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.

This was the first run out of my O&G army at an event, I’d not had a great deal of practice and the army was pretty much designed based off a combination of netlist, models that I like and what I thought looked good on the table.  Going into it I thought it would be quite a fun army to play but also hoped to get a best painted nomination.



Game 1: Dale – Tomb Kings (Battleline)
Dale is a clubmate of mine so slightly frustrating to draw him but I didn’t think it was worth swapping as the field had a fair few ELG players there.  Dale runs a pretty solid TK list and had used the special characters slot as an excuse to get the grand hierophant into his list.  He was backed up by a couple of light mages 3 sphinx and a heap of infantry plus a tomb king.  It’s an interesting list and having seen it on the table I’m now dying to paint up some more bits for my TK to allow me to play with something similar!  No chariots and no snakes was the big difference plus a skelly deathstar.  Overall it looks like it would struggle in the current game with very little to punch through armour but that largely doesn’t matter against me. 

We’d played a month or so back as one of my practice games but at 1999pts where the Orcs ran over the top of his TK with little effort, so I was hopeful going into it.  Unfortunately I made the mistake of letting him get his necrosphinx into by savage orcs T1, he promptly beat them in combat by landing 4 killing blows on the lord (I stopped the WS10 but not the killing blow on a 5+ spell).  With my general dead the trolls went stupid the rest of the game and after killing the necrosphinx my savage orcs spectacularly failed a terror test from another sphinx charge and ran away... Oh dear.  All the time the casket was killing my artillery  and the wolf riders failed to take it out, I should have sent the wyvern in instead but he was off hunting the heirotitan, which he killed but got stuck on a sphinx after than and eventually died.  I was down about 500-600pts T6 so just threw everything into combat in the hope of getting lucky.  I didn’t and the savage orcs died horribly and got run down making it a 1-20 loss.

Game 2: Paul – Ogres (meeting engagement)
Paul hadn’t played warhammer for a year or so and let me know he was a bit rusty.  That said he was playing ogres so I still had to be a bit careful.  Army was a big unit of ironguts, big unit of bulls, 8 leadbelchers and a thundertusk (ice one if that’s the right name) and an ironblaster.  There was a tyrant, slaughtermaster and bsb who because the bulls didn’t turn up all ended up in the ironguts.  This lead to a game of his deathstar killing my army, my deathstar killing his!  It ended up my night gobbos, savage orcs and the wyvern (less rider) on his side of the board and his ironguts & characters on my side each having butchered everyting else.  Because of the wyvern not giving up it’s points I got an 11-9 win.  Skills!  Great fun game of just mashing everyting into each other, not very cerebral but jolly good fun.

Game 3 Calum – Vampires (Blood & Glory but keep playing once broken)
O&G don’t like ethereal very much and Calum had 3 spirit hosts.  This is partly what did me in, I forgot they were move 6 and let him get what I thought was a very long charge but turned out to be not that far into my trolls.  In addition I’d positioned my wyvern badly so it couldn’t fly in to help out with one of my rare magic weapons.  As a result the trolls did nothing all game, though they did eventually crumble the host through static res once I remembered 3 wide gave me 2 ranks. The wyvern did do miracles in surviving till T6 fighting black knights and warding up lots of killing blows but got screamed to death by the terrorgeist which despite the base size my artillery didn’t ever hit.  Other than that everything got into big fights and had fun but the vampire lord was basically a 1 man wrecking crew vs my savage orcs when he pulled out his sword of anti heroes and went 8S8 attacks with red fury for another 8 more or there abouts.  Combined with 3 vargheists and a varghulf that did a lot of wounds and I needed snake eyes to survive, I didn’t.  But I did butcher the vargheists and vargulf so not all bad.  Orc magic was doing nasty things sniping out all his necromancers with ‘eadbutt so I had some fun with that but knew it was never going to be enough. Overall though once the Vamp killed the savage orcs it was game over and I went down 1-20 again.

 

So overall how did my list perform?  Well the trolls were a massive liability, in 2 games my general died so they wandered about doing nothing the rest of the game.  In the other they got hit by a gutstar so didn’t stand a chance anyway! The wyvern was equally awful, largely he got thrown into monsters or cav units and eventually got ground out. It was slightly disappointing but I don’t blame him for any of my losses, I didn’t play all that well with it because of lack of experience. Savage Orcs, in 2 games got out deathstarred, the problem being I’m so character reliant and if they die then that’s basically game over for the whole army.  Perhaps I had too many eggs in 1 basket but I don’t really want to run a bunker unit just for my lord and bsb to hide in, but perhaps that’s what I should do...

