Blood Bowl

Greetings,

After posting the Dark Elves up before Christmas I thought they they would have been finished before the New Year. Unfortunately I was hit by something horrible. I got hit by apathy. The Dark Eldar models are the main issue for this I think. They are really intricately detailed and for myself, who is not one for a lot of intricate painting is the main issues with them I think.

So running under the old axiom of 'a change is as good as a rest,' I have managed to build two more Blood bowl teams in the past two weeks.

The first team that I built was a Goblin team. I purchased a pair of metal Stone Trolls, a Fanatic plastic box and I went halves with a box of Night Goblins with one of the other gamers at Orctown. This gave me 2 Trolls, 10 Goblins, a Fanatic, a Looney (with a chainsaw on a chain....), a Pogoer (not on a pogo stick, but attached to a bounding squig) and a Bombadier. This is a good selection of Goblin grunts and positionals for a Goblin team.

The other team is Norse. I bought a box of Chaos Marauders and an Ogre Kingdom Yhetee. This gives me 8 or 10 Linemen, 8 or 10 positionals and a Yeti.

I got the Goblin team, just because. A team full of potential but also full of goo. I had a game with them on Sunday against a Lizardmen team being played by a Korean newbie. I scored first, then got 3 smashed in against my by Skinks. There were no casualties on either side, which was, strange, but they were a lot of fun. I need to check their rules a bit more though.

I haven't played the Norse on the table yet. I have played them a lot on the Blood Bowl game on the PC and they are really good. Then again I did start playing Ogres to start with...

Hopefully I will be able to get these guys fully painted soon. Hopefully before Sunday.

In other news, since I have been having sooo much fun pummelling the hell out of people in the Blood Bowl PC game I decided to get together all of the Blood Bowl gamers who go to Orctown and play as many games of Blood Bowl as possible. On Sunday, not only did we get 8 games played on two pitches, we also got some of the Koreans joining in as well. Something that they have talked about doing, but never done in the year that the game was available to buy at Orctown.

Due to the sheer joy of the carnage the remaining Sundays in January are going to be for the Korea Cup. Pretty much run as a basic League for Blood Bowl. Each player must play someone different in the League. The two players with the best 3 scores go into a final game for the imaginary cup. It has been so much fun and there are more people saying that they want in as well. If it goes really well I may try to get people to get teams sorted for a Summer tourney.

Anyway, I'll leave you be with my mindless ramblings.

Chat anon.

Regards,

English Pillock

Blood Bowl

Greetings,

Here are some photos of the Blood Bowl teams that are either finished or being built.

Dark Elf Team

These are made with a mix of the Wych and the Warrior boxes from the new Dark Eldar Range. They are a bit of a pain to put together, but they look decent enough.

Maxed out there are 2 Assassins (mirror masks), 2 Runners (green hair), 2 Witch Elves (pink hair), 4 Blitzers (fully armoured with enclosed helmets) and 5 Line Elves (blue hair and bald). Although to start off with the specialists will be Line Elves.

Lizardmen Team

The Lizardman Team has been up and running for ages. It only received it's final addition upon my return to Korea with the Kroxigor.

There are 6 Saurus, 12 Skinks and now a Kroxigor. Enough for a variation of the basic set-up and a few options for the team getting bigger and more advanced.

Khemri Team

The Khemri team was another team that I threw together quickly. There is a mess of Skeletons and the maximum numbers of each specials. I really like the four Mummies or Tomb Guardians (they have had their names altered with the new BB editions). The blue and red makes them stand out a lot more.

Ogre Team

The Ogres are my favourite team to play with. They are one of the hardest to play with but I have so much fun annoying the hell out of the other coaches when they lose team member after team member to Ogres tapping their players on their heads. Unfortunately they also get hamstrung with Bonehead a lot, but I have fun with them none-the-less.

I hope you guys like them. I will see about putting up a post about the Cygnar that I have recently been given to show you how they look.

Chat anon.

Regards,

English Pillock

Current projects

Greetings,

Again I apologise for not posting anything recently. I have been working on my miniatures though. I do have several projects going on at the moment.

1) Cygnar

I have been given a 25pts Cygnar warband from one of my American friends who is leaving Korea.

Prime Caine

Cyclone heavy Warjack

Hunter light Warjack

6 Gun Mages

Gun Mage Captain

6 Long Gunners

Longunner Command

They need to be re-painted and are being done so. A two-tone blue and a purple colour plates with copper, gold light and dark steel for the Warjacks.

The troopers will have khaki and leather brown added.

2) Greeks, Romans and Celts.

Celtic Warlord

Celtic BSB

88 Celts

3 Chariots

Consul

19 Praetorians

30 Legionary

Strategos

51 Hoplites

16 Peltasts

Slowly going through the Celts first. Once they are done I'll be finishing the Romans. It is a simple scheme and should be quick to finish once I get in the mood.

The Greeks will be painted up as Spartans even though they have more generic armour and dress styles.

