Slight return

I am doing stuff honest, I am! Progress here has indeed been slow but there are things happening. Part of my weight loss plan involves more exercise and an unfortunate side-effect of this is that I am not finding enough time to paint. That said I am attempting to do a few hours on a Wednesday night when my legs are still recovering from playing Touch Rugby the night before.

And not one to miss a bandwagon, just get on it rather late - I picked up a copy of Dragon Rampant last month. A work trip allowed me to give it a good read and by crikey it seems rather excellent! Simple rules written very well and with just the right amount of daft humor dotted throughout. It's really got me excited to get a load more fantasy stuff done, and it turns out I have just enough old minis to scrape together 3 warbands.

First out of the blocks are going to be the Dwarves, slightly fitting after the recent news about Wayne England. I'm hoping to base these on a clan from my favourite way to waste time on the toilet at work - Battle for Wesnoth. If you don't know about this it's a rather fun little turn based skirmish game for your phone/laptop/tablet with a HUGE community producing content for it. Worth some time.

These are the first few stuntys off the painting blocks - A Thane from the Battle of Skull Pass box set I believe, and 2 of my old Norse Dwarves that survived the wilderness years.

And around the start of the month I actually finished some of the Malignancy Cultist types for the Stealer 40k Warband. See I told you I had done something!

And we are off.

First finished miniatures of 2016, even though they were started in December (that counts right?). Original 1st edition Space Hulk Stealers painted using the quick method from the Corehammer blog. Came out better than expected and my first time using ink washes. A bit of work required however, and possibly some better spray paint.

Blaaarreeaghhhhhh.

These will form part of the Stealer Coven warband for my 250pt 40k games. The rest of the gang (Magus, 2 Hybrids and some Brood Brothers) are getting pretty clos to done, more on them soon!

The Not Quite a Year in Review Post

Slightly jumping on the bandwagon (late, again) with this post but thought it better to use it to define a few new goals for the next year.

I've been back into the "hobby" for a little over 6/7 months and it's been a wonderous voyage of (re)discovery. LOADS of new models, some amazing rules for anything you can mention and the blogging of others have kept me stoked throughout. There have been a few dips in motivation and the tedium of painting similar models has got to me once or twice, but I'm still amped on getting things done as best I can. (Except maybe those plastic Skaven, those guys sucked).

Gaming wise - there's only been some rather sad solo games of SoBH and 2ed 40k, and while a blast it's not quite the same as facing off against someone. My scenery needs a bit of work but it's a millions miles away from the stuff I made as a teenager, if I even bothered at all back then!

Orks n Arbites on the rad Deep Cut mat (with my iffy scenery).

Anyhows, a few things I want to do in 2016.

• Keep painting 40k stuff. This past year saw me finish small 250pt warbands of Space Marines, Orks and Adeptus Arbites. I've got a Pirate group coming together but next on the list and (currently in progress) is a small Stealer coven using the Macrocosm minis. Ideally I want to expand these to 500pts and then possibly upwards from there. I snaffled some later age Ork figs from t'bay which should give me a good base for a potential 1000pt army. I'd like to end with at least that and an opposing force by the end of the year.
• Get back into Epic. I have a ton of this stuff and really enjoyed playing it so it's probably about time to dig it out and get it properly painted. I've knocked up a few 1500pts army lists to begin with so I'd like to get those done at least and see where I'm going from there. There is a very active scene for this out there too, and a lot of it in Bristol it seems, so who knows maybe I'll get adventurous and check it out.
• Warbands, warbands, warbands. SoBH is still a great game and I want to keep chipping away at various fantasy stuff until I've got a decent collection that I can pull out at any time and run off a game. I may even learn how to paint Skeletons properly this year too.
• Post Apoc stuff. Get started with this, it a loose aim and will probably end up as a project I work on when I'm sick of the others.
• More Goblin Quest! As the boy nears school age I'm hoping to get him a bit more interested in some gaming stuff. Keeping his attention long enough is tricky. I may have a look at simplifying (even more!) the SoBH rules and see how that goes. Either way more gaming with the boy in 2016n would be rad.
• Play against real live people. Unsure how much of this I will do, it may help if I bite the bullet and sign up to the Oldhammer forum to see who is out there, or just get along somewhere and maybe try a few demo games of something. There has been an idea thrown about of meeting up with Mark and getting a few games at the end of Feb so fingers crossed that will happen.
• Check out some new rules. Not really too important but I do like looking about. Frostgrave is getting plenty of attention and it does look fun, Infinity might be interesting but looks like it gets really involved really quickly.
• Get better with the painting. Again one that will come with time. I need to expand my paint collection a lot more and learn what to do with it (especially yellows). More reading and video watching there I feel.
• Lose weight. Personal one this but I turn 40 in 2017 and I'd like to not be rounder than I am tall by then. Diet fun!

