Battle for Salvation; 14 weeks and counting

This week I added another wrack to the completed list.  This this time Dragstor, who had some GW parts to him, though I can't remember exactly what. 

I also took the time today too do all of the bases for everything that had been comleted so far, as well as the ones for the next five wracks on my paint list.

 

I also started working on wire supports, using coat hanger wire, that will hold a couple of the 'flying' characters aloft and also the two old school raiders and the three rotons when I have them done. (the other three raiders, hellions, and ravagers I'm going to keep on the clear peg stands). My plan is to have plumes of hot gasses coming up from fissures on the surface of Snake Mountain, and make them out of some kind of cotton material spray painted and then use them to hide the supports.

 

I didn't do any work on the hellions this week but I knocked out all of my 18 kabalite warriors, who looked at one another in confusion as to why they were being painted up like toys from the 1980's.

 

 Dr. Carnivean knows how to commit to a theme

 I really like the way these guys came out. I almost want to run around the house with them going "pyew pyew pyew".

Hmm
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The reenactment of my childhood is now complete

Battle for Salvation; 15 weeks and counting

Even taking the holiday off from hobby stuff, I still managed to get enough work done this week to feel a sense of accomplishment and that things are progresssing. I was hoping to have the hellions closer to being done but am still happy with how they're looking. I'm probably going to start on the 15 warriors I have to paint this week as I'm finishing up the hellions. 

 

As for the wracks, Webstor, Octavia, Leech, and Spikor have joined Faker and Mer Man in the ranks of the completed, with their bases being the only thing that needs to be done. I may end up waiting till the end and doing the bases all at once.

 Leech was a complete sculpt from scratch.  The only part on Spikor that was a previous model was the arm holding the mace, which I think was rom a Skaven kit. Webstor I remember had some Kroot DNA in him, and ghoul arms.  I think the head was also based on a ghoul and his weapons I got from the bitz box. Octavia started life as a daemonette.

Battle for Salvation; 16 weeks and counting

Now that I have my flight booked and am registered for this year's Battle for Salvation GT October in Nyack, NY, and also now that I've taken all of my licensure tests and am now kind of sitting back and waiting for results and callbacks for jobs I've applied to, I've decided to start working on the army I'm planning on using.  I've mentioned the Kabal of the Snake Headed Mountain in a few other posts previously, as I've been working on my Masters of the Universe themed dark eldar for almost the past two years now.

I've done some work this week and here is where I stand with 16 weeks to go.  I figure I'll do a new post at the end of each week to show how I'm progresssing.

Hellions
I've started working on all of the hellions this week and while I'm probably only a third of the way in on them so far I'm really liking how they're coming out.  They're totally selling the Masters of the Universe theme with those colors and really do look like toys from the 80s.

Everything Else:

 Basically the last time we saw them all, with Merman and Faker standing proudly among the rest of the half painted and half sculpted wracks, trueborn, and kabalite warriors.  The pieces of the Roton (which will serve as venom transports) are still being worked on, although I've made the first mold so far with the pieces that were finished.  And them below are the other vehicles I have so far, two OOP raiders which will transport the wracks, and the two newer ones to carry the warrior units.  I still have to eventually pick up another raider and a trio of ravagers,

The Symbol:
Finally sat down and drew the symbol for the KotSHM, which is basically the silhuette of Snake Mountain from the old 80's cartoon.

I may take a little off the bottom so that it's more evenly distributed making it fit better on things.  I plan to have it on all the sails on the skimmers, on the wings of the Hellions and I may even do another Chessex order and have some dice with the symbol.

Snake Mountain:
Right now all I've got is a kind of a sort of a sketch.

I'll be doing some more detailed sketches in the next couple of weeks.  I already figured out the maximum size I can make it to get it up north.  I'm going to have to make it in three stackable pieces which can be packed in a suitcase.

 

Right now I'm shooting to have the hellions, warriors raiders, and half of the wracks done by the end of July and have the roton molds made, and then spend the next three months focusing on Snake Mountain, the Ravagers, rotons, and the rest of the wracks and trueborn.

