Managed to do some painting and modeling

I was able to get some assembly work done this week on the Long Riders and the Extreme Mauler. The Long Riders are all done and assembled, but the Mauler still needs a lot of work. That guy is a beast! He must weigh about a pound.

I also did the skin on two troll champions. It went a lot more slowly than I thought because I've not done the skin for so long that I completely forgot how I normally paint it.

Even so, it was a ton of fun to get back into the painting/modeling groove. It was especially nice because I was able to paint with an old college buddy (who happens to be working on a GW Tomb Kings army). Painting with a buddy always makes it seem to go a lot faster and it's really nice to just relax on a Sunday afternoon and chat. The football game was also on in the background too for added entertainment.

It was really nice to catch up with my old buddy, and I got a lot done to boot as well! All in all quite a wonderful day.

Borka's Night on the Town

Had a fun game tonight with Scott and his Menoth. I brought the Borka beast list I posted in an earlier entry. I had to proxy the Pyre Troll, but everything else was correct. I'm not going to put up a full report, but instead just go over some things I learned about Borka today.

1. Borka is TOUGH! With Champs and a Kriel Stone Bearer, they are all DEF14 ARM19. They took a full barrage from zealots and only lost one champion.

2. The Mosh Pit spell is nasty! Anyone ending their activations in melee range of a troll gets pushed back one inch, generating free strikes. This totally fouls up any melee troops.

3. The Keg Bearer is awesome...because Scott didn't want to kill him, Lil' Keggy was able to kill 3-4 zealots and get in the way of others. It was a lot of fun running him in like the crazy kamikaze drunk pygmy that he is.

4. I need to remember to transfer damage when I get hit. I had two fury and forgot to transfer damage when some Daughters got in and backstabbed him.

5. The High Reclaimer is pretty gross when he can get tons of soul tokens...he got I think close to 20 focus one round and almost killed Borka in one round. Amazingly, Borka lived with 1hp to spare, and the Arm19 from the KSB really paid off big this game.

6. Borka is pretty bad with three beasts. I found that I couldn't really support three and had to make many frenzy checks during the game. I just couldn't pull enough fury off to keep the beasts cool. Also, he doesn't really have any spells that help beasts out. I need to drop one for more troops.

7. When the Fell Caller gets a free strike, it's brutal! Well it was also a monster roll too, but still, he did a POW 30 hit to a revenger leaving combat. Took out the two middle columns in one giant cleave. Go Fell Caller!

8. I still hate Daughters and Zealots. They're too fast and they do hit very hard! If not for the KSB and toughness of the champs and Borka I think I would have gotten quickly swamped.

Overall I think it was a really fun game, though we couldn't play it out to the death. Borka was on fire with 3hp left at the end of the game, while a lot of the Menoth troops were dead or routed. I think it could have gone either way, though probably was more in the Menoth's favor since my beasts were all mostly wild and I was down to 3 champions.

I'm definitely looking forward to next week, and maybe I'll have my champions painted in time for that battle.

Borka Built for Battle

I put together Borka last night. No real major issues with assembly and all the pieces fit together nicely. I did however do one pretty major change. I didn't really like his codpiece so I left that off and instead tried to sculpt my own belt and loincloth for him. This was my first major attempt at sculpting anything big with greenstuff.

I found it really hard to get the loincloth folded right; I think I may have been trying to shape it too soon after mixing the greenstuff because it just wouldn't hold it's shape and kept getting stuck to the table or my fingers/tools. I remembered later that to sculpt a wavy piece of cloth, it's best to wait an hour for it to harden before trying.

I also had some trouble doing his belt buckle and so it doesn't quite look right to me either.

I'll post up a picture later today, once it's all dry.

As for the list I'm going to be using him in tonight, I think I'm going to try this out:

Borka
-Pyg Keg Carrier
-Mauler
-Axer
-Pyre (using my Impaler to proxy)
Champions
Krielstone Bearer + 4 scribes
Fell Caller

I know he should be a lot better with just two beasts and more infantry, but I don't have the models to include Kriel Warriors or long riders yet. The Pyre in this list is kinda extraneous since the Mauler is there.

I'm expecting to get crushed tonight by Scott since he'll have his tournament list there, but it should be fun anyway to see what Borka can do.

Hordes: Evolution - Quick Review

So I'm back from Taiwan now, been back for about a week. It was a pretty good trip; I got a lot of things done work-wise, the people there are great, and I enjoyed my stay there for the most part. While I'm glad I'm back to the US now, I will probably have to go back there again in a month or two.

A nice bonus that waiting for me at GameCastle was my preorder of the Hordes: Evolution book. I spent most of yesterday reading the fiction, which was quite a bit of fun. I really like how they advance the storyline with each new book they release. (No big spoilers for those that haven't read it yet, just general thoughts and impressions).

The Story

The trolls have carved out a little corner of Cygnar for themselves, but things are very tenuous and life is still hard for them. I really liked the way they expanded Alten's character as well as using him to explore Grim's character a bit. I found it interesting that they are making Doomshaper into a serious warmonger, trying to instigate a fight between the trolls and Cygnar. Not really much else of note on the troll story front though.

What I found the most interesting though was the legion fluff, in which they showed the "nicer" side of it, where Everblight is seen as a loving father rather than a crazy evil dragon, and all the warlocks are a sort of weird extended family. Very strange, but interesting nonetheless.

I didn't really like the Circle fluff much...it was all very political, and dealt with characters I'm not really interested in. I was pretty disappointed in Kaya's story progression though. She's just going to be used by Morvahnna now as a pawn. It was sad that she was too dumb to realize this. Oh well.

The Skorne story was pretty interesting in the parts that involved Magnus. The last part was especially interesting, and it makes me wonder what Zaal and Hexeris are up to, and what Vinter's master plan really is. Cool stuff.

The Art

The art throughout the book is very well done, and there's quite a lot of it. I like most of the new troll art, especially the full page picture of the keg carrier and his whelp. Circle art was pretty nice too, though since I'm not really interested in them, I didn't pay much attention though. I do think a lot of their new units looks pretty nice though. I especially like the wolves standard bearer and champion though, and the new Satyr heavy warbeast looks pretty cool.

Legion art was ok, nothing super special. Same with Skorne. The Agonizer art is even worse than the mini, so if the mini bothered you, then be prepared for the art. It's pretty gross looking. Other than that, it seems like more of the same for the Skorne.

The Troll Units

I'm sad that the trolls didn't get a pygmy bushwhacker UA, but happy that there is another pygmy miner unit. I'm definitely picking up a set of these guys as they seem really useful in scenario games and for claiming/contesting objectives. Plus popping out and dishing out a bunch of POW 14 slug gun shots to the face seems quite strong.

The troll bouncer light warbeast seems pretty useful. He's got decent power, great armor, and some nice defensive bonuses for having him near your warlock. Still, I'm not sure how I'd fit him into my army, especially my 500 pt. lists as he just doesn't seem quite good enough for me to want to replace my Axer in most cases. He might be more useful in 750, or maybe with Doomshaper and an Earthborn.

The best new unit/addition though has to be the new Standard Bearer, Musician, and Caber Tosser. These three guys make Kriel Warriors incredibly good. The standard bearer and musician make the Kriel Warriors tougher (tough on a 4+, unit members can't be knocked down) and faster (extra movement if not running, more spread out formation ok), while the caber tosser adds a much needed attack oomph to the unit. With the option to lay down 6" of pow 13 death, or a single target POW 20 hit, these caber tossers are brutal. Plus I really like the art for these guys and I hope the minis look cool too. I'm definitely going to be picking up a unit of Kriels once these additions come out.

Lastly, I've got mixed feelings about the new Solo, the Stone Scribe Chronicler. He's pretty much like the testament of menoth, where he has to read his special abilities in order. The bonuses are nice, but the order might cause some trouble. He's cheaper than the Fellcaller though, but doesn't quite seem as nice. Maybe in larger games he'd be a good addition, but I probably won't be getting one.

And of course there were all the guys covered by the previous NQ magazines (Earthborn, Long Riders, Grim, and Winter Troll). I'm definitely looking forward to some Long Riders soon. I think they should be out in a few weeks.

Which brings me back to painting. I really really need to get started again soon. I think my goal for next week will be to slam out the Champions, who have been sitting patiently in my army transport for months now, waiting their turn to get painted. I also want to get Borka assembled and primed for a game next week against Scott too. I'm sure he's sick of seeing Grim across the field. :)

So the week after will be Borka, and then maybe a break to paint the swamp gobbers or the Rhyas I got just to paint.

Heading to Taiwan...

So I'm finally done with my GMAT, and I did well enough that I'll never have to take it again. Yay! I'm really glad that's over and done with.

