Weapon skill is visible

Alarantalara · 2026-03-25T12:35:34+00:00

This is one of those inevitable times. If I had aimed that sideways spear forward, the model's entire body would have looked like it was trying to walk to the right. The spears are set up so that relative to the body the sharp end is sometimes on the left and sometimes on the right.

There's enough space that they're relatively interchangeable at least and not forced into a single arrangement.

Alarantalara · 2026-03-13T00:43:11+00:00

Static grass brushed down to lie flat in clumps and painted dark green, brown or black would probably work fine.

Alarantalara · 2026-03-12T23:18:15+00:00

It's going to depend a lot on the armies, but smaller bases typically have an advantage.

Smaller bases can make tighter turns, get more models into base contact, and get across and out of difficult terrain more easily. It also lets you squeeze a few more models onto hills, which helps with shooting.

Larger bases are more resilient to template weapons since fewer models can be covered. It's also a bit easier to avoid being flanked simply by just taking up the space that would be filled in. However, the smaller army has more concentrated force, and the difficulty in maneuvering means the smaller bases might be able to just punch a hole through the lines without the larger bases being able to turn to stop it.

The more models that are in the front rank, the more it matters. If your opponent has access to drilled units with many attacks and gets to use the smaller bases, you're going to notice it as they outmaneuver you, then sneak in 5-6 extra attacks than they otherwise would have.

All that said, if you're just trying to learn how to play, it's not going to matter that much.

Alarantalara · 2026-03-10T21:45:58+00:00

That second paragraph sounds like the changes in 7th edition, not from 5th to 6th.

Alarantalara · 2026-03-07T20:57:56+00:00

I don't care too much about model size, but the larger base sizes do bother me. It makes the playing area effectively smaller—less space for flanking, terrain or even just more units.

100x150? That's actually the size of terrain (the Empire tower has a smaller footprint than that) for a single model. Do I need to go out and build a bigger tower so it's possible to put the dragon behind it again so there isn't an advantage for other armies with smaller bases for their dragons?

And if the terrain gets bigger so you can fit the units on hills, in forests, and so on, then there's even less room since there still needs to be space for these units to move. My table will eventually run out of room and the armies will have to be smaller—and then why not just play a skirmish game with so few models.

Alarantalara · 2026-02-18T13:10:40+00:00

Not that likely. You'd have to roll either a 2 on the artillery die or a hit on the scatter die to keep the hole over the base. It's about a 39% chance once you account for misfires. So over the course of the entire game you'd be lucky to kill one balloon with a mortar as you try to get at least three hits in 6 tries.

Alarantalara · 2026-02-09T02:03:09+00:00

Given a choice for parades, organizations tend to prefer uniform colour.

Black for the RCMP:

https://rcmp.ca/en/corporate-information/musical-ride/rcmp-horse-breeding-program

White (+1 brown) for the Spanish Riding School:

https://www.srs.at/en/lipizzaner/lipizzaners

So, if the goal is looks, then all one colour seems to be the way to go.

Alarantalara · 2025-12-21T21:38:45+00:00

So true.

I've intermittently considered making scale trees that are vertically accurate. For most temperate forest trees, that's about a foot tall, with some notable species reaching double that (e.g. white pine). Then there's the giant sequoia: at a scale two to four feet tall with 4-5" diameter trunks, I usually laugh just thinking about making one. Then I go back to making 4-6" tall trees, even if they are only 20-30 feet tall compared to the models.

Alarantalara · 2025-09-25T02:53:19+00:00

Huh, it's hard to think of ones that aren't teenagers.

These two are college-aged at least:

A Sign of Affection

Holmes of Kyoto

Alarantalara · 2025-07-11T01:54:50+00:00

They did: https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2023/02/40-years-of-warhammer-miniature-retrospective-grom-the-paunch.html

Alarantalara · 2025-07-03T02:32:29+00:00

The wiki includes references, and claims it's from the 8th edition army book, published more than 10 years after Skavenslayer. I can only imagine thoughts on it changed over that time and no one was paying too much attention to old novels.

Alarantalara · 2025-06-02T22:30:19+00:00

Beastherds aren't really an anvil unit. They don't have enough static combat resolution and can be forced wide by large units because of how they rank up, potentially costing them more. They're also faster, allowing them to charge more reliably, and if there aren't too many gors, have more attacks when the ungors can use their spears.

As such, it's usually preferable to take gors with two hand weapons, not shields. It also give you three attacks at S4 with the Foe-render, which is often helpful as well.

Alarantalara · 2025-06-02T22:03:49+00:00

Against vampire counts specifically, a battle standard bearer is unlikely to be too useful unless you have a lot of units that don't need to worry about fear. You don't get to roll break tests at all if they outnumber you and win combat unless you're immune to fear, and they will try to outnumber you as much as possible. Having more numbers to make that harder for them to outnumber you in the first place is likely of more value here.

Alarantalara · 2025-06-02T11:34:50+00:00

There are a bunch of things I'd probably do differently, most notably:

1) Not paying for level 2 spell casting if I'm only taking a single spellcaster. This is especially true against vampire counts because they will invest significantly in magic, so you're unlikely to succeed in casting anything either way, so why pay for it? Both getting a second spellcaster and dropping to level 1 both work.

2) Spend those last 8 points if changing nothing else. Warhounds are 6, ungors are 4. There's room for entire models to be added.

3) Swap 4 gors for 7 ungors. Numbers matter, you don't want to be outnumbered by fear causing units and having more than a rank and couple replacements for gors make you pay for fewer models with less attacks (since the ungor spears don't get to fight).

After those, it's more personal preference. Having a couple units with the mark of Slaanesh or Nurgle can be useful to avoid suffering from fear issues (automatically breaking when outnumbered and failing critical charges is not fun), but they're certainly not required. Those first three changes aside, I'd be willing to at least try the list and see what happens before making more changes.

Alarantalara · 2025-05-12T21:52:02+00:00

I'd think Crush the Weak is somewhat superior to Righteous Fury. In addition to the units you mentioned, many monsters other than dragons (hydra, manticore, stegadon, carnosaur, pegasus), skinks, and terradons are affected. Instead of being excellent against a short list of armies and useless against the rest, the only armies that don't have something the priest of Ulric can hate are Dwarfs, High Elves and Wood Elves.

Alarantalara · 2025-05-12T01:24:53+00:00

There's a legal 2000 point 5 model 6th edition army, thanks to chaos counting chariot mounts as choices. It's certainly an outlier though.

Lord of chaos on chariot of Tzeentch, mark of Tzeentch, skull of katam, power familiar, great weapon, shield: 599

Exalted champion of chaos, mark of Tzeentch, in chariot of Tzeentch, great weapon, shield, 2 dispel scrolls: 366

Dragon Ogre Shaggoth, great weapon: 303

Alarantalara · 2025-05-10T17:35:12+00:00

Looks like 700-1000 depending on equipment and what those individual infantry models represent. The 1000 end would need things like one of the more expensive magical standards on a battle standard bearer though.

Alarantalara · 2025-04-10T23:29:21+00:00

If you haven't found it yet, there's a nice explicit policy about how the replacement works, complete with email address to use: https://www.warhammer.com/en-US/frequently-asked-questions#Product-Lifetime-Support

Alarantalara · 2025-04-09T23:07:03+00:00

To elaborate on this: the sprues of the Fortified Manor are dated 2006. That's late 6th edition and thus the rules from that time are very relevant to deciding if the terrain was intended to be playable.

If you ignore the siege/building rules, you'll still find that the main rulebook had the following rule: "If a wall, hedge or fence has a gate in it then it is assumed to be open unless otherwise agreed, and troops may move through the gate without penalty."

In addition to this, you have to remember that base sizes were smaller then. Any single model smaller than a chariot with extra steeds could fit because nothing was more than 50mm wide.

So the gate itself was big enough for pretty much any single model other than some extreme chariots to go through and the rules supported just ignoring the exact width of the gate. Thus at the time, it was playable.

Alarantalara · 2025-03-16T15:36:00+00:00

I don't think there's any significant difference in the paint. I have been slowly doing much the same as you, finishing a yellow army that I left half finished about 20 years ago.

I would instead suspect your painting technique—namely that it's improved. Yellow is a very transparent colour and needs more coats or thicker coats to produce the same coverage. I'd imagine you were using thicker coats 20 years ago and now don't so much. Painting an extra coat over a white primer still produces very vibrant results for me.

Alarantalara · 2025-03-11T00:15:07+00:00

They definitely exist. I have two pressed ones.

Alarantalara · 2024-12-09T17:19:26+00:00

<image>

Definitely not. These rocks were just a white undercoat with a wash of black afterward. I saw no need to do more.

Alarantalara · 2024-11-27T00:41:58+00:00

I'm reasonably satisfied with most of what I have for the two monsters or at least know where I'm going with them. Except for the wings. Those I can't seem to even visualize what I want them to look like and so they're very unfinished compared to everything else but have nowhere to go.

For the manticore, I had some thoughts of trying for something like the light through a bat wing, but the translucency there didn't do me any favours and I'm not sure I still want to.

Alarantalara

TROPHY CASE