Stylish Blogger Award

Imagine my surprise when I heard from Meatball from My Dice Hate Me that he had been kind enough to nominate my inane ramblings for a Stylish Blogger Award! I was both shocked and pleased, especially as I've not been as on top of things in the world of blogging as I should have been in recent months.

The Stylish Blogger Award given from one blogger to another one might say, is like a pat on the back for a good job. It's definitely a viral, zombie-like spread of good will so it's too good to pass up.

There are four rules for the Stylish Blogger Award:

• Thank and link back to the person giving you the award
• Share seven things about yourself
• Select 10-15 blogs who you think deserve this award
• Contact these bloggers and let them know about the award

So first of all, a big thanks to Meatball for choosing my blog. I've been reading his blog (in both his previous and current incarnations) for a long time now, being as he is a fellow Witch Hunter's player. If you don't already, go and check out My Dice Hate Me and click on the Follow button.

So first of all, seven things about me:

1. I like zombies. Anything to do with zombies really. My favourite non-Romero zombie movies are Zombi 2 (aka Zombie Flesh Eaters), Zombieland and Tombs of the Blind Dead.
   
2. I have (almost) 3 sons.
3. The first miniature I ever painted was the dwarf from the Warlock of Firetop Mountain boardgame
4. Having The Hobbit read to me at school when I was about 8 changed my life
5. You can follow me on twitter @tigerstyle40k
   
6. I've been into miniature wargaming since 1989, but I did stop for 12 years between 1995 and 2007
7. Apart from minis and zombies, I also like podcasts, music, Lego and sleep.
   

So here's my list of bloggers to nominate (aside from My Dice Hate Me go and check that out anyway) in no particular order :

1- Standard Template Construct: Roleplayer is a fabulous painter, even if you don't like Space Marines (like me), then check out his work.

2- The Lower Crypt: This is a Malifaux terrain blog, and there's some really great stuff on here. It's a little behind in being updated, but check it out for the awesome terrain.

3- Warpstone Flux: Jabberjabber has been a long time follower and supporter of this blog, and he always impresses me with his regular updates whilst still maintaing high quality.

4- Excommunicate Traitoris: Superb paint jobs focussing on Inquisition armies.

5- The Glorious Works: The guys running this blog provide regular Malifaux oriented posts, which I always enjoy reading.

6- Constantly Risking Obscurity: Consistently excellent and interesting post from Mike, and he's been kind enough to offer advice to me in the past.

7- John's Toy Soliders: Another long time follower, John provides varied and consistent updates, and some nice photos as well.

8- Kantor Base: The Hammer provides excellent 40K coverage and even some Fantasy.

9- Sons of Twilight: 40K and Lego, two of my favourite things.

10- 2 Ton Studios: Wolfy is a friend of mine and a fellow Freeboota so check out his 40K painting blog as well. He's casting some sweet bases as well.

Hope you enjoy reading these blog. If one of these blogs is yours then drop me a comment below to say you've seen it to save me the job of contacting you.

Cheers
Chris

Malifaux: Grave Spirit

More Malifaux stuff, with still more to come.

This time a Grave Spirit and another try out of OSL:


This totem will link to another model and confer them Armor 2, which reduces the number of wounds inflicted. One of these combined with Nicodem for example (who is already Hard to Wound 1 and can assign hits to nearby zombies) makes him tough to kill.

Malifaux: Crooked Men

I've started a new job this week, so I haven't had much chance to paint anything for almost a fortnight, but today the kid's were out all day leaving me with several hour painting time.

So... Crooked Men:



The one in the middle is my first ever attempt at OSL:

I've got the idea I think, just need to work on the execution. I'll be giving this another go with my grave spirit I think.

And this one has a really wierd zombie canary in his hand:

This guy has a flat top to his head like Helicopter Zombie for Dawn of the Dead.



Still to come in this crew:

-Mortimer the Gravedigger
-3 Samurai Punk Zombies
-2 Canine Remains
-Grave Spirit
-Flesh Contrust

Malifaux: Vultures

I've finished the next models in my crew, 2 vulture totems. I'm not I'll ever want to field two (not unless it's a really big game), but when I bought the models second hand I got two of them. They look OK from tabletop distance anyway.




I've had some more models arrive this week for the crew as well: 2 canine remains, 3 punk zombies and a flesh construct. They've been added to my "to paint" list.

The rules manual also arrived on Tuesday. I'm really impressed with it, it makes alot of the areas that the main book is vague on (blast markers and corpses counters are two examples I've struggled with), and it's got a huge section on strategies and schemes. I'm guessing some of this must be taken from "Rising Powers" (which I don't own yet), as there are master specific schemes in there for masters which are only in that book.

Malifaux: Bat rep, Nicodem Vs McMourning (25ss)

I played my first (almost) full game of Malifaux last night. This was at 25ss. I say it was almost full, we just both used the Slaughter strategy rather than flipping for it, the idea being to keep it simple as I'm still learning the game and my opponent was still learning a new crew.

He was my list:
Nicodem, The Undertaker
Mortimer, The Gravedigger
3 Crooked Men
1 Vulture
Soulstone Cache of 7

And the opposing crew:
Dr Douglas McMourning
Sebastian
Flesh Construct
4 Canine Remains
Soulstone Cache of about 5-6

Deployment was just standard across the board.

I kept back, and castled up my crooked men around Nicodem. Mortimer dug up a corpse counter and Nicodem raised a mindless zombie from it to protect himself. My vulture headed forward and I attempted a Decay through it against the dogs, but I was cheated out of it.

McMouring and his crew headed forward fast, McMourning using his scalpel sling off the Flesh Contrust to catapult himself another 6" of so forward, but wounded the Flesh Construct in the process.

Things were starting to look bad around turn 2 or 3. I was really thinking I was going to get kerb stomped as I was not confident in my own crew's melee abilities, but this point was where it turned round.

My Crooked Men used Shafted to block the route between some terrain. This meant the Flesh Construct had to risk it, so my opponent sent his dogs into clear it, wounding them in the process. I dropped another Shafted on my activation in the same place, so he had to send in another dog. His other surviving dog charged and wounded my third Crooked Man. The FC then killed a Crooked Man. At this point, he had two dogs and a wounded Construct (I'd softed it up as it advanced using Cave In) very close together.

Nicodem then used Decay to kill the dog that had wounded my Crooked Man, leaving him free to Cave In the Flesh Contruct, killing it and using the blasts to kill the two dogs near him.

Next turn, Nicodem had what he needed: alot of Corpse Counters. I summoned my Crooked Man back and then raised 6 mindless zombies. Nicodem then used Rigor Mortis to paralyze McMourning. I pretty much managed to keep McMourning paralyzed for the rest of the game, which was just as well, as on the one turn I didn't do it (thanks for a rubbish control hand), he caused carnage, killing Mortimer and a zombie and healing 8 wounds. I eventually killed Sebastian and McMourning resulting in a win, mainly thanks to Bolster Undead making my zombies much tougher.

A great game overall, very tactical and I really had to think about how my crew works, particularly with more of a support caster like Nicodem. I'm not sure how I would have faired in a strategy which required me to move around the board more.