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I am excited by the prospect of Archaon perhaps finally being worth his points (Give dorghar rend & better damage 2k19) and getting fun new ways to beat people over the head with varanguard spears Hopefully there'll be some really fun support spells and buffs for the wizards and shrine so that I can really gear up my everchosen elite into true heavy hitters!

Yeah that's kinda the plan. I'm definitely not wanting to just throw them away and I may end up swapping the crawler for a second harvester but it's just trying to fit things in for points... Not being able to get the stalkers as battleline certainly hurts a bit in that regard as I'd rather not have 3 units of guard. Will consider some cavalry though as they could be good besides just kersploding. If I go for two harvesters I'd want 2 units so I wasn't just pinning everything on one unit as I find that is a risky proposition (many a time I've had my key units get stuck somewhere). I'll mostly have to decide on whether I want to build around the 5+ boom for crematorium or build without it in mind and see it as a bit more of a little bonus. As depending on how much you go for exploding attrition really changes how your list will look.

So using a bit of the explosive recycling list on Warhammer community as inspiration I'm looking at my own Crematorium list So presenting the lightbox initial draft of Mister Arkhan's Wild Ride: Arkhan - 360 Liege Kavalos - 200 - General Bone shaper - 130 20x Mortek Guard (Swords) - 260 - BL 20x Mortek Guard (Swords) - 260 - BL 10x Mortek Guard (Swords) - 130 - BL 3x Necropolis Stalkers - 200 Gothizzar Harvester - 200 Mortek Crawler - 200 Emerald lifeswarm - 50 Points: 1990/2000 So my ideas were arkhan and the bone shaper provide some nice resurrection though the shaper does have that nasty 6" range limit which could be hard to work around but he should be able to keep up with the guard. Arkhan also obviously provides some nice spellcasting and unbinding. The emerald lifeswarm also adds to the theme of recycling my guard for splosions and just generally war of attritioning my enemies out though it can be a bit double edged due to enemy being able to use it too but I should still be outressurecting them with all my healing put together. The guard I put in units of 20 partly to save points for other fun things (I don't want a pure guard list) and whilst I could have 1 unit of 30 and 2 units of 10 instead I don't like the idea of putting all my eggs in one unit basket (though I'm open to suggestions of why it might be a better idea. The Kavalos has his command ability for the nice +1 attack and he's not bad in combat (if a bit expensive) but he does add some useful mobility to the force too. The stalkers are a bit of a unit I can let run off and do their own thing as they won't need all the resurrection support though only 3 of them could be a bit too few but they are also gorgeous models I want to use. The Gothizzar gives some more resurrection potential and a smashy monster (though the 3" range could be a pain but he does at least allow for recycling from enemy units too). The crawler is another really cool model and provides the list some ranged support and hopefully the potential to shoot some backline targets if my guard struggle pushing through lines. I think the list provides some decent numbers whilst also having a few different options of punchy units and even if exploding doesn't do too much having the recycling to give me more staying power could be pretty nice. I'm very much open to (and looking for) C&C on this list and what might work better for crematorium in general.

So I'm definitely torn on what subfaction I want to play but leaning toward crematoriam because I like the sounds of their lore (slowly becoming aware they're throwaways) and exploding on death sounds super fun. I quite like the idea of the list on Warhammer community with lots of guard running around blowing up and getting healed but as stated that may be hard to pull off (and I don't like running massive units...) As I play more casual I'll probably very much just get what I wanna build/paint and see how it goes. Whilst I love the look of the spears the swords will probably be a better choice so I'm thinking I may very well just replace the sword blades with the spear tips which could look pretty swell. I'm also gonna look at back banners to add to the samurai esque theme they kinda have going on, will possibly do the masking tape and brass rod method since they seem difficult/expensive to buy (and would be hard to find in the correct scale) I also may paint their faces like masks as opposed to being skull faces to get a bit of a mempo theme. Colour wise I'm considering the idea of the contrast with black drybrush over mentioned in the stormcast podcast for the flambe fellas but instead of yellows and oranges I might try blue, purple or green so it's less explody fire and more spirit energy so they can potentially be a different subfactions. I can also totally see that working well with a metallic drybrush instead of black for chamon. It may be finally time to go and buy arkhan since the ressing and spells could be quite useful.

I got Hammerhal which I suppose fits with the blue heavy grey warden colour scheme I planned. Plus a demigryph battalion sounds nice.

Cheers buddy! I think all my conversions are what helped me win favourite army and yeah i'm super happy with his tricorn. And with the fact I reposed his arms so he doesn't look so weird.

Me and @Azamar recently played a doubles tournament with both our kharadron forces. Which means I finally have 1000 points painted up I have to say what I learnt from it was that brokk is a beast and having an admiral alongside him meant things got wrecked in melee! I think some next steps for my army are adding skywardens with guns or some endrinriggers for some mobile objective grabbers / more firepower. And of course a third unit of arkanauts. Pics of the army I took during my game on Wednesday can be seen here:

Recently I took my Kharadrons to a doubles tournament in run by the @Hampshire Hammerers in Winchester with @Azamar and as such I had to get my 1000 points painted beforehand! It's my first force I've actually got painted and I'm really happy with it It's been super nice to play with fully painted models too!! We ended up coming third out of four teams which meant we lost out on the coveted engraved wooden spoons (Boo) but I managed to win favourite/best painted army! Which I'm quite pleased with. My opponent on Wednesdays club game (where I took these photos) also let me take some nice shots of my units vs his painted ones. So enjoy! Now to just do my board for armies on parade!!

@Double Misfire put together a list of ideas on his blog for how to convert or proxy models which do include ideas for bretonnia: https://doublemisfire.blogspot.com/2019/09/no-substitute-discontinued-units-in.html Could be helpful.

