Duke it out!

This was a 14 person local tournament at 2,000pts over 3 rounds, reason I’m mentioning it was I took the new WE book out for a spin. I’d obviously scoured the internet for all the broken combos which the WE book can throw out (after getting agreement that arrows could be duplicated across multiple units). I wrote a list on that basis, posted it up for everyone to view on the club forum and got feedback on how it looked pretty good. So I then threw it away and wrote something which would actually be fun to play with and contained all my nicer painted models for the army!

Dragon Lord, 4++ ward, charmed shield, spear
Eagle BSB 4++ HA, shield, spear
Lvl 2 Fire, ruby ring, dispel scroll
20 Glade Guard, Std, Muso, trueflight arrows
5 Glade Riders, Muso, Hagbane
5 Glade Riders, Hagbane
9 Wardancers
10 Waywatchers
Treeman

I’d not really considered it in advance but it’s only 3 drops plus characters which doesn’t really help the 20 glade guard out much, they become a really obvious target to aim for as a soft squishy unit of shooters. But the unit is 20 of Skarlocks archers so I really wanted to field them as a single unit because the way it looks is cool!

Round 1
First off I got a doozy of a matchup against HE.

Alariell, her banner on BSB, lvl 1 fire all in 25+ White lions with ‘that banner’. Backed up by 4 RBTs, 2x15 archers, 2x5 reavers and 2 eagles

Kinda felt like I was being punished! But that said I suspect my army was possibly better off than the netlist WE list against this as I was able to get over the table and smash up his weaker units with the dragon and BSB. I killed everything but the WL deathstar but sadly lost everything but the dragon (lord dead), BSB and 1 unit of glade riders. Overall lost by around 400pts so was pretty happy with how it went. 1,000+ pts in a single unit at 2000pts w/l/d event makes it rather difficult to pull out a win when the deathstar has a 2++ against 90% of the attacks in your army!

Round 2
To make up for that next round I got to play a daemon player who won their first game, the joys of being the smallest loser of the first round… This was a bit of the standard build and a bit of different stuff in the characters.

Lvl 1 slannesh general, nurgle BSB, 2 tz heralds (tz & metal), 2x10 horrors, 25ish PBs, 5 BoN, 2x1 BoN, 3 fiends, 5 furies, Cannon

Basically I couldn’t deal with the 5 beasts, What I should have done is made my wood a stupid wood and put it in the way in front of my army to force his movement to end in it if he just marched up twice, but I didn’t think of that so the beasts ran at me, my dragon ran at his horrors and I charged and killed them then he did the same to the rest of my army. My dragon then got pinned by a single BoN before ultimately getting charged by the cannon and broken from combat to run off the table.

I was left with 5 WW at the end of the game and only killed his tzeentch stuff, a beast and the furies. A big loss but one that was largely of my own making, that said if I’d sat back and played it tight he’d have just cannoned off my dragon and treeman to win anyway so might as well try throwing it all forwards.


Round 3
I was on 2nd bottom table and rewarded with a dwarf army with 2 OGs but no cannons or GTs.  

Lord on shieldbearers 5++ dunno what else, runelord 4+ steal a PD, BSB 5++ vs shooting in 6” and stubborn, 30ish GW warriors, 15 xbows, 20 hammerers, Gyrobomber, 2x organ guns.

From what I’d discovered the last couple of games I just sat so I could shoot off 1 OG at a time and the whole army attacked it & the Gyrobomber T1, I failed to kill either but his return fire was through my strategically placed citadel wood and bomber wasn’t in range to fly over anything. Next turn I shot both off (ambushing poison shots are great) turn after I got the 2nd OG and then surrounded his 3 blocks.

Being nice I committed to killing his GW warriors (and I’ve just realised I played them as S6 vs my dragon all combat thinking they were longbeards… He had only played 6 games ever so I was basically calling all the stats for combat so my own fault). Regardless I beat the block up killing them all and got to treewhack a BSB to death too, which was fun! Shooting dealt with the 20 hammerers and the 15 quarellers easily enough so it was only the 2 lords (runelord and dwarf lord) left on the table round 6. Dragon ate the runelord and the dwarf lord took 4 wounds from shooting (flaming sword on waywatchers was awesome!) and to end the game he suicide charged the lord into my wardancers who went killing blow and chopped his head off.

Great guy to play as kept his head up and was a gent throughout despite being utterly out of the game from early on. Having only played so few games before he’d never come across my style of list and it just does horrible things to a static army as I get to choose who fights when and where and there is very little he could do about it.


Overall had a great day play, 3 enjoyable games despite my feeling 2 of them I was really up against it and the third was a bit too easy. I do wonder if this will be a common occurrence for the WE, but will have to wait and see.
One thing I can say is playing the build I had was a whole lot of fun, having been heavily into the TK for the past while I'd forgotten just how enjoyable it is to throw a big dragon 20" forwards and say 'deal with that', in all 3 of my games the dragon was never really much at risk, flubbed and ran off the table vs the DoC and almost chopped up by the dwarfs (but I chose to go into that combat without really needing to).  Sure there will be games where someone just goes 'take it off' with a cannon but most of the time it's great fun to play with.

Next event is 2,999pts and I'm now going to take the WE again, still don't plan on buying any of the new units for the army yet, as there are plenty of the old ones which I still need to try out to see how they work first.

