WHFB: Dark Elves Transfers 2

28/11/2013

Four more banners that escaped Tuesday’s work:

The CoK Standard – chosen to mix in more with the army BSB.

Executioner standard – red, very difficult to see, but steeped in the blood read of Khaine. GThere’s a bit of shine from the transfer itself, which I’ll fix with some matt varnish when the weather is right.

Black Guard, symbol looks like the Eye of Ra, as in Malektih is watching you.

Finally the Corsairs, the Kraken face, its just appropriate. And about the only transfer that would fit on this small standard.

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WHFB: Dark Elf Transfers

26/11/2013 2 Comments

With the new miniatures come a full A5 sheet of transfers (aka Decals). When posting on druchhii.net it was noted that the standards of my army were blank. This was because I originally intended on printing my own transfers and decorating them. Well life intruded and over the last year I didn’t get round to that.

Today, I started decorating the banners with the GW supplied ones.

A few things to note:

  • Buy a decent pair of tweezers
  • Use a bowl or tea cup saucer, with a small puddle of water
  • Have a box of tissues to hand to soak up excess water
  • Cut the transfer from the sheet, I try and get close to the actual design, and make sure it is not a square/angular cut
  • Soak the transfer/decal in the water, making sure it is under the water
  • In the mean time paint Micro Set onto the area of the banner you’re going to add the transfer to
  • Slip the transfer off the backing paper after a couple of minutes
  • Grip the decal with the tweezers from one end
  • Do NOT grip it in the middle, as once out of the water the transfer will collapse around the tweezers and itself and be useless
  • If this does happens dunk it back in the water to disentangle it
  • Place transfer on the standard, and use the tweezers to shift it around – if necessary dip tweezers in water to keep the transfer from sticking to them
  • If there’s two much liquid, use a tissue to draw off the excess – don’t let it touch the transfer itself though
  • When its in the right position leave it to dry for a while
  • Then use Micro Sol, to help it adhere to the surface properly

So far the transfers I’ve used on my AVBCW stuff have all stayed in place, unlike back in the day my Airfix models that flaked off !

As you can see I’ve gone with a theme for my army – I don’t like the cheesy extended skull ones.

Warning – at the bottom of the sheet are very small transfers, and they are all individual. They are a right s*d to use.

For example, this standard/pennant has 6 separate transfers (three each side), I think I used more than 6 expletives whilst doing this one.

My advice is to start at the top of the sheet and gain experience. Expect to lose/damage some transfers. As you get a sheet per box, and you’ll be buying multiple boxes per unit there is room for collateral damage. So don’t get disheartened. The Corsair standards and the largest transfers are where you should start if you do not have experience of using transfers.

Hopefully they will tart the units up a bit. 🙂

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WHFB: The next test of the new Dark Elves

24/11/2013 2 Comments

Another day, another game, Byahkhee Rich and I had a game yesterday…3000 points Dark Elves vs Empire. I expressly treated it as an exercise in learning about the new units, in particular the Warlocks that I had assembled and base coat painted.

The Empire set up, lots and lots of k-nig-its.

Compared with my set up of: “let’s try it out”.

His main unit of knights, which he buffed with BSB and various magic spells.

Luck was not his side, as though winning first move, he started rolling a lot of misfires on the artillery dice.

Mt General, Redark the Hunter, mounted on Great Wing the Manticore.

The inevitable feline supervision !

Having botched my set up, and boxed in some units, the artillery hunting fell to my general…an expensive artillery hunter but very effieicent, he destroyed a cannon and distracted the mortars before destroying one and allowing one to go pop in a puff of smoke.

Big and scary, but not good against hippy-gryphs – as discussed afterwards they monsters should have been supported by infantry (or cavalry) units to finish the hippies off, as they lost combat resolution despite dealing out a lot of pain. This allowed the hippies to…

…get into combat with the Warlocks, who did surpisingly well, and last two round before being defeated.

Meanwhile:

Ten RXBs hold up a unit of cavalry for several rounds much to both of our surprise.

If the dice Gods did not favour the Empire artillery, they also didn’t favour my Leadership tests, with a single casualty the Cold One Knights turn tail and run…again…

Crunch, the knights and the Silver Talons go head to head. The knights win, and I again fail my leadership test and they run away despite the BSB.

Having chewed his way through the artillery, my generalattacks a unit of knights, and defeats them.

More feline intervention.

The CoK, rally, and charge the hippies, and defeat them in combat, making them run away, but curses, whilst I can roll lots of 6s and 5s for Leadership, I can’t do the same in pursuing the enemy !

