Tale of OG Gamers - High Elves

[cunningmatt]

Definitely in April, I just checked!

[fatolaf]

Definitely in April, I just checked!

And in the piccies before you announced it, or is it possibloy amongst your garden / Jabberwocky collection?

[cunningmatt]

The picture was up on the blog when the egg-citing competiton was announced, it's not an egg-stremely devious one that you're missing. Sorry that was a terrible yolk!

[cunningmatt]

Wednesday 4th May - WEEK 18

It's Star Wars Day, May the Fourth be with you!! Ok now that terrible joke's out the way let's get on.

I'm afraid that's it, your 11 days off (perhaps) and your 4-day Bank Holiday weekends (if you were lucky) are over. It's back to work with a bang, no more painting in the garden, if you have been (incidentally if you have you can check out my top painting tips for outdoors in last week's Blog - scroll up, scroll up, bit further - I mention this only as someone pointed out to me they hadn't had time to read my blog because they'd not been at work this week. Glad to see my blog is costing the economy money!). Still despite being back at work we can all agree the Royal Wedding was lovely, didn't all those trees look amazing in Westminster Abbey. Shame the Duke of Edinburgh failed his dangerous terrain test and took a wound!! Hey, and they said I couldn't make a joke connecting Warhammer and the Royal Wedding, admittedly they didn't say it had to be a good joke!

This week I've decided to introduce a new feature to my blog entitled "Models from Hell", or maybe "Poo Models" it's a work-in-progress feature so we can worry about that in good time. Essentially it's an opportunity to moan about models that we don't like in a kind of Room 101 for hobbyists, except without the fun trap door and Paul Merton. Before I start I should point out I don't actually moan about Games Workshop that much on this blog, in fairness I moan a lot, but it's generally about how my own persona is supremely unsuited to our modern world and actually the moan is more my own rebellion at the fact that I'm a crap example of a person. I don't really like to give Games Workshop too hard a time, as it some ways it feels a bit soul destroying to attack the very core of what we all do for leisure, and also being the media w**ker I am, I do understand the predicament of trying to balance the need for Games Workshop to make profit with trying to do everything the "fans" want (not that I have "fans" in any form). That all said, one particular model ruined most of last Friday and Saturday with it's intense stupidity so I've decided that it shall be my first "Model from Hell"/"Poo Model".

Model from Hell/Poo Model - Number 1

And the model that has caused my rage is the Beastmen Razagor:



I realise the poor old Razagor has never had its fans, but I'm going to shock you now by saying I actually don't mind the look of the finished model. It's not my favourite model ever, admittedly, but I certainly don't hate it and am happy to have it in my Beastmen army*. I realise that trying to convince you that this model isn't that bad looking will be a bit like trying to convince that you Jedward are good, so I'm not going to try. Incidentally, if you are wondering what happened to Jedward (?!) then you might like to know they are entering this year's Eurovision for the Republic of Ireland (and you thought Blue was bad!). Genuinely they wanted to have two real life tigers on stage them with, but the hosts banned it on health and safety grounds. I think I speak for the whole of Europe when I say we're willing to risk it.

*Terms and conditions apply, I'll come back to this point

Despite all of what I've just said, this is a democracy (of sorts) so on the grounds that the vast majority of you don't like this model that clearly is grounds for our first black mark against the Razagor.

Regardless of thoughts on the models design I did purchase a handful of them, why you might ask? Well the only units, with models available, missing from my Beastmen Horde are a Razagor Herd and a Razagor Chariot. So I decided it was about time I rectified this and over the months since Christmas have ended up with four of the buggers, three for a unit and one I intend to convert to pull a chariot. At this point, thinking about and buying the models, I probably should have stopped...

So after the festivities of the Royal Wedding I decided to assemble my Razagor herd, and got three of the models, first thing I noticed was – no instructions.



Now don't get me wrong it wasn't impossible to work out what goes where, but given some of the simple plastic kits that get instructions, I'd think a 13 (yes thirteen)-piece metal model could probably do with some, but never mind. Second black mark.

