Playing something a little different

So this week I haven't even looked at a miniature. Despite the fact I have a tournament coming on the 30th I really wasn't inspired. Getting everything ready for the Gorey tournament took a bit of the desire to paint out of me! I have a few long beards that need to be painted but they can be substituted with a few Clansmen or Hammerers. I doubt anyone will notice. Instead I have pulled out a few board games, grabbed a few beers and called some friends over. Smallworld is the game we have been playing. I think I played four games of it alone this week. Its fantastic. If you have any interest in boardgames this is really one to pick up. Its pretty tactical but gives a really good illusion of being simple. Turns move around really quickly after the first game and nobody is stuck for ages waiting until their turn comes up. Its also pretty friendly for the whole family. The artwork is quite comical and so is the theme... especially when you consider you can have Flying Giants fighting Seafaring Trolls! I have managed to lose each game I played and come last everytime. I am not sure what I am doing wrong but I am definitely doing something badly.

Dominion is another game I have been playing recently though not this week. I picked up a german copy of the game and while that presents some difficulties I think it proves the strength of the game that I can still play it and enjoy it! This games is a pretty simple card game where constructing the deck itself is the mechanic by which you play the game. Essentially you need to score the most points before the card stacks you are selecting (buying) from become exhausted. The game comes with twenty five stacks of which ten are used. That means you get a hell of a lot of replayability! At least my winning record is good here. I have won the last three games I played.

So I have to have a three thousand point list created for the Dwarves for this weekend. I have no idea what to spend the points on! Its six hundred more than the Gorey tournament and I struggled a little to even fill that army list with effective selections. I am considering putting in a regiment of Hammerers but getting twenty of them in the points allotment for special will be tough with twenty five miners and two runed-up stone throwers in there already! I can of course bulk out on characters but I am not sure if that would really bring me much. I will keep you posted on how the list construction goes over the week.

Almost a horde

October really is the month of Dwarves for me! I have been trying to get some regiments finished. I have had Dwarves for so long that the regiments I built conform to a lot of different editions. My plan is to try to make sure that the 'bits' of regiments I have are eighth compatible. I would love to have a mega game with them eventually and as such I need to have them at least function someway! To that end I lined up everything and tried to match together what I could. I then assembled a lot of spares I had to fill the gaps.

I realised that with all the miners I have I am almost at forty! Actually I think I am just two models short. However in the interests of diversity and the fact there are no real special slots anymore it would probably be better to have two regiments of twenty. So I am painting up a spare command group at the moment. The unit filler adding eight models really bulked these out and I will be adding as many as possible to other regiments. Looking through the spares that I have I think I will be able to add four. One is already in the Long Beards and I think I will add the others to Clansmen regiments to bring them quickly up to forty and twenty five. I have been considering what unit fillers I need for the Chaos. I hadn't intended using any but they would speed my progress up a huge amount!

I have to remain disciplinde however. I really need to get back to the Chaos soon. This months break will hopefully reinvigorate me. The marauder blocks are going to be a nightmare. Once they are done however thats it! The army will finally be useable in a painted state. It will also hopefully coincide with the Warhammer Forge releases. The preview stuff I have seen are fantastic and I can see my self investing all too heavily! The plague toads will probably be first and assuming that they fit on the correct base sizes I will use them as Dragon Ogres eventually. The Trolls and Ogres I haven't got a good look at so I don't know if they will suit. Its great the see alternative, albeit expensive, miniatures coming out for Warhammer. Its a pity they couldn't have had it more in line with the release schedule of eighth. I also hope that these options will make it into the army books in some fashion as it would be a turn off to have these models as optional only.

4th to 8th - Dwarves

Interestingly I have been playing Dwarves for quite a long time. They are the army I have had the longest and their career stretches back to the very beginning of fourth edition. As you can imagine the lists and models have changed quite a bit since then. Still some of those models still feature in my army but most of them have entered retirement. Having finally used the Dwarves in eighth edition at the Gorey tournament I think I am back in love with this army. In seventh edition I found the Dwarves pretty boring. They were forced to play very defensively and the games were always the same. My opponents generally complained and I can see why. I gave them up for Ogres and Chaos.

Comparing what I took for the tournament in comparison to older army books there is a huge difference. The twenty Clansmen have changed from 242 points including a champion in fourth edition to 205 points in eighth, in fouth they only had light armour however. Better yet the thirty Longbeards have gone from 505 points in fouth to 475 points in sixth and finally to 440 points in eighth. In fourth they had no options for great weapons! Curious to see the general changes in points between the editions I made out the army list in each of them. In fourth I would have paid 3053 points for an approximation of the list. There were no Rangers in this edition so I just paid for Crossboxmen. If there were rangers I am sure there would be a few more points to add to the total. In sixth the list begins to look very similar but comes in at 2580 points. The eighth edition points are 2498.

It was very interesting to go back to fourth edition to try to make out a list. I had forgotten how annoying it was. Champions are a separate option within the characters section. They really are not much more than champions are currently but they are almost twice as expensive. They could take magic items at least. Command group members cost twice that of a standard trooper. This makes them in general a little cheaper than within the current list. Other interesting features was the expensive warmachines. Stone throwers were more expensive and the rune of accuracy came in at fifty points rather than twenty five. This makes fitting these machines in much more of a challenge.

