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Age of Sigmar, Battle Report, Fantasy, Fittsy, Games Workshop, Hobby Update, Kharadron Overlords, Order

Tale of One (Kharadron) Overlord – Part 2

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So… I’m back again with another update for my tale of four warlords style article, albeit with only one warlord and weirdly I’m doing it as we change editions at the moment making my life much harder than it needed to be. May was a really productive month for me, I had a real focus on painting (helped by cutting back on PC gaming and TV). I was also feeling a little pressure to get more of my models painted up knowing that June and July are going to be pretty busy at home.

You can see part 1 here if you’ve missed it or want to recap.

More screening bodies

First up was getting more Arkanauts finished for the Slow Grow for May. Nothing really new here… a lot of these ones I’d painted before for Warcry so they all had to be stripped so that I could do my new scheme. I also realised that when I’d done the previous month, I’d mixed the cutlasses and axes but now with this unit painted up, I can field 10 of each for easy unit identification on the battlefield (what I do for the next 10… no idea :D)

Their job is to die first but I still feel a bit sorry for them

The first big one!

I also pushed through these Arkanauts because I knew I wanted to get my Frigate done and get it on the table for 3rd edition. It was a lot of fun to tackle the Frigate. I had a few “what should I do” moments as I was painting, similar to the Gunhauler for where to use which colours but especially when it came to the windows. I scoured the internets for windows which were in a style that a) I liked, and b) that I though I could reproduce. In the end, I happened to see Bair from Goonhammer’s Frigate in their Spearhead Article and reached out to him for the scheme. I then did it a little differently (of course) and went with a dark metal underneath with Akhelian Green over the top and a layer of Ardcoat to give it that window shine.

Oh how I wish I’d done more subassemblies… Still painted every dial and knob!
I’m really happy with how this looks on the table!

Finishing off my Spearhead

Then it was onto the Admiral to complete my Spearhead (I’m still pissy at GW that actually I’m not finished because it’s not like the cover art but instead is 3 Skywardens with a volleygun). This also finished off my card for the GW campaign to help the settlement be founded and I got a fancy Coin Malleus too! It was nice to work in more gold colours I use for heroes and also to do up the crystals on the base. I have run into a bit of a problem here with my heroes as I had a planned basing scheme for them but they mostly come on sculpted bases which mean I can’t but slate rocks underneath them… I’m still trying to figure out how I’m going to deal with that in the future.

Why not one more unit for May?

At this point, I still had a week left of May and not much left prepped ready to paint so I went through my project box and pulled out my Thunderers. These were 2nd hand ones built with 3 special weapons so I’m short a fumigator unfortunately and still trying to figure out a good solution for that.

Getting in some gaming!

We kicked off the Path to Glory campaign at the start of May and I had my first two games against FEC and Cities, along with some nice cocktails for the kick off event!

Off to a flying start 😉

Over May, I got quite a few games in to sort of wind down with 3rd Edition. It was fun to focus on the narrative side of things and to build up the Kharadron Port around an old abandoned mine. A combination of winning my early games and some good luck with the dice meant that the Aetherdogs quickly built up a serious amount of Aethergold and started to work towards “repairing the damaged frigate” (adding Barracks and buying the Frigate for the army).

The gunhauler was a real winner at the small scale and survived some attacks it really shouldn’t have against Morbhegs, Aleguzzler, and Gorgers. The other strong unit was the ‘Riggers who did a lot of work (so long as they didn’t get attacked first). Playing around with different Artycles and Enhancements was nice, having Grudgebearer giving my Endrinmaster 6 damage against an enemy hero was nasty in Path to Glory but fun when it worked.

This is where the Frigate is flying to! (…and being destroyed in the next turn)

The first game I really lost hard was my last one… where both the Frigate and Gunhauler both went down (and everything else). This was the first time the Gunhauler went down in a match and it went down destroyed (which I accepted since I hadn’t rolled for my frigate yet).

All in all, KO felt a little oppressive in PtG and most of my matches easily went my way but was clear with the right counterattack that the KO would go down quickly too.

Building up to 4th Edition

In June, my plan is to do more thunderers if I can find a fumigator (please let me know if you have one spare 😉) work on a couple more heroes and either do some more ‘Riggers or probably more sensibly another boat. The hype is real and I can’t wait to get some games in with the new edition!

