Painting Madness - Tale of the Painters

Painting Madness!

Ohoh, now I've done it....

I've gone and signed up for Warseer's Tale of the Fantasy Painters.

For those who don't know what it is, it's basically a commitment to paint a set number of points of a given army every month for a year. Now, those who know me know I Suck (capital S) at sticking to a single project for longer than a few weeks, so this should be a challenging task indeed.

However, I have so much unpainted stuff laying around (Skaven, Ogres, WoC, to name but a few) I feel I need to start working through the piles of unpainted soldiers.

Battle Report - Ogres vs Orcs n Goblins, attempt two

Alright, let's try this again, shall we?

As I was trying to tell you yesterday, I played another playtest battle with my Ogres tuesday. This time I played vs Greenskins, captained by my little brother. He's the one who made that giant, and I think it's awesome. Seeing it always make me crack a smile.

My brother started playing Fantasy over a decade ago, his main army being Orcs and Goblins, and over the years he accumulated quite a collection. He hasn't been playing Fantasy exclusively in those years, sometimes favouring Mordheim or sometimes just no tabletop games at all. Recently his interest in the game has been rekindled, mostly due to 8th edition being more fun and, to a lesser extent, an ever-nagging sibling (that would be me) badgering him to play more.
So, he and I both have signed up for the same tournament and we would be trying out our tournament armies against each other.

This is probably a good time to mention that I have never lost a game of warhammer to my brother. Plenty of draws, but never a loss. You can imagine how much it means to both of us to break the streak / keep the streak intact, respectively. Honour was at stake!

Ok, on to the armies!

Delayed Post

Damn Blogger App has eaten the post I planned on posting today. I had this beautiful battle review of the Ogres vs Greenskins battle ready, and now it's lost somewhere!
I guess I'll try it again tomorrow. Can't be bothered rewriting it today....

Battle Report - Ogres vs Dark Elves

Another batrep from a playtest battle for my Ogres. I'm still on track for that Tournament in November, and I'm trying to squeeze in as many games with my Ogres as possible in between Campaign Battles.

On a side not, I really should get started on painting my Ogres if I want to avoid my typical routine of 'paint nothing until 2 days before the tournament, then paint till 3am on the day of the tournament, and then play in said tournament while being sleep deprived and unsatisfied with my rushed paintjob'.

Regardless, if I don't playtest this army I'll not win many games anyway, so let's get to the fighting!

I would be playing my mate whose usual army is High Elves. He felt a need for change for this battle, however, and decided to take his dark cousins for a spin.

Here are the armies:

Fantasy for the 40k'er - Quick Tips

Ten tips for those 40k players looking to get into Fantasy:

1) Charges happen at the start of your turn, not after the shooting phase.
2) If you thought Perils of the Warp was annoying, wait till your wizard suffers his first miscast and you have to make the roll on the miscast table...
3) Unlike 40k, it is possible to win a battle with only combat units and no missile units. Of course, missile troops do help.
4) Turning is done around the centre of a unit. Wheeling is done around a corner of a unit.
5) Ask your opponent beforehand if he is ok with you using Special Characters eventhough technically you do not have to.
6) You measure the charge distance between the two closest points of the charging unit and the target unit. Once you've rolled your charge distance and have been found to be in range, you can move the charging unit into contact with the target, no matter how many inches it actually costs.
7) You are only allowed one Wheel move during your charge though! 'Closing the door' does not count as your one Wheel move.
8) Forget about bringing anti-mech. Bring anti-magic instead.
9) You can always wound something on a roll of 6. Always.
10) Eventhough there are more than 15 different armies to choose from, you can rest assured knowing none of them are a variation of Space Marines...

Fantasy Campaign Battle Review

Well, that was an odd battle...

To quickly set the scene: 2*1000 pts of High Elves vs 2*1000 pts of Skaven fighting in T3 of our current Fantasy Campaign. The High Elf player was defending and had fortified the Territory earlier, allowing him to place 2 Buildings and 3 Barricades in his deployment zone.

Mission was a Meeting Engagement.

