Warmachine Weekends

Last week I didn't really paint much even though I really intended to. Things were interrupted mainly because I had an unplanned night shift on wednesday and spent most of my free time that week doing house cleaning (which is also important!).

Despite my poor performance that week, I made up for it on the weekend. I played Niek for a game against his Khador and another one against some Skorne that he proxied. I lost both games as I still struggle with the basic warmachine rules and I don't really have a good strategy figured out yet. I probably need to do some experimenting with different armylists next time.

After the battles, Niek told me he'd been thinking about getting rid of his Galleon. I've seen Niek's Galleon before and I remembered that he painted it in pretty much the same colour scheme that I used in my own army. Long story short: I have now acquired a new Galleon! And I don't even need to paint it!

DaanofWar presents: "The Galleon" a.k.a. "The Awesomest Collosal".

Also present in the above picture, are the two Croe's Cutthroats that I painted on sunday. Now I also have that unit finished. Finally.

This week I hope to get started on some characters that I've been meaning to paint for a long time. My chaos lord on jetbike, Drake McBain and my chaos sorcerer with wings. If I can get that done this week I'll truly have accomplished something for once. So that's it for this week's update. See you next week!

Death to the False Emperor!

Warmachine, Chaos Space Marines + The 24 Hour Painting Challenge

Now for a real blog post!

During the last couple of weeks I've been busy getting back into the hobby. What mostly got me started again was Rob, reminding me that I signed up for his warmachine tournament. Luckilly, I finally had some free time on my hands, so I ordered some last-minute mini's and paint-rushed them just in time for the weekend. I managed to take some pics of the first and last battles:

First battle was against a hard Menoth army led by the Harbinger. We were both rusty with the rules and struggling with our plays a couple of times, but luckily I managed to pull through with a last minute assassination.

Second battle was against Niek, who I play regularly and I lost to his Khador as always, but the third battle was against Sjoerd. I haven't played against Sjoerd in a long time and was surprised by his new Retribution army. Not knowing any of the rules for Retribution models saw me make a few bad decisions and my inability to damage his Hyperion did the rest. I held out for quite a while, but eventually lost on scenario.

Here's a sample of one of the models I painted for the tournament. Quite happy with the result, even though I had to rush them a bit.

The rest of the tournament was great and I actually won Best Painted on account of having the nicest painted army out of the two people who actually painted their entire army. I always seem to forget that Warmachine players don't usually take painted armies to local tournaments. Which is rather odd, seeing as they have less models to paint than your average warhammer/40k player. Maybe it's just something local.

Anyhow, after the warmachine tournament I decided to put some much needed attention into my Chaos Space Marines. I tried out a couple of list ideas and last week I played an actual game again with Koen, Dirk and Michiel. The game was great fun, and me and Michiel's orks won in the end. The win was more due to Michiel's orks than my own marines unfortunately. It seems the new edition really has my army stumped and I'll probably need to come up with some better lists sometime soon.

Decided to take a photo from something more than just mini's this time. I came to regret my decision almost immediately afterwards.

I was on a roll that weekend and proceeded to participate in UnderEmpire.net's 24 Hour Painting Challenge. I only did 18 hours in the end, but that was more than enough to finish my remaining chaos marine infantry, an Aiana model for someone in my D&D group, a dark apostle and 2 raptors. Now I finally finished most of my basic infantry for the chaos marines. Next up are some random characters, 2 warmachine models and a bunch of cultists.

The combined result of my 24 Hour Challenge run.

So, I'll leave it at that for now and hopefully next post I'll have some newly painted stuff to show!

Death to the False Emperor!

Butchered

So yeah, I went and had myself an actual warmachine battle yesterday. Considering how infrequently I play the game I'm actually kind of proud of how I did. It was me and my Magnus theme force against Niek and his Khador. We went for a killbox scenario with 2 objectives.

The deployment. Niek's Khador (above) vs my Mercenaries (below).

I've mentioned Niek in a post from august back when we were having a couple of games for a Journeyman League. Niek's brilliant Butcher army is one I've faced before. So far I've never quite been able to win. I've come close a couple of times, but the raw power that is The Butcher Unleashed (the third and most powerful incarnation) keeps catching me off guard. 

The army he used yesterday was something new he was testing. It used a group of 2 devastators and 2 demolishers to block LOS to the Butcher and serve as a very literal wall to his opponent's troops. He also took some pikemen, orrick, corbeau, a wardog, a greylord solo and a gobber tinker (if I recall correctly).

The Butcher stands behind his Clam Wall and some Iron Fang Pikemen.

I was using my old Magnus army. It's a cool feeling to be able to use models that you painted at least 2 or 3 years ago and still have them (kinda) work on the tabletop. True, this army definately needs some extra love and care before it's tournament worthy, but for a casual pickup game in the local store? Why the heck not?

Cuthroats/Saxon Orrick in the woods, a line of Long Gunners, Magnus, Gorman, Jacks and an assortment of Steelheads.

Since we were sort of pressed for time, we went fast into the game. Niek moving his stuff forward almost immediately and after his turn 2, we already had a couple of dead long gunners and halberdiers. I spent my first turn moving forward, setting up and used my cuthroats to take some potshots at one of the butcher's dogs, hoping to take one out early. Unfortunately that didn't work. 

