Skaven Screaming Bell

So I finally got around to taking some photographs of my completed bell. I'm quite proud of how it turned out. I look forward to terrorizing my fellow gamers with it in future games.


It took me quite a while to paint the bell in several sub-assemblies. I spent about 10 days doing it when I had time. It was painted for the special scenario I have posted about previously and it performed quite well.

The Battle for La Maisontaal

Or how Skaven are the master race even when everyone picks on them.

Last Sunday my friends and I played a special scenario from an old games workshop book, about a historical battle for an abbey in Brettonia. The players featured in the game were Throt the Unclean and Seer Gnawdoom for the Skaven. Heinrich Kemmler, and Krell for the Vampire Counts and two Brettonian lords made for the scenario Tancred Duc De Quenelles - an undead slaying guy and Bagrian, Abbot of La Maisontaal  who was a level 4 of beasts.  

There were a few changes we had to make to the original rules due to their being several editions since the scenario was written. The biggest one was magic due to the random power dice in 8th. The player who's turn it was got their power dice as normal. The two other players split the dispel dice as per desperate allies. Then they could channel dispel dice on a 4+. It actually worked quite well as magic wasn't running rampant. Another part of the scenario was if you had models in combat they fought each player turn. This sped things up and no one was sitting around for ages with nothing to do. 

Vampires and Skaven both deployed at the same time. Due to the small deployment area Vampires had to keep a few units in reserve. I also kept my Doomwheel in reserve also due to space issues. Two peasant units were deployed in the abbey with Bagrian. 

The Brettonian army arrives first turn as per reinforcements and try to arrange themselves so they can actually fit from their 12 inch deployment line. Bagrain gets wildform off on the peasant archers and they shoot a few arrows at the skaven bell unit slaying one or two clan rats. The Vampires (There wasn't any vampires in the army but I will keep calling them that) advanced towards the abbey. a unit of dire wolves and the graveguard deathstar with Hemmler and Krell and a Banshee coming for the poor Skaven. Nothing much happened in the magic phase. Then it was finally the Skaven turn where I essentially won the game. My monk unit charges the direwolves. Thrott and the HPA and Doomwheel which has arrived at the back of my deployment zone head towards the Grave Guard. I ring my bell getting embolden and my spells get dispelled. My cannon kills a few knights. Doom rocket takes out about 20 or so graveguard. Poison wind mortar is ineffective. Then my two warpfire throwers fire at the peasant bowman and the men at arms in the abbey. I cause a couple wounds however both units flee out of the abbey from panic. The monks make short work of the direwolves but I roll low for the over run into the Grave Guard.

Turn two Vampires get about 500 or so free points from the skaven by charging the fleeing peasants and men at arms with Bagrian who then flee right through all the knights and off the board. The last unit to damage/make flee get the points for the target unit in the scenario. The Grave Guard charge the Plague Monks and end up getting a flank charge, we had to dice for it as it was right on the 45 degrees. There was a little movement from the other VC units but as kemmler was getting a bit far from the rest of the army they mostly couldn't march. Magic mostly revolved around replacing the Grave Guard I had killed in my phase. My monks fought valiantly against the graveguard killing one of two but they were defeated and then run down but not very far and not into any of my units in that area. Brettonia shuffled about some more heading towards the Skaven mostly. I think dwellers was cast on me in this phase killing about half my bell unit. Luckily the horned rat was with me and I didn't lose any characters. Then it was my turn and I tried to hit the graveguard with both doomwhell and HPA. Doomwheel came up short but the HPA made contact and mushed quite a few Grave Guard. Unfortunately it turns out that Krell gets heroic killing blow when in a unit with Kemmler so Krell killed my HPA and it died for real. Also my Stormvermin jumped into the abbey where everyone kind of forgot about them for a couple turns. 

For the next few turns everyone picked on my skaven the Brettonians charge me with most of their strength I held out for a turn or two but my left flank was eventually destroyed. On the right I threw everything at the Grave Guard unit as there was quite a lot of points there. I sent in Throt's unit of giant rats who lasted a few turns due to some insane courage. Thrott managed to killing blow Krell in the face to avenge his abomination. Thrott was then left alone and was run down. I cast plague a few times on the brettonians. Some Knights killed the terrorgheist then got bogged down fighting zombies and skeletons. By turn 5 I had 3 units left. My Bell unit which was down to about 20 guys. my Doomwheel and my Stormvermin. My Doomwheel eventually managed to charge the Grave Guard unit that was down to 3 guys and Kemmler after having scorch cast on them 3 or 4 times and having half my army thrown at them. So I managed kill the GG and crumble kemmler for some serious points. Some valiant knights assaulted the abbey containing my Stormvermin. My cheiftan killed their BSB with his corrupted blade. Then nine stormvermin killed 7 of the 9 surviving knights and repelled them making it look pretty good that I was going to get the 500 bonus victory points for holding the abbey. 

