Warhammer Weekend (Wood Elf Vs Skaven).

Well I finally got round to playing a game of Warhammer. It was to be Boy!s first game so I decided to make it a 'proper' game, so I decided that we would only use painted figures. Not that big a thing really, I thought, after all I've been painting and playing for 20 years now, I'd have a wealth of things to choose from.  Well surprisingly, no. I have over 200 skaven painted and nearly 100 Wood Elves but as previous blogs have noted, I have a very ecclectic painting schedule, hence for my skaven army, no jezzails (I've only got two finished), no Screaming Bell (it's being repainted), no Doomwheel (again repainted) and none of the really snazzy new stuff from the latest army book - no Warp Cannons, Doom Flayer, Plague Furnace or Poison Wind Globe Mortar. The Wood Elves were hit even worse! I only managed to field 24 Glade Guard and only 14 Wardancers. No Waywatchers, Glade Riders, Treekin or Wild Riders. So after some calculations I worked out 2000 points was the size of battle and the army lists were to be written. As Boy! had no idea what a game of Warhammer entailed (and I didn't know which army he'd pick) two army lists were written by me and he just had to pick the army he liked the look of.

The Forces of Bad

The Flea-Bitten Horde
 Warlord (I didn't bother to name him): Blade of Nurglitch, Heavy Armour, Cowardly Disposition. 100points.

Warlock Engineer (Unnamed, but probably something like Squit Manktail): 3 Warpstone Tokens, 
Spells: Death Frenzy, Skitterleap. 130 points.

Cheiftan Battle Standard Bearer (I'd imagine I'd have called him Shart Poxknee): Heavy Armour, Banner of the Under Empire, The Musk of Fear. 95 points.

Assasin (if I didn't name those above I'm certainly not going to name him): Warpstone Throwing Stars. 170 points.

40 Clanrats with spears, musician, standard bearer and Clawleader. 220 points
Warpfire Thrower. 70 points.

40 Slaves with musician and Pawleader. 86 points.

24 Giants Rats with 5 Packmasters. 112 points.

6 Rat Ogres with 3 Packmasters. 258 points.

15 Gutter Runners with Poisoned Weapons and a Deathrunner. 256 points.

30 Stormvermin with musician, standard bearer and Fangleader. 235 points.
Warpfire Thrower. 70 points.

20 Clanrats with light armour, shield, musician, standard bearer and Clawleader. 110 points.
Warpfire Thrower. 70 points.

Grand Total: 2000 points (Give or Take).

The Forces of Goodness(ish)

The Tree Hugging Collective

Wood Elf Highborn: Eternal Kindred, Bow of Loren, light armour, shield, faint whiff of roses. 196 points.

Spellweaver Level 4 mage: Dispel Scroll, Power Stone, Talisman of Protection, Longbow.
Spells: Tree Singing, Fury Of The Forest, Ariel's Blessing, The Twilight Host. 315 points.

25 Eternal Guard with musician, standard bearer and Guardian. 352 points.


17 Dryads with Branch Nymph. 238 points.

16 Glade Guard with Lord's Bowman. 240 points.

8 Glade Guard with Lord's Bowman. 108 points.

14 Wardancers with Bladesinger. 266 points

Treeman with woodworm. 285 points.


The Battle

Boy! decided he wanted the skaven army, I can't blame him when I set the two armies up next to each other
 the Skaven looked a lot more impressive, 175+ models against 82(ish). I suggested he group them all fairly close together as wood Elves don't have artillery. I on the other hand spread my archers out to maximise shooting with my Eternal Guard behind the smaller unit of Glade Guard. My Dryads, Treeman and Wardancers were hidden behind a wood with the intent of scooting round and  presenting a very hard hitting flank force. In truth as both armies weren't at max strength i.e. lack of jezzails and flying creatures the battle wouldn't be truly representational, but as I said, painted only!

Ratty Goodness!

 The first turn started with Boy!'s Skaven running like buggery across the battlefield, I was dissappointed to lose the first turn as I had hoped to run my treeman into the woods, Tree Sing the shit out of the woods allowing me to charge my second turn and really disrupt the skaven lines, but to no avail. In fact due to the Giant Rats marching they were only  and inch or two from the wood making moving it a largely pointless prospect. The was no Skaven shooting and no magic this turn.

Tactical Error No1: It was only after my movement phase started that I realised that I had stupidly placed my Eternal Guard Unit behind my Glade Guard Unit meaning that only with two crap looking wheeling manoeuvres could I get my best shooter with his Bow Of Loren to fire. D'oh! compounding that I couldn't target the giant rats either it was a rather rookie mistake.So the upshot of my first turns offensive magic and shooting 5 giant rats, 5 Skavenslaves and 2 Gutter Runners.

A Rats-eye view!

Tactical Error No2 The next turn was a lining up by the Skaven with the only offensive action was Death Frenzy being cast on the soon-to-be-charged-by-the-Treeman Giant Rats. I let it go as I thought to myself, they're fucked. My turn consisted of a Treeman charge into the rats, some more shooting and my units of Wardancers and Dryads mooching through the wood to support the Treeman (not that he would need it). The Treeman promptly charged and failed to break the rats in one go, partly due to their immunity to pyschology I bet.

A blurry picture!

Carnage!

