Beasts we are lest beef we become

Over the summer I fell into obsession with old west miniature gaming, well, painting them that is as I only got to play once so far.  I had a goal to get through that involved painting 8 miniatures and completing two full gangs for Warhammer Historicals Legends of the Old West–gangs that I have been ‘working’ on since 2005.  Over the Xmas break, I was able to finish all but two, and knocked the remainder out over the worst weeks of January.

Now after my first play of Warhammer 8th edition, I took a long view over my painting table and backlog in order to get to 2000 points painted.  50 beastmen, 1 chariot, a chaos spawn, a hound of scathatch, a giant and 5 harpies.  59 miniatures all told, with two of those being big models that will take weeks to complete. At my rate– about 5 miniatures per year that will take me until my kids are deep into high school.    The bottom line is, I’ve never tried to paint an entire army before– sure Necromunda gangs, blood bowl teams, etc. but nothing equaling over 100 models– it seems totally insane.  So to keep it reasonable, but to have a goal, I’m going to try to paint 10 miniatures per month, not including the big shit–the Giant will take me more than a month probably.  At that rate I should be able to spend a few hours here and there on week nights and then one big chunk of time on either weekend day.

The motivational part is that my 1000 points painted hit the table this weekend, and though it was  chaotic game where we absolutely did not get the rules right, my stuff just looked totally awesome on the table,  even painted as mediocre as it is.  Of course, the game itself was just great fun, 4 hours went by in a snap (and I stood for the whole game, forgetting to get a chair!).

The game was against Night Goblins, with their whirling fanatics, a doom diver and a stone thrower.  All three did horrific damage during the initial turns of the game, but not enough to save the hapless goblins once the beastmen closed in for the kill.  The beastmen themselves aren’t that great, just tough, but when you take into account that most of the time they can reroll misses on any round of combat with a slight chance of Frenzy happening, they get a ton of hits in combat with the potential, however slight, of just going totally fucking apeshit.  Though the beasts smashed most of the Goblin army it was actually a very close run thing and a lot of luck in the pinch.

What I loved was the huge combats– just too fun, but also the insane terrain on the board.  We randomly rolled and just about every roll had some crazy magical mystery terrain.  The forest on my left was a fungus forest that caused Stupidity in my army, but helped the goblins!  In the center was some sort of Necrosphinx who granted wishes or ate characters who tried to solve her riddle, and on the right flank was a Tower of Blood overlooking a dismal fen.  The tower of blood shot the dicepools into the stratosphere– causing units within 6″ to have Frenzy (double attacks) and Hatred (Reroll misses).  Never in my wargaming career have I rolled so many dice.