Tale of OG Gamers - High Elves

[fatolaf]

Nice phone sir, shame you got it too late to get the quartermaster app (aka Iphone army builder) before GW pounced on it (new legal version coming soon)..

Must sort out this swear filter as well...

[cunningmatt]

Nice phone sir, shame you got it too late to get the quartermaster app (aka Iphone army builder) before GW pounced on it (new legal version coming soon)..

Cheers, yeah I was surprised to find there were no official Games Workshop apps, seems like the kind of thing that they could easily do and boost their presence.

Must sort out this swear filter as well...

Oh dear, on reading my post do you think it needs to be upped. 

[fatolaf]

Oh dear, on reading my post do you think it needs to be upped. 

No, it has been set to rather over zealous levels, therefore you ended up with this sentence

if you are using the same box for all your spraying do be careful to make sure that any black dust that ac!@%$#%@ulates is brushed away else

when all you wanted to write was ' accumulates'

[cunningmatt]

Though to be fair that black dust is annoying, I can understand the filter needing to swear at it!! 

[cunningmatt]

Wednesday 25th May - WEEK 21

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you are reading this you didn't make it to heaven. I know, I probably should have warned you to sit down or something, but there is no easy way to say that you've done the equivalent of missing the last tube to heaven and you're going to have get the purgatory night bus. If you've no idea what I'm talking about (well no more than usual), then you'll be shocked to find out that the world ended at 6pm on Saturday, at least according to evangelical broadcaster Harold Camping who predicted that the world would end with a series of massive earthquakes, all believers would ascend to heaven in what was called the "Rapture". Any one left behind would be dead by the 21st October, which is good news because I've got a holiday booked for June.

In the media there's been widespread consensus that Harold Camping's prophecies have failed to come true. But have they? He hasn't been since Saturday, in hiding because of the shame of his failed prophecies, or perhaps he's ascended, how would we know? And on slight tangent I wonder what his Out of Office on Outlook would say? Admittedly some of his followers have been seen and are rather bemused by events, but perhaps they weren't as good as they thought, maybe they had an unreturned library book they'd forgotten about? And as for the predictions of earthquakes and the destruction of the world, well... fortunately they haven't happened, but just after 6pm on BBC One there was a trailer for a new series of "Tonight's the Night" with John Barrowman. That sounds like a hellish punishment for us non-believers,  though even adding all the sins of every human who has lived over the last two thousand years, I still think that "Tonight's the Night" seems a bit of a steep punishment - I mean what was wrong with eternal suffering in a lava filled pit. Certainly seems more appropriate. The good news any way is that if we are destined for hell, it has at least frozen over, because I've done some painting! (Surely you're impressed with the breathtaking smoothness of that segway? No!)

A whole host of Beasties have come off the painting table to torment the forests of the Old World and lose all the games they play. First up is a new Beastmen Wargor:









One of the few character models from the Beastmen range I hadn't painted up (there's not millions in fairness!). And as he's a pretty good model I thought I should get round to it. The base is an Ungor shield and a log (twig from Clapham Common). The main thing of note is here the colours I've used. My accent colours for my Beastmen army are red and cream, red being the more bright and exciting colour I tend to use it more often and particularly so on character models. However I specifically didn't use any red on this model and I think he looks all the more striking in the cream because of it.

Also finished was the Jabberslythe that got started on this forum a few weeks ago.













Here he is next to the Wargor for scale.

You may not notice the difference but all the wounds/pox marks on the body have been painted Chaos Black and then highlighted a 1:1 mix of Chaos Black and Scab Red - the bestiary describes Jabberslythes as having thick black liquid oozing out of their wounds, so wanted to replicate this. Plus I painted the eyes (there's quite a few!) and based it up.
I also used Water Effects on the base to make a small puddle:

Here's Vallejo's Water Effects tub (Games Workshop's own brand seems to have disappeared from their website), which comes with a nice retro 1970s style label:



Once open it rather worryingly says "Sealed for Your Own Protection" on the seal, what is inside that I need to be protected from? Do 1 in 50 packs contain a serial rapist?



Fortunately once open it turned out there wasn't a serial rapist (or at least not one of those serious rapists, one of Ken Clarke's minor kind), just natural yoghurt.



Ol recommended using a coffee stirrer from your local coffee shop, or Ol (he has thousands), to apply the stuff:



Whilst this was useful for applying, I have to say I found the trusty old Citadel Sculpting Tool useful for smoothing the mixture out, didn't want too many waves in my puddle!



It's also useful for picking out dirt from under your toenails, just so you know.

And here's what it looks like applied (a bit like a large bird has pooed all over the Jabberslythe base, though having been plopped on only last week by a bird with serious bowel integrity issues I can confirm bird poo is no longer white, but a sludgy green-brown colour that stains – sad times. Also it isn't lucky to be pooed on by a bird, I think someone who had been pooed on claimed it was lucky whilst being ribbed by his friends to try and win the argument and somehow this has stuck. I fail to see how being smeared in avian s**t is lucky.):



So far after 24 hours, the puddle is still a little bit white, so hopefully it should be fully dry soon!



