Monday, 22 November 2010

HOTT Carnage, Game 1

VSF vs. Samurai

River, two pieces of rough, one steep hill in the corner.


The Samurai deployed across the river, and then proceeded to come forward. As did I, though the rough going did slow things up a tad.


As his line advanced up popped my water lurker. He didn't last too long - after a couple of recoils in hand to hand, he was sunk with a flurry of arrows from a distance.




The advance continues




The trio of Samuri Heroes pile in vs. my Magician General, Behemoth and Airboat.


One Hero was quickly ensorcelled...


...and the Airboat was also brought down in a hurry! Bother. There was now a jolly big hole in the centre of my line.



The battle for the centre continues. I try to bring my shooters on the flank into the the fight, and peel one off to lure the Samurai Hero from the flank of my Steam Tank. Thankfully, it worked.




The battle for the centre swung back and forth as time also ticked away. With this round drawing to a close, Joe charged his Hero into my Gattling Gun (finally running it down), and charging his Riders into my line of Shooters to the East, who cut his cav to pieces.

With time finally called, it was decided that the game was a draw, although to be fair I won by one point!

Nick

Sunday, 21 November 2010

HOTT Carnage, November 2010

Good evening,

A fine day's gaming was had this fine day in fine company with a fine result. 10 players, four rounds...and I got second...beating out Stan by one point!

This is us, minus Mark. (The code that embeds this image is flogged directly from Robin's site!)


That's me in the middle. With the middle. And the class camera.

One of the cool things for me was seeing others using my armies - I brought along 5 armies for the event for me and others to use, and at one point four of them were in use at the same time.





I shall upload my own pictures over the next couple of days from work. The upload speed from home is abysmal...especially with Matthew sitting on the 'net every spare waking moment he has.

Bye for now,

Nick

Saturday, 20 November 2010

Steam Punk Chivalry

This is BRILLIANT!


Nick

Saturday, 13 November 2010

Skellie Dragon...

...and a shooter element.

Good morning,

Just before I bury myself in writing general report comments (sigh), I have managed to complete (sans base - I need to grab another couple of 25mm DBx chariot element bases) another $2 Shop Dragon. This time for my Skellies...







Painting was thusly...
  • Black undercoat

  • Citadel Shadow Grey (I think it was)

  • Citadel Fortress Grey

  • Vallejo Blue Grey

  • Citadel Skull White

The subtle layering of greys were a little redundant, they can't really be seen, but, well, nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Here he is beside an element of Skellie shooters, for a scale comparison. Not really that big, but he has seen better days!



These Skellie archers are from the Caesar Undead army box. They're really cool!

I've got a crazy idea to expand my two HOTT armies worth of Skellies to make a WarMaster/WarMaster Ancients army to fight my Romans. I'd need a lot more Hordes though...lets see...2 boxes got me 8 elements of Horde at 5 figures each + 5 figures to crew the three chariots + 4 archers for the 2 LH elements + 6 scythe dudes I've for those Bd elements + these three archer figs...hmmm...say 58/2 per box = thats another 4 elements of Hordes (= 12 bases = 4 WM units) + possibly another unit of blades, and I should have enough archers for two more elements (+ this one = 1 WM unit), already got 3 chariots (1 WM unit), I should be able to scrounge two archers from somewhere for another LH element (thus equaling 1 WM unit), + this dragon and a munted one I've still got that I've been planning to make into a Behemoth/Bone Giant...I wonder if I could class these HOTT Magicians as psuedo artillery...hmmm...how many points might that be? Got to get to 1000 to match the historical WMA armies...

That is quite a dense block of text...

(Later)

Done some quick calculations, and it looks like I can muster just over 1000 points if I count the Dragon as a Sphinx, or over 1100 if I count it as a Dragon using the stats from The Battle of Five Armies. I'd just need me one more box of figures.

(Later still)

Warmaster Undead Stats, straight from the rules...

TroopTypeAtkHitArmCmdSizPtsMin
/Max
/1000
Notes
Skeleton GuardInfantry336+-330-/2*1
SkeletonInfantry236+-3302/--
Skeleton BowmenInfantry2/130-3452/-
Skeleton CavalryCavalry235+-360-/-
Skeleton ChariotsChariot3/135+-3110-/3
Bone GiantMonster644+-1125-/1*2
SphinxMonster463+-1150-/1*3
Tomb KingGeneral+2--911301*6
Liche PriestWizard+1--8190-/2*7


(There has got to be an easier way to embed a table than by coding it by hand!)

1. Stats taken from The Battle of the Five Armies - for Goblin Guard units! I needed some way to incorporate my HOTT Bd elements!

2. Bone Giants cause terror. When a Tomb-King gives an order to a Bone Giant or a brigade that contains a Bone Giant there is a -1 Command penalty. There is no penalty when a Liche-Priest gives an order.

3. Sphinx. Because the Sphinx has so many hits (6) we must consider the possibility of hurting the Sphinx and reducing its effectiveness in subsequent turns. Therefore, if a Sphinx has accumulated 3-5 hits by the end of the Shooting phase or Combat phase it is deemed to have been badly hurt. Once a Sphinx is badly hurt all accumulated hits are discounted and its maximum Hits and Attacks are halved for the rest of the battle (to 3 Hits and 2 attacks).

6. Tomb King. The Tomb King is empowered by the spells cast upon him when buried. He can use this power to increase the Combat Attacks value of all the stands in one unit within 20cm by +1 for the duration of one Combat phase. This ability can only be used once per battle.

