Today I present you another work in progress of the huge conversion I'm working on for my Sons of Or... The Wanderer King has found a kindred spirit: the mighty Aurok, prince of the plains!
"Among the great beasts of the Appalathian plains the mighty Aurok is second only to the great Stanehorn and the hunters of the Five Tribes consider it one of the fiercest preys and honour him as a powerful and warlike spirit, the embodiment of the wrath of Or.
Since time immemorial the tribesmen have worshipped these creatures and depicted them in hunting scenes on the walls of their caves as the legends tell that during the Forgotten Days the Alderans, the great Ancestors, managed to establish a friendship with Bael-El, king of the Auroks, and ride his children in battle against the Snake.
Ancient prophecies tell that the Dahel-Yurd'Aurok, "He who is friend with the Aurok" will one day come to liberate the people of the plains and lead them to war against their enemies. Many tales identify this mighty hero with Or Himself, but others suggest that it will be a chieftain from one of the Five Tribes, born under great omens.
Whatever the truth might be, few of the hunters of the last generation managed to kill an Aurok, let alone ride him, and the ones who did shows the trophies of that endavour with great pride."
This project is taking a long while to complete, and it's more a challange to myself than many other I've been working on lately... Not much because of the scale of it, which is indeed something I'm not used to, but more for the fact that I don't quite like the esthetic of Stormcasts as gw presented them and I really struggled at the beginning to find out what to do with them. In the end, as you are probably noticing from previous posts, I decided to give AoS a try but do it my way, moving aside from the "canonic" bg of the main narrative and detailing what, to me, could be much more intersting than what they are pulling out: the life and people of the realms, their costumes and habits, their point of view on the "War in the Heavens" and their deeds and roles in it.
I realise it's still too vague by now, but trust me, the project is entertaining me a lot and you will soon see where I am heading to, as soon as I'll manage to finish this big guy and move on with the rest of my warband.
Looking absolutely stunning there Hagen! It's great to see your work coming together like this. I much prefer your style to the standard Sigmarines. I'm intrigued by your take on Age of Sigmar, I'm currently in the camp of the 'stick-my-fingers-in-my-ears, I-can't-hear-you-GW, la-la-la, the-Empire-still-exists' denialists at the moment! I still can't believe they blew up the world though, it seems crazy to me, such a rich and vibrant fantasy just lost. It'd be like if the new Star Wars film blew up the universe and started again with something completely different, no jedi, no sith.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the tangent! I'm really looking forward to seeing how your ideas progress, and it's be nice to see some good come out of the AoS.
Spechless, the head is amazing
ReplyDeleteThanks Gonfrask, welcome to the blog!
DeleteThanks Matt, and thanks for the tangent as well, because it gives me the opportunity to rant a bit as well, and explain better where this project comes from.
ReplyDeleteI am a HUGE fan of warhammer fantasy, have been for more than 15 years. I've been playing wfrp and fantasy battles since the good old days of 6th edition and there is NO other setting that interested me that much since then. Of course when they blew it away with ET I felt betrayed, disappointed and backstabbed. And what was worse I really did not like what came next and these sigmarines they are forcing down our throat, doesn't matter if you like them or not. I always trusted and followed gw though, so I decided to read through the BL novels and found them really boring and flat. One might argue that it's just a matter of time and they will flesh it all up in the next years, but I'm talking about the direction they are heading to, not the results achieved at the moment, and I don't see it going in what I would have considered the right way... It's all about good vs evil in fantasy hells where you can come up with whatever you like and there is no restriction at all to what can and cannot exist in them. Nothing like the Old World for sure!
But then a very good friend of mine and I had a discussion, about four months ago, and he pointed out how many possibilities this new, open setting could give us. We could come out with our own narrative, our own setting and visions and we could have used WHATEVER minis we liked for it; providing a solid background we could have had Elves riding demigryphs, humans with different esthetics than the Empire/Bretonnia ones, undead slaves and so on... Many great ideas and possible conversions surfaced on our minds, and we challenged each other to give a try to this new game but under our point of view. We would have used the elements of the bg we liked (there are many interesting ideas in AoS, just terribly executed and developed) to create our own narration, our own world and cultures just like some really talented people do with 40k worlds.
People disliking AoS say that the game is designed to appeal to kids. It might well be that gw conceived it for that but we are able to do great things with it, I can see it now, and although it might never be at the same level of Mordheim or the rich and complex Old World (which I keep playing in with exactly the same enthusiasm as before) it will be OUR worlds, our esthetics, our narratives.
There is great potential in AoS for people with good ideas and some culture and skill, and I accepted the challenge and don't regret it a bit!
There certainly seems to be a few people really beginning to realise the potential of such an open world but yeah it's intimidating.
DeleteYour blog is amazing and your Wanderer King is stunning.
You might like these guys who are also playing with race mix-ups in Age of Sigmar.
http://technasma.com/
Thanks a lot for the link Minitrol! these guys got it, it's all about inventing stories and having fun with minis you always liked! I'm not talking about game mechanics, because I personally don't know them, but if you are mostly a collector/painter with a passion for telling stories than AoS might be very interesting as an experiment... It is for me at least!
DeleteBy the way, I'm still trying to figure out how to add links to my blog but I would also recommend this guy for an original and unsettling take on AoS:
http://www.exprofundis.com/
His work has been really inspiring for me!
Awwww thanks for that those are amazing will definitely spend some time there as well!
DeleteAmazing job on this mini !
ReplyDeleteThis Wandering King has a real personnality, and your converting/sculpting skills really bring your visions to life.