Tuesday, 8 July 2025

The slow grow continues

Another month has passed (well more than a month, really) and there has been some limited progress on the painting front. I'm not really sure what my target was as the month started, but I ended up scrambling to reach my target by painting a couple of cannons toward the end of the month, and that was enough for me to at least be on track from a points perspective. I'm not proud, I'll take that.

10 Handgunners, including 1 champions with Hochland Longrifles (they're meant to be used as a couple of small detachments with the Halberdiers). Of course they're all on 20mm bases (all of my stuff will forever be on the old bases, and just lean on adapters).

Monday, 7 July 2025

Snake Eyes Aftermath - Part 2

This is the second part of my report of the recent Snake Eyes Warhammer: The Old World tournament. You can find the first part of the report here.

After our glorious showing in the first round, we were at the back of the pack. Time to see if we could maintain that, or if we were going to slip up and actually get some battle points...

Tom Stockdale
Vampire Counts

  • Master Necromancer [425 pts]
    • Level 4 Wizard
    • General
    • Mortis Engine
    • Sceptre of De Noirot
    • Crown of the Damned
  • Tomb Banshee [90 pts]
  • Wight Lord [85 pts]
    • Lance (when mounted)
    • Heavy armour
    • Shield
    • Battle Standard Bearer
    • Skeletal Steed
  • 25 Grave Guard [343 pts]
    • Seneschal
    • Standard bearer - Drakenhof Banner
    • Musician
  • 32 Zombies [96 pts]
  • 5 Dire Wolves [46 pts]
    • Doom Wolf
  • 5 Dire Wolves [46 pts]
    • Doom Wolf
  • 9 Black Knights [310 pts]
    • Hell Knight
    • Standard bearer - Standard of Hellish Vigour
    • Musician
  • 3 Spirit Hosts [147 pts]
  • 5 Blood Knights [271 pts]
    • Kastellan
    • Standard bearer - Rampaging Banner
    • Musician
  • Varghulf [140 pts]

Ben Yuill (C)
Bretonnian Exiles

  • Baron (307pts)
    • General
    • The Exile’s Vow
    • Virtue of Knightly Temper
    • Royal Pegasus
    • Shield
    • Frontier Axe
    • Gauntlet of the Duel
    • Falcon-horn of Fredemund
  • Baron (279pts)
    • The Exile’s Vow
    • Virtue of Heroism
    • Royal Pegasus
    • Charmed Shield
    • 2x Lucky Heirloom
  • 10 Mounted Knights of the Realm (311pts)
    • The Exile’s Vow
    • First Knight - Antler’s of the Great Hunt
    • Standard Bearer - War Banner
    • Musician
  • 15 Peasant Bowmen (85pts)
    • Skirmishers
    • Standard Bearer
    • Musician
  • 12 Peasant Bowmen (65pts)
    • Skirmishers
    • Musician
  • 12 Peasant Bowmen (65pts)
    • Skirmishers
    • Musician
  • 5 Pegasus Knights (321pts)
    • The Exile’s Vow
    • First Knight
    • Standard Bearer - Banner of Honourable Warfare
    • Musician
  • 4 Pegasus Knights (266pts)
    • The Exile’s Vow
    • First Knight
    • Standard Bearer - Banner of The Zealous Knight
    • Musician
  • Border Prince Bombard (100pts)
  • Border Prince Bombard (100pts)
  • Trebuchet (100pts)

Peter Reilly
Tomb Kings of Khemri

  • Tomb King (441pts)
    • General
    • Necrolith Bone Dragon
    • Great Weapon
    • Shield
    • Armour of the Ages
    • Talisman of Protection
  • Mortuary Priest (85pts)
    • Wizard Level 1
    • Lore of Nehekhara
    • Amulet of the Serpent
  • Mortuary Priest (55pts)
    • Wizard Level 1
    • Lore of Nehekhara
  • 39 Skeleton Warriors (235pts)
    • Thrusting Spears
    • Master of Arms
    • Standard Bearer
    • Banner of the Desert Winds
  • 42 Skeleton Archers (210pts)
  • 5 Skeleton Horse Archers (55pts)
  • 6 Ushabti (301pts)
    • Ancient
  • 3 Ushabti (147pts)
    • Great Bow
  • Tomb Scorpion (70pts)
  • Tomb Scorpion (70pts)
  • Necrosphinx (195pts)
  • Casket of Souls (135pts)

I ended up matched against the Vampire Counts, after we led with our Chaos army so that he could avoid the monster-hunting Bretonnian army. Tom was using a borrowed army, which became apparent when he went to roll for a break test with his undead... That's OK, we sorted that out pretty quickly. They were also on the wrong sized bases. Very old school. Not at all like my much older models on new-fangled base adapters! Moral high ground for me!

This was one of 3 Vampire Counts armies in the field, which is more than you might have expected given the character and magic limits. Dire Wolves vanguarded forward on the flanks, and Tom got the first turn.

Wednesday, 2 July 2025

Snake Eyes Aftermath - Part 1

Recently we attended a slightly different Warhammer: The Old World tournament. This was an event with teams of 3 players, where each round the team would be matched against another team. A matching system similar to that used by the ETC was them employed to determine which armies would face each other on the tables, and the results were then tallied together at the end. A rather gentle "capping" system was in play, meaning that despite each game being determined by a 20-0 system, the overall team results would never be more than 20 apart. So the team would always get at least 20 points, and could never get more than 40. This essentially means the teams move around on the leaderboard exactly the same as solo players would with the normal 20-0 scoring system. It was a 5 round event over 2 days, and there were 14 teams in attendance (so 42 players).

