My Hammerhal box set began in 2017 by building and painting the excellent Putrid Blightkings, which are the best enemies in the 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 has 7 vigour minimum and presents a tough challenge when compared to most Silver Tower enemies.
 ‘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 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. |
 ‘Spike’ is my armoured blighking, and I went with a heavy green style to fit with Slambo, and gave him a spikey horn helm. This is probably my favourite model of the set, and he gains an extra vigour life point for having a shield. |
 ‘Bellringer’ is an interesting character, with options to carry either a giant tocsin bell or an axe, I went with the latter for a dungeon where a weapon seems far more useful, and gave him a flail of bells instead so he can still make a noise. Carrying a tocsin bell adds plus one movement to all Blightkings, and I will use Bellringer to bring this rule into play. |
 ‘Moose’ I originally built as an icon bearer, which when present heals Blightkings one wound each round, but I felt it carrying around a huge war staff in a dungeon was a little off and a little static in his pose. I changed him into another shield bearer for the extra vigour point, and plan to add the icon to the dungeon as a room item you need to destroy. |
 ‘Tank’ is the final Blightking 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. I am pretty happy with the blightking results, I do find skin harder to paint than anything else so this was a challenge, and in hindsight i should possibly have gone for putrid green based skin tones. |
| Next were the bloodreavers which i completed during 2018, completed with mostly standard builds, but with a couple of blightking conversion crossovers to some add extra dungeon interest if i need it. A gradual realisation that this box is all skintones has made me wince, as again these were quite hard to paint well, and are not amongst my better miniatures as i lost a bit of enthusiasm on the way. |
 |
| Finally it has taken me until early 2019 to complete the acolytes, as i was mainly using the models from the Silver Tower set. However the recent decision to buy into the next instalment of the series with Blackstone Fortress has forced my instinct to kick in and finish the set this month, so with 7 now done i have just 3 remaining. These acolytes are more interesting to paint than the bloodreavers, but all the metal edging and little detail makes them more time consuming. My efforts here are better than the bloodreavers and also better than the Silver Tower ones i did over two years ago, and the miniatures have better poses than in the older set and more interesting alternatives such as the scroll and bird carriers. |
 |