Steam Roller - Ass Kicking

So yesterday saw me lining out with some friends against some of the best players here in Germany. My local club organised a Steamroller event and despite a smaller than expected turnout we had some great fun. My first round was against a good Cryx player who used Mortenebra. Uusally I find this a tough match up as I can't often deal with the armour easily. However my druids really were the stars of the game. In the first turn they pulled the Deathjack about 10" forward and allowed me to do about 80% damage to him, knocking out his cortex most importantly. Second turn they pulled Seether in while pushin back the rest of the force. Both the Deathjack and the Seether were destroyed in that turn and due to sprint I had nothing within his range. A perfect game for me really.

Things went downhill from there though. The next round was again against Cryx. 50% of the players brought Cryx. I popped down Kreuger and my opponent popped down Deneghra with thirty Mecanithralls. I managed to kill twenty six of them in one turn and both necrosurgeons but my opponent was really canny and pressured the scenario right from the first turn and I was never able to get on top. He won with a scenario victory in Outflank, Outfight, Outlast. It didn't help that I thought that Tornado was a slam effect and not a throw effect. I used it on my Warpwolf to try to help clear some threats and after I had cast I read the spell and realised what I had just done. I wasn't too happy.

Things continued downhill from there. Next up was Skorne and I used prime Baldur. I have not faced epic Morghul before and I was nervous going into the game. The scenario was Sacrifice and I felt I had a good chance at a scenario victory. However I pushed Bladur up and feated thinking I was safe. I was very very wrong. Despite the Archidon having massive wings I forgot it could fly and ignore my feat. I also forgot that Ghostwalk ignored my feat too. I was close to actually surviving as not much could reach me but enough did and Baldur went down. That was a fairly basic mistake so I can't blame anything but my own stupidity. It was still fun to play despite a quick loss.

Then I played some pick up games as we finished way earlier than anticipated. Of course I won these then! That always seems the way. I did get to face off against the newest incarnation of Asphyxious and wow what a 'caster. He really dominates the board and I imagine is great fun to play. Still two Warpwolves to the face are enough to get the job done usually! So there still are two rounds to play today. I will be right in the middle of the first game when this posts. I hope I can pull out some wins now that the pressure is off. Though it is the toughest field I have seen at a german tournament and there are no pushovers at all. There are some shots of the event from yesterday here if you want to see.

Snake Eyes, Again?

I had an interesting Mangled Metal tournament at the weekend. There are sadly not enough tournaments for Warmachine here in Hamburg so it was nice to have one finally. I decided to bring Kreoss along backed up by a Reckoner and two Redeemers. I was hoping that a nicely placed knockdown would enable my Redemeers to cause havoc. It didn't really work out as I had expected. The game format was four players per table deploying in the corners. Between the deployment zones and the centre there was rough terrain or a forest. In game one I played cautiously and only managed to take out a Leviathan. I had everything still alive and directly in the centre of the board by the end of the prescribed six turns. So for all my cautiousness I mananged to score only ten points. On the other table people were already on forty to fifty points.

So the second game came around and we mixed the players up. I was still on the same table but in joint last place overall. So Mulg and Doomshaper came directly towards me in turn one. I obliged him and moved up feating. Nicely enough I mananged to catch Doomshaper and knocked him down. The eckoner then got him with the Consecrator, setting him on fire and causing flare. So thats Def 5 for the round. Six redeemer rockets came in next needing only a 4+ to hit and well only two hit. Still they were effective and managed to leave Doomshaper in bad bad shape! However this was a sign of things to come and depite my best efforts I managed to leave both Mortenebra and Kromac on fire and with only a few hitpoints left.

So while it was great fun and I guess will eventually become one of those stories that is oft repeated amongst the gaming crowd here, I came last. Over the entire tournament the Leviathan was the only model I killed. So I am hoping that the Domination event that is coming up will be fun but slightly more succesful for me!

Finally some inspiration

Well as you may notice from the abscence of any new posts here I haven't been painting that much recently. Getting everything ready in a rush for the tournament in Gorey(Ireland) and then trying to get more stuff ready for the tournament in Bad Odelsoe(Germany) really killed my desire to paint. This week I got a number of things in the post that really got me hungry to paint again! It all came in a big box courtesy of Maelstrom Games. I bought Warhammer: Invasion. While it is a card game, generally something I avoid, I was tempted by how much I had enjoyed Dominion. Having played exactly two games of it I found myself quickly thinking about collecting Orcs and Goblins again. I had been playing that deck. It was nice to see the artwork as some of it is from the old box covers. Coupled with playing the game was the other contents of the box: enough pieces to add two more trolls to the army, some more warriors and finally some terrain.