So thats that, it'll no doubt mutate over time but it's a good start. I'm thoroughly enjoying delving back into all this stuff and hope to get deeper in the rabbit hole this year!

Happy New year everyone!

Badly Painted Boy(z)

Had a spare afternoon "working from home" so managed to finish a few more of the Doom Legion Space Fascists and also set up a slightly more professional set up to take pictures of some of my better minis. I know I am nowhere near a good painter, as I'm basically learning from scratch due to never putting the effort in when I was younger but these are a couple I'm happy with so far!

Doom Legion Captain, last mini to be finished, as usual a few bits good, a few bits bad!

em4 Rebel/ganger fella. Tried for a punk bleached jeans look, almost worked!

Orc Warboss, loads of fun to paint!

Zombie dude types. MmMbwaains n'ting.

Chaos Sorcerer type. Pointy, skully joy!

Orctobervember

As usual a day(month) late and a dollar(couple of quid) short. My painting speed ranges from stop to slowslowstop so these fellas have taken me almost 2 months to do. To be fair I lacked a bit of motivation during October, and November was my boys birthday (and seemingly every other child in his pre-school class) so painting time is at a premium. I have avowed to dedicate at least 1 night a week to slapping on some pigment so things may hopefully improve in regards to blog updates.

Quite happy with the big fella, he's going to be the BigBoss of my Nobz mob.

The rest of the Nobz, yep - all from the 2ed box set. Quite fun to paint but I'm not a fan of black undercoats now.

Group shot with added Mekboy (who will be used as a Nob with a Flamer).

Again apologies for terrible photos, one day I will sort out a nice shoot with my proper camera in direct sunlight and do a mega-blog-post of all my painted gubbins. Well at least the stuff I'm happy with.


Anyways - this lot are all part of my 2ed skirmish project - a few warbands of roughly 250pts. Along with the Orcs there will be some Marines, an Adeptus Arbites squad (with added Ogryn "Enforcer"), a pirate/gang squad and a small Genestealer cult made up from old plastic Space Hulk Stealers and the excellent Malignancy miniatures from Macrocosm. Oh and maybe a Chaos Cultist squad too as I just scored some of the new GW figures super cheap on t'bay. If I get all that done before 2020 it'll be a miracle.

All that and I've also sketched out a few warbands for Ganesha Game's Flying Lead rules based on the Vegas Apocalypse books I've been sneakily reading via Scribd at work. These will be semi-post apocalyptic/modern survivor types but I'm struggling to find any figures to represent the Rojos - any tips on Vato-esque minis gratefully recieved!

Slow down

The end of summer is always busy in our house, especially with a 3yr old. Various weddings, parties, mini-holidays, summer touch rugby and other social shenanigans have lead to a slow down in my lobbying. Not to say I haven't been doing anything but the painting was pretty much non-existent!

That said I did purchase this:



Yep, that's a 2nd Ed box. Contains everything but the space marines and all in good condition too, didn't cost the earth either. I plan to use it for more skirmish based games initially and have a few warbands planned but I'll save those for a later post.

As for painting then there was this ganger type from em4 that was one of my first purchases when I started up again.



And then my first painted marine for a long time! One of the newer plastic ones picked up cheap with some other off the bay. Gone for a Doom Legion paint job mainly as its pretty straightforward! Looking at the picture there are a few bits I need to sort out but quite stoked on it.



More updates soon if this new app I have proves to be any good!

Clash of Warbands

Recently I luckily found myself with a chance to have empty house all to myself for a day due to an early vet appointment. Not one to miss an opportunity I figured I could get in a good swathe of hobby based fun. After discovering aforementioned cat was fine, apart from a sore tail probably caused by scrapping with the one across the road, I was back in the house by 9.30am and excited by what I could get on with.

First task was to finish 2 drastic plastic Skaven from the Warhammer Armies massive box set I had as a kid. These had been sprayed over rather than cleaned first and they looked OK to paint, not too much loss of details. How wrong I was, they promptly turned out pretty rubbish, wether this is down to my poor painting skills or the rushed nature of the task (I wanted them for my Chaos warband for this days gaming, turns out...didn't get round to using them).

Painting woe aside the afternoon was earmarked for some serious SoBH gaming. A mini campaign/tourny of sorts with myself against...myself. One thing I would really like to do is get a game of something in with someone, plans are afoot for maybe just this later in the year but perhaps I need to bite the bullet and get out there and join a club?

