New brush time. How about Windsor and Newton Series 7s?

This is just a brief interjection before I get on with part 3 of my Orcs and Goblins posting.

I'm painting up my Deathwing now and I've come to realise it's time to buy some new brushes. My current set have been going for over a year now and while they're in decent shape, they're forking quite a lot not, making it hard to keep the detail painting going. My GW brush forked a while ago after just a month or so of use, so that's no help.I've heard rave things about the Windsor and Newton Series 7 brushes and wonder if it's time for me to invest in a set of them.

Does anybody have any experience with these brushes and what sizes to pick up? I was thinking of a size 2, a size 1 and a size 0 so I would have a range to work with.

Thankyou

Pete

WFB Orcs and Goblins using just a sprinkle of GW for flavour. Pt 2: Saving money ;-)

To continue our look at making an orcs and goblins army on something of a budget, here are some price comparisons and ideas for saving those precious dollars/pounds/euros/florints/yen etc. ;-)

I know that many people buy from online retailers who offer discounts but for this post I'll keep everything on RRP or it will get very confusing with all the different places you can buy. Also, I'm rounding everything up to the nearest £ so don't have to type endless .99 etc.

1x Orc Mega army from Mantic (96 figures) = £100
1x Orc Ax horde from Mantic (30 figures) = £25
3x Night Goblin regiments = £63
1x Giant = £31
1x Arachnarok spider = £36
2x Goblin bolt throwers from Ramshackle Games = £9

Total = £264

Now if I want to be even cheaper, I'd drop the night goblins for now and either the giant or the spider, making the total around £170. Either that or I'd track down a set or two of the Goblins from the old Battle for Skull Pass Warhammer set. If anybody has the gobbos models from Skull Pass they'd be willing to sell/trade (I have metal Grey Knight Terminators), please drop me a line ;-)

Skull Pass Gobbos, have you seen us?


So the basic army I can build from this is as follows:

- Warboss on boar
- 40 Black Orcs
- 10 Boar Boyz
- 75 Orc Boyz
- 60 Night Goblins
- 2 Speak Chukkas
- Giant
- Arachnarok spider

Now for a brief comparison of cost vs GW sets.

- Orc Warboss = £17
- 4x Black Orcs = £104
- 1x Boar Boyz = £16
- 6x Orc Boyz = £108
- 2x Night Gobbos = £42
- 2x Spear Chukkas = £38
- 1x Giant = £31
- 1x Arachnarok spider = £36
- 1x O&G Battalion (15 boyz, 20 gobbos, 5 boar boyz, 10 spider riders) = £60

Total = £452
Difference = £188 looking at RRP, or

To be fair to GW, the spider riders in the battalion are extra, so I should knock £19 off the difference to account for buying a set of them to match.

Adjusted difference = £169.

Not a bad saving in my mind. Once you add in the discount from online retailers, you can knock a bit off each total as both Wayland Games and Maelstrom Games stock Mantic and offer shipping within the EU.

Ordering from both (and Ramshackle) to take advantage of the prices on offer, I come out with a total of £224 delivered for everything.

Part 3 coming soon where I put together something of an army list and ask advice from more experienced WFB players.

Pete

WFB Orcs and Goblins using just a sprinkle of GW for flavour. Pt 1: Inspiration

Hey everyone,

I recently had a crazy idea about Warhammer Fantasy. When I first started with GW I was mainly a fantasy player and had a dwarf army. Since then it hasn't piqued my interest compared to 40k and other tabletop miniature games that are availablhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gife. That is with the exception of the greenskins. Much like my 40k ork army, which I was sad to pass on (especially after painting 80+ figures), I love the character of the WFB orcs and goblins army.

To me they hearken back to the days when Warhammer and 40k were less streamlined and dark worlds. There was more of a light-hearted dorkiness to a lot of the units and gameplay mechanics that I love. Perhaps it's something of the nostalgia for those innocent early days of wargaming :-)

However there are two big problems for me:

1 - I think the WFB orc boyz look really goofy and I don't like the proportions.
2 - It gets really expensive to make a horde army, especially with GW's prices on basic core unit boxes. I'm not inspired by spending £100 on two units of orcs who will make up basic regiments.

