The Jurassic Dark

We created a few "horror-inspired" Age of Sigmar armies for our Halloween Battle this fall - these Lizardmen are a wily bunch of witches and grave-robbers that have chosen to take root in the Realm of Shadows and have tread a bit too far from the light of the their star-masters. This would have led to a cultural and physical decay in their mighty cohorts, with the loyalty to the Old Ones slowly changing to cult behavior and primitive paganism. One of the most interesting elements in AoS for me is how the different realms offer thematic conversion ideas and possibilities to interpret the usual faction visuals and culture in a different, imaginative way.

Small projects like these are awesome for testing out new mediums, methods and techniques - it's always healthy to challenge oneself and to try pushing both the vision and end product a bit further. Some of the cornerstones here were the Vallejo Malefic Skin Paint Set, AK Interactive scenic accessories and Green Stuff World tools such as the Chainmail Texture Plate, most of which are available via our webstore. Our instagram.com/gowarhead also contains many pics and musings about the idea and execution behind the new force.

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Halloween in the Mortal Realms

What a mad week of preparations and painting marathons, what a Halloween gaming party! We rolled our first dice in the Mortal Realms yesterday,  commanding completely new armies especially created for the spooky occasion. The mini campaign was about a violent adventure in the Realm of Shadows, with our daredevil factions trying to locate the Shadow King's stolen crown. 

The participating armies (The Shadecast Eternals, The Pumpkin Gitz, The Soulblight Gravelords and The Jurassic Dark) will get posted here and in our social media channels with some descriptions and debriefing as usual - this is just to highlight the fun we had and to thank the participating parties! Hopefully another tradition in the making.

The Spectres of Nex-Murnau

To continue with the Thracian Insurgency campaign footage, we've just received an image transmission from a foolhardy remembrancer attached to a battlegroup of another traitor legion - the Night Lords!

Ollie's take has been to build a suitably frightening VIII Legion army, steering towards darker themes instead of the mainstream "halloween horror" vibe. This is already evident in the colour scheme with the usual blue replaced with a cold-tinted black, a proper midnight clad.

The Night Lords have been based to match the colours and textures of our Thracia Rex table and their style fits the gloomy surroundings as well! We've been joking that it was fun to spend 15 months creating a 6x4' display board just for Ollie's traitors...

Night Lords FB Army Gallery - The Spectres of Nex-Murnau

The Phoenix Nest

 
Betrayal. Trenches. Vanity. Thematic trinity for our new Horus Heresy Emperor's Children!

The army was created as an undercover lockdown project last year as we started planning our Thracian Insurgency 30K campaign - our crew has long traditions of secret army builds (usually associated with grand reveals in our Civil War tournaments) and here the new force played a narrative part in the story as well. It's a project that I was very inspired to do, a bit smaller "cabinet" force with emphasis on scenic storytelling instead of gameplay practicalities.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about 3D printing making its way to the hobby scene, even without really going into the IP issue. On the other hand it is a wonderful enabler of conversions and gives so much possibilities into creating imaginative concepts, playing with the scale of things and makes some of the crazy ideas more affordable. It's not hard to see that some of the cool concepts that people have produced would not get done without the help of some bits printing.

The other side is what kind of effect printing has on the creative process. I feel that an essential part of making conversions is that one looks at the parts they have available and then combines them in an inspired way or turns those parts into something else. Combining kits or creating alternative builds is awesome and that "forced creativity" having to go with what you have at hand might be spoiled by the endless catalogue of printable conversion bits. This is of course partly (mostly) sentimental nonsense, we're just of the generation that looks at household items to turn into terrain and likes to write their army lists on paper with a pencil... But still, an imaginative conversion of an established model is often much more interesting to see than an alternative third party miniature.

This army was pretty much a personal experiment in the printing realm and my next army project will go with the opposite (and more traditional) kitbashing route.

Emperor's Children FB Army Gallery - The Phoenix Nest

War Head Feudal World: Thracia Rex

Thracia Rex, Imperial Feudal World, Ultima Segmentum, Rebelling, 005.M31.

With our first campaign games played in June our gaming table project of 15 months has finally reached a stage that we can call it finished! This doesn't mean we don't have additions in the works, but these are smaller projects of their own that can be used to modify the existing scenery or to provide narrative details, such as pieces of scatter terrain. I look forward to these more "relaxing" mini projects now that the pressure to finish the terrain for summer gaming has been lifted off our shoulders!

Although I and Ollie have done the heavy lifting, we've had a lot of help and support from our hobby pals crafting and painting details, participating in planning, gifting us parts or just encouraging us to keep ploughing through the tasks. Now we get to enjoy a (hopefully long-lived) narrative gaming spree together!

We've been sharing detail pictures in War Head Instagram and in the Facebook Album, and will continue to do so as we get more gaming footage during our Horus Heresy: Thracian Insurgency campaign. 

Spring Consolidation!

Silence on the hobby front? Nonsense! Most of our project progress has recently been directed to our social media channels and despite the lack of posts here there's a lot going on. Blogger's editor update has made it really cumbersome for us to share pictures here, so until we update our website we welcome you to follow us in the channels below for War Head hobby updates, project galleries and more. Here's hoping we can start meeting you guys in events soon again - until then we'll keep painting and preparing for the battles to come. Onwards!

For commission painting enquiries, collaborations or other wargaming chatter, please feel free to email us at contact@gowarhead.com. We currently have a few weeks of project queue but stand ready to plan ahead!

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