War Machines in fantasy

Hi All

A post about some misconceptions regarding war machines.  Having fought against a few, many players have their own ideas on what can and cannot be done!

Tonight I fought against dark elves in a 3000 point standard battle.  My opponent had various nasty units such as witches and the like, but he also took along two cauldrons of blood.  My list in all fairness should have dealt with him fairly well but I lost due to several factors and one of the main factors was the fact that I still do not really know the rules that well!

I charged a 40+ strong unit of crypt ghouls into one of his cauldrons.  My opponent then told me that only a certain number of units can attack a war machine very much like fighting inside buildings.  It worked out that 9 of my ghouls could attack the war machine.  I was licking my lips at the prospect of 18 poisoned hits to be dealt out.

Misconception No.1

My opponent told me that after his dark elf warriors have finished slicing and dicing my ghouls (with their many attacks and higher initiative), there would be no rank at the front to fight the cauldron operators.  This is wrong!  The casualties are removed as in usual combat – from the rear and presuming there are enough models left in the unit.  The rear models basically climb over their dead comrades to continue the fight.

Misconception No.2

Only 6 models can attack and no more (of course on the understanding you have at least 6 models in the charging unit!).

Misconception No.3

You strike and attack the war machine itself and therefore use the stats of the war machine.  No this is not the case!  As far as I can see in the rules, you strike against the war machine as a unit but using the operator’s WS, S and T and not the machines stats.  This makes perfect sense when you consider the old days when a cavalry would “charge up the guns”.  They would go for the cannon men and not waste time in denting their sabres against the cannon muzzles!  Shooting at war machines might be different though due to their size.

Now if I knew this, I would have made mincemeat of his cauldron, which would have allowed me to crash my ghouls into the side of one of his nasty witch units.  The battle would have gone vvvvveeeeeerrrrrrrryyyyy differently!

Cheers

Andy

Basing for Warhammer

Hi All

Here is a quick post about basing warhammer movement trays.  The warhammer trays you get from Games Workshop are fantastic except for one thing, the models sitting on them are not attached and you have to be very careful in moving your units or else your models decide to fall over the place!

Anyways here is a technique I use to help keep the models in place.

I did a search on eBay for magnetic paint - basically it is paint which has iron filings mixed into it.  Of course I think you could do this yourself with the right stuff if you wanted to!  I bought a pot of magnetic paint called Marabu Magnetico for around £8.  Several coats are needed for a suitable amount of magnetic attraction and I also found that criss-crossing the layers of paint helped hugely.  Due to the iron filings, the paint is textured and makes a nice effect when painted and drybrushed.

 

Starting the layers of paint.

 

The magnets come from searching eBay once again. Here I show two different methods.  To ensure that the magnets adhere to the paint on the base, I had to use green stuff for the Games Workshop model (left).  I glued the skeleton base, stuck the green stuff onto it and then followed with gluing the magnets into place.  Care is needed because the magnets are normally neodium and therefore rather strong so they can ping into each other and if they have glue on them (as in super glue), it can be messy and tough to seperate them, not to mention the chance of gluing yourself somewhat!!!!

But as soon as one magnet was in place, I would push the model onto my cutting mat thereby pushing the magnet into the green stuff and ensuring the magnets were flush with the surface to be stuck to.  Repeat for the second magnet and then set aside so that the green stuff can cure.

The other model comes from my undead mantic set (right).  Mantic models have a very handy circular base attached to the model which sits into a square base compariable to GW bases.  This means all you have to do is drill the correct sizes holes for the magnets and then glue them into place.

And there you have it! The models will not shift around when moving the trays, although the magnetic bond will not be super strong.  In order to get that you need a source of sheet metal or perhaps some copper Euro coins (1 cent coin is best because it sits in the GW base perfectly) for the magnets to stick to.  Or you could have a tray full of opposing magnets but this can be fiddly due to having to remember that every single magnet on your trays will need to be one polarity and all of your models will need to have the opposite polarity, or else you might find some models being repelled by the magnets!  Using the paint allows the magnets just to go that little bit further!

Cheers
Andy

Work in Progress

Hi All
Just a quick post (really must do some more) on various projects I have on the go.  One aspect of my painting which I do endeavour to change is that I see a model or need a certain unit - build it then get roughly 70% through the paint job.  Then another model or project comes along and I start that one also!  Then another and so on, you get the picture!

I do apologise for the photos.  My friend says that I really should get a light box to help with lighting and removing distracting backgrounds.  I will get the lightbox asap!
So here are some photos of various models.

High Elves

Here are some high elves from the Blood Island box.  I managed to get my hands on two sets of the high elf models and will paint to sell them later on.  On these, I undercoated black (due to the level of armour) then airbrushed Vallejo model air gun metallizer (the only time I would ever put a 'z' where an 's' should really go!), then top spray gun and then finished off with a relatively heavy drybrushing of model air silver.

The cloth is layered with three blues from the vallejo model colour range - dark to light.  Faces are quite difficult because of the face guards and helmets.  Vallejo rosy flesh.

