The quick and the dead

Small update: Finished this little lady; Mary Fearless.

When I saw her rules: "you shoot her, she starts shooting back! Whomever has the most successes counts has having shot that turn." I knew I wanted to have her in my Ash & Oak list. She has 2 funds, so she can buy the protection of the Ogre bruiser. Again this miniature was a pleasure to paint, and it costs less time than I usually spend on my GW miniatures. It's the lack of cluttered details, I think. Or maybe I should paint something else than miniatures covered in boils, sores and skulls. :) Mary Fearless to me is a bit of a contradiction; a female gunslinger, but part of the aristocratic faction. I tried to show that in the coloring. I choose red, white and dark blue for the dress, hopefully that comes across as aristrocratic. The boots, coat and belt are done in browns, I thought that had a proper western feel to it. The studio model is a blond yet in the artwork she looks like Eva Mendes, so I made her a brunette. In the background are the D10 dice to be able to play IHMS.

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

New kid checking in: After joining the group and working on my Carnival of Chaos warband since April (personal record), I needed to work on something else for a bit. Having discovered steampunk on Beasts of war in their Wolsung video, I bought two of these Micro Art studio miniatures to see if I like working with their models. To me the Wolsung miniatures are oozing character, which is a nice break cause the carnival of chaos miniatures are mostly oozing pus. Being more of a builder/converter than a painter and it is so refreshing to be working on a miniature that is not covered in straps, boils, buckles, pouches and skulls. Lots of large surfaces, but for instance the clothing is nicely structured with creases and wrinkles so it has a nice texture to work with. So painting is easy and fast and you can try to freehand a bit, which is something I usually don't do. But that's because mostly I've been painting beastmen and things covered in rust, blood and guts. It's still WIP, I need to finish up the base and varnish the mini, but I'm quite happy with this first mini so I wanted to show it off. About the miniature this is one of my favourites from the Wolsung line.

It's an Ogre Bruiser from the Ash & Oak club, a henchman catering to the wishing of the rich and mighty with some brass knuckles. For some reason he reminds me of an Irish bar-brawler, so the vest needed to be green. Googling Victorian clothes, I found many plaid and striped pants so that was a nice challenge to try out. The other miniature I bought is Mary Fearless, a hot little aristocratic lady who can shoot the lights out. She has two funds, so she can pay for the services of the Ogre bruiser. She'll be the next project after I finish my nurgle warband, which is hopefully the next update. Another thing I've recently discovered thanks to Ludo and Tom is that these miniatures can double for both Wolsung and In her majesty's name. So I should get good mileage from them. :)

From the sewer with love

Every once in a while wargamers that keep their eyes open will stumble upon a bargain. I happen to have had that moment some days ago. While I say bargain, it was also a bit of a sad story. Without going into much detail, a lovely lady had some warhammer laying around and needed to get rid of it. Problem was: she did not know how much value there was in the box. So I drove by and helped her to determine the value for placing it on marktplaats (our national form of ebay).

We dug trough 3 big boxes of high elves, some of them not even out of the original box! She also had the island of blood starter set, a LOT of paint (mind you, a beginner with over 40 jars is pretty rare I'd say) and a number of other stuff.
Since I already had enough elves I was not interested in the HE, but the skaven did attract me somewhat. Apart from a very poor undercoat job on the general (much to thick!) and the poison wind team all the other skaven members where still in a sprue. I told her I was interested in the skaven, some never-user GW pliers and some paints. Because I helped her out so much I could take all that home for 30 euros! Not a bad deal at all, I'd say.

So, does that mean I will be playing skaven? Nope, at least it is not my intention to start a WHFB skaven army, but it is really nice to paint something else than ogre's and mantic elves every once in a while, and the skaven are just full of detail and fluff!
Furthermore, it is great to have some models to test new techniques and paints on, without having to worry about army composition and colour scheme's and whatnot.

So, that is exactly what I did, and the results can be seen below. Mind you, this is severe work in progress!

First up:
The leader of the bunch. A very striking model, but unfortunately undercoated with a gigantic layer of white. Like someone held a bottle of skull white upside down all over this guy. Fortunately I had my trustworthy sephia wash with me. In order to find all the details once again, I almost completely dipped the general in and miraculously some details became visible.














