Ogres Smashed

So Sunday's game against the Vampire Counts was an absolute mess and loss miserably. A combination of not realising Vampire Counts were Unbreakable in combat and a mass session of rolling 1s and 2s my Ogres were stomped off the battlefield! I enjoyed the game don't get me wrong, it was nice to play a bigger game and get some training with the Ogres against a fellow new player but I definitely learnt some things yesterday;

• Mournfang Are Devastating - First turn they smashed into a unit of 25 raised zombies. Wiped them out with ease with taking no wounds and then overran into a large group of ghouls. After that a unit of 10 Hexwraiths accompanied by a mounted Vampire charged the front too. The 4 Mournfang spent almost the whole battle fighting these two units wiping out all but one of the Hexwraiths and numerous ghouls before finally dying in the last turn. If Vampire Counts weren't Unbreakable I would've easily broke both of these units in the first couple of turns. 

•  Target the Characters - This was my naivete in the game but I didn't realise you could target characters within units in close combat. If I'd known that from the off I would've tried to take out his Vampires and Vampire Lord before they started dishing the pain. At one point when the Ironguts engaged the Vampire Lord and Graveguard the Vampire Lord was rolling 7 re-rollable attacks hitting on a 2+, getting about 5 wounds unsaved (mainly due to my awful armour saves) then rolling another 5 attacks.

•  I Must Get Better at Deployment - I used my two Sabertusks on the flanks on the first two drops as they're meant to. However Harper had 2 units of 5 Direwolves to use as the same. Meaning that after two deployment drops each I still had no idea what he was lining up with. I tried to match up certain things against each other, however lining up the Ironblaster up against the Terrorghiest was probably a wrong move as he basically flew it straight over first turn and then screamed the cannon to death without me getting to use it.

So yeah a great day and I'm looking forward to playing the tournament on the 2nd Feb, even if I'll probably be propping up the table!

Once the tournament is done I'll be then focusing on getting a big enough Lizardmen army on the go. I won a Stegadon off eBay for less than £20 so it'll be a welcome addition. I already have plans to pick up a Slann Mage Priest, Skink Priest, some Ripperdactyls and the awesome Carnosaur model next month after payday. From there I'm hoping I'll have the makings of a decent Lizardmen army to get stuck into!

A Short Update

Greetings!

Been a bit hectic recently, finally finished my Warhammer training on Monday night huzzah! Though my deployment against The Beastmen was completely borked, something I've got to get used to and learn from, and I ended up loosing the game.....

Fear not for I'm going to be playing my first proper game of Fantasy on Sunday against a fellow newbie at Blyth! Though I won't be taking my Empire this time around. I've signed up for the quarterly tournament (why?) on the 2nd Feb and with the points being 2400 I thought it would be a great chance to use my Ogre army! So this Sunday I'm going to be bringing them to Blyth for a couple of games so I can get use to them/learn all the special rules that go along with these brutes. Still got some custom Gnoblar Trappers, using the bear traps on the Ogre sprues and cocktail stick spikes, to make before then; so hoping they can be sorted either tonight or tomorrow.

So with Warhammer World screwing everyone over about Invasion trips and the Winter Crusade coming to a screeching halt I was a little pissed that I started my Empire army with the hopes of getting it out on the Warhammer World's boards. It's probably why painting them has taken such a big step backwards that I'm not fussed if they take to the table primed and that's it.

What I have been painting finally is an army I've been looking so forward to starting ever since I bought my first few models last year and that's my Lizardmen. After buying close to 70 x Saurus, 40 x Skinks and 8 x Cold One Riders off Ebay cheap they unfortunately sat in my display cabinet doing nothing. Well now in the past week I've been slowly sorting out colour schemes to batch paint them and after some experimenting I've got a simple but effective scheme that I'm going to be using. In the last two nights I've already painted 14 x Skinks and got my Saurus warriors paint scheme nailed down too. Hopefully this weekend I can get the rest of my Saurus fully primed and also crack on with the rest of my Skinks. Oh and today I bought the first of two-planned Bastiladons for my army. Cannot wait to get that bad boy built and ready for painting!