The Army of Lord Horrificus

 

It was upon the second day of my travel that I came across the farmhouse, and the memory of my encounter there shall undoubtedly haunt me for many years to come. The fields were mal tended, and disease had been allowed to set in, all but destroying the crop. I decided to investigate, thinking that perhaps whatever farmer tended these lands had taken ill and may be in need of aid, or perhaps had passed from this earth, in which case a proper burial was called for.
As I neared the house, I saw a single cow grazing in the field before it, and as I drew closer, I could see that the poor creature had been blinded. Dismounting my horse, I had a closer look, and noted the recent scar tissue about the empty sockets. Turning my attention back to the house, I now noticed the thin grey sliver of smoke drifting lazily from the chimney.
Setting my jaw, I prepared to have strong words for the farmer who would mutilate one of his beasts in so cruel a fashion. When he answered my knock at the door, however, all thought of such admonishments left my mind, as I stared aghast at the haggard man’s vacant sockets. The farmer had been blinded as well. As had his entire family. Even the sickly tabby cat that brushed against my leg was so defiled. My mind swam at the utter ghoulishness of the scene. When I could again speak I asked the man who had done such a monstrous thing to he and his kin.
The man answered with a single word.
"Horrificus"
-From the journal of Professor Heinrich von Ruttenburg

 

The dread lord Horrificus has marched forth from the Forsaken Vale to seek the Spectral Colossus. Like pus from a squeezed cancer, his fetid host streams into the Old World, spreading its foul corruption where it travels.  Before the great host rides the vanguard led by Furrghus the Debauched, a raider and pillager who has given himself over to Slaanesh and leads a menagerie of foul creatures into battle.

Horrificus has divided command of his armies among his two chief lieutennants, and each of them commands a splinter force.  The first is led by the headless Count Brocken, an early experiment of Dr. Shellendrak and Horrificus' right hand. The second is led by Dycedarg, a foul daemon who entered this world through the Rotfeast Monolith. It is unknown whether the chaos lord has actually bent this foul creature to his whim or if the daemon merely serves to further its own nefarious goals.

 

Lord Horrificus (chaos lord, 2500 pt general)

 “The way I hears it he used to be some kind of lord somewhere and that he was only born with one eye, and that’s why he likes to cut them out of people. He keeps ‘em  on little hooks woven into the hair of the  hippogriff he rides. They say he found it dyin’ on some battlefield in Bretonnia and kept alive with ‘is dark magics and that you can still see the ‘griff’s guts fallin’ out. They say  he can kill you just by touchin’ you and that he’s got every disease known to man, and a couple even the gods don’t know about. Them that’s good anyway.”

- Unknown patron at the Malodorous Goat

Count Brocken (exalted hero, 2000 pt general)

“And if I were to tell you I was this Brocken, what would you do?  Shoot me with that pistol in your hand?”

The sellsword stopped then in his tale and took another drink. He was deep into his cups now and I worried it might affect his recollection.

"His back was turned to me when I drew it," my dinner companion continued, "and I had cocked it before even entering the dwelling. There was no way he could have known."

"Some sorcery," I suggested, and the man just shook his head in dismissal.  His body language was becoming more and more agitated.

"I shot him then and there.  I hadn't lasted this long by taking chances. The shot was true - I saw the hole open up in the back of the hood he was wearing.  I began to untense a little but then he turned back toward me and his head fell right off onto the table."

I raised an eyebrow at this, but the man continued without noticing.  The color had drained out of his face.

"But it wasn't a head at all. Not a real one. Just a wooden one with a face painted on it and a big splintered hole in the back where the ball had hit. I had no idea what had just happened. That's when the laughing started. But I could see now it wasn't coming from him. It was coming from the hooded cage on the table. My heart stopped in my chest then. There ws enough light to see the shape of something moving around in there behind the cloth, and wasn't no bird. Piss shot right down my leg as I looked at the sillhuete of that head laughing at me. The last thing I remember before turned tail was his headless body waving a bloody sword and that shape in the bird cage moving around. I ran out of that house and never looked back."

The man across the table from me rubbed the stump at the end of his arm.

"I must have gone a whole block before I realized the bastard took my hand."

- From the journal of Professor Heinrich von Ruttenburg.

 

Dycedarg (scyla anfingrimm, 2000 pt general)

Dubious of my bold claim, the creature Dycedarg tested its veracity by tentatively brushing at the invisible threshold of my protective circle with a vile tentacle. As it did so, steam emitted from the fleshy tip with a hissing sound, and the daemon recoiled its appendage, a grunt issuing from one of the two heads.  The other head curiously examined the blackened spot that now marred the purplish daemon flesh of the tendril.

“Most impressive,” the other head growled, “I applaud your efforts.”

“I am ever amazed by the ingenuity of these humans,” remarked the first head almost conversationally.

There was a silence then, and I could hear the silent weeping of those huddled within my protective circle, and the sound their shuddering bodies made on the floorboards.