SWe ended the game at about 8.30pm, with me conceeding. The late burst of success of the CoK and General, would not have offset the other losses and the disruption of my line.

Conclusion

  • My set up was wrong, his was right
  • I boxed in some of my units
  • The Warlocks are GOOD !
  • The combination of ASF and murderous prowess is very rough for the enemy – even RXB units are now not a walk over
  • Hydras and Kharibdryis need support to be effective
  • I need to further hone my General and Heroes’ weapons choices
  • My general was good but really needed to be shoved down my enemies face in support of the main unit
  • Army list – need to think more about that – is it a mobile/cavarly dominated force ?
  • My spell phases were absoloutely and without a doubt lousy, I can roll three ones and a two
  • I can’t rely on his bad luck
  • Cats are a major distraction for me

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Post our Paint, and fish licences

21/11/2013 2 Comments

An article on TMP caught my attention, the Royal Mail are implementing a new(ish) rule on contents of packages including one that affects us wargamers, artists and so on.

Yes, there will be restrictions on the posting of Acrylic paint within and from Great Britain. Posting alcohol in glass bottles remains ok though. Obviously.

More details are here on TMP.

This is quite frankly nuts. Small containers of water based paint are not a threat. This would prevent us from buying more than one triad of paint from say Foundry in the same package.

Please sign the petition here.

At the time that the GB Government is sponsoring WRAP to reduce the obscene waste and environmentally damaging land fill produced in packaging, the “greenest government ever” is introducing nutty laws that will increase the production of wrapping and packaging waste.

Next my beloved Hailbut, Eric, will need a Fish Licence !

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Laserburn: The Weapons Factory

18/11/2013 3 Comments

We played the scenario I’d written up: The Weapons Factory.

We built gangs of about 5,000 points and each fielded about 10 men each.

The table, as set up, with the factory in the middle.

We start deployment…

Rich deploys his troops including a sniper on the roof of the building.

I waste three recruits out on the far flank, who made little contribution until they got KO’d in an explosion later…

Feline supervision is needed, apparently !

Turn 2 and the first casualty – Rich’s sniper gets a head shot to my guy Lance – after Lance Henrikson one of only two actors to have been killed by an Alien, Predator, and Terminator.

A firefight ensued across the central open area. My guys caused a fair amount of damage to Rich’s team as I had a heavy bolter and my leader involved, so Rich started lobbing smoke grenades, which we improvised by using cotton wool balls stuck to paper templates.

Rich sent forth his minions.

They got Tobbac’A, before one got killed outright (standing in the open).

But this was evened up, when Rich fired on the dangerous materials loaded onto a truck, that blew up and KO’d my 3 flanking guys.

More smoke grenades were deployed, as after looting the weapons factory, Rich conceeded the game.

He got the weapons, I got the glory (experience points).

A good game and complaimnts about the layout of the rule book aside its still a nifty game that is enjoyable.

Further feline supervision was needed !

More photos are here

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Laserburn: Aftermath

17/11/2013 6 Comments

Byakhee Rich & I played a game of Laserburn today (Weapons Factory), here’s some thoughts:

  • How do we play this game again ? (After 6 months)
  • Even after 30 years of playing them of and on, its still difficult to follow the rules. They’re all in the rule book but just not in a logical or sensible order – they need editing.
  • Setting up gang rosters – we forgot to amend Initiative stats for the weapons and armour
  • Initiative, surprising how big an effect the modifiers had
  • Game was dominated by the three guys who had a chance to hit anything (it would have been four, but he got shot in the face in the second round)
  • Anybody of regular skill level with an inaccurate weapon can’t hit a barn door at 5 paces (cruel)
  • This affects tactics – I certainly wasted three guys who were flanking for most of the game and had little input
  • Cover isn’t much use
  • You’re harder to hit moving at walking pace
  • Move, shoot, move (into cover) is a good option
  • Out of sight is the best option (How not to be seen)
  • Being in the open is a death sentence, being out of sight is best because then you can’t be shot !
  • Take a chance (on me) and do the reaction roll (Rich got lucky on that many times…but when it really counted !)
  • Duckback ! Where the hell is that in the rules ? Turns out it is on p10, but we couldn’t find it when playing Grrr
  • Left leg – the most common location for being hit
  • Laserrs vs Armour = no damage
  • Morale & Unit coherence, applied by the players not the rules, maybe they need to be beefed up
  • Along with the deployment rules these are all missing because it is more like an adjunct to a RPG as opposed to a wargames system.