So until the Ogres come to play on Sunday I'll keep you updated and hopefully get some pics up of the Lizardmen soon!

Happy New Year!

A very Happy New Year to everyone! Hope Santa brought everything you all wanted and the hangovers have been taken care of by now. I had a very relaxing but also hectic Christmas period including driving 5-hours home at 3am on Christmas Day with the Girlfriend after she finished work and then driving all the way back on Boxing Day evening. Though I wouldn't have swapped it for the world as it was such a good day with all the family.

So what did Santa (girlfriend) bring me this year for my Empire army?

1 x General/Captain of the Empire set - Always wanted this set and it's a great box including many options for both a mounted and standing Captain/General. I'll definitely be using the standing Captain and probably give him a Sword/Shield combo for that added protection. I'm not the biggest fan of Knights in my Empire army but think I need to use them more and if they work I'll be adding the mounted model to this unit.

1 x Box of Empire State Troopers - going to be building these tonight or tomorrow to make another 10-man Halberds for my unit. The final plan is to have a big block of 38 and also include a Empire Captain/General and Warrior Priest. After this box I'll be at 34 add my Captain and Warrior Priest and I only need four extra troops, I think I'll be adding another unit filler (maybe use one of my Ogres) to this rather than shelling out on another box.

1 x Warrior Priest with Extra Hand Weapon - Little did my Girlfriend know but I've already got this model, though I'm not complaining because I love this model so I'm sure I'll be able to use it somewhere in the army.

1 x Warrior Priest with Hand Weapon and Shield - Who says you cannot have enough Warrior Priests? I do possibly have a plan with this one by maybe using it as a Arch Lector but I'm still not sure. I think I need to build everything first and then work out an army list to decide what to do with him.

1 x Box of Demigryph Knights - Yep the mothership of all Empire forces and the box set I've wanted since I started my Empire force. These will definitely be built tomorrow night as I've got my final training game on Thursday night at Games Workshop Metrocentre and want these bad boys on the table.

So yeah I feel extremely spoilt but now my painting backlog is a hell of a lot larger than I was expecting. To have a 1,500pts Empire Army fully painted by end of Jan is going to be one huge task. Thankfully I've not got much planned this month so I expect it'll be a few late nights to get them all up and tabletop ready.

Unfortunately with the Xmas period I've not had the chance to do much painting and when I did have a bit of time I touched up the Tau Hammerhead which just needs the Ion Cannon and Railgun end bits painting before it's finished. I was really hoping to get a real good start on getting everything sorted but now I've got roughly four weeks to fully paint everything I have. The one problem I've got is the weather is beginning to turn and everything needs priming. I might need to chance it by spraying in the shed, and then bringing the guys straight into the house. This is where the pain of not having a garage shows.

Anyway onwards and upwards, New Years resolution is to get everything I own painted by the end of the year. Empire will be done one way or another by Feb so after that it'll be finishing off the last remaining few of my Ogres, the Tau and then see what happens.

Start of the Tau

So I thought with the first day of the holidays yesterday I'd make a start on my Christmas projects. The Infinity starter set are built and took a hell of a lot longer than I anticipated. So many fiddly metal bits for each characters and so much flash it took ages to trim everything off and stuck. Though they do look good hopefully I'll be able to get them primed in the next couple of days (as long as the weather stops raining!).

Unfortunately it meant my plan of making the Fire Warriors was a non-starter yesterday, hopefully I can make them today with the possibility of priming them on Monday. I did begin on my Hammerhead that I bought for a tenner off eBay. Being pre-built it was missing some of the weapons but did come with unattached Railgun and Ion Cannon. So I'll be magnetising them so I can switch when needs be.

I've decided a Purple Tau army is on the cards, I was sick of anything Red or Blue what with both my Ogres and Empire armies being those colours and I'm not too confident on painting White or Yellow colour schemes yet. The other paint scheme I was thinking of was a drab green however I'm thinking a mid-year project of Nurgle-Themed Chaos Space Marines might be on the cards using the Dark Vengeance box set so I didn't want to reuse that.

