Recruiting for the Tau Empire

I haven’t been posting too much lately, because I’ve been very busy painting. Tau to be exact – dozens of them. I have 1200pts painted so far, with just 300 more to go before the long weekend (this weekend) here in Canada.

Below are some of the models I’ve been painting over the last 2 weeks – and it has just taken 2 weeks to get all these done – with about 30hrs of painting all told. Tau do paint up fast!

I have 2 full units of Stealth Suits, almost 500pts of Crisis Suits, a lrge Kroot horde of mixed kroot and hounds, a painted Hammerhead, 2 Broadside suits and a whole whack of drones to accompany them.

The drones are especially interesting – they can be customized to accomodate your Tau force into a specialization – shooty, accurate or defensive. I have a good mix chosen with my army, which I have yet to play, to keep my opponent honest. Because the Tau are mostly BS:3, I’ve upgraded several units with markerlight drones.

I found painting the vehicles particularly easy, but time consuming. There’s more technique to choosing appropriate colours than getting the painting right. I did have some help though - all these models were already built and primed, so all I had to do was paint.

Some models are mangled though – like these Broadsides. The metal railguns uptop have clumps of miscast metal all over them – so where there should be smooth lines, there’s cludge, and it really takes away from the elegance of the Tau high-tech. I’m also disappointed in the tiny freakin’ ball joints that attach such a heavy model to the feet on the base. It’s a fragile attachment that has broken on a couple of models – not just the Broadsides.

I really like these Kroot – they paint up fast with base colours and then a wash. After the wash, just highlight with some of the original colour and you’re done!

Below is a pic of some more Crisis Suits in progress – all in all, each Suit takes about 1hr to paint properly. The most time consuming part is all teh finicky highlighting of edges, which really make these models come alive!

Online with World of Warcraft

After many years of watching, and many years of wondering, I finally took the MMO plunge and am playing World of Warcraft. I had to be pushed though – my brother got me a subscription for 3 months worth of play time – so after an hour long DVD install, and about an hour and a half of patching – I was ready to go!

Here are my stats:
Name: Dovad
Race: Dwarf
Class: Paladin ( I usually never play a fighter)
Server: Eitrigg

Dovad is on the East continent, starting in the Anvil Marr region, in the town of Dun Morogh. I tried my best to make him look like me, and for the most part he does. I debated making a female Dwarf for the simple reason that, if I’m going to stare at someone’s ass while gaming, it might as well be shapely. I’m already level 2 after 15 minutes of gaming – I’ve killed my 8 wolves, and now have gloves of boar handling.

I’m going back online now to check my internet speed at night, as well as maybe bop a few bunnies on the head. See you online!

High Elf White Lions – One Rank

high-elf-white-lions

One rank of White Lions is complete! I traded for these White Lions many years ago, before the latest HE book, and let the models sit. Before the 6th ed. HE book, White Lions just weren’t worth taking – they were too expensive and a rare choice too, I think.

They’re an excellent choice now. They’re the strongest HE in the army (outside of characters) with S:4, and great weapons. That alone – along with their stubborn leadership of 8, make them worth taking in any game you have small, heavily armoured units to fight across the table: cavalry, 40mm elites, etc.

I really like these models – though they’re chunky metals. I would like to have seen these guys redone rather than the Shadow Warriors GW thinks they had to improve. White Lions are all about the axe, but these chubby axe handles would scare a dwarf off. They do have lots of character though – I’ve painted they’re helmet plumes orange (washed with red) to make them match my Lion Charioteers. They took a little longer to paint, as my prototype was done in this rank.

White Lions
Points on the table: 81pts (with musician)     Time to paint: 4hrs

More High Elf Spearmen

High Elf Spearmen (2x20)

Finally – after 5 or 6 years of owning High Elves, I’ve finally got 2 x 20 man regiments. I’ve been stuck at 32 models for years, which allowed me to field a single full unit at whatever I wanted, but always a second, too-small one. So I often never took more than 1 regiment of Spearmen.

At 9pts a guy, with full command, (and I always take full command with spearmen – why not?) a unit of 20 is just 205pts. That’s a good deal for 3 ranks of fighting warriors moving at 5″, WS:4, I:5. On paper they should:

• be hitting at 66% 
• be wounding at 50%

But it never works out that way. I’ve seen 18 attacks get no wounds at all against the most average of troops, because they’re S:3. By the time you get through the math above, and factor in even poor armour saves, you often get no kills at all, which is why I’m going to start adding nobles into the front rank. These guys need to get more kills to win combats.