However, I've been browsing the web a bit as I wait for my training to start for my new job and have found a company that can help me out with my two major objections. Enter Mantic Games Orc range

I really like the character of their models compared to GW and the price is great too.

The GW orc looks to me like a caricature with its heroic proportions, where the Mantic orc is hunched and menacing.

I also really like the warboss on a boar that Mantic have going.


Their boar boyz, in my opinion, outdo those offered by GW as well.

GW's boar boyz

Mantic boar boyz


So the models live up to my standards, certainly with respect to making large blocks of troops. I know that there will be more repetition of model types using Mantic orcs as they are not the same kind of multi-part kit that you find from GW orcs, but in a big regiment of 20+, I think the difference between them will be less noticeable than when comparing individual figures.

When browsing the Mantic site, I notice the following deal for an Orc Mega Army

For £99 retail you get:
- Orc Krudger (warboss) on boar
- 10 x Plastic Resin Gore (boar) Riders with Command Group
- 20 x Plastic Orc Greatax with Command Group (Two handed weapon)
- 20 x Plastic/Metal Orc Morax with Command Group (Twin axes)
- 45 x Plastic Orc Ax with Command Group (boyz)
- (Enough little snotling-like additions on the sprues to make two or three bases)

Mmmm greenskin horde


Now that a solid bulk of the army is there, what from GW just can't be replicated elsewhere? Well, there are three big things for me that I would consider from GW. These are the parts that add some flavour you can't find elsewhere. When you're just getting the odd bit at GW prices it makes a horde army a lot less daunting.

- The Giant. Great model, lots of options for construction and fun to play with.
- The Arachnarok spider. Expensive but a really nice big plastic kit. Plus forest goblin riders are just cool.
- Night goblins and forest goblins. The little buggers are just awesome and have the fun of fanatics, netters, spider riders. I am also a big fan of Warlord Skarsnik.

So a possible purchasing block could look like this:

- Army deal from Mantic.
- Additional Boar boyz and orcs from Mantic
- Giant from GW
- Arachnarok from GW
- Couple of Night goblin regiments with fanatics from GW.
- Some forest goblin spider riders from GW
- Skarsnik and Gobbla from GW

So there's the gem of my next idea to go alongside my Deathwing army. Part 2 of this post will look at some cost savings from using the Mantic range. Part 3 will put up a basic army list using the models I've found.

All the best,

Pete

Painting display models

Hey everyone,

Been very busy recently getting myself settled into my new life in Bratislava, Slovakia where I'm teaching English (for more info see here http://pete-teaches-in-bratislava.blogspot.com) so not much time to do anything wargaming related. I've managed to keep up to date on blogs and internet news for the most part but haven't broken out the brushes or even taken my models out of their packed state since June 28th when I put them away before flying here. Since I haven't yet managed to find any gaming groups around here and I'm not sure I'll have lots of evenings free to play wargames, I was thinking of getting a fancy model or two to really go to town on and make into display pieces.

The two possible models that have caught my eye for now are:

Ruby from Studio Mcvey



...and the completely crazy option of Elspeth Von Draken on a Carmine Dragon from Forge WorldRaaargh

Mmmm, insanely fine detailing

Now the difference between this two are primarily scale and cost. Ruby fits on a 50mm base and costs about £27 shipped, whereas Elspeth would set me back something like £80 shipped. Quality-wise I would trust Studio Mcvey more but then again this is a new model from Forge World so the moulds are likely to still be good.

The main concern I have with both of these is making sure that my painting lives up to the quality of the models.

Have any of you painted models that were intended almost entirely for display? If so, how do you suggest going about it, especially for something as big as Elspeth? What's the best way to maintain interest during such a long and complex project? What techniques should be mastered before going about such a task? Paint in pieces then assemble? Create a fancy base for the model in case I want to game with it in the future?

As you can tell I'm both excited and intimidated by the idea of either of these models. Who knows, with a good enough effort over time they might even be somethiing I can sell for a profit. I can dream right? ;-)

All the best,

Pete

Simplifiying 40k for a children's summer camp....in another language ;-)

Hey everyone,

So I'm in Bratislava, Slovakia now and about to begin the exciting job of teaching English for the next year. It's been very fun so far and I'm relishing the opportunity to soak in a new culture and get new life experiences.