The bad news is I'm getting sent to Taiwan for work starting this Thursday for a week. Doh. But after that, things should be well settled down and I should be able to dive back in to painting. Plus, Evolution should be out by then and it'll be fun times again for games I hope with all new units coming out. :)

I'm thinking about taking some models and paints to Taiwan with me so I have something to do at night...but I'm worried that it won't get through security...they might think the paint was some sort of liquid explosive.

Grim Angus 95% Done

Ok, I know, I've been really bad about updating the blog with progress on my trolls. Sadly, the reason is that I just haven't made much at all lately. As some of my readers may know, I've been slammed with work and school.

For work I have to set up a whole new engineering team in the US and Taiwan. School sees me getting close to taking the GMAT exam. Anyway, all that in short = BLARG!

BUT! The bright news is that I'm now 95% done with painting Grim now! Woo! All that's left is his tartan, which I'm still undecided on how I want to paint it, and touching up a couple of boo-boos on his gun (there's a slightly messy highlight on the top of the scope that you can see in the closeup of the scope). I like his green goggles, the NMM work on his guns, and his pants and shirt.

Also, I managed to get a couple of Winsor Newton Series 7 brushes via a super sale online that Broken Zealot spotted and alerted me to. They would normally have sold for over $50, but I got them for only $20. As I understand, these are the Ferrari's of the mini paint brush world. Yea, ok that's super geeky, but whatever. :) I'm excited about using them sometime soon instead of the old GW brushes I've been using.

Back to Grim, here are some more pics of him as he is today (click to enlarge):

Summer Rampage Week 1: Picnic by the river

I played my first game today as part of the Summer Rampage League against Broken Zealot's Menoth. I brought my Grim Angus army, and we played the Menoth scenario. The objective was to be the only side with warbeasts or warjacks in a 12" circle in the middle. We played on a board with two big woods, one on each side, a nice river running down the left side of the board, and a few hills and low walls. The only terrain that really came into play were the two large-ish forests.

The Trolls deployed first, and Menoth went second. Amon came with a Castigator, Crusader, Revenger, full zealots and monolith, Gorman, three wracks, and a full choir. We played five turns with the mission victory conditions, caster kill, or VPs, whichever came first.

In summary I was able to do a good job controlling the board with Grim and his movement spells. For the first time the Gobbers didn't do to much, mostly because I had them on the wrong side and they were blown up by the zealots early on. The Impaler didn't really do all that much either. He got a couple of shots off, but once again no critical slams. It's been several games now where he hasn't really done very much. His animus did prove useful though, where Grim was able to snare gun the Castigator.

Grim was definitely the star of the show, throwing out cross country spells, shooting to throw bait on the Crusader so the Mauler could charge, man trapping to knock down big heavies, and snaring the Castigator to keep him out of melee. You name it, he did it all. I'm really loving Grim for his versatility in missions like this.

The Axer was quite good again, he was able to absorb a fair bit of punishment, slam around some warjacks, and just be an all around nuisance for the Menites to deal with. The Champions, sadly were on the wrong side of the board so didn't get too much done, but thanks to cross country, they were eventually able to get into melee with the choir, and wiped them out. One champion also got into melee with Amon, doing about ten points of damage to him (after concert bonus and a huge melee damage roll).

There were a couple of times that I made some blunders. One was deploying the Champions and gobbers badly. The other was one turn where I forgot to use Grim's feat to keep the zealots from bombing him and it almost proved fatal. Grim was reduced to 5 hp. Thankfully his super high defense (18 in woods) saved him from taking a single direct hit, otherwise he would have been crisped. He was also able to use his feat on a later turn to prevent zealots from approaching him then, so in the end I suppose it worked out anyway.

All in all, I have to say that it was a very enjoyable game, and the win went to the trolls, though just barely and by a sliver via victory points. I had four points and the Menites had two. Plus, the Mauler was on his way out on the last turn, with only about 5-6 damage boxes left. Had he gone down, the game would have gone the other way with a 5-4 win for Broken Zealot.

I'm definitely looking forward to another game next week. As a side note, I almost got a bonus point for killing off all enemy solos...but one wrack remained at the end of the game. Doh! :)

Grim patrols the woods...

Played a quick 350pt game against Broken Zealot today at Gamekastle. I took a Grim melee list with a Mauler, Axer, Impaler, and Swamp Gobbers. The Menoth came with Severius, a Revenger, two Seneschals, Vilmon, six Daughters of the Flame, and Troll Bosun Grogspar (traitor!). Oh and two wracks.

Terrain of note was four stone walls in the center, each of us had a hill near our deployment, and some woods also. The hill on my side was on my right, and the woods to the left.

Deployment: Menites deployed in a line in the middle, with Vilmon and a seneschal to my left, and Grogspar and a second Seneschal on my right. The Revenger and Severius were in the center. My deployment was slightly off-center with the trolls closer to the forests than the hill. Grim was in the center with the Mauler to the far left, the Axer and Impaler on the right, and the gobbers in the middle next to Grim. The Daughters advance deployed on my right near the hill.

Turn 1
The Menites all push forward in an all out sprint. Everything runs and gets some cover behind the walls, except Vilmon, who goes into Impervious wall and makes a beeline for Grim. The Daughters run up behind the hill to my right.

The trolls move up close to the woods, and the Mauler actually moves into it. Grim casts Man Trap on Vilmon, killing him outright. The Impaler throws a spear at a Daughter killing her. In hindsight he shouldn't have been able to do this, but it probably didn't matter in the end as you'll see soon. The gobbers pop their smoke so that the Daughters can't get LOS to charge anything.

Turn 2
The menites move up again, with the Revenger behind the stone wall closest to my side. One seneschal runs into melee with Grim. Doh! The second Seneschal gets a charge lane on the Impaler for next turn, and the Bosun moves up slightly behind the Revenger but it out of range for his harpoon gun. The Daughters run around the hill and now threaten me from behind. These little gal's speed still amazes me every time. Severius casts ashes to ashes on the Impaler, hurting him some, and also killing one swamp gobber. Luckily only one is hit, instead of two, so the second gobber picks up the swamp fog gun.

The Axer goes first, moves into melee with two daughters and kills them with a Thresher attack. The Imapler goes next and spear slams the Seneschal to the right, killing him, but he could come back to life if someone dies within his command range. I spent some time thinking about this, and what to do, and I think I came up with a solution. The Mauler walks up to the Seneschal, who is in hand to hand with Grim, grabs him with two meaty fists and chucks him far to the left and away from the other Seneschal. The Seneschal is killed by the throw, and since he's too far from the other Seneschal now, both of them die. Nice. Grim shoots a Daughter and kills her. The gobber pops a small smoke cloud in front of him, Grim, and the mauler, blocking LOS to them all from the Revenger.

Turn 3
Severius goes first and casts ashes to ashes again through the Revenger on the Impaler, doing some damage, and more importantly killing the last gobber. Grogspar shoots and hits the Impaler with his harpoon gun, and the Impaler is now stuck with Dynamite. The last two Daughters charge the Impaler and shank him from behind, killing him.

The axer turns around and walks into melee with the unit leader of the Daughters killing her easily. The last Daughter panics and runs. Grim backs up into the woods, and out of LOS of the menites and casts man trap on the Revenger but misses. He shoots Grogspar, doing enough damage to him, but he makes his tough roll. Grr. The Mauler also moves deeper into the woods and out of LOS.

Turn 4
The last daughter runs, but regains her composure after she gets some distance from the frightening Axer. Grogspar shoots the Axer and sticks a piece of dynamite on him too. Ugh. The Revenger moves up around the wall to get LOS on the Axer. Severius does a good amount of damage to the Axer with multiple immolations through the arc node, also setting him on fire, but he manages to stay standing.

Grim moves up and puts Grogspar out of his misery with his rifle, and then heals the Axer some. The Axer regenerates and then slams into the Revenger, knocking it back 5". The mauler moves up behind the middle wall.

Turn 5-7
Basically the last few turns boiled down to the Axer repeatedly slamming the Revenger back, Grim taking pot shots at whatever was available and then finally feating to keep Severius from running away. Raged Axer charging finished the game with one mighty swing, cleaving Severius in twain.

Conclusion
Another fun game with the trolls, and I feel like I'm getting better use out of Grim now. I was able to really put the forest to good use, moving in and out of it as needed. The Axer was great, doing tons of damage, taking tons of damage and finishing off the game in style. The Mauler was also key with a well timed and placed two-handed throw of the seneschal. This let me kill them both in a single turn. Killing Vilmon early with Grim was a fortuitous event too...if he got into melee it would have been a completely different game.

The Daughters didn't do as much damage as in previous games, I think mostly due to the smoke clouds that the gobbers were laying down. Stopping their charges was key, though I did have to sacrifice the Impaler. I didn't think he would go down that quickly, but in the end, he did his job.

