Shadespire: Magore’s Fiends review
Magore’s Fiends are the second Khornate warband released for Shadespire. Unlike Garrek’s Reavers, the Fiends focus on heavily-armoured assault. The box contains three Blood Warriors and a daemonic Flesh Hound. This is a review of the expansion contents.
Shadespire FAQ 1.2
The second FAQ for Shadespire has just been released, and can be found here.
No major surprises in this one – mostly just further clarifications on some wording. The Sepulchral Guard’s “raise two figures” rules still trigger if it’s the same figure being returned multiple times, which helps with Battle Without End and the Warden’s Inspire condition. The extra action from Time Trap can’t be used for anything you’d otherwise be prevented from doing (e.g. Charge with a model that’s already made a Move action). Now that there are a few cards out there that trigger at the same time, the Sequencing rules from the Errata document are also becoming more important.
Steelheart’s Champions – painted Shadespire warband
I finally finished painting my first warband for Shadespire – settling on Steelheart’s Champions, as much for the low model count (only three figures) as for the large flat surfaces and a chance to try out some different painting techniques.
As the previous posts have shown, this type of gold spends a lot of time looking like brown and yellow paint… I’m still figuring out the right balance between dark shadows and bright highlights, but I owe a lot to this excellent video tutorial from Painting Buddha. You can find individual photos of each of the figures below:
Painting WIP: Angharad part 2
I continued working on the Angharad Brightshield model from my last post, pushing the contrast up a bit with deeper shadows (black and brown), and much brighter highlights. Same plan as before, only with more consistency across the model: the light source is coming across the body, from somewhere above the left arm.
That meant the helmet highlights needed to be placed on the opposite side, and the specular highlights on the shield needed to become a lot brighter. I think it’s working much better now, and a large part of that comes from the contrast on the shoulder and the top of the shield. I’m happy with where this is going, now 🙂
Now to open up the Shadespire box for another look at the game boards, and then I’ll try to match colours with the model bases. I had originally planned to work on 1-2 models from each warband before starting work on something new, but I’d like to have a painted Shadespire warband ready for a game. So, I’ve just cleared all the other models off my desk in preparation: the next things I paint will be the other two Liberators from Steelheart’s group.
Even late at night, the weather is starting to get a bit too warm for painting – so I think this Summer may be when I finally try using a wet palette for the first time. Stay tuned for the next batch of WIP photos 🙂
Painting WIP: Angharad Brightshield
I’d planned to paint the Shadespire models in regular metallics, so I could quickly get them ready for some games. Then I realised that it’s pretty rare to have a painting project capped at only three models, and that seemed like a good opportunity to practice some non-metallic metals.
Bright lights and close-up photos make any painter cringe a bit, but this is the result of last night’s painting on Angharad Brightshield, from the Liberators warband. I realised much later that I’ve painted the light source on the wrong side of her helmet, so I’ll need to go back and change that next time I pick up a brush…
More detail behind the cut…
Shadespire: Sepulchral Guard review
The Sepulchral Guard warband adds some interesting twists to the base game, and also contains some of the nicest plastic skeletons out there. It’s a big warband, by Shadespire standards: seven models (1 leader, 3 heroes, and 3 lowly petitioners), able to swarm the enemy or cover multiple objectives with ease.
Garrek’s Bloodreavers – painting WIP
I’ve started trying to get back into the habit of doing a small amount of painting each evening, in order to re-train some of the muscle memory I’ve lost over the last few years. First up from Shadespire are a couple of Garrek’s Bloodreaver warband: Garrek himself, and his henchman Arnulf.
I’m very rusty, but I’ve enjoyed working on the skin tones for these two: shading with purples, reds and greens, and building up to a bright yellowish-white for the highlights. There are lots of interesting textures to work with, particularly on the torsos.
Unfortunately, I tried spray undercoating on a very windy day, and have ended up with a very thick coat of paint – particularly over the faces of this warband. I think I can salvage them, but it’s going to make things much harder when it comes to detailing the faces.
Flesh, leather and red armour panels are pretty much done on these two – I’d been considering some non-metallic metals, but it’s been ages since I did much work with regular metallics. My silver paints have mostly dried out, so I’ll start work on the blades and buckles once I pick up some new ones.
Shadespire Card List
A Shadespire card list seemed like a handy resource to have, so I’ve added a list of every card I have so far. They’re presented here as two tables: one for Objective cards, and the other for Power cards. You can sort these lists directly in your browser – just click on the header to reorder the list. View the full tables below.
Updates:
- 16 Apr 2018: new Magore’s Fiends cards added
- 25 Feb 2018: new Spiteclaw’s Swarm cards.
- 14 Feb 2018: new cards from The Chosen Axes expansion.
- 10 Nov 2017: new Ironskull’s Boyz cards.
- 6 Nov 2017: new Sepulchral Guard cards. I’ve also started adding a category (Offence, Defence and Utility) to the Power Card list.
Shadespire: First Look
My copy of Shadespire arrived in the mail today, so I’ve opened it up for a quick look. No painting or gameplay time just yet, so these are just my first impressions of the box contents.
It’s a nice compact box – around half the footprint of big-box titles like Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower, which seems about right for a game aimed at quick casual matches and easy portability. The box is pretty solid, but the card insert is not – mine arrived already torn, but I’ll probably add some foam inserts to carry the miniatures as soon as they get painted.
There are two double-sided boards inside: enough for a couple of options in gameplay, but I was hoping to find more after reading early convention reviews about how there would be “lots of board options” available. Still, they’re high quality card and artwork, and the hinged fold helps to keep the whole game compact. There are also three sheets of card tokens: wound markers, victory points, objectives and that sort of thing.
Changing course
I started this blog with high hopes for porting across lots of the content I’ve previously worked on for painting and modelling diaries, starting with the River Dock project. That’s still my aim, but the PhotoBucket debacle has left me with hundreds of forum pages full of dead image links, and very little desire to wade through all the mess.
However, I’ve just ordered a copy of GW’s new skirmish game Shadespire, and it’s dragging me back into this painting and gaming hobby all over again. I like what I’ve seen so far, from the fixed lineup of each faction (paint one “set” and move on to something different), to the fast, tactical gameplay and the ability to vary tactics based on the objective and power cards chosen before each game.
So: there’s a new game on the way, which ought to be here before PAX-AUS. With luck, I might even have it out of the box and ready for a few games at the convention. Let’s see how I go…