WHFB: Xmashammer 2013 – 2 – The First Day

31/12/2013

Initial set ups:

Evil !

T’other end…

Stunty !

Two units of Dwarf Rangers then deployed – one was 40 strong !

The Savage Orcs and Wolf Riders, facing 40 XB armed Dwarf Rangers charge into combat, but bounce off leaving just the Orc Hero to slow down this flank. This leaves 2 Bolt Throwers and 20 arrer boyz in defence. This flank held much longer than expected despite a gyrocopter swooping in.

Flank moves

The Beastmen’s main units get cobbled up and congested behind the scenery. This has a major effect on the rest of the game.

Beastmen ambush the DWarves, to no avail and are quickly driven off.

The Chaos Ogres adided by the Orc General on Wyvern charge into a Dwarven horde.

Some Gors catch 24 Long Drong’s Slayer Pirtates in the flank, but didn’t last long…

The Gyropcopters on the flank mess things up.

Head to head in the centre of the table.

Crunch !

Ambushers turn up

Trolls vs Trolls Slayers – at long last.

Centigors get stuck in to a Gyrocopter.

The centre of the board veers back and forth !

Filed under Warhammer Tagged with , , , , , ,

2013 in review (blog stats)

31/12/2013

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 21,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 8 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Filed under Uncategorized

WHFB: Xmashammer 2014 – 1 – SNAFU

29/12/2013

The day arrives, our long planned two day Xmashammer extravaganza. 4 players plus myself, each player fielding 5,000 PV armies so people get to bring out lots of toys !

My cleaner had popped round the day before yesterday so everything was spick and span. I’d fixed the toilet even (the builders broke it). I’d set the board up, a mighty 8×4′.

It even passed feline approval from BlackJack.

10.30, a clearly unwell Rich phones up and says he is unwell and cannot attend. Clang, that’s a spanner in the works. Clang, two spanners in the works, because he was going to supply Roo with some figures for the Beastman army.

Anthony arrives, is briefed with the news we’re going to have to make it up on the spot, and he points out he has come with an efficiently packed army and has little leeway for expanding his army. Luckily, I have some stunties and go find them, so at least that wasn’t another spanner in the works.

Gav phones up, and e-mails me his army spreadsheet. Clang, another spanner in the works, the spreadsheet obviously wasn’t saved properly so when he arrives we have to start almost from scratch.

So lots of frenzied re-writes of army lists, and we’re ready to go at 12.00…

As von Moltke commented:

“No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength” (or “no plan survives contact with the enemy,”)

Interestingly, von Moltke was also a wargamer.

Filed under Warhammer Tagged with , , , ,

Towards the end of the year…WIP 2

26/12/2013

I’d hoped to have posted this yesterday morning:

Great Wing, my heavily modified Manticore. Now with some mid and highlights.

The scales need a second go over with wash and a different highlight to distinguish them better from the main body. The chains and hooks need highlighting. I am also painting up some brass etched ivy and fern leaves for the base, which might be a bit ambitious for getting this model ready by the 29th…

Silver Talons & Great Wing’s rider (aka Redark the Hunter). The Silver Talons are to be the back rank of the existing unit.
The rider has four arms with magnets so I can mix and match the equipment between sword, lance (right arm), and shield or RXB (left arm).

Filed under Painting, Warhammer Tagged with , ,

Towards the end of the year…WIP

23/12/2013

Finished off the first two tranches of Dark Elves. I was somewhat delayed as I was helping oversee my parents’ transition to an iMac, from their wheezing grindingly slow PC today. The sales engineer and I did enjoy finding all their archaic hardware and trying to make it work with the new h/ware from this side of the renaissance.

Anyhow – The back rank of the Ladies of Spears:

In the latest edition of WHFB, larger units are the order of the day, so having bought some plastic kits about6-8 months ago finished them off. An all female unit of spearmen. Gold shoulder pads and breast plates distinguish them from the other 40 spearmen.

I then created a new standard bearer for them, using the new standard and transfer. the painting is to wargaming standard, as most of these figures are destined for the back ranks of units, thus being hidden and removed as casualties first. So basic coat of paint, wash and simple highlights only.