I really enjoyed playing with the army, it was massively frustrating at times but still enjoyable.  Playing Dale did make me realise how much I miss my TK and I think there are some other builds out there to be found for them but the O&G are also up there as a really fun army to play.  Particularly enjoyed not being very magic reliant, often I was casting spells ‘just because’ but didn’t rely upon them at all which felt good for the army design.  I have no idea what place I came in the end, I didn’t bother checking but with 13/60bps it wasn’t going to be very high!

On the painting side I wasn’t in the top 2 for best army, those going to Neil Peckett’s Skaven (2^nd place) and Richard Payne’s Ogres (1^st).  This was Richard’s first tournament and he was a well deserved winner, I’d seen the army developing on Twitter and knew it was going to be really well received, technically I think his skin was the weakest part of the paintjob but he’d done enough with the rest of it to make the overall look carry it off regardless.

As a side note the tourney was a great success raising £1700 for charity from the 48 gamers & sundry watchers who were present, which nicely average out at about £35 a head, who says the Scottish are stingy? It’s likely that this will be my last tournament in Scotland as I’m hopeful that I’ll be moving down to Bath relatively early next year and with Ruari now a couple of months old it’s unlikely I’ll be going to any events down there in the near future, so I’ve bowed out of the tourney scene pretty much replicating my early results, but as much as I may feel like a total chump there were a few highlights to be found in the middle of that period.

What’s next for me?  Well with a fair win I’m hoping to be moved house early next year and that should allow me to get settled back into painting in my spare time around playing with my son, so the Eldar project which has kicked off should continue and after that we’ll see what most takes my fancy from the many options I’ve been working on.  I’m up against it a little in terms of achieving my 366 models in 366 days this year but I’m hoping I can put in a burst at some point to get me over the hump, currently I’m 9 models behind the run rate so need to pull my finger out as December is seldom a good month to get much done.

Giddy as a Schoolgirl

That’s right apparently they’re the benchmark of giddiness...

The reason behind this unusual mindset is I’ve nearly finished another army project.  My O&G have been a relatively quick project having really only started the bulk of it in April but are now nearing completion.

It was an army I never really thought about doing as the background fluff is totally not my thing, ‘were stupid and only want to fight, why? Just cos’.  Not really something that draws me into an army.  But then I realised they were really uncommon on the tournament scene which is always a big draw (my previous main armies being Dwarfs, TK and WE all of which are pretty rare) and the models were available off Ebay/trades pretty cheaply which again has a great appeal.  So I decided to pick them up, doing various trades to get the starter for the style of army I wanted, so I’ve ended up with tonnes of Gobbos I probably will never put on the table now I’ve begun writing lists but that doesn’t really matter as I’ll painted them all up regardless.

I decided very early on I wanted this to be a quick, but good looking, army.  The paint schemes I developed were all about churning out models at a high rate with only a few colour choices but with maximum impact.  To that end I had decided the Gobbos, Orcs and Trolls would all have different skin tones but everything else would be consistent across the range. There was one small change that occurred to vary from this, I moved to using a muted purple cloth colour on the Orcs which doesn’t appear on the Gobbos who have grey.  To contrast the muted and natural colours I wanted a brighter base colour and went for a reddish brown coloured base, but again with muted grass tones, I think that has helped bring out the models a little and avoid the issue of all blending into one big lump.

The first thing I started with was an utterly generic netlist army, I do this quite often for my armies for a few of reasons:

1.       I don’t have to think at all about what I need to buy

2.       It means if I go off the army then I’ve actually got something that I can sell which should recoup it’s cost

3.       It’s usually the netlist for a reason, it should work ok on the table and from there it’s just a case of tailoring it to the play style I like.

At the time the netlist was: lots of savage orcs, big unit of gobbos, 2 doom divers, 2 rock lobbas, 2 mangler squigs and some other junk to fill the points.  As is the way of things that appears to have moved along a bit in the intervening period, from what I’m hearing trolls are now a big thing, entirely unrelated to this I’d bought a load of trolls, why?  Because they look awesome and are totally different from an infantry horde army, the other added bonus is it cuts down the model count quite a lot too!  So I’ve ended up still sticking quite closely to the netlist, which is fine by me, just goes to show you should probably try everything out the book when building armies regardless. 

The particular list I’ve been painting was for a club tournament that happens every September, the event is called forgotten Heroes, it harks back to the previous edition where pretty much everyone maxed out their allowance of lord characters and you never saw the lowly heroes.  So Lords were banned (1999pts) but in 8^th that didn’t prevent them, so they’re specifically banned now and the hero allowance is bumped up to 35% to still enable a reasonable selection of characters to be taken. They also play that characters get a look out sir vs spells like dwellers when in a unit.

