The Grand Tradition Of Losing

Today my old opponent S and I travelled to Warhammer World and played two games of Warhammer Fantasy 6th Edition. We each brought two 2,250 point armies, I wrote (well, adapted) two scenarios, and we randomised things by rolling to see which army we chose first, and what scenario we'd be fighting. The first game was my Skaven versus S's Wood Elves, and the scenario was a slightly adapted Breakthrough - the Wood Elves having to get units into my deployment zone and I had to stop them:

Deployment from my side. The terrain was placed then its position scattered 2d6 using the "Storch Method" named after a fellow on one of the 6th Edition Facebook groups

Wood Elf deployment! The Skaven line looked quite formidable...

End of Turn 1 from the Skaven point of view - you can see where the Stormvermin had run away for a bit after taking a bunch of casualties to shooting. I remembered after the game that they had a 4+ ward save against shooting that wasn't S5 or greater. You can also see that the right-hand Clanrat unit is missing two ranks... that's because the Ratling Gun that's pointing at them misfired (of course) and instead of obliterating the Scouts that are behind the grey woods in the middle, pumped a spray of lead into their comrades instead. Yes-good! All as the Horned Rat wills-demands!

End Turn 1 from the Wood Elf perspective. Those Scouts were very lucky that I got greedy with the Ratling Gun...

End Turn 2, Skaven view: the poison wind globadiers were initially charged by an Alter Kindred Noble, but a Stand and Shoot with poison gas killed him outright! So they then got pasted by arrows, and the Warlock Engineer decided discretion was the best part of valour and ran away errr performed tactical repositioning. The Stormvermin had regained their position in the line and were now Frenzied thanks to the Grey Seer. The Tunnel Team hadn't bothered showing up this turn sadly.

End Turn 2, Wood Elf view: the rat swarms did a great job of stopping the Wardancers, but the Wild Riders and Warhawks were posed to be a serious pain. The Glade Guard has killed the Ratling Gun, and one of the Spellsingers had used a spell to turn one of the Warpfire Throwers into mush.

End Turn 3, Skaven View: at this point I conceded. My Clanrats were dead or fleeing, my Rat Ogres wildly out of position, my Jezzails unable to do anything as the Eternal Guard were hiding in the wood, the Tunnel Team having arrived late were unable to get a charge off and were now sitting ducks (rats?), and S still had almost every unit entirely intact.

End Turn 3, Wood Elf view: The Gutter Runners, late and unable to catch the elves. The Treeman standing victorious where the Stormvermin had once been - Frenzied they may have been, but they whiffed! Only the Jezzails and Rat Ogres remain to oppose the Asrai.

A very funny game which really did hinge on the Ratling Gun misfiring in Turn 1 and blasting my own unit - if it had killed the Scouts instead, then I would have taken far less casualties and maybe even managed to get my Assassin out! As it was, the failure of the Weapons Teams and the running away of the rats spelled doom. The Horned Rat was not smiling on me today.

Lessons Learned: Remember your rules! I forgot to give my Stormvermin their 4+ Ward save against magic and mundane missiles of S4 or less thanks to the Umbranner, and the miserable Leadership 5 of most of the Skaven should have been boosted by their rank bonus, making most of the tests I took should have been on at least an 8 - but, again, I simply didn't remember. I think the Tunnel Team would have performed a little better if I'd given them slings to shoot with, but there we go.

After a spot of lunch outside from a little food van - as Bugmans' is being renovated - we returned to play the second game. This was an adapted Ambush scenario, with the Ogres defending and the Night Goblins attacking. As before we placed the scenery then scattered it 2d6 inches:

 

Deployment - the Night Goblin left, with the mercenary ogres and various comedy units

Deployment - the Night Goblin right and main force, with all the actual gobbos and the trolls. You can see the Ogre force clumped around the farmhouse ready to take them on

End Turn 1: A little animosity over on the right had staggered the advance, but the first fanatic to be released killed one of the Hunter's hounds. The Trolls had actually been able to move despite my risky positioning of them!

