Painting Dwarf Irondrakes

I now have less than 2 weeks to prepare for Convic, and I haven't exactly made grand progress thus far. I have a group of 10 Thunderers who are about half-done, and I've painted a small batch of Irondrakes. This post is obviously about the latter, given they're actually done.

I've talked previously about how I don't particularly like the models as provided by GW, and did my best to add some variety to their poses and alter their appearance before I painted them. Nevertheless, when I sat down to paint them, I found myself scratching my head a bit. I painted all the armour (ie, basically the whole model) and then picked out the gold detailing, but the unit looked pretty bland and I didn't feel like it would match the brighter colours of the rest of my army at all. So I started experimenting with adding some spot colour.

6 painted Dwarf Irondrakes with random splotches of colour.

Painting, Irondrakes and Convic Lists

The last week has been a bit of a blur for me, having gotten sick and then taken a long time to recover after getting ahead of myself and regressing. I think I'm on the mend this time though, which is good - because I suddenly seem to have a lot of work to do. 

I haven't entered a tournament in almost 6 months now, however I have been planning to enter Convic. I say planning, but really I gave it little thought until I realised that lists were due yesterday, and then had to suddenly scramble to work out what I was going to do. I did indeed enter, and started to think about lists. If Face Off is anything to go by, there will be about a million Wood Elf armies at Convic, and plenty of other Elves as well. I didn't want to be part of the problem, so decided against using Elves. I also figured I would be likely to get shot at a lot, so wanted an army that wouldn't just get picked off as it jogged across the table. That ruled out the Ogres I have available, and Orcs were not likely to be much better. And then I didn't want to use Empire again, because I've done that enough for now. 

So I am using Dwarfs. This feels ill-advised given that the only other time I took Dwarfs into a tournament, it put me off using them again for years. But they do have a new book and some new tricks, and it seems that plenty of people still don't really rate them. And I'm busily painting them anyway, so why not?

Turns out the answer to that "why not?" question is that I am an idiot, and incapable of fielding a list that makes use of the hundreds of painted Dwarfs I have already accumulated. So I've submitted a list for a tournament in 3 weeks, and it has 40 unpainted models in it. What is wrong with me?

The army as it currently stands.

Duelling Gamers - Month 3 Progress

I've been a bit slack with my Tale of Duelling Gamer updates this month, but that doesn't mean I haven't made any progress.

My plans for the month have me painting another 16 Dwarf Quarrellers and 2 characters in June. Having not particularly enjoyed painting Quarrellers last month, I can't say as I was enthusiastic about this plan, but I stuck with it because it will give me a substantial regiment for the army. I will worry about the characters later, assuming I have time.

Rather than just paint up another 16 of the current plastic Quarrellers, I decided that I wanted to do something about the fact that I might want to equip the unit with great weapons. The normal models really don't allow for this at all, so I decided to work with some older plastic Dwarf models I had acquired - the multi-part kit from back in 5th or 6th edition. The one where the models carried great weapons of crossbows on their shoulders. It seemed like the perfect solution - they had both the weapons I was looking for. 

A few older Dwarfs, each armed with crossbows and great weapons.

Stemming the Tide - Part 3

This post is the final part of my report of the Warhammer display game played at Little Wars. If you missed the previous part of the report, you can find it here. The main page for the report is here.

Turn 5

The White Wolves find themselves in a spot of bother.

Stemming the Tide - Part 2

This post is a continuation of my report of the Warhammer display game played at Little Wars. If you missed the first part of the report, you can find it here. You can find the main page for the report here.

Turn 3

Archaon was displeased. It was still the opening phases of the battle, but already his incompetent allies were falling like flies to the enemy artillery. And now Galrauch was in peril, and with him the last of the powerful magic wielders in the Chaos host. He would have to do something; it was time to intervene. With a roar he urged Dorghar into a gallop, leaving his entourage of Nurgle Knights behind as he charged into the Flagellants alongside Galrauch. The large regiment of Nurgle Chosen followed suit, swinging around into the flank of the Flagellants whilst a party of Marauders who had been in their way hastily engaged the Griffon on the flank (getting out of the way was their primary motivation). The Nurgle Marauders on that flank charged headlong into the waiting ranks of Halberdiers, whilst the Nurgle Warriors continued their slow march behind them.

Archaon leads the rescue attempt for poor old Galrauch.

Stemming the Tide - Part 1

OK, so it's taken me a while to get this online. As I had mentioned previously, a group of us attended Little Wars at the Moorabbin Town Hall a bit over a week ago and played a 14,000 point per side display game of Warhammer Fantasy. I took plenty of photos, however it was pretty busy and there wasn't time to handle the game as a proper battle report. Here is what we've got instead. The report covers multiple posts. You can find the main page here.

14,000 points per side, 6 hours to play up to 8 turns... What could go wrong?

Stemming the Tide

The Chaos army was enormous – far larger than the reports had led them to believe. The Emperor himself Karl Franz had ridden north to meet the advancing threat, however as mighty as his army was, they were not prepared for what was coming and they now knew it. Archaon's hordes were a dark stain across the horizon – a seemingly endless tide of steel and death. As the full scale of the invasion had started to become apparent, the Emperor had made a difficult decision. The Empire forces would have to fall back, and quickly. If they were caught out in the open, here on the southern steppes of Kislev, they would be slaughtered.

The order was given and the bulk of the army withdrew at best speed toward the relative shelter of the cities to the south. However, the enemy was now too close for their retreat to go unnoticed, and the advance elements of the Chaos host raced to cut them off. Not being one to shirk from battle, Karl Franz himself led a rearguard action to buy time for the rest of his soldiers to escape. Only after the site of their valiant stand was chosen did the scouts report that the Everchosen himself rode at the head of the onrushing Chaos forces...

This battle uses the Invasion! scenario from the Warhammer Fantasy 8^th edition hardcover rulebook. As per the scenario rules, the battle was played lengthwise on a 8' x 6' table, with control of 3 defensive positions and the 4 quarters of the table deciding the victor. The Chaos invaders were able to recycle lost Core units from the table edges of any quarters that they controlled. Assuming we had time, the game would go for 8 turns.

I ended up making the army lists for both sides. A number of brave volunteers raised their hands when I asked for people to help me run this thing on the day. The Empire were commanded by Nick Cook and me, whilst the Chaos forces were under the control of Tim Stewart and Ben Leopold.

The Birdie and The Emperor

Sounds like a terrible fairy tale, doesn't it? In truth it's really just a painting update. I was rushing to try to get things ready for Little Wars on Sunday, and this consumed my evenings for the previous few days. As predicted in my previous post, I ran out of time to try to get Karl Franz on Deathclaw painted before the game, but I really wanted the Emperor to make an appearance, given Archaon would be on the other side of the table. So once I got the second Griffon out of the way, I set about finding a barded warhorse for him instead.

First up we have the second of the Glorious Birdies I was trying to paint in a week (the third being Deathclaw, who obviously missed out). Having just painted a fairly bright Griffon with green and purple feathers and a rider to match the purple and white of my Krakenberg contingent, I decided that this guy would use more muted, natural colours and the rider would fit in with my Stirland regiments instead.

My second Empire Griffon, this time using the old metal model.