Wyrding Wells, Magic Circles & Zombie Pens.

As a renowned procrastinator (or at least a not very well known one) it's always a big thing for me to actually finish something. So imagine my surprise when I actually finish 5 separate pieces! So here is my attempt at pretting up my battlefields:

Wyrding Well

I really like how this came out. It is basically one half of a petri dish glued to an old CD with masses of greenstuff shaped around the sides to give it an uneven look. I dismembered then painted up a skink archer in the pool (to represent the healing spa properties) then poured about 4 spoons of Ronseal clear floor varnish. This set (eventually) and has given the pool the impression of depth.

Wyrding Well

 In game terms the Wyrding Well can generate some pretty cool effects (regrowth or unbreakability) but because the last couple of games I had it was represented as a bowl and a crisp packet no one hung around it to avail of the facilities. Of course we probably won't roll it up in the next ten games rendering my efforts worthless, but here's hoping!

Other Side

 Magic Circle

Next up is my magic circle. This is a rather easy piece to make. Find some stones, glue them to an unwanted CD (I find George Michael is best). Add sand. Spray black. Drybrush the shit out of it. Done.

A Magic Circle

In game terms any model within 6" gains Magic Resistance 2 so place your artillery pieces near it to give them lovely cannons a bit more game time. Or anything you think will get spell-humped early in the game. On a side note since I started building this piece, my mind keeps going over the scene in the film This is Spinal Tap where a model of Stone Henge is lowered on stage where a dwarf dances round it, but due to a cock up in scale the dwarf is far larger than the model! With that in mind I placed a dwarf ghost (actually cannon crew) beside it for scale.

Crap Henge

 Fences

This fences were knocked up in about 2 hours. Cut the bases with tapered ends so it's easy to angle them in erotic ways. Then cut your lumber, I prefer my little box of balsa I got from fleabay but expensive oak would do at a pinch. Make tiny clay mounds, stick your fence posts into them glue your rails across them. Add sand, spray back, drybrush like bejasus. Done.

Getting DeFENCEive

I built 9 of these barriers which I'm hoping will catch the odd cannon ball that seem to be rather prevalent these days in Warhammer. In particular my treemen as they really don't like Khorne's Flaming Magical Daemonic Chariot Cannon of Movable Doom!

 Zombie Pens

After playing a few games of Necromunda I thought I'd make some terrain. These are two Zombie Pens (my scavvys like to keep them handy), they can also be used as Mutant Internment Cells, Ammo Dumps, Chemical Storage Areas or a handy place for holding captives/slaves/hostages/meals. I painted messages on the doors (CD cases cut with my Dremel) one says 'Keep Out' and the other meant to say 'Danger Zombies' but I ran out of room so now it says 'Dang! Zombies'.

Zombie Pen #1

Zombie Pen #2

So that's my offering for this week. I hope the can inspire someone to make a better version of my efforts!

Warhammer Fantasy Battle Recorder

Just discovered a groovy new website where you can record all your Warhammer Fantasy Battle games. Just log in, create a profile and record all those crushing defeats, improbable wins and cursed-by-the-fickle-dice-Gods-(damn you!)-boring draws. It is called Sigmar's Fantasy Battles. I'm pretty sure it's not the original Emperor of The Empire but just in case it is, I'm putting a link on my blog.

 

As I have played more games this year than in, probably the last 6 or 7, I have gotten to be a real WFB nerd (again). So expect regular stats from that site to validate my own hobby time.

Varnish-the cum of the Devil!

Goddamn Monkey Balls!

Well the War Against My Unpainted Collection Of Figures (or W.A.M.U.C.O.F.) took a rather heavy defeat recently with a unprecedented act of sabotage which left me angrier than a member of Westboro Baptist Church when they find out some children were saved from drowning by a Catholic priest and a Rabbi. I varnished my Screaming Bell with it's customary gloss varnish, then 24 hours later I put matt varnish over it only to discover that it turned into a creamy opaque goo that made the model look like a Vermin Lord has made sweet, sweet love to it and had a happy ending all over the carriage and the poor unfortunate bell ringer! The only saving grace was I noticed this phenomena before I slapped Daemon Jizz all over the Grey Seer. So the problem now is whether I strip the whole model (it took me around 20 years to paint it first time around!) or just try to cover up the Monstrous Daemon Semen, with a very tentative lick of paint!

