Skaven Warp Lightning Cannon

So in the aftermath of the recent disastrous outing for the Skaven against Conscript Mike's Bretonnians, I decided to put the Warp Lightning Cannon on a base to match the other war machines in the army. This wasn't as straightforward as it sounds though, because the second-hand cannon in my collection was missing one of its crew, and THIS. WOULD. NOT. DO. 

So off to ebay I went to find the missing crewman, he's in the photo above. Of course no-one was selling a single crew model so I had to buy the pair at an exorbitant price... having said this, if you have a Warp Lightning Cannon missing the left-hand side crewman I will make you a good deal.

The other fun thing I did was put a little cat vs. rat vignette on the diorama base. The models are nominally 1/48 scale 3D prints from Green Stuff World that come in 25-rat or 15-cat packages for about $6USD. I got mine at Games Plus on my recent trip to Chicago. They're great little models but it's too bad the rats aren't a smidge bigger - they really are regular rat size for the scale.

Of course I have two grey cats so I painted this one as "Gilles", the male. This probably explains (ex-post-facto) the sub-par outing against the Bretonnians as Gilles was obviously a Bretonnian saboteur!

I based the Skavenslave crew on 20mm square bases, mainly because that was the way the kit was originally designed... I'd intended to put the slaves right on the cannon base but they needed the extra height of the slottabase for the cast-on poles to fit into their mount on the cannon body.

Anyway that was a fun little project, hopefully Warhammer; The Old World will come along soon to reinvigorate interest in fantasy battles!   

ps Now that I'm looking at the pics I might actually paint some more tiny rats for the base :-)

Are You (Really) Ready for Some Blood Bowl???

So Conscript Greg was back for a visit a couple weeks ago and suggested we play a long-delayed game of Blood Bowl, pitting my Rat-thletic Club Skavenblight team against his Carroburg Crimson Commanders. As I've been wanting to play this game for over 10 years (!) I was really enthusiastic to get it on!

 

I'm not gonna go through a blow-by-blow account of the game (being new to the rules we managed to play only one half) but it was super-fun and I totally get how Greg's LFGS crowd is really into it. We used the old Astrogranite board which I painted years ago, and just one note - the squares fit my old-school 25mm round bases much better than the new-fangled 32mm bases that Greg's team sports.

The game itself was a hoot - Greg's hapless Ogre's stupidity was matched only by the viciousness of my own Rat Ogre, who managed to put at least two of his OWN TEAMMATES (!) in the infirmary. 

There was certainly a lot of the old ultra-violence. Neither the Skaven nor the Imperials had much other than a ground game :-)

Both teams came close to scoring (the Commanders with a long run down the sideline just barely stopped by a Skaven Lineman playing safety, and a Blitzer; the Skaven with a run down the opposite sideline that came to grief with the Blitzer failing his "push it" roll and fumbling the ball on our last possession) but the half ended scoreless.

The game was great fun (I think even Dave V. and Mike F. had fun watching the mayhem) and I'm sure we'll get at Blood Bowl again, I even went out and bought the current rulebook which is a really nice hardback. I also have two metal teams to paint so there is some hobbying to do yet!

Rattenkrieg auf Middenheim! WHFB Pictures

 

A few weeks back, we decided to dust off a couple of our old Warhammer Fantasy Battles armies and have a go. Conscript Greg brought his Empire panoply and I rolled out with my Skaven. Two thousand points was the engagement level, and I was pretty worried about making the time to get a list together since work has been so mental... however I needn't have worried overly, since in my podcast listening I'd found out about Battlescribe, a free list-building app... both Greg and I used it and it worked pretty well on our iPads.

Greg's guys looked awesome arrayed in a line of battle. I was initially heartened by my superiority in both bodies and magic-users. Greg brought a few scary things though - notably the three artillery pieces and a 15-man knight unit...

Even scarier than they look - and they look plenty scary

I brought some Jezzailists to wield their S6 -4 save weapons against said knights...

Level 4 Grey Seer on his Screaming Bell...

Hell Pit Abomination and a third big block of Clanrats.

Chittering hordes itching to get at the humans...

 

If I recall correctly, this is one of the main things that did me in - Helblaster cannon.



Rats had a simple plan - advance to contact and rip the humans apart. We had superiority in numbers and some big monsters on our side too. What could go wrong?

 



Well, this for one thing... that's the bounce on the Great Cannon shot at the Hellpit Abomination. Yes, he died quickly. No, he did nothing.