Next up:
 A warpfire thrower team. Already assembled but with a much nicer coat this time, so I could easily undercoat the mini black without loosing any detail.














After that:
Some small rats. There were some more, but these 2 stood out. The one on the right because he is actually armed with something to push rat ogre's forward which seemed very cool. The other armed with a simple spear. I tried some new colour combinations on these guys and am pretty please with the result so far.














Then:
Since we need something to actually push on, here's a rat ogre! There were 2 of these guys in the package and I don't know yet how to finish them, but I like where it's going so far.

Last:
But certainly not least! My personal favorite of the bunch, the Warplock engineer! Very nice model, striking pose and such a blast to paint!














Now, onto more painting! Perhaps we will seem these guys on the battlefield someday. Or ... lurking the streets of mordheim, that is only if I find a warband with Clan Skyre theme instead of those dreaded assassins!

 By the way: Pictures made with a lousy mobile phone camera, so excuse the quality!

Painting OOP dwarves

Got me a set of OOP metal dwarfs from fellow #warmonger @Woutertje_l. It is nice to exchange some old models lying around now and then. I happen to find an old Rhino he was happy with. In this way these miniatures get some paint and playing time, who otherwise were left in the dark in some storage box waiting for better times.

Ok, back to the dwarfs, some very nice old marauder dwarfs, but also a set of metal Ironbreakers there! I love the models that were there before the new plastic kit and already had a set of 10 painted. When playing I mostly added dwarf warriors to the ironbreaker unit to proxy a larger unit but now I can really field big Ironbreaker units! Woohoo!

Started painting some dwarfs from the sit just one by one. When looking at the OOP dwarfs the models are characters in themselves although being for example just dwarf warriors. Therefore it is nice to just pick a model and start painting. One of the first ones is this piraty wooden legged dwarf with the crossbow strapped to his back. I found this the ideal model for playing in Mordheim warband but also at the front of a Dwarf warrior unit. Started painting him and actually quite quickly this lad was done only missing his shield and a matching base to the rest of my dwarfs (stone tiles cast with hirst arts moulds).

The finished result is something that looks like the following. 

Miniswap 2014

Something as the miniswap 2014 is stuff that gives me something new to paint and to break existing paint structures. I am busy painting away at Ogres for some time now and before that it were dwarves for years. The occasional other model comes by, but it is difficult to paint something completely different since it will not fit your army or game system you are working with. The miniswap is the ideal event to do just that and even have it a bit of a surprise to see what model it will be.

A painting challange for myself is nice but is also very interesting to see what your “opponent” will paint and how he paints it. What is his choice for paint scheme and how will his paint techniques work out.

All in all a great event to participate in. For me I sent in an Ogre Butcher. It was an old model I had lying around for some time now, it came from a collection I bought in 1 go and needed to be repainted. I stripped the paint and sent in the model. I am paired with @NigelSBartlett and he sent me an Eldar Farseer. It couldn’t be a model farther away from my safe paint environment of Ogres and Dwarfs. Not only another army but also another game entirely (still GW though). I painted some tyranids maybe 15 years ago but that was it for me painting Warhammer 40K stuff. The Eldar are something I’ve played against, but that was also 15 years ago and the closest I got to the elder. Now I was holding a farseer! Great model, nice and sleek, Elfy (also big contrast with my Ogres and Dwarfs).

Now is the time to come up with a paint scheme. I actually did some research on Eldar in general, color schemes and craftworlds. In the end I settled for blue/turquoise with white and brass accents. The cloak is something screaming for a nice painting on it, so I will have a go at painting a nice big wave on it with a small wave trail along the edges.

Plan in place, start painting! Progress was a bit slow due to some holidays here and there, but suffice to say I finished the Farseer. A nice paint project and in the end the base gave me to most problems, creative wise. It is a readymade base that comes with the model. Discussed with Nigel that snow fits the army. Therefore a stone to be painted and some snow to be added but nothing much more then that really. I must say with the white snow and the white in the model it fits the complete picture nicely. 

Just in time StuGs

Finished just before leaving for a holliday trip, these Flames of War StuGs are my first air brushed models. I camouflaged the more or less acceptable camouflage with mud and some snow, in line with my Waffen SS panzergrenadiers..