Overall I just feel a lot more comfortable with Grim now that I've gone more toward a melee based list. I'm looking forward to new units in Evolution, as well as playing in the upcoming league.

The Black Hole

So all my time these last few weeks has been sucked down the black hole known as "getting ahead in real life." I've been totally slammed with school, studying for the GMAT, and now, as (if all that wasn't enough) I'm going back to work part time too. My old boss made me a killer job offer, in terms of pay, that I felt I couldn't really turn down. Hopefully it turns out ok, but so far so good.

Anyway, what all this means is that I've had zero time to devote to painting or playing games, and I guess the lack of updates here is a testament to that fact. Every day my Trolls look at me with sad, betrayed eyes, I've become like King Leto! Gah! :)

School should be finishing next week though, so that should free up a little bit of time, and I'm hoping that work falls into a regular rhythm so that I can at least get back to playing once a week and also a couple hours of painting a week.

In other news though, my wife got me the Dire Troll Mauler Extreme for my birthday! Woo! Can't wait till FedEx drops him off later today or tomorrow. Muahaha!

Interesting fact...

So I remembered just today that I had created a forum account on the PP site ages ago when Warmachine first came out. I tried logging in with it, and after a few guesses at the password I found that the account still exists!

Apparently I was forum member number 740. I think the members have gone up to the tens of thousands now.

It's strange, but it's kinda nice being old school yo'.

Grim vs. Harbinger...take three

So I played another game against Broken Zealot again with a melee heavy Grim list vs. an infantry heavy Harbinger list with a few jacks thrown in too. We had planned to play two games, but this first game took an unbelievable four hours to play out. Yikes. By then end of the game, my brain was totally fried. I think I have to chalk that up to us both playing semi-turtle casters. The games that we play with melee casters goes a lot faster.

The list I took was:

Grim
Mauler
Axer
Impaler
Champions
Fell Caller
Swamp Gobbers

We both had pretty bad luck on our dice rolls...I missed several key attacks by one or two most times with low required rolls to hit. I even rolled triple ones with a boosted attack (though Grim actually hit better now that I have him painted!). Scott also flubbed several damage rolls by a point or two (i.e. he's need to do 9 damage to kill the Impaler, but only managed to do 8) This happened quite a lot...it was uncanny.

Anyway, I think the most memorable moment was when the Choir charged Grim, taking him down to 3hp with some crazy Harbinger buffs. That was pretty impressive. Fortunately for Grim, the Impaler was able to thin them out enough for them to flee and free up Grim to move away.

Oh, and one other really memorable sequence sticks in my mind. The Axer, charges in to the Repenter and with the Mauler scrap it. But the Axer in turn is charged from behind by a Dervish, who nearly kills him (1-2hp left). The Axer heals up enough the next turn and pretty much cleaves the Dervish in twain. Rupert charges the Axer and almost kills him again. The next turn, the Axer once again heals enough to attack, but fails to finish Rupert off! He's down to a single hitpoint. Mortally wounded, Rupert summons up all his strength for one last desperate attack. As the Axer is leaning in for the kill, Rupert stabs him through the heart, killing him!

That sequence is worthy of Peter Jackson himself. Well ok, maybe not.

The Swamp Gobbers were again really nice...they blocked off some charges, and with Grim's Spread the Net, allowed the Trolls to actually get the charge instead of the usual being charged. I'm thinking about moving these guys up on the paint ladder due to their total awesomeness in game.

More Grim Angus Work

So I spent a couple more hours working on Grim tonight. I've finished off his goggles (boy what a huge pain that was...I kept messing up the gem effect...I must have done it 5-6 times). I also did the gold/copper metal on his guns. Lastly I finished his pants, the net refills, and his shoulder pads. I didn't really like how the shoulders came out though...I may redo them in the golden/copper color instead. I'm also thinking about redoing his bedroll.

I do think the gold/copper colors came out decently in the NMM style. I used a base of Snakebite Leather, and slowly worked my way up through Golden Yellow. For the very edges and tips I used half Skull White, half Golden Yellow for a very light creamy yellow color. I'll try and get a couple of pictures tomorrow hopefully when lighting is better.

All that's left now on him are his gloves and his kilt. I'm still not sure if I want to do a kilt or just make it cloth. Ah well, I'll decide that later...time for sleep.

Grim Angus Gets Some Color

Here are a couple of quick shots of the work I've done on Grim Angus so far. I've finished off his cloak, skin, bandana, and most of the gun. I just need to change the scope clip to a bronze color and do the medallion. Also, I really like the olive green shirt color. It reminds me of military undershirts. I just need to give it a bit more shading so it looks nicer.

So there's not a lot left to do for him. I'm not sure what color to paint his pants though...and I think I may change his backpack colors...it looks too weird with the beige and red/brown. I also don't like how his sleeping roll looks now that I've seen it on photo. Then it's just gloves, net gun, boots, and shoulderpads. He's a ton of fun to paint too because there's all sorts of things on the model that require different styles/skills. For example, while he has a lot of leather, he's still got troll skin, metal pieces on his weapons, cloth shirt/pants/bandana, glass/gems on his rifle and goggles, etc. I'm hoping he'll be done by this time next weekend or sooner.

I'm also going to get someNMM bronze/copper going on his gun and shoulderpads.

Hopefully with a finished paintjob he'll start doing better in games. :)

Oh, by the way, I tried to make his scope have the reddish-orange reflection found in a lot of sniper scopes these days. Here's the reference photo I used:

Grim Angus...don't go where he goes...there's only death there...

So I played another game with Grim today against a Harbinger heavy infantry list. Oof. I think I did a lot worse in this one than the last game. The hordes of Menite infantry totally overran my lines. Most of my beasts were totally ineffective, Alten couldn't hit anything, and the Champions got munched by Vilmon. All in all, it was a really poor showing for Grim and his warband.

The Pyre troll (which I proxied) was kinda neat...but in the end he didn't really do all that much. I didn't really need the animus at all (no jacks to attack) and his flame breath was only mediocre. This army is really giving me fits...I'm just not sure how to play it correctly...either that or Grim just isn't meant to go up against Menoth. :)

Anyway, I'm not gonna give up on him yet...I'm hoping eventually I'll be able to figure something that works. If I can make it to my normal game next Wednesday, I'd like to give my Menoth box set a go for a change of pace. It's been sitting here in my army box for years...should be well aged enough to play. ;)

In other news, folks on the forums seem to like how my Axer came out! I think I'm improving my painting skills slowly but surely, and it's nice to see folks liking how he looks. I just need to deepen some of his shadows, fix some boo boos, and I'm going to call him done. I thought about doing some bronze/copper armor pieces...but I don't want to mess him up...so he'll be the meticulous troll...always keeping his armor nice and shiny.

What I will try though is some bronze/copper armor on Grim's shoulder...that's suitably small enough to experiment on without needing a lot of effort...plus if I mess up, I just paint it black and start over...it's easy at this point since I've only finished his skin so far.

Grim Angus needs corrective lenses...

Grim Angus faced off against the Harbinger of Menoth tonight. It was a pretty grinding fight, and a lot slower paced than the other recent battles I've played. It was also my first game with Grim, and also my first game against the Harbinger, so there was a lot of learning on my part.

Basically I think this was possibly one of the wort matchups for Grim due to the fact that the army I took was very heavy shooting oriented, and the Harbinger army was pretty strong against ranged attacks. I had a really hard time cracking the Menoth knot today. I definitely credit Broken Zealot for an excellent use of his resources to totally neutralize my strengths.

Here are the lists:

Trolls
Grim Angus
Blitzer
Impaler x2
Champions
Alten Ashley
Swamp Gobbers

Menoth
Harbinger
Crusader
Castigator
Devout
Vilmon
Paladin
Seneschal
Choir
Wrack x2

Deployment
Basically, the Menoth deployed in a brick, with the two heavies completely blocking line of sight to the Harbinger, the Devout to her right, Choir following behind chanting no shooting, and the solos on the flanks.

My deployment was warbeasts on the left, Grim and the gobbers in the middle, and Champs to the right. Alten was only deployed slightly forward in a forest.

The Game

I'll skip most of the turn-by-turn commentary and just hit the highlights because there wasn't a lot of action going on for the first few turns. Basically the warjack wall with no shooting made all my guys mill about aimlessly as they advanced. I did try to hit Vilmon with Grim's Man trap, but kept missing horribly (on 3 dice even, needing only a 7 to hit!). He also missed a rifle shot at a choir member and a snare gun shot at Vilmon in the opening turns. I blame his non-painted goggles! (they are still primed black...he was obviously having trouble seeing through them)

Eventually, the Champions got stuck in with Vilmon and the Paladin, who promptly then got butchered by said Paladins. Also, the Harbinger's feat did a ton of damage to the Champions...finishing off any that the Paladins didn't down. The Blitzer took the Crusader down to just systems left (did damage evenly across all the columns, but unable to take anything out), but then the next turn the Blitzer was killed by a fully focus laden Crusader. Ouch, that guy can put out a ton of hurt against other heavies! The Castigator also downed one of my Impalers.

