Hobby Bingo Update and Tomb Kings Progress

It's time to check in with how my Wargame Hobby Bingo card is doing in the first quarter.  I'll also give you a look at some of my ongoing Tomb Kings projects (and have a rant about Age of Sigmar).

 

 

With 24 spaces on the card, I need to complete about two per month in order to finish the entire card by the end of the year. With only three spaces filled in, I'm lagging a bit behind. I've got a bunch of projects planned and slated to fill in specific spots, which you can see written in white on the card. Some of them are comprised of a single miniature that I can knock out quickly, while others (such as the terrain) will take much longer. Here's a look at the squares that I've checked off so far:

 
Finish Painting and basing a new model within 48 hours of receiving it–

 
I'm kind of relieved that I was able to tackle this one; I had been struggling to find a single miniature that I could paint in one go, and the time to paint it. I nearly did myself in with the conversion, but managed to get through it and finish him with time to spare.

 

 

Paint a model or figure that you don't intend to use for gaming–

 
I've selected Chopper from my Rebels crew for this. I haven't played Shatterpoint, and I probably won't ever get around to it. I just really dig the characters from the animated series, and wanted to paint them. I can't say I'll never play the game, but I don't have any current plans to, so these are just display models. I'm going to make a corridor backdrop to display them on. I might even remove them from these bases and put them on something smaller because they take up so much space, making a "family photo" difficult to compose. 

 

 

Finish painting a model that's been on your to-do pile for more than a year–

 
This is my most recent addition to the card. I've had 20 Deadwalker Zombies converted and sitting on the shelf throughout 2025. 

 

 

I haven't had any drive to paint them because I no longer have any interest in Age of Sigmar other than how the setting relates narratively to my characters. But as a game it has steadily lost all appeal for me since the end of its Second Edition.

 
The initial launch was essentially sold as a lie– "The core rules and all of the unit warscrolls are going to be free. and there's no need to re-base your models." Sounded great. That convinced everyone to at least try the game. But they were just kidding, and eventually the warscrolls were pulled from the website and players needed to buy battletomes, which at first was fine, because they included some extra army-wide rules and magic items. They added a General's Handbook, which added some depth to the game (like ways to actually play a game). But that quickly spiraled out of control and amounted to buying a new rulebook every year. Poor armies like the Lumineth Realmlords had to buy two army battletomes about six months apart. The shelf life of each book seemed to be getting shorter and shorter, to the point where it felt like we were expected to spend more money on books than on miniatures.

 
And if you wanted to play in any kind of Official™ way, you had to re-base your models. And the thanks for dutifully re-basing an army of Tomb Kings, Bretonnians, Beastmen, and now apparently Dark Aelves is that your army is out of the game. Go put them back on squares so you can play The Old World.

 
Complaints aside, I genuinely did enjoy the game– I think the Second Edition was a near perfect version of the game, and I really had fun with the endless spells and realm rules in the Malign Sorcery expansion. Unfortunately, toward the end of Second Edition, they had entire armies that completely overrode the core rules (coining the term "The Activation Wars"). It was this "battletome creep" that ruined everything. 

 
Third Edition tried to address the balance by writing the rules like an ugly legal document, but all they did was make the game more unwieldy. What used to be a simple command point mechanic was expanded to the point where it rivaled 40K's nonsense. The extra hero and monster actions also added more stuff to keep track of during the game.

 
The rules became an exercise in pedantry, and I just couldn't even be bothered anymore. Fourth Edition didn't look any better, and introduced Spearhead– You know, so we can play even smaller games of Age of Sigmar. I'm hoping that the rumors of an "End Times" for Age of Sigmar are true, not because I want the game to go away, but because I'd like to see a complete overhaul of the game itself, and maybe the Fifth Edition will be something I'm interested in playing again.
 

So, anyway... I knocked out these two zombies in an afternoon to fill in a spot on the card. If I have any spare time throughout the year, I'll try to get through the other 18.

 
 

Tomb Kings Progress
 

One project I've been steadily chipping away at is a Screaming Skull Catapult Kitbash, using the Ossiarch Bonereapers Mortek Crawler as the base and incorporating the crew and other bits from the old catapult.

 

 

I'll have a full blog post about the conversion work. I'm not quite sure where I'll be able to plug it in on the Bingo card; most of the obvious spaces already have a model planned for them...

 

 

The remaining Ushabti Archers are nearing completion. I've sculpted bandages on the bodies to add some variety to the body poses:

 

 

And, the bows are strung, with new arrows:

 

 

As of writing this, they are about a third of the way through the painting process. I'm hoping I can have them finished by the weekend so I can use them in an upcoming game. And if you want to participate in Wargame Hobby Bingo, here is the unaltered card:

 

'Til next time!