Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Campaign Hammer progress


I've been playing in a WFB campaign for a while now. It's starting to hot up. The wheat has been separated from the chaff, the men from the boys, the core from the hardcore...or something.

We've had two players drop out (which is a pity). One through other commitments, and one through a devilishly good flank attack on his capital. The third capital fell today, t'was the Beastmen - though I'm sure they'll attempt to re-assemble their empire and fight on.

Like fluff? There's been a fair deluge of that today. I guess folks have realised that it's possible to talk about stuff that's happening without actually giving any of their plans away.




The campaign map at the end of year 2.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

dedicated paint time

IMG_0010
early progress
Last weekend I made a trip to hang out with Mr.Saturday so that we could get some productive painting time under our belts.  I've been spending no time on it of late, and I reckon Sat's been the same, so making an event of it made sure neither could back down. :)
His Fimir are coming along nicely, I can't wait to see the first finished unit.

We started with some pinning. Never having done any pinning before, I was quite scared of irrevocably damaging any models by drilling into them. Or perhaps misaligning the pin on one side of the join, causing an arm to go be misaligned with the body and ruining the entire model.
My fears were unfounded, under careful tutelage we got the three Golem models all pinned up, and one pinned to it's base.

After that, I got 3 Hammerers done, which I'll post photos of later. I made a good start on 3 more, then based up a bunch of trees (they still need painted).

IMG_0005
Golem pinning

Monday, October 24, 2011

Dwarves - what non Dwarves think

"Whaddya mean I can't
take all these weapons?"
A little while ago I read good ole troller of a post on Fields of Blood. It got me thinking though, he's right. For any army, there's always the nay sayers who are never happy with their army book. I like to think I'm happy with any army book if things are fairly balanced - but no doubt I'm biased towards the Dwarven Army as they hold that special place in my beard clad heart.

To try and pin down exactly how I am biased, I mailed around my warhammer group asking for their honest opinions. Sometimes these are hard to come by in a group where back stabbing your trusted ally is considered a jolly good show, and something to be proud of.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Undercoat colours

image from TGN.com
I used to be a black under-coater. I recently switched to white, to see if it brought out the lighter colours, it does - but I found that grey was suggested on one or two of the innumerable painting tutorials / websites so I've been giving that a go. It works quite well I think.

The main reason I'm switching around the base coat colour is citadel paints oranges & yellows.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Painting: Warmaster Gyro

warmaster gyrocopterOh-arr I 'ave been paintin'.
It's taken me a while to get back on the horse. It's the usual excuses, work etc. etc.  I painted this up for use as an army banner in the long term campaign I'm playing in.


Have a look see after the jump for some more photos.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Dread Fleet Lethargy

Dread Fleet arrived, a while ago.

I opened the box, had a poke around, decided: "hmm, that's lovely" in a very resigned sort of way - while staring at sprues and sprues of assembling and painting that would be required of me.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Space Marine in pictures

A description of my Space Marine experience, brought to you in glorious technicolour, and without reams of text (I know how lazy you are). 



Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Space Marine for cheeps


Holy crap, Space Marine for only €18.
This game is a whole lotta fun, you now have no excuse not to play it. Bless your weapons, and go (kill orks).

"Even a stoopid hoomie should no what's good fer im!"

Monday, September 19, 2011

Dreadfleet

Where's Nemo?
I'm sure the small Warhammer corner of the internet has already been abuzz about Dreadfleet, this post will add another hundredth of a decibel. I'm not sure Dreadfleet will be any good, and ordering a pre-order game without knowing how it plays, or having any idea of rule balance would be absolute madness right?

Monday, September 12, 2011

W40k: Space Marine

The smarter side of slaughter (Joystiq's review of Space Marine).
I like the tag line for that review. I played through the demo twice, I liked it so much. You're darn tooting that I'll be picking Space Marine up tomorrow. I didn't realise it was out already! AND it has a coop mode being released soon? Mind readers is what they are.

There's something about games which feature any accent but American which agrees with me. English accents in particular, when in computer games (unlike the hollywood style he's English so he's a bad guy), speak to me of steam punk / Victorian era - I'm not even sure why as I can't think of a single example game which encouraged this....wait...waaaait a second.
I remember.

