Dryads done!

Hooray- One unit done and finished. I got all 8 highlights finished, based up and varnished this morning. This takes the total number of finished models to 38 in the army; about half way done.

Here is a bonus shot of the army WIP (this unit of dryads was mid base coat when I took it.

There probably won't be any more updates until I get back from my honeymoon now in a couple of weeks, so stay safe!

Kick start Wood Elves- Unit in a weekend!

God, it seems ages since I worked on my Warhammer Wood Elf army. I picked up the battalion in January FFS yet still only have 30 painted models to show for it. I have all the models for 2000 points of pointy eared, tree hugging goodness but still need to paint another 40 models.

It has been hard to get motivated to paint recently, what with me getting married in 7 days time! But with the other half away for the weekend to see her folks and get her hair cut, I decided to make a commitment to fully doing a small unit of Dryads from box to board-ready! My intention was to do a unit of 8 and photograph each step of the way, showing it come to life.

I started on thursday with the sprues and assembly:




After snipping we need to get the bodies on the bases, then the rest on the bodies:

A quick coat of black primer:


Base coat is painted on the bulk of the model. A mix of Khemri Brown, Vermin Brown and Calthan Brown:

Then the details are added with Green coats and red eyes, and gravel glued to the base:

Having let the glue dry by popping out, I then wash all the models with Devlan Mud and Thraka Green. I also stick a very wet layer of Scorched Brown over the gravel to seal it and basecoat it ready for the real basing later.

With this done I can pop off to watch the cricket a bit! Still to do- highlights, basing and varnishing. I am confident I can have this done for tomorrow.

Battle Report- Skorne Vs (Dirty) Cryx 500pts

Last night I got to play Rich at Hordes at my place on my shiny new board and mat! We played 500pts, my Skorne and his Cryx (or to give them their real name- his dirty Cryx)

My list was:
Makeda
Krea
Titan Cannoneer
Praetorians (10) +UA
Cetrati (4)
Ancestral Guardian
Extoller Soulward
Swamp Gobbers

His list:
Skarre
Skarlock
Deathjack
Deathripper
Bane Knights (10)
Mechanithralls (10)
Bile Thralls (10)

Terrain layout was hill in opposite corners, woods in opposite corners and 3 items in the middle (tubs masquerading as solid objects heh). I won first turn and deployed first. Praetorians at one side and Cetrati holding the other side choke point. The beasts and the rest all were behind the Cetrati.
He deployed with the bile thralls opposite the praetorians, and the rest opposite my guys with the Bane Knights in the middle to float over the middle barrier.
First turn we basically barrelled forward. Second turn the Cannoneer shot at the Knights and killed 3 or 4 of them. The Cetrati hunkered down with def and arm buffs to hold their line. The praetorians got savagery off Makeda and all ran round to get close to the Bane Knights and Bile Thralls. They popped the minifeat and with autowounds killed a few of them off. The Bane Knights moving after damage was VERY annoying as it stopped me maximising casualties with follow through. Makeda also popped her feat.
Rich used his next turn, aware of the feat, to try and kill the full units of troops. The thralls managed to purge and kill all the praetorians although they did overshoot and kill some bane knights too (teehee). Skarre feated and used a thrall to “Skarrebomb” the Extoller out of existence. He didn’t go for Makeda due to her being sat on fury. Deathjack (DJ) then barrelled in and wiped out two Cetrati and the Mechanithralls killed another. The last Knight tried to kill number 4 but missed.
My next turn I got the cetrati back via the feat and congaed them out to threaten DJ and Skarre. Krea fired her paralytic aura on a thrall next to the DJ and then back up leaving charge lanes for the Ancestral Guardian and Titan. The guardian promptly did what it does best and kicked the asses of the thralls with his reach halber. The Titan spied a nice move on the DJ by slamming into Skarre who was near a solid object. This left both of them knocked down and in the Cetrati reach. However the Cetrati couldn’t damage them due to their ARM. Makeda just hid out of sight.
Rich’s next turn he got Skarre and DJ back up and killed the Cetrati and then tried to hellfire the Guardian which was threatening a bad charge on Skarre. This missed. Rich has a terrible run of dice luck this turn, missing out on needing a 5 by rolling 4, needing a 6 by rolling 5 and needing a 7 by rolling 6. Doh! His last move was to slam my Cannoneer with the Deathripper who knocked him into the last Cetrati and knocking the Cannoneer down. Crucially though, the Deathripper was now engaging the Guardian. Boo!
My next turn the Cannoneer frenzied, so got up and roamed over to the Krea. Good job it couldn’t attack! The Krea activated and used a boosted paralytic aura on the Deathjack which caught Skarre in the area effect. Good! The next move was to pop Carnage on Makeda and charge her into the Deathripper. I then blew all her fury to kill this, freeing up the Guardian. At this point I was gutted that the wrecked jack was blocking the Guardian’s charge lane, but luckily it could move into reach of Skarre and use its soul tokens to take her out. When I rolled snake eyes needing 3 to hit on the first attack I thought I was cursed, but a big damage roll on his final attack sorted her out.

