Having played Age of Sigmar about a year now I decided it was time to write something about it here. And since my latest project is a skirmish environment I’m writing about that.
As with the basic rules of AOS the rules for Skirmish aren’t too burdensome. In fact there are only a handful of rules in addition to the basics of the game. The latest iteration of these rules were published in the January and February issues of White Dwarf 2019. The latest news about Age of Sigmar seem to indicate that there will be a more fleshed out version for skirmish style of game coming this year but currently I will be playing with the rules given in the mentioned issues of White Dwarf.
My actual project began with some random idea about an underwater game. I found the DeepWars-miniature game but since I actually like the current rules for Age of Sigmar I wanted to challenge myself by building the whole thing from the scratch.
As with most project of this kind I searched the web for ideas and posted a few brainstorming requests on various Facebook groups. I got some great ideas and encourages to “go for it”. My premis was coral reef scenery and as it turned out it was quite a idea that I liked more and more.
I started by buying a Start Collecting Kharadron Overlords. Mainly because I wanted to have a submarine. Yeah, Age of Sigmar is about fantasy and I do not particularly like steampunk. But I just really wanted a submarine. And I’m pretty happy with the result.
And since I had the other duardin now as well I built them as deep sea divers.
While the Kharadron were a new faction for me I have collected an army of Sylvaneth and I just knew they would fit in very nicely. Coral reef is a forest (at least a kind of) and thus there certainly would be Sylvaneth there.
Since I had an unbuilt Branchwych I decided to test the theme and built it with only minor conversions. Most apparent conversion is her Bittergrub taking a form of fishes.
A bit more subtle effect is the altered scythe blade. Since I had that one sitting in by bitz box I tried it on and at least for me it felt like a perfect match.
That blade came from a some box Idoneth Deepkin that I bought last year as a conversion for Wanderers. I never really got around using the Namarti Reavers though. I went through my sprue city and found the scavenged sprues still had a few models left to build! So naturally I wanted to add them to this project.
Even though I like the sculpts on the Deepkin I dislike their flavor. In the Age of Sigmar their gimmick is enslaving beasts and stealing souls. For some reason the whole business of “soul stealing” is just off. I understand the all Warhammer property needs to be grim and gritty but that’s a theme I have grown very tired of (as might be apparent looking at that Branchwych).
Since I wanted my Deepkin to look different from the “official” paint schemes I went to a place a fell in love – Ixalan of Magic the Gathering. Ixalan has vividly colored merfolk and I tried to imitate their coloring with my aelves.
Now I had the basics for the project. I knew I wanted it to be bright and colorful. Wanted did not have was the scenery.
Coral reefs are multiform and beautiful. I knew I wanted to have that but I also new I needed to start somewhere simple. I could always add more later but if I really wanted to have this “game” playable I wanted to have something sooner rather than later. I had already eyed some Warhammer 40K scenery for regular games of Age of Sigmar but once I found the Killzone: Death World Forest I had the winner. I still have a few pieces left to paint but it’s coming together very nicely.
The gaming area of AOS Skirmish given in the White Dwarf is an odd 30”x40” and I didn’t have that either. Having already painted one Realms of Battle I did not have patience to do another for this project. Luckily I found out that the Deep Cut Studios had a perfect art for a gaming mat already at their store (I suspect it is meant for DeepWars). It’s great quality and doesn’t take too much space to store.
Having worked in this project from about the end of 2018 I’m really happy to see it going further.
I just recently bought some 40K orks to with power armor that looks sufficiently enough as a deep sea diver suit. They have their ranks increased with a couple of squigs (from which I cut the legs of so that they resemble blobfishes). I’m already building fishmen from bloodletters but these projects as well as the rough outlines of flavor and special rules will be discussed later.