Monday, September 05, 2011

FlickRiver Warhammer Pics

JK's skillz of the dice rolls
Only need a 2+ to hit? Here, have these 5 1's.
I'm writing another Rules Monger post, these take me a little while as I like to try and make sure they're correct & I've looked up every relevant paragraph in the Warhammer rule book / army books.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

blogger post scheduling

I fail at blogspot post publishing scheduling. The last post (about the face off) was supposed to roll on out at about 10am yesterday morning, right about when I've just gotten my first work coffee break and sat down with a fresh mug. Instead, it seems it insta-published the post (which is the default behaviour).

Ah well, it's always the morning somewhere right?

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Unit face off: Rangers vs (Corsairs & Black Guard)

Humans fear the unknown.  I don't play enough Warhammer. Ergo, I fear the unknowns of Warhammer.
What I'm getting at is that when I play, I'm not familiar enough with the units I'm facing.  As a result I usually overestimate those units, and can end up with my units in a less than optimal position.

I thought I'd record a few unit face off's.  They don't have to be matches which are of equal value, just random units which fought each other in battles.  In this post the Dark Elves are worth slightly less, and also get rear charged. Still I figured it might be an interesting exercise & post.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Rule Monger: Cannon vs Mounted Characters

IMG_5572
I love how the closest cannon crew member is
looking the wrong way. "They're behind you Doofus!"
This should probably be titled with the YATIMI8ED tag, but I didn't miss this. Everyone who ends up on the business end of a cannon seems to have though. Quite a few times now my opponent's disbelief has led to trawling the rule book for the tiny little sentence which covers what happens when cannons shoot at a monster with a rider.

In summary:
Cannon's are template weapons, they hit everything under the template, both the rider and the mount are hit simultaneously.

A Closer Look:

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

These aren't the droids you're looking for...

...move along, move along.

This post is singularly lacking in all things Warhammer. Instead, it's what I've been up to for the last few months (i.e. not posting here). If not warhammer = not interested, you're free to stop reading.

Road Trip
I spent a few weeks travelling around France, with my brother and my partner. Highlights include Paris, being in a bomb scare at Charles De Gaulle airport, the fantastic Mont Saint-Michel which felt like Middenheim, lots of driving, the amazing Bayeux Tapestry, the Lascaux Cave paintings and the megaliths at Caranc - there are over 3000 megaliths in roughly 4km. I also dragged this guy (click for hilarious twitter feed and amazing photos therein) around with me, long story. Actually that's not true. You've heard of the travelling leprechaun? Photos taken of it around the world? I was going for something similar, except this Jack Bauer actionman is a workmates and was sitting on his office desk for the past few years. It made for interesting situations, and many odd looks from other tourists.

Mountain Biking (MTB)
I spent a week in Wales cross country mountain biking. Wales is a gorgeous country, I highly recommend a visit especially to northern Wales.
MTB is fast becoming a passion (brace yourself) equal to Warhammer. It's also the only thing trying (and failing) to hold back my expanding waistline. I've spent a lot of time learning to fix and replace parts. I'm a bit hard on the bike, I think I've done about 400 to 500 miles in the year I've had it (not much by a MTB's standards). 3 separate links broke on the chain while in Wales. I was lucky that it broke beside the Trail Centre the first time so I could purchase the necessary bits to fix it. If it had happened an hour or two later it would have been a long walk back. My trail kit is nearly complete - it should have everything one needs to do full or temporary fixes to the bike, enough to get you home. My aim is to learn how to fully service and replace everything on the frame, barring the front forks. I'm tempted to start a blog about the whole learning experience and to keep a log of the trails I've ridden, if nothing else it would be alternate memory storage (I have a terribly memory).

HTPCs:
XBMC
XBMC is awesome. I've been learning about all the bits I'll need to put together a decent HTPC box, which can record HD TV as well as series link. I'd like it to replace the Magnet set to box we currently have - it's a piece of crap. During the learning process I set up XBMC on my laptop while sharing out my entire media collection from my main PC.

PS3 Media Server
Up until now I've been using PS3 Media Server on my main PC to serve up content to my PS3. It's lacking in all features except it does give you the ability to play content on your PS3 using the PS3's native methods. Your main PC which is serving the content, first transcodes the content for the PS3. So you have this massively powerful PS3 console with it's Cell processor being swaddled and spoon fed, rather than doing any heavy lifting on it's own. That always annoyed the heck out of me.

