It’s been a busy month (wait what, October already?) as the penultimate year of studies heads towards its conclusion and mid semester break (which is always in week 10 of 13, go figure) has arrived to give us students a much needed breather. While there hasn’t been much painting happening (I need a colour scheme for the ogre merc company) but there has been a few gaming opportunities to be had, the most recent being a Henchman Hardcore event.
The event was 5 rounds lasting 30mins each, with the conditions that the match is played at 20 soulstones total to be spent on four models, one of which being your free crew leader who must be a henchman/woman/demon/creepy fish monster.
For this event, I decided to test run some Wave 4 goodness (which hasn’t hit the shelves officially yet outside of Gen Con) and use Aeslin (pronounced Ashling) as my henchwoman.
She’s the frowny wooden-dress Dryw, center left. The new Master, Titania is far right. The glowy bum fairies are not even Fae, but are Will’o’the wisps.
Aeslin’s no slouch as she generates an extra AP for cast actions (which all of her attacks are). Combined with the Tooth and Claw (both to her right, respectively) there’s a lot of synergy happening. To fill out the remaining points after whacking on some upgrades, a depleted was used was not used as I forgot to bring them, so Iggy was substituted to my, er, woe.
Anyhow, the list proper:
Aeslin
-Taproot (1)
The Tooth (7)
The Claw (7)
Iggy (5)
From playing this, I’m unsure on Taproot. Sure Titania’s thematic crew can law down scheme markers like crazy, but there’s a churn and burn approach. If a scheme marker is burned during an attack, there may be none close by when the attacker becomes the attacked. Long story short I cam dead last but enjoyed every moment.
There’s a lot to keep track of and turns out opponents with beaters aren’t keen on Curse of Autumn, an ability which is basically a Wp duel or slow when an enemy begins their activation nearby (re: engaged). Gotta remember so much before I can actually start winning games but it’s either this: a) I get a few months/up to a year of practice in with Titania et al before her crew is released to general public or b) run back to Lilith and game with a familiar master (still don’t win but am getting more tactically aware with Lily).
Moving onto the Age of Sandwich ogres, or ogors (or even gutbusters if we’re using keywords) the initial 4 bulls have been completed. It took a while as I’ve been neglecting my painting and am horribly out of practice. Coupled in the general difficulty of painting fleshtones, they have turned out quite pleasingly regardless!
Ogres have layers…of paint on them.
Obviously the basing looks nothing like the initial early spring mountainous terrain I wanted thus something had to give when I sat back and thought about the army. Why, exactly, would their armour be so rusted if they were in a rather temperate environment where there’s little opportunity for such extensive rust.
The initial idea behind my Age of Squidward force was to have a mercenary company of ogres/FANTASY OGRYNS being displaced due to the Realm of \m/ a.k.a Chamon being held firmly in the grip of the Farces of Chaos. They would then take up refuge in a different realm while attempting to reclaim their former base. Something to that effect, anyway. The realm in question appears to be Aqshy, the realm of Australia/Fire (same difference, really). Setting the ogres in the realm of fire, then doing their bases to appear like a salt flat or similar would definitely suit the extensive rust on their equipment.
Here are are couple of close-ups on the ogres, or gutbusters if you go by Age of Skeletor keywords.
First up is this guy, he was kinda fun to paint as I attempted a non-caucasian skin tone using yellows and purples to shade instead of greens and reds. His left hand was a conversion where the musician shouting hand was removed and replaced with a stock-standard punchy fist.
It’s punchy!
Next up is a different ogre with some depth-perception problems….
It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this.
This guy got a spare punchy fist (I seriously do not know what they’re called) from the Mournfang box, which has enough spare bitz to make MOAR ironguts and the Tyrant who’ll be leading this force.
In Age of Sigmarines, the Generalissimo’s HandNoun VerbBook lists the minimum unit size for the ogres as 3, to a max of 12. Given that there’s 22 ogres total, 2 are going into characters, 4 into leadbelchers and another 10 or so into ironguts, I’ll probably end up with two units of 4 ogres for the time being.
See below youtube video link. Is an abridged episode of NGE
The above guy is a unit bellower/musician. No idea what he does as yet (I need to read some warscrolls, but that’s later, right now painting and modelling) but I think there needs to be a few fat, decidedly English or Aussie ogres who are there to hurl abuse/sledge to opposition. Maybe something like this -abridging is hilarious to listen to, though it’s been years since I actually watched any of that sort (it was big around 2009-2012 then it sorta died off), the bellower reminded me of that link. Plus, y’know, NGE isn’t easily available in PAL and I’ve been meaning to watch it since…forever.
In closing, there’ll be more of these guys to come and GODDAMNIT I need to find a PAL set of Evangelion, or some way to view the entire series given how it’s not in production anymore (the holders of the rights are kinda big asshats).
More mangled English and poorly taken photos coming soon to a blow website near you.
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