That aside the plan was to play 4 of my warbands against each other in 2 games, "winners" going through to play the other, then the warband left standing facing off against the newly created Chaos Warband. Background fluff loosly based around the news that a maurading Chaos warband were laying waste to local areas and searching for a mystic stone where they hoped to summon a Great Demon. Each warband were searching for magical items to aid them in seeing off this threat but it appears others were thinking the same thing. Apart from maybe the Undead who just wanted (spicy?) Chaos brains for tea.

First game saw the Gobbo clan of Garg Urkls Kneebiterz facing off against Extan Slygrin's Undead warband. 3 markers were places around the board, one of which would contain the magic item (rolled off the basic magic item chart in the SoBH rulebook). Things started well for the Goblins as in so much they actually moved forward, apart from the archers who think hiding at the back is probably best for them. The Troll got ganged up on by the Twitchers who must have been so hungry that they thought Troll flesh was appealing.

Gerroff my legz wiv dem point fings

Extan Slygrin himself used his Flight and Free Disengage skills to move around as he needed, and even took out one goblin easily with his Assasin skill. The terror inducing Lich snuck up the left flank hoping to open one of the chests located there. Moment of the game was when he charged a lowly Goblin hoping to cause terror but this Gobbo must have been made of sturdier stuff as he promptly passed all 3 Quality rolls and proceeded to batter the Lich to death (errr...again) in combat! By this stage the Troll was in a standoff with the Twitchers and there was only one chest left to check. The Gobbo Shamen, Garg Urkl himself and one of his remaining boys were stuck in a race to it with Extan the Wraith Lord. The gobbos got there first but before they could leg it Extan slaughtered the poor fella holding it, picked up the Cloak of Stealth and flew off to safety. Sneaky win for the Undead!

Second up were the Gladerunner Elves against another new warband - Clan Dirwir dwarves. It seemed equally matched, with both side having decent quality scores. The skirmish was fun, the Dwarves showing their close combat prowess by taking out the elf warrior early, the Elf mage and bowman working well in tandem to take a dwarf or two out. 

Right lads theres one of them long haired types, lets gerrim...

This one was settled however when the Dwarf leader found the magic item (Enchanted Javelins, perfect for a dwarf!) and being the only one without the short move hinderence promptly shuffled away with it while his crossbowmen held off the Young Wood Elves trying to chase him down.

You watch my back while I nab this magic thingyme, then we'll LEG IT.

For the final clash of the day (took longer than I thought to get through the other games and I figured I should be on time to picmk up my son from pre-school!) I changed the format to a "take the hill" type of game, this was to allow the winning warband to gain a good tactical deployment area for the final clash (which hasn't been played yet). The warband with the most figures on the hill by the end of turn 6 would win. As it turned out we barely got to the final round as the Undead were wiped out fully in turn 6 by the Dwarves. Their superior quality score, coupled with sticking in range of the Leader for the +1 bonus gave them a decent advantage over the Undead who struggled to keep it together. Again the Lich was taken out early, he is a useful piece but suffers in combat when his target is able to pass the terror roll!

This was the most I've played since spending days round my mate Neil's (Aka Jeff, aka Moley) house as a teenager and it was throughly enjoyable. Hopefully this write up wasn't too wordy, I've tried to sneak a few pictures in too so you can have a giggle at my terrible terrain! I can see more of this happening soon, infact the wife is off out tonight so I may just get in the final game once the boy is in bed.

Progress, or what have I got myself into..

To avoid a large gap between posts here's a little (edit:Very waffly) progress report and a bit a chance to take stock of what I want to do in the future. Some good stuff, a bit of a painting frenzy and Yay - dice rolling!
Firstly I got in a couple of quick games of SoBH with the finished Gobbo and Elf warbands. First game was possibly the quickest game ever - Gobbo leader killed in turn 2, everyone else routed off the table due to terrible quality rolls. In fairness I think I missed a few rules that could have made it last a bit longer but as my first -reintroduction to moving little men around a table while rolling dice it was good. Let me have have a chance to play again where things lasted a bit longer - the Troll actually moved forward and I discovered Gobbo archers are pretty pants. The Elves vastly superior Quality stat really showed through in these games.
In an attempt to keep the gaming stoke going I fancied facing the Elf mob off against something different so in a furious 5 night flurry I managed to paint up some random Undead types I had lying about. These included possibly one of my oldest figures - a Lich I've had since god knows when - it has been battered about a bit over the years and has lost the original dagger so a bit of a quick fix with a gobo chariot scythe seemed to fit nicely. It painted up OK but time and figure mismanagement hasn't been kind to it! The other fellas in the mob (otherwise known as The Horrors of Slygrin Swamp) were a wraith/spectre miniature I picked up from the bargain bin at BIG and a some swamp zombie dudes from Black Tree. These 3 (Michael, Eric and Terry) were actually pretty fun to paint and had some nice little details, their proddypokeyhooky sticks are really thin and fragile which worries me slightly. Terrible phone pic below (Sorry!).


