Friday 30 December 2016

Warmaster: High Elves Spearmen

At last!

As the year ends - I snuck in some extra painting time and finally polished off these fellows who I have been ignoring for 3 years or so.

The command stands for some Warmaster units are so filled with detail that they can be very intimidating.


 I think I did a very good job with these chaps on horseback.  There's a lot of trim and barding which prompted me to break in a Series 7 Winsor and Newton brush because my knackered old GW brushes simply weren't cutting the mustard!


Most importantly, with these chaps, is the fact that I now have a legal High Elf army that can go to 2000 points - FULLY PAINTED!  No more bare lead or base coated models for this army at least.

Now to move on to the half dozen or so other armies who are still bare metal or black undercoated!

Sunday 25 December 2016

Warhammer Art: Land of Eternal Autumn

For Yule, I have taken receipt of a printer / scanner.

I have recently joined the "Inquisimunda" forum on Ammo Bunker and been inspired to share my pictures which have grown from that ferment.

In fact I made a topic to post my doodlings, but I felt I would edit them and repost them here for sake of record.

---

I have a vague outline for a place which was in the very early stages of what would eventually become a Hive World, but on being cut off from the Imperium ended up regressing into a Knight World level of technology. Parts are almost medieval, with a huge central city and ruins and remnants of semi autonomous refineries/factories scattered throught the world. Left to develop/devolve by itself for millenia, heretical technology and beliefs have blossomed even in the apparent absence of Chaotic influence.

---

"Arbite Bannerman"


 This fellow - I have attempted to thumbnail at least a dozen times, and draw full A4 at least once and it just doesn't want to manifest.

My idea for the remnants of Arbites and law enforcement on this planet is that they have split up and regionalised - becoming more and more medieval the further away they are from the Capital and other large towns and cities.

Ironically, the higher ranks want to emulate nobility - and look as individual and lavish as possible, looking more like Warhammer fantasy Empire generals than soldiers, with feathers in their caps and colloquial technology such as duelling flintlock pistols.

I liked the idea that recruits would be given the most useful weapons and armour because they were not "fashionable" so you might have scrawny kids with big ancient arbite helmets wobbling on their heads as the mascot of a group, like a drummer boy.

I figured that it in the most rustic areas they might have recruited a fellow who had never seen a gun fired in his life. He might have a family heirloom of a shotgun that had only ever been used as an improvised club. One of my thumbnails had this fellow staring dumbfounded at a bullet/shell given to him as a reward by his superior, completely confused as to what he was to do with it.

Another idea was for some kind of boltgun to be the symbol of an Arbite leader, but for the bolter shells to be so rare that it was a purely ceremonial object. A "white elephant", it could not be relinquished or disgarded, despite being a huge lump of useless metal. Essentially some servant would be required to constantly carry this thing wherever the leader went, perhaps strapped to his back, as a symbol of office - in fact, maybe nothing else would be acceptable as a symbol of office to all the peasants in the outermost places. If you turned up with an "official seal" they'd think it was suspicious and easy to copy - but some huge lump of intricately detailed metal - well you'd have to be the real thing with that as a sign of office!

This fellow is veering towards medieval, with his metal helmet, shotgun that could be club or firearm, and the fur of some dead beast cloaked over his shoulders. Banners flutter in the wind, showing symbols of the weighing scales - one of the few signs surviving that these forces think of themselves as Arbites.

---

"Lanternman"
 


  The usual trope in mainstream 40k stuff is fire and flame, promethium, burning the heretics etc. etc.

But I rather like the idea of citizens worshipping light rather than simply flame - light including electrical light. Venerating it almost as a lost technology.

This fellow is a Lantern Man, one of a great variety of penitents or semi religious nomads/tramps.

They provide illumination and navigation for caravans of traders, pilgrims or monster hunters as they move between settlements or through tunnels, having no real home, relying on the generosity of their wards for food and shelter.

