Harmonic Convergence

off to campberwell gw today for 3 games of a 2k teams tourney. we took a pretty horrible list, although we certainly werent the only ones. greg and i had:

Lvl4 Tomb king lore dragon bane gem
LVL4 Big warrgh scroll
LVL1 Big Warrgh Shrunken head  
20x Skelie archers muso standard
20x skellie archers muso standard
24x Sorcbuns with FC
10x Horse Archers
2x Wolf Chariots
War Sphinx Fire breath
2x doom divers
1x rock lobster
1 casket of souls

we also had to write some fluff to operate as one army, rather than allies. heres ours:

Leaning against his gnarled staff, Gorlog Foestompa, head orc shaman of Ordak's 'Ordes, took a moment to consider his position.
With Ordak greviously wounded, his boys in disarray, and his trolls dispersed, he had sent Gorlog and the remainder of his forces to an old camp in the badlands to gather more orcs and raid anything that came past. With high walls naturally forming, it was an ideal camp, and known to many warbosses. There were, however, other forces that knew of their position, and with no sign of any scouting party returning, Gorlog's concerns were founded by the distant noise of heavy footsteps.
Through the twilight came hurtling both of Gorlog's sentry wolf chariots, shrieking about the skeleton men, before coming to a skidding halt. As the terrified goblins began to debrief Gorlog, through the murky dark came a whistling volley of deadly accurate blue flocked arrows, skewering the goblin crew to their machine.

Gorlog took another moment to consider, this time to recognise those arrows as belonging to the armies of a particularly belligerent liche priest that Ordak and Gorlog had crossed choppas with many times in the past. As savage orcs began to pour out of the surrounding tents, Gorlog raised his staff, and with a green mist beginning to form around his head, commanded the frenzied orcs to hold their position. His caution was rewarded when out of the murk began to emerge rank after rank of skeletons, flanked by the enormous bulk of a dreaded war construct. As the undead emerged at the camp entrance, movement on the top of the camp walls caught Gorlog's eye. As his staff pulsed a bolt of illumination into the air, Gorlog and his forces could see skeleton archers stretching all along the tops of the walls. As he began to mutter and spit a spell, his concentration was broken as a figure strode to the front of the assembled undead, and with a voice eerily like the one only he could hear deep in his shamanic trances, addressed him:

'Gorlog Foestompa, I offer you and your forces the opportunity for much carnage and violence. There is a war brewing, and war is the sole enterprise of orcs. Either join me or die'
As the last of the liche priests words echoed off the canyon walls, a handful of the assembled savage orcs could not restrain themselves any longer, and launched towards the awaiting undead. One by one, they fell dead, the bodies speckled with arrows. Once more, Gorlog took a moment to consider. He was realistically no longer under the thumb of Ordak - at least for now, and mork himself had told him once in a trance to follow the skeleton people for the opportunity to amass items of huge magical power. At least, Gorlog was pretty sure thats what he said.
Looking at the greenskins surrounding him, Gorlog reasoned - quite correctly - that the gobbos were completely replaceable, and an ideal source of war machine and chariot slave labour, both for technical know-how, and crewing their creations. The savage orcs on the other hand, were a tough lot, and if they didnt all die, Ordak would never believe their stories. Not to mention this was the badlands, where savage orcs are at their most prolific. Shuffling foward to the front of the savage orc ranks, Gorlog addressed the undead general:

'Yes, we will march to waaaaaaagh!' 

so, onto game one, battleline. our opponents had top to bottom - 4 belchers, 9ish bulls with bruiser, ironblaster, tz warrior block with l2 tz wizzie, marauder block, 5 knights and another 4 belchers. opponents go first. we shut down magic, and ironblaster does nothing. we move up, cast foot on the warriors, scatter off but blood forest does a hit or two, and moves directly into the centre of their lines, with the blaster in the marsh

heres their turn, before it turns to custard. tzwar fail a terror test from the kitty, who then charges the rauders instead. they too fail a terror test, and we charge em off the board. bulls make an ogre charge into me savages and kill a goodly amount, but the savages hit back harder and run em down. running to an inch in front of the belchers, who also die to wood and bone choppas. tz warriors rally, but we shoot and magic them to death. cant remember what happened to ironblaster, think it may have been king hit by a lobba. kilt one chariot tho.

other chariot tho, mvp for me. hits the knights in the flank, kills two with impact, wins combat and runs em down. overrun into other belchers, kill a bunch and catch them too, before rolling a one on dt and blowing up. savages take care of the belchers and the handful remaining reform. greg loses his hiero, and his archers slowly start falling apart. i hand one unit out of knight los and into shooting range at twar.

