And We’re Back

Yes, I know it’s been two months since I last posted anything.  Yes, I know that I was supposed to be up-to-date on my WHFB comings and goings.  Yes, I know it’s pathetic how quickly I stop posting after I start again (I think I’ve tried properly blogging like this four times already!).

But whatever.  I’m back.  And I’ve got some updates.

So I defintely haven’t been idle over the past two months.  I’ve been playing WHFB games regularly, as Skaven, against a few different players.  As usual you can find reports for these at DakkaDakka.  In fact, to make things easier, I’ll just give you the links to them:

www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/347570.page  1000pts vs. Lizardmen

www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/349013.page  1250pts vs. Lizardmen

www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/355613.page  1000pts vs. Lizardmen

www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/357357.page  1000pts vs. Wood Elves

www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/359280.page  2000pts vs. Bretonnians

There were two other games that I played against Lizardmen, I believe a 1000 or 1250, and a 1500, that I did not write a report for (lack of pictures, short and extremely unfinished games).  If you read them, you will see that for the most part my Skaven are fairing pretty well.  Probably due to the fact that we are all learning the rules as we go along, and I have been incredibly lucky with dice, and my Lizardmen opponent had to really figure out his army since the style he wanted to play (Skirmisher-heavy) turned out not to be so powerful.

Anyway, I’ve painted a bunch of my stuff.  Not as much as I wanted to, and I definitely failed my goal of painting before I bought more, BUT starting in May a group of us are doing something of a “Tale of Four Gamers” challenge, where we are starting with a Battalion, Army Book and a character or two.  We will build and paint them completely, within a certain amount of time, and start playing games with them.  And thereafter, probably for three more months, we will increase our overall army size by 500pts per month until we have 2000 point armies.  We feel that the peer pressure and the light challenge atmosphere of it all will help us complete these tasks, and end up with fully-painted armies.  I’m confident that it will work.  Even though I am expecting a baby in the first month that this “Battalion Blog” starts.  Oh boy.

Oh yeah, and I’m doing Empire for this challenge, which I’m really looking forward to.  Even with their basic statlines, I’m looking forward to using Detachment systems, lots of gunpowder, and some religious fanatics.

I’d like to finish off with a shoutout to Meeplemart, definitely my board, card and minis game store of choice.  www.meeplemart.com  is the place to go for pretty much all of your gaming needs, whether you play family boardgames, grognard wargames, or tabletop minis games.  This Toronto-based shop is where I have been playing WHFB all this time, making use of the great tables and terrain that Steve, the owner, has for customer use.  I highly recommend stopping by there, in person or online, if you have any needs.

Hell Pit Puzzle

You know that saying, “Real men don’t need instructions”?

Most of the time I try to prove that.  Well, not when I’m putting together Ikea furniture, but most other times.

Yesterday I picked up the Skaven Hell Pit Abomination, without a box.  Apparently without instructions, either.  I’m not sure if there are supposed to be instructions, but I hope so, because I’m sure they are plenty helpful to those putting this kit together.

Well, I didn’t have a set of instructions, all I had was this…

And after some despruing and cleaning up, I had a puzzle…

Thankfully my brain likes a puzzle!

So, after probably an hour and a half, which I’m sure is above average…I’m slow at this, especially when I’m reading and watching battle reports while I work…I had my Hell Pit Abomination pretty much complete.

What a beauty!  Or a grotesque specimen of Clan Moulder genetic engineering.  Same difference.

It wasn’t too difficult to build without instructions, actually.  I think not doing it in the right order made certain areas harder to do, but finding good pictures online helps.

I’m not even thinking yet about painting this guy.  It’s going to take a lot of love and practice with other minis, like the Rat Ogres who also have a lot of fleshy parts to paint.  For now I’ll probably leave it as is or give it a brown primer coat, just to sort of fit in with the rest of the army.

The other night I also picked up a box of Night Runners, intending a handful of them to be Gutter Runners (because, really, who takes Night Runners?).

Here are the first five. 

I’ll try them out, see how I like them, and decide if I should make another 1, 5, 6 or what, to either up this unit or make a second, or both.

Skaven vs. Lizardmen – 800pts

Last night Andrew and I played a 800pt ‘tester’ game, using scaled down and much-proxied versions of our Skaven and Lizardmen armies.

