Monday 29 January 2018

...Into The West

Back again with the results of my exploits at a LOTR Tournament. It was a great weekend and I had a lot of fun catching up with old faces and meeting some new ones. Always good to get out for these sort of things as I get to play people I wouldn't normally have the chance to, but very rarely do I get the chance any more due to work. So how did I match up to tournament regulars I here you ask.... lets find out.

Game 1 was against Callum and his own Angmar list. Now I had heared that a real Angmar army could be quite powerful, but nothing prepared me for the nightmarish slog I had to put up with in this game.



The objective was just straight up Kill Points and I thought the cavalry would give me the edge here except for one thing, the (expletive deleted) Shade! That Tricky little piece demonstrated how a good player can use the tools he's given and just how out of practice I was. Everything I tried bounced off the wall of goblins as the Shade sapped the strength from my charges and soon after any resistance.



Callum played everything right and delivered the me a solid whooping, smacking me to the bottom tear tables where I belonged. That said, Callum was a gracious winner and was good enough to give me some helpful pointers in how to use my army going ahead.

My second game was against Dave Clark. We had met at an event last year, so I was looking forward to a rematch. This game centered around grabbing treasure from the middle of the board and escaping off the opponents table edge. I had played this style of mission before and knew how to win.



Dave was using Minas Tirith featuring a little bit of everything; shooting cavalry, high numbers. He played well and was able to break my army which scored him some points, but I had passed the treasure marker onto the Witch King early on which gave me my first win of the Weekend.


Game 3 was against Ryan that brought a mixed army of Dwarfs, Woses and Saruman the White (the good version). Though his army was small, the mission required players to attack opposing camps, forcing me to advance across the board.



My plan was rush the Dwarf lines and cause enough disruption to overwhelm the camp. Ryan wouldn't have been able to attack my camp in time as he had rightly chosen to defend all out. Ryan's choice to defend proved the right of things, The Dwarf line held strong and I couldn't break through fast enough to score off the camp. Ryan, score points for breaking my force and even killing the Witch King early in the game.

The fourth game was against Dave Alexander (there were a LOT of Daves at this thing) and his Isengard army, all crossbows and bezerkers. the mission called for moving models off your opponents board edge and I had the Warg riders to do it, but I spent too long skulking away from the Isengard crossbows to do anything impressive.


This was a hard fought match and Dave took the win by running a few stragglers off the board while my army desperately tried to hold against the wall berserkers.

Game 5 for me was a case of "be careful what you wish for" against Luke. Early on in the tournament I had seen a few people tackling the Mumak that was Luke's army.


Hobbits had had a go and so had a few others, but I had vowed that if I faced the Mumak myself I would slay it! The boast would require no small amount of luck and a little sneaking, but on paper the plan would work. The Witch King held a Morgul Blade, which would allow me ONE chance to kill the Mumak with a single strike. This game can be summed up in one image....


Yup, the Mumak trampled the Witch King to paste and the dice abandoned me at the worst moment. The dream was dead. That said, it was a good laugh and Luke played well and knew what he was doing.

Game six was against Ian and his Harad army. Ian and I had played at Firestorm last year when he was using an all Troll army, so it was good to get a chance to play him again. Again this was a very close game with everyone gunning for the Heroes to score points.



The larger part of the game was a mass of infantry brawling in the middle of the board. My cavalry attempted to encircle the Harad, but stumbled along the left flank, leaving the Haradrim superior fighters to clear up the Orcs in the middle.


I did have some fortune. My archers, who  had been utterly useless in the tournament until now, came out with avengeance and crippled the Haradrim General in a single round of shooting. Ian was forced to hide the injured General for the remainder of the game to avoid giving up any points. Once the Witch King entered the frey, that was no long within Ian's power. Using fell magic the Nazgul drew the General into the open and charged him. wounded and unsupported, the Harad leader was cut down.


Despite my last minute killing of the enemy leader, Ian took victory for breaking my army. It was a hard fought game and a great rematch.

