Category: Miniatures

Goal failure! sort of…

10 miniatures a month complete.  Seems easy? Doable?  Yes and yes.  How could I have failed?  I blame the weather and Rackham!  The first week of the month started off awesome: I finished 6 Beastmen Gor and was poised to meet the goal by mid month– if I had had any more primed Gor or Ungor.  Then the weather turned from bitter cold to the drizzlin shits of rain, where priming was impossible.   So I grabbed one of my bigger models, the hound of scathach from Confrontation 3, as a stand in for a Razorgor and that took two weeks.   Eventually the weather cleared and was able to get a mess of stuff primed and I tried to pull it out and get to 10 in the last couple days, but I just couldn’t pull it off.  Still it’s only 103 points…

April has to be 14 or I’m no brushman.

Wow that's a messy table.
probably just mad because that corpse stinks something awful

WFB 8 Battle Report: Beastmen vs Goblins (or– Thank you Anvil of Vaul!)

Cain indulged the current obsession for the fourth time this weekend hauling his Night Goblin swarm over to pit them against the primal fury of the beastmen in Warhammer Fantasy Battle.   We rolled ‘battle for the pass’ for the scenario,  which means the armies fight it out starting on the short ends of the 6′ X 4′ table rather than the long ones as normal.  This gave a very compact center with little room on the flanks for maneuver or trickery.   At 1500 points per side, that made for quite the crowded table with few places to escape the big blocks of rank n file.  A tough fight for the goblins to start with as the table set up neutralized the Gobbo advantages on the flanks (there weren’t any!) was exacerbated by a bit of terrain that worked just a wee too well in the beastmen’s favor: the Anvil of Vaul (oh and his fanatics).

The fanatic didn’t go exactly the right way shortly after this shot

Under normal circumstances, the Anvil of Vaul, which gives Flaming and Magical attack augmentation to all units within 6″, would be a pretty even bonus for both sides in a fight, but I just happened to choose Blackened Plate as my only magic item for the army (man was 1500 points a squeeze).  Blackened Plate gives a 2 up ward save to the wearer against flaming attacks AND a 4 up ward save for any unit he is with.  In the clutch block on block fights during the battle, all within 6″ of the Anvil of Vaul, this gave my main Gor unit, who usually go skin with no save at all, a horrific advantage over the Goblins leading to their decimation, flight and subsequently ending up inside a stomach for their pains.  Still it was a great game and we’re finally getting down the rules.  It’s been tough to remember the fiddly bits here and there and to remember that Charges are resolved before compulsory movement (a big change from almost every Warhammer ruleset I’ve ever played) but we’re getting closer.  One makes a big investment getting into a game like Warhammer, and committing to an edition and so far I couldn’t be more pleased with the games played– all just a total blast that makes 4 hours go by in a wink.

My list was finally legal after struggling to reconcile the 7th edition book with the 8th edition rules (sorry Cain) but was not fully painted, which is my personal shame as I really dislike hitting the table with unpainted stuff:

Gorbull (General)
Blackened Plate*

Wargor (Battle Standard Bearer)

Bray Shaman Level 1 (Lore of Beasts)

Core:

38 Gor with additional hand weapons, standard, musician and champion (both the Gorebull and Wargor joined this unit)

10 Gor with additional hand weapons, musician (in ambush)

29 Ungor with spears and shields, standard, musician (the Bray Shaman joined the ungor)

2 Tuskagor Chariots

5 Chaos Hounds

Special:

Razorgor (played by a Hound of Scathach from Confrontation)

Rare:

A big fat Giant!

Smell my book!

I accidentally picked up a Dark Elf army real cheap today with the 7th edition book in tow.  I cracked it open a few minutes ago and not only has it been obviously exposed to rooms filled constantly with smoke from them tweeds, it reeks as if it was regularly used to hold quantities while it’s former owner was, say, packing a bowl or rolling a fatty not that I would know about any sort of things like that.

10 BEASTS

As of 1:10 PM today, I made my quota for miniatures painted for the month.  4 Ungor, 6 Gor AHW for a total of 68 points added to the 1000 or so painted I have.   That means In 5 months if I can keep pace I’ll have an additional 340 points for the beastmen army. That’s it?  Ouch….

These were from a set off ebay that I picked up pre-built and pre-primed, so there are some mold line problems on some of them.  Recipes– I hate it when people post pics of their stuff and don’t post recipes.  Flesh is over a black undercoat, Dark Flesh, Vermin Brown and then Vermin brown with a slight amount of bronzed flesh for the final.   I use the dynamic layering method so no washes, and only drybrushing where it really makes sense.  The axes turned out pretty well as I overbrushed the blades and then cleaned up the head of the axe with a wash of black to just lightly cover the dry brush.  Again, these are core troops, so if hold one to your eye you will see the impressionist style that layering methods create (as opposed to blending).  and each color only at most, four layers (In contrast to 10+ for a blended model).

This batch of models includes the first time in history that I enjoyed painting shields.  The plastic shields GW is putting out are just exquisite.

Now I just have to keep momentum and get more on the table to drive the horn in some more Night Goblin ass.  Next up is 5 more Gor AHW.

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.

