Shut up and Take my money

Painting like a machine

Well it was that time of year again.
The days before the dutch Battle of the Clubs

First of lets talk about the event a bit
As far as I know the event is unique for the Netherlands. Its a tournament that is team based  where every team is based on a warhammerclub.  Now teamtournaments of course aren't unique but I can't think of one that is based on gameing clubs.

Anny way what do I mean when I say its this time of year again?
Well I am always always ill prepared for this. I like going to a tournament now and again.The way you can play against a complete  stranger and still find common ground in form of the game is just awsome.

But I am never prepared for it. Thing is I don't like taking the same list to Tournaments.
So it usely take a compleetly different list each time. And the problem is that I putt off painting it for way to long.

So 2 days before the tournament I still had to paint 10 chosen, 2 chaos marines and  convert 2  obliterators.

SHIT

Now  luckily I am a pretty good speed painter.  Whit that I mean that while I am far from a great painter. I can turn out models at a good speed.
It only took me about 5 hours to paint all 10 chosen, including base coating and baseing.

To bad it took me about that long to do the other 4 models but then again I had to make the obliterators from scratch.

And that meant that I was finally done whit painting at 3 at night the day before.
So when I got to the tournament the next day I was exhausted.

So I did not expect to get much out of it at all.

But i'll talk about that later for a bit
Also I wil go back and add some pictures to this topic when I get the time.

Cya and may the dice god bless you.        

Warhammer analysis: BIG waagh

Warhammer analysis: O&G magic big Waagh

Man am I busy today third post so far.

But welcome to the first of my totally irregular series
Warhammer analysis  where I look at just one small part of the hobby and give my analysis of it.

Today :The magic of the green skins.

Greenskins are unique  in the fact that they have not one but Two racial magic lores
The big and small waaaagh
They are also unique in the fact that they have absolutely no choice when it comes to magic.
Goblins use the little waaagh orcs the big one and that's it.
So if you are playing whit Orcs and goblins you better learn these spells well so that you can get the maximum out of it.

ok so lets take a closer look at the spell lores themselves. Now bigger is always better so lets start of whit the big waaagh

Big waaagh.

This is the magic of the orcs. I kinda think this lore is verry hit or miss whit some totally dominating spells and some very very weak ones.

So ere we go.

The lore atribute:

Basicly this  gives all you spells a extra strenght as long as you have more units (not orc units mind you) in  combat than that are fleeing.
Not to hard to pull of but on the other hand the spells themselves are don't benefit that much from the atribute. Not bad not broken either.

 Signature spell:

 Gaze of mork
A direct damage spell that works like a cannon ball whit a random range  at strenght 4
Now  as far as signature spells go this one is just a stinker. Its not very reliable and not all that damaging. But then again if you ever manage to cast this while you are really close to the enemy (but not in combat) then it could do some great damage overall tough I don't like it.
MISS

The rest:

1: Brain bursta
A short ranged sniper spell whit strenght 5 great to put some wounds on enemy charters but the damage it does is so minimal that one really has to wonder it's effectiveness. Although the psychology effect of it might draw some dispel dice. Nice to use after a Eadbutt tough.(see below)
Like missing a barn when firing from the inside.

2 Fist of Gork.

A simple augment spell. It beefs you shaman attack and strenght to chaoslord level of combat powers in a second. The only problem it can only target you shaman. But it does work whit the equipment your shaman already has. So  potentially very nasty. Only problem is that it has one and only one use so easy to counter also  even for orc wizards combat really isn't the best place to be
 MISS



3 Hand of Gork. 

Now when Gork is done whit making a fist this is what we get.
A spell that picks up a unit moves it either 3d6 or 5d6 across the table and then lets it kind of reform around any model in the front rank. You have to remain in the same formation but you can turn the unit any way you like. Now this is massive allowing you to move units straight to the rear of the enemy, drop that unit whit the 3 fanatics straight on top of him like some fantasy bomming run, or just pull a unit out of danger. This spell has so many uses and it can and will win you games.
LIKE  A HIT FROM A TIRE-IRON 

4 Eadbutt

 This lets you  hit a enemy wizard in a random range whit a s4 hit whit d3 wounds
Now this the most random spell in the lore. Against dwarfs this is totally useless. And against that don't go for magic its still very limited in its use.  Then again against VC or tombkings this is a game breaker just spam it till he's dead and laugh as his army crumbles. A nice thing about this spell is the fact that it can potential kill a wizard lord in one hit for most ppl that would really hurt the game plan so this will draw dispel dice most of the time.
Mostly good HITS sometimes miss.

5  ere we go


A simple spell that grands units rerol to hit whitin 2d6 if your shaman. 
But only orc units. and the range stinks.  Nice to boost  the combat powers of the unit containing your shaman but like fists of Gork to limited in its use and to easy to counter.
Sometimes Hit mostly MISS 

6  Foot of gork.

This is the spell that orcs have always had and it has alway been awsome.
In this version it uses a template of fair size and hits at a strength of 6 (or 7)
for d3 wounds. Wauw just Wauw.  This will hurt so much that it's not even funny. Hell against some armies like ogres just one casting of this spell can win you the game.  
Even better if you cast the boosted version  gives you a 50% chance to use the spell again and again. Of course there is also a 17% chance of hitting one of your own units but well we  just have to live whit that. 
 HITS like a truck.

So to sum this up.

The lore has some of the most worthless spells in the game  due to there very limited use. But it is impossible  to roll for a lvl 4 and get a set of spells without a good spell  (unless playing dwarfs)
Then again 2 spells are absolute win foot of gork and the hand of gork win games. And eadbutt  can be utterly devastating in some match ups. On the other hand when you miss out both these spells you can feel like your left hanging by you wizard. Also apart from foot of Gork don't expect your spells to do the damage for you this is still in the hands of your combat units. The spells are just there to help make that happen.
  
