Woods!

I finally managed to find the GaleForce 9 Battlefield in a Box Large Pine Wood on eBay for a reasonable price so I picked one up. It’s a long story, but I had attempted to purchase this a couple of months back, from at least four different vendors, and each time, the order would go through only to be cancelled because the item was actually out of stock.


Anyways, once it arrives it will replace at least one of our “cutout” construction paper woods. The Battlefield in the Box terrain really appeals to me because it’s cheap and requires no painting or assembly. I am contemplating further purchases of the line, perhaps another woods and the Elf Tower, but we will see how this one looks first and if there are any more in stock.


With all that being said, man I have spent a lot of money on the hobby this month, but all is good, this one was budgeted for (even if my last splurge wasn’t) and it will be nice to have a proper woods terrain for my gaming table. If I find time, I’ll do a write up on it after it arrives.


Tonight, Dave is coming over for another 3000 point battle. I’ll be playing my DE for more experience. My list is pretty much what you saw in that battle report he did with just a couple surprises (need to keep him on his toes). Should be a lot of fun and we will be sure to post something about it soon.

Out for Blood

Last week Liable and I played his Dark Elves against my Dwarfs for 3000 points. I killed 2 of Liable's Hydras in the first turn and finished off the last one in turn 2. Then I focused them on his general but didn't have much luck because he has a reverse armor save.

The general closed ground pretty fast. Liable had him mounted on a pegasus. He tried to ride that damn thing into my left flank. Luckily, I managed to slow him down with my grudge thrower then finally finished him off with my quarllers. Too bad by that time I didn't have much of a flank to defend.

His spearmen, with the help of of the Cauldron of Blood, managed to break my dwarf warriors. It didn't help much they got hit in the right flank by some angry witch elves.

My hammerers managed to crush the witch elves aimed at my left flank. They got slowed so bad though they didn't have a chance to go after anything else.

In the end I just barely slipped past Liable in points. The three hydras, the general, witch elves, and a bolt thrower my miners managed to pull down gave me the points I needed. I lost my warriors, both grudge throwers, the organ gun, and both units of miners. A turn or two more and I probably would've been anhilated. The 6 turn limit allowed me to hold on by the skin of my teeth. In the end we couldn't quite tell who won it was so close it was likely just a draw.

Turn 1: You can get pretty good feel for how our battle lines are set out from this shot. 

Turn 2: Liable's starting his advance towards me. Being the dwarfs I hold my ground and fire at him with my war machines for as long as possible.

Turn 4: I missed turn 3 but basically Liable's spear-men charged my warriors  and his witch elves sought to draw blood from my hammerers. I also lost both of my grudge throwers. One to his general and the other to his witch elves.

Turn 5: My warriors have broken. My hammers took down his witch elves and are attempting to get back in the fight. At this point his general gets a little tangled up between my two cannons and my quarrelers. This gives me a chance to take him down with a blast of grapeshot.  

Turn 6: I attempt to close the ground between my hammerers and the Cauldron of Blood. No such luck  as my dwarfs are too slow. We call the game because not much else can happen this turn.

Thinking Inside a Vacuum

DON’T DO IT!

Well, we all do it to some extent, but it is something that should be done with caution.

What do I mean when I say thinking inside a vacuum? I mean when we look at something worth looking and make decisions based solely on those characteristics and not outside factors. A good example of this is discussing a unit in an army solely on its’ stat line.

I guess I see this kind of thinking a lot on the forums and blogs that discuss WHFB. Someone posts a comment about a unit and then the people start talking about said unit. This is all perfectly fine, but I would caution the WHFB initiate, or Wargaming initiate in general, that a unit alone is a relatively small piece of the puzzle and together you need to understand how that unit functions and its roll in your army (or what its role will be).

This is very rudimentary, of course, but this post is meant to setup some subsequent posts regarding units. It’s important to understand how a unit will function in the army just as much as its stat line and its special rules. So I want to make it a point that we will be going beyond what is written on paper and talk about tactics for each unit in your army. As an example of this thinking, the War Hydra is, on paper, probably one of the nastiest close combat monsters for its price. In practice (while it is seriously nasty) its nastiness is overshadowed by its psychological effect and proves to be best used supporting other combat units rather than fighting on its own, but more on that later.

The Arrival of a Grudge Thrower

My new dwarf grudge thrower

I finally got my hands on a Dwarf Grudge Thrower and this thing is, to borrow the parlance of a good friend, razmataz. The detail on the crew is amazing. Bringing out the detail in their beards is going to be so much easier than the warriors and quarrelers. The grudge thrower itself has detailed scroll work all around the base. Also, it's a cool little touch to have the bucket of the grudge thrower shaped like a hand.

Once I got it out of the box I noticed a there are some areas affected by air bubbles and some other issues. I decided to put off patching those issues with green stuff until after I assembled it. Mostly, because I wanted to get it out on the battlefield to use against Liable. It performed admirably, taking down a hydra with a single shot in the first turn, though I'll leave that story for another post.