Alten got a couple shots at the Paladin, dropping him twice, but he was brought back by the Harbinger's resurection ability. Vilmon was also killed a few times during the game as well as the Seneschal, but that darn resurection spell kept bringing them back. Alten was also able to cap the Choir leader eventually which definitely helped. But it was a little too late since the warjacks were now in melee. Still it meant that they didn't get the bonus to hit and damage.

One bright point was when the swamp gobbers charged the Seneschal and killed him while he was knocked down (from the resurection ability). The swamp gobbers also helped quite a bit all game with the fog cloud effect. Sadly, I didn't realize I could use it to block line of sight from my own guys to the Harbinger during the feat turn. That would have saved a ton of damage on the first Impaler and also the Champions. Doh.

On the second to last turn, Grim and the remaining Imapler were able to finally take out the Castigator and Crusader, but by then they were the only things I had left. Meanwhile, the Harbinger, Devout, Vilmon, and Paladin were still left. I could have kept running backward and taking shots at the remaining Menoth, but I opted to just go for the kill.

The Harbinger was down to 9hp from all the resurections, but the Devout was still ready to jump in the way of a shot with his shielding stance. So Grim walked up, man trapped the Devout, knocking it down so it couldn't intercept the shot. He then shot at the Harbinger, doing 7 damage (another low roll here with an 8 on 3d6). The Impaler walks up to finish the job, needing a 9 to hit, sadly the spear just misses wide of the Harbinger (8 on 3d6, doh!). Next turn Vilmon and the Paladin finish off Grim.

Conclusion
I guess the theme of the night was a lot of missing on my side. I just could not hit the broad side of a barn/warjack/etc. Even when needing really low rolls (like 6 on 3d6) I just couldn't hit. It was pretty frustrating, but that's just the way of the dice. I guess this game balances out the horrible dice rolling game that Broken Zealot had a few weeks back where he just couldn't hit my guys.

The other thing was that the no-shooting Menoth special ability from the Choir coupled with the warjack wall really threw me for a loop. I just am not sure how to get past that since it's near impossible to kill the Choir since they're behind the wall too. I definitely credit Broken Zealot with totally neutralizing my army's strengths with his list and formation.

That and the fact that I didn't have a way to reliably boost my damage output either through a Mauler or some other spell. This really hurt me because I couldn't take out the heavy jacks with the Blitzer. He's just too weak at POW 15 vs. ARM 19. This makes me sad because I really want the Blitzer to be useful with Grim, but I'm just not seeing him being better than a Mauler which is sad. Instead of two Impalers, the Pyre might have been a better choice also. At least that way I could bump the Blitzer up to POW 17.

Actually one way I thought of to beat the warjack wall is to move the Blitzer up and two hand throw the warjack out of the way. Then I'd need to shoot and magic with everything I had at the Harbinger and then run in a second melee beast. Even then, I'm not sure if I could take her down, especially if she is camping focus to overboost her armor.

Also, the Champions really lose a lot of staying power without the Krielstone Bearer and Surefoot. At 14 DEF they were pretty easily hit by the Paladins. The Harbinger's feat did hurt them quite a bit though, maybe if I had shielded them with a fog cloud they would have been better off.

The best performers for me this game though were clearly the swamp gobbers. These guys blocked charges, lowered melee attack, and even took out the Seneschal. For 15 points, they were well worth the points.

Worst performer had to be Grim. Not being able to hit anything was horrible. Clearly I've overestimated his shooting ability. Thinking back on things though, I really can't see doing anything differently except for the fog cloud blocking LOS to the Harbinger. It was just a tough matchup. Hopefully he'll do better next game though! He definitely very different from either of my other warlocks, and I have a feeling he's going to be a lot harder to learn.

Finished Trollblood Axer Photos

Here's my finished Axer. But as usual I've found several problems with him after examining the big photos. There's several places where the blending just isn't smooth enough. I've also decided that I don't really like how the axe came out.

Lastly, I don't really like how his bracers and his neck guard look. The bracers are not shaded enough and are too washed out while I think the neck guard transition from light to dark is too fast and so doesn't really look natural.

I've definitely learned a ton about painting NMM (non-metallic metal) from this guy. Honestly though, I don't think I'm going to be doing NMM on such a large scale anymore. It was just super time consuming, even frustrating at times. The end result I think is not bad for a first real attempt, but I think I could do an even better job with just regular metallics.











I will still probably do some NMM on models that don't really have a lot of metallic parts though...just not fully armored guys. (E.g. I'll be doing some NMM work on Grim Angus' gun barrel and nick-nacks).

The good thing about this whole process though is that I feel it will really help me to shade and highlight better and more naturally. Highlighting skin, leather, etc. all seems tons easier to do now that I've tried out NMM.

Axer finished!

Finally finished off the Axer today. He's looking ok, though I didn't especially like how the leather came out. I also need to touch up a couple spots on his skin where little paint flecks got on it, but other than that he's done.

Pics tomorrow when there is some better lighting.

Madrak and Doomshaper take to the field

So in my previous post I mentioned that I played two games against Broken Zealot and his Amon army. Both games were really fun, and both games really made me think about my moves. We both won one game which was also nice. I don't really have detailed battle reports for these games since I've forgotten most of the details by now. Doh! I should really write these up the night of the game...but I was just really tired and hungry after getting home.

Game 1

For the first game, it was a very similar list to last week's game I believe. I brought my normal Madrak list. Basically there was a big scrum in the middle in turn two or three when I ran my Champions into melee with his Daughters of the Flame and Herne and Jonne. Madrak got a nice axe throw and ricochet off of an unsuspecting choir boy into Amon, doing a massive 10 damage. During this fight, the Daughters vaulted over my front line of Champions and assasinated the entire Krielstone bearer crew. Ouch! They then proceeded to plink the Impaler to near death by the end of the game.

Luckily for Madrak though, the Mauler picked up the Revenger and chucked it at Amon. Although he missed, since he was so close to Amon, it didn't scatter far at all (half an inch) and knocked them both down. Madrak then hurled his axe into Amon and finished things off.

Game 2

In the second game, Amon came up against Doomshaper and his beast list. Amon brought a lot more bodies this time though, with a full unit of Zealots and Knights Exemplar. Yikes. I think I was outnumbered about 3:1 or 4:1! A notable event in this game was a huge trample attack by the Dire Troll Blitzer, who ran over 3-4 Knights, killing them outright. Had the Zealots not been invulnerable that turn (stupid Monolith Bearer!) he would have snacked on a few zealots as well. Sadly, he wasn't able to kill the Seneschal with the slugger gun after the trample, which proved to be my undoing. The Seneschal and remaining Knights proceeded to slam the Blitzer back with his smite attack and then chop him to pieces. This basically collapsed my whole left flank, leaving Doomshaper very exposed.

At this point I could have tried to pull back and hope to consolidate my forces or go for the all out attack. The Axer had an opening to Amon though, and so I opted to attack. Sadly, because Amon camped all his focus from his last turn (since I feated on my turn, he didn't want to take damage from the feat), he was ARM 20, and the Axer just couldn't do enough damage. The following turn, Doomshaper was bombed to death by the Zealots. Ouch!

Things I Learned:

• Trample is awesome when you can pull it off. I was really impressed by how well a trample attack can thin down infantry ranks. I'll definitely be looking to use this option in the future as well.
• The Mauler is still awesome. He pretty much scrapped a heavy warjack in one turn in the second game. Also, letting him frenzy is actually a *good* thing sometimes. He can still do a ton of damage and it allows you to leech fury from other beasts you don't want frenzying. Plus his two handed throw of the Revenger into Amon was a key game winning move for the first game.
• Madrak's thrown axe is really really nice. Especially with the ricochet rule. Bouncing it into Amon was great.
• Fighting in the middle of the board with Doomshaper's beast army is a bad idea. Once my Blitzer went down, my whole left side collapsed. I suddenly found myself surrounded because I didn't have enough guys to screen/block for Doomshaper.
  
• I need to plan out my Feat turn better. I don't want to be feating the turn before I plan to go for the caster kill. Warcaster camping focus = sad times for the Axer.
• Daughters of the Flame are just gross. Not only can they leap over units, but they ignore free strikes while doing so. AND they can move around to the back side of a model without taking free strikes either. They basically kept jumping behind my Impaler and plinked him to death with POW 9s. I totally underestimated these gals because of how poorly they did in the last game (though I did remember they were fast). I'll definitely have to be more careful next time!