Thirdly despite the Razagor being designed to be fielded in units of multiple models (although minimum unit size is 1), you'd think there might be at least two different variants, even an interchangeable head or something. You'd be wrong. All four of my Razagor are identical.

It turns out the 'Eavy Metal team have got over this by converting a handful, as seen in this battle report from White Dwarf 362 when the current Beastmen range were launched.



Whilst I liked the original model, these "variants" I'm really not keen on, they look a bit too much like a cartoonesque explosion of boar, and how exactly have they converted them? I can't in fact tell which is the original model and what was done to make these different – they look like completely new sculpts. I may not be the only one pleased with them either, as this is the only picture anywhere (that I can find) with them in published by Games Workshop – apart from this blurry one from the same battle report (best to keep them out of focus):



All the army shots in Warhammer Armies: Beastmen and other sources feature no more than one Razagor – the standard one. Is it possible these were the original models, and they withdrew them as they look odd, but not before they photographed the battle report?

So with my unit of Razagor consisting of three clones, I had to do some converting work to try and at least differentiate them slightly – which is particularly tricky when you consider the fact that despite the model being 13 pieces it is primarily one large hunk of metal. However I did give it a go and add on some bits and pieces from the Chaos Spawn set and do a bit of fur modelling from green stuff, you can judge my results shortly.
However the single worst thing about this model, is its absolute impossibility to assemble, it would probably be easier to reassemble Osama Bin Laden's body than put this pig of a model (literally) together. None of the parts fit properly, it all needs pining and there isn't a single join that I didn't have to attempt to glue at least twice on every bloody model, for f**k's sake!

Pining whilst usually the answer didn't work in this case, as the pieces are so badly fitting it is impossible to get the holes on each piece to be aligned. You need the pieces to be actually touching to work out the "least worst" option of where they'd join, which my usual technique of mounting a pin in one piece and pushing them together to find where the second hole should be doesn't allow. Similarly putting a blob of paint on one part and pushing them together doesn't work, as at most places the parts don't actually join due to the poor moulding. This is exacerbated by the fact I was using Games Workshop's pin drill and hobby vice, often whilst pushing the pin drill down to bore a hole the drill bit will slip back into the drill, hot helpful. And as for the hobby vice, the vacuum clamp on the bottom has less chance of adhering to a surface, than Nick Clegg has of adhering to a promise. I tend to find wedging the model in a lump of blu-tac works better than the hobby vice, which is more useful for holding together two pieces you are waiting for the glue to dry on.

Of course the fact that none of the pieces actually bloody fit together means I used enough green stuff to build a full scale model of the Himalayas. So after two days of getting green stuff all over the dining table, drilling into my arm and getting superglue all over my fingers the three Razagors were finally assembled.



I only managed to spray one (the non-converted one for info), as the other two still need some more green stuff, in fact a tusk fell off just moving them into position for this photo. Bloody pieces of tat.

What annoys me more, is I can so no reason why they didn't just make a kit to do a few (maybe even a chariot option, but I shall not push it) from plastic, which would have given some variation and been a hell of a lot easier to put together. In fact I say Games Workshop should be banned from releasing any more metal models that are more complicated to assemble than putting in a slotta base. Plastic is the way forward, it travels better, assembles easier, is less likely to break and harder to chip paint off – not to mention cheaper. Yeah, yeah so metal can have more detail on – ok so you can cast extravagant details out of metal, but you can't actually cast pieces that might potentially f**king join together for f**king-c**ting-bu**ery-bo****king sake. And worst of all I've still got one of these to assemble for my bloody chariot, I need a lie down.

Sorry had to get that off my chest.

So there we go the Razagor has been nominated as my first Model from Hell / Poo Model because it looks rubbish (according to popular opinion), has no instructions, no variants and is less fun to assemble than an IKEA bookshelf with all the parts missing.

