OWAC IX - Part Two

 

SO YOU’RE PROBABLY WONDERING “WHY IS THERE A PART TWO? WASN’T THE LAST POST THE THING?”

Well you see, dear reader, I am a mouthy piece of work who can’t leave well enough alone. Sure I could have ended things there, but long-term followers will know that Gnomes are in my blood at this point, and if we leave this series at three parts, we’re all getting off lucky.

So, a second post huh?

Well I suppose that is more Gnomes than last time, so maybe there’s actually something to yap about.

My original list was quite modest, weighing in at about 60 figures. I’m a bit of an overachiever however, and that initial 60 was to make sure I was set up for a hurdle I could confidently clear. One of the things about OWAC that delights me is deviating from the plan in a way that goes above and beyond, and so while my season 9 was grueling, it was not so much that I couldn’t tackle some of the other models I’d gathered in preparation.   

Additionally, while OWAC is for 5e and earlier, I’m a 6e kid. It’s common knowledge at this point that my attentions are split, making one version of the army for the challenge and another for my personal satisfaction, and the transition from 5e to 6e makes that staggeringly apparent. To the best of my understanding, this edition change is where we see the undead of the Warhammer world restructured to make two distinct forces; Vampire Counts and The Tomb Kings of Khemri. Since I was styling the army to behave like a VC list, I was torn on how to represent many of the supplementary miniatures that my overachiever nature added to the project, and thus many of them went unclaimed at the end because I couldn’t pick profiles or goals in 5e to pair them with.

Furthermore, at the very end of the challenge, I pivoted to having Kemmler and Krell be centerpieces of the army after misplacing one of my other Gnomish necromancers in an unfortunate cat-related incident (she has no respect for the craft.) This created a further avenue for the future of the force, since Kemmler has a special army list that appeared in White Dwarf that allows him to run a full army in 6e, and I began to consider that list heavily as the project ran into its final hours, since I thought it added an exciting dimension of list-building to what was already a striking force. This doesn’t even touch on the cool variant lists found within the 6e VC army book, but if I waxed in that direction, we’d be here all day.

So what are the odds and ends that expanded the army beyond its original measurements? Kicking off our list of lurkers is a small batch of mummies, who could be used as a pop-up unit of zombies. Remembering tales from my youth, VC were hard to beat because they could simply conjure new units of roadblocks, preventing you from getting where you wanted to go. Mummies could very well perform that task and so I added them to the pile gleefully.

I also had some ghosts to consider! In previous non-Warhammer games, I’d used them as tokens or lurking banshees, and so I suppose in actual Warhammer games they’d make a fun banshee/ghost screen as well. I had considered them as one option for a spirit host situation, but decided against it since spirit hosts weren’t featured in 5e. I really like how these ghosts turned out though, as spectral green was always an effect I’d wanted to create. For the life of me I could not find the recipe I actually wanted, as its in a copy of White Dwarf no one else remembers, where an entirely ghost army of goblins was featured (and burned into my brain apparently.) The goblins had been a lighter, more yellowish green, but these bluer hued dudes work too!

Next up are some sheep, who are shepherded by a different variety of ghosts. The lighting is much different for these shots, but I think I got nearer to that yellow-green I’d mentioned before. I decided to have this unit straddle a line where they could be another pop up unit of zombies, or run in the main list of 5e or 6e Kemmler as a horde of ghosts who suck at combat but are some variant of ethereal. I haven’t played them yet, so I can’t tell you which is the preferred way to bring them, but either way I think I’ll be the only one running a herd of sheep at the tourney!

Finally we have three stands of Crow Swarms who are this force’s version of Bat Swarms. They’re from an adorable Noggin the Nog range that is now outside of my ordering range due to international isolationist policies, but they’re part of the force that gives me the warm and cozies.

And those are all of the minis I painted for OWAC 9!

…

Actually there is this last mini, sent to one of the organizers as a token of thanks for running the challenge.

So actually, with this out of the way, those are all of the minis that were painted for OWAC 9! Great headwinds were made towards 5e Undead, 6e Vampire Counts, and 6e Heinrich Kemmler (which is a secret dream come true,) and another Gnomish army goes in the books. At three Gnarmies total, I’m a little worried that other OWACers might be getting a little burnt out on the guys, but personally I think I’ve still got a ways to go before I’m finished making extra mini minis. For now though, that’s all I’ve got to say on the matter.