Wood Elf Upgrade

Well here we are after a massive 6 month break. Life has finally settled down into some kind of normality again apart from the fact I am moving to London in 3 weeks...ok so it's still a little up in the air. Regardless of that I have started what I wanted to start 6 months ago, replacing all my mantic with GW models. I think what spurred me on was a doubles game at mansfield maul where on the tabletop my army next to Dave Pyles looked like a sack of crap, I plan to double up with him again so I don't really want to feel that shame again, although I think his snow looks better than mine.

 I always love winter themed armies so I have gone for a winter woody army, I will be using Eternal Guard ( as always ) as they fir the theme nicely, I would love to have no tree spirits and stick completely to the fluff but in all honesty I won't win any competitive games so basically....balls to that. I intend to add one more layer of highlights to the Glade Guard here as suggested by mental rapey Dave Sweeting. 

 The forest spirits are painted reasonably pale, to show their dwindling power as the winter sets in, I have just re-based these and have two units like this one. The plan is to get it all done in time for Sheffield Slaughter (a great tourney if you get the chance to go) which is optimistic, but my hobby has always been about turning around armies quickly, like the 2 week mantic army. I feel that one day I will do an army in 2 months and I'll have got so good at speed painting that the painting standard will be somewhat there with minimal effort.

I would just like to give a quick mention to the tale of four geeks podcast, I had a listen today and its very good, considering it has been around a very short time it is already quite flowing and full of great content, give it a listen and if you like wood elves then Jon on the show is doing his own (albeit band wagoner to the jayhop train) project.

http://taleoffourgeeks.co.uk/

Once again sorry for all the typos but I really don't give two hoots

xxx

Video Battle Report 2400pts VC vs DOC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50a5OT-UaKA&feature=youtu.be

Enjoy!

x x x

Tale of 2 Warbosses - Progress

So far I have done hardly anything on teh TOTW apart from assemble the awesome wolf riders and squigs, I spent yesterday base colouring my 30 goblins and this is what I have come up with so far.

I am pretty happy with the colour scheme as I have always wanted a yellow dominant army, I am unsure about the shields and I need to practice highlighting/washing the yellow to get it right, hopefully I will get these done by the end of the week so I can have 2 weeks to finish the rest of the army in time :P LOL aint gonna happen...think we need to come up with a forfeit...any suggestions?

x x x

Warhammer Feelings #1

Hello! I listened to the Bad dice podcast yesterday and it raised lots of questions for me with regard to WFB and what sort of player I want to be. I know I want to win games, winning is fun but at the same time I don't want my opponent to have a crap time...but its looking more increasingly like in order to win you have to play the game to the letter of the law, which is fine I guess, I think it was Gareth on Bad dice who said that if your opponent makes a mistake thats tough shit and he made his bed so he can lay in it...its interesting because I have let people get away with murder on the battlefield, going back in time "takebacks" and all that jazz, I have even let people reroll all their dice because they forgot about a buff or something, but I think the next tournament I go to I am going to play by the rules :P I just need to find a way that I can still make it enjoyable for both players without being a twat...which if you know me will probably be fairly hard for me, then again if Matt Sewell can take down a best sports and finish as top Empire then there is hope. I would like to know what people think with regard to "being gamey" or playing to the letter of the law, do you need to do that if you want to win or finish high? let me know via twitter @jayhopkinson

Hobby Weekend!

This weekend I managed to have a bit of hobby time...

Firstly I did a basic green stuff tutorial and uploaded it, shich can be seen on the left hand side or at this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVP1MJkrgns&context=C47bfe50ADvjVQa1PpcFOXiekPWD8LEFLoqgRNLF01JSdnnd5sKQY=

If you have used green stuff before it will be useless to you as it is a basic intro on how not to go terribly wrong.

Other than that I assembled 16 of my Relictor Vanguard Veterans but not the shields yet as that will make them too hard to paint. I made 2 bases for my Garden of Morr as I'm splitting it into 2 smaller bits of scenery. The best part of the weekend was assembling Krell "lord of undeath" sweeeet! I did this in the garden in the blazing sun and he looks freaking awesome... I now have a hardon for wight kings almost as hard as for Starcraft marines with combat shields.

Need to get him in a game ASAP!

XOXO....gossip girl?

Tale of 2 Warbosses - Part 2

Let battle commence!

Gill and I met at York Garrison for their Saturday all day session (2nd Sat of every month) we played our 600pts lists against eachother and the results were surprising! along with complete carnage...here's what happened.

So I had a mage and I took 2 spells, I got the Number 6 spell "curse of da bad moon" and the one that grants poison attacks (not sure of name) Gill went first and rushed at me with his cav and the savage orcs followed closely behind.

