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.