Battle!!

Vs Joels Dark Elves
I lost...
.
.
.
Badly...

So what went wrong? Most things, apart from the one spell that worked. Black Guard are horribly deadly.
But anyway, I ran with
Grey Seer with power scroll and talisman of preservation
Lvl2 warlock engineer with doomrocket and warp energy condenser
2 blocks of 25 rats with full command and attached warp thtrower
2 blocks of 35 slaves with musician
8 jezzails
Doomwheel
Warp lightning cannon.

So turn one, cannon was destroyed by combo of Irresistable withering and being shot a lot. Doomwheel took 3 wounds from a bolt thrower and then went backward 7" from the out of control. It then proceeded to kill 2 slaves in my turn. These would be it's only kills all game. Only spell that worked my side was a warp lightning from the Grey Seer who rolled a one and fried himself, but passed his ward. Jezzails did 2 wounds to the Hydra

Turn 2 found one of my clanrats charged by the black guard and the Hydra. Engineer fired his rocket and missed. They were butchered to a rat and he fled. Black Guard reformed to face my other clanrats. In a desperate attempt to save the clanrats I charged one of my slaves into the elves. Many slaves died, just enough for them to lose steadfast in fact (by 1 model). They broke and exploded, killing more elves in the explosion than any unit had done so far. Jezzails failed to wound the hydra. Doomwheel misfired and found itself with one wound left. One warpfire thrower was shot by dark riders. Other Thrower overshot the black guard by a mile.
Crowning achievement of the entire was the grey seer using his scroll and killing off 17 crossbow elves. 2 more would of wiped out the unit and the lord. The remaining elf and the lord then fled.

Turn 3 saw the black guard in the flank of my clanrats. Bolt thrower finished off the doomwheel. Hydra charged the jezzails in the builiding. Clanrats were very deaded and ran. Jezzails were butchered by the hydra. Leaving me with 70 pts of slaves vs many black guard, a hydra and the Elf wizard who would of rallied turn 4.

So what did go wrong. Losing the cannon early was a nuisance. Doomwheel was a spectacular failure. Black Guard are insanely killy. Didn't expect them to reach me so quick. Two flank charges = gg. Not that a frontal would of helped. They buchered over 15 models each time Should of tried to get the dreaded thirteenth on them. I did think it didn't need los though. And I would of in no way been able to destroy them anyway. At least I had a chance v the archers.
Note to self don't rely on memory . There turned out to many things in my memory that were flat out wrong. I swear I read all these things somewhere though.
Dread Thirteenth + the scroll worked. It's cheese yes, but meh. 6 dice and the scroll is a guaranteed cast success removing 4d6 models. Only thing not guaranteed is the irrestistable.

What would I have changed. Not much. Drop the engineer down a rank, level 2 was a waste. Bump up the unit sizes a bit. Prob make better use of deployment. Had most of my units facing the crossbows, who were miles away, and the dark Riders who are fast cavalry anyway and I could in no way touch. Leaving black guard to tear through my ranks.
Cannon would of benefited from being further back really out of crossbow range, but the hill was where it was and not much could do about that and was still better sitting on that than being further back not being able to see anything.

Things to take away from this -
Learn your rules Matt!!
Don't march to your doom when you wanted to fire the rocket.
Do deploy better.

Edit - things I got wrong. When rank bonus is calculated (in 7th it was start of phase, 8th is end of phase), though doomwheel had bad things happen on triples, this is actually the abomination.
Aformentioned los on the dreaded thirteenth. Tactics in general (just wanted to emphasise that)

Warhammer Quest

Been sorting some stuff out, and found my old figure case, that has all my Warhammer Quest metal minis in it, plus the heroes.

Oh how I love Warhammer Quest, but not the point of this post. Want to paint them, but on the other hand I also don't. Not like I can easily replace and cock ups.

I also think the monsters n the box need replacing, most of them look dated, and not in a good way.