His lamppost and battery backpack are hierlooms, passed down from father to son, with almost no knowledge surviving on how they work. Probably only a fraction of the mass of the backpack actually generates the power for the lights, with slung together technology having built up like sediment over the centuries. A forest of different power adapter wires dangles from... somewhere, allowing him to plug it into local power generators when he stops to rest. Whether this actually helps or whether there's a gram of radioactive material with a half life of 10,000 years ticking away inside - who knows? Every Lantern Man is different!

A variety of replacement lightbulbs adorn his belt, a bit like other characters would have spare ammo clips or grenades!

He clutches The First Bulb, a burnt out power unit turned into a relic of significance for Lantern Men, a bit like rosary beads, allegedly the very first bulb that one of his great gr. gr. etc. grandfathers would have begun the tradition with.

For his weapon, I imagined an ancient, completely broken Power Maul, which is now simply a club with some phosphorescent material inside it to make it mimic the appearance of its former glory!

His weapon has a cable tied around his arm - this is inspired by the way that Black Templars are chained to their bolt weapons - I like the idea that he can never relinquish his "guiding light" and therefore his responsibility in guiding travellers in the darkness.

He is bald with perhaps whisps of hair - with various burn marks over his skin and scalp. He is a man constantly strapped to a lot of electric power and I imagine that the urge to tinker and explore the heirloom means that he is covered with scars with a lot of burnt off body hair!  His forearm and hand have a remnant of some metal on them with half legible numbers on. Along with the equipment, the idea is that the shreds of some ancient imperial adept uniform have survived down the long years, the origin of the Lantern Man probably being some splinter group of some very menial Imperial techs who only knew how to change light bulbs in the City.

The larger insect hunting moths is some genetically modified dragonfly, fearsome to look at but much venerated by the populace as one of the surviving bioforms from the initial colonisation/terraforming, designed to make marshlands habitable with a voracious appetite for mosquito and other pest type creatures.
---

"Lanternman with Marrow Seekers"



One thing I like about all the vignettes you get in Warhammer rulebooks over the years are the little servitors / grots / cherubs etc. that snap at each other in the margins. Mercifully, this seems to have survived at least until 40k 6th edition and in the themed art on the GW webstore.

Here, it felt natural to add some ratlike creature on the tilting, damaged lamp on the right. So I added a whiptail, a kind of rat sized lizard creature, not really vermin but an ill tempered spiny creature in any case. It's raising it's hackles at the perch of a dragonfly to the left. If you want to eat moths for dinner, a Lantern Man's totem is a good place to sit!

I figure these gentlemen are Marrow Seekers, moving across a mostly dried up lake bed (like the Aral Sea), trying to find the remnants of what are, to the eye of a 40k player, Eldar wraithbone constructs. These are brittle, porous and ground into a power source which is used alongside the scant Promethium which is occasionally wrung from dilapidated, semi-automated sources.

---

"Preacher of the Spire"



There are many fragments of Imperial Ecclesiarchy left on this world, whose energies have been turned to strange things in the virtual absence of the light of Holy Terra.

One such faith goes by diverse names but is called in official channels the Church of the City Unattained, but also goes by Faith of the Spire among lay people. Different splinter sects of this movement regularly roam the planet, making pilgrimages to places they believe are the foundations of a mythical paradise city they were cheated out of when the planet was isolated from the Imperium.

The Capital city has many grand pillars and attempted excavations that have since been built through under and over. These great cisterns, caverns, pipes, tunnels, vast pillars and girders were the beginnings of the long process of turning the world over into a productive Hive world.

The Faith believes that these decayed fragments are an eternal reminder of the failure of the people of the world to live up to the Emperor's standards. They are forever chipping away at these remnants and turning them into holy "relics" even though the vast majority of them are sewer maintenance parts from the foundations. They have no real mental image of what a Spire or a Hive even consists of, but they venerate the Imperial Eagle in their masks and iconography as they see it on the ancient bulkheads that survive.

I imagined the the flying buttresses and eagle heads from the Imperial Sector kits would be a big motif for this cult. They would wear masks which were just that kind of aquila pointing forwards or maybe blank art deco masks like the Sigmarites have from AoS.

I would imagine their cloaks are dyed differing shades of blue/green in mimicry of the Verdigris they would see on old ruins.

