From beyond the pale - Revenants, Goreblight and some characters join the fray

 The ruins of the castle, once a sad monument to a failed Order, were now a gaping wound in the fabric of life. A cold wind blew and a hoary everfrost clung to dead branches of the woodlands surrounding the tumbled walls.

Perching on a high fell, the slopes of which were of sheer, dark stone, Coldguard Keep was a fastness of a kingdom long since fallen into ruin. Here they had stood against the frozen wraiths during the Long Winter, their faith a shield against the relentless onslaught of ice and death marching down from the North year after year. The passes guarded by the unyielding edifice of Keep, manned in a ceaseless watch by the Knights of Coldguard and the Guard of the Ford, were the rock upon which the waves of Winter's onslaught broke time and again, ever to assail but never to conquer.

And so it would have been, should their vows have held true.

Here they had stood, and here they had fallen, ultimately brought low by the hardening of their hearts, and the subsequent abandoning of their post. Dearly they paid for their forgetfulness, but dearer still is the price yet to be paid, for on Pannithor death is rarely a sanctuary, and never does it settle the debt of betrayal.

The revenge visited upon the Knighs of the Kings was long in the making, and as it oft goes, also bit the avenged just as deep as those it was taken upon. The Necromancer perished at the height of his spell, but the gates to the Underworld had already been opened. Now the dead streamed forth, eager to avenge both their deaths and their unlife to the living.

The courtyard was teeming with unlife. Runed, grave-worn armor was donned, and ghastly heads were covered with mighty helms, as proudly plumed in death as they were in life. Blades, bitten by the bitter turning of the years, now glow with a deathly hunger. Ragged banners were raised, ghostly horns blared in the mountain air. The Guard of the Kings had risen again.

There is a blast of frigid air and a ghostly laughter rising from some deep place echoes through the roofless halls as the King Arisen gallops forth from the gates. Once a brother to the one who came back first, the Cold King, the one who now returns is a creature washed clean of empathy, honor or indeed any thought save to bring ruin and to bring all living things into the icy embrace of Death. Once a mighty captain, and the co-ruler of a powerful kingdom, the one who returned now bears little resemblance to the noble lord, brought low by the tides of fate.

The inner sanctum of the Keep lays in ruins, its stained glass windows shattered into blood red shards and dry, cold dust swirls in the slow drafts of air that sigh and moan through the corridors. In the centre of it all there is a gateway of massive stone slabs. Once leading down into the crypts of Kings, it now opens to sheer nothingness. Not a darkness, but a desolate deepness gapes under its massive lintel.

From the shapeless opening a shape begins to emerge, while the echoes of the necromancers unholy spell give form to yet another abomination. A faceless creature emerges, clad in bony armor and sinew crafted from the flayed souls of the dead. This creature is not something brought back, but something altogether foreign, a creature native to the sunless lands. Driven by hunger, its very presence seeps the life from all those around it. As it lays a massive, clawed foot onto the stones, an unseen miasma begings to spread and the stones of the ruined castle groan in protest to its presence.

The thing that should not be has come, a Goreblight has emerged, nerver-living, yet ever hungering.

Worst of the Undead are those that are neither forced by others nor bound into any will save their own. The Keep, once the domain of Kings, is now the seat of a deadlier power than any there has held before. A Liche Queen, once a mighty mage-queen, now guides the Dead with an iron will. With a voice devoid of the warmth of life she now commands her legions, and all are subject to her will. A single word from her ethereal lips can freeze a hearty warrior to the bone and a single motion of her hand can call the dead from their graves.

Greetings, fellow KoWsters!

After a longish break from this blog, I decided that it's time to revive it as 2021 is showing some promise when it comes to hobby opportunities. With those opportunities also my hobby mojo is coming back and with that, the graveyard that is my hobby desk is receiving more than sad glanses and forlorn moments of silent reflection. Dust has once again been driven into the small, dark spaces under the paint racks, and water once again sparkles in the cup at the paint station f.

