Poor poor blog

This poor blog has sat here unattended for nearly 2 weeks. And the worst part is, I don't even have pictures to fill it with. We had a very success Nerdsmas 2, we being the Nerdherd gaming group. I got to play in 2 big team games. One was fantasy and my teammate had to drop out so I was stuck playing 3520pts by myself. I was a long but super enjoyable game. The combinations between Daemons and Warriors of Chaos are pretty awesome. And with a Daemon Prince and a Keeper of secrets zooming around it was a lot of mobility. One of my opponents used a flying vampire, so we played a game where both of us attempted to get out of the other's LoS.

In game 2 was allied with an Iron Hands player and faced off against Grey Knights and Space pups. Our opponents had some rough luck and couldn't hit anything or make 2+ armour saves. The game felt very one sided with us playing for the win while they played for the draw. It's a tough boat to be in and I've been there myself. All in all it was a good game and I was reminded of how awesome drop pods can be.

The campaign has stalled a bit with all the chaos of the holidays. I'm told that the last 2 games of this campaign turn will be played on NYE. So I am expecting a new turn in the new year and many more games to play.

Daemons Ho!

I haven't blogged in a few days, and the reason is 3-fold
1) It's December and real life has been kicking my ass. Apparently kids like more attention at Christmas time, what the hell?
2) I have so many things that I want to blog about that I can't settle on one to start with
3) Daemons and playing games. In the last 6 weeks I have played 7 games, which pretty much ties my total for 2013. I have also been painting and converting like a,  well like a demon.

I finished converting the Beasts and pushed them right into the painting stage. They still need some work,  but they're up to tabletop quality for now. I used a lot of the same techniques from the Plaguebearers.

I started to work on the Skullcannon and quickly realized that if I want to get paint everywhere, it's going to have to painted in subassemblies.

I quickly slapped a Keeper of Secrets together from a Dark Elf Bloodwrack Medusa plus some bits from the Daemonettes kit. And on the topic of Daemonettes, I eBayed some brass butterfly wings to add to their backs and make Slaaneshi Furies.

Oh and Nerdmas 2: Darkness Reigns is on Sunday. I'm looking forward to seeing the boys and getting a few more games in. Plus, maybe I'll convert some of these Squarebasers into dual system players.

Campaign Turn 10

So here we are at Turn 10. It looks like the strong get stronger and the weak are getting weaker. My Daemon empire is under attack from both sides,  the Ogres are mostly pinned in a corner,  and the Undead in the Northwest are under seige. The 100% not even close to the fluff,  not this day,  not any day,  not even in the End Times alliances of Skaven-Woodies and Undead-Lizzies are taking the land by storm.

In addition to the 6 games that need to be played, the map sees a new development. This development is the Marauding Warbands rule. Starting T9 in the End of Turn phase a Marauding Warband marker will be placed on the map (This turn was territory 20 and I'm still painting the marker). If a Marauder Warband marker holds a territory for 2 campaign turns,  it will Raze the territory and then redeploy. This represents the left over scraps of armies, Empire forces,  and deserters banding together to loot and pillage and make the most of their desperate situation during this time of war. If a player banner moves into a territory with the Marauding Warband marker,  they will fight a battle to destroy the marker. Any player,  who is not in an alliance with that player,  can volunteer to play as the Marauding Warband. If the Marauding Warband wins,  the other player retreats as normal,  note that the player banner cannot be scattered by way of Tabling. If the player banner wins,  the Marauding Warband banner is destroyed and the redeployed in the End of Turn phase, and the player also gets a bonus. The banner is placed with a d80 roll. If a special territory or HQ is rolled,  a scatter dice will be used to determine the map section that it deployed. For turns 10-15 there will be 1 MW marker, T16-20 = 2 MW markers, T21-25 = 3 MW markers, and T26-30 will have 4 Marauding Warbands. The number of MW markers may be revised at a later date.

The Marauding Warband rule is largely to allow players on opposite sides of the map the opportunity to play games against one another. It also means that players with larger empires will have higher odds of being targetted. It also gives the Skaven more of a reason to use their special rule.

So now it's time to do battle. I get to battle the 2 best Generals in the campaign. I definitely wish that I didn't suck at this game.

What a year in the hobby

As I had previously alluded to, I finished the Hobby Progress Challenge. In addition to that I had also worked like a mad man to finish off my Daemons for games. After the last minute push to complete the HPC,  I took a few days off from hobbying. But you see,  the thing is that I'm now in a routine of daily hobby. I work in construction,  then come home and I'm Dad to 3 kids 5 and under. I don't spend a lot of time sitting down. I have found that if I'm going to watch any TV,  it's either with the wife (0 hobby allowed) or watching Netflix while I paint.

