the trouble with stunties

Dear GW,
Please print a copy of 'the trouble with stunties', read it, learn it, love it and keep it under your pillow.
Yours,
-Craig

warrior painting

It's been a while since I've done anything warhammer related, and last weekend I got my paint on big time. 

Spent some more time yesterday on them, finishing off two more warriors and the musician and banner. The musician and banner took a good deal of time more than the warriors - a chunk more detail on each.

I'm really happy with them. I was going for a slightly darker orange on the banner than I used on the beards. It's not as different as I'd hoped, but any darker and it just looked brown. I think the banners orange goes well with burnished gold. Also, it was my first freehand attempt. Not too bad eh!

Now I just have to matt varnish then and base them up properly.

Dwarfs vs. Lizardmen, 2.5k

I used Battle Chronicler to put the report together. It's a really nice application, though there are a few gotchas to it. I really like it though, get it free (!) here.

Army Lists:
Dwarfs

Core
DW1 40 Dwarf Warriors, FC, GW - 425
DW2 10 Dwarf Warriors, Musician, GW - 105
DW3 10 Dwarf Warriors, Musician, GW - 105
Hero
H1 Dragon Slayer, with RoSmiting, 2xRoInitiative 85 points

BSB with Strollaz Rune
Runesmith with MRoBalance + spellbreaker

Runesmith with MRoChallenge + spellbreaker

Runesmith with Spelleater

Special

H2 30 Hammerers, FC - 390
S1 25 Slayers + 5 Giant Slayers - 423
S2 25 Slayers + 5 Giant Slayers - 423

Lizardmen
Core 
S1 30 Skinks + 3 Kroxigors - 337 points
S2 10 Skinks 50 points
S3 10 Skinks - 50 points
SS1 7 Skink Skirmishers 70 points
SS2 7 Skink Skirmishers - 70 points
SS3 7 Skink Skirmishers - 70 points
JS1 Jungle Swarm - 45 points
JS2 Jungle Swarm - 45 points

Special 

TG 28 Temple Guard, Temple Guard - 467 points
Rare 
SHP 2 Salamander Hunting Pack - 150 points
Lord
SMPB Slann Mage-Priest BSB - 300 points
SMP Slann Mage-Priest - 275 points
Hero 
SSV 3 Saurus Scar-Veteran - 160 points

Deployment

Turn 1 - Dwarfs

Turn 1 - Lizardmen

The 3 saurus scar veterans charge the slayers, and start slowly but surely wiping them out, killing 8 this turn. The slayers score only a few wounds, all of which are saved.

The 3 units of skink skirmishers move and shoot at the warriors, amazingly they only kill 6. The warriors don't panic.

Turn 2 - Dwarfs

DW2 Dwarf Warriors on the left flank charge skink skirmishers, killing 4 and routing them. Persuit roll succeeds and runs them down.

S2 Slayers continue to take wounds, while causing none. 1+ armour save, which is re-rollable, or ward save of 4+ (depending on which veteran I target) is very hard to brea.

S1 Slayers charge the Jungle Swarm, wiping the swarm out and overrunning into the Salamander Hunting pack.

Turn 2 - Lizardmen

SS1 Skink Skirmishers kill another 3 DW2 Dwarf Warriors. The warriors do not panic though!

S2 Slayers continue to take wounds, while causing none.

S1 Slayers wipe out the Salamander pack, and overrun for a second time (!) into the Skinks. I think this was a mistake, they should have faced off against the temple guard letting DW1 get into the fight.

Turn 3 + 4 - Dwarfs

S2 Slayers continue to take wounds, while causing none. They reform into a 5x3 with remaining troops. They're not going to last much longer.

S1 Slayers wipe out the Skinks and reform to face the temple guard. They change into a 5x4 with their remaining 21 models.

Turn 4 - Lizardmen

The Scar vets and the Slaan BSB charge the warriors, and do some damage. The warriors fail to cause any wounds against the Scar Vets, but hold as they are steadfast.

Turn 5 - Dwarfs

The H2 Hammerers attempt to charge into the flank of the scar vets, but fail their required roll of a 6 with double 1's. ARGH.

DW1 continues to die slowly to the Scar Vets, they do manage to do a single wound this turn though!

The Scar vets target the BSB in the warriors, killing him very very dead.

The S1 Slayers kill a few of the Temple Guard, but take more wounds themselves. The Slayers went with GW's for this combat (since the combat started that is).

