Last BR recap

After the game, its sometimes easy to see how you could have won. If only you had done this or that.

First let me just say, this was a great battle, and I had a great time. While playing Greg wasn't that pleasent in our first meeting, since then I've had 3 great games with him that I've enjoyed immensly.

And while his belly may not be hiddeous its definetely disturbing. ;-) (just kidding Greg).

Now onto things I could have done differently that may or may not have changed the outcome of the game.

Deployment:
I probably should have put the herd that went in the woods over by Ratspawn. The extra Ld 9 would have kept them on the board and their multitude of attacks could have been a great help against the slayers. I could have then used the 2nd Minotaur unit to help Ratspawn dance with the Iron breakers.

I'm not sure what I should have done with the cannon on the far flank. A couple suggestions:
1. Don't change anything. The furies should have been able to handle the job and just failed, that happens sometimes.
2. Put a herd over there. I'm tying up a lot of points on 1 cannon by doing that. And with a move of 10, they are charging on turn 3 and without fear, they have to kill them all. So that would have been it for them. They would not have gotten back into the game. But they could have removed that threat that ended up killing both chariots.
3. Put a Mino unit over there. Seems like a waste of points.
4. Send some hounds with help from the furies. The hounds give you US so at least your winning combats probably. While the furies give you str 4 attacks. If both were going he couldn't stop both of them.

So looking back, I'd probably put the herd on the far right by Ratspawn and a unit of hounds over with the furies.

Things in the game I could have done differently.
1. Probably the biggest #1 thing would have been to not charge Ratspawn into the IBs. Even with the hounds breaking their ranks, odds were I'd only win by a couple. I need better odds before throwing Ratspawn into the fray. Maybe a chariot coming in with them, or Mino's on the flank.

2. In turn 4 when the Rat Ogres charged the Organ gun, I should have done that combat first and used hand weapons. Odds are I only kill 2, the last one auto-breaks and I Overrun into the crossbows in combat with the spawn.
I then kill lots of crossbows, they break and the spawn chases them down.
Then on turn 5, I can charge the Anvil with both the Rat Ogres and the chariot. And even if he slows the chariot down I'd have 4 rounds of combat to do that last wound instead of 3.

3. When the chariot hit the organ crew, and killed them all, instead of staying there they should have overrun off the table. He would have still had a turn 6 shot at it, but I left him 3 units lined up on turn 5. That was just silly.

4. In turn 4 when the furies charged the cannon, what I probably should have done was plop them down right in front of the cannon to block its line of sight everywhere on the field. They would then have to shoot them instead of anyone else.

5. In the last turn, hold with the Rat Ogres and hope for a insane courage. Also possible he whiffs and I could direct attacks on the BSB with hopes of wounding or killing him for a few points.

Well, those were my kernels of wisdom I learned. Any other suggestions of things I might have done differently in the game that might have turned it.

Things that kept him from winning. The Dwarfs were very close to winning this game. If he makes both saving throws on the last turn, he wins. If the Rat Ogres fail their re-roll on the panic test in the last turn, I lose. If his cannon shot had been 2" less and he wounded the spawn he hit with the cannon, he wins.

There were several spots in the game where just a couple of rolls could have given the Stunties the day.

Until next time...

Heroes recap

If you thought I forgot about Heroes Monday, you would be mistaken.

Not one of their best episodes, but still very good as they start several new story lines.

Peter finds a mentor who is going to help him control his power.
Hiro is kidnapped and urged to quit his crusade and go home, via First class. When he refuses he finds out his father, played by none other than Sulu from Star Trek.
Nikki realizes she can't hide in prison the rest of her life and is going to work with a shrink to try and control Jessica.
Claire tracks down her mom, aka Firestarter, and we look forward to a reunion next week. And has also refound her friendship with Zack.
Nathan talks with Dr.Suresh about helping his brother, but they lose him when he turns invisible.
Matt, the cop, gets suspended for 6 months but then comes home to find out his wife is pregnant. He has also come clean about his ability. She thinks its cool, but is getting annoyed that he can always read his thoughts. Wonder what ability the baby might have.
Micah decided to help his dad with money and used his ability to steal several thousand dollars from ATMs around the area.
And it looked like Sylar had died, only to wake up, kill his doctor and from previews next week is on the rampage again and still after Claire.

So lots going on, and it looks like the next few weeks are going to be great.

Until then...

BR: Dwarfs vs Chaos Beasts part 3

The game is half over, but the Battle had yet to really get going.
In a quick recap, the beasts had rushed across the field, but the timely use of the anvil and shooting, and great placement of his artillary had kept some of my forces at bay.

Here was the situation at the start of my turn 4:


It was time to get a few things started. Charges:
I needed that cannon tied up if not destroyed. I charged the furies into it. He fails his fear test. So all I really need to do is 1 wound to win combat.
Rat Ogres charge the Organ gun.
Hound and beastherd charge the crossbows. The hound mainly to prevent a stand and shoot.
The spawn charges the crossbows in front of the anvil.
The 2 hounds in front of the organ gun rally.
The fleeing Rat Ogres in front of the slayers rally.
The hounds move to the flank of the ironbreakers.
The RatOgres holding the Rangers banner move back on the field.
Chariot moves up.

In combat, the crossbowmen lose none to the spawn, and do a wound to it.
The other crossbows, kill a gor, while losing a couple of dwarfs. I win by 2, but he holds.
Onto the organ gun combat with the Rat Ogres.
Here I should have used my hand weapons, but instead use my great weapons and wipe out the organ gun crew and am stuck there.
If I use hand weapons, I get on average only 2 wounds, he would need insane courage to hold, so I get to overrun and hit the crossbows this round. And probably break them, setting up the chariot for a charge into the anvil.

Instead I have to just stand there.

Finally, the furies, get 2 attacks. Both hit!! Needing a 4 to kill. I fail to do a wound. Needing 6's to hit, he fails, but wins with unit strength, I pop.
Here is the situation at the end of my turn 4:


On his turn he shuffles a bit.
I don't remember what his cannon did, not much, IIRC.
His organ gun turns and with a slim line, kills a rat Ogre holding the captured banner from the Rangers. I make my panic test.
He then does Wrack and ruin, doing another wound, but more importantly, I have only a 6" charge range next round.

In combat, I kill 1 dwarf and he fails to kill any in the herd/crossbows combat. I win and he again holds.
The crossbows do another wound to the spawn, and the spawn kills one dwarf in return. He wins again.

Time for turn 5, here is my setup:


So the question now, do I charge the Iron breakers with Ratspawn to the front and hounds in the flank to break his ranks.
A tough call. I'd already used my Crystal ball and know he has the static:
Unit strenght, banner, bsb, warbanner and so would be +3 starting the combat. I would have my banner, but figured the flank bonus would be gone.
I was already surprised he had not used his anvil to go for the charge with them last turn. I thought for sure he would. Maybe he thought I would flee with them.
I didn't feel like I could wait any longer.

So after thinking about it for a second, CHARGE!!!!
Ratspawn and bodyguard into the Iron breakers. Hounds into their flank.
Both Rat Ogre units into the front of the slayers.
2 hounds and chariot into the Organ gun.
Rat Ogres into the flank of the Crossbows.

Everything was now in combat except his anvil, cannon and my 2 Rat Ogres in the corner.
Here was the situation after the charges:


Now into combat. I did the Rat Ogres into crossbows first. I was able to kill several crossbows, they auto broke (no insane courage) and were caught.
The spawn moves enough to hit the chariot and stop, while the Rat Ogres hit the Anvil crew, who have to line up to the Rat Ogres.
The chariot and hounds kill the organ crew and in a spasm of insane stupidity, they do not overrun.
The herd and hound (he has put 4 attacks on this 1 hound so far and failed to kill it.) Again he whiffs on the hound as I do a couple wounds, he flees and is caught. Both units pursue off the board.
The 4 Rat Ogres in contact with the slayers kill 5 slayers, the whole front line, leaving ony 7.

Finally, the big one.
I challenge with Ratspawn. His champion accepts. He thought about refusing, but when I reminded him, I get to pick who moves to the back, he accepted.

His BSB with Rune of swiftness sword goes first. He goes after my champion and does only 1 wound.
Now its my turn, I lick my chops.
Hounds get 3 attacks, nothing. (In retrospect, I may have done 1 wound here.)
Ratspawn in the Challenge: Needing 3's to hit and 3's to wound.
5 Attacks, only 2 hit. Ugghhhh!!! Thats ok, a single wound can do wonders with this sword.
ZERO wounds. I rolled a '1' and a '2'. This was huge. I knew he still had a 4+ armor save, but come on.
I really needed that 1 shot re-roll I had wasted earlier.