Because HE are so expensive per model, you need every Elf in the game to be fighting, or contributing in some way. You can’t buy your way to a +3 rank bonus at 9 (or more) points per guy.

The 8 guys I painted tonight took me about 3hrs to do – there were no special troopers. There’s always a longer paint time to light coloured troops.

High Elf Spearmen
Points on the table (2×20): 410     Time to Paint: 20hrs 

Skaven Ratling Team Complete

Ok, so I bought a Skaven Ratling Gun Team a couple of weeks ago. They’ve been taunting me in their assembled, primer stage for a couple of days now, so I whacked some paint on them at lunch today. I’m pretty happy with the results.

They match the Mechrite Red of my rank and file units, but the sculpts are slightly different from the new plastics. I like the new plastic heads better.

Skaven Ratling Gun Team
Points on the table: 55pts     Time to paint: 1hr

Ogre Butcher is Complete

Ok – I really don’t like this model. I already have a butcher model but felt I needed a second one for my army. I bought this one on sale at Dueling Grounds last year, so it was the right price for a model I kind of resented having to use.

The kit comes with 3 variable right arms, and 3 heads. The first butcher I assembled used the best of these, and since I didn’t want an identical 2nd model, I had to use the sub-standard options: butt-ugly head, and poorly sculpted (very rough) poorly fitting cleaver arm. I even had an above average amount of putty work to do.

But he’s done now. Maybe I’ll revisit him in the future and give him a second chance at painting love, but GW really screwed up on this model. It was rushed out the door, and it shows.

Ogre Kindom Butcher
Points on the table: 130     Time to paint: 5hrs(!) (assemble, putty, paint)

Warhammer Giant is Complete

This model is a fantastic kit. I remember when it came out – I bought one that week. And since then it’s been sitting around – fully assembled and primed – until I finally decided to “recruit” it for my Skaven army.

Of course the Warhammer giant is usable in many armies – my Skaven, Ogres and TK can use one. (Remember kids, the giant is essentially a Dogs of War model, and the rules for it allow for its inclusion into almost a half dozen Warhammer armies.)

I’ll admit that a giant can be problematic to include in an army. These guys draw a lot of fire and can fight unpredictably. But they’re a terror bomb when you need one, can fight exceedingly well, and just plain look good on the table. Stubborness helps. Jumping up and down helps.

This guy was painted in about 10hrs. While I paint I always leave the pots I used next to my model – it helps me remember what colours I used, and its fun to count up how many were used when I’m finally complete. This guy needed 21 different colours and washes. That’s probably a record for me. It’s very tempting to paint the giant in whacky colours – he’s got detrious from several armies strapped to his body: lizardmen skins on one arm, Bretonnian and Empire shields on the other. It’s obvious he’s scavenged equipment from all over. But in the end I decided to keep his acquisitions in the red and green colour groupings. This would help keep him under colour control, but it also matched the accent colours on my Skaven and OK models.

Overall I love the model, but I particularly like the contrast he adds to any army I might field.
Warhammer Giant
Points on the table: 205     Time to paint: 10hrs

Ogre Kingdoms Additions

These 3 guys are a 180pt unit.

So while I’m on this new painting frenzy I decided to dust off my current collection of Ogre Kingdoms models and see how many points I had painted. Turns out it was just under 700, which really shocked me because I’ve had OK since 2005. I’ve had many models assembled and flashed, but never quite got around to painting them. So I set myself a goal to get a 1500pt force together and painted.

These 2 units, plus the Skaven used as gnoblars, (as I refuse to buy gnoblar models when I had so many hordes models already kicking around) will get me to about 1300pts. Next I’ll work on my Slave Giant, and that will almost get me to 1500pts. Throw in some magic items and luck gnoblars, and I’m there. I’m very interested in having a 1500pt game with these guys. I’ve only ever used them in Warband games of 500pts or less, where they usually kick ass.

These 3 Bulls are 130pts.

I’ll have them to 2000pts easily with a couple more characters and unit of gnoblar trappers. The Ogre Kingdom army has to walk a fine line between power and numbers – we’ll see where I end up, but it would be nice to have a 3rd, fully painted, 2000pt army! It doesn’t count unless it’s painted. Ogres are so easy to paint. You can see I’ve got some white guys in my units now – that’s because the foundation paint, Tallarn Flesh, covers black opaquely in 1 coat. Add some Ogryn Flesh wash and you’re done!  I might put tattoos on some of these guys. I’d probably use the designs right out of the book.

Whither, Warmachine?