XBMC has some fairly amazing lookup (scraper) scripts which (as long as you have a tidy enough directory structure) identified all my TV shows and Movies without any issues. The only (of many) TV series it missed was Conan the Adventurer :) It grabbed the series artwork ok, but didn't identify any of the episodes I have. I am incredibly impressed with it.
Note though, that it doesn't yet handle live TV or TV recording except through plugins other people have written.
Next step is to get a TV card and test record live TV with my desktop to make sure I can do what I want, before actually buying any PC parts for a HTPC.

MythTV repair
I've spent the few evenings repairing a MythTV box of a friend. Unfortunately I've only managed to do the equivalent of giving it a new lick of paint, and the problem has gone away on it's own. It reminds me of a quote:
Bugs which go away on their own, generally come back on their own.


Plans:
Painting
is quite high up my list. I'm planning on easing my way back into this with a few smaller models.

Blog
I haven't forgotten about this blog, noooo. In fact I have a list of topics as long as my arm upon which I shall wax ill-lyrical soon.

Thursday, June 30, 2011

BCon 5 : The Sunday Match

Too Long Didn't Read (tl;dr):
Don't be so lazy, but if you must, there's pictures at the end for you to feed your eye holes.

At BCon it's become a habit to try something a bit different on the Sunday. For BCon5 we had a free for all face off, 2000 points a pop, Lords and Hero's onlymatch of the day extravaganza.

We'd award 1VP per 100 points of things killed, and more VPs for buildings held. Half way through the game the buildings became merely obstacles much to a few players surprise. I'm not sure what happened there.

Unfortunately it didn't turn out the best, but it was a bit of craic sure.
Everyone was too far away from each other, some alliances briefly formed only to be broken. Nobody wanted to commit troops, we all got bored, the magic phase was ridiculously too long and overpowered, etc.etc. 


I took:
- a bunch of 50 point Slayers
- a bunch of Thane's with GW's and Dwarf Pistols (lacking warmachines I wanted something which would let me do some damage from afar to help equal the offensive magic other players would have)
- 2 runed up Lords (<drones in a bored tone of voice> yes dave, one of which you killed with killing blow, with your wight, which makes it the second time that's happened</drones in a bored tone of voice>. Remind me, who had the most VP at the end and faced the Bloodthirster?)
- a runed up BSB
- 2 runesmiths with 6 spellbreakers between them (I used one by the end)

We created a nice bit of fluff around it, anything for bragging rights eh? King of the Brothel town, his time was up. We were fighting to become the next King. We drew to see who'd become the defending King & Mr.Saturday's undead won the right to become the spitoon.

In brief, the dwarves, undead and dark elves agreed to ally until they were then only ones left standing, then all bets were off.

4 hours (turns) later, I got bored. The Skaven, Daemon's and Warriors of Chaos were pretty much still on their side of the table, the skaven had had a go at the daemon's, and no one else had committed. I fastened my beard to my belt, hiked up my britches, smiled apologetically at dave, and charged his troops which were occupying the ziggurat building (wait, it's an obstacle, it only helps against shooting, wtf?).

We were busy killing each other off, the Dark Elves decided to stick their toe in the water, some of them died, some of them killed dwarves.

In the end, we had to cut the game short. It was decided the two highest scoring sides would chose a character of their own for a show down.

Before you start reading this final paragraph, we need to set the mood. Click this link, and leave the music play in the background while you come back here and read. Good? Good!

I had more VPs than the the Undead (hah!), so chose my surviving Lord to go toe to toe with the Bloodthirster. My Lord had the tasty Master Rune of Smiting (any wound caused actually causes D6 wounds), a Rune of Resistance, and Master Rune of Spite. I was confident enough.
The daemon looked at me and declared that it was carrying some evil magic which cancelled all magic weapon effects used against it. Damn. How was my S4 going to harm that daemon?
It lasted a few rounds, it was fun. The Eye of the Tiger was played, air guitars were strummed and hips gyrated.  The Lord got the daemon down to 1 wound (it had already taken some in the battle). The Lord saved many wounds with the armour and ward saves.
Then I think the Daemon realised that there was a dwarf attacking it, and actually defended itself. It hit and wounded with every single dice. The Dwarf Lord became red paste between the daemon's toes.
Oh well.

And now for the lazy reader, here's the same story, brought to you in new fangled tech-ni-colour.
Roll on BCon6!

Turn_1 12-06-2011 12-31-09
Turn 1

Turn_2 12-06-2011 13-24-08
Turn 2

'See you jimmy? Oh ayyyye, you!'
'See you jimmy? Oh ayyyye, you!'