.

 that doesnt stop the rest shuffling forward and shooting and magicking the last tzwar and sorceror, i think. regardless, kitty dont crumble, and its a crushing victory to shirts off warhammer!

it was 20pts for a crushing victory - taking double the pts off than your opponent, 15 for a regular one, 10 for a draw, and 5 for a loss. 

next up were double woc, double hellcannon, dawn attack. we set up and went first. top to bottom they had hellcannon, some unmarked horsemen, maybe 14 halberd kwarriors, 18ish twarriors with bsb, lord on steed with 5 knights, 3 drogres, and another hellcannon. these dudes were crack up, which is particularly good, given how it went

got a few - 4 turns worth of - missing photos here unfortunately, but heres deployment

nec minute

some terrible luck for our opponents here again, greg shoots a drogre early on, panicking the unit through the knights + lord, who ofc panic too, and ofc run off the board. drogres rally. in the meantime, the twar get a lil visit from a certain foot, killing 2/3rds. then that cheeky foot comes back to visit the savages, thankfully with less effect. shooting kills all but champ and wizzie, who make it into savages. savages do what they do, and shred em. 

on the other flank, shooting+kitty take out horsemen, before kitty is king hit by a hellcannon. both are wounded by shooting too by this point, the bottom one quite mortally. chariots both hit the kwar, roll 11 for impacts and kill 11/14. last three take out one chariot, but are run down. go chariot! for the second game! drogres rally and charge it, but chariot flees and rallies on the board edge. lol

shooting accounts for the last drogres, and the savages take out the bottom hellcannon no probs. other one has no crew and few wounds left. another crushing victory for shirts off warhammer!

last game was against another woc + ok team, meeting engagement. we had casket,dd and my l1 start off the board, but started first. our opponents had a shaggoth, 16ish kwarriors with klord. monurgle bsb with the 7 bulls, along with a tyrant. theres an ironblaster and a pair of mfangs, who started off the board, along with l2 firebelly. more missing photos, but off we go

waaghtillery wasnt too effective, but down comes the foot again, killing a shit tonne of kwar. shooting accounts for all but champ and lord i think

more moving forward as shooting and magic takes its toll on the bulls. i fail a charge on the shaggoth with the sorcs, and we are in a bit of poop. fortunately both l4s are in the back archer bunker

fortunately, our opponents chose to try go through the skellies to the bunker with the ogres, and into savages with wounded shaggoth. it did a few wounds, but was torn apart, and i could reform to the flank of his ogre unit. turns out they had forgotten about how crumble works now unfortunately, and that was a game changer. savages go in and kill his bsb, but cant break em. ogres then reform and the fight goes on. greg gets a -1 s&t spell off on the bunker which helps in the subsequent couple combats immensely.

  
greg caskets the blaster off, while in an amazing display of dick move, blocks the m/f, who had come on and killed the lobba on the very right flank and overrun off the boarrd, with his wounded kitty.
it all comes down to the centre combat, with the remainder of our opponents forces vs savage orcs. i kill the last kwar who had charge in, but not the lord. wounded the tyrant and belly, killed 2/3 ogres, and lost by one. held, and dice down were called. 

 well that was close, saved by the bell it seems. another crushing victory, putting us in contention for a podium spot. being a gw event, it was handsomely sponsored, with teams with unpainted armies winning paint brushes etc lol. our shirts off b team - nick and james with woc and doc - had some issues and bad match ups, finishing 15/20 overall, but greg and i ended up 2nd, only a couple pts worth of comp&painting between us and the dreaded ginger thunder. 

all i gotta say is thank god we didnt draw them like nick and james did, it werent no 30 white lions - which were in attendance - but it was de and emp, with cauldrons, hydras, inner circle knight busses, 4 chooks, stanks and so on. good lord. they did bring along an insanely well researched page of fluff tho lol
but yeah, another great day of standing ass to ass in a stinky hot nerd hole with my brethren. the points system had treated us well, and we had some good games, good match ups, and good times. took home a steg's worth of spoils too. thats all for me, but final words from greg:

Hey everyone, Greg here, I just thought I would share my side of the story for our team tournament where Ben and I teamed up to have some fun. Ok so going into the event we had a very solid list with so much shooting and magic we really didn't have to many bad match-ups.

