As if we needed another reason to put more push ploys in the deck. Looks like that mostly hidden objective card is "The Stage is Set"? Reading what's there it looks like it scores 2-3 points if the only surviving fighters are leaders?

My Farstrider deck is almost identical. The one notable difference is I put in some Shadeglass weapons instead of the Farstrider and Swiftblade specific upgrades. Too often I've lost one or both and wound up with dead cards in my hand. The Shadeglass weapons may only be one shot, but they're a nice upgrade over the default melee attacks and can be used by anyone. In Shadespire, you often just need one good strike to work to make a difference anyway. As you said, my round 1 is usually passive, hoping to score some easy instant objectives for upgrades and draw some new objectives, maybe pick off someone if there are 2-3 health targets, and keep them from scoring. If round 1 ends 2 or 3 to 0 that's a good start. Put down some upgrades and go on the offensive round 2. I use Inspiration Strikes and Hidden Paths as well. Both are easy ways to inspire even if I need to go passive. Hidden Paths is also great for sneaking an upgraded soldier into their backfield and cause trouble, and inspire them too.

I don't follow AoS, but the new Stormcast in that article feature the anvil-lightning bolt icon on the new card preview so it seems certain they'll be what we're looking at in the new Shadespire release. I hope we get a diverse warband... using the names from that article, maybe a Knight-Incantor as leader, plus a Castigator and Sequitor (or two)? Guys with different stats/abilities like the Sepulchral Guard and Spiteclaw's Swarm, less like the Farstriders who are all fairly similar.

I'm curious... in a tournament setting, how do you adjust once your opponent knows you're hoping he kills off 2 of your fighters? With or without relics?

I don't like Crippling Doubt. Ploys that weaken attacks are one thing, but one that only applies to leaders is too situational for me. Otherwise cautiously excited. New cards are potentially a good thing.

So the price for the figures alone is $25 vs $30. What a deal!

I do like their pitch that you could paint a second warband set as the "inspired" version of those figures to swap out when they inspire but I'm not interested. A "neutral card pack" would be very tempting just so I could deckbuild/play more with my son at home.

A slow work week meant I was able to knock out Magore's Fiends too! As much as I liked the idea of skulls and lava, it didn't seem to match up with what I think Shadespire is like so I went with an eerie ghost-like river of undeath look...

Thanks for crunching those numbers! Cleave-on-Crit is pretty near useless, unless you're facing 2 defense figures who use block. Even then, from your numbers it barely makes a difference.

Just wrapped up my Farstriders:

I've never been a Games Workshop consumer until Shadespire but I've painted miniatures for board games recently and for Battletech a looooong time ago. I'm firmly in the amateur camp and happy with just a basecoat, cleanup details then wash. Figured I'd put my work up as I like to think that for the time invested they look pretty good and hopefully inspire others to give it a try knowing you don't have to do two thin coats, wash, drybrush, detail, wash again, drybrush again, etc. Not really knowing the game world I stuck pretty close to what's on the box for most of these: For the Sepulchral Guard I didn't like the idea of them being in "uniform" so I gave the named guys their own color scheme, leaving the Petitioners in khaki: For the Orruks... I just didn't like that bright yellow on them at all and went with something a little more muted: For the Chosen Axes... early in their "Let's Chat" thread someone talked about maybe painting them to look like the Earthen from World of Warcraft (a sort of Golem-like precursor to the Dwarves in that game) and I liked the idea so much I decided to give it a try as I really didn't like their default look: I thought about putting some gold or other color on them but wound up committing to the gray/steel/blue look. I wasn't really happy with them until I got the "sapphire" runes and eyes done and that put it all together for me.