Now,  with the HPC complete,  I wanted to get a shot of all the models that I have painted in the last 6 months. Add to that all the terrain that I've built in the last year,  I feel like I'm cruising through projects at a good rate. Some day soon I will bust out the entire Brazen Fists chapter so far abd get a picture of it.

For now,  it's back to messing around with Green Stuff and making gross looking Ogres.

End of Turn 8

As a quick recap,  I lost both of my games in the last campaign turn,  including the one where I had a 40% (640pts) advantage. I suck at this game!

That ended with me losing a banner as I didn't have enough territories to support it. I also seem to be surrounded by 4 players.

And now it's time for Orders.

HPC and some Nurgle Ogres

It's a travesty,  I know. 8 days without a new blog post. I am ashamed. I have been in full hobby mode. The ICs HPC finished on Sunday night at 11:59PM and I pushed it right down to the minute. Are all of the models 100% done? No, but they do look pretty good. I'm really happy with the progress on my army. Since June I have paintes another 2000pts of Brazen Fists, 3.5 gaming tables, and 1800pts of Daemons.

I will come back to the Scouts and Centurions, but for a few days I need a break. Painting every available minute, including waking up at 5am to hobby. A note on the scouts is that other than the sergeant, none of them have progressed to full Battle Brother status and therefore do not have a red glove

To take a break from the Marines, I started messing around with some Ogres and greenstuff. I've got bits in the mail and they should be here in a week or so. This is my first real attempt and seriously sculpting. It's going to take some learning.

Next up is a game for WEDNESDAY NIGHT WARHAMMER! And a game on Thursday Night as well. Once thoseare done the campaign can progress further.

Campaign Turn 8

Turn 8 is here. I received all of the orders in less than 3 hours. I'm impressed. People must be excited.

Turn 7 saw some interesting games,  4 of which resulted in Tabling. As per the scattered rules of the campaign,  those banners returned to their HQs. As alliances change and the Skaven/WoodElf contingent continues to press it's attack into Daemon territory,  we have a paltry 2 games to play. As the Daemon General,  I am still undecided as to how I will spread my advantages in the upcoming battles.

Also,  on my painting desk I have 6 Centurions. I am amazed at the size and detail of these models. I'm still not sure if I will have then done for the end of the month and the ICs HPC. I've got about 4 hrs in on then already and it hardly looks like I've done anything.

The Painting Escalator. Second Floor

So, today is the 2nd deadline for our painting escalation campaign. For those who are reading this and haven't seen the Escalation Rules , well you're wrong. Our first deadline was at the highly successful Nerdsmas event.

At this moment in time,  we have a 5 way tie for the most points. I can't explain how exciting that is for me. Each of the leaders is painting a great looking force and I find that each of them is exciting in it's own way.

First up we have the Skaven. Neil is an accomplished painter with hundreds of finished models to his name. His dark elf army is superb,  especially with his love for monsters. A large portion of the Skaven army was already painted,  but now he is expanding the army and adding cool conversions and some great looking OSL.

Then we come to the Ogres. Nick is relatively new to the wargaming hobby. His painting has improved 10-fold in the last 2 months. The last time he totalled up his painted Ogres,  it was something in the range of 3600 points. It took me years to paint my first army,  but Nick is really cranking it out,  and doing a nice job as he goes.

Let's talk about the Warriors of Chaos. Josh is my brother,  and the one who introduced me to this fine hobby. With painted armies that include well over 3k of Bretonnias,  a monstrous CSM army,  a loyalist Space Marine army,  and one of the coolest Astra Militarum forces I have ever seen. I really like the high contrast colour scheme that he is painting,  and his newest Sorcerer conversion is out of this world.

And then there's those dastardly Wood Elves. Colin is painting a really cool looking force. It's a lot darker than I typically see for Elves, and I think that adds a lot. Everyone has seen armies of High Elves with blue,  gold,  and silver,  but this flies in the face of that. I don't think Colin has even painted this many models for one single army,  probably because his hobby ADD is as bad or worse than my own.

Oh,  I've been painting some daemons too,  but daemons are easy.

I'm excited to see what happens with painting in the coming months. I think if it comes down to a vote worthy tie,  the Wood Elves will win as they are the least disgusting models. There's just something about daemons,  chaos,  and Skaven that make women cringe.