My Army was going to be:

Orc Big Boss, Great Weapon, Obsidian Lodestone

Savage Orc Shaman – Lucky Shrunken head

Black Orc BSB, banner of discipline

38 Savage Orc Big-uns, extra hand weapons, full command

5 Wolf Riders, Musician

10 Trolls

3 x 1 Orc Boar Chariots

2 x 1 Doom Divers

1 Rock Lobba

1 Snotling Pump Wagon

1 Giant

Now anyone looking at the list will realise it’s not fully optimised but it’s designed for 1 particular thing.  The characters are a delivery system, all 3 go in the savage Orcs and the combination of the lucky head and the obsidian lodestone gives a 2+ ward save vs magic and a 5+ ward vs shooting.  Combine that with the T4 means that unit will usually get across the board at close to starting unit size.

Next to them are the trolls who’re using the general and BSB to ensure those leadership tests are passed LD9 with rerolls has them moving most of the time. Those two units are designed to steamroller anything put in front of them. 

In order to ensure they reach their target destination I’ve got the chariots, pump wagon and wolf riders who are there purely to clear out chaff & skirmishers from around the big blocks so they are free to charge important targets.  Finally the war machines can help me bombard my opponent’s line as I advance towards them to soften up anything I particularly don’t want to face. 

That leaves me with the giant who is along for the ride on the basis of being painted and having some really nice anti monster ability which generally speaking the army lacks.

Not having any lord characters hurts the army a lot, it means that the general, BSB and Mage are all a bit more vulnerable than I would like, so once the trolls make combat it’s likely they’ll end up getting one good fight then probably the general will be dead if my opponents target him so the trolls become useless, but that’s a sacrifice I’ve had to make to get the LD9 into the list for the early game benefit.  If lord choices were available then the Lord is ld9 base and can get protective items on him, plus the BSB can be protected too.  That would use up all those points currently invested in the giant but removes a big vulnerability of the army.

As a painting project I’ve really enjoyed the O&G, the models are quite simple on the whole but have good clearly defined detail and my standard approach of basecoat, drybrush, wash has worked really well for quickly churning out a good number of models.  The army also has masses of variety of options and I’ve barely event touched half of what’s in the book.

I’ve got one unit of Savage Orcs but could also have Orc Boys, Black Orcs, Orcs/Savages with bows, boarboys and savage boarboys.  Then there are the squig units: squig herds, squig hoppas, mangler squigs.  And then the various other gobbo options in spider riders, arachnarocs, wolf chariots, bolt throwers and then there are 3 different types of trolls should you want more variety of which I’ve just used generic ‘trolls’.

Knowing I have a solid core of an army to work with and the ability to add a load more stuff with plenty of variety means this army has massive appeal as a painting project, something I’d simply not thought about before starting it, so can see myself working on additional units for this on a fairly regular basis whenever any other project starts to get a little stale. 

I started painting the army in April 2012 and I had a pretty consistent burn rate of models, peaking in June with 41 models painted, most of which aren’t in the army as they were gobbos.  Surprisingly the model count of the army is actually very low, only 64 figures in 1999pts, historically I’d always considered O&G a horde army but the build I’ve come up with is very much an elite army.  When I go up to 2400 I think it’s only going to increase to 80-90ish.

Anyways enough rambling on, here’s the link to my final army shot.

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c264/dafruk/Orcs%20and%20Goblins/8756735B-83F5-429B-B35D-8E50C048223A-5330-0000056FB39E72BE.jpg

Bayou Brawl - Malifaux Tournament

I attended my first Malifaux tournament at the weekend.  It was a relatively small 1 day event, held in Worlds at War in Livingston, there were 10 people playing over 3 games.  Strangely it somewhat followed the wider tendency for Neverborn to be very popular (and I took mine too) with 5/10 players bringing Neverborn.  The total breakdown was 5 Neverborn, 2 Guild, 1 Resurrectionist , 1 Arcanist and 1 Outcast crews.  The other unusual thing was the event was a brawl, so 2 masters per list if players wanted but only 30 stone lists in order to keep the game time down to a sensible length.  Rather than being fixed faction it was also fixed lists, so you picked from 2 pre-submitted lists for the 3 games.

I took 2 Zoraida list but chose not to have a second master as I didn’t want to overcomplicate things for my first tournament.  Basically 1 list was a bunch of big hitters and the other one was very manoeuvrable as the strategies were pre defined so I could tailor to fit them.  The strategies were: Shared Distract, Shared Deliver a message and shared Escape & Survive and with being a brawl there  were 3 schemes for each round and you weren’t allowed to repeat schemes either, so it really meant you used virtually all of them. 

I was really happy with how I played in the event, overall results I went 1-1-1, which was unfortunate as it was done purely on game result rather than cumulative vps as are often used and probably meant I placed lower than I would otherwise have done but I wasn’t really bothered about my result.  The three games were 8-2 win, 6-6 draw and 4-5 loss. 