Well, the Rat Ogres can still pull it out for me. With 10 attacks, needing 4's, my dice continue to defy all odds and I get 3 hits??!?!
Surprisingly, I did get 3 wounds and with a 5+ save, he failed all 3.

Luckily his rolling was almost as bad. He did kill off 2 of the hounds, so I lost my flank bonus. But I was expecting that. I figured 2 wounds for the 3 ranks was a good trade.
And in the front, he did nothing. He had 3 wounds + 4 static against my 3 wounds + 1 static, gave him a +3 win. I remember it being only +2. Maybe the hounds did a wound I forgot about. Either way he won.

Needing a 6 or 7 to stay, I roll an 11 for the hounds. No biggie. The hound wasn't going to help next round anyway and would probably cost me a wound.

Then onto Ratspawns unit. Another 11. Oh boy!!

Yep, good old Ratspawn and company fled like little girls with their skirts hiked up.

Onto the flee roll and I get the big 3 inches fled. So maybe more like little boys with their pants down.
My dice have amazing ways to bend me over something fierce. But thats why we throw the dice.
He of course easily catches me and wipes me out.

So now, did you say make the charge??

Here is the situation after my turn 5:


Turn 5b: Things moved pretty fast after that.
He turns his ironbreakers to face the combat with the slayers.
Long cannon shot just hits the chariot and spawn, destroying the chariot but failing to put the last wound on the spawn.

In combat, the Rat Ogres wipe out 4 slayers leaving 3 alive after they failed to kill any, but did do a couple wounds. What helped was there were 2 units, so they had to split their attacks.
But with no ranks, I was easily able to win combat and now outnumbered him as well.
But if I had killed all 7 with 12 attacks, it would have again made a big difference.

With the Anvil, I put 5 attacks on the rune lord and 4 on the guards. I killed a guard, and no wounds on the runelord.

Start of turn 6:


There wasn't much to do here. I moved ths spawn into the runelord and last guard.
Then moved the hounds so he couldn't kill more than 1 from a cannon shot.
Moved the herd on and also spread them out.

In combat, I chop down the remaining 3 slayers, but am just stuck there.
At the anvil, my spawn does in the last guard.
The rune lord with 2 attacks, does another wound to my Rat Ogres and kills one. So only 3 attacks on him this round. He fails his armor save and takes a wound.
Oh, if he had failed one of his saves from the previous round I'd be in great shape.

Turn 6b:
Ironbreakers charge the flank of the Rat Ogres.

Another minor brain fart, but thought it was better to flee for some reason. If I stay, he easily kills the Rat Ogre on that end as it had 2 wounds, but there is a chance I stay with insane courage and no panic test on the 2nd unit. By fleeing, I stood no chance of saving the charged unit and caused an auto panic test on the 2nd unit, because they had to flee through them.

I fail the first panic check on Ld 8. Luckily I have undivided and get to roll again.

I pass it this time.
He shoots his cannon hoping to kill one of the non-fleeing unit, but the ranges are off and he misses.

So its down to the last combat with the Ruin Lord.
He swings first and does nothing.

I get 5 str 4 attacks from the spawn and 6 strength 6 attacks from the Rat Ogres.
I do 1 wound from the spawn, he saves.
I do 2 wounds from the Rat Ogres...

He fails 1 save.

.
.
.
He makes the 2nd. Ugghhh!!!

There is several hundred points I just lost.

Final positions:


When it was time to add it up, he was up on me by 200 or so points and
the game was declared a draw.

Tough, tough battle against a worth adversary. I made several mistakes that I wish I could go back and do again.
Still trying to get the hang of all these 7th edition rules.

While my dice played a part, my opponent played excellent. My hats off to him.

So I now sport a 2-1-1 record in the league and another tough Dwarf opponent coming up next.

Wrapup and things I should have done differntly, coming soon.

Until then...

Quick Painting Update

With the end of January drawing to an end, I wanted to give a quick look at where I stand in my schedule.

Jan 11: Complete 2nd batch of Gors. (DONE X)
Jan 12-17: Complete 2nd batch of Ungors (packmasters) (DONE X)
Jan 13: Base and prime all 3 units of warhounds (giant rats) (DONE X)
Jan 18-31: Complete all 16 Giant Rats.
Jan 20: Complete Furies, base and prime. (DONE X)
Jan 27: Strip 4 models. (Both stormvermin and both wizards. 3 primed black and 1 painted horribly.) (DONE X)
Jan 27: Build new chariot ungor. (DONE X)

This was everything I was supposed to have finished by the end of January.
As it turns out I finished the 2nd unit of Giant Rats last night. Leaving 5 Giant Rats to finish by tomorrow night. Right now I'm looking at being 1 day behind.
Not to bad.

This weekend I took the time to strip the 4 models, which went pretty easy. And finished glueing together my furies and a new ungor to go in the chariot, instead of trying to strip him and repaint him.
I also got the furies all based and primed.

Now the problem. Looking at my schedule for February, I realize, I forgot to put on the list time to actually paint my Furies.

Here is the schedule from Feb 1st on:
Feb 1: Reassess status.
Feb 1 - Feb 5: Complete 1st chariot.
Feb 6 - Feb 10: Complete 2nd chariot.
Feb 11: Base and prime 3 characters.
Feb 11 - Feb 16: Complete 3 characters.
Feb 17 - Feb 23: Build both spawns.
Feb 24 - Mar 2: Base, prime and paint both spawns.
Mar 3: Make very basic Display Board.
Mar 4 - Mar 9: Finish flocking, Adding static grass, Touch ups; Finish movement trays, Clear Coat everything.

So somewhere in there I need 3 days or so to paint my Furies as well.
I'm going to try and push hard to finish my hounds in 2 days instead of the 3 it usually takes me from where they are at and then start on the furies.

If I can take just 4 days to do the chariots instead of 5, and a couple less days to build the spawn, then I should be ok. 6 days to build the spawn is probably way to conservative an estimate, so I should be ok.

So Feb 1 I reasses the schedule and squeeze in time to paint the furies.

But I am very happy with the way both units of hounds came out.

Until next time...

BR: Dwarfs vs Chaos Beasts part 2

The battle lines had been drawn and the war cry was given.

Magic items looked like:
Doombull, Hellfire sword
Wargor: Chaos armor
Bray Shaman: Staff of Darkoth, power stone
Bray shaman Lvl 1: 2x power stones

RuneLord: Runic Armor of Preservation (immune to poison, killing blow) Rune of Stone, +1 armor save, Runic Talixman 3x Rune of spellbreaking.

Thane: BSB with Master rune of Gromril 1+ armor save,
Rune weapon w/swiftness, & fury.
Rune of battle on standard. (this was allowed due to a League resource he had).

Iron breakers had rune to make immune to fear and terror.
Cannons had rune of forging. one had burning as well.

Turn 1a: Ratspawn bellows out the command and the entire line lurches forward.
Magic is completely shut down with his 7 dispel dice and 3 scrolls. I don't get a single spell off and never IF or Miscast. So I'll not bother to mention magic the rest of the game.

Here is the situation at the end of my turn.


On turn 1b: His dwarfs don't move up much except for the Rangers to move behind the woods.
In his shooting he took out 5 of my hounds in the unit of 6. Killed off 1 and 2 in the other units of hounds.
One of his Organ guns kills 7 out of my beastherd in the middle. And a wound is done to my spawn in the middle.
Then his Anvil goes. Wrack and Ruin on my furies up in the Scree. 4 hits, and 3 wounds. I fail to save any. So down to 2 and they cannot fly next turn.

** I forgot to take a picture here. **

Turn 2a: Everything surges forward again except for Ratspwan and company. The cannon in the far corner is really starting to bother me now.
I set up several charges and a couple minor traps in case he charges.

Here is the scene at the beginning of his turn 2:


No charges, though he does move his Slayers up and offers their flank to my hounds.
In shooting, he gets a long cannon shot into Ratspawns unit anyway killing one Rat Ogre.
The 2nd cannon shot and took out the chariot on my left flank.
His crossbowmen shoot at the unit of 4 hounds and kill 2. They panic and rush across the board towards Ratspawn.
His Organ gun shoots into the herd in the woods and kills 6. But they make their panic test. Whew, I need to keep them closer to ratspawn.
Anvil does Wrack and ruin on the furies again. This time no wounds but they cannot fly again.