Basic Lists:
*I’ve left out upgrade details*

Skaven
-Chieftan General and Warlock Engineer in a 25-strong Clanrat unit w/ Ratling Gun
-Chieftan BSB in a 25-strong Clanrat unit w/ Warpfire Thrower
-3 Rat Ogres w/ Packmaster
-Warp Lightning Cannon

Lizardmen
-Scar Vet in an 11-strong Saurus unit
-Skink Priest
-2 units of 12 Skink Skirmishers
-2 units of 5 Chameleon Skinks
-2 Salamanders w/ 8 handlers

The Game:
Deployment

Pretty basic stuff.  Those Scouting Chameleons are annoying, especially when I don’t have anti-Chameleon-only resources in this small army.

Turn 1
Skaven got the first turn, which went sort of like this…

I played it safe, which is probably not really the way to go with Skaven.  I sent my Rats and ROgres up a little bit, and pivoted my weapon teams to face the Chameleons.
My Warp Lightning was dispelled.
The Ratling Gun, on 11 shots, managed only a single kill on the left.  On the right, the Warpfire Thrower couldn’t toss the fire far enough.  The Warp Lightning Cannon bounced and landed JUST shy of the Saurus unit.  Pity, as that would have been nice.

Overall, a pretty lack-luster turn indeed.

A much better turn for the Lizards.
Everyone moved up at least a little, mostly getting ready to take annoying blowgun shots.
All the units in the top-centre were boosted by Harmonic Convergence, while my first Clanrat unit took some damage from Urannon’s Thunderbolt.
The Chameleons on my left knocked out the Ratling Gun easily, while the unit on the right got three hits on the WLCannon.  The Salamanders toasted the Packmaster (I should have bought another) and singed the fur on one of the ROgres.  The Skinks on the right got some hits on the second Clanrat unit, while the unit on the left hurt the first Clanrat unit some more.

Overall, I was less than happy with what was going down.  In fact, I was pretty much ready to forfeit by the end of the next turn.  Oh me of little faith!…

Turn 2

The ROgres began by declaring a Charge against the closer Skinks, who decided to Flee!  Andrew figured later that was the wrong thing to do.  The ROgres failed their redirected Charge against the Salamanders.  The leftmost Clanrat unit moved up a little more, again too cautiously.  The rightmost Clanrat unit wheeled around to aim at the Chameleons there, which I almost immediately realised was a bad idea.  It took them out of the coming turns, and I wasn’t trusting my WFThrower to do the job.  I need to have more faith in these rats! Well, until the inevitable game full of Misfires.
Warp Lightning failed or something similarly dismal. 
Well, the WFThrower made a pile of scaly ashes out of the Chameleons with a perfectly-landed template of fire on their heads.  Suckahs.  The WLCannon also jolted three Saurii.  That was nice.  Made me understand why the WLC can be so awesome.

A much better turn for the Skaven.  If only I had been a litle more agressive on the first turn, there would have been more dead lizards this turn, for sure.

The Lizardmen were not happy.
The Saurii Charged the ROgres.  The two Skink Skirmisher units stayed put while the surviving Chameleon unit moved up to aim at the Clanrats’ butts.
The Skink Priest’s Thunderbolt hit and destroyed the WLCannon.  Farewell, faithful cannon.  At least you didn’t blow yourself up!
Lots of shooting again.  The surviving Salamander burned some of the Clanrats from the leftmost unit, which was also shot at by all the Skinks on the left.  Ten dead rats later, at least they didn’t run.
The Scar-Vet declared a challenge to the Master-Bred ROgre.  The ROgre couldn’t kill the Vet, and the Vet couldn’t kill the ROgre, but just barely.  The rest of the combat was gross-ness.  No wounds on the Saurii, three wounds on the ROgres, killing one off.  The ROgres lost the combat, lost Frenzy and ran away.  But, they managed to JUST out-run the pursuing Saurii.

Game End
Sadly, since we started late and we always manage to take a long time to play even small games like this, we had to call it quits at the end of the second turn.  Pity, that, since I felt that the next turn would have gone a little better for me.  I had plans, man, I had plans!
Technically a draw since we called it so early, but clearly the Lizards had done the most damage.  They probably killed off more models than they had on the table themselves!

Post-Battle Thoughts
-Awesome fun.  Even though it was short and unfinished, and we used some proxies and unpainted models, we still quite enjoyed it.
-Chameleon Skinks are annoying.  They’re pretty fragile, but cause slow death if not dealt with.  Thankfully, WFThrowers seem to deal with them just fine.
-The WFThrower was awesome.  I’ll have to include more of them in my future, bigger lists.
-Bigger games against the Lizards is going to be fun.  Plus I’ll be playing against Tomb Kings, Wood Elves, Dwarfs and maybe Vampire Counts (my unifinished army) and Goblins.  Oh, and my own High Elves once I’m happy with where my Skaven are at.

