Seldon9 is Painting Conquest – The Old Dominion

This was the warlord in the latest Old Dom starter. I’d bought it to bulk up my army for the tournament and now had time to paint him.

The Strategos was a level up from the Xhiliarch, determining strategy for a larger army.

Once again I made a scenic base and he can use the retinue bases if needed. Similar sort of process to the others so I’ll post the finished pics.

There’s quite a lot going on with this sculpt. He wears a lion skin above his helmet and has a mixture of accoutrements over his torso which need some picking out. Cool sculpt though.

Tournament day and I had enough painted to field an army. I’d tried to get some practise games in but fate decided I could do one. Have to confess I largely to take pictures.

I ran fairly small regiments thinking in my previous tournament my opponents could pull a few tricks with the extra regiment cards they had. Old Dom are tough. The Archimandrite was my warlord in a block of legionnaires with a view to just keep reviving them. Xhili was with Praetorians to occupy a zone and add a bit of punch.

I have few light and heavy units so my army tends to come on a couple of rounds in.

Round 1 against the Wahdrun
We were just trying to grab objectives and kill each other. Wahdrun can choose some kind of drum beat to give them some bonuses.

I pushed up to one of the early zones as fast as I could. I didn’t have a lot of pace so no mucking about. The Wahdrun bombed in some Raptor Riders who gave a prodigious kicking.

I have a unit of Moroi I like to run up the board and give my opponent an early problem. Something to hold them up and give me time to get to the zones. This went ok till the Tontorr turned up.

I had no idea what that thing could do. I thought it would be slow. No. I’d positioned my Moroi in an awkward spot to deny access to a scoring zone. Worked ok for a bit but the Tontorr got involved and crunched them.

My rolls to bring on my troops were going badly. Then the Tontorr got clear and could traverse almost half the table! I hadn’t even got my heavies on before it was in my backline. My Praetorians folded and I didn’t see how I would catch up with too many units just entering the field. Game over. I didn’t even get to try out my Varangians or Bone Golems.

Round 2 against the 100 Kingdoms
This time I was matched up against my friend who’d organised the tournament. He’d planned to step in if there was a drop out.

Once again we were scoring zones. He had two regiments of ranged units, one set having crossbows. His army was a kind of demo army so lighter on cavalry than he normally prefers.

I think his ranged units were a problem for him. He kept them back whereas my entire army poured into the scoring zones. My Bone Golems flattened his early troops before getting charged back by his cavalry. Ultimately he took them down but I followed up with the Varangians. That was clobbering time. He attempted a duel to see if he could shift my Xhiliarch but that guy is tough. No can do there.

On the other side the Archimandrite struggled to keep numbers up and he eventually positioned a null mage close by. The Archimandrite killed himself attempting a foolish cast. A regiment of Steel Legion followed up and I struggled t hold them up.

Overall I dominated a zone faster than him and got ahead to the point where he couldn’t catch up. At some point the Old Dominion just set their shields and they’re hard to shift.

Round 3 was an Old Dominion mirror match.

I was quite pleased to see this. My opponent had played for longer than me and had some useful tips. He was also trying a few units I was wondering about – two regiments of the ranged Caryatids.

Those Caryatids were nasty. I’d been quite blase about fronting up to ranged units, not there. I ran my Bone Golems and Varangians straight up the board and flattened them. They did quite a bit of damage though.

I had some luck in this game. My units came on quickly. My tactic of running the Moroi up early had an unexpected consequence. It pushed back line of reinforcement meaning he had to come on from the back of the board. This gave me an early advantage getting to the zones.

After that the game came down to the quality of our troops. I got an early lead and just hung on. By the end of round 10 I was one zone score ahead. Close, but another victory to me.

Overall it was a chilled experience. I came third 🙂

Interesting command model you can add to a regiment. Gives your regiment Aura of Death +1. Heh heh heh.

It’s painted with a white look to it’s armour. I stuck with similar colours to the Archimandrite. But of course, the egg of evil thing it’s carrying is the important piece. I gave it a bluish purple colour because that’s a death evil magic scheme.

On a side note this unit’s arms kept falling off. I also found it awkward to photograph.

Another new unit. The Archimandrite animates a pile of junk strapped together from tombs and graveyards. Strange unit that didn’t appeal to me at first but really grew on me as I started building them.

As always I start with a preshade. I painted red parts with thinned Cavalry Brown and stone parts got good coverage with Basilicanum Grey contrast. Metallic parts got an undercoat of P3 Bloodstone. The bones wreceived sveral shades of Agrax Earthshade.

Next I drybrushed over the stone parts with ScaleColour Boreal Green SC-42 and then Spring Green SC-47.

After this it’s just highlighting. ScaleColour SC-26 for bone highlights and undercoats. Dabbed metallics for the metal parts.

Ooh new unit. Most tactics advice I see for the Old Dominion is buy these, then buy more of these.

I skipped the oil wash on these guys. I just liked them as they were when I reached the oil wash stage.

Really I just switch colours round a bit. The blue parts were painted with Vallejo Xpress Space Grey 72.422 over a white drybrush.