Winners!

Hell ya! My team won OFCC Fantasy 2012!  I can't freaking believe it!

So  my team was 3 people, myself, Ogres and Skaven.  The Skaven player completely smashed face, getting close to max battle points. I didn't do bad either going 3-1-1 getting 73 out of a possible 100pts.  The Ogres ended up 3-1-1 as well.

My army was one of only 2 at the event (74 ppl) with max painting score, but the other one got more favorite army votes (he had a Cthulhu-based VC army) so I got second there.

My team got 2nd overall battle points, 2nd overall sports and 5th overall paint.  Enough for the win!

I didn't take much video the first day, and 2nd day I forgot the camera. It's ok I really didn't want the added stress of filming. I just wanted to have fun.

Some great moments:

Game 1: I fired the rock lobber at a unit of tomb guard. It scatters 10" directly over the middle of a sphynx, killing it outright
Game 2: I Lost the game entirely, but about 1400 victory points but got full bonus, so I ended up with more battle points then my opponent lol!
Game 3: Was really close from the start. This game we were fighting over a hill.  His first shot killed my troll, made the archers and all 3 war machines panic.  However after that the warmachines were golden. In the bottom of turn 6 a mangler and the warmachines completely cleared the hill, leaving only the mangler to claim it for bonus points. It was amazing.
Game 4: By far the closest and best game.  Key moment was when 2 units of Knight Errants charged my big'uns. One unit passed over a mangler, but made all but 2 saves. The other unit, however, charged over a river and lost 5 to dangerous terrain. The Black Orcs were wiff-tastic, being locked in with 5 knights for most of the game.  Oh, and lost the spider to Heroic killing blow lol!
Game 5: Amazing game. Gork came out and did a lot of stomping, killing 15 out of 18 Khorne warriors along with most of the marauders protecting the casters.   The moment of the tourny though was when my spearmen charged a kited-out Chaos Lord on chariot in the rear.  He killed 5, but I had ranks and charge and won by 1.  He then failed two LD8 panic tests, and then rolled 2-2-1 to flee, and the gobbos ran him down!  It was epic!

Things I learned:
-Foot Showshoe of Gork is the most amazing spell, ever.  There is no doubt I'm going to dual- level 4 casters in big games.
-My new strategy really works out. I move from having the big'uns ready to do all the damage, to having my NG horde and deep HW/Shield boys out front. with the BSB and general nearby they are both very, very resilient. I then use the chariots, big'us and spider to come up and actually kill things. I never got to use sneaky stabin' though or had many flank charges, but I didn't really need too either.
-Jury is still out on the chariots.  Really, these guys are interesting. People put more effort then I think it is worth killing them, as the usually don't do anything. But they are great for harassing, flanking,  and just generally being a pain.  I might go to goblin chariots due to the extra movement.
-I could probably use a Calvary unit, maybe replacing the chariots.  Speed is something I lack.

MVP:
by far the mvp's of the tournament were the warmachines, and specifically the doom divers. Holy crap these things are just amazing.  The doom divers are incredibly accurate, and just love to hit small units of heavily-armored troops.  Not great against mass infantry, but that is what the rock lobber is for.  Second place goes to the Orc Shaman and Foot of Gork.
LVP:
Aracknarok.  Only in 1 game did he do anything (harassing and finally running down a horde of marauders) the rest of the time he was not effective. Being only S5 he can't cut through heavy armor, and just in general isn't very killy or survivable.  Not too bad if you can use him as pure support, but there are much better support units you can get for 290pts.

So that's it!  A year's worth of bragging rights!

Raindog's Rampage (1500pt WHFB tournament) Part 4

As the day winds down, I am again on the Table of Shame, this time against Sean's Lizardmen

Game 4 mission: Road Warriors.  There is a road down the middle of the table. You can a bonus point for each unit on the road at the end of the game.  You can an additional bonus point for each unit in the opponent's deployment zone (so a unit in the opponent's zone and on the road is worth 2).

Lord: Slann Mage Priest (lore of light); Focus of Mystery, Focused Rumination, Cupped hands of cheat.

Core: Saurus Warriors x20; full command, spears
Core: Saurus Warriors x20; full command, spears

Special: Temple Guard x20; full command, Sun Standard of Chutee
Special: Chamelion Skinks x5
Special: Chamelion Skinks x5

Rare: Salamander Hunting Pack

 This was the only game everything more or less worked out.  The mangler took out the Salamander and a few temple guard.  The skinks tried to shoot down my spiders and chariots running to the opposite side of the table but failed, both units got shot down by warmachines and spider riders.  The big'uns did their job against the saurus warriors, not only going first but all the attacks and S5 just chew through the heavy armor.  At the end of the game I get off a small bad moon, and just happen to roll initiative and the template hit 15 out of 16 remaining warriors, wiping out all of them.  He called it in turn 5 with only a handful of guard and the mage left.  Counted up 6 bonus points and a solid 16-3 victory.

Took me out of last place! lol ended up just 4pts above last place (in battle points) and 10/13 overall. However I did win best large model (warmachine/chariot/whatever) so I was quite happy about that.

It was a great day and I really hope I took all my lumps in stride.  After all, if I was really worried about winning I wouldn't play Orcs and Goblins!

I want to thank GW for the new Nob Biker kit...

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440160a&prodId=prod1570011a

If I had the money I'd so buy 2 boxes of these and go to town!