Turn 5 - Lizardmen

The BSB Slaan finally gets a spell off (up until now, the Dwarfs have used roughly a scroll a turn, even with RoBalance and 3 Runesmiths for 3 dispell dice, it's hard to handle a +4 caster). The Slaan has previously been using death magic spells which targetted the BSB in the unit, leadership tests for wounds and damage.

He casts Purple Sun (ARGH!) and it side swipes the DW1 Warriors, and the Hammerers. It lifts about 13 warriors and 16 hammerers.

The Scar Vets finish off the Warriors, the Slaan BSB persues and catches them to wipe them.

The swarm chaff moves in front of the hammerers to block any charges.

Turn 6 - Dwarfs

The H2 Hammerers charge and destroy the Jungle swarm, but the overrun angle means they can't make contact with any other units. Instead the Hammerers reform to avoid any flank charges.

Turn 6 - Lizardmen

The Lizardmen finish off the slayers, but don't charge the hammerers - playing it safe and not wanting to lose any points.

What worked well:

My measuring tape...

My first overrun into the chaff which lined me up nicely with the salamanders.

I like Slayers being unbreakable, but they don't seem quite choppy enough on their own. They did take 3 full turns (~6 turns of combat) to be destroyed by the 3 [SSV] Saurus Scar Veterans, which kept the SSV's away from other more fleshy things.

What didn't work well:

Not having cannons:
I couldn't deal with the 3 Scar Veterans, just couldn't scratch them.

Cannons would probably have dealt with two of them. But taking cannon against 25 scouting skinks that can throw out 50 poisoned shots every turn, means I'd be lifting any cannons pretty quick.

I kept forgetting about the Rune of Challenge, though the Runesmith with it was in the Hammerer unit and couldn't have done much. 

Mental Note: Rune of challenge could be used on chaff which is about to block your unit, to get the chaff to charge or flee during opponents turn. It might be a bit of a waste using it on chaff, but if it means your unit gets a decent charge into an important spot the next turn, then it is worth it.

What I would do differently: 

I was overeager. "RAWR! I have teh Strollaz! I must run as fast as I can at you and do DAMAGE!"

He had no warmachines, and a bunch of shooting which was concentrating on my 10 warriors, I didn't really need to run ahead quite as fast. It's just so tempting when you take Strollaz, to use it.

Dawn attack really screwed my hammerer and warrior unit. They were pretty much out of the battle (though double 1's didn't help for their charge!). I outnumbered the lizards unit to unit, I should have waited in the centre while I brought the Hammerers over to somewhere usable.

Next time, if I know a unit is a bit fooked, I might leave my BSB behind the unit before they charge / get charged. The BSB can be picked out by death magic anyway - though I would be exposing the BSB to a hail of skink fire. It might be worth it for the Runesmith though. They're really just there for the dispel dice, and suck in combat.

I still feel like this slayer build could work, but I'm missing the Anvil. It's just so...expensive, and vulnerable.
This slayer list will be back, I'm not done with it yet. No sir.

WFB shecksy models - Bloodletters

The herald of Khorne points out his enemies...you know, in case they weren't sure.

20 Bloodletters charge headlong into a unit of 30 Dwarf Warrior Rangers. Somewhat surprisingly, the Warriors hold and start winning over two turns. Until the Bloodthirster showed up.

Meanwhile the main bloodletter unit is about to decimate the Hammerer horde, killing over 23 models in the first turn. Goooood, feel your hatred.  It gives you focus, it makes you stronger and lets you re-roll hits in the first round of combat.

Brocon - battle report 2 vs Dark Elves

Here's the army list I took.

Battle 2: Vs the Dark Elves  

Scenario: 
Watch Tower
This one caused me trouble, I hadn't accounted properly for it in my list. If you can't occupy the tower as a dwarf in turn 1, it's either empty or your enemy has it. If it's empty, it takes you three turns to get into the watch tower. No other army will take as long, so you're fighting a losing battle to get them out of the tower.

Army:
From left to right in the above pic, Dave took:

• 40 Executioners - these nasties have killing blow and GWs. I believe they had a banner giving them always strike first. So striking first, rerolling, great weapon Str6 troops. Scary.
• 1 Repeater bolt thrower 
• 10 Crossbowmen 
• 1 Lvl 2 caster in with the Crossbowmen 
• 30 Corsairs 
• 20 Spearmen Cauldron of blood, with hag and another character if I remember correctly (the cauldron is directly behind the spearmen, but just out of camera shot) 
• 1 Lvl 4 caster (I think?) in with the Spearmen 
• 1 Hydra 
• 7 Shades 

Who went first?
The Dark Elves.

