Blood Angels Painted Models & Avoiding Burnout

I've been all over the place with my hobby the last few weeks. For starters, I have been doing a rebalance on Mordheim called Newheim, painting and assembling my Blood Angels, and planning our first 40K Battle Report featuring something really cool that I don't think anyone in the 40K blogosphere has done before.

There was a great post by Miniature Tim on how to avoid hobby burnout. If I can give any advice, have multiple projects going on at once. When you get bored of one, switch to something else. Also, try to avoid too much hobby crunch time leading up to a tournament or an event. While those deadlines are good to get some serious work done, a lot of times you finish that last model and walk away from the hobby for a few months. Just look at my run up to the Doubles Tournament at Adventure Games. No posts for almost 2 months after and I didn't get close to getting done what I wanted to.

The painting bug has struck me recently and I have been working a lot on my Blood Angels. It all started at our recent Club Day with getting busted on how all my Land Speeders had no pilots so they couldn't move or shoot. I started assembling and magnetizing a new Land Speeder and I couldn't fully assemble it without painting some of the details. So I've been working on that, my converted Librarian, and my Death Company Rhino/Razorback. Here's some pics.

I'm happy with how the Land Speeder is coming together. All of the magnets are in except for the gunner. Don't fret, I'll have a tutorial on how to magnetize a Land Speeder in the future. My recent snag is trying to get transfers on the shoulder pads of the gunner and the pilot. My first experience with Micro Sol and Micro Set didn't end very well. Hopefully my next go will yield decent results.

This is my Death Company Rhino/Razorback. I picked up an airbrush recently and the dust on the bottom half of the tank was done by spraying vermin brown. It still needs more weathering/battle damage and I'm not sold on the dust effect. The back door is a conversion I did. I figure the only way the Death Company would get back in the vehicle after the battle would be at the behest of Sanguinius himself. I'm not happy with the realistic painting of this. I'm going to redo it in aged bronze like I painted the Honoured Imperium. Tutorial and pics here.

I got tired of being schooled by all the Psykers in Farseer Frank's Eldar army and one of my other friends recently joined the hobby and started playing Grey Knights. I figured I needed to do my own Librarian and aside from hating metal miniatures, none of the Librarians available appealed to me. This one is made from a variety of bitz. You'll see Death Company, Sanguinary Guard, Grey Knights, and Dark Angels parts on there. I'm thinking of changing the Warding Staff for the Flaming Sword from the Empire Wizards kit. Do you like it as is or should I change it up?

Not sure what I'll be posting next time as I just bought a bunch of tea lights to make some destroyed vehicle markers and I've been doing a bit more work on Mordheim. Who knows what the future holds?

Till then,

–The Harrower 

Blood Angels and all things... Mordheim?

In the coming weeks, you are going to see a bit of a shift to what I'm covering with the blog. Previously, I've been exclusively doing Warhammer 40K, but I'll be expanding to start covering Mordheim. Don't worry, if you read the blog because of the Blood Angels and like the tutorials and 40K material, none of that is going away. I'm just going to be sprinkling in some Mordheim now and then. 

Why are you covering Mordheim? That game is like 100 years old.
Very true, but of all the Games Workshop games I've played, Mordheim is one of my favorites. It's easy to get into as you need a small model count and the integrated campaign system makes for some really memorable games.

I have a bit of history with Mordheim as well as I was one of the original designers on Lustria, Cities of Gold and I wrote the Dark Elves and a lot of other Warbands. I hear the collective groan, Dark Elves were so overpowered. Well, that is the type of stuff I aim to fix and really not that overpowered (unless you power game). Truth is I worked on Lustria with a great group of enthusiastic people, but they weren't game designers and most of the decisions that were made were done by consensus which is the wrong way to approach such things and resulted in decisions that I wasn't proud of. Here's a picture from Town Cryer of the first event for Lustria we ran back at Gamesday.

Harry Golden, Derek Whitman, Jeff Visgaitis, Steve Cornette and John Herrington

That's me in the middle. I was much skinnier back then with long hair and full of hopes and dreams. I met and talked to a lot of great guys in the Games Workshop Studio including Space McQuirk, Tuomas Pirinen, Jervis Johnson, and Steve Hambrook (RIP). I got a tour of the hallowed design studio, saw the amazing work of Jes Goodwin first hand, drank at Bugman's Bar, and was the first person outside of Games Workshop to see anything for The Lord of the Rings line and the Tau.

Thanks for the history lesson, but where is this going?
Right! Mordheim is a great game, but it is definitely showing it's age. Several editions of Warhammer Fantasy Battle have come and gone and a lot of the rules are outdated and the Warbands based on fiction that has been updated. My first goal is to be rebalance the ruleset and attempt to address some of the issues such as:

• Armor is too expensive and not worth purchasing for the benefits you receive
• Using two close combat weapons is better than using a sword and shield
• The weapons themselves aren't balanced with each other (i.e. slings are better than short bows, blow pipes are useless)
• Etc.

You do realize that's what Coreheim does, right?

I do and I have taken a look at Coreheim which I think is a well done rewrite of the rules. My problem with Coreheim though is that it is a rewrite and doesn't feel like Mordheim anymore. A lot of things were changed unnecessarily in my opinion and while well balanced, it invalidates a lot of existing fan material that is already out there. My goal with Newheim (catchy, huh?) is to address issues with the current ruleset without invalidating all of the existing material out there.

At the end of this journey, I'll be leaving the community with an updated ruleset for Mordheim that presents options instead of pigeon holing your choice to taking sword and hammer and scorning armor. Of course I'll update some of my favorite Warbands along the way including Lizardmen, Dark Elves, High Elves (NOT the Shadow Warriors, mine were never printed), Norse Raiders, and maybe I'll add some new surprises. I plan to set up a website at http://www.newheim.com where you will be able to download PDFs of all the rules and step back into the dangerous streets of Mordheim once again and experience something that is both familiar and new.

Till next time,

–The Harrower