Army Book Design

So over the past year or so we’ve had a slew of army books released, going back to Feb/March last year you have Warriors, Daemons, High Elves, Lizardmen, Dark Elves, Dwarfs and Wood Elves.  Wow that’s almost half of the armies have been updated in a year, first off Great going GW, truly fantastic achievement to turn out so much work so quickly, secondly great work GW as they’ve not overly suffered from horrendous power creep  and unbalancing the game (unlike prior editions).

So that said what do I think about the books, are they well designed?  For this I’m thinking balance of rules and units rather than aesthetic and background, while those are really important for choosing which army to play they are somewhat less important for the decision of what to put on the table.

If pushed I can probably put the armies into tiers, unlike prior editions though I don’t actually think this is all that meaningful as there are more matchups where A>B, B>C but C>A so overall it levels the field over the course of a few games.  But again pure power and tiers isn’t really what interests me, I’ve always preferred to play the underdog armies as an additional challenge on myself.  Though reading a blog recently it suggested that this was just a protection mechanism to explain away losses and I should really try playing with the gloves off and accepting the truth about just how good a player I am.  An interesting point and definitely partly true, but I’m comfortable that it is very unlikely I’d win any tournaments if I did take the hardest thing, so I prefer the personal challenges I set myself.

What does interest me is the longevity of a book and the flexibility of the book.  Obviously not all armies can do everything but most can be played in a few different styles and then secondary to the playstyle (or partly feeding into what defines them) are what the different units in the book can do and how effective a ‘bang for their buck’ they provide in doing it.

Those who listen to podcasts have probably heard some people saying that the cost of a unit is somewhat irrelevant if it does something in an army which nothing else can.  This is hugely true, but for me the sign of a good book is where there are multiple different ways of achieving one thing.  For example take the Dwarfs, sure they’re pretty limited in certain ways but if you need to kill a big monster there are a multitude of options from WMs, Characters with multi wound weapons or slayers with always wounding on a 4+ and getting extra hits as they die.  All sort of do the same thing but in very different ways.  So if I want I can make the decision my army won’t have any cannons and I don’t overly have to worry that suddenly there is one area of the game I can’t cope with.

So considering this and looking at the books what do I think?  Well I’d say GW have been getting a whole lot better at this than they used to be.  Are they getting it right every time, no not quite.

WE being the new kids on the block are what has inspired this.  At first glance at the book it’s a horribly one dimensional gunline army with some mobile avoidance thrown in.  Forest spirits are ‘nerfed’ and it has no combat power.  But actually try digging g a little deeper, what if I put 3 units of Wild riders into the army, all of a sudden that’s a lot of S5 AP attacks on a relatively small frontage probably with rerolls to hit most things.  So what happens if you throw them into the current ‘meta’? Armour isn’t going to like it a great deal, sure a 4+ save will deflect a decent amount of that damage but with multiple units and only about 150pts for a unit it’s a decent bit of punch for a throwaway unit.  Then try pitting them against infantry and suddenly they’re utterly shredding them.  Wild riders into White lions, Executioners or even T4 infantry like saurus, dwarf warriors even WoC are doing lots of damage before they die.  Sure their damage output falls off after a single turn but that initial impact is pretty intimidating.  The only unit I’ve thought of which still doesn’t really care are Plague bearers but even they should lose about 5 guys on the turn of charge to killing around 2-3 back. Combine all that with the hugely flexible movement then it’s such an appealing unit, of course they have frenzy so you’ll occasionally lose them to running off into something they shouldn’t but I just find that makes it even more fun to play with as it’s yet another control element to consider.

So all of a sudden that one dimensional gunline army has a new focus for me.  Out go the 100s of shots (Zzzzz), in comes something like 18 wild riders! Do I need an anvil unit to go with that maybe?  Well you have core dryads or their harder cousins the Treekin, sure the damage output isn’t spectacular but that’s not really what an anvil is all about.  Plague bearers seem really popular still despite their weakness to death magic, admittedly they’re better in virtually every way than dryads due to poison, better ward and inbuilt -1 to hit plus access to command including a magic banner.  But DoC can’t put down high volumes of shooting on the board to thin units down.  Or maybe even moderate volumes of shooting and some mobile combat punch for a more balanced army.

Another look at the army and another model to consider.  Captain on horse with spear, shield, probably throw on AP arrow too 93pts (with the arrow).  3S5 AP attacks with rerolls, 4+ save or enchanted shield, or dragon helm gives a 3+.  Suddenly a couple of great chaff/WM killers again for throw away cost.

So the defining feature of the good books that GW has been turning out is variety and flexibility of how to do a particular thing with an army, all of this whilst they manage to maintain the theme of the background. 

So where do I think this has been done well?

Obviously from the above I think WE have got it right, but also HE have it in spades.  DE have a decent shot at it but I think there are some slight internal balance issues (basically read warlocks) which have very quickly driven them into a single build which has become hugely popular at the expense of all others.  If you choose to ignore that build though there are so many good options in the book that you can get great flexibility out the list.

Sliding down the scale a little you’ve got DoC and to a lesser extent WoC.  Both books have a standout build that has become very popular but actually stepping away from that doesn’t really hurt the power of the books significantly and they can still perform fantastically with a lot more variety of units, but in the case of WoC it is still all about getting stuck into combats largely by charging front on into your opponent and smashing them. DoC have a bit more subtlety about them but do rely heavily upon horrors and skull cannon for a pseudo gunline element to support some good grinding combat ability with the powerful smash element of a GD.