Disgraced Terrain Builder

So if you read Campaign Game #2 you may have noticed the poor quality  (read none) paint job on my terrain. At first glance this may not seem like that big of a deal,  but I was hugely embarrassed by it. You see,  in the last 12 months I have cranked out a tonne of terrain,  built and painted. In fact,  I have made enough terrain to run a 10-12 player tournament without worrying about sparse terrain deployment.

Now,  terrain building is always the most time consuming part. As I already had some hills and forests and scatter barricades,  it was quick to paint everything. I spent maybe an hour over the course of the evening painting this stuff because drybrushing is just too easy.
-Is it finished?  No
-Is it the best I can do?  No
-Does it look way nicer than it did before? Yes

It still needs loads of work,  but hey it's a start and I can now use this terrain without feeling like an idiot.

Campaign Game #2

So following Campaign Game #1 the Skaven General and I made an agreement to stop our advancement into each other's territories. So when it comes time for campaign orders ,  that rat bastard betrayed me and invaded 2 of my territories. Honestly I'm not surprised.

The biggest challenge for me is getting enough time to play a game. We decided to try out a later game after I had gotten the kids to sleep. It actually worked out fairly well as I had the tabke set up and my army on a tray and ready to go. It also happened to be a Warhammer Wednesday. I have recently been listening to The Dwellers Below and they regularly extoll the virtue of gaming on Wednesday. I will admit that I thought today was Wednesday but then realized that it's Thursday.

Ok,  so Skaven bastard shows up,  someone had rolled the Meeting Engagement(read: Arranged Marriage) scenario. Each player has a deployment that is 6" off of the centre line run diagonally across the board. I really like this deployment as it shakes up deployment. What I don't like is setting up the deployment zone lines and that you have to roll for each unit prior to deployment and the roll of a '1' puts the unit into reserves. This random deployment thing is so BS. The skaven player had 3 units stay off the board and I had 2 in reserves. Random deployment does not test Generalship, it tests luck.

So we get set up and I go first. I flew my Daemon Prince over, LVL 4 with Lore of Death, and then killed his BSB while miscasting and dropping myself to a LVL 1. I then proceeded to avoid him for the rest of the game. I had enough to win the game and securemy territory and that was enough. The only MODELS that I lost were 3 Nurgling swarms that I scouted in behind his big Stormvermin block to distract him and draw him away from the rest of my army. And the Reign of Chaos table absolutely destroyed him. It killed a handful of stormvermin, a weapon team ,  oh and his General on T6.

All in all it was the most boring game I have ever played. The opponent was great and his took his loss well. I think he hates the reign of chaos table now. I did what I had to do to win, but it didn't feel like a game. We shall see what happens in upcoming games. I can see myself rolling a 2 on the table and then having all my units pop off of the table.

The included pics are after deployment and at the end of the game. Yawn

HPC continues

I have taken a break from the daemons for a bit. It's not that I wanted to stop painting them,  but I have committed to finishing the Independent Characters Hobby Progress Challenge. The goal of the HPC is to paint a 2000 point army over the course of a year. I started in June and it end at the end of November. To complete the challenge, I  need to paint 10 scouts and 6 Centurions.

At this point in time I need to paint 8 boltguns, do battle damage and all the bases for the scouts. Last night I got the Centurions up to the point where they are ready to be primed.

Wish me luck because I keep getting pulled to do the Daemons some more.

Campaign Turn #7

So,  we finally finished our first round of battles today. I was very jealous because the 4 players who had games left to play got together this morning and played them. Group gaming is so much fun. So the WoC player decided to give up Stavern,  which allows the Undead General a 3rd banner. The Skaven punked the other Undead General in a game. That Dreaded 13th is starting to become a pain to deal with. And as previously mentioned I lost my game.

Now with an updated map,  we're ready for Turn 7. It should be very interesting to see where the battles go from here. Many alliances have been made,  but I wonder how many will be broken.

Finally, when you do this all over the phone and Internet, you need to fond a way to randomize things. I had to deploy my newest banner randomly so I simply got someone else to picka number 1-4. In the end it was not exactly where I wanted to be, but such is the random nature of Daemons. 

Lest We Forget

Today,  November 11th,  we officially remember. In Canada we call it Remembrance day,  in the US Veterans day,  in Poland it is Independence Day,  different names for the same day that remind us all of the same thing. Freedom isn't free,  it is bought with the blood of men and women. But not just the blood, but the hopesand dreams of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice. Those brave souls whom gave up everything, their entire futures, so that we can be free and live the way we want to live, love who we want to love, and be who we want to be. And we need to remember those who may not have died, but lived on wounded through the years.

