Our 8th Ed Campaign

Nyx here.

We as a group have decided to go back and play some 8th ed. When this was mentioned, I was pretty darn happy. It's pretty much the only minis game I ever got fully into, and I love the models. I also love painting the models. Then we decided we were going to start small, and build and paint an army over a campaign of games. YES.

So, what army did I drag out of the backlog pile? I have a few kicking about, some skaven, some dark elves, some lizardmen, but regular readers will know I have an absolute obsession with undead armies. I have a fully painted vampire counts army and one on sprues to replace it, now that my painting skills have matured. I also have a tomb kings army on sprue. And they don't make tomb kings anymore, so they're pretty much not for Sigmar. I decided it was time to bust these out.

Now, I have played a lot of 8th ed. My vampire counts list was pretty well tuned. If I wanted to, I could write a pretty nasty list of tomb kings, even if they were the slowest and most underused for a reason. But what would be the point? The group includes 3 completely new to 8th ed members, who would have no fun and learn very little if I rolled over them. So I decided instead my list would have visual impact, even if that meant no game impact.

Visual impact for me means thinking about what I want to paint, and what the army would look like on the table. I have been wanting to paint a sphinx for ages. I love the look of the chariots, and they should be led by the ultimate king on chariot, so in goes Settra, points be damned. Then there's the gleaming Ushabti, and the sinister looking snakes. Yes please. Follow that up with a chaser of shambling skellys, even if the chariots cover the core. Basically, I've not strung together a cohesive tactical list, I've gone through my backlog pile and pulled out the shinies.

So far, I have begun a necrosphinx. I've not been a fan of GW gold paint, so I've picked up Vallejo Game colour glorious gold and polished gold, adding in a sepia wash in between. Then came a happy accident, I picked up a Tamiya black and accidentally got a glossy one, which has made the sphinx body slick black. It works pretty well though. I've also begun the lightning pattern with the face, using stegadon scale green > sotek green > temple guard blue > white scar. I'm still thinking about the colour for shields and things which will tie the army together. A lot of TK armies use red and blue, so I want to avoid this. My gold is pretty yellow, so I'm hoping to get away with purple.

So far, so good. I'm also thinking this might be the army for armies on parade next year, but I don't know if they will be allowed if they're not sold anymore. I did however lay my hands on some Sylvaneth yesterday…