O&g update

With the gobbo scheme locked down I pushed on with a full unit of 20 to get the army started.

That was then followed by some more Orc tests. Blue tinge skin wasn't right so went more traditional and liked the look so now that's the orcs sorted too.

Enjoying painting this stuff at the moment so wanting to crack on with units before momentum dies.

Day 2

And I continued my seesaw journey!

Game 4 - rob farmer wood elves
Strange build with eternal guard, 2x5 treekin. I played it all wrong and overestimated 2 sphinx into the treekin, they killed 2 over 4 turns of combat. Should have put all 3 into the eternal guard and just ridden out the treekin counter charges. Lost 0-20

Game 5 -Joel Smith Dark Elves
Nice dragon list & cold one bus. Did my usual thing and necrosphinx goes for the Bsb and other 2 sphinx front stuff up. Chariots on shooting duty for dark riders. Basically get a bit lucky when I killed the hydra and the dragon panicked. Necrosphinx also fought of flank & rear charge from xbows and spears with a big thunder stomp followed by 2 failed break tests. Over the rest the dragon comes back and gets into the character bunker but WS10 & shems lead to a fluffed turn and the dragon flees again with me 1" behind and my turn next. I run him down for 800pts swing. I was very lucky and he wasn't being the real difference. I won 18-2

Game 6 - James knight daemons
The dice gods turned back on this one and I didn't get a stomp above 2 and the key turn he hit 6 of 9 wards for the blood letters to survive which cost my chariots and heirotitan. Then it all collapsed from there, fun game though for 1-19 in the end. Snakes surprised him when they chomped 5 fiends in 3 rounds of combat but I botched the reform and let him escape a counter charge. But snakes have done that for me every time they play fiends, so knew it was in my favour.

Overall 58/120 was disappointing as thought 60 was achievable and but for some bad play would have been a reality.

Great fun event and a nice one to finish up my month of play with.

Unless I have to play 6 nations that's me done for the year and probably going to focus on building and painting the next few armies I want.

SCGT

My TK made the big trip down and have enjoyed much Zappa fun through day 1, lots of nice squishy targets presented themselves and obligingly jumped under my sphinxes feet!

Game 1 - Dave Meechan with dark elves (17-3)
Game 2 - Matt Lee Daemons (5-15)
Game 3 - Danny Pegg high elves (17-3)

The daemons was a great unclean one who I just couldn't fight as bale sword just chopped through all my big constructs and my Mage miscast and fell down a pit to remove my last chance of doing anything.

The elves were both subject to magic missile barrages and the shooting had plenty of good targets which forces them to commit and the sphinxes started to smash things up.

Day 2 beckons.

Orcs & Goblins Progress

I'm working off second hand models (ebay for mucho cheapness),so whilst it's 'painted' in the starting pic none of the original paint remains on the finished model.

Quite happy with how the test skull pass gobbos came out, then set them aside for a while to basically have a month off painting whilst did some real life stuff and play lots of tournaments.  Now finally getting back to them and to get myself inspired I decided to do something a bit fun first.  So I cleaned the mould lines off 80 night gobbo that were in various stages of being painted but none had the lines removed first (typical 2nd hand cheapo figs).
 

That got me a bit bored so I dug out something slightly better to start with in the form of a doom diver picked up in a bit of a state, so I'd ripped it apart and removed all the excess glue and mould lines then just stuck it back together again.  Fortunately the paint on it was actually quite thin so I didn't feel the need to strip it.

And my finish point:



 


Again happy with how my scheme came out, was pretty quick to paint and I think looks nice for the level of effort. 

Of course having just listened to the latest heelanhammer episode I'm singled out as someone that just churns out armies as a basecoat & dip merchant, slightly hurtful given the fact my armies usually look better than the majority of those at tournaments, but agree that obviously no effort for those 'best painted' awards.  What I have always said I'd do is get to the point where I can put any army of my choice on the table at an event and then I'll sit down and set about improving what I've got.  Only being 32 I reckon I can achieve this quite comfortably before my eyesight goes so will have plenty of time to improve the standard of these armies at my leisure.

Edinburgh GT

Generic write up for a few forums so some blindingly obvious details in here, but will just post it all as is.

So I slightly tweaked my list again for another tournament, but largely unchanged. For the comp junkies this was UK SCGT comp which basically caps your additional power dice at +d3 (or two) plus channels. 90 shot cap and that's about it. The important thing is it's 6 battleline (so I have zero standards in the army) and a 20-0 scoring system with +150vps steps per point. (so 1500vps up = 20-0)

2 lvl 4's nehek&light, lvl 1 light - Scroll & sceptre of stability (+1d6 to a failed dispel roll)
10 archer, champ & muso
20 archers, muso
7 chariots, muso
4 snakes - champion
2 x sphinx - fiery roar
necrosphinx
heirotitan
casket


G1 John Harper (DE)
Lord – Cold One, +2S sword, pendant
BSB – ASF (maybe the unit? Dunno banner costs)
Lvl 4 shadow, lvl 2 metal, lvl 2 fire – stabby dagger, scroll +1 DD
2x10 xbows, 20xbows, 5 harpies, 2x5 dark riders.
8 CO - +1Attack banner, muso
Hydra

John is on a challenge to play a different army at every tournament and took the opportunity for a round 1 grudge with someone he knew to try and learn the DE which he’d picked out a hat! Not an entirely standard DE list but plenty of common themes, I’d actually suggested the knight bus to him (so only myself to blame!). My only tactic vs the bus was delay it and hope I could get lucky and kill off the rest of his army before it killed mine. So I threw a necrosphinx at it early to try and kill the bsb for some points early on (he failed only doing 1 wound) and let my snakes go after his archmage’s archer block. The hydra got pinned by a sphinx and they both chumped it up for ages until finally I got 1 wound to his zero and a breaktest worked out! Eventually I manged to do what I’d set out and killed off everything but the knight bus, pendant lord and 1 unit of archers but lost a fair amount of mine in return netting a 14-6.

