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!

Project Log

Well as it seems some blogs of note (of which this is not one of them) seem to have a review of their year I thought I would do the same. Ok here goes;

Well this year I have posted (prior to this one) seventeen blog entries. Mostly about figures I have painted, a couple of Batreps and my ongoing affair with ebay. I think I have painted up about 30 models which is pretty shite really, my only defense is I can't be bothered a lot of the time. Coupled with a somewhat unhealthy obsession with Facebook my spare time is unequally shared. The choice between hauling my arse up a ladder into my oftentimes icy cold loft or scamper joyfully to a warm room with a pc is generally an easy decision. In fact, its amazing I ever bother going up there to be honest. Call it dedication!

I started about four pieces of scenery, a Comms Tower, a Drinking Hole and two hills. None have been finished but I have some time at Christmas so hopefully I can get a good bit of work done. Incidentally I have a project that has been ongoing (some might say for the last 17 or 18 years) in my head, and that is Athel Loren the home of the Wood Elves.I have grand images in my head , of tower like trees, huge rooty ramparts and bridge of vines. A bit ambitious I know but aim high, thats what I sometimes say.


Something I have put on my resolutions list is painting. Both the quality and the quantity I want to increase. If I can improve my photography skills as well I will be well on the way to putting pictures up that I'm proud of. My collection of mutants will also have to be finished early in 2012.Looking back I also promised to finish the following ;

5 Attillan Roughriders
5 Marine Scouts
a 10 man Space Marine squad
5 Necromundan Pit Slaves  Done!
Fabius Bile.
Of these only the Pit Slaves got finished so I'm already behind last years quota so it doesn't look good for my ability to formulate then stick to a rigid painting plan. Oh well.

Of course the main ambition for next year is to play more games. I want to introduce Boy to Warhammer as my large Skaven and Wood Elf armies haven't had a ruck since the previous summer! This is quite puzzling as Warhammer is the game (other than Necromunda possibly) that I have played the most and have the most figures painted.

And Warhammer Quest, I really love that game and would like to run a few dungeons for Boy and his buddies. I used to roleplay a lot and WQ was one of those don't-have-to-think Hack n' Slash dungeon crawls. Considering I have hundreds of painted skaven to run whole soap operas of series's of campaigns of games, it should be relatively easy to acheive.

So really if I am to make an attempt to progress in my hobby I have to set myself realistic goals. Well goals anyway. They are play more, paint more and build more so my 2012 targets are;
Play at least three games with Batreps (should be easy)
Paint up and finish at least 31 figures (doable)
Complete the four scenery items I started (definately acheivable).
So there is my plan for 2012, lets hope my inherant laziness can be defeated BY THE POWER OF  GREYSKULL!!!

How crap am I?

Well there is a well (?) known figure painting site called Cool Mini Or Not (or CMON to be really cool) where you rate the painting abilities of fellow figure painting nerds. A long time ago I decided it would be a great ego boost for me to put some of my best stuff up on there to make me feel great and let others see how good I am. Unfortunately after clicking through half a dozen pictures of other peoples efforts I came to the conclusion that my stuff was pretty crap!

Five years on from my initial input I have decided to put a few more up on display, partly because I am an eternal optimist but more so because of the 3 main forums I frequent that allow me to put up a gallery, after a combined total of over 30,000 views, no one has rated a single figure.

Undetered I have decided to post like buggery on there to bring up my average rating. The way I will do this -obviously- is by improving my standard of painting, and photography. Well I have 9 pictures up and by adding them all together and dividing them by 9, I get an average rating of 4.95 per figure. This in itself seems an easy task to improve my average. I mean one decent paint job and I should get into an average rating of 6! Well that is my target to achieve a better than shit average rating for all my CMON piccys.

So in an attempt to understand why the people of CMON don't like my painting I will analyse each of my poorly scoring pictures.

Warpfire Thrower team 4.0

First up is my beloved Warpfire Thrower team. The paintjob is (I think) sound, based with static grass and dirt coloured sand. Ok so gloss varnish was used, that was before I learnt that that was soooo unfashionable! The background is equally uninspiring so I have to agree this should have a low score, but 4.0? That's not fair!