I moved my 20 Goblins forward into fanatic range and out they popped! Killing 2 savage orc boar boyz. 1 Mangler Squig kills itself... bent

Savage Orcs fail animosity and have to cahrge the fanatic, the fanatic kills 3 and the Orcs end up on top of another Fanatic...4 more Savage Orcs dead...Savage Orc Boar Boyz charge my Goblins and lose 5 to Fanatics AHHAHAHAHHAH

Turn 2.....

I fail my animosity and have to charge nearest unit with my 26 night goblins...this launches 3 more fanatics out, who only go 3 and 4" and one which cuts down another Boar boy...now I have to finish the charge...this puts me on top of 2 Fanatics and a Mangler Squig....bye bye 21 Goblins!!!!! total chaos...and Fail...animosity FTL.

Turn 3....

After a draw the previous round the Goblins overwhelm the final Savage Orc Boar Boy and the general flees and gets cut down as I roll a mighty 11.

Savage Orcs charge the 20 Goblins and win combat, putting all his attacks on my general and his 4 night goblins they now flee and die all thats left is wolf riders and 20 fleeing goblins.

Turn 4....

Goblins rally! Wolf Riders move in behing for a rear charge.
Savage Orcs fail their Charge on the Goblins.

Turn 5...

Goblins charge the front of the Savage Orcs and the Wolf Riders hit the rear...Wolf Riders flipping PWN the Savage Orcs in some serious dice carnage and kill 4 out of the 7 remaining. Static Res does the rest and the Savage Orcs flee and get cut down.

Was actually an awesomely fun game. Cant wait till they meet up painted for the next clash of OnG Rivalry!

Tempest V

I had the pleasure of attending Tempest V a few weeks back, and once again it was very very enjoyable. Banter, funky lists, armies you don't normally see, people fielding models that had been shelved for over a year :D it was great fun. Ben Curry even took 3 manticores which was nice to look at...there might have been a dragon in there too?

I went with Sheen Gill, he took his newly aquired Daemons and I took my VC which I have been doing on and off for aabout 6 months, wow longer actually, but I wasn't really doing anything with them until the new book came out. This was my first proper outing with them.

I took 10 hexwraiths, a unit of 9 spirit hosts :P and 150 zombies. I cant even remember what lord I took now...aaah yes they were all on foot... it went ok on the whole, I only lost 1 game drew 3 and won 2. 2 of the draws I should definitely pushed for wins and one I was lucky to get (Daemons eat my ethereals) I played a guy with Goblins and looking back I think he slowplayed me for the draw, he even went out to use his phone for 10 mins near the end when it was looking good for me but meh who cares it was a laugh either way.

Had a few games of poker on the Sat night and so far it has been my favourite tourney attendance from a fun point of view. I would have to say that the detatchment comp was lame, I didn't like it much and allowing so many dragons/manticores/flyers but other than that it was cool.

Looking forward to the next one!

Marines!

Just a sample of my new marine army, its the first practice model here! Sorry for blurryness :P

Tale of 2 Gamers Part 1 - The Lists

So here we go, here follows the 2 lists we have come up with for our first 600ish points. We are being leanient with the allocations for the first round.

Sean "am I a man?" Gill and his Orcs.

Savage Orc Big Boss
Warboar
Fencers blades
Potion of foolhardiness

20 Savage Orcs
full command
Add H/W

9 Savage Orc Boar Boyz big uns
Add H/W
Full command  Banner of Swiftness


TOTAL 607pts

"UBER" Jay and my Gobbos

Lvl 2 Night Goblin Shaman

20 Night Goblins
+ 3 Fanatics

26 Night Goblins
+ 3 Fanatics
+ Netters

5 Wolf Riders
+ Spears
+ Shields

2 Mangler Squigs

TOTAL 608pts

Tale of 2 Gamers!

My good friend Sheen Gill and I are planning a tale of 2 gamers, currently I am going to do Goblins (only goblins) and Gill is going to do Orcs (only orcs) just for a bit of a laugh, if we want a serious game at a tourney we can mash our armies together.

Gill is going to be using the mantic orcs and I the GW goblins, I intend to fund the majority of my army off ebay and see how cheaply I can do it.

Stay tuned and first 600pts lists/purchases etc will go up here in March.

Jay

The Tale Of The Zombie Horde...

SO the VC army is nicely underway and my zombie horde is lookign tabletop ready now, below shows the story of the zombies...

How they began!

#eurgh 3 hours!

Meh 6 hours!

19 Hours!

48 man Hours and they are based and painted to tabletop standard.

Now I am slowly going back through them and adding detail...

I can't wait to get them all finished, I am really enjoying the VC army and loving how my zoms are playing.

