This last couple of weeks have been a bit manic for me at work so not really found time to sit down and paint, I ended up working all weekend so didn't really have time to finish off the savage orcs I'm currently working on. But because of the nature of the work I was doing I did have some downtime as things were getting pinged back and forward with a client so I put that to use constructing a pump wagon for my O&G army.
GW have only really made 2 pump wagon models, the current one which is all big spikes and massive wheels and doesn't really make any sense to me and the old 3rd ed one whith the spikey roller and 2 stories (though you could get it as just 1 level) of wooden platform. I much prefer that model as it seems far more likely that it'd be something snotters could actually construct, it doesn't rely on anything particularly complex unlike the new one which looks like a serious bit of engineering.
The decision to scratchbuild was largely driven by the prices on EBay, the old style pump wagons kept consistently rising about £10 which given the simplicity of the model felt a little bit excessive for me. So I pulled out some plasticard and some balsawood and started bashing one together. A quick raid of my bits box turned up a number of wheels and I slapped these on the side and then went looking for bits to make up some shielding for the crew and also some stabby bits. This brought me to my savage orc sprues I'd got a load off as part of some purchase (just the spares not actually any models) So I took the head of the big stabba as a nice large pointy ram and a couple of the spear heads as assitional blades. These also have the benefit of being made of stone so felt more appropriate for the model again. For protection there are a nice bunch of wooden shields which don't have any parts of the arms attached so I used a load of these off 2-3 sprues worth to add some protection all round the lower level of the wagon leaving the top deck open for the snotters to throw stuff off. Possibly it could have done with a bit of something up there but this was in keeping with the origial model which was bare up top.
Thursday, 28 June 2012
Monday, 18 June 2012
Yup the woodies came back out for a bit of a scrap this weekend. As you'd expect with woodies under 8th edition there was the standard filth as follows:
Treeman Ancient, lvl 4 Life - scroll
Noble BSB MR3, Noble on Eagle 3+ ward vs non magical, dragonhelm, LA, Shield and Spear, branchwraith
3 x 5 glade riders - Musos
2 x 8 dryads
10 archers, muso
8 wardancers
2 treemen.
As I said, standard netlist filth...
What does the army do, basically runs about a lot and hides if there is any sensible terrain on the board.
Event was a 1 dayer up in Dunfermiline with some heavy comp restrictions as follows:
You get a look out sir versus dwellers etc and if you fail it's still only 1 wound.
Battleline scenario used for all 3 games.
Yeah that's it for restrictions.
So what did I face?
G1 Russell GIfford - Empire.
Russell is a relatively new player, I faced him at his first ever tournament in November last year when he was also using Empire, but has a new book now.
His list
lvl 4 fire, lvl 2 death
3 x 11 Knights, FC all with a warrior priest in them (varying armaments)
3 x 6 pistoliers
2 cannons
1 steam tank
So basically a wall of 1+ armour, ideal when you've got a small amount of S3 shooting... Thankfully terrain gave me a great big hill to hide behind, so I obliged. with 2 treemen and the third was put out as cannonball bait (nowhere left to hide him) Everything else did the skirmishy/vanguardy thing to threaten his cannons and avoid the tank.
He got T1 and pushed it forwards, 2 x 5+ ward saves later I'd taken no wounds from the cannons and nothing else did owt (fireball & something else at treemen did no wounds and dispelled one of them).
My T1 because I'd vanguarded forwards but went second 1 unit of glade riders charged some pistoliers, took zero wounds on S&S and butchered them, running the last couple down. Magic I 6 diced dwellers on a unit of knights killing half but losing 3 levels in the process leaving me with awakening of the woods... Not so good. But the knights failed their LD 8 test and ran off (winner!). Shooting killed another unit of pistoliers through concentrated fire.
T2 his tank misfired and lost all steam points which was a bonus (1/6 failed so perfectly average this game). Knights failed to rally and ran to the table edge (1/2" on but I had an eagle rider in charge range so just shepparded him off in my turn. Mage did no wounds to treeman with medium fireball and I let off flame cage on a unit of dryads (needed to move them but worried about the death magic) cannons did 3 wounds to a treeman but that was all.
My 2 I charged 1 cannon and ran the knight unit off, dryads pushed up to threaten the other cannon but I knew they'd never make it due to a looming knight unit. Moved my dryads only for him to roll 4+ on all 8 dice for flamecage and take the unit off! With 1 cannon down I pulled out the 2 other treemen to threaten, magic was a double 6 phase so I did some treesinging!