Here are the armies:

Fantasy Campaign - Turn 3 Moves

And here we have the updated map for Turn 3 of our campaign. There is a fair bit of repositioning going on and not so many outright battles. Apparently we are all getting ready for a bigger push in T4. It's not all moving and no action though!

Let's look at what's happening:

After winning big in the North, the High Elves are looking to push the Orcs and Goblins further south while simultaneously trying to get closer to where more of the action is happening (territories 25-28).
The High Elf Banner 5 tried to drag Orcs and Goblins Banner 4 in a battle in Territory 21, while HE banners 1 and 6 try to do the same to OnG banner 2. If you remember, these OnG banners were both soundly beating the previous turn where he was already severly outnumbered (2500 vs 3500), so the last thing the OnG player wants is to have to fight those same HE again while he still isn't back up to full strenght!

Army - 1000 pts clan Moulder

I'm doing it again...

Currently I have a Deathwing army to finish, I am participating in a Fantasy Campaign for which I need to paint all the models I need to field (all the Army Banners are worth a combined 6500 pts), I'm working on 2400 pts worth of Ogres for a upcoming Tournament, and I have plans for a 2400 pts Warriors of Chaos army as a side project.

Plenty of units to put together and paint, I would say.

So what do I do?

Exactly. I start a new army...

Special Characters in Fantasy - yay or nay?

Saramoff is doing a OK review over on 3++, where they occasionally take a break from posting cracking 40K stuff to dabble in the Fantasy side of things.

When he wrote his Special Character review (which you can find here), it made me realise there is a fundamental difference between special characters in 40k and Fantasy.

Taking Special Characters is a lot more 'special' in Fantasy than it is in 40K.

Most of the 40k army lists that are out there use Special Characters to one degree or other. Seriously, try googling "Draigowing army list" and see how many hits you get.
Now, part of this is to do with the fact that certain Special Characters allow certain units to be taken in a different FOC slot, like Logan for Space Wolves, Draigo or Coteaz for GK, The Baron for DE, etc, etc. If you want Wolf Guard as Troops, you need to take Logan. Simple as that. And sometimes these unlocks can lead to a player being able to create a very good, or just plain better, list

Fantasy Campaign -Turn 2

Yes, that is a Fantasy battle about to commence. Yes, those are bits of paper in the middle representing terrain. Yes, most models are unpainted. And yes, there was even a small bit of proxying going on.

(see that plastic dragon in the middle of the Orc line there? That's really a cleverly disguised pump wagon...)

This might be a good time to mention that we are also using this campaign as an excuse to get our armies ready and painted, and make sure we have some nice terrain to play over. Since this is only turn two, we're still very much in the 'assemble and undercoat' phase of our painting plan. But, not to worry, as the campaign progresses you will see more and more painted Skaven and Greenskins. Hell, you might even see the occasional High Elf done and finished on the table. If we can get the HE player to stop messing about and get his ass in gear, that is!

(I wonder if he'll read this and take the hint ;) )

Anyway! Last weekend we wrapped up turn 2 of our campaign. As you could see on the map we had three battles to fight. One between High Elves and Orcs n Goblins in territory 19, and two between O&G and Skaven, in territories 25 and 27.

Fantasy Campaign - Map

And here it is, in all its full-coloured glory. Don't have too much time now so I will explain what is what later, but most things should be pretty selfexplanotory. Arrows indicate which banners are moving where. If opposing banners end up in the same Territory, battle will ensue.

Greenskins = Green
High Elves = Blue
Skaven = Red

Fantasy Campaign - Turn 1

I just remembered I had said I would explain some more about the Fantasy map campaign I'm in. Whoops, got distracted writing other stuff!

A little bit of background info first. Myself and two mates meet up one evening every two weeks and play games. We started doing this almost a year ago to sort of try and see if we could maintain a regular gaming evening, since we all love games. We started with just playing a board game of one type or another, but pretty soon one of us suggested we try our hands at a GW campaign. Since all three of us have been loyal GW games players for over a decade (including the occasional hiatus), we soon caught the gaming bug again and before we knew it, we were knee deep in our first Necromunda campaign since the early 2000s. What a fun game that is..!