This new feature isn't all about me though, I'm sure you have a Model from Hell / Poo Model that you absolutely hate for some reason, and I'd love you to put some nominations in too. Feel free to reply with something suitably vitriolic here, or if you like you can PM your rant and I may even add some photos in and shove it in next week's blog. Do bare in mind we want a rant not just Model BLAH – because it's s**t! Oh and suggestions for a name for this feature would be cool too.

In the interests of balance, after having a "slight" moan at Games Workshop I would like to say something very positive about them. After recently purchasing a Beastmen Chariot from Ol, I found that sadly one of the parts was missing - obviously nothing to do with Ol so keep buying from here peeps, keep buying!! (There done my bit). So as not to bother Ol he's a busy man, he has the blog to read after all, I e-mailed Games Workshop directly to ask them what to do. They told me to either send it straight to them or pop into a store, being I don't work too far from the Oxford Street store I popped in there, showed the guys the problem and the e-mail from Games Workshop Head Office. On the spot they opened up a replacement and gave me the missing part, and then let me keep the rest of the model they'd opened up as they were only going to have to send it back to Head Office to dispose of it. So after the slight annoyance of having a missing piece from my chariot I ended up with an extra chariot (bar one piece). Which I consider to be excellent customer service at rectifying their mistake, so big Well Done to Games Workshop – possibly the first time (and last) this phrase has appeared on a gaming forum anywhere in the world ever.

Easter Egg Hunt and What's In the Box?

Over the last couple of week's I've been running an Easter Egg hunt to win a fabulous pack of Cream Eggs (now reduced in Sainsbury's to about 8p), all you had to do was spot the 12 eggs hidden in recent editions of this blog. I've had a number of entries, two being a number, admittedly a rather low one but still I'll take what I get.

However the 12 eggs did prove elusive with our highest scoring entry only finding 11 of them, so where were they?

Well going back to WEEK 15, you'll find Egg #1 which was a hen's egg popping out of the LEGO helicopter box:



Egg #2 also from WEEK 15 was a pink children's egg of some description (don't ask) on the Chaos Spawn instructions:



Moving onto WEEK 16 and Eggs #3-8 were in a box of six eggs cunningly displayed with some painting guides:



Egg #9 was on WEEK 16's set of What's In the Box boxes:



Eggs #10-11 were on the Easter special blog entry and were probably the trickiest to discover as they were drawn by our resident 4-year old artist on the Easter card.



But where was that elusive Egg 12? Well I had some inventive suggestions, including the fact that maybe Cheryl was an eggplant, which amused me greatly, but actually it was in plain sight. It was another hen's egg with the Storm of Magic in a Teacup gift set.



I suspect you were all distracted by the comedy of that gag – Storm of Magic in a Teacup, get it? in a Teacup – sometimes I'm just so funny! Anyway that may be why you didn't see the egg!

Although no one got all 12 eggs, in the spirit of Easter I will give the Cream Eggs to Ol who managed a sterling effort to get 11 of the 12 eggs. Well done mate, the eggs are winging their way to you, so duck!!

Much more popular was the What's In the Box competition with an impressive five entries (if this was BBC Parliament they'd be pleased with those kind of figures)! Here's how the boxes looked at the beginning of this round:



With Cheryl dead it fell to our guest independent adjudicator, all the way from the Lion King it's Simba...:



...who drew box No. 36:



Congratulations Andrew, though this did mean I had to shuffle the boxes round to get them, and all the stuff wedged behind them under the bed avalanched out. Not good news – thanks Andrew!!





And Box no 36 is a classic High Elf box:



Featuring 12 classic Shadow Warriors...:



...who despite there being different sculpts appear to all be posed in exactly the same way!

Also 14 monopose Archers from the 4th edition box:



6 classic Phoenix Guard...:



...not as good as the current models, but better than the set prior to the current incarnation.

16 monopose Spearmen, also from the 4th edition box:



A couple of classic High Elf Mages:





Randomly a poorly painted Chaos Warrior, High Elf shield and an odd unpainted shield:



A full command set for the Spearmen unit...