T3 he faced one unit of knights at the remaining dryads and the other failed a swift reform allowing me to get a treeman in front of them to block his advance. Magic he double 6'd bhuna on the branchwraith followed by a 3 on the 2d6 for zero wounds and took a wound of 1 priest and both mages. cannon wounded another treeman but only 1 wound.
I put 2 glade rider units into threaten his cannon and charged the dryads into the knights to kill the death mage. 3 treemen setup to trap the knight unit that failed it's reform the turn before if he charged in. Kill the mage but nowt else and flee
T4 he charged the wounded treeman, did 2 wounds but couldn't finish him off. I clobbered the warrior priest in return and passed the break test on my bsb reroll. other knights ran the dryads & branchwraith off the board.
both glade riders fail their charge on the cannon only needing a 9 & 8 but both treemen charge the knights in combat with 1 tree. I smash his lvl 4 and then he passes 7 of 8 armour saves but the unit was still testing on a 3 because he was in a wood so not steadfast. He passed of course.
T5 tank tries to countercharge the treeman ancient but rolls 6 on the 3 dice and I get away with it. pistoliers shoot off 1 unit of glade riders, finally the knights break from combat and I run them down.
I charge the cannon with the last unit of glade riders and everything else runs away to hide from the tank. Kill the cannon and overrun but still in range of pistoliers who shoot them all dead in T6.
My T6, I do nothing and game ends with a 14-6 to me (200pts brackets in this event)
Really hard work with all that armour but I took the easy points where I could and suckered him into exposing his knight units piecemeal so I could deal with them (though the dwellers helped massively here).
G 2 Lizardmen - Trev Moffat (who I play all the time)
Light slann - loremaster, ruminating, becalming, cupped hands
Temple guard
2 x skrox
Engine of the gods
2 x 1 salamanders
2 x 5 chameleons
2 x 10 skinks
Think that was about it.
Basically game was 4 large parts of impassable terrain in each quarter, I was able to dance up one side and turn the game into battle for the pass! Treemen went into the engine and I forgot one was the ancient so he challgenged and the 2nd one couldn't fight. Light magic buffs went off but counterbalanced by my rehealing wounds with lifebloom and regrowth so eventually I won the grind. He killed archers and 2 x units of glade riders with zaps and rocks. I got 2 x chamos with a treeman, a unit of dons and the engine in T6.
11-9 to me.
Game 3 Tim Gronneberg - Dark Elves
Basically he had my army but better because it's DE. Dragon, pendant BSB on Peg, noble on Peg, 3 x 6 dark riders, 2 x 6 shades, 1x5 shades, 20 ish spears, 2 x 5 harpies, hydra and a RBT.
I got my setup a bit wrong and he was able to pressure me early, I lost T1 and he shot off 2 units of glade riders and I knew I was out the shooting battle. I then proceeded to fail pretty much every break test for the rest of the game and his dragon got into my mage bunker as a result. Should have been pinned by T6 dryads who were stubborn in a wood but failed the test so he got right through. Treeman ancient killed the pendant BSB over 2 rounds of combat (1 wound already taken) but then broke because of dark riders in his rear and failled his stubborn test. I was left with only my noble on eagle who was fighting his other peggy rider in a chumpfest both down to 1 wound but couldn't kill each other!
Big loss of 19-2 (weird scottish thing that you get an extra point at 19 and 20, unless you conceed you don't score zero).
So overall 2-1 win record but only good enough for 22nd place out of 30ish due to that last result. And annoyingly the other wood elf player was on the exact same points as me but more vps having played on the bottom tables game 3 and smashed a lizards player at his first event so was bottom WE too.
But that said Trev and Tim were probably two of the better players at the event so not as though I chumped my way through it and really happy with how I played on the whole. Could have possibly done better versus Tim if I'd been more conservative but not really much chance due to his shooting being so much better than mine. (more shots for less points and higher BS with the shades).
Treeman Ancient, lvl 4 Life - scroll
Noble BSB MR3, Noble on Eagle 3+ ward vs non magical, dragonhelm, LA, Shield and Spear, branchwraith
3 x 5 glade riders - Musos
2 x 8 dryads
10 archers, muso
8 wardancers
2 treemen.
As I said, standard netlist filth...
What does the army do, basically runs about a lot and hides if there is any sensible terrain on the board.
Event was a 1 dayer up in Dunfermiline with some heavy comp restrictions as follows:
You get a look out sir versus dwellers etc and if you fail it's still only 1 wound.
Battleline scenario used for all 3 games.
Yeah that's it for restrictions.
So what did I face?
G1 Russell GIfford - Empire.
Russell is a relatively new player, I faced him at his first ever tournament in November last year when he was also using Empire, but has a new book now.