“Very well professor,” Dycedarg boomed in twin voices.  “You win for the present. But I have other methods at my disposal which your arcane wards and glyphs will be unable to circumvent. Do not think you can protect these people forever.”

-          From the journal of Professor Heinrich von Ruttenburg

 

 

 

 

Project Skaven

Ghosts N' Goblins Ride Again

With school winding down I'm making a push to get back into the hobby, kicking it off with a tournament at Coliseum of Comics in Kissimmee. This was the first time I did any playing since the first tournament I went to at CoC last September. .

I brought the Ghosts N' Goblins to do battle with, since they were the nicest looking army that were not outdated by recent books and editions thus could still put on the field as is, without much work. They didn't let me down (off the field anyway) as I got loads of compliments on them

 

My first battle was against a young player named Jonathan and his Warriors of Chaos army.  As an aside, I remembered Jonathan from a couple of weeks ago went Alice and I went up there for boardgame day and they were running a 30 man game of "Are You a Werewolf?"  I think everyone voted to string up poor Jonathan early on (who turned out to be a normal villager) I lasted a while longer before my date with the leafless tree (another innocent villager. We were pretty stupid in our village apparently).  My wife ended up being one of the damn werewolves eating everybody..

On turn 1 the ebon chaos chimera swooped in to draw out the fanatics from the night goblin units and found it bit off more than it could chew.  It backpedaled a little after the initial hits but still got smeared at the beginning of my next turn.

 

The Chaos monster vanquished, the enboldened goblin army marches out to meet the enemy.  Well, some of them anyway.  The night goblins archer unit on the right flank decided they were going to keep trying to pick a fight with the big black orc unit.  Not sure if this should have happened, and this may be just be me getting bit in the tail for deciding to forego the $50 on the latest army book for the tourney since I was using basically the same list as last edition and I had all of the special rules/spells/etc. in the Army Builder printout, but it just said 'closest eligible unit' and I decided to eat the bullet and assume the black orcs met that requirement, being the closest unit to them.  They actually managed to kill four black orcs over two turns of the "Get Em!" result on the Animosity table, and another orc was killed by a fanatic clipping the unit, and this would come back to haunt me.

The goblins on the left flank were getting routed, but the fanatics they disgorged killed off all but one of the mighty dragon ogres, just leaving two warrior units that were weathering multiple rock launcher hits with minimal casualties. The warp beast took some fanatic love too at some point for a wound or two. Things were looking pretty good still till the last dragon ogre and the warp beast charged my black orc unit. All the black orcs and the big boss used a pair of choppas for the fight giving them S5 in the first round with an extra attack. When they attacked the dragon ogre had 2 wounds and the warp beast had 3 or 4.  My crack unit couldn't even put the T4 dragon ogre down, with the BSB and his giant spider helping out.  They managed to do a wound to the dragon ogre and two to the warp beast and then took eight losses, mostly from the dragon ogre who I had put most of my attacks trying to kill. I had a rank, standard, BSB, and War Banner, so I only lost combat by one and was stubborn from having more ranks with the general right there, but I rolled a 9 which I rerolled with the BSB and got an 11, and that was it. That was the last turn, I think, and resulted in a major loss.

My next game was against Tim, a goofy and easygoing young man that reminded me a lot of Scruffyface, otherwise known as the offspring of Brother Francis. (I miss you Scruffyface!). He was using Bretonneans, which was fun for me since I very rarely get to play them.

In the first turn, Tim's courageous Bretonnean knights charge into battle with the Ghosts N' Goblins, despite taking heavy losses from the ghost fanatics. Armored knights were dropping like flies. The fanatics were definitely earning their points.

Then something happened between the movement phase of the top of turn 1 and the close combat phase. Something dreadful.

 



What was in the first picture that wasn't in the second picture.  Here's a hint: it was just to the right of the general's chariot and it had my BSB and black orc boss in it. It's funny because when I went back to look at the pictures the next day I saw something in that first picture that made me laugh. Here it is zoomed in.

 I didn't even realize my catapult had tipped like that, but that was some pretty heavy foreshadowing if ever there was. The first Bretonnean trebuchet shot hit the unit, killing a few black orcs and catching the BSB in the blast radius. BSB failed his ward save and was dealt 3 wounds. The unit had to make a panic test, once again with the general standing right next to them. They fail, then run right off the edge of the board.
Needless to say, the abrupt and unexpected loss of the battle standard bearer and his elite black orc unit in the first turn dramatically shifts the tide of the battle and the unsupported goblins very rapidly find their battle lines collapsing. By the third turn the battle is all but lost and the Goblyn Queen soon finds herself alone against the Bretonnean army. Her and the orc shaman go out in a blaze of glory in a daring suicide charge against the stalwart knights

And now it's game three and The Battle for Last Place begins now with both armies wishing they could be in the saloon and whorehouse on the neighboring battlefield seen in back.