The holiest artefacts wouldn't just be torn up bits of pipes and plascrete but rather, working or legible bits and bobs from thousands of years ago. This fellow is attempting to read some huge bound manuscript which in reality is probably a detailed treatise on waste water management rather than the one true path to the Lost City.

Mummified servitors that have been torn from the walls of ancient tunnels are sometimes turned into "living saint" type reliquaries.

This Faith is seen as something of a pest by the authorities as they travel around the feudal areas encouraging the peasants to build bizarre, aimless towers to appease the Emperor and encourage him to return and finish building his Spires. This has the result that there are areas of the planet littered with strange follies and earthworks in primitive imitation of what the Administratum began to accomplish.

---

"Sin-Eater"



I figured this chap to be a hanger on with groups like the Faith of the Spire. He has sworn a vow of silence and communicates through the countless strips of parchment and seals which make up his clothes.

He makes his living taking food / drink or some small coin to write down the prayers and names of those living and dead who will never get to live in the promised Spire. Essentially, he mourns the living and the dead who never had the chance to live in the promised land of the Spire Unattained. He will also take some of your sins for you as an indulgence... Lighten your soul as well as your coin purse, of course.

My thoughts were that yes, he has a little airbrush type quill with an ink reserve and a compressor on it. He has candles for wax seals aplenty. His backpack would have all sorts of seal stamps and spare candles, perhaps even a canister just full of hot wax and a little spigot to pour it out as it's needed. His collar and shoulders are covered with the latest promises, but his entire coat is composed of the oldest ones woven into it to replace wear and tear. After years of travelling and sin eating his coat is entirely made of cured leather, vellum and parchment. He carries a coin box on his waist a bit like a Boxing Day collection box.

His staff top is probably an ancient servo skull whose grav motors gave out centuries ago, with a scroll stuffed into it's mouth, a good symbol for a sin eater.

---

Wednesday 14 December 2016

Blood Bowl: Orc Blitzer

  Games Workshop, despite it's flaws, seems to have turned a corner lately.

  They have finally begun a kind of community engagement; launching a new website, using Youtube and facebook more and overall becoming less of a Fortress of Solitude.

  Far more importantly for a contrarian such as myself; they've fired up a new Specialist Games division, which means they are revisiting some of the "greatest hits" from the past, and the first to reappear is BLOOD BOWL!

Blood Bowl is one of the many, many games that appeared in White Dwarf that I would fantasise about playing even though my budget / attention span would not cover it.  I used to pretend to play it or Dungeonbowl using the Heroquest set as a kid, without really knowing the rules!

Now I finally get to be one of the cool kids and have a go, myself!  The base game contains two teams; humans and orcs.   I have plumped to paint them in the suggested colours for the sake of simplicity and am mostly following the official guide in the rulebook.

I want them to look good but I also want to be playing sooner rather than later so am hoping not to fall down the rabbit hole of spending too long on each model!  This is the first finished model, an Orc Blitzer, who I believe only really wants to break the limbs of his opponents, rather than do anything with the ball.



  Over the years when Blood Bowl was not supported by Games Workshop, the fans built up rules and fan sites to keep the game alive.  I was searching online and one thing that they do is to colour code the bases of the models.

This is very similar to how I colour code my SAGA bases to show the quality of the troops.  For Blood Bowl teams, red is the colour of blitzers.




  There's a little hole on the bases for these models - it's a new 32mm base which lets you put a little plastic ball marker in to show who has possession of it during a game.  It's a very little addition and shows the thought that's been put into this new version of the game!

Tuesday 13 December 2016

Warmaster: Dark Elf Spearmen

  Took awhile but I finally polished off the first rank and file Dark Elf unit!

These are resin models, very brittle and likely to break.  I am not putting as much detail into them as the High Elf models so only a rune on the banner, not on every shield!

My fancy has been taken by Blood Bowl, lately, so I'm probably going to be taking a break from Warmaster for a little bit.



Sunday 13 November 2016

As Seasons Change

Me and my Dad have taken some photos on our phones as we've been out and about.

We had something of an Indian Summer, it seemed, with some very mild days up until November.