Dire Wolves

A useful unit of wolves for my Vampire Counts army.  Base coated in rosy flesh, highlighted with elf flesh then knocked back with GW ogryn flesh wash.  Beasty Brown on the fur, highlighted with bonewhite and then knocked back with GW Devlan Mud.  Gory red highlighted with GW foundation yellow then washed with Les Bursley's APJ softbody black wash.  One slight thing I would warn people about APJ softbody black wash is that leaves a sheen on areas it is painted.  In some of the videos from Les B, you will see him wash the softbody black wash into the recesses in the armour but clear away the excess.  This wash is fantastic as it will give depth without shading the whole paint job, but unless you want a slight shine from the wash, you will need to either remove as much from surfaces as you can or paint over the shiny bits!  Usual bonewhite for the exposed bone parts!

Strigoi Ghoul King on Terrorgheist (in the colours of a zombie dragon)

 This model is fantastic and a real centre piece for my Vampire Counts army.  I bought Zacharius the Everliving on a zombie dragon, so I thought I would not bother to magnetise this model to accomodate both builds.  Gory red blended into black for the wings.  Black blended into bonewhite for the spinal bones. Gory red highlighted with drybrushing GW foundation yellow then washed with APJ softbody black wash for the body sections.  Bonewhite for the bones etc.  I wish I could remember about the Strigoi on the back :(.  I cannot remember, although I remember something green, grey with a sepia wash!

Company of Misery Chaos Lord

My 40k chaos army consists mainly of Black Legion, but I didn't want him to be the boring black with golden highlights, so I looked in the codex and found the colour scheme of the Company of Misery - a sort of black armour with blood red splattered from one side.  Bloody red base coat, the other section basecoated with black.  The face (and skin sections) is basecoat purple with white layer topcoat then washed with APJ softbody black wash with make him look rather intimadating! Cloak has a purple basecoat and blue wash made from Magic Blue with GW Lahmian medium.  I really do like the Lahmian meduim, very useful in making you own washes out of normal colours.  The metal sections are gun metal followed by the usual silver drybrush highlight and wash with GW black wash.  Blue metallic model air was used on the backpack skulls then highlighted silver.  I wanted to the banner to be human skin with a chaos icon painted in human blood (well not really human but model human blood!!!!!).  Three skin colours were used from dark to light then washes with Vallejo skin ink watered down.

Lemartes, Guardian of the Lost

I really love the Blood Angel characters and the models GW has for them.  Black undercoat, grey edging with white further edging.  The edging is thick but will be trimmed to much thinner lines soon.  Left shoulder plate, bloody red blended into blazing orange at the top.  The right shoulder skull, usual bonewhite basecoat with white highlights then knocking it back with sepia ink watered down.  I prefer his eye lenses to be red and not blue so they are in the middle of being worked on to make them look optical.

Avatars of War model High Elf Sorceress

 Very nice model from AoW, two sets of blending going on here!  The top part of the dress has two different purples whilst the bottom part of the dress have two blended blues.  You will notice the failed attempt at adequate recess washing with APJ softbody black wash.  I think I will need to remedy this with a darker blue wash made using thr GW Lahmian Meduim!

Anyways, there you have it!  Some models in various levels of completeness!
Cheers
Me!

Warhammer Joey + serious bad luck!

Well a new phenonemon to hit youtube has arrived (albeit a while ago now) in the form of Joey and her Warhammer antics!!!  What a breath of fresh air!  I look over many many MANY videos on the wonderful world of youtube concerning warhammer and signed up to Joey's video blog thing right from the start! She adds such colour to the videos about the hobby.  I had just got into warhammer fantasy a little earlier than Joey but not much! It is very nice to see someone hitting the same road blocks etc. as myself in the game.

Her takes on the lores are fantastic with the metal lore being my favourite - especially at the end, cracks me up everytime!  It's nice to see her painting progressing very well indeed (one could say exponentially) and also her gaming coming on.  I wish I could say the same for my wargaming! Although I am not bad, I normally suffer the wrath of the dice imps!

Last Thursday I played against a friend and his Warriors of Chaos army at my local wargaming club.  I took a sizeable Vampire Counts army and within the ranks was my prized unit; the killing machine of 7, yes indeed 7 Bloodknights being lead by no other than the most expensive character choice in the whole VC codex; Count Mannsfred.

So there I am, happy, set up and ready to unlease plenty of undead death on my apponent......or so I thought!  He went first, during the magic phase he cast the infernal gateway with unstoppable force onto my uber killing unit and got 11 for the strength! For those of you who do not know about the infernal gateway, a score of 11 or 12 on the strength role removes that unit and characters from play because they are sucked into oblivion.  My face said AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!  My mind said NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I sank to the floor realising that in one magic spell I lost not only Mannfred but 1020 points in one!  I am still stinging over it!  Therapy is not helping my friends!!!!!!  Well some retribution on the miscast table - oh no not for me!  He rolled a 5 - takes a str 10 hit and saves with a 4+ ward save.  He did the damn gate two other times during the battle and saved his sorcerer EVERY TIME!!!!  Gutted isn't the word!  Probability of rolling the required strength for this case - 0.167, to save his sorcerer with a 5 miscast then 4+ ward - 0.01389.  To put this into perspective 0 is not likely and 1 is likely!  Moral of the story - KILL THE SORCERER ASAP!!!!!!!!!!!

So apart from that spleen vent(!) all I can say is SUBSCRIBE TO WARHAMMER JOEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Also check out her blog, facebook thingy and tweets etc.!!!!!
http://thejoeyberry.blogspot.co.uk/
https://twitter.com/#!/JoeyBerry89
http://www.facebook.com/pages/TheJoeyberry/216670435089674