There were some interesting rules in place for army selection. Every player in the team had to take a different race, and they couldn't duplicate magic items across their lists (so only 1 Ogre Blade between the 3 players). You could also only field a combined total of 8 levels of magic, and characters were capped at 600 points despite the armies being 2000 points. There were also some rules around spamming duplicate choices, but it all added up to mean that army selection was interesting. How would you spread the magic levels across the armies, which ones would work best with only 600 points of characters to work with, and did you need to look at armies like Dwarfs or Daemons, who don't need to fight over the magic items?

We ended taking a combination of Empire, Orcs and Goblins and Warriors of Chaos. Across the event there was a pretty wide range of armies in play, with only Wood Elves, Ogre Kingdoms and maybe Dark Elves not represented at all. Amusingly there was an identical over-equipped Chaos Lord on Dragon that managed to make its way into 4 lists (including ours). 

Tim grabbed some quick photos of our armies when they were arrayed for the army parade. I failed to do so, because I'm a useless blogger. This was my Orc and Goblin army
Pete's Empire army, which was slightly less White Wolf than it really looked.
Tim's Warriors of Chaos army.

This was my list. Honestly not the most carefully designed thing in the world, but I managed to play a couple of practice games with it, and I didn't do too badly in those games. I also liked actually having some infantry... Unlike my teammates.

Wednesday, 4 June 2025

The slowest of slow grows

In my previous post I indicated that I was going to be launching into another "slow grow" painting challenge. Well at the time, I didn't really understand just how much emphasis was going to be on the "slow" part of things...

May was the first month of the challenge, and we set off with a group of us declaring our planned involvement and what we were going to be working on:

  • Me - Nuln Empire
  • Noakes - Bretonnians
  • Sean - Daemons
  • Tim - Skaven
  • Pete - Vampire Counts
  • Hamish - Beastmen
  • Jono - Wood Elves
The general guide was that we'd work on a rough target of about 250 points a month, with the aim of putting together a usable force over 8 months or so. All pretty simple, not very formal in terms of what order things were worked on. It's just meant to give some shape and motivation for getting some painting done.

Anyway, May is now done, and between us we have... not a whole lot to show for our efforts. Here's an update:

Me (Nuln Empire):

I figured I was starting the month with momentum on my side, having just worked my way through a regiment of Handgunners, and a War Wagon before that. This made me confident that I could tackle a relatively big opening month, and I declared I was going to paint a regiment of 20 Halberdiers and 10 Handgunners as their detachment.
How it started: 10 Halberdiers, 10 Handgunners, and a bonus Engineer. If I got all of that done, I'd be off to a flying start.

Saturday, 12 April 2025

Continuing Nuln and another slow grow

I have been continuing work on my new Nuln Empire army. Progress has been steady, and I've completed 10 Handgunners with another 10 well on their way.

Technically these are meant to be Ironsides (a resin upgrade kit for normal Handgunners that came from Forge World), although they're a Magori 3D printed version of them. They still sport the heavier armour, and include kneeling models for the front rank. I printed a pile of these and undercoated them years ago, then they languished in a box, waiting for their time in the sun.

Tuesday, 1 April 2025

Slow, quiet progress

It's been a long time since I posted a hobby update (over a year, it seems), so here is a bit of a catch-up.

First of all, I spent a fair bit of time painting battlemechs and tanks for games of Alpha Strike with friends. I probably did more than I needed to, but that doesn't mean I'm done (you probably know that about me by now)...

My current Steiner force, painted in dribs and drabs across the last year. I've shown some of the tanks previously, but there's well over a battalion of stuff all told. It's not well balanced in terms of the mechs I got finished. I need to add some more light and medium mechs, maybe some infantry or battle armour...

It hasn't all been mechs and tanks, of course. I played in 2 Warhammer: The Old World on either side of Christmas, and needed to paint things to get my armies ready for both of those events. Firstly for Axemaster, there were various gaps that needed to be plugged...

Sunday, 16 February 2025

Cancon 2025 Aftermath - Part 6

This is the final part of my Cancon report. You can find the previous part here, or go back to the start here.

Game 6 - Command & Control
Callum Borthwick - Ogre Kingdoms

  • Tyrant on Thundertusk with Deathcheater, Ironfist, Light Armour, Tenderiser, Talisman Of Protection
  • Slaughtermaster (Level 4, Battle Magic) with Deathcheater, Grut’s Sickle
  • Bruiser with Battle Standard (Bull Standard), Deathcheater, Light Armour
  • 20 Gnoblar Fighters
  • 6 Ironguts with Great Weapons, Heavy Armour, Full Command, Veteran, The Blazing Banner
  • 6 Ogre Bulls with Ironfists, Light Armour, Full Command, Cannibal Totem
  • Ironblaster 
  • 4 Maneaters with Light Armour, Full Command, Immune to Psychology, Poisoned Attacks
  • 4 Mournfang Cavalry with Light Armour, Ironfists, Full Command
  • 3 Yhetees with Greyback, Scouts

These Titan Forge Ogres are very nice. That is a Tyrant on a Thundertusk. Naturally it scuttles sideways (he's facing the camera)