His list
lvl 4 fire, lvl 2 death
3 x 11 Knights, FC all with a warrior priest in them (varying armaments)
3 x 6 pistoliers
2 cannons
1 steam tank
So basically a wall of 1+ armour, ideal when you've got a small amount of S3 shooting... Thankfully terrain gave me a great big hill to hide behind, so I obliged. with 2 treemen and the third was put out as cannonball bait (nowhere left to hide him) Everything else did the skirmishy/vanguardy thing to threaten his cannons and avoid the tank.
He got T1 and pushed it forwards, 2 x 5+ ward saves later I'd taken no wounds from the cannons and nothing else did owt (fireball & something else at treemen did no wounds and dispelled one of them).
My T1 because I'd vanguarded forwards but went second 1 unit of glade riders charged some pistoliers, took zero wounds on S&S and butchered them, running the last couple down. Magic I 6 diced dwellers on a unit of knights killing half but losing 3 levels in the process leaving me with awakening of the woods... Not so good. But the knights failed their LD 8 test and ran off (winner!). Shooting killed another unit of pistoliers through concentrated fire.
T2 his tank misfired and lost all steam points which was a bonus (1/6 failed so perfectly average this game). Knights failed to rally and ran to the table edge (1/2" on but I had an eagle rider in charge range so just shepparded him off in my turn. Mage did no wounds to treeman with medium fireball and I let off flame cage on a unit of dryads (needed to move them but worried about the death magic) cannons did 3 wounds to a treeman but that was all.
My 2 I charged 1 cannon and ran the knight unit off, dryads pushed up to threaten the other cannon but I knew they'd never make it due to a looming knight unit. Moved my dryads only for him to roll 4+ on all 8 dice for flamecage and take the unit off! With 1 cannon down I pulled out the 2 other treemen to threaten, magic was a double 6 phase so I did some treesinging!
T3 he faced one unit of knights at the remaining dryads and the other failed a swift reform allowing me to get a treeman in front of them to block his advance. Magic he double 6'd bhuna on the branchwraith followed by a 3 on the 2d6 for zero wounds and took a wound of 1 priest and both mages. cannon wounded another treeman but only 1 wound.
I put 2 glade rider units into threaten his cannon and charged the dryads into the knights to kill the death mage. 3 treemen setup to trap the knight unit that failed it's reform the turn before if he charged in. Kill the mage but nowt else and flee
T4 he charged the wounded treeman, did 2 wounds but couldn't finish him off. I clobbered the warrior priest in return and passed the break test on my bsb reroll. other knights ran the dryads & branchwraith off the board.
both glade riders fail their charge on the cannon only needing a 9 & 8 but both treemen charge the knights in combat with 1 tree. I smash his lvl 4 and then he passes 7 of 8 armour saves but the unit was still testing on a 3 because he was in a wood so not steadfast. He passed of course.
T5 tank tries to countercharge the treeman ancient but rolls 6 on the 3 dice and I get away with it. pistoliers shoot off 1 unit of glade riders, finally the knights break from combat and I run them down.
I charge the cannon with the last unit of glade riders and everything else runs away to hide from the tank. Kill the cannon and overrun but still in range of pistoliers who shoot them all dead in T6.
My T6, I do nothing and game ends with a 14-6 to me (200pts brackets in this event)
Really hard work with all that armour but I took the easy points where I could and suckered him into exposing his knight units piecemeal so I could deal with them (though the dwellers helped massively here).
G 2 Lizardmen - Trev Moffat (who I play all the time)
Light slann - loremaster, ruminating, becalming, cupped hands
Temple guard
2 x skrox
Engine of the gods
2 x 1 salamanders
2 x 5 chameleons
2 x 10 skinks
Think that was about it.
Basically game was 4 large parts of impassable terrain in each quarter, I was able to dance up one side and turn the game into battle for the pass! Treemen went into the engine and I forgot one was the ancient so he challgenged and the 2nd one couldn't fight. Light magic buffs went off but counterbalanced by my rehealing wounds with lifebloom and regrowth so eventually I won the grind. He killed archers and 2 x units of glade riders with zaps and rocks. I got 2 x chamos with a treeman, a unit of dons and the engine in T6.
11-9 to me.
Game 3 Tim Gronneberg - Dark Elves
Basically he had my army but better because it's DE. Dragon, pendant BSB on Peg, noble on Peg, 3 x 6 dark riders, 2 x 6 shades, 1x5 shades, 20 ish spears, 2 x 5 harpies, hydra and a RBT.