3) High Elves

I have backed off painting the High Elves as I have been thoroughly annoyed with the Phoenix Guard that I have recently purchased. They are insane to put together and to rank up. When you add in Caraydran he throws everything out. When I take a bit more time to get some of the other projects out of the way I will come back to them.

4) Dark Elf and Lizardmen Blood Bowl teams

I have been looking at the Dark Eldar miniatures and I have got a few of them and I have decided to get a box of Wyches and a box of Warriors to throw a team together. I have the two Assassins and a Witch Elf built. Going to throw more miniatures together soon. I'm only going to have 15 of them though.

As far as the Lizardmen team goes I have added a Kroxigor to the team. It is one of the older Kroxigor models put on a 40mm round base and re-painted.

5) Lizardmen

One of my friends got me a box of Temple Guard for Christmas. These are going to be made into a second unit of Temple Guard for my second Slann. I have had a look at the rules for 8th after I was planning to use 2 Slann in a 3500pts list. Since we are still limited to 12 power dice in a single magic phase.

Well this is pretty much all that I have going at the moment. A lot I know, but I have a lot of things to paint.

Regards,

English Pillock

Back in Korea.

Greetings,

First off I feel that I must apologise for taking such a long hiatus between this post and my last. I got into a bit of a funk while waiting to get back to Korea. I've been back two weeks and I've had more games in those two weeks than I had in the 17 I was in the UK!

I have been thoroughly pummelled in 8th Edition so far. I have still yet to find a good balance in 8th yet, although I have yet to play with my Lizardmen as of yet. Played a game with my Elves, 2 for my Ogres and a game of 40K with my Nids.

Photos will be up relatively quickly, but not as of yet. Hopefully I will have something in the following week or so.

Regards,

English Pillock

WAAC: Why I loathe it. Part 2 of ?

Greetings,

It's been a while and I will apologise for this is not meant to be a rant, although again it will end up being so. I know this for a fact.

In my last WAAC post I talked about my first experience of dealing with WAAC players en mass. It wasn't a pleasant experience for myself nor for those who were used to playing to the fluff or for fun.

More recently I have seen people who do WAAC for pick-up games. Normally they don't have a list prepared and then once they have seen the enemy army or list they prepare one to counter it. the writing of the list is normally accompanied by some of the following;

• It's written at the gaming venue.
• It takes about an hour.
• It can't be understood unless you know half a dozen dead languages and have three PhD's in cryptography and having grown up in Bletchley Park*1.
• It is written while they are constantly bitching about their opponent's list.
• They always asking for more points.
• They are always complaining if any restrictions are in place.
• They want to proxy miniatures because of a specific rule they have works amazingly effectively against your army.
• Their armies are often poorly painted.
• They are literally just thrown into or tipped out of a box.
• They look like they have been put together by someone sneezing over the miniature when they have a cold and shoving the rest of the parts at it, hoping that they'd stick.
• Finally they always say 'It's not the best list I can come up with.'

Normally people with lists like this aren't fun to play against. If something goes wrong they blame everything but themselves.

• 'It's not a good list.'
• 'I didn't have enough points.'
• 'I can't win the game unless I kill every model of yours.'
• 'I don't do objectives.' - I swear I was going to kill this guy...
• 'I haven't had time to make a good list.'
• 'Are we using the latest FAQ?' - I nearly DID kill this guy.

Even throughout all of these excuses and attempts to have a good game, I have often felt as if I'd just been in a WAAC tournament. It's not a feeling I like.

I actually have a few lists for each of my armies upon my person when I'm gaming. I can throw together a list in about 15 minutes, no matter the restrictions. As far as my armies for Warhammer go I have Ogres (apparently good in 8th, but one of the weakest in 7th), Bretonnia (see the comment about Ogres) and Lizardmen.

Now Lizardmen were got before the newer Army book came out. They were faring rather poorly on the power scale. Saurus were over-priced. Armies were small and under-powered, unless you went with one of the few internet lists available. Then along came the new army book. Nearly everything got a boost AND they got new shiny things. A horde of Stegadons crashed through the undergrowth, Skinks appeared in even greater numbers and the Slann were insane in the magic phase if upgraded properly. New plastics made them more affordable too.

I played them under the new army book for a bit. I was scared at how many more of the Lizardmen you could fit in an army. For myself I always like to take thematic armies. So I tried the Saurus Horde. Using only models with Saurus on them. I had 3 blocks of Saurus Warriors with spears, a big unit of Cold one cavalry, a Carnosaur Lord and two other Saurus heroes. I ended up just marching up the field and eating an Empire artillery army. I had managed to crush them in four turns. After this game I stopped playing Lizardmen for months. My opponent didn't even manage to destroy a single unit. This wasn't for lack of trying though.

I went back to my Ogres and a few months later picked up Bretonnians. I was going again for a thematic list. All cavalry. Sounded good. The main issue with the Bretonnian cavalry that they can't do anything if they don't break the enemy on the charge. So I bulked up my army with Peasants. Nothing too severe. Just made it more like an actual army. Knights were more or less ALWAYS in the majority. It was always the poor sods in the infantry who outnumbered them 270 to 1. I actually started having a chance at winning a game. The knights died in a multitude of horrible ways, but the Peasants normally survived. Ummm... sorry for rambling...