*** Again forgot to take a pic at beginning of turn. Did take one after movement.**

Turn 3a: Charges: On right flank 3 Rat Ogres/Minotaurs into front of Ranger unit.
Herd into ranger unit. 3 Rat Ogres into flank of ranger unit.
On left flank 4 Rat Ogres into front of slayers. He was surprised I didn't charge hounds into the flank. That would have been bad, IMO.
I charged furies into cannon but with no fly, they were 9" out and so failed charge.

For rallies, the hounds failed and the nearest edge was his board edge. So they fled and stopped right in front of the Organ gun. Not bad. The other hound moved up and tried to block the Organ guns line of sight.

Luckily the spawn moved up 8" and out of the way of the rat Ogres hitting the rangers flank. Everyone else moved up.

Here is a pic after the movement:


In combat the unit of 4 wiped out 5 slayers including the 2 giant slayers. So I'm feeling ok with that combat.
In the Ranger combat, my first roll I do really bad. Only 3 hits out of 9 attacks. Instead of sticking with that, I used my League resource that gives me 1 free re-roll per game. I used it and got 4 hits.
In the end, I killed off 9 Rangers and took 1 wound in return. With 2 units I outnumbered with fear causers and he broke and ran. I easily caught him with the Rat Ogre units. One hits the crossbowmen and the other hits the cannon after everything made its panic tests.

Here was the scene going into turn 3b:


Turn 3b: No movement on his part.

In shooting his organ gun knocks my herd in the middle down to only 3 plus the shaman.
His cannon tries a grapeshot at my furies and does no wounds. Prepares for the charge.
His 2nd Organ gun swivels and shoots my herd on the right flank. 8 hits, and knocks them down to 3, they panic and off the board they go dragging my shaman and wargor with them. Ugghhh!!
Crossbows shoot and kill the spawn in the middle.
Anvil does wrack and ruin on my chariot. It does 1 wound, but more importantly knocks its speed in half to prevent it from charging next turn.

In combat, The Rat ogres wipe out the cannon crew.
The Rat Ogres kill 5 of the crossbowmen who flee and are pursued off the table.
both the crossbows and organ gun make their panic tests.
In the slayer combat with 10 attacks he does 3 wounds and I'm down to 9 attacks. With them I do only 2 wounds??? He wins combat by 4 and I break.
Not wanting to leave the Iron breakers unsupported he restrains pursuit.

Here is the situation I'm looking at when I begin my turn 4:


The battle is still in the balance and plenty more blood is yet to be spilled. Stay tuned for part III coming soon.

Until then...

The Dresden Files

I watched the 2nd episode last night and I have to say I liked this one a lot more, for several reasons.

1. The writing seemed to be very sound. I didn't see any real loopholes in the plot like there were in the 1st one.

The bad guy knew what he wanted, he got it.
Then when Dresden figured it out, he jumped to the cop and shot Dresden.

His plan was to jump into the Las Vegas Tycoon until Dresden convinced him he could cause him serious pain no matter where he was at.

2. Dresden actually used a bit of offensive magic with the vodoo doll. Of course this is black magic which he isn't supposed to use, but I thought it was cool.

3. The defensive magic actually worked as his bracelet took 2 bullets for him.

4. It was a bit of a mystery until they showed the Autopsy photos. As soon as they did, I figured out what was going on as did Dresden. But it was a pretty good mystery right up until then.

Overall, I give this one an A-. It could have been better, but not a lot. He was risking a lot on the bad guy believing he could cause him pain no matter where he was.

Of course if I was the bad guy in the cop body, I would have taken a swat team to the warehouse to get Dresden with orders to shoot to kill. But hey, I'm hopefully a bit smarter than the local Jail thug.

Until later...

BR: Dwarfs vs Chaos Beasts part 1

I played my 4th League game this last Sunday. It was against another Dwarf player and a very good player. He came in 4th least year in our league after losing to me in the consolation round. He played Sylvania last year and he is even better with his Dwarfs.

We were both 2-1 going into this round, so this was a critical game for both of us. Winner takes command of 2nd place and a wild card spot, while the loser would be at 2-2 and being on the outside looking into the playoffs at the half way point.

And unfortunately, he was the home player giving him an extra 50 points. He also used his Lair/Hatchery resource to buy his anvil. The resource allows you to buy a Large Monster for your character at 50 points less than normal. The anvil was counted for the dwarfs, the bell for skaven, and chariots for the Tomb Kings.

So he was really sporting 2350 points to my 2250 points. Ouch!!!

I was hoping for a lot of terrain, but instead we rolled a 1 and so there were only 4 pieces. Rolling on the old Dwarf terrain chart we got:
Tower, woods, scree and mine shaft.

The Tower we ruled was a regular building, you could walk in, and had 3 levels for shooting from.
The mine shaft was 2 small shacks, impassable and a set of stone walls around them. I got to set out first and put the tower in the left middle of the table.
He then placed the woods off to the right side about 6" from the edge.
I then put the shacks and walls in one deployment zone in the middle. And the scree went on the far left side in the middle.

I then used my resource Lay of the Land to always pick deployment zones and took the side with the stone walls.
This left NO terrain in his deployment zone at all.

I had to deploy first and it looked like this:


Starting at the bottom, I had a unit of 3 Rat Ogres.
Then a beast herd of 13 (7 gors, 6 ungors, fc) with my wargor and Lvl 2 shaman.
Chariot and then a spawn.
Next was another unit of 3 Rat Ogres with a unit of 5 hounds/giant rats in from of them.
In the wall we had the 2nd beastherd of 13 (7/6) with Lvl 1 shaman
On the other side was Ratspawn and his body guard with a unit of 6 hounds in front of him.
Another spawn next to the hounds.
Then a unit of 4 Rat Ogres with a unit of hounds/G.Rats in front of them.
Then a chariot, my 5 furies/cloud runners
and finally another unit of 4 Rat Ogres (minotaurs with great weapons).

My list was the usual list I run. Magic items included:
Hell fire sword for Doombull
Chaos armor for wargor
Staff of Darkoth for Lvl 2 shaman
Swapped out 3 dispel scrolls for 3 power stones.

And you can see Greg's bright shining face at the top of the pic.

His deployment was much more hedious and deranged. It looked like:


At the bottom we have a unit of 10 crossbows
In front of them is a unit of Rangers with Great weapons and scouting. But with no place to scout, this is where they went.
Cannon and then Volly gun
Another unit of 10 crossbowmen with the Anvil with Runelord behind that.
Then another hideous Organ gun, then another 10 crossbows.
Up from them in a unit of Ironbreakers with the BSB in them.
Then a unit of 20 slayers. 18 Troll slayers, 2 giant slayers
Finally, in a devious, hideous move, he puts a cannon in the very far corner.
And up from that you can see his hideous belly, which almost rivals my own.

So a wide open board. Hand to hand force verse the typical Dwarf refused flank gunline in it. It was going to be bloody.

We rolled to see who could go first and he won the roll.
In a surprise move, he let the beasts begin their charge across the field of death.

Part 2 coming soon.

Until then...

GW's new incentive program

I have no idea where these guys come up with these plans, but this is the dumbest most rediculous incentive program I have ever seen.

If you haven't seen it yet, you get a card. Remember those Subway cards you could get. Buy 9 subway sandwiches and get the 10th free. It is similar to that.

Similar, not the same.
In GW's version, you had to buy a Character, 2 units of core, 2 units of special troops, a boxed rare set, a can of primer and a White Dwarf magazine.
So you have dropped well over $200. Probably closer to $230+.

So do you get your prize yet. OH NO!!
Lets make them jump through a few hoops as well.
Now you have to paint them, and play at least one game at a GW store which is free advertising for them.

So now, I get my prize.

YES!!!

Now you get your prize.

Alright!!

Is it a free battalion set? Uhm, no.
Is it a free regiment set? Uhm, no.
Is it a free blister? Uhm, no.
Is it some free paints? Uhm, no.
Is it a free white dwarf? Uhm, no.

Then what the heck do I get?

Oh, you receive 2 coupons.
The first is good for 20% off a white dwarf mag. Oh, so its worth $1.

And the second is good for 10% off a battlion set. Cost is $90, so it only costs you $81. So you save $9.

So you have to spend, well over $300 to get $10 off.

This is just crap on a stick. Come on GW.
You have got to try and do better than this.

Until next time...

A few quick notes

Sorry about yesterday, just way too busy at work.

