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.

Spiky, axey, bucket-heady

After a skate trip to Hamburg curtailed my painting time I finally got around to these 2, probably part of a chaos warband for SoBH with an aim to be part of a bigger chaos faction for WHFB3. Chaos mage was an eBay purchase and I do like his purpleyness. Gurt big marauder dude is an Avatars of War miniature and I'm not totally happy with his skin - was my first time using the Vallejo skin wash and it seems really dark. Still not too bad overall.

Moving into the space age

Or possibly moving backwards into it. After signing up to the rather wonderful Scribd and finding all sorts of Oldhammer rule book goodness on there (along with plenty of comics) I got inspired to sift through my old pile of 40K metal and plastic. After feeling dismayed by the incredibly rubbish painting (and half hearted Chaos Marine conversion - Skaven heads, hammers for hands, terribly glued on extra arm!) I found a small pile of plastic and lead Squats, all pretty horribly put together and covered in lurid, badly applied paint.


Then it was off to the chop shop and a nice bath of cleaning fluid.

What magic lies inside? Mangled arms and las rifles mainly.

Fingers crossed they'll clean up enough for me to put together 5 or so of them hopefully with the aim of knocking up a small skirmish size gang for a bit of Rogue Trader action. Just need to find some swarthy opponents now.

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