All in all two very fun games. I'm now looking forward to playing with Grim Angus though as it'll be a really nice change of pace. I've got him primed and assembled down and I'll probably start painting him tomorrow night. Tonight I'm going to try and finish off the Axer.

Colonel Angus Reporting for Duty!

I finally got my Grim Angus last night while over at GameKastle. Woohoo! The lame thing was apparently mine didn't come with a medium base, and upon inspecting the other ones in the store, none of them had medium bases either. DOH! I guess there was some QC issues over at Privateer with these. Luckily there was a nice guy over at the store that had a spare base and he gave it to me so I could start working on him last night.

I also picked up a Rhyas just to paint up for fun too (ninjas rule!). I finished assembling both of them last night while watching the Shining for the first time. Pretty freaky movie. I liked Jack's weird axe murderer limp. That and his crazy expressions.

Anyway, I played two games last night against Broken Zealot. Both really fun games. I actually enjoyed the one I lost better than the one that I won. :) Battle reports coming in another post. The nice thing was that I think I'm getting faster at doing my turns since we finished the first game in just under 2 hours. The second game we also finished in about 2 hours.

And a last bit of news, I'm pretty much done with my Axer. Just need to finish up the leather straps and his axe and he'll be all done. I'm going to see if I can finish him up tomorrow night. I'm thinking about doing Grim Angus first before the Krielstone bearer so that I can use him in a game. Plus, he doesn't look hard to paint at all...most of him is just leather armor and a few nick-nacks. Should be fairly quick and easy. I'm thinking about not doing him as an albino though...I never liked that look.

Plus, I'm picking up a Swamp Gobber crew and Alten Ashley for my new Grim Angus list. I'm thinking about taking the following:

Grim Angus
>Dire Troll Blitzer
>Troll Impaler
>Troll Impaler
Champions
Swamp Gobbers
Alten Ashley

I might swap out one impaler for an Axer though...I also really wanted to fit in Pygmy Bushwhackers too, but I'd have to drop the Champions for them...and I think I need the Champions more. This list is pretty shooty, but it's still got some melee punch to it. I'm hoping it does well. I think the Impaler and the Blitzer really synergize well with Grim, and Alten should be nice to have too against Hordes armies, though not as much against Menoth. Still, it's another guy who can shoot really far and take out those annoying solos and maybe even some unit leaders. The gobbers are just there to fill up points, but they should help with some nice clouds to obscure certain things.

No game this week...

No gaming this week sadly, I have finals for my classes. Bah. I did get a little more painting done on the Axer though. I finished up his right leg armor, but it didn't come out as nicely as his left leg. Ah well, it's still looking ok. Hopefully next week I'll have him completely done by Thursday or Friday.

First battle on wednesday night - league game

So for my first and more enjoyable game on Wednesday night, I played against Broken Zealot and a tweaked Amon ad-Raza list. There were the choir and the same solos as always (Vilmon and his two Paladin entourage, a Seneschal, and Gorman). The difference this time was that he brought a Repenter, a Guardian, and his newly painted Daughters of the Flame. I thought that they looked great for the speed that they were painted with.

I forgot to bring one of my Champions, so I instead used my original Doomshaper list. We played one of the Spring League scenarios (Khador vs. Protectorate), where there is one big hill in the center, with four small forests around the hill. The flash flood rule was also used, but there weren't any floods all game. The objective is to claim the hill by having more units on the hill than your opponent at the end of each round.

Menoth Turn 1
Everything runs up toward the hill, with the Seneschal sneaking around the left woods, the Guardian, Repenter, Amon, and Choir moving onto the hill, and the Paladins, Vilmon, and Gorman also move onto the hill, to the right of the warjacks. The Daughters running incredibly fast onto the right side of the hill, but still screening the Paladins, Vilmon, and Gorman. They are almost in charge range of my army already! That is a truly scary move.

Trolls Turn 1
I now need to get some guys onto the hill as well, else I'll start losing control points. Due to the slow speed of the Trolls, I know I need to run most of my guys, else they will not get there until turn 3 or later. The Axer and Impaler both run onto the hill. Doomshaper casts fortune on the Blitzer and advances. The Krielstone Bearer, Mauler, and Fell Caller all toward the hill as well but don't make it onto the hill. The Blitzer runs onto the hill and now has a clear shot at the Seneschal, to the left of the hill. The Pyg Ace gets two shots with the chain gun, and mows down the Seneschal.

Since Broken Zealot has more units on the hill he gets one control point.

Menoth Turn 2
The Repenter moves up and shoots a gout of flame at both the Blitzer and Impaler, missing the Blitzer, but setting the Impaler on fire. The Guardian moves up and engages the Blitzer in hand to hand and takes some swings at him doing a moderate amount of damage. Amon then casts a Sandblast at the Blitzer through the arcnode on the Guardian, but fortunately doesn't knock it back.

The Daughters of the Flame move off the hill to the right and into a flanking position, also clearing the way for the solo group. Thrice cursed Gorman walks up and chucks his evil black oil onto the Impaler and Axer, blinding them. Vilmon sacrifices his action to enter Impervious wall and moves into combat with the Blitzer, Axer, and Impaler. One of his Paladins also manages to charge as well, doing a bit of damage to the Axer.

Trolls Turn 2
(Here I actually messed up the rules on the two handed throw, where I threw the Guardian at Amon and actually killed him, forgetting that the two-handed throw is only at Str /2 not (Str + Pow) /2. So we had to do a big rewind. Below is what correctly happened after the rewind. OOPS!).

The Mauler moves up onto the hill and casts Rage on the Blitzer causing its muscles to bulge with Troll fury. The Blitzer walks up to the Guardian, grabs a hold of it with both hands, and with a loud roar hurls it toward the Repenter, knocking both of them down and doing a large amount of damage to the Repenter, destroying its cortex. The Pyg Ace riding on top of the Blitzer gets a bead on the Paladin and Gorman not in combat and lights them both up with the chain gun, killing them both!

The Impaler takes some fire damage this turn, and pretty much misses a lot due to the black oil in his eyes, and the Axer, with help from Doomshaper and a fortune cast on him, is able to take out the Paladin. The Krielstone bearer moves onto the hill and casts his aura. All the scribes move behind the woods to get out of Line of Sight of the Daughters of the Flame, and the Fell Caller moves up slightly, as does Doomshaper.

No control points are given out as we both have 5 units on the hill now.

Menoth Turn 3
The Daughters of the Flame run through the woods and engage the the Krielstone bearer and scribes, and one Daughter is just short of getting into combat with Doomshaper. Yikes! I totally underestimated their move distance again. Luckily for me, she was about half an inch short.

The Repenter stands up and flames the Blitzer setting it on fire. The Guardian stands up and (thanks to its reach) stabs the Blitzer, severely hurting him. Amon then casts Sandblast through the arcnode and kills the Blitzer. Vilmon gets three attacks this turn, chopping up the Axer, but it barely hangs on by a thread and has 4 hp left.

Trolls Turn 3
With the noble Krielstone Bearer in danger, the scribes heft their axes and, in a flurry of death and dismemberment, they actually take down 3 Daughters of the Flame! The Fell Caller charges into the Daughters near Doomshaper and kills two as well. He then lets loose his blood curdling Rebel Yell and the Daughters actually turn and flee!

Doomshaper moves over to get a line on the Repenter, but misses with Accursed, needing only a 5 to hit. Doomshaper casts Rage on the Mauler. The Mauler charges the Guardian and slaps him around and then takes a big chomp out of it. He takes one last whack at it and puts it out of commision, having only generated two fury. I'm still amazed how easily the Mauler is able to take things out and still have so much Fury left over. (I bet he could take out two Carniveans at once with a little support from Doomshaper...can't wait to try that out on the Legion player...the guy thinks the Carniveans are the best heavy ever. He hasn't seen a Mauler in action yet though heh heh).

The Impaler and Axer together are able to drop Vilmon. I now get one control point.

Menoth Turn 4
The Daughters of the Flame flee and no longer have any impact on the game. The Repenter moves over and has a clear shot at Doomshaper. He only needs a 7 to hit, but fortunately the flame goes wide. Amon charges into melee with the Impaler and the Mauler. He uses his special "crack the whip" attack on the Mauler, slamming it back through my Axer and the Krielstone bearers, knocking them all down. Ugly. I think a couple of scribes die, but none of the beasts are hurt badly. The Choir charges in to the fray and actually do some damage to the Impaler, who is now at 8 hp left. They also block off all the charge lanes to Amon.