Knights ram into the clanrat block with Screaming Bell. I kept forgetting to activate the Bell but it didn't make a great deal of difference as it (and my Grey Seer) died horribly.

Nothing much better on the Plague Monk front - Empire troops took an extra dose of hand sanitizer before the battle and came out refreshed.

Can't remember exactly what this die roll represented but I'm pretty sure it was Not Good for the Skaven :-(

 



All along the line we were getting stuck in but it seemed to no avail. Empire detachments wrapped around and that was it. No coordination = no momentum.



 



Mortar played a part as well dropping templates on the clanrats from afar.

Anyway, this post is kind of an object lesson in posting when the battle is fresh in mind. This one happened some weeks ago and although I'm sure SOME things went my way in the game, all I can remember is abject defeat ;-)  Perhaps that's the Horned Rat's way of saying "must do better next time" :-) Always fun to play WHFB though and the game looked great!

There's No Hammer Like Oldhammer (Orcs and Skaven)

So lately, I've been on a bit of a fantasy kick... in particular, I've been obsessed with the old Citadel range, circa 1987-91 or so. You remember, the models from the old red and blue catalogs, before skulls skulls and more skulls, Finecast(tm), army book escalation, overmuscled Orcs, etc... just the old-school stuff back from when I was a teenager.

 

About a year (or more?) ago I acquired a bunch of fantasy Orcs from a well-known TMP member called John. Got 'em for a song. Some were painted, and some were old Citadel models, and some were even painted old Citadel models! I got about 100 models, and there were maybe 20 Kev Adams Citadel Orcs, and for what I paid, I'd've been happy if that was all I got.

So anyway, I busied myself with touching up the models, re-basing them, and painting the shields. These models are the core of the gang Conscript John used in our New Year's Day game. Aren't they superb models? The new Orcs don't have a patch on 'em, I'm afraid :-(

While the Orcs didn't qualify for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, I recently painted some Skaven that did. Above are the assassin adept and Clan Eshin Sorceror I used in the recent game. (Yes, I know they're a Plague Monk and a Night Runner)
 

I just love the old-school flava!!

Here's the unit I painted - 15 models. There are a few more to come, but for me the beauty of Oldhammer is the individual character of the models. I mean, there are guys with halberds, swords, clubs and slings in there, but they all just kinda look cool en masse.

Perhaps the idea might just be cool enough to suck in some fellow Conscripts...?

Skaven Verminlord

A couple evenings last week were spent painting a Skaven Verminlord. I'd picked up the model in a dire state a few weeks ago locally - it was painted (poorly) and broken. I'd always wanted to add a Verminlord to my Skaven army, though, and couldn't resist picking this one up for a song.  So I broke it down, threw it in paint stripper and repainted it.

Doom Glaive blade painted with Boltgun Metal, washed with Devlan Mud and rusted with Dark Flesh

Photographing models is driving me increasingly bonkers. Flash - colours are washed out with distracting shadows. No flash - everything is blurry. I am hoping the solution is this - I've ordered one and will let you know how that works out...

In the meantime, I'm happy with the Verminlord as a two-evening job. I'm thinking of picking up some more old-school Skaven and painting this guy hasn't helped dissuade me... nor has this blog, about one very talented man's obsession with miniatures from the '80s...

Are You Ready For Some Blood Bowl???

I was putting away the Space Hulk boxes from the game the other night and had to move the Blood Bowl box to do it, which reminded me that a) I have a Blood Bowl set, b) I have painted a BB team, and c) I would like to play Blood Bowl next year. So I took a few pics of my team in the hope that it will motivate some fellow Conscripts to paint their teams so we can try this very cool game.

Also, it is coming up to "Bowl" season so this is timely, right? ;-)

The name of my team is "Rat-thletic Club Skavenblight" and they are inspired not by American football, but by "European" football (that is, soccer) and in particular, Athletic Club Bilbao, the home team of our friends that we visited in Spain in 2009.

So get painting, friends - we need to play some matches in 2012!

It Came From Hell Pit

This is literally the first project I've finished in several months - a Hell Pit Abomination for my Warhamer Fantasy Skaven.  Unlike some previous Skaven projects (Plagueclaw Catapult, "Doomwheel") which were scratch-built models, this one was built straight from the box.
 

Pretty scary piece of kit, eh? The Grey Seer thinks it should serve sufficiently for the purpose...