Orctober (8)

I finished some Orcs for Orctober!

Irritatingly one of the arrows in the back of the downed Orc has vanished in the last stages of finishing off. Must have pinged it off with some over enthusiastic drybrushing.

The Ork Warboss will have to wait a little longer (though hopefully not until next Orktober. At the latest Janu-waaaghry I'd have thought.)

Oddgit, Night Goblin Shaman

So Oddgit is finished.
Meaning I've achieved success in Idle of Gorktober.

Lovely model to paint this one, really characterful. I'm especially fond of the crescent moon face on his scythe - lovely touch.
Big though by modern Night Goblin standards - must be all dem weird mushrooms 'ee keeps scoffin'

Think I should get the Arrer boys finished before the end of the month too, though the 40K fella may not quite be finished in Orktober

Orctober (7)

A weekend without children meant I had a little time to myself that I wisely spent painting greenskins

These are pretty much finished I reckon.
Need to work our what colour the arrow fletches should be (red I think, but can't remember and the rest of the unit is in the loft), maybe add a highlight to the boots and then base.

This guy is a bit further off, but making solid progress.

Congo! A first game

As part of the ongoing inability to agree on a whether or not to play Warhammer like men or fart about with round-based-pseudo-fantasy-bobbins AoS the Sherwood Hucknall and Ilkeston Team has been experimenting with taking it in turns to host games.
As a result of which we've taken a turn toward Darkest Africa.
Firstly I ran Steve and General B through a DA game of Triumph and Tragedy, then after a hiatus, during which he vanquished Dan the Second in unarmed combat, General Ballroom laid on a game of the new fashionable thing all the cool kidz are doing - Congo!

General B. despite having a stroke just over a year ago has managed to paint and assemble both forces and all the terrain. And it all looked nicer than mine. I'm thinking I might have a stroke to see if it improves my painting and makes me better at wrestling strange men called Dan.

So we turned up to this.

Looks good, dunnit?

And, naturally this - the only thing to drink while playing Congo!

Apart from beer. I had some beer.

Steve took the part of the rapacious explorers, ravishing valuable stuff from the beleaguered natives. I took the role of the native population turning up to politely request the return of our valuables.

Legitimate owner of ransacked goods

Here's the pictures

 The explorer camp is roused from sleep and points in all directions

 Native troops arrive

 The Diplomat urges the young warriors on

 From the far side more troops close in

 Tha alarm begins to sound in camp

 Whilst the warriors close on the tents

 The first attackers breach the perimeter

 Whilst the explorers send their allies on the offensive

 Confusion reigns in the camp as warriors arrive

 Venerable muskets wreak havoc on warriors

 Dr Greenwick with his Sikh escort quits camp

 The diplomat and his boys get amongst the tents

 Meanwhile the attackers have set a tent on fire (and grabbed some loot)

At about this point I drank the Umbongo! 

It was horrid.

 Dr. Greenwick (after a brief diversion through thick jungle) is able to make good his escape

After early success of my troops in ransacking the camp the elite Sikh's and their leader were able to hot-foot it toward the board edge. Poor card choices by me (and a reliance on shooting instead of cold steel) meant my men were unable to catch them and the precious heirlooms were spirited away to form pride of place in a European collection


So what did I think of the game?
It's easy to pick up and moves along at a reasonable clip. Even buffoons like the three of us seemed to get most of it right most of the time.
And it delivered a good result - the scenario was quite finely balanced with the victor in doubt up to the final turn.
My reservation is probably around the picking the card part of the game. It felt to me like the game is won or lost in the decisions you make around the cards you choose and the order you play them, rather than the actions of the little lead men. So it felt a bit like a card game with toy soldiers, rather than a toy soldier game with cards.
But it's a minor quibble - it looked awesome and we had a fun and convivial time. I expect we'll be playing again.

Steve's version of the events can be read over on his blog

Orctober (6)

So after a short hiatus we return to the joys of green flesh.
And this time I've actually done some work on da Orcs.

Much basic blocking out.
I suspect liberal application of washes will be my next step. Then some tidying up. These are part of a large unit, so I'm not going to spend too much time on the details.

In addition Oddgit has crept almost to the finish line in Idol of Gorktober

And finally the warboss has had his red bits done

Idol of Gork a WFB Battle Report

As regular readers (thank-you both) will be aware I am a big fan of campaigns and narrative battles.
Steve likes to play Warhammer and so humours me because it means he gets more games. Generally I like the story telling aspect, so a short series of linked battles, rather than open-ended campaigns suit us best. These types of thing also usually means painting up some new and unusual models which makes Steve happy.

In the past we've played Sigmar's Blood, The Underway and, most recently a Siege campaign.
We've frequently joked about the old WFB 4th edition scenario packs, and in particular Idol of Gork but never quite taken the plunge. however our recent games of Empire v Orcs led us once more to blow the dust off the old campaign pack and give it some serious thought.

The army lists, as is the way of these things are a bit odd. Made even odder by the fact that they were written 20 years ago for a different version of the rules.
The Empire force came to roughly 1000 points under the current rules, but the Goblin forces led by Oddgit were considerably short of that amount, and as the scenario called for equal forces I added a magic level to Oddgit, beefed up the Squig herd numbers and added a unit of Night Goblin archers (the scenario talks about Night Goblin shooting not being affected by the dark, but the supplied army list includes no NG archers so adding 20 of them seemed like it kind of fitted with the original intentions of the game).

The battle began with a lone unit of Greatswords protecting the hill on which glowered the Idol of Mork, next to the fallen representation of Gork (or is it the other way around?).

Opposite them stretched the goblin battle line

The bloodshed commenced with the Night Goblin horde parting to unleash three whirling fanatics into the Greatswords. They killed four and the doughty empire fighters immediately fled

Oddgit decided to wield some magic, miscast, and lost a level.
In the Empire turn the Greatswords rallied and formed up to face the Squigs whilst the rest of the army advanced.

On the left flank the halfling militia began to take a deadly toll on the Night Goblin Archers.

Delayed by the whirling fanatics blocking their path the Night Goblins were dismayed to find the Empire halbardiers cresting the hill before them.

The squigs, meanwhile, made short work of the Greatswords.

The Empire state troops bravely faced down the Night Goblin horde.
Briefly we discussed the fact that Oddgit could just walk out of his unit and up to the Idol and win, but that didn't seem like much fun so we decided he'd have to stay with his unit.

So Oddgit cast a mighty spell, but miscast in the process. Losing another two levels. But wiping out half the Empire unit.
The Squigs, taking shooting casualties, reformed to attack the halberdiers.

In backfield the Spider Riders managed to get onto the flank of the crossbow unit, broke them and ran them down.

Back on the hill the Squigs crashed home with inevitable results - victory was within Oddgit's grasp...

The brave Empire handgunners managed to charge the Squig herd in the rear. Unnfortunately the gribbly beasts were able to pass the resulting test for losing the combat, and then another leadership test (on Ld6!) to reform.

Inevitably the red horrors ate all the handgunners, leaving Oddgit atop the hill to claim the Crown!

This was good fun. The scenario (great work from the legend that is Jervis Johnson) was cleverly balanced and meant we had to do some hard fighting. the restrictive army lists mean you can't just rely on killer combos and knowing your opponent to get you a win. You have to be lucky as well.

Now for the future battles which require things like 20 Kislev horse archers, a war wagon and a unit of Savage Orc Arrer Boys...