The rear view of the Bell of Gunk

You can just about see the bell ringers bemused expression!

On a Happier Note.....

My painted Eldar army grew by one as well this week due to one of my started 15 or more years ago but only finished now type projects to the tune of an Eldar Exarch. Funnily enough when I started painting him, Eldar Exarchs were the equivalent of a major hero costing well over a hundred points. Nowadays he is a unit champion and barely worth 20! No wonder this hobby is in a constant state of upgrading, todays 2500 point army is the 1750 skirmish force of tommorow! 

 

An Space Elf with wings

Mutant Bitty

Bullet Dodger

Stripey Pants

Also in my finished shelf is my mutant bird legged bird and two Orlock juves, not much to say about these other than they're finished! Lead Mountain is smaller by four this week. Only another 3000 to go!

Back To Warhammer Quest

What? Who? For those who clicked on the blog title thinking it was about Warhammer Fantasy Battle, well, no, not really. Possibly a little bit anyway. If you're still in the dark, then Warhammer Quest was a rather excellent game that Games Workshop produced around 1993 I think. You take the role of a brave adventurer entering the depths of the Warhammer world is search of riches and fame, where many find a quick and painful death. The game came with five playable characters Barbarian, Elf, Dwarf, Wizard and Trollslayer, and Games Workshop released many more.

So, in case you haven't guessed I have managed to gather up some disaffected youth to play Warhammer Quest with, started last weekend we managed 2.9 quests. The first one was a straight forward dungeon crawl to allow the players to get a feel for the rules, while at the same time refresh my memory. The first quest from the rulebook had the Barbarian single handedly defeat a Minotaur that had slain his father and stolen his enchanted sword (Inigo Montoya style). The second foray was where the party had to stop a Skaven attempt to flood a dwarven underground fortress. Unfortunately due to a cave in and the fact that the Dwarf character had lost his pick meant that the quest came to a short, and ultimately fatal end for Karak Azgal. The third and 90% finished quest was to rescue a wealthy merchants daughter from Skaven, by this time the party was up to 6 (the games monster matrix is designed for 4), so I had to ramp up the lethality of the dungeon, (tee hee). The party reached the objective room which contained gutter runners, giant rats and Throat-Rip-Death-Hell my favourite painted Rat Ogre model. Throat-Rip-Death-Hell was at the end of the room guarding the maiden, so the party eventually slew the gutter runners and rats without too much trouble. Then instead of going for the kill, they faffed around with the intention of shooting poor ole Throat-Rip-Death-Hell instead of duking it out with him. Then the dice gods decided that discretion is not the better part of valour and dumped 9 Chaos Warriors on their asses! After two party members have come to within a whisker of death, three Chaos Warriors are slain and Throat-Rip-Death-Hell is raring to go! That is where Sunday nights session ended and the weekend is where we finish it!

Chaos Warriors ruining the adventurers day.

Birds Eye view

One of the more enduring features of the game was that you could take your character from the dungeon and into a warhammer game. This was all very well if you had an Elf, Dwarf or Human but not much cop if you play with one of the evil armies. Luckily there appears to be plenty of people on the web prepared to create rules for them. Now then, as I've stated before one of my favourite things to do with wargaming is making new rules, so with any more preamble here is my first addition to the bestiary of the WHQ world.