 (when the tournament runner was putting buildings down on the table I said "why do they get the saloon and we get stuck with this crapshack??")
My third opponent was a Sylvanian themed Vampire Counts army commanded by a very friendly and fun opponent named Brian (not Scruffyface). The undead take the fight to the Ghosts N' Goblins early, using their vanguard dire wolves and bats to draw out all the ghostly fanatics. This was the only of the three lists I faced that day that really had a good way of dealing with the fanatics.

The Ghosts N' Goblin meet the vampire challenge head on, paring down the grave guard unit to less than half under withering fire from the pumpkin chukkas.

 The next couple turns are pretty much me doing my best to keep Brian from casting Invocation of Nehek to heal his army (and succeeding, with the help of a dispel scroll) while the vampires held their troops back as the fanatics swarmed over the center of the battlefield. The Goblyn Queen used the opportunity to send her trolls and goblins to sieze the two objectives. (actually the trolls failed a stupidity test and ended up stumbling into the objective while shuffling aimlessly forward. Trolls..)

Once most of the fanatics have been vanquished, the vampire counts charge en masse, sending vampire led skeletons into both buildings in an attempt to drive out the Goblyn Queen's forces

 A goblin unit finds itself squished between a unit of black knighst and the fearsome black coach which was fully powered up with the power of arcane sorceries. The knights continued to charge on into the flank of another goblin unit but found themselves destroyed when they are charged in the rear by the Goblyn Queen's black orc bodyguard (who really needed to make up for their pitiful performance in the first two games). The undead ultimately drove the goblins out of one objective while the trolls held the other, killing the attacking vampire with their acidic troll vomit. The battle ended in a hard fought draw

I had a really fun time playing and while I ended up most likely at the bottom of the heap in the standings, I won best painted army and a $25 gift certificate!  I'm excited about WFB again and especially about the 1600 pt league that's going to be starting there at the end of the month.  I think this time I'm going to go with something a little... furrier.

Dark Elf Driders?

Looking for feedback on a possible converstion for dark elf dark riders. 
Okay I'm going to do something different and put the massive introductary wall of text at the end of the post and get right to the pictures I want feedback on.  I just slapped this together - there's been no attempt to cover joints or smooth transitions with green stuff.  I'm just looking to see if this even works, because I don't want to devote more time to something (and destroy more daemonette and spider bodies) if I end up not liking the finished result. 

I need about 250 more points of core to make my dark elf army legal for the 1600 - 2500 point range that pretty much all tournaments and leagues are in. (Right now I have 400 pts of dark elf crossbowmen)
I have a couple of options for doing this without spending lots of money on new boxes since A) I don't have any extra money now, and B) I'm really to work with stuff  I already have and cut down on my unpainted models without getting more stuff.
Option one is to go with the themed base inserts to grow the crossbowmen by another 50 percent, but I don't want to do that for a couple of reasons. One is that so far I've used that trick with Chaos, Beastmen, Undead, Skaven, and Orcs and Goblins (and will be using it with Lizardmen). And it works there I think because it looks good and makes sense to have these guys just moving as a disorganized mob through woods, graveyards, etc, so that while on the one hand it cuts down on how many times I have to buy and paint the same model and allows me to do more creative stuff,, it also looks really good on the field, fits the character of the army, and allows you to see more of the detail of the models not in the front row.  With dark elves (especially dark elf crossbowmen) none of those things really apply. They DO look like they should be in a regimented rank and file unit.  They're only in two ranks anyway, so nothing's really getting lost in the thick of the unit, and their look is so static and uniform, it doesn't really matter if you can't see the detail of the guy in back because he looks exactly the same as the guys in front.
So my other option is to makes me some dark riders, which I think would actually give the list more versitility than another 20 crossbowmen anyway.  I had thought for a long time about doing driders for the dark elves, especially after the skull pass set came out and you got all those nice plastic spider riders.  I also have most of a box of daemonettes that I have only used two of the bodies of, and some dark eldar hellion bits and other stuff.
So let me know what you think of this, becuase again, I only want to proceed with it if it's something that I think I'll want to keep using in the army even if they eventually release plastic dark riders. I'm not going to do that much for just a stop gap measure - I'd rather just suck it up and buy another two boxes of crossbowmen at that point.