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!

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).