Heroica - Draida

Good evening children of the Plague father, I hope in this time of excess you have grown fat and are cultivating his diseases as we speak. I apologise that I have not posted much of late but the poor weather has stopped me spraying my Necrons so I have been playing Star Wars: The Old Republic and I have to say it is amazing.

Today I offer you my experience with the first in Lego's Heroica games. As part of my Christmas box my wife gave me the four currently available on the sly. Without me playing them before hand or even reading any reviews this was a bit of a gamble ( but who doesn't love Lego and gaming ).

The port city of Draida under vicious Goblin occupation

Heroica - Draida is set in Draida Bay, a port town currently occupied by Goblins in an effort to keep the heroes from aiding the land. Out of the box it was almost exactly what I was expecting with standard Lego pieces and easy to follow instructions on how to set it up. The rule book was similarly easy to get to grips with as it only had 4 pages and a lot of that is illustrations and dice tables.

The Heroes of the day line up against the Goblin horde

When I finished building the board it was smaller than I expected as had assumed the Lego Heroes / Monsters would be the standard sized Lego models. They have been designed to be placed on one stud rather than the traditional two studs. This has been done by making them shorter, thinner and removing the arms. On the upside the board was small enough to put back in the box fully constructed.

It suggests 5-10 minutes per game though I am always wary of these timings as they are normally off by a country mile, however this was pretty much spot on. It took 10 minutes for the first game while I made sure I was using the rules right and 5 minutes for the follow up games. The rules are very simple which allows them to hold up well as there is very little to be manipulated. The goal of the heroes is to kill the area boss or reach a set marker on the board, any other monsters killed on the way is just to help you get there without getting ganged up on in the last section.

The Goblin General stands watch over his mystical Artefact

The monsters on the other hand have to defeat any two heroes or one hero twice though with them being considerably weaker than the heroes this isn't as unfair as it first sounds. After 5 or 6 games it was pretty even between the sides win/lose ratio. It came down to dice rolls a lot of the time as the monsters can kill themselves on a bad dice roll ( even the area boss ), while the heroes only take one point of damage out of the 4 starting wounds for a bad roll.

The game is designed for ages 7+ but with a little patience I'm sure you could teach younger children how to play. It is a wonderful introduction to wargaming with it being quick and simple to learn but is still fun. In the next games it has rules for buying new weapons to take with you through the other dungeons or playing it all as one ( it even suggests making up your own rules and the forums have some nice ideas on this )

Beware the die forged in the ninth circle of hell

My only criticism is the rubber bound die provided, I imagine this is to protect the plastic sections you add when building it but it causes two issues when rolling;

i) The rubber sticks and it doesn't roll it just stays on whatever it landed on immediately
ii) The rubber decides it let us all down with sticking last time and will atone for it by attempting to bounce itself through your roof like it is possessed by the spirit of Icarus.

In the end I would recommend this game for people who remember Lego fondly, people who want an easy way into table top gaming or want to try and bring the next generation into table top games without dropping a four hundred page tome of rules on the them to read by candle light in a gloomy dungeon until they understand the horror that has been unleashed on the land and how they as a halfling bard are the only one who can stop the Dragon Queen's tyrannical rule.

Until next time continue to freely give out his gifts to anyone who is willing to help usher in his latest dire creations.

O'Shashar

Winter is coming...

Welcome back to Papa Nurgle's favored cupboard. This week I wanted to share with you something a little different. I recently picked up my copy of Game of Thrones 2nd Edition board game. After watching the first Season I have to say I am extremely looking forward to having a game of this. I got it from Wayland Games for £43.19 and with free postage and packaging, which I think is pretty good to say its RRP is £47.99 for a game that can be played out of the box for 3 - 6 players.

Last night I decided to unwrap the game and have a look at it and I have to say the quality is very good. The board is pretty big and very clear. The printing quality is excellent and even has some details to make some parts look like worn leather. The Cards are Plastic coated and are similar to Bicycle Cards so they feel very nice. The counters for the units are made of plastic in 6 different colours and are done in a Pearl style so that they look marbled. The colours are bright and they stand out nicely from the darker colour of the board. The tokens are made of about 5mm thick pressed card and feel like they wont fall t obits any time soon.


I'm looking forward having a game of this as it seems you have to forge and break alliances to win the game and be very 'tricksy'. You place order tokens upside down and have a screen to keep all your tokens hidden. I'm impressed that the game manages to pack up in suck a small box for the amount of stuff and the size of the board. I do however have two gripes with this. One is that there are no bags for the tokens, luckily I had some zip bags I used to save me sifting through about 150 different tokens. The other is that they provide two reference sheets. It would be more practical to supply one for each player. To sort this out I am going to get them scanned and possible laminated.