I was a bit concerned about the excess water effects that went on the sides of the rocks, but I think it looks alright, as if it's quite a moist area of terrain, and Jabberslythes live in swamps after all!

Obviously I was fully up for painting the Jabberslythe's reflection in the water but according to the bestiary "They are truly repugnant to look upon, having such grotesque features that even the clearest pools of water will not offer up their reflection", so sadly I can't, what a shame!

There's also two new Tuskgor Chariots, doubling the fleet to four.

Here's Chariot 1:





This chariot may be taking a dangerous terrain test in a minute!







And Chariot 2:







Skulls here from the Warhammer basing kit.



And here's the full fleet:



You may notice the slightly older looking crewman, on Chariot 2, he's the original driver from the Gorthor's chariot, who got replaced when the basic Beastmen chariot kit's crew were upgraded. I decided to swap him off Gorthor's chariot, so Gorthor could have the better looking crewman and also to add variation to my standard Tuskgor chariots, all four have a different combination of crewmen. Originally I was going to chop the driver's sword off and give him a spear, but closer inspection of the model and seeing how the sword was moulded right up against the leg, led me to bottle it! However I did add a spear from the Ungor set to his chariot, to use in those all important charges (I chopped the spear off the Ungor's hand and glued both parts together to make the spear).

Followers of an older, much less funnier blog, may remember two Tzeentch Chaos Spawn I had painted up (converted by adding various Tzeentch Daemon parts):









Well, originally these were going to be part of the Beastmen army (before the new book I was going to do a Tzeentch Beastmen army to accompany my Warriors, but having seen them move away from the individual gods in the 7th edition book I decided against it). Now whilst these still could be used in the Beastmen army, they felt a bit too, well... blue and pink to fit in. So finally I painted up some replacements (the originals will be in loyal service with the Warriors):

For the first one I used a selection of the Beastmen parts from the Chaos Spawn frame, I wanted to make it look like this Spawn had recently mutated. And I think there's something more tragic about this model as you can see its original origins.



Of course there's a large claw, and a random tentacle - just because! I painted the tentacle the same colour as the Jabberslythe to try and tie these models together.



Look at those long horns!



Hopefully on this photo you can see that I a) need to get better at dusting off the fake snow, the excess gets everywhere!! And b) that I've tried to blend between the grey main body of the Spawn and the brown of the remaining Beastmen parts – this was done by gradually mixing the colours across the gradient. Hopefully it looks like it's recently mutated.

And here you can see the discarded shield of a Bretonnian Knight Errant (from the Warhammer Basing Kit) – with so many Bretonnian players out there this Spawn's bound to face them in battle once!! Covered with a little fresh snowfall and trampled grass.



And then for the second, I just went a bit crazy and used the parts of the Chaos Spawn frame that I liked the most to make a completely random spawn with no hint of the original creature left. This one has three beady eyes, lots of claws but no mouth – such is the fickle nature of Chaos (and a good incidentally a good template if any geneticist is creating the perfect partner):



I'm particularly pleased with the eyes which have come out well, and the skin tone which is Deneb Stone washed with Tharaka Green, then highlighted watered down Bleached Bone (to keep the green showing through).





I positioned this log to look as if the Spawn had stepped on it with such force to buckle it and raise it in the air, which I think looks alright and pretty dramatic. My top tip, I think maybe this needs to become a regular feature like "Matty's Top Tip of the Week", what do you reckon, maybe with a jingle? Hmmm. Anyway my top tip, is that if you are going to break up longer pieces of twig or cut them to shape them like this, you'll find they may start to fragment and then the various layers break off. If you give it a generous wash with PVA glue it will all hold itself together again.



So here's the full set of Beastmen reinforcements finished this weekend:



If only the Water Effects will ever finish drying! Don't worry I won't poke it, probably.

This takes the painted Beastmen army to a whopping 5,386 points! And using my usual counting procedure for counting painted models (using Warhammer 7th edition unit strength) equates to 283 models, my biggest army ever! For those of you interested he's the full army list of painted Beastmen (I'd take a photo, but army shots always look poo, and I'm not sure I've a big enough table for them all any more):

LORDS:
Malagor, the Dark Omen
1x Beastlord
1x Great Bray-Shaman

HEROES:
2x Wargors
1x Wargor with Battle Standard
1x Bray-Shaman

CORE:
20x Gors with extra hand weapons and full command.
20x Gors with hand weapons and shields and full command.
40x Gors with hand weapons and shields and full command.
16x Ungors with hand weapons and shields and full command.
20x Ungors with spears and shields and full command.
10x Ungor Raiders with bows, Halfhorn and musician.
10x Ungor Raiders with bows, Halfhorn and musician.
4x Tuskgor Chariots
10x Chaos Warhounds

SPECIAL:
6x Minotaurs with great weapons and full command.
10x Centigors with spears, shields, light armour and full command.
Ghorros Warhoof
6x Harpies
20x Bestigor with great weapons, heavy armour and full command.
20x Bestigor with great weapons, heavy armour and full command.

