Ogre Ironguts

I've got my next unit finished now in my Ogre army: a unit of Ironguts.











The faces were harder to paint on these ones, due to the more restricted poses of the miniatures (the arms in front of the face, the helmets etc). The banner was done in much the same way as the banner on the Ogre Bulls I completed a couple of weeks ago.

I've resolved to push myself a little bit more with each paint job, to try something new each time, maybe some freehand, or wet blending, so that's going to be my resolution for future units. I was going to freehand a bit more on the banner, but I didn't get chance.

Next up: build my giant (I built 6 more Bulls last week as well), then I've got a couple of 40K projects I need to get done soon, namely 6 Obliterator conversions from AoBR terminators, and a new Rhino. I managed to pick up a classic Mark I Rhino on ebay which needs a bit of attention but I should be able to turn it into a suitably Nurgle vehicle.

Ogre Butcher

I've not had much time to devoted to painting recently, but I've just managed to get my Ogre Butcher finished:




The Halfling Cookbook:


The apron wasn't very smooth, I'm weak at smooth green stuff. With hindsight, I should have used milliput as that's much easier to get smooth.

The blood sprays on the apron were done with a mix of scab red and chaos black. I then thinned that down, and dipped an old toothbrush in it. I then used the stiff bristlles of the toothbrush to flick the paint over the model, mainly the apron and the cleavers. After than I added some more blobs of paint by stippling Scab Red and then Red Gore to highlight some of the larger blobs.

Ironguts are on the table next.

Ogre Bulls: Finished

Just found a spare half an hour this weeks to finish off the bases, to complete my first fully painted unit for my Ogre Kingdoms army: 4 Bulls with additional hand weapons.




The colour selection for the minis was a bit of a gamble, as I hand't painted any test models before hand to try it out like I'd done for previous armies. I knew I wanted to do snow bases, and knew that I wanted to keep to a fairly muted, cold palette for the unit as I plan for them to be from the high peaks of the Mountains of Mourn. I quite like the colour selection, but I'm not sure on the banner background for a future colour, I think it needs more contrast.






Mostly the unit was done with GW foundation paints, with Adeptus Battlegrey and Astronomicon Grey for the skin, Fenris Grey, highlighted up to Shadow Grey for the trousers.

Generally speaking, I'm pretty rubbish at painting faces, but the size and level of detail on the Ogres meant it was quite easy to do. I'm particularly pleased with the Bellower.

The standard was a bit of a gamble as well, as I hadn't planned out any kind of army or tribe symbols so after much deliberating I went for the symbol of the Great Maw. I figured I could always paint over it if it went wrong. I started but drawing around a 1 penny piece with a pencil to give me a circle to work to, then I drew in the teeth part with the same pencil. Once that was done I painted them in with Mechrite Red, highlighted with Blood Red and touched over any stray pencil lines or red paint with the grey.

The bases were done using GW snow, something I hadn't used before. I toyed with painting parts of the base white first and then snow covering those, but in the end I decided a more natural effect would be to do the snow in a couple of layers. I think next time I'll texture the base a bit more first with some milliput to provide lumps and bumps and then add the snow in a couple of layers.

With 8th Ed just around the corner, this unit will probably get bulked out to 5 models and have a character added to give it two ranks of 3 Ogres. I envisage using my Butcher in this unit, so that's what is going under the brush next.

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.

Second time with the Ogres

I got game 2 in with the Ogres this week, again doubling up with another player like last week like last week. We were taking on Skaven this time, with a magic heavy list (11 power dice and 7 warp tokens). We got stomped flat.

Both these games have really helped me get a little insight into the army strengths and weaknesses. Psychology really hurt us alot in this game with a unit of 7 Bulls and a Butcher panicking off the table on turn 1 (a good demonstration of why the MSU style list would have helped), plus my Bruiser and 4 Ironguts losing a combat against a unit of giant rats, failing their break test (even with a reroll) and being run down.

I'll be back again next week with the big guys.