A beautiful rainbow my Dad caught on one of his walks.


Marlow Bridge, currently shut for repairs and pedestrianised after an accident.




Bisham Abbey from the towpath side, and again by a fallen willow tree.


  It's been a long time since I really paid attention to things around me and took photographs.  I've never been a shutterbug.  But the quick pace of time is making me feel that perhaps I should be recording things, here and there, as signposts in time.

Monday 31 October 2016

Warmaster: Final High Elf Reavers


After a small delay, I have finished the final (for now) unit of High Elf Reaver cavalry for Warmaster.


I'm quite proud of these.  You can see my painting evolve somewhat through the High Elf units.  They don't quite have the consistency of the Chaos army because they are trickier to paint.  I picked a weird colour scheme which relies on two washes, and I changed a couple of colours through necessity from one unit to the next.


The flesh, blond hair and wood all use brown or red-flesh washes, whereas the majority of the model takes the new, dark blue Drakenhof Nightshade wash from GW.  Earlier units used Asurmen Blue, an earlier wash that is no longer produced.


Friday 21 October 2016

3D Print Test: Mayan Pyramid

I was visiting a friend the other day who has a small 3D printer.

Anyone who knows me will know that I spend an inordinate amount of time looking through forums and websites always looking for "bits" or terrain odds and ends that could be useful for something now or in 10 years in the future "when I get around to it".

One of the things I've been thinking about is jungle / Lustrian style terrain for Warmaster, that I could probably also use for Epic in future.  That means Mayan or Aztec style pyramids or ruins.  It's not a popular setting for wargaming so not many people make them, and when they do, they're for Pulp adventure settings in the 15mm to 28mm scales.

The thing is, with a 3D printer, you can /tell/ it what scale to print in.

We went on "Thingiverse", which is a website where people share their basic 3D print files, and looked for pyramids. 

This fellow was a 6cm temple that took about a 80 minutes to print.  I knew it would be too small but I wanted to see how it would turn out.  It is 6cm along it's sides. A 10cmx10cm base one would have have taken 4 hours or so but of course would be proportionally much bigger.

It has me thinking - that I should get into Google Sketchup, and see if I can make something more fitting to the cartoonier 10mm scale of Warmaster and make a base that I could print different sizes from.




Sunday 16 October 2016

Warmaster Battle Report: Chaos vs. Orcs

  I was invited to my friend Mark's house for a rematch of Warmaster!

We both decided to go for a 2000 point - a - side game, with Mark taking his customary Orc & Goblin list and Chaos for myself.

My army list was:

Chaos Army, 2000 points
Warmaster Armies
----------------------------------------------------------------
 300 -  2 Chaos Warriors
 180 -  3 Chaos Marauders
 270 -  3 Marauder Horsemen
 205 -  1 Chaos Knights
     -  1 Sword of Fate (5)
 120 -  4 Chaos Hounds
 285 -  3 Chaos Chariots
  65 -  1 Harpies
 110 -  1 Chaos Spawn
 125 -  1 General
 160 -  2 Hero
 180 -  2 Sorcerer
----------------------------------------------------------------
2000 - 18/9

EDIT: Mark has corrected me with the correct list:

Orc Army, 2000 points
Warmaster Armies
----------------------------------------------------------------
360 - 6 Orc Warriors
110 - 1 Black Orcs
150 - 5 Goblins
110 - 1 Trolls
330 - 3 Boar Riders
180 - 3 Wolf Riders
150 - 1 Giant
150 - 2 Rock Lobber
195 - 1 Orc General
- 1 Crown of Command (100)
160 - 2 Orc Hero
45 - 1 Orc Shaman
60 - 2 Goblin Shaman
----------------------------------------------------------------
2000 - 22/11 

I finally have not just a fully painted Chaos army, but enough units painted that I have different options to try out in my list.  For this one I went for almost the maximum light cavalry that I could have for the points, as Chaos command is expensive, with a minimum unit cost which is likewise a bit pricey.

I went for a terrain dense board as usual, I hadn't brought out my cliff / pass terrain for a while so I thought I'd put it down as a dominant feature in the centre.