I rang my bell one last time and destroyed the abbey. I lost 3 or 4 stormvermin. Seer Gnawdoom was eventually killed by the two Brettonian units that had attacked him from both sides. Vampires tried to make a few charges etc to get into the abbey but they failed. Then we added up the points and I came out winner by about 200 points or so. Mostly due to taking out the Vampires deathstar and holding the abbey.  I am now back to back champion of the Battle of La Maisontaal. 

Here's one last picture. It's of the scoreboard we had to use to keep track of who killed what for victory points. It's kinda blurry as it was about 1 am when we finished playing. We started at about 5 pm. Thanks to Lee and Danny for a very fun game. I'm sure they did cool stuff in the game that I didn't cover while writing this battle report. I'm not sure I conveyed how bad it looked for Team Skaven for most of the game. 

Bell update

Quick little update on the progress of my bell. As you can see the main carriage part of the bell is nearing completion. Stuck on the rat ogre, who is looking pretty bad ass I think. Also the Seer is very close to being finished as well. I have two and a half days left before the big game so I am starting to feel pretty confident that I can get it done in time.

It's been pretty painful doing the bell, but it has also been good as I have been forced to use all my tricks. I really wanted to take it up a notch painting wise on this figure. It's going to be the centrepiece of my army and I want it to show what two years of serious painting can get you.

Screaming Bell

So over the last few days I've started working on my screaming bell for the Battle of La Maisontaal. It is taking quite a while. It should go a bit faster once I finish the wood and do the basecoat of the various metal parts. I can only hope that will be less tedious and time consuming as basecoating the wood.

I put a little brown wash on the chunky bits of the stone arch because I wanted to see if I could get it to look like it had been ripped from the earth rather than giant pieces of warpstone that I've seen on the internet, which I am not really a fan of.

Also you can see the Seer and a Poison Wind Mortar in the shot who I am working on when I get sick of painting the bell carriage. Some times it's good to have something small and manageable to work on when painting a large model.  Stay tuned for further updates.

Dry spell over

So I started painting again, renamed my blog and have resumed posting. I took a bit of a break from warhammer and painting over winter. Flirted briefly with 40k when the new rules were released. I just don't like it as much as fantasy and my foot slogging space elf army just gets curb stomped. I have half painted a bunch of things but haven't really finished anything. That is all going to change now as the three player game we were planning to do is back on. The battle for La Maisontaal. Today I started painting Throt the Unclean.

Here is a WIP shot. I have 3 things to paint for the 3k force for the game. Throt, who I purchased specially for the game and will probably only use it this one time in this game. A screaming bell which I imagine I will use all the time. Also I have a poison wind mortar to paint up as well.

Depending how I go I may finish painting Skweel Gnawtooth for the game as well. I am not a fan of the model. His whip looks stupid the way it is bent on my figure and I am afraid to bend it into something better looking as I am sure it will snap.

In other hobby news I plan to paint up my space elves. Also I want to paint some of my warriors as well. Hopefully they are magically more fun to play when they get their new book. I think I ruined other armies by playing Skaven first. They can do all the fun stuff. I will probably keep my warriors army small for the moment as I want to get a few more skaven specials. A second unit of Gutter Runners and the Skryre specials as I want to run a Skryre fluff list with Ikit Claw and all the toys. I tried out a proxy army and although I lost it was a lot of fun. I am bringing shooting back. I will try and blog more regularly as well.

Happy Batman Day!

In honour of the release of The Dark Knight Rises here is the most batman like skaven mini available.

Fury of the deeply conceited

So I finished painting Queek Headtaker. He took quite a long time due to the cold weather making my acrylic medium take even longer than usual. I used 26 different paints and washes while painting him which is pretty amazing as he is just black with some bone when you look at him. I'm looking forward to trying him out against other special characters, he made short work of Konrad and he wasn't even painted then. 