Anyway, thanks for reading!
There will be plenty more reports on the way as we start playing more games.  So please leave comments and suggestions so I can make them entertaining and informative.  Hopefully you like Battle Chronicler, because I do, and I think I’ll be using it a lot.

Skaven vs. Lizardmen (800pts) – Setting the Scene

Andrew and I got to test out mini versions of our armies last night.  800pts, Skaven vs. Lizardmen.  Lots of proxying and unpainted models.  But, of course, lots of fun, and quite a bit of learning about our armies.  I’ve played some Island of Blood-size games with Skaven, but nothing ‘properly’ constructed.  This was Andrew’s first time taking the Lizardmen out.

As a bonus to it all, I’m fiddling around with Battle Chronicler, so I can make pretty battle reports like this…

I’m still learning how to work the program, so it’s as accurate as I can get it right now (although there are some Skink Handlers missing on the Salamander Hunting Pack at the top).

Anyway, I’ll try and finish the report later on, but this is how the game was set up.

Forgive any strategic failing in deployment…we’re still new =)

I Haven’t Been Idle!

That’s right.  I may not have been posting regularly, but that does not mean I have been slacking…too much.

In the last few days I’ve completed some work on my Skaven that I am happy with.

First up, Poisoned Wind Mortar/Poisoned Wind Globadiers…

What I’m hoping to do is collect a few more of the Island of Blood PWMs and, like this, separate the figures and turn them into two PWGs.  Yes, if I do this I’m going to have some very similar-looking models other than their clothing colour.  I’ll try to change colours as much as I can, but I think that if I can get a few more of these for relatively cheap, I won’t have to pay the $10 for ONE GW Globadier.  Heck, if I have to pay $10 for a PWM team, that’s TWO for the price of ONE.  Maybe I will get one GW Globadier to act as a Bombardier…but probably not, if I can help it.  Will have to look into more ways of converting the team to be unique.

Sorry for the cruddy photo.  After I’ve painted more rats I’ll set up my ‘photo booth’ and take some better photos of it all. 

I’m happy with the way these guys turned out.  You’ll see better with better photos, but I think the colours, poisoned wind globes, and the shading-by-wash all came out great.

Next up are some Plague Censer Bearers…

Again, crappy photo, but you get the gist.  These are Plague Monks converted into Plague Censer Bearers…really just by fiddling a bit with the flails that the PMs come with.  I did a little bit of snipping and gluing here and there, which hopefully will be less noticeable once they are painted.  As you can see, one guy is missing an arm and a flail.  I need to pick up another set of Plague Monks (I want more anyway), and I’ll have four more flails.  And a bunch more Giant Rats.  Well, small rats, but they’ll be Giant rats.  That’s another project I’ll need to work on.

Skaven – Week 1

After one week’s worth of painting, I’m both happy and disappointed to say that I am nearly finished one Clanrat unit.

Happy, because I’ve nearly painted 20 individual models in a week! 

Sad, because at the rate I was going, I should have actually finished them.

Weapons have been painted seperately.

I apologize for the poor picture.  I wanted to take it quickly here at my desk so I could post it.  When they are complete I will take some better pictures, promise.

Honestly, they only need another hour or two of work: eyes, wood, teeth, little rats, straps and touch-ups.  Then I’m going to dip them.

I’m opting to dip them instead of wash them for this batch of rats.  If  I like the outcome, I’ll do it again.  If not, I’ll give them washes.  I’m also going to see how I like how the armour turns out.  I’ve seen a couple of different methods of doing armour now, so if this isn’t favourable I’ll try those.

The beauty of it is, I right now have 100 Clanrats to play around with, so I can try lots of different colours and methods.  Hopefully by the time I’m finished my next 20 (by the end of next weekend?) I’ll have a good system down, so the next 40 from Island of Blood should be a breeze…or at least breezier…or something along the lines of a Howling Warpgale, if we want to stay in character…

In other news, the Great Horned One (talking like this is so geeky) has smiled upon the Skaven and given them a new opponent: the Lizardmen, fielded by Andrew.  With just a little convincing Andrew has picked up Lizardmen, and as soon as his Battalion box and Stegadon arrive we’ll be duking it out.  Can’t wait.