Trolls Turn 4
Doomshaper takes aim at the Repenter, needing a 5 to hit with Accursed, and misses! They seem to be trading misses at each other. Doomshaper then casts Rage and Fortune on the Impaler, and also heals him for some crucial damage. The Fell Caller moves up and uses his special action, Reveille, to stand everyone up that was knocked down. The Mauler comes to, slams one of the Choir into Amon, knocking him down, and splattering the poor Choir boy. The Impaler then, seeing the prone Amon, gives him a couple good stabs and finishes him off.

Victory for the Kriels!

Conclusion
That was a really fun game, and we both had a lot of fun. It's really quite fun playing against Amon as he's got all these neat little tricks and slams that send my guys flying all over the place. The battles between the trolls and Amon have been like watching a WWE wrestling match, with people and trolls flying left and right.

The battle could have gone either way a couple of times, like if the Repenter had actually hit with his flamer those two times on Doomshaper, things would have been very different, and it's likely Doomshaper would have burned to death.

I also learned to really watch out for the super fast moving Daughters of the Flame. The amount of ground they can cover is truly amazing. Thankfully the stone scribes are actually decent in melee with light infantry, and so were able to send them packing. The Fell Caller also proved invaluable once again, standing big blue guys up, and also his Rebel Yell that made the rest of the Daughters flee in terror.

The Blitzer in this game was a terror. Truly amazing. He did it all this game with his throwing and shooting, accounting for the deaths of three solos with the chain gun, and taking the Repenter's cortex down (no focus allocation to it, so it couldn't boost to hit Doomshaper) and damaging the Guardian. Not to mention knocking them both down for a turn. Honestly, I was thinking about not playing the Blitzer anymore and just using Champions instead, but he really showed his stuff this game, and I will definitely not give up on him, especially at 750pts.

Aside from my rules screw up, the game went much more smoothly, and I think I'm getting faster at playing my turns, as the game only took about two hours instead of the usual three. I'm also feeling a lot more confident with how to use the Fell Caller and the warbeasts I have in general. What I need to be more careful with though is the Impaler. I seem to be getting him stuck into melee too early on now. That or Broken Zealot has gotten a lot better at tying him up early. :) Next game I may try to hold him back some and instead let the Axer and Blitzer take the lead.

Sadly, I won't be able to make it down to GameKastle next Wednesday as I have a final early next morning.

Two battle reports tonight...here's number two...

The first game was with Broken Zealot, and was a blast to play through. We both also learned a lot of rules. The second game was with the Legion of Everblight player, but since it was super short I'll go over that one first.

Battle 1: Trolls vs. Everblight 350pts.

I had about 20 minutes to kill and so we played a quick 350pt. game. I took Doomshaper, a Mauler, an Axer, and Impaler, and a Fell Caller. He had Thagrosh, two Carniveans, and a Shredder. Basically, I went for the turn 2 kill. I had Doomshaper move up and cast Acursed on Thagrosh, doing only a little damage due to poor rolls. He pops his feat and has two fury left on him. Then I had my Mauler through Rage on the Impaler, and then throw the Impaler toward Thagrosh. What I should have done though was throw him AT Thagrosh, thus knocking them both down. Oh well.

Instead, I walked my Fell Caller over, stood the Impaler up and then had the Impaler beat down on Thagrosh. Unfortunately, due to my bad dice rolling (need only average to below average rolls on the two attacks to kill him) Thagrosh had 5hp left. So then I had the Axer charge Thagrosh, needing an 8 to hit, I miss with a 7. Doh. The Axer would have most likely killed him since he was doing straight damage and only needed to roll a 5+ on two dice. What I should have done too, was move the Fell Caller into melee with the Carnivean, speed bumping him for a turn so that he couldn't charge Doomshaper. You make dumb mistakes while playing under a super time crunch.

Next turn, two Carniveans charge Doomshaper and kill him. Once again I forget to roll my tough roll. Grr. Thagrosh lives with 2hp (took 3 damage from the feat). Oh well. The smart thing to do if I had more time to stick around, would have been to instead have the Fell Caller charge and kill the Shredder that was in melee with the Impaler. Then use the Impaler to spear slam the front Carnivean into the back one (they were lined up nicely). If no crit slam happened, the Axer could still slam the Carnivean. And if he missed, the Mauler could have too. Then Doomshaper could cast Acursed on both Carniveans, taking them both out of the battle for a turn (no movement or action after standing up). Then it would have just been a mop up the third turn, where everything just charges Thagrosh and beats him down.

I'm confident this plan would have worked, had I had the time to implement it. Sadly, by the time it got to my turn, I had to go in like 5 minutes, so wouldn't have time for my third turn. Anyway if we play again, I'm pretty confident against his chosen list. It's all about slamming those big beasts out of the way and smashing Thagrosh, who is really squishy compared to the Menoth guys I'm normally facing. If only my dice didn't suck today, it would have been a cool move.

Axer pics so far...

Here is a picture of the Axer's left leg plates. I think these came out looking really nice for NMM. The collar though needs some more work, as does the axe.

The back plates also are done, but they don't seem as nice looking to me as the leg plates. It makes sense since I acutally tried to do the axe and the back plates first...I was still trying to figure out how to get the highlighting just right.

The final picture is of the lower back/side plates. I think these along with the knee plate came out looking the best.

NMM Success!

So I did a lot more work on the Axer's armor plates today, and I think I've finally got some good looking NMM on him now! I'm pretty stoked as it's been a pretty long road of trial and error with NMM painting, but I think I've got it down, at least for armor plating now. Yay! I finished up his chest, back, and left leg armor plates. I tried to add some rust effect, but it came out looking funny. So I guess no rust for this guy for now. Sadly, I won't have this guy completely finished for my game tomorrow. Ah well. Hopefully he'll be done by next week's game.

I tried to get some pics, but they all look pretty bad now since it's dark...I'll see if I can get some good pics of him tomorrow when the sun is out.

Once I'm done with this guy, I'm not sure who to do next...maybe the Krielstone Bearer and crew...they're always in any list I play, so he might be a good choice for the next up. Plus it will be a nice change of pace from the warbeasts I've been doing.

Some NMM work on the Axer

I did some NMM work on the Axer's axe and an armor plate today. I'm not sure I like how it came out though. I think the highlights are in the wrong place again (as is usual with me I suppose). Anyway, I'm too bleary eyed to fix it now. Maybe tomorrow I'll take a look at it with fresh eyes and see what can be done. I think the armor plate did come out looking better than the axe, though it's a bit too clean looking and needs some rust/dirt added to it.

No pictures right now, I want to see what I can do to fix it before snapping photos.

An Unlikely Alliance - The enemy of my enemy is...my friend?

Played a 2 vs. 2 game with Broken Zealot against a couple of other folks at the game store today. It was Menoth and Trolls vs. Circle of Orboros and Everblight. While the fighting with Menoth has been fierce these last few weeks, we decided to group up to eliminate the mutual enemies in the Dragonspawn and the betrayers of the Kriels, Krueger.

Broken Zealot used his Amon ad-Raza list from the previous week and I used my Madrak list, also used the last week. I'm going to try to recount all the parts I can remember, but after the first turn, the battle sort of split into two games, with Trolls vs. Circle, and Menoth vs. Everblight. Here are the Everblight and Circle lists to the best of my memory.

Everblight
Thagrosh
Carnivean x2
Seraph
Shredders x4

Circle (of Betrayers)
Krueger
Woldwarden
Warpwolf
Tharn Ravagers x6
Shifting Stones
Druids (the Circle player totally forgot to put these on the board, so he was down about 84 points this game)

The battle took place on a fairly forested area, four woods in each table corner, about 4 walls in the mid-field, and a medium sized hill right in the middle of the field. The terrain didn't really play much effect all game.

Deployment
The Trolls and Menoth deploy first in a cental position. I am holding the left flank, and Menoth has the right flank. Across from me is the Circle army, and the Everblight army is staring down the Menites.

Turn 1 - The Good Guys
Everything in the troll army runs forward. The Menites mostly run forward as well, some taking cover behind the walls in the midfield. Madrak puts up Surefoot on himself and the champs. Vilmon goes into his Impervious Wall.

Turn 1 - The Betrayers
The Tharn declare a charge on nothing for some odd reason, or maybe one that I don't understand, instead of just running. Weird. The Woldwarden moves up and takes a potshot at the Impaler with Forked Lightning but is just short. Krueger gives the Tharn Lightning Tendrils. On the Everblight side, the Carniveans move through the woods, and the Seraph flies over and I think takes some shots at Gorman. Krueger pops his feat and drops three storm templates, one on the Impaler and Axer, one in front of the Warpwolf who moved up, and the last one on Vilmon and the Paladins. Vilmon takes a couple points of damage, the Impaler takes a few points and that's the end of the first turn.

