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.

New Blood

Got a chance to do one of my favourite things down the club on Wed, a game in against a new player.  He'd played Warhammer back in 4th Ed days and had just come back, at the time of our game had played 3 times.

I love these games for a few reasons, firstly the pressure is right off, no massively tactical thinking, no pressure situation before calling my movement phase at an end and you can actually just relax into the game.  Secondly I get to show off my rather encyclopedic rules knowledge, sad and geeky it may be but I'm pretty good with the rules and seldom come up with a wrong answer, though the occassional blank!

Anyway game was great fun.  He had a semi nasty skaven army but with a couple of soft options that I could take advantage of, plus he didn't know the army very well so made a few rookie mistakes.  Ended up a draw due to a rather massive brainfart on my behalf.  I forgot that a doomwheel can still shoot when it rallies and had my dragon as the closes thing at that point.  3 S8 zaps later and one dead dragon and rider, oops!

Still my army did pretty much what it does and cleared up his flanks (2 x doomwheels, 2 x 3 ratogres, 2 WFTs and the treekin did a number on his characters.  He didn't see me throwing a longish charge into the front of his stormvermin block with greyseer and engineer in the front.  3 attacks on the engineer failed to kill him but the 6 took out the grey seer netting me magical parity and a lot of points! Treekin then ground the stormvermin till T6 due to passing 3 breaktests needing a 5 or less (a tad lucky but the bsb was giving rerolls each time to help out a little).

Anyway great game, great guy and hopefully will be back for more as always nice to get fresh people involved.

Finally painted something worthy of putting on the blog.

My last few months have been all about batch painting vast numbers of models.  Whilst this is great for getting things done, it doesn't really give me much to show off about.  Sure you painted 240 models but they all look a bit meh, nobody really cares.

So when I burned out painting them I fell back on my Woodies, this also fits nicely with an upcoming tournament where I'll be able to run them out for a bit of fun with a nice fluffy build using all the stuff people normally avoid and refusing to use any glade guards.

The one thing I wanted to do more than anything was run my Dragon, but that build also requires a BSB on an Eagle which I've never painted, and also requires my rider for the dragon to be painted!

So I painted one!

The original model is standing and has 2 swords in his hand and comes from the Skarloc's WE archer box (from 3rd edition times).  I bent the legs (model is 20ish years old so nice soft metal with plenty of lead in it), then snipped off the 2 swords and drilled through the hands.  The BSB banner pole is a paperclip with a couple of layers of liquid green stuff on top to bulk it out and give it some definition and then the banner top from the glade guard box. 

The spear is from the glade rider/glade guard kit.  The spear had the tip snapped off and fed through the hand which I'd drilled out, then I attached a sword from a champion hand from one of the gladerider/glade guard boxsets as the tip.  Eagle is just a warhawk with the standing hole greenstuffed up.

Super happy with how he came out.

Bang! Ouch that's my head.

Yup that bang was the sound of me hitting the wall hard.  Since turning out my first 10 gutter runners on the 12th I've managed to paint the basecoat grey on 10 more and base the flesh on 5 of those.  If you could hear the sound of the gears grinding to a halt it wasn't good.

So what has caused this stop?  Hard to say really, just motivation doing it's usual thing.  I've written about this before and it really does come down to the desire to paint.  But as one door closes another door opens.  I built up my terraclips terrain for the first time over the weekend and I went back to my WE and built a couple of treemen and am also putting together 4 treekin.  These are models I've had kicking around for ages so was just a random spur that made me decide they were where I wanted to focus.  To go with them I've also picked up a couple of projects that had sat unloved for a while, so the WE BSB on an eagle also went back on the table and I converted up a rider model with a flag and a spear as I'm planning to run him with that build.

Interestingly exactly as this happened to me I noticed another gamer on Twitter having exactly the same issue with a skaven army but he's trying to push through it and was complaining about really just not liking the army as a result.  That is exactly why I didn't want to try and force it.  I did it with the WE a couple of years back and it resulted in me dropping them for over a year as I just couldn't face them.  Since then I've always targetted multiple projects rather than trying to push through with one which I was losing interest in.

On the buying front I've picked up my first purchases of 2012.  Not stuff I really need but some offers I saw going to get the bulk of an Orc army together for pretty cheap so I just jumped in.  £90 later I have the pretty solid basis of what most tournament orc armies seem to be running. 30 savage orcs, a buttload of night gobbo archers, a rock lobber and a couple of shamen. Just need to get a couple of doom divers, a mangler or two and a couple of chariots & wolf riders.

