Longbeards on the way

Ordered myself two boxes of the beautiful old metal longbeards the other day, I should have them in time for spring break. I have 25 painted up as my longbeards right now, but when I have the new metal ones painted I will phase them out and use them as warriors. When I get the 10 that are on the way finished up I will order the last 15. As of right now I have a full unit of 20 Ironbreakers, 25 Warriors and 1 Thane completed. Next up will be the new metal Longbeards and then the organ gun I think. I am also trying to figure out a decent conversion for the gyrocopter because I don't care for the Games Workshop version.

Thane BSB

With a snow day in effect in State College (self imposed of course) I knocked out my thane BSB in one day's worth of painting. Though the model doesn't actually have a banner ( I loved the sculpt too much to mess with it) it will be the BSB for the army. Will put up pictures when the sun comes out tomorrow. Tried some new techniques with this model that I am really happy with. It's really cool to look at the models I have finished just in the past 6 months and see how my skills have improved and where I still need more work!

Sorscha WIP and completed and Juggernaught WIP

First off are a few bad shots of Sorscha in progress, please pardon my awesome photo taking abilities

And now a handful of her completed, I hope some of the details come out.


Finally a couple of the warjack, after these were taken I decided I wasn't crazy about the way it was looking so I slapped a wash on there and am waiting for it to dry before I go back over it again.

A Warmachine Interlude

So in addition to having a Warhammer addiction I am also dipping my toes into Warmachine. I've had the Khador and Cryx faction boxes sitting around for a few years so I pulled out the Khador one today and decided to paint it up. So far I'm working on Sorscha and the Destroyer 'jack (I think it's the destroyer at least). Super excited about Sorscha, I think this is some of the best painting I've ever done. I'm going to go take some pics now and post them up ASAP. Woohoo!

New Year, New Army

Well I've decided that to ring in the new year in style I will be starting a new army. I had mentioned Wood Elves earlier but then I started re-reading A Song of Ice and Fire series by George RR Martin and the idea of knights just stuck into my head. Go figure. So I will be trying to build and paint a 2,000 point Bretonnian army this year, all while starting my marriage, trying to get into law school, working, finding a career, moving home, starting law school, starting a new job and trying to keep my head stuck to my shoulders. I'm either bold or mad, or both, we'll find out. Later today I'm going to sit down with a planner and try to work out a schedule on a weekly and monthly basis to try to stick to. I'll post updates as to how I'm sticking with it. Maybe I'll tell Julie and she'll force me to stick to the deadlines because she is great at keeping me on task.
Won't have much hobby time coming up in the next month or so. Finals are next week so I'll be working on those. More importantly though, a week from tomorrow Julie and I will be getting married! We first started talking about all this more than two years ago so it's crazy to sit here and know that it's only 8 days away! I'm nervous about some things but I am just so excited and happy to be marrying the woman I love! Needless to say, with the wedding and then the holidays right after I won't have much time to work on assembling and painting my toy soldiers.

Dwarves v. Chaos v. Chaos

Last night I managed to get a game in against 2 other guys from Hell's Crucible. We only had 3 people though so we decided to fight a three way battle. I'm still trying to get the basics down and advance my skills a bit so this was a stretch for me but it was lots of fun. I had a 4' by 2' rectangle on an 8' board edge and the other two were in the corners opposite me. I tried to spread out the warmachines and quarrelers evenly so that I could slow down both sides and then move my infantry blocks to help out whichever side was going to get hit first. I didn't make notes of their lists or even what specifically happened each turn so I'll just give some of the highlights and then some reflection on what I could have done better. The army to my left ran some Chosen Knights and Warriors with a big block of Marauders. He used Valkia with the Warriors. On his far corner was the Troll King with 6 troll friends but they ignored me for the duration of the game. On my other side were 2 huge blocks of Marauders, a small unit each of Marauder horsemen and Knights and then a unit of Chaos Chosen. His lord was a Daemon Prince that was pretty nasty up until about turn 3.

My early turn shooting didn't do much, I think I took a wound off of the troll king with my bolt thrower and that's about it. By the end of turn 1 I had a DP throwing some nasty spells (his treason of tzeentch got max power and hits both times it was cast) and by the end of about turn 2 my unit of Hammerers was down to 2 plus the Lord on his shieldbearers. After bringing that unit down a good bit the DP killed my bolt thrower crew and then tried to kill the organ gun crew but left one man standing. That same turn my Ironbreakers got flank charged by Chosen Knights and then by Valkia in the front. 5 IBs dead and nobody dead back and I was running for the hills, their short little legs failed them and they were run down by the Knights. Well there went the left flank. He would have overrun into the Organ Gun but he wanted me to gun down the DP, so I obliged the next turn and managed to hit and wound with all 10 shots, of which he only saved 3. Demon prince splatter mark. Next few turns weren't too exciting. In turn 5 my longbeards and thane got a flank charge in on the chaos knights from my right-hand opponent. I did one wound and the knights broke from combat. He rolled a 3 for his flee and I was actually able to run them down! Go longbeards! That turn my lord and his 2 hammerers left charged the chaos chosen from the right-hand opponent and locked them into combat for the remainder of the game. In my final turn I got them below half-strength so at least they took some VP for me. In turn 6 I also managed to line up an organ gun shot between two units right at Valkia. She got the same treatment as the Demon Prince. Both lords fell to the might of the organ gun, I can't get enough of this thing. I also managed to burn down a handful of marauders with the gyrocopter and take them below half strength.

My turn 6 exploits managed to put me into 2nd in VPs for the battle, it's not a win but I'm still quite happy with it. For next time I really need to re-do the runes on the lord's weapon as he really lacks any killing power as I have him set up right now. Organ gun and gyro were wonderful, again. I'm not sure about the cannon and the Bolt Thrower. They both caused some wounds but nothing tremendous, then again it is probably user error here so they will stay in the list. I want to keep the list the same as far as models go right now and just modify who has which runes (though the lord is really the only one who needs it) and maybe give the longbeards great weapons instead of HW and Shield.

Losing my mind?

So this morning I received a package from the WarStore (my plasticrack dealer of choice). Inside this wonderful box was a new battalion of warhammer fantasy troops. Clearly I have lost my mind, these were wood elves! Yes indeed, I am delving into the forest of Athel Loren and starting a Wood Elves army. I love the idea of a smallish army made up of somewhat elite troops with lots of archers and then some trees running around for good measure. This doesn't mean the end of my dwarves though. I am planning on alternating painting for the two armies so that I can end up with two fully painted armies just in time for the new Empire and Orcs and Goblins that are rumored to be in the works for next summer. I was up in the air about what new army I wanted to work on. The skaven have been a personal favorite for me but the sheer numbers of models would be too hard on my budget and my already limited amount of painting time.

For the elves I am going to use an autumnal forest color pallette. In my package this morning I also had 2 Reaper paint triads, one is Autumn Browns and the other is Bloodthirsty Reds. I'm thinking lots of brown (obviously) with some reds, oranges and yellows here and there to break up the monotony a little bit. I am nervous about painting the horses though because I have never had to paint cavalry before.