Barbarian #1 4.7

Next is one of my Ginger Barbarian. By this time I had discovered the curved-piece-of-paper-that-hides-the-shadows-at-the-back trick. Nice leather loincloth, static grass reasonable, if somewhat bland skin tones. Me likee. Unfortunately most CMONers don't. Score 4.7

Heartbreaker Ratman Warlord 4.7

This one slightly baffles me. When I finished this Ratman Warlord from Heartbreaker (not a heartbreaker of a model, in case you thought it had in fact; broken my heart) I was made up. The unusual colour of armour was acheived by many different ink washes applied one after another a lovely pallid flesh tone and to top it of a border around the picture. Admittedly it was glossy again with that god awful background, but hey! Nobodies perfect. 4.7 for fuck's sake!

Warzone Demon 4.8

Scoring slightly higher was my Warzone demon. Matt finish, minimal shadows and an attempt at a sculpted base. It only got 4.8 so back to the painting table I guess.

Barbarian #2 4.8

I really liked the way this one came out, the figure is from Black Tree Designs and a real pleasure to paint. He has a nice eyebrow ring which isn't quite pictured and a big bloody sword. Still for all his beauty he still only got a 4.8. Sheeesh!

Barbarian #3 5.0

Woop woop! This is the first figure has has a better that shit rating of, wait for it-5.0. It is also the only one that got a comment (nice leopard skin markings). Perhaps the wood on the axe and shield could have been highlighted more, or his nipples darkened to get that extra 0.2 of a score to make it loved, I just don't know.

Barbarian #4 5.1

of all the Black Tree Barbarians this is by far my favourite, he is quite litterally dripping with axes! Big meaty hands and a bald head, who couldn't love him? I suppose giving him pink nail varnish and a bland skin tone helped to lower his score. Sorry old buddy. 5.1.

Imperial Psyker 5.5

My imperial Psyker scored 5.5 with a gloss finish and shit background, but then he did get a frame so it's swings and roundabouts really. Does it matter that it is ever so slightly blurry?  5.5? Really?

Genestealer Hybrid 6.0

My highest scoring model! Also the most recently painted and photographed. A big lumpy base probably helped too! 6.0, yeah baby! Who knows what he would've gotten with a frame? The sky could've been the limit!

I'm not really sure what conclusions to conclude from this rather patchy data, what I probably should do though is to paint a bit better and stop whining about overly critical peers. Frames will defo help though! Best if I don't paint them as Gingers either.

Whom Let The Dogs Out?

After buying (and losing, then finding again) a new camera I decided to post some more pics up. Its a snazzy IXUS 115 and has a variety of functions that my old camera didn't so I will be experimenting over the next few weeks to see how to make my figures look better than they really are.

Elven Hunting Dogs

First up are my Elven Hunting Dogs (hence the ever-so-funny blog title). I intend using these for a farming world campaign where the yokels have to protect their crops from another band of raiders/yokels/mutants. My main reason to paint these in such a quick and drab colour scheme is to just get them off my painting pile and into my finished cupboard. Job done.

The People's Revolutionary Armed Team

 Staying with my agricultural world denizens are members of the People's Revolutionary Armed Team which is a faction on the planet, as you may have guessed a farming commune that actively enforce their political views on the masses whether required or not. The two on the right and middle are Frateris Militia and the girlie on the left is an old guards(wo)man. These figures (and the rather bland paint scheme) can be used as factory workers, spaceship crew or any other citizens that live in the crushing monotony of the Grim Darkness of the 41st Millenium!

Barsulsnart

 This is Barsulsnart. An independant daemon who made several appearances during my forays into the World Of Darkness (Vampire the Masquerade), a great roleplaying game I used to play. Now he is a daemon who trawls the ether waiting for unprotected psykers to let him into their minds and fuck things up for them. His favourite stomping grounds are the underhives of Necromunda where he likes nothing more than to posess a wyrd and then take out half a gang before reality reasserts itself and sends him back to the warp. For those interested it is an old Black Tree Design demon which I believe is still available. Again a rather simple (some might say lazy) paint job that is only enhanced by the gobbets of flesh, entrails, bones and flayed face that I have lovingly embellished the base with. as the whole Daemon posession thing goes, I imagine the poor unfortunate vessel that the Daemon enters is literally blown apart by the otherworld powers of chaos, hence the offal at his feet.