End Turn 3 - I didn't take a photo at the end of turn 2 I think! The slave giant had charged my Ogres in the rear and lost, running away, my own giant had charged some Bulls in the rear and they just didn't go anywhere either. The Trolls got wrecked by the Yhetees, various Fanatics had killed a few Bulls here and there, and the Leadbelchers had been eating Snotlings quite happily... but they were now open for a charge from my own Ogres! Meanwhile the Gorger had arrived and was poised to do some really quite nasty stuff to my poor gobbos

End Turn 4. The Leadbelchers had been wiped out by the Ogres, the Squig Herd had finally got into combat with Stanley the Slave Giant, Bert had been done in by the Tyrant, my Warboss' block of gobbos had fought off the hunter and two units of Bulls... and then the Yhetees and Gorger wiped out a block of spear goblins in a single round of combat, while one of the Butchers panicked my other block of spears with a dastardly spell!

End Turn 5, endgame state: The squigs had eaten the giant then been panicked by magic, while all my big blocks of Night Goblins had been destroyed by breaking and being run down (or just being run down). The Fanatics had managed to kill a couple more Bulls though, and put some wounds on a Butcher, so it wasn't all bad news.

Another fantastic game (even if I did lose again), and one that - with a couple of better dispel rolls (or extra scrolls!) would have seen my Night Goblins hold on a bit longer. The Trolls probably should have stayed back as a flank guard like they were supposed to be, but the Gorger in the rear was a bad time for all concerned. A great laugh and a fantastic introduction to the lunacy and chaos of greenskin armies. 

Lessons Learned: More Fanatics. Risky, but both funny and dangerous. Also while the Trolls were a threat, they didn't like the magic weapons of the Yhetees and were too isolated - they need to be closer to my main line. Other than that, a pretty decently bad performance as expected, and I enjoyed it very much, which is the most important thing.

Overall a good fun day out with lots of dice rolled and two armies that I've never played with before seeing the table for the first time. Jolly good stuff all round.

Warboss Giteata da Great

Well, after looking at my army yesterday and today, I decided I needed to shuffle some stuff around. So I've moved the Warboss and Boss with battle standard to the big mob with hand weapons, and increased the size of the Yellow Dag Stabbas by two models to replace the gaps.

To do that I repainted a couple of the standard bearers so that the Warboss' mob has a cloth banner rather than a carved Bad Moon, jazzed up Giteata's hat so it looks a bit snazzier and more in keeping with a Clan Chief who's boss of three seperate (and perpetually squabbling) tribes:

Giteata from the front. Now his hat is chequered and has a bit of red on it, representing all three tribes (the Red Band, White Dags and Yellow Dags) of his clan.

A better view of the red band on his hat (hood, really) and the crown he nicked off some fancy skeleton once.

Giteata's shield, and a look at the armour he wears. It's not as snazzy as Maglub's (but easier to wear).

I don't really think this fiddling about with some details is worth more than a single Painting Point, so:

Painting Points:
Today: 1
This week: 43
2024: 43

Clan Gitsmasha of the Grey Mountains

After yesterday's distractions I made sure to take photos of the Night Goblin army today.

First of all, here's the army list - made using the Warhammer Fantasy Battle 6th Edition Night Goblin list from the back of the Orc & Goblin army book:

Clan Gitsmasha:

Lord:

Warboss Giteata

Heroes:

Boss Fingeata, with battle standard
Wundagit da Clevva, Level 2 Shaman
Zognasha da Eadbanga, Level 2 Shaman

Core Units:

Da Yellow Dag Tribe Stabbas: 40 Night Goblins with spears, shields, full command, and 2 netters.

Da Yellow Dag Tribe Arrer Boyz: 20 Night Goblins with bows and full command.

Da Red Band Tribe Stabbas (Moongit Maglub's Mob): 42 Night Goblins with hand weapons, shields, full command, and 2 netters.

Da Red Band Tribe Arrer Boyz: 20 Night Goblins with bows and full command.

Da White Dag Tribe Stabbas: 42 Night Goblins with spears, shields, full command, and 2 netters.

