The Big Red Ones

I'm bored.

They go faster

Rather than continue painting my budding fanfic piece, 'Fifty Shades of Green', I've decided to break the mould and crank out a full spectrum of goblins. Blue and yellow yet to do, with maybe a pink one and an albino one in there somewhere. And turquoise. There will be turquoise.

Scab red undercoat, then layers of warlock purple, blood red and dwarf flesh + blood red highlights.
Hair, weapons and loinclothes as previous, although a little extra highlighting for the leather
to stand out against the red

The end is now in sight for the goblin hoard. There's more paint than plastic in the box now, which feels good. Only if I don't count the huge sheets of scenery, of course, which are as dull and fiddly to paint as you'd expect large expanses of wood speckled with tiny bones to be.

Harvest Time

Yes, those ripe ears of corn are just ready to glean.

Let's Thresh!

It's another set of marauders, nine more for the Khornate group. That gives me a solid block of twenty, or possibly two smaller units of ten - easy enough to whittle or route, but frenzied flails or great weapons means they'll draw fire or put a crimp in something.

Can barely see past his mace head

Can barely see because of badly painted eyes

As before, they're a crude amalgam of viking, saxon, marauder and random parts. I had Heroquest leftovers after savaging a bunch of bases for the chaos warriors last time round, and I put some of them to good use. Or use, anyway.

Slavar av Mörker

Ding Ding!

In round one, the warbands start by facing off against their most hated foes. Khorne v Slaanesh, Tzeentch v Nurgle, offering the most opportunities for the champions to grab some swift Victory Points. They need to amass ten for a Reward, and there's no final conclusion likely until someone has at least six, so I'm keen to keep this fairly fast.

Gorefaust comes out the best in round one. He manages to personally account for all but one of Eirich's beastmen plus Eirich himself. Even though he loses, he comes out with 12 VPs. This earns him a Reward - the Eye of his God! Khorne is watching with interest, much like nobody else in the stands. Vorti scores a ludicrously powerful chaos weapon, a pet demon dog and a Collar of Khorne all in one fell swoop. And a broken arm and a dead Thug, but it can't all be glory.

Eirich has technically won, but earns nothing - he didn't survive until the end himself, his beastmen don't get VPs, two of them are perma-dead with one crippled and Eirich's ribs are broken for a T penalty. This is all fine. I still don't like Slaanesh.

It's a stalemate from the others - Urge is taken out by a bolt from von Triest's staff, but his virtually unkillable Pestigors (T5, W2) wipe the Tzeetnchian band out entirely. Neumann dies of his wounds and is the first knockout; Urge merely loses an arm and therefore ability to use his only weapon. Lucky he's got that killer face, then.

I am not happy about this.
I mean, I'm all for change, don't get me wrong, I just expected something more positive. 

De Förlorade och De Fördömdas

This is how my brain works when my daughter wakes me up at five in the morning.

"I wish I'd been at the Woffboot the other weekend. Oh look, my old Realms of Chaos books. That gives me an idea."

In the absence of actual battlefields to deploy them on, I felt a deep-rooted, possibly even unhealthy need to partake of some non-video gaming for a change. Neither of the Krakenettes were remotely interested, of course, and despite my evangelical tendencies for gaming, I'm yet to really find any Swedes up for Warhammer. Actually, that's not true, I did find one but he was a fucking loon pot who I'm not particularly desperate to invite into my home.

Yet.

I am therefore playing with myself. Feel free to avert your eyes as I give you, gentlemen, the two-part saga of an unholy yet classic struggle writ large. Behold, four champions of the Dark Gods, locked in battle to become the most potent and powerful of servants - the Demon Prince!


A Window for Rulebooks

I'm using the Realms of Chaos books, so everything contradicts everything else, has no attempts at balancing and uses the Oldhammer rules. Except I don't actually have an Oldhammer rulebook to hand, so I'm sort of playing 8th Ed and adapting on the fly.

First things first - I shall need four warbands, one for each of the Ruinous Powers. To the random dice tables!

