Fantasy Gaming (6) - Warhammer Underworld (1) - Some Warbands

 But first a brief update. 

Here's the story. My work has decided to block the blogger domain and I was previously (all of last year) setting up blog drafts at lunch and then scheduling the posts out. This has all but killed my ability to post as when I've had the free time to do hobby and hobby adjacent tasks (like blog) I've spent that free time painting. The second, slightly ugly truth is, for no reason I can explain, the AHPC did the opposite of motivate me this year. For whatever reason, I hammered some stuff out, made my first post and then proceeded to not touch a brush for the remainder of the challenge. I haven't really unpacked it, its very possible that its work that stopped the hobby (lots of changes in the last 8 months that were more or less ignored here as the blog was set to auto post almost 2 months in advance)

Regardless I have been painting again this April. Pretty pictures first, then story (you've had enough of me ranting I'm sure. 

 

Long ago, GW released Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire. This is a board game where each bespoke warband came with its own deck of cards. The rules encouraged playing to the objective and each deck (faction) had its own ways of scoring. I bought the core box, painted one of the stormcast for an advertisement for the Hobby Shop and then never finished the set. We played maybe once? And although I remember liking it, it fell by the wayside as so many games do (looking at you aristeia(sp))

Here's that original paint job by the way, in case you want to compare notes from ten years ago

 

I remember pouring my heart into that paint job. Its funny now, spending the last ten or so years focusing on decent but quick painting styles how quickly I cracked the three out. The old tone was much redder and much more GW. The new, a shinier gold. 

I then turned my attention to Garrek's Reavers (probably, i cant keep these straight and its late here.)

These are the set that came with the original core box. The new skill here was mixing a dot of various colors into the skin in order to vary the tone slightly. These got a glaze of the original skin base which seemed to do ok for all three of the tones I used. 

Now I'm sure you're thinking, he's boiling the frog again. We're gonna read all this and not even know were in the middle of one of his listless reminiscing sessions. You know me so well. 

Why is he painting a 10 year old box set? Well the answer there is Paul. See Paul decided while on vacation, to spend some time looking into this game and as fate would have it, there's a new edition out. after some back and forth texting he proceeds to tell me hes purchased it all. He's not quite sure he got it all as there are some lots and he needs to meet up with a couple sellers to actually pick up what he bought but there's at least most of it and the new second edition starter set. Behold, distraction Skeletons.

As a lot of GW stuff, I dabbled. I already had the starter and as it turns out I had the Sepulchral Guard in my pile of shame as well. See for all my ribbing of Paul, he was right, you can get the second edition starter for a steal. (I paid around 60 on ebay for a copy shipped once I was done making fun of his impulsiveness)

I boldly adopted a "1 out 1 in" strategy to only buy a new set once I painted one I had. I promptly pulled this set off the shelf and finished the final details to get them to the table as well.

These figures were painted on release close to 10 years ago (i have no idea how long exactly) and Mollog (troll) was all but finished. So I painted the rock and the mushroom and the bases and called it a day. 

Now, dear reader, Do you think I held up my end of the strategy? Here we are with 4 out, how many do you think came in?

Most (not all) of the warbands are now sold in packs of 4 based off grand alliance. This means if I show my wife the range and say "who looks cool" and she rightfully picks the crab (look it up) that I need to buy 3 other factions to go with it. Which is fine, painting these has been an absolute joy and has just slaughtered the painters block I'd be struggling with. 

A few warbands however, like the Savage Orks (already found on ebay) or Cyreni's Razors (searching desperately) aren't in these packs yet. 

If you guessed 13, you'd be eerie specific but also right. 

While on a work trip in Grand Rapids I stopped by two stores I like to frequent and ended up with Reavers and Ruin, Seekers in Shadow, and Grandfathers Gardeners. 

I'm currently working my way through Zikkit's Tunnelpack but will probably paint either one of the Nurgle bands next or Elathrains Soulraid for my wife.