Let the Ruination begin...

Righty,

With the list submission deadline passed I can now safely post my list for Ruination 2014. You can find it here...just kidding I couldn't bring myself to submit the Nuln fluff list. Though I worked it out and I was only short 1 Rocket Battery...could have easily swapped that out for something me thinks! Later this year I think I'll rock out that list in a fluff game "The siege of Nuln"

Anywho here's my list:

"Joel's fluffy Empire list that's so fluffy my cat sleeps on it"
Karl Franz: Barded Steed, Ghul Maraz
Arch Lector "Otto": Heavy Armour, Great Weapon, 4+ ward, Dragonhelm
Amber Mage lvl4
Light Mage lvl4

Engineer: Light Armour
BSB: Barded Steed, Full Plate Armour, Shield, Other Trickster's Shard, Dawnstone
Warrior Priest: Additional Hand Weapon, Heavy Armour

13 Inner Circle Knights: Full Command - Steel Standard
30 Swordsmen: Full Command
42 Halberds: Full Command
8 Archer Detachment
5 Archer Detachment

Cannon
Cannon
4 Demigryph Knights: Musician, Standard - Banner of Eternal Flame
38 Great Swords: Full Command
5 Reiksguard Knights: Musican, Standard Bearer
5 Reiksguard Knights: Musican, Standard Bearer

Steam Tank
Helblaster Volley Gun
Hurricanum

Karl and da boyz out to ruin someone's hobby 1 special character at a time...

The Reiksguard Knights that look suspiciously like my vanilla knights but with a standard bearer...

Fluff points: 
Karl Franz list with Reiksguard knights
Some characters with no magical items
Light Armour on the Engineer
Swordsmen not just as a mage bunker
Only 1 Steam tank
Only 1 unit of Demigryphs
More than minimum core (1003pts)
No light council
Fortitude of 10
It's not the list I wanted to use in the first place :P

So there you all are. Have Fun getting Ghul Maraz'ed to the face among other things :D I don't look forward to the 300 skink list that someone may have had the smarts to submit...can't trust lizardmen playing TO's to have an unbiased eye :P

Now I just have to hope my GW order arrives so I can get the failcast Amber mage painted up in time...otherwise I may have to "proxy" a wizard from another order of magic...shudder.

Holiday gaming day 2: The day of reckoning has arrived...

Yo yo yo,

Day 2 of my holiday gaming schedule is a trip out to Will's house to take on the fatties + check out his new fancy Realm of Battle table that he impulse bought one day.

Now Will has for a while been all "Joel I want to play your Woodies cos I've never played them" etc etc...yet my long Dwarf-like memory recalls a certain campaign weekend at Château Dunn where Will consistently put the "cannot challenge" perk on me...I don't actually think Will wants to play vs Woodies. Yet here we finally were in a situation where he could not avoid them.

Anywho - I rock up with the exact list I used at the campaign with 1 small change (so not the exact same list...)

Treeman Ancient "Ye Olde Prunned Tree" (head had fallen off in storage)
Life Weaver lvl4: Divination Orb (was a scroll)
BSB: Dragonbane gem, Aysendi's bane, Hail of Doom Arrow
17 Glade Guard: M, SB - flame
5x10 Glade Guard: M
3x8 Dryads
5 Wildriders: M
Treeman
Eagle
Eagle

For those not familiar with the amazing (but very dated) Woodie armybook the Divination Orb provides a free dispel dice whenever your opponent uses more than 3 power dice to case. Naff in 6th and 7th...but useful, if not underrated, in 8th where people like to "go big or go home"...but don't like to 6 dice every spell for fear of IF.

Will was using a standard Ogre list...Heavens Slaughtermaster, stubborn BSB in Ironguts etc etc kittycats, scouting maneaters, mournfang, funblaster etc etc

Anywho to keep things simple we set up for battle line:

In true Woodie fashion, the "free forest" is placed completely out of the way. The "stone forest" also quickly found itself removed from the board.

Please note the classic "models fall off movement trays" issue the ROB tables are famous for.

