Fjord Serpents - Karvi

   As a general rule I'm avoiding buying games on Kickstarter* as for the price a lot of them go for makes buying them blind and without knowing it is definitely being posted to you just seems too big a risk. However, when I saw the Fjord Serpents game on Kickstarter a few years back, I was in before I'd even thought about it. This became one of those Kickstarters that I was fairly sure wasn't going to deliver once the manufacturer they had lined up couldn't meant the quality they wanted for the price and they had to start looking elsewhere. I'm fairly sure the ships and figures were supposed to be plastic with resin hulls but I might be wrong, while what we got were resin hulls with 3d printed parts and crew.

*which means I've missed some amazing games that then haven't gone to retail

   For me the Dark Ages, or Early Medieval period as it should now be called, is just the most fascinating part of history and something I am always drawn back to, and a Viking longship game just had to be bought.

   Then when the backer kit came out and the rules were made a bit more open, it became fairly obvious that a "standard" game would be about 3 to 4 ships, I looked to add another pair so I can have two fleets of 3, before realising that those two ships cost more than just buying a second starter set - with the only loss by doing this of not having a the varied prows that come in the single ship sets.

   It's the crew that have completely blown my mind. As the warfare is basically land warfare but on water, with the crew doing the fighting in shieldwalls and not the ships (like in Napoleonic naval warfare for example), I knew I'd be painting some, but each box comes with 322 figures (on stands of 3-4), this might take some time. I've decided to give the crew more of a gist of a paint job rather than spending loads of time, I've based in brown, highlighted in brown then done quick layers in a limited palette with the idea being they look about right as long as you don't look too closely. This is going to be a long project.

   This test ship is a Karvi, the smallest war ship in the game, which has 32 crew. I've gone for the plain red sail you see in a lot of art online, but I plan to vary sails in the future.

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The August Lion Patrol

   In the effort to finish a project, any project, I spent a few days making sure the last of my August Lion combat patrol was finished. I only had the terminator squad and the terminator librarian picked up from the magazine to do. I painted these vaguely the same as the rest of the force, with the librarian being blue as much for that being their codex colour as well as copying the Lego wizard he is supposed to be based on.

   The terminators should have white helmets to show they are veterans, however, I though the white would break the 50/50 split too much, so I decided to go with a black helmet to show their status, partly as it didn't add another colour and partly because the knight that came in this faction of Lego castle had a black helmet.

   The Librarian was slightly converted to make him a big more interesting, the joy of doing a lot of Grey Knight terminators at the moment is I have a lot of terminator sized interesting pieces. He got a weapon swap as it's a big part of the silhouette and a top ornament change.

There is every risk I will add the Dark Angel combat patrol to this project in time, but I'm not going to do it right now.

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The Lion

   Considering how much Horus Heresy I played a few years back and how many figures I painted for that project, I have never painted up a Primarch, despite definitely needing one for a few of the games I have played. I've always kind of felt that the price tag for the resin ones required a better paint job than I could happily do, so I've never attempted it*.

   However, with plastic Primarchs coming out for 40k, it was always just going to end up being when rather than if.

*plus they always feel like they should be displayed somewhere rather than stored in boxes and that's something I also don't have

   The three chaos Primarchs so far didn't suit my chaos armies, so they were out**, then there were the loyalists. Guilliman being the regent of the Imperium, just didn't feel like someone who should be on the battlefield and character wise I just don't see him going anywhere without his chapter, which I don't have and don't plan to do. The Lion, though, is much more of a loner, and I can see him just joining any of his descendants to do a job***, so as I have a combat patrol of Dark Angel successors, I asked for one for Christmas as a project.

**the newly shown off 4th one also doesn't fit

***although I just can't seen the Dark Angels letting him out of their sight without a unit of bodyguards of their own which I do plan to buy and do at some point

All in all I'm pretty pleased with the model. I've spent a bit more time on him than I would a normal model and I think it shows. It's also given me a bit more confidence doing these more expensive character models and now there are a bunch of new Phoenix Lords on preorder . . .

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Grimbold, Marshall of the Mark

   A bit of a just painting stuff that is near my desk for this post. I can't remember if I bought these models as Made to Order or if it was regular purchase, but they are a blister pack I always meant to buy. Then they went into my backlog to mature.

   I'm in that mood at the start of the year where I have multiple projects that I keep deciding are the MOST IMPORTANT EVER, but then by the time where I actually think I can fit some painting in, either my mind has changed or I'm struggling to focus on doing anything, so if I can just paint something, that has to be a win.

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The Horror Of Burning Things

   One of the projects that is staying towards the top of my list for this year are my Tzeentch Daemons. As mentioned before, this wasn't really a project I meant to start, but now I have, I would like to get them to about 1250 points which is a pretty good sized game, then if the army wants to expand in the future it can.

