Morbus Legion

I got a new case last week (A Father's Day present), so I had to unpack my whole army from the crappy boxes I used to keep them in and re-pack them in the new case. I don't think I've ever had them all out in one place before, so I took some pictures before they all went back in the box.



Troops, including 35 Plague Marines and 44 Lesser Daemons and a couple of rides:







HQ choices, 2 Daemon Princes, a Sorcerer, and the only non-Nurgle model in the army:






My Elites, terminators, dread, and Chosen:





Heavy Support, Defiler, Vindicator and Doomsday Device:


Anyway, they're back in the box now until the next Apocalypse game!

Battle Report: Ogres Vs Dark Elves

I played two 1000 point games last week, both against the same player who was running Dark Elves. I can sum both games up in a short phrase: I got mashed.

Here's my list:

Brusier, Heavy Armour, Great Weapon, 2 Gnoblar Thiefstones, Fistful of Laurels
Buther, Bangstick and Dispell scroll

4 Ironguts, Standard with Look-out Gnoblar and a Bellower
4 Bulls, additional HW, Standard with Look-out Gnoblar and a Bellower

2 Leadbelchers
2 Leadbelchers

The Dark Elves were all mounted, led by a lvl 2 magic user. He had two units of Dark Ridesr, a unit of Cold One Knights and a repeater bolt thrower. In the first game he include a unit of Shades with an Assassin. For the second game he swapped the shades and assassins for a hero on a manticore (which was brutal).

Dark Elves are a tough list, they had a fair amount shooting and fast moving cavalry which meant it was hard for me to get into combat with them. I killed the Cold Ones in both games, since they were the only unit he had that really wanted to get close to me. The shades and assassins also got killed to some decent magic from the Butcher (bang stick and bone cruncher). Other than that he took me apart with shooting and magic.

With 8th Edition around the corner, I suppose alot of things I took away from these games will change in 8th. One thing that will be better is ranked Ogres, since they are monstrous infantry the second rank get up to 3 attacks each, plus the Stomp attack. So with 6 Ogres with no upgrades you're getting 18 S4 attacks, plus Bull Charge (at S5), plus the Stomp attacks. Add in the rank and the standard and you're potentially getting some decent combat res.

Probably what I will do is expand my Bulls to a 5 Ogre unit and add a character to it, or put it at 6, and throw 2 characters in with my Ironguts.

In the new White Dwarf, Phil Kelly has picked an Ogre list for 8th Edition. He's got a 6 wide horde unit of 15 Bulls, which is clearly going to be pretty nasty. The drawback is going to be that it's massive (so hard to manoever), it's 575 points, and Ld 7. I suppose if you stuck your general and BSB in there you'll be testing on his Ld with a re-roll but it's a lot of points to risk panicking of the board on turn 1.

What won't change in 8th is the Gut Magic miscast table will still be brutal.

Ogre Character from Avatars of War

Just a quick post, Avatars of War have got a new (to me anyway) Ogre character out:

He looks like a perfect Tyrant or Bruiser. I've got an AoW Chaos Warrior sat primed on my painting table and the quality of the minis is really good, and the sculpts are great.

2nd Birthday

Today (24th June) marks the second birthday of this blog, and honestly, it doesn't feel like two years ago since I started this. So thanks for reading, and hopefully I can't getting back to some more regular updates in the coming months!

Shoot 'em in the head

When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth - Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Here's what I spent the last couple of weeks doing the second half of: a Plague of Zombies.


I did the first 20 of these a few months back, over the last couple of weeks I've done the other 24 of them and the Plague Lord to lead them.


These are some close up example of them (I might do a banner for the guy in the middle eventually). For each group of 10-12, I probably spent around 2-3 hours on them, so they're not great but they look good as whole. The skin was basically done by drybrushing three shades of green from the foundation range over black.

Game-wise, these zombies have a triple usage:
-Summoned Lesser Daemons in a standard game using the Chaos Space Marines
-Plaguebearers in my (still WIP) Chaos Daemons army
-A Plague of Zombies in an Apocalypse game

The Plague of Zombies needs a Plague Master to lead it:




The picture didn't come out that well, but you get the idea. This model was converted from the Necromancer from the Corpse Cart model, with a head and weapon swap. I got a bit stuck for ideas on the scythe handle so it looks a bit flat. I might try some wood grain on it if I get chance.

In praise of Gryphonne Sepia

Everyone loves Devlan Mud. Slap some Devlan Mud on a mini, instant depth for a table top mini. I love Devlan Mud myself.

