2025 in Review: Miniature Wargaming

 Well, I'm not going to finish anything in the next 27 hours, so let's wrap it up.

currently on the mat

My son's beautiful eyes still glow in the daylight, don't you worry about that, but now that he's running around and not a little potato baby I am less willing to post photos on the blog. Other than that, this has been as crazy a year as everyone always complains in these things - changed roles at work, juggling parenting and a far more stressful role (and for less pay, thanks inflation) without the ability to work as flexibly (see parenting) has meant that finding time for hobby things is very hard.

Also, I tried to be a bit more disciplined than usual, as mentioned in 2024's wrap-up post. How did that go?

morten tyrannis: finis (2)

 No, no -- really. Honest.

Lord of Poxes

I know I said that I was finished, but even then I acknowledged that Games Workshop had just announced a new model.

I really like this guy, actually. A lot of the 'new' (it's seven years old...) range is way too over the top with the tentacles and the gloop and the smoke. This fellow is a lot more industrial and grounded, while still having a giant silly backpack and a sword the length of two men. Good times.

After Action Report: The Softness of Gold

..their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord.

   - Ezekiel 7:19

ruins of some now-nameless place

Only a few months after being butchered by Camille's gold-clad enforcers of a soon-to-be-dead king, we have a new edition of Horus Heresy and a new opportunity for the sons of Mortarion to show their mettle. Of course, keeping up with the tradition of me not updating the fucking blog, this battle was back in late August and I have forgotten nearly all of it. Oops.

Death Guard tactical marines deploy

This was the first game of the new edition, hot on the heels of playing exactly two games of the old edition this year. Very excellent timing. That said, Camille and I are het* up about the new edition and both immediately bought a lot of new miniatures for it. I even started painting up a new Centurion, who didn't get finished in time for the game but was polished off that night. That's pretty good.

*ironically

After Action Report: Perish in the Pit

 The ruins still gleam in the falselight cast by the engines of the gods, the spacecraft blasting the worldlet's atmosphere with artificial light. It gleams on the ancient temples built above the death-water-from-below, shadows obscuring the ancient, pre-Imperial glyphs and ritualised warnings. Pale-armoured warriors cluster in the dead temple, their plate clicking with the sacred signs that the death-water-from-below always whispers around their gods' wargear. The semi-man hisses a ritual of thanks, his bristling fur colouring with the proximity to the old, old water. The gods war, and death comes. His will be a place of honour once again.

the battlefield. some Death Guard are deployed

Another skirmish last Sunday, a 1000-point game of Horus Heresy against my old friend Camille, last seen in Vicchièneche, one of the chief cities of Saint-Saëns, where their Sisters of Battle were slaughtered by (but defeated!) by the Death Guard. This fight was ten thousand years earlier, with their Adeptus Custodes against my (less mutated) Death Guard.

Death Guard

Siege-Breaker, power axe, combi-flamer, phosphex bombs.
Contemptor with assault cannon, fist, twin-linked bolter
14 Tactical Marines with attached Apothecary
14 Tactical Marines with attached Apothecary
7 Marines with missile launchers

Adeptus Custodes

Helena
Several Squads of Guard
Contemptor with Spear Thingy

We set up the terrain, sort of accidentally creating a ruined temple with several crumbling fortifications and the War creeping in on the grounds. We were joking around that the temple seemed to have once been a nuclear reactor, and the lake and river had formed from the pool - so that's the setting now. Some pre-Dark Age nuclear site that had fallen into ruin and become a place of worship and that civilisation had itself collapsed, and then Compliance and now civil war. 

It's fun making maps and then accidentally creating layers and layers of history to a place.

look at this huge battlefield we don't use (spoiler)

After Action Report: Asphalt and Blood

 A bleak and meaningless skirmish on the edges of a galaxy-spanning civil war...

an abandoned bunker amid the ruins of a worthless city

Early 006.M30. Nomirhast Minor. Nomirhüüs-Б. A crumbling suburb leeching off a nowhere township on a minor worldlet, in a meaningless sector of a self-defeating war. The dust of orbital bombardment and the curling after-effects of rad-phages drift over the sludge-grey ruins. Sergeant Caliel Gloss waves a pale gauntlet through the murk, leading his patrol through the silent rockrete guardians. The traitors are here, red-mouthed revenants in their old colours, loyal to the masters who betrayed their oaths. He will find them.

Across the square, past the empty eyes of an abandoned redoubt, Classya-Lablas licks blood from his athame, witchlights burning in his pale brow.

mortem tyrannis: finis

 Thus, all tyrants projects.