As wargamers, it can all too often be easy to look at our games as just that, games. I for one enjoy the tactical aspects and decision making that comes with this hobby, but I have always done my best to never make light of war. When the game is done, the beer has been drunk, and the miniatures all packed away it's just grown men playing with man dollies. But makes sure that you take time to appreciate what it represents.

So for all those who have fought for freedom, and those who continue to live, fight, and die for freedom, Thank you.

So this campaign map...

So the last time I ran this campaign,  I painstakingly updated the map using MSPaint. Now it seems that I no longer have the full resolution map files. After wrestling with the idea,  I decided to use the physical map and just snap pics for each campaign turn. And as I don't have anything else hobby wise to complete, (*cough cough Independent Characters HPC cough cough*) I made map banners for each player. Not bad for an evening worth of effort.

I recreated the map to where it was on T6 from Nerdmas. There are 3 battles. I already lost mine. But territories #12 & #66 still hang in the balance. I'm excited to see where all of this goes and if my WoC ally can win his game and retain control of Stavern.

Campaign Game #1

Well,  I actually managed to play a game. At first I thought it would be one of my banners vs Neil's banner with 1 support banner. As it turns out,  I had 1 supporting banner and he had 2. So in less than a week I needed to paint up 560 more points of daemons so that I can continue on with only using painted models. Pics of new units to follow in a nearby blog post. I now have 1760 painted,  but I dropped 2 wizard levels on the prince and a few plaguebearers so that I could try out Colin's Skull Cannon. Here's a note from my WFB CV,  when the Storm of Chaos happened, I bought a Hellcannon the day it came out, in 3 games the first shot misfiredand the hellcannon ate the crew and rampaged. In the 10 years following I have never participated in the shooting phase. For this game I took 3 units of 3 Flamers and 1 Skull Cannon. It was fun and the skull cannon had a few missed opportunities. I blame user error. In the end I made several critical mistakes and it cost me the game. My rolling didn't help me much either, but such is life in a dice game. I managed to get crushed but not tabled.

Oh, and like a noob I forgot to take any pics of the game.

Now it's the waiting game to get a VC vs Skaven game and a VC vs WoC game done.

Too old for wargamming?

So Saturday, after successfully running a 4v4 mega battle and starting our newest map based campaign,  I went over to my parent's house for supper. Some time during the meal prep my mom asked "Are you still going to be painting and playing in your 40s and 50s?" At the time I wasn't sure how to respond. My mom is an artsy fartsy person and her latest hobbies have  been pottery and oil painting. The more I think about it,  the less I really understand the question at all. In my Industry,  construction,  every one has a hobby. Whether they work on cars,  golf,  hunt, skydive or something else,  they all have a hobby. The only one who don't have a hobby are the alcoholics,  and some might say that's a hobby. A few years back I had considered quitting wargaming and "growing up" and finding a "manlier" hobby,  but I didn't.

So here's the question,  will you quit wargaming?  How old is too old? I for one see this as a life long hobby that I will support my kids in if they want to pursue it.

Nerdsmas was a success

I don't know if just saying it was a success accurately describes it. Perhaps a roaring success. Yes,  Nerdsmas was a roaring success. Everyone had fun,  everyone lost models,  had it gone one more turn I would have been tabled.

A note on the scenario. Each player brought a 1200pt list. The table was played on a 8'×4' table and each general was randomly given a 24"×12" deployment zone. The goal was to capture as many meteorite markers as possible. The winning side would receive a +1 to their 2d6 rolls to see who selected HQ territories first on the campaign map. At the beginning of each game turn,  the teams diced off to see who placed tge meteorite marker. They picked a spot and scatter an artillery dice. The meteorites hit like a stone thrower and also any unit touched by the blast template was hit by d6 S4 flaming attacks. When the meteorite was placed,  the placing player randomly pulled a card from 8 selected from the battle magic deck (5 augments and 3 hexes) and any unit in control of the meteorite gained that spells effect.

At the end of the game we called it a draw at the end of T4 and moved on to the campaign moves. The game was a blast and everyone had a lot of fun. Some memorable moments were:

-A horde of zombies charged through a meteorite marker and picked up +1S and flaming attacks.
-My daemon prince charged and killed a Slaan and then charged a Chaos lord on juggernaut,  only to die to the Lord who then turned into a daemon prince of Khorne.
-zombies... everywhere ...

Good game,  good players,  a good afternoon. What more can you ask for?