Extan Slygrin and his band of merry flesh eating chums.

I also picked up this:

Boy this gave me a few flashbacks!

I've been lurking around the Oldhammer forum and many of the excellent related Blogs and some of the 3rd Edition battle reports, especially those on the Warhammer for Adults blog, reminded me that however clunky and intricate the 3rd edtition rules are they really lend themselves well to the type of fantasy gaming I used to enjoy. 3rd edition WHFB was one of my games of choice with my small gaming group back in my teens (and I should probably post up something about that murky period) but I was always the one more interested in it than the others. My original copy actually lasted for some time until a leaky, damp garage at my old house got the better of it and rotted the pages (Unfortunately taking the RT rules with it too, if only I'd known better!).


With my small collection of fantasy figures slowly growing it made sense to me to line up WHFB as a potential rule system, and I really like the army lists (I work with spreadsheets, I may have a small obsession with making lists and adding up points). Plus the models that lend themselves to that period and the Oldhammer ethos are really awesome. I've tried to like some of the new plastics ones, I've even won a few on evilbay that will feature in the small armies I'm planning but the overblown mega-hat stuff that's out these days really does not float my fantasy boat (Longship? Giant Turtle?).


That said I may take a quick spin on the Age of SiggyMarley rules roundabout but mainly because it was free and, yeah, army lists (No points though waaaaahhhh).

Gladerunners

Warband post number 2, those lovely flouncy Elves. These were finished a week or so ago and I'm quite happy with them too! Well apart from the squiffy eyes on a few of them, another point to add to the list of "things to learn to do properly".




Again another mix of old and new figures - a couple of old Wardancers, 2 Chaz Elliot Champions and some new Chaz Elliot in the form of the Mage and Archer. Have to say there are parts of the Archer that were quite lumpy and bad - the hand holding the bow and the face in particular.

Ylithrian's Gladerunners


Ylithrian on the left getting pointy and Hylinril on the right doing the shouty.


The Backup Boys, Gildorn the incredible disco Elf on the left

Gydrial the Elf Wizard, really happy with this paintjob, but yet another pointy chap, does remind me of an old drawing by my mate Whip though - Zzzzap!

And for sake of completeness here is the SoBH warband list. Again I took a slight liberty on the personality points but I wanted a Hero and a Mage so nyerrrr.


Ylithrian's Gladerunners 
Points: Personality: 158 (52%) Warrior: 146 (48%)
 
Ylithrian - Wood Elf Lieutenant - Personality 
Points 95 Quality 2+ Combat 4
Special Rules Forester, Hero
 
Gydrial - Elf Wizard - Personality 
Points 63 Quality 2+ Combat 2
Special Rules Magic-User
 
Silydr - Wood Elf Archer 
Points 56 Quality 3+ Combat 3
Special Rules Forester, Shooter: Long, Unerring Aim
 
Gildorn - Young Wood Elf Warrior 
Points 26 Quality 3+ Combat 2
Special Rules Forester
 
Taran - Young Wood Elf Warrior 
Points 26 Quality 3+ Combat 2
Special Rules Forester
 
Hylinril - Elf Warrior 
Points 38 Quality 2+ Combat 3
Special Rules None

Dems kneebiterz

Well it appears I've knocked off one of the targets I've set already and completed some warbands ready for SoBH. Not a massive amount of miniatures to paint but I realised that doing 5 at once is quite a struggle, but lesson learned for that one.

Onto the figures and the warbands - first up is Garg Urkls Goblin Kneebiterz. A collection of some of my old Citadel miniatures, a new Goblin archer from Ral Partha (by Kev Adams of course!), a Reaper Bones Troll and the 2 "character" figures are from Black Tree Design. Also apologies for the pictures, taken on my phone camera and forced into the blog via photo bucket hence crappiness.

Garg Urkles Kneebiterz in "attack" formation "Clobba em ladz".