7. Liche Priests cast spells like other wizards.

Soooo...
  • 2 units of Skellie Guard @ 45 points each

  • 4 units of Skellie Infantry @ 30 points each

  • 1 unit of Skellie Archers @ 45 points

  • 1 unit of Skellie Cavalry @ 60 points

  • 1 unit of Skellie Chariots @ 110 points

  • 1 Bone Giant @ 125 points

  • 1 Sphinx @ 150 points

  • 1 Tomb King @ 130 points

  • 2 Liche Priests @ 90 points each

...gets me about 1010 points worth. 1210 if I count this bonie dragon as a...well...dragon. Enough to go up against my EIR, Parthian, Indian, Persian, Alexandrian, heck even my Gobbo WMA armies!

Right, I really must get to work.

Nick

Sunday, 10 October 2010

Early German Dragon

Good afternoon,

Here I have the final summation of my holiday's work. My Early German Dragon!







Not bad for a $2 Shop toy!

I'll use it alongside my Early German Ghosties to scare the pants off my EIRs. 'Cept the EIR Legionaries aren't wearing any pants...ah well, you get the idea.

Painting was fairly easy.
  1. Goblin Green/Navy Blue mix; Dwarven Brass base...

  2. ...Goblin Green; Shining Gold drybrush/highlight...

  3. ...with a little yellow and white highlight highlighting.

  4. The poor horsie is Beastal Brown with a bit of Devlan Mud shading.

In case anyone is wondering, the squished horse is a munted HaT Numidian animal that, due to some injudicious application of a craft knife was missing its hooves down its right side. So I just chopped it length ways down the middle and presto!

I'm quite looking forward to using this in a HOTT game. Could even use it for some VSF adventuring too, I guess.

I've got one other dragon to finish - a skeletal one for my Skellies, funnily enough. Another $2 Shop toy, as it happens. Its the only way I could afford these things!

Nick

Wednesday, 6 October 2010

EIR Ax Infantry

Good morning,

Here is the summation of my Term 3 holidays!






(They are on temporary bases until I can get some more MDF bases off Stan)

The grunts are HaT Early Imperial Auxilia, the commander is from HaT's Roman Artillery and the Cornican dude is an Italeri Late Republican Roman figure. All painted with [pretty much] two layers (a dark shade with a lighter highlight) atop a black undercoat.

The primary difference between these Ax and my earlier ones is that these now have brass (actually Dwarf Bronze highlighted with Shining Gold) shield bosses and rims.

That's all of my EIR Ax infantry finished.

Now to finish the rest of the EIR Ax Cv, rework the artillery pieces, finish the rest of the legionaries and complete the Pretorian/General cav elements. Oh, and the Eastern Archers. [Sigh]

Then on to the Sarmatians...and Parthians...and Indians...and Macedonians...and Greeks...and Persians...as well as a smattering of others, like my Early Germans. Of which I have at least base coated the Dragon!

So many dollies, so little time...

Nick

Saturday, 2 October 2010

EIR Ax Cv

Good afternoon,

More acronyms, this time standing for Early Imperial Roman Auxilia Cavalry.




These are HaT figures straight from the box. I thought they came out rather well.

Hopefully, before the holidays are out I'll have some Auxilia Infantry completed as well. Perhaps even an Early German Dragon! But we'll see. It's back to school on Monday to start gearing up for the coming term...

Bye for now,

Nick

Wednesday, 29 September 2010

EIR WMA Cmd

Ah, acronyms. Where would we be without them?!

Good evening,

As I am plodding away on some more Early Imperial Auxilia, I thought I might share some EIR command stands that I made up for War Master Ancients.


From left to right we have, well, the 3iC, 2iC and then the big man himself. Its his command. He's in charge, the boss, the head man, top dog, big cheese, a head honcho, number...

(100 points to the first person who can identify which movie that last sentence came from. And no cheating by copying it into Google!)


Interestingly, we have three different manufactures represented here - front to back we have Esci, Italeri and HaT.


Then we have Italeri, HaT and Newline...


...and finally Esci and Newline to finish.

I know these are ideally supposed to be on round stands so that they are distinct from the actual fighting stands, but, well, I didn't have any, and I can't cut them perfectly circular, which would bug me to no end!

In case you are wondering, the horses are actually 20mm metals from New Line (their Roman cav, if memory serves). I thought them to be too skinny to mix very successfully with 20mm plastics, but they look just the biz for these command stands.

As for the riders, well, one is a HaT Punic Roman, and the other two are a couple of my very early conversions - Esci Roman torsos atop Napoleonic cavalry legs. These were from the days before HaT (and then others) began producing any ancient cavalry in plastic (though, to be fair, Atlantic did bring some mounted Romans out ages back - never did see any over here in En Zed...).

A friend of mine told me how he made his (in fact, that mounted standard bearer is Mark's - all the way from the early 1990s!) and so that was the way mine were done until something better came along. As new ancient cav was produced, my early efforts were gradually replaced .

It's funny, my first DBA EIR army was comprised of Revel Pretorians (a bit of an odd set, but at the time it was marginally better value for money than the more accurate Esci Romans - and that was why I got into plastics in the first place - price!) with cav chopped up as above. Over the years, as I further understood what the EIR army actually looked like I gave away the legionaries (to Young Stan's son) in favour of the Esci ones, the Auxilia (again, from the same Revel set) to a chap in South Africa, pulled apart the cav in favour of the HaT EIR cav...in fact, my only converted cav figures from this first army that still remain are a couple of mounted archers that are now filling out my Sarmation army!

But I digress.

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, those bases are 30mm by 30mm. They look much better than the 40 x 40 I initially used for my Raetian Goblin WMA Army.

Nick

Sunday, 19 September 2010

VSF Steam Powered Rocketmen

Good afternoon,

I have finished my Flying Tommies...well, almost.

I've still got to find where I put the bear stuffing that I got from Robin for the trail of steam that will be pouring forth behind them.

But, for what they're worth...





...I think they're pretty cool!

Nick