Also priced up the rest of what I fancied for the generic tournament DE build.  Not that it's what I want to run, but just to see the cost!

Terraclips - what a fantastic product.

So I've had 2 boxes of terraclips sat in my cupboard for about 3-4 months and finally got round to cracking them out for a game over the weekend.  I used the sewers set just to make a bit of a building. Stuff works really well, it's incredibly simple to put together structures and they're good and sturdy.  Plenty of options for walkways and doorways which allows plenty of options to break up line of sight but not just end up with cordoned off rooms.

The stuff to the right of the area is the leftover bits.  From the tapemeasure you can see it's 18" across so those of you who know malifaux can quickly work out 4 x the structure I've built will give you a completely covered board.  Which is kinda impressive.  So to go multi level and cover a whole board probably takes 3 kits, but 2 should give coverage and a couple of structures.

Onto the game itself I played Zoraida vs Von Schill on a shared line in the sand.  I was attacker and took 3 silurids, 1 stiched and a wicked doll on the basis of they're generally what I had to hand and were painted so fitted well into 25 SS with 2 SS left.  Opposite was VS, 2 Freidcorps, Trapper, specialist and Librarian giving 4 SS.  Rather than taking simple schemes I was trying mixing it up to see how I'd do at some of the others.  I discoverd that vs Von Schill I really don't want requirements to kill his crew, with him and the librarian kicking around they are a tad difficult, particularly vs Willpower requirements as he kept bubbling the +4WP.  I had kill the 2 FK and the trapper and get into his deployment zone (announced).  He had Bodyguard (snore) and holdout (unannounced). 

First flip of the game I got initiative and first query came up.  Are henchment when used instead of masters able to be targetted by Zoraida's Obey? We decided for simplicity I couldn't so I had LoS to his trapper and had him ding VS for 4 wounds, nice start!  Then the librarian healed him straight back up by a couple of wounds (boo).   [have now looked it up on the wyrd site and we played it correctly, henchmen as masters count as masters so can't be obeyed].

That was followed by a couple of turns of him shooting me and me activating dynamite.  A miscommunication lead to me moving my stitched into range of his trapper so I lost him a bit cheaply and as he had the +4WP bubble it was never going to achieve much anyway but the LoS block would have been nice.

Game went on and my silurids were forced into the open because the terrain layout and I want to try and put pressure on him, unfortunately the guns coming back the otherway overpowered me and all three died for the loss of only his specialist, at this point I had zoraida and 2 dolls. with 2 turns left.  I succeeded in killing the specialist and the librarian (neither of whom got me VPs) and he was able to move onto all my markers and disarm in the last turn.

A frustrating game but I know how I'd play it differently now.  I thought I'd put the kill minions mission on his weaker stuff, but then focussed all my attacks on his specials because they were doing the damage to me, so if you need to kill someone anyway you might as well focus on them! Other than that I should have just ignored the fight, kept up my soft cover from shooting defense on the silurids and kept arming tokens.  That would have stretched him towards the open ground where zoraida could control him.  Admittedly testing for obey on an average -4 was costing me dearly on soulstones.

Game ended up 0-6 and a big loss. (sadface!).

Happy New Year

Ok it's a few days late but I've finally gotten round to writing something!

In typical fashion lets open with a review of last year:
Gaming
Played 10 tournaments (51 games) with a 22-5-24 record, every army except lizards was a losing record but only by small margins so given I was using Dwarfs, TK and WE I'm quite happy with that.

Painted 537 models, a ridiculous tally that saw me complete 3 armies and get most way through a 4th one.

Last years resolutions:
Paint my WE and use in tournaments - Success
Paint my malifaux crew, Now have 4 painted - Success
Avoid buying any more armies until I'd finished the ones I had - Spectacular fail, model collection went through the roof with the skaven purchases I made and have loads of spares I'm never likely to use left over.
Some other stuff I can't remember off the top of my head.

This years resolutions:
Finish painting another 3 warhammer armies - Skaven & 2 others (likely to be an all plastic army - daemons, Empire, Ogres all possibles).
Fully paint all remaining Malifaux figures (remains of 1 crew and ~6 other figs)
Avoid playing netlist armies - probably requires expanding my TK.