Kings of War Salamander army finished!

Well, as finished as armies ever get before inevitably being reinforced as shiny toys insist on being purchased!

The last units consist of a rhinosaur horde (who doesn’t love large lizardmen riding even larger rhino lizards?) a rhinosaur hero (taken from the horde who are now five strong), a Lekelidon (the more traditional looking black lizard) and a Gekkotah Skylord (the little lizard on the back of the flaming bird)

Pretty pleased to have got these done as they represent a 2,000 point list for the game. No idea if they’re any good, but they’re what came with my original second hand purchase, so I’m happy enough with that!

I got these in mid December and had six weeks out for building work at the house, so four odd months to get an army finished is something I’m pleased with and I wish I could do that more often!

Now I just need to resist the urge to buy more figures as a congratulations to myself for my work on reducing the stuff on the shelves of holding.

The More Unusual Elements of the Salamander army

Following on from the rank and file, I’ve now finished a bunch of the more unusual units for the salamanders army for Kings of War. Once again, I’ve multibased to make them easy to set up and use. Thank goodness for the MDF sellers on eBay who helpfully sell most base sizes that I needed.

This unit are fire elementals. The salamander army seems synonymous with fire and the units completed here are mostly fire and flame related.

These chaps were pretty quick to paint up as I decided to be pretty abstract with the flames and use a mix of red, orange and yellow and some black to show soot and smoke. As larger based (40mm square) model, there are three of these to a regiment.

Next up are the scorch wings, which appear to be animated rocks in the shape of birds who exude flames!

Don’t ask how they fly, I guess it’s magic.

Now for the biggest flame based model in the army - the phoenix!

This is an absolutely beautiful model and, along with the other models above, Mantic had done a fantastic job on the resin figures for this army. It’s a bit of a beast, that’s a normal 28mm model in the last photo.

It’s quite the chunk of resin and was great fun to paint.

This next unit consists of Tyrants. They’re bigger lizard creatures and also need three to a base for a regiment and 6 for a horde….. but I’ll admit to have cheated and broken the 75% rule for this lot. I’ve put two one one base and one on another to make a horde sized base.

They’re lovely resin figures once again and I was tempted to get more, but I decided to cheat as I want to get the army done and I wasn’t filled with excitement about painting another set of them. I may come back and add to the unit later, but for now they’ll certainly do.

I then moved onto the characters for the army. These two are a mage priest (who throws fireballs that get more potent if he’s standing by the flame elements of the army) and a war leader who can be one of a couple of options.

Really pleased with how these have gone so far and I just need to stay focussed and finish the last few units and I’ll have a 2,000 point army all painted and ready to play.

Rank and File for the Salamanders Kings of War army

I tend to find that I can sometimes be laser focussed when hobbying and sometimes flit around doing lots of projects or units without finishing anything! It was very much like that with the salamanders as I got my colour scheme for the main units and so was able to smash out a lot of salamanders in pretty good time….. but then I left the basing and a few models to finish each unit and so had virtually the whole army on the go at the same time!

Whilst this can be frustrating (even for me as I do it!) and messy (with lots of half finished things laying around the hobby room) the benefit of this approach is that every now and again lots of things get finished at the same time. This happened here and so I herewith present, the rank and file salamanders.

This unit counts as a regiment in game and I armed with swords and shields. I decided to multi-base them as it means I can be set up for a game very quickly. Whilst it means that I can’t use the figures in other games, I think the trade off is well worth it as I’d rather use figures properly in one game than have them more flexible for other games that I’ll likely never play in reality.

In Kings of War, you’re encouraged to use 20 individual figures in a regiment, but they suggest a minimum of 75% of that where possible as it looks good. These salamander figures are pretty bulky and so I went with 15 and as you’ll see from this picture of the next unit, it’s not like I had much spare space!

This next unit is the same as the first, but is armed with clubs and axes. The figures were all stuck together already when I picked them up, but I was fortunate as I had enough of each armament to split them like this.

Broadly speaking, Kings of War allows you to use Troops (10 infantry), regiments (20 infantry) or hordes (40 infantry) with each base size being double the previous one. I discovered that I can put these two regiments together to make a horde, but only one way around - sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good as I didn’t plan this whilst putting them on their bases!

The last main unit is armed with double handed weapons. These lads trade away some armour for additional hitting power.

The final unit that I completed is the ceremonial guard. These are elite warriors armed with spears, which are good against cavalry. I’ll admit to having painted them because they were in the bundle army that I bought rather than any tactical acumen, but they do look cool. They use the same base bodies as the main units, but have resin upgrades for arms and heads.

Again I went for a lighter model count than the maximum but there was again very little space left on the base!