I did take a lot of pictures, but I had think and decided to get hold of the video below as I thought it was better and to be honest today I am just being plain lazy.

And that's it for this week I hope Nurgle Claus brings you something nice for Christmas.

Works in Progress

Salutations fellow followers of the spreader of plagues. As I mentioned last week I have a variety of Projects on the go at the moment. In the last week I have been concentrating on some terrain, which I managed to get finished last night and thought I would share them with you all. I know it's not special, but I thought it was better then nothing.

My Fuel Dump/Command Post is currently on hold as I am contemplating building it so it can be duplicated in resin or some other light weight material. This is because over the last month I've considered getting some bases done in the same way. I have yet to research how easy and costly this will be yet.

In the meantime I have a few small bits and pieces of scenery that I go cheaply of eBay and I thought as a change I would get these out of the way. I have assembled and painted 10 barrels, 4 barricades, 3 tank traps and an ammo dump. I was going to mount the ammo dump itself onto some MDF board, but I thought the way that I did would mean it could be used on any type of board.

Now that I have this bits out of the way I am going to paint my command for my Orcs and Night Gobbos. Until then farewell and may Nurgle's blessings fall upon you.

Tale of Three Gamers update (Orcs and Goblins)

Hello and welcome back again this week to the Plague Father's blessed Cupboard of Nurgle. As some of you may know I promised a much better update this week in regards to what I have been up to, a kind of mystery project so to speak. I will apologise as this mystery project hasn't progressed as quickly as I would like due to miniature side projects including an update on my Orc and Goblin horde. I have started this project, but I thought I would turn to our faithful followers for input on what should happen with this project.

As you can see I haven't gotten very far at all, but this is because I am torn between two idea's for this piece of board. Originally I wanted to create a fuel station to accompany my ammo dump I am currently painting, but then I thought that I could make a kind of command post so to speak. I want it look a little something like the one Forgeworld used to sell. If you don't know what I'm on about a picture can be found here. OK so my question to you guys is would you prefer me to make an fuel station or a command post?

On a side note I used my Black and Decker multi tool to sand the edges I bought for £40 a while back and I have to say it is totally worth it as I now longer have to deal with cramp in my hands from sanding the edges!

OK and now onto my Orcs and Goblins. As you can see I have managed to finish another five Night Gobbos and 5 Orc Boyz. As you may be able to tell with my Orc Boyz they do not seem to rank up very well which is starting to concern me. This is because 10 of them are converted Orks from the Assault on Black Reach box set and there arms stick out a bit. If the worst happens I will just have to paint more Orc Boyz with shields until I have 20 that rank up as I am at some point going to increase the squad size to 40. This will be the same for the Night Gobbos, but because they actually rank up I am not to concerned with them at this time.

So at the moment I have assembled and base coated quite a bit ready for painting. I am hoping to have some this done for a post next week for you. I have got the command squads for both my Orc Boyz mob and Night Gobbos mob as well as 10 40k barrels, my ammo dump and some tank barricades. I am hoping to have the barrels, barricades and the ammo dump for next week.

Until then fellow worshipers of the Lord of Flies spread his glorious corruption to everything you meet.

Thar's Gold in them thar Dungeons!

Hello our fellow plague bearers and welcome back to Nurgle's favoured cupboard of putrid delights. Now admittedly we have been a little slack of late with updates to the blog and there are a variety of reasons for this. For myself I have currently been busy with a number of things such as sorting out a new PC, playing Space Marine and Gears of War 3 and looking for a house.

I haven't completely slacked off in project work though, I just simply wasn't doing enough for a weekly update. I have a post for you guys next week that I hope you will enjoy, I don't want to give anything away you will just have to tune in next week. I have including a few pictures from two of the weeks we was gaming, one was with my phone as I forgot my camera.

If I can stop my babbling I can get on with this weeks post. Now some of you may be aware that myself and O'Shashar have got together with some guys at work for spot of Warhammer Quest. An absolutely fantastic game, that before now have only played once about 16 years ago! I have to say I have thoroughly enjoyed our Questing. Our DM isn't using the standard rules and has gone for the more complex rules from the Role play expansion.

What this does is add an extra dimension to the rules and more or less means you can do what you want in the dungeon and it of course helps with a spot of role play during the game which adds to the enjoyment of the game. If you don't have Warhammer Quest then I would strongly suggest you go an seek it out either by buying the board game and rulebooks on Ebay or acquiring them by other means.

So far we have only done three dungeons, but one being turned into a two part dungeon so you could say four dungeons. Our Party consists on a Wizard, using the Dark Elf Sorceress from Games Workshop, a Dwarf, using the Dwarf Lord from Avatars of War, a Bretonnian Knight, using Finari from Reaper Miniatures and lastly the Elf from the original boxed game.

This seems to be a very strong party. Admittedly a party should always have a wizard for healing and other various spells. The Dwarf and Bretonnian knight do a lot of the combat and the dwarf I am playing I am starting to buff up as a Tank as he a lot of wounds and I have managed to get a ring of protection and some armour so he has a toughness of 7. This is more or less true for the Bretonnian Knight except they managed to get their hand on a very nice magic sword that add 3 attacks onto the base attack of the Knight. The wizard has a variety of healing, buffing and destruction spells that help in a variety of situations. Lastly the elf is an all rounder having managed to get his paws on a decent bow that increases his ballistic skill and two types of special arrows to help against certain foes.

I could go on in more detail, but I think I have probably bored you guys to death as it is. As I have previously mentioned I have a bit of a treat for you next week, so I am hoping that makes up for my latest slackness. Until next time out may the Plague Father bless everything that you do.

Updating My Necron Colour Scheme

If I were you, I would keep my eye on the little ones

Good evening children of the Plague Father and thank you for joining me again on this cold and dreary evening. I would like to take a look at my ( lack of ) progress with my Necron Force and hopefully help me make a few decisions as to which direction I am going to go in with them.

When it was formally announced that Necrons were being given a new codex I knew I had to add to my collection, they were my first army after all and it would be rude not to. So I placed an order which gave me a little of everything to try out. While this does mean I don't have an army internet approved "auto include" units, I do have a lot of nice new models to have a play around with and can hopefully find what suits my play style.

I actually like the Cryptek who thinks he is KISS

So far I have only assembled an Annihilation Barge as afterwards it got me thinking about my colour scheme. As you can see in my previous post my models have a basic scheme and the basing needs redoing. I have decided to add blue to the army as it goes well with the brown of metal but am torn between a metallic blue and a flat blue. Both of which I like though I find myself switching back and forth between the two.

I apologise that the photos below are pretty bad, this is because I had lost the natural light by the time I finished trying out colours on my robotic minions but hopefully it will help you get an idea of what I am going for.

Dark blue and my Dragon Forge base tester

Metallic blue

Then there is the question of vehicles and what colour to do them as my monoliths are painted the same way as my infantry but I am unsure on the smaller vehicles. I have seen some very nice ones using a dark green base and glow effects which I could change to suit my idea of a blue scheme. This is causing me to delay my army as both ways appeal to me and I could extend the metallic blue on to the vehicles as they have a lot more detail than the oppressive monolith does.

For the bases I have decided to use the Dragon Forge bases I picked up for my Black Templars as between painting my Tomb Kings, Necrons and any smaller model that steals my interest they have been carefully packed away waiting their next wave of reinforcements to further bulk out an army I barely use ( what can I say T'au & Necrons just steal away all my 40k focus ).

Luckily I already know how I am going to do the bases as I painted one Sunday afternoon ( without my usual changes to the colour scheme every few minutes ) along with testing a few colours out on my Necrons. Looking at the pictures above I am happy that the new bases really do look a lot better.

So I put it to you ladies and gentlemen of the internet, metallic or non-metallic blue?

Until next time keeping spreading the blessings of Papa Nurgle and you will always have a place in his garden.

O'Shashar

Crimson Fists Showcase

Hi everyone, I thought I would take a break from my Skaven progress posts (mainly as there hasnt been much recently) and show some pictures of some of my Crimson Fists army.

First off here is the Chapter Master himself, Pedro Kantor. In the above picture he is with my Sternguard Veterans unit. Including Pedro in an army list allows you to use Sternguard as a scoring unit (which has been very handy at times). My favourite thing about Pedro is the extra attacks he gives out due to his Living Chapter Banner rule. Half of my Sternguard are converted from a tactical squad and the Black Templars upgrade sprue as well as some bitz I had left around, and they fit in well with the metal figures so I'm happy I took that approach.

One of my other units I often use is my Chaplain with Jump Pack attached to an Assault Squad. Rerolls for an assault squad are fantastic, this unit ripped apart Mighty Simo's Demon Prince in a single turn the last time I fielded them (and he was not happy!!!)

My Terminator Librarian has only seen battle the once so far (and rolled a perils of the warp - doh!) however I can see big things for him if I can learn how to use him properly. My ideal plan is to add him to the Sternguard unit and teleport into ideal locations to unleash the Sternguard's special ammo.

Another unit type I am fond of are the Scouts. I tend to use my scouts in a defensive capacity, holding objectives in my own deployment zone, however I sometimes use the land speeder storm and bike squad to try to perform last minute daring moves to contest objectives, or to lend support to an assualt. In my last game my scout squad joined an assault and actually caused 2 wounds on Typhus... Bargain!

I also have painted up a Predator, Dreadnaught, Tactical Squad, Devestator Squad, Techmarine, and a Captain, however I'm not as happy with the paintjobs on those. I have lots more to paint for my Crimson Fists, including a Vindicator, Landraider Crusader, Rhino, another Dreadnaught, a second Tactical Squad, some more scouts, more terminators, some assault terminators, Darnath Lysander (as a counts as model), another Captain (which will be my attempt to create Alessio Cortez the Immortal), a Command Squad and thats it off the top of my head... Damn you Ebay!!!

Thats it for me until next time, hope Father Nurgle doesn't frown upon my Imperial background :)

Fresh from the Forge: Chaos Warhound Titan

Hello and welcome back to Nurgle's favoured cupboard. We apologise for being a little behind on our posts, but we have all been extremely busy or have had nothing new to report. I wanted to change the tone from the buzz of the latest Necron release. I have to say they look very shiny and I am sure O'Shashar will be doing a post soon about them seeing as he acquired some of the new models on release day.

OK, now none of you may be aware but it was my birthday 2 weeks ago. I was surely blessed as last week my Brother-in-law got in touch with me regarding my top secret present. It was so secret that even the Inquisition struggled to find out what it was. Well today I have decided to share this blessing of Nurgle with our loyal followers.

I was gifted a might Chaos Warhound Titan fresh from the forges of Mars to bolster my growing Chaos war band. My Brother-in-law and his best friend Salty, who some of you may know him as he is very well known on Warseer Forums, had hand built the titan from scratch. Now for those of you who would like to know how this can be done can find the blueprints here.

OK, well I am sure you are drooling in anticipation to see what this magnificent war machine looks like. I have got some pictures for you below that Salty kindly allowed me to use from his Warseer log. He has two running at the moment that I would recommend checking out. He has an Ork log and a General log.

I am unsure when I will be able to get round to painting this awe inspiring creation, but as soon as I do I will get post, put up about it. For the the less evil of you out their Dorn's Arrow is due to put up a showcase of his Crimson Fails...I mean Fists. Until next time our loyal daemonic followers of the all father.

An ancient evil stirs (Necron Showcase)

Welcome back our faithful followers to Nurgle. Now I thought I would continue where O'Shashar left off and dust off my small Necron army with the pleasing news they are due to be updates tomorrow (let's face it, we all know its happening) and its about time aswell! I started my Necron army shortly after getting back into Wahammer about 2 years back. I thought they would be an easy army to paint and build up and the plan was to use them when I got bored of my Spiky Marines.

Needless to say in 5th edition Necrons have been nerfed pretty badly, so I am hoping the update with bring them back in the competition. However, I don't want Games Workshop to carry on their trend of making each new army overpowered like the Shiny Super Marines as I don't want to dust off my Necrons only to find that everyone has decided to be them as they are the best thing out there. Rant over. Anyway, back onto my cold, merciless killers from the stars. Below are a few snaps of my army (about 850points) in all its glory!

I decided not to go for the standard paint scheme of black dry brushed with a bit of silver and a few details as I thought it was too sloppy. I looked through the codex and decided to bring a bit of colour to the scheme. There where a lot of nice examples of alternative ways to paint Necrons. I really liked the ceramic effects on some of the schemes as well as the old and rusted. In the end I ended up doing a mix of two or three of the schemes in the book. There a few more photos of my models below for a closer look.

I started by basecoating the entire model in Tin Bitz and then dry brushed a layer of Boltgun metal over the top. Followed by a lighter dry brush of Chainmail. I then did two washes on the model. On the metal areas, I gave a light was of Gryphonne Sypia to give the metal a rusted look. To achieve the metallic purple I gave the model a wash of Leviathan Purple. The gold trim was done by starting with a base coat of Dwarf Bronze with a Layer of Shining Gold, followed by a highlight of Shining Gold.