Stonelings

Deep in the cavern systems and dungeons of the warhammer world live snotlings, a kind of simple semi humanoid green skinned thug that is a nuisance if not a menace to the intrepid explorers. Despite their small size snotlings are quite resilient to the dangers below, one such example is stoneling. A stoneling is an immature snotling pup that has unfortunately come into contact with the dung of a Cockatrice, Gorgon or Basilisk. Now normally this is a death sentence but something in the snotlings metabolism allows it to frolick with childish glee in the essentially magical feces, but not without a cost. The creature formally known as a snotling is transformed into a stoneling. Stonelings look for all intents and purposes like grey snotlings but are far more dangerous. The stonelings are much tougher than before and also have strong anti magical powers caused by the metamorphosis. Despite (or perhaps even because) of these changes stonelings are very difficult to hit.

Dung frollicking Stonelings

Wounds: 2 
Attacks: 1
Move: 4 
Gold(each): 50
Weapon Skill: 1 
Armour: 2
Ballistic Skill: - 
Damage: 1D6
Strength: 2
Toughness: 2(4)
Initiative: 1

Enemies Weapon Skill	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
To Hit Foe	4	4	5	6	6	6	6	6	6	6

Special Rules: Ambush, Magic A, Gang Up, Magic Drain 5+, Magic Resistance, Small Target.


Small Target: Because Stonelings are extremely small there is a -2 modifier to hit them with a ballistic weapon and a -1 to hit in hand to hand.

It is a fairly safe assumption that once Stonelings are encountered a creature with the ability to petrify won't be far away. On the other hand the Stonelings may have moved on to dungeons new. It all depends on how sadistic a Gamesmaster you are!

So as with all my other fads, all previous painting schedules are being put on the back burner while I prep lots of unrelated roleplayingy figures to add to my ever growing started-but-not-finished heap.
*sighs*

2047 will be a big year for me!

Over the weekend I was up in my man cave doing some non productive housekeeping, ie looking at my unpainted stuff, imagining what it would be like to have it painted. Try as I might I simply cannot foresee when all my bits will be finished. This is mainly due to my lead avarice, a common complaint in the wargaming, some people have the ability (and restraint) to purchase a unit and paint it before shelling out for another. Others are less restrained and buy maybe 2-3 units take a while to paint them, but still manage to keep a handle on their hobby. There are though, some complete nutcases who craving for lead far outweighs their ability to paint them. Welcome to one such nutcases area!

Assembled Ready For Painting Area

The next four pictures below are a record of my rubbish ability to stay focused. We have on this table (I say table but what it really is, is two large pieces of chipboard lying over a spare double bed) various projects in various states of incompletion. There are approximately 60 Wood Elves, 80-100 Skaven, 100+ Lizardmen models, which are all part of army projects. Then there is some not so rational set of figures waiting a burst of enthusiasm - 5 Bloodletters, 4 Ogre Ironguts and 4 Leadbelchers (for my OK army), 4 Dragon Ogres, 5 Eldar Jetbikes, 10 Blood Angel Space Marines, 3 Catachan Mortar Teams, 6 Genestealers, a Brettonian Organ Gun, the list goes on and on................

My assembled so paint me area

30cm to the left

60cm later

My futility table

My, It Was All Worth It Area

Here is what makes it sort of worth while, my collection of painted figures, as previously reported my armies have a very haphazard painting schedule and because of this my armies are not the most potent forces that they could be, that said I have over 800 painted I think so I'm definitely moving in the right direction. I really must work out how many (in total) points worth of figures I have so I can go on forums and play the my armies bigger than yours game.

Humanity & Wood Elves

Skaven

Imperial Guard & Other Sci Fi Dudes

More Skaven

So my unpainted is very much ahead of my painted total so I think it is a looooong time in the future where I will have more coloured in than not. Probably around 2047......

Never Look A Gift Skaven Warlord In The Mouth

A long term gaming buddy came over from Essex to my humble Irish abode a couple of weeks ago for a catch up, a beer or three and an obligatory game of Warhammer. The craic was had and to my delight he presented me with a painted Skaven Warlord. Now my collection of Skaven figures are hardly 'current' so imagine my wonderment at having a model that is less than 10 years old! So without further ado here is my newly acquired Skaven Warlord.

