Campaign: Beginner's Path to Glory v1.1 Update

Good morning everyone!

At your request I've updated my Beginner's Path to Glory -campaign with three new factions as well as slight rule modifications, all according to your good wishes and suggestions.

The three new factions I added are Ogors, Beastmen and Greenskinz. The Ogors-faction mainly contains models from the Gutbuster Ogors range, while the Beastmen are a combination of Brayherd and Warherd subfactions. The Greenkinz are a mesh-up of Orruks, Gitmob Grots, Moonclan Grots and Troggoths, similar to the old Orcs&Goblins faction of the Fantasy Battles. I plan on adding Ironjaws and Bonesplitters as their own entries later on.

Each of the added factions has its own Champion-, Hero- and Follower tables, as well as a Naming Your Heroes -table to generate unique personalities from.
Will your rampaging Ogor warband be lead by Orag Doomslayer or Trekig Deathseeker?
What story will you weave behind a Beastmen champion called Taalar Rusthoof or Northoz Gianthorn?
Can the motley Greenskin crew of Grug Shroombasher or Kurbag Githand ever grow into a mighty Waaagh! ?

The slight rule-modification I made was an addition to the Creating Your Warband instructions:
The rules now specify that if you roll on the Hero Followers table of your faction and get a result that you already have in your warband (either as a Champion or a Hero Follower) you must re-roll the result. This is to reduce the possibility of a player having multiples of the same Hero while adding to the fun as the diversity of your Followers increases!

Without further introduction I present you the link to the updated full version of the campaign (ie. you don't need the old pdf anymore):

Beginner's Path to Glory

Campaign: Beginner's Path to Glory

Looking for something small-scale, easy and fast to have a few games played off with mates over a weekend? Then this is something you're interested in!

Over the last few couple of days I've been working on a Path to Glory -campaign that is scaled down to be suitably fast-paced and interesting for new players, while still retaining the feeling of the original one. You follow your own personalized champion and his/her warband as they grow in strength and size, living a story that ends either in favor or disgrace in the eyes of your gods.

As I'm going to play this game type with a group of mates that don't necessarily own any models yet, I needed to focus this campaign around the models that I own myself. This may be a bit of a hindrance for some of you but trust me, I own a lot of models and you can always modify this campaign to better suit your own needs.

At the moment there are 7 factions available in the campaign:

- Free Peoples
- Slaves to Darkness
- Duardin
- Tomb Kings
- Seraphon
- Stormcast Eternals
- Wanderer Aelves

Each of these factions has its own Champion-, Follower- and Hero Follower -tables which you can roll on to determine the composition of your warband. I've also included Naming-Tables for each one, meaning that you can generate names for your heroes just by rolling a few dice!

Now let's take a closer look on some of the campaign features...

Champion and Follower Reward tables. Each time you've fought a battle against another player you make one of three choices: you roll for a new Follower, roll for a reward for an existing Follower or roll for a Champion Reward.
These Reward-tables are meant to represent the experience your models gain on the field as they fight the enemy, making existing units deadlier and more efficient than any fresh recruits.

The Champion table gives eleven possible bonuses (one of which is not an actual bonus...) for your champion, conferring in-game enhancements that reflect your warrior's growing skill and confidence on his quest to glory.

The Follower table contains 6 bonuses that represent the experience your followers gain as they progress from green recruits to hardened veterans. It is a tough choice whether to generate a new unit of followers after a battle or to enhance an existing one, as both are equally considerable options.

In the original Path to Glory each faction would have its own tables for rewards. To make things easier and faster for myself new players I put together these two generic ones that are used for every included faction.

Choosing Your Battles. As long as you have the General's Handbook (and you really really should have it) you're on a good footing with the scenarios of this campaign. Every single one of the six battles shown here can be found within the pages of that sacred book, with full explanations from how to set up your models to what you'll have to achieve to win. Just roll a dice and see which of the battles you'll dive into with your opponent!

I cherry picked the most fluffy ones I could find, while still trying to retain a certain neutrality so that the players might implement their own narratives into the battles they fight. Any of the battles can be freely modified or changed if the players wish. Come to think of it, wouldn't it be nice to suddenly declare in the middle of the campaign that every player now fights a special battle, one that isn't listed here. The special battle could also be worth some extra Glory Points. Interesting, eh?

Naming Your Heroes. Here are three of the total of seven naming tables which you can roll on to decide your hero names. I strove to include many different combinations that had a unique feeling to them, as well as a few funny/crazy ones.

Each of the seven factions has its own table. Each table requires three rolls with two dice to generate a name. First you roll your hero's forename, then the surname in two parts. Simple, isn't it?
This way there are eleven times eleven times eleven (11x11x11) possibilities for a character name on each table, meaning that one table is able to generate 1331 different names.

My aim is to help people forge their character's narrative with these tables. What cool background story will you come up with for a champion named Fauadan Mosswarrior? What about Vorax Madwit? Titus Twinbreaker?
Once a name is generated it will be a fun challenge to figure out how to explain it in the story!