The best thing about the list we have was that my battle plan was that I let the Orc's run forward which is enough to put off even the strongest enemy and we take everything of there off of the table and yell "shirt off" at them....... And guess what happened.... Exactly what we wanted.

At the end of the day after standing around in an extremely hot room and playing 3 games against practically the same army we had 3 big wins and stood neck and neck with 'Ginger Thunder' (Dave and Nick) 2 of the best players that I know. What I will say is:

                                                            it is on at VICC you guys.  

Take it off thursdays: a compilation

alright, so lots of gaming went down last night, but rather than batrep the whole lot, for a variety of reasons, heres a best of.

it really was a dark and stormy night, very literal thunderstorms. of course we're playing warhammer in the leaky tin roofed shed with the baking soda based woc! i thought it was time to assess this daemon prince option, now i had the beginnings of one. thanks greg.

we rolled meeting engagement, and i rolled 5 ones for 10 drops. on the board i had dp with nearly all the bells and whistles - l3, monurgle, poisoned, soulfeeder, flying, scroll, 2+as - a pair o' chims with regen and bad breath, my bsb on his lonesome, and 3 crushers with a muso. oh and i had to set up first. absolutely brilliant.

in reserve i had:

greg then not only didnt roll any ones, that jammy bastard stole the initiative and tks went first. bsb fled from a scorp charge. shots and spells accounted for 2/3rds of the crushers

reinforcements arrive in a very tactical position, away from errthing in the opposite corner. dp and pet chims go straight towards his bunker and caskets. bsb and lone crusher head for the corner camp. i get a few schpells off behind the trees, including upping the regen of a chim to 3+. i do however take three wounds on the dp from shooting

but the super regen chim dies to stalking, while the other flees. dp looks nonchalant 'i dont even know those guys dude'

dp fights a scorp, taking another wound, but getting one back from combat, and one from spells. yay nurgle. other chim rallies, and then charges the flank of chariot block that had failed a charge. it takes out all 8 in two rounds with only 1 wound left, thanks to shots and caskets. accounts for a horse block too before eventually dying. dp looks tough, then dies to stalking too. 5++ just aint that great

my crusher and bsb get away, but i cause no more damage, with the h/c missing every shot. very very frustrating there, and i wasnt too pleased.

so we racked em up again, dawn attack this time. greg goes first, and we advance

theres shooting, magic, moving, then the dp miscasts and falls down the hole. ger-rate.

i say what the hell, charge both chims in - who arent so hot on a casket test without a dp around, and one dies without killing the kitty. something awful happens to the crushers too, but cant quite remember. must have blocked it out. in any case it was only 8pm,  so we racked em up again

greg wanted a hoon with my lizo, so i got the emp out, my two aussie armies vs each other. battleline. he decides to take beasts instead of shadow but errthing else is the same lizo list

theres a little foreplay, with the cammies nabbing the h/blaster before a halberd block charges em out the building.

then nick arrives and im happy to tap out. greg fancies lizo again

more chaffing about, magic and pew pew, but it comes to a head when the cocs charge the rear of a letter block. not euphemisms. that goes on for a bit with the letters eventually winning, then the thirster goes into the temple guard

kills the champ thrust forward to fight him, and the rus counter charge, with the scar vet stepping up against the thirster. greg gets both panns pelt and savage beast on the vet, allowing the scar vet to strike back on one wound, landing two. combined with charge, flank, down a hill, 3 ranks, banner and bsb..

he pops. im sorry nick, but a thirster dying is a beautiful thing, as im sure we can all agree

so lots of gaming, and 0 painting. thats ok. then i spent most of today on universal battle with dave, and had a great game with my ong vs his nasty etc delves. i managed to deal with his chaff and keep my waaghtillery safe, snipe his mage early on, and take a big chunk of xbows with a foot. trukk got stuck against pendant peg bsb all damn game, but mvp had to be a chariot, taking out some driders, then making the rear charge and two wounds on a dragon locked in a challenge, then breaking it. it rallied, then the chariot went in again when sorcs failed frenzy - dead general ofc - did three more wounds in impact hits, and caught the bloody thing. sorry dave.

so again, lots of gaming, not so much painting. with a tourney on sun i doubt ill be able to finish my empire by monday, but ill have done a good chunk of the hard part.
but yeah, if you're on universal battle and keen for a battle, im ordak, hit me up yo

The empire strikes ben: wednesday

had a 2nd round interview today, so couldnt stay up too late last night. next couple nights tho... hur hur

anyway:

got a halberd block up to knight standard - all basic colours, needs detailing, wash then highlights - and g/swords are a colour and a half down. should have done the silver first.

got a game against greg tonight, so expect a batrep later. hoping to get the g/swords up to knight standard tonight, and get started on the detachment. gonna be a late one!