Turn_3 12-06-2011 13-27-00
Turn 3

Turn 3 - Demon!
Turn 3 - Bloodthirster Daemon thing!

Turn_3 12-06-2011 13-30-25
Turn 3

Turn_4 12-06-2011 13-36-19
Turn 4

Turn_4 12-06-2011 13-36-43
Turn 4

Turn_5 - Dwarves and Undead go hell for leather
Turn 5 - Dwarves and
Undead go hell for leather

Turn 5 - The Grim Reaper points the finger and turns a dwarf to dust
Turn 5 - The Grim Reaper points
the finger and turns a dwarf to dust

Turn_5 - Here's Johnny!
Turn_5 - Here's Johnny!

Turn_5 - 'Dodge this, Elf!'
Turn_5 - 'Dodge this, Elf!'

Turn_5 - Chaos and Skaven fight together against the Demon foes, it's not enough
Turn_5 - Chaos and Skaven fight
together against the Demon foes,
it's not enough

Turn_5 - the chaos warriors finally make a move from their altar of Khaine
Turn_5 - the chaos warriors finally
make a move from their altar of Khaine

Demon V Dwarf - One on one final combat-1
Demon V Dwarf -
One on one final combat

Demon V Dwarf - One on one final combat-2
Demon V Dwarf -
One on one final combat

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

MyBattleReport.com bannery widgiteroo


I'm sure it's old news to the rest of the steam powered interwebs, but I chanced upon this while wandering the dark corners of MrSatsMumblings (there are no light corners there). 
I signed up, decided upon an army name using a Khazalid Lexicon and entered Karak Az.
Google has no (or few) mentions of 'Karak Az' or 'KarakAz' or 'Karak-Az', but I'm sure it's well taken, as no doubt I'll be educated in the comments for this post!

I added some of my recent history at BCon5, and away we go.

Initially I had some issues with BattleReporter, I think that someone had previously entered RedCraig as an opponent, who never signing up to the site, I inherited their battle history - which was amusing, it was all 40k.
The Dwarves of Karak Az vs Imperial Guard! Dwarves win, woo!

Way to go on the unique usernames there lads.
I PM'd an admin type in the forum and he fixed it quick sharp. Fair dues to them.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

GF9 Tokens for WFB

I picked these up today in passing at GamersWorld, impulse buy. I quite like them.
Gone are the days of scraps of white paper littering the table with 'Blood Forest' or 'Abyssal Wood'. They have named each and every one of them them slightly differently, for instance 'Blood Forest' is on the token as 'Bloody Forest', and 'Fungus Forest'  is on the token as 'Fungal Woods'.

They're made well, they have a perspex layer on top of the printed image, so they have a bit of weight and substance when you pick them up. The backs are felted. A bit on the expensive side I suppose, but a thumbs up from me.


Mysterious Waters Markers

Mysterious Woods Markers

Fantasy General's Token Set

Click on the pictures to follow through to the product page on gf9, where the potentiality of embiggening exists.

Unfortunately, GF9 don't seem to have an offering for Arcane Architecture or Mystical Monuments.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Holiday painting

So I've fallen off the wagon with regards to my painting & assembly plans. The guilt & enthusiasm have been slowly combining in equal measures.
Kuffeh's recent longbeard post (and the other one with the BSB for that matter) got me thinking. I have a week of holidays soon, which are not at home (i.e. no painting supplies). Would it be possible to squeeze enough into a case to get some assembly and painting done?

EDIT: I'm flying to destination. Will the citadel paint pots explode?
Thinking of what happens to water bottles, they probably would. Shoot.

I'm a kitchen sinker when travelling, and I just know that if I don't get everything in I'll be sitting there doing some painting and thinking - "damn! why didn't I bring that thing X, I totally need it to paint thing Y. Gorram".

In reality though, if I beat the kitchen sink compulsion, even if I forget something I could surely get some assembly and base coating / base painting done.

Hrrmmm.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Nice paint job

It's not mine, I was browsing around seeing what there is to see.
I can't link to the photo in place as the author has turned off sharing.
You'll have to go clicky:


I like how the painter hasn't used too much (any?) gold on his Dwarves.
Also, the black & silver on the longbeards looks quite good. I think I saw a unit in the Dwarf rulebook with the black / silver colour scheme.
In the Longbeards again, I notice he's used a darkened blood red / gore red as the main uniform colour. Looks quite well.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

BCon5 : my Dwarf Army List

Army board needs a little work here
Below is the army list I fielded at BCon5.