I got my setup a bit wrong and he was able to pressure me early, I lost T1 and he shot off 2 units of glade riders and I knew I was out the shooting battle. I then proceeded to fail pretty much every break test for the rest of the game and his dragon got into my mage bunker as a result. Should have been pinned by T6 dryads who were stubborn in a wood but failed the test so he got right through. Treeman ancient killed the pendant BSB over 2 rounds of combat (1 wound already taken) but then broke because of dark riders in his rear and failled his stubborn test. I was left with only my noble on eagle who was fighting his other peggy rider in a chumpfest both down to 1 wound but couldn't kill each other!
Big loss of 19-2 (weird scottish thing that you get an extra point at 19 and 20, unless you conceed you don't score zero).
So overall 2-1 win record but only good enough for 22nd place out of 30ish due to that last result. And annoyingly the other wood elf player was on the exact same points as me but more vps having played on the bottom tables game 3 and smashed a lizards player at his first event so was bottom WE too.
But that said Trev and Tim were probably two of the better players at the event so not as though I chumped my way through it and really happy with how I played on the whole. Could have possibly done better versus Tim if I'd been more conservative but not really much chance due to his shooting being so much better than mine. (more shots for less points and higher BS with the shades).
Wednesday, 6 June 2012
ETC 6 Nations 2012
And so comes to a close my stint as captain of the Scottish ETC team in any meaningful manner, from now on I'm just an admin junkie to help the guys get out there, though to be honest pretty much everything is in place.
The 6 nations was over in Northern Ireland and was one of the most fantastically well organised events I've ever been to. Similar to the EDGT which pash put on there were free drinks & snacks throughout, there was an all you can eat chinese dinner and a few other bits. All for the cost of £29 which is cheaper than most normal UK events which won't include free drinks, nibbles and dinner.
The event itself was a great laugh, plenty of the guys have been on the teams for years and know the ropes by now so were over early on the Friday and found propping up various bars. We caught up with the welsh & Irish on Friday evening and carried on the merriment!
Saturday saw the 'serious' side of the event kick off, though in reality it was still a pretty relaxed atmosphere. We had the traditional favourites of England up first which was a bit disappointing as traditionally it had been us and them for 1st & 2nd so felt like the decider came too early going into the event, boy did that prove to be wrong! We did reasonably well out the matchup process and the games were going to plann barring a couple of disasterous results we were exactly where we'd aimed for. The disasters unfortunatley were partly due to experience and were leasons learnt in the harshest of environments. Overall the round ended a 72-88 loss, but it was a pretty good score as I've a feeling they expected to win bigger.
Next up was Northern Ireland, the hosts with some interesting lists, but not ones we thought were that good. This turned out to be the case as only one of our matchups was unfavourable on our pre round scoring and we ended up wining this with a maximum score 100-60. I was the biggest loser of the round going down to a dwarf list 5-15. It was annoying as I really felt I played it right and it was dice that cost me but thankfully not the team, at the end of the game I'd killed a master engineer and a cannon (both killed by a single terradon), his organ gun had survived an onslaught from most of my army and lived to tell the tale with a single crewman holding off several of my units.
Finally came Ireland, historically a bunch of drunken chumps but seeming to build into a good team the last couple of years they were leading the event at this stage. Here the pairings went badly, ireland were slow to get started and that put a bit of pressure on me and think it got to me, also not helped by a very drunk team member generally shouting down the room. So we got a middlish set of matchups but still overall probably just favourable. Unfortunately it didn't come through in the results, 2 big disappointments lead to us giving up the round 72-88.
After that all rivalries were forgotten and off to the chinese buffet we went before then heading back to the pub for a quiet half before bed...
Day 2 opened with France. Now France have what we all consider the most unusual lists, simply their style is slightly different to the UK, they design them to work for the ETC and play them to death. Overall they're all very good lists with good players behind them, just 'different'. Our pairings went really well here, we had 1 unfavourable matchup, 3 close and 4 favourable per our pre event scoring. Then the dice started. This round saw everything that could go wrong happen. There were two mirror matches - daemons vs Daemons and Lizards lizards. The daemon off saw our player pressing as he had the better list in that match, the keeper of secrets got the siren song on the thirster and lost combat by 1 (about average), this was then followed up by double 11'ing his breaktest when he had a unit to charge in the flank next turn. Gutting. The lizard off saw a T6 failed LoS to a purple sun and dropped down a pit, our skaven player triple 6'd his bell and blew up and a string of other disasters were described. This resulted in giving france the full 100 (uncapped the score was 101-59 making my T6 disaster all the more galling) and catapulting them into the lead.
