Gaming Updates

Resalised I've missed off the last few games I've played.  After a slightly slow start with my Tempest List I've been tweaking it slowly and finally starting to get to where I want it.

List is:
Spellsinger Lvl 4 - Beasts, fireball ring, wand of reroll dispel dice
Lord - Bow of loren arcane bodkins (4 S3 no AS shots), 2+ ward save once on 1 wound
BSB, hail of doom (gets to keep his bow under the comp)

10 Glade Guard, FC, BoEF
10 Glade Guard, FC
10 Glade Guard, FC
11 Dryads - Champ
8 Dryads
8 Dryads
6 Scouts

4 Treekin - Champ
4 Treekin - Champ
3 Warhawks

6 Waywatchers
Eagle
Treeman

A nice mix of various bits and not doing the whole eat my massive horde unit tactic.

Played
Skaven - Quite heavily restricted under the pack
lvl 4 bell, Abom, 1 WLC, no storm banner, no doom rocket, 2 x slaves (max 40s), 2 x 30 clanrats, 20 giant rats, warlock -brass orb, BSB, 30 Plague monks & plague priests lvl 1. 9 Censer bearers. 1 ratling gun, 1 Warp fire thrower. 24 Night runners and a grinder team. 6 gutter runners

Was the random deployment mission and his bell went in one corner which stuffed him up a little, but everything else went where he wanted pretty much, so not too bad in the end, he basically loaded up everything within the bells ld bubble and then put the monks, abom to the far side and then just shoved it forwards. His night runners sat right beside my character block (they didn't turn up until T6 and that was a misfire which killed half of them and I had the treeman sat on the marker so they got beaten up for their troubles, oh dear!).

My list did it's usual thing of being spread out across the entire baseline but all the archers ended up pretty well grouped and I dumped all my characters in one unit as my first deployment to give me some control over them.

Basically it was one of those games where the skaven toys didn't work much and I was able to kill his abom with my first turn of shooting (it should on averages).  I was then able to swing one flank and draw back on my other flank keeping most stuff out of combat.  Without the Abom or furnace skaven can't deal with the treekin in combat so I was able to push those up at him and really block him up.  The censer bearers got to play with dryads and the volume of attacks means I dropped them to 3 thus removing their combat efficiency so the only remaining threat was magic and the WLC.  The treeman did nothing all game except sit on the night runners marker until they appeared, without that he'd have been doing horrible things to his units.

So under these restrictions skaven are quite a nice matchup.

Next was lizardmen, generally a horrible match up.  This is why I have the waywatchers in the list.  The kiling blow shots means he has to keep the scar vets in his units or I can pick them off.  Without them he can meanace me with the scar vets who I generally can't touch.

I was able to force him to hold off which let me shoot his skrox unit to bits, he sacrificed his chameleons to get a unit of treekin but that let me get a saurus block too by charging the second unit in.  Not the best of trades but I also got the scar vet as a result because he was left exposed after combat which meant I could killing blow him with the waywatchers so about neutral on points.  I thought I was up early when I cast the big amber spear into his steg only to hit the steg and get a 1 to wound.  Very frustrating.  Eventally took the steg down but he got my treeman at the same time.  I sacrificed some dryads and couldn't kill off enough of his chaff to force a win but did eventally get the Skink krox unit through a bit of luck, otherwise he'd have had my bsb and probably the win.  Ended up a draw with ~30 vps in my favour.

Finally felt like the army was starting to click.  What I can't decide between are the 3 warhawks vs a unit of wild riders.  Both are very flexible but is fly better than the combat of the wild riders, not sure.

Eldar goodness continues

I had a slight delay in getting this up due to blogger falling over, but seems to be ok now.

After my sterling start to the Eldar (painting a Guardian) I wanted to test out my scheme on a vehicle and therefore pulled out the airbrush.  It was high time I used this for something a little more sophisticated than base coating so wanted to give this whole blending thing a go and the scheme I’d chosen looks like it would suit it pretty well.

So battered out a couple of coats and got a result I was pretty happy with after some experimentation.  Messed up a few bits but nothing that was too irrecoverable (though a bit of a panic at one stage where I managed to pool an area).  I then set about picking out the detail with the brush which gave me some good practice on gemstones which I reckon are looking decent enough.  Overall I’m quite happy with the end result so definitely full steam ahead for this scheme now. 

Unfortunately the painting challenge doesn’t allow me to claim my Falcon for my painted component until month 4 (only posted once I’d started) so will have to rip through 200pts of something else to get my challenge points which is going to be some Dire Avengers.