I removed a bunch of the output from ArmyBuilder, the full output is far too verbose.
  • the Grudge Throwers underperformed spectacularly. I didn't roll an on target once in both battles.
    I would possibly swap out one of them, definitely not both. I'll give the 2 thrower list another bash before I decide.
  • ETC rules limit any unit to 450 points. As I wasn't taking a Lord (which would give the Hammerer's immune to fear and terror), I took a RoCourage instead.
  • I took a MRoGrugni (5+ ward save against missile fire) on the BSB, this meant the BSB was naked but the Hammerers had some cover.
    I'd much prefer to take a runed up BSB, RoPreservation, Gromril Armour, RoStone. That kind of thing, but needs must.
    Oddly, even with one of my opponents being the DarkElves, The MRoGrugni hardly ever came into it. 
  • I completely forgot about the master rune of immolation in both battles. And each time I had a nice opportunity to use it. Ah well.
  • I love SpellEater Runes.
    They totally paid for themselves in the Battle with the Dark Elves, cancelling out that Fulminating Flame Cage spell and making the Sorceress forget it. So sweet.
__________________________________________________________
2400 Pts - Dwarfs Roster
   40 Dwarf Warriors, 415 pts (Standard Bearer, Musician, GW's)
   39 Rangers, 444 pts (Standard Bearer, Musician, GW's)
   33 Hammerers, 444 pts (Standard Bearer, Musician, GW's)
      1 Runic Standard (Rune of Courage)

   1 Thane (Battle Standard Bearer), 140 pts
      1 Runic Standard (Master Rune of Grungni)

   1 Runelord, 284 pts (General; Great Weapon; Shield)
      1 Runic Armor (Rune of Iron x2; Rune of Stone)
      1 Runic Talisman (Spelleater Rune x2)

   1 Cannon, 150 pts (Rune of Burning; Rune of Forging; Cannon)
       1 Engineer (Hand Weapon; Brace of Pistols; Light Armour)

   1 Organ Gun, 120 pts

   1 Grudge Thrower, 150 pts (Rune of Accuracy; Rune of Penetrating x1; Stone Thrower)
       1 Engineer (Hand Weapon; Brace of Pistols; Light Armour)

   1 Grudge Thrower, 175 pts (Rune of Accuracy; Rune of Penetrating x2; Stone Thrower)
      1 Engineer (Hand Weapon; Brace of Pistols; Light Armour)

   1 Bolt Thrower, 75 pts (Master Rune of Immolation; Bolt Thrower)


Composition Report:
 Points of Lords: 284 (0 - 600)
 Points of Heroes: 140 (0 - 600)
 Points of Core: 859 (600 - Unlimited)
 Points of Special: 994 (0 - 1200)
 Points of Rare: 120 (0 - 600)

Total Roster Cost: 2397

Created with Army Builder® - Try it for free at http://www.wolflair.com

Friday, June 24, 2011

Wayland returns finecast stock

My opinion on finecast is along the same lines as 3D movies. If I ignore it, it will go away.

One of the guys in Underground Gamers sent this around earlier:
http://www.waylandgames.co.uk/games-workshop/finecast-resin-models/cat_955.html

I am amused.
At the same time, it's early days for finecast, you kind of have to expect this sort of thing?

Electrickery

At the last BCon there I had forgotten to print my army list - and on the second day we had no printer.
We're big on Army Builder you see, I guess too many (genuinely innocent!) mistakes have been made in the past. It's a great tool.

I created the army list and output it to PDF, slapped that sucker into dropbox which my phone could read. One easy access army list.
"Bah, smart phones!" you say. Meh, smoke em if you got em.

One of the others in attendance had been doing a similar thing, downloading his army list to his kindle. If one were to find oneself with a PDF of the BRB which had full text, putting that on your kindle would mean a searchable rule book. It'd be hella smaller than dragging the massive hardback version of the rule book. I should really invest in one of those A5 rulebooks, see if I could fine one on ebay.

I heart gadgets.
If I were a Dwarf, I'd be an engineer.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

BastardCon 5 : The ETC Rules Cometh

Bcon5 posterBabylonBastardCon 5 :
"Where the tears of your opponent are like sweet sweet wine."