Having been delighted with the quality of the 40k terrain that Games Workshop have produced I decided to see what the fantasy stuff was like. I picked up the chapel. While I haven't even unboxed it yet it looks great. I had seen it at a few tournaments before but as the tournament terrain is usually all glued together in a hurry and then simply airbrushed a few appropriate colours, I had never payed the chapel much attention. As soon as I find an appropriate base I will glue it together and get it painted. Sadly the nice high stone wally you get with the manor kit are only available there and even then you don't get many. I had hoped to put a high wall around the chapel but unless GW release them separately thats not going to ahppen. I guess it just doesn't look right with the lower walls. I also bought some of the fences. I will make a small few fields which generally look nice and add a nice tactical feel to the battlefield. In seventh edition they were just a nuisance. However now with the general -1 to hit for shooting and combat for being behind them, coupled with the fact they don't impede movement for infantry makes them pretty good. As long as they are big and can easily contain a regiment of up to forty that should be fine. A nice blog I found on terrain can be seen here. Hopefully I will get everything togther soon so I can post some pictures of my terrain on here.

So hopefully I can get some painting done this weekend. I am going to try and focus on the marauders as getting the two regiments of them finished would really take the bul out of the army and allow me to concentrate on the fun stuff!

Getting back on track

After the horrible results of washing this spawn I was prepared to dump him entirely. Instead I struggled on and experimented a little, especially with the horns. He came out okay in the end except for the strange white residu in the cracks. I have also now found a nice enough way to paint horns at least large ones. I have my painting desk finally together and with the daylight bulbs it is finally possible to paint in the evenings after work. To celebrate I took out my marauders on foot and got them almost base coated. They are pretty boring to do and probably not the best choice to keep me enthusiastic but a good start was made at least. With all the rumours of eight edition around it would seem that infantry are being given a boost. At least this way I am tempted to construct another warrior regiment and a chosen regiment. I should concentrate on painting what I have built already though...

I am off back to Ireland next weekend for the Battlecry tournament. I am looking forward to it but I don't think I will manage to succesfully defend my title. I won the tournament the last time it was held with a fairly nasty zombie heavy list. Wwhile my memory can't recall all the details it was a tough day of gaming. Hopefully this is going to be good. As I still have not managed to paint this chaos warrior army I will be borrowing one, hopefully Beastmen. I will at least get to try out the new book and have some fun. I am assuming the only way to go is with a lot of Chariots. The composition restrictions are pretty tough so the armies should be nice and somewhat fluffy. It will be a good introduction to the new lists (Skaven and Beasts) out since I last played on the scene.

I picked up AT-43 during the week due to its popularity in work. A few people there have played a little. The factions look interesting too. The Red Blok have taken my fancy, there is something about Russian style factions that I like. Any way I have only played the introductionary scenario and it wasn't anything special. It would seem that the system plays much like any other sci-fi system out there except with a funky activation order. I will play a few more of the scenarios before I invest. The army box does seem cheap however at €60 for a fully painted 2000pt force, which I assume is the standard game size. It also comes fully painted, to a poor standard, meaning it can just be left in work and played at lunchtimes there... The benefits of working for a games company I suppose.

A weekend, I won't know what to do with the time

As predicted work has swallowed a lot of my time. I finally have two days off together so I intend getting some painting done! I managed to win the Northern Wasters painting competition this month so I have decided that the next months theme will be "the best of the best". It is intended to have the elite members of the amry represented so I will be doing some painting on my unconverted Forsaken. I have used Daemonette models for them in games. I have to say they were pretty useless and tended to be free victory points for my opponents. I would like to use them more so I want to get them painted up. I will be doing them in a white scheme but hopefully with the burning armour you have seen on the Chaos Warriors!

My tournament didn't go so well last weekend sadly. One of the games ranks as the possible worst ever both from my point of view and possibly my opponents. More of that later! The tournament itself was great. Organised well and run well, the only complaint was it running a little late meaning I didn't get home until midnight. Wwell it wasn't home but to a friends house that night. The first game was against a decent Dwarf gunline with an anvil. It lead to a very tense game that was decided by some very lucky rolls on my behalf. I managed to hold a decisive charge on a double one! That saved the game for me. It ended up a draw. I was happy with the result to be honest. If it had gone on longer I think I had the edge but a fair result by the end of turn six was a draw.

Game two was a different story altogether! I played another Wwarriors of Chaos army. These civil wars are often very bloody and this game was no exception. My opponent had no magic defense instead trusting to the most elite troops! I got first turn and advanced with everything. He did the same and suddenly I was pinned behind a wall of chaff with knights pointing straght at me! There was little I could do to stop the worst but I managed to hold off the worst charges and get in some of my own. The trouble, in my opinion thats of course biased, is that the guy I played against had never been in a tournament before. He played and acted a little too agressive and wasn't following what would be considered standard tournament etiquette. He would vaguely measure things and then move them while I was telling him that wasn't possible. Things like spawns moving through friendly troops became the point I lost my cool. I admit I eventually couldn't stay calm. We more or less had to keep the ref beside our table to explain everything. I just sat down and didn't care what happened. By turn four I was prepared to concede. I had had enough. Once the turn five was finished we had been told that there was five minutes left. Aat this point the opponents general and main regiment of knights was fleeing. I stood up, said sorry, and went to the toilet. While I needed the break to stay calm I knew that in taking it the game would be a draw. Bad tactics I know but I really couldn't do anything else. When I came back there was a minute or two left so I started my turn six (I went first). The judge decided that as there was no chance to finish the turnj we shouldn't start. The game ended up a very minor win for me, 12-8 in ETC terms. So I pulled a bad tactic. I felt shit about it but in the moment it seemed appropriate due to my opponents behaviour. No excuse though....