1. Painting Update:
Last night I was able to sit down and finish my first unit of Giant Rats.
I think they look pretty darn good, I'll try and get some pics taken of them this weekend to post. I think I need to flock them and get them coated right away. I fear the paint on their tails will take a beating over the next couple months. Thats where I always grab them.

The hounds are on schedule to be finished on time. With 6 days left to paint them, that gives me 3 days per unit. Or about 2 Rats per day. I did the last unit in 3 days, And with the weekend to work, I should be ok. Just have to stay off the NWN.

Still haven't finished priming the Furies, I plan on doing that tomorrow while I soak my 4 models I need to strip.

2. Now onto Battle Star Gallactica. I loved this show when it first started, but I think the writers have lost their way. They have done some awesome writing over the couple years its been on, but this latest bit is just starting to get too touchy-feely.
Not sure the right word, but its all about who's sleeping with whom, or who wants to sleep with whom. Too much prophecy, from both the humans and the cylons.
Now they seem to be trying to live in peace while both are racing to be the first to Earth, and the humans are trying to keep the Cylons from finding it.
Its just gotten too weird.
I'll probably keep watching it, but it needs to get better.

3. Quick recap of my Jousting competition on line.
I have started playing Never Winter Nights and having a blast with it. Played last night in fact and got slaughtered by Minotaurs. But made some friends and a lot of loot. But over the weekend, my brother set up a Mid-Winter Festival and I was there. He had a Jousting competition. You needed to ride a horse and use your knockdown ability to knock the opponent down.
There were 8 of us in the competition. A couple you could tell were no real competition, but there were about 4 of us that had the skills to make this tough.
We were also not allowed to use any magic items at all except for a magic weapon.

My draw was against a female Monk. I wasn't too worried, but when it came time to joust, we turned out to be an even match. We kept either missing the other person, or would hit them and we would resist the knockdown. This went on for easily 30-45 seconds. Which was just a huge amount of time. We each resisted 10-12 knockdowns each before finally I was knocked off my horse.
It was best 2 out of 3, so we would go at each other again. This time I couldn't get set as the computer was messing up on me and there was a lot of lag. I tried to rage, but she came at me so fast, she got in a quick shot and knocked me down without me swinging a blow.
I was defeated and out in the first round. But proud of my 1st joust.

My opponent went on to slaughter the rest of the competition in straight sets and in less than 5 seconds for each bout. I was the only one who had even given her a fight. So while I was out in the first round, I felt I was the 2nd best there. Just got the unlucky draw.
Either way it was a lot of fun.

Until next time...

Things I could have done differently

I've been thinking about my game verse Skaven and some of the things I did wrong in the battle, and how could I do them differently.

1. Knowing my objective was to go after his general and knowing his general was the killing machine, I had to send Ratspawn and his unit that way. I didn't do it. I sent it to the opposite field and it cost me.

2. When the Clanrats overran into the unit of 4 Rat Ogres. On my turn I had the option of charging the Beastherd into the globadiers or into the clanrats. I chose the 2 globadiers, killed them and eventually made it down the jezzails and killed them. I think it was probably more important to hit the clanrats in the flank. With the extra 2-3 combat res I pick up there, we should break that unit and be ready to face the storm vermin.

3. Instead of trying to manuever both Ratspawn and the chariot to charge the SV, I should have just set up Ratspawn to charge and turned the chariot around to face the clanrats who's back was to us, or who were off the table. When they came back on, I could charge them easily and probably break them.
When I did move them, if I moved them another inch sideways I'm out of his charge arc and nothing he can do to stop a turn 6 charge with the chariot.

4. Instead of charging the Monks, I should have sacrificed a unit, probably my furies, to force his monks into a bad charge that would force his flank to be hung out. I could then hit the flank with RatOgres and hounds to break the ranks, and keep his champion and plague priest out of the combat.

I think if I had done any of these 4 things, the game is a draw and not a loss. (Though #1 depends on if I could have actually killed his warlord before the warlord killed Ratspawn.) And if I had done 2 of these, I think I could have won the game, even without killing his warlord.

I hope you got something out of this. Losses can be tough to take, but if you learn from them and bring it to the next battle, it helps in the long run.

Until next time...

Painting update

I was doing really well until this weekend.

I ended up taking all of Friday night off and most of Saturday.
My brother is a DM for one of the Never WinterNight campaigns and had a big event planned for this last weekend. I just had to go play.

Then I ended up doing a fast schedule for my 4th League game on Sunday, and so NO painting on Sunday either. (BR coming soon, BTW)

This left me very far behind. The biggest problem was I was about to hit the drybrushing phase of the hounds/Giant Rats and was afraid of the outcome.

But Saturday I did start and as suspected, it looked like crap. I just cannot drybrush, period.

So I changed stratagies. Instead, I drybrushed as best I could, which means I got paint everywhere. I then went back and did a very light addition of watered down Reaper Flesh shade, which is a dark brown. It flowed into the cracks pretty well without covering up my paint on the top of the hair that bad.

Overall, I think it came out pretty well. I wish I had a pic to show you. I'll get some more soon. Saturday I did 5 like this, and last night I knocked out the other 11, so all 16 are done with the fur.

I'm now ready to move on with the skin/eyes/teeth, etc..
I like the way their tails look and will probably just leave them alone.

I missed finishing up the cloudrunners completely and will have to try and squeeze them in soon. They were my secondary Saturday project.

But I still plan on finishing the hounds by next week, so I feel like I'm back on schedule.

Until later...

Heroes last night

Another good show. This one wasn't as good, but its almost like a whole new mini-series. They *Saved the Cheerleader* so now its a matter of finding out who they are.

The cheerleader Claire is trying to rekindle the friendship that was erased. And is now on a quest to find her real parents.
The cop is trying to save his marriage and came clean to his wife about his power, after screwing up things with the FBI.
Peter wakes up from his coma and realizes he needs to get out of the city. Thats when he sees the invisible man, and picks up his power. I've read the invisible man becomes Peter's mentor.
Peter's brother finally accepts his destiny and is going to try to help.
Isaac comes back to NY clean and wants to get back with his old girlfried.
Hiro is on his quest for the sword. Finds it in the museum, steals it only to find out it is a replica.
Dr. Suresh is approached by Claire's father, but refuses to help him.
Sylar is still being held. I thought for sure he had gotten out after killing the girl last season.
Nikki is in prison and Jessica is making life very hard on her. Very cool scene when she grabs the cops night stick and snaps it in half.
And Nuke Man is seen in the desert, where Peter is running to BTW, trying to control his powers.

So they were really just trying to get a bunch of new plot lines started again, but still an excellent show.
The only problem I see is they are trying to tell too many stories in 1 hour. They either need to bring more of them together or tell fewer stories.

I said it before and I'll say it again. One hour is not nearly enough time for this show.

One upcoming scene showed Miccah finally revealing his power to his father. Looks like he is going to rob an ATM machine.

Until next time...

TV Series Review: The Dresden Files

I got a chance to watch the new TV series on the Sci-Fi channel called the Dresden files.

This series is based on the book series by the same name. It stars Paul Blackthorne as Harry Dresden, Valerie Cruz as his police contact Lt. Murphy and Terrance Mann as the visage of the spirit in the skull, Bob.

I want to admit up front, I've only read a couple of the Dresden file book and that was a while back, so I'm not going to compare the books with the series. I'm going to review the series to stand alone. Though from my memory, it did seem a bit different, than the books, but the premise is the same.

Overall, I'd give this series a B maybe a B+. It was a fun interesting show that I will probably catch again. It has a few things going against it.
1. It seems to be a stand alone episode series. So if you miss one, its not that big a deal. Though that is yet to be seen.
2. It is trying to go head to head with Desperate Housewives, which my wife watches. This means unless they play it on another regular time slot, it is almost bound for cancelation.

The overall story, I thought was excellent. The monster, a skin-walker, is after a very sweet looking boy. The boy tries to hire Harry, who basically tells the boy to not believe in monsters. Later the boys shows up again hysterical, so he casts a protection spell to calm him down. This actually protects the boy from the beasty, but the Ravens steal him away to protect him.

The skin-walker shows up at Harry's place and finds out how to find the boy, but Harry gets there first with a magical box he uses to defeat the bad guy. Which he was able to build in less than an hour??

As far as scenery and special affects. What they showed was really good. I liked the apartment and props, and the few affects they did show.

What I didn't like was the details in the story.