Check out the next episode here!

Age of Sigmar, Fantasy, Games Workshop, Hobby Update, Kharadron Overlords, Order

Tale of One (Kharadron) Overlord – Part 1

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So… we’re still waiting for 4th to kick off and most of the Age of Sigmar coverage is checking out faction focuses or being upset about individual warscroll changes (noone likes to see their favourite toys get worse). We’re still stuck in the phase that I’ve termed the “paint and wait”, where we can all throw some models on the table that aren’t needed for that next tournament but the ones we just feel like painting (ignoring the fact that a lot of people I know are just choosing to take a bit of a break)! Meanwhile… I thought I’d start off this series while I get going collecting and buidling up a Kharadron Overlords Army.

This article is a bit of a funny one… it started out with a heavy narrative slant, going through the army I was building up for a Path to Glory campaign but at the first PtG day, my phone decided it didn’t want to do anything except show me a black screen and with that I lost my momentum on the narrative coverage (narrative is probably the right way to play this game but that’s a discussion for another day).

Humble beginnings: My first test model

How’d I ended up starting this Kharadron Army

I’ve been a very heavily Nighthaunt focussed player for a long time… since the days of AoS 1.0. In the meantime, I’ve dabbled with Skaven (actually… just Skryre and as much as I love the army, they never brought me much joy although this wasn’t helped by trying to play only Skryre keyword units). I decided with 3rd winding down that I’d get a new army into the mix. Well, in fact, it’s an old Kharadron Overlords army which I’d bought just when I was finishing painting my first 2000 points of Nighthaunt… in the short time frame before the reveals for the new Nighthaunt models came out. I did at one point build together some 1500 points worth of the models but that went back in the boxes at some point.

Sometimes I even play Nighthaunt without 20 Hexwraiths 😛

I saw the Woehammer slow grow article (check out some of the early months here, here, and here) and this was the perfect place for me to jump in… shortly after that, my mate Janis, also kicked off organising a little Path to Glory campaign to close out 3rd edition. A more or less perfect combo for me to get going slowly on my Kharadron Overlords army… or so I’d thought.

As you can see from my Nighthaunt picture above… I wouldn’t call myself a good painter by any stretch but I enjoy working out a scheme I am happy with and going for that overall army look (or gang as with my Necromunda models). For my Kharadron Overlords, I’d previously done up a warband but hadn’t been happy at all with the overall effect. I found it too bright on the table and I absolutely hated trying to spray them silver (because it kept screwing up and layering on really thickly).

Getting started with some paint

So I did a couple of tests to see how I wanted to do the models on 3 models I bought for a couple of Euros way back and then tried to apply it to a Thunderer and an Arkanaut. In the end, I went with a heavy drybrush of a dark metal colour over a black undercoat with some dark blue and dark brown to keep the overall scheme dark. Then I used my coppers (and golds for heroes) to give it some more interesting points. The key part for me with the scheme is the aethermatic globes and effects to really draw the eye in and to make that the flashes of light within an otherwise dark army.

Even with the terrible lighting, you can see how I came back to this old scheme with a series of changes

The bases were really important here as I wanted to avoid anything which took away from that army effect so I decided to order some Mediterranean soil from Geek Gaming Scenics and some more tufts from Gamer’s Grass. I even decided to go for some flowers to help make my bases contrast against all the metals. Those differences in texture were important for me. You can see what I was trying for with the Endrinmaster the photo below.

February – the Beginning

So I started out in Feb innocently enough with a single hero, my Endrinmaster, who was to be my general for the Path to Glory army.

There is something satisfying about getting that 1st model in a new project done!

I tried a few new things for me (like drybrushing on the effect for the aethermatic hammer) and trying to work on details I might have ignored in the past like painting every single dial on every single KO (even when you can’t see them… I’m not sure why I do it then but it’s become a thing for me).

Fancy hammer… and a painted dial!

March – Getting into it

I needed a battleline for the Slow Grow so I got some Arkanauts out and got them ready, where I started trying to paint the scheme a little quicker than with my test models and the Endrinmaster.