The win was a bit odd in that I only got all my vps on the very final turn so until then I was 0-2 down but confident I could always get at least 4 vps out the game due to the scenario as I killed his master (Hoffman).  I got max for that but only 2 scheme (assassinate – Sonnia and framed for murder on Lelu), failing to achieve kidnap (didn’t even kill 1 of those models!). 

Game 2 I suffered a T1 deliver the message due to a mistake on my part, but then delivered the message myself the next turn, I was then able to get eye for an eye and bodyguard failing on deliver a message as I’d have had to expose Zoraida to achieve it and didn’t want to chance Levi killing her.

Game 3 was frustrating as my opponents crew had been built for this objective unlike mine.  Lilith, 1 mature, 3 young and Tuco.  My opponent also had the 4 blood counters scheme, stake a claim and frame for murder, I had stake a claim, breakthrough and grudge but killed the mature with ranged fire so couldn’t get the objectives.  I tried to deny my opponent but he got 4 blood counters in the final turn from discarding soul stones and the stake a claim, other than that we pretty much wiped out each others crews but as he started with less I couldn’t stop the 1 vp for having lost less models than me.  So I lost 4-5.  This was the most annoying game as there were loads of rules queries (all went in my favour) and his movement was incredibly sloppy, I’m pretty sure he was measuring middle of back to back of base when he moved so his combat crew was even faster than it should have been.  Only 1 time I picked him up on something was when he measured a 6” spell which was clearly way out and said ‘yup that’s fine’, it was over 7” when I checked it.  Also would have had a sports hit if such things existed. 2 poison on his mature he does his turn and afterwards I remind him of the wounds, he refused to apply them as out of sequence, at that stage his mature only had 3 wounds left so would have killed it next turn when it activated.  Somewhat shocked by that but if he’s that desperate to win...

All of that over I came 7/10 as win record was the decider over vps but did pick up something to make me not care in the least.

Warhammer Wanes, Malifaux waxes

So recently my appetite for all things Warhammer has been on a downwards spiral, this is no doubt in part driven by the fact I've spent months preparing for the Warhammer ETC being held in Poland this year but I'm not actually going.

Having become team captain at the event last year I was looking forward to it immensely but then life did it's usual thing of changing plans and with child number 1 due in September I've ended up arranging not to go myself but still doing a load of the admin work for the 8 players who are going.  Not something that particularly bothers me but now that it's all done and out the way there's nothing else for me to do other than wish the guys luck and find something to fill my time.

I briefly filled that space by churning out a unit of 40 stormvermin for my skaven army which I was lending out to Mark Wildman for the Midlands Open event, again an event I wasn't going to (due to being on holiday), seems the army performed well enough in the hands of a competent player and he came in the top 20 (80 odd player event).

The next few models I then painted were Malifaux figures.  I'd been a bit naughty and broken my own rule of only buying new figs once all the old ones were complete but I did it to get some stuff cheap so at least it was for a good reason.  But because of that I had a bit of a backlog of figures kicking around which I really don't want to happen for another game system!  So I got to painting a few of them.  Months ago I'd primed a guild guard white but then been stuck for a paint scheme, well I came back to him and hit some inspiration which allowed me to quickly bash out the model.  After that I remembered what a joy Malifaux figures were to paint.  So I dug out a couple more in this case both single piece models in the Convict Gunslinger (who I'd traded for the limited edition Miss Demeanor gunslinger as I didn't like her model) and the Doppleganger.  Again both of them flew off my brush at a  rate of knots and I was very happy with the final products.

Finally I started work on Avatar Zoraida, now the avatars are something I've not been entirely sold on.  With the game being pretty complex I've never been entirely on top of the rules interactions as it was, so adding in a model with 2 sides of rules which determine purely how you can put it on the table I felt it might be a bit of overkill.  But the model is kind of nice and apparently it's stupidly good in game!  I like the figure of the model and the tree is ok, but the swamp thing (bad Juju) doesn't really do anything for me.  So I'm part way through painting that and I'm happy with how it's going but that's got my juices going for painting up the rest of my Wyrd stuff.

Currently I've got 1 guild guard, 1 austringer, 3 wicked dolls, Lelu and Liletu sat unpainted in boxes (and yes that's my 2nd lelu&liletu because I'm a filthy power gamer!).  Plus I've also got the nightmare edition Lady J box and nightmare Teddy sat waiting but they're a bit special so I'm not sure if I'll get round to them any time soon.

All of this has me back on the Wyrd forums and taking an interest again which is pretty dangerous given we're just before Gencon and they'll be releasingt he next wave of 000's of models shortly!