Lately my desk has been filled with Revenants from Mantic and a repurposed Plague first gen mutant and I've also seen an unexpected return by the second Revenant King that I built more than a year ago.

Multibasing my revenants

Mutibasing is one of the coolest things about KoW. it gives me the freedom of expression rarely achieved when basing models on single bases. The small dioramaesque interactions and the ability to create different feels to different units really bring the units to life. Is this unit a ragtag mass of frenzied critters or perhaps a well-ordered, cohesive fighting force? Both can be expressed with ease, along with a multitude of other things.

For my Revenants I wanted to stick to my ruined castle theme, this time crafting the front courtyard of the castle's main hall. Mantic's plastic bases are an excellent material for building bases as polycement makes the structures very sturdy once it dries properly. I used them for the flagstones of the castle stairs, while I clipped and cleaned their sprues for the colums and masonry of the cracked doorway arch. Two Basilean horses donated their heads to make ornaments above the doorway: one still on the wall, the other fallen and cracked, to be almost buried in snow. I carved out the central circular holes to make stained glass windows, using plasticard for the glass panes themselves.

The main problem when making stuff yourself is getting enough detail into the base. With this base I tried to add detail by making cracks and chipped edges to the stonework, while also making sure enough (but not too much, mind you!) is happening on the base. These bases feature ruined walls, crumbled masonry and broken glass and also stone braziers, filled with ghostly flames from which more Revenants are rising. 

I knew I was mainly going for a Horde, so I planned the entire base before getting to work on the models themselves. I use 3mm MDF for the bases as it provides some additional resilience to warping from PVA and other water-based materials. Previously I've used warbases.co.uk, but I probably need to find another provider due to the Charlie Foxtrot known as brexit.

I usually use some pen-and-paper sessions to draw concepts and to map out materials needed, build order and possible problems. This Horde breaks down into three parts; a regiment and two troops. I don't expect to use them a whole lot, but who knows. I wanted to strive to minimize transitions from one separate base to the next when they're put together. That means "themes", or parts of bases need to continue from one to the next, which is problematic when I also decided to go for minimal overhang. Some people like to go for a dynamic feel with the miniatures hanging far over their base, but I find this to be an inconvenience during games as fitting units flush together becomes difficult.

In this base the themes carried over is for one the broken wall of the castle, which runs in a direct line on both the regiment base and the rear troop base. The two troops have a few things that "carry over", a fallen bit of masonry spans both bases and some stained glass, also. Another continuing theme is the stairs, as both the regiment base and the front troop have an identical, short stair. 

The goal is to have a unit that looks tied together without being boring. I also wanted an.. organic? look to the base, meaning I didn't want it look like a flat piece of wood that I glued a miniature ruin on and then threw in some models. Using a piece of MDF and just gluing some random ruins on it usually leaves very little reasonable interaction between the base and the models. 

What I mean by reasonable interaction is simply that models need to look like they're moving through whatever is on the base, and that means the base needs to look like there is some reasonable continuation of whatever is on the base that can be imagined to continue around it. I think you shouldn't glue a horse in full gallop so its hind legs are touching a wall (I mean, how the hell did that horse accelerate to full tilt with one stride?), nor should you just throw a random goblin on the roof of some partially ruined building that's on the base (I mean, sure, goblins are weird, but the single dude haphazardly glued to the roof rarely adds the desired effect). A horse clearing a fence is cool, an ogre crashing through a fence is cool, a dwarf fording a running stream is cool. All these require something else than just having a random ruin on the base.

Now my goal isn't to moan about other people's basing, but more to explain the thought process behind mine. I wanted my Revenants to look like they're marching through the ruined castle and that means the models must be positioned so that a person looking at the base can kind of see the motion even if it isn't there.

Ice and snow

The fun part about basing my Undead is the winter theme. Snow and ice present a challenge as they have a very recognizable look and feel to them, which is difficult to capture at this scale. One problem with creating realistic snow bases is that once there's quite a bit of snow, the snow is everywhere. It's not clumped, it's not here and there. It's everywhere. Every surface that's not vertical will be covered by it, and every nook and cranny will be filled up with it. The magical winter wonderland that's super pretty in early February in Finland looks really really boring when recreated as a base. That's why I decided that I'd rather strive for a look that looks realistic rather than is realistic.

The recipe for my icicles I stole from a long-lost youtube video, and it's simple. Using clear plastic, such as is found on the flyer base stems and sprues, I heat the plastic over a candle until it gets a sheen to it and starts to bend slightly. It's important to be patient, it takes a little while and you shouldn't try to speed the process by getting too close to the flame, otherwise you'll get soot on your icicle.

Once the plastic is malleable, I gently pull the ends away from each other. This creates the icicly narrowing shape. Be careful not to pull the ends too far apart, as this will snap the plastic and the narrow parts will curl before they cool. Once you reach the desired thinness, hold the plastic in place for roughly half a minute, as this will allow the plastic to cool down.

I am yet to manage a totally sharp icicle, but I am also yet to try.

Snow is a little tricky, and I ended up using Army Painters snow flow, glued with oodles of superglue layer upon layer until I achieved the thickness I wanted. What I wrote above about snow forming a uniform cover isn't necessarily true always and everywhere. Cold doesn't yet mean snow, at least not a lot of it, because snow = rain, and there are plenty of cold, dry places where there is snow, yes, but it's not a deep cover. That is a whole lot easier to manage.

A thing to keep in mind is that snow is usually soft and must be waded through. That's why it's usually a good idea to make the base, add the models and then add the snow as that allows for a move realistic interaction between the snow and the models. Patience is key, and if you're using snow flock, then multiple thin layers is the way to go.

For the Goreblight I went for a look that the monster is dragging a victim caught in its chains through the snow. which was a bit of a pickle since snow does yield under weight, but doesn't get easily brushed completely off. I went for a compromise with some stone showing under the lady-in-distress, as I think it made the movement more apparent even without me explaining what's going on.

Snow can form uneven piles, but that requires two things: constant cold temperatures that keep the snow from becoming dense, and wind. The constant cold is easy enough to imagine, but that would mean that there should be NO icicles on my base, as icicles start forming when the snow melts in sunshine, but the temperature hangs below freezing. This wouldn't do, so damned be realism! I wanted big, dramatic icicles with banks of snow, so I made big, dramatic icicles with banks of snow.

Next up: a story about hobby related vanity project.

Cheers and thanks for reading!

AoW

The Growing Dark: expanding my Undead

Greetings, KoWsters!

With 3rd edition fast approaching, my Undead project, which had been on the backburner as work and other "real life stuff" has taken a ton of my time, came back into vogue.

I finally managed to paint up the last of my remaining Revenant Cavalry, bringing me up to two regiments that might be combined into a horde in some future edition that might permit such foolishness.

This project has definitely been the weirdest one of my armies so far, as it is one in which I have scarce played a game as my forces grow ever closer to 2k! I honestly have no idea whether the army I'm building is or will be good now, let alone after Third hits us.

At any rate, the unit which had daunted me for months seemed to paint itself in less than two weeks! Without further ado, I give you the Pale Knights:

Ice, snow and the ruined remains of a more civilized time many years past are the themes for my army's bases, and with this unit I went for a ruined bridgre over a stream. I mounted my undead knights half on the bridge, and half on a ghostly memory of the self-same bridge, summoned from some nightmarish memory long cherished in the dry lands of Death.

I wanted the regiment to look crammed, a surging mass of ghostly knights, packed far tighter than any living riders could be. While I feel like I succeeded relatively well in my goal, I also feel like I created a unit that is almost impossible to photograph in a way that looks something else than a jumbled mess.

