Crusaders Games

Shadows Over Hammerhal – Painting Journey (2017-2018)

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Shadows Over Hammerhal was released in February 2017, both complimentary and separate to Silver Tower as a stand alone box set where you can use hero and enemy components of both sets together. Hammerhal is an underground multi level dungeon beneath a city, and features 4 new heroes and chaos enemies including Nurgle and Khorne, along with a good number of Tzeentch acolytes again. Painting my Hammerhal box set began in March 2017 through to summer 2018.

My first hero was the Cogsmith, and whilst i prefer the Fireslayer dwarf from Silver Tower, this one has a combination of copper and silver metallic with armour, gadgets and weapons. I am adding flock to the hero bases as I did for Silver Tower heroes to make them stand out a little more from the enemies. The Elf Loremaster is a great model, who i decided to paint in a green and brown wood elf theme style, as these have always been my favourite elven faction. I am really pleased with how he turned out. One of my better models for this set.
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The Black Art Fleetmaster is another fantastic model, and also one of my all time favourites painted up. His cloak detail is amazing, I went for a predominantly purple colouring with some gold effect to the cloak scales.
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Lord Castellant took longer to paint up with all the little details. This time i went with the more standard golden armour approach that i avoided when i painted the Silver Tower hero. He comes with a gryph-hound, which turned out very nicely in the end, inspired by some other painters, i put some extra detail into the fur painting.
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The Chaos Lord, wearing a purple robe offset by gold and black armour, and probably not one of my better painted models really, but it looks fine on the table.
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The enemies followed with the excellent Putrid Blightkings, which are the best enemies in this set. You have a lot of build alternatives with these models, so I decided to make them into mini characters to add a little extra interest for the dungeon master. This group presents a tough challenge when compared to most Silver Tower enemies. I find skin harder to paint than anything else so this was a challenge, and in hindsight i should have gone for putrid green based skin tones.
‘Fang’ is the Blightlord, generally thought of as the leader and i gave him the most deformed theme. He is the only one in my unit without a helm which gives him some extra distinction. The Blightlord gets to roll one extra dice when he attacks so he will pack an extra punch, and dual weapons seemed the best fit.
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‘Spike’ is my armoured blightking, and I went with a heavy green style to fit with Slambo, and gave him a spikey horn helm. This is probably my favourite enemy model of the set, and he gains an extra vigour life point for having a shield. You could also thematically give him a save roll for his full body protection.
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‘Bellringer’ is an interesting character, with options to carry either a giant tocsin bell or an axe, I went with the latter which is better for a dungeon where a weapon is far more useful, and gave him a flail of bells so he can still make a noise. Carrying a tocsin bell adds plus one movement to all Blightkings, and I will use this character to bring the rule into play.
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‘Moose’ was originally an icon bearer, which when present heals Blightkings one wound each round, but I felt carrying around a huge war staff in a dungeon was a little odd and the pose too static. I changed him into another shield bearer for the extra vigour point, and added the staff to the dungeon as a room item you may need to destroy.
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‘Tank’ is the final character who has an unstoppable look to him, crashing through the dungeon towards the heroes. Having two weapons will allow him an extra dice to attack.
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January to June 2018 next were the bloodreavers, mostly with standard builds, but i added a couple of blightking conversion crossovers for some extra dungeon interest if i need it. A gradual realisation that this box is all skintones has made me wince, and i lost enthusiasm for these towards the end.
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These new acolytes are more interesting to paint than bloodreavers, but all the metal edging and little detail makes them time consuming, but my efforts here are much better and skin painting improved. These acolytes have better poses than the Silver Tower set, with more interesting alternatives such as the scroll and bird carriers.
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The great thing about Warhammer Quest is the ability to expand the games with the help of some additional rules in White Dwarf, so I decided to build a few new enemies into my Hammerhal box set.
An old favourite Chaos Warrior model re-released in a new upgraded format, and with some Warhammer Quest hero rules for him in the White Dwarf march edition, albeit a little overpowered to include in most adventures. I was excited to add him due to my history with Heroquest, and made my own enemy rules for Hammerhal > Slambo
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The release of the excellent Chaos Adversary pack broadened the scope of Warhammer Quest, and with three new quests released in White Dwarf in early 2018, it included both a skaven and chaos warrior themed dungeon. I was therefore distracted for a while adding new Skaven enemies to populate Hammerhal, and the Shadespire warband was perfect to add some character into the dungeon, both as a warlord and his henchmen, or to use as general stormvermin.

Check out the following site which along with an undead adventure, there is also a fantastic new skaven adventure > Manticore Designs
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