My favourite way of setting up, as suggested in the rulebook, is to write down roughly where your brigades are on a piece of paper as your opponent does the same.  The scale of Warmaster means that even at 2000 points on a 6` by 4` table you can keep your forces entirely on one side of the table.  Rather than doing the "I place one unit, you place one" which usually ends up with everyone trying to counteract one another and spreading out in a thin line - this way usually ends up with more interesting games where opponents double guess one another then have to compensate for miscalculations.

Deployment

This is the initial setup, Mark's Orcs all cosied up on one side, cavalry on the flanks, artillery in the middle.  As for myself, I am pretty evenly spread out in infantry and cavalry brigades.



Orcs Turn 1

 Mark won initiative but didn't have much luck with his command rolls.  He made a bit of an error in putting his elite Black Orcs unit directly behind his Giant.  When a Giant fails an order you have to roll on the "Oh No, What's He Doing, Now?" chart.  In this case, he ran backwards, engaged the Black Orcs and crippled them!

He plugged some gaps  in the terrain with his cavalry but most everything else wasn't too interested in moving.  Orcs managed a nasty "Gerroff!" spell (the bane of my life) which broke my main cavalry formation and sent a Marauder Cavalry unit off the table.



Chaos Turn 1

 I had a lot of movement in my turn, all infantry marching forward to the hills, all cavalry moving up, as my Marauder Cavalry remained stubbornly off table.




Orcs Turn 2

  A much more aggressive turn, with a wall of goblin Wolf Riders crashing into my chariots, and a Giant clashing with my Chaos Warriors on the hill.  However, the Wolf Riders only managed a few wounds before withdrawing, allowing me to sweep in and destroy them all!  The Giant didn't do so well against me, and brimming with over-confidence, I attempted to pursue him and was taught a lesson in how tough monstrous creatures can be! I limped off with just one stand remaining, but the Giant was severely wounded and reduced to half strength.




Chaos Turn 2

 Harpies managed to get the drop at the rear of Mark's army, moving behind the remaining Black Orcs and Rock Lobber units near the centre.

My Chaos Chariots charge a brigade of Orc Boyz who had been following up the Wolf Riders and destroy them!

A foolhardy infantry group of mine attempt to charge some Boar Boyz, doing some damage but end up being crippled.

My Chaos Marauder Cavalry finally come back on the table and sweep to the left, hoping to maybe flank the Giant or move to threaten the artillery in the centre.

The elite cavalry including some Chaos Knights pushes forward from one piece of cover to another in order to challenge the Boar Boyz.




Orc Turn 3

The Giant attempts another movement, but can't get into combat, instead hurling a stone at a remaining Chaos Warrior stand which is driven back!

The enraged Boar Boyz crush the last of the Chaos infantry at the loss of one of its own units.

The artillery finally had some targets to shoot alongside goblins hiding in the treeline but failed to take out the remnants of the Chaos Chariot units on the left flank.




Chaos Turn 3

My cavalry move forward, destroying a surviving Boar Boyz unit and not doing a very good job of attacking a reserve brigade of Orc Boyz.

Everything else refused to move, but on initiative my Harpies rear charged the Black Orcs defending the artillery section and destroyed them, but did not do so decisively enough to have the momentum to move into the Rock Lobbers and destroy them as well.




Conclusion:

At this point in the game, I had lost a lot of stands, but Mark had lost more individual units.  He had lost:

3 Orc Boyz units
3 Wolf Rider units
2 Boar Boy units
1 Black Orc unit

But I had only lost:

1 Chaos Warrior unit
1 Chaos Marauder Infantry unit

At this point, he conceded.  I was definitely close to losing several units, but only needed to destroy a couple more of his to earn a victory.

I consistently complain about Orcs having cheap spellcasters in their games, but having a General who only has a command of 8 can be a pretty big impediment as I saw.  Mark attempts to counter act this by using the Crown of Command magic item.  It's powerful, to be sure, but it's 100 points, a big investment for any army.

Overall a good game which could have gone either way!