Big thanks go out to Old Shatter Hands for his networking to get me the job over here and giving me lots of insight into places to go and things to do while here. Props also for his helping me start learning the complex and very multi-layered Slovak language.

Later today I will be taking a bus with my new colleagues out to a summer camp the language school is running for children. During a meeting with the owner of the school, he asked me how I came to know Old Shatter Hands. When I explained that it was through wargaming and explained the basic premise to him, he thought it might be a fun activity to play with some of the kids, if I'm willing to bring the models.

Now I only have my Deathwing and there are only a few of them (27 total). Given that the children are going to have variable comfort and skill levels in English, I'll need to bring the rules waaaaay down from their current level so that we can have fun games but not get completely lost in the combination of poor rules and language barriers :-)

So my thirty second rules ideas are something like this:

- Giving regular terminators a 5+ save, SS termies get a 3+ save.

- Storm bolters are 2 shot. They need 6s to cause a wound (skip the hit and then wound mechanic)

- Assault cannons are 4 shot, needing 6s also. Cyclones are 1 shot needing a 3+ to wound.

- If TH termies get into combat, they need a 3+ to wound (again, combining hit and wound rolls). LC termies wound on a 5+ but get two attacks. Regular termies need a 6 to wound with one attack.

- I'll probably include the run rules so the assault termies can rush up a bit.

- Each team/player has to choose if they want a shooty or an assault squad.

I will be leaving out Belial and the Librarian from the game (or use them as objectives maybe) to keep it simple, which gives me 3 assault squads and 2 shooty squads.


So tell me what you think people. Does this look like a fun game that will interest the kids and give them a chance to use English, without completely confusing them?

Any and all advice is gratefully received.

All the best

Pete

Everyone's a king when there's no-one left to pawn - sacrificing units

But what do you do if the only things to sacrifice are Astartes?



Hey everyone,

So the post title is a lyric by Razorlight but I had to think a bit about sacrificing units in my game tonight against Blood Angels. It was an interesting list the my opponent brought and I had to really make some tough calls about which units to keep and which to lose.

My Deathwing 1500pt list took on a Blood Angels army consisting of:
- Astorath the grim
- 5 jump pack Death company (DC) with Lemartes (uber chaplain). All with power weapons.
- 5 jump pack Death company, all with power weapons.
- 5 terminators with assault cannons
- 5 lightning claw terminators
- 5 tactical marines
- Death company dreadnought with Blood Talons

Now this isn't a very balanced 1500pt force but it sure packs a lot of punch if it gets the charge on you. Plus the death company get furious charge, feel no pain, rerolls to hit when charging and rerolls to wound (plus Astorath makes the opponent, i.e. me, re-roll successful invul. saves). Very nasty.

I quickly realised when my early shooting phases didn't kill off the jump troops that I would have to sacrifice units while the rest of my army moved to deal with the threats of charging Blood Angels. The death company with those characters hit so hard on the charge that you're pretty much bound to lose a lot of guys, or the whole unit if you lay with Deathwing five man squads.

Thankfully I spent a lot of time talking with Old Shatter Hands about the necessary sacrifice tactics he played with when using Tau and having to block the opponent's movement. The Kroot bubble wrap, Piranha blocking and accepting one charge in order to prevent multi-assaults etc. were all in my mind during this game. The harder part is that I had to accept the loss of ~250pt units as part of my sacrificial strategy.

As it played out, I whittled down my opponent's non-DC force with firepower and focused assaults while I fed in two units and the librarian to control the rampaging Death Company attack on my left flank. My army as a whole mopped up the entire BA force through careful shooting followed by concentrated assaults, then brought the weight of thunder hammers to bear on the rampaging Death Company and special characters. I had to use the assault rules to my advantage when I charged into the existing combat by making sure that I only made it into base contact with one or two DC marines and not the characters, meaning the new attackers could only be hit by a few shots each time. In the end it paid off and the Deathwing cleared the table, losing two entire squads, the librarian and a couple of terminators.

The victorious Deathwing posing on the GW gaming table.




Sacrificial tactics.

