The 9th Age

After Age of Sigmar killed the Warhammer Fantasy universe I kind of lost my love for the warhammer fantasy setting; compounded by a significant increase in work commitments I stopped most of my hobbying. Having only recently discovered the significant and impressive work and community that now exists for The 9th Age fantasy battle i'm more invigorated and determined to get back into the hobby then ever. As part of a motivating aspect I'm looking to restart the blog focusing on varied aspects of 9th age. Assembling my Dwarven Holds, Warriors of the Dark Gods and Vampire Covenant armies.

Part of the interesting (though not entirely good) aspect of the current status quo is how much lore/fluff exists for certain armies. Given the amount of time it takes to put out the very high quality books they've done so far, there is only a trickle of information to potentially theme ones armies around. Having recently listen to an older episode of Ammertime podcast  (https://soundcloud.com/ammertime-podcast), I found myself entirely in agreement with regards to a strong desire for more lore for the armies. I read somewhere on the 9th age forums that part of the process was to limit the amount of lore given to players so as not to restrict their ideology and background for their armies. Which is definitely a safer route when players will be getting models from a variety of sources now and may very much want to build to a specific theme, which if strongly discouraged in the fluff could be off-putting for people.

I started thinking about what defines the people, characters (monsters and creatures) which make up the army itself. In particular I focused on Dwarves and how much of what I envisage their characters to be was defined by GW's setting. Initially I looked at the lore on the wiki pages for dwarves relating to GW's universe, after a little bit of tweaking I ran it through a Worlde (I think) online software which highlighted in a decrease size the prominent words used in a given volume of text. I missed a few things (like edit), but a lot of what came up did highlight things which are important in the history of the Dwarves. Karak= their hold and homes, Chaos, Elves, Skaven, Greenskins all prominent. Magic and Lore and Runes and grudges all instantly noticeable as well. It's far from a perfect analysis tool but it highlights that much of the Dwarves history is shaped by it's interactions with other races.

Secondly I used something called Coggle, which allows you to make mind maps, and although the basic online software is a bit fiddly to start, its a free software and i'm sure the paid for one does some cool things. Anyways I tried listing out the core driving mechanisms, or character defining aspects of how I envisage Dwarves, and unsurprisingly it matched up very heavily to GW's ideals.

I don't know what's going to happen when the army book for the Dwarven Holds comes out, but I'm intrigued to see if they move away from any or many of these core facets.  Looking at the previous comment on how historical interactions impact on their development makes me wonder if changes to other armies might be the first indications of alterations. Obviously Dwarves aren't GW's creations but it will be interesting to see if certain aspects of their presentation need to be curbed to not be so similar as to draw IP issues. Their current Fireslayer model range in AoS seems to rely heavily on that aspect of their creation, which is unsurprising as Slayers are probably their strongest dwarf IP standpoint. I wonder if Avatar of War's "Slayer Models" i.e. Berserker's, are perhaps where the lore may end up to avoid this possible issue. Of course the Fireslayer's themselves are some kind of mix of Romanesque (with the hair tuffs), Slayers' and Infernal dwarves (I truthfully haven't looked too much into their fluff, my initial delving returned a less than appealing background), so maybe the Slayer basic persona isn't defensible from an IP point of view.

The only particularly notable piece of information which at present seems markedly different from the GW lore is the three names given for the Holds. Instead of Karak -something, there is Nevas Vanez, Nevas Derom and Nevaz Barim. Nevaz doesn't to me correlate to any language as I read it, but Ben Nevis is a mountain in Scotland (the highest in the UK, not that that's saying much), so perhaps they are leaning towards a more Scottish Dwarf (which might be very safe from an IP point). I have some Dwarf models which are quite Scottish in nature, from the Clan McFiggin Dwarf Brewers from Oathsworn Miniatures (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/oathsworn/clan-mcfiggin-dwarf-brewers). Similar in style to his previous Kickstater, they have a lot of character and I can see me trying to incorporate them in some capacity to the army, especially if the lore does go Scottish.

Runes have also gone visually, at present, down a different route. The below image, courtesy of the Dwarven Holds rulebook, come from the Battle runes (a new introduction which i'll talk about in a later post). Thet have a almost Mayan/Aztec crop markings kinda feel. The linear/angular aspect of them is in essence Dwarvish but i think the very long/tall nature feels ....alien from Dwarvish writing (at least for me).