Once I get the green stuff sorted I'll have to figure out how to paint it. I still need to figure out the colors for my dwarf army. It'll take me a bit longer but I'd really like to try to emphasize that the dwarfs are a citizen army and not give them strict uniforms. Of course the professional soldiers like Hammers and Iron Breakers will have a consistent look, for all the rest I'm thinking of varying them between four colors.

Of course, for the grudge thrower itself this doesn't really matter. It'll be a combination of gold, black, silver and grey. The crew is a different story. I suspect it's safe to say that each war machine is owned and crewed by a guild/clan so maybe I could try to incorporate that into the way I color them somehow. I'll have to review my army book.

Some pictures of the dwarf thrower below. I highlighted some of the deficiencies in the piece. All told I'm pretty happy with it.

This guy turned out pretty good. The rod with the hand on top is an awesome touch.

When I opened the package it took me a moment to figure out this guy is turning a crank to reset the  grudge thrower

The fraying at the bottom of his coat is the only defect I saw on the crew. I suspect an air bubble didn't get squeezed out before the material set.

Clearly, as his expression indicates, lifting rocks into the grudge thrower's bucket is tough work. Take a break guy, it'll be good for you.

Of course the grudge thrower itself. The two pieces I had to attach to the base will need some green stuff to fill in the gaps. There's a crease visible in the arm where it looks like the top and bottom didn't quite square with each other. Not sure if I can do much about that other than distract people with an awesome paint job.

Some of the same defects are visible on this side as well. It's also possible to see a bit of a bend in the base. Even so this piece looks fantastic and I'm psyched to get it painted up.

Bloodied but undead

Last week I played a game with Liable where I used my dwarfs as Vampire Counts. I spent the week before the big battle carefully planning my 2500 point army. Trying to ensure I had an anvil unit, some hammer units, and a few units just to keep my flanks secure. I thought my plan had a good chance of succeeding.

I was disastrously wrong. Liable's Dark elves rode right over my army. He neatly tenderized them with magic then sent in his troops to devour them. It was slaughter, massive whole sale slaughter.

Before now my dwarf rune lords had always protected me from magic so I never really thought much of the magic phase. I did all my damage in the shooting phase then mopped up in the close combat phase. Now here I was with my undead army, no ranged units and at a loss for what to do in the magic phase. I should have heeded the advice from the forums and committed my vampire lord to magic to pump him up for offense magic and dispelling. Especially against the Dark Elves who can have a near endless supply of magic dice.

One of the most painful mistakes I made was spending all of my magic dice to stop some of Liable's big hitting spells. I felt pretty good when I stopped Occum's Mind Razor, only to watch him parcel out the rest of his power dice on easy to case hex spells that made my army useless.

I know the vampire counts can be awesome. The image in my head of a noble, yet blood thirsty vampire leading a horde of undead won't let me believe otherwise. For now though, I'm heading back to lead my dwarf throng where good ol' fashion gun powder determines how a battle is one, not flimsy unreliable magic.

-David

Where are we going with this?

“If you build it, they will come”

I have never watched the whole movie, but I think I get the general idea. A bunch of old dead baseball player ghosts tell a guy to build a baseball field. He can’t because the world is covered in water, something about him being the last mailman on earth who delivers mail to a tribe of Native Americans, and then everyone, including some wolves, plays underwater baseball and all are happy. Who needs IMDB anyways?  I believe that quote fits well because I think this blog will be analogues to most Kevin Costner films, in that, it will be a clearing house for fellow gamers half-baked ideas and the epic stories that could only truly exist in the delusional mind of an institutionalize crazy person (you know what I mean, we have all seen the Untouchables…such fantasy).


So we will have battle reports, strategy articles, painting guides, progress reports, and crazy rants. All of the amazing things that make a Wargaming/General Nerdery blog great.  I know Dave will be contributing articles regularly; hopefully he will introduce himself soon. Having Dave on board is good because I know his posts will add a bunch of much needed credibility to this blog (and proper writing skill).


Along with the two of us writing articles, I will be reaching out to fellow wargamers and hobbyist in the area to contribute articles to the blog. Right now we associate with a small group that meets at one of the local hobby/comic shops, primarily to play WHFB. This group is incredibly dedicated to all varieties of wargaming and have years of experience beyond my own. They should be an incredible resource and I am looking forward to their contributions.


So what’s on the agenda for this week?


Continue to think of blog articles, I would like pump out at least two articles a week. Work will continue on my Dark Elves and I hope to post my main 3000 point list for the world to see (can’t stop tweaking it). Campaign reports! Our gaming group is running a WHFB Board Princes Campaign and I will be including updates on these activities as they happen (we just had a HUGE, approximately 10,000 points siege battle). Dave and I finished a small game last night at my place and I hope to have a battle reports of our games up as soon as possible (trying to find a good battle reporter). Finally, World of Tanks! I came late to this game and while it’s not table top wargaming, it is incredibly addicting (So close to getting my own Tiger tank!) To give you an idea, it is basically Counter-Strike with tanks! It will continue to be a huge time sink for me.