Pulling up the rear are Dwarfs and Lizardmen – Both of the books made attempts to diversify through the addition of new units, all of which are cool in their own way, but ultimately the tournament builds are exactly the same as before and the flexibility to build them in different ways generally results in weakening the build. 

It’s pretty small things to be honest, Saurus need certain magic buffs to work, the changes to slann means you don’t really see them any more, so saurus remain substandard choices which with the core being the way it is results in only skinks amounting to much, the changes to skink-krox units has made them less flexible so again you don’t see them used and the builds become very one dimentional. 

Dwarfs I’d say was a missed opportunity through a couple of very small things.  1. The hatred special rule should have been before deployment not after, the army doesn’t have enough flexibility of movement to change it’s setup to reflect a huge change in combat ability, so it forces a more defensive deployment.  2. Runic Anvil but no other bound items in the list.  I think runesmiths should have had a lore of magic effectively added through bound spells, all buffs not damage output, not debuffs so it’s very much an internalised thing.  Basically like the warrior priests do with empire.  It would have made them able to compete in combats where they potentially go in as underdogs.  All to often when playing dwarfs you set up for an even fight and then the opponent gets off a spell and you’re done,  being able to have that same option to swing things would have made them a viable combat army so moved them away from the reliance on defensive gunlining.

So reading back I do wonder is it just the fact that it’s been elves that makes it look like the wonders of diverse flexible books has become a regular thing?  It has always been a hallmark of theirs that they do all things fairly well so I’d expect them to be the more flexible books anyway.  Hopefully we’ll find out when Brets, Skaven and Beastmen get updates (hopefully they’ll be the next three books before repeating any of the 8^th Ed ones).

Winter War (Reading version update!)

So I finished 2013 tournaments by attending Winter War in Dunfermline and opened 2014 by attending Winter War in Reading.  Both 1 day tournaments, 3 games of battleline, then it diversifies a little Dumf was 2250 (just to mix it up) and un-comped, reading was 2400 and some restrictions.  Both were in the region of 50 players so up there with the bigger one day tournaments but not so big as to be really unwieldy.

Overall I think the army balance at Dumf was better than at Reading, the comp clearly missing the power of Daemons whilst hitting a few other armies, so un-comped actually allowed a more balanced field.

Both held at Community type venues, so nice locations for events, Reading had a bar, where Dumf had better food facilities with a sort of kitchen thing on the go.  Reading takes the win at the tables with the extra 6” round the side to dump junk on but Dumf had the better scenery, the stuff at Reading was a combination of badly placed (nothing in the middle of the table) and pretty ineffectual for what it was (low hills that don’t block LoS, woods & difficult ground on the whole) so combat armies at a real advantage.

My results also flip flopped between the two, Dumf I came 7^th pushing daemons around and Reading 49^th (6^th bottom) with TK.  A fine combination of Daemons being far better than TK in general and matchups (the daemons flier army got to run at a dwarf gunline, who they should smash most of the time! The TK got Ogres with the biggest gutstar in existence!).

My Reading  games were a fantastic fun monster mash WoC list featuring Scyla, Kholek, a giant and a shaggoth plus a bunch of other things running across the table at me! A fairly standard skaven list from a couple of years ago with a bit of everything and an Ogre list that was the most character heavy deathstar I’ve ever faced. Results were big loss, small win, big loss.

Both really fun events, was able to catch up with friends from the tourney scene I’d not seen for a while at each and that’s pretty much the main reason for doing these things!

New Years resolutions

Last year I never posted up my resolutions. I'm not entirely certain I made any!

This year I'll commit them to print and see how I fare. Last year was meant to be a bit of a free for all trying to finish off some projects and the likes. In reality I ended up painting 5.5k of daemons after everyone said the new book wasn't all that strong, they lied. Also painted just short of 2k of Brets but never finished them off and sundry other bits. 

Specifically wasn't doing the model a day challenge but come the end of the year I only missed it by about 10 figs. 

So 2014, what to do?

1. Buy less than 25 models (the mrs said 10 so may try for that but suspect I'll fail with a few bits I want to add to make a HE army). 

2. Finish painting the last of my TK figs. Not many left about 20 I think. 

3. Finish my Brets to 2400pts, finish all the models I have for them (again less than 20). 

4. Paint my HE army. Very specific build planned and have most of the models for it so not too much conflict with 1.

5. Get back into malifaux and finish painting all my stuff (7-10 figs for guild/neverborn)

6. Strip the rest of the CD stuff I bought and paint up a few units. (Not committing to a playable army this year as purchases would be needed).

7. Empire or DE 'should' be next army I target as have majority of both owned, commit to painting without buying for either to continue to build them up. 

8. Improve the quality of a specific 2400 pts WE list to target a paint nomination at an event (if I get to any). 

With writing it all down it feels rather a lot, so suspect some will fall by the wayside. But as ever there is still a mountain of models waiting in the wings to full their place. 

My only real aim is to start eating into the unpainted mountain, which is big enough to last the rest of my life I'm sure! How that happens is somewhat irrelevant right now but I generally find an army focus helps with getting a volume if stuff done. 

Motivation is high but time is a massive premium so will just have to see how it goes and try to ensure I enjoy my painting. 

