Council of War - Day One

This weekend I have been playing Warhammer and drinking beer at the Council of War event at Warhammer World in Nottingham.
Our team had done it properly and were all using Orc and Goblin armies. None of this mix and match allies stuff - just loads and loads of greenskins. Proper.

Yesterday saw me play three games, two at 2000 points and one doubles game with my chum Steve.

A combination of old age and alcohol consumption mean that I am unable to relate the finer details of what occurred. Except that I came (a distant) second in all three games.

I took quite a lot of pictures, but several factors (Warhammer World lighting, ageing digital camera, the aforementioned alcohol consumption) mean they are not really of the highest quality. But nevertheless here's the eye candy. Some (the grainy ones) were taken with the (ageing) digital camera, the others (non-grainy but inclined to blurriness due to lighting) are iPhone pictures.

First up was Dave and his Warriors of Chaos featuring the Unkillable Daemon Prince.

Next was Tom and his Clan Skyre Warmachine army of Doooooom

And finally Rikki and Greg (not Greig, sorry Greg) with their Lizardmen Empire Combo. For which I was joined by "Seven Pints" Steve and his Mischief Making Manglers

Tomorrow you'll get the eight player 10K a side mega picture update.

My Underway is full of Toadstools

I always think good scenery adds immeasurably to a game.

So for our ongoing underway campaign I've been creating some fungus forest type bits and bobs for our various greenskins to lurk behind. Here's the first one.

The mushroom is from Wargames Terrain Workshop and the puffball is just a polystyrene sphere. The base is one of the 4 Ground tree base thingies.

I hope you're admiring the firm shaft and purple head of my mushroom.

Orc Boarboyz (4)

The next batch has been assembled, sprayed black and had some basecoats added.

 First coats on flesh and metals

 Highlighting on the flesh, leather done

Should get these finished today, then that just leaves the command and this unit will be ready.

Gripping Beast Plastic Vikings

As I flutter from project to project I alighted on my box of Gripping Beast plastic Vikings.
I think this may be inspired by the Viking Conference I went to at the weekend

Anyway, I have half a plan to make a Viking army to play against my Saxons - the first historical army I collected and one that I have never used as an army, only parts of it have seen action in SAGA games.

So whilst retrieving Boarboyz from the loft I grabbed a sprue of these to make a start.

I have to say that I found them quite fiddly to put together and am not entirely convinced by the resulting poses (some of which is my fault, but I think the kit has to shoulder some of the blame) and some of the heads seem very out of scale to me. I enjoyed glueing the Orcs together considerably more.

Anyway, I've assembled these ten.

To see if a lick of paint improved my opinion I've slapped some basic colours and washes on three.

I like them better now, and they were pretty simple to paint (though they need a few highlights). But I'm still not convinced by the poses. I think I'll finish this box, but the rest of the army (ha, as if I'll ever get that far!) will be mostly metal.

For rules I'm thinking of using the Crusader set I bought several years ago and seeing how that works out.

Carry on Colonial (2)

May I present Private Arthur "Wafty" Crank of Her Majesty's 3rd Foot and Mouth

And finally in the official memorial shot as kept on the mantelpiece by his dear old Mum in Blighty

Quite pleased with him in the end. I wonder where the rest of the blister has got to..?

Carry on Colonial

There's a Colonial painting league thingummy running over on the Lead Adventure forum.So I grabbed this chap off the shelf where he'd been standing half-finished for a while.

Intended for my Darkest Africa project with half an eye on maybe some Afghan adventures one day, he's a Perry Miniatures Sudan Highlander. He's inspired by the 3rd Foot and Mouth of the legendary Carry on Up the Khyber film, so the uniform (and especially kilt) are a little less than historically accurate. But then as my African country will be fictitious and contain a certain amount of Lost World flavour I'm not fussed.

Here he is ready for the dip

And now ready for a varnish.

Next he needs a good hard matting and some basing.

Nice pictures tomorrow if I can get the camera working.

Orc Boarboyz (3)

More progress.
Added a highlight to the flesh whilst sitting in the garden. Gotta love long sunny evenings.

Then returned inside and got out the washes and the like.

Almost finished now, so as one of them had fallen off the base I popped him on a Boar to have a look at what the complete thing will look like.

Just need to get back into the loft now in search of missing assembled Orc, the five still on sprues and the lost leg. It's all going well.