Tale of OG Gamers - High Elves

[cunningmatt]

Wednesday 23rd March - WEEK 12

WARNING THIS POST CONTAINS IMAGES OF AN EXPLICIT NATURE

After an unscheduled rant about philopshicl, philospicl, phiolsophica,... why is that word so difficult to say out loud? And what does it matter I'm trying to write anyway, I know it's spelt philosophical. So anyway after an unscheduled rant about philosophical matters it's time for this week's blog update proper, and given it was suggested a few week's back, and I haven't thought of anything better myself, I present this week's Tale of OG Gamers - High Elves blog in the style of a tabloid newspaper... enjoy!



Daily Tale (of OG Gamers – High Elves), like Daily Mail, get it? Except it's not daily and we're unlikely to blame it all on the BBC, asylum seekers and the cost of the Olympic Games and I'm unlikely to mention house prices. Though I may throw in the odd reference to Princess Diana for s**ts and giggles.

And here's this week's front page story...



See what I did there, don't mock, it's at least as good as the Sun and I didn't charge you 20 pence for this.



Tale of OG Gamers - High Elves author Matt, also known as "Shut the doors the Nutter from Clapham is coming" has finally finished his February painting task of some Phoenix Guard. A source said "Matt has been blathering around doing anything but painting his Phoenix Guard, even talking about Pot Noodles and Red Nose Day yoghurts to get out of it. I'm amazed he's finally completed it." Matt had even been extending the month of February in an audacious bid to try and claim he was still on schedule, when he wasn't. Our ace reporter Michael Madeupaloadofbollocksbecauseourreadersarestupidandwillbelieveanything caught up with Matt on the scene to give us this update on how he finished them:

This is getting odd, isn't it? (You see italics is the newspaper report and normal text is my comments, , you'll get the hang of it! I'd say it's worth persevering, but possibly not – though bare in mind this one of your ideas, before you start moaning!)

Here's Stage 4 of the Phoenix Guard painting guide:

Stage 4 – Phoenix Guard













Base: Drybrushed Bleached Bone and flocked with Glad Grass
Leather Pouches and Sword Sheaths: *NO CHANGE*
Outside of Cloak and Sleeves: Highlighted Pure Skull White
Inside of Cloak: Washed Ogryn Flesh then Highlighted Bad Moon Yellow
Silver Metal: *NO CHANGE*
Gold Metal: Highlighted 5:1 Shining Gold: Mithril Silver
Flesh: Highlighted Bleached Bone
Armour Trim: *NO CHANGE*
Weapons Haft: *NO CHANGE*
Flame Trim on Cloaks and Flames on Banner: Very fine highlight Blood Red
Night Sky on Banner: Layered 2:1 Regal Blue: Enchanted Blue
Phoenix on Banner: Highlighted Skull White
Coals on Banner: Highlighted Skull White
Stars on Banner: Space Wolves Grey with a central dot of Ice Blue
Drum Skin: *NO CHANGE*

I'm really pleased with the cloaks, not only have they turned out whiter than the cast of Midsomer Murders, but the flame pattern seems to have worked really well. The secret, I'm afraid is lots of layers of oranges and yellows, no quick tricks here.

Matt also finished the remaining Archers required to complete that unit, so here's his armed build up on the Libyan border as of February.

Just to clarify I'm not planning on invading Libya, bloody press always lie. But here is how the army's looking as of February:

In order to get the points right, February consists of the Hawkeye and Standard read my story exclusively in next week's Daily Tale for the Archer unit (42 points) and nine Phoenix Guard including Musician and Standard. So here are February's finished models:





Here's the army list:





And here's full army:



And the other headlines:

Private Jet owners anger at new tax. "It's going to affect every middle-class family in Britain", says Lord Hartlepool-Fontleroy-Piddlebottom-Brown-Netherburt-Cuddle-Wuddle. The Daily Tale blames the BBC.

Prince William and Kate Middleton Souvenir Condoms available with just 5 tokens, turn to Page 42 to get your first one.

ITV to commission new Titanic drama, viewers complain they already know the ending.

Asylum seekers steal one hour from your weekend. Clocks go forward as Poles demand they get the hour. Hate them and burn them the foreign scum they are raping your daughters.

As always a balanced view from the press there.



And now for Page 3, which has been kindly provided by our resident four year old artist:



Sadly she didn't understand why only women appear on Page 3, and also did this drawing:



Unfortunately Social Services have now taken the resident four year old artist into care. Oh dear.



Breaking News, Breaking News. It has emerged that Tale of OG Gamers – High Elves author Matt, also know as "Brick up the windows the spikey haired moron's back!" has not only painted February's High Elves but he's also painted March's section as well. Michael Madeupaloadofbollocksbecauseourreadersarestupidandwillbelieveanything is back on the scene:

Yep, this time the papers are correct. March's task was to paint Caradryan, Captain of the Phoenix Guard here's a full guide:

Stage 1 – Caradryan, Captain of the Phoenix Guard







Base: Khemri Brown
Stone: Charadon Granite
Silver Metal: Chaimail
Outside of Cloak and Sleeves: 1:1 Astronomacian Grey: Skull White
Armour Trim and Decorative Cloth: 1:1 Enchanted Blue: Ice Blue
Gold Metal: Tin Bitz
Weapons Haft: Khemri Brown
Leather Straps: Scorched Brown
Hair: Snakebite Leather
Flesh: Dwarf Flesh

Stage 2 – Caradryan, Captain of the Phoenix Guard







Base: *NO CHANGE*
Stone: Drybrushed Adeptus Battlegrey
Silver Metal: Washed Badab Black
Outside of Cloak and Sleeves: Layered 5:7 Astronomacian Grey: Skull White* then 1:2 Astronomacian Grey: Skull White
Armour Trim and Decorative Cloth: Layered 1:3 Enchanted Blue: Ice Blue then pure Ice Blue
Gold Metal: Shining Gold
Weapons Haft: Layered 1:1 Khemri Brown: Graveyard Earth then pure Graveyard Earth
Leather Straps: Washed Badab Black
Hair: Layered Desert Yellow then 1:1 Desert Yellow: Bleached Bone
Flesh: Layered 1:1 Dwarf Flesh: Elf Flesh then pure Elf Flesh

*5:7 Astronomacian Grey: Skull White is 50% 1:1 Astronomacian Grey: Skull White mixed with 50% 1:2 Astronomacian Grey: Skull White!

Stage 3 – Caradryan, Captain of the Phoenix Guard







Base: *NO CHANGE*
Stone: Drybrushed Codex Grey
Silver Metal: Highlight Mithril Silver
Outside of Cloak and Sleeves: Layered watered down Skull White
Armour Trim and Decorative Cloth: Layered 1:1 Ice Blue : Skull White
Gold Metal: Washed Gryphonne Sepia
Weapons Haft: Layered 1:1 Graveyard Earth : Bleached Bone then pure Bleached Bone
Leather Straps: Highlight Scorched Brown
Hair: Washed Gryphonne Sepia, then Devlan Mud in recesses only
Flesh: Washed Ogyrn Flesh

Stage 4 – Caradryan, Captain of the Phoenix Guard









Base: Flocked with Glade Grass
Stone: Drybrushed Fortress Grey then washed Badab Black
Silver Metal: *NO CHANGE*
Outside of Cloak and Sleeves: Highlighted Skull White
Armour Trim and Decorative Cloth: *NO CHANGE*
Gold Metal: Highlighted 5:1 Shining Gold : Mithril Silver, then pure Mithril Silver
Weapons Haft: *NO CHANGE*
Leather Straps: *NO CHANGE*
Hair: Highlight strands with Bleached Bone, then tips with Skull White
Flesh: Highlighted 1:1 Elf Flesh : Bleached Bone, then pure Bleached Bone

I mounted Caradryan on a stone base from the Warhammer Basing Kit (pining him through the base) as this has the effect of making his base look more detailed and making him taller, as he comes in a little shorter than the other Phoenix Guard, because he's taken his helmet off!!