NZ Scene too competitive?

One of the NZ top 12 players and I believe member of their most enjoyable podcast put up a blog about the competitive nature of the scene.  I started to write a response and then it somewhat ballooned and was too big to post, so I thought I'd make it a blog post of my own.

http://kiwihammer.co.nz/the-nz-warhammer-scene-hopes-and-dreams-for-2014/

Ways in which to remove the WAAC mentality?

1. Remove any form of rankings (It's a way of people measuring how 'good' they are, it promotes the mindset of if I finish higher I'm a better player)

2. Hugely incentivise soft scores (really just moving the goal posts as winners are not pure hardcore gamers but gamers who can paint and not be an asshat at the table)

3. Heavy comp on netlist builds (again more a case of moving the goalposts as people tend to build the best list under a comp pack)

4. Change human nature (by design/genetics we are competitive, some people are able to put that to one side for things that are 'just a bit of fun' others aren't so regardless of the challenge/activity they will try to 'win' at it because the act of being better at something is the reward.

5. Use scenarios (again shifting goalposts but if you need blocks of infantry to capture stuff then it forces people to use more rounded lists)

6. Wait for the majority of current players to get a bit older and have kids (having gone through this recently myself it's amazing how many people simply enjoy a weekend away playing toy soldiers and getting a good nights sleep regardless of what happens on the table!)

Ultimately there is no way you can stop people from wanting to win.  The challenge is how many people from a given scene become focussed on it.  And actually the issue is not the desire to win itself but the behaviours it drives from people.  As you've noted there are players in the scene who are taking unique or different lists and doing well, encouraging people to look at what they've done and learn those lessons is always good.  Ultimately your real problem is dull netlisting (or more specifically dull power build netlisting).

As mentioned the UK scene and the netlisting issue it's probably worth touching on this, Raf responded in the comments about how the UK has diversified a lot in terms of allowing a lot of different comp packs in which helps mix things up.  Even putting that to one side the real question is how much of an issue is rampant netlisting?  Well the obvious place to look is the WoC and DoC lists, in reality that is what people are talking about when they go on about this.  From Sept onwards we've seen a surge in the volume of daemons players, reason being twofold:

1. It takes a while for people to get their new armies painted up and what used to be the power build is now crap with daemons.

2. The German ETC list, suddenly everyone realised that the internet was wrong and there was real power in the daemons book still.

Now with that in mind what have we seen occur with daemons, are the lists all the same?  Having looked at them, I'd say no-ish. There are a few people who have adopted the wall of nurle as it was the early 'power build', but the more it's played the more people have got their heads round it.  Sadly it's main weakness is getting purple sunned off the board so encourages that old favourite of death magic but plenty of people are now rocking that out so the list becomes one of those which is unlikely to win many events as sooner or later you'll hit that large purple sun through your army and lose the game without much effort. So yes the list will be about and wreck a few players weekend but it won't be winning many events. (a problem)

Then there are the lists which have sprung up since Russ started smashing the world.  As it happens I'm also playing a nigh identical list so I'm well placed to comment on it. I started painting mine back in May so would claim it's in no way been influenced by Russ and arrived at independently based upon my own considerations but who knows when I first saw it and how it impacted me.  That list is the speed daemons.

The list has 7 flying/hovering units and basically one unit which doesn't have a 20" threat range (PB block).  The list is hugely flexible due to it's movement and survivability in combination thus very powerful, but doesn't have quite the same negative play experience the nurgle wall so is generally better considered.  It also requires better play to do well consistently which is why Russ has been crushing people with it but few others have had consistent success.

But I’ve played with all sorts of daemons list, not used GUO, crushers or slannesh chariots (all flavours) but otherwise think I’ve used everything in the book and the unusual thing is, it’s all really good.  The play style doesn’t flex that much between builds so I can see how it feels a bit samey to opponents but daemons are just flat out good because they are so reliable.

Warriors are a bit different, they had the netlist developed after about a day of the book being out, they’re a classic example of a dull and very obvious build being popular because it’s incredibly simple to play.  As the book ages though they’re going to drop off in exactly the same way the Ogres did, once you know how to beat that build it just becomes a boring game as you have to do the same process each time or it runs over the top of you.  Hopefully once enough people learn that process the builds will start to switch up and we can all move onto finding more enjoyment in the book.

For myself I’ve played 3 tourneys with Daemons and I’m pretty bored of them, there is pretty much no challenge to them, they just do well at whatever they do and have the ability to press home an advantage pretty easily.  I’d much rather play a game which is a challenge.

And that (finally) is the thing I’m getting to, there are always plenty of players who don’t care less about winning tournaments, instead I want to have as many tactically challenging (and fun) games as possible, I don’t want to stomp my opponent into the ground 20-0 I want it to be tight, back and forth and require me to really think about what I’m doing if I’m going to win a game.  That is the mindset that you want to encourage to get away from WAAC play, sure I could push my daemons forwards and win on the back of army power, but what does that do for me?  “nothing” is the answer I come to, so I’ll go back to my TK, WE or O&G (though less so, current meta and all that) which all make me feel like I’m working for my win rather than knowing from deployment what the outcome will be.

