2020 Painting Year in Review

 2020 was, let's face it, pretty terrible. On the other hand, it appears that my painting productivity skyrocketed. 

Here's a bunch of pictures of almost all the figures, terrain, or other things that I completed during the year. I say "almost" because there are at least 3 things that I can't include yet until after a few painting competitions end. 

Anyway, here goes!

WW1 French

 A quick post with some closeups of the WW1 French Army in 10mm.  Figures from Pendraken. 

Somehow I never posted anything about these and my painting notes aren't exactly perfect.  Most of the recipe was for my first attempt at WW1 with Le Coq Fou - we tried 15mm Flames of War.  I speed painted the army in 2 months for a tournament.  But then we realized that FoW was just not for us, and we switched to 10mm using some homebrew convention rules called Take Action! from the H.A.W.K.S. warming group.  Love these rules. 

Anyway, this French recipe was great for 15mm, but I tweaked it a bit for the 10mm scale figs.  I definitely eliminated a few steps but I can't remember exactly which ones. 

So, the biggest thing is a white undercoat. At this smaller scale, white undercoat is pretty important for this light blue color. Otherwise, it'll be too dark (or just too difficult to get it bright).  

Then...

1) Very thinned downed wash of Vallejo Model Color (VMC) Grey Blue 70.943.

2) Wash of GW Gulliman Blue Glaze (about 70%) + GW Nuln Oil (30%), then mix that with a 50/50 Lahmian Medium.

3) Wash of GW Hoth Blue 

4) Then drybrush of Hot Blue + VMC Grey Blue + GW Ulthuan Grey 

For the "Wash" of regular paint, it was a soupy solution of paint, water, and Vallejo Glaze Medium and Vallejo Thinner Medium

That's basically it.  Tweak the ratios above to your liking, or remove steps to speed things up. 

Chaos vs Dwarfs Remote Gaming

 Played first remote wargame a few days ago and it worked surprisingly well. It was myself as the Dwarf player vs Joshua, of Crown of Command Podcast fame, remotely commanding my newly painted Khorne Chaos army.  We used Google Meet and I attached my iPhone on a stand. Connected a Beats Pill bluetooth speaker to hear the remote player (Joshua) better. 

Joshua is very small in the iphone

14 hour time difference was no problem.  It definitely helped that it was a a small game (1500 points), we used no magic, and had the right attitude. 

Chaos vs Dwarfs, Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WHFB) 4th edition. 

Deployment:

Overhead Deployment

You can see in the above picture the Chaos deployment (left side of picture) with a "Refused flank", to try and take the flame cannon out of the game, as well as the hammerers (the block of Dwarfs on dwarf right flank). 

Dwarf Army

Chaos Army

This isn't a turn by turn battle - we didn't have pictures of the first two turns because I had forgotten to charge the batteries of the "fancy" camera and since the iPhone was hosting the video, I couldn't snap any! Better planning next time.  

Dwarfs had initiative and went first.  Unloaded all 5 barrels of the organ gun, didn't misfire! This decimated the beastmen unit. 

The Khorne Chaos lord on the Griffon flew forward (did NOT fly high), and used his "breath fire" chaos gift, blasting the crew of the organ gun and leaving 1 crewmen remaining.  This proved critical because it meant it would take an extra turn to "reload" the organ gun. (We'll return to that later).

The the most part, the Dwarf shooting was pretty effective.  The flame cannon tried a few ridiculous attempts to shoot the flames over friendly units, and didn't get there, killing Dwarfs instead.

After neutralizing the organ gun, the chaos lord charged the dwarf crossbows, who opted to flee as their charge reaction and which forced the griffon to have a failed charge and get stuck right in front of the organ gun.  When the Dwarfs were about to unload all 5 barrels again, we realized that with only 1 crew remaining, the organ gun would need another turn to reload, so...that didn't work out. It left the organ gun a sitting duck for the ogres (who were on the extreme flank).

The chaos warriors were slowly making there way around the rocks that were in the middle of the table. 

Eventually, the chaos lord slammed into the crossbows, but you can see that the main dwarf clansmen unit had repositioned themselves (with their general) to either help this fight or take on the chaos warriors.

