buy all the mini's

this is a statement that comes by quit often these days. As a matter of fact the 2nd hand market for old (school) miniatures is thriving. A lot of classics come bay on sale-facebook pages and the different fora. Is this related to the end times? Is it the end times for old armies and old miniatures? Maybe it is just me and a more nostalgic mood related to the game with the end times near? Maybe so but the end times books I am reading right now and these are great (in my opinion that is). The over the top battles with extreme characters is fun to play with especially in a triumph and treachery setting; I love it.

Ok back to the old school mini's. The fact is I come across loads of cool very old models these days. Dwarfs, Tzeentch deamons I love the older models. Hard to find and when they come by they are not too cheap. Sometimes high prices for the more rare models. Sometimes batches come by for a good price. Interesting since the price per model is then really good. But a big load of mini's in one good builds towards the lead mountain. On the other hand how often does such a deal come by you think. And when closing the deal a couple of days later even more and bigger batches come by.
Still we want to buy all the mini's! Why? The time to paint it all is limited. To play with it all is near impossible (10000 pts games last way too long :)).
Maybe it is just the hobby, the collecting the nostalgia and everything together! Maybe it is now that those batch deals come by and stop for the next years :). Or maybe everyone is waiting for 9th edition and they want to play and are clearing their shelves to be prepared to buy all the new mini's!

Battle report WHBF dwarfs vs Daemons 2000 pts

Note up front: pictures to be added!

With the new dwarf army book out, I was dying to play a game with the new rules. Recently I acquired some extra dwarfs as well and it was time to give them some action after playing lots of games with the Ogres. Also playing a lot of Mordheim and even Flames of War lately so WHFB was a while ago (I’m still trying to convince everyone to play a game of triumph and treachery, but no success to date).

We fielded 2000 pts against each other and my armylist was mostly shooting with an anvil of longbeards. War machine wise I fielde a cannon, grudgethrower and an organ gun. For the rest 3 blocks of 10 thunderers (because I love the models and the fluff over quarelers) and a block of 40 longbeards. This was topped of with a lord on shieldbearers, a thane BSB (strollaz rune) and a master engineer to help shooting with the war machines.

The scenario rolled was Dawn attack and with a lot of rolling it was defined where our units would land on the battlefield. Of course this was not a preferred scenario, but it was how the dice rolled. My block of longbeards ended all the way to my right side and the rest ended left or in the middle. Very nice, since my opponents daemons ended on his right side (my left) setting our main forces as far apart as possible. Very nice when you can vanguard with your big block of dwarfs en nothing is there to vanguard towards! Argl! Bad start deployment wise.

Start of the game, I shuffled here and there, mostly positioning my shooters and war machines (pivot here and there). Now my main phase: shooting! First shot with my cannon, direct to the great unclean one in order to knock off some wounds. A nice hit, a nice wound and now d6 for the amount of wounds: 6! BLAM! Not saved, great unclean one: DEAD! WOOHOO! What a start of the game for the dwarfs. The canon is known to be the ultimate sniper and I proved this to be very right indeed.

The rest of the game for my dwarfs was mostly trying to shoot off the oncoming plaguebearer squads. Thunderers doing some of the work but not that fast and a tower got in the way. The grudgethrower managed to do mostly nothing and the organ gun was somewhat useful (at least lots of shots were fired each turn). I also had a gyrocopter flying around but the brimstone gun I found not that good an investment and I didn’t get (forgot) to drop some bombs, better luck next time here. The warmachines got swarmed over and killed by loads of fury’s. That was one of the weak parts of my army, I didn’t get to protect the warmachines that good. Part of the scenario and setting up, but also some bad tactics on my side.

During the game my huge block of longbeards and characters managed to shuffle their way to the centre but when turn 6 arrived managed to NOT get into a single combat! How nice. By loosing all the warmachines to fury’s and not being able to shoot of enough plaguebearers the end of the game was a draw, VP wise. Still it was a good game, a fun game and it was nice to see the new dwarf rules in effect.

Overall I’d say the new dwarf army book gives a new feel for playing dwarfs. A tendancy with new armybooks is that new = overpowered compared to “old” other armybooks, this is not the case for us. Only played one game, sure, but I’d say the feel for the dwarfs is balanced and inkeeping with 8^th ed WHFB. Furthermore I have 10 irondrakes waiting to be finished with paint and they must get some action soon. Very curious to see how these new guns play out.

Tactical is not for the Ogres

After a well earned vacation it was time to bring out the miniatures again. Too long without any wargaming/painting and whatnot :) I had enough to read with me, but it is not the same :)

My Nurgle friend and player Arjan came round and it was quickly decided to do a small game: 500 points skirmish WHFB. Of course this meant pitting some Nurgles against my Ogre Kingdom.

The fun with 500 points is, that it is quick but also you never can guess what your opponent will bring. Since 500 points means always "kill your darlings" in your army list, it is the opportunity to take something wacky or something extremely fluffy. It is therefore more often then not a "use your experimental list" type of game. One thing guaranteed: fun!

The Nurgles were with
- some Marauder horsemen
- 6 forsaken with
- 1 Nurgle leader
- 1 spawn of Nurgle
- 1 chariot

I pitted the following Ogres:
- 3 Ironfists with
- 1 butcher
- 2 mournfang cavelry
- 2 sabretusks

Of course here and there they were kitted out but not much, since 500 points is easily spent!