Weekend Haul; Some Rats

So this was a great weekend for my new Warhammer obsession.  I did not pick up any models, but I did get…

As you can see, I picked up my first issue of White Dwarf.  I’ve only ever flipped through one other, and while there’s nothing super important in there, it’s a good read.  If there’s one thing about GW, it’s that they really know how to work the fluff for a game.

I also picked up a second Modular Movement Tray kit.  I’m impressed with it.  You can make up to 8 movement trays, of up to 10×10 20mm bases, per kit. 

Next, Battle Magic.  When I first saw these, I laughed.  Not really necessary.  But after playing a couple of games with Rob’s, I realised their value.  It reminds me about how I want to see unit stat cards (a la Malifaux, Warmachine, etc.), making things totally easier.  So anyway, I picked up the basic, Skaven and High Elf Battle Magic decks.  I was really surprised to see the HE one, considering I didn’t find it very easily anywhere online.  I guess I was lucky.

Oh, that was all picked up yesterday at Heavy Support Games here in Toronto.  Now, Meeplemart is actually my go-to store for everything: board games, minis, Tuesday night minis games, Thursday night boardgaming, good chats about the hobby.  Heck, I even had a psuedo-bachelor party at the store last year, where we set up Rock Band on a projector.  Anyway, Steve (of Meeplemart) has only just begun stocking GW stuff, and while I would normally ask him to order in what I wanted, I was in Heavy Support’s area and in need of spending some hobby cash.  Of course ‘need’ is not as appropriate a word as ‘desire,’ but I digress.  One day I’ll discuss my out-of-control spending habits.

Anywho, today I ran down to 401 Games to pick up some P3 paints, my preferred paint company.  I picked up 7 new bottles of paint, including 3 shades of green.  As in, Warpstone base, Warpstone shade and Warpstone highlight.  =)

As I was in the area, I figured I’d run into Curry’s, as I needed some new brushes.  To my wide-eyed delight, Curry’s was having a this-weekend-only 50% sale on all of their paintbrushes.  Angels sang on high, I tells ya.  So I picked up 13 brushes, sizes 3/0 to 3, for $14.  It helps getting another 10% off because I’m a teacher.  Sadly, there was nothing smaller than 3/0 available, and most of the 2/0 and 3/0 brushes were frayed.  But I’m pretty happy with my deal.  These should last me a (little?) while.

I’m proud of myself for not purchasing any new units this weekend.  Might I buy some on Tuesday when I head back to Meeplemart for a small HE vs. Skaven battle?  Possibly.  But I’m going to test out my will-power.  I’m considering forcing myself to finish painting all, or at least a percentage of my models, before buying new ones.  Of course, I’ll have to limit that to only SKAVEN models, since the number of unpainted models I have, well, runs into the hundreds.  I’m not proud of that…

So days like yesterday and today are great when I can say I painted 4 minis!  I got some Clanrats painted up.

I know what you’re thinking, these Skaven are too CLEAN!  Yes, yes, I know.  That’s because they aren’t finished yet.  I need to decide if I want to use Army Painter’s Quickshade, or do a better job and give them some washes and highlights.  I have a can of Strong Tone Quickshade, but I haven’t tried the process out yet.  Steve  uses it, so while I’m there on Tuesday I’ll probably ask if we can test a couple of the rats, so I can see if that’s the direction I’d like to go.  I was originally hoping to rush these rats out in Army Painter style, but after working on them, I’m not so sure anymore.  We shall see in a few days!

For these guys I used a combination of 5 different colours for their hoods and robes, 2 colours for the armour, and a few more for other parts like flesh, fur, teeth and weapons/shields.  With the paints I bought today I’ll be adding a few more, plus some others I have already.  I’ll probably be able to rotate between 10 or so colours.  Even though most are just different shades of similar colours, at least it will offer some variety.

Only after I primed everyone did I realise I didn’t start the bases.  I’ve got a container of white sand that I like to use, but since I forgot to do it I’ll have to find an alternative.  Meeplemart carries the Army Painter Battlefields range, so I’ll check them out on Tuesday.

Whew, this is a long post.  That’s it for now!  I’ll have more to say/show tomorrow.   If not later tonight… =)

Too Cold to Prime

At -17*C, it’s too cold to go outside and prime. 

Thankfully I’ve got 40 Clanrats and 2 Weapon Teams already primed: