Editorial - My first game with beastmen

"Seriously, was that the best you could do against welves?"

So, on sunday I finally got to play with my beastmen in what seems like an eternity collecting and painting them.

I played my friend Nightwolf, whose High elves you may remember were at warhammer world against my daemonic legion. Well, he brought with him the wood elf book this time for a bit of 2,000 point action on my living room floor.

So, I threw together a quick list, and I lost...just! It was an entertaining game which was littered with forgetfulness ("Oh yeah, wissan's gives plus+1toughness as well as +1 strength", "Forgot primal fury again", "Don't forget your unit has that s2 auto hit on any unit in base contact" "Oh I forgot my unit has that s2 auto hit on any unit in base contact" and so on).

I attempted a magic heavy list, going for a Lv4 great bray with lore of shadow and stubborn hat (crown of command), Swagger Jagger Dagger and Steel Claws. I brought two level 1s with lore of beasts and a shard of the herdstone. In theory - I librally cast miasma (and wissans) and hop around the board using smoke and mirrors bringing my stubborn hat with me, whilst each turn I overpower my foe with extra power dice from the herdstone.

Well, Nightwolf brought some trinket which allowed his level 4 to reroll failed dispels so very little got through. Bah! Damn opponants having their own schemes!

His wardancers mullered both my razorgor (they really need a 5+ scaly skin save) and my centigors (who I put on the flank thinking they were light cavalry...they aren't...no vanguard move for them. They also rolled +2 initiative on their drunken rolls - excellent! I4 vs and army full of I5 minimum!). My chariot ran straight into a walking chestnut tree, who insisted on passing all his armour saves with contemptuous ease before picking apart my best painted model on the table. I finally offed the treeman in turn 6, after he dropped death conkers on exactly half of my 46 strong gor unit and withered him to T3 and Mindrazored said Gor herd - he still survived two damn turns of being wounded on 2s!

I took 30 Bestigors with banner of swiftness (In an attempt to try and avoid what the internet tells me!) who made a charge on exactly the 14 required. They also passed every primal fury rolled asked of them, making two on double ones! Rawr!

I kept making stupid errors, like falling under 40K mode and attempting to "escort" units off table edges when they ran thinking they couldn't rally within 6inch of an enemy. D'oh! Infact my gor herd spent half the game practising their reforming.

But yes, a good game which helped me clear the cobwebs from my non beastly mind. I know for a fact I'm going to struggle against most lists...but hey, beastmen are cool! Also, they tend to have good games against those classed as lower tier, who I'll be getting to know quite intimately when I haunt the bottom tables of any tournaments.

Also, something quite sneaky is putting your Wargor BSB with uncanny senses and GBS with many limbed fiend in the same unit and going after multiwound monstrous infantry - My wargor did the donkey work taking off wounds on a treekin, before my GBS finished him off in the next initiative step and got a cheeky model for use with jagged dagger.

Editorial - Bidding the vampire armybook an unfond farewell!

Well I'm just getting ready to go have a nice relaxing weekend- and- a- bit- gaming with my arch-friend Max. This weekend is just getting Max into fantasy again with his vampire counts - a week before the new book no less! Poor planning - although this weekend was the first (and last) I've had free for a while to go away.

Even so, it will be a bitter fought weekend with Max pulling every dirty rotten trick he can, so I'm ready for him! It's 1500 points and I'm bringing my daemons of slaanesh, just because I have them built, painted, and experience with them.

So, what do I expect? Knowing Max, a huge hoard of Ghouls, some skellies and a huge grave guard deathstar with a vamp bunkered up in it, with libral casting of necromancy to keep his armies buffed and resurrected.

So, what have I brought? Well I'm mixing it up a little. First of all is a big block of 50 daemonettes in a hoard. The Hero restriction at 375 points, I could afford one herald of tzeentch (a must in my list when facing a magic heavy list like vamps) and a herald of slaanesh. With only one herald, I can only buff one regiment, so I just combined my usual two into one large one. The herald was given a BSB and banner of sundering, which I'll choose to use the -2 debuff to all casting by Lore of necromancy. I never leave home without the banner of sundering, it's a very under rated magic flag!

Second - flamers of tzeentch - I'm running a full unit of 6 for a nice bunker for my herald of tzeentch. With their marching D6 flaming shooting attack, I should make mincemeat of any regenerating units and weaken up any smaller units for decisive charges. The herald has loremaster and a dispel scroll (or the daemon equivalents) and will probably run with shaodw in my first game, then beasts in my second.

Thirdly - two fiends of slaanesh and a unit of seekers, both for flank protection, flank charges and big critter removal.

And that's it - a very small, fragile army. I am tempted to change it about abit this weekend, by taking 3 bloodcrushers instead of the seekers, and dropping a rank of 10 daemonettes to help cover the costs. The bloodcrushers have slightly more staying power and much more punch. I'll see how the first list goes - it's abit weaker but more nippier, although against a slow foe like vamps it might be a bit redundant.

I'll let you all know how it goes - I've also got a game against my friend Matt's High Elves tommorow so I don't want to tailor my lists, as that's just not cricket!

Wish me luck!

Editorial - New vamps and Your ad here!

Hi, I'd like to wish you all a very happy holiday season, hopefully your christmas was merry and your new year will be drunken and debauch.

So I've not had much chance to game or paint recently, although I'm extremely excited for the new year. Firstly, I will be playing against my old rival max's vampire counts in the first week of january. I'll probably be taking my daemons for a long awaited run out.

I'm extremely worried about the new vampires. They look utterly amazing, and  their arrival before other more needy books (w'elves, dwarfs and the bretonians) is obviously GW sitting up and making a real retaliation at other companies (like Mantic) and their more affordable plastics taking a chunk out of their sales.

There's going to be alot of ethereal models floating around being untoucheable, which will cause alot of armies (especially built for all comers like mine) struggling because they just can't dish out enough magical attacks.

This leave me with a problem - my daemons army all have magic attacks - everything they do is magical, even the bloodletters! They'll be quite happy fighting vamps.

Beastmen...not so much! Beastmen already have an ache in the balls facing armies with armour, regen and high initiatives. Armies with alot of ethereal troops may be even worse! Nothing worse than being tied up with a unit you can't hurt.

I'll be taking my daemons with me to game Max because I won't have chance to make my beastman army in time. Max will also be using the old book, since we are gaming literally the week before the Vamps get their new goodies. Oh well, at least he has an excuse as I run through his lines rampantly! (it's about time I made up the gap between his superior win ratio)

Secondly - Sponsor me! I'm currently on £4 earned in over 9 months using AdSence, which isn't great as the content is not very specific to wargaming. My blog has become extremely popular, with over 100 hits a day and growing. So I'm looking for sponsors for my blog. All offers considered! I'm willing to accept very decent offersfrom all sources as long as your ads are relevant to wargaming and the advert itself looks good.

So, if you are, or know anyone who may be interested, then drop me a line, or click on the mspaint banner on the side of the blog!

To finish with, I've painted a little bit today, finishing a razorgor and a big chunk out of my doombull, so hopefully I'll be back in the new year with some more painted posts and a few battle reports!

So fellow beastmen, take care, click my links, earn me money and enjoy yourself over the holiday period!

Blogs I like - Dec 2011 edition

Allo, I had this idea about making a list of blogs which I liked which are related to mine. I've had this waiting on my files for a week, ready to add more on. But I didn't find any others to add so it's only the one blog. - but boy its good.

It's called The bovine overlord - and narcissistically it's written by the bovine overlord.

I'm unsure whether there was any sort of Democratic vote to achieve his rank, but his stuff is rather good. Unfortuantely his blogs on wordpress, and wordpress and blogger shall never intertwine. He also has minotaurs with hooves. I could tell you how he made them...but then why would you go to his blog and read all his lovely battle reports?

Exactly. Here's the link. Enjoy.

http://thebovineoverlord.wordpress.com/

Change comes - A Taste Of Chaos!

Just to let you all aware that this blog is now a combined, ALL IMPROVED Chaos log! As well as updates from my daemon army (who are far from done just yet!) we have an all new Beastman contingent to look forward to gracing you blogroll as well as new terrain.


Basically, I'm expanding my model making in fantasy to include a wider range of miniatures, so I thought it would be apt to change my blog's name. and let's face it...musk was a little bit creepy.
See you all again soon!

Editorial - Another filler post. Unit fillers, that is.

Hi guys, I've had this post ready to go for about two weeks, but with things in real life getting on top I've not had chance to go back and tweak it before I posted it. UNTIL NOW!

Editorial: Unit Fillers

So, what does everyone think about unit fillers?

For those who don't know, live under a rock, or play more childish games like 40K (ooooh snapz!), Unit Fillers are basically models which are used in lieu for the actual models which should make up the unit. They are generally based on a larger base which ranks with the rest of the unit, so if a unit is 20mm, unit fillers are often put on 40mm square bases. Game wise, they have no additional affect, but the equivelant base space they occupy represents the number of models that should be there - so the earlier example would take up four spaces, and count as four models for wound purposes. Confused? Good, I'm terrible at explaining.

There are several different kinds of unit fillers, and several reasons why people do them.

The first is a simple money saving, and time saving, reasons. For larger units, people will spare themselves the monotony of painting more identicle zombies or goblins and instead choose to put a dioroma or terrain piece in.

The second is to add a bit of character to units. A well done diorama (the squabbling animosity orcs model GW produces), or the odd characterful model (again, see the Empire Bear mascot GW produces) can add alot of personality to a unit. And I've seen alot of people using Ogres to bolster their puny ranks at the back, and why not? Many people have older, antique models from over the years which no longer have a place in their front line, so why not add them as a cheeky auxilliary to the back of your squads?