Anyway! We actually played two consecutive Necromunda campaigns which in total lasted until about May or June of this year. Assembling and painting our gangs and then going out and playing games of Necromunda with them was just great fun.

(as an aside, I can wholeheartedly recommend playing a campaign of Necromunda to those who feel they need a break from 40k. It is just great and by far my favourite GW subgame)

After the second campaign, now fully convinced we would be able to keep our biweekly meetings going, we decided to try our hand at something a bit more... Well, just something a bit more!

My OK army - Thoughts - part 3

And we arrive at the final part of my OK army list analysis. With Characters and Core choices taken care of, all we need to do is spend the remaining points on Special and Rare choices.

Let's see what I have so far:

A lvl 4 slaughtermaster using the Great Maw lore with the Hellheart, with an Ironfist.
A lvl 2 Butcher using Heavens with a Dispel Scroll, with an Ironfist.
A BSB carrying the Banner of Eternal Flame, with heavy armour and an Ironfist.
9 Bulls with Ironfist, musician, standard bearer.
9 Ironguts, musician, standard bearer, Standard of Discipline.

That's 1367 of my 2400 pts spent, with 715 of those going in Core. That leaves plenty for some nice Special choices, and I know just which two units I want to take.

My OK army - Thoughts - part 2

After more or less deciding what to do with my characters, it's time to look at the rest of my army.
To recap, so far I have a lvl 4 slaughtermaster using the Great Maw lore and with the Hellheart, a lvl 2 Butcher using Heavens with a Dispel Scroll, and a BSB carrying the great utility Banner of Flaming Wonder aka Banner of Eternal Flame.

One of the things you notice flipping through the new book is that there are a lot of goodies in the Special and Rare sections, and that the Core section seems pretty bland. Of course, this can be said of a lot of Core sections in other books, and at least we get two different troop type (Infantry and Monstrous Infantry), but compared to Special and Rare, Core seems a bit meh.

Thunderstomp Painting - Dark Eldar Succubus

Ok, that's not a Dark Eldar Succubus. It's a Chaos Warrior Exalted Champion, painted by me when I still played Chaos somewhere in 5th or 6th (I don't remember exactly). But the pic does have a point. Allow me to explain...

I am not very good at painting entire armies. I am the kind of gamer who loves playing with painted armies, but who never has completely painted armies unless it is for a tournaments (where I get soft score points for painting). And even then, the army will most likely have been "completed" (I use the term loosely) approximately 6 hrs before the start. If you've ever been to a tournament, you know the kind of gamer I am talking about.

I'll just flat out admit it.

My OK army - Thoughts - part 1

I thought I might write about how I came about choosing the army in its current form. It's still subject to change while I playtest it, but here is the thought process behind why I chose what I did.

Some general info first: This is the army I will bring to a tournament in a couple of months, and as such I'm bound by the restrictions the TO implements. Nothing too drastic, fortunately.

It's a 2400 point tournament, no special characters, a max of 2 duplicate Special Choices, and a max of 1 on duplicate Rare choices. Which is to say I can only take every Special Choice twice, and every Rare just the once. Nothing too bad, although I would like to have been able to take two Ironblasters. Oh well.

Battlereport: Ogres vs Tomb Kings

Here we are with another battlereport. This time it was a clash between my Ogres and my mate's Tomb Kings. We have a tournament coming up in a couple of months so we decided to playtest our armies. For the report, once again I will keep it short and sweet, focussing more on analysis than on an actual blow-by-blow of what happened. I think it's more interesting this way, but that could be just me ;)

On to the armies!

Start of our Fantasy Campaign

Apparently today was the day me and 2 mates were going to start with our very own Map-based Fantasy campaign. We decided we were going to do one of those just prior to the summer and had set the starting date to 'sometime after the summer'. Well, today was that day! Luckily for me I had already planned my different armies and I was ready to go! I just need to remember what the fluff was for my army...