But, there's one other colour in the wash set that I love nearly as much, one that is a bit in the shadow of the mighty Devlan Mud: Gryphonne Sepia. This is a colour I've been using more and more, often to tint or shade much lighter bases colours.

Let me share some examples using some of the minis I've done over the past year (these have all been on the blog before).

Firstly, Gryphonne Sepia to shade parchment:



The Sage was done with a Dheneb Stone base, washed with Sepia and then a highlight of Dheneb Stone. The Familiars had similar but I think I used Kommando Khaki as a base for them. Quick and easy, this is also good for things like purity seals.

I also use the Sepia for pallid skin tones:



On the subject of painting skin tones, check out the Precinct Omega podcast episode 3 (in fact check out all of them) which has an excellent section on painting differing types of skin tones.

I also use Gryphonne Sepia for bone or horn as well if I want something quick. This is what I used on the horns and claws for my Nurgle Dreadnought:



...and my Eversor (bit of a small pic, but it was the only one I had to hand):

I've also used it to quickly do the skull work on terrain as well. Both of these were done over a base of Astronomicon Grey and the Sepia tints it nicely.

Finally, I've also used Gryphonne Sepia to tint silver to give a pale gold. This is an idea I stole from the Painting Corps, and used on my Inquisitor's power sword handle:


Along with Liche Purple and Dheneb Stone, I'd rank Gryphonne Sepia as one of my favourite colours to work with.

Dark Heresy Campaign

A couple of months back, I managed to pick up the Dark Heresy core rulebook on ebay at a pretty reasonable price. It was all the cooler as it was signed by GW artist Karl Kopinski, as it was Karl's wife that was selling it.

So I've been wanting to try it out, but normally on club nights I prefer to play 40K or Fantasy rather than anything else.

Having said that, I've actually rolled up a character this week, as I'm hoping to play in an online Dark Heresy campaign via the Freebootaz forums.

I decided to play a Scum character, as I've always liked the Underhive ganger type of character so that's what I went for. I haven't really done much roleplaying for the last 15 years, last time I played was Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition I think.

I've written up a background for the character, it's a bit cliched, but I'm still learning and I couldn't think of a really unique angle. I originally wanted him to be a master forger, but I think for that I'd really need to play an Adept which I didn't particularly want to. Instead I went for a more classic Hive ganger by the name of Sil "Sham" Drust, complete with tattoos and ultraviolence. I kind of imagined him a bit like Joe Peschi in Good Fellas: violently underpredictable. Being a Scum class means he get pretty high Fel scores to start with and some Fel based skills, so I think he's probably pretty charming until you either cross him, or you don't give him what he wants, then the ultra-violence starts.

I'll share some updates for how Sham progresses once the campaign get going a bit more

Battle Report: Ogres Vs Bretonnians

Firstly, apologies for the lack of updates to the blog. Over the last few weeks, I've been working really hard so I haven't had much time for hobby. What I have had time for has been cleaning, assembling and priming models, none of which are very exciting blog topics.

Anyway, I did get a game in last night, my third game of Fantasy. I've only got 1000 points of Ogres, so a club mate was good enough to lend me some extra models. I grabbed some models from his case which I approximated to be around 2000 points (I think, it was in that area anyway), so this was going to be the largest game I've played on my own. I was lining up against Bretonnians (hi Ryan if you're reading this!), and I didn't have much chance of winning from the kick off, mainly because my opponent is a far better general than me, but the game was a good chance for me to learn some basic stuff and have a laugh.

So the result was pretty inevitable. The Bretonnian army wasn't the usual one you picture when you think of that army, as it had a load of peasant bowmen, a trebuchet, a couple of big infantry blocks, all support by a unit of Knights led the general and 3 Pegasus knights. I was worried about getting too shot up so I deployed behind some terrain for a good half of my army, which did protect me from shooting but prevented me from getting anywhere. I'd probably have been better just deploying the whole army infront of his gun line and running at him, and taking whatever he was throwing at me.

I have to say, in this game, I could not roll a dice to save my life. I rolled 2s and 3s to run away from combat, I miscast on two dice twice and then my Butcher's lost all their spells for the whole game, my Tyrant was held for two rounds of combat with a unit peasant bowmen as I could only kill one per turn. Rubbish. To be fair, the best luck in the world probably wouldn't have saved me from my tactical errors.

For my character loadout, I tried the Daemon killer scars on my Tyrant (meaning he caused terror), but it didn't pay off that well. On the Butchers, the bangstick was the only thing which actually managed to kill any knights so that worked well.

Good game though. Roll on 8th Edition, just placed my order from Maelstrom Games for it yesterday.