'Ere weez go!!!

So....... Month one of the new tale of gamers with my orkz and the challenge is harder than you would expect. 400Pts, only one troops choice, only one H.Q. and all for £50 (with a bit of squeeze room for the V.A.T. increase) There are two ways I could realistically go. Assault on Black Reach or the ork battleforce. Initially I was thinking that AoBR would be better for month 1 and to be honest in probably would be if I was only thinking about month one, but this is the only month I could afford the battleforce, where as with a monthly budget of £30 I could get AoBR latter (yes it cost £55 but just the orkz would be about £30)

So the battleforce it is then. As I'm planning to do an Evil Sunz Kult of Speed army I want every model to either be fast moving in it's own right or have a transport, So I started off with the Truck from the battle force and after tha mandatory red paint job, filled it with Boyz. I added a nob with a power klaw and boss pole to give the mob extra combat punch and then decided to upgrade them to 'ard boyz. As I'm only allowed one troops choice in the first game I need there 'eavy armour to keep them alive long enough to claim an objective and the extra cost means that I can make the army up to 400pts despite only having one troops unit.

Anyone see a problem....? There's no HQ unit in the ork battle force. Or is there.....?

Well no, there isn't, but I've converted one. Fitting with the evil sunz theme I've gone for Wazdakka Gutzmek as my HQ choice. Being able to move 24 inches to claim a 3+ cover save AND firing 4 strength 8 shots a turn is really potent and 5 strength 9 power klaw attacks on the turn he charges should turn the tide of any combat he joins in with. He needs to be this potent cos at 180pts he is nearly half my army for the first game.

To make Wazdakka I used one of the standard bikers with parts from the boyz mob nob, some spare assault cannons from my salamander landspeeders (Like I was going to ever use anything other than flamers and meltas on my landspeeders), a tau fussion blaster, the scenic bass from a mounted high Elf prince, some space skulls and a bit of green stuff. I'm pleased with the finished product but do let me know what you think.

As for painting I started with the skin, Orkhide shade base coat with successively light dry brushes of Snot green, Goblin green and Rotting flesh give a fast but effective ork skin colour and I gave Wakdakka a Thakka green wash to darken him up a bit. I wanted to keep the red parts clearly red, but looking dark and dirty so I started with Mechrite red with a Devlan Mud wash. I then picked out the armour and straps in another coat of Mechrite read and an edge highlight of blood red. The metal parts were mostly just Boltgun metal dry brushed over chaos black, broken up with areas of Tin Bitz with a lighter Boltgun metal dry brush. To complete the evil sunz look I added some yellow details, such a glyphs and check pattens but chose Iyanden Darksun as the yellow tone to keep then suitably dark.

I tried something a bit new for bases, snakebite leather dry brushed over scorched brown to give a muddy effect with patches of Scorched grass to give the effect that a once verdant field is now torn up by the advance of the Speed Kult.

Not quite finished painting all the boyz yet but I've still got a week to go. After the first battle I'm planning to get a blog up with how it went and some pics from the game.

See you soon.

P.S. If you like my blog please subscribe so I know people are actually reading this and I'm not just blogging to my self.

Da new beginin'

Evenin' all. I've finally had the time to put another blog up. I've been busy with work, life and winning four games in a row with my newly revised 2000pt high elf list, but that's not what I'm blogging about today.

As I said months ago I'm planning to start an ork army, that's what I'm blogging about today. I've had the models for the army and the idea for the list for a while now but I needed an incentive to get it going. Then my good friend Mr Carl Short came to me with the idea for another tale of four games for 40k. Well if you've read my blog for a while you know I can't say no to one of these collecting, painting and gaming challenges and this one has something a little extra to make it even better. Carl's done up a good set of rules for this competition to spice things up and keep us on track. Basicly we've got £50 in the first month to get 400pts of our chosen army with only one troops choice, one HQ and what ever else we want. At the end of the months we have an 8 way game at the north hill gaming club in colchester. We then get a set budget and points limit for each subsequent month and play a variety of different games. Each month we get points for the result in the games and as well as for painting, converting etc. And to add another layer to the challenge the games will form a planetary empires campaign that will play out over the months. All in all I'm really looking forward to it.

I'm not the only one blogging about it either, Carl's got his own blog about it so if you want another point of view on it, and a look at his tau army head over to http://ch1hammer.blogspot.com/2011/03/hello.html where you can also see the plans for the first game.

That all for today. I'm hoping to get some more blog action up before the end of the week with details on the start of my waaagh!

Tactica Chaplin

Hey guys. I've just finished the Space Marine Chaplain in terminator armour that my brother got me for Christmas so I wanted to show him off cos I'm really pleased with how he turned out. But rather than just rabbiting on about the paint scheme I thought I'd do a bit of tactica blog about Chaplains.