My main point is that just because it is a pick up game, doesn't mean that you should treat it as a tournament or bitch, whinge and whine if it doesn't happen according to plan.

It's a one off.

Apart from the 'I must win every game,' attitude playing a WAAC at a pick up game is not an occurrence that happens too often. People who do WAAC refuse to play it as a GAME. They, again, treat it as a job and it takes the fun out of it for people who don't do similar.

What I'd like to see is people playing smaller games, or playing under limits as to what they can use. For example in 40K only using 1 HQ and Troops choices without vehicles, special or heavy weapons, for Warhammer having one hero and only using Core choices.

Simple things to make gamers think on how to use their armies effectively without having to resort to an internet list from BOLS, Warseer or Bolter and Chainsword. I know there will always be some people who won't like it, but if some people can start playing outside of their comfort zone they will, hopefully, become a better person to game against for those who don't play as competitively as them.

Regards,

English Pillocket

*1- Bletchley Park was the place in England where the German Enigma machine code, Italian Air and Naval codes, and most of the Japanese Military codes were cracked during WWII. It is now the National Museum of Computing as well as being used half a dozen other roles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bletchley_Park

A busy week ahead...

Greetings,

Now I know that I have been a bit lapse in putting up posts recently. Especially considering how I started off. There are a few main reasons for this. Primarily I have had my contract extended twice due to my company going slightly nuts and my replacement teacher deciding not to take the job he applied for.

Well this week I have managed to do 37 Skink skirmishers, 3 Skink characters, touched up another Skink and painted a Saurus hero. Today I managed to base all of the Skinks while I was at Orctown abusing a freind who was painting up some EmoElves (High Elves painted with red skirts, blue trim and dark steel mail) after he gave up on painting white.

While I am back in England I am lending my Lizardmen to one of my friends. He hasn't got a fantasy army and with 8th Edition being released soon he wants to have dinosaur stompy action upon other people's armies. I'm going to be giving him the Lizardmen next weekend so I want to have the army fully painted by then. A tall order methinks, but anyway....

Here is a list of what I have left to paint and base:

Engine of the God's howdah and all 5 of the Skink crew.

2 Jungle Swarms

18 Skink weapon beast handlers

Basing for 3 Salamanders and 3 Razordons

5 Skink Skirmishers

10 Saurus Cold one rider (2 command groups and 4 riders)

10 Cold Ones

2 Cold Ones for basing

Now although this seems like a lot, I did manage to do a mess of Skinks in two days and basing them in one massive basing session today. What I will do is put a post up of what I have done every day with a photo and hopefully post a photo of them all painted up when I'm at Orctown on this coming Sunday. This is going to be rather insane, but I'd like to be able to throw down a 5000pts game with two of my own armies, since I have two armies with 6000pts, but giving a bit of variation within the lists. It should be fun to see though, especially with the rumours of 8th leading towards scenario-based battles.

Regards,

English Pillock

Recent painting

Greetings,

I apologise for not posting a lot up recently. Truth be told the first time I picked up a paintbrush with actual paint on it was on Saturday. Since the last time was the 20th of May with my Khador, I really needed to get some more painting done. These guys were all partially done, so it's not as if I had to do all of these from scratch. But 18 Skink Skirmishers, 2 Skink Chiefs (from the Stegadon boxes) and my Cold One Saurus hero.

I still need to flock them and neaten up their base edges with black, but these are done as much as I want to do them. I'm not one for going back and dealing with mistakes if they aren't too glaring. Like I know that one of the Skinks has only a single eye painted white, the other is orange. If anyone asks he is winking lewdly at another Skink.

Regards,

English Pillock

Random 2010 WFB League photos and More Khador...

Greetings,

Just to break up from the massive wall of text that was the last post here are pictures from last weekend. The top 7 are from the Orctown WFB League 2010. The games were Daemons vs Vampire Counts, Daemons vs Lizardmen and Lizardmen vs Lizardmen.

Here are some pictures of my Winter Guard that I bought on the weekend. I still see the Khador symbol as a Skaven glyph though...

Sorry that the photos are dark. The camera flash was too severe and the sun was being highly uncooperative....

I used a similar scheme to my Warjacks and my Bretonnians. They look pretty good in my opinion. Not as bright and shiny as PP's stuff, and I think it looks better. I always prefer the gritty and slightly shabby instead of the new paint job that a lot of other modellers like.

Regards,

English Pillock

Greetings,

This was from my battle against Daemons for the Warhammer League that I'm running. This game did not go well for me. I did manage to really badly hurt a Daemon army in my first game against them in the League, but that was just a fluke it seems.

The Daemons belongs to one of the foreigners that frequent Orctown. They are stunningly painted and the Daemon Prince, isn't. He is actually meant to be a Bloodthirster. Either way I lost, but no one likes playing against Daemons, and even those who are playing them in the League don't like using them. They are just playing to win. I hope 8th sorts out a lot of the Daemons overpowered nature.

Regards,

English Pillock