...though I suspect the Champion could pass for a standard bearer!

A "misfired" classic High Elf Bolt Thrower in need of glue, hopefully no  bloody pinning here:



An odd flying base:



And 6 High Elf armoured horses, with a Silver Helms champion, who appears to have fallen off them!



Sorry if you didn't win this month, but I'm sure in a few weeks we'll be revisiting the boxes. And bare in mind as we run out of boxes the chances of you being picked increases!!!

From one thing you can vote on to another, see what I did there, Thursday sees only the second nationwide referendum in the United Kingdom's history (bonus points if you know what the first was about), as the nation decides whether it knows what Alternative Voting is or not. Now keep reading, don't skim to the end this is IMPORTANT, and I promise to try and make it a bit entertaining(ish)! If you follow the media you will know that Alternative Voting is so deeply complex, that you can't possibly hope to understand it, I will try and have a go at explaining it now, but bare in mind as a mere mortal you may not understand it.

Essentially under Alternative Voting rather than voting for a single candidate you rank as many as you wish in order of preference. All the first choices are then counted, and if someone has over 50% of the vote then they win, otherwise the lowest scoring candidate is eliminated and the second choices of those who voted for that candidate are added to the remaining candidates, this process continues until one candidate has 50% of the vote and is declared the winner.

Did you understand it? You probably did, because in actual fact it's not that complicated, admittedly it's more complicated than the current voting system, but I'd say it's about as complicated as the way in which the judges' scores and viewers' votes are combined on Strictly Come Dancing, the rules to buying houses in Monopoly, the format to The Weakest Link* or understanding the rules for magic in Warhammer. It's certainly within the realms of understandability for most humans, and is definitely easier to understand than the reasons for Kerry Katona still being on our television screens.

I would like to just say at this point that Anne Robinson announced she was quitting The Weakest Link the very week I compared her to Jabberslythe on this blog, I sincerely hope her decision was not motivated by my comments.

It is customary for me now to try and re-explain Alternative Voting through an elaborate and deeply flawed metaphor in order to confuse what we've already realised is a reasonably straight forward concept. So here is my Warhammer based attempt.

Wizbit the Elf Mage can't decide what's the next best unit to add to his growing High Elf army, so allows his Elves to vote on which unit is best to add to the army. The Elves are excited to learn that they will be able to use the new voting system of Alternative Voting, so rank their top choices. Wizbit decides for simplicity's sake (and as the author of this metaphor isn't great at mathematics) to only ask 100 of his warriors to vote.

After the first round of voting the votes stand as follows:



As you can see much like British politics we have two very popular choices, the Dragon Princes and the Swordmasters – the Swordmasters are currently winning but don't have 50% of the vote so cannot win at present. There's a third reasonably large choice, the White Lions (who everyone liked until they got in power with the Swordmasters) and much like real world voting we have the lunatic choices – the Ellyrian Reavers and Tiranoic Chariot and the BNP choice the Witch Elves.

As no one has more than 50% of the votes, the lowest scoring choice is eliminated. Wizbit won't be having any more Ellyrian Reavers in his army. The second choice of those who voted Ellyrian Reavers is now added to the remaining first choice votes.



The Swordmasters remain in the lead, but still don't have 50%, so at this point any chance of Wizbit having a Tiranoic Chariot in his army is removed, and their second choice votes are added to the current scores.



Still the Swordmasters are in the lead, but again not having 50% of the vote means the Witch Elves, current lowest scorers, are removed. Wizbit breathes a sigh of relief, as the Witch Elf voters second choice is now counted.



With a large Dragon Prince support from Witch Elf voters they push into the lead, but it requires a 5th round to get an overall majority.



All White Lions votes are recounted (second choice for initial White Lions voters and third choice for those who had White Lions as second choice), and the Dragon Princes claim the majority, just. So despite not winning the initial vote the Dragon Princes are the overall winners, and don't you feel enlightened? That didn't complicate things at all.