Next up, some photos of the game. 🙂

(Now editted for the typos, and a new link added)

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Laserburn: Scenarios & Deployment rules

16/11/2013 5 Comments

I’ve written up two scenarios Byakhee Rich & I will play tomorrow. I’ll trawl the records and brain cell to add some more as there seem to be very few Laserburn scenarios written up.

One thing that struck me when writing them up and reading the Laserburn rule book was the complete absence of deployment rules. Its totally up to the umpire to decide when designing the scenario – but what happens when there is no umpire ? Who chooses sides ? Who sets up first ? In what order ? How far in ? etc. Now having played different rules sets and different scenarios there are any number of options.

Some ideas for deployment rules:

  • Dice to choose side of table
  • Dice to choose deployment zone(s)
  • Play out the scouting rules as per Chain of Command
  • Hidden movement
  • Scouts & Vanguard movement (WHFB)
  • Place units alternately
  • Place all units in one go
  • Place units in an Initiative determined order (high first or low first)

It got me thinking as to how these rules would affect the way scenarios are run and how the balance of gamesmanship would change. If one side places all its units first, that could give the other side an unfair advantage (advanced intel). This is something that hasn’t come up in AVBCW yet where we simply all pile in all at the same time. Is this better or worse ? On what terms ? In terms of the chaos of war ? In terms of fairness ? Or does it disrespect advanced intel and hence undermine military prowess ? How far do you go when designing a scenario to favour one side or the other ?

I’ve longed to write up some inter war rules sets, and indeed to expand the Laserburn rules so if you have any ideas, chuck them in to the comments. I want to break out of the IGUGO rules and fixed deployment zones and get a really fluid battle going.

Thanks !

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WHFB: Doomfire Warlocks

14/11/2013

One of the new units for the Dark Elves are the Doomfire Warlocks.

I’ve just finished building the first five of them.

Another unit of Fast Cavalry, and they get to cast spells (yay). I have yet to use them in battle, but that should come w/e after next.

The models themselves were quite fiddly as the faces are separate to the flowing hair !

I stuck with it, despite the glue fumes, and the fumes of undefrcoat paint, and gloss paint pervading the kitchen.

Good job I was working in a well ventilated place – gloss paint takes ages to dry and as I was doing the back door, I had to prop that open as well. Still stinks though. It didn’t help I was building another 5 Dark Riders, and 5 more Warlocks at the same timne.

Key points from the Dark Riders also apply….

Now to prepare for some Laserburn.

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When white is not white and it isn’t alright

13/11/2013

The nearest thing I have come to painting today !

A “white door” ?

Same door with white undercoat (not even gloss)…Just goes to show the variation of pigmentation and how over time paint can absorb elements from the atmosphere such as bromine, and even tar from cigarette smoke (NB: I don’t smoke).

I’ve started so I’ll finish…the whole downstairs it might seem. The neareest I’ve come to painting anything. The Doomfire Warlocks are almost built so should post them later.

Providing I don’t paint any more Cats ! 😉

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WHFB: DE Dark Riders

11/11/2013

As commented previously I have availed myself of some of the new DE Dark Rider/Warlocks kits, enough for twounits of 10 each. The kits are dual purpose and come on three plastic sprues along with transfer sheet.

As with all of the recent plastic kit releases, an instruction booklet detailing how to build the models is provided, and its obvious that these models are mostly if not wholly designed using CAD.

The booklet needs reading as the parts seem to be specific to each model so you can’t just go charging in and snipping bits off like you used to. There are options listed but these are more limited. It may be that there is greater variability between models but this is just the first box I’m playing with. The models are however quite fussy with a large amount of small parts so not suitable for younger people, nor the ham fisted.

Having now built all five models, there are a few key differences between these models and the old plastic/metal ones.

Three important tips:

Firstly, make sure the bases of the horses are totally smooth. As three of the horses have only one hoof on the base any excess plastic will make them look very drunk leaning one way or another.

Secondly, build the horses with two hooves on the base. These can then be used to support/prop up those with only one hoof on the base.

Thirdly, the reins are very delicate, clip the part off at the most delicate part first, then the more robust connection to the sprue.

Overall

The horses are smaller and much sleeker giving much more of an impression they are fast. The hunched down riders are much more dynamic, again re-inforcing the idea that they are getting a shift on.

The downside is the complexity of the kits, you have to be careful following the instructions.

As Dark Riders can now come with shields with no effective penalty I’ll be using shields a lot more to give a 4+ Armour save.

Next the alternate build of the Warlocks.

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