First time out for the Ogres

I took my newly assembled Ogres out to club night last for their first game. Now, I haven't played Fantasy since 2nd Edition so I wasn't exactly expecting to win. I'd put together a 1000 point list out of the Bruiser, Butcher, Bulls, Ironguts and Leadbelchers I'd made out of the battalion box.

I teamed up with another Ogre player who had about 1400 points worth of troops, and we squared off against Tomb Kings. I made some pretty elimentary mistakes thanks to my inexperience and lack of knowledge, but we actually ended up winning the game, surprisingly.

Having played 40K exclusively for so long, adjusting my mindset to a game where you don't have a 360 degree field of vision took me a couple of turns to get used to; along with getting used to a game which is won and lost in deployment and the movement phase but I enjoyed it alot, I'm really looking forward to 8th Edition.

Just playing this one game really helped me to develop ideas about what is good and bad in the list I'd built, and how Ogres are played, built and deployed. Probably over the next couple of months, I'll be adding a couple more units to bring me up to 1500 points. I'll probably pick up another box of Bulls and possibly a gorger or a giant (I love the giant model).

Ogre Characters WIP Part II

Following on from yesterday's Bruiser, here's my more or less done Butcher:


Again, kit bashed from the Ogre Battalion box. The apron didn't quite come out how I'd envisaged, I realised after I'd done it that it should be lower on his chest.

One part I like is his Halfling Cookbook:


What could be a better cook book than a real, live Halfling to carry round with you?

Ogre Characters WIP Part 1

Having completed my last lot of primed 40K miniatures last week, I thought it was time I got to work on the Ogre Battalion box set I got for Christmas. I'm in two minds as to whether I'm actually going to play any games of Fantasy before 8th Edition, given I don't know the 7th Edition rules that well, I think I might as well just wait and learn the new rules along with everyone else.

Anyway, my Ogre army is about 1000 points or a little over, and I've got 4 Bulls, 4 Ironguts, 4 Leadbelchers and 30 Gnoblars built. They just need a final clean-up, gap filling and basing.

For the characters, I'm converting a spare Bull into a Bruiser and a second Bull into a Butcher. The Butcher is still not completed, but here's the Bruiser:



This was mostly kit bashed from the contents of the Battalion box, plus a couple of Ork shoulders I found in my bitz box. I tried to build him so he could be reasonably interpreted as having a few different magic items depending on how I field him (Gut Maw, Greedy Fist, Greyback Pelt etc). After I'd put him together, I glanced at the cover of the army book and realised I'd subconciously built something similar to the Ogre Tyrant on the cover....

The cloak is from a Chaos Terminator Lord with fur added using green stuff to make him stand out more from the average Bull:


I'm quite pleased with the effect of the fur, and hopefully it will look convincing when it's painted up.

It's pretty simple to do:

-Lay greenstuff over the area you want to make furry. It's need to be reasonably thick to take the marks you're going to put in it, so maybe 2mm or so.
-Smooth it out, it doesn't need to be prefect just flatter. I used the round end of the standard GW sculpting tool.
-Using something pointed, work around the fur in a line pulling the green stuff downwards to look like fur. I used this tool for this part:


It's basically a pointy blade on a stick, but use whatever you've got which is similar.
-At the edges of the fur, pull the GS apart a little as you mark it to look more fur like.

I'm looking forward to painting this one. I'll share picture of the Butcher when he's done.

New year, New Army

After Christmas, I'm starting an all new army. In fact, an all new games system. As you can probably guess from the picture, I'm starting a Fantasy Ogre Kingdoms army. Having never played Fantasy before, this should be interesting. I chose Ogre's simply because they are my favourite miniatures in the Fantasy range, and I'm well aware they are considered to be a little underpowered.

If anyone has any blog links for good Fantasy blogs, and Ogre's in particular then please let me know in the comments.

Of course, I'm not neglecting my 40K armies. I'm aiming for 2010 to be the year of the Witch Hunters. I'm getting some more Sisters for Christmas so I should have about 1200 points of force org legal troops after Christmas so I'll hopefully get some games in.