   I need to sort my Pink Horrors out as they form the backbone of the force, but there are other units that need to get moving, one of which are the Flamers of Tzeentch. 

   As part of the gift box of daemons my brothers bought me came a box of Flamers, however, at the very least I either wanted a unit of 6 or the ability to run two minimum units, so I bulked them up with another box along with a HQ Exalted Flamer to lead them, as why not by that point. It just made sense to do this unit all in one go instead of doing bits at a time.

   This is a unit I wasn't really sure how to paint, I had half a plan of making them a mix of all 3 types of horror but in the end I went for a different blue base and then varied the tone across them with drybrushes and washes.

   Part of me wonders if I should have painted the flames as magical flames rather than just fire - ghost like green maybe? - but ultimately I used real fire colours elsewhere so I stuck with that across the army so far. Maybe if I do another unit I can vary then, but it might look even weirder by that point.

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Nemesis Dreadknight Alessio

   Another model that came in the combat patrol is the Nemesis Dreadknight - or Baby Carrier as it is sometimes known. This is quite a divisive model in the Warhammer's current range, just because as a concept it sounds so good - a massive exo-suit that Grey Knight Terminators put on when even a Terminator suit won't cut it - but in practise it looks like something a new parent buys.

   In the novel Angron, a handful of Grey Knights go to banish the newly reborn daemon primarch and put on these suits to be able to do it, and it's one hell of a cool scene but model wise it can be hard to defend at times.

   On the other hand, I am thinking that if this army does continue to grow I would like at least a pair of these to be able to go toe to toe with Greater Daemons. This one is worn by the last member of Squad Alessio.

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Scenery Project 1 - Back to the desert

   Back in 2016 my regular gaming mate was massively into modern warfare, so as we gave each others interests a chance and tried to play a mix of games, this meant I got into wargaming the war in Afghanistan.

   He was a massive army nut who always meant to join up, so it was obvious which side he was going to play, when left me to take the Afghans/Taliban and also the scenery (as scenery is the bit of the hobby that is probably my favourite aspect). We played Sangim Skirmish, which due to this period in my gaming life, is still one of my most played rulesets, despite it being a set that I think relies too much on multiple tables to be really enjoyable. One of my biggest regrets was when he moved clubs and we saw each other less and less, was selling all my stuff for that game to him*.

*wasn't worried about the figures but I was pleased with the board.

   The bulk of the scenery that I sold was from Tinned-Fruit and I was incredibly pleased with it, but the rest was home made in some form or another, mostly with a MDF structure at the core.

   With last year's aim that we would be playing games in the desert** I had it in the back of my mind that I would need to work on rebuilding that board, but other stuff kept getting in the way. Saying that, I do have a Crusades collection, WW2 desert war army and our next 40k campaign will be on a desert world, so there is a lot of usage that will come from sorting this out.

**that went well

   I already had some desert scenery from 2020 when the enforced lack of gaming meant my heresy group started planning a big come back campaign based on the desert world of Prospero. I plan to use this post to go over the bits already done, so that the next two months, I can post stuff as it is finished.

   The Dyeing Mill was from a German company called More-Terrain.de and was just so different I had to pick it up. I'm really tempted to give this a repaint to match my other buildings but I'm worried I'll ruin it in the process.

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Squad Polo

    While waiting for the combat patrol to arrive I had a bright idea and bought myself a second terminator squad. Then because I was doing two of the same squad at the same time I gave them matching names and opposite heraldry.

   Reading the before mentioned Emperor's Gift novel there is a battle scene where just over a 100 Grey Knights all descend onto a planet to attack a daemon army*, every marine of which is in terminator armour - this is a scene I'd love to replay one day** but I can do on a small scale if I have a handful of terminator squads.

*minor spoilers

**very much doubt I will

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Squad Marco

   The next unit is some Terminators for my Grey Knights. These are another unit that came in the combat patrol, is they are built to that rule sets specifications. I quite enjoyed this kit as it's just so different from any other terminators that GW will sell you.

   I didn't go nuts on the goldwork and left a lot of details as carved areas of their armour just to give characters and their elite terminator unit somewhere to go in the future.

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Squad Romeo

    A project I painted towards the end of 2024 that never made it onto the blog were my Grey Knights;

   Over the summer I reread The Emperor's Gift for the umpteenth time, it's a book that always makes me tempted to do a Grey Knight army but I'm normally pretty good at avoiding that fate. However, with Combat Patrol being a thing and it being easier to organise those small games, I could do an army of just 11 models, scratch that itch, actually use them and happily move on.

   So I received the combat Patrol for my birthday and got on with it*. This is the regular power armour squad - Squad Romeo. If this army ever expands much beyond the few bits I have picked up it is unlikely to be more power armour guys as I heavily expect Grey Knights to get the new marines in time, which would replace these.

*then didn't post anything

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