I got the first turn and unleashed my 68 shots + HODA into the Irongut bus with Slaughtermaster and BSB and this was the result:

Bus panics off the board, panicking the Ironblaster with it...ouch. Will then rolls his first magic phase...

INSTABILITY TESTS! oh wait, wrong bad guy. Instead the Butcher decides to IF the s2 MMissile (2 dead archers) and blow up huge...avoiding the pit, but still. Game went downhill from there as my Archers cleaned up everything. There were some lolz moments when Treeman Ancient vs Maneaters = 5 1's to wound and t7 Wildriders beating up the other bus to then run them down, but generally it was a classic case of picking apart targets who had nothing to get points from.

Big win to the Hippies.

We reset for a 2nd game and this time I deployed my archers closer to the tower on the hill for a "Refused flank" set up to try unhinge any tactics picked up in the first game.

Will got 1st turn and did something every Ogre general would be proud of:

Sorry for the potato photo - my ipad is very inconsistent!

He moved up max...but kept out of 15 (but not 20...). This of course was then followed by an IF comet right in my lines meaning I lost the 2 turns of shooting resetting the bowline and 25 archers who couldnt get away. OUCH.

In my 1st turn I taught Will why you dont enter forests when 3 Treesinging castings (with a bluff Throne of Vines to start) = dead maneaters. But this then set up something I forgot to take a pic of...so I'll recreate it with Demigryphs...

1. The Dryads who were facing off against the (now dead) Maneaters are flanked by Mournfang:

2. The Mournfang smash face, and the dryad holds on a stubborn roll:

3. In a classic Woodie move the counter charge comes in:

Who wins this fight? oh right yeah...the Mournfang kill 3 Wildriders, finish off the solo dryad (stomps) and kill the entire flanking dryad unit for the loss of....not a single wound.

This is a classic example of why the Woodies suffer - we struggle to hold up monstrous calv in combat - even in favourable situations. This unit of Mournfang then took out another unit of dryads + an eagle and was the only unit left untouched in the Ogre army at the end of the game winning it unit of the match.

The game came down to me with Treeman Ancient, the unit of 17 + lvl4 and BSB (in the building on the hill)+ 2 supporting archer units backing into a corner. The Treeman took 4 cannon shots to die (thank you lore attribute!). In the end classic frustration tactics won. The "bus" charged the building and drew - putting it out of position, the Slaughtermaster then soloed a unit of Glade Guard only to be shot to death (had 3 wounds left).

In the end I had BSB, lvl4, Treeman Ancient, 1 unit of 10 Glade Guard, and 4 of the unit of 17 left alive. Will had BSB, 1 Irongut unit, Ironblaster, firebelly and 2 mournfang left giving me a 200pt win!

In conclusion: It was a good run out for the woodies - their 1st in 12 months and Will now doesn't want to play them anymore. Hopefully they will see the table top a few more times, and HOPEFULLY that new armybook is just around the corner...

Next up:  The holiday gaming concludes with a day of Gaming in Levin on Sunday. FUNTIMES!

Summer Holiday gaming part 1 "1 in 36 chance means 3 times in a game right?"

Hi All,

With the "family time" out the way I can get cracking into getting as much Warhammer played as I can before work starts up again.


The "1 in 36 chance"
Tonight I had a game vs Alex (first time appearing on the blog = everyone say hi) who has started to show interest in Warhammer after getting bored with the old DoC book...someone who loved smashing face, but not with 90 bloodletters.

This was also the 2nd game of his return (not including Vermintide appearence in 2012 where he did very well with a Woodie list I wrote for him) - the first was using my Empire army where he got very unceremoniously pulled apart by Ryan's Slaaneshy WoC in the usual kinky Slaanesh way ("6 dice Choir").