Rock lobber, doom diver with a bunch of goblin meat between

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!).

Yes that's the tower from Dark Tower

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.

Giant

This is on the painting list TBD circa 2015

I’ve got a medium-size collection of gaming books, old D&D, some of the older White Wolf stuff dealing with the effete, paederast blood-suckers, loads of the obligatory Warhammer Fantasy/Battle/40K books, almost everything published for Exalted (of course) and quit a few random books here and there bunged from musty used bookstores I couldn’t pass up at the time.  Many of these books are impressive in their binding and artwork and design, some are pretty hefty collections of paper, especially the 2nd Edition Exalted books– however, nothing could have prepared me for the sheer size and gleaming glory of the Warhammer 8th edition hardcover.  I’d even seen it and handled it in stores before, but you forget you see, you forget just how huge it is.  Clocking in at over 500 pages literally packed with full-color images throughout–it can easily be deemed the Armageddon of miniature war-game books.  I contrast it to my first miniature wargame rule set from the late 70’s: Swords and Spells and it’s staggering reminder of how far we’ve come in the hobby– that a company that sells toy soldiers and some books to a tiny portion of the planet’s population could pull together the cash to write, design and publish something so massive it cannot even be used as crapper reading without a crapper reading stand– it’s just that friggin’  huge.

And so officially begins my descent yet another miniature gaming obsession that will produce probably less than 20 painted miniatures and 2-3 actual games in the next year.  Sad but probably true.

Oops– Rackham is gone…

I guess I was a bit off in my post last spring about a new version of AT-43 coming out—looks like after some craziness and confusion Rackham Entertainment has gone into liquidation.  Neither of their websites come up and it looks like all news around the interweb tubes confirms that they’ve gone dark.  I think the lines will likely survive in some form, but holy crap I never expected to see one of the better rivals to Games Workshop’s fantasy and sci-fi dominance hit rock bottom so quickly.  While I really liked the rules to AT-43 when the full version finally came out, I was not impressed with the new version of Confrontation, specifically the prepainted miniatures*, while the same figures as some of the older lines, just looked crappy to me (where the AT-43 pre-paints looked really great on the table).

* not that I’ll ever actually get the time to finish painting my Drune…

Getting in on a good shootin’

I finally got to bust out my Old West miniatures and town over the Xmas break after almost 5 years of on and off painting for everyone’s virgin gun down.  We used Wargame Foundry’s The Rules With No Name to good effect as it’s a great pick up and play set of rules.  I just made up a scenario where a wagon tipped over in the middle of the town, breaking open some luggage that was filled to the brim with gold!  We had three players, and each player had three models (two gunman and one shootist) and won if they could survive or get off the board with the most gold in hand.  Gold was gathered by moving into touch with the wagon and rolling a d6.  I had to make up the action deck for the game before hand, so the players didn’t get a chance to pick their models from my meagre collection, but I did allow them to give them names, a fun way to start off the shootin.

TRWNN has an interesting impluse system for initiative wherein you build a stack of cards made up of all the models in play and add in a joker card (that instigates a reshuffle of the deck when drawn) and one card representing each class of character (Civilian, Gunman, Shootist).  The cards are shuffled and then drawn to determine who’s turn it is to act.  You can’t hold back a model’s turn and you don’t really know when each model will move again, so it makes for an aggressive game without a lot of dilly dallying around.  There is a way to control when your models move if you get a bit lucky.  When a class card is drawn, a player can take that card if one of his character cards is drawn next that is equal or above that class level.  For example, if a Gunman card comes up, the next card drawn is a Shootist or Gunman character, that player of that character can take the class card.  The class cards can be used to interrupt other model’s turns at any point (even in response to being shot at) to give another model an insta-turn.  This system gives a semi-random feel to the order of turns, and my only complaint was that some characters don’t get to move turn after turn if the joker card just happens to come up a lot.

This system of impulse is very much keyed to individual models and wouldn’t work too well if you were trying to simulate fights in big groups unless, like Confrontation, you allowed multiple models to act when a single card was drawn.

All I can say about this particular game was that my dice were the hottest I’ve had in a long time, and I almost felt guilt as my tiny lead men shot the tiny lead men of the others again and again.  One of my gunman killed outright two models in his first two turns of shooting, and I had my shootist out in the open, completely out of position relative to one of the other shootists, only to have one of the other shootist’s shots all go wild– and then said shootist was gunned down instantly with just about the best rolling you can have. See below.

We did not use the morale optional rule and this revealed an oddity about the TRWNN system– models can be wounded over and over and over at point blank range and still have a good chance of staying in the game (a model can be knocked out and come back on a dr of 1 whenever that model’s turn comes up).  One of the models had been shot and wounded 12 times and was still on the table, granted he couldn’t move, reload or turn in place, but he was still there, holding gold.

I would absolutely use the The Rules with No Name again, especially for pick up games like this.  It’s very beer and pretzel’s and though the scale seems to work best with just a few models on the table, the level of detail with the shooting and wounding is such that this isn’t a drawback, but simply what the ruleset is supposed to simulate.   Eventually as I get more models painted (in the next decade or so) I’d love to have a go with the Legends of the Old West rules, but that’s a dog for another day.