Salvage's Dragon Crew - MONTH 0

Howdy!

Happy to be a part of this AOS megablog, and it’s certainly well-timed, as I’ve just recently begun building momentum towards a dedicated AOS army. Back last summer, when I grasped how modeling-focused this game is (i.e. VERY), I knew I’d be doing at least one round-based army for AOS, despite having used my WHFB 7E Ogres for virtually all of my AOS game time thus far. (For those not in the know, Ogres are stupidly amazing in AOS, and it has been grand to get my fatties out of their case and onto the field again. Pulping faces is a happy side effect, to be sure.)

But what army to do? As of last fall, it was actually Orcs! I spent about $100 on loads of Black Orcs, metal characters, and so on, all towards a proper Ironjaws theme. Reasoning was that Orcs were never going to be OTT (a big positive for me), I’ve never actually done a greenskin army (apart from Gorkamorka), and Orcs are looking for the same thing out of AOS as I am: carnage! Sadly that plan withered on the vine as 2015 came to a complicated personal close and hobby time evaporated. I’d still very much like to do up my Ironjaws – and I already have TWO Arachnaroks built and primed :X – so there’s still serious hope for later this year.

Just around the new year, however, I found myself caught in a boast over on Dakka, about making an army out of the recent Bones Dracolisk release. There was much scoffing, but I pulled the trigger despite:

Dragon Hoard!

One pile of vinyl later and I’m the proud owner of 16 Dracolisks, 1 Basilisk and 1 Pathfinder Red Dragon O_O

Of course there’s a plan here. For a long while now I’ve wanted to do an AOS army almost entirely made up of Bloodwrack Medusae – a decent warscroll that combines speed with passable (if luck-dependent) shooting and some amount of combat ability – however the plastic model from the Cauldron / Shrine kit is extremely hard to find at all, let alone for a spammable price. Along comes this Dracolisk – another speedy medium-sized beastie that can turn people to stone – and I’ve found my solution.

Which means I’ve found myself making a Dark Elves force?! To flesh the list out I traced the dracolisks backwards: Where do these things come from? A dragon and a basilisk, biology tells us! So Papa Dragon and Mama Basilisk round out the list of models. As for an armylist, I’m using the following warscrolls:

Dreadlord on Black Dragon

Sorceress on Cold One

5 Bloodwrack Medusae

5 Bloodwrack Medusae

5 Bloodwrack Medusae

1 Bloodwrack Medusae

This force comes in at 1893 SDK and/or 100 wounds (and 18 models if that matters). More on SDK in another post, but at this point it's my preferred method of balancing AOS, much more so than pool or wounds alone. Not-coincidently this army is also being built to be able to adhere to the comp Adepticon is using this year (1800 SDK + various keyword limitations). Not that I’ll be making it out :’(

What a wall of text. Let’s do another picture:

Wary Cultist Is Wary

While I was waiting on shipping I cleaned up an FLGS ‘Lisk, which was not as painful as I thought it would be. The Bones vinyl is certainly going to slow me down, and I haven’t done any GS work here yet (including smoothing over the holes where the wings used to go), but with so few models I can cope.

Speaking of wings:

Mmm, Wings

I’ll have 16 sets of these things by the time I process all these baby dragon-things >_<

Doubtful I’ll get much more done in January, besides possibly GS-ing this first pup, as right now I’m speeding through a Kirai crew for Malifaux on top of prop building, so stay tuned for February!

PURCHASES

Basilisk + 15 Dracolisks = $51.68 USD

Dracolisk = $4.85

Pathfinder Red Dragon = $14.49

Narthrax = $16.19*

------------

$87.21

*Once I got him, the Pathfinder Red Dragon proved to be too weedy for the crutch / centerpiece black dragon I had envisioned … so I picked Narthrax up locally too. I have a feeling Rojito will show up in the army later, as the Dracolisk brood’s uncle or something; also because I may need a second crutch to buff up the army :P

I've made most of my purchases already, but I'll see about breaking them down across the months/weeks to come. Ideally this project should move quickly and, opponents-willing, hit the table and start generating battle reports soon!