Anywho he has an obsession with MSU lists, which is cool as it mixes up the types of armies that get played. This was also my first "home turf" game in 8-10 months, so it was weird using  my own terrain! He turned up with:

Tzeench lvl1: metal (general)
4x10 Horrors: FC
3 Bloodcrushers: SB-flame banner
5 Seekers
2x5 nurgle furies
slaanesh chariot
5 ambushing hounds
2x1 beast of nurgle
4 Beasts of nurgle
2 Skillcannons
Tzeench burning chariot
3 Plague Drones: SB

So a very MSU list!

I decided to try out the much talked about (I think) Swedish High Elf ETC 2013 list:

Loremaster of Hoeth: Earthing Rod, Sword of Anti-Heroes, Shield of Merwyrm
Archmage: Level 4, Light, BoHoeth, ICI
Mage: Level 1, Light,
Lothern Seahelm: BSB,  Standard of Discipline
10 Archers: Musician
23 Archers: Musician, Standard
3x 5  Reavers
28 White Lions: FC, Banner of World Dragon
1 Frostheart Phoenix
2x 1 Great Eagle
3x RBT

It's a list I very much like the look of...but it is essentially "avoid combat and ldship10 death snipe and s6 banishment stuff + enough shooting to hopefully do something as well" So "fun" to use once in a wee while, but I would get very bored using it all the time!

We deployed, Alex got the first turn and rolled a snake eyes magic phase.

Leadership tests later...

2 units of Furies, Plague Drones (double 6) and Tzeench Burning Chariot (double 6) + token Horror = awesome

+ some very valuable wounds on the beasts! Though pretty much everything else rolled a perfect 7 for their leadership tests grrr. When I then burning gazed off the Slaanesh chariot he accused me of picking on the "best looking" models in his army...He then later on double sixed another break test (crushers vs Frostie) and also snake eyed a break test (skillcannon vs Archers with reavers in the flank regaining 1 wound).

Long story short - Alex's goal was to kill everything but the "bus". Thanks to the "bus" taking 3 attempts to charge the unit of 4 beasts (failed a 7 inch charge,  5 inch charge, and finally made an auto charge sigh) he ALMOST did this. Frostie was on 2 wounds left (blue fire + failed toughness test = 3 wounds grr), and the unit of 10 archers was down to 3. the other unit of archers JUST died end of t6. However it was still a comfortable victory to the High Elves...the waystones were protected and the threat of Chaos was held at bay for just a little bit longer.

Gotta love the randomness of Chaos!

Next up: Trip to Will's house to see what the fatties want! Might re-use the High Elf list, or rock up my Bolt thrower list of awesome...or even open up my Wood elf army case...

Laying down the Gauntlet...Nuln fluff list for Ruination.

Righty,

So a lazy Sunday spent avoiding sanding plaster (oh joy!) = laying down gauntlet to all the gunline pretenders under 5 foot in height.

Everyone secretly knows that the Empire do the gunline the "best" and to prove it I present my fluffy 4000pt Nuln list:

Even in my Smack Down lists this poor guy can't find a spot :(

General Of Empire: Armour of Meteoric Iron, Warrior Bane, Iron Curse Icon, Pistol 160
Celestial Mage lvl4: scroll (that's lore of heavens) 225

BSB: Fullplate, pistol, flame banner 108
Engineer 65
Engineer 65
Engineer: Hockland Longrifle 85
Engineer: Hockland Longrifle 85
Engineer: Hockland Longrifle 85
Witch Hunter: Brace of Pistols 55
Witch Hunter: Brace of Pistols 55

10 Handgunners: FC - Hockland Longrifle 140
10 Handgunners: FC - Hockland Longrifle 140
10 Handgunners: FC - Hockland Longrifle 140
40 Swordsmen: FC  310
20 Crossbows 180
5 Knights: M 120
5 Knights: M 120

Cannon 120
Cannon 120
Cannon 120
5 Outriders 105
5 Outriders 105
5 Pistoliers: Champ - Repeater Pistol 110
Mortar 100
Mortar 100

Helblaster 120
Helblaster 120
Rocket Battery 120
Rocket Battery 120
Steam Tank 250
Steam Tank 250
3998

*drops mic, walk off stage*

I'll leave you all to sweat nervously wondering exactly how close I am to being able to field this list...