Turn 2 - The Good Guys
The beasts under the templates now have to test for frenzy due to the special effect of the storm clouds, and the Impaler fails with double sixes! The only thing in line of sight is Vilmon, unfortunately, and the Impaler, remembering the previous fights I suppose, lets loose a loud shout and runs Vilmon through with his spear, doing 27 damage on the attack. DOH! Sorry Broken Zealot!

The Revenger moves forward to line up a beautiful Sand Blast on a Carnivean and Thagrosh, fires and knocks the Carnivean into Thagrosh, knocking them both down, and doing some damage to Thagrosh. Other than that, not much else seems to happen on the Menoth side.

I decide to try and tie up the Warpwolf with my Champions, and so I run them into melee, but can't attack since I ran them. Madrak moves up and casts Surefoot on the champs and, thinking that he was safe, drops the rest of his fury on the Krielstone bearer. This would prove to be a big mistake in the next turn. The Axer, Mauler, and Krielstone bearer both move up near, but behind Madrak.

Turn 2 - The Betrayers
The Circle player start cackling madly, and I wonder what's going to happen. Well, he moves his Shifting Stones so that the Warpwolf's base is now within the three and then teleports the Warpwolf into melee with Madrak. DOH! (Question: Can shifting stones move and then still teleport something?)

The Wolf unleashes on Madrak, and through the flurry of attacks Madrak has to use his scroll and still take I think 8-10 damage. Thankfully, Madrak is tough as a rock and lives through it. There will be much pain for the Wolf next turn, oh yes.

The Woldwarden takes another shot at the Champions with Forked Lightning, but misses due to screening. Go troll brick. The Tharn charge into Melee with the Impaler, Champions, Axer, and Paladins. The kill one paladin, damage the Impaler, and take the Axer down to around half. Again, troll toughness impresses. Armor 20 on the Axer and 18 on the Impaler blunt most of the damage, and they miss or do little damage to a couple of the Champions. Krueger flies over to the middle of the field and casts forked lightning at the Champions. He hits, does some meager damage thanks to the Champion's 19 armor, and ends his activation.

On the Everblight side of the board. The Carnivean charges the Revenger and rips off the Revenger's shield arm, and does a fair amount of damage to it. The Seraph shoots and kills the Seneschal and Gormon. I think Shredders also charge into the Seneschal as well, but I don't think anything else of significance happened.

Turn 3 - The Good Guys
Broken Zealot and I both look at each other and both say, "It's Feat time!" First though, the Dire Troll Mauler needs to take care of business. He shows the Warpwolf what a real beatdown is, killing it in three hits. He also pops Rage up on the Kithkar Champion. Madrak casts Guided Hand on the Champions as well and then announces his CRUSHER feat. The Fell Caller walks into melee with a Tharn, easily kills it, takes his 1" crusher move, and easily kills another. Weapon Master + Crusher = total Tharn ownage. The Axer also moves up, regenerates his Spirit and Body some, and then easily drops another Tharn. Sadly, there is no one within crusher range of him anymore.

On the Menoth side, the Paladin kills a Tharn, which now frees up the Impaler to move. The Impaler charges the Tharn leader, but fails to kill him. However, he's now within melee range of Krueger. He takes a swing and does about 4 damage to him (horrible die rolls since the damage was boosted too...I think I rolled a 5 on 3 dice). The Champions then charge Krueger. Needing 10s to hit on three dice (guided hand) with 3 attacks, and 3 more attacks coming on two dice, I think that this is pretty much a done deal. Not to mention that each hit makes it easier by 1 to hit with the next guy.

The first Champion hits and does about 10 damage to him, but misses his second attack. I then forget to add the +1 to hit for the second guy. Ugh. He misses both attacks, I think one of which only by 1. Agh! The Kithkar, who only needs a 9 to hit, almost misses both attacks due to horrible die rolls. Krueger lives with 2 hp left. GRR!

Back to the Menoth side, I missed most of what happened this turn since I was busy dealing with Krueger, but vaguely, I think Amon casts some spells, and the Castigator slams a Carnivean away, and then beats down Thagrosh in melee, killing him. Here's a link to Broken Zealot's account of his caster kill.

Turn 3 - The Betrayers
Without much left to do, Krueger goes Skyborne and flies next to Madrak to try and finish him off. He takes several attacks, and after a couple of damage transfers, Madrak lives with 1 hp. We call the game there as Krueger is completely surrounded and only has the one Woldwarden left.

Victory for the Kriels! (and Menoth)

Conclusion
Well I have to say, that was a pretty interesting first game against Circle. Initially, I was pretty scared of the Tharn, but it turns out they are really squishy in melee, and they just don't hit hard enough to take down my light beasts, unless all of them are attacking the same one. Even then, with the Krielstone, 20 armor is tough for them to bust through. I'm definitely less scared of them now after seeing what they can do.

Trolls are just so durable and tough, it amazes me every game. I only lost 2 stone scribes the entire game.

One thing I did learn though is *don't forget about Standing Stones teleport ability*! That one mistake almost cost me the game. If I didn't have the scroll, Madrak would have bought the farm on that one turn. The other thing is to remember the Concert bonus for the Champs. That +1 for the second champion and kithkars would have been one more hit that they should have had, which would have finished off Krueger earlier.

The MVP had to be the Krielstone bearer. This guy blocked so much incoming damage, it unbelieveable. Probably upwards of 20-30 damage blocked over the course of the game. The worst performers were probably the Champions...not being able to hit Krueger, even though below average rolls were needed, was really annoying. Next time I might just try slamming one of my own guys into him to knock him down. Actually, I should have just slammed the Tharn into Krueger before charging in with my Champs. Ah well, something to remember for next time.

Lastly, while the Circle player was down one unit of druids, I honestly don't see how they could have really made a big impact. They would have had only one turn to shoot the Champions, and they wouldn't have killed any with average rolls. Maybe one or two with really good rolls. But then, only 3 champs were able to get into contact with Krueger anyway, so again, I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be a huge impact.

Oh something else weird I just thought of. So after I killed the Warpwolf, how was Krueger able to get full fury the next turn...doh. He should have only been at 3 max fury from the Woldwarden. So he would have only been able to take the one attack against Madrak the last turn.

While the game was pretty engaging, I felt like it wasn't quite as fun or friendly as the games I normally have playing against Broken Zealot. Our opponents were a lot more high strung during the game, and sometimes it seemed like they weren't having much fun either. I guess it felt more like a tournament game, where people were more concerned with getting the win rather than having a friendly game. One of the guys seriously lost his cool after his caster was killed, and that kinda put a downer on the whole thing. Maybe it was just me though. Hopefully next week people will be more relaxed now that the first game is out of the way. Then again maybe I'm just spoiled playing against Broken Zealot all the time, who is an ace opponent. :)

I still had a good time, and I definitely learned more about Circle, I mean, the betrayers.

Axer skin and face done!

In a fit of painting I finished off the Axer's skin. Now to start work on his armor plates and Axe. I am going to try to go for a full NMM look this time, instead of the weird hybrid look with the Impaler.

Finished Impaler...Starting Axer!

I finished the Impaler today, finally! He was actually a lot of fun to paint, but as usual, it took me a lot longer than I thought to finish mostly due to real life, and a lot of experimentation (with NMM this time).

Better Pics of the Finished Mauler

I never really liked the first pictures I put up of the finished Mauler, so here are some more, in better light, and a better backdrop.

Chief Madrak and his Champions take the field

Played my first game with Madrak and his Champions tonight against the same Amon list from last week. It was definitely very different from my normal Doomshaper beast-heavy army. I liked having a lot more models on the field and it was definitely easier to manage positioning on the board with so many extra models.

The Champions showed me how tough they could be, With Surefoot and Brothers-in-Arms, they were sitting comfortably at a nigh untouchable DEF 16, and with the KSB, ARM 19. Only one champion was felled all game. They were even able to bring down a Castigator heavy warjack, though it did take a few turns of melee. They also finished off a paladin and Amon on the last turn.

Madrak didn't do too much this game besides casting Surefoot. I might need to be a lot more aggressive with him next time - I'm just used to shielding my warlock from harm while playing Doomshaper, who is much more frail.

Some notable events: pretty much the worst rolling I've seen in a long time on Broken Zealot's side. I think his horrible rolls pretty much lost him the game. He couldn't do any damage, couldn't hit, and just didn't get along well with his dice. He might need to set a few ablaze as a warning to the other dice to get their act together.

One other interesting note: the Mauler charged in for the caster kill on the third to last turn, but just couldn't hit with the last two attacks to finish the job. The next turn he was utterly mangled by Amon. I still need to keep in mind that Warcasters are tougher than I think, and I really need to devote more resources to the caster kill before trying to pull it off.

