(Lead) Mountain Musings - "Kings Of War" January 2020

"The souls of the damned are released from their prison to drive the unit towards its foe."

This month's themed attempt to reduce my mass of metal, plastic and resin models has been significantly fuelled by the BlackJack Legacy Slow Grow Army Challenge over on “Facebook”. Weighing in at over two hundred participants the eight month long event has been created to inspire gamers to paint a 2,000 point army for “Kings Of War” by “Mantic Games”, and will see me desperately try to pigment an Empire of Dust force at a (probably overly-ambitious) rate of 250 points per month.

For once though, I’m actually off to something of a quick start, having already finished a metal Casket of the Damned for my first unit of Skeleton Warriors. Costing 10 points, this army special upgrade will accompany my ten-figure strong infantry unit across the battlefield, and once per game, allow me to "roll an additional six dice" when "this unit is targeted by a Surge spell..."

"Kings Of War" WIPs - The Ahmunite Pharaoh is slowly having all his details 'picked out'

The 28mm scale miniature comes inside every "Mantic Games" Skeleton Regiment box, and was primed using a double layer of "Vallejo" Gold before being heavily washed with "The Army Painter" Strong Tone Quickshade. I then dry-brushed it with some (more) "Vallejo" Gold and gave parts of its relief sculpture a splash of colour using a lick of Turquoise and "Citadel" Drakenhof Nightshade. Lastly, in an attempt to show the ravages of the desert sand upon the 'prison', I dabbed (even more) "Vallejo" Gold over the container's front facing, so as to give the impression of its pigmentation fading across the aeons...

Of course, every army needs its leader, and considering the decidedly Egyptian feel to the Empire of Dust, I have gone for an Ahmunite Pharaoh. The multi-part figure was actually something of a pain to assemble, as its kit comes complete with the additional components to turn it into a High Priest; and all of them are unbelievably delicate to handle. Indeed, I actually ended up having to significantly pin the fellow together, as super-glue alone simply wasn't providing a strong enough bond between his limbs and torso to survive even the most timid of touches.

Wargame Hobby Bingo

Disconcertingly, I've suffered similar problems assembling my actual Skeleton Warriors and Skeleton Spearman too, where the generic plastic undead legs and torsos don't really seem to like being bonded with the Empire of Dust metal components. Each separate body, head, shield and even occasional arm, has literally needed to be left overnight before I have been able to add an additional piece to the precarious ensemble. And such a long-winded build has proved both incredibly time-consuming and deflating...

Assembly frustrations aside, I'm also hoping to maintain my positive progress with the Wargame Hobby Bingo Challenge squares I set myself five months ago. I've somehow managed to haphazardly complete ten of the tasks without paying particular attention to the trials themselves, and most recently successfully achieved both 'painting a new unit that can be used in multiple game systems', as well as 'adding a new unit to your army, and completely painting it before using it on the battlefield' with my "Games Workshop" Iron Golem warband for "Warcry"/"Age Of Sigmar", and some (as yet unposted) "Lucid Eye Publications" Grove's Shrubs for "Dragon Rampant.