In youthful (!) enthusiasm, I had made too many RXB men with the RXBs facing forward, which means they don’t rank up. So I did another 10 of them…very boring…

Just as well I have other things WIP, such as great wing. Lighting is not good, but all the base colour paint, and wash is now done. I hope to both Greatwing and his rider ready for Xmashammer (28/29th), in which I as the host may get to play.

Filed under Painting, Warhammer Tagged with , , ,

Where I-Go, Mi-Go

21/12/2013

A seasonal treat:

Lyrics gratefully taken from the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society songbook “A Very Scary Solstice“

Freddie the Red Brained Mi-Go

[to the theme of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer]

You know Deep Ones and Dark Young and Shantaks and Shoggoths
Nightgaunts and Polyps and Fungi from Yuggoth
But do you recall the most loathesome beastie of all?

Freddie the Red Brained Mi-Go
Had a very slimy brain,
And if you ever saw it, you would scream and go insane.

All of the other Mi-Go
Laughed at him and made remarks.
They never let poor Freddy whisper to them in the dark.

Then one foggy Solstice eve
Hastur came to say,
“Freddy with your brain so bright, won’t you scare some folks tonight?”

Then how the Mi-Go loved him
As they buzzed about the place.
“Freddy the Red Brained Mi-Go, you’ll live out in darkest space!”

Filed under Music

Crunchy Frog Pizzas and Progress

21/12/2013

Right, I have been busy hence a paucity of updates here.

Firstly, the builders have been in and out again. The tiled floor they laid is cracking up, so I have a parade of builders, tilers, and suppliers in and out of the house trying to work out what is wrong and shift the blame. Basically its a crunchy floor I have as the tiles shift round. Seems like the adhesive is to blame. Now, this is important as in the run up to Xmashammer we have to have a theme, so crunchy floors have turned into crunchy frogs.

Obviously.
Just nod, and phone the doctors….
Luckily for the Byakhees, I have promised not to cook a crunchy frog pizza.

Secondly, Peter O’Toole never produced Lark’s vomit, but he was very good in films like Lawrence of Arabia.

So that got watched as homage to a great actor who passed away this week. Plus it has Rolls Royce cars and all manner of WW1 shenanigans.

It also helped pass the time whilst ironing. This is Spades, who insisted on siting on the ironing pile but got more than he bargained for.

Thirdly: In the meantime I have virtually finished off the Sister of Spears including new standard, the extra Silver Talons, and have got Great Wing along with Dark Riders well advanced so I still hope to achieve the end of the year aim.

Xmashammer 2014 is now planned, so I should have lots of photos before the end of the year.

Filed under Cats, Film, Painting, Warhammer Tagged with , , , , ,

A race to the end (of the year)

17/12/2013 2 Comments

Following the last couple of months that have been terrible due to the ongoing building works, I thought I’d update the Painting Log. On opening the file I found I had not updated it since June. So I scrabbled around and listed all the stuff I’d done. So far about 790 figures (equivalent) this year, lower than the 900+ I’d done last year.

However, I have a lot of the new Dark Elf plastic figures on the go. Half painted but with Xmashammer (28/29th December) due, a true incentive to finish them off. Should take me to the 900 mark.

And as you can see I’ve been tidying the Playroom, and have a bag of sprues of stuff to assemble. If I can get all the figures built I can clear out another area of space as well. This should mean I finish off (HA!) the Dark Elf army as well as making space and tidying the room up. An extra rank for the Ladies of Spears, and extra rank for the Silver Talons, an extra unit or two of CoK, and so on.

Now all I need to do is paint them… 🙂

Having a painting loog is certainly one way of energising you !!

How do you focus your energy ?

Filed under AVBCW, Painting, RCW / BoB, Warhammer Tagged with

AGW Deniers, a taxonomy

15/12/2013

On the Grauniad CiF comments section, the question was posed:

Here is a question for both sides. How do you term someone who accepts that the climate is changing, but who is not convinced that man is entirely responsible?

How long is a piece of string ?

(1) Sceptic. Informed, and asking for more info. Will read links provided to scientific literature and change stance according to the Evidence(TM).