Warlord Snouty Pusfoot of Clan Pusfoot

 I really like this model, more so because all I had to do was base the little bugger. His first foray into the world of mediocre generalship was against Matt. A 2500 point battle of Skaven Vs Lizardmen. The game was pretty good fun with lots of Skaven dying to poisoned blowpipe darts, and plenty of Lizardmen dying to rusty skaven weapons and assorted warpstone implements of varying degrees of lethality. A couple of things that I have decided that I don't like on the Lizardman army list : Oldbloods with the Blade of the Hornet (25 points!!!!) and a Skink cheif on an ancient Stegadon with a Stegadon War-Spear. The first one gives an Old Blood the always strikes first rule, whereas the second gives the Stegadon 2d6+1 impacts hits when he charges. Both of these items caused unholy carnage on the soft furry bodies of my beloved ratmen! On the plus side my Doomwheel performed admirable as did my Warpfire Throwers, minuses were Ratling Gun and Stormvermin, one blew up in a ratty red mist while the other was pulped by a double charge of Stegadon and Saurus.  The game was a draw but a draw that would leave both armies too weak to effectively call it anything other than a disaster. The final turn saw Snouty Pusfoot crushed by an Old Blood in a challenge so his first outing ended in complete bloody death for him. Either I have to rename him for his next battle or give him an implausible last gasp escape to continue his narrative life.

Screaming Bell

I also finished my Screaming Bell after approximately 20 years! To be totally honest I have been using it virtually every game with it's 'basic' painting standard (which roughly translates as shit), so to actually finish it to a standard I'm pleased with is something I'm pretty psyched about. Funnily enough it suffered from 'Newly Painted Model Syndrome' in its first game and was next to useless. In fact the three items that really underwhelmed in the game were all afflicted with it: Screaming Bell, Ratling Gun and Warlord Snouty Pusfoot. So hopefully my free Skaven Warlord will be more successful in the future!

Screaming Bell

From a slightly different angle

Mugsshot

Another slightly different angle

Rise of The Tomb Doggers

Last week I played my first game of Necromunda for absolutely ages and it was highly entertaining. What was also new for me is that I used a Scavvy gang for the first time. I used the most recent version of the Scavvy rules which I only really have one gripe about - shotguns. Seemingly in the far future of the war torn 41st millennium and more importantly, the festering hellhole that is the scavvy wastes, with its primitive weaponry, the simple shotgun is too complex a weapon for them to use. Scatterguns/blunderbusses and automatic weapons only. Now I'm not an expert in weaponsmithing but it seems to me the technology involved in manufacturing an automatic rifle shouldn't be less than making a tube with a cartridge full of buckshot. What is more galling is that I have half a dozen shotgun armed Scavvy models including the leader. There is also a rule about the maximum size of a scavvy gang, which is dependant on the leadership. This is probably going to piss me off in the future!

Tomb Dogging

  My first opponent was a Delaque gang, we rolled for scenario and got Hit & Run. A second roll meant The Stick Up the camp scenario.  I rolled for how many of my diseased troublemakers went on the raid and I rolled the minimum - 4! I then rolled  for how many followers (I only had ghouls) and also rolled the minimum - 1! So already my gang was showing itself to be a lazy uncooperative group of scumbags who are trying to thwart me before I start! With this in mind I selected my only mutant, a winged shooter, two sword armed scavvys and my leader - Tomb Dog. The only scaly in the gang was left behind as I didn't particularly have a good feeling about my first two rolls. The game itself was an amusing one as the four scavvys managed to steal the loot, causing some serious smackdown on the Delaques only to bottle it when some know nothing juve gunned down my flesh wounded leader when he arrived from the table edge I was leaving on! The only light at the end of the tunnel was although I lost  the loot, I managed to pick up a ganger for the pot! Looks like my boys will eat well this week (providing no uppity Delaques try to mount a daring rescue).