Anyway, in short the campaign works as follows: we made a map, consisting of 60 territories. Of these, 5 were marked as Primary Objectives, and another 5 were Secondary Objectives. Next, we created about eight-ten Risk style mission cards, each listing two Primary Objectives and two Secondary Objectives. Each player was dealt a mission card before the start of the campaign.
To win the campaign a player receives points for controlling Objective territories at the end of the Campaign. The Objectives on his mission card are worth the most points, but you can gain points for controlling other Objectives as well. And of course, whoever has the most points wins. Our campaign will last for 8 campsign turns.
To capture territories players needed to make one large army and then divide it up into smaller battlegroups. We decided on using a fixed number of these battlegroups, each with a fixed number of points. This because playing in a map campaign can be tricky and we wanted to not complicate things too much by using a random number of Battlegroups.

The different battlegroups we use are:
One 2500 points army
Three 1000 points armies, one of which has to be Quick or Fast (I'll go into detail what that means in another post)
Two 500 pts Scout armies (again, I'll fully explain later)

So that's a grand total of 6500 pts. Both the total army and each of the smaller forces should be legal armies. So yes, that means a maximum of 1 BSB in total, no more than 3 of any given rare choice, etc. We did not allow special characters. Magic Items were severly limited. No player is allowed to use magic items unless he controls one or more of a few territories that allow him to take, for instance, a magic weapon.

The armies participating are High Elves, Orcs & Goblins, and Skaven. I'm playing the ratkin!

Tomorrow I'll write about how the first turn went and how things stand now.

OK Tryout 2 - Part 2

Continuing from yesterday...

Mission: Pitched Battle Deployment: (I'll try and fix a fancy image to make this clearer as soon as I can)

Tomb Kings, from left to right : Chariots;Catapult&Casket ;Archers w Hierophant;Hierotitan;Archers w lvls 4&2;Catapult;Warsphinx;Carrion;Necropolis Knights.

Ogres from their left to their right: Ironblaster & Ironblaster ;Gnoblars in front of Bulls w BSB;Gnoblars in front of Ironguts w SM; ; Sabretusks w Hunter. Maneaters deployed 12" away from the Necropolis Knights in the corner of the TK deployment zone.

OK Tryout 2 - Part 1

And here we are with the battlereport for my second battle with the new OK book. I have to admit, so far I'm loving the new book. Making armylists is a challenge since I always seem to be running out of points too soon! That means there are plenty of viable units to choose from, which is a good thing. Now I need to see which units have the best synergy, and which build suits my playstyle best.

So, for the battle: it's a 2400 pts battle vs Tomb Kings. I am curious to see how the Ogres will fare against another 8th book. Also, I have a 2400 pts tournament coming up in about 10 weeks, so I need all the practice I can get!

Here are the armies:

First battle w Ogre Kingdoms

Alright, my first tryout battle with the new OK is in the books. It was a 1000 pts skirmish vs Skaven and it was fun to try some of the new stuff. I learned quite a few things. Not least of which was relearning that I really do not like Doomwheels when they don't suffer a serious mishap.

OK, on to the armies:

Skaven:
Plague Priest (Cloud of Corruption)
Warlock Engineer (Warp Lightning)
BSB
31 Clanrats, shield, full command, Mortar Team
40 Slaves, shield, musician.
13 Night Runners, sling
5 Gutter Runners, sling, poison
Warp Lightning Cannon
Doomwheel

Ogres:
Firebelly, 2 hand weapons, level 2 (Fireball, Flaming Sword)
9 Ogres, 2 hand weapons, musician, standard, gnoblar
3 Ironguts, standard
3 Leadbelchers
Scraplauncher
2 Mournfangs, heavy armour, fist.

I won't be doing an elaborate turn-by-turn description because a) I should really have taken pictures for that to work properly and b) it was all over far too soon anyway.

Here's what happened:

New Ogre Kingdoms - First thoughts

Just got the new OK book earlier today and am in the middle of reading through it now.

