So long WoC

Thanks for all the not being that much fun to play. I'm selling my guys except for my Wizards, as my Sorc Lord is wicked famous and I don't want to part with him. Now I'm getting in on the Vampire Counts action. Just ordered the Von Carstein upgrade pack. Soon I will get a Battalion and some sexy Black knights and paint up an unholy storm. Stay Kinda Tuned!

Escalation Sensation

I'm doing a little escalation league with some friends at the moment. Mostly to get me to paint my Warriors of Chaos who have been in a box for several months after the initial excitement of doing a new army wore off.

Starting off at 500 points People need to get stuff painted. So after changing my list about a dozen times I painted some war puppies. You can see them here being all war and puppy like. I probably spent too much time on them seeing as it will be an amazing miracle if they are ever on the table for more than 3 player turns. Next up to paint is more dogs and around a dozen chaos warriors. I am cheating a little and using my sorcerer lord as my hero at the moment.

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.

One year of hobby to do list

So around this time last year I started keeping a list of the things I wanted to do hobby wise each month. As I was updating it yesterday I saw that I had been keeping it for a year now. I decided to share it here on the blog. The red parts are things I actually finished doing. As you can see there are a quite a few things that got little to no love over the year. Mostly wood elves and a few malifaux guys that I am doing for a friend. I found it to be a pretty good motivational tool over the year. Except for the end on winter when I took a bit of a break from painting etc. Mostly due to Guild Wars 2 and 6th Ed 40K releasing dampening my enthusiasm, as there are only so many times you can see new space marines on the internet and not die of boredom. They have to be the least interesting models around.

October 2011

Spray hpa

Assemble marcus and co (6)

Paint movement trays

Paint slave bases

Paint executioner

Paint austringer

Doomwheel banner

Matt spray metal skaven

November 2011

Paint hpa

Paint warlitter

Paint warpfire thrower

Paint rat swarms x3

Paint woodies (at least 5)

Base spear gobbos

Repair doomwheel

Assemble cannon

Assemble clannies

Assemble ikit

Assemble warlock

Spray cannon

Spray clanrats

Magnet stuff?

Assemble guardian and raptors

Assemble ramos crew

December 2011

Paint Warp-Lightning Cannon

Paint Warpfire Throwers

Paint Austringerz

Paint Executioner

Paint Guardian

Paint Raptors

Paint Wood Elves

Assemble Hoffman etc

Assemble Guardian

Assemble Raptors

Base and Spray Malifaux guys

Jan 2012

Paint Clanrats

Paint Lilith

Paint Babies

Paint Young

Paint Mature

Paint Cherub

Paint Warp-Lightning Cannon

Paint Warfire Throwers

Paint Warlock Engineer

Paint Wood Elves

Assemble Grems and Zoridia

Assemble More Grems and other things

Make a Boneripper

Feb 2012

Cut finger 10 stitches Probably wont get anything done this month

Assemble Ogre battalion

Assemble Ogre battalion

Assemble Ironblaster

Assemble Ironblaster

Assemble Mournfang

Assemble Mournfang

Assemble Mournfang

Assemble Mournfang

Assemble Mournfang

Assemble Mournfang

Assemble Thundertusk

Paint Clanrats

Paint Warlock Engineer

Paith Lelu

Paint Lilitu

March 2012

Paint Castle

Paint Clanrats

April 2012

Paint Castle

Assemble Furnace

Assemble Malifaux ~10 2 down

Assemble Skellington Warriors

Assemble Skellington Warriors

Assemble Skellington Warriors

Assemble Skellington Warriors

Assemble Tomb Guard

Assemble Tomb Guard

Assemble Tomb Guard

Assemble Tomb Guard

Paint Sorcerer

Assemble Warriors

Assemble Marauders

Assemble BSB

Assemble Sorc Lord

May 2012

Assemble Tomb Guard

Assemble Tomb Guard

Assemble Tomb Guard

Assemble Tomb Guard

Assemble Skellington Warriors

Assemble Skellington Warriors

Assemble Furnace

Paint Skweel

Assemble Thrott

Paint Thrott

Assemble Malifaux

Paint Sorcerer Lord

June 2012

Paint Queek Head-Taker

Assemble Tomb Guard

Assemble Tomb Guard

Assemble Skellington Warriors

Assemble Skellington Warriors

Paint Skweel

Assemble Thrott

Paint Thrott

Assemble Malifaux

July 2012

Paint Thrott

Assemble Malifaux

Paint Spellweaver

Paint Warhounds

August 2012

Assemble Bell

Assemble Chaos Dwarves

September 2012

Nothing was done at all.

October 2012

Paint Thrott

Paint Bell

Paint Poison Wind Mortar

Assemble Chaos Dwarf war machines

Base and undercoat Warriors and Spawn

Assemble Malifaux

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.