If the actual attempts to explain to you how Alternative Voting works hadn't confused the hell out of you, then maybe the campaigns of the Yes and No camps will. I at this point wish to make it very clear I am not influencing your decision on who to vote or even if you should vote, I am going to treat you like an intelligent adult capable of making your own decisions... unlike the Yes and No camps. However we could have a look at some of the more Jackanory style campaign points. Let's start with the No campaign, who quite frankly are best at this, and sent me this lovely leaflet...



So what do the "No" campaign say. Well you can't have failed to see the controversial posters featuring an ill baby saying "She needs a new cardiac facility NOT an alternative voting system",



Implying that the £250 million that it is claimed AV would cost would come mean our sick baby can't get the treatment she needs. That sounds absolutely outrageous, I mean taking money straight from the NHS to pay for changes to our voting system. And then of course there's a similar poster featuring a soldier saying "He needs bulletproof vests NOT an alternative voting system".



First of all slightly greedy for him to want multiple bulletproof vests, who does he think he is Osama Bin Laden? Secondly if both of these posters are true, surely the bigger choice is do we have a new cardiac facility or do we have bulletproof vests? We clearly haven't got the money for both, which is more important babies or soldiers? Or is it more likely that money won't be diverted from a hospital or the army to pay for any voting changes.

And let's look at our figure of £250 million to pay for AV, which seems to involve rounding up the costs to the nearest £250 million. This figure includes £26 million to "explain" to voters how the new system works – it's not complicated it doesn't need explaining!!!! Plus I and every media outlet have explained it for free, pay attention people. £130 million will be potentially be spent on counting machines, despite the fact that London and Scotland already have counting machines for various local elections, and in many other countries that use AV they count by hand. That's still actually quite possible, we could get counting machines for first past the post – but we don't. Also the cost includes money for reprinting ballot papers, because of course under first past the post we can use the same ballot papers as last year as not a single candidate across all 656 constituencies has changed since the last election. And last election we printed at least twice as many as we actually needed. Hmmm....

Then of course there's the other countries that use AV:



According to the "No" campaign, this is what the world looks like under AV, you mean we can only see countries that have the same voting system as us, how disturbing. Surely though the terror at seeing most of the known world disappear should be balanced by the excitement of seeing these new undiscovered lands using AV suddenly appearing on our planet?



The "No" campaign claims that AV is "the least popular" voting system as it's only used in three other countries: Fiji, Australia and Papua New Guinea. Really does this make it "least popular" is it, say, less popular than the voting system used in Syria? In fact I think very few of us actually rank voting systems in order of preference, I think they've confused "least popular" with "least used" which is what they actually mean. And is this really a good reason not to have it, not many countries have free health care, however I wouldn't think that's a good reason to demolish the NHS – obviously the current government think differently. This point also conveniently forgets that many countries use AV for local elections, and lots use Single Transferable Voting a form of AV, but hey who needs the truth.



Of course sports have been a good metaphor for AV, even the "No" camp have used it, though they seem to have misunderstood it. Because here they suggest that the last placed runner has won under AV, this could never happen, it's even worse than my metaphor as it's plain wrong. The person who comes last, can't win as they can never have 50% of the vote, weren't you listening during my explanation?



And of course there's President Clegg, if you vote for AV then he will always be president forever. Technically not true, and also rather disturbingly suggests should AV be implemented the Queen will be executed and we will become a Republic. This is a side to the argument that's not been publicised that much. Though as the execution will be under AV we at least will be allowed a choice of preferences for how the Queen will be removed. I'm going to vote for sending her on the Total Wipeout course. Of course it could be that using the word "president" is simply more scary to worried voters, who hate change.