By the way, I enjoyed making these tables immensely. If you have a faction in mind that you think should receive a naming table like this, just let me know and I'll make one.

Now that we've looked into the campaign in a bit more detail, it is time to publish it. Here's the link to the PDF -file:

Beginner's Path to Glory

I'll end this post with the same thought I used in my last campaign: Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.

The Art of War

Greetings, weary travelers of the internet!

Need some refreshment on your journey? Here are a coupe of set-ups I created on my living room table, using the painted part of my collection of models to turn it into a fantasy battlefield. Using the Prisma -app on my phone I then shot these pics to brighten your day.
Enjoy!

A horde of Chaos Marauders converges upon the Duardin lines under heavy cannon-fire

The Stormcast shieldwall holds firm under the pressure of the enemy attack

A small contingent of Liberators has been surrounded in the midst of the fighting

Cannons and handguns scythe down invaders as they assault the Duardin lines

Slaughterpriest duels with a Liberator-Prime for the dominance of the field

Lord-Castellant holds his lantern aloft on the steps of the embattled Realmgate

Another take on the dueling champions

"Face-off amidst the ruins", a Lord-Celestant clashing with a Daemon Prince of Tzeentch

Sigismund the Betrayer, Slaughterpriest of Tzeentch

Hello folks!

It's been hard to keep posting stuff here at a decent pace as life is busy sometimes! Today I'm here to introduce you the model I got along with the latest White Dwarf magazine (monthly once again!) and the process of painting I went through to get him to shape.

Here's a stage-by-stage guide as a collection of pics to show you how the model changes during the process. I love seeing how each stage affects the model and how different the final result looks when compared to any of the earlier stages!

In five general steps the method of painting I used was

1) Assembly
2) Undercoat
3) Base colours
4) Washes
5) Layering, highlights &detail

Now that you've briefly seen the process as a whole, let's delve into each of the steps in a bit more detail!

I'll start off with the assembly as it was here that I made the first changes to the model. As the model is originally a Slaughterpriest of Khorne I had to make slight changes to make him fit into my Tzeentchian army a bit better. The most notable (and the only change actually) was the replacement of his groin armour and leather strips by a piece of parchment loaned from a Flagellants kit.

The model came together very neatly and with little effort, a real joy to assemble. The pose is threatening yet still dynamic, with the priest clearly looking down on someone shorter than him with a murderous gaze.

A black undercoat applied with a brush. I usually use spray paints to undercoat entire units at a time, but with single models I like to get at them with a large, soft brush to really examine and explore the model and all its curves and bends.... Wait, what?

This helps me plan the techniques and paints I'm going to use for each surface, so that the painting process itself will be as smooth and fluid as possible.

The basic colours. Applied in 2-3 thin layers, each area of the model is assigned a base colour from which the later effects are easy to work up. I used:

- Slaanesh Grey for skin
- Caledor Sky for armour
- Gehenna's Gold for shiny golden ornaments
- Xereus Purple for the small cape in the back
- Screaming Skull for horns, the skull under his foot and the groin parchment
- Ironbreaker for metal
- Mournfang Brown for boots and leather belts
- Screamer Pink for the sword's handle

Then came the inks, applied with a medium brush. Bone and parchment received a wash in Seraphim Sepia while all other parts were darkened by Nuln Oil.
I don't spare inks when I wash as I really want the effects to look like something, something that creates contrast when painted over with lighter colours in the next step.

And down we are to the final step. Basically all base colours were applied again over the darkened layers, leaving any recesses and shadowed areas darker than the spots where light would naturally hit. This is something I especially love doing to areas of bare skin, picking out the muscles one by one to make them "pop up" from the model.

Finally I applied the special something of my Tzeentchian warband's theme... the extreme armour highlights!
I obediently picked up my pot of Lothern Blue and the smallest brush I own, drawing a (hopefully) thin line along the hard edges of the armour plates to make the whole model look a bit more magical and contrast-y.

He fits into my army pretty well despite his past as a servant of Khorne. He saw the greater promise of power the Great Schemer could offer over his previous deity and now lends his powers to Izazel the Twisted and his fatesworn followers!
As the Slaughterpriest has no abilities that specifically use the keyword khorne I decided to implement him in my Tzeentch Mortals -army, casting his Blood Boil and Blood Bind prayers on enemy units while hacking at them with his two weapons of choice. Of course, he cannot gain any bonuses from my other Heroes that use the tzeentch keyword but I don't usually buff my supporting heroes anyway unless the situation urgently calls for it. 
And in addition to getting an interesting character to join my warband I get to call him "the Betrayer" for a good reason!


Finally as a reward for those who've read this post all the way down here, please enjoy these pics I created by playing with the famous Prisma - mobile app:

Filters from top left to bottom right: Gothic, We Can Do It!, Electric, Udnie, each of them at ~60-70% saturation.