The next project

One warband for my new army.

Here's the first warband for my new army.  Twelve Galadrim warriors, four with bow and spear, two with spear and shield and six with sword and shield.  The warband is led by a storm caller, which brings us to an interesting story.

Games Workshop makes a Stormcaller model.  It used to be available as a single metal model in a blister.  With the new format they repackaged it into a box of Galadrim command and made it in resin instead.  This is totally awesome because it means not only is the individual model I want more expensive but I have to buy three other models, that I have no use for, in order to get it.  Of course by totally awesome I mean it sucks ass.

At this point the only models I'm buying from that company are one offs that I need to finish an existing army.  I have to add a few heroes due to the new warband creation rules.  I'm not going to rant here, I'm really not, but what the hell GW?

The Storm Caller is the chappy front and center.

I'm making a conversion to get my storm caller.  Everything you see here is straight out of the box.  The staff is a spear, with some work done on the hand to make it fit.  I'll dig through the bitz box to see if I have something appropriate for the end of the staff.  Worst case I'll make something, badly, out of green stuff.

The archers have had spears added to them.  The two spears, and all but one of the sword and shield elves, are straight out of the box.  The last sword and shield dude has been re-cut to make his two handed stance into a single hand stance.  It's a little awkward now but should look fine once he has the shield attached.

The other two warbands of this army are High Elves and are requiring a huge amount of converting to get right.  I've had to make shields for the sword and shield elves.  I am also having to scratch build spears for the archers, as the only way to get High Elf shields and spears is by buying the three model metal blisters of spear elves.  I'm not going to be doing that, thank you very much.

More to follow on the Storm Caller and the other two warbands.

Battle Report - Harad vs Galadrim - Again

The ongoing grudge match between Harad and Lothlorien continued tonight.  I got to Collectormania early.  Jonathan showed up a bit later and, yet again, we were left with only each other to play against.  Don't get me wrong, I always enjoy playing against Jonathan, he's a great opponent and our games are always nail biters.  It's just that, if you look at the bat reps on this site, you'll see that we play each other more than anyone else.

Now that the league is over we are firmly into the new "Warbands" era, leaving "Legions" behind for good.  This means a new meta-game.  All armies, in the local group, have gotten smaller.  We are, mostly, still trying out new lists and making our first purchases of new models, mainly heroes.

Jonathan's list was Rumil, an archer captain and a mounted captain.  Rumil had his phalanx, spears and pikes, though smaller than under Legions.  The archer captain was leading, oddly, eight archers.  The knight captain had four knights, two with bows and six sword and spear elves.  My list is pretty much the levy of Kharna list.  The Betrayer, Haradrim King, Taskmaster, Chieftan, one Warrior of Abrakhan with horn, six Abrakhan guards, twelve haradrim with spears and eighteen warriors of Kharna with bows.  This gives me eighteen shots hitting on threes with poison re-rolls on a third of the dice (1-2).  With the points for the Kharna upgrade I could add five more models.  So far, in four games, the upgrade seems to be worth the points.  We'll see how it works out in the long run.

Initial Deployment.  The Taskmaster's ill fated band is behind the ruins to the left.  You can see the hornblower.

Doldrums

I am having a hard time getting back in to the swing of things.  I started painting up the rest of my Gondor army but I just can't bring myself to finish them. 

I think I need to play.  Playing always motivates me to throw some more paint on my models.  When I'm throwing dice and my opponent's army is painted, and mine is not, it is a huge motivator to get it done.  I'm always good for at least a week after that.  Likewise, if my opponent's army is not painted I think about how crap it looks and want to get mine looking better.  Either way the gaming is what keeps me painting.

The other thing that helps is having a deadline.  I got more painting done in the lead up to the GitD than I have in any given year before.  Having that sort of goal is hugely helpful to me.  I have always worked best under a deadline.

Bottom line, I need to figure out a deadline or play some games.  We have our warbands league this weekend, so I may be able to get some gaming done then.  That would get me kick started on my Empire.  I have a lot painted for that army but there is more I can do.