Da Snots: 5 bases of Snotlings.

Special Units:

Da Nutters: Squig herd - 9 Squigs, 3 Squig Hoppers, 8 Night Goblins.

Da Rocks: 3 Stone Trolls.

Rare Units:

Bert: He's a giant. He loves his mum.

Total Points Value: 1,995 (there's five Fanatics too).

And now here's the photos!

The whole army

Yellow Dag Tribe Stabbas with Warboss Giteata (second from left) and Boss Fingeata (second from right), with the Snotlings at rear

Yellow Dag Tribe Arrer Boyz with Zognasha at rear

Red Band Tribe stabbas with the stone trolls at rear

Red Band Tribe Arrer Boyz with Wundagit the shaman at rear

White Dag Tribe Stabbas with Bert at rear

The loonies - squid herders, riders, and fanatics!

And that's that! Technically. In theory I do have an alternate version of Fingeata, a shaman having a bad time, and a Warboss on Giant Squig to paint up but they're a pretty low priority now. Very pleased to have all these done - I now have three fully usable 6th Edition armies that are fully painted. Next on that list will be the High Elves that I was working on the last time I was posting regularly on this blog...

Drums In The Deep

 Well, it took bloomin' ages, but I have finally finished my last mob of Night Goblins for my Stillmanite Night Goblin army - the Red Band Stabbas, or Moongit Maglub's Mob.

42 Night Goblins armed with hand weapons and shields, and a full command. The front rank has two netters, who can reduce incoming attacks for a turn.

I'm particularly proud of the musician, who I initially painted a couple of years ago or so and whose hood I updated to fit the mob's colour scheme. The shields all look great en masse too:

 

 

 

 

Angle showing the yellow "Bad Moon" emblem on the shields, with vicious toothed grins and red eyes.

 

Doing this was quite tedious work towards the end - I had to fill all the slots in the slottabases with blu-tac before adding the flock, and that took what seemed like HOURS and HOURS. I took a photo when I was about half-way through...

A shot of my workspace, with about half the Night Goblins still in the process of having their slottas filled before the addition of static grass scatter.

 

However! Now they're done, so I have a couple more Night Goblin characters to do and then it'll be on to Royalist Quar I imagine. So here's to the first block of painting points officially recorded in 2024:

Painting Points:
Today: 42
This Week: 42
2024: 42

(A quick note - one infantry figure = 1 painting point. Cavalry are 2, walkers or monsters are 5, tanks or similar are 10)

 

The Witching Hour Approaches...

 It's nearly midnight where I am and sadly I have not yet finished the Night Goblin mob I'm working on. I have got them to the point where all I need to do is highlight the skin, dot the eyes with red, and paint the teeth on their faces (and shields), plus a few details on the standard bearer - mushrooms, mostly.

Then, of course, base the wee buggers. I've been using third party 20x20mm slottabases bought from the cursed Amazon, as Games Workshop no longer makes the 20mm squares what with The Old World moving to 25mm as its 'standard' base size. The downside of this is that every single base has a bloody great hole in it that needs filling, so at some point tomorrow I'm going to be shoving blu-tac into 40 bases to fill the slotta-bit. Ho hum.

Anyway, once they're done, that's the army complete to a Stillmanite standard of 1,995 points (I can't find anything worth 5 points to add)! which is close enough to 2,000 points for Warhammer work. In theory I could bulk the army up a bit by making some conversions and adding in some war machines and spider riders, but I think I'll leave that madness for another day. 

More likely my next thing will be to finish up my This Quar's War starter set by painting the Royalist squad that comes in the box. I've done the Crusaders - some bad photos follow:

A squad of Crusaders - at rear, the Yawdryl (roughly equivalent to a Sergeant). In front are three three-quar sections, each with two Bogen semi-automatic rifles and one Rhyshi automatic rifle. The Quar on the left is the Milwer (roughly a Corporal), commanding A Section. 

Showing off some details at the rear and sides.

These were quite quickly painted with flat colours, a wash, and a single layer highlight, giving a quite dull and dirty finish - suitable for a more grounded, realistic approach to, er, dieselpunk anteater space soldiers.

