Campaign Turn 14

Campaign Turn 13

Well real life has been kicking my hobby in the teeth. It's been a long few weeks but we're finally back with an updated map ready for new orders. One VC player is out of the campaign and it looks like some other players will also be done very soon.

Campaign Turn 12

I have been betrayed!! For those who don't know, our WoC player and my erstwhile ally is also my brother. But he has turned on me. This was my initial response to learning of his betrayal:

The lowest level of hell is reserved for betrayers and mutineers. I shall bring down wrath upon your army. It shall be with raining fire and brimestone that I shall smite you. You destruction will be total for my fury and vengeance shall be of biblical proportions!!

And he responded in kind:

I heard a sorcerer say once "The gods favor no sacrifice greater than to spill a brothers blood."

On these blood stained battlefields, a thousand leagues from home, we let our axes sing, and serve the brass lords throne. We liberate these countless fools, from the chains of mortal form, we bleed there bodies endlessly, forming rivers of our own. Let the ravens fly tonight, with words of war and lies, for on the bloody morrow, we'll slay the Lord of flies.... attributed to Gunnar the heavy handed war Skjald of Kharnath

So there are 5 battles to be fought:

Vampires vs Skaven
Vampires vs Wood Elves
Warriors of Chaos vs Vampires
Warriors of Chaos vs Daemons of Chaos
Daemons of Chaos vs Skaven

Campaign Turn 11

After Turn 10 taking a full 4 weeks, we're back at it with everyone rested after a nice holiday break.

The Skaven and Wood Elves continue to coordinate well and have a firm grip on the Western front. Territories are changing hands quickly as some forces flail around in all directions. This may indeed be the point of no return.

Battles are for the following:
Territory 59 where the Ogres have 2500pts vs 2200pts of Undead
Territory 19 with 2000pts of WoC against a Woodelf army that could be doubly supported.
Territory 33 with 2200 points of Chaos vs a Skaven army of variable size
Territories 30 and 31 are both Daemons vs Skaven.

The overlapping fields of support should prove to be interesting once they are declared.

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.

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.

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.

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

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. 

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.