The table had some obstructions in the middle: buildings, fences and a mysterious forest) THe battlefield was well divided in the middle. Starting of with the Nurgles some manouvering around the obstacles was done. My Ogres were playing a waiting game in order to get charges in this turn. After 3 turns running around the horsemen killed of 2 sabretusks but I got no charges in.
Eventually I manouvered in such a way, that the horsemen were in the wrong direction for charges but my Ironguts had a clear line for the forsaken and the mournfang could flatten the spawn. The chariot was still well away, since fences and forests proved to big a barrier. OK, charges are go and ....I roled a 1 and a 3, needing more then 4 inches for the charge.... So I moved 1 inch with the ironguts with a butcher mad as hell! The mournfang flattened the spawn as was expected, but left the rest in the open.

Of course the forsaken charged next and rolled 4 on d3+1 for their attacks and wiped out the ironguts! What happened here! Tactical masterpiece on my side but totally disrupted by throws of the dice! As my opponent nicely pointed out that in 7th edition WHFB I probably would have won but in 8th it is't so :)
This is then the charme of the game, forsaken being the winners of the game and acting as a superb bodyguard for their leader. A fluffy way to play the game against a small, hard as nails, scaving group of Ogres wandering through the woods.

All in all, as expected with 500points skirmish: FUN!

Ogres vs Vampires

Since I started playing my new ogre army I have learnt a lot in Ogre tactics. First set of games was all about learning how to play what units and how to divide my attention to the battle field. Actually I also learnt a lot on the 8th edition WHFB ruleset. Still we are forgetting rules and I keep forgetting abilities of my precious Ogres but we have come a far way since then. Still the ogre army has many possibilities and since I am painting a lot of members for the army that is also input for choosing troop types for the roster that I am going to play. This time it was the gnoblars as a general theme for this battle. I am busy painting 90 gnoblars (and have another 10 ready to round it of to 100) and have a set of 70 that I found play worthy. Also the first horde unit I am going to field with 8th ed. With the big block of gnoblars I was going to field the scraplauncher as well to have a gnoblar themed army but I was facing vampires and went for more ogres to crush skeletons. I fielded a block of 12 ogres with a bruiser BSB and a set of 6 ironfists with my butcher. These were the hitting power and the gnoblars the anvil. Supporting this I had 2 sabretusks and a gorger for stray units/delaying tactics/warmachine hunting. To top it off 4 leadbelchers to shoot the rest to pieces. What I was facing here were 2 units of skeletons with a vampire each. some groups of war hounds, a set of dread knights and a black coach. None too big an frightening units but still tough enough to tear through in one go. The battle started with the ogres lining up for the charge and on sabretusk tearing through a set of hounds completely shredding them to pieces. The black coach started with a big gulp of magic and directly advancing on the chart. I found out one of the sabretusks was too far out and had to head back over the battlefield, the rest pretty much placed good enough. The gnoblar unit of 70 was a bit difficult to maneuver but all in all not a bad start. Second turn had more interesting stuff going. My leadbelchers shot a volley to the knights but did not do much damage. The black coach managed to gobble up almost all the magic and was fully charged at the end of turn 2! Also the coach charged the sabretusk and with max. impact hits, shredded the big cat to pieces. My ogre unit charged a group of skeletons and really cracked some bones, slaying one vampire in the proces. What a result! Turn 3 got nasty for the vampires. The coach charged into my ironfists and the other skeleton unit as well since they were frenzied by some blood tower nearby. The coach managed only 3 impact hits not doing much and the skeletons were unable to hit very much. The ironfists however almost maxed the amount of to hits and also to wounds. Very impressive dice throwing against all statistics. The black coach did not managed to hit very much with very little impact hits, it was ethereal and flying and whatnot so I couldn't hit it back. The result of the skeletons combat part for this unit was so good for my part having the BSB there as well I won this combat breaking the black coach! The dread knights were charging the group of gnoblars in the meantime not knowing the all the traps set by the trappers in this horde of gnoblars. already some horses tripped and fell taking their riders with them, the rest managed to delve into the unit but the amount of gnoblars was overwhelming. In no time all knights were done for. If 10 of the gnoblars died no one noticed in the melee of green skins. The gnoblars tore the knights apart leaving not much but bones and even these were picked up for clubs. We looked at the rest of the table and threw some dice for some of the left over units to see if the VC went somewhere but it was to no avail. The flow of events was set and the outcome was inevitable: a win for the ogres. The battle was good with some epic dice rolls deciding the game. However I got a good feeling on the block of gnoblars and it is true that 8th ed needs horde units to swing victory to your side. I saw the need for swift cavelry and therefore need to paint up those mournfang cavalry quickly!

Battle for the Kitchen

Last saturday I managed to play a 8th edtion warhammer battle against one of my youngest friends Chris. We played a 2000 points 'normal' battle using a scenario that Chris had written. Key in this scenario was the (rather original) rule that the only way to gain points was making your opponents units run off the table, destroying units did not grant you anything (but satisfaction) (Chris called this a 'mother friendly' scenario). Beside this he came up with a very nasty 'random event' table to be used every turn.

I was playing my a more or less standardized Chaos Warrior army. Chris' Orcs and Goblins had quite a lot of magic users and a very big spider...

The winds of magic did not bring the carnage Chris had hoped and my warriors managed to reach their opponents without much damage. My general accompanied by Dragon Ogres, a block of Chaos Ogres and unit of Nurgle Warriors cut through the green skins. Despite the rather one sided battle, the score remained in balance because of the 'drive not finish them off' rule.

On top of that, the 'random event' table summoned one very very nasty 'Random Daemon' which killed off my general... Luckily after that it went after a lone (and stupid) Troll on a left part of the battle field and did no farther intervene with the battle. After this I managed to drive two more units of Gobbo's of the table, resulting in a 3-1 win!

(Picture by Bart)