Feedback is welcome, holliday even more :-)

BTB: Avalanche

BTB: Avalanche

In previous posts on Mordheim I mentioned the fact that we started a new Border Town Burning campaign. In the posts it is not recognizable as such so we added the BTB prefix here. I believe the tagging is still correct. Next to posting on BTB campaign games the score board on this blog is restored and no w reflects the current status of all participating warbands for the new campaign.

This weekend we played with 5 participants and of course this situation was not accounted for. We already played 5 player multi battle for the campaign, but always multiplayer battles is not really in keeping with the BTB campaign set. We have to address the available scenario here and there. In order to this we split up in a 2- and a 3-player battle. I ended up with the 2-player battle and our scenario was rolled: Avalanche. The other 3 rolled the Manhunt(?) scenario that by chance can be played multiplayer quit easily.  We installed on 1 big table and split up the scenery and started playing.

With the table split in 2, this left us with a smaller playing area than usual. Not too bad and with a small adaption to the advancement of the avalanche (1D6 inch iso 2D6 inch) this was a really cool and enjoyable scenario. We built up scenery with a lot of snowcovered pine trees and some ruins to the side reflecting the mountainous area of the northern wastes. After a lot of city battles this was a nice change for once.

As said I played against only the 1 opponent and this was our much respected Carnival of Chaos player with “Papa Noigal's fingers”.  Both warbands are at the opposite ends of the spectrum for experience. Pappa Noigal and its followers only just started and my Marienburg Mercenaries were battle hardened for a long time. This resulted in a big underdog position for Carnivale. It’s good to see that system working for once. In the end it gained Pappa Noigal a lot of experience and a big step to catch up with some of the longer playing warbands in this campaign.

The scenery set up gave a good feeling of winter and the avalanche started to advance and the game commenced! My strategy was to delay some of the Carnivale members with a sacrificial ninja gnoblar to get them all covered under the avalanche. However the game thought otherwise . The avalanche only progressed relatively slowly and I got a lot more warband members cought up in hand2hand combat. The marksman in my band was trying to get a good position in the woods to start sniping of rival warband members, taking care not to come too close to an edge. With his blackpowder weapon he might trigger an extra avalanche or two and these are unpredictable! In the end the marksmen didn’t fire a shot the entire game: aarrgh! He moved and moved and moved out of the way of the moving avalanche and then saw all his targets move behind some snowcovered trees or buildings walls. His game was only to keep the Carnivale moving I suppose.

The dwarfs in my warband were moving slowly out of the range of the moving avalanche only just outrunning the thing. They didn’t get much fighting either.

The Ogre bodyguard however was getting caught up in huge fight and was only relieved from the pressure when the mercenary captain joined the fray with his brace of duelling pistols. Luckily no extra avalanche was triggered by shooting his guns and the Ogre finished the resulting fighters. OK, he had a little help from my witch that after some tries cast “The dust of the blind” on one of the Strongmans that are part of the Carnivale.

The ogre remained caught in battle with a small Nurgling that for 3 turns kept the Ogre busy. The rest of the Carnivale warband was now thinned down a bit an route tests started. Pappa Noigal was cold as ice and didn’t budge but in the saw a wall of snow and ice coming his way and thought better of the situation, fleeing the field, leaving the victory to the Marienburgers.

In the end I think both sides gained a lot from this battle result. The Carnivale gaining 4 extra experience points per surviving warband member (in the end all but one survived!) and progressed nicely with new skills and characteristics increases. My Marienburgers gained an extra campaign point, they tried poisoning some of Pappa Noigal’s fingers but these nurgle powers prevented poisoning just as easy. There was a chance of getting more CP’s but this is nice for now, increased some characteristics here and there as well so all in all the Marienburgers did good.

Actually the best of this Avalanche scenario was the scenario. We really had the feel of the setting in the snow with an avalanche approaching, getting out of the way of all the snow and ice and trying to trap the opponent in the mounds of snow with the occasional fight. The fact my marksman didn’t get a shot fired was due to the fact he had to move to keep in front of the snow and everyone else moving as well. He needed to be able to predict moves and find a good sniper spot but didn’t get a chance in all the fray. We really got a feel for the border town burning setting. Exploring in the end left us with all kinds of borderland equipment found.

Let me finish by saying it was a great game.