When assembling Caradryan, I ensured he'd rank up with the other Phoenix Guard before gluing him in place:



Unlike the newer Phoenix Guard models, there's no moulded flame pattern on Caradryan's cloak. So I painted the outline of one on using a Fine Detail brush and some Chaos Black, practicing the pattern on some newspaper in advance.



The pattern was then painted as on the Phoenix Guard with the following layers, moving upward: Skull White, Bad Moon Yellow, Sunburst Yellow, Golden Yellow, Fiery Orange, Blazing Orange, Blood Red.



So here's March's two models for the Tale of OG Gamers – High Elves:



The updated army list:





And the army as it stands now:



Unbelievable scenes here at Matt's painting table, because not only has he finished March, he's also painted a handful of other bits this week. We went to Tale of OG Gamers leader in chief Ol, who said: "Meh", before drinking another glass of red wine:

Yeah somehow lots got done this week as I also painted a handful of movement trays, the Banners for the two Beastmen units I painted back in January and I finally finished Malagor, the Dark Omen and Ghorros Warhoof from November last year:



I actually painted eight movement trays up, more details next week.

Malagor, the Dark Omen









The base is from the Warhammer Basing Kit (like Caradryan, Malagor is pinned through the base), and I painted lava in the cracks stealing Lee's technique. I say stealing, he did put an excellent painting guide up for lava bases so what does he expect? Check it out here:

http://ogforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=160.0

I've added snow to the base to match the rest of the Beastmen army, but thinned the snow closer to the lava. The idea being that Malagor has just opened a lava vent beneath his feet (seems something that suitably evil people do), and the snow is rapidly melting in the heat. Plus I think I score cheese points for having lava and snow on the same base!

Ghorros Warhoof









The base is slate from the Warhammer Basing Kit, with a branch with skeleton growing out of it, which is actually a spare "arm" from the Dryad kit. Both Ghorros and Malagor had their arms pinned in place.

And finally the Beastmen Gor Banner:





And the Beastmen Bestigor Banner:





Make sure you check out next week's Daily Tale for a full pull out guide on painting banners and making movement trays, only here in the Daily Tale where we tell you that foreigners are bad.



And now it's your chance to win only with The Daily Tale as it's this month's What's In The Box competition, yes you can win the honour of your box being opened and nothing much more. Remember to play along you just need to send your box number 1-36 (not 3, 6, 14 or 25) on the back of a postcard to The Daily Tale, Biased Street, Made Up Trash Town, Injection of Despair into Society City, N0 4INER5

Or alternatively you can just post it below, make sure your entries are in by midday next Wednesday!



Travel is all about planning, for example I was planning to organise a trip to Edinburgh for this weekend, however fortunately I did some checking and found that the last train back to London on a Saturday was at 5.30pm (because we live in some third world backwater country apparently). So due to my planning, we realised this would not be possible and so we cancelled the trip. You see planning is very important, it's equally important if you're also the company running the transportation network as opposed to the traveller.

My journey into work is about to change, because as part of the Crossrail development Tottenham Court Road Underground station is going to be shut to Northern line trains from April the 2nd for seven months. Nothing funny in that sentence, especially as I commute on the Northern line to Tottenham Court Road. You see the problem is that for the last year there has been reduced escalator capacity at Tottenham Court Road station whilst the escalators are being refurbished. Now call me crazy, but wouldn't it have been more sensible to combine these works? With no Northern line the station would be around half as busy, and so closing half the escalators to replace them during this period, would have surely been sensible. No? Maybe I know nothing about escalator replacement. Or maybe I am planning genius, well by TfL's standards anyway?

Fortunately they have been planning for the Northern line not stopping at Tottenham Court Road, as someone has already place the little stickers with a big cross through Tottenham Court Road on all the maps on the Northern line carriages – nearly 4 weeks before the station has actually closed.

Now I'm not suggesting that to place all those stickers is a small undertaking, that can be done in one night, there must be what 20 maps per tube carriage, 10 carriages per train and around 100 trains on the Northern line. So that's 20,000 stickers to place, and anyone who has ever built LEGO surely knows the stickers are the most frustrating bit. But surely to have done the vast majority of the work nearly a month early is a bit keen isn't it? Is the sticker person on holiday for the next four weeks? Certainly this has led to confusion where announcements are playing out on the Underground announcing the closure of Tottenham Court Road to Northern line trains, along with announcements explaining that Tottenham Court Road is still open to Northern line trains and to ignore the stickers on the trains. It's all rather confusing so let me explain, Tottenham Court Road station is still open to Northern line trains, as long as you are reading this before April the 2nd – otherwise it's closed, unless of course you've gone back in the archive and are reading this after November 2011, in which case it's open, unless you're reading this at a point in the future where new engineering works are taking place in which case it may be closed. I'd get a bus to be honest.

I say that, but buses are no better, my regular bus trip to Wandsworth to play at the OG Games' Nights has had to change. In fairness to TfL I'm sure they didn't want Thames Water to replace the water main outside my house any more than I did. But it's happening. So as I am sensible I planned my journey, I went on the TfL website to see how my journey would be affected. Critically I wanted to know which stops my bus would no longer be able to stop at, and thus which stop would be best to get my bus from. What would have been helpful here would have been a map showing the new route, instead I'm simply presented with a list of roads the bus route now goes up – no map, no directions, just a list of roads. Cross-referencing these with an actual map of the original route, which is really easy to find on the TfL website I concluded, as best I could from the incomplete information available, that the bus would be leaving the original route about three stops (10 minutes walk) before my house and rejoining at Clapham Junction about six stops (30 minutes) after my house.

So this presented me with a decision, do I walk for 10 minutes or 30 minutes, obviously I plumped for the 10 minute walk. So imagine my surprise when after walking for 10 minutes, boarding my bus, and driving for 30 minutes on a wild goose chase around backstreets and the like, I then found the bus rejoined it's original route one stop from my house, or about 2 minutes walk. Brilliant. Hence I was unnecessarily 40 minutes late for my game with Lee, which put me in a hysterical mood (see below), and then caused me to come home and rant on this very blog about the metaphysical nature of falling down Beastmen herdstones. (As a side note, I need to say thanks to Ol for putting a herdstone on the Black Isle map for my Beastmen army after my discussions on tower building a few weeks ago – Ol you see has the common courtesy to update his maps, take note TfL!).

In fairness to TfL it's hard to update their maps, it's not as if their website already has software that allows it to plot routes on maps just by putting two postcodes in. Nor were the roadworks announced about three months ago. So it's not as if they had any time to update their maps. Anyway to give them a hand I've produced an updated map for TfL which hopefully will give them the message of the kind of thing I want:



This map is dedicated to you TfL, I hope you got the message, the subtle message!



And finally it's the sport news, as David Cameron led his Beastmen into battle against Lee's Empire army in order to conquer the Black Isle. Pre-match reports suggested that Matt was in a rather odd mood, he muttered something about the number 37 bus before deploying the unit he intended to place in ambush in the centre of his battleline. It didn't look like it was going to go well...