What Happened:
Shade scouts were deployed 12" away from my hammerers, and in their first turn they marched into range and repeater crossbowed a grudge thrower off the board. Some good shooting there. You can't even see the grudge thrower in the first picture above as it's already been removed, it was behind the hammerers.

On the left flank:
The cannon did some damage to the Hydra before it charged the hammerers. It then killed the bolt thrower.

The executioners advanced, I faced off my warriors and quarrellers backing each other up, increasing the charge distance the executioners would make and readying for a counter charge. I was expecting a charge from the executioners which never came!

My quarrellers pinged the 10 man unit of crossbows over two turns but having reformed into 5x6 (expecting a charge from the executioners) they never did enough damage in this formation to cause a panic test. I was hoped to panic them and have the lvl 2 caster flee with them. The executioners never charged, so kept hitting them, but the cauldron gave them a 5+ ward save.

I decided I was screwed unless I made an attempt at the tower, so in the warriors charged, while the quarrellers moved backwards increasing the charge distance the executioners would have to make.

I kept hitting the executioners with the grudge thrower, taking out a sizeable chunk more. Realising I was out of time, I also charged the quarrellers into the executioners. The quarrellers were winning, but it was already too late - turn 6 had arrived for this flank. The warriors were soundly beaten over two turns and fled the combat.

In the middle:
The hammerers moved forward to give the organ gun a clear shot at the shades. It killed 5 of them, they panicked and fled off the board over the next two turns. The next turn the organ gun decided to misfire and roll a 2, which means destroyed. Bye bye organ gun.

The remaining grudge thrower targetted the corsairs until they got in the tower, it then targetted the executioners on the left flank taking 10 of them away over two turns.

On the right flank:
The cannon on the left flank did some small damage to the hydra, which then charged the hammerers and was murderated by them.

The hammerers moved up with the idea that they'd either assault the building, or chase points behind the building via the lvl 4 caster general type in the spearman unit. They would have wiped the floor with them, and kept gunning into the cauldron. After killing the hydra, they marched forward in turn 3. It was turn 4 before they started to attempt charges on the spearman unit. Unfortunately, those charges would fail for the next 3 turns.

Result:
15-5 Loss
Because I didn't take the watchtower, the score started at 15-5.
I did enough damage to take it to 13-7, but adjusting for SCALE the Dark Elf army was a 0 and I was a 2, meaning it was back to 15-5.


What I would do differently: 
Ignore the building, or get into combat with it much faster.

What didn't work well:
The organ gun misfired and removed itself from the board. Sigh.
Assaulting a building with frenzied corsairs in it. They were putting out 23 attacks a turn.

What worked well:
Same as last time, I had spent a lot of points on anti magic and poor Dave had his magic phase shut down.

Missed Rules:
Buildings!

• When assaulting with 10 people, step up rule still applies. We played it that if the corsairs killed 7 warriors (they frequently killed more) then I only got 3 attacks. Wrong. Attackers always get 10 attacks assuming they still have 10 models. 
• When assaulting a building, even if you win CR your attacking unit is moved back an inch thereby not getting a followup round of combat in the occupying players turn. 
• If you win combat res, and the enemy fails it's Ld roll and flees, you can combat reform INTO the building. 
• I also didn't know that skirmishers could march and shoot. Barstewards.

Moar Golems

I've finally got my paint station in place again. It's always that bit of an extra impediment to painting if everything isn't just ready to go.

In other news I got the Megalith pinned and based a while back. Thanks for the help Mr.Saturday - you popped my pinning cherry.
More pics await...

Fluff: Dire Maneuvers

CampaignHammer :
Year 3, Month 1.

I'm still playing the campaign over on CampaignHammer. Thanks mainly to getting fugged by the chaos storm positioning and some crafty spell casting of the Ogre's, my deployments were spread far and wide. The Ogre's had (locally) outnumbered my fleets and were likely going to be carting over multiple banners to my island (well, the island that's in contention).

Interested in a little bit of analysis followed by some fluff I wrote on CampaignHammer? Then read on.

dedicated paint time

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).

Golem pinning