Game three was what the doctor ordered! A great friendly opponent playing a fun army, Savage Orcs! The game went well until shagga's sword got close to my character bunker and tore my Chaos Warriors to shreds. I lost badly 6-14 I believe but it was a fun game. I have to thank my opponent, if he ever reads this. That game was really what I needed.

So in the end without painting points due to my hastily assembled Forsaken I came 26th of 32. A bad result, possibly my worst ever, maybe a good sign that Karma exists!

The ambush

I have noticed what may be a national characteristic here in Germany, the lyrical ambush. This has happened to me a few times already and I am waiting prepared for the next occurence! The best example I can think of is this: I was asked what the word 'Levy' meant. I explained that it is special type of tax and recieved a look of incomprehension. Then I was asked again as there must be another meaning. I thought for a second and then explained that a levee was an obstruction both naturally and artifically created to prevent rivers from flooding. Once again a look of incomprehension but at least the guy left. Eventually the guy returned and said what does "I drove my chevy to the levy, but the levy was dry" mean? Hmmm this time the incomprehension was mine!

I was in Hannover at the weekend. I attempted to attend a tournament and party there. Sadly I missed the tournament due to the party! I was going just to spectate and see what the armies were like. It would be nice to know what exactly is acceptable in terms of nastiness for armies. I don't want to turn up at the first tournament with what I thought was fine but nobody else does. Maybe it will be the one time I would get away with it? There has been a huge amount of disscussion online about army compositions within the Irish Warhammer Community. It is great to see everyone chatting about it and hopefully some reasonable concensus will be reached! With the vastly improved tournament scene there now I think these types of issues really need to be discussed.

I am still slowly getting the army prepared. Sadly real life things like a job are getting in my way. I suppose I should be happy about that but still today I would have prefered to paint. The Chaos Warriors are what I am working on at the moment. As I can't glue the shields and weapons on to these guys yet but I still want to use them. I felt they needed some attention. At least that way my opponents can see exactly what they are armed with. I have half of them started. It takes a long time to do one!

I incorporated a few Slaanesh symbols onto these guys. The helmets come with a tiny symbol in the centre. GW really hot the ball with this one. The mould line runs right down through the centre of the delicate sigil. I removed it fairly well but on one or two of the models so far I have also managed to remove part of the symbol. Annoying but a steady hand fixs them up pretty well. The heads look really great on the warriors. I don't have a clue what colour to do the crest in. I was thinking a dark grey blended up to white, keeping the colour cold. It should offer some contrast to the warmer palette but not distract from the details. It will be the last thing I paint on them anyway.

I still haven't finished with the Hounds. They are almost done, I think the claws are the last bit to do. To tie them in with the army I put some lava on these guys too. I wasn't sure what colour to do the scales so I experimented with the same pattern as the armour. Its not bad!

A weekend of blood in Gorey

I have returned intact though my army hasn't arrived unscathed. Well I haven't unpacked it yet but already I know a few things are broken. At least the packaging kept it to a minimum. A few arms and heads broken are not too bad. The tournament was great. It was not what I expected and coming fifth was a suprise. Sadly my travel plans clashed with my weekly Dungeons and Dragons game so I wasn't able to take part in the first session of the newest scenario. I thought my flights were early in the day but actually they were quite late. Hopefully I can catch up! The last scenario finally finished the previous week. Lysimakos did well, surviving the zombie ambush that decimated the party. We finally got a map working and while it was not perfect it helped a lot.

As for the tournament I had a great time. It was held in Gorey, Co. Wexford. We all headed down the night before and after a good feed of pints there was plenty of hi-jinks! At least the hang-overs were not too bad. The draw paired me up against an Ogre player for the first round.