The ogres charged the organ gun, and to everyone's surprise no wounds were caused on either wide, and the lone crewmen won the combat because of the +1 higher ground bonus! we were on edge as Josh rolled the break check...and he barely passed!  Either way, the crewman had done his job.  He tied up the ogres in combat for two turns, basically taking them out of the game.

This picture above was when I realized I made a mistake by letting those final two members of the beastmen unit survive.  I thought they were harmless, but the champ was actually a chaos champion of Khorne (not a beastman champ), and he had frenzy, and something else, and basically when the hammerers failed to break them on the first turn with rank bonus and standard bonus, the champion and beastman standard bearer tore through this unit of hammerers.  It was brutal!

You can see the unit of 6 Dwarf slayers moving across the rear of the dwarf line in a "snake" formation.  Pretty sure that's the first time in my life that I ever moved Dwarfs in a snake. 

You can see above, this is this misguided attempt by the flame cannon crew to shoot the flame over their own units...and hitting the Dwarf General's unit of clansmen instead.

The Slayers got into position, waiting for the eventual destruction of the crossbowmen.  That set up a great combat with the griffon and chaos lord against the slayers.  Well, great because the slayers actually got into combat with a monster.  But they got slaughtered and met a proper "doom".

This set up a final last chance gambit by the Dwarf General and his unit of clansmen.  The charged the chaos warriors, hoping to break them.  They didn't.  The chaos warriors won and broke the unit.  

That was the end of Turn 5 and the final turn. The forces of chaos handily defeated the dwarf army.

All-in-all, it was a great battle.  Lots of fun to play some solid "herohammer" which had wild swings of momentum and general ridiculousness.  I know that 4th and 5th ed get a lot of complaints, but the rules as written hadn't accumulated any of the "cruft" of the later editions.  Sure, there's some ambiguity and grey areas here and there, but the spirit of the game is pretty light and fun.  It wasn't "serious" yet. Which is why it was, and still is, my favorite edition of WHFB. 

Thanks to Joshua for staying up late and playing as the "remote" general!

Chaos Banner!

 As part of my chaos army in the on-going Call of the Crown painting challenge, I decided to finally tackle my favorite chaos banner from the Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness book.

Some quick background. When I first began a chaos army back when I started in WHFB 20+ years ago, I tried to recreate this banner.  It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't good, and eventually I lost it. 

Now, I was determined to finally try again, but also terrified to try and tackle it. I was really afraid I would screw it up.  But over the past few years, I learned some basic tips and approaches for free-handing banners and it has really made approaching banners much less daunting.

Here's a few pictures throughout the stages. 

First, trace it out with a sketch using pencil. it helps to draw very light "guide lines" down the center and halfway point vertical and horizontal.  Then, use a micro artists ink pen, trace over the pencil in black. 

Then start filling in the main colors.  This is regular printer paper.  Make sure to thin down your paints.  Also, I painted the back of the banner first (all black) so that I didn't mess up the completed work when flipping it over. I learned that the hard way.

You can see the artist's pen in this picture. Not too expensive, I picked them up at A.C. Moore (or Michael's art supply store, i forget).   I began filling in the rest of the colors here.  Try to work from the background "layer" forward.  

Here's the completed banner.  I also used the micro pen to write in the text on the scroll. 

...And here's the side-by-side.  I might still go back and add some thin rope (probably sewing thread). 

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with my recreation.  The flames were definitely the hardest part.  I really love the ridiculously large size of the banner from the Oldhammer era.  It looks awesome on the battlefield.  This Chaos army and my orcs and goblins will definitely have lots of unnecessarily large banners. 

The Warpstone Conflict

Apparently this has been stuck in "draft" for a while.  It was some brief background for the campaign we were playing a few years ago. I should probably organize it under the campaign page.  But at least it's here for now.  It's also a little out of date.