First thoughts:
> No real surprises, pretty much the whole book was leaked and most info had been established as accurate. Still very glad to finally have it!
> I am loving Hellheart. It'll definitely be an auto-include for me for a while. Very random and very deadly, it's the perfect item for me.
> Slaughtermaster over Tyrant for me, every time.
> Points will be tight for heroes. In my standard 2400pts list I need a BSB, I want a Firebelly (Breath Attacks in combat are awesome for monstrous infantry vs regular infantry), and then I'll probably need to decide if I want a third hero or not... A hunter to join the sabretusks on a flank? We shall see.
> Speaking of flanks, I think a min sized Mournfang unit with full armour and a champ (10pts for another Ogre attack? Yes, please!) will make a great flanking unit. At 150 pts per unit, with M8, impact hits, 13 attacks, and a 2+ save (and parry), they will be tough for any flanking unit to handle.
> Not sure if I'll include either of the two new big beasties... There is already so much to choose from and I need a good think about how to best to use them. For now I'm leaning towards a Thundertusk over a Stonehorn, just because of the utility the TT provides over the SH's sheer combat ooompf. Don't look at me like that. Ooompf is a word.
> Ironblaster seems great. A T6 chariot that can fire a reliable cannon shot on the move is great, never mind the S10 grapeshot. Big monsters will not enjoy battling my Ogres.
> Trappers are awesome...

Prediction time:

> I think yhetees will be one of those units people won't take often at first but that will be used more later on. M7 and swiftstride, coupled with I4 and S5 makes for a very fast and deadly unit (against the right target, of course).
> I think we will not see the dreaded Maneater combi of Brace of Pistols, Poison, and Sniper quite as often as is feared. At 62 pts a model the unit will be quite expensive and range 24"  will only get you so far... Maybe replacing poison for scouts or vanguard will allow you to be in a better position to actually take those shots at wizards. If that's what you really want to spend 186 pts on, of course...

Alright, that's it for now. Time to get back to the book and start making some armies!

Tomb Kings Review 1

Tomb Kings Review

All right, here goes!

If you’re reading this it will mean I’ve actually gone through with a plan for once and I’ll have finished the first of my reviews for Warhammer Fantasy 8^th Edition.

Kicking off this series of reviews of Armybooks will be everyone’s favourite desert dwellers, the Tomb Kings of Khemri.

So how will this work? I’ll start off with describing how the army handles on the table, what its general strengths and weaknesses are, and how they are different from the other armies out there. Next will be a review of all the units in the book, as well as a look at magic lores and magic items. All fairly in-depth and with an aim to be useful to Warhammer players of all levels (just starting to true longbeards) and all skill levels (classic ‘beer and pretzel’ to ‘competitive’ <yugh, I hate that term>).  Sounds ambitious? Well, it is. We’ll see how I’ll end up!

Off we go…

And away we go!

Alright, here we are. The very beginning. The beginning of what exactly I'm not sure, but we'll see where we'll end up...
I just got a new (smart)phone and I thought that was all the excuse I needed to start this blog.

This blog will be mostly about Warhammer Fantasy. I'll go into more detail about me and my interests later because, really, no one is going to read this yet anyway :p What I plan on doing is writing about aspects of the game that interest me, like tactics, army lists, and different army builds.
I enjoy going to Tournaments and I plan on writing about my preparation, actual games, and army-in-hindsight post. I'm also planning on doing reviews of the different army books, starting with the three books that have been released for 8th edition. I'm well underway with the Tomb Kings review and I'll most likely start with the first installment tomorrow!
Next week myself and a couple of mates will start our very own Map Campaign, so I'll use this blog to post updates on that as well.
I have lots of other ideas for articles and series as well. Like writing about different aspects of the current edition, basic tabletop skills that will help you be a better player, thoughts about terrain, magic, and whatever else I can think of.
The focus will be on gaming and listbuilding, less so on painting and converting. I am the kind of player who greatly enjoys painting single models, but finds it extremely difficult to find large quantaties of models to a high standard. I get bored :p I also never bothered with honing my conversion skills beyond kitbashing and some basic green-stuffing. So, any army logs that might end up on here will be about true gamer's armies, not wonderful works of Warhammer wonder.
Ok, that should give you a fairly good idea of what kind of stuff you can find on here. Like I said: Away we go!

THUNDERSTOMP!

P.S. I do play 40k as well, so there might be some 40k related posts on here as well occassionally. Heck, I'll probably do a bunch of crossover posts as well. Don't say I didn't warn you!