Next weekend is our 40K league.  I have not played any games yet, but we are doing kill teams from the Battle Missions book.  That would give me a chance to learn the rules and to get motivated to paint my IG.  I have one squad of them painted.

I also got an American Rifle Company box for Flames of War for my birthday this week.  If I get them assembled then I could play some practice games of that.

I guess I just have too much hobby and not enough time or motivation.  I know what I need to do, now I just have to do it.

Warhammer Warbands

I am running a Warhammer Warbands escalation league down at the local shop.  We are playing for four months.  We started in January at 200 points.  We are increasing the points by 50 every two weeks.  The original plan was to go up 100 points per month but everyone wants to play bigger games.

The first month was all training games.  The vast majority of the players had not played fantasy before.  This is why I am running the league, to suck them in.  Rumors say that there will be a new edition of the rules this summer.  Because of this, no one wants to buy the rules. 

This last Saturday was the first "real" game.  We are keeping score now.  We had 24 people show up.  We had about 16 the first weekend, 12 the second weekend and nine last weekend.  That is better than I expected, and some people are playing during the week.

Some people were complaining that they were getting burned out, so I may push the next session back to the end of the month.  That will give people more time to collect and paint. 

I am very pleased with how well the league is going.  There has been a lot of interest.  Lots of new armies are being started, not just to the low, warbands, points levels either.  People are liking the game and looking at it as a viable alternative to 40k, which is the major game at the shop.  I hope that we will have five or six people who are eager to play on a regular basis by the time we are done.

I have also learned that people are much more likely to play a game if someone takes the time to organize things and provide some structure.  I'll keep this is mind for the future, when things start to run down.

Warhammer Warbands

We played the second round of our Warhammer warbands league yesterday.  We had fourteen players.  The games are very small, only 250 points yesterday.  When we play again in two weeks they will be 300.

I started this league because there were only three of us who played Warhammer at the store.  I gave a lot of thought to the best way to get people to play and decided to give this a try.  The response has been a lot better than I had hoped.  Over twenty people have signed up and we had sixteen the first day and fourteen the second.  There have also been a lot of games during the week.

The nice thing about Warbands is that you start off small.  We began at 200 points.  This gives people the who are just beginning to try out Warhammer without a huge investment in time and money.  One or two units and, perhaps, a hero and you can start playing.  This size force is also less intimidating to get painted, though it is not a requirement that everything be painted to play.

The other nice thing about a league is that people can try a whole bunch of different units and tactics before they buy a lot of models.  It has been interesting to watch people pick units that they think will be great and then to see how they work on the table.  A lot of players are discovering that the unit either isn't all that they hoped or that it doesn't fit their play style.

The bad thing about Warbands is that the armies are not designed to work at this level at all.  Everyone has been playing in the spirit of the warbands rules, ie, it is for fun.  Everyone also sees how much better their army could be if they had more points.

I actually think this is a good thing.  In dating and hobby organization it is always a good idea to leave em wanting more.  If they are thinking about how great it would be to be able to play with more points, then they will want to play bigger games, which means they want to play Warhammer, which is why I did this in the first place.

This league is just for fun.  No money involved.  That gives me the opportunity to modify it as we go along.  I have already increased point levels once.  Yesterday was supposed to be 200pts, not 250.  I also decided that we would just play for the first month.  No league points or anything like that.  In the future I can increase the points, or even push us up into small Warhammer sized games rather than large Warbands games.  We'll see where the community sits on that but I am pretty sure that, model collections allowing, that is where everyone would like to go.

Of all of the players signed up only four or five have played before and they may be the only ones who have the rule book.  The rumor mill is pretty sure that 8th Edition of the Warhammer rules will be coming out this summer so no one is willing to fork out the $$$$ for the rule book.  There are still quite a few instances where people are surprised by the rules, usually to their detriment.  There have also been a lot of people having trouble because the rules are similar to 40K but not the same.

Now that we have had a couple of practice weekends I think we will be able to really get rolling next month.  I'm very pleased with the whole thing.  It has been well worth the time and effort on my part.