Game 1: Grimbolds Host vs. Ogre Kingdoms
My opponent, Karl, was from the 'Drogs of War' club. I had played there a few months ago with my Ogres and preformed well. Karl had got a copy of my list and based his upon it. That was a pleasent suprise. He did include a Hunter that I generally avoid but it almost proved a game winner.
I won first turn and moved forward. I needed to be weary of his Hunter placed out on the left flank. He was equipped with the Greyback Pelt which allowed him to ignore difficult terrain. Karl advanced his army to meet mine int he centre of the board. I had set up my right flank well with difficult terrain giving me a perfect position behind to set up baiting units and knights ready to intercept failed charges. On the opposite flank the hunter forced my hand. My flanking knights were vulnerable to a charge from him. I had to charge my Marauder Horsemen in to attempt to do some damage. As I wasn't paying attention the dogs accompanying the hunter took a wound each. Instead one of them should have been removed. In the end this proved important as their return attacks decided the combat. My Marauders lost and fled. I had positioned the knights so that their flank was not vulnerable anymore from the hunter.
Karl, while being an inexperienced player, did not fall for my baiting and positioned his regiments excellently to bait me! His hunter didn't charge but his dogs did. My left flank began to crumble due to gnoblar shooting and Leadbelchers taking out half of the warhounds there. The knight defeated the overrunning dogs and held their position. In my turn I was able to charge the knights into both the hunter and the Leadbelchers due to them being lined up. I slaughtered the Leadbelchers and this caused the Hunter to lose combat. While I was not happy to have my knight buried in difficult terrain for the rest of the game, I had to run down the Hunter. I thankfully managed this. My magic began to work well in this turn. The combination of Pandemonium and Hellshriek caused most of his army to panic. The spells prevented him from using any characters leadership for tests. Hellshriek forced everything within 18" of my rapidly advancing general to take a panic test. His three most dangerous regiments panicked! I was forced however to intercept his gnoblars with some marauders though and in the next turn this proved fatal as it allowed the giant to get into the marauders flank. (The marauders actually lost combat against the gnoblars!).
The giant ended up in combat and due to the fact that the gnoblars had a greater unit strength when the Marauders fled the giant thundered towards my knights. Thankfully he ended up an inch short of the knights. I was able to cast Flickering Fire twice into the giant leaving it on a single wound. I also stated mopping up regiments in the centre that had been fleeing. The Ogre magic phase finally fell apart when he miscast and killed both his Butchers. The infernal puppet is great! The giant did manage to get into the knights and slaughtered them on a jump up and down result. The single knight left did prove brave enough to take the last wound from the giant though!
The game was quickly over after this point. While his general rallied at the board edge everything else was dead or mauled. The reslt to me was a 16-4 win. Karl played a great game. While being inexperienced he was able to position his regiments perfectly a skill many generals are not able to do at all. He suffered badly from the combination of Pandemonium and Hellshriek over the course of the game. I was lucky that he gave me a chance to tet out the army. I quickly realised that I had a huge army. Terrain placement oftern forced me to crowd together too much. I also realised that the slower elements of my army formed an excellent reserve!

Game 2: Grimbolds Host vs. Dwarves
In this game I played a very small Dwarf army commanded by Padraig, another of the "Drogs of War". His army was focused on shooting but I felt it wasn't honed. He could easily have made it much nastier in my opinion. He had a small hill in his deployment zone and fell straight into a trap during his deployment. As I got to choose sides I gave him the hill. It had a wood in front but it provided a dominant view of the centre of the board. I had more regiments and deployed my more sacrifical troops to the centre. Once he was fully deployed I placed knights and marauders ready to sweep around the wood from under cover and unto the hill by the second turn. He had placed the flanks of his army against the hill and most of his shooting unto it.
Everything went to plan in the first few turns. He had placed a cannon and bolt thrower far out to his right to provide enfillading fire as I attacked his left flank. I was able to get my marauders horsemen across the board supported by the dogs to take out these machines. While that was happening I swept unto the hill taking minimal loses and destroyed his firebase. My centre advanced to keep him under presure and prevent him from turning his units to face my flanking knights. I mopped up his smaller regiments and managed to get my knights into the front of his longbeard regiment. I didn't want to charge his blocks as I felt I couldn't break them from the front. I had managed to get Treason cast on his longbeards in an earlier turn and they slaughtered themselves. This meant the knights, that I made frenzied, swept through the remainder of the regiment and over ran into the front of his Ironbreakers and Lord. In my turn I was able to charge the flank of this regiment with the knights that had swept through his firebase and I again slaughtered the regiment with the hel of frenzied knights! The game was over at this point and I scored a 20-0 massacre!
Padraig lost due to the fact that he didn't notice I had an easy route into the bulk of his army. He isolated some of his machines rather than castling fully around the hill. If he had I don't believe I would have had such an easy ride! He also made a few less than optimal choices in his army selection. His list was fine but could have benefitted from a few changes, such as Hammerers instead of Ironbreakers!