At the end of the weekend I was looking for a nice easy game to wrap up, but fate does love to play tricks and with the rankings set in stone at this point the only viable opponent was Dave Clark. Yes, twice in one tournament, the War of the Daves was being fought on both the Top and Bottom tables it seemed.


For this game we had to hold 5 objectives scattered around the board. I sought to hold the 2 in my half and we would duke it out for the central objective. I had hoped to send the Wargs up the flank to take one of Dave's objective markers, but once again, Gondorian heavy armour proved the better and my casualties began to mount up.



In the end my forces began to flee, abandoning one of the objectives I held in my table half. Though Dave had a solid victory, the cowardice of Orcs cost me a few points that could have swung it in the long run.

After seven games, I came out the end of Sunday with 6 loses and a single Win and even then Dave came back in Game 7 to reestablish his dominance. I enjoyed the event and everyone was good enough to give me some advice on using my army in the future and getting the most out the Witch King, so thanks to everyone for the advice, I look forward to seeing you in the future to try again.

The painting standard was really high at this event, with a good mix of armies and themes, here's a few of my favourites.



And the over-all best painted, Dave Clark's Gondor. A really nice looking army with a lot of detail and character. He talked about trying a new army in the future, so what ever he chooses to do, I'm looking forward to seeing the finished paint job.


At the end of the weekend I was lucky enough to not walk away empty handed. When I mentioned to people I won THREE awards, I keep getting asked who I stole them from. That said I happily took the Wooden Spoon (for coming dead last, but getting some good lessons) and surprisingly Most Sporting (I think handing out cookies to my opponents and the TOs may have helped) Finally I achieved Runner-Up for Best Painted which really made me happy. As I had voted for Dave's Gondor to win, it was nice to get some glory for my painting too, so thanks to everyone who voted.

Once again, a lot of fun and I hope I get the chance to do it again next year.


Wednesday 24 January 2018

If That Fell Kingdom Should Rise.....

And it has. Been working on these for a while on and off now and with a Lord of the Rings Tournament taking place this weekend I thought it was past time to show off my efforts. Here are some of the horrors coming out of the ruins of Angmar to assail Middle-Earth...

First up the Orc Shaman and his bodyguards. Also a mounted version for those long journeys.



Not to be out done by mere Orcs, the Lord of the Nazgul leads from the front with a pack of Warg Riders.


Every self respecting force of Evil needs more Orc grunts to fill out the ranks and a Captain to keep them in line.


Finally, some of my favourite models from GW's LOTR range, the Specters. First and only Elf model I've painted in the last 7 years. Probably be the last Elf model too.

A sneaky peak at what I've got on the desk at the moment so enjoy. I'll have a full rundown of the event next week Wish me luck.

Wednesday 17 January 2018

Dystonian Doodles

I've been doing a lot of scribbling of late. With the down time in work and few quiet afternoons I've been inspired by  the Inq28 crowd and Blanchitsu articles to get a few random characters together. At the moment this will fall in between  the Dwarf sculpting project and the Night Lords Terminators as it's both a sculpting and painting experiment. For now though, here are a few ideas for what I have in mind.







Some of these pictures appeared during my doodle spree for #Inktober towards the end of last year. seemed fitting to dig them out again.
                     

The long term goal is to build a small gang of miniatures out of spare parts like I did with the Night Lords. Though this will allow me slightly more freedom as I'm not looking to use any particular set of rules. For now I'm just going to play around with some more concept sketches.

Wednesday 10 January 2018

Rambling and Dashboards.

Following on from last weeks post. I've had a little time to draft up some Dashboard style stat cards for Gaslands. I've been getting in a few more games and building up some interest amongst my gaming group so the plan is to hold a massive one off race with lots of players and hand out some prizes at the end. Nothing too official, just a bit of a laugh. For those interested I've included a link to download the PDF of the Dashboards I made, HERE

Mean while, I've been taking advantage of the free time following Xmas and getting some painting done for a tournament at the end of the month. It's been a while since  I played a tourney so I'm looking forward to it. I'll get some pictures put up when I'm finished, but right now everything is a bit all over the shop.