So here is my take on the steps of sacrificing units.

Do you need to sacrifice something?
If you don't need to have a unit die for a greater purpose, don't put it in a place where it can die. Simple really but something that people (me included) forget at times. You should sacrifice things when they will help your overall strategy, save a better/more important unit, tie up an opponent's powerful unit or act as bait that puts him in a vulnerable position. Otherwise, I would try to keep your toy soldiers alive as much as possible. They can't help you if they die for no reason after all.


Which unit will you sacrifice?
There are two main factors to consider when it comes to choosing who will die for your victory.
- The first one is who is close enough to get into the right position. Clearly if you have only one unit that can block your opponent, they are the ones with heads on the chopping block. The more your forces are set to work together and overlap, the more choice you will have about who to use for your sacrificial strategy.
- The second is to choose the unit you can most afford to lose. Most of the time you will go for your more basic choices over the expensive elites (choosing scouts over losing a squad of terminators) but remember what each unit is capable of. Assault terminators can kill like nobody's business but if you have scouts on the objective near the end of the game and a dreadnought coming to get them off it, the terminators are perfectly viable to give up in exchange for the win. In my case I gave up a ranged Deathwing unit led by the librarian in order to allow my thunder hammer squads to get the charge on the DC marines, giving them better odds to win.


What is the purpose of the sacrifice?

This one is the really key point that you need to keep in mind when considering your tactical options. You must have a good purpose for your unit or you will simply be throwing them away, which makes your models feel sad ;-)

You can sacrifice for a number of reasons including:
- Stalling your opponent e.g charging a dreadnought with a mob of fearless orks. Even without a power klaw, those orks will last a long time. They can't hurt the dread but they have taken it out of the game for a number of turns. Unless it's a Blood Talon dreadnought it probably won't kill that many orks per turn and will spend the game locked in a combat it doesn't want to be in. The Tau under OSH are masters at this as the Piranhas, drones and kroot all stall your opponent to give more time for the shooting elements to do their work.

- Blocking your opponent's movement. If you have a unit of Furious charge Blood Angel terminators in a land raider, you have a threat range of about 20" (12" move, 2" deployment, 6" assault). If I can move a unit in the way of the Land Raider you have to get past that first before getting into the assault you want to be in. Now I know that in this case my blocker would have to be a vehicle or the Land Raider could tank shock through, but the point stands. I've headed off a potential charge by Nobz with a couple of gun drones, letting me get the charge the next turn (plus another round of firing). Think about your opponent's likely avenues of movement when you start the game and plan on how to block them if you need to.

- Saving a more important unit from dying. Let's say I'm the one with a unit of Death Company led by a chaplain. If I get to assault, my damage output goes way up compared to if I am on the receiving end of an assault. In this case, I would happily sacrifice another unit to my opponent so that they are left close enough for me to get the charge on them (Note: This plays also into the bait tactic below). As mentioned before, you could also choose to save a scoring unit that is on an objective and might give up a very strong elite unit for this purpose. In the case of OSH's tau forces, he would give up a unit of 10 kroot (70pts) in order to save the squad of crisis suits (150+ pts) hiding behind them and let the army as a whole have more firing time. In my case, I let a character and a ranged unit take the killing charge of the enemy assault units in order that my counter-assault folks could return the favour.

- Baiting the enemy forces. Now this one is a tricky thing as it depends on your opponent wanting to kill your bait and expending effort doing so. The trick when baiting is to put your sacrificial unit in a position where your opponent can go for it, but will have to change his line of attack to do so. Putting a single dreadnought in line of sight of a broadside across the table is not bait most of the time, it's a target. Putting your expensive HQ unit (e.g. 3 Crisis suits + Commander) on one flank where your opponent can get to him if he just moves a couple of units is more like it. The idea with baiting is that you make his army start to act piecemeal, rather than as a whole. I will lose my bait, but you won't have the units that moved in position to deal with the rest of my army which is now moving to act on my plan. Of course, when doing this you should endeavour to use units and positioning that will be good even if the bait isn't taken. In my crisis suit example, if you ignore the suits, I'll be able to put a lot of fire on the flank of your force, which vehicles hate. Bell of lost souls did a good article with thoughts on baiting (http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2009/01/goatboys-40k-thoughts-for-week-baiting.html)



That's it from me for now. I'll probably post a little bit more this week but time is rapidly running out for me as I gear up to head off to a new country (Slovakia) and a new career (Teaching English). I fly out a week from now and it's both exciting and scary.