To tide you over until the next article, here are some pics of that siege battle!

The Setup

More Setup Shots

Demon Defenders

Empire Siege Towers

More Setup Shots

Demon Skirmishers Attack! (Notice the Dr. Pepper of DOOM!)

Empire Breaches the Wall!

More Empire Troops Pour In.

Giants Rounding the Corner to Get Into the Battle!

The battle ended with in turn 7 with the Demons holding the center. A good game to watch with plenty of action!

How I got hooked on Warhammer

When I started playing Warhammer I was a little more excited than Liable because I've had some experience with these types of games before. My dad has a good size collection of Johnny Reb models and an even large collection of models for a World War 2 game I can't even remember the name of. When my dad and I picked up The Battle for Skull Pass I just figured it'd be fun to give it a shot.

A year later, I have the beginnings of a Dwarf army. My dad is making good progress on his Empire army. And totally unexpected, Liable has a good sized Dark Elf army and is working on a high elf army. I was about ready to give up on the game after a couple of slow games of "The Battle for Skull Pass" hadn't hooked Liable when I suddenly discover he's bought a Dark Elf battalion and has more stuff on the way.

His enthusiasm for the game caught me off gaurd and has now found me reeling to catch-up. I'm still working on settling on a stable list for my dwarfs. This also means I am way behind on ordering models for my dwarfs. Luckily, Liable and the rest of the Warhammer guys at the local game shop, Paradox, don't mind if I use the random Night Goblin and Skaven models as well as assorted pieces of paper or notecards.

In the next few weeks I'll start showing off my progess on painting and assembling my models, talk a bit about how to get started playing the game and try to squeeze in a few battle reports.

First Post!

What to write? What to write?

I feel the need to write some meaningful, something lengthy. I want this first post to be something that people will look back on and say: “This is where he setup the foundation for this truly epic blog about wargaming, surely anyone in the future who blogs about wargaming, or anything for that matter, will have to take note of this masterful wordcraft” or something like that.

Unfortunately, I have yet to develop the skills of a master blogger, let alone a master wordcrafter, or wordsmith if you like. The concept of blogging, while not unknown to me, has been something I have had little practice with. Blogging has always been something I have heard the hipster kids were up to, but I never participated in myself. This is not unlike my experience with wargaming. I do fondly remember going to the local hobby store and looking at all the cool miniatures that were there. My friend and soon to be co-blogger’s dad had complete battalions (yes BATTALIONS) of World War II and modern army miniatures that we used to look at (and carelessly play with) for hours/days. I was aware wargaming existed, but I never participated.  I always said it was something I would love to start, but never did, being a poor kid/college student it was the cost.

Fast forward several years to a spring evening a little over a year ago. My friend had just picked up the Battle for Skull Pass box set (or got it as a gift, I forget) and was begging me to give it a try. I’ll be honest; I blew him off a couple times. It sounded kind of tedious and I usually detested playing competitively in games, especially one vs. one (seriously, I hated it, but that is a subject for another post).  Eventually, I relented and he came over to my place for a game. So there it was, a bunch of tiny plastic army men (Dwarfs and Goblins to be exact) sitting on my glossy dining room table, all ranked up, in full glory, ready to deal pretend death to their enemy.


I think the first game I was Dwarfs (can’t remember, seriously I could be making this up), I hated it and I lost badly. The second game we played I used the Goblins from the set. This game was fun and I managed to win it (well I think we technically came to a draw, but I killed more units, and since at the time, we could not be bothered to look up the victory conditions, I considered it a decisive victory). At any rate, the Goblins really pulled through for me and shortly after, I was looking through the materials in the box set saying “Man, so many armies, so many cool units! It would be so cool to build your own and be the general!”

Box of Crack

I respect my friend, he is a moral compass and typically someone who you could use as a guiding principle for making life decisions, however, I have now come to the conclusion that he is a nerd-crack dealer and I’m just a junky. What is it they say, the first one is free the next one is full price? Or, give away the razor and sell them the blades? Who knew Games Workshop was creating a little drug cartel, providing box sets to kids to run around and hook their friends on this junk?  Someone should tell the DEA.

Being a semi-adult type person, I possess a full-time job. Cost was no longer a huge factor for me (cost be damned! I am hooked!) so I ordered up an army of Dark Elves and thus began the journey that has led to this strange place, the blogosphere (seriously, do they still call it that? Word seems to think it is, let’s roll with it). I have been developing my wargaming hobby interests since that first game and this blog seems to be a natural progression of that. I hope, in time, the content on this blog will grow along with my abilities, so that I can truly say, I have reached the level of apprentice wordsmith.  

I’ll write about the ideas behind this blog in my next post, thanks for reading!