Wednesday 12 October 2016

Frostgrave Game Day

I game at MADgamers most Friday nights:

http://madgamers.co.uk/

We're small in number but big in spirit and I have met some great people that way.  Over the years we have occasionally set up a small "Game Day" where we pick the current "Flavour of the Month" game that has been popular and most people play and set up to have a few of us spend a Saturday or Sunday morning and afternoon playing a couple of games.  Either in a tournament style or just for fun.  It's all good fun and we all chuck in a fiver to keep the Club piggy bank in good health!

We also do a memorial game to honour members no longer with us who have passed on.  Previous games have included Warmaster and SAGA.

This Sunday just passed (9th October 2016) we held a little Frostgrave game day; two games from the Thaw of the Lich Lord expansion book which is a series of linked scenarios.

We managed to get just two games in but that with with five players each time sizing each other up!  The games were quite lengthy, with monsters summoned every time we rolled a 1.  I didn't do a blow by blow because that would have taken page after page, but I took a few action shots just to give a nice overview:

Mark's forces move forward to steal the loot!




 The fluffy cotton balls are an easy way to show snow drifts as terrain, and the cardboard cut outs are ship wreckes in a frozen river.  A human servant of the Lich King is about to awake and two of my friends' warbands are bracing to take him down and steal his loot!




A wider shot showing the first scenario where an eclipse lowered visibility for models but allowed a single turn of huge bonuses for mages and their apprentices.




I am especially fond of this model, which my friend, Russ, modelled to show the "two fingered salute" of an archer, viz. Agincourt.




We're hoping to do a Warmaster game day at some point and I look forward to it!  I have quite a bit of terrain for it now and would be happy to make more.  Also, I have two armies painted now, so would be able to loan one!  I hope to have more painted in the coming months, as well.


Sunday 25 September 2016

Warmaster: More High Elf Reavers


Reaver unit two out of three finished!




I've had a couple of questions about the banners my cavalry units have.  They are actually plastic 28mm Warhammer High Elf and Wood Elf plastic pieces.  They are the ribbons from White Lion axes and the flag ends from banners of the Wood Elf infantry.

I filed them down and superglued them as best I could to the banner poles which are bare in the case of High Elf cavalry in the original metal.

Unit number three is on my workbench...

Sunday 18 September 2016

Warmaster: High Elf Reavers


  I once again thought that I could set up a "factory line" to paint 3 units of these at the same time, and once again got sick of seeing them.

   I don't know how people do that; line up dozens of stands or models, no matter the scale, and work on them in batches.  I just feel like I'm not achieving anything.  I need the "hit" of seeing some finished that I can show off or I lose all interest.

   So I have finished my first batch of High Elf Reaver cavalry and I am pretty proud of them.  Ideally I want to get the other two finished sharpish and then move onto Spearmen so I have a legal 2000 point army.

 

Thursday 8 September 2016

Warmaster Battle Report: High Elves vs. Chaos


  I have, off and on, taken photos of many club nights or games that I have played.

They are rarely good, and by the time I remember to do them I realise that I have a very incomplete reference of a battle, usually half a turn in or at the very end when things are half tidied away!

This past Friday, however, I made the effort of taking them after each player's part of a turn, to give a clearer sense of movement and casualties.

It's hardly a 90s White Dwarf feature but I scribbled on the photos with Paint Tool Sai and I think it's pretty readable, with some narration...


Deployment




This was a game put on at the last minute using all my own terrain and models, painted, for the first time ever!  We had to settle at ~1300 points, a bit unusual but that's what I had to hand.  I believe the lists were:

High Elf Army, 1315 points
----------------------------------------------------------------
120 - 2 Spearmen
150 - 2 Archers
440 - 4 Silver Helms
190 - 2 Chariots
65 - 1 Elven Bolt Thrower
180 - 1 General
80 - 1 Hero
90 - 1 Wizard
---------------------------------------------------------------- 1315 - 11/6

Vs.