OK, so here’s my problem with Warmachine at the moment – yes I’ve played alot of games, and I’m probably burned out on it. Yes, I fell into a painting hiatus-hole (thank-you Skaven for getting me out of that). The real problem is that I don’t know what Warmachine actually is these days, so it’s on hold until that gets well and truly sorted out.

Here’s what I mean – the Warmachine MkII testing rules came out, and my fellow gaming buddies and I embraced it. I even printed and bound this thing because I knew I’d be using it alot. I printed the cards, I made the lists, and in the end the games were good. Pretty much the same, but better; and I liked the new army list assembly procedure. But then, we were all pretty much torn as to which version we’d be playing when we got together, because some of us wanted to use our Horde armies, now incompatible with MkII, and although the rules were now better, the illustration-less, index-less rulebook was sometimes a pain to use.

Then there was a MkII update. And I refused to reprint or disassemble my “bound” copy, or use the “final” stat cards, which weren’t cards at all now, but bloody great big 8.5 x 11″ sheets of ugly layout. And the real rules weren’t that far away – January it seems? I can wait. With so many choices of rules to play now (3), and without everyone in the group up to date on all of them, Warmachine took a back seat; where it will probably remain until January.

Until then though, my interest in Fantasy has resurfaced (thanks to Skaven), and the club activity at my FLGS is way ahead of Warmachine. We’ll see what January brings – but I’m interested – is anyone else feeling the same way about this great game? Does Warmachine feel like it’s in purgatory?

Now the same thing will happen with Hordes. The new MkII Rules for Hordes are online at Privateer, but there are no cards! Just 8.5 x 11″ pages! Hey PP, I know that takes time, but come on – way more convenient than 167 pages of stats.

New Skaven Army Started

It occurs to me that although I haven’t been posting recently, I have been doing a lot of gaming related activities, so now’s the time to catch up. The most noteworthy of these activities is the start to my new Skaven army.

Skaven Plague Monks. This unit took about 12hrs to assemble and paint.

And why would I start yet another WHFB army?

I have a full HE and TK army – I have remnants of OK, Chaos and Demon armies (thanks GW for splitting them up) and I still have Lizardmen models, believe it or not. So why Skaven? When Skaven were released, I got nostalgic for my old O&G horde army – an army I sold off more than 3 years ago now, and it was the right thing to do at the time, because the new O&G book was out, and it totally undermined my almost all Goblin units. The new Skaven models were cool plastic kits, and the most important of them were plastic – I just wanted to paint some! A modest investment got me the army book and a box of ClanRats and I was off.

Skaven clanrats unit. This took about 12hrs to assemble and paint.

The New ClanRat Models - The new ClanRat models are a huge step forward for GW. I remember with the old Night Goblin models that piecing a regiment of 20 guys together was brutally time consuming for what they were – 2pts apiece! ClanRats on the other hand are 2-part models, superbly done. Their bodies (head to toe) are 1 piece – you only have to attach the right wepon arm. DONE! If you want, you can add a shield for 3 parts, but I only do shields on my first rank anyway – they’re so small, they’re not easy to see in successive ranks of rats. There’s also very little flash on the models – probably the least of any kit I’ve bought from GW – which is great for me, as I want to get units painted quickly, and really resent the time wasted de-flashing models.

The second best thing about the new ClanRats are how easy they are to paint. The high detail lends itself really well to tidy paint jobs and a covering wash. DONE! Maybe a bit of highlighting with the original washed colour afterwards, but only if the rat doesn’t look good enough as it is, which is most often the case. Awesome models all around. Quick to assemble and easy to paint – that makes us horde army guys really happy.

Plague Monks – These guys have been plastic for a long time now, but they were my second choice of unit to paint, because with a unit of these guys, you can get a Hero level Plague Priest to accompany them, and therefore put a Plague Furnace on the table. With a horde army, I’m all about getting big points on the table whenever possible – high cost units are very welcome indeed.

Like the ClanRats, the Plague Monks were easy to paint, although they’re made from 4 parts each. Their robes are smooth, and their weapons plain, so you can blast through these guys on the painting table, in about a day – that’s 8hrs kids – that’s a “billable” day for me. Yes they’re that fast.

The Skaven Promise – I promised myself I wouldn’t buy additional Skaven units until I painted what I had, and so far it’s been quite fun to stick to that promise. I’m excited to finish a unit, as not only will it look good, but I eagerly search the book for my next, most logical purchase. (Which I can then buy guilt free!) I’ll let you know how that comes along…