Splintered Fang Painting

With the help of Mr Pertwee (in glass form), I decided to take a couple of snaps of my latest painting project - the Splintered Fang. 

I very much like the "bespoke" (whatever the hell that means) warcry warbands much more so than AOS ones. The bespoke warbands give me a sense of small scale skirmish combat that better suits the theme of the warcry game. I find it a little incongruous that players are allowed to take extremely rare and exulted members of factions in such a small game. Why would a incredibly powerful and divinely blessed authority figure choose to wonder the woods with 3-4 common soldiers? 

I would imagine such individuals might have armies to lead or grand strategies to prosecute ... 

In any case, I decided on Splintered Fang for two reasons. I love the concept of a small cult of snake worshippers. I don't necessarily see them as chaos related (I only VERY loosely ascribe to any of the GW fiction - I reject the concept of such third rate fiction being consider 'lore.') I envisage the group much more akin to a mystery cult of the ancient world ... which brings me to the other reason for choosing the group - their Hellenistic theme. 

I found them a joy to paint. Say what you will about GW but those boys know how to make miniatures. They were easy to assemble, all parts fitting extremely well, and the pronounced details on the miniatures make painting very rewarding. 

I'm very pleased with my painting. I think the overall colour scheme is effective and my painting (uncultured as it is) created a good appearance. I have two boxes of these figures (which I also found quite well priced for the high quality product) and intend to paint most of them - all except the leader. 

I'm very keen to play these in warcry but foresee their use in a range of games. I'd use these in Mordheim or even In Her Majesties Name. An ancient snake cult would be a worthy addition to some VSF fictional tales. 

Mind you ... I think they will be belted with mercy by most of the AOS type warbands in Warcry. Their stats seem far from competitive. I just don't see how they can do any more than act as a speed bump against a 36 wound Ork or other somesuch killing machine. 

For me, Mordheim is much better thematically (and in a few other ways eg: morale) than warcry in creating a setting where desperate combat erupts between lowly warriors and their modest leaders. With any figure almost capable of humbling any other, it creates far more tension and visceral action rather than the direction warcry has turned with monsters and 36+ wound models running about (who can barely be killed within the 4 turn limit and thus face no real threat.) In a wargame there is supposed to be war, not just positioning models near a non-descript area of grass for the win. 

Mind you, I'm really keen to play more warcry, shape it to my will and imagination, using narrative play.