War has broken out in the Old World again. What began as a few small skirmishes in Bretonnia outside of Parravon when a goblin horde emerged from the forest of Athel Loren has turned into full-scale open warfare across Bretonnia and southern provinces of The Empire.  The war escalated when a massive piece of warpstone landed outside the village of Lietzburg in southern Talabecland, which has drawn major heroes into the conflict, from Skaven Lord Thrott, to the reemergence of infamous Orc Chieftain Gorfang Rotgut and even the Emperor Karl Franz.

Below is the timeline of events.

Imperial Year 1870: Marquis de Parravon leaves for a campaign in Lustria.
1871: Gorfang Rotgut send goblin Boss Skragg of the Crooked Moon Night Goblins to Bretonnia town of Parravon to "cause a ruckus".
- goblins raids occur outside of Parravon
- word reaches the Marquis who requests help from his old Elf ally, Prince Althran
1872: Prince blah lands in Bretonnia and repels the raiding goblins

-skaven mount n attack which fails
-skragg gets annoy with his ally, and launches attack against skaven. lose, retreat back to forest
local bretonnian lord doesnt know that marquis has asked for help and attacks the elves

baron edmund takes his army Leitzburg's first and invades down to fight the elves/skaven


things cool down as gorfang realizes he needs to take matters into his own hands


warpstone crashes, skaven send a force to leitzburg and retrieve it

word of the warpstone reaches Ulthuan and they send very powerful mages to "assist" prince blah's army and retrieve the warpstone before the rest falls into the hands of the skaven

Lizards of albion happen to be in bretonnia gathering materials for construction of new Temple ...
hear bout warpstone and go on the march

As gorfang gathers the rest of his Waagh, he sends the black orc lord and lieutenant Skullface to distract whoever he finds (turns out to be the lizards)

Thrott sends an army and hits Empire army with Baron Edmund, but gets routed back to bretonnia

Waaagh Gorfang reaches the Bretonnian town of Summersall Fort along the river briene, and hits a massive SKaven force led by Thanquol in response to the rout of Thrott's force

Call of the Crown Painting Challenge 2020

 I've decided to join the inaugural painting challenge for the Herohammer Crown of Command Podcast, the "Call of Command".  2000 points, 200 point per month.

This was the final push I needed to finally paint my Chaos Army.  Everything kicks off on September 1st. 

I came up with some names for most of the characters and units to help provide some context and color.  As I complete each unit, I'll take pictures and start building a separate background page for the army.

Warband Name: Crimson Blades

Led by Chaos Lord Marus Crimsonblade

He rides a griffon, Chiron

Unit of Chaos Warriors, "the Ragebringers"; the unit's Champion of Khorne hasn't been named yet.

Beastmaster, Sigvald the Low, leading his two chaos hounds, Balefur and Zuch

Dragon Ogre Tarthaek

Bloodthirster, Skullpile Bluntgore.  His "true daemon" name is K'aaohwae F'ppaeowfs (randomly generated from the Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness Daemonic Name Generator!)

I'll fill in the more of the backstories later, but I wanted to get these written down before I forgot.

Gorfang's Last Chance

Here's a quick recap of the third and final chapter of Gorfang Rotgut's attempt to capture Nuln.

The previous battle ended with the Empire barely holding off the orcs on the outskirts of Nuln which bought enough time for Elector Countess Emmanuelle von Liebwitz to muster up enough of the town defenses and get the famous "guns of Nuln" onto the city wall before the rest of Waaagh Gorfang crash into the city. 

The new Baron, young Edwin, son of Edwin "The Absent", led the forces in that skirmish but lost his nerve during the combat and quit the field early.  Countess Emmanuelle is giving him one more chance to restore honor to himself and to the family name as he leads the forces of the Empire against the Orcs and Goblins.

Here's the initial deployment. Lots of artillery lining the city walls.  Note the foot and mounted units of Reiksguard on the left - double Reiksguard!

At the start of the game after the greenskins moved up the Helbaster volley gun malfunctioned in glorious fashion on the first shot, exploding and completely mowing down the river trolls before disintegrating.

As Fred the giant advanced through the pastures of the farm, he charged the unit of halberdiers and the routed off the board.  Seeing that his right flanks was sorely threatened by the Giant, Edwin attempted to avenge his father’s untimely death at