Ty to @apostlegillus and @lricketts88 for the help with them :D

Jay

2400pts vs John Otter's LIZARDMEN

You can check out my game vs snotter the otter here...

http://crouchingotter.blogspot.com/

Enjoy :D

NHB Game 5 vs Caz (Black Sun)

Old new now I guess but it's always nice to read a battle rep :D I had intended to video blog this one with pics and a voice over but I chucked out my old journal so I only have the pics to remind me what happened and my poor memory...so I figured text base was best unless you want to hear me going...erm...erm...not sure what happened there every 30 secs.

So on with it!

Every tourney I go to I always single out 1 player that I really really want to play against and weirdly I have drawn that player every time so far, Paul Brown at my first Tempest, Diesel at Maul, Pash at Slaughter and I really wanted to play Caz at NHB, I don't know why but he seemed a funny lad (in a good way) and it was good to see someone as abusive as me.

I felt bad actually that I couldn't give him a proper game with a proper army that involved more than 3 or 4 tactics, I only had my 99 shots army cus I had no money and wanted to get into Warhammer, so 100 archers for 40 quid on mantic was the fastest way to get an army so I apologise for that mate :P

I was up against his dark elves, a nicely painted army with a few nice conversions, an original looking Cauldron (a banebeasts model I think?) and an interesting list. Not sure exactly what he had but he had at least this:

30 Corsairs

20 Black Guard

20-25 Spearmen

5 Harpies

12 Shades (2x6)

Hydra

Mage on peg



A recap of my list is as follows:

Lvl 4 with life, Talisman of Preservation, Dispel Scroll

BSB with Banner of springtide - no bow

Noble with the hail of doom arrow -

21 Glade Guard + Banner and musician (BOEF magic item)
21 Glade Guard + musician
13 Glade Guard + Musician
13 Glade Guard + Musician
11 Glade Guard + Musician

9 Waywatchers
9 Waywatchers



Caz's Dark Elves

So we rolled for sides and setup, Caz took the defensive stance and was most definitely going to play for a draw...

He put some Shades in the building and they were quite pesky tbh. I Spread my army out on one half of the board and put some Waywatchers in the other half to combat his 5 Harpies and 6 Shades that he had in the far Quarter. He was obviously playing for the table quarters objective, for some reason he thought I was playing for banners, but I wasn't I was also going for table quarters.

The game basically consisted of me trying to dwellers his corsairs and him bunkering up in the corner, I kept changing my mind on what I was to shoot at which is stupid, Caz kept hitting me with lifetaker so I moved out of range of that and just kept peppering his units the best I could. Caz moved his peg mage into the Corsairs in the hope of using som magic missiles on my archers, however he cascaded his mage and things never looked good for him for the whole game.

Until that is... I cascaded my own mage trying to get dwellers off on his cauldron, a trick Kev Weaver had taught me (the cauldron fails characteristic tests) so even though I lost my general and more points than his cauldron, he wasn't going to get any rerolls if he failed a panic test.  I had also taken out his shades and his harpies on the far right so I was definitely getting the +500 points for that.

Cauldron shortly before being Dwellered and an entire Dark Elf army taking cover.

 I had managed to get a nice crescent shape going and there was nowhere for the Dark elves to go, the Waywatchers were picking off Black Guard from the side as the rest of my army focused the Hydra.

I put about 45 shots into killing that Harpy in the very corner due to its -4 to hit and I put about 60 shots into killing 6 Shades in the building early on, considering I had all this shooting I had so far killed a cauldron (with Dwellers) 2x6 Shades, 1 x 5 Harpies, Caz cascaded his mage on peg and he had killed more spearmen with Sacrificial dagger than I had with shooting...it was looking like a small win at best with my general being dead there was not a massive amount in it.

In the last turn however I picked off a couple more Black Guard but not enough, there were 7 left so I ran my Noble with Hail of Doom out of the unit and fired it at the Black Guard, I rolled 11 shots, I hit with 8 (needing 3's to hit) and I wounded 7 of them giving Caz 7 dice to roll 1 6 and save the unit, he failed, they all died and the Hydra ran off the board turning the game from a 12-8 to a 17-3 I think in the last action of the game.

Black Guard and Hydra die in the last turn.

After the Game Caz was his usual honourable self and said "i'm not shaking your hand cus your a cunt" he did however shake my hand and he felt there was nothing else he could have done in the game but wall up and try to get a few points. I however was more worried about him speeding the Hydra and corsairs at me...I think he might have done better with that tactic, as it worked for Kev Weaver and the Corsairs are even harder to kill from shooting than spearmen.

I did enjoy the game, there was plenty of banter, but like I said before, I can't wait to play with a more interesting army. I look forward to playing Caz again sometime, hopefully he will get his arse to a Tempest :D

Jay

BOO!!! Vampire Counts!