Finally we had Wales. Of the lot this was some of the toughest pairings, we had to sacrifice a couple of lists to get the good matchups. Overall it worked out and we won the round 88-72 but there were a few touch and go games which could have put it back at a draw and also a mistake by the welsh TK player which resulted in him probably swinging the results by something like 10pts on the round. Annoying to miss out due to a rules error but I wasn't about to get on a high horse over it and just accepted the game score, could have pushed for an adjustment if we'd really cared but as we won the round I just accepted it.
Overall we came 5th as a result which was rather disappointing, giving up the 100 to both France and Ireland didn't feel like justice for how we paired them up and the relative strengths on the teams but it's a dice game at the end of the day and them's the breaks.
It was a great fun weekend and it was my pleasure to captain the team through it.
The 6 nations was over in Northern Ireland and was one of the most fantastically well organised events I've ever been to. Similar to the EDGT which pash put on there were free drinks & snacks throughout, there was an all you can eat chinese dinner and a few other bits. All for the cost of £29 which is cheaper than most normal UK events which won't include free drinks, nibbles and dinner.
The event itself was a great laugh, plenty of the guys have been on the teams for years and know the ropes by now so were over early on the Friday and found propping up various bars. We caught up with the welsh & Irish on Friday evening and carried on the merriment!
Saturday saw the 'serious' side of the event kick off, though in reality it was still a pretty relaxed atmosphere. We had the traditional favourites of England up first which was a bit disappointing as traditionally it had been us and them for 1st & 2nd so felt like the decider came too early going into the event, boy did that prove to be wrong! We did reasonably well out the matchup process and the games were going to plann barring a couple of disasterous results we were exactly where we'd aimed for. The disasters unfortunatley were partly due to experience and were leasons learnt in the harshest of environments. Overall the round ended a 72-88 loss, but it was a pretty good score as I've a feeling they expected to win bigger.
Next up was Northern Ireland, the hosts with some interesting lists, but not ones we thought were that good. This turned out to be the case as only one of our matchups was unfavourable on our pre round scoring and we ended up wining this with a maximum score 100-60. I was the biggest loser of the round going down to a dwarf list 5-15. It was annoying as I really felt I played it right and it was dice that cost me but thankfully not the team, at the end of the game I'd killed a master engineer and a cannon (both killed by a single terradon), his organ gun had survived an onslaught from most of my army and lived to tell the tale with a single crewman holding off several of my units.
Finally came Ireland, historically a bunch of drunken chumps but seeming to build into a good team the last couple of years they were leading the event at this stage. Here the pairings went badly, ireland were slow to get started and that put a bit of pressure on me and think it got to me, also not helped by a very drunk team member generally shouting down the room. So we got a middlish set of matchups but still overall probably just favourable. Unfortunately it didn't come through in the results, 2 big disappointments lead to us giving up the round 72-88.
After that all rivalries were forgotten and off to the chinese buffet we went before then heading back to the pub for a quiet half before bed...
Day 2 opened with France. Now France have what we all consider the most unusual lists, simply their style is slightly different to the UK, they design them to work for the ETC and play them to death. Overall they're all very good lists with good players behind them, just 'different'. Our pairings went really well here, we had 1 unfavourable matchup, 3 close and 4 favourable per our pre event scoring. Then the dice started. This round saw everything that could go wrong happen. There were two mirror matches - daemons vs Daemons and Lizards lizards. The daemon off saw our player pressing as he had the better list in that match, the keeper of secrets got the siren song on the thirster and lost combat by 1 (about average), this was then followed up by double 11'ing his breaktest when he had a unit to charge in the flank next turn. Gutting. The lizard off saw a T6 failed LoS to a purple sun and dropped down a pit, our skaven player triple 6'd his bell and blew up and a string of other disasters were described. This resulted in giving france the full 100 (uncapped the score was 101-59 making my T6 disaster all the more galling) and catapulting them into the lead.
Finally we had Wales. Of the lot this was some of the toughest pairings, we had to sacrifice a couple of lists to get the good matchups. Overall it worked out and we won the round 88-72 but there were a few touch and go games which could have put it back at a draw and also a mistake by the welsh TK player which resulted in him probably swinging the results by something like 10pts on the round. Annoying to miss out due to a rules error but I wasn't about to get on a high horse over it and just accepted the game score, could have pushed for an adjustment if we'd really cared but as we won the round I just accepted it.
Overall we came 5th as a result which was rather disappointing, giving up the 100 to both France and Ireland didn't feel like justice for how we paired them up and the relative strengths on the teams but it's a dice game at the end of the day and them's the breaks.
It was a great fun weekend and it was my pleasure to captain the team through it.
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