(2) Innocent or naive. The individual has been unaware or uninformed of AGW for whatever reason and has not read the scientific papers, associated scientific literature and has say, stumbled on this article and BTL comments. May change their stance given enough scientific Evidence(TM).

(3) Misinformed. The individual may have stumbled upon several bits of science on websites that give conflicting views of the state of the science and assumes they (the sources) are right. May change their stance given enough scientific Evidence(TM).

(4) Gullible fodder. The individual has stumbled upon several websites that give conflicting views of the state of the science but predominantly the denier websites like GWPF and WUWT and assumes they are right. Unlikely to change their stance given scientific Evidence(TM).

(5) Denier. Has made up their mind and no Evidence(TM) will change it. This may be due to any or all of the following:
– Dunning Kruger
– Ideological orientation
– Willful ignorance
– Cognitive dissonance
– Mistakes science for policy
– Conspiracy theorists

(6) Shill. Paid to deny.

I had to think and exercise the brain cell to come up with this list. Input is welcome and this will be subject to updates.

Filed under AGW Tagged with ,

WHFB: Dark Elves vs Lizardmen

09/12/2013 1 Comment

We were meant to have a game last w/e, but both Byakhee Jim and I were both out of sorts so we delayed it until today, and it was a quick one (12-4pm), with Jim having to be Captain Decisive.

He’d recently bought some of Rich’s Lizardmen army, so he was able to deploy a large cloud of Skinks as a meat shield (complete with poisoned blow pipes) and two stegadons, a block of saurus warriors plus a tyranosaur.

Plus obligatory salamanders, no doubt aimed at Hydras ( 😉 )


I deployed my rather haphazard army – based on what I had painted, but it seemed fairly good. I still have yet to set up my tag team of a Dreadlord on Manticore with a Beastmaster on Manticore next to each other. But I thought I’d like to see what the horde of Bleak Shards (swordsmen) were like. To make up the PV, I added in a basic Master (hero) with no magic just to bulk them up – Faeygin Cheapsoul.

Well having failed to win first move, Jim’s army managed to make sure the RXB unit ran away, followed by Eric the Khybrdis and Spitty the hydra. Three failed LD tests. Great, nearly 10% of the army gone before my first go ! This sounds familiar. However, I stated this was a game intended to test the new rules. Partly this was my fault in the deployment of the BSB and General. On the upside, his Salamander managed to eat all its handlers and went for the Grr option and crouched there not advancing nor retreating.

Bye bye RXB unit…they knocked off two wounds…

In for a penny, in for a pound, the Warlocks blew themselves up (shame) but were a real menace and the Dark Riders got behind his lines as intended which really disrupted him.

My front line advanced straight at him. Despite the inauspicious start as Jim pointed out, my centre had 3 hard units versus his one unit. By placing his Cold Ones and T-rex on the flank, he had split his army.

My General Redark the Hunter, on Greatwing the Manticore, did a flank charge into his stegadon, and won. We ran the stegadon down and charged into the flank of the skinks that had reversed to try and cope with the Dark Riders (and failed – 36 shots two wounds).

In the centre of the table, his Saurus charged the CoK, and the skinks the Bleakswords.

Neither gambit was good – the skinks were destroyed before they landed a blow – including one of his skink shaman. The Saurus were held. Their BSB was destroyed. This meant that the Bleakswords charged into the Saurus and the Silver Talons flank charged the Saurus the next go.

The Saurus were wiped out. The hero was killed in a challenge by my hero Samartik. The remainder fled and were caught by the CoK

Jim conceded as his centre and flank had been or were about to be trashed. So I had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. he only had a unit of Saurus on Cold Ones, a stegadon and a Carnosuar all of which were two moves away that could harm me whilst I had swept the rest of the board clean.

Frustatingly for Jim, the terradons failed to appear in this battle.

Conclusion

  • I got my deployment wrong – my BSB and General were too far away from the centre of my army
  • Do not give up even if the first round goes wrong
  • the Dreadlord on Manticore is a VERY potent weapon
  • ASF + Murderous Prowess makes Dark Elf combat units much rougher than before

Filed under Warhammer Tagged with , ,

← Older posts