Back 4^th edition chaplains had the same stats as captains so were pretty good combat characters in there own right. That changed in 5^th edition and a chaplain's role has become more specific. His strength is in supporting other units by making them fearless and letting you re-role failed roles to hit in the first round (as long as you charge) not in killing loads of stuff himself. So when you put a chaplain in a list you need a specific unit that you're going to put him with. This unit needs to be combat focused, likely to charge rather than be charged and have a delivery system (transport, bikes, jump packs, ect) that the chaplain can join them in.

So what units should he be with? Well, any of these would be a good choice.

Terminators

Assault terminators (But not if Vulkan is in the list and you have thunder hammers)

Command squad (including bike mounted command squads)

Vanguard veterans (but not if you are planning on using heroic intervention)

Assault squad (but only really worth it with larger units)

These units, however, would be less useful units to put a chaplain with.

Tactical squad

Bike squad

Scouts

Sternguard

Devastators

These units just aren't assault focused enough and/or don't have enough attacks to make it worth the points for a chaplain.

So that’s his job sorted, but what equipment should be have? As little as possible! I usually Just take a basic chaplain with no upgrades, remember the chaplain is there to support other units, not to do much himself. Obviously if the unit he joins has jump packs or bike he will need a jump pack or a bike to keep up with them. However, in my opinion, terminator armour in only worth it if you plan him to deep strike with a terminator squad (This is a viable tactic and a teleport homer in a rhino mounted tactical squad help it to be more reliable) if he is going to ride in a landraider with terminators, save the points and give him power armour. Terminator armour means he can't use a pistol (so he gets 1 less attack) and doesn't give that much extra protection cos it will be probably be a power weapon that kills him anyway. If you have the points a plasma pistol or melta bombs are good options but only if you have points left over.

Now we have our chaplain's role defined and he's armed, what to do with him on the battle field. Well, him and his unit are awesome on the charge and not great at much else so they need to get stuck in there as soon as possible. Ideally they shouldn't get draw into protracted combats as weight of number will be a problem if combat drags on and you start taking casualty. They need to charge units that they can break or wipe out in 1 or two rounds of combat and them move onto a new target. The plan is that they can either rack up several kill points or take out the enemy’s scoring units while your tactical squads manoeuvre to the objectives or get to hard cover and give supporting fire.

That's it for my first tactica blog. Let me know if you liked it and it you want to see more of them on here

Onwards and upwards

Soooooo. Tail of gamers is pretty much over, so to quote Guns 'n Roses, where do we go now. Well 1500pts is a good start to a fantasy army but by no means all I want. I've already got loads to paint for it and the nicer looking ones will show up on this blog. After painting all those sword masters and sea guard I fancy painting something a bit different, a centre piece for the army. And what a centre piece. Last month my girlfriend, who is the most amazing and beautiful girl in the whole world (and dose subscribe to this blog), brought me a high elf lord on dragon!!! I've already build it up and done a bit of magnetization work so it can be a prince or a mage and so the wings come off for transport. I'm planning to paint it in nautical colours and do some water effects on the base and call it a sea dragon. This fits the subtle coastal theme of my army and lets me play it as either a sun, moon or star dragon for coolness and customizability.

Other than that I'm planning to expand my salamanders army and put up some tactic and painting blogs with them. I've already started this expansion with a razorback (see photos bellow) and 5 assault terminators and I'm planning to add a whirlwind, terminator chaplain, devastator squad and maybe some more dreadnoughts. These will all be playing on the nice new realm of battle gaming board I'm getting in the new year (not much to blog about there, I'm just rather looking forward to it) and some will be coming to the 40k doubles tournament in feb with me and Adam (plenty to blog about there).

Finally, after the doubles tournament I'm planning to go green. No, I’m not talking about carbon neutral blogging, or recycling my models. Nope, I'm starting my own WAAAAGH! Probably doing an Evil Sunz Kult of speed, but more on that another time, for now I'll leave you with my razorback.

The elven hoast grows

I'm back.

Sorry it's been a while. This past month I've managed to to get loads of great looking models painted up for my high elves :) but then only had time for one game :(

I had planned to build 1250pts, play with it, blog about it and then go onto 1500pts. Alas, time and work had other idea's and the 1250pts game and blog got put aside. However, the painting did get done, more sea guard and a noble with a reaver bow as well as putting the shadow warriors back into the list. The obvious highlight of this step was the noble. He turned out really great, especially the gold. I base coated the gold in shinning gold and the gave it a wash of ogryn flesh. Then I painted all but the lowest recesses in another coat of shinning gold before building up a highlight of burnished gold and finally methril silver. Turned out really shiny and makes him stand out in the big unit of seaguard that he hangs out with in most games.

The next step was to go to 1500pts. Once again, more seaguard, giving my a huge unit of 32 with every model able to attack when they get charged. To this I added a unit of 5 dragon princes to give my army some manoeuvrability and punch. I used the old models cos I brought and assembled them about 2 weeks before GW announced they were doing new plastic one, Grrrrrr! I'd never painted horses before but I think basing them in white, washing in a watered down mix of astronomican and codex grey and the highlighting in white worked out ok for the majestic elven steeds.