Lastly looking over the map shown at the top, it is interesting to note that as there aren't a more Easternly facing mountain as in the Old world, and thus interactions with Ogre's would likely be less, but perhaps interactions with Infernal Dwarves would be more. These sorts of changes can add to lore and stories more in the future development of the Dwarven Holds.  Ultimately I'm excited to see what they come up with in the end, but as I expect it will be a long time coming (there's about 10+ army books due for release), I shall patiently move towards an army that can fit into whichever theme I think is coming.

Dwarven christmas painting

Rumour is that 2014 is going to see the release of the much anticipated 8th edition dwarf army book. On top of this a number of resculpts and new units should hopefully be joining the dwarven ranks. In anticipation I finally got around to painting a number of my models, though in truth I have an entire battalion box to put together let alone paint the 30+ more warriors (maybe longbeards) I need to paint.

 So first up I painted my small unit of slayers. Its a small unit for a couple of reasons. Firstly everything I've read about slayers and even my own gut feeling has always been that they are just not very effective in games, not matter how epic they're fluff/background is. Secondly I have know for a few years that when they did redo dwarfs (which if I'm honest I had hoped would have been sooner but hey) that they would redo the metal models, i.e. slayers, hammerers and ironbreakers. So I got this bunch second hand and I'm'm pretty happy with the way they look. technically I have 2 of the deamonslayer models in the unit (you can see a photo of one of them below) so I may leave it as a unit of 10 and have the deamonslayer hiding somewhere, not sure. Also in this batch is a dwarf slayer from the oathsworn kickstarter (see link below), he's a fantastic looking model, and encouragingly he fits in reasonably well with the other slayers, despite being a little more normal in proportions than those old models used to be (dwarves with big heads and hands). It's encouraging because the newer plastic models will if I'm' right look closer to this oathsworn model than the current ones do, so hopefully I can just buy a regiment and mix and match happily. Of course all of this depends on how they change the rules, so here is hoping for some runic tattoos for ++ invulnerable saves.  (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/oathsworn/oathsworn-heroes-of-the-dwarfs)

I had some old school dwarf warrior back from early 2000, and then I also got hold of some more because I was ambivalent about some aspects of the newer dwarf warriors (which were rumoured to be replaced, though my gut tells me not). I've put together 20 warriors with great weapons (and i'm tempted to put throwing axes on their backs to potentially make them rangers). Another unit is armed with hand weapons and shields, and contains about ~25 models. I painted the line models first which is why the command models are at the back.

This is a single model close up shot. I've based the models with the mournfang snow texture paint.

Lastly I painted a regiment of Ironbreakers. Personally these were my favourite to paint, partially because I love the models, and the also because they were probably the easiest to paint. I'll be interested to see how the new models look. I can see them being pretty kick-ass, but likeliness is it is a shared box with hammerers, and as i don't have any of those and anticipate them looking epic i'll likely make them as hammerers. Either way though i'm pretty excited. I've included a close of the champion (cannot remember his name right now, I want to say Lodewarden but that might be Miners)

 (Grombrindal the White dwarf is accompanying this unit, which is somewhat coincidental as news that the old white dwarf magazine is changing to a weekly event with the warhammer visions taking the monthly role having been sprung on us yesterday (or rather that was the first announcement, it had been news for a week beforehand)

Grombrindal-The White Dwarf

White dwarf have just released the new white dwarf model, a bram stocker van helsing-esque model with a comical vampire goblin and coffin. To honour the true white dwarf this post is focusing on a particular favourite dwarf of mine. In fact, the only two other dwarfs who I think are as impressive are all represented in a fantastic model diorama.

The white dwarf, or Grombrindal as he is properly known, is a dwarf ancestor.  For a race which values and respects age as a significant indicator of personal worth, ancestors are vaunted above all others. By. Grombrindal isn't simply old. He singularly personifies dwarf-ness,  he is the mountain. Hard and unforgiving as stone, and immovable as the rock which they come from. Born from the greatest betrayal to befall the dwarf race, from the greatest of their kind, Snorri Whitebeard died and was reborn as Grombrindal at the betrayal of Malkeith.

He is never ending. He will be with his race until the very end, fighting those who have betrayed his race. Strong, tough and almost invincible, he resides in you unit only to reveal  himself when your unit is most in need.

Full rules for the model can be found here http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?categoryId=&pIndex=4&aId=4600005a&multiPageMode=true&start=5 , Personally he is pretty pricey at 500pts, but for an unbreakable, str 6, ws 7 re-roll to hit, wound and forces your appointment to re-roll their armour save (which would be at best a 4+ due to his str), 1+ and 4++ with MR(3)  he can single-handedly sit on an location and be immovable.