The empire strikes ben: tuesday

poor effort for tuesday, but with a 2am power cut being the culprit, rather than procrastination. getting through a fair amount today though.

hang on, whats that on the desk next to broken skinks? looks like an old metal 40k dprince.. whatever could that be doing on me desk? thanks greg!

Take it off tuesday: lizo vs tk

off to gregs with the freshly painted lizos. no glamour shots yet cos i aint based em. still.
gregs got his tripod out - not a euphemism - for some near on time lapse hammer.
top to bottom hes got the usual; ten horse archers, 8 chariots, 2x20 archers, one with heiro, casket, titan, pair of bad kitties, more harchers, and a pair of tomb scorpions, and those fucking stalkers entombed.
ive got skinks, sallie, skinks, 6 cold ones - trialling splitting the big unit - saurus, sallie, chammies, tg&slann, skinks, more cold ones with a scar vet, skinks, and other chammies right in the bottom right corner.
blood and glory, greg goes first.

 lil moving, dessication on the top sallie, who is shot to bits cos greg thought they were s5 templates. theres more shooting at skinks and chammies, but when isnt there?

 i do a lil movin, nothing exciting. get a scroll out on pit, wither a scorp to t2, but only get two wounds in shooting.

gregs stalkers come on, scatter off the table, rolls a 6, and rolls the table side that he originally wanted. so basically gets a free move lol. there are some chaff charges, but his hiero miscasts his first spell, rolling an 8 that i curse charm to a 3, and down the hole he goes. that explains the missing tk stuff below. so while the harchers and archers slowly fall apart, one sphinx takes two wounds in a crumble, but all the chariots & construct stuff rolls a 9 or under for crumble for the rest of the game.

stalkers wipe out the bottom coc unit, leaving only the scar vet. scorp overruns through the skinks. errthing else gets closer. i get two pits off over the nec couple turns, but both scatter 6". pendulum a wound or two off wounded kitty. miscast steed of shadows, and wiped out 12 tg. what i didnt check at the time, but the way its written means i could have still ignored it without an enemy wizard nearby. nevertheless.

he charges sallie with uninjured kitty and i roll snake eyes for the flee, and he catches. stalkers charge into skinks with a wither on em and i kill one

i throw rus into the flank with a spazzrazor. scar vet flies behind the crumbling archers. cocs fail a boxcar on chariots

rus reform after smashing kitty, but its looking grim. scorp goes into to skinks to support last stalker with two wounds, but both survive and win, stalker running off the board. chariots go through cold ones. im losing a tg or two a turn to casket

chariots go through saurus, and stalker comes back on. last two tg are casketted, only skink priest and slann left now

we figure he would get both, as is t5, and i run for the train. despite this being an asskicking after me not being able to capitalise on his hiero's death, the way blood and glory is fought here in oz is if you break an army, you immediately get the entire armies pts value, which is offset by what ever pts the broken army can get from unbroken one. so i think this was a draw, in that case, cos gregs only got two banners and general.

empire update later

The empire strikes ben: monday

 
didnt get as much work done on the empire as i wanted yesterday, was still painting lizo. they're all done now, just gotta add flock later tonight.

got a few coats on the inner circle knights, just need to do details, then wash,  then highlights. so about 2/3rds through. started base coating a halberd block too.

have an interview this afternoon, then a game with greg later. so expect some better quality photos of lizo if gregs got his camera handy plus a batrep.

hoping to get the hals and greatswords up to knight stage tonight, no plans tomorrow so can have another 5am-er lol. its really really frigging hot lately, so its been slow going in my room. updates later