Daemon engine. Defiler-class. Cognomen: 3-9-ϴ-27

This is it! The last model for the (post-heresy) Death Guard! Except for that pesky Lord of Poxes, anyway, but I can get him when he's released. This is the last planned model. I've finished another project! Exclamation marks!!!!

mortem tyrannis: lil guys (and an officer)

 I was misinformed the other day when I said I only had four miniatures left for the project...

squirmy wrigglers

Lord of Virulence

I have been going back and forth on including some Nurglings in the project. On the one hand, they aren't really Death Guard. On the other, everybody includes them in lists (not that I've played a game of 40k in 10th) for holding objective markers. They're also cute little guys, and I would be building fun little dioramas for each lot... but I could 'finish' the project quicker if I didn't do them.

In the end, I not only did some (nine!), I bought new bases and some extra models from eBay...

mortem tyrannis: engines, daemon

 Good lord, I've been painting this accidental project for over five years.

Second miniature of 2025: a second Plagueburst Crawler, a Death Guard-unique artillery and battle tank. It was challenging making this different from the other (painted in 2020, apparently - I need to focus better on projects), as the kit is quite detailed and unique, but with limited options to customise.

2024 in Review: Miniature Wargaming

I picked up Midgard: Heroic Battles today, after doing some shopping at CanCon. I now have ideas for about a dozen more projects...

stay focused: this is the current work-in-progress

Every hobbyist struggles with distraction, but the past year has seen the pressure ramp up even more than usual. Two sets of temporary promotions, personal issues - oh, right and my beautiful son, whose eyes glow in the daylight.

bad selfie from last week

Still, let's try to get more thoroughly back into the hobby that I, y'know, love. Let's review 2024.

mortem tyrannis: многоочитии

Not all daemon princes are ascended from human stock.

ꙮ, associated with + + + XIVE CO77UPT3D + + +

Probably not the Three-Eyed King in Yellow worshipped by cultists shuffling through reeking sumpwater at the rotting base of their hive cities, but an ancient and puissant creature nonetheless. Ordo Malleus archivists have determined that ꙮ brought about the fall of at least one pre-Imperial civilisation on Terra, and there are indications that the multi-eyed horror has been known for millennia, across many pre-Dark Age human peoples - called variously многоочитии, or 百々目鬼, or ^dŠul-pa-è-a, one of the so-called 𒀭𒐌𒐌𒁉𒀭𒈥𒆪𒉿𒅀𒀸 (trans. 'Dark Heptad'), seven fell lords of ruin that serve the Plague-God-that-Must-Not-Be-Written. The truest way to name this creature is the single character ꙮ.

Its blank eye enervates, overwhelms. Before it, healing stops, regeneration ends. Life drains away.

mortem tyrannis: walkers

  ..qui sanat contritos corde, et alligat contritiones eorum
    - Psalmi 146:3

rule of three

As I intimated in the last post, I went a bit crazy in the end of winter, converting up bio-mechanical horrors for my Death Guard project. I decided I wanted to have a trio of dreadnoughts, but wasn't pleased by the idea of them all looking more-or-less the same. Chaos in general - but Nurgle especially - should lend itself to mutability and change. Plus, I'd been staring at moldmoldmold's work way too much, and had some Ideas...

mortem tyrannis: flesh and steel

augebit Dominus plagas tuas, et plagas seminis tui, plagas magnas et perseverantes, infirmitates pessimas et perpetuas

    - Deuteronomium 28

Mars-pattern Rhino transports (corrupted; Death Guard affiliation)

A few months ago, winter put a halt to undercoating and therefore painting, but that freed up my hobby time to allow me to finally convert the trio of second-hand Rhinos that I had accumulated. I may have gone a little overboard...

mortem tyrannis: decay and renewal

It's been a while. Let's move on.

 

Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Sānchóng

A lot of things happening since I last posted. Rather than get into it - most of the readers of this blog follow my instagram anyway - let's just move on to the miniatures. I've been working steadily to try and finish off some of the 'big projects' I've got, in an attempt to reduce the ongoing strain on my mind from having so many things unfinished. A relatively easy one to finish is this accidental Death Guard project... especially as I was unable to undercoat all winter, so I did a lot of sculpting on some vehicles and... others. Stay tuned for those!

mortem tyrannis: growth and growth

 A few additions to the Death Guard.

Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Gehazi

Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Naaman

Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Joab

You may remember my squads of 7-strong Death Guard infantry. Fluffy, fun, neat - a great part of this accidental project. Unfortunately, the 9th edition codex made those squads immediately illegal. Now, while 9th edition is basically unplayable due to a) the overwritten rules making it hard to follow the game and b) the constant rules changes making any faint understanding immediately obsolete, I wasn't totally happy with a few aspects of the squads anyway. One lacked an icon, for instance, and I wanted more of the fun equipment that 8/9th has brought to Mortarion's Chosen.

So I painted and converted a few more lads. Now the three squads are ten-strong, which is less flavoursome but there are still three of them - and I can always drop a few members if I ever actually play a game with them.

morten tyrannis: officer

 Good to get things ticked off the list.

hail mortarion! hail the death-of-kings!