There seems to be alot of debate regarding unit fillers across several forums. Some people love them, and rightly so. If alot of effort has been put into them and they match and enhance the feel of the unit then I'm all for them. A few people dislike them, however, thinking they look out of place and are lazily alternatives to buying and painting models. Again, I kinda agree on this point too, some terrain pieces look out of place in huge units and detract from the "fluid" movement of the group of models, making them look static and stationary as they stand by a huge piece of gothic masonry.
So, coming back round to the topic I want to talk about, are unit fillers worth it? Does my slaanesh army need them?

Well, no, I don't need them. Building my second unit of daemonettes, I have more than enough to make up two full 30 strong units of core. However, I've got a unit filler in the form of a faithful daemonic hound to go alongside my banner bearers. The banners both intrude the model to their right hand sides personal space (the blue flag actually intrudes the one behind it too!), so I've added an OOP Dark Edlar warp beast to my front line.

And, secondly, I've plans for a unit of old OOP metal daemonettes. These guys are pretty pricey, so a few shrewd investments on ebay should help bulk up my unit. But alas, I may need help to fuller fill out the unit to a substsantial size. I got a bargain on eBay for 7 old daemonettes (including command).I found an old daemon prince from that era in my bits box, painted a sexy shade of scoprion green in the same scheme as my Death Guard from around the year 2000. Old school! So after a 10 year slumber in the bits box, I gave him a proper strip, and touched him up. As he's about the same size as a current day chaos spawn, I'm going to make him into a unit filler. As he takes up four spaces in the ranks, and the old crab claw daemonettes cost about £3 each before postage, that should save me around £12.


Unfortunastely, terrain pieces will not be finding their way into my unit. I find them far too static within my fast army, and would look out of place within my ranks.

So, here's a few unit fillers I found trawling the internet. They arn't mine, and look really cool, so I thought you'd like to see them. If any of these are yours, feel free to drop a comment and I'll happily drop your name and website details in either this post or a future post. You are obviously someone who deserve adulation and celebration and if you really want, I'll come round and give you a kiss.
No tongue though.

This is a terrain piece done well, as the bloodletters are on the terrain piece, making it look as if they're moving through the terrain.

I'm not sure why, but I approve of this terrain filler.

The Kislevite is being seduced by three daemonettes. It takes up four models, and uses 3 daemonettes, a net gain of one daemonette! Since they are the rare-as-donkey-shit diaz daemonettes this is a saving of about £100.

Screaming bell masonry, tenticles, and cool blues.

I think this filler is really cool! It's alot of character and the balls and chains are really well executed.

This is nice, except it's skaven, so I automatically have to hate it. If I didn't loathe the Skaven, I may like it...

I hope you enjoyed this blatent display of other people's work! I'd love to be able to make fillers like this, so keep an eye out for future updates!

Editorial - Operation: Finish a unit

Afternoon y'all. This is just a wordy "filler" post to help tide me over until I have something substantial to blog about.

Firstly, I have some bad news from the zones tumbleweeds, it turns out our local store and gaming venue is shutting down in the next week This saddens me as I may have played my last ever game there. Bad times!

Although I had a good game with my pal Rob and his lovely crisp empire army. We played a blood and glory mission which we unfortunately didn't get time to finish, although he insisted I won I still insist he had a very good chance of drawing, if not getting the win himself.We basically ended up with our units tied in combat in the centre, with myself controlling the flanks but with units too out of position or weak to pose much threat.

I must apologies for my bloodcrushers chasing an outrider unit off the board by causing terror (which they didn't cause!) so they could have stood and shot before being cut down. But alas, another point to plot on my learning curve.

A few quick additions - I've been a bit busy on ebay, and I managed to acquire another fiend of slaanesh head for my spawn fiend conversions. I also acquired a Games Day Sorceror for "cheap", who will be finding use in my future Beastman army.

So, I'm hopefully going to be attending AGOM next year with the rest of my gaming club The Leeds Nightowls. I'm six games in with the daemons and I've actually won more than I've lost - so I'm sure I'm due a few poundings in the future!

Anyway, this is bringing me nicely to my next point. I've had a few comments about my army being a nice, aesthetic force...but there in so much disrepair! I've got a mix of good models in with unpainted, half painted or utter monstrous mutant daemonettes with the legs the wrong way, heads at jaunty angles smeared in hormogaunt purple foundation paint.

So, my mission is - finish one unit of daemonettes. I keep putting this off, but I need to sit down and grind out a unit of daemonettes. The standards, champions and musicians need touching up, the bases need doing, the tray needs painting and finishing.

Last night I tidied my "toy room" as the missus affectionately calls it, and cleared my multitude of half complete projects and years worth of bits away. A nice, neat workspace ideal for lining up a unit and painting until completion.

This is actually a secret ploy. I've started back at university again studying for a PG dip, and soon enough the work will stack up to a point where I'll need to donate a lot of my free time to university work. My girlfriend also needs a room to study in, and would like to use the desk when it comes to the end of her doctorate in spring next year. Basically, I'm concerned this project will run itself into the ground, and lose steam when I need to concentrate on real life. I don't want this to happen as I want to have the discipline to actually finish an army I'm proud of.

So, wish me luck. I will not update again until the unit is complete!