Progress

Added decals to my Valkyrie. Not bothered for so long, but damn just adding numbers to it makes it look so much better. So gonna dig up a ton of these sheets I have lieing around and tagging stuff some time.
Starting with my Chimeras. Been finishing painting them up (inc the blasted tracks!!) so they just need the transfers which will hopefully make them look less...plain.

Also went back to my guardsman and added the little water bottle/pouch/knife thing to them. They may be guardsmen, but I would assume they go out with supplies on the off chance they live a day. These guys would also need transfers, but the only ones around are the Cadian ones. And not wanting to put the cadian gate symbol on my guys. The water slide transfers can be printed, but not in white since my research states that no domestic printer can print white. Dunno what colour would go best in the absence of white. Printer died a death so can't really test how pale a grey is possible.

Painted some Gutter Runners. War machine hunters extradornaire. On turn 2, and on a 4+, they can turn up on any board edge (ie right behind your war machine) and launch poisoned rocks from their slings. And then if it's empire or dwarfs they get blasted by the gazillion other machines sitting there, but still.




I seem to have a lied in a prev post. My plague monks aren't painted. Got 11 so far, I honestly thought I had done these. In my defence they are hidden at the bottom of the case. So this week been continuing them. Can't get motivitated on them though. Odd really since I love plague monks a great deal. Almost an auto include in any skaven army I would ever make. Could have something to do with the plague furnace as well.

Thought for the year

I've been painting stuff - should probably get a game in sometime.

Tank tracks

Painting tank tracks sucks. It's not fun at all. I quickly lose patience with it, and pretty soon I've made a mediocre job of it just to get the blasted things out the way.

FU tank tracks!

Short term goal

Desperately need a box of stormvermin and 3 warpfire throwers. With which I can make a legal 2500pt skaven list. Although I do need a battle standard bearer also, problem with that is that no standard bearers exist for skaven outside the standard troops. Best bet would be to convert a stormvermin I guess, but then I need two boxes of them - well out of my budget. Old clanrat is filling the vacancy at the moment.

Wonder if someone wants to trade a kidney for them.

The plan currenty sits at, alone with a small note on modelling progress
Thanquol and Boneripper - painted
Warlord with gt wpn and warpstone armor - undercoated

Plague Priest on furnace - painted
lvl 2 Warlock Engineer with Doom Rocket - Doesn't have an actual rocket, but painted
Battle Standard Bearer with Storm banner - proxy model painted

2 Units of 25 Clanrats with full command and warpfire thrower - 40% painted, 98% actually exists
40 slaves with musician - 50% painted
39 slaves with musician - not even undercoated
20 Stormvermin, full command, warpfire thrower and banner of eternal flame - don't have

27 Plague Monks, full command, Plague Banner - painted

Doomwheel - painted
Warplightning cannon - just slave crew to paint

Hard to choose between Thanquol and a normal Grey Seer on bell. Thanquol and Bone ripper are painted though, so he wins. And I really like Thanquol.

Rolling Doom

Inspired by a text message received two days ago, I painted this over the past couple of nights -



Funny what contact from people will do. Though this doesn't help with what the message was about. I need about 200 points of core troops from somewhere. Thats pretty much yet another regiment of clanrats, with weapon team.

I'll hope for sunlight tomorrow and take better pictures. It was basically followed from the guide on gw's site. Although my bronze is nowhere near as dark which is fine. And I didn't quite use as many stages as they did on a great many things, The guy inside for one, you can barely see him.

Also photos plainly showing mould lines on periscopes ftl. In my defence, i assembled and painted it in pieces, and the periscope is single piece part that just got forgotten. I even forgot to spray it when undercoating it all. The kit also has big problems where the outside frame on the wheels meet the internal frame, the joins are plainly visible. Even on stock photos, though they never show the back and now you know why. My wheels stick out a little too much (maybe 2mm) which exasperates the problem. But oh well, I may fill the gaps or leave it. The top part isn't too bad, and the second join is right behind the wheels and looks really obvious, but it's right at the back so, myeh. Not glued in yet anyway. Not going to glue the sides on so it can lay flat for storage.