RARE:
2x Chaos Spawn
1x Giant
1x Jabberslythe

Ok I probably should stop painting Beastmen, but I wouldn't mind painting up a few more Minotaurs, including the character model (as they were quite fun to do). Plus maybe a conversion for the Ghorgon and Cygor, and the other special characters (I've come to quite enjoying painting Special Characters as nice individual models). Oh and of course the Razagor and Razagor chariots. I've finally undercoated the three Razagor:



Maybe I'll get to assembling the Razagor Chariot one day, when I take extra helpings of patience.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that this was a Beastmen blog this week, but this is because I was a good boy and got ahead with my High Elves, painting April and May's models (Prince on Griffon) at the beginning of April, so I've been having a rest and painting up some Beasty reinforcements. However June is nearly upon us, it really nearly is, so I've got my Dragon Princes, which will make up June's entry, all assembled and ready to go. Can I say what mightly fine models these are, really impressive details and just generally lovely, I used pretty much all the accessories and extra gems to give them hopefully a truly elite look in the army. The banner and shields have been left off for ease of painting, but I've attached the individual pennants as the design is already modelled on them.





I really hope you can see some of the wonderful detail on these models, and incidentally my blue fruit bowl.

And I even undercoated them, ready for June:



To end with, I probably should make a retraction from last week I made some early judgements about Citadel Finecast, and to be honest having seen the models I am starting to be slightly swayed – not totally, but I have to admit they do look good. Plus I think I've been a bit naughty moaning about Games Workshop recently, I don't like to.

Part of this love for resin also comes from realising how robust and lightweight my resin Jabberslythe is, despite being a conversion it seems to take a decent amount of punishment – compare this to my metal Beastmen chariots which are just crumbling to dust every time I touch them. When I saw the lightweight Blood Knights on the Games Workshop website I did think these do look a lot better. No pinning, no collapsing and chipping at the first sign of being touched sounds good to. Looking down Ol's list of models that will make the range and I see the Dwarf Gyrocopter and think how much easier mine would have been to make from resin, and how less likely the flying base would be to snap. My eyes also spy the Dragon Ogre Shaggoth which I'd been thinking of adding to my Warriors for a while, it would be so much easier to build from resin. Ok I don't like price rises, but unless I'm mistaken the positive is that many of these items which were Direct Only will now be stockable by Ol (correct me if I'm wrong), which hopefully means Ol will be able to offer us a nice discount. By my Maths this means I could now get the formerly Direct Only Shaggoth for only £2 more and have a far less vitriolic swearing match assembling it. That doesn't sound too bad to me, plus being resin it will take a bit more abuse it could even come on holiday for my next edition of Painting on Tour – something I'd never have done with the metal model. So at present I'm warming to the Citadel Finecast range, obviously I'll need to see some close up to judge, but I'm feeling more positive. Though it does mean I'm considering the wonderful Azhag the Slaughterer model, which I said no to because it would be a bugger to assemble... have to rely on the price tag putting me off.

STOP PRESS...STOP PRESS...STOP PRESS...

Our old friend Harold Camping has reappeared, apparently he got it wrong about the Apocalypse... and it's now happening on the 21st of October. According to the BBC News website Harold Camping said it had "dawned" on him that God would spare humanity "hell on Earth for five months" and the apocalypse would happen on 21 October. That's good to know, best get on and finish the High Elves then, probably not worth starting a new army then... though I could get Azhag painted in that time. Oh dear!

With Doomsday marked on the calendar, we probably should get on and play What's In the Box? else we'll never get them all opened in time. You know the drill send us your numbers, I can't be bothered to explain any more that that.

And on a completely unrelated note, I'm going to assemble some Marauder Horsemen soon. Looking at the options on the sprue I quite like the idea of giving them hand weapons and shields as it looks quite good. But I can't see any game point why I would, light armour costs the same as the shield, and has the benefit of leaving hands free for better weapons, there's no parry save benefit for being mounted and if I give them light armour and a shield they do get 4+ armour save but cease to be Fast Cavalry which surely negates their main point? Can anyone see anything I am missing? Otherwise it will be the slightly less cool looking, but more gameworthy Flails options for this unit.

Have a great Bank Holiday, hopefully there will be some Elven progress to report next week.

[fatolaf]

Nice work on the Beasties buddy (as always)...

As for Finecast, finding out today what we can get and how much for...

And box 17 please sir....

[maelzch]

lucky box 13 for me please matt 

[cunningmatt]

Nice work on the Beasties buddy (as always)...

As for Finecast, finding out today what we can get and how much for...

Thanks mate, hope I haven't preempted you on what you can and cannot get. Please remember dear readers terms and conditions apply, anything I say could be false and I have no idea what I'm talking about!

[fatolaf]

we can get them just found out, but no more than 3 of each pack per week (till stock levels improve), but no idea what they are going to cost us yet, But I will predict I can do them at 10% off...

[cunningmatt]

Cool well I speak for all our readers when I say we love whatever % you can get off. So should I buy Azhag...? Hmmmm....