Painting Pikemen

I stated in my last post that I was intending to work on my regiment of Ricco's Republican Guard, and I actually seem to be following through on it. This is relatively novel, as my last few months have been full of stalled efforts to pick a project and try to build up some momentum with it. I think this time I will actually be able to push through to my goal.

I've finished painting the first wave of 21. That leaves 7 more models and 3 Ogre fillers (which don't exist yet) to push the unit up to KoW horde size (ie 40 models). That's my current goal, despite the fact that I will have a number of models left over at the end. Given that they need work to sort out their incorrect and/or missing pike situation and 40 is a reasonable footprint in Warhammer too, it might be a while before I get onto doing anything with the remaining models. Let's not be picky. At least I'm making progress!

21 Ricco's Republican Guard, or if you speak KoW, 21 Heavy Pike. I thought these guys would be really fast to paint because they're pretty much fully encased in plate armour. But there is still enough feather, leather and cloth to slow me down more than I would have liked.

Twirling!

"As a young boy, I dreamed of being a baseball; but tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling..."

Right now I feel like I have been taking slightly too much of my advice from Kang. Sure, it sounds like a good motivational speech (in places), but I'm not sure it really points towards progress...

Anyway, I have been making some limited progress in certain directions. I just don't feel like I have much to show for it right now. I think I am still in the twirling stages. I continue to hope that at some point I will settle on something and have a little more focus in my efforts.

Somewhere under there is a work space. Truly.

My first KoW tournament - Smorgancon

After trying out my first larger game of Kings of War, the following day I went along to my first tournament - a small event called Smorgancon. I think it was the first time any of us were involved in a Kings of War tournament, so it was always going to be something of a learning experience for us all. 

I was actually a pretty late entry (a spot opened up when someone pulled out), and my list was not exactly a finely honed precision instrument. I had been toying with lists that might resist flyer-heavy armies, as a theme seems to have been developing in our games that big flyers are very powerful and can be difficult to counter. Rather than taking this as an invitation to go mad with power and field several monsters, I wanted to try making a list that might counter them and help buck the trend. The list below was what I came up with. 

• Ax Horde
• Ax Horde
• Ax Horde
• Ax Horde
• Troll Horde
• War Drum
• War Drum
• Gore Rider Regiment
• Godspeaker with Bane Chant, Inspiring Talisman
• Godspeaker with Bane Chant
• Krudger on Winged Slasher with Medallion of Life
• Troll Bruiser

The theory was that this army could anchor its flank on a table edge, put out a solid 4 feet of orc hordes with no room for anything much to get in between, and then have enough other stuff to both shield the far flank and lurk behind the main line to charge any cheeky flyers that hoped to get into my rear. So theoretically both my flanks and rear would be protected, which would largely negate the impact of the flying monsters. Of course, I didn't play any practice games with the list I came up with. So it was all theory going into the event.

The theory was then undermined somewhat by my own incompetence and lack of preparation. When I arrived (late) at the tournament, I discovered I had failed to pack something - an entire horde of Orcs. I only had 3 in my box. So some emergency changes were made; a Giant made a sudden appearance in my list, and I wound up going into my games 15 points short. Oh well.

Behold my "Giant". Alas, he was all I happened to have on hand! Well at least the base size was correct...