I did these a while ago, so I'm not going to count them for Painting Points - I'm going to start from 0.

Anyway, tomorrow approaches at speed so I'm off to have a midnight snack and go to bed.

So Many Feet

 Today I have mostly been painting Night Goblins. 42 of them, to be precise, with a Shaman and a Battle Standard Bearer sitting waiting their turn (although really I don't need to paint these as I already have several Shamen and a BSB completed). This meant I needed to paint 84 shoes, 41 weapons, 38 shield rims, and now I'm working through the highlights on the shield designs so that's... oh I don't know how many passes of yellow on the shields.

Anyway, while doing this I have mostly been listening to this really quite excellent little series of videoed Battletech: Alpha Strike battle reports that Wargamer Stories over on the You of Tubes have. My best friend CH put me onto them today and they're really good - a series of linked battles as part of a proper old school map campaign, charting the war for a planet called Blue Hole, between the Alyina Mercantile League and the Vesper Marches' House Kerbyn. 

They've really got me itching to do some more 'mechs, but my main problem there is that the Mercenaries Kickstarter I backed is months away from arriving (damn space travel) and all my existing mechs are painted up anyway. So I guess I'll have to crack on with these cackling green loons, and try to get them done this weekend - if my sanity holds up after painting umpty jillion goblin teeth.

Oh, and so I don't post something without a photo, here's some photos from the Alpha Strike game CH and I played the other week at his parents' house. I took a Star of 'mechs from the Jade Falcon unit Falcon Guards, of the Gamma Galaxy, and CH brought a reinforced lance of his mercs, standing in for the Davion Brigade of Guards.

Deployment - Falcon Guard Alpha Trinary Command Star ambushed by Davion Guards reinforced lance

Initial moves to contact: the Davion Annihilator on the right really struggled to get to the fight.

After the Davion MadCat destroyed the Nova, it became a scrappy knife fight...

...so I pulled back to allow my superior ranged firepower to do its work.

CH's MadCat and my Timber Wolf blew each other to scrap at point blank range while my Turkina and Kingfisher dealt with the Annihilator.

When the dust settled only the Davion Archer remained standing, and CH withdrew having destroyed my Timber Wolf and Nova for the loss of his Blackjack, MadCat, Annihilator and Jagermech.

And, because I'm a fan of the stories that wargames and campaigns generate, that night I wrote a short story - just a thousand words - about the immediate aftermath from the perspective of the Jade Falcon clanners. You can find it here, at Archive Of Our Own.

No painting points today as I haven't finished anything. See you all tomorrow with some more progress (or even photos of the finished gobbos)!

ARISE, YE LEGIONS OF THE DAMNED, ARISE!

 Excuse me while I dust the cobwebs off this space and gaze in horror at the broken image links.

Hello again! It's been, uh, a while since I posted on here. Five years or so, in fact. Since then quite a lot has happened in my life, from moving house to seeing my son move into Secondary School, changing my gender and name, completing some wargaming projects, selling others, buying new ones... you know, the usual I suppose.

Anyway of late I have been wistfully thinking of the old internet, the internet of blogs and forums and the like. Social media has rather brain poisoned a lot of people and almost certainly done far too much psychic damage to me really. So I thought I'd come back to my old blog and get back into the habit of updating it and keeping track of all the things I do wargames wise.

And what am I doing wargames wise?

Well, currently, I'm in the process of painting up a big block of Night Goblins, which, when finished, will give me a 2,000 point 6th Edition Fantasy Battle army. 

Then I've got some Quar to paint up, as well as some bits and bobs - a Dwarf standard bearer, some Tomb Kings pieces, and - really - the pile of opportunity as well.

Here's some of those Night Goblins. This is an old photo - these giggling greenskins have long since been finished.

Speaking of painting, I'll start keeping track of the painting points again too now I'm back updating the ol' blog.

That'll do for now - hopefully next time I'll have some new photos of newly painted things, and perhaps I might put some old photos of stuff I've done over the last few years too. Until then - toodle-oo!