Category Archives: Warhammer Fantasy – 9th Age

Melbourne Museum Rocks! Objective Markers and Summoning Portals

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So today Marouda and I took my Mum to the Melbourne Museum. We all still refer to it as the “new” Museum, even though the new facility was opened back in 2000. The old Museum, located in what is now entirely the State Library of Victoria was a lot better, as they had much more of their collection on permanent exhibition, while the “new” Museum only has things like Arms and Armour on display when there’s a “thematic reason” to include them in some other form of exhibit. So, basically, never. (Yes, seriously).

Anyway, it was still a decent day – seeing dinosaur bones again, even cast ones is always good. But since this isn’t Facebook or Twitter to be filled with meaningless babble, there’s a point to all of this. After the visit, we took a look through the gift shop, not really planning to purchase anything. We’ve gotten some fossils from there before, but this time, I spotted various Orthoceras for sale, including these little polished ones with the same footprint as a coin. I decided that they would make just about the coolest objective markers ever – after all, they’re actual bloody fossils!

So I bought some.

Orthoceras for Objective Markers. Elf for scale.

Undead and Elves pretend to contest the fossilised Orthoceras objective in simulated game photograph.

I’m sure I’ll also sometimes use specific modelled objective markers for thematic reasons, but regardless, these are incredibly cool, and work well on a number of levels.

Speaking of cool, I also spotted these:

Agate Slices – available in a variety of colours – $15 each, sure. But that’s still probably cheaper than whatever crappy plastic summoning portals or vortex templates that GW or PP et al are selling. My first thought was actually Dark Eldar, but they’ll work for anything as far as I can see.

The Mouth of Sauron summons bad things from the Pink Agate portal. And provides scale.

Now summoning from the Blue Agate portal!

And finally, from the Purple Agate portal!

These Agates played havoc with the auto-white balance on the cheap digital camera that I use, as you can plainly see (check the desert sand mat!). Regardless, and despite the slight tonal shift and the fact that you’re not getting the 100% true colour of these Agates, the point is that they look bloody amazing, and despite the fact that I’ll likely use them rarely, they’ll also double as a nice little bit of deco for the War Room – and when I need a magical or psychic portal for a wargame or RPG, I’ll have the most kick-arse ones you’ve ever seen. They’re beautiful, have depth and layers, and incredibly deep colours. Oh, and as you can see – they look the part amazingly! It might be worth giving them a coat of clear acrylic to protect them, which I’ll look into later on.

Citadel Spirit Hosts – Completed! + LotR Barrow-Wights.

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So, the following day from starting these nice little surprises in the post, I managed to finish them. As stated last time, it’s a quick and simple job, but it’s effective enough and they look good on the table.

Citadel Spirit Hosts – Based as a unit of Wraiths for Kings of War.

It seems that these figures are properly called “Spirit Hosts”, and appear to date from 2000 when GW split the undead army into “Wet” (Vampire Counts) and “Dry” (Tomb Kings), as that’s the first reference I can find to them over at Stuff of Legends. They usually mount three to a 40mm base, but I’m using them for Kings of War, so individual 25mm round bases does it for me to turn them into a regiment of Wraiths.

From the last post where I talked about the paint process, I simply painted the bases (base, drybrush, wash, weathering powders) and added a thinned down Citadel Sybarite Green paint wash to the eyes, nostrils, mouths, and around the belts and necks/hair of the individual ghosts to emphasis those parts slightly. And of course, a nice matt varnish to finish them off. – And yes, that is a spot of weathering powder on that front guy in the photo. Sorted now!

Some might be critical that I’m using what now seems to be the “official GW palette” for ethereal models, but I liked the effect when they were used on the Army of the Dead figures more than a decade ago, and to me the look really is suitable for undead, and looks better than the “dirty sheet” look that was used before.

Citadel Spirit hosts bases as Individuals for skirmish games.

While I do like the look of the new ones, these ones were free, painted in a day, won’t snap off their bases if you look at them funny, and are a lot more versatile – at least when based individually.

I could see designing a Pulp Alley/7TV scenario game of Scooby-Doo using the Hasslefree figures that starts off like a typical Scooby-Doo adventure using the Hasslefree “gang and dog” set, and once “the gang“‘s players makes it to the safehouse, taking their figures away and replacing them with the second version of that set, and turning it into a L4D apocalypse scenario…

While I was photographing these guys, I thought I’d also take a pic of my Citadel Lord of the Rings Barrow-Wights. These two (and their third – a former Army of the Dead figure) are used both as actual Barrow-Wights in LotR SBG, and also as a troop of Wights (surprise!) in Marouda’s Kings of War Undead army. Well, she hasn’t used them yet, but soon.

Citadel LotR Barrow-Wights

I’ve shown these on the blog before, but that was some time ago, and the pictures there aren’t exactly the best, so why not show them again in a slightly better light? Why not indeed.