Hobby Spending - July 2023.

 

July has now passed for Hobby purchases, and the rundown is a bit bigger then normal, as I found some great stuff on eBay for future project which I thought I'd snap up as it was there.

I've always liked the Iron Kingdoms, Warmachine/Hordes setting which Privateer Press created.

The mix between Steampunk and traditional Fantasy was fantastic I thought, and other things like the Khador faction being Steampunk Soviets, or the Cryx being Undead Pirates, later the Trollbloods being Scottish and Viking in their theming were all cool.

And robots bashing each other, steam powered in this instance, has always been very cool!

So with Privateer Press moving to Mk.IV of their rules and making some announcements* about the latest version of the game, a LOT of stuff popped up on eBay.

I started the month with some Khadoran flavour, picking up this unit of Winter Guard, along with all the attachments (3 Rocketeers and the Commander and Flag), a staple unit of the Khadoran army, I was going to need at least one of these:

As I already had a unit of Widowmakers, but they come in a unit of four, I needed another one for my eventual plan. This marksman from the Iron Kingdoms RPG Miniatures line made a perfect addition:

Kommander Sorscha was one of the original Warcasters from the first edition of the game. 

A caster who uses ice magic to freeze her enemies before smashing them asunder was cool...also, she's wearing an Ushanka as well as her armour..."URAAAAA!".

The fourth version of her miniature featured a fromotion to full Kommandant (general I think) and a nice new suit of Khadoran Man-O-War armour (steam powered armoured which turns her into a walking tank!) what's not to like?

Turning to the Khadorans arch rivals in the setting, this Trencher bunder popped up and I put a cheeky offer in, winning the lot.

20 Trenchers, 6 Grenadiers, 2 Officers and 2 Snipers.

This will form a core of a Cygnaran force for the plans, just a couple of bits to fill it out:

With Cygnar mostly sorted apart from bigger bits, a large group of Tempest Gun-Mages turned up and I couldn't resist.

Already having a miniature of Ashlynn d'Elyse, the Llaelese mercenary warcaster, I decided to have a punt on this stuff to make a dedicated Llael force for her, imagining a slightly different version of the history of the Iron Kingdoms then was written by Privateer.

The Tempest Chargers are the mounted Gun-Mages and are usually very hard to find for not silly money, a punt of an offer was accepted which I was surprised about. The two units of Gun-Mages were again cheap buys, and do most of the infantry for the force:

This unit of Cygnaran long gunners are going to be recommissioned for Llael, being such close allies with Cygnar it won't be that much of a jump to assume that their Llaelese, I just need to find 2 more, preferably command models to  form the unit:

These are the Black 13th Strike Force, an elite black ops Cygnaran unit, who will become a command bodyguard to Ashlynn, again a cheap offer for a hard to find unit:

Lastly a couple of Warcasters:

Major Beth Maddox on the left is a Cygnaran Warcaster and will fit in as a secondary leader.

Captain Kara Sloan on the right (part painted pink) I'm not sure what to do with yet, she's a Cygnaran character, but might fit in with the Llael force with her arcane sniper rifle (considering everything else in the force fires arcane bullets):

Lastly, I picked up these two Minicrate Exclusive alternate sculpts of characters.

The Plaid Piper of Ord is a resculpt of Rupert Carvolo, the mercenary character:

Likewise, Professor Viktoria Pendrake is a resculpt of the mercenary Viktor Pendrake, the Cygnaran professor from who's point of view many of the unit entries in the books are told from. Imagine him as part soldier, part Indiana Jones and you get the idea.

The Minicrate miniature is a gender-bent version of the character:

This month's numbers:

Khador Winter Guard: £15.

Khador Marksman: £2.50.

kommandant Sorscha in Man-O-War armour: £5.

Cygnar Trenchers bundle: £20.

Cygnar Tempest Chargers: £10

Cygnar Tempest Gun-Mages bundle: £7.

Cygnar Long Gunners: £5.

Black 13th Strike Force: £4.

Captain Kara Sloan: £1.

Major Beth Maddox: £1.50.

Minicrate Exclusive Piper of Ord: £2.

Minicrate Exclusive Viktoria Pendrake: £2.

Total for July: £75

Budget for June: £50.

Over/Under Yearly Budget: under budget by £19.44.

Yes, I've gone over budget, but when deals turn up I think you have to if you can.

As I said, all these are for a future project, I'm planning to run next year. Keeping tally of stuff it's been moved to next year as Myself, Chris and Cardboard Fortress have decided upon definitely doing a Weird World War 2 project for the last three months of this year.

I'm not using the Warmachine rules for the Warmachine project either as I'll convert stuff over to Xenos Rampant to make stuff a little more manageable and more fun**.

I need to buy some more for the Warmachine project, so we'll see what next month brings, but there has been noise made by another friend about Tenth Edition 40k and trying that, so the Orks or Astra...Imperial Guard may get an overhaul and organised for the edition.

Until next time, have nice day...

*Privateer Press announced Mk.IV Warmachine, then whilst announcing that they would be 3D printing their new armies to sell to the players (which itself has had mixed results), they also announced that any legacy miniatures (Mk.I, II & III) would not be supported in Mk.IV.

This had the inevitable result that people were shedding Warmachine stuff faster then GWs release schedule, and most at low, low prices.

Perfect for a hobbyist like myself!