Kings of Hobby: Billy Smith

Hello, and welcome to the Billy edition of “Kings of Hobby!” But, for the two or three people who don’t know who the great King Billiam XXXVII is, let me fill you in: I started painting miniatures with Dragonstrike, back when I was in middle school. I was hooked. From there, I got into 6th edition Warhammer Fantasy Battles, and painted miniatures for a while. I took a nice long break through most of high school and college, and got back into the hobby, after I got married, and had some expendable income. Shortly thereafter, I floated in on a dwarven refugee vessel bound for Mantica. I have been in love with Kings of War and Mantic in general ever since.

My Project

For the last several years of Kings of War, I have been building a new army per year or season if you will. I’ve really pushed myself hobby-wise, and have tried to learn new techniques and expand my repertoire with each one. First, I rebased my old WHFB dwarf army and added a few units. From there, I really wanted to start a “full Mantic” army, or as close to that as possible. I came up with Christmas Goblins. That army was a blast to build, and I learned a lot: mainly that Woodland Scenics snow loves to flake off, and LEDs are a big pain. From there, I built my Forces of Nature army. I really wanted to learn how to do non-metallic metal, so this was my opportunity. I also wanted to experiment with using a very limited palette, while still being very lively and eye catching.

For 2019, I will be building Abyssals. The project idea started like this:

Wife: I’d play that game, but I really want an army of like bondage ladies. I want to make opponents uncomfortable.

Me: *Shows her brother-vinni.com*

Wife: OMG YES!!

My wife does this often. She comes up with very creative ideas with no intention of actually playing, and I usually think, “One day I’ll do that,” but then realize that there are only so many hours in the day and so many dollars I can spend/earn. However, when a miniatures company puts their entire webstore on sale at 90% off, who can say no? And so I, like many others, invested heavily in the massive Coolminiornot sale that took place at the end of 2017. I bought enough House Nasier minis to build the Fire Legion formation and two or three hordes of Molochs, with a few extra guys thrown in. Add a naked succubus, courtesy of Reaper Miniatures, and an on-sale titty demon from Mierce, and I had the makings of an Abyssal Army that was sure to offend someone.

From there, the minis have sat in a box in a state of partial assembly for over a year. Sometimes I’d sit and scrape mold lines from miniatures of voluptuous, rabbit gimp mask-clad women, while watching TV with my wife, but mostly they were on the back burner. Until one fateful day, Austin “Picture Frame” Carrigan and I decided to team up for the world’s premier Kings of War doubles tournament: The Blues City Brawl.

Austin and I waffled over themes for a few months, until we settled on, “Gross, STD infected, undead monstrosities, and ruined cathedral sex dungeon.” It was perfect. We are also both great fans of Diablo II by Blizzard Games, and figured we could work that in somehow. I’ll give more details on that in the coming months.

With a general theme figured out, a tournament to prepare for, and a scheme I had been contemplating since before I bought the models, I was ready to move forward. As my club mates will tell you, I’m definitely the hobby hero of the group. I tend to kind of build lists, assemble and paint models, and then promptly get my face crushed in, because I didn’t actually think about how to use the stuff. I’m usually fine with it, and after a few months of tweaking, I can usually play something halfway competitive. It works for me.

Blues City Brawl is a doubles tournament where each player takes a 1000 point army and uses them together on the table against the other team. No Living Legends or formations are allowed. It’s an absolute blast and I am very excited to be theme-ing our armies together. I won’t reveal Austin’s list here, but I’ll spoil the dumpster fire that is my *tentative* army list below:

This is 100% based on the stuff I want to paint, as well as the models I have to choose from. I know that it’s not 1000 points (I said I’d have more details on that later!). The Fleshlings/Lower Abyssals, or whatever they end up being, will be the Wrath of Kings House Nasier Bloodmasks.

These models will form the core of my Abyssal army going forward. They have that perfect “sadistic sex dungeon” vibe that I’m going for.

The Molochs will also be from Wrath of Kings by CMON. I’ll be using the House Nasier Pelegarth Brutes. These guys are basically roided out versions of the Bloodmasks, only they’re whipping giant chains around. It’s awesome.

Finally, for my Archfiend, I plan on using the Mierce Miniatures Euryalia, Queen of Ker-Ys. It’s a great model. It fits perfectly on a 50mm base, it fits my theme extremely well (I mean, do you see those chains? And fishnets?), and I got it half off during a sale.

Goals for January

I usually like to start armies by painting the “boring stuff,” AKA infantry. So my goal for the month of January is to build and paint a test base, and one regiment of infantry. Once I have the bases the way I like them, I’ll likely build all of the bases I need at once, so that I can make sure that they fit cohesively, and so I only have to break out the supplies for this stuff once. If I can have all of my bases built and painted, then I really just need to focus on getting the minis done, saving the Archfiend for last, of course.

Goal: 1 regiment of infantry

We’ll see how I get on with it this month! Hopefully I’ll have some success to share with you soon!