Game 3: Grimbolds Host vs. Dwarves
My two good wins saw me on table two against Lenny's Dwarves. Lenny plays with my own club the Underground Gamers so I knew him well. He also played in the 2009 ETC and did well. His Dwarves were optimised and he knew how to use them. I considered, really considered, hiding in the corner of the table behind a hill and taking a draw. I didn't want to charge into the face of his guns as I knew I would come out the worst. Thinking hard I decided that playing Warhammer was why I travelled to Gorey and I might as well have a proper game! Caution was thrown to the winds.
We both deployed deep in our alloted zones. I didn't want him to be able to take advantage of any shooting in the first turn. Thinking about it I could have gone forward much more as his twenty four inch guns wouldn't have been able to shoot in the first turn anyway.
He won the first turn and managed a few shots. He killed some knights but nothing panicked. This was his best turn of shooting for the entire game. He had anchored a flank on some woods that enabled me to move around again with my marauder horsemen. As his guns are move or fire he wasn't able to retaliate against them. I moved forward into the range of his guns. By the second turn my hounds were almost gone but the knights were still doing well. Having learned from the second game not to charge hounds into dwarven warmachines I instead mover the remnants of the regiments infront of the guns to prevent them shooting anything else due to the lack of a line of sight. I was also able to cast delusions onto his Longbeards forcing them to move infront of his organ gun restricting severly its line of sight.
By turn three I was able to charge the flanking marauders into his crossbowmens rear. My knights crashed into his Longbeards front. The foot elements of the army were getting very close to his line and I was able to use magic to the fullest extent casting Flickering Fire into his machines and decimating the crews. I wasn't able to make my knights frenzied sadly! The knight inflicted a lot of wounds unto the longbeards and while suffering none in return they fled seven inches. Thankfully the dwarves refused to follow. This proved decisive. The marauders inflicted a good few casualties against the crossbows but didn't manage to break them.
The organ gun thankfully misfired and blew intself to pieces. That proved fortuitous as the knights were then able to rally without suffering casualties right in front of the Dwarven line. By this stage the shots being taken at my line were much reduced due to the lines of sight being blocked and casualties. In my turen I rallied the knights and prepared them for a charge into the Longbeards. My Chaos Warriors and Marauders reached a threatening position and the marauder horsemen began to grind down the Crossbows. I also got delusions off on the Hammerers and General forcing them to reveal their flank to the Chaos Warriors to exploit the following turn. I finally broke the Crossbows leaving three Marauder Horsemen to ravage the back of the Dwarves.
In the fifth turn the Knights crashed into the Longbeards. This time they were frenzied and they smashed through wiping the regiment out. The Warriors charged the flank of the Hammerers and won combat easily. However the stubborn warriors passed the break test as expected. The Marauder Horsemen didn't do so well. They charged the Bolt Thrower with Master Engineer. The stand and shoot reaction wiped them out... ouch! Combat between the Warriors and Hammerers continued through to the sixth turn, the Sorcerer Lord killed the Battle Standard Bearer in a challenge in the previous turn, which I forgot entitled me to a roll on the Eye of the Gods table! The Warriors finally lost combat in the last turn due to not having a musician. This meant that the Dwarves scored 800 victory points on the strength of having a musician. This made the game a draw, but with 100vps in my favour. I almost had them!
I wasn't happy to say the least. I had eleven points spare in my list, enough to buy a musician. Well I won't leave home without it next time! The draw was a decent result in the end but defeat was really snatched from the jaws of victory during this game.

I finished the tournament in fifth place due to not scoring anything for painting. I have to say I didn't expect to do this well. I managed to avoid Daemons and Vampires on the way up which possibly helped a lot. I don't think I would have managed to get good results against those two armies, especially considering the nasty lists I noticed around the tables. The army proved it is capable of acquitting itself well on the board. The choice of Slaanesh magic for the lord really made the magic phase a challenge as I often ended up with ineffective spells. He was still capable of causing harm but I believe if my opponents had paid more attention to what I was capable of casting they would have realised that some of my spells were not worth it and they had nothing to fear from the threat of me casting them. Tzeentchian magic is amazing though. Flickering Fire is the best spell in the game plus Treason and Pandemonium makes for a great magic phase. I have noticed the combination of Pandemonium and Helshriek makes for a lot of failed panic tests. The Slaanesh spell that makes the knights cause terror is also excellent when combined with Pandemonium! For the next tournament I will have to change the army as it is under ETC restrictions. I still think it can do well and look forward to playing with it in the future. Congratulations are due to Alan Heffernan for a very impressive win with a decent Dark Elf list.

The tournament itself was excellently run. It was approached in a very professional manner. Every player was given a bag of goodies including counters and custom dice. I hope a lot of other tournaments decide to do the same, getting dice is great! While a lot of the lists were hard there was very few obviously 'cheesy' lists. I only saw two or three lists that I felt the players had gone a little too far. Thankfully I didn't have to play against them. There were a lot of Dragons flying around so I have to think about how to deal with them in the future. Looking at the newly posted rankings I am in fourth position due to the fact that painting scores are not counted (thankfully!). I wonder how this will shape up after the next tournament?

T-shirts do a good job

Okay I managed to pack the army finally. Two shoe boxes, a trousers and some T-shirts did the job fairly well. I am scared to open the boxes now to see the little broken pieces tumbling out. I should really bring a small plastic bag to collect the pieces up! Battlefoam's customer support is really useless. I have placed the order almost a week ago and they haven't bothered to get back to me at all! The big problem is that calling them is difficult as they are in Arizona and the time-zones are not really compatible. I will try to give them a call this weekend and put some fire under their asses. I have eight weeks until the next tournament and they better have it ready by then. I don't want to be using T-shirts once the army is painted.