Arachnarok Spider WiP #3 - Base done

Finished up the base tonight, other then flock which will come after the varnish.

Arachnarok Spider WiP #2; New GW paint line

Finished the howda and then decided to pin it to the spider. Turns out I made a mistake in assembly so I had to make some modifications to the spider.  Nothing that will ever be seen though so no biggie. I plan on mostly airbrushing the spider, which I can't always do, so I started on the base. lots of detail but nothing I have not done many times before. Won't take long to finish, then I will have all weekend to paint the spider. Might actually make it by the end of the month after all.

I'm completely ecstatic for Coelia Greenshade. It is a nice blue-green wash from the new shade line. before I had to mix my own blue-green wash from Thrakka green and Asurmen blue.  The blue has so much stronger pigments then the green that getting it right was a pain.  New shade color, no more mixing. thanks gw!

I also mixed the base ice color, which is 1:3 liche purple and scaly green (yes I know they dropped scaly green years ago, so I used a Vallejo equivalent) which makes the most amazing deep blue color.  Hopefully one of the new paints will be close enough where I don't have to mix that either.  I'll be checking out Sotek green and Thunderhawk blue to see if either of those will work. Not mixing, especially when airbrushing, will make me do the happy dance.

Lastly picked up Mourn Mountain Snow to try it on the basing for the O&G.   I like how it turns out, a lot.  It has a very slight blue tint.  Before I used a combination of flock layers and the white sand to get the look I wanted. Now I plan on just doing a layer of mourn followed by a quick flock. Time saver!!!

So anyway I need to make an update video.  Maybe tomorrow.

I did it..

Ya it's been a few days since I posted, but I basically spent the whole time painting. Finished with hours to spare, including all the layers, pigments and basing.  Sometimes I impress even myself :)

Here's the strange thing. I'm not burnt out. At all. Not even a little.  I have spent pretty much every spare second for an entire month with a brush in my hands. Not doing some hobby stuff seems..well strange.  Like I should be doing something when I'm not.

Wierd, huh?

So after finishing what I would call an epic achievement (considering I have a full time job and 2 kids), taking pictures and video, editing, encoding and then uploading to youtube what do I do? Take a break of a couple hours then start right back in it. I started by cleaning up the pile of crap from the contest.  I first clipped all the bits off the sprues and bagged them, then I opened and built the 3 goblin fanatics I had on the pile.  I also had 3 black orcs from a trade a while back I had built, so I based them to rank up with the guys I have.  Didn't take long of course, but I still kept going..

Tonight I'm short a kid (spending the weekend with gramma) so I was able to do a few things around the house I've put off but even those didn't take long.  So I finished off the big shootas and skorcha for the warbuggy.  After that I sat down and read the O&G book, trying to decide on army composition.  I want to run Grimgor...he sound freaking bad-ass.

What's next? Mainly waiting for contest results. I figure it will be a couple weeks before voting even starts on the SMA contest, so will probably be a couple months before I know the results of that. My apoc game got postponed but I'm still going to paint the stompa.  It will give me more ideas on what I need for my jet battlewagon.  I do have some re-basing to do with my Blood Angels for OFCC, and I still need to do my Hawk Lords mini for MAC. 

I plan on finally doing my talking about orks videos for dark eldar and grey knights, now that I have a bit more experience against them.

Instead of the apoc game, I'll be going to another tournament on the 30th.  I'll be taking the same list as last time.  It works well, and I've got a lot of practice in with it.  I see no need to change.

I am thinking about diving into redoing my stormboys, and getting a finecast zagstruck.  I think I could make a viable variation on my meta-denial list with them.I also need to touch up a few 'ard boys plus replace the 3 big shootas I have in there for some unknown reason. That's easy though.

I still have a lot of O&G new in package.  I need to be working on those in and among other project to get them done by next June. 

Sorry for the wall of text ramble, but I had a lot on my mind. 

Goblins are done!

Finished my unit of goblins last night.  Oh boy this is a lot more work then I anticipated and I'm really not sure if I can finish.  We'll see...

Quick review of Isle of Blood

My cousin and I broke out his IoB box today. I should note, neither one of us have ever played Fantasy before. We've read rules, watched instructional youtube videos (which were all 7th) but never actually played.

So after a tedious hour or two assembling the models, we wanted to try out a game with the stuff that came in the box.

And here is were we hit a wall.

There is no information in the IoB box that explains how to use the models in the box. There is no listing of wargear, there is no instructions for the engineer's pistol or weapons teams, and the stats in the back of the rulebook are incomplete. It was incredibly frustrating.

The only way we could actually play was load up army builder and generate armies and lists from what models were there. Still didn't get info on the pistol, though. If you know the rules, are playing either army, this box is amazing.

The models are great though, especially the griffon. I already have a sizable VC army to assemble, and would probably go with High elves if I was buying an army.

We did a few minor wargear changes (like giving the prince dragon armor). I went with lore of life on the HE mage, and rolled a 5...exactly what I wanted. Turned out to be the game changer too as my spearmen were being whittled down, but I raised 2 back up and the extra attacks turned a combat and I ran down a unit of clan rats. After that it was just a mop up.

I did enjoy it, but I am not clear on one thing. When declaring a charge, we assumed because of the free 90 degree wheel you can declare against anything within that 180 degree arc. I'm not sure that is correct.

Anyway overall ratings:
Contents: 5 stars
As a standalone starter game: 1 star.