For these guys and the noble I had a crack at using citadel water effects on the base. For the noble I've got him standing on a rock in the sea which looked ok but kind of tailed off at the edges. For the princes I did my standard elf bases but with a few rivers and puddles with turned out much better because they were enclosed which gave a better effect.In the past months I had played a few practice games with the high elves at various point levels and the dragon princes had done ok but no so in my game with this army at 1500pts. I made the sort of mistake that I reckon most fantacy players make once and will never, ever, ever! Do again. My opponent was a Chaos player and fielded a hell cannon and I thought, ahar, a war machine with nothing protecting it his flank. I took the opportunity to charge it with 200pts worth of dragon princes thinking I would kill the crew quickly and then charge back into the rear of his main army later in the game. Unfortunately the hell cannon counts as a monster with handlers not a war machine, making it much harder to kill. I still thought I had a chance and did win the combat by 1 and hopped it would break. Alas my opponent pointed out it was unbreakable, leaving my the princes locked in combat to get eaten next turn. The rest of the game was a closer affair than it could have been but too many chaos units hit my battle line at the same time and I just couldn't cope and I lost badly. In hind-sight I should have used my dragon princes to charge the flank of his marauders (next unit along the line from the hell cannon and slightly in-front) and then disrupt the rest of his battle line. But hey, you live and lean.

That's tail of gamers pretty much over as 1500 was where we were aiming for, but it's far from the end for my high elves or this blog.

To be continued............

All at Sea.

This last few weeks I've been so busy with work life and love (and starting a 40k campaign with my flat mate) that I've not had that much time for the high elves but I'm back with a quick update on what I have done. I've now got my first 1000pts fully painted. To round it off I've bulked out my sea guard and swordmasters to 24 and 16 respectively giving me 2 good sized combat units but the main addition is an eagle claw bolt thrower. Painting that much wood was a new challenge so I tried to use a variation of what I did for the bows on my archers. Base coat in snakebite leather and then drag a really old brush over it in one direction with bleached bone to try and get a wood grain effect. Repeat and then dry-brush the edges in skull white. You can't see it too well in the photo but I'm happy enough with the result.

I've only managed one game against an experienced chaos player at the store. We played the mission where you have to kill standards and the general to make you opponent's army break. He Only had one standard (one point) and a general on juggernaut (two point) to count for this; with a breakpoint of one this ment I had to kill his general. Easier said than done when he's on a juggernaut in a unit of chaos knights. My sword masters almost did it with a flank charge after they killed his trolls but they fled and left my mage undefended with my archers and seaguard on the other side dealing (quite effectively) with his warriors. A fun game but ended suddenly, sooner that I would have liked when they charged my mage.

Next thing to add is a noble (with a reaver bow?) and maybe some more seaguard, as well as getting some more games in.

See you next time.

Ahoy sailors!

For the first addition to my high elf army I've gone for 20 Lothren Sea Guard. This is only the start of a much bigger unit I've got planned but twenty is a good start and lets me take full advantage of there ability to fight in 4 ranks. This gives me a few points left to bulk out the swordmasters to 10 for a bit more survivability. To do this I've temporally dropped the shadow warriors as they proved less than effective last time out.

As I started these guy before IoB was launched they are all from the spearmen set with added bows and hand painted seaguard shields (fun to paint but took ages). I've tried to add a bit of variety to the unit with a mix of different poses including a couple with bows taken from the archers and one I particularly like parrying upward as if blocking an arrow.

The new structure of the army has served me better than my 500pt list. Admittedly I lost my first game, against mike's high elves (2 big units of sea guard, a fire mage and a bolt thrower shot me to bits before I could do much. Flame cage really screwed my sword masters) but then I got my first win of tale of gamers against kyles lizardmen. My mage started well shooting down his terradons and using curse of arrow attraction to help the sea guard kill off the skinks in one round. This brought my swordmasters time to sneak round behind the big block of saurus with his scar vet. I deliberately delayed my charge to give my archers, sea guard and mage as much time as possible to shoot but still charged in time to prevent the saurus charging my missile units. Two rounds of combat saw my swordmasters wiped out but took plenty of saurus and the scar vet with them (Swordmaster champions are great in challenges). The remaining saurus fell to missile fire so by the time they charged my sea guard I was able to kill the 3 survivors before they even got to strike.

I like the direction the army is going and I have loads of sea guard still to paint. With that in mind I'm liking the idea of an army from Eataine, the most southerly elven kingdom. Sailing out of Lotheren, the army would have little time to gather forces from too far off so would consist mostly of sea guard with support from other units from Eataine and the neighbouring provinces of Caledor and Saphery.

I'm planning to bulk out the fluff a bit more next time around, as I am the sea guard unit.