 

 
   
    

 

  

OMG the colours

Now  this is something  I know makes no senses but I wanted to do any way.

On of my wargameing buddies just did something really awsome

He won armies on parade in the Netherlands.


That of course means that he has the best looking army in the country

                                             Want to know what it looks like click  here

Now I play against his armies relativity frequently so I am used to seeing it. As a matter of fact I think I don't ever realise how lucky I am to be able to play against such good looking armies. That and I should be ashamed that mine still aren't painted

But hot dam looking at those pictures GW made I am stunned all over again.Also he paints really really fast at least for the standard he gets his models finished at.



(above one of his ogres)




This is a barge he  did for a other gaming buddy of his
Nice looking isn't it. But I have to say the real thing looks even better  seems like he still has some things to learn when it comes to taking pictures.
He runs his own website for miniature painting and you can find that  here

Oh  and coming back onto why it makes no sense.
I know nobody outside my gaming group actually reads this. So it's pointless to tell you guys againg
But you have to amid pretty awesome achievement.

Cya and may the dice god bless you

 

True Victory

Well a other Friday a other loss

Oh no wait

I actually won a game.

I did not just win I totaly destroyed the enemy army. (sorry to my opponent)




Sadly I think there where 2 things that heavily influenced my win and neither of these two where due to actual skill on my part.

1. My artillery absolutely rocked this game. In fact on my first turn 3 of my warmachines rolled a  hit.
    So I killed:  10 archers
                        1 trebuchee
                         5  errantry knights

During the rest of  this kept up killing even more knights and archers while not as ridicules as turn     one it kept up a nice tally.  The high point most have been destroying a unit of  9 knights in one turn whit just 1 stonetower and the 2 doom drivers
This must have been a total pain to my foe. But for the most part is was

On the other hand my opponent could have done some things to decrease casualties.
For instance on turn one I found out that he had deployed two of his knights units to close to each other. Meaning that if I shoot a doom driver in between, I could hit them both. Now this of course is a very bad thing. Knights getting 2x 1d6 no armour saves  hits is not the way to go. Sadly he did not move them. In effect doubling my damage output.

2. Bad amry selection and placement on my opponents part.
Now I know this is not a nice thing to say but some times the truth needs to be said.
Now I already did right a blog about how I think the  gun line is dead and this was a other game that proved this to me. My opponent hat chosen to go for a more shooting bretonian  army.
Now this might seem silly but its not all that bad if you think about it. Bretonian archers are very cheap only 60 points for 10 and they come whit spikes for free. Now these things are fences meaning that they count as obstacles. So cavalry need to test for terrain when they charge them and also you have -1 to hit on units behind them. So in fact they are really good against the bane of the shooting unit: fast cav.
My opponent went wrong in 2 things. One making his unit to large. He had taken a horde of archers 40 strong and placed them 10X4. This of course means that 10 of them don't get to shoot ever and 20 of them cant shoot if you move or make a stand and shoot reaction.
Now paying points for shooters that don't shoot is silly'. The second thing he did was  placing this unit on the flank and even at a angle. Now granted that was the only way to put them on a hil. But it made it very easy for me to deal whit them.  Even such a large unit of archers is not going to kill enough of a combat hoard to make them in effective in two turns of shooting. And that meant that  i ended up flanking him. Easily defeating him in one round of combat and seeing them run of the board.
Personally I think he would have been much better of taking 4 units of 10. This would have given him  3 more deployment drops ( a big plus for brets), made more models shoot. And most importantly denied  me the change to defeat them all on on go.
But on the plus side it was a cool looking unit.

Now  on to the things I took away from this battle form my own play

Wolf riders are absolute gold.

I am starting to think that these are some of the best redirectors in the game
There are so many good things about them  For starters they are dirt cheap, Secondly they are lightning fast and thirdly orcs just don't care when they die?  Now these things are great at blocking of enemy combat units. Orc hordes  can take a lot of things one on one. But whit the big hordes comes the disadvantage that they are not very mobile. And getting combo charges is a pain. Wolf riders can really help prevent that. They can throw enemy units of  course just by standing in the way. And most of the time the one turn delay that, that gives is all that is needed for the orcs to win trough.

Doom drivers are a great compliment to orc hordes

Orc hordes can really dish out a lot of attacks. My army had 3 combat hordes
1 unti of 40 savage orc big ones  (that's 50 s5 attacs)
1 unit of  40 squigs (thats 40 s5 attacs)
1 unit of 40 black orcs  (that's 40 s5 attacks or 30 s7)

Now these things will just lawn-mow trough most enemy infantry. I mean every thing shy of chaos warriors or elves is in for a world of hurt. But where thy seem to falters is against knights.
Now knights tend to have a much smaller frontage meaning less attacks and a great armour save meaning that these attacks are going to be much less effective. And once the hordes get bogged down they become very vulnerable. Not only do they hit hardest on the first round of combat but if they get flanked being in horde is actually a very bad thing. Cause it means you have less attacks and less ranks making U very easy to break.

Now doom drivers are weak against infantry causing just a few hits but those hits are really hard hits
meaning that they are great against cavalry.  And on top of that they are scary accurate.
In this way the  doom drivers and the hordes cover each others weakness. The  doom drivers can deplete the enemy heavy cavalry to a point where they are no longer a tread to my orc hordes.
And the hordes can mow down the infantry that the doom driver couldn't hope to deal whit effectively.  Now that's some thing I like


So to sum up what did I learn from this battle

1) a little luck goes a long way
2) Don't take army selection and deployment lightly
3) Never ever leave home without some redirectors
4) Make sure your units cover each others weakness.


Cya and may  the dice gods bless you