The Daemons March Onwards

So I’ve now taken the DoC to 3 tournaments now.  All at different points levels and all at different levels of restrictions:

• Stormlords – 2400 pts, small comp restrictions (5 games 3:2)
• The Maul – 2999 no comp but encouraged to play non netlist builds (5 games 4:1)
• Winter War – 2250 no comp (3 games 2:1)

My total record across those games is 9:4:0, which is significantly above any other army I’ve ever played with.  So what can I conclude, well obviously it’s that my years of experience are finally paying off and I’ve now started to get the rub of the dice that I deserve… Or alternatively Daemons are a ridiculously good army even when you take the non-obvious builds and their forgiving nature is behind my sudden improvement in results.

My 4 losses have been:

• DoC – wall of nurgle list against which I played it wrong and got smashed 0-20. Learnt a fair amount but was always going to be a struggle to win.

• HE – BoWD dragon prince bus, double phoenix & support.  Made a couple of mistakes but all went wrong when a stupid wood caused a chunk of my armies advance to stall and I couldn’t get across the board to his easy points allowing the bus to clean me up.

• Doubles game of Slannesh DoC & WE vs O&G & WoC – fully blame my doubles partner for this ;-) Was a close game which was decided when we neglected to remember to use his annoyance of netlings in a challenge and got his TMA killed to lose the game by his cost (facepalm).

• WoC – Diced myself out of it, Hellcannon killed LoC who flubbed with eternal blade over 4 rounds of combat (did 1 wound to hellcannon). Small loss by value of the LoC!

My wins (I won’t do details of these) have been against:

• O&G x 3
• Brets x 2
• DE x 2
• Dwarfs
• WoC

So not a very wide variety, but then you can only beat what has been put in front of you! The one which most surprised me is the 3 wins vs O&G, they have the tools to easily deal with the greater daemon but I’ve always been able to clear out the WMs before they’ve killed the GD, admittedly once it was pure luck and one was a quirky army without WMs so a bit different.

What have I observed about the daemons as I’ve played with them?  Well the biggest thing I’ve realised they have going for them is threat range.  They are able to put multiple units on the board which have massive threat ranges and put out decent amounts of damage at the same time. Basically anyone straying inside 20” is risking getting multi charged by GD, Plague drones, screamers, furies, fiends, seekers and Beasts of Nurgle or fleshhounds, skull cannon (use it for combat, it’s ace!) are not far behind them. 

In fact the only stuff that is a bit slower is the core units and once again they provide a couple of different options that allow for an efficient set up regardless of which you choose. But any army needing 600pts will not go wrong with 2x10 horrors for magic support and then a 25-30 strong block of Plaguebearers, Daemonettes, or at a push, Bloodletters.

 
Bloodletters currently feel like the poor man’s choice because of the points cost.  If they were 12/13 pts a model then they’d be about right but the combo of losing their S5 and going up in points with the only bonus being the rather worthless scaly skin 6+ makes them the big loser as they die as easily as daemonettes but don’t have the volume of attacks to make S4 work and lack the speed to reliably bring their S5 to bear.

Daemonettes by virtue of their cheaper cost are quite good for what they bring, particularly if you’re prepared to toss a couple of heralds in there, they suddenly start to fight really well. But they’re more than capable of performing the same function most people use the PB block for (see below) and are faster so less likely to flub the all-important charge roll.  End of the day their WS5 means most people hit them on 4+ and they have a 5++ so the only difference from the nurgle stuff defensively is the T3 vs T4 (against WS3 troops nurgle is even better but not that many people run combat troops at WS3 where it’s not just about static res)

The obvious choice is the Plaguebearer block, solid reliable grinding unit with good combat res and the banner of swiftness so they can more or less keep up with the rest of the army and bring their static res into the corner of an existing fight in the second turn of a combat for a big swing.  Major downside to them is the vulnerability to being purple sunned out the game.

 

 

Battlecult stormlords review

Event was a 2 day 5 game wfb tourney which ended up with 30 players. Great size for a nice social gathering and ideal for me to meet plenty of the local gamers. 

Game 1 – Andy Parker DE So my first ever game with daemons and it’s versus a bit of a mixed DE list, interesting change with the lvl 4 on peg, who I assume had the pendant, never tried to find out. Cauldron, 2x hydras, chariot, big corsair block, small witch elves, couple of units of shades and some xbow units, a unit of dark riders and harpies (or two).  Andy pushed his dark riders forwards slightly turn 1 which offered the plague drones an 11” charge in T1, he swithered fleeing but chose to stand and shoot which basically cost him the game, one 11” charge later the drones were munching away behind his army from then onwards and got a mage and some xbows to add to the dark riders.  Other than that we were both a bit cagey the beasts went straight up the middle after whatever they could find killing the chariot and the witch elves.  Cannon took 1 hydra out but other one I tried tzeench magic on but the 3+ regen was a mistake as it made it into the PB unit with a few wounds left and I struggled to kill it.  Ended 13-7

Game 2 – Bryan O&G Standard netlist but with less trolls and a block of Black Orcs, blood and glory scenario for 500 extra vps.  I was more than a touch lucky in this game, Reign of chaos killed 2 rock lobbas and a mangler on the turn I expected them to kill the lord of change (which would have broken my fortitude as T1 I lost my bsb to a miscast), lord of change then lived a charmed life and survived being foot of gorked twice and a doom diver to the head.  I tested 5 beasts vs 6 trolls, beasts win only taking a couple of wounds in the process.  Nurgle block & khorne chariot smashed the black orcs. Final turn of game 4 screamers charged his general (on 2 wounds) and managed to kill him for the fortitude and a 800pts swing which made it 20-0, could easily have been 1800vps diff if my general died and his survived!