Urkl Wolfhak astride his mighty wolf Chuckles, ably backed up by the ever grumpy Shaman Harsk Dedhan

Smalt Furbak and Snurk the gobbo stickas backed up by Humk Lumpnbak the (semi) tame Troll

Der Kneebiter Boyz - Firgl, Kirgl, Shuk & Glunk

So there you have it, pretty much the first miniatures I've painted in 20yrs! Still a lot to learn, expecially basing and highlighting, although I don't feel these pics capture some of the shading I attempted and make them look a little flat. However I am pretty stoked on getting (most) of the paint in the right places, trying out a few new techniques and actually completing a small project.

These fellas will be used in my first few games of Songs of Blades and Heros to get a feel for gaming again. I've put together a little warband list for those of you interested in that sort of thing - there were a few liberties taken with the personalities but I wanted to shoehorn a Shaman and a larger miniature somehow!

Garg Urkl Kneebiterz

Urkl Wulfhak - Goblin Commander - Personality
Points 59 Quality 4+ Combat 3
Special Rules Fearless, Leader, Mounted

Hasrk Dedhan - Goblin Shaman - Personality
Points 50 Quality 4+ Combat 3
Special Rules Magic-User, Stealth

Smalft Furbak - Goblin Elite Archer
Points 26 Quality 4+ Combat 2
Special Rules Shooter: Medium, Unerring Aim

Snurk - Goblin Archer
Points 23 Quality 4+ Combat 2
Special Rules Good Shot, Shooter: Short

Firgl - Goblin Warrior
Points 20 Quality 4+ Combat 2
Special Rules Gregarious

Kirgl - Goblin Warrior
Points 20 Quality 4+ Combat 2
Special Rules Gregarious

Shuk - Goblin Warrior
Points 20 Quality 4+ Combat 2
Special Rules Gregarious

Glunk - Goblin Warrior
Points 20 Quality 4+ Combat 2
Special Rules Gregarious

Humk Lumpnbak - Hill Troll - Personality
Points 62 Quality 4+ Combat 4
Special Rules Big, Fearless, Tough

Listy listy list list

Having had a crack at painting as my first foray back into this hobby I figured I'd better set a few goals to help push myself along a little.

Firstly I figured it best to find a system to start playing. The obvious ones would be the GW games I played first time around but after checking out some of the starter kits (pricey), background (woah heavy stuff) and rules (lots of) I had a hunt around for something different.

First up was Across the Dead Earth, a Post-apocalyptic skirmish game set in the future ruins of the UK. Brilliant concept and incredibly well thought out. Then I realised I have no-one to play with, and with the starter kit being £50 I figured it may be better to look elsewhere. I do have a strange feeling ATDE will be making some sort of impact on my gaming at some point though, it's too good not to!

Looking at what miniatures I had left over gave me 2 choices - Epic scale games or a fantasy battle type of deal. A quick search at work led me to the KR-16 8mm skirmish rules from Angel Barracks - free, simple to understand and I had a LOT of old Epic scale stuff that could be used for it. Only problem was getting them off the current bases and onto tiddlywinks. Trickier than it seems but again another project I think will come back around once i get into the swing of things.

That left the fantasy miniatures of which I have an incredibly odd mix of - everything from 1980's pre-slotta goblins to Chaz Elliot Elves and the odd sprinkling of Chaos Warriors, Undead and Dwarves. Again more constructive time spent searching the interwebs at work uncovered the Song of Blades and Heroes skirmish rules from Ganesha Games. These sounded perfect for what I wanted - small warband scale skirmishes with quick and easy to understand rules, the bonus being the cheap price and the fact you can download a PDF of them. Sold.

So with that decided I guess I need a list of things to do. I'm beginning to sense this may be the first in a long line of lists.

To do fairly sharpish:

1. Find some suitable rules to get into - DONE!

2. Generate a couple of beginner warbands for the first game - DONE! There's an incredibly handy online warband generator for SoBH that I used. I'll post more on this goal when I've done a bit more of the next one.

3. Paint aforementioned warbands - UNDERWAY! Infact one is almost done. Crikey.

4. Make some scenery - UNDERWAY! Again this has been quite interesting and worthy of a blog post, only if to give people a laugh at how poorly made it is.

5. Play an actual game - NOT YET. My brain-oddness tells me this can only be done with painted miniatures and not before then.

To do in the future:

1. Play against another human person. This will probably end up being my son, who while only 3 1/2 at the moment will probably be of an age to play when I'm done painting!

2. Paint a few more warbands, in preperation for the next point...

3. Plan a campaign. SoBH has some really good campaign rules and a storyline is already forming in my head.

4. Venture out and maybe check out a gaming club. A pretty big step this one as SoBH is not widely known and most places seem GW heavy. This may lead me to check out the WHFB 9th edition rules when they come out, if only at skirmish level.

So thats that for now. Hopefully next post will be about a completed warband.