Now onto poking holes into the show.
1. This skin-walker is so powerful, it goes in and kills the kids teacher and stills her skin so she can get closer to the child. Ok, seems a bit wasteful, why not just go to the kids house and kill the mom and take her skin?? But I can live with it.

2. She is at the school, with the child alone and instead of just grabbing him and running off, asks him to stay after school??? Huh!!?? Now I know this is all hindsight, because at the time you don't know she is the bad guy, But still, come on. Are we not supposed to look back at the plot.

3. Some lady he had talked to earlier, comes and gives Harry some info about the kid, and then rips down his protections, then dies. This was very confusing to me.

4. The skin-walker comes into Harry's house still looking like the school teacher, holding a skin in her hand. Who's skin was this? Then the next scene Harry is hanging by chains being tortured??? Huh?? Did he just roll over and give up?? I didn't like this at all. It went to commercial and I'm practically licking my chops waiting for it to come back, so I can see him duel it out with this monster. When they come back he is tied up. Very, very bad here.

5. The Ravens. Ok, these guys were just weird. It confused me at first, but I got it later. They are a magical race that can transform into bird form or humanoid form. And are watching out for the child because they had something to do with the original placement of the child.

6. And like I mentioned before. They state that the skin-walker can use a location spell in about an hour to find the boy. Sounds like a pretty easy spell to cast and I was surprised Harry didn't do that on the feather to find the boy earlier. But then he builds this hypothetical, very powerful, jack in the box enchantment. Gets to the old church where the Ravens are keeping him. Talks them into taking the boy back to his house and is ready for the skin-walker when it shows up??? What, was this a 15 minute incant. And Heck, if it was that easy, lets build 20 for the next few monsters we run into.

That was the biggest problems I had with the show. While I loved the story, it just kind of left me with a, huh, why did the characters do that? Feeling.
Too many years as a DM I guess where I didn't have my monsters run head strong into the hero with vorpal blade. Lets be a bit sneaky and smart about how we run our bad guys and good guys for that matter.

A few more special affects would have been good to. At least show Harry attempting to do something to protect himself, even if the skin-walker brushed it easily aside and knocked him across the room, unconscious.

So I love the premise of the show, and I can see so many possibilities in the future, but the writers need to get a little smarter, and drop a few bucks into some special affects. It is a show about a wizard after all.

I'll reserve final judgement for a few more episodes, but it looks like it is going to make a showing in my weekly TV viewing.

Let me know what you thought of it.

Movie Review: My Super Ex-Girlfriend

My wife and I had the pleasure to sit down and watch this movie Saturday night.

It stars Uma Thurman as Jenny Johnson, Art History gallery director by day, G-Girl, super heroine extrodanaire by night.

The star Actor is Luke Wilson, with supporting cast of Anna Faris, Rainn Wilson (from the office) and Eddie Izzard as the Arch-Nemisis to G-Girl.

This is a very quirky little movie that really never takes itself seriously as it should be.
G-Girl seems to have powers similar to Superman. Super fast, fly, invincible, etc.. and only a rock from outspace is her undoing.
But beyond the super powers, she has a couple of personality quirks, like being totally neurotic, jealous and oversensitive. (I've had a few girlfriends like this in the past, just without the superpowers.)

Luke, who plays Matt Saunders, does a fine job as the lead man, getting in well over his head first from G-Girl's ex-boyfriend, now arch-nemises Professor Bedlam. And then when he realizes he is in love with his co-worker Hannah (Anna Faris, who is totally hot.)

Matt finds out the hard way what a super-girl can do when spurned. He has his car thrown into orbit after the words 'You Suck' are etched on it. He has the word 'DICK' laser burned onto his forhead the day before a huge presentation. A shark thrown at him, after being caught in bed with Hannah.
The list goes on, until he decides to team up with Bedlam to get rid of her super-powers. More hilarity ensues leading up to a great cat-fight between G-Girl and Hannah.

I don't want to spoil any more for those who haven't seen it. But if you want a quirky funny movie, definetely put My Super Ex-Girlfriend in your Que on Netflix. You will not regret it unless you only like super serious movies.

Until later...

BR: Skaven vs Beasts Summary wrapup

I know most people want to win their games as do I. But a loss can be a good thing if we examine the things we did wrong and try to learn from them.

So even those this was a draw game, it was a lose in league terms and there was still plenty of things to learn from.

1. I had gotten in the habit of pushing this army forward and winning. This game was a real eye opener. The Skaven horde did better than I thought it would.

2. If the Minotaurs hit a ranked up unit head on, they need a bit of help.

3. I need to use my speed more to gang up on units and defeat them. I've fallen into a habit of sending 1 unit to deal with enemy units.

4. Chariots!! This is my first army with chariots in it, and I'm still struggling to use them properly. they don't move fast enough to stay up with the army and I'm not coming into support my units in combat properly. And if I'm lining them up to charge a unit, keep them out of the units charge range.

5. OBJECTIVE: If the game has an objective besides beating up on the enemy, I have got to a do a better job of keeping my eye on the ball, and not lose site of it.

6. This army still needs my doombulls LD to keep the army together. Ecspecially the herds. Otherwise they don't do what I want them to. I let my Doombull get too far away from the herds, so they failed their restraint roll and got them too close to the PCB's.

7. My big Doombull unit still has a tough time with the huge static combat res unit alone. It needs a bit of support.

Well, I'm still happy with the army, but I know I need to be more careful with it.

So until later...

Busy Weekend

WOW!! Where to start. I had so much going on this weekend that I wanted to blog about. Keep coming back today, I will hopefully be putting up a lot of things about this weekend.

I have a movie review for 'My Super-Ex Girlfriend'.

Brand new series started last night called the Dresden Files, based on the book.

Battle Star Galactica started back up again.

I had another Warhammer Battle yesterday.

I still have to write my final battle summary for the Skaven battle.

A quick report from my online gaming of Never Winter Nights when my Dwarf Barbarian entered into a jousting competition.

And an update on my painting. So much to blog, so little time.

And, one thing that has me on pins and needles today is that HEROES is back tonight. I've been waiting for 6 weeks for this one. I'm really starting to get pumped up. One of the best new TV shows that has started up in years.

So until later...

BR: Skaven vs Beasts Part 3

When we left off the battlefield looked like this:


You can't see the unit of 5 hounds in front of the clanrats at the very bottom of the pic, but everything else is shown.

Turn 4a: Clanrats charge the hounds.
Clanrat unit with Warlord on my far left flank charges the unit of 4 Rat Ogres in front of them. The Rat Ogres flee.
For movement, I'm hoping the banner of hatred kicks in and makes the monks move up, but it doesn't and the monks are able to side shift some.
The storm vermin, not wanting to take on Rat Spawn and a chariot, back up, using the wall as protection.

In shooting, his jezzails wipe out the hounds in front of them. And the ratling gun hands my unit of 3 Rat Ogres in front of the monks 5 wounds, killing one. They pass their panic test.
Things are going down hill really fast here.

In combat, the clanrats beat up on the rats who run off the board. The clanrats try to restrain but fail and pursue them off the table edge.

Here is what I was looking at the beginning of my turn:


I knew I was in trouble and had to start making a few things happen.
Turn 4b: My herd charges across the lake and into the jezzails (not shown in the pic.)
My furies charge the ratling gun. It fails its fear test and flees. The furies easily catch it and destroy it.
The Rat Ogres that were fleeing rally.
thinking I can still get both Ratspawn and the chariot into the storm vermin, I move both units up.
Bonehead move here. I should have turned the chariot around.

I set everyone up for charges on the next turn.

I finally cast bears anger with a 9. He scrolls it.

In combat, the herd rips the jezzails a new one, killing off 4. I win combat and pursue them off the table. But not before suffering a wound to my shaman.

Here is the setup at the end of turn 4:


The arrow is still next to my Rat Ogres, but they had rallied.
Turn 5a:
Not really in charge range of anything, the skaven declare none.
Again, I am hoping the banner of hatred kicks in, and he is forced to move forward, he rolls a '4' and is able to simply reform to protect his flank.

He moves his Clanrats back on the table. And moves his Storm Vermin back 2 more inches.

In a surprising move, he moves his warlord out of his clanrat unit and into the rocks. I really wasn't expecting this and gave me a glimmer of hope.

Here was the setup at the beginning of my turn 5.



Turn 5b: I figured it was now or never. I charged Ratspawn and body guard into the stormvermin with BSB. I had messed around long enough. His BSB was still in the front rank and I didn't want him to wiseup and move it to the back.