I also uploaded him to the Games Workshop Flicker pool as I would like to get on the little selection from there on their blog page. I put my Sorcerer Lord on there also but they decided only to show boring 40K miniatures for the next few days after I did that. Hopefully I will get something there one day. Then I will be printing some business cards that make reference to that achievement. 

Next I will probably try and finish Skweel Gnawtooth as he is about half finished. I dont really like the model though as his whip looks stupid and if I try and fix it I'm sure it will snap. So I will probably paint some Chaos Warhounds, Thrott or Ikit. 

Turns out it's June

Seeing as I only did one post last month which suddenly ended without letting me know, I decided I should post something. I don't have much to post due to playing too much Star Trek Online. I've totally got a handle on that now and have been painting Queek Headtaker who has been sitting around patiently waiting for me to paint him for over 2 years. Here is a WIP shot of him. He has been troublesome as I went through about 3 variations of what colour his weapons would be. I tried doing them warpstone but it ended up distractingly neon and I didn't want people to think he had ethereal weapons. So now I'm back to metal which I am much happier with. He is a bit glossy in the photo as the paint is still wet and everyone knows there isn't time to wait for paint to dry when you want to take a photo.

Skaven Glamour Photography IV

So this is probably the edition of Skaven Glamour Photography for a while. Hope you've all been enjoying it. Going to finish strong with Skaven killing trixy elf things.

Skaven Glamour Photography Part III

Another update of my Skaven photos.

Skaven Glamour Photography Part II

Here are some more photos of my Skaven, We took about a hundred, so expect a few more updates.

Skaven Glamour Photography Part I

Last weekend my friend and I unpacked my Skaven and took a bunch of photos. Here is part one.

Winning Streak Over

So yesterday I battled Lizardmen for the first time. It was also my first game in the campaign we are doing down here. I don't think I have ever seen so many misfires on artillery dice in a game before, I got 4 or 5 and my opponent got 3. Gareth the Lizard player had a big block of Temple Guard with a Slaan with all kinds of abilities it was a 900 point deathstar taht I spent the whole game trying to kill. He also had 2 blocks of 20 or so Saurus and a Stegadon with a Skink Priest and  2 Salamanders. I had 90 Clanrats, 40 Slaves, 30 Monks and 30 Stormvermin, a couple Warpfire throwers, a Doomwheel and a Warplightning Cannon, BSB a fighty Cheiftan a Warlock Engineer and Skeetz Skitterpaw Grey Seer to the stars.

First off I had the scouts event so Gareth had to deploy everything first. I got the first turn and started whitling away at the Templeguard Bunker with my shooting Doomrocket took out 11 TG. Cannon misfired. I had to discard Sixes so my magic phases were non existent which is why you wont hear me talking about it much. I don't think I got a single spell off the whole game. Basically what happened after that was a lot of comets falling from the sky, my Monks broke 20 Saurus and ran them down Doomwheel took out a Stegadon then a skink priest which was good, My Grey Seer ran away after being Repeatedly Cometed on. I got the Templeguard down to about 6 guys on the last turn but lost combat by 1 or 2 after being debuffed twiced so the game ended in a Draw I was ahead by about 20 points so my winning streak is over. I made an Error with my Doomwheel thinking my clanrats needed help with the Saurus rather than sending it into the temple guard but I wanted another turn of shooting with my cannon and remaining warpfire thrower on the Temple Guard as they are pretty tough customers. Then a comet fell from the sky that I had forgotten about in my eagerness to kill cold things and I lost my Doomwheel AND my Seer ran away for the second time this time off the board and my warpfire thrower was killed as well.

It was a fun close game, Gareth played well and I think we were both deserving of our 2 empire points.

First Game of the Campaign

So this weekend I will be fighting my first game in our local campaign. I will be taking my Skaven and I will be facing Cold Things for the first time. As I am too lazy to do any research about lizards I am taking an all comers style list, fairly confident that I will outnumber the cold things and have plenty of Skaven tricks to use on them. I'd post my list here but my opponent might read it. After the game I will write up about the battle, hopefully I will continue my win streak as I am up to 7 games now. There are 10 players in the campaign, with no doubles of races which is great. Every race is represented except for Empire, Dwarves, Beastmen, Warriors of Chaos, and Tomb Kings. A while back my friend got a wicked cool new camera and he took some interesting shots of my Skaven in the game we played. I'm a big fan of this one.

Hellpit bears down on some Big Un's

Some Stormvermin fighting Green Things

Stormvermin

Plague Monks