It felt good to get a few more models on the table and see how the scheme worked across a squad of troops

The other reason was that I’d gotten a Gunhauler out and really wanted to try doing one of the ships (and my first vehicle ever)­. I suffered from some real uncertainty about halfway through… I even made changes to my orginal plan for how I wanted to paint it. What I did to push through was to paint up the parts I was sure I wanted in certain colours and then left it out for a couple of days where I could look at it a bunch until I could decide where else I should paint my dark blues and copper tones.

My self made light box was to small to fit the gunhauler in and I’ve got to learn to use more subassemblies to keep painting those dials!

I actually really had some fun getting it done and I started to turn my eyes to the frigate but I knew I needed to do some ‘Riggers first so that I could play in the Path to Glory Campaign with something sensible-ish.

April – Starting to look like an army (albeit a small one)

April saw me finishing off my unit of 6 ‘Riggers for the Slow Grow where I needed a scout type unit too.

I have a soft spot for any units which are Engineers! I will definitely do more ‘Riggers

Plus a Navigator… I didn’t like that curved beard on the original model so I snipped it off and made my own respirator type thing in its place. It was also a chance to make another female Kharadron of which I have a few scattered through my units where I snipped off the beards and I’m going to do more of these as I go along. It’s not always easy to do with some of the heads but I dislike having too many beards in my KO army anyway.

I couldn’t decide how to finish the lenses on the stick but I’ve later gone back and done them up “properly” as in not just black… I’ll post pics again in May’s article if I remember. The dials all ended up looking a bit too blue… I might go back in and repaint that one in the top left… but we’ll see how much it bothers me 😉

Of course… I did a bit of a “family photo” of my Path to Glory Kharadron before our first games!

My small Kharadron force ready to go out and earn themselves some Aethergold!

The end of Part 1

So I know it’s now June and this article mysteriously ends in April but I was super late with getting this finished and it’s already pretty wordy. Maybe if I didn’t head off on tangents and ramble on about bits and pieces it would’ve been shorter but that’s not what you’ll get from me!

With the tournaments winding down and not much gaming happening in general, it’s been a great time to just paint what I want and that’s what I’ll keep doing (at least until 4th drops and I start focussing on the units I need to fill out 2000 pt lists). I am working on doing better photos (these ones are already vastly better than my old photos) and that’s slowly becoming a part of my hobbying too. May was also a pretty big month for my with the KO with games, painting, more painting, faction focus reveal and a bit more painting so I’ll be back to fill you all in on my progress again soon!

Go and check out Part 2 here if you’re keen for more!

Fantasy, Games Workshop, Gamesplanet, Reviews, Total War: Warhammer

Total War Warhammer Thrones of Decay – Malakai starting guide and review

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Don’t want to read my thoughts about the new DLC and the Malakai campaign and you want to make your own instead? Go purchase a copy of Warhammer Total War 3 Thrones of Decay using our affiliate link and save 10%!

Big thanks to Gamesplanet for providing the copy of the expansion for this review!

If you’re not sure whether you want to try out Total War Warhammer 3 in general, check out my review of the game here.

Thrones of Decay… it’s Malakai time!

So I’m back again in the Realms of Chaos (the smaller campaign that is a part of Total War Warhammer 3)… with Malakai of course. I’m always keen on a faction which leans into war machines and especially so when they get buffed and modded as you progress (I may have some sort of bias being an engineer). I don’t really know his story or any of that (I don’t even know much of Gotrek and Felix’s) but as a character and a faction, it really spoke to me!

It’s got a nice overlap with my Kharadron Overlords from Age of Sigmar which I’ve been getting into painting this year and hope to bring them to the battlefield more soon. Malakai’s army is probably the closest thing to Age fo Sigmar’s Kharadron Overlords that we’ll ever see in Total War. It’s unfortunately got a bad overlap with taking away from my painting time but you win some you lose some (which is also my motto for Total War :D). I do get out the paints sometimes when I start to load a battle and do a colour before jumping back into the game itself .

The start of my new Kharadron Overlords army

First Impressions

Oh that Airship! It is magnificent! Buffs on the map, smashes face on the battlefield, and gets you across mountains and pesky rivers too. The only downside to it is forgetting to use it… quite a lot in my case at least. I didn’t realise until a fair few turns in that I could use it in a similar way to the Underway. Upgrade it as soon as possible, it just gets better and better!

