The State of the Nation 2013

I've not been too frequent with my blog posts lately, but as that is well documented already I won't go in to that too much other than to say that as much as I love writing, I miss wargaming as much as I used to be able to. 

Focus
One of the decisions I made earlier this year, which is again well documented, was that I would focus on GW games with a view to maintaining a consistent approach as well as to improve my knowledge. As such I have stuck closely to single armies for both Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000.

Warhammer 40,000
The army I have played the longest for 40k is Chaos Space Marines. I've tried a few different styles over the years be they Night Lords, a mixture of the cults and none cults, but when GW started to focus more on the Red Corsairs more as a unified force rather than a rag tag band that is mentioned from time to time in the fluff, I really started to like them. The Huron model is superb, and as such with the new book I wrote a Red Corsair themed list. The list itself isn't a tournament list by any stretch, nor however is it too weak and as such I have enjoyed using it greatly. As I've tweaked it and become familiar with it, I have looked towards developing a second force, which whilst remaining a Chaos Space Marine force does perform in a different manner. The Red Corsairs were more of a fire base army with a few mobile elements with which to close up to the enemy. However, I have developed a purely Tzeentch army whilst is quite the reverse. It is much smaller even than it's Red Corsair counterpart, and is in truth a bit of a glass hammer, but although I shall need to test and tweak it further, I think it should perform strongly.

Warhammer

For Warhammer Fantasy Battles, I have again developed one army before working on a second. The first being a Daemon Prince led Tzeentch army with a few monsters in it, albeit that I have mixed marks in this army a bit. I liked the idea of men of the North worshipping all the deities, but perhaps some being favoured more and so the bulk is Tzeentch but some of the army is dedicated to Nurgle. Afterall, they are men even if they are servants of the gods, and men follow a strong leader even if he does speak of a different god. This army has done reasonably well. Again possibly not a tournament army, but solid nonetheless. The second army is a much newer beast. All units in this second warband are marked Nurgle, or cannot be marked. It is still early days, but is enjoyable enough to play with.

Children of the Empyrean
I have however begun building my dual system Daemon army. Very early days as yet, but initially I plan to use them as allies in 40k, then develop them as a force in their own right.

Privateer Press

Now, having spent the first half of the year keeping my promise to stick to GW, I find myself yearning to get back to Privateer Press. At the end of last year I felt I was finally starting to get somewhere with Hordes and Warmachine, something which I think I shll have to develop once more due to the break in play. I am still very much in love with my Trollbloods and have spent a lot of time recently thinking about lists. Jarl Skuld is still my favoured Warlock and so he is still going to be the crux of my main list, but I have found myself looking at the new Hunters Grim Warlock unit from the Gargantuans book.

Having played about with some list options, I am happy with the theory of how the units will play, and as such he is now on his way.

Aside from the War Wagon (which I think will have to be a Christmas present) and any of the currently unreleased models, I'm now at full faction and as such I have plenty of options and so I'm trying to vary the lists as much as possible at least up to and including 35 points. Inevitably the Fennblades are a popular option in most lists as are the Scattergunners, but I've resisted putting them both in all lists. I've also varied the Warbeasts as much as I can, though the Impaler, because of his animus and my seeming preference for ranged lists, makes it in to more than one force. Initially I shall concentrate on the two Warlocks mentioned above, though eventually the aim is to get back to developing the Borka list and some of the other Warlocks that I've not used before.

Convergence of Cyriss

Keeping with Privateer Press, I have wanted to have a go at the Warmachine side of the coin for some time, though as they did before I first bought the Hordes Trollblood starter pack when Mk1 was around, none of the factions really captured my imagination. Even the newer Scyrah didn't really hit the spot, and to be honest I had decided to forego that side of the game entirely. However, with the announcement of the Convergence of Cyriss as a playable faction, I decided to wait out the details and see how I liked them, and I must say, I really like them! The idea of them being clockwork beings that have foregone their flesh is a very good one to me, and I like the idea of the Vectors rules. As such, I have ordered the starter set for them and who knows, maybe I can cope with painting silver?

Dystopian Wars
To be frank, this has taken a back seat for now. I still have much less time than I would like to wargame, and either 40k or fantasy will suffer to fit in Warmachine/Hordes. But it is not forgotten, and I shall get back round to it at some point.

The Future
Some of you may know already, however The Whyf has been given a store manager position in Ilkley, and as such at some point the intention is for us to move to West Yorkshire. Their are pros and cons for us that we have carefully considered, but both think it will be beneficial in the long run. It may be in a few weeks that we go, or in a few months. That is the best information we have at the moment, but we are looking forward nonetheless.

In the meantime, thanks for reading.

Big Changes afoot!

I've been getting back in to the fantasy love affair once again so have been assembling one or two models over the last week. My favourite of the models built was the giant.

I'm sure that you can already guess which army he shall be for, but if not i shalt spoil the surprise! and if you know don't say! (this all really boils down to me wanting to think i'm all mysterious and stuff, even though i'm not).

so whilst this new endeavor is underway, I've once more been using the Stormkrow Tribe. Faced Ben's Ogre list earlier in the week and i must say, it gave my  well honed list a run for its money. It didn't help that i couldn't remember how my lord was supposed to be kitted out, but he was 90% how i used to field him, so there is now real excuses there. Seems that the new book isn't as bad as feared!

Old Battle reports - Gaming day 27th March 2010

For those that don't know, I used to run a small forum for a few friends. I've recently taken the decision to close the forum down but didn't wish to lose all my old info. As such some of it will be posted on this blog.

The 27th March saw the first day of what is becoming an annual gaming event.
On the Saturday, four armies of Chaos clashed to determine who would be the Chaos Gods' champion and lead their armies to take on the valiant Dwarf alliance.

because they were ready first, Ancient and Snorri had a warm up battle between Snorri's mounted Warriors and Ancient's Beastmen

Once the armies were ready, the Combatants lined up their forces for team photos!

Unfortunately Greg the Giant didn't bother to turn up for the team photo, and he was the one with the kit, hence the unpainted army! ;)
Drax's Beastmen:

Ancient's Nurgle Warriors:

Snorri's mounted Warriors:

lucifer's Warriors:

The first battle saw lucifer's Warriors face off against Ancient's Nurgle warband.

the result was a resounding win for lucifer who along with a fair amount of luck (including most of that of Ancient's!) displayed a great amount of skill, especially considering that this was his first bout with the army!

on the other table, my Beastmen faced Snorri's Mounted Warriors.

i hadn't expected much out of this game to be perfectly honest, not least as this too was my first time with the force, however despite a well deserved victory for Snorri, i felt confident i knew what needed amending and was ready for my next match.

and this is where it all fell apart. the beers were out and so the photography came a second place - well, 5th actually: gaming, beer, toilet breaks, food, photography. and in practice, we could only really cope with remembering the first four!

the results of the next game were that Snorri faced lucifer with lucifer winning whilst i faced Ancient and Ancient won. my tweaking obviously hadn't been perfect, but more went my way, so i was on the right path. the battle was a bloody one!

in the third and final game of the day, Snorri and Ancient faced off with Snorri winning.

that result meant that if lucifer beat me, we would have a neat and easy hierarchy.

however, i wasn't going easy. i was after first blood and had spent two games intentionally losing so that i could pounce on which ever fool i faced last and as such i managed to gain my first victory.

this meant that Snorri and lucifer were drawing for first place with Ancient and i were left in joint last. in order to break the hierarchy, we had a wizards duel with ancient and i facing off each other and snorri and lucifer against each other