Next up is the more unusual units for the army and to see if I can keep my focus enough to get this army done in its entirety before I start working on a different project……

The Salamander Army Takes Shape

 I had to have a bit of a break whilst we had our kitchen redone - my painting room was he room chosen to be “the studio flat that we all lived in whilst the work was being done, so the whole room was just full of stuff and meant all of my paints had to be packed away…..

But that’s all done now and so I got out the salamanders again as the striping and starting painting had happened before all of that.

Anyway, I settled on a nice and simple paint scheme as I have waaaaaaay too many figures and scenery waiting for some attention. So decided that I wanted to get these done and on the table quickly. First up, a grey primer for the salamander warriors and onto painting sticks as I was going to multibase them

The scheme relied on contrast paints, washes and a bit of touching up

Pleased that I was getting through the rank and file nicely, I started on the fun, flamy elements of the army. First, a red undercoat for them

A Phoenix, three flame elementals, three flaming bird thingies (not sure that’s their official title) and a bigger flaming bird thingy for a hero.

Once again, I was keen to get these done quickly, plus (and most importantly) I’m rubbish at actually doing flames on models, and so decided to go a little more abstract on the flames, as shown in progress pics below

Steady progress being made for once and next up is some more painting and onto the basing!

A New Project - Kings of War Salamander army

Well, it’s been a very long time since any of us posted anything here. The usual reasons posted on any hobby blog which hasn’t been updated for a while apply, but also a more personal and sadder one. One of our stalwart gaming group passed away at the start of 2020 and frankly he was the one who was keeping the blog going.  We all took a bit of a knock from that and still miss him terribly, but I’ve now decided that I should get back on the blog, partly as paying my respects to Nat as he’d have wanted us to get painting (he was always, quite rightly, telling us to paint and play instead of buying more things!) and as a diary of what I’ve done.

So, what am I starting with? Why a complete army for a game that I’ve never played of course!

Kings of War looks like a very good game. I’ve become disillusioned with age of sigmar and 40K for a number of reasons, with the main one being that I can’t fit a game into an evening anymore. But I do really like the sci fi and fantasy genres so I’m moving over to trying the games produced by other companies, including the Mantic stable, which look great and seemed designed to fit into an evening’s play.

Idly scrolling through eBay (and yes, I do count searching specifically for “Kings of War army” as “idly scrolling”!) I happened across a large, but very badly painted salamander army for auction….. I stalked it for a few days, telling myself that I already had too much stuff and didn’t need it…… and then obviously pounced at the end when my willpower crumbled away in seconds. But it was a bargain!

Here are some pictures of the unboxed win

As I’d hoped, it just needed a bit of work, but nothing looked unsalvageable. I decided that I’d paint strip the bigger, posher resin green models for the most part (I was pleasantly surprised to see that the resin stuff produced by Mantic is lovely these days, easily the match of other producers), but that I’d just overspray the rank and file salamanders with undercoat and go from there. I reasoned that the larger models would be more visible whereas the rank and file would merge together more. And it would have driven me a bit bonkers having to paint strip everything.

Into the bio strip….

Happy with how things were going, I started painting, which I’ll update next time.

Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge reward

A few years ago I stumbled across a fun little thing on the internet - a bunch of people who collected miniatures and had decided they needed motivation to get them all painted up.  So they decided upon a scoring system (bigger scales/models get more points) and they made blog posts about them on the same blog to encourage each other to get things painted.  The community of gamers and painters on the "Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge" was such fun that I'm now on my fourth year!  It runs for about 3 months from December to March and is responsible for the vast majority of my painting output for the last few years.

Anyway, you can have "side duels" against other entrants where you challenge each other to paint the most points of something.  Two AHPCs ago (yes, two) I lost a duel to GregB which was based around how many points of Horus Heresy miniatures we could paint.  Greg absolutely smashed me and when I asked what figure he wanted, he asked for a survivor of the Drop site massacre..... Little did he know it would take me two years to actually make good on my promise (insert embarrassed smiley face here.....)  Now, for background, there were 18 Space Marine legions at the time of the Horus Heresy.  Four of them turned rogue and purged the loyalists in their ranks.  When this was discovered, 7 loyalist legions were sent to the Istvaan system to destroy them, attacking from space onto the Drop site where the four traitor legions were dug in.  Three legions made up the first wave and then the remaining four legions dropped in the second wave.... but these last four legions had also secretly turned traitor and so the 3 legions from the first wave were massacred in the crossfire with very few escaping.

It took me quite a while (and more than one abandoned idea) before I came up with what I wanted and here he is - Barek Furibundus, Dreadnought.

Barek is a dreadnought from the Salamanders Legion, one of those massacred in the drop.  The Salamanders revere and hunt giant lizards on their home world, hence the trophies on the carapace.  He fought bravely in the cauldron of battle, but suffered critical damage to multiple systems.

Left for dead, he was recovered by a scratch force including some from the Iron Hands legion, who are notoriously good with machines.

Repairing his cogitator system, but unable to save his original left arm and right foot, they salvaged alternatives from a Dreadnought from the Word Bearers legion - one of the traitor legions.

Deciding that having Barek rejoin the fight was worth the use of the heretic equipment, they effected battlefield repairs and so he fights on.  The Wordbearers Legion iconography has been crudely scratched off (decals added and then scratched/painted over..... am I mad?!?!?).  With his group managing to escape the battlefield on a commandeered Thunderhawk, Furibundus will fight on across the worlds of the 31st millennium, opposing the forces of Horus wherever he can to avenge his fallen brothers...

Anyway, a massive thank you to Greg for being a total gent and never once chasing the (long) overdue duel-gelt whilst I faffed around not knowing what to make for it.  I've also left the base unhighlighted as despite zooming in on Greg's Horus Heresy bases, I couldn't find a brown in my paint collection to match so figured Greg could highlight and add some tufts to make him fit in better with the forces he'll be fighting alongside.

Painted 30k salamanders, Thousand Sons and more gobbos!

They say that every cloud has a silver lining.  The metaphorical cloud in this case is the fact I'm a hobby magpie, constantly grabbing the shiny things from my garage and starting them and not being quite so good at finishing them before the next shiny thing grabs my attention.  This can leave large amounts of half finished figures strewn all over the study, steadily encroaching out of the zone I'm allowed for "Daddy's little men".  The silver lining, to stretch this metaphor almost to breaking point, is that sometimes the moons align, the Scooby gang catch the baddy and I get a load of stuff finished at the same time.

First up, some Salamanders with flamers.  I really wanted a unit with the throwback 30k flamers which pay homage to the flamers released in the first ever space marine box in the early 80's, the one with the beakies in.  No real plan for these, but the Salamander legion do love them some flames so I'm sure they'll get some use.  They were a legion that resisted Horus' betrayal of the Emperor and were mostly massacred for their troubles by the traitor legions in an ambush on Istvaan (boo, hiss).

They'll go nicely with my other Salamanders and I tried to get some muzzle burn damage on the flamers.  Decals applied by my own fair hand on one shoulderpad and flames handpainted on the other shoulderpad to hopefully appease both sides of the decal schism (or perhaps to be considered a heretic by both sides!).

Next up, some more hot death in the form of some Thousand Sons Plasma dudes.

They would ideally be wearing oven gloves as plasma weapons are extremely temperamental can kill the wielder if your dice are bad enough.  So no bad dice out there to stay safe kids.  They originally had converted autocannons, but you know how sometimes you just get a model build wrong?  Took me 2 weeks to admit it to myself as I had a sulk about it, so off went the autcannons and on went the plasmas.  I'm so pleased I did that now.

To support these chaps are twenty members of an assault squad

I see these fellas as the glory boys, laughing at the tactical squads who trudge through the mud as these guys zoom overhead, making themselves a perfect target against the sky no doubt.  Sort of like how the RAF and army consider each other.  So lots of gold and fancy decals showing how much they like flying (birds head on the right shoulder pad, flying scarab on the top of the jump pack).

 I once again showed a cavalier disregard for the make of jump packs in existence during the heresy and used far cheaper 40k ones ( I could buy three units like this for the price of the proper FW one).  All the armour is the correct mark (IV and VI) as I do have some standards... the 30k world is probably as close as GW games get to historical gaming with regards people worrying about exact markings, colours, who fought with whom, etc, but I think we all have to find a level we're comfortable with these things.  The heads are the simply superb Forgeworld upgrade ones for the most part and using these covers a multitude of sins in my eyes!  So look at the pretty heads, not the jump packs...

Some nice chunky axes and swords in the unit and some marines with their helmets off, because it appears to be a tradition that someone in every marine unit won't wear the hermetically sealed life support and vital armour because he wants the enemy to see him snarling...... You can just imagine the conversation

"Sorry Amon, you're the last one here, so you have to leave your helmet behind today and grimace for the next 3 hours about the grim darkness of our present"

"But I did it last time!  Isn't it Azhek's turn?"

"Watch it or you'll be assigned a plasma gun like Hotep was after he complained"

And finally, 32 more gobbos to go with the ones I did a few weeks ago.

Same recipe as the last ones and I was regretting deciding upon two highlight layers on the skin by the time I got to the second one...

These lads will be trampling onto the gaming table shortly and then probably promptly running off again.  I'm hoping to have time to bring some crazed fanatics and netters to the challenge, but I shall have to see how the week goes as time has gotten away from me a little!