And, of course, this has opened the floor to anyone who can "up gunline" my attempt.

Ruination 2014 prep and stuff

Hi All.

Just a quick break from watching England lose the Ashes in style (down a crack) to give you all an update on where I am at hobby wise.

Disclaimer: as a true blooded Kiwi I am disliking my support for the Aussies in this series...but bitterness from the last series vs England and a begrudging ANZAC spirit has forced my hand + the Michael Clarke kinda looks like Dean Winchester.

Salamanders:
All troops are assembled sans shoulderpads. The forgeworld order has been made via Glen and hopefully I will have some pics for you all of the pre-painted dudes in the early new year. I have started green stuffing the flames and stuff...I'm determined to not resort to posting it all to Shirts Off Warhammer hehe

High Elves:
Nothing to report other than a wee bit of list-hammer.

I'm enjoying the discussions on Ulthuan.net about the potential for Swordmasters to be the main elite block. DL:DR - swordmasters lose less effectiveness with the loss of rare ranks and benefit the most from high magic and the loremaster...who loses combat anyway?

Empire:

RUINATION is coming up in the early new year. 4000pts of Warhammer goodness with "dont be that guy" veto comp. I am very much looking forward to this event. So much so it has managed to get me to unpack my painting gear and get repairing all the old stuff.

As usual, I like to keep my lists inside my army theme...so here's some pre-list fluff to keep everything in context:

Otto liked winter. It was cold, the forest was quiet, and the village folk were hungry and restless...but too drunk to do anything about it other than grumble. His soldiers were more worried about gambling than they were about wanting to go home. At least in the service of Otto and his Rickwald forest Inquisitional Forces you got food and grog which was more than they could guarantee was waiting for them back home. Besides, the winter patrols rarely lasted more than a day or two. Winter was easy. Winter was predictable, and more importantly the snow meant that Otto could ignore the rest of the so-called "empire" for a few precious long months. Witch hunters, glory seeking knights and the like were not so zealous or brave when they were freezing and the forest was just a little bit darker...Otto found himself cracking a sly smile.

This however was all coming to an end. As Otto walked the walls of the village his troop were wintering in he could hear the forest slowly waking up. The river was swelling and the snow was beginning to melt a little too fast for his liking. Even worse, the red full moon signalled the return of the Elector Count's court of fools. Otto's reputation at court had recovered somewhat after the fall of Stonefalls to the undead Manfred...the graveyards surrendered few bodies to the unholy master still at large in the forest when the ground refused to be broken. There was little to report, or embarrass him further other than the odd missing villager. However Otto just knew this court would require him to swear mumbled allegiance (again) and prove it with some grand gesture about "taking Stonefalls back for the glory of the Emperor" or whoever was on the throne somewhere far-away. People who only swung a sword in tournaments never counted the cost of progress in pints of spilled blood. The counted in flags over their keeps, trophies in their halls, and songs on the lips of (well paid) bards.

Otto never cared (nor could care) for frivolous displays of pretend power. Fear is the root of all religion (and Otto had seen enough to make him fearful for a lifetime) , and religion was the true key to power. The fools at the courts had never smelt the blood of a frenzied mob who willingly throw themselves on the weapons of evil so as to win battle with the sheer weight of their dead bodies. They had never witnessed the miracles on the battlefield when the chanting of ancient tongues slowed down time itself...or blasted apart the horrors that lurked in the shadows of the forest. Otto had faith and the cunning to weave the zeal of fellow believers to his own benefits....and that of the church. He was just not so good with the unbelievers, or even worse, the fake believers.

But all that meant nothing right now as Otto took in the sights and the smells, savouring every last moment of winter. What was going to happen was going to happen and the only real question was whether Otto and his nice little corner of the world would survive it. Trouble was arriving all dressed up in shiny armour and expensive weaves, on well groom steeds to the sound of horns, the waiving of flags, and proclamations of false piety by those of important birth. This is the worst sort of trouble (naive fools!), and the sort that Otto would best rather avoid. 

