Rumbles in the Dark

So! Time to play the new Hobbit game. This is my first outing with Battle Chronicler, so excuse some of the slight idiosyncracies of these shots. 

Generalling tonight will be Kraken and Krakeness, playing as the dwarves, against the goblin overseer Anders Wängdahl (official Woffboot name tbc).

Setup and Background

This is our first match, so I've picked out an introductory scenario in which four of the Dwarves (Oin, Gloin, Fili and Kili) must make their way across a narrow walkway through a throng of blocking goblins. They've got ten turns to get at least three dwarves across. If they don't make it, or if the goblins kill two or more of them, it's a win for the gobboes.

A Hoard o' Marauders

Another day, another twenty marauders. Not really, I wish I could paint that fast. But I've been chipping away at this lot steadily over the last week, and my current to-do list is now down to six. Plus thirty six plastic goblins and Gandalf and the dwarves and all that stuff. But I'm not counting that yet. 

Here's the new batch of Tzeentchian shields, ranked up and semi-individually: -

Happy Shoggmanay

In the spirit of starting as one means to go on, here's a new model for the new year: -

I finished this off a couple of days ago. Then I realised I could wait until the New Year and have a terrible pun as the title, and, well, it would take a stronger man than I to resist that.

Know what I mean, nudge nudge wink wink?

The black and blue theme worked well in the end, but the hair was a bugger to get as I wanted it. Nothing seemed to work, it was either too washed out or not blue enough. In the end, a surprise wash with thinned out Polished Blue did the trick, although it does mean he's got a slightly disco glitter look in certain lights.

Unboxing Day

So everyone's seen the Hobbit by now, I expect? Yes? No? Well, we can talk about my hurt feelings over that particular damp squib another time. This here's a gaming blog, not the graveyard I intend to bury Peter Jackson in.

Games Workshop, ever keen to leap on a marketing bandwagon (within a fairly narrowly defined lane of traffic, to be fair), have seized on the forthcoming trilogy to release a bunch of new models. And I, being ever keen to throw used money off a fiscal cliff, fell for the preorder offer and got this box here: -

The limited edition has indeed escaped from goblin town.
Unlike the reputations of the cast... no dammit I'm not getting into that here. 

It came in the post while I was out yelling 'Merry Christmas' repeatedly in Stockholm. That all went well, by the by, although the cost of providing endless Christmas cheer on stage was that I more or less forgot that real Christmas was actually happening at the same time, and was a bit too tired to fully appreciate all the sparkly lights and excellent hams that happen in Sweden.

But now I'm back home, surrounded by cribs and swaddling clothes that have nothing to do with the Nativity and everything to do with our lives this year coming, what better to postpone the assembly of the new cot than the glueing together of a plastic Sylvester McCoy?

This model of the 7th Doctor even has his spiky but loveable sidekick Ace tucked under one arm.
Wait, no, that's a hedgehog.

WoffBoot us, every one

It's been a quiet couple of months on the WoffBoot. Chiefly, I suspect, because two of its most prolific writers have been plying their craft (re: losing their minds) on the NaNoWriMo challenge to bash out a novel in the month of November.

This little web graphic makes it all worth while.

Unlike Warhammer, everyone can be a winner if they try hard enough, and both Kraken and myself succeeded in our literary endeavours. Sci Fi and Fantasy respectively, and I'm sure WoffBoot Publications would be only too happy to represent them.

I didn't manage to paint anything in December, although there are some half-painted Savage Orcs that are have been giving me the stink-eye recently. In fact, the only think I managed to paint was this tree ornament when I got picked to be my CEO's Secret Santa.

Painted in the company colours.
(Toadying corporate lickspittle that I am)

I regret giving him away now. Mounted on a 50mm base and he would have made a very festive Giant model for my Orcs and Goblins.

Happy Woffmas to all!

Painting by numbers

After purchasing some paints from "ebay" which included the the Dwarves and Night Goblins from "battle of skull pass" box set, I thought it was a great experimenting ground to learn the art of painting miniatures before moving onto my newly acquired Wood Elves.

I started with some basic Dwarf warriors, the progression was slow but the learning curve was high.
Unfortunately the paints I had purchased on ebay were limited and led to a visit to the local GW shop.

£100 later and I felt comfortably armed to continue. I started on the Goblin forest spider riders, basically because I really enjoy the models.

I have completed 5 so far please see below.

Gift of Tongues

Well, a little impatience and a quick shopping stop have intervened (see dropbox).

I'm now back in part time education, seeing as how nine years of being a student just isn't enough. I'm taking SFI classes, which stands for Svensk För Invandrare, or Swedish For Immigrants. Clever bit of acronymics, that.

My homework for today is to read a paper and listen to some news radio. I thought I'd try and justify a quick GW stop on the way home, and actually buy White Dwarf for the first time in years. But I'd make it into homework by getting it in Swedish!

I can now chat a little more fluently, and quickly discovered that Sweden doesn't actually have any of the rules or products in their mother tongue. This is disappointing, I wanted to know what Bloodcrusher of Khorne is in Swedish. Because that will be useful in ordinary conversation.

Seems a bit disappointing, that, and almost certainly a sales force thing. But ah well, I came home with the all new layout of WD to read through.

Changer of the Ways

Nooooo they've only gone and released a new army list a month and half after I've bought a new army.

Dagnammit.

It's impossible (for me, anyway) not to get excited at the amazing Warshrine model, although that's going to have to wait a long, long time before I spend any money on it. Good sprues for chariot conversions, I'm thinking, and it's a pretty good fighter in its own right, so I have my myriad unblinking eyes on one for the future.

It doesn't look like there are massive changes in the pipeline, as far as my guesswork goes. Lots of new models coming for some of the older character models, which are nice. My hope is that Marauders don't suddenly become more expensive, or that the way the Marks work isn't vastly different, or...

Nuts. There is no way of telling, is there? No plan ever survives contact with the enemy, as they say. Delightful that Spel Verkstad reveals themselves as the enemy in this particular scenario, and perhaps it would have been good to bloody my army in its current form first. Hey ho, it's all skulls for the skull throne at the end of the day.