New Orcs & Goblins

Wowzers!

I've been looking forward to the new Orcs & Goblins arriving since they were announced before Christmas, and seeing the new models available for advance order has whetted my appetite even further! See the Games Workshop website for pics.

I always had a soft spot for the greenskins when I played as a youngster - the chaotic and unpredictable nature of the army could be a hindrance, but it's balanced with such a sense of fun that you can't help but smile. Units like Night Goblin Fanatics, the Doom Diver catapult and Squig Hoppers are perfect examples of just how fun they can be.  Who cares if they have a tendency to run away at the first sign of trouble!

So to me the new models add a lot to the bag of tricks. The Savage Orcs look ace, and are now a lot more customizable than their metal predecessors. The Night Goblin Nasty Skulkers look great too, can't wait to see how they will play on the battlefield - hopefully they'll be a mobile and hard hitting unit akin to the Skaven Gutter Runners.

But for me the pick of the bunch is the Arachnarok spider. Just look at it! An elephant-sized spider! With goblins on it! How awesomely gobliny!

I for one can't wait to get my hands on one. My compadres had better watch out or spidery death will be scuttling their way!

Better late than never...

Well, despite my best intentions, the blog swiftly died a death - an unhealthy addiction to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was the main reason, then inertia kicked in.

Still, with the Blogger app for Android now installed on my phone I thought I'd resurrect things. Despite still being a big PS3 addict, my gaming and painting has continued slowly but steadily over the past year and a bit.

And what a year it was for the hobby - most notably a new release of Warhammer, rendering Skull Pass a thing of the past as The Island of Blood replaced it.

More importantly, though, in the last year our gaming group has now grown to four players, so although other commitments mean we don't play quite as often as we'd maybe like it's always a varied and interesting battle whether Warhammer or 40K is the game of choice.  Not to mention a successful branching out into Dungeons and Dragons which has been lots of fun!

I've also painted the beginning stages of a Tyranid horde which has proved awesome on the battlefield at times, started an Eldar army, nostalgically branched out into Blood Bowl for a while, and even bought and painted a Realm of Battle game board - a big investment, but worth every penny.

More on all of those things later, I hope, but enough rambling for now. If this app works well I'll try to post more regularly.

Prepare for battle!

As chance would have it, reilly2040 and I are just about to get started with another Warhammer battle this afternoon, using the skull pass set and a couple of extra bits.  So I shall try to take some photos and create a battle report of sorts later on today!

I'm actually quite excited since it's the first time we've played with two fully painted armies - photos will be posted later.  In future posts I do intend to talk more about how my painting has progressed with these units, so consider this a sneak peek :-)

I should add that I've borrowed the logo from another site, contact me if there are any objections to it's use and I'll remove it straight away.

Skull Pass - The First Battle!

I've talked a little about painting, so now to digress onto the other aspect of the hobby - gaming.  Not long after getting the Skull Pass set all sorted out, I managed to persuade reilly2040 to join me for a game.  Well, I say 'persuade', but really there wasn't much effort required as I think he was looking forward to it just as much as I was!  So, one Friday afternoon (thank goodness for public holidays!) we got together and set up the table for a battle.

I hadn't played Warhammer for years, so to begin with we played through some of the tutorial games suggested in the Skull Pass set so that we could get used to the basics of the game - movement, shooting, close combat etc.  These initial mini-games were quite good and were a nice way to ease us into Warhammer since the full rulebook is quite daunting.  For those who've never played, I would certainly suggest starting with small tutorials such as this.

Having played through the initial games quite successfully, we set up all of the forces for a full-scale battle.  Now, it must be said that this first full game involved a heck of a lot of pausing to consult the rulebook and the army stats, but I guess that's par for the course.  My feeling is that things will always become quicker and easier with more experience of the game and also with a better knowledge of one's own army.

While the basic rules are pretty easy to get used to, some of the more complex stuff relating to characters and so on took some time to get the hang of - in fact, we're still trying to get the hang of them properly.  Nonetheless, it was a most enjoyable way to pass an afternoon.

On the day, my goblin horde was soundly beaten by the smaller force of dwarfs, thanks in large part to the goblins' tendency to turn tail and run at the first sign of any danger and the ridiculously good saving throws which reilly2040 tends to make!

Overall, the first battle certainly whetted our appetites for the game and prompted more forays into GW games including Warhammer 40K, Space Hulk and Blood Bowl.  More on all of those to follow!

Painting for dummies part II

So, you've met Steve.  Now it's time to meet the rest of his gang - a 20 strong unit of Night Goblin Spearmen complete with champion, standard bearer and musician.

If my first golden rule of painting is to paint neatly, my second golden rule is to have discipline.  When I was younger I'd flit between models and projects like a gadfly, resulting in a wide variety of single models or units of a handful of painted models and a lot of unpainted ones.