Lessons learned:
On my last turn I had to be brave and commit Makeda to get the Guardian free. If the guardian had messed up, she would have been DJPaste the following turn.
I bricked up my deployment too much and a lot of my models got in their own way.
Cannoneer is great! I really want to play with the Skorne again.



Holy crap the Ancestral Guardian is slow until it gets some soul tokens to get it going. I intend to get Zaal as my next caster. Free charges for the guardians will help them in turn 1 and 2.
I wasted LOADS of soul tokens because the guardian was out of range to collect.

It has been a while...

Well, it seems an age since I last updated due to the house move. Happily everything is set and our broadband is back up. I have much more space to put my hobby stuff and more space to keep my paint station and paint in. Firstly I think I should update on my first Hordes tournament in Altrincham. These were 3 750 point games over one day. My memory is very hazy as it was so long ago, but here are the quick roundups.



Game 1 was against Darran Palmer who had trolls with Grissel as his warlock and the scenario was mosh pit (keep control of a circle in the middle of the board). I lost this game quite badly. I played Baldur but didn't realise I could have used his feat to win on my 2nd turn. Oh well... He basically moshed through my army using the usual troll stuffs (champions, fel callers etc). Darran ended up finishing 2nd overall. My inexperience at 750 was obvious I think (this being my first game at such a size!)

Game 2 was against Ruth Pape and her circle army. I almost snatched a first turn caster kill as she left eKaya exposed against some advance deployed Tharn Bloodtrackers who ambuscaded first turn but failed to kill her. The mission involved controlling strips of the board and I won this game and killed eKaya. Ruth finished 18th I think.

Game 3 was against the Cygnar of Ian Adams and he had Haley plus a ton of shooting. (temporal barrier ftw) I won this game on scenario even tho he shot the crap out of me. I found this game the most dull, though Ian was a great guy to play against, as removing models gets tedious. Ian finished 12th

All in all I finished 8th of 20 with 2 wins and 1 loss. A very happy me to finish top half! The pic is of a pair of Tharn Ravagers finished the day before the tourny. Last minute as usual"

Blogging- hard with no internet

Sorry for the delay since my last post. I have just moved house and due to the suckiness of BT am still without broadband. We finally got a telephone line yesterday, so my ISP, the excellent Plusnet, can move our internet services within the next 7 days they say.

I know I still have to report on the Altrincham Altercation (sneak peak: I didn't lose all my games!) and I haven't painted for almost 2 weeks due to packing my life up and moving it.

Battle Report- Baldur vs Zaal 350!

I went over the Mansfield last night with Rich to play some 350pt Hordes games. These were my first games using Baldur the Stonecleaver as my warlock and also the first to use my freshly painted Woldwarden (pictured).

The win condition for all games was caster kill and my list for both games I played was:

Baldur the Stonecleaver

Warpwolf

Gorax

Woldwarden

Game one was against Nathan’s Skorne.

His list was:

Supreme Aptimus Zaal

Titan Cannoneer

Tyrant Rhadeim

Praetorian Swordsmen (10 models)

This was my first time against any of these models. I know the titan had some hitting power and a big gun. The tyrant is a dragoon so was fast and hitty. Looking at Zaal’s feat (gets tokens when troopers die and can use them to boost attacks through the army) it became clear to me that my main way to win this fight was to avoid killing the swordsmen to starve him of tokens. I deployed in a smallish block, heavies at the front, Baldur and Gorax at the back. We were due to advance into a patch of rough terrain so Woldwarden and Baldur were aligned to walk into it (using All Terrain and Pathfinder, respectively.) Nathan deployed his Praetorians to his left, with Zaal behind, Tyrant in the middle and Titan on his right opposite my guys.

Nathan had turn one and mainly ran forwards, popping some upkeeps on the Titan (free animus use) and Praetorians (unhallow making them tough and undead). On my turn one I advanced everything. Warpwolf warped for armor and had Earth’s Blessing cast on him by Baldur. Baldur also created a 5” forest in front of the Warpwolf to cover our advance and block charge lanes. Gorax was riled to max fury and advanced.

On Nathans turn two he ran the Praetorians round the side of my newly created tree and followed them up with Zaal. The Titan advanced and fired a cannonball at the Woldwarden hitting and doing minor damage to it. The Tyrant also advanced to ahead of my Warpwolf. My turn two and it was time to make my play. I leached back to full fury and dropped the upkeeps leaving a nice big charge lane for the Warpwolf. The Woldwarden cast Earth Spikes on the titan, getting a crit with boosted attack roll which knocked him down and did minor damage. Gorax cast his animus Primal on the Warpwolf. Warpwolf activated, warped for strength and charged the Tyrant. One word- gibbed. I think I may have overbuffed the wolf and he only needed his basic hits to cream the dragoon. My final action for the turn was to move up Baldur and pop his feat. This meant that nothing in Nathan’s army could enter Baldur’s control zone and nothing already in the control zone could end its move closer to Baldur than it started.

