Woop woop! - Skaven army complete

2400pts of skaven now complete, I started on these guys 18 months ago and in that time have now finished off 4 armies to add to my existing dwarfs!

Feb 2011 - first outing of the WE (started around 4 years before then shelved for ages)
April 2011 - first outing of the lizards (only 2000pts but scaled up to 2400 quickly, started march 2010)
Aug 2011 - Tomb Kings to the ETC (<2m start to finish)
March 2012 - Skaven (18m start to finish)

So that's me now hit 5 of the 16 Warhammer armies.  3 More to come and it's decision time again, empire are tempting me so think I'll stick with that, but there's a lot of temptataion out there!  Should maybe go for a quick fix of a smaller model count army but instead I've lined up empire, O&G and Dark Elves for the next three...

I think I'll keep doing what I did with most of the last few armies and paint a few units from each overlapping each other as I'm in no real requirement to get them finished to give me a playable army now I've got 5 to pick from already.

ETC Comp

I see the ETC second pack and I wonder what people actually play in some countries, it certainly doesn't seem to be the same game as other parts of the world.  In the UK we started out with zero comp and then 6 months in we setup a number of restrictions. Following on these have generally been slackened off every so slightly but no major changes.  Pretty much the only thing that matters is the max 12 dice in a magic phase, only adding 2-3 dice to the phase, max unit size of 450pts and look out sir on all spells unless they say otherwise.  Compare that to what is appearing out of a number of the european countries where it's 4 dice max, no irresistable on certain lores and a tonne of restrictions on individual armies.

To me that seems to be excessively unnecessary.  The UK has seen all the top players continue to be the top players, clearly the '6 dice monkey' terminology exists for a reason but not to the extent where it decides tournament winners.  So we're looking at restrictions in the UK which knock out a number of the irritating excesses of some lists, but still leaves virtually all options available.  The european teams talking about heavy comp seem to prevent vast number of build options from being used completely so part of the sacrifice of playing in there scene would appear to be far lower diversity.  As a player that doesn't like playing the 'optimum' builds this seems like a rather daft way of going about promoting enjoyment, it seems that 'balance' is achieved by striping out a lot of the uniqueness of the armies.

I'll be voting against harsher restrictions but to be honest I'm amazed that we've got here on the second year of the tournament using 8th edition it seems people really don't like playing the game as the designers appear to have intended.

Painting Update

So I've not really kept the painting side of this blog up to date.  Not really sure what the best approach to take is.  Generally I post all my figs onto a number of forums for general feedback so adding them on here (where I don't even know if anyone really looks) is worth it.

On a separate issue around the look of my blog, it is intentionally utterly minimalist and intended to look as close to a boring work document as possibly purely because I spend most of my time writing these things during work hours, even if it is lunchtime I don't particularly want to splash massed images and colours across my screen to draw attention to what I'm doing not being work.  But I might have a go at slightly improving the utterly minimalist approach I've taken.

So purely because I'm talking about my painted figs I'll firstly plug my favourite painting site: www. thepainteddragon.co.uk/forum/
As I say all my figs tend to get put on this page and they're a brilliant friendly bunch who'll give you genuinely helpful feedback but with very little of the negativity that tends to permeate the Internet.

As a final sign off here's my latest couple of additions to the Skaven all painted up
Skaven Hellpit Abomination

Skaven Plague Furnace

Hobby Stats - Scary Reading

I've been tracing an increased number of hobby stats this year, last year I just did the number of painted models and tournament games, this year I've been tracking all games, painted models and hobby expenditure.

Can you guess which of those three items has proved to be the scary reading?  No prize for guessing I'm afraid but so far this year I've spent >£700 on toy soldiers, terrain, rulebooks, paints & accessories and tournament fees.