If points stay more or less the same then it's pretty easy to fit 4 rocket batteries and a steamtank in a 2000 point list... that'll be fun. I definitely plan to get a couple of rockets at least regardless of city just for that long ranged fire support. I'm also definitely looking forward to seeing which cities/heroes open up each battleline option

Boy I am excited about free cities getting a book, from the start of AoS I've loved the idea of humans, aelves and duardin all working under the same banner and even wanted to do a dragon age grey warden colour scheme for them too! (Plus griffons fit that). Having gained a newfound love for shooting as well as melee due to playing a lot of Kharadron recently I have decided to finally build up my dark riders and outriders, hopefully adding some mobile shooting should be fun and I'm excited to see how/if they're both improved in the battletome. One of my favourite things about outriders are the gunblade swords, it's a shame the little pistol attachment doesn't really have rules though. My plans going forward are to get myself some greatswords and possibly another steamtank or see if one of the monsters will be good come the battletome. However since I'll most likely pick greywater fastness I can see steam tanks doing well... I'll also need to pick up some rocket batteries to throw fire and thunder at my enemies from afar! Hopefully weather will permit me to start spraying models soon and I'll be able to start painting them.

I'm considering sticking with the bone theme but a nice deep red for the armour/shields and possibly for the faces as well or maybe silver for the faces. But I am super excited about walking chair priest/priestess though I would like to see more melee smashy smash heroes.

After an evening of being unsure how to proceed and then just saying '****** it I'll work it out as I go' I finished my conversion of Brokk (well i may add more shadowy tendrils but probably not) I repositioned his arms, gave him a tricorn (because -all- of my shadow pirate heroes need tricorns) and gave him a nice shadow doppleganger friend just like my admiral (since I'm probably no longer gonna always want to go dopple cloak on my admiral giving all my heroes dopples makes it more of a ulgu theme thing than a relic thing) and his little minion holds his cannon because I felt it looked a bit too busy beneath the balloon (everything on brokk is so compacted into a small space, especially with his original pose). I'm looking forward to painting him up soon too

So recently I finally finished the energy arcing for the realm gate on my ironclad! I'm incredibly happy with how it looks. I also redid the skin, hair and shadow doppleganger on my admiral and I'm much happier with the results! I just need to finish the base on her (also the pics don't really do the model justice I think, it looks better in person)

Whilst they will look amazing with skeleton horde there is part of me tempted to paint them up like the necromongers from Riddick... if only because my dad reminded me of this:

#AOSShowerThoughts Also back onto topic of the models I find it a little visually odd how the catapault has such a massive frame but looks to be hurling some small skulls instead of something like a giant flaming bone skull... Though the idea of these things following behind the front lines and yeeting skulls at enemies is quite amusing. Even more so if you imagine a legion of skeletons behind them just handing the crew their heads to fire. I really really adore the cavalry featured though. I hope they have good rules, and I'm also hoping this army does become an elite one ala stormcast. We have enough horde in death as it is!

Boss fights vs chimera's sound like a great twist to throw into campaigns And mercenaries will be interesting, lots of potential conversion fun there to match them to your warband!

Had my first two games with the cypher lords yesterday and ooh lordy were they fun! First game was basically capture table quarters and my opponent was Iron Golems. It started pretty intensely with us both launching people into each other to try and take out models. I managed to eradicate his ogre using our quad ability on my leader (the amount of attacks we get makes crit fishing great) and in round 2 I managed to get ahead in scores by clever use of shadowy recall. I then managed to start whittling down his forces enough with crits and using my mobility to stop him being able to bring the game back on turn 3. Second game vs same opponent but he swapped to his flesh eater courts. It was the scenario where you earn points by being on top of terrain, his army was smaller (2 flayers, 1 horror, 1 crypt infernal, 1 ghoul) but he had a lot of potential to eat my larger force up and make me lose my model advantage because cypher lords are kinda squish. Suffice to say his bad luck combined with my obscene amount of crits that game... (my luminate managed to do 37 points of damage to his crypt infernal in one activation [2 attacks with onslaught]) Unfortunately for him he struggled to kill off my models whilst I kinda somehow mulched his big beasties. I'm looking forward to get more use out of them as I'm really enjoying their playstyle and with my fickle luck having lots of attacks is helpful for me (I did get a couple of attack activations with no wounds on 5 or 6 dice) shadowy recall also is really nice to have in ones back pocket for objective manoeuvring.

Go on now go, bleed on the floor Just pay your tithe now, Else you won't be living anymore

EDIT: Whoops joke too slow and messed up my edit by posting extra instead

Man these look super cool, and being bone constructs perfect for conversions! I'll probably have to get at least a few!

As well as branding you could also look at putting collars or just chain around their necks with a little bit draping down like a leash to show that they've been taken and subjugated by your warband as opposed to roaming free etc. Also something like runes on parts of the skin or wings to basically be like magical symbols that bind the fury under the command of your leader etc. Also another way to capture the enslaved thrall beast feel would be using blood for the blood god or other paints to make little wounds or bruises on the model to show where its been beaten into submission etc. Stuff like that all kinda helps reflect the brutality of chaos whereas the brands and runes show a more refined way of taking control etc.

Great dive into cypher lords! May have to pick some of them up now as they sound fun. Looking forward to seeing more

I'm still building mine up (doing greenstuff rollers on my bases so will have to paint everything separately before putting them on bases) but I'm really keen to start hearing how people do. Looking at the cards they seem pretty squishy but I'm expecting a lot of their strengths is going to come from their abilities and getting extra attacks. Would be good to see how they do on boards without much levelled terrain as well just to see if that hampers them too much.

Would have some interest. Free cities are such a great army for sharing conversions too since with their lore they could look like anything!