Nathan started turn three in a bit of a bind. The Warpwolf was in charge range of his warlock and ready to kill…and he couldn’t make a play on Baldur due to the feat. He stood up the Titan and fired a shot at Baldur which didn’t really do anything. He then charged his Praetorians into the Warpwolf but could only get two in due to the feat. They did a bit of damage to the wolf but I used the reactive warping to put all the damage on his spirit aspect. Zaal had a full tank of fury and then charged in. He hit and the effect on his stick is to destroy all the spirit aspect on a beast before rolling damage. As I had put all damage on that aspect already, this only netted him another 3 damage. He then proceeded to whack at the Warpwolf until on 2 fury. This didn’t kill the beast. For my turn I leached fury on Baldur and then had to activate the Warpwolf immediately. Because he had Primal cast on him the previous turn, it meant he would auto frenzy. He duly attacked the first thing in front of him (Zaal) and tore him to bits. Nathan should really have transferred to the titan at this point, but the game was effectively over by this point.

Lessons I learned:

I was very happy with my fury control, managing to have full fury each turn with no trouble.

I should have charged the knocked down titan with the Warpwolf. He would have almost certainly killed him in two hits and left Zaal with no fury source. This would have left me using the forest to block Baldur from the Skorne army while the wolf did the nasty work and the Gorax provided defense for Baldur by getting in the way and being a transfer target.

Leaving the Praetorians alone and just stopping them moving at me saved me a ton of headache from Zaal’s feat.

I think I was too cautious with Baldur, he mainly sat at the back casting upkeeps. I guess I am mainly just too scared at the moment to stick him in the mix in case he gets smacked down.

UK Games Expo 2009

I went down the Clarendon Suites in Birmingham on Saturday and Sunday for my first UK Games Expo. Wow- brilliant event. Boatloads of stalls selling everything imaginable. It was quite eye-opening and also very reassuring to see the support that my favourite hobbies have. All the main gaming areas were covered- RPGs, Miniatures (both fantasy and historicals), CCG/TCGs and Boardgames. In fact the only related gaming aspect not included would be LARP I guess.

On day one I went down with Rich with primarily my miniatures head on. One of my main goals was to get the final models I need for this tournament on 21st June. There were a lot of stalls selling Privateer Press stuff which was really reassuring and the vibe I got was very much one of a growing hobby. The PP stall itself was well manned and getting a lot of people going with starter games. They had a stunning centrepiece board (pictured) with Trollbloods vs Circle Orboros. I had to shop about a bit to get the models I wanted, but I came home with eKreuger, Blackclad Wayfarer, Ravager Whitemane and Ravager Shaman for Circle and Titan Cannoneer and Cataphract Cetrati for my fledgling Skorne force. Some stalls were doing some great deals working out at 20%+ off! Hi to SMG!

For the PP games, the core of the weekend would be the UK Masters for WM/Hordes which were going on in a pair of side rooms. There were some lovely armies on show and we chatted to a few players. Big shoutout to John from the Boosted Damage podcast who chatted a while. It seems eMorghoul was popular for the assassination run! Maybe next year I will enter the Masters!

There were some huge participation areas for all sorts of games especially Esdevium hosting a ton of boardgames, a large DND starter dungeon with a dedicated GM and quite a few places to try CCGs. In the middle of the main thoroughfare was the full size Tardis accompanied by some Daleks and a rather enthusiastic Doctor Who. We also caught site of some other costumed roamers like this guy:

On sunday I went down with John, of Photowalkthrough fame, to mainly check out the boardgames. We had a great time checking out the hundreds, and I mean hundreds, of games on sale from so many vendors. We got to spend some time chatting to a few designers about their games and finding out more. We chatted for a while to Alessio Calvatore (yes, him of GW fame) who was there showing off his game Shuuro. This game looks really good- a mix of chess and wargaming. We also watched a demo of Snow Tails, a wonderful game of husky racing in the vein of Ave Caesar. John picked up both these games. We tried Snow Tales last night and it was great fun. controlling the sled while going too fast is hard! The game I have on my wishlist next is Canal Mania. Not only does it look fun, but one of the towns you can build to is Skipton, my home town in Yorkshire!

For the coming week, my main panic is going to be getting the rest of my Circle guys painted for the Altrincham Altercation. I still have 4 models to paint, which may be a struggle for me in 10 days, especially as I move house at the end of June! Pics to follow as I finish the models!