Turn three was when I realised the Dice Gods had decided that the luck was only going to one person at the table and it wasn't me! Shooting saw a Warpfire Thrower toast 10 Eternal Guard. The Gutter Runners danced through a storm of arrows into a Glade Guard unit and the Skaven Assasin Skitterleaped behind my archers for a big old portion of stabby in the next turn. The final nail in this turns particular coffin was my treemans inability to hit the rats whereas the frenzied rats caused on wound on him. One failed break test later the Treeman flees like goblin into the woods!

The treeman legs it!

My turn came and I thought it was payback time! I charged into a big block of spear armed Clanrats with my much depleted Eternal Guard whilst simultaneously flank charging them with my Dryads. The Wardancers charged the Giant Rats with the generals unit  a few inches behind so with luck a swift bit of choppy and I'd overrun into them! Predictably the Clanrats were on the end of a -5 break test and subsequently fled. The stupid slack jawed Dryads failed to catch them but my 10 strong unit of Eternal guard did and ploughed straight into the flank of the Rat Ogres! The Wardancer/Giant Rats tete a tete went pretty much how I expected with a total wipeout. I thought a nice overrun into the generals unit and the game is won! They were 4 inches away I rolled a 1 and a 2 ! Not good.

The final turn ended in 20 Clanrats routing a unit of Glade Guard the Gutter Runners and Assasin wiping out the other unit of archers and my Eternal Guard effectively locked into combat with the Rat Ogres. As for the Wardancers they were charged, defeated and slaughtered in short order. This resulted in a defeat for the Wood Elves which did not truly reflect my own ineptitude at my first game of Warhammer for over 2 years.

Release at will!

Score: Skaven 789 Wood Elves 600.


My main objective for the game was to get back into the swing of it and more importantly for Boy! to enjoy it. Both objectives were met and i learned a few things about both armies:
1) Big units of skirmishing Wardancers and Dryads are too big and ungainly, stick to 8-10 models.
2)The Lore of Athel Loren is pants.
3)Putting a wizard in the front rank of your top combat unit is the work of a nonce!
4)If you give someone the Bow of Loren make sure he can shoot the bloody thing!
5)Death Frenzy makes Giant Rats very nasty.
6)I already knew this one but you just can't trust dice, they hate me!

So hopefully I can get my painting hat on and crack on with my plan to field two tasty Warhammer armies so I can actually gain some tactical acumen. Until next time.....

I've Got Wood!

Yes another innuendo rich title. This time it is totally true! I have got wood! I am excited about it too! Here is the picture to proove it!

Wood!

Yes it's been a long time coming but I have finally compleated some woodland scenery for my Wood Elves. For the first 10 years of my gaming life woods consisted of one block of wood with a dozen dowels in it covered with ripped up lumps of upholstery foam painted green (thanks Brendan). The next ten consisted of the trees you see before you blur tacked to the game board. Now we have hardboard with shaper polystyrene and ebay bought trees all nicely flocked. If you look closely you will see on some the edges the flock just hasn't taken that well, so I will be PVAing the shit out of them this week.
On the painting table this week (and probably for the next 6-8 if I'm honest) is/are/am 3 jezzail teams, a ratling cannon, 10 Wood Elf scouts, three skaven slaves with farmyard implements and a giant rat on a raised base which I intend to make it look like a pile of crap (garbage to any U.S readers). That and of course an old Imperial Assasin, 5 law enforcers from Black Tree Design, my mutant collection and 5 old, old chaos hounds that will be used as Scavvy hounds.
Tune in next week to see whether any of these models get any further on in their quest for tabletop fame!

Bare Breasted Barbarian Buxom Beauties!

 My first blog of the year was all very well intentioned, it was supposed to be about what I planned to do with my vast selection of unpainted models, how I was going to come up with some disgracefully unbeatable army lists, build epic scenery that would put Warhammer World to shame and stuff like that. Then I started looking over my meagre viewing stats and came to the following conclusion, if you put tits (or some derivative name for tits) in your blog title then you get more views. My most viewed post 'Mutated Tits Out For The Lads' is proof. Some of the search words used to find my post were 'mutated tits', 'fat hairy tits' and 'mutant tits'. I'll be honest the sort of person who does put that in their search , probably isn't looking for converted 40K miniatures but rather something altogether less pleasant.
Anyway all this digression leads me away from the real subject of this post, some old School Barbarian Ladies from the 1980's that I painted up a long time ago but still quite like.

Behold: Jubblies!

'Oh No! My wizardy robes have come undone just as I was about to fireball the shit out of you!'

This is an old Citadel wizard that I have used mainly for roleplaying purposes but made it on to a few battlefields where magical ability took precedent over common decency.

Very pert Executioner type Barbarian and Peek-a-Boo Sally

The next two are nice characterful topless Barbarians, the one on the right is from Citadel, the one on the left is from Black Tree Designs, but when I bought it they were called Icon , I think. The most remarkable thing about this model is she is wearing a mask to pressumably cover up her hideousness but at the same time show off her impossibly pert norks. Women, eh?

Two Buxom Bare Breasted Barbarian Beauties

 Lastly are another two Citadel barbarian girls, the one on the left almost seems transgendered judging by her mannish face whereas the other is considerable  more feminine. I always feel that they are best suited to dungeon crawls as NPC's. The sort of plot devices that have managed to escape from their cells by outwitting the imbecillic guard, stolen his weapons but decided that there simply isn't enough time to put some clothes on.

The cheeky rear view.

I don't really buy half naked female models anymore, which is unfortunate as they are much fitter these days, but I thought I'd like to share these anyway as models like this just don't get the publicity they deserve!