Game 3 – Paul Eacock DoC, Watchtower with a hill for 500vps. Papa, Epidemus, 2x3 flies, 6 beasts, PB block with Bsb, cannon. Basically my list with less of the experimental chaff and a GUO.  Papa miscast and went into the warp T1 but despite that I still managed to lose the game!  Tried 5 beasts vs 3 flies, beasts take them out in 1-2 rounds for a couple of wounds.  But I let the nurgle tally build up and it cost me, also reign of chaos took our ward saves from 4+ to none over a couple of turns for some really weird occurrences!  Paul just played the army better than me despite his early setback and cleared stuff up.  Chicken died to 3 flies when he had no ward save.  We did 3 flies with death heads vs 3 with poison, I lost all 3 and he took 1 wound but poison didn’t really do much was just dice and a bad crumble role. Lost 0-20 and was tabled.

Game 4 – Rob Hall HE Blood and glory for 500vps 2xphoenix, dragon prince bus with prince, phoenix guard, bsb, high arch mage, 2x archers and 3 x reavers. 2 Phoenix in your face T1 are scary! Both 20” forwards and facing the cannon for T2 charge.  Double 1’d my first magic phase and lost the harpy screen plus a few wounds elsewhere but the issue was no magic for the phoenix, did bolt 1 for 2 wounds and cannoned off the other but the burning chariot did nothing to the wounded one over 2 turns which cost me a lot of movement.  Beasts of nurgle missed a couple of charges and got stuck in a stupid wood and failed the test in a critical turn which meant I didn’t get to his archers.  Chicken nearly pulled the game back in the final turn when combo fighting a phoenix guard block in the flank and archers in front.  Killed 8 archers to win combat and PG with mage & bsb (sent to back) testing on a 9, passed with a 9 (sqeeky bum time!).  Wouldn’t have deserved to get back into the game but again much closer than 1-19 score suggested.  DP bus was BoWD and killed most of my stuff, was a bit unfortunate that a fiery convocation took off half my PB block when set up for flank charge into the DPs so I couldn’t commit. But I made some movement errors and cost myself several pts as a result.

Game 5 – Ross DE Pendant Dragon, peg bsb, 2xlvl 2s corsair block, xbows, 2 x hydras (maybe just 1) and cold one bus.  We set about smashing each other to bits in this one and was great fun, played it far more aggressively than v sandy G1 and it almost paid off, barring the beasts totally fluffing against the cold ones I’d probably have won big.  Beasts did zero wounds and got ground out vs cold ones, ASF banner on unit but still way off averages but don’t think I got a single beast with more than 3 attacks across 3 rounds of combat.  Metal magic killed the dragon but pendant guy had 2++ flaming so I couldn’t touch him, bsb also survived due to my not targeting him when I could have as didn’t have any protective kit. Other than that we basically killed most of each others armies.  I did combo charge the corsairs with the PBs in the front and the chicken in the flank and killed about 20 guys in a single round for 3 wounds back.  PBs then killed the CO bus after breaking from combat they ran them down in the final turn.  Final game I played a lot more aggressively and think it helped me a lot.  

Overall looking at the list I had about 300pts that did nothing all event, so could easily optimise the list further and it would be much better but less variety.  The volume of magic didn’t really achieve much for me, the chicken seldom cast much and rarely more than 2 dice as tried to keep gateway off him.   Metal did nothing the first 4 games but was great in the last and death wasn’t worth much as generally need 3 dice to try the snipe and that takes away from the rest of the phase.  For the event I went 3-2 but my losses were massive and my wins were small (well 2 of them) so I ended up in 20th.

Playing again I might switch to 3x Blue fire (or 2 & gateway), lvl 1 metal, lvl 1 death (spells too good not to have at least 1 level).  So LoC could become a lvl 2-3 and still do fine, spells I want cast on an 8 generally so 2 dice is still cast most of the time.  Never got any benefit out of treason and only 1 time glean achieved anything was to take gateway off the paul's horror block as at 18" I was generally not wanting the chicken to be in danger of getting charged so couldn't cast it very often.  

The other big failure was the burning chariot, I didn't have great luck with the artillery dice misfiring several times but overall it didn't do enough to justify its points (a second cannon would have been better in every occasion but I'm still assuming that will get comped out). Only moving 10" meant it couldn't get away from threats. 

LoC lvl 3 (Tzeentch) 
Tzeentch Herald lvl 1 (Metal) 
Nurgle BSB, lvl 1 (Death) 
11 Horrors 
10 horrors 
24 PBs - FC, Swiftness 
5 beasts 
2x3 screamers 
5 furies 
2x3 drones - Poison 
Cannon 

Obviously doesn’t work with scenarios as only fortitude 4 and 2 of those in the potentially easy to kill LoC but pretty easy to move some points around for standards on the 2 horror units.  Screamers were really helpful chaff and that was with me forgetting about the slashing attack all event too, so 2x3 should do even better and 2x3 drones are also great anti chaff units that can threaten flanks, kill shooters and generally be annoying. 