The frequency with which we're getting these BCon weekends in is increasing, but I think that's unfortunately misleading. We really just tried to squeeze this one in before folks all disappeared off on summer holidays or other family commitments; if we hadn't made this one it likely would have been Sept before BCon5. That's too long a wait seeing as the last one (March '11).

"Wait, what?" say you, "You can't just start posting again after a whole month without saying anything."
Eh. Whadya gonna do. Excuses? None to be found here.
Hopefully you few, you happy few followers kept yourselves warm with each others bodyheat. Now, back to BCon.

"Godzilla posts always three
time bigger! RAWR!"
It's at this point you should duck out for your coffee. What was going to be 3 posts (bcon + 2 battle reports) has become a Godzilla like post. Don't worry, there's plenty of pictures.

Unlike BCon4, we had a format where the total possible you could get for winning a game was 20 points, total loss 0.  At the end of the battle, tote up you and your opponents victory points and use the ratio between them to award the 20 points between you.
There 8 of us and everyone got in two games. We took it handier this time, with longer lunches. The games felt harder fought and we all thought we deserved the break. :)

There was a good mix of armies in attendance:

  • Dwarves : Craig (me)
  • Ogres : Dec
  • Dwarves : Tom
  • Lizardmen : a late delivery of Tomb Kings meant the Lizardmen were in attendance for JK
  • Chaos Dwarves : MrSaturday
  • Dark Elves : Vic
  • Beastmen : Noel
  • Daemons of Chaos : Paul
My two battles were against the pin cushion experts, the Dark Elves; followed by the straight in no kissin Beastmen.

Rules:
2400 point army lists.
ETC rules in attendance. The major one which affected me was the 450 point max per unit, which I have to say if fair enough. It keeps the stupid o'clock sized units down a little bit. The power dice affecting limit worked in my favour as well, so no complaints here.
Limiting war machines to a max of 5? With two templates? Done. Easy. I wasn't even going to take 5 until I saw that was in the rules. :)

Scenarios:
For each round of battles we rolled a single scenario, and each table had to play it.

Terrain:
We setup terrain at the start of the day on each table, the first battle players setting it up for their own table. We decided to keep the same terrain for the rest of the day after it had been setup. It would turn out, this was kind of foolish...

Battle The First: Dark Elves 

Scenario: Battle for the Pass
...we setup the terrain completely for our benefit to suit the Battle for the Pass scenario, so when it came to the battle #2 - things got ugly, but interesting!

Turn 1: setup fun. Remember it's battle for the pass, the length ways battle field. Each sides deployment zone is still only 12" from the centre, but you can deploy waaaay back if you so wish.
I wished. It happened. The Dark Elf dealt with it.
Bcon5 - Vs Dark Elves 11-06-2011 12-52-23
Turn 1 - the setup.
You'll notice the massive unit of dwarves in the top left. A large block of 39 Rangers. GWs. I wasn't sure about placing them here, I figured that the DE would turn around and munch them easily as I was coming at him piecemeal. That's not quite what happened though.

The Dwarves got to go first, the turn was spent moving the all inf blocks forward, then firing ineffectually. Pretty much did next to no damage. Both grudge throwers missed. Cannon missed the Hydra, killed a few BlackGuard. BoltThrower missed. Orgun gun out of range. etc.etc.
DE's advance, and don't turn around to face the scouts. Phew.

Turn 2:
The Rangers get their above average distance charge against the DE bolt thrower, wipe it out and overrun into the back of the two units: Corsairs and BlackGuard. Mental State? Tasty happy with the overrun, but very uncertain about how the rangers would stack up against those two units.
The rangers did good. Over the two turns, they took heavy losses, but wiped out the corsairs (except for that damn last man!) and took out 15 out of 20 blackguard.
Unfortunately they still lost on wounds in the second round, and fled. Corsairs have the Slavers ability, which meant that I had to re-roll the highest D6 for my flee roll before they make their pursuit roll. They caught the rangers, and then did nothing for the rest of the game.

Bcon5 - Vs Dark Elves 11-06-2011 14-44-11
as things stand at the start of turn 4
~Turns 3 & 4:
Shooting still ineffectual.
DE fast cav playing silly buggers, Hammerers can't get into combat.
DE wipes out war machines, the Manticore gets an overrun from the Bolt Thrower and on into the Grudge Thrower.
The Hydra triumphantly marches (I know, march and shoot? wtf!) down beside the Warriors, and flank flames the unit. Luckily the cannon had caused it 3 wounds, so it's breath weapon strength was reduced to 2. Not a dwarf was lost!