...And here's some exciting prep pics

That's all from me at the mo. 

First 40k "game" and the weeks that were

Sup,

Thought I better do an update.

WHFB wise I have been not doing much TBH. I've had 2 games - 1 vs Ryan's WoC and 1 vs Glen's Skitterleap VC One Direction fangurlz list.

I ran the same list both games. Archlector Lotto in his usual attire, lvl4 with 2 lvl1's of light, Otto'ss trusty Halberds and Banner bearer, some suicidal chaff knights, the usual Demis and a couple of stanks with back up cannon (or as I call it "I had to spend the spare 120 points on something and TBH a bunch of xbows or some Pistoliers would probably have more impact on the game!").

The VC game was very much defined by my T1 toasting of 5 Crypthorrors (thank you burning gaze and banishment) and Glen chucking his bunker in a building meaning I could approach the screams piece meal while targeting the Mortis Engines with magic and the Cannons who are officially overrated as over a game I successfully hit, wounded and bypassed the 4+ regen once...and to top it off the Stanks forgot how to make it into combat. This people is why Halberds are awesome. 9 ranks of Steadfast denying+ SCRes out of their eyeballs with the odd light buff/sigmar prayer and they will go though everything (well, almost). A nice 15-5 win with nothing undead left "alive" outside of the tower.

Vs the WoC Ryan was running a very cool list. Slannesh Dprice, usual BSB and lv1 set up, couple of chariots, block of Warriors, chaff, chimera, Hellcannon and Skullcrushers. This game was my turn to put "the bus" in a building...but only because Ryan had the nerve to kill the archer bunker that was originally in it! I drew the scroll out t1 and over the next 2 turns I successfully kept the Dprince out of combat and banished it off the board. s6 banishment vs 1+ AS/5+ re-roll ward is not as autokill as it might appear! This sent the building attacking Chimera packing leaving me to clean up the rest. The stanks figured out how to charge and together took out the 2 chariots, 1 soloed the warriors in the flank (boom!), while the other got a fluky cannon shot that killed the Hellcannon having missed the charge by a couple of inches (combat before gunz in my books!). I got lucky with a "rolled the flee dice too quickly" moment where my initial reaction was to flee the Dprince charge on demis flank to keep it out of combat...I totally didnt see the easy double stank rundown and the horrible overrun for the demis! Doggie charge on fleeing Demis = end 1 inch from board edge out of BSB range for a nervous rally test! However that game ended up as a big win for the Empire (stupid broken vanilla knights!)...the demis redeemed themselves by killing mr "unkillable" (my demis are making a habit out of that!).

So the not-so-secret in there is that I have a 2nd stank (my 3rd having sold my old metal one to Ben from Shirtsoffwarhammer). I havnt got around to painting it because of this:

Yup...lots of Marine goodness. I've been getting lots of crazy ideas... greenstuffed flames EVERYWHERE + a Forgeworld order is on the way with the Salamander shoulderpads/rhino doors etc to give the army the Salamander feel. Lots of fun...but OMG I'm sick of mould lines!

SPACEMARINES (Ironfists chaptertactics) VS ELDAR

So a trip north to the Metropolis that is Levin would not be complete without a game of 40k to get me used to not having 90 models on the board that cannot shoot and scream WAAAAGH. I looked around his shelves and saw some pretty marines and grabbed a few to get something that looked like an army. Glen added it all up, and then wrote a super broken Eldar cheese list to smash it. How nice of him.

We deployed:

Glen chose the other end of the table first. I put the landspeeder storm and 2x1 Attack bikes with Heavy bolters in reserve (yeah...power list). That Rhino has some tactical marines in it.

Glen's deployment:

Oh yeah...just 2 super waveserpents, a Nightspinner, jetbikes with a Farseer. 2 brightlance warwalkers and a Viper in reserve...cos this is a balanced game.