The general trend from fourth to now is that everything is getting cheaper. As the new Tomb Kings and Orc books loom on the horizon I wonder will the trend continue? I can't see why not as it forces us to buy a little more each time to keep the armies current.

Speed painting!

I got them done! Thankfully I will be fielding a fully painted Dwarf army for the tournament this weekend at Gorey. Thats far better than last year at least where I used my newly constructed Chaos army. I don't think there was a single painted miniature on the table, at least on my side. The only thing I have to consider is that I am not 100% sure what I have back in Ireland and hopefully I will have enough models from my previous Dwarf army to fill up the regiments I a using in eight. I have a regiment with thirty great weapons. I have twenty three models and no command. I think I have enough to fill the gaps. Fingers crossed eh?



I at least know I have enough miners to bulk this regiment out. I am nervous about my list selection for eighth. I have put in both Rangers and Miners to compensate for some of the demands of the scenarios. The miners offer a threat along the board edges enabling me to get into a flank easily enough or behind an artillery battery. The sheer threat value of the regiment often causes the opponent to make a mistake due to the fact that they don't often react to this type of threat. The rangers allow to get into a nice position early. With the abundance of terrain, well hopefully at this event, I should be able to get them into a nice position early. As they have crossbows they can then easily threaten a large area of the board. They should be within short range and at least get two rounds of shooting before they are forced to reform for combat.

So for less than a weeks painting I have managed to get my army ready for eight edition. I am sure that there will be a few adjustments needed along the way but its done. Let the gaming begin!

Basecoating

It has to be the most boring task of a painter - basecoating. It is especially boring the more models you have to do! With these Dwarves I am going crazy! They at least don't have too many large spaces that need paint such as horses. The Beards cover most of them. Getting an even coat on the flesh is tough despite using the foundation paints. I find that they get really thick soon after you use them for the first time and you quickly need to begin watering them down pretty heavily which as you would expect breaks their coverage. I am still not convinced about these paints. However as I somehow have to Dwarf Flesh I needed to use Tallarn Flesh as the closest equivalent. I am coing around more and more to adopting a different paint set. I think I will pick up some of the Privateer Press paints to try again. I might also cehck some Coat d'Arms also. Not sure yet...




The colour scheme is one I have used for most of the regiments I have already painted that are residing in Ireland for now. I am hoping they match up fairly closely. I went through all my photo albums in the hope I had documented my painting of the dwarves. Other than a few random shots I am working from memory. Not only did I paint this army years ago but I also last gamed with them years ago! I really only know I used red, green and gold. So hopefully I can guess correctly exactly which shades. Otherwise I am going to have a fairly motely army! So now I am getting back to shading these guys. Thankfully the GW washes are available now!

Getting started

So work has begun! I have the dwarves assembled and undercoated. I forgot how annoying that the 'new' dwarf models are to put together. They really suck. I am not sure why the designers went for ths style against the previous one. The older one consists of legs and head being separate from the body. Now the back and the legs are one piece with the chest and head being a second piece. They fit together poorly and make a big gap if done incorrectly. Well they are assembled now so thankfully no need to do any more of that!

I had to make a few regiment fillers. The number of Dwarves I needed to get ready was far to much to expect to get done this week. The fillers take the space of eight dwarves and involve about the same effort in painting terms as three dwarves. I have some carts spare from a few copies of Battle for Skull Pass. That means I can continue the theme across some of the other regiments and hopefully bulk them out to fit in eighth edition better. I will hopefully get all these guys base coated soon...

The Long March Begins

Gold, Gold, Gold, Gold, Gold, Gold!I have a week and fifty Dwaves to paint... Can it be done? I have no idea. I hope so as I need them for a tournament in Gorey, Ireland. Its 2500pts and my first eighth edition tournament! I have a huge amount of Dwarves but still I had to change the army so that it would function best in this edition. Forinstance I never had any Longbeards before. Now I need to add thirty to the army and they have to have great weapons. So I can't really just use something I had from before and simply call them longbeards! I also need to buy and paint a Grudge Thrower as they seem to be great in the new edition. I don't like the current model in comparison to the old one. The all metal version just doesn't seem right to me!

Miners are really looking attractive as a regiment now. I will be fielding a large regiment of them. The ability to come on and move give them a really good board control effect. If my opponent gets too close to the board edge I can come on get up close and with the help of the Anvil hopefully smash into their flank. The only problem I see is that there are only eleven attacks coming from this regiment meaning a maximum in average terms of six kills against standard infantry. Still they cancel ranks and with a combined charge they could be very effective.

Longbeards are looking much better to. They are expensive in comparison to a Clansman but hopefully worth it. The boost in Weapon Skill and Strength really make them better. I would prefer to have Iron Breakers but they quickly eat into your special points allotment. I have armed mine with great weapons because if you are going last you had better hit hard! The immune to panic at least saves you having to roll but passing along a re-roll to others isn't so important.