A long time coming

So an update has been a long time overdue for a few reasons. Firstly my work still use IE version 5 or something which is now utterly incompatible with any functionality making posting during lunch breaks nigh impossible. Add on top of that the blogger app hiding any photo functionality (it may have been there I just didn't spot it) I decided against adding further walls of text!

But that is now changed as I've seen how to attach photos:

See! And with this I can confirm great progress on my daemon army, its now over 4000pts strong and growing. 

So what else have I been up to? Not much gaming, at last count I was on about 14 games for the year, way down on my average. But the painting has been going strong and alongside the daemons I've been doing a bunch of empire stuff and have enough for a fairly sizeable army these days. 

So just need to get painting on that next but must go back and finish off the bret army I was working on, I did all the core knights and just need to finish a unit of grails and some pegs for the full force of the usual netlist stylee.  Zero desire to play them though so will just gather dust for a while and see when they get a new book if I like the look of them. 

Overview of armies:

Brets - mostly done 

Dwarfs - done, want a new book because they are boring. 

Daemons - plenty still to paint but basically done

Dark elves - sat in a box, got distracted from project, rumours of a new book anyway. 

Empire - bought lots, painted little! Next big project I think. 

High elves - got lots of stuff but not an army as no white lions, dragon princes or all things Phoenix. 

Lizards - new book adds some units but in no rush to try them, painting up cold ones for cav bus list as a laugh. 

O&G - happy with how they look but still missing a few options. Gameplay a bit meh, turns out they are pretty defensive. 

Skaven - done, not all options and some bits still to paint if I ever go back. Never really gotten into playing them. 

Tomb kings - should really finish them off, not much still to do. 

Warriors - buying up some options but only painted the one unit. 

Woodies - really want to improve the paintjob across the army so must finish all other projects first!

So there we go, 12/16 armies covered, missing are:

Beastmen, chaos dwarfs, ogres and vampires. Mostly my least favourite armies for various reasons but I did a few beast men figs as plaguebearers so reckon I could churn them out. CD are a low model, quick army, same for ogres which leaves VC. Team Sco really needs an army for them but its the one I have least interest in doing, lots of models, but mostly dull stuff. 

2013 appears to have been the year of cavalry for me, Brets, mounted empire, HE shore riders, TK cav of both varieties all getting time on the painting table. But daemons are probably the highlight as they went from nothing to loads in a couple of months proving just what a good new book can do!

Army Painting

What follows here is actually an email response I gave to someone asking about my approach to painting armies quickly, but to a decent standard, I don't think it will win awards but what we're looking for is a good finish that looks coherent and adds to the gaming experience, without sinking your life into painting the army.

Before you even think about techniques and products the very first thing to consider is paintscheme, it's something it took me a while to learn and I'm getting better with each army.

My first army was my dwarfs, pretty simple purple & green but then I spent ages doing my pouches and wood and leather all in different shades of brown and really labouring them.  My next army was my WE, I simplified the colour scheme to 2 shades of brown and a green, painting time was cut down massively.  Lizards was then done as 3 colours and a wash, 4 colours for the TK and O&G which I had at Winter War was basically 4 colours on the whole model.

So first off work out what you want your model to look like and then how you can strip that down to as few basecoat colours as possible.  If you need to make your leather & wood look different do it through washes or highlights, the base coat can be exactly the same so it saves you a bunch of time. One thing to consider is if you want the models to stand out at all using entirely neutral colours will blend your models down into an amorphous lump.  Think about all the top armies at winter war, the Ogres had bright blue and the snow to really pop them out, Neil’s skaven have a bright red to them and the skin highlights go really bright and the basing is generally muted but with the bright green on the stone.  It’s all about contrast on the models.  If you’ve ever seen Johnny Hastings (Pointhammered host) beastmen he’s got a really bright blue for his fabric, looks amazing:

[img] http://www.thewildherd.com/images/gal-gors1.jpg[/img]

Obviously that’s some serious high end painting, but thinking about your scheme can get you a long way towards that.

Next up is batch painting, I did my Orcs & Gobbos in batches of 20, I did my Skaven in batches of 40 models.  Beastmen are a pretty infantry heavy army I'm guessing 40 gors and 30 odd bestigors as the core of the army?  So that should be 3-4 batches of painting at very most.  Then you just grind colours on the models.

Assuming with beastmen you'll have brown fur & some colour for skintone? I know Calum did blue beastmen, Ryan did red, but traditional is just skintone.  So I would spray the whole model brown before putting a paintbrush near them.  Personally I prefer to use lighter colours and then use washes but some people like darker tones and then just drybrush/highlight up.  For that all over basecoat I use an airbrush but that's only because I've got one and it allows me to ensure I can touch up with the same colour as my spray because I've got it in bottles.  Previously I've used all sorts of sprays, Halfords have a pretty good range of sprays for cars that can be good but probably not for natural browns so you might need to try plasticote or Tamiya.  Any of the hobby brands tend to be ok, but those are the two I've heard people use most often.  I’ve used Tamiya in the past and liked them. For my Orcs this is what mine looked like:

[IMG]http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c264/dafruk/Orcs%20and%20Goblins/85c11a7e.jpg[/IMG]

That’s just a layer from the airbrush.