Basically I tried to hold my 2 objectives with super Eternal Warrior, 2+ as/3++ Chaptermaster tanking the Terminators while Glen happily flew around pwning me with all the terrain covering his flanks etc.

Action shot:

Crater is the remains of an Ironclad...I think I managed to take 2 hullpoints total the entire game!

But a fun pasting (and deserved given the hiding his VC got) that got me used to some of the rules (individual model placement = very important!) and experience of how fast other armies can move! I will have to be well tricksy with the Salamanders to keep up!

Anywho that is me for now. I'm trying to motivate myself to get the greenstuffing started for some exciting photgraphs of something other than my messy hobby space!

Next Hobby Project and reflection on the year that was

Hey all,

Back from a bit of radio silence. I was away in the land of cheap Warhammer, so not much hobby action there at all (though the GW sales staff in the UK are a lot less "fluff" orientated than the hobby-hero-hammer staff that work in NZ).

Anywho, any trip to the UK would not be the same without spending far too much money on Warhammer with the justification of a quick currency conversion + overseas use bank fees and then comparing that to the price your local Southern Hemisphere GW would charge for the same loot...

This of course now means that I have officially picked up my Hobby project for 2014...a Salamander Army.

SHOCK SHOCK a 40K army you might say??? ("I thought you already had a 40k army" was what the other half said)...and my answer to that is...DONT WORRY! I'm still a WHFB player first and foremost...I just have friends who also like to play 40K + it's fun...and that's going to be my key consideration...fun.

Now in that pile of plastic you will find:
3 Drop pods
1 Rhino
1 Razorback
1 Ironclad Dreadnaught
2 LandSpeeder Storms
2 Landspeeders
2x5 Scouts (no sniper rifles)
2x10 Tactical Marines
2x5 Devestators
5 Sternguard
AEGIS defence line

Meaning for my evil plans to come to fruition all I need to pick up from NZ is a thunderfire cannon and Vulkan.

I have set myself the goal of having it all painted with display board (and be reasonably confident using it) by Call to Arms 2014. Assuming CTA '14 is a 1750pt tournament with the usual rules and stuff I will have more than enough stuff to get some options together.

The Good news for all you is that my blog will no-longer be simply me painting another "X" to add to existing armies etc + I'll have to figure out how to make 40k battlereports make sense. The lack of strict movement rules can result in hard to follow reports, so I'll try my best.

WHY A SALAMANDER ARMY?
...especially when the internetz is telling me to Wave Serpent spam or take White Scars (the new "oh, I've totally owned that Demon Prince for years"). The reason is 2 fold.

The first fold is that since Space Marines are the default army in 40k they will never be "bad". They may not always be the top dogs, but they are the yardstick against which 40k is measured. My existing Ork army is the exact opposite. I'm sure when the book gets a revision in 20 years it will be the new shizz for 4 months or so, but it will eventually suffer "old codex" problems like it currently does today.

The 2nd fold is that Salamander's tick all the cool boxes for me. They like close quarter fighting with templates (Heavy Flamers = yum) and they have a dragon as their symbol! + I dont see many of them around = a chance to do something a little different. They also have built in super consistency at what they do best - flame and melta - which is a nice change from the Orks who do 1 thing consistently...powerklaws.

THE YEAR THAT WAS
So with the 2013 year officially finished I can now reflect on where things are at.

• I was 14th on the rankings for the Master's cut off, having fallen out of the top 10 after a frustrating Call To Arms where a couple of games I just failed to capture points from combats that I had successfully won (looking at you Halberds). This was better that last year where I was 16th.

In saying that I could have gone to Masters this year as I was 2nd on the waiting list - and the 1st no longer lives in NZ. However time zone differences + the dates colliding with the partner's birthday meant I couldn't go :( All the best to everyone who is attending.

• I am currently the Empire Icon Holder which was my goal for the year. I hope to extend my Stewardship of it for another year.

I'm very much looking forward to the usual Welly events next year. NZTC should be the highlight as it was so much fun last year + Panzershrek for some Swedish goodness. I hope to attend an event in OZ + hopefully an event in Auckland.