Those Who Were Undercoated

 Winter has come, and I am once again unprepared.

Undercoated Family photo

It's too cold to undercoat any of the projects that I want to concentrate on, so I've dug up a handful of already-undercoated models from projects I stalled on - most from years ago - and done a little brushwork on them. Not included here are three models finished from my Age of Sigmar Flesh Eater Courts, because I'm going to do a big project post for those when the whole army is finished. I also have the original Escher gang that I didn't finish for the last Old World Army Challenge I was in, but I haven't been able to do much on those yet.

I'm also working on some terrain, and I'm prepping a bunch of miniatures for when the weather warms up so that I undercoat tons at once. I really ought to plan these things better. Maybe next year...

Project: Blood Bowl - Amazons

 It's been a while. My computer became too unstable to write anything longer than an email, [redacted] occured, I got promoted at work. Luckily, I've done fucken tons of hobby stuff since April. Let's start with a fully completed project.

watch the parrot!

Of course, about sixty seconds after I finished the last of these girls, Games Workshop released a new ruleset for them. It doesn't look too bad. Catchers are gone and while the blitzers are reduced to 0-2, we now have blockers, who are also 0-2. So I should be able to use the team without too much trouble - if littlemangs and I ever get around to seeing one other in real life, that is.

Presenting the Lemuria Leopards!

League of Two-As-Four: Match One - Uzkulak Udugs v Skälsbërg Skrëëchers

Good afternoon, folks! A few weeks ago, my regular opponent Mangs-of-War and I got together on a calm autumn day to inaugurate a miniature Blood Bowl league.

..the teams line up! Here comes the kick!

Unfortunately, this was on 14 March, and I'm writing this nearly a month later, so I've forgotten nearly all the details. It's been an unforgivably busy month at work and with the Old World Army Challenge, with April not shaking out much better. This means that you will have to settle for some snapshots and my vague recollections.

On the other hand, this is the first match of the League of Two-As-Four, where Mangs and I take our four Blood Bowl teams and mash them against each other. Two coaches! Four teams! For games where we play against ourselves,* we will hand control of the team to the other coach. Fun! The team roster looks like this:

Team	Team Name	Coach
Chaos Dwarfs	Uzkulak Udugs	goblinpaladin
Human	Skälsbërg Skrëëchers	Mangs-of-War
Elf Union	Saphery Strikers	Mangs-of-War
Amazons	Lemuria Leopards**	goblinpaladin

For this first bout, the Uzkulak Udugs took the field against the Skrëëchers, here fielding an Ogre instead of Herr Skrëëch. Come below the cut for pictures and a match summary...

Match Recap: Uzkulak Udugs frozen out of victory on a frosty afternoon

  UZKULAK, ZU. -- A brutal offence is the best defence - but sometimes even iron and steak isn't enough.

The exhibition match between the freshly minted Saphery Strikers and home-mine heroes the Uzkulak Udugs ended in a crisp 2-2 draw on Sunday 08 August. 

part-way through setting up

We take you to our commentators, Jim and Bob...

Match Recap: Despite turmoil on the pitch, Uzkulak Udugs defeat Skälsbërg Skreechers 2-1

 UZKULAK, ZU. -- Even bringing a screeching owlbear mascot onto field isn't enough sometimes.

Luckily for the newest Chaos Dwarf team out of the Great Skull Land - a region producing a number of great teams this season, including the Uzkulak Juggernaughts - their coach had the tools to handle the flailing mass of teeth and claws.

This Sunday saw the Uzkulak Udugs take the field in their first home exhibition game against the newly-reformed Skälsbërg Skreechers, coached by the infamous LMW.

the two teams line up!

Project: Blood Bowl - Chaos Dwarfs

 I did actually buy Blood Bowl in the 90s. I might have even bought my favourite team; I don't remember. Like so many things, I gave away or sold these things as I moved to university, keeping only my Empire army and a few bits.

Luckily, Games Workshop reprinted them a couple years ago. I finally started painting them for the new ruleset and...

watch the sulphurous, vile avian!

..finished putting the finishing touches to the bull centaur blitzers last night, so the whole project is done! That's quite satisfying, even if did lead me to procrastinate from my Squats commitment until dangerously late in the month...

At any rate, below the cut for more photos of this tusked mob as well as some team name ideas!

Project: Servants of the True Emperor

A few weeks ago, I started a project for 'deadcember'. Today, I finished it. That's a pretty auspicious start to a new blog!

rrr... mmrr..nrr.

Deadcember is one of those slightly silly hobby challenge things that people do. Orctober is probably the most obvious one; Serftember is another. I think my favourite is the Month of Marsh, which I first heard about via ZeroTwentyThree. I'd had my Mordheim undead miniatures lying around for the better part of the last two decades, and I'd never gotten around to painting them, so #deadcember offered a perfect opportunity to do it.

What really kicked me into gear was the work that some of the guys in the AOS28 community were doing. While I've never gotten into Age of Sigmar (a subject for a different time), the AOS28 are just incredible. The movement generates really evocative dark fantasy, sometimes quite intimate and detailed and always with an incredible aesthetic.

Steam trading card: Decay of Society

Alexander Wirnberg of Echoes of Imperium fame has recently been starting a project called Mordheim 2019. Slightly later than the original game's timeframe of 1999, with Mordheim having festered for twenty years and the Empire's anarchic civil war allowing corruption to blister across the continent, Wirnberg's project features the kind of horrible, intricate detail that you'd expect. He takes the weirdness vein already running through Mordheim and turns the dial up to eleven. It's fucking great.

My project was more humble...