Shirts off saturday

so off to hampton we go, getting in two games this time.
first up was blood and glory with ben leopold's and ogres. top to bottom he had a sabertusk, golfag maneaterman by himself, 8 leadbelchers, 9 guts with l4 and bsb with d/hbanner, another tusk, 3 mournfangs, 4 bulls with l2 butcher and an ironblaster. clearly a man who knows his shit.
top to bottom i had chim, crushers, hounds, halberd kwar, l4, twar, ahw kwar, dogs and hellcannon.

he goes foist, moving the m/f right in front of the dogs, blocking the ahw kwar. iblaster takes a flank shot down the crushers, but only does two wounds. belchers kill 6 halberd kwar.

 my hellcannon immediately then fails its rampage, and hits the flank of the m/fangs. chim joins l4 in the centre, crushers move to adjust their angle. h/c - in a poison forest - wins combat by a slim margin, doing two wounds, but he holds.

 bulls and butcher go into the flank of the h/c, and a s/tusk dickmoves the other hounds. ironblaster down the flank of the halberd kwars killsome, and belchers take the rest. 8 belchers is good.
h/c takes a couple wounds, and he gets a comet off by the h/c combat

 l4 and chim move around to get the blaster, and give him another flank shot with the crushers. i charge hounds into side of m/fang and win the combat, but they both hold. last crusher on two wounds charges a sabertusk, and overruns past golfag. hounds beat s/tusk, overrun between the ogre blockz and reforms later, deciding to switch teams

comet arrives, killing the hounds, hellcannon, all the remaining bulls, 2 m/fang, some ahw kwar, twar, and wounds butcher. chim stomps iblaster and overruns into butcher, ahw kwar take care of last m/fang and also overrun into butcher, in the flank and out of los of guts

kill the butcher, then get a final tranny on the guts, killing a couple, but nabbing his bsb and unit champ, i think. he charges remaining guts into ahw kwar, and then dimensionally cascades down the hole with the l4 and thats b&g for me.

we continue. lone crusher is now hiding safely behind a house, as are twar, and belchers keep failing swift reforms. kwar are destroyesd 

 as chim and l4 - who is now a level zero after two miscasts try and do some bad breaths for nada

ended up being a narrow win to me. bens a great guy to play, and correctly pointed out my error of not taking transmutation of lead, as i thought the guts were ws4. the l4 cascading was the only thing that swung it my way, as i relearnt the sting of ogre shooting. h/c being in combat t1 meant no panicking guts lol.

nevertheless, for the next game hampton continued to deliver the cream of vic fantasy. fresh from turning gregs tk into bone dust, i was playing against aussie no 1 david duriesmith and his vc. and boy, did i get a hiding. lets see how:

rolled a battleline, and i went first. daves packing a 'salty' list and once i understood the meaning of salty, i had to concur lol. blurry photo soz, but it gets better. top to bottom hes got hounds, bats, zombies, pair of hosts, bats, zombs, dogs x2, 20 ghouls with a l2 vamp, hexwraiths, black knight bus with l2 vamp bsb on a hellstead, and the 540pt tricked out - 4++/ogre blade/red fury/asf/l4/hellsteed vamp lord, and a terrorgheist

 i move up a bit, do two wounds to gheist with h/c, and transmute a few knights.

 he charges into one set of hounds, and blocks crushers with the other. ghest does two wounds with screamin'. i charge cannon into it, and l4 into dogs, after mine hold. kill hounds, but monster fight doesnt shift.

 and then i see the punchline of this list, when both flying vamps charge out and carve up h/c. bsb hero one doesnt overrun far enough, but vlord goes through crushers flank,after another scream does more wounds, crushers do one wound in return and are run down, vlord overruns into ahw kwar, killing them all before they can respond.

i charge a spirit host with twar and reform. chim flies over to building. l4 falls down the hole after i/f'ing and killing bsb vhero with golden hounds. kwar fail long charge into zombies

twar are run down after a combo charge by black knights and gheist. kwar catch the flank of the black knights but one is left alive, blast! chim goes into ghouls in building and between wounds and res - he does 3 wounds! - 2 ghouls and the l2 are alive and hop out the building. sigh

and the vlord goes through another woc blocks, aided by his gheist, and seeing i only had a chim on one wound left and a unit of hounds cowering, that was that.

dave was also great to play, and really gave me some food for thought for both my woc army and vc list. that flying vlord is terrifying, it basically killed my army single handed. hmm

so need to try finish the lizo this weekend, then into empire asap. they are all undercoated:

and ready to go, once i am