Chaos Army, 1300 points
----------------------------------------------------------------
300 - 2 Chaos Warriors
120 - 2 Chaos Marauders
180 - 2 Marauder Horsemen
120 - 4 Chaos Hounds
285 - 3 Chaos Chariots
125 - 1 General
80 - 1 Hero
90 - 1 Sorcerer
---------------------------------------------------------------- 1300 - 13/7

I was playing High Elves and my friend Mark was playing Chaos.  I went over the points limit slightly for High Elves, but Chaos were allowed 4 chaos hound units to compensate; something normally only allowed at the 2000 points level.

We both had a solid brigade of core infantry, but we knew that it would be the cavalry that would win or lose the battle, as is often the case in Warmaster.

Chaos Turn 1




  Mark's Chaos Horde (mostly) advanced with confidence, creating a battle line that looked quite solid from my side.  Only a couple of chaos hounds units on a flank failed to heed the call of Tzeentch.  Lacking in missile weaponry, he waited to see my opening moves.

High Elf Turn 1




 I decided to take a risk with my High Elves and split them, even as my infantry core failed to advance into position!  I put my Eagles right beside the Chaos chariots threatening to the right, in the hopes of forcing them to pull back or expose a flank to my own chariots.  Chaos Hounds threatened from the rear but I felt the Eagles worth sacrificing in order to sieze this side of the board.

My Silver Helm cavalry on the left split into two units of two, one blocking the way of the Chaos Marauder Cavalry, the other awaiting to see how Mark's core battle line would move.

My Bolt Thrower artillery crept forward just enough to get an enemy chariot unit in sight and, to my amazement, all 6 shots hit, and all 6 armour saves were failed, crippling the unit and pushing it back in a state of confusion, losing 2 out of its 3 stands!

Chaos Turn 2



  Enraged by my nasty elven habit of shooting poxy arrows from afar, Mark charged his Marauder cavalry through the wooded area on the left to meet my silver helms head on.  A tough struggle ensued, but Chaos fell back and were destroyed, allowing my Silver Helms to push forward in a combat reform and threaten his rear.

Mark moved his reserve Chariot unit to threaten my own reserve Silver Helms in the centre.

On the right hand side the Chaos Hounds were whipped into advancing but slavered and dug their heels before they could strike my Eagles.

High Elf Turn 2

 



  Fresh from defeating the Chaos Marauder Cavalry on the left flank, the remains of my Silver Helms crashed into two units of Chaos Hounds in the flank and rear, ensuring their doom.

A series of successful commands saw the remaining Silver Helms bypassing the intercepting Chaos Chariot unit and crashing into the brigade of Chaos infantry.

Meanwhile, my infantry were roused from their lethargy and pushed forward along with the bolt throwers, meaning that they could shoot at the lone Chaos Chariot unit, damaging it and putting it into confusion.

On the right hand side, my chariots crashed into Mark's Chaos forces, supported by the Eagles, destroying not just the two Chaos Chariots that had been worrying me, but also a Chaos Hound unit.

At this point, Mark had reached his breakpoint of seven units lost, so we called the match there before doing the Silver Helms on Chaos infantry combats.

RESULT:

Chaos: 7 units lost (Approx. 490 points)
High Elves: 0 units lost (Approx. 145 points)

Conclusion:

This was, I believe, the fastest game of Warmaster that I have ever played.  I also believe it is one of the very, very few times that I have won.  We played on a simple battlefield and our armies were just big enough to allow a range of units to use.  Mark's luck deserted him for a couple of crucial command and combat dice rolls, which paved the way for me to push him towards his breakpoint, by destroying his "glass cannon" units of light cavalry.

Wednesday 7 September 2016

Warmaster: High Elf Archer Brigade


A week late, but not a dollar short, I hope...

On the Specialist Games Forum the "Tale of Gamers" style posts have been revived.

A monthly friendly competition is held with gamers encouraging one another to tackle their lead foothills, mountains or indeed mountain ranges.  One promises to try and finish a certain unit or models from a particular army that month.  Later you post your progress then finished models.  At the end, other gamers vote on their favourites for that month!

For myself, I can say that I have finished four units of High Elf Archers.  They're a bit samey so I photgraphed them in two batchs of two for the sake of brevity.


It's amazing how the contrast of adding some static grass to a limited palette model can really "finish" it and make it all come together.