I changed the way I paint the armor of my Revenants, replacing the earlier method with a faster one that requires thinner layers and as such dries faster. I rely very much on washes with this army as I went for a theme quick to achieve that looks both uniform and more than meets my "tabletop" standard.

The sigil for my army, the Yr-rune, symbolizes death and ending and on my army it's drawn bright, piercing white on a field of deep, time-worn purple.

The base had two halves, with one half being a half-ruined plank bridge over an icy stream, and the other painted a ghostly green. The ruined half is half covered in snow and besprinkled with icicles, while the ghostly side is far more elaborate, with ghastly braziers hanging suspended mid-air, lit aflame with some malign magic, held in place by heavy chains, while a pale banner flies in an unearthly gale. Everything about the ghostly bridge was intended to be far grander than their living counterparts had ever been.

Yesterday I got a nice little parcel from Mantic that contains what I miss from my 2k, and soon I shall field a grand army of Vengeful Dead!

If I can find an opponent, at any rate.

AoW

Multibasing - A quick tutorial

Multibasing 101 - A quick tutorial

Kings of War brings with it the possibility of multibasing your units. That means, in short, placing all the miniatures in the unit on a single base the size of the footprint of the unit. This is possible because units don't break down into smaller components during a game as casualties aren't removed and there is no Reform mechanic.

Basically multibasing is that simple. Take the models that the unit comprises of, glue them to one base and you're done.

There are, however, a few rules and points to take into consideration that I will deal with in this post, starting with things related to planning and continuing to execution.

1. MMC or PMC?

Multibased units don't have to include the exact number of models that is stated as the unit size, as the individual models don't have role as anything else than a part of the unit. This where the little diagram of Minimum Model Count and Preferred Model Count comes in (You can find it in the FAQ). Players going full model count are rare and most units tend to fill PMC instead.

Minimum Model Count means the absolute minimum of models you should put on the base to avoid confusion. Usually this is one model added to the model count of the next size down. Thus an infantry regiment's MMC would be 11 models, while it would be 21 models for a horde. Preferred Model Count, on the other hand, tends to be something along the lines of 16+ for an infantry regiment or 30+ for a horde.

When you're constructing your units you'll have to decide how many models you're going to fit on your bases. There is no rules-wise requirement for either in terms of game mechanics; in theory you could play with pieces of cardboard with labels on them. PMC tends to cost more as you need more of that precious plastic and it will take more time as well as you'll be painting more, while MMC sometimes leaves the base looking very, very thinly populated. This leads us to the next thing to consider:

2. Rule of Cool

Kings of War bends quite a bit when it comes to model selection for any given unit. Statlines can be explained by many combinations and thus there are multiple natural matches between miniature and unit entry. Some models are a lot larger than others, and thus there will be less of them on the base. One should be careful, however, not to allow artistic freedom to overcome clarity. Models should be appropriate and one should carefully weigh whether or not they are cutting back on models for economic rather than artistic reasons. These are of course my own thoughts and others may disagree.

I tend to favour a simple, hobby-friendly rule which goes as follows:

If it's cool, it's cool.

That goes to say if the unit looks cool, it's cool to field it, regardless of model count and other factors. One should, however, be careful not to mix Rule of Cool with Rule of Cheap, because while both are acceptable, they lead to pretty dingy looking armies if they're mixed up.

3. Think of the whole

If you go for a multibase, you should treat the unit as a whole that comprises of models on a base. This is a very different approach to individual basing, where the base is often just a backdrop for miniatures instead of constituting an important part of the miniature. When you're multibasing, however, your individual miniatures will be small compared to the base and typically will always be seen as part of the base. Thus, the base should be treated as something the miniature is a part of instead of being a stand to pose the miniature on.