The shooty phase finally comes good, the cannon gets a shot off and takes out the Manticore and it's expensive character rider. There was some (understandable) desperate straw grabbing, about how the cannon could hit both the mount and the rider.
Bye bye DE general. Those tears tasted good.

The Hammerers wanted so bad to charge the Hydra but couldn't as they would have come into contact with the fast cav first. You can't come into contact with an enemy you haven't charged, so I had to charge the fast cav - and of course they fled. I'm not sure of the rules here, more than half my unit could easily see the Hydra, but I agree that they'd wheel and hit the fast cav first. Does the ranked unit skirmish it's way around and charge the target? 8th Ed has certainly simplified the rules, so possibly...

The Hydra obligingly charged the hammerers, and got munched - mainly due to the cannon doing those 3 wounds to the Hydra earlier in the battle.
Bcon5 - Vs Dark Elves 11-06-2011 15-11-37
start of turn 5
Turns 5 & 6:
Clean up. 
Hammerers wipe the floor with the Spearmen.
DE Scouts flee the Warrior charge.
DE Fast cav fails to rally (hah!).

Game ends with only the surviving corsair and blackguards hiding behind the ziggurat.


Final Score: 14-6 to the Dwarves.


WorldsEndRadio - great name
for a podcast
Battle #2: The Beastmen:
Scenario: Dawn Attack
The one where you roll to see which flank the unit can be placed in. Scout Rangers were totally worth it in this scenario, being able to place them wherever I needed to plug the gap.

Rather than an in depth turn by turn summary, I'll just go with some highlights.
First off, we were still playing with the Battle for the pass terrain. Bummer. It pretty much divided the board in two.

Second off, you see the ship wreck in the middle there? That's a Haunted Mansion, right, smack, in the middle of my deployment zone. Every turn, if a unit within 6", that unit takes D6 S1 hits with no armour save. That gets pretty annoying I'll tell you.

Third point to note, that black altar on top of the hill, is an Altar of Khaine. Units within 6" gain frenzy.

This battle was definitely of the straight in no kissin variety.
Cool stuff:

  • Centiguars are badass. Be Afraid. They charged my GW Warrior horde of 40, and held them for a turns before help arrived. They're in the next pic, the unit that looks like it could be cavalry which has charged the Dwarf Warrior unit in front of the Shipwreck.
    Now, the Centiguars performance was boosted by Khaine as they were within 6" of the altar, thereby gaining extra attacks and frenzy; but still, holy cow they did the deed!
    The Minotaur unit and a chariot charged the warriors to help finish them off.
Bcon5 - Vs Beastmen 11-06-2011 17-27-10
~end of turn 2 - centiguars taking names, "Simon? Here!"

  • Target those Minotaurs:
    The orgun gun and stone throwers did the deed, and killed off all the other Minotaurs except for the character - who is still an awesome force to contend with.
  • The Gors(?) showed up with the ambush rule. The cannon tried for grapeshot, only 1 kill.
  • In a rather tasty move, the Hammerers and the Rangers charged the main unit of 40 UnGors (?) which contained the general, BSB and a Shamen. The skirmishing Gors left enough of a gap to charge around. 24 wounds later (see next pic) and that unit is outta here.

Bcon5 - Vs Beastmen 11-06-2011 18-38-05
~end of turn 4

Bcon5 - Vs Beastmen 11-06-2011 18-43-54
~turn 5
  • the skirmishing gors finish off the warmachines
  • the remaining centiguar taunts my stone thrower, forcing indirect fire by sitting in front of it! 
  • the rangers chase down the remains of the BSB unit, which rallied, and wipes it out (woo!)
  • The Hammerers turn and face the Minotaur who charges them, this time Frenzy is on the Dwarf side and they turn the Minotaur to a red paste.
Final Score: 14-6 to the Dwarves - yep, same result again. 
He killed a lot of warmachines, and that warrior unit.


Job done.
When we added up the points, myself and the other Dwarf player both had 28. He had faced the Chaos Dwarves and I think the Demons, so fair play to him.

We intend on playing the final against each other in Dublin, some evening soon. 

The Sunday game? That's a different story, most definitely deserves a fluff based post.