An observation about painting these:

First, I began using GW's Celesta Grey as a base and then Ulthuan Grey as the bright, near-white layer.  Both these paints I have given a chance and like some of GW's latest paints they seem cludgy and half-mixed with big gobs of unmixed pigment lurking inside.  That wasn't so awful except that these colours seemed to go onto the model very unevenly, even when I tried different levels of thinning.  Worse, the Ulthuan Grey had -tiny- little lumps of unmixed pigment that you might not notice on the brush until they were already on the model, leading to lots of fiddling with a clean brush to carefully get them off.

This is the 2nd pot of Ulthuan Grey I've tried and now I've pretty much given up on these GW greys.

You couldn't tell unless you squinted but the first two units I painted with the GW colours and the last two I painted using Vallejo paints.

Vallejo equivalents are Heavy BlueGrey (Celesta) and Ghost Grey (Ulthuan).  They went onto the models beautifully and were very easy to control.

I'm very close to having a large, legal, High Elf army of over 2000 points for Warmaster!



Thursday 18 August 2016

Whispers of Autumn


  I've been chipping away at the edges of my lead mountain, painting a batch of archers and plotting my next move.  I've therefore not had any finished work to show off, so thought I'd post some signs of the seasons.


  A wasps nest, built stealthily in an old stump near a flowerbed.  Some creature had attacked it in the night, perhaps mistaking the buzzing for that of bees and expecting some honey as a reward.  I can only imagine the stinging retort they endured.  We found this hive structure with some survivors picking over the ruins late in the day.



  I went out for my walk on the hill and deciding to dip down across it somewhat, and found a swathe of rosebay willowherb.   A common weed, but seeing it visited by bees, moths and butterflies gladdened my heart.



  Some little signs of the season winding down are appearing.  This is the largest patch of Lords and Ladies berries I've seen round about here, usually I only find one or two hiding under a hedgerow.


  Conkers growing in the trees.  The leaves are not turning, but all the horse chestnut trees around here seem to be afflicted with a virus that causes the leaves to brown and shrivel prematurely.

---

  I've thought that I will start writing - if not full reviews, then at least, my impressions of books I have read.  I have been delving into modern Weird fiction and horror after being fixated for the past decade on the early 20th century.  There seems to be a tight knit community for such things and I would like to broaden my horizons and become a part of it.


Thursday 28 July 2016

Warmaster: Chaos Marauder Infantry Reinforcements!


Finally!

  I made the mistake of splitting my efforts between two units and of course that means the work goes half the speed, not twice the speed...

With these two Chaos Marauder infantry units I finally have a fully painted, legal Chaos army that could go up to just shy of 3000 points!




  When I was prepping this unit I'd bought second hand, I noticed that there were two command strips, and a missing rank-and-file strip.  Not discouraged, I decided to put both command strips together on the command stand.  Let's just say it's a unit with very high morale?  It actually looks fine as these early sculpts were very generous with alternative strips and so - the two variant command strips look pleasingly different to the eye.




  These units were some of the earliest that I had prepared; half glued to stands, other half glued to lolly sticks for ease of painting.  But they had also sat on my desk or windowsill or languished in a box for the longest time.  At least a couple of years, in fact.  It is immensely satisfying to see them painted up and to be moving on to the next thing.

Monday 4 July 2016

Warmaster: Final Chaos Chariot Unit


Finally! I have finished my third and final Chaos Chariot unit for Warmaster.

I am going to proxy Dragon Ogres as chariots for a 2000 point army so I can have 6 full units of them.  Because I'll be damned if I can be bothered painting/glueing one of these nuisances again! 


The final result is lovely though, if I do say so myself... <3

My migration to new acrylic paints continues.  Several "old" GW paints have bitten the dust, the latest being the old "Dwarf Bronze" I have used with a verdigris effect for all of my Chaos.

Here you can see that paint alongside the GW replacement called "Hashut Copper" and thankfully it appears to be a perfect match.

I don't have a huge amount of Chaos left to paint before I can field a legal 2000 or even 3000 point list but it's nice to know that I'm not having to search high and low for a crucial pot of paint!