The face mask was done to mimic bone and I did in the same way many people would do ice. The idea behind this was that the face mask would strike fear in the Necrons enemies and I thought doing the same method as bone wouldn't look right. I wanted it to look more artificial and so I went with a cold ice white. I started off with a base coat of Fenris Grey I then gradually added Space Wolf Grey in dry brush layers and then finished off with a highlight of pure Skull White.

Anyway that's it for me this week our companions of chaos. I am currently finishing some more models for my army in our tale of three gamers and I hope to have some pictures up soon of those. In the mean time continue to spread Nurgles blessings.

My Finished Justicar Finari

Good evening children of the Plague Father and thank you for making the perilous journey through the warp to join me in giving reverence to our lord.

Tonight my humble offering is my completed Justicar Finari from Reaper Miniatures and follows on from my earlier work in progress post. After the issues I had I was going to leave her as she was and hand varnished with gloss coat for two reasons, firstly I had become completely paranoid I was going to damage her again when I played my first game and secondly I didn't own any brush on matt varnish.

This made the armour look a little too reflective compared with how tarnished it was suppose to be, as well as her cloth, skin and hair looking unnatural. I decided I would pick up a pot of matt varnish and hope it evened out, the trouble was I had a very busy week at work and couldn't find the time to walk up to my local store. After I took some photos of my Necrons last weekend I was filled with motivation to paint and Finari got a little more work. I decided to work on her face, hair and to highlight the cloth.

So without further ado here is my Justicar Finari.

In the end I redid the sword as well as found it disappeared into the armour. It also gave me an excuse to use my Vallejo Gun Metal Blue, which I bought for no other reason than I thought it looked funky. I used it as a base then gradually added Mithril Silver, building up the colour with a mix of thin layers and dry brushing.

With her hair I added streaks of a darker brown to the recesses as they had been lost after the second repaint. For the cloth I mixed Hawk Turquoise with a touch of Enchanted Blue and used broad highlights. I then added gentler highlights using a 1:1 ratio of Hawk Turquoise and Enchanted Blue.

The base I was torn between adding a skeletal arm or some red lichen used sparingly. After speaking with my fellow adventurers during our first Warhammer Quest dungeon, they seemed to like the base as it was and thought that anything else would take away from the feel of the stark dungeon floor.

Now I know I am not going to be winning a Golden Daemon any time soon, I am however happy to have this model done and to a better standard than I was planning to leave it at. For my first attempt at highlighting I am pleased with how it turned out and I have learnt a few things, mainly I need to take my time, keep a steady hand and practice as much as I can. As without practice I will never improve and there is a lot of room for improvement judging by the quality of work I have seen others publish on their own sites.

On the subject of improving my painting abilities I welcome any criticism that you may have.

On a final note this will be my Bretonnian Knight stand in and will go by the name of "Sabriel la mort d'argent" which should be the "Sabriel the silver death" however if any of you speak/write French and this is incorrect please correct me.

Until next time remember you are never alone as long as you carry Papa Nurgle's pestilent blessings.

O'Shashar

Progress, Injuries and Distractions

Greetings followers of the Plague Lord. Today I thought I would talk about my last month's hobby activity which brings me to the title, 'Progress, Injuries and Distractions.' So first of all I would like to share with you a couple of photos of 'Progress' towards my 1000 point Skaven list.


So above are 20 Clanrats which I will mix into my Slave unit (and pretend they don't have shields). I will be mixing in some non-rat members as well as more poor looking wretches to the unit shortly in order to boost it to 40 strong.


The above are another 20 Clanrats, this time with spears and shields, so another 19 to add to this block and I will be getting somewhere with my ever daunting list.


Above is my 2nd Standard Bearer and my first attempt at a very simple freehand banner design, which I am fairly happy with.

Now onto the 'Injuries'. A few months ago I broke my toe while kickboxing, which allowed me to spend a fair amount of time painting. However this month I injured my hand while doing a much less extreme sport (washing the pots haha) and was unfortunately bandaged up for a week. However it was around this time that the idea of doing Warhammer Quest started cropping up. Which leads me to the 'Distractions'...



Here is my Warrior Priest that I have painted up for Warhammer Quest. I'm really happy with how the model has turned out as I have always wanted an Empire army from the Ostermark region and this model can be my first step towards that aim. Now if only I can find enough free time to get to one of these Warhammer Quest meetings...

Next post from me I will hopefully have some Stormvermin painted up and will have played some Warhammer Quest, so until next time friends enjoy the pestilent gifts of the Drippy One.