What elements do you want on the base? How many miniatures will you use and how will the models be placed on the base? It's a whole different thing to make a flat, grassy field for a spear phalanx than to place models wading through a swamp, and that needs to be thought of beforehand. Especially height differences on the base, while super cool, are difficult to execute and need a lot of work to pull off.

Also take into consideration the amount of work you're willing to put into a multibase. If you're not careful, the base can take a whole lot of hours from hobby time you'd rather spend in another way. I'd suggest that if you don't want to spend a lot of time, then go simple. Trying flashy stuff in a hurry isn't really a formula for success.

4. Models as a part of a diorama

I think it's important to see the base as a distinctive place the models are located in and interact with. Your models will always be seen on that base and as such the base and the miniature must form a natural looking relationship.

Thus, when you're planning your bases, I think you should first look at the miniatures and see what kind of poses they naturally go into and form your plans for the base to accommodate those poses. If the models don't deal well with slopes, then use stairs or rocky, outcropping shelves to create height if you want it.

If the ground is swampy, the models should leave footprints and sink into the ground a bit. If there are barriers (like hedges) on the base, one shouldn't put models running into those just as one should avoid putting galloping horses with their tails touching a wall. These small things can turn otherwise sweet looking bases into slap-sticky comedy.

5. How I do it

I tend to finish the bases long before I finish the models that will be mounted on it. This is mainly because I usually assemble miniatures right before I start painting them and if I want my models to really interact with the bases, I need the base to be ready (to a point) before I can get to work on the models.

For an example of a relatively simple base I will use my Sisterhood Infantry that I did about a year ago. I started by making enough bases for a horde, since I knew that at some point I will paint them up to a horde (although I'm still at regiment painted). I went for two troops and a regiment on bases that will blend into each other when put together.

All my Sisterhood have a water element on their bases. I wanted to give the whole army's bases a cultivated look in the sense that the battle is being fought on the outskirts of a hamlet or a town. My Panther Lancers have irrigation channels and I decided to go for a little creek flowing through the town for my Infantry. Thus the bases have large paving stones with a channel flowing out of a sewer (the grates of which are on the bases of troops.

In order to make the whole deal work I had to construct the bases at the same time, even though I didn't have models for more than a regiment at this point.

After completing the troop bases I started to paint the models so that I could mount them on the base as soon as they were done to avoid storing them without a base while waiting for final basing. I painted the models in patches of three as I didn't have a whole lot of time to paint at one go and I wanted to feel like I'm getting something done. If I try to finish more than three models at a time, it always feels like things aren't going anywhere and I lose motivation. Thus I tend to paint in smaller batches. That's one point everyone has to find for themselves.

When multibasing I nowadays try my best to avoid overhang. This is because it's relatively easy to avoid when individual models aren't restricted by 20mm or 25mm squares, but can be placed freely within the 80mm by 40mm troop. Overhang tends to be very annoying when you're playing, and thus I spend some time planning my units in order to reduce overhang.

When making compound multibases that go together to form larger units one has to be particularly aware of overhang in multiple directions so that the units form up nicely. That's why the foremost troop in the image above is done front rank first and the rear troop has zero overhang to the front.

The flagstones are the plastic bases that come with Mantic models. They're really useful for creating steps and larger portions of worked stone on a base. For the water effect I used PVA that I let dry until it formed a thick film on top of it and then I drew stripes with a slightly sharpened stick to create a surface more akin flowing water. Then I painted it and finally added a glossy varnish on it. In the future I will look into using clear water effects, but for now my method works well enough.

The final part of the horde will be based on the bridge base, making a whole that breaks down into regiments and troops.

In short, my multibases are made in few steps:

1. Plan the base

2. Make the base

3. Paint the base

4. Paint miniatures

5. Glue miniatures

6. Tidy up

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I'll make a few other tutorials on multibases for my Undead army, once I get the bases and the miniatures from the mail.

Feel free to comment and suggest other topics to cover!

Cheers,

AOW