Okay, I don't have a list. I do enough project management stuff in my work that I don't want to start doing Trello cards for my miniature hobby. But with the current weather systems across eastern Australia, I can't get any undercoating done. This guy has been on my desk in his undercoat for something like a year now, so I painted him!

Part of the reason I was so hesitant was his cloak. With the red-right-arms on some of my XIV Legionnaires, I didn't want to go the obvious route of an officer's red. Likewise, a muddy green would be too obvious for a captain of Nurgle. I decided to pick up a pot of Hobgrot Hide to see what that looked like, and then.... figured I might as well try it on this guy.

Pretty pleased with it.

I'm not sure I really nailed this, and my gradually failing phone means that the photos aren't the strongest - but he is done and that is the very main thing.

After Action Report: Mortem Sororibus

Saint-Saëns was an unremarkable planet, part of a string of systems that had existed in relative peace for several centuries despite their proximity to the Maelstrom. Saint-Saëns (Tithe grade: Solutio Secundus) was an especial jewel of the sector, an ancient world that had served the Emperor for over four millennia. The ruins of pre-Imperial ruins dotted the more civilised places, nestled within the proto-Hives and bustling horizontal cities clustered along the world's river-analogues and alkaline oceans.

Vicchièneche, a chief city
Note the early Imperial ruin, c.700M38

The oligarchical Triarchy maintained the ancient ruins in the interest of history and culture; some wild places were left intact, the better to reflect the glory of the emperor (and allow for the feudal lords' hunting). Saint-Saëns was a place of peace and beauty, a rarity in the grim darkness of the Imperium of Man.

In the early years after the Great Rift, the world fell into fire and doom. The Death Guard had come.

plague zombies pour from the industrial district

mortem tyrannis: against death

Justice shall be delivered, and doom shall stalk a thousand worlds.

Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Naaman and his squad

Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Joab and his six brothers-in-hell

Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Gehazi and six Once-Men

The final part of the Death Guard showcase, the core of the army: infantry. Three squads of seven posthuman nightmares. This the core of the accidental army - I'd always loved the old monopose plastic plague marines and after winning a couple of accidental eBay auctions.... well.

Apparently the pathway to hell has seven steps. Below the cut for more photos and conversation.

mortem tyrannis: neuron plague

The Weeping. Mutterflux. The Slithering Scourge. Neuron Plague. Somnambuphage. It is known by many names, but we all know the result:

urgh.

...

Two mobs of 14 plague zombies. A mixture of the recent Poxwalker miniatures from Games Workshop (some of them mildly converted), classic Necromunda Plague Zombies, and a bunch of weird conversions the ideas for which were largely nicked from Wilhelm.

These were all mostly painted with washes and largely pre-date Contrast paints, being done in bits and pieces over the last couple years.

Below the cut for a big pile of gross disease-ridden thingos.

mortem tyrannis: praise! joy!

Cast aside the bronzed lie of the Emperor, He who brings death, He who takes away your children, murders your cousins, takes your lives and offers you nothing but endless grey for a future.

Throw aside the crushing golden heel of the Empire - come with us, O cousins! O sisters! O daughters and uncles! - come with us into a bright and sticky future.

There will be only peace.

graffiti may be the voice of the people, but oppressors only listen to gunfire

We've seen these lovely scavvies and renegade guard several times in Necromunda, where they form a street gang. In the platoon-to-company scale game of 40K, they form a mob of oozing cultists, prepared to die to defend their saviours-in-white, the sons and servants of Him Who Is King Behind the Mask: The Cult of the Three-Eyed King.

The nucleus of the cult was a handful of models I'd hacked together in about 2004 or so, the last time I'd played Necromunda, using some bits from a friend's Skaven Mordheim gang and a few Cadian guard that I'd bought in the vain hope of starting a new project. They played a few games, got some thoroughly average paint jobs and sat in dust and decrepitude for something like fifteen years until I got back into the hobby hard a couple years ago.

join us! never know pain or hunger again! joy! praise!

I then rescued a couple of them, stripped them and gave them marginally better paint schemes. I've since added to the Cult, and now it stands at a healthy twenty-one figures; three times seven - an auspicious and sacred number to the High Lords of the Warp, They Who Bless and Prosper Us, Yea! E'en Here in the Depths of this Hive.

Why don't we go through them? Meet the family. Hear the whispers. Taste the blessings of the Winged Lord and His Great Servants; let Them feed you...

mortem tyrannis: daemon engines

A tank is one of the oldest expressions of industrial slaughter; small wonder that daemons love to inhabit them.

malicious artillery

possessed tankettes

The showcase of my accidental Death Guard army continues with the warmachines that I've accumulated so far. My partner bought me a trio of the easy-build Myphitic Blight-Haulers a Christmas or two ago; I painted them last year. The Plagueburst Crawler was a decision made once I realised that this army was beginning to actually be an army and therefore needed heavier support than ranks of plague marines and some cultists.

Below the cut we shall see some more photos, O yes.