Continued Maraudings

Nothing very wild to report in this post. But I couldn't let a whole week go by without posting up some more work-in-progress pictures of the Marauder Hoard: -

The Shaggoth is coming along - I'm going with a Black Dragon look, complete with copper spear staff, the better to draw down lightning with.

No longer WIP, this - pretty bearable for freehand, by my standards.
See what I did there?

Battle Report: Vampire Counts vs Empire

The second of this week's OffBoot matches. Same battlefield as before (minus the Wood Elves' extra wood), and if I'm more vague on the details, it's because it was getting late.

Deployment

Deployment - the grass has gone all spooky, like.

Vampire Counts - General Kasfunatu

1 x Vampire General on Hellsteed (Lv 2 magic; Heavy Armour, Shield, Additional Hand Weapon; Summon Creatures, Dread Knight; Talisman of Protection, Book of Arkhan, Dragonhelm)
19 x Ghouls
(including Vampire Lieutenant (Lv 2 magic; Heavy Armour; Red Fury; Sword of Striking, Talisman of Endurance, Enchanted Shield)
5 x Dire Wolves
5 x Dire Wolves
8 x Hexwraiths
 - 1000 points

Empire - General Stylus

28 x Spearmen (full command)
 - including Warrior Priest (Charmed Shield) and Battle Standard (Luckstone, Standard of Discipline)
14 x Halberdiers (detachment)
10 Free Company (detachment)
10 x Knights (full command)
5 x Pistoliers (musician)
1 x Wizard (Lv 2 Lore of Death, barded warhorse, Dispel Scroll)
 - 1000 points

Battle Report: Wood Elves vs Empire

This week, we played two off-schedule WoffBoot battles (an OffBoot?), with myself taking my Empire army against Generals East and Kasfunatu respectively.

Bear with me on these Battle Chronicler maps - it's the first time I've used them.

Deployment

Deployment

Wood Elves - General East

10 x Glade Guard (musician)
 - including Spellweaver (Lv3 Lore of Life, Hail of Doom arrow)
10 x Glade Guard (musician)
8 x Dryads
8 x Dryads
4 x Treekin
1 x Great Eagle
 - 1000 points

Empire - General Stylus

28 x Spearmen (full command)
 - including Warrior Priest (Charmed Shield) and Battle Standard (Luckstone, Standard of Discipline)
14 x Halberdiers (detachment)
10 Free Company (detachment)
10 x Knights (full command)
5 x Pistoliers (musician)
1 x Wizard (Lv 2 Lore of Death, barded warhorse, Dispel Scroll)
 - 1000 points

Shaggoy Dog Story

The last of my ebay buys has turned up now - for a grand total of just over £50 (including the parts of the postage that were included, rather than the bits I did myself), I got a box of warriors, a box of marauders and this splendid gentleman: -

It was a dark and stormy night, and this dragon walks into an ogre bar...

I've done some very limited conversion on him, not that he'll ever see the light of WoffBoot owing to points cost. I've always liked the model, though, I think it's a cracker. But close up, I found I wasn't as keen on the big axe as I was in the publicity shots. It's a bit... boring, really.

The option in the list is to leave him with either his basic fists (already S6), or give him an overkilly great weapon or an extra hand weapon. That latter option is worth the spare ten points I don't have anyway, I thought.

The resin sculpt was already glued together, not brilliantly.
After trying to improve on it, I've decided I don't like resin, it's not made for gluing. 

Fists of Gork

Due to an surfeit of decorating chores (the needs of the skirting board outweigh the needs of the miniature army... apparently), there is very little 'P' in this 'WIP' post.

But since it may be a while before I get to paint these painted savages, here is the latest on my two infantry regiments. In terms of gameplay, these will be the hard-hitting units that will carry the biggest punch - the two 'Fists of Gork', you might say...

Big 'Uns with additional hand weapons

This unit gets its distinction from the front rank (which may be the second rank, once they've had to shove aside to make room for Shamans, Battle Standards and Warbosses). The ones that aren't *actual* command models are converted standards and musicians - and fortunately command figures were sculpted just a little bit bigger than regular boys (which fits into the fluff of Orcs so perfectly, I'm almost tempted to think it was deliberate).

They inherited two painted command models from the original unit
- so basically, they're done.

The front-rank conversions also have two hand weapons, which gives me plausibility to arm the whole unit that way. The others are just ordinary boys, but I filed away their shield 'nubs', so their left hands are now empty. About half of them have big stone knives in sheaths, so I'll assume they just haven't drawn their second hand weapon yet.

I'm keen to try a 6-wide formation (24 boys in total; 18 if I'm scrimping for points). It looks a bit unwieldy, but with the 5-model minimum frontage, it means that even against 20mm bases, every Orc will get to fight. With Frenzy and Choppas, that's a total of 24 x S5 attacks. It's krumpin' time!

The Order of Bone

Another job-packed week in sunny Sweden, so the painting bay has been bearing fruit: -

Most of the Chaos Warriors I've seen on GW or other sites have a tendency to go for a dark palette. This makes a lot of sense, and looks good, but I wanted to do something different. I thought I'd go with something to match my Archaon model, just in case he ever gets fielded as an army general. Or we change the WoffBoot to 5000 points, or something.

Haven't tidied the bases yet. But I will! I do that now!

Hold me closer, tiny Viking head

Made to Marauder

I'm aiming to put the big marauder units together fairly quickly. The plan is to have two. One will have with shields and a mark of Tzeentch, the other will sort of have flails and a mark of Khorne. I'm doing the first one at the moment, although I'll probably shuffle a few models around later. 

Here's the ten I've done so far, using spares from the Chaos Warrior set: -

The first two ranks of the Tzeentchian Shield Wall

All ten of these have a conversion somewhere about their person. Most of these are small things, like a different head or the inclusion of a larger, spikier weapon or shield than real Vikings tended to use. 

Shield walls are much easier to form when your shield is as tall as you are.

These two may yet turn to Khorne.
Especially if my wife notices the horns on the left-hand helmet, that's a definite authenticity breach.

Chaos Orderly

Box number two was retrieved from the hunchbacked cripple who doesn't deliver my mail this afternoon. For a 75% saving, I got a box of twelve Chaos Warriors, missing only a couple of arms, heads and four bases. What kind of wasteful lunatics are out there? Who buys a set just to use that much of it? Is Carlos Slim a Warhammer buff?

Anyway, in what felt like no time at all, I had the first eight assembled: -

Virtually 25% of a WoffBoot army, and they aren't even a legal unit until there's ten of them.

I reconnected with my cellar-dwelling teenage years doing this. The smell of the plastic glue, the roar of my disinterested loved ones - it's all coming back to me. Three hours vanished in blissful silence as I sliced axes off the sprues using my traditional Stanley knife and nail clipper combo.

This is Bruce. You won't like him when he's angry.
Luckily, he's taken up Tai Chi recently. 

Champions are extra horny, which is sad for them.
The Chaos Warriettes haven't been greenlighted yet.