Touched by the hand of celebrity (sort of)

I was skimming through my FaceBook feed this morning, when I see a post from the day before yesterday on the My Battalion page:

http://mybattalion.com/content/artic...-by-tigerstyle

That looks familiar, I thought...

The admins at My Battalion had picked out my Ogres to feature on the hobby page! I was quite excited, sad but true.

And it was picked on my birthday as well :D

Battle Report: Chaos Space Marines Vs Imperial Guard

I had been planning on playing 8th Edition Fantasy at club night last week, but I couldn't find anyone with a small army so I ended up playing 40K instead. I haven't played 40K for a while so it was a nice change.

I was playing an Imperial Guard player, who's army had more heavy weapons than I've ever seen in one army. He must have had about 20 or so heavy weapons teams, plus 3 Leman Russ (one ordinary, one exterminator and one punisher), plus some veterans. There were so many gun teams in fact, I'm not wholly sure how he?d managed to get them all in, but then again, I don?t know the IG codex that well. Anyway, it was Annhilation with Dawn of War deployment.

In my list, it was more or less my usual 1500 point list, except that I dropped the Defiler and Vindicator in favour of 2 squads of 2 Obliterators. This was one of the driving forces for me for the game, as I've got a tournament coming up in November so I thought I give them a try and see what the fuss was about.

My plan was fairly simple: get close and kill IG in assault. This is exactly what I did. My units suffered a bit on the way over there, but once I got there I was able to tear units apart. IG have nothing really against a unit of Plague Marines up close, even two of the Leman Russ were of limit use. The Punisher cannon was pretty useless against T5, FnP Plague Marines. Even my Rhino got in on the act and tank shocked 3 heavy bolter teams off the table. So the end result was a win for me by tabling him in turn 6.

The obliterators worked fairly well, while they didn't kill much they felt pretty threatening throughout the whole game. I had lost three of them by the end, but not one had died to enemy fire. No, my dreadnought had gone into a fire frenzy twice and killed three of them. The game helped me with some thoughts around what will we be in my tournament list (Obliterators) and what won't be (Dreadnoughts, of which I had thought about taking three).

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.

Precinct Omega Podcast

If you're after a new podcast to listen to, then I can thoroughly recommended the Precinct Omega hobbycast. It's five episodes old, and I'm really enjoying it, it's a change from the usual podcast fair as it focuses purely on hobby stuff for all different types of miniature painting. Robey from Precinct Omega studios is a great painter so the information is very good (he used to go to my local club before he moved down south), so check out his podcast here, or search for precinctomega on iTunes.

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.

Spearhead

The new White Dwarf arrived this morning, complete with the new spearhead rules.

Here's the headline points on Spearhead:

-Force org chart is unchanged in terms of what you can take, but it adds in the ability to take spearhead formations in addition to the usual slots. There are no compulsory slots.

-Spearhead formations seem to be like apocalypse formations in that they cost some points plus models, there's one provided in WD which consists of 3 tanks or walkers gives all the models the Tank Hunter special rule for an additional 60 points on top of the model cost. More formations will be on the website, and there will be super-heavy spearheads

-Game is played from short edge to short edge

-3 new missions: Breakthrough (VP for being in the opponents half), lightning war (3 objectives), vital ground (objectives but one is nominated as the vital objective so gives 3 VPs)

-Random game length as usual

-Troops, tanks, walkers and spearhead units are scoring

-3 new deployment methods: Counter attack (deploy in a wedge shape formation), cauldron (bit like pitched battle) and Escalation (bit like Dawn of War, in you deploy one spearhead or three non-spearhead units and everything else is in reserve).

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.