I can't really say I had a worst performer this game, as every model (including the Fell Caller!) did his part. The best performer would probably be the Champions. They were able to dictate the pace of the battle, and presented a wall of troll that could not be broken through.

Hopefully, next time Broken Zealot's dice will be more accomodating, so we can have a closer game. While it wasn't as exciting as last week, I did enjoy having the unkillable champions. :) I'm definitely looking forward to using them more in the future, and the models are starting to grow on me more now. I've got one guy set up kind of like the jumping guy in 300 (the one who flew through the air to chop off the emissary's arm). I think it'll be pretty fun to have him painted.

New Hordes Evolution Models

Someone on the Privateer Forums was able to snag a bunch of photos of the new Circle, Skorne, and Everblight models coming up for Evolution. I am really liking the ninja theme and I hope they stick with it. The Tharn Bloodtrackers on wolves I pretty much expected, and they look pretty nice too.

Sadly, no troll pics. BAH!

Didn't make it to the Hordes Tournament today...

Just too much work to do for next week. I really wanted to see what it was like...but c'est la vie.

Insert frowny troll face here.

Amazing battle against Amon ad-Raza

Wow. I had a great game tonight. Probably one of the most interesting thus far for me, as Broken Zealot (EDIT: his excellent summary located here) took a pretty neat warcaster, Amon ad-Raza. There were models getting knocked around left and right on both sides, with huge rolls and horrible misses by both of us too. Made for a really exciting and bloody game. On the last turn I only had Doomshaper, a Blitzer and a Fell Caller. He only had a Devout, the choir and Amon.

The Fell Caller actually did some useful things this game! He killed a paladin, some choir, and most importantly he made my warbeasts stand up after getting knocked around by the sandblasts coming out of the arc node. I think the difference this game was I really made an effort to hold him back as long as possible, and only use him to mop up injured units.

Doomshaper once again gets the MVP for throwing around tons of Accursed spells on things, doing quite a bit of damage and shutting down warjack actions on several turns. Other than Doomshaper though, most of my units were fairly useful tonight. The Impaler sacrificed himself for the greater good, with a courageous (and incredibly damaging) charge into a Castigator, the Mauler helped a lot with casting his animus on folks, and I actually used the Blitzer's animus to get him out of melee! I needed to regroup one turn, and the animus actually helped him avoid some free strikes so he could move away unmolested.

The only guys who didn't do much were the KSB and crew. They died pretty quickly to a few sandstorm blasts early on.

At first we tried to play some steamroller 3 scenarios, but gave them up quickly at the end of the first turn since it was clear that it was impossible for me to win since I was too slow. The scenario objective was to hold two points on the field at the end of your turn to win. Even though I ran full speed toward one point, I couldn't get there before Broken Zealot would get his second turn and hold both points. We ended up switching the scenario to Pendulum, and the game came down to the normal caster kill. I probably need to rethink my list in terms of tournament scenario viability, but for this Saturday's tournament I'm stuck with what I've got.

I'm really kind of disappointed with the quality of the Privateer Press scenarios, as they don't seem very well thought through, and definitely favor extremely fast armies. Broken Zealot pointed out that it would have been much better if you had to hold those points for an entire round, not just have an instant win situation, and I'd definitely have to agree. All the GW scenarios I've played have similar requirements.

Overall though, a very enjoyable game, though it ran a bit long. We didn't finish until 9pm, which is pretty late for us. Hopefully he didn't get in trouble with his wife!

Pics of Impaler progress so far...about 90% done now!

Here are the pics of the Impaler to date. I've just got a few last things to paint tonight and then he'll be finished!

I really like how the Beige leather came out, and it adds a nice mellow tone to the guy. I think I'm going to be using this color for other parts of my warband too. I think it goes very well with the red-brown leather.

To paint this beige color I started with a base coat of Bleached Bone (took about 3-5 coats to cover up the black primer...grr). Then I washed with a *very* watered down wash of Snakebite leather to give it that yellowish-beige 'old' feel. Then I just highlighted with Bleached Bone again and then finally with Skull White on the very edges.

I did his eyes in yellow, like the Mauler.



I also started the leather (cloth?) wrappings on his spears. I've been using Bubonic Brown with a light Brown Ink Wash to get the recesses and then highlighting again with Bubonic Brown. Honestly though I'm not sure if I like how it so far. On the one hand, it matches his leather foot wraps, but on the other hand, it's coming out looking somewhat dirty. I'm not sure if this is because of the old paint, or just my technique.

Looking at these pictures I can also see that I need to do a better job with the studs on his leather pants (the beige part). They don't seem to be showing up very well..I may need to use a darker metallic color to get them to stand out from the beige.

So now all that remains is to finish up the leather wrappings on his spears, the spear wood, the gem on his belt, and touch up his facial skin. I think I'd like to make the highlights a little more prominent in some places as it does look somewhat flat at the moment. Oh, and his wrist wraps, I'm still undecided what color I'm going to make those...maybe beige also?

Finished leather armor on Impaler

Did a little bit of work on the Impaler tonight between studying. I used a light beige color for the leather armor on the top and bottom of his quiver and also his kilt. I like the beige look as it's pretty unique and will look different from all the browns that other people do. I'd like to tweak it a little more though before posting as I think it really needs some more shadows to make it "jump" out more.

Pictures maybe tomorrow.

Ignominious Defeat Against the Menite Hordes!

Just a quick batrep update, I played another game against Broken Zealot's Feora list. We had originally planed to play a 4-way troll bash, but two of the people couldn't play/make it. As usual, I had my standard army. It was a really fun game, quick and brutal. I think it only lasted 3 turns total and as par for the course I had a lot of trouble with the zealots again. Their monolith bearer and the fire bombs really mess me up badly. I really need a trade/tie up unit to deal with them, which I just don't have when going beast heavy.

Overall I think I did do a little better than the last game though. I went straight for the caster assasination this time instead of trying to kill all his troops. On the last turn I went for the assasination with Doomshaper and just missed the kill by 2 hitpoints. In doing so, I had no fury left on me for transfers and so she blasted me in return, killing Doomshaper. As usual though, I forgot to roll my tough roll. Doh. I think I need to write it on my sheet next to his life bar. That way when I go to cross of his last box, I'll remember to roll. Ah well, guess I'm learning the hard way. :)

Terrain wasn't really an issue at all this game, and I almost feel like maybe there should be more terrain on the board to make things more interesting. I almost feel like we're just playing on a wide open field some games. Maybe we just need more toward the middle of the board and less on the outskirts where it doesn't really matter anyway.

The Fel Caller did nothing again as usual. I'm really not liking this guy much, at least against Menoth. The Blitzer was actually really nice today, using his Blitzer gun to take out the Choir leader and the Piper, as well as throw and slam some jacks around. The KSB was totally awesome, and his aura absorbed tons of damage throughout the fight. In the end though, I feel that I just don't have enough models on the board to deal with the hordes of Menites running across the field at me. Broken Zealot did a great job surrounding and outflanking my smaller army. Champions are definitely in order for the next game.

Broken Zealot should have some pictures up of the battle on his blog at some point I think, and you can find it here.

Second attempt at NMM

Here's my second try at the NMM on the Impaler spears. I think it's coming out a lot better. I only did one side of the spears though and I still need to do the other side (the opposite side of what's pictured). I basically wet blended from Shadow Grey mixed with Black up to Skull White on the edges. I think it captures the reflective quality of metal better than they used to, and I tried to imitate the photo that I posted a few days back.

I also did a lot of the leather armor he's wearing. I really like the reddish brown leather colors as it contrasts fairly well with the troll skin. I used a Scorched Brown base coat, and then covered most of that with Terracotta (I'm not sure if GW makes this color anymore...it was part of my 20 year old Space Marine paint set).

Next came a wash of 50:50 Brown Ink and Water. I then highlighted the edges with a mix of Golden Yellow and Terracotta, I think around three parts Terracotta and one part Golden Yellow. Doing this adds a nice "worn edges" look to the leather.

I also did the armor plates he's wearing on his forearms. I did these in metallic paints before I had decided to give NMM another try. Even so, I think they came out looking pretty nice, but it doesn't quite fit stylistically with the NMM spear tips. I'm undecided if I should redo all these armor plates or just leave them.

I do like the rusty, dirty look so I may just leave it as is. At least for now...maybe after I finish all the other models I'll come back to it and decide then whether to redo them in NMM.

All that's left to do now is to finish off the last parts of his leather armor (top and bottom of his quiver, and his loincloth). Oh, and his little wine barrel. While it's taken me a long time to finish up this guy, I think he'll look pretty sharp when he's finally in full color. I only wish I had more free time to paint, but sadly real life has gotten really hectic with multiple exams, projects, and taxes needing to be done. I hope I'll have him finished by next Wednesday though!