I have ordered the 432 Pack, the one that is great for transport on planes. The problem is I have to design the foam inside myself. Therefore I need to really think as what I want to pack in. I also need it to be interchangable which is really annoying. If I combine two units into a single tray I have to be sure that I will be always bring those units together. It is a pity that they don't do half trays, as that would make them very interchangable! Also one of the problems is the cavalry tray. It is 4" high and it only takes twenty four models. That means it uses up two thirds of the case for far less than two thirds of the army.

Listening to the lists everyone is bringing to the tournament I think I am bringing a knife to a gunfight. There will be massive beasts galore backed up by hordes of wizards and batteries of warmachines. That should be enough to smash my army to pieces! The draw for the first round has already been made and I believe I will be fighting against an Ogre force. That would at least be a decent match up but not a simple game. As I have played Ogres a lot I know that they are dangerous. The magic is powerful as are the characters. With a decent game plan and some luck I should do well. I will also have to learn to play for a draw in this tournament. As I don't believe that I can deal effectively with everything that will be thrown at me I need to cut my losses and draw. While that probably make for a terrible game, it is a needed skill for ETC games.

Anyway you can look forward to some reports next week I hope... I have to go and catch the plane now!

Wrap me in a towel and carry me away!

I am having no luck with this army! I finally got the english version of the army book. When it arrived from Maelstrom it had a big crease on the back cover Not that this effects the contents but I still don't want a damaged book. I have to send it back. Hopefully the replacement arrives before I leave. Oh and Games Workshop have finally gotten back to me and have agreed to supply me with replacement bases from the Chaos Batallion box. However I have now realised I am also missing four marauders from the box. They want me to send back the entire box to get replacements. A little late considering that I have almost everything glued together.

So I have started on the general of the army! Grimbold the Blind, mighty Slaanesh Sorcerer. I have built him with components from a number of kits. Once again the Flagellant kit proved versatile! I changed the left arm extensively. The arms I was provided with in the Chaos Knights box were not really suitable at all for what I wanted. So I chopped it down into its constituent pieces and reformed it into a better position. Some green stuff in the joints reinforced the connections. The armour on the knights left arms is without any detail so I had to sculpt some. It came out well but not as I imagined. It is hard to get a sharp edge in greenstuff. I have seen some brownstuff for sale. It is supposed to be better for doing armour so I might eventually try that out.

I wanted Grimbold to be carrying a book. The more I thought about it the les I liked the idea. First of all he is charging into combat on a horse, reading would probably prove difficult. I also don't like the pose where the model is showing the book to the enemy. Instead I stuck the book on his saddle and put some flames into his hand. I intended to sculpt them myself but then I noticed a nice component of the Empire Wizards box. The flaming skull was perfect. I needed to make his hand first though. This was fun to sculpt but amazingly difficult. I now forgive Gary Morley for his many mistakes! It is tough to get the proportions to look right. While they may be anatomically correct they might not look correct in 'heroic scale'.

Having the hand open was the tough part. Sculpting fingers around a haft is pretty simple in comparison. The right arms recieved a lot less attention. I sculpted better bracer to match the other arm. I wanted to try out putting some runes on the surface of the armour. It was tough to do it and keep the surface of the greenstuff smooth. I haven't perfected ithis technique yet but I intend trying a few more times. I should be able to get it eventually! I have more sculpting to do on Grimbold but I won't be able to get more than the preparation work done before the Gorey Tournament so I haven't bothered. Once I get back I will give him the fur cloak like the rest of the army and some more details to give him the sense of being a little more shaman like, such as runestones and bone charms.

I am busily gluing together my marauder horsemen now. They are the final thing to complete before the weekend. I have given this regiment throwing axes for some reason. Everyone online says that flail are the best equipment selection. I don't like the flail models themselves so I tried to avoid using them. I will probably try to figure out a way to get flails onto the second regiment without them looking too stupid. Games Workshop really do bad flails. The Flagellants were really terrible. The flails were almost completely vertical!

This regiment again benefitted from the Flagellant sprues. The heads are much more expressive than the standard marauder ones so I swapped them. The back banner is nice and looks very well on horseback. It gives a sense of movement to the rider I hope. I wanted to get some flames into this regiment to match some of the marauders elsewhere in the army. I gave the riders to each side of the regiment flaming brands. This will give me a chance to try some light sourcing on the miniatures without having to worry how they rank up. If it works well I will carry it across the army.

The only other conversions I made with the marauders were simple weapons swaps. This rider got the flail arms but an axe head tops the shaft. I did this to stop the static look of the models when they only have a limited number of poses due to a lack of variety in the weapon arms. While it makes him look like he has a great axe I hope it won't be an issue. He is the only one carrying a weapon like this. The horses themselves are wonderful, possibly the best horses Games Workshop have produced so far. While they are still a little cartoony I think it suits them well and erves to make them look evil!