Then for the other move. The unit of 2 Rat Ogres and single Rat Ogre into the monks.
Then the unit of 4 Rat Ogres into the clanrats and 3 hounds into the flank of the clanrats.

My thinking here is if he stands, then I do this combat first, crush the clanrats and overrun into the monks flank and can then crush them.
If he flees, my hounds catch him and the hounds flank the monks.

He flees and only runs 4". The hounds catch and kill them. But when we lay down the template, 2 of the 3 hounds are in the front of the monks. They don't hit the flank, they hit the front. And the unit of 4 rat ogres are out of range.

The storm vermin make their fear test.

Totally flustered at this point, I turn the chariot around to face the clanrats.
I move the herd back on the table.
I move the furies up close to his general.

In combat with the plague monks, I can only get 1 Rat Ogre on the Plague Priest. So I kill off a bunch of monks, but not near enough as he kills all 3 hounds and does a wound to kill a rat ogre and I lose by 5 or 6. I break with both, both run 6" and are caught by the pursuing monk unit who pusues 8" and hits the wall.

Now the big combat. My last gasp.
Ratspawn puts 3 attacks on the BSB. Knowing I need to get 1 wound in to kill him, I figured I better play it safe. I get 2 wounds in and kill him. There goes the BSB and Banner of the swarm, so +4 combat swing right there.
2 more attacks on the storm Vermin and I miss with both. Ugghhhh!!! Needing 3's to hit and 2's to kill.

Then with the 10 attacks from my Rat Ogres, needing 4+ to hit and 2+ to kill. I get only 4 hits and then only 2 wounds. :( This is horrible.
With his 3 attacks back he does 2 wounds.

So He has Combat res of 8: 2 wounds, 3 ranks, banner, warbanner, US.
I have 5: 4 wounds, banner.

So I lose by 3. Needing a 6 not to break and prevent the massacre. I roll the 6.

WHEW!!! What the heck happend there.

Here is the situation leading into the final turn:



Turn 6a:
Clanrats that just came on, into my chariot. Huh!! Oh crap, surely its out of range.
I hold. We measure, nope, right at 10". Its in. This is huge.

Not much else.
In magic, he finally casts Warp Lightning and gets a 10 and I have no scrolls left.
I roll my 3 dispel dice and match his 10. Whew, saved the herd.

In shooting he lobs 2 globes at my furies, one lands on him and kills himself. He makes his panic test. Then his warlord shoots his pistol at me. Needing a 6 to hit, he hits and wounds. I'm down to 2 furies. Enough for my last desperation try.

Maybe things are not over yet.
Big combat: I challenge, his champion refuses and moves to the rear. I don't care really, but gets rid of one attack. He can't handle the overkill potential of the Hellfire sword.
He gets to swing first and does only 1 wound.
With my 15 attacks, I kill 6.

His combat res: 1 wound, banner, warbanner, 3 ranks, US = 7.
Mine: 6 wounds + banner = 7.
He wins with his musician. Ugghhh!!!

Needing an 8 to prevent the massacre: I get it. Whew!!

His clanrats get 5 attacks on my chariot, 1 hit, 1 wound. Need a 4+ armor save, I fail it.
With 4 attacks, I get 1 hit and 1 wound. he saves it.
He wins by 4. 1 rank, banner, US, wound. So needing a 3 not to break. I roll a 4 and break.
I'm thinking, that ok, I'll get away and rally next turn. I flee 6 big inches on 3d6 and he catches me.

So this is the state going into my turn 6:


Table quarters don't count in the battle. But the objectives do.
I had one final shot at his general. It was time to take it.

Furies charge the warlord. I outnumber him and cause fear. With only a Leadership of 7, means he has about a 45% chance to flee.

We will get to that later.

In the big combat, I finally wrack up 7 wounds and knock his numbers down to 14 guys. With me having a US of 15, he needs insane courage and fails to get it. So I break him, catch him and capture their banner. This is a huge number of points and brings things almost back to even.

So it comes down to his generals fear test. He rolls the 2d6.

I see the 6. Oh yea, baby, come on win column.

Then I see the '1'. A 7, he had hit it exactly. One more pip was all I needed.

The warlord, easily dispatches the furies.

I'm thinking this is a huge victory for the Skaven but when we add up the points, I'm actually ahead by 50 points.

I killed 50 less points, but had captured the banner, and no table quarters and no generals killed, I was up by 50.

But then we looked at the objectives.
His was kill the big guys, not counting characters. I had 23 to start and only 8 left. So he got his. +400 vp.
Mine was to kill his general. I failed. -200 vp.

So in the end he was up by 550 vp and won the game.
We went ahead and rolled for the warpstone amulet but the 111 vp it might have given me was not enough to bring it to a draw. He rolled a '2'.

That Leadership 7 test he made, I calculated was worth 932 vp. If he rolls an 8, I win by around 380 vp. Ugghhh, so close, and yet so far.

So A draw game that turned into a loss because of the objectives.

It was a great game, that I learned a lot from.
I'll be doing a recap of lessons learned soon.

Hope you enjoyed it.

Work in progress

I thought I might do a step by step on choosing and painting my chaos hounds / Giant rats for my beastman army.

First step was to decide on the models I was going to use. I knew I wanted around 3 units of 5. I looked through the GW models and nothing even comes close to the size I was looking for except the Huge Rats used in the Nurglitch plague army. There are 2 there, same pose and they run $8 a piece. Since I wanted 15, that would mean a price tag of $120 for 3 throwaway units.

After looking a little further, I found some very nice Reaper Barrow Rats that look great, there are 2 poses and I could get them for about $2 a model. So $32 later I have a set of 16.

I trimmed off their flashing, filed down their mold lines and then glued them on some cavalry bases. This is how I've used them for about a year now.

Then last Saturday, they finally hit the cue.
Next step was to glue sand and rocks to their base to match the rest of the army.

I then primed them white and they looked like this:


The next step is really the toughest. Where do you start painting?

I find it helpful to decide ahead of time exactly what I'm going to do. Now that doesn't mean you can't change along the way, but I try to plan out exactly how I'm going to paint a model or unit of miniatures before hand.

So here is my plans for the Giant Rats:
1. I want to stick with the same basic paint scheme as the rest of the army, so I'm going to do an undercoat of Flesh wash over the entire body.
2. See below for detailed description.
3. I then want to do any open wounds, open mouths and tongues in a dark red. I may also do some of the boils in a dark red as well.
4. Then a tan color that will hit the flesh and tails. This will be extremely watered down, to blend in with the flesh wash and let some of the red of the boils filter through.
5. Then I do white on the teeth, eyes, claws and skulls.
6. Do all the rocks under their feet with grey and maybe a hit of white highlight.
7. Then hit with a washed out flesh to highlight the tan skin and boils.
8. I hit the tongues with a bright red highlight and put pupils in the eyes.
9. Finally, I do the bases, the same color as the rest of the army.


Full description of #2 above.
The one thing I left out was the fur. This one has me puzzled and I have not been sure what to do with it. I'm terrible at painting fur and there is only one technique I've ever seen that looked good with fur. Drybrushing.

So I've decided to drybrush. I know some people hate this, but if done right, it can look really good on fur. Unfortunately, I suck at it. I've been working on my technique and I'm getting better at it. There are a couple things I've learned about dry brushing.
1. If your paint is too watered down, it will always suck. So you cannot water your paint down, like I usually do since I use a lot of craft paints.
2. If you pigmentation is too large in your paint it will suck. So I cannot use the normal craft paints I use. They tend to have large pigmentation and if you don't water them down well, they suck. So I've got some reaper paints. I've been using some of them for a lot of highlighting. I have a tan color, I'm going to try the dry-brushing with this paint.

Status:
I have now finished #1 above the base coating. When doing this, I use a large flat brush and just throw the flesh wash on there in broad strokes, just making sure of 2 things. First, that you don't miss anything and second that it doesn't pool up anywhere. I covered all 16 pretty quick.

Before doing each one, I double checked for any flashing, ecspecially on the nose and tail tips. I then bent each tail. Every model was only 2 poses, so they looked a bit too static. By going through and bending each tail carefully, it gives a much more dynamic look to the unit. You just have to be careful, not to bend too much or they will break.

Finally, I painted each one with the wash and they look like this:


Next step up starts tonight with the drybrushing. My goal is to finish all 16 with drybrushing by the end of the weekend.

Also in the que for Saturday is to work on the furies / cloud runners, base and prime them. I have like 2 arms to glue on, and then just tape over the flying stand, glue on the sand and prime. Should take about 30 mins tops.