I am happy to say that the new VC book has been out now for a couple of months, I went and bought it from www.maraudergames.co.uk and immediately realised my Ghouls were going to be put on the shelf for a bit, they are still good, don't get me wrong but zombies are cheaper and make good enough core for the lists I am thinking of, most importantly you gain 2d6+caster magic level of them and they can go over their starting number.. I do really think ghouls are worth taking, as if you take zombies to support them you could still take 100 zombies (3pts each) and have 30 Ghouls. The main problem Ghouls now face is that they can no longer be increased above their starting amount. Invocation is great now, cast on a 6/12/18 for a spell that covers every unit in 6/12/18 inches and if you have a lvl 4 necro that means you get back 5 Black knights if the spell goes off, which is utterly devastating. Invocation cannot be cast multiple times by the same caster now, which is a shame but hey ho! The lore attribute is the same as Lore of Life which I like a lot, combined with "the hunger" (if vamps roll a 6 after a combat kill they get a wound back) it makes Vamps hard to kill off. I do think an FAQ is required asap as with invocation if you cast it on a unit containing characters its not clear if just the unit regains wounds or if each character within the unit may gain 1 wound also.

Curse of years is awesome now, its a hex so it can be cast into combat and it now goes off on a 12...more than last time I hear you say so how is it better? for me it's better because if its goes off, it needs to be dispelled in the opponents magic phase before it becomes devastating, now trying to dispel a spell on 12 is not as easy as it sounds and it can ruin your magic phase...how many dice do you throw at a 12 dispel? 2? 3? depends on your level I guess but rolling 8 on 2 dice is against the odds, so 3 is safe? maybe 4 to be sure? I love it. The magic in general is better I think, sure Danse Macabre can no longer be used to charge, but that was retarded anyway, conga line charges (HOWLEY!) is not a nice way to die.

So lets have a look at a couple of the new units. I have picked out my favourites from the new book.

Hexwraiths:
These guys on paper look amazing, str 5 flaming magical attacks, ethereal fast cav!!! great stuff...but at T3 and with a 6+ save they are dealt with with 1 or 2 magic missiles, they can move through units doing a str5 hit per wraith, which is great for killing Aboms and the like. I used them in about 6 games and they rarely got their points back, I need to find a better way to utilise them as I am sure they are better than they have been in my games.

Crypt Horrors/Vargheists
The book sees us VC players getting some monsterous infantry!!! love it! the Horrors are tough with T5 5+ regen, 3 str4 poison attacks each and 3 wounds...they are fairly cheap in points and are most likely going to be popping up everywhere. I personally prefer the Vargheists (I seem to be alone on this atm) but with 3 str 5 attacks + frenzy and initiative 4, they are devastating if charge correctly, they are LD7 so its one of the only units worth mindrazoring too. The most important thing for me is the FLY rule for the vargs, -1 to hist for skirmishing and able to fly round the tabletop causing havoc is great, if you tie enemies up with zombies then hit their flanks with vargs, generally you can break a lot of units in 1 round of combat. I love them and intend to run 6-12 of these in every list...depending on how many Black knights I take :D

As for Lords and heroes the Necromancers can now be taken as lvl 3 or lvl 1 with an option to upgrade to lvl 4 and 2, they can take Vampires or Death  with the Vampires being given access to Shadow.

There is a lot of playtesting needed for the new book but so far its looking like Black knights are still the daddy of the special choices and you can expect to see these all over the place, they have killing blow but are no longer magical attacks, they are nasty, and the new models are ace.

I for one am in love with the new book, I find myself wanting to paint my army just because I cant wait to play with it and I haven't had that before. There are so many different lists to be written that could work and nearly every special and rare choice could be featured usefully in a tournament list. I love the way you can now field a proper zombie horde as that's what I personally have been waiting for.

Will let you know how I get on with my upcoming games and feel free to let me know what you think of the new book. :D

Jay

Sleeping Hoppy

Well...it's been a long time of inactivity on here for me, christmas was hectic and works been hectic ever since. The ne VC book has come out and I have been reading and enjoying that, the lists available now are much more fun than the last book, there is finally some variety. I have been painting an army up for TEMPEST5 but I may not get it completed in time, in which case I will take my Wood Elves.

I have some battle reports to go up, including 2 from No Holes Barred last year (yep that's how lazy I have been)

I went to Sheffield Slaughter which I really enjoyed dispite being ill for the entire thing, I met and played against some really nice people that weekend.

I will post pics up of the tabletop ready VC army if I get it finished by Friday and I will talk about the new VC book in more depth along with a rundown of upcoming and attended tournaments.

Hope everyone has had a nice new year and all that jazz.
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