I’ve played a few campaigns as dwarves… oh how I forget that you can’t chase anything down with the army. Although adding more Gyrocopters to my army is helping out there a lot for flexibility.

It’s a nice faction for roleplay in terms of decision making from army compositions, hero skill selections, and dwarves who quickly get pissed off when you aren’t resolving grudges. I’m certainly having fun with them and this feels really different to my other dwarf campaigns in the Old World of Total War Warhammer 1.

Fitts’ guide to the first few turns with Malakai

The first thing I noticed was I didn’t know where I should go at the start… apart from focussing on the aggressive neighbour and quickly taking them out which should be your first job.

Build a few more melee units to hold the line in the first turn and then knock off that first army in the second turn. Then start taking the settlements before they can recover.

Malakai’s starting position on the world map

I was already unsure where to then start expanding. I’m going to cover a whole bunch of mistakes or decisions I regretted and my first one was early and entirely my own fault. When it gives you all the information about Malakai’s adventures… select one. Don’t get distracted by whatever you were doing before that. It’ll save you some potential backtracking later.

Once you’ve activated the mission (and although I initally thought I’d made an error selecting the cannons one first, I think it’s the right choice), then start collecting those tasty bonuses to your unit. By the way, watch out for Grapeshot, you will destroy your own troops if they are blocking the cannons! It feels awesomely powerful though for an early artillery unit once it gets those buffs.

If you’re going for a good game instead of a narrative one, you want to attack and take that last settlement for the region directly south of your starting one which is held by a little Kislev nation… I didn’t and I’m now stuck with that one piece missing in my puzzle. I then headed up towards the coast to take my next region with an eye on being able to move northwards towards the Chaos forces across the river.

And a few one more turns later…

At this point, I realised I’d made the error not to build any oathgold generating buildings and that the other gold generating one locked me out of being able to build it in those settlements. This probably slowed me down a few turns effectively. It’s also when I wanted to build up a second army so it felt quite frustrating!

Malakai crossed the river after knocking off a few more pesky high elves and made a beeline for the old Dwarf Hold which was held by Nurgle forces… he quickly took this while failing to settle enough grudges again and the dwarves back home being all grumpy about it which was about to become a recurring theme at least for a while.

Gotrek and Felix fixing a hydra problem for Malakai

While he was over there knocking off chaos forces, I quickly did one of the Teleport Missions which had popped up and happily and easily walked off with the prize. This is where I started to see the real value of Gotrek and Felix in battles, they’re both really handy combat heroes and they help to plug gaps and deal with “big” problems really quickly.

Just when things were starting to consolidate here, another Nurgle faction, a Khorne faction, and a Chaos Undivided faction all decided that I was looking tasty. Quickly losing a settlement that was part of my starting region, Malakai needed to beat a hasty retreat and leave my newly gained territories. Here I starts to see a shift in the grudges as when they attack you those potential grudge points start to rack up very very quickly!

Here I had one of those nice Total War moments… Nurgle caused a rebellion which quickly took the territory which it had spawned in. Now, I didn’t really like that narratively, so I rewrote it for myself that they were the embattled remnants who have broken away after I abandoned them in their time of need. Allowing me to make a new friend deep in Nurgle territory who will hopefully cause them some issues and slow them down.

Malakai made it back to the capitol in time to face down both Skarbrand and the Daemon Prince who had dared to take one of my territories. This is where Malakai and his army really shone, taking down both decent armies without too much trouble (nothing 2 turns of healing wouldn’t deal with). Gotrek and Felix again really pulling their wreight… but the real stars were the 4 buffed cannons which have started to really chew through the daemons.

Skarbrand was taking a bite out of Felix’s health bar but Gotrek decided to change that

How does Malakai’s faction feel?

Weird actually… but not in a bad way. It’s pushed me in a direction I would not have considered before with the dwarves. It ends up being a really interesting mix for Malakai’s army (where all my focus is). I’ve settled on 4 x Misc Slayers 4 x Pirate Slayers to hold the line , 4 x Gyrocopters, 4 x Cannons, Malakai, Gotrek and Felix, Engineer for now which gives me a really solid castle whilst also being able to harry and distract the enemy with the Gyrocopters.