WoffBoot 0

“Primordial Soup In A Cup”

	Vs Gob	Vs WE	Vs CD	Vs Dw	TOTAL
Greenskins Utd	-	3	1	3	7
Lorian Forest	0	-	1	3	4
Eastern Northend	1	1	-	1	3
Bearded Albion	0	0	1	-	1

We fought several tournaments before hitting upon the magical (2D5) formula of the WoffBoot. Here is one of then, circa 2001.

It was composed in the form of a football league, hence the football suffixes. We also named the battlefields after football grounds, appropriate the specific race.

Two of the founding WoffBooters took part, along with two other novice generals, whose introduction to WFB was so overwhelming they have never played since.

That's about all I can remember (or as much as my unearthed notes will tell me), other than Leofa's Bull Taurus was frequently described as 'that pink flying cow'.

Green Glow the Goblins O

I'm now just over half way through the Hobbit box. This means most of what's left is repeat goblins. Joy.

Another shade of green for these ones - bilious green, with a blue wash and yellow highlights. They've come out kind of skinky, which I like. It's like what happened when Kermit's children started inbreeding.

Games Just Became Less Special

As rumour turns into reality, it appears that the long, slow death of the Specialist Games is being brought to an end by those loveable chaps at the Match Toolshed.

This includes:

• Necromunda
• Battlefleet Gothic
• Epic
• Mordheim
• Warmaster
• Inquisitor

The books and sets have long been out of production, but apparently when the current stocks of miniatures are gone, they will not be replaced.

'Limited' indeed...

Not that they can stop us playing with the games we already have (they can't, can they?) and I for one am still dead keen on a Woffheim/NecroBoot weekend.

But if you were planning on picking up any odds and sods to finish off your collections, you would be wise to do so now (I've already grabbed that House Escher gang I've been planning for decades and never got around to starting - maybe now I will).

And if you feel bad about this turn of events, just remember it was probably your own fault for not buying enough Space Marines.

Cut and Paste

Very quick post - I'm on my way out - but I just read a rather thought-provoking article referenced from a Guardian story and wanted to share.

How long before we can save up together and buy ourselves a printer, learn to use it, and never darken the doors of our dark overlords again? And then sell all our new intellectual property on Kickstarter for a mint, of course.

Da Tally of Ouch-Makin'

The dust has settled on WoofBoot VII, and once again, I engage in the traditional naval-gazing of my army...

(as opposed to the army-gazing of my navy, which I seldom do)

Bonekrunk Stonesplitter

Savage Orc Warboss

168 points

Battle Honours

Great Eagle, Glade Guard, Dryads, Hell Pit Abomination, Chaos Ogres, Hammerers.

As with the preceding greenskin army, I couldn't resist the temptation to go for full warboss (the model helped swing my decision) and he proved to be something of a mauler in close combat.

While he would be expected to shatter the fragile elves, he also had no trouble taking down Monsters, Monstrous Infantry (single-handed, when there was nothing else for it) or Elite Infantry. You name it, he'd pick up his six S6 dice and pound it to gristle.

... assuming he lived long enough to strike a blow, that is. Poor Bonekrunk died in three of the five battles - two of which were in close combat (I'll overlook the unfortunate final turn when a crossbow volley of five '1's managed to pluck him out the ranks). Both K'zak's killing blow and Queek's barrage of special rules were enough to bring him down - although I think both would have struggled to endure his counter-strokes. So next time, I'd want to look at an Initiative-booster, like the Golden Sigil Sword.

As for his other qualities. I forgot to use his Waaagh! power in all but one of my battles (very bad time to remember a one-off special rule - heading into a crucial fight when the blood's pumping), and I didn't notice his Ld 9, which implies I was passing a lot of tests, making it an invaluable asset.

Final Grade

Bring 'Em On.

WoffBoot VII

“Let the Khornucopia commence.”

	Vs DoC	Vs WoC	Vs WE	Vs SO	Vs Sk	Vs Dw	TOTAL
Daemons	-	1	3	3	3	3	13
Chaos Warriors	1	-	0	3	0	3	7
Wood Elves	0	2	-	0	3	1	6
Savage Orcs	0	0	2	-	2	0	4
Skaven	0	2	0	0	-	2	4
Dwarves	0	0	1	2	0	-	3