I’ve bought a shed load of Elder stuff too.  Incoming are:

3 Warwalkers

1 Wraithlord

2 Fire prisms

7 Fire dragons

3 Wave Serpents

3 Warlocks

All of that gives me the basis of the army I wanted except for the Warp Spiders and Jetbikes.  I think I should be ok for the allowed elements of the painting challenge, as it is Troops, Elites and Fast Attack only for the first couple of months, so painting Dire Avengers, Fire Dragons and Wave Serpents should do the trick nicely.

Something else I looked at this week was my output for the year.  Generally it's been pretty good.  I worked out it's over 150 models I've painted so far in ~5 months.  So greater than 1 per day.  The unfortunate thing is I also counted up the number of models I've purchased and due to a recent splurge on a Skaven army that is in the region of 450 figs...  Somewhat ruins the record for the year and no chance of hitting my 1:1 target.  But if I persevere and only paint up what I've purchased thus far (maybe plus a few jetbikes/warp spiders) I should start to dig into that tally.

Post holiday blues

So I'm sure that everyone in the UK enjoyed the Royal Wedding very much.  I missed it, I was on my way to a stag do where I wrote myself off for the long weekend and felt like death come the end of it!  So one might expect that I didn't achieve very much this weekend past but I did get the opportunity to do a few things.

At the club last week I got a quick game in at 2000pts vs a daemons player.  Again he was off to a tournament with a few special rules so got to experience the joy of a magical change - irresistible needs 3 6’s but still miscast on 2.  We played dispels were on 2 but don't know for sure if that was right or not.  Overall it was a tad unfortunate as it resulted in T2 my mage blew his head off on a spell which didn't even succeed (it was dispelled) and then I had daemons run over the top of me with magic having pretty much no impact.  On first viewing I'm not a massive fan of this rule!

Painting as I say was somewhat limited, but I did put a bit of work on a couple of items.  I'd agreed to paint up a furnace for a skaven player down my club.  He doesn't enjoy painting but I'd convinced him to get a brown spray, can of dip and to get his troops done to a basic standard by showing him how simply it could be done.  This actually worked quite well and he's been cracking through them at a rate of knots. 

What he didn't fancy was doing the big stuff.  So I agreed to take on his furnace as probably the most fiddly thing he needed done (he does have a bell and an abom which are 'sort of' painted and will do for now).  I'd seen them about but never had my hands on the kit, it's actually a really nice model, got to give credit to GW for the quality of their plastic kits as nobody else makes things as nice.  For painting it it had been mostly glued together before I got my hands on it, which isn't ideal, but thankfully the wrecker and crew at the back were unattached.

In typical 'quick paintjob' fashion this was getting some airbrush love for the basecoat and then a tonne of washes and that's about all.

Steps taken
1. Undercoat - white
2. Airbrush wood basecoat using vallejo air range ochre
3. Go away on stag do for weekend, return feeling like death
4. Painted the stone 'field blue' a Coat d'arms colour which is a grey but with a lot of undertones of blue which come out when thinned.
5. Drybrush stone with mix of field blue and dheneb stone
6. Pick out metals with chainmail: dwarf bronze 3:1
7 Wash all wood and metal with devlan mud and let dry (I aided this with a hairdryer)
8. Wash stone and metals with asurymen blue
9 pick out ropes in dheneb stone
10. wash ropes with thinned devlan mud
11. Wrecker ball metals done as above but not washed in devlan and make sure all the smoke trail is still white.  Wash this in thrakka green.
12. Crew colour scheme was provided - red cowl and off coloured cream robes.  Here I had to take a bit of a punt, he had clearly worked over a black basecoat so not really my style,

Robe - I guessed for dheneb stone, washed it down with devlan and highlighted back to dheneb then further with a bit of white mixed in.
Red cowl - Dark flesh basecoat, devlan wash, highlighted back up with scab red.
Fur/skin - graveyard earth, devlan wash, some dwarf flesh/graveyard earth mixed highlights to fleshy areas.

You'll notice everything gets hit with devlan, that was all done as a single step doing usual basecoat, wash, highlight process.

It all then got hit with a layer of gloss and then matt varnish for protection and is ready to hand over.

And finally this morning saw me start looking at colour schemes for my Eldar.  Seeing as I've just started an Epic army I thought I'd best see how that scheme translates.

Looks ok I reckon, but going to try some other things to see as it's a bit simplistic and possibly want to challenge myself a bit more on the larger scale.