So here's the start of the Hammerhead. Still got a long time to go but I thought I'd do an update. I base-coated the whole Hammerhead Naggaroth Night and then gave the grooves a wash of Druchii Violet. After they dried I used Xereus Purple to be the prominent bright colour. I've still got a few sections to do this colour and I'm still deciding whether to use a grey in the colour scheme?

So here's the Hammerhead in it's current state. Still alot of work to do this week on it. Unfortunately at the moment I'm only using my iPhone to take photos. I'm getting my girlfriend a Digital SLR for Christmas so I'm sure I'll be stealing that to photo my models in the New Year!

Christmas Projects

So guys, moved from Wordpress over to Blogspot and it's so much better!

Such an easier interface and the options to customise without being stuck behind the limitations of a set theme. Hopefully my blog will now blossom and become one that people read and enjoy!

So it's my last day at work before I take a week's holiday for Christmas, at work we were only going to have the Christmas Day and Boxing Day off as we need to do a full warehouse stock check. Thankfully, after participating in it last year, I've managed to book off the whole week so I can sit back and chill and mainly focus on my Wargaming while the girlfriend is at work.

As mentioned before I know I'll be getting some new Empire units for Christmas so that'll keep me busy in the following days after but before then I'm going to be building and painting my new Infinity team, make a start on my INQ28 Retinue and I've also decided it's about time my Tau Battleforce is taken out of the wrapping and get building and painting them! I've already got a colour scheme and the paints sorted as I'm going to attempt a Purple coloured Tau army.

Hopefully everyone has an awesome Christmas period and you all get what Santa wants. I'm sure I'll be posting a bit throughout the weekend and on Monday/Tuesday with my progress for all three projects.

Chalmers! 

Starting Infinity The Game

So along with Fantasy and Flames of War, I've been enticed into Infinity The Game by the lads at NAG. After seeing the georgous models by Corvus Belli I was instantly in-love and it's really got me in the mood to start a small-scale futuristic skirmish army.

After going through the various models and armies I realised I could easily spend a hell of ALOT of pounds on these models. But the one army that really grabbed my attention was the alien forces of the Combined Army but most importantly the Shasvasti Expeditionary Force. While the Starter set gives you some decent looking figures to start it's the extra units to add to your army that have got me burning a hole in my pocket!

Hopefully the starter set arrives tomorrow so it'll give me something to paint over the Christmas week as I've taken the whole week off work. I'll also be making a start on my INQ28 Retinue, I've already got some ideas of adding a Tau and Kroot to the warband and have ordered some great extra bits from Anvil Industry to really make these custom figures shine. More on the progress of that next week along with the first pics of my Empire and Ogre Kingdoms armies.

First FOW Training

So I had my first training session in Flames of War on Sunday at my (not so) local Wargaming club, Northumbrian Adventurers Guild in Blyth. I had expressed my interest in starting Flames of War in 2014 and Neil, who has been playing since mid-way through the 1st edition very kindly offered to teach me the rule this weekend.

He gave me a generous Late-War Tiger-heavy Panzergrenadier list against his British Armoured column and I've got to say I absolutely loved the whole day. The boards with all the scenery really makes the game look amazing at such a small-scale, you can picture the tanks rumbling down the village road while troops tackle the fields nearby to launch an attack.

While the basic rules are pretty simple to grasp we tackled some of the more in-depth rules and it's very easy to see how complex and tactical this game can be. For example in the first game I freely moved my Tiger command unit and two Tiger platoons towards the objective and then suddenly Neil ambushed them with some M10 Tank Destroyers and wiped out two and bailed one in one shooting phase! It really teaches you to not just rush up but to use the surrounding cover and expect the unexpected.

I'm going to playing a few more practice games at the club over the next few weeks with a view to possibly starting a Winter Volksgrenadier army from The Battle of the Bulge in Jan/Feb time.