Well, I'll let you know how the painting is going Monday.
Don't worry, I think I can find time to finish the battle report this weekend.

Have fun!!!

BR: Skaven vs Beasts Part 2

The Skaven horde won the right to go first and took the initiative. He surged forward and took up positions in all the major gaps.
Since his magic was pretty weak I went ahead and used a scroll. No use, letting a spell get through now.
His cannon shot and hit my chariot with a strength of 6, but failed to wound.
Finally, his jezzails shot and put 3 wounds on my chariot.

At the end of turn 1a, this was the situation I was looking at:


There were no charges for me, but I pushed forward. My furies flew into the middle to contest the boulders in the middle of the field.

Remember at the point I have no idea about any of his magic items. I use my Crystal ball to find out his General is a Minotaur/Rat Ogre killing machine as I figured he would be. Since he got to put him down after I put down Ratspawn, I'm no where near getting close to him. But his general is so far off to one side, his Ld values are pretty low.

In magic he lets me get off Bears Anger on my Lvl 1. My level 2 casts Beasts Cower on his swarms. He rolls his 3 dice for dispel and stops it.

Here is the setup at the end of turn 1. Beginning of 2a:



So its time to get into it. His Poison rat swarms charge my unit of 4 Rat Ogres.
His Clanrats charge the hounds. On my left flank his slaves charge my hounds.
I hold with everything.

I scrolled his warplightning again. But his shooting took out my chariot on my left flank. His ratling gun on my right flank kills 5 out of my beast herd but I hold.
We did the ratswarm combat first and I slaughtered his swarms, taking only 1 poisoned hit. I stomped on the last few rats running around.
His clanrats didn't do any wounds to my hounds and I didn't kill any, but I lose by 5 and break. I run through my Rat ogres who make their panic test and the clanrats overrun into the 4 strong Rat Ogres. I smile.

The slaves break the other hounds after killing 2. They break and run and no one cares except my unit of 4 Rat Ogres on that flank who fail a Ld 8 panic test, then re-roll and fail again!! ugghhh!! Very bad.

I took a picture here, but it somehow got corrupted and I had to delete it from the camera. So no pic of me starting turn 2b.

I think the 4 Rat Ogres can handle the clanrats so I charge the beast herd into the 2 globadiers in front of the stormvermin and ratling gun.
I move my spawn at the ratling gun. I have plenty of distance, so he stands and shoots. He makes his Ld 5 fear test. Then rolls a 6 for hits. Rolls again and in good skaven fashion blows himself up. So the spawn continues on into the storm vermin. Who make their fear test. Come on...

My furies charge his warp lightning cannon who flees and the furies catch it.
My beast herd declares a charge on the flank of the slaves on the left flank. The spawn is in the way, but I then point it at the PCBs. It needs to move about 8" to hit them. I roll a friggen 4. Ugghhh!! This blows the plan to tie up the PCBs and possibly kill them, and leaves the beastherd in a really bad spot.
The Rat Ogres on the far left flank charge around the wall at the slaves. It was close, so he decided not to risk it and fled.
Looking back I should have had my hounds charge the slaves in the center. Failure to do that, really mucked up the middle for too long.

My 4 fleeing Rat Ogres did rally, but then I realized I screwed up, rallying them before the hounds. The hounds failed to rally, run through the 4 Rat Ogres and force another panic test. I'm an idiot. Luckily I pass this one on the 2nd shot at Ld 8.

For magic, I cast Oxen stand on the 3 fleeing Giant Rats. He lets that go, looking to dispel my Bears anger at the end of the phase. So instead of letting him dispel it on 4+, I cast it again on myself and roll a '3'. Ugghhh!!

In combat, the herd decimated the slaves who broke. The herd tried to restrain but I roll an 8, missing by 1. And pursued, but failed to catch them. Ugghhh again.

The Storm Vermin only managed 2 wounds on the spawn tieing them down for another turn, while the herd wiped out the 2 globadiers and chose not to overrun.
Finally the big combat. His Clanrats attack the 4 Rat Ogres and only manage 1 wound.
With my 12 str 6 attacks back I kill 8 and win combat by 2. He is down to 2 ranks and so has a Ld of 7 -2 means a break test of 5. HE MAKES IT!! Ugghhhh!!

This is where the game started to turn.

Here was the setup going into turn 3a:



The skaven push the advantage. His Warlord and clanrats with PCB's both charge the beast herd. The herd flees and runs a big 5" and is cutdown by both units. The PCB's also hit the spawn.
The slaves at the back of the table fail to rally and run off the board, while the one up by the wall rallies.
His generals unit has a flank right in front of my unit of 3 Rat Ogres hanging out by the wall. It looks very nice. His Ratling gun pours warpstone death into them and does 6 wounds. Ugghhhh!!! Now I can't break ranks with it.
His jezzails kill off 2 furies.

He had made a great move, moving a single PCB in front of the flank of his generals unit. This just sucked because if I charged and killed it, I couldn't overrun. And if I kill it or break it, no one cares. My only hope had been to charge it, have them fail their Ld 7 fear test and then I could hit the warlords flank. But the Ratling gun, ruined even that attempt.

In combat the PCB's slaughter the spawn and overrun directly in front of my 4 Rat Ogres. Oh yea!!
The Storm Vermin kill the other spawn but are stuck where they are.
In the crucial combat, the clanrats do 2 wounds to the unit of 4 Rat Ogres and kill one off. With 9 attacks back I do only 5 wounds. He has 6 to my 5, and wins by 1.
I roll an 8. I measure to my general and am less than 1/2" out. I break, and am run down. The hounds behind them also panic and run.

I forgot to take a picture here. This is the last missed shot. I think.

Turn 3b: I need to salvage something here.
4 Rat Ogres into PCBs
3 Rat Ogres on far left flank into just rallied slaves. They flee and go 4" and are caught.
1 Rat Ogre into globadier. He makes his Ld 7 fear test.
Hounds and herd into slaves in the center. Slaves flee 8", but hounds catch them and stop right in front of jezzails.
Herd cannot catch them, but the 5" gets them out of the storm vermin charge arc.
Ratspawn and chariot moves up to threaten strom vermin with BSB.
Furies fly up right next to ratling gun making it make a choice.
My hounds on far right flank rallied at the boards edge.

Magic I roll another 3 and fail to cast bears anger again.

In combat the rat ogre slaughters the poor globadier and cannot overrun.

Here is the battlefield at the end of turn 3. Still up in the air, but with the collapse of my right flank, things are not looking good.



Stay tuned for the exciting end to the battle.

Coming soon...

Stay on Target, Stay on Target...

I feel like the X-wing fighter in Star wars going down the narrow valley while Darth Vader is on my ass trying to take me out.

I'm referring to my aggressive painting schedule. Right off I was falling behind.
My League game took out a whole night of painting.

But then the force was with me and there was Snow.

I stayed home from work yesterday and finished off the last of the ungors (packmasters).

So I stayed on target and am now ready to start the chaos hounds/Giant Rats.

I could have even started them last night, but 2.5 hours of painting to finish the ungors was enough for one night. But I did get them out and got them ready for tonight.
I'm still not over the hump with only 14 days (till the end of the month) to paint the 16 Giant rats. But with 2 weekends thrown in there, I should be ok.

As usual I'll keep you updated and will hopefully start posting some more pics of my army soon.

BR: Skaven vs Beasts Part I

So finally once again the Skaven and their hordes have chased down Ratspawn and his fleeing band of loyal followers. Whom shall win the day??

This rematch was an excellent battle with both players playing really well at times and making some lucky rolls and each of us making huge mistakes at other times.

We rolled 5 pieces of terrain:
2 Cave walls, totally impassable and flyers cannot fly over them. (we are in a cave here, the walls go to the ceiling.
Area of boulders (hard cover, difficult)
area of stalagmites (soft cover, difficult)
Pool of water (no cover, very difficult)

Here were the army lists:

Ratspawn, Doombull led Beast of Chaos Undivided list:
Doombull undivided w/Hellfire sword, hvy armor, shield
Wargor w/chaos armor, great weapon
Lvl 2 bray shaman w/braystaff, 2x dispel scrolls
Lvl 1 bray shaman w/braystaff, 2x dispel scrolls

5 Minotaurs und(Rat Ogres) w/Great weapons, banner, champion
2x 4 Minotaurs und w/Gr.Weapons
2x 3 Minotaurs und w/Gr.Weapons
3x 5 Chaos hounds (Giant Rats)
2x Beast chariots
2x Beast herds, 7 Gors w/extra hws & 6 ungors w/spears, full command
5 Furies (cloud runners)
2 Chaos spawn with mark of slaanesh

My Deployment:



My deployment was ok. I originally had my chariot over at the table edge. He used a League resource he had called spy to move my chariot behind my main battle line.