All the best

Pete

I hate it when people give up before they've lost.

My last opponent could take a lesson from this pooch.


Hey everyone,

So my Deathwing got to play in a 3k points game last night and it was mostly a lot of fun. I teamed up with the Tau player I played against last week to take on a guy with 3k of orks. It looked like it was going to be a really great scrap but sadly the ork opponent just started getting despondent and downhearted really early on in the game and it took me giving him tactical advice to get him to actually try and play again, which made the game drag a bit.

Essentially he was upset that our turn one and two shooting really smashed his ork forces and he didn't think he could get into assault with us. Instead of really making an effort to maximise his gameplay to at least do damage to us, even if he still lost, he seemed happier to mope about and just resign himself to saying that he brought the wrong army and that game wasn't really winnable.

Sigh.

My side was winning when we ran out of time (turn 4) in the overbooked GW gaming space but I'd almost got to the point when I was going to make him swap sides to take my Deathwing so I could unleash my inner ork and kick some ass ;-)

Battle Report

Army lists were (approximately as these are from memory)
- 1500 pts deathwing.
Belial, Librarian, Assault command squad (apoth, banner), 2 assault squads, 2 shooty squads)

- 1500 pts Tau
Farsight, bodyguard. 6 crisis suits (firestorm, BC&PR), 6 stealth suits, 48 fire warriors, 20 kroot, 8 pathfinders, 1 Piranha, 3 Broadsides, a bunch of drones, 2 devilfish

- 3000pts Orks
Ghazghull, PK warboss, 10 Lootas, 10 Burnas, 20 Nobz kitted out, 80 boyz, 2 trukks, battlewagon, killa kan, 8 warbikers, Looted wagon with boomgun.




Basically the battle was a turkey shoot in turn 1 (understandable) and for turn 2 my opponent liked my advice to use the devilfish and drones as blockers (thanks Old Shatter Hands) so we could funnel the orks towards us and slow them down. It was pretty successful and our opponent didn't really hit us with enough to truly cripple us though I think he could have killed off the Tau player's flank if we'd had time for another turn or two (and if he'd been playing them like orks....as I would have).

His key problem was letting our shooting dictate his plan and footslogging ineffectively. If you're coming at us on foot, you should be moving and running as far and fast as possible from turn 1. When your trukk with Ghazghull and nobz gets stunned on turn 1 (leaving it in LOS of the broadsides again), you get that power squad of nobz out and get running as far forward as you can. You get your units into assault with the maximum prejudice and using cover as much as you can. Your killa kan should move and run from turn 1 too. If he loses the klaw, he's still on assault duty for taking out vehicles or tying up battlesuits in assault.

He chose to shoot with his boys mobs a lot more often than I would. In my book Boyz get to shoot when they are about to charge into assault, or for a turn prior if they are shoota boyz. Nobz don't shoot as their firepower is nothing compared to their ruthlessly powerful assault abilities. When you stop your boyz mob from running in order to take 2 rokkit shots (BS2) at the front armour of a devilfish (12) you've not really grasped where ork power lies. Also, a S8 AP3 large blast weapon should be aimed at the tightly clustered crisis suits to kill them with instant death instead of the 12 fire warriors nearby, no matter how cool it looks to cover 12 models instead of 3 and 2 drones.

When I got him to use his forces in a more effective manner (multi-assaults, using Ghaz's waagh, killa kan vs devilfish etc) the battle really jumped back into contention from where he seemed happy to leave it in turn 2.

It was still a fun game to play and it would have been nice if we'd had time to bring the game through a full turn 4 (we cut it short) and played turns 5-7. I think the orks would have probably lost, but they could have ripped up the Tau flank and it would have been an effort for the Deathwing to bring them down finally.



So don't let me see any of you blog readers giving up on games that aren't going your way. My charge to you is to persevere until the end. It ain't over until the last dice is rolled!!!

Pete :-)