The grudge system feels much better and I actually like my surly dwarves being effectively my biggest enemy. I also start to feel like I understand the decline in power of the dwarven nations. I do see it changing in my campaign. Losing against some armies rapidly changes how many of those grudge points are there for the taking and that feel right. Also, it gives a bit of a power balance to the faction… when you’re doing well, being unable to fulfil the grudges will slow things down whereas when surrounded on all fronts by enemies there are a lot of bonuses to be gained. I will be focussing my next efforts against those who have the most grudges now and I expect with the forces of Chaos knocking on my door there will be plenty more to be gained.

Having bought most of the upgrades for the airship now has turned it into a real monster on the battlefield. The fact that it can drop in anywhere makes it key for turning around difficult fights! It’s also really fun to use in battle. It feels slow but dominating… perfect for a dwarf!

The review part of the review

Something, something, shouldn’t there be some more traditional review points in this article? Ok, here’s one to finish on:

Is Thrones of Decay value for money? I’d say yes! It’s bringing a new style of campaign to the Total War Warhammer 3 map and it’s been worth it’s money already!

Go justify me writing reviews of this expansion and buy Thrones of Decay for Warhammer Total War 3 using our affiliate link and save 10%!

Do you think I’ve missed some points or there’s some really terrible decisions I’m making? Drop me a comment!

Fantasy, Games Workshop, Gamesplanet, Reviews, Total War: Warhammer

Should you give Total War Warhammer 3 a go? Fitts’ completely biased review

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Are you waiting for AoS 4.0 but still want to crash armies against each other? Either grab yourself a copy of Total War Warhammer 3 and jump in or read on and I’ll try to convince you that it’s worth a whirl!

If you do want to give it a whirl, why not purchase a copy of Warhammer Total War 3 using our affiliate link?

Why I play Total War Warhammer games

Total War Warhammer is my guilty pleasure game and one of the hardest to say game titles I’ve ever played. I’ve been jumping in and out of it since the 1st one dropped and I’ve started to lose count of all the campaigns I’ve played, Khemri, Dwarves, Empire, Undead, Lizardmen, Vampire Coast, Skryre (because they are definitely the best clan, so says my 2000 pt pure Skryre AoS army), more Khemri, more Vampire Coast, more Dwarves, and a little bit more Khemri. Playing the campaigns multiplayer has been one of the highlights (shoutout to my mate Samwise who is much better at the game than I am).

Look at all my cute little diabolical ratties!

Looking at the list of the factions I tend to take is also one of the reasons why I come recommending TWWH3, the games bring me a nostalgia hit which I don’t get from any other games (don’t tell Games Workshop but when I thought I was going to start with the Old World minis… I just loaded TWWH3 again instead). Playing on the computer with those armies and those units which I looked at hungrily in the White Dwarfs of old is one of the draw cards. As with each game and DLC before, it expands on the roster available and with some real treats this time around. All the chaos gods are finally represented along with Ogors and a couple of new factions.

  Oh how I wish I’d owned some of these models

Getting started with TWWH3

I went into it thinking I would be starting up a Slaanesh campaign… and I started the tutorial then thinking that Kislev would be an interesting option too. Kislev is a really interesting faction being built upon a few of the units from Empire of old and some of the lore but then really pushing it out into a fleshed out faction that feels like it has always existed that way in the Warhammer universe.

When I came to start up a new campaign though, I found myself drawn to the Jade Empire, Grand Cathay. I hadn’t expected that from the previews but looking at some of the units available and the starting map, I could see a faction that really vibed with how I like to play my armies and campaigns in Total War Warhammer.

The start of Miao Ying’s victorious campaign

That was a lot of waffle to start but I wanted to make sure I covered some of that reflection from the tabletop gamers’ side of things. I’ll keep rambling on and give you some of my experience getting into the meat of the campaign (the good and the bad)….

Finding an army that fits to you makes the game much more enjoyable

Cathay is army that really lends into building up combinations of units that allowed me to adapt tactics and to focus certain armies towards different builds. I loved the look and the feel of Cathay (which to me is probably the most important thing when it comes to an army on the tabletop or in a Total War game). Trying to reflect a little, I had been a bit dubious that this would feel like a Warhammer army within TWWH3… but the inclusion of the massive constructs and a general who can turn into a dragon when you want helped prop that end up.