Cameron surveyed the battleline as his Beastmen prepared to attack the Empire. He was pleased he was able to deploy with his brand new hoard of Gors – 34 fighters known as Osbourne's Briefcase Carriers. He looked to his left pleased to see the other Gor unit, The Deficit Reducers, deployed. Then he remember they were supposed to be going into ambush to deal with The Empire artillery – the fools, they'd forgotten to go into ambush. Cameron knew the replacement of the Victorian Water Mains on Black Isle was going to be problematic. Still the hoard charged, bombarded by a spookily accurate mortar hidden behind a hill. The Empire's Pegasus rider drove forward charging the Harpies and forcing them to flee from the field and preventing them from dealing with the Empire's cannon. After much bombardment the Beastmen hoard readied for the charge. Chariots charged the Pegasus rider who fled. The Deficit Reducers fled from a well placed mortar shot, whilst Osbourne's Briefcase Carriers and the Minotaurs charged the two units of Militia who had been sent in as sacrifices. The Minotaurs butchered the Militia but were too busy feeding on their bodies to overrun into the nearby Archers. Cameron, was now a super powerful monster with a variety of augment spells coursing through his body. Then Osbourne's Briefcase Carriers felt the call of the wild as their Primal Fury sent them into a frenzied rage. Between them they butchered 14 of the 15 Militia, however now forced to pursue the fleeing runt they ended with their flank exposed to two large units of Spearmen and the Empire's General and Battle Standard Bearer. Cameron attempted to reboost his own Strength and Toughness in preparation for the fight. But he misjudged the power, energy flowed through his body as he forgot three of his spells. The spearmen charged in, Cameron despite his mental breakdown still retained the abilities of the augment spell, though they were rapidly dispersing and he couldn't remember how to recast them. He and Ed Milliband pushed to the flank to massacre Empire Spearmen. They bravely hacked the ranks limb for limb and would have drawn the combat were it not for the Griffon Standard which made them lose the combat by three. The Gors fled after some high break test rolls, and then preceeded to roll a Double 1 for their flee move. The Spearmen chopped up the Gors, Cameron and Ed. With that, half the Minotaurs dead from the Mortar and the remaining Gors still fleeing as they just refused to rally Cameron called it a day!

So despite going into this battle with a 300 point advantage, a whole 34 Gors of killing power extra, I still buggered it right up. Bloody stupid deployment, bloody miscasting Cameron, bloody fleeing Gors, bloody number 37 bus. I only challenged Lee, because he's usually not that good, instead he's started winning games now, when did they start? It's rude if you ask me.

So Cameron now has trench foot and can only move 4" a turn. Great. Though I did roll 50 gold, I've actually rolled less for a game I won – so I suppose that's good news.

Oh well fingers crossed for the next battle, who knows I may win. Hopefully I won't turn into the raging lunatic I became during this game, on which note that leaves me with one final thing to mention this week...



Goodbye to Matt's sanity. It will be sorely missed. Though few ever met it.

Until next week... coconuts on unicorns!

[Veldemere]

I feel slightly soiled by page 3!

Another cracker Matt, well done

As a small aside, not sure I have mentioned this before but I really don't like the phoenix guard helmets, they are just comically enormous.

oh and, box 11

[Meals]

Loving your work Matt, you've salvaged an already crappy day. 

My hats off to your artist, that was sexy, yet tasteful, you've made me so happy!  She's even included the inane comment about current affairs (cause obviously Pg 3 girls are there for their insightful opinions...). Your attention to detail is impressive.

[fatolaf]

Unfortunately Social Services have now taken the resident four year old artist into care. Oh dear

Those bastards.....

[Dave]

Your attention to detail is impressive.

You mean the 4 year old's attention to detail!

Once again a fantastic read and combined with my rant has salvaged my grim mood of this morning following last nights violoation.

[cunningmatt]

Cheers for the comments, glad I managed to cheer some people up!

Ritchie - you think you're soiled by Page 3, our poor resident 4-year old has come out of it a whole lot worse. Hopefully I can wrestle her back of social serivces too. I do have to disagree though, love the new Phoenix Guard models - think they are amazing, even if cloaks are a bugger to paint.

I should also say that Sarah and Ian, aren't just pretty faces, they are well known for their intellectual insights on a range of matters, so if you can please respect them for that. 

[roland murat]

Consistently great painting Matt (muttermutterevilstaremutter).

Look forward to bashing away at your beast tower on monday. Oo-er

[cunningmatt]

muttermutterevilstaremutter

For a minute, I thought this was the name of another journalist on the Daily Tale! Thanks for the compliment.

Look forward to bashing away at your beast tower on monday. Oo-er

Well I have got another 300 points to play with, so I wouldn't be sure you can beat the Beasts (not that it made any difference in the last game!)

[Julien]

Well I have got another 300 points to play with, so I wouldn't be sure you can beat the Beasts (not that it made any difference in the last game!)

Yes it did make a difference. There was more beats dead in the graveyard. (I'm not sure beats do bury their people) 

[Garzini]

Absolutely beautiful Phoenix Guard, and not a subtle hint about house prices in sight!