Sludge Jellies

In keeping with the Necromunda theme I have nearly finished two Sludge Jellies for the game. They are pieces of greenstuff fashioned to look similar to octopus/jellyfish hybrids and in this attempt I seem to be fairly sucessful. Still trying tp figure out a way to half submerge them in varnish without it slopping out over the side. It will come to me.

Tox bomb markers

Using a bit of greenstuff and broken sea shells I made some Tox-Bomb markers for my Scavvy gang. I intend to make some Rad Counters and Blight Grenade markers too for my 40K games.

Blood Flies

Very much still in the construction phase are my Necromundan Blood Flies. Inspired by the Underhive Bestiary articles. Not a truly gang killing critter they should be able to put the fear of Bejasus in a flesh wounded juve. For those interested they are greenstuff rolls placed in ever decreasing lumps with wings of greenstuff squeezed into wing-shaped loops. Not sure if I'm going to put a second set of wings on them, or just leave them be.

So this is what I have been up to lately, and hopefully I will shortly figure out how to work through all the whistles and bells on my camera to take much better shots. Until next time then...........

My trip to Lala Land.

Well I have finally figured out why I have so much trouble maintaining focus on any single project, well not finally, I've just decided to articulate it, in the hope that it might be a kick up the arse for me. Put in simple terms, my painting speed can't keep up with my painting wishlist. That is, I start painting, for example Genestealer Hybrids, my mind races off down a huge lengthy campaign where the final battle is a glorious (or doomed) defence of the Imperial Governors palace by beleaguered household troops in a desperate attempt to save the planet. Therein lies the problem, I start painting one thing only to go down this yellow brick road of insanity and find I want to finish 50 figures all from different armies, games systems, and even sexual orientation!

The current campaign I am flirting with is a chaos cult rebellion on a semi industrial world with temperate climate and a pale green sheen. I have many Necromunda and Confrontation (the old GW type) figures to use as rebels, with a fairly strong contingent of beastmen as added muscle. Opposing them I have a pretty big Imperial Guard army with plenty of big nasty tanks. So now I realise I have to scratch build some armour for the army of debauchery otherwise they will get Iron Fisted! So within 5 minutes of devising a campaign I have given myself weeks of graft hand building some trucks that will very likely be blown off the table in the first turn.

My scratchbuilt painting table.

My painting table covered in  shit I want to paint.

Another reason is my beautifully crafted painting table. Well no, not really, it was built by me to paint my little heart out at and it was to be custom built higher than all the other tables (dining, computer coffee etc) so my painting ability will increase exponentially and I will become The God of Paint otherewise known as Potbig the Eternally Ideal Consistancy. Unfortunately not being an expert (or even a novice) in Ergonomics I made it too high and I don like to spend more than an hour at a time at it! Also for the last 4 years I have been going through a seies of table lamps that I don't like and therefore can't achieve what I want to with them. My greatest lamp was a simple 50W metal table lamp that my niece sat on and broke much to my dismay. then I found out that all these energy saving flurescent or LED lamps and whatnot don't even illuminate a fraction of what my beloved energy guzzling spotlight used to do. 

My Soon-To-Be-Painted table is also a problem. As I have a huge loft, leaving a figure on a surface half finished is not a big problem, so when I'm in a 40K mood all my currently on the go Warhammer stuff gets dumped on my F.T.F.N (fuck that for now) table until I go back to it or I start with Warhammer Quest and dump my 40K stuff on the F.T.F.N table. The cycle is perpetually replenished as I go through different fads with different armies and games systems.
Well there is a few reasons why I can't ever finish anything. I'm certainly not blaming my own laziness!

On the plus side I've gotten a follower. Cheers Krug!