Looking back at this objectively I do have more or less 3 new armies to show for that spend, so not entirely wasted but I've not really started painting much of it yet.  So think I'll try and put all purchasing on hold until I get this lot painted up.  I'll probably allow myself the occasional purchase for models to round out the armies as and when I get what I have of armies finished up (I just did this with my Skaven but admittedly the purchases were an abomination and a furnace so £60 worth of 'rounding out').

This all feeds back into my intent to own a painted version of every single army for WFB.  The Skaven (which aren't quite done yet but very close) takes me to 5.  I've then purchased my next 3 - DE, Empire and Orcs & Goblins.  I think I'm going to do Empire first and hopefully get a chunk done before the army book gets released though current rumours seem to suggest April, so don't imagine I'll get close to an armies worth being done by then.

My ambitious project is therefore continuing well so I'm quite happy with that.  My one concern is will I actually enjoy playing these armies!  Skaven having put all this effort into painting them up don't actually interest me that much to play on the table in the normal build people use at tournaments.  But that's what I've painted largely driven by my ETC commitment. In the middle of last year it was looking like we wouldn't have a Skaven player so I thought I'd best cover that base, we now have 3 available!

A Slow few weeks

Hit another hobby slowdown period, it was called February! In total I managed to get through 11 figures but that was all bigger stuff so not too shabby I suppose.  Slightly rushed my Collodi Crew so could be going back there at a later date but will do for now, still not put them on the table yet though.

March is looking like it'll be a more productive month as I've got a furnace built and the wood painted, I've built an Abomination and have plans of how I want to paint it, I've also build and undercoated 28 empire knights and constructed a load of other empire stuff.

The Empire was a bit of a surprise project, they were something that never massively appealed to me but as I always wanted to do all the armies I'd obviously have to pick them up at some stage.  As it happens I got a few bits in a sale pre christmas time which set me down the route of looking into them and with rumours of a new book on the horizon what better time to start buying stuff up.

So I've now got:
Wizards x 3
Priests x 2
Engineer
Archlector on alter
25 Knights
3 mounted chatacters - BSB, hero and Priest (bits bash knights kit)
10 Pistoliers
2 cannons
2 Mortars (same kit just builit the frame part required from balsa wood)
Hellstorm Rocket Battery

Basically all I need are the compulsory core halberds & swordsmen and I'll be good to go with a complete army, well barring the steam tank, flagellants and other fun bits.

So this seems to have jumped the queue ahead of the O&G army I was planning.  Not a bad thing as it should get me up and running again with painting, similarly it's jumpstarted my urge to do the skaven again.  Having got so close to a working army I really should finish them off, at present it's 260 troops and nothing to go with them, well I'm working up 10 giant rats for the complusory rat dart deployment drops, add the furnace, Abom and I'd best do a WLC to complete the absoultely TM tournament army other than characters.  From there I'll be able to paint things at my leisure though there are 40 stormvermin that I really wnat to get built up but we'll see!

On the gaming front Feb saw the Falkirk Free for All tournament where I rocked out the TK to much enjoyment and mediocre success, but had such a good time playing them I just wish I could flex the list a little more, points are just too tight so can't quite squeeze in what I want at 2400 (basically min core & all the big beasties prevents me shuffling points around much).

Also played a couple of games of malifaux - Zoraida vs Von Schill, sat at 1:1 but just realised we played the scenario wrong on the one I lost so claiming a moral victory...  The game I won I finally rocked out the twins to give Z some hitting threat, and wow is it good.  Until now I've been forced to mess with my opponents crew because obeying my guys didn't achieve much but with Schill doing his WP bubble it generally meant either burning stones or winning initiative and going first with Z.  Not idea.  The twins make a seriously big impact on the playstyle so really enjoyed throwing them out there.

Next up for the neverborn I'll really need to send Dreamer or Collodi out for a test run, but still not picked up any daydreams so guess Dreamer is on the shelf till then.

Anyways here's to hoping the painting picks back up again and the next tournament is 31 March in Edin so nice local WFB goodness to come.