Finally, I did a quick watercolour. not sure what prompted me to do this, but I've always been a fan of the classic Sonic franchise (don't get me started on the new gen stuff) as it was a series I grew up with and even the comics were some of the first comics I ever read.

Another quiet week then. Next week I'll have something meatier for everyone. Cheers.

Thursday 4 January 2018

A Day at the Races

Well it took a full month, a change of calendar and the planets to align, but I finally got a chance to play Gaslands since I bought it back in November. So without further excuses, let's burn rubber!

The track was set around a wasteland settlement, using the the natural rock formations as the race marker gates and competing for the first win of the New Year were the Nuke Valley Raider (blue team) and the Thunder Wasps (yellow team). First few turns were a little slow to get going. Neither my opponent or I had played before and with only a minor grasp of the rules myself it took me some time to explain the collision and wipe out rules, but after some early fender benders the race got well under way.



The Thunder Wasps took the lead and passed the first gate with relative ease. The NVR heavy artillery was not to be ignored as the pick-up truck sporting the 125mm cannon soon put a serious dent in the Wasps' lead car. Lagging at the back, the NVR "King" must have been drinking from the petrol tank as the idiot just couldn't get the car to go in the right direction.



Once again the Wasps passed the gate first and held the lead two gates in a row with the NVR Pick-up truck following close behind. Too close however...


The Wasps were down one car, but with "King still struggling to even make the first gate, it was really all down to the Pick-up Truck to win it for the NVR. The wasps' remaining car, following a brief detour off the track, quickly caught up ahead of the third and final gate.


But the driver misjudged the the turn and disaster was the final result seeing the Wasps' remaining car smashing into the smoking wreck of it's team mate. Ahead of the Third gate and pulling away from the carnage, the NVR pick-up truck crossed the finish line to take home the trophy (free lift home)



So, my first impressions date back to the first ever post of this blog when the Gaslands Team were still demoing the rules. Since then the Game has had a year to get some tweaks and polish on it and it doesn't disappoint. My opponent and I both had a great laugh out the evening and I'll be taking the rules out for a spin over the next few weeks to add in a few of the advance rules that we left out or got wrong this time around. 

For those who love Death Race, Mad Max or even the Pod Race scene from Star Wars, this rule set is worth a look and getting a few toy cars from a car boot sale will cost you next to nothing to get playing quick. I would recommend getting the movement templates if you can as they make things nice and neat and drawing up some dashboard style stat cards for your vehicles. Gaslands has a downloadable roster sheet, but we found these to be cramped to work with whilst keeping track of tokens and damage. Altogether it's a great rules set and a lot of fun.

Tuesday 2 January 2018

...And They're Off!

Happy New Year everyone, I hope the Christmas period was all food and loved ones. Failing that I just settle for food and lots of it. Now that all the busy stuff in the real life is done, I'm looking forward to getting back to some gaming and some painting (2D and miniature).

 So what's on the table right now? More Dwarfs. I'm looking to expand the range of dwarfs I sculpted last year with some Heavy infantry and perhaps something else a little further down the line, but right now I'd just like to get back into some sculpting. As you'll see from the pictures, it's still very early days on these, but I've attached some sketches of what I have in mind.


I've been slowly expanding my Night Lords Kill Team on the quiet as my gaming nights are getting me back into 40K. The Orks are still fun to play with, but I fancied a change and I like the idea of a Traitor legion where everyone is trying to be Batman.




I'll do a bit of a showcase of this lot when I've a few more models finished.

Finally, a quick update on the long awaited Age of Savagery anthology. This has been a labour of love for me since March last year and it's still going ahead. dispite the printer set backs in September, Kev and I used the extra time to give some extended deadlines and even get some more content from interested writers and artist. We've gathered everything together and will soon be announcing a release date for the finished project.


That's all the news I have right now. plenty of things to be getting on with and lots of things to look forward to in the new year.