Finally you get to see what I am doing with the Flagellants. They are my marauders with flails. Once again the concensus seems to be that there is no point in arming marauders with flails anymore as it costs the same as upgrading to great weapons. Well I like the look of these models and if they end up being useless I can always swap them out! For now I want to ee how they preform in comparison to the great weapons. As they are essentially sacrifical troops I don't think that there is much of a distinction.

The conversions on these models are going to be a bit more minimal than the other marauders. Some of the arms had to be repositioned necessitating some green stuffing but nothing major. I am going to give them a lot of parchment scrolls representing their secret cult knowledge type stuff! Other than this I don't really know what else I cold do. The models are nicely detailed and I suspect will demand a very good paint job. I guess that a few interesting symbols on the robes will look nice. I also managed to find a use for the old chaos sorcerer I have had for a long time. He fits in as a champion quite well I hope. I do need to get another model to fill the regiment up to twelve so hopefully I can prevail on someones charity!

Thankfully the chaos warriors come with cloaks! At least there is one regiment that won't have to have these sculpted. They do have a nasty gap in the fur at the shoulders but I fixed that easily. I had some spare slaanesh champion heads lying around so I made sure to get them onto these models. I had intended to give them the Mark of Slaanesh anyway so this was great. I bought the heads years ago and forgot about them until I was moving here. While rummaging through some of my boxes I found them. I am short one but thats not a problem as I can just get original model they come from and steal his. As the army I am using now will not be valid under ETC restrictions I will probably use that Slaanesh model as my general in those lists. At least for now I don't have to worry about it. The next tournament in Northern Ireland will have ETC restrictions but it is in November so I have some time yet.

I did want to have a conversion of some form in the regiment. I decided that the champion looked quite like the model of Archaon on foot. In my mind he had his shield resting on the ground. I copied this idea sculpting a new hand for the champion in the process. Now that I think about it the Archaon model has his shield up in the air! I like this conversion and hope that it breaks the static warrior pose. As I won't be able to paint the models with the shields attached I will have to bring them to the tournament shieldless. I hope people won't mind this! I should probably bring a special list for people so that they can check out what everything is and what they are armed with! I can't even glue the weapons on unless I want to go for a very static pose.

I also managed to get the knights constructed, both regiments. They are fantastic models that just won't rank up. I will have to take photographs of them so that I can reference them when I need to rank the models up. I have managed to get them into ranks through painstaking gluing, breaking apart and regluing. I won't have time to start sculpting extras unto these so they will remain as they are for now. They will probably be one of the last things I paint for the army as I will want them to look well.

I will have to carry this army without the benefit of a case as my Battlefoam order has not arrived and will not arrive for a while. Its pretty much my fault as I ordered way too late. Their customer service is useless though... I will be following a suggestion from the Underground Gamers: a towel. Yep a few small soft towels with the models all wrapped up inside. I really hope that this gets the more delicate models there in one piece. I guess I should bring some super glue with me...

Turning to the dark side!

Here is one of the wizards that I am converting. I am trying to keep it more in touch with the marauders so I am going for a shaman rather than a sorceror. I began with the Empire Wizards sprue and added a few other components. The chaos star worked well to give an instantly evil look. I have also decided that the wizards will all be blind.

The extra piece come from the wonderful flagellant sprue. There are lots of little bones, skulls and symbols that can be attached anywhere. The cloak I added so that he does not look too empire. The blind flagellant head hopefully keeps him evil looking too. While evil is not a theme I really wanted to convey I need some in there. I was imagining a viking shaman. I added the little runetones around the fur cloak to reinforce that image. They were easy enough to do so I will carry them in through the rest of the army in various forms. So less than two weeks to go and I am getting there. There is no chance the army will be painted, absolutely none! I am having to temporarily abandon my workspace and I don't really know if I will be getting much more access to it before I have to leave. Hopefully so as there are a lot more marauders that need some glue!

I am really struggling with my list at the moment. The competition in Gorey is going to be high. I want to power up the list without completely going to the Dark Side! How I am going to achieve this I don't know. I really like the Warriors of Chaos list but it suffers from being well balanced! When compared to other more powerful lists there is nothing that jumps out as being great. The magic is good but costs a lot to bring to a dominating power level. I will be taking three wizards as the fourth is too expensive. I am struggling with which lores to take. I want a Slaanesh army but the lore is not fantastic considering the two armies I will need to be able to beat are immune to two thirds of the spells. The Tzeentch lore is good, well fanatstic really. I don't want to rely on a single spell: Gateway, to win my games though. It is a rather poor spell when you consider the much easier to cast Flickering Fire. I will take a mix of lores and from the games see what actually works well!