G2 Owen Bell (Empire)
Pope, Lvl 4 fire, BSB, Engineer
48 halberds, 6 archers, 10 huntsmen,
2x5 knights, 2x5 pistoliers
2 cannons, Mortar, Steam tank

Oh dear, cannons. Actually was looking ok, I got some decent matchups in deployment, got lucky on some terror and magic early to clear out the huntsmen and a pistolier unit early. Unfortunately Owens T1 he dropped a mortar on my heirophants head and I failed the look out sir roll. 3 wound later I started my crumble tests. At that point I knew I had to commit so everything went forwards, necrosphinx at the lvl 4 in the halberds and everything else forwards. Casket decided to blow up turn 2 taking out a sphinx that had been cannoned already, then other sphinx got cannoned and necrosphinx died to combat res. Rest killed as much as they could but everything bar 2 chariots died in the end. 2-18 loss.


G3 Annie Norman (VC)
Necro lvl 4, necro lvl 2, wraith, banshee
3 x 20something zombies, 30 ghouls, 30 grave guard
2 x 6 crypt horrors, 3 x2 bats, spirit host
Mortis engine

Mega T1 magic phase saw me blow the grave guard down to 5 models, unfortunately also blew up my lvl 4 on light who fell down a pit. Stopped as much raising as I could then put the necrosphinx into the graveguard with 2 ethereals in it. After all the attacks and crumbles left the banshee on 1 wound as the only thing remaining so the sphinx was pinned, 1 more wound and that was an overrun into the lords bunker, ohhh so near! Another sphinx had gone for the combo charge and failed so it got pinned by a spirit host. So now I was in real trouble as I could do nothing about those two. Necrosnakes went on a rampage but unfortunately so did annies second unit of crypt horrors so we both ended up smashing off our respective mage bunkers but annie had split her 2 characters by then so not much crumbled end of the game I’d killed a few units of zombies, the grave guard, lvl 4 necromancer and some crypt horrors but lost most of my army with just 2 sphinxes hanging around on a couple of wounds and the snakes I could only hold on for a 6-14 loss.

G4 Jay Knight
Grey seer on bell, BSB, chieftain, warlock eng (doomrocket)
40 stormvermin
3 x 40 clanrats, 2 PWMs
2 doomwheels

Jay was hungover to hell and his army was a bad matchup against mine for him, this was further made difficult when I killed a doomwheel turn 1 with the casket. That was the start of the end really as he’d gone with plague and as a result had nothing really to deal with the sphinxes apart from an 11-12 result on the bell (he never rolled above a 7 on three dice). The snakes got into the 2nd doomwheel due to a bad distance roll putting it a bit too close and -1S&T followed by WS10 meant they chopped it up. My whole army then piled into his blocks and the stormvermin eventually killed one sphinx with blessed with filth but the rest stomped all over his army leading to a T5 concession before I could declare 3-4 charges into the bell unit. 20-0

G5 Trev Moffat (WoC)
Disc Lord, bsb horse, mage horse
18 HW&S Tzeench Warriors – rapt standard, 12 Halberd Warriors Banner of Rage
12 marauders, flails, 2x5 dogs
2 chariots, 7 knights
Hellcannon, Warshrine

Typical game between me and trev, a bit close, we’ve played countless practice games in the run up so both knew each others armies. I think trev stuffed up his deployment a bit compared to normal and isolated his knights. Therefore I went for the big risky charge with my necroserpents and a sphinx only to get a rather lucky failed fear test from the sphinx making them WS1. The knights then butchered a few and ran them down, on the otherside of the board trev was failing charges every turn despite small numbers needed so I managed to delay everything enough that my lvl 4 on light could do a runner and only had to immolate a chariot in order to get to some safety (well relative safety given he had to suck up a 2d6 S4 burning gaze on the final turn, true to form trev fluffed his dice and left me on 1 wound). I also got jammy to kill the chaos lord, he took 1 wound from the casket spell, then was in combat, but he overran into my casket who got WS10, I10 and -1 to hit on them so a guard survived to chip a wound off before dying and the explosion of the casket killed the lord! So basically I diced him up good and proper to not lose about 500vps in the last turn! 10-10

G6 Marco
Prince, lvl 4 shadow, lvl 2 high, BSB
28 Seaguard, 2 x 10 archers
5 shadow warriors, 18 white lions, 14 sword masters
2 bolt throwers

Marco should have realised this game was going to go wrong when he won the roll for the first turn (he’d not done it all tournament). 5 spells on shadow and no pit saw me a happy man! A bit of shuffling, magic (not much) some shooting and a couple of my chariots died. In return I removed 1 bolt thrower with the casket and 10 archers with banishment followed by some shooting. Marco’s dice went down from there. The lvl 4 miscast on 2 dice, blew himself up and took most of the sword masters out as he went just as they charged a sphinx which was chomping the white lions. They did enough to kill it but then got a necrosphinx in to them with only 4 guys and a bsb left. He ate the bsb, stomped the unit and overran into the 6 remaining white lions. From there it was just clean up. Apparently I cast in the region of 30 spells without miscasting (admittedly most on 2 dice, and several on 1). Again dice helped me out but it was always a reasonable matchup for me as I play the HE often and the best thing against sphinxes is lots of magic missiles which he lacked. 19-1


Overall I came 7th (of 28) tied for TPs with 6th but behind on BPs. I was 4th most vps scored at the event showing the 'smash em up' nature of the list.

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.