I remember the days when lizardmen and Lustria were coming into the Old World, Cathay riffs on a different vibe of being a land on the edge of the world… something that has always been there and interacted with the Old World but is also apart and has its own strong identity. The campaign with Cathay was also a blast… although I didn’t feel like the story was woven deeply enough into the campaign mechanics and I would really like to know more about that story. Mechanically, it took me a while to get to grips with the Ying-Yang mechanic but once I had it figured out, it was easily controlled by recruiting the correct heroes. The combination of the mechanics and feel of Cathay was a hit for me.

The unit diversity in this picture will make Kharadron and Fyreslayers players jealous!

The stuff I didn’t really like

This is where I want to get down into the “bad” part of TWWH3, the campaign mechanics can be a bit annoying, in the sense that it forces you to start tending your lands to stop the daemonic incursions in a way which feels more like housework than enjoying a wargame. The fact that these mechanics and the camapign end goals are effectively the same across all of the starter factions was also a real bummer. After being treated to varied and interesting campaign goals across the other games and DLCs this was a real let down.

I finished up my Cathay adventure (or so I’d thought) and I more or less immediately went back to the new campaign screen to try and choose my next faction (maybe Slaanesh). However because of the lack of variety in the campaign I just didn’t feel it and in the end didn’t start a new one. You know what? I think that’s a real shame, it feels like a lot of love and development work went into that map and I hope with the future expansions we’ll be given reasons to go back to it (I still need to do a Kislev campaign… those bears and beards look great).

Getting on with it…

Well, that didn’t last long and later that day I was booting it up to jump into Immortal Empires instead and for the first time ever I jumped back in with the same faction I’d just played (and won with) and got stuck into a grand campaign with Cathay. For TWWH3, Immortal Empires is really where its at, there are a series of quality of life improvements in regards to victory conditions making it feel a bit more like I had some concrete goals and could happily finish a campaign with a Long Victory instead of feeling like I needed to grind and grind to get towards a final victory. I don’t know how they did it but I’ve felt much happier jumping into Immortal Empires in TWWH3 than with the earlier games.

The valiant army of Cathay stand fast against a Tzeentch assault (and the dragon gets covered in blood and daemon juice)

I’ve gotta start wrapping up this review so I can’t get into too many details but I’ve had fun popping in and out of TWWH3. I’ve played a bit of Ogres and lot of Chaos Dwarves since (I won’t get into Chaos Dwarves in detail yet but if you like their vibe, the DLC is worth it at full price. I actually mean that. It is a vastly different faction with in-depth mechanics that feel like they work and the campaign is *chef’s kiss*. Also, hobgoblins and evil dwarves in big hats, and bull centaurs)

How does it play?

Oh, you came here for an actual review and managed to read through all those long sentences up above! The game runs pretty nicely on my 6 year old computer (don’t ask me for the specs). The performance actually felt better than in the earlier entries, I didn’t feel like I was waiting overly long for the transitions from campaign map to battlefield (as has been a problem before for me). The graphics weren’t glitchy (as I’ve also had a problem with) and this really helped keep me immersed.

The small campaign map felt “personal” I really started to form a rivalry with my fellow Cathay empire below me and the threat of chaos trying to break through and wreak havoc felt right. Later on in the campaign, I started to really want to get to grips with the slippery Tzeentch forces.

Immortal Empires gave me this too but on the grander scale that comes with it. When you get into these bigger longer campaigns, in this iteration (and the earlier entries), I really find myself going after personal goals rather than the ones imposed by the game but I never felt I was being penalised or pushed towards doing it differently.

I haven’t tried out the Multiplayer with TWWH3 but have had a blast in earlier versions. Now it’s upgraded to let you play a campaign with up to 8 players and they even made two special campaigns focussed on multiplayer. I’ve heard though that stability is an issue and you’ll want to check out dedicated server options if you want to go down that road.

Time to settle some grudges… with a war zeppelin!

Onwards and upwards

It’s been a while since my last foray into the “Old World” of Warhammer and I’m getting that itch again. My sincerest condolences to Slaanesh though, you’re going to have to wait a bit longer. Next campaign, I’ll be jumping into Thrones of Decay… Dwarven Engineer with a deathwish, pirate slayers, a war zeppelin… I’ll be back soon with a review of the DLC from the perspective of Malakai!

Purchase the DLC on GamesPlanet with the affiliate link