Well, with age comes wisdom (or so they say), and I now have a bit more perseverance than I did when I was a teenager.  So, I pressed on with the rest of the Spearmen unit now that I had painted up Steve as a test goblin (with a name like that I can't help but think he should have a yellow and black suit and a blank expression and be smashed through some little goblin car windscreens... but I digress...)

I found the easiest way to do this was to pick a colour and paint every model with that colour before moving on to the next one; faces and hands first, then spear shafts, then spearheads and so on.  At times it felt like a never-ending process, but there was a great pay-off at the end when all 20 models were finished more or less at the same time!

I spent a little more time on the champion, musician and standard bearer - which is only right as they're more detailed models and deserve a little more attention.  Still nothing fancy, however, as I wasn't quite ready to get started with anything more than a basic paint job.  Washes, highlights and so on could wait - all I wanted was a neat and tidy finished unit to admire - and you can see the finished unit at the top of the article.  It's amazing how high-resolution photography shows some of the little flaws, though!

I should add that the models were based in old-school fashion with modelling flock to look like grass, and I made up a tray for them using the modular movement tray set - more on both basing and the movement trays at a later date.

Painting for dummies (i.e. me!)

So having purchased the Skull Pass set and getting all the models ready, there were two things I was looking forward to; getting my first game in and seeing how many of the rules I remembered, and getting started with a paintbrush!

In the past year I've assembled and painted a handful of Airfix models so I was satisfied that I remembered which end of the paintbrush was which.  Airfix models are reasonably large, however, and the last time I  painted something as small as a citadel miniature was probably about 16 years or more ago.  Suffice it to say I was worried about whether I would be able to have the steady hands required to produce a decent finish.

I've always liked goblins, so I decided to start with the Night Goblin Spearmen in the box.  First up, I undercoated 20 of them with the Citadel Chaos Black undercoat spray which was a quick and painless process and gave a nice base coat to work with.  Since the goblins would have black robes, I figured it would be a reasonably easy way to start as all I'd have to paint would be faces and hands, the spear, the shield, the belt, and if I felt confident then I could go for the teeth and eyes.

I remembered the golden rule which I'd read in White Dwarf years and years before - as long as you paint neatly then it doesn't matter if you've used fancy shading and blending and highlighting techniques; the model will still look presentable.  So I got started, and a while later had finished goblin one - promptly named Steve by my better half.

So here's Steve - as you'll see there's nothing fancy about him, but I was quite pleased that the finish was neat enough, and particularly with the eyes and teeth as fine detail work was never my strong point.  He also looks a bit dusty by now but then he's been not been in action for a few months so that's no surprise!  The rest of the unit look pretty similar - but I'll post a photo of them with a bit more detail next time.

Skull Pass

This is how it all began.  In June 2009 or thereabouts, whilst wandering the aisles in Hobbycraft - one of the most enjoyable shops to wander in, I'd say - I came across a display of Games Workshop stuff.  This was news to me - my wife and I had been Hobbycraft regulars for some time, but had never seen any GW stuff.

Suffice it to say that my interest had been piqued.  Fond, hazy memories of teenage days of spending pocket money  on models, painting them, and having battles with friends began to come sneaking back into my head.  I was beginning to get a hankering to get back into it...

On our next Hobbycraft trip, I had a closer look and was tempted by a couple of sets - mainly The Battle for Skull Pass, which is a starter Warhammer set including over 100 models, the Warhammer rulebook, and various other bits and bobs.  I did some research at home and found out it usually cost £50, yet Hobbycraft were selling it for only £40. The temptation began to build...

The trip after that I cracked, and Skull Pass was in the basket along with a few paints and a couple of paintbrushes.  Frankly, I was like a kid in a sweetie shop!  That afternoon I got home and began to take things out of the box.

Firstly, I couldn't help but notice what an excellent set this is.  It'd have been a steal even at £50, but £40 was simply phenomenal - the image above should give some indication of the number of models and other bits and pieces which come in the box.  It includes everything you need to play a small game of Warhammer, with a small Dwarf army and a slightly larger Goblin one.  The models are all finely detailed, yet easy to put together without any glue so it's ideal for anyone new to the hobby - or anyone, like me, coming back to it for the first time in years.

So after snipping the models out of their sprues and clipping them together, I was able to look over my Goblin horde and Dwarf army and begin to think about getting a battle together and beginning to paint things up and see if I could get any of my artistic skills back!  I was never a great painter, but perhaps losing some of the impatience of youth would allow me to do a bit of a better job than before.

Anyway, more to follow on both gaming and painting.  Suffice it to say that Skull Pass is a great starter kit, and has certainly got me hooked again!