Once I’ve got that base colour I use a size 3 or 4 brush to do the basecoat.  Partly this is due to having pretty good brush control so I’m comfortable using that size but it massively cuts down the time it takes to put a basecoat on if you’re using a big brush.  I get them from Hobbycraft as you can get a synthetic brush for far cheaper than using high quality sable ones and the brush will get trashed from basecoating anyway.  So with the model brown I now only really need to apply 2-3 colours to the model, for beastmen I’d imagine that you’d have whatever skintone you’re using and then a bone colour for the various skulls/horns etc and then finally something for the fabric/armour on the models.  All off those go on in a nice flat even coat across the full batch of models I’m painting.  In theory that gives you a three colour minimum that’s tabletop but in reality it still looks pretty crap.

Then I think about key areas of focus, for the Orcs it was the skin, probably the same for beastmen, so I highlighted the skin.  For me that was done with a drybrush, everyone criticises that technique as a bit messy but as long as you’re controlled and do it before washing the model it works really well because the wash tones it down a bit it doesn’t look as messy at all.  If you’re more comfortable then you can just do highlights with a brush, again I’ll try and use the same size of brush as the basecoat and just pick out all the raised areas as quickly as possible. Here’s the highlight on the skin, because it was over so much of the model it did it before picking out any of the other detail from the step above.

[IMG]http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c264/dafruk/Orcs%20and%20Goblins/dd29b3c5.jpg[/IMG]

After that I’ll hit the washes.  I think the new GW paint range is awesome and the shades & glazes all work fantastically (just make sure you shake them).  My Orcs got an all over wash of Agrax Earthshade.  Not just the skin but the whole model got coated, so you don’t have to be careful about where you put it.  This is the stage where you could use dip if you wanted, I did it with my skaven but for the Orcs the tone I wanted wasn’t quite right so Agrax was better.  The model will now look pretty decent, might need a few highlights but largely it’ll be done to a reasonable standard. Also don’t just thing about shading like with like, for example I tend to shade my reds with either blue or purple washes, it gets a much better contrast into the recesses.

If there are any key areas which are likely to be focused on I’ll specifically pick out some highlights on those, so shields & faces are the key areas but only if they catch the light, again everything here is focused on contrast for maximum effect.

The final thing you need to work out is what scheme of basing works well with the colours on the model.  For the Orcs I went with a reddish brown, largely because there was nothing of that tone on the model and it contrasted nicely with the skin.  For my WE it was a dark almost black earth but with quite bright static grass and woodland leaves (http://www.antenocitisworkshop.com).  Good basing is what makes an army, get the right compliment/contrast to the paint scheme and it then means you get an overall look that is far better than the individual model.  Avoid putting too much static grass on bases, far better to have patches and break it up, doesn’t make sense in terms of what you see in reality but looks good on models.

So in short:

1.       Simple Paintscheme & consistent across the army.

2.       Colours basecoat spray

3.       Big brush for basecoats

4.       Quick highlights

5.       Wash to shade

6.       Basing

Another example of my process was the skaven army I did, for that I took step by step pictures of a clanrat model.  In painting those I spent about 6 hours painting in total on 40 models.

http://heelanhammer.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1615

Things to avoid are :

Getting caught up with the detail of a single model - you’re going to have 40 of them ranked up in a unit so it’s very rare that anyone will look at a single model and notice the effort you’ve put into highlighting the pouches on his belt which normally never get seen.

Having a different scheme for different unit types – You’re army painting, so it all needs to look good together, different schemes for different units wrecks this unless done very carefully.

If you want a ‘what not to do’ check out the progress on this blog:

http://heelanhammer.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=360

He’s painting individual scales on his HE armour rather than just painting it all silver and washing it.  His method takes forever and doesn’t really look any better as a result, so just time wasting. He also changes colour scheme part way through and repaints all his old models, soul destroying stuff.  Work it out up front and stick with it.

Ohh final thing I’ve just thought of, remember most people will be looking at your army from at least 4 feet away most of the time, so that’s what you want to look good, unless you’re wanting to win awards that’s the target for the best distance to check whether the quality is right or not. At 6” away I always spot massive flaws in my figs, but at 4’ they look pretty decent.

Hope that helps.

It's been a while

So, it's been a bit quiet round here, I kinda got tied up with a lot of 'real life' over the past few months and hobby took a serious backseat.  Events in my life:
1. Having a kid
2. Moving house/city/transferring job

Reckon that's a detailed enough description, now back to the important stuff of Toy soldiers!

My desire to own/paint every army for WFB is still the same as ever, I want's em.  Currently on the chopping block are the Bretonnians.  I'd done a bunch of work adding units to some other armies and branched out for a bit but then got bored so started on the Brets.  I've now got most of the army well under progress and hopefully will get it churned out first half of the year.  Also added a bunch of units to my TK army and will be running them out at a tournament soon so need to finish a few more off just for completeness as soon I'll have every unit out of the book available and in pretty decent numbers too.

Malifaux - totally gone on the back burner, I still love the game and the models but lack any opponents with my move of location, no bad thing but I do still have a heap of models to get painted up.

Warmachine - Again back burnered, though in all honesty it was never really much further forward than this!

40k - Eldar are grinding along slowly in the background, hit a bit of wall with them too so they've not come out the box in the new house but I do have a solid start to a force with standard HQ & Troops choices available.

Other thing I'm doing is a commission infinity army/team/crew/squad as someone asked nicely with a pretty please! Really nice models with a great amount of detail though it's quite fine so could be easily clogged.