And then lastly there's the thorny issues of the BNP, according to the No camp, the BNP will benefit under AV. Really? Really? I mean even in the most disillusioned of constituencies are there areas where 50% of people would vote for the BNP? I find that hard to believe. Secondly who has the BNP has their second choice, "I mean I really want to screw over foreigners, black people and gays, but not as much as I'd like to annoy f**king students, so I'm voting Lib Dem first choice then the BNP" - does that really happen? To me the BNP seem like a rather polar choice, you either love them or hate them – much like Marmite, only obviously less brown.

I always wonder if people do actually read my entire blog, so at this point I'm going to pose the question "Is it wrong to crack one off, whilst watching the Royal Wedding?" simply to see if any of you spot this filthy conundrum.

In the interests of balance I should of course look at the Yes campaign, who really haven't been as inventive with their lies, and haven't sent me a leaflet which isn't very helpful for this part of the blog. Some of their suggestions are however a little fanciful an "End to Safe Seats" is promised, well technically only safe seats that don't already get 50% of the vote. Around 200 seats in the UK are elected with 50% of the vote, they'll still be safe. Although the thought of a dangerous seat does amuse me, is this one with only three legs at the top of a cliff?

And sadly the Yes vote did tarnish their reputation with a certain video (which sadly I haven't been able to find a link to) showing a war veteran proudly displaying his medals who explains that "for all the say I've had, I might as well have died in the Russian convoys, or on the D-Day beaches, or in the Pacific after that". You might as well have died? Really? You think First Past the Post is such a horrendous voting system that we might as well have let Nazi Germany simply conquer the entire free world? I suspect you might be exaggerating slightly, or you might have left your sense of reason on your submarine.

Anyhow as is customary on the internet the mention of the Nazis brings all forms of sensible discussion to an end, and really stupid ones too. I'd like to reiterate in no way am I telling you how to vote or even whether to vote on Thursday, or not. Simply mocking the stupidity of some of the campaign posters, and my longer mocking of the "No" campaign is simply a sign of the fact that they have stupider posters, not any political bias. I for one will be voting "Yes", but "No" will be my second choice!!

On that political bombshell I remind you that I'd love to hear your entries for Models from Hell / Poo Models, but remember we want to see some elegant rants! Reply here, or post them to me and I'll add some of my sardonic wit, and pointless pictures to them in next week's blog, not that I'm sure when I'll have a chance to blog – as The Apprentice is back next week on Tuesday and Wednesday!!!! Horray!

[Dave]

Hurrah, I'm looking forward to seeing you paint dragon princes!

And in response to your question, it depends if you were in company or not.  There is now a rather large facebook group which suggests you weren't alone in that thought.

[maelzch]

the BNP ... much like Marmite, only obviously less brown

This is a great quote

Is it wrong to crack one off, whilst watching the Royal Wedding?"

similar response to Dave, probably only if not alone!

[cunningmatt]

Hurrah, I'm looking forward to seeing you paint dragon princes!

Me too, I was lucky enough to get a set from Mr Shakey Shakey for my birthday and the frames look amazing, slightly concerned by the 8-page instruction manual!!! But at least they have one, ruddy Razagors <insert Mutley-esque grumbling noises here>

similar response to Dave, probably only if not alone!

I was in Westminster Abbey at the time - does that make it wrong?

[Dave]

I was in Westminster Abbey at the time - does that make it wrong?

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/formfitting-mcqueen-gown-gets-pippa-middletons-bum-its-own-facebook-page-2277987.html

Was it this or do you just get off over regal things?

[cunningmatt]

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/formfitting-mcqueen-gown-gets-pippa-middletons-bum-its-own-facebook-page-2277987.html

Was it this or do you just get off over regal things?

Guilty as charged! 

[fatolaf]

I cannot tell you how many times I looked at this piccy, crazy how I missed it...Still another win, I love creme eggs 

As for the Pumbagor, I too had to use oodles of GS to make it, and the blooming spines fall off all the time, but even so it's no where near as bad as making a TK SSC or a Scorpion, hell haff no fury like those 2 models..

here's hoping they do plastic ones in the rumoured TK 2nd wave...