His Deployment:


Going from the bottom of the pic to the top he had:

2 Poison Rat swarms
BSB w/hvy armor, banner of the swarm in unit of:
29 Storm Vermin w/full command, warbanner
(ouch can you say +8 combat res to start)
Next to them was a unit of 24 Clanrats with Ratling gun and full command
In front of them was a unit of 2 globadiers. He had 3 of these.
9 Jezzails lined up behind the pool of water.
Next to them a unit of 20 slaves.
Then a unit of 24 clanrats with a Warlock with 2 dispel scrolls.
Next to them was the Warplightning cannon.
Then a unit of slaves, with Plague Censors behind them and plague monks with Plague priest behind the PCBs. The Priest was sporting his own censor and the warpstone Amulet.
Next to them was the last unit of 24 Clanrats with ratling gun.
The Warlord found a good home here sporting the Weeping blade, warpstone armor and enchanted shield and a warplock pistol.
And finally another unit of 20 slaves at the very far right of his deployment.

We had drawn objectives, his was to kill more than half my multi-wound models. I had 23, so he had to kill 12.
Mine was to kill his general or have it fleeing at the end of the game. The only model I felt could kill it was Ratspawn and he was no where near his general.

Finally we rolled and Shaun won the right to pick and chose to go first.

Coming soon, Part 2. The battle begins...

Battle of the Rats Last night

I did get the battle in last night and it was bloody, bloody, bloody. I thought I was winning, then Shaun's Skaven horde, then a draw. Find out what happened, coming soon.

With the snow today, I'm taking the day off and will blogger lite today. I'll start on the BR tomorrow.

Have a good one guys.

What the hell's this white stuff?
Must be the Global Warming...

Game Tonight!!

I'm really pumped. In about 2 hours I'll be playing in my 3rd League game of the season and its a big one. Shaun and I are both 2-0 and the winner tonight takes a commanding lead in this short 8 game season.

Not only is the winner up on points, they are ahead on any tie breakers as well.

Shaun plays Skaven and is very good at it. He took 3rd place in the League 2 years ago and last year made the playoffs, but faced me and my beasts in the first round where I knocked him out.

This will be a rematch of that first round playoff game from last year. Shaun playing Skaven and me running my Beasty Herd.

Should be a good game. I'll probably start a battle report later this week.

Have fun!!

The MAWL

As I have mentioned many times, I play in a Warhammer League called the MAWL.

MAWL stands for Metroplex Area Warhemmer League. Nice and simple.

I founded it 3 years ago. I originally got about 8 - 10 players in it when a local store said they were also starting a league and wanted to merge the 2. We talked about it and agreed to let me run it and off it went.

The first year we had 16 players and went for 10 games.
Year 2, we went up to 24 players and decreased the games to 8.
This is the 3rd year I've run it and it is up to 30 players. And I have a list of more players who want to jump in.

When designing the league, I got tired of the Leagues where:
1. Players can play 4-5 games a week and dominate the league.
2. A player can jump in with 1 week to go, beat the same guy 3 times and qualify for the final rounds.
3. A system where the winners can continually build bigger and better armies making battles lobsided by the end of the league.

So what I designed hopefully eliminates these. Here is how I run it.
1. Everyone signs up for the league ahead of time and pays $10 if they are new, or if they forfieted a game the previous year. Or $8 otherwise. This gives you incentive to not forfiet any games and to come back the next year.

2. The money goes towards trophies and door prizes at the end.

3. I divide the League into 2 regions and each region into 2 divisions. The regions are done geographically to keep players from having to drive huge distances to get to their games.

4. A schedule is made and posted to a website. There every player can see who they are supposed to play and when. Also on the website goes the standings, contact info and what resources a player has.

5. Each player picks the type of army they are playing before the league begins. SoC armies are different. Chaos must choose Mortal, Beast or Daemonic and which mark their general will bear. VC must pick a bloodline. Example, I am playing Chaos Beastmen, undivided. Players cannot switch armies in the League. (I make exceptions for players doing really poorly, who want to try something different at the end of the League.)

6. Players are given 2 weeks to play each game. They email me with the results and i post them on the website for all to see. Players are encouraged to write battle reports, but are not required.

7. Before the League begins, players are given 2 resources and 1 special resource. This is done in what has become to be known as the MAWL draft day. We all get together, this year it was at a pizza joint. A draft order is determined. This year, we did it by, who had the worst record to best record from the previous year. New comers were inserted into the draft randomly between those who made the playoffs last year and those that did not.

8. We have 36 different resources. Since we had 30 players that means we need 60. So most resources there were 2 of, some only 1. We start at the top and each player can pick the resource they want. We go through the list twice.

9. Each player also gets what is called a Counter Special resource. What this allows a player to do is 1 time during the league. So in all 8 games, they can use this 1 time. Is stop another player as he starts to use a resource.

10. What the resources are is mostly 1 shot items that will help you in your games. Perhaps 1 free re-roll of a dice. Give a unit +1 weapon skill for 1 round of combat. Some help you ahead of time, by giving you an extra 25 or 50 points. Some help with deployment, allowing you to always pick your deployment zone, add or delete terrain items, redeploy a unit of yours after deployment, or even redeploy one of your opponents units after deployment.

11. Games are base 2250 points (same as local GT's).

12. Each game has a home player and visiting player. Home player gets 3 advantages:
A. They get to pick, within reason, where to play.
B. They get +50 points. So most games are 2300 vs 2250 points.
C. They get to use their terrain chart.

13. A player may bring 3 resources to use in each game. So even if I have 8 resources and my opponent only has 3. We both bring the same number to the game, I just get a wider choice of what I'm bringing.

14. Of the 3 he brings, he must wager one of those 3. So while I may have 3 great ones and bring all 3 I have to wager one of my good ones. A random one is also rolled up.

15. Play the game, if there is a winner, then he may choose either the wagered resource or the random one that was rolled up.

16. After all 8 games are played, Then the winner of each division + the next 2 best players in each region make it to the playoffs.

17. In the playoffs, it is single elimination in the first round. The final 4 come together for the final day. Here everyone comes, plays warhammer or whatever and watches the final matches. The winners of the semi finals face off for 1st and 2nd. The losers of the semi-finals face off for 3rd.

18. Trophies are given out for 1st through 3rd. Also a trophy is given to the best sport voted on by all the players. And this year I'm adding a 5th trophy that is called Lore Master, given to the player with the best battle report.

Thats about it, let me know if you have any questions. You can find our website here:
http://dfw.mawl.googlepages.com/index.htm

Have fun!!

Sci-Fi Movie Grendal

I watched the Sci-Fi movie Grendal Saturday night.

Now I have watched many of the Sci-Fi Saturday night made for TV movies and most of them are grade B bad movies. Very poor stories, very bad special affects, very bad acting, etc...

Grendal is of course based on the story of Beo-wolf written years ago. The story is a bit on the simple side, but the special affects were not horrible.

The monsters (3 of them) Grendal, Hag and a serpant at the beginning, they were not afraid to show and had some neat features to all of them.

Grendal looked really pretty good with the tail like appendages coming out of his arms. You could still tell it was Computer generation, and I wish they had done a bit more with colors, overall I still give it a thumbs up.

And that was a monster to be dealt with. A whole host of fighters were attacking it, and Grendal just hacked them down 1 by 1, beating off half a dozen men and killing 1.

When he was finally slain and the Hag came to take her revenge she was pretty awesome as well.

My biggest complaint was at the end. There was a sword that could slay the hag, hidden in her cave. Sorry, but if I'm the monster and I'm holding the 1 sword that can slay me, I burying it under the ground I sleep in. Or putting it up in a very small cubby hole, that no man can get to.
Nope, lets put it in a special display holder at the entrance of the cave?? Who the hell put this thing there??
That was my biggest complaint. But I did like the movie. If you get a chance, check it out, I'm sure Sci-Fi will replay it again.

One thing I liked best when watching it was not the movie, but the lead in to the commercial breaks. They did these "how to survive monsters" hints.
So it would come on and say, hint number 37. If the footprint of the monster you are fighting is bigger than your house, don't hide in your house.

My favorite might have been. If you can see flesh stuck in the teeth of the monster, you are waaayyy too close.

Enjoy