In terms of regiments I should probably focus on very hard hitting cavalry and then some cheap distractions. I have a more balanced inclusion at the moment with four decent infantry regiments of 12+ each. These could be problematic as they will need a lot of space to move around comfortly. The Chaos Warriors are almost the same points as a regiment of Chaos Knights and I really don't think they can preform anywhere nearly as good. Still as the tournament will actually be my first chance t play these I will have to go with the expectation of not doing all that well but learning some valuable lessons!

The children are complete

I have finished the Children of the Bear. The cloaks are all done and the heads are finally in place. The most extensive conversion was on the champion. I wanted the image of a haughty warrior and I think I have managed to achieve that! The conversion was a lot more simple than I imagined. The resting hand on the weapon was made a lot easier by some delicate cutting of an existing hand and then replacing what was needed. The thumb around the back was the trickiest piece to do. The fingers might be a little long but I am happy with them so no changes!

The cloaks are getting a lot easier to do. It still takes a little under an hour to do the sculpting once the frame is prepared and dry. Only thirty more to do I believe! I put together a few more models from the army and I have deicided that the Chaos Knights can do with cloak too! At least the Warriors come with them already done. The cloaks do seem a little small on the marauders though. I think I was not generous enough while sculpting them. I should probably have extended them out to the sides more while sculpting. That would give them a much more voluminous appearance. Also the addition of some more folds lengthways would have helped. At least I know this now for the rest of them!

The bases are done on these too. I didn't put much thought into the placement of the elements on the bases sadly. It does mean that they are easir to rank up but it does not look as cohesive. The Warhounds below show how cohesive basing looks great across a regiment. As I have probably said I am simply going for a woodland type base. This means rocks and branches. I have used it before on my Circle or Orboros army and it worked well. They however don't need to rank up so placement of things was not too important. I think that a scattered placement here takes away from the regiment.

These are poor models. GW don't seem to be able to do dog like models. They are at least a step up from the Dire Wolves they produced. In this picture you can se what I mean by keeping the basing cohesive! I just need to figure out a way to do this for the static element of the army. The Chaos Warriors don't really give me much scope in their poses to have them stepping over things. I will figure out something... I would like to make a symbol of Slaanesh in rocks on the bases across the regiment and see if anyone ever notices! I doubt they would.

This is a shot of one of my next marauders. These are going to represent a Cult from the south. I am not sure exactly what more I am going to do with these just yet. The addition of a few Chaos like symbols gives a good hint at their alliegiance. I will put pictures of them up here once I think about them more and then start constructing!

Here is one of my giant knights. These guys are huge. They are also fantastic models. I do believe that there is a conspiracy by GW to not allow Chaos models to rank up. I have had to break apart each model a number of times to get him to fit with his bulky neighbours. They will be getting some greentuff treatment soon!

The tournament is now less than two weeks away as I have to leave early to get there! I at least made a provisional army out last night so I have an idea of what I am goig to take. I am finding it hard to get the army together as I don't really have a good idea of what I want. The characters are proving especially difficult. While I want a Slaanesh army I can't relly rely on their magic phase as at least two armies are completely immune to the effective spells on the list. Well I still have some time to think about it. Thats half the fun with Warhammer!

Less than three weeks!

Hmmm I have just realised that I have less than three weeks to go to the tournament where I am hoping to field my Warriors of Chaos. I currently have less than two hundred points worth assembled. I do have the bulk of the army done though with thirty eight models on their bases. Sadly that means fourteen hounds and twenty four marauders! Tomorrow I will have to sort out some characters to make sure I can meet the points. I have been looking to order a mounted Deamonette on all the online retailers but it seems that they are now out of production. I will have to head to the local games store in Hamburg 'Spieleland' which is fantatic! Failing that I will once again venture into GW in the hope that nobody speaks English so that they can't haunt me while in the shop.

Spending the weekend helping reonvate a house by the sea didn't give me much time to construct more little grey men this weekend. I spent all of Sunday asaulting an unruly hedge with a chainsaw. The novelty of a heavy spinning blade wears off rather quickly. My arms are broken in pieces. I have muscles now I didn't realise I had! Stevens Eriksson's books have also proved a distraction. I am currently enjoying the seventh book Reaper's Gale. Thankfully I have spotted a few retailers of english books as I doubt if I will ever have enough mastery of german to manage a novel of that complexity! I do have to get my 'Krieger des Chaos' tomorrow to figure out what I will bring to the tournament.

The upcoming tournament is being hosted by theNorth Wexford Gamers. I guess it will be a complete cheesefest as it is the first Irish ranking tournament. I don't think I will manage to core too highly, especially as my army won't even be painted. I would like to get a feel for how my regiments are doing though so I can be prepared for the next ranking tournament, which was just announced today, the Resurgence 2009. It is being held in Ballymena, Northern Ireland by the Northern Wasters. I hope it lives up to its previous incarnations as Bloodstorm. The last one was 2004 I believe. They were great fun!

I am still waiting on getting into some gaming fun here in Hamburg. Once I get more boot on bases I will organise some games properly. I am really looking forward to seeing how Warhammer is played here!