I needed a very good turn 2 to turn things around in my favor and get his caster in a vulnerable position. Which, when you're talking about the Butcher Unleashed behind a wall of devastators, is not an easy thing to do.

End of Niek's Turn 2.

My turn 2 went pretty well despite a couple mistakes in activation order. I'm incredibly rusty after all and still unclear on some of the basic warmachine rules. I wasted a lot of time trying to kill corbeau, while I could've just been killing pikemen. 

Completely forgot about Gorman DiWulfe, who could've made my Mangler's job of denting the clam wall a lot easier. I had a good plan though and with a little luck from the dice I was able to silence the Butcher with Croe and get Magnus behind a wall of his own Jacks, not giving any points away for the scenario.

Oops.

Alas! Once again I underestimated the maelstrom of destruction that is the Butcher Unleashed. Apparently this guy is able to march through his own wall, completely smash a temper metal boosted renegade and hack Magnus apart with focus to spare. 

To be fair, we were pressed for time at that point and with a little more thinking and planning I probably could've foreseen this and positioned Magnus a bit better. At least far enough back that the Butcher wouldn't have been able to reach him after hacking appart one of my jacks. Oh well... Maybe next time. 

All in all it was a great game. I learned a lot and we finished the whole thing just in time for me to make my night shift.

Death to the False Emperor!

Floral Pattern Intensifies

New blog post this time because I've been busy with my Menoth army!

It took me a couple of months but I finally finished the stuff I posted about last time: the Choir and the Castigator and the Crusader.

Check 'em out!

Still going strong with the floral pattern!

The choir scrolls are still empty due to lack of inspiration. I figured I'd have enough time to think of something cool since there's still a lot of stuff left to do for this army. I still have two infantry units to go and a bunch of solo's and wreck markers. I also assembled another warcaster (the testament), but our cats stole his base. It's frustrating how difficult it is to get your hands on warmachine bases these days, so I'll probably be saving him for last.

My 'menoth' shelf.

I've been making solid progress these last few weeks though, so hopefully with some luck I'll be able to show off some more completed mini's somewhere next week. In the meantime I've agreed to meet up with a friend today and actually play some games for a change. I'll probably be using my mercs though, since I very much hate playing with an unfinished army. I'll try to take some pictures and stuff and see if I can make a cool battle report.

Death to the False Emperor!

Short Update

Here's a short painting update on the flowery menoth army:

A repenter and a heirophant. The white on the hierophant was trickier than I anticipated. This whole exaggerated contrast thing on the robes leaves very little room for error.

These guys are next. I'm a bit further done on the crusader while I post this. So far it's tempting to paint all my warjacks first since they're so easy.

The end line is starting to look a bit out of place now..

...

Death to the False Emperor!

Growing Strong

Once again, it's been a while.

Last time, I talked about the new chaos book, a new campaign and how I was going to rebuild my army. Long story short: Dropped out of the campaign and the chaos marines are gathering dust.

My new focus during the past months has been my new Protectorate of Menoth warmachine army. As of today, everything in the army has been assembled and basecoated and some models even have their first coats of paint on them.

Kreos and a repenter (bases unfinished). I'm going to try and do a nice, pleasant floral pattern theme this time.

I've been having some games also as part of a Journeyman League with Niek (local press ganger/hobby hero). The games were really fun and made me want to get back into the Warmachine side of things. After I'm done with my Menoth, I plan on doing some work on my old Mercenary army in between projects as well.

To be honest, the past few months have been kind of a burn-out wargamingwise. I suppose everyone has them every once in a while, but it still makes me feels like crap when I think about all the unfinished armies and mini's I still have lying around the appartment that I haven't done anything with for over a month.

Not any more though. Weekly blog posts from now on.

I can do it, I can do it, I can do it.

Death to the False Emperor!

I played Chaos Space Marines... before they were popular!

Long time no blog, folks. I would apologize for the lack of updates, but that would mean I'd have to repeat myself for about the hundreth time. So, I've decided not to. Instead of apologizing, I'm going to give a bit of an update about what happened during the past couple months. 

In case any of you were wondering what happened to the campaign that I was blogging about: it ended a while ago. I didn't really play any more battles in it either since the campaign took a bit of a break after the guy who ran it handed it over to someone else. It was during that break in the campaign that me and my girlfriend decided we wanted to start renting an appartment. This effectively took me out of the hobby for a couple of months and I completely missed the end of the campaign. 

Not to worry though! A new campaign will be starting up this friday. I already had some great idea's for a new armylist. The armylist needs a lot of things that were not a part of my previous list. The whole rhino setup I used to have is simply not effective in the new edition. Also, with the new Chaos book there are better uses for my points. For now I've decided on a strategy that uses big 20 man chaos space marine units with plasma that are led by fearless HQ's. I'm also going to use two small units of melta-raptors and 20 cultists, divided into 2 units of 10 or 4 units of 5 (haven't quite decided yet). Don't know what else I'm going to use to flesh out the list yet, but this is going to be the basic framework. The following pictures show some of my attempts to modify some of my old marines to fit into the new list.

 Go, Bitz Box Go!

That'll be all for now, folks! I've spent to much time on this blog already and not enough time working on the army. I've also made a renewed effort to practice the guitar more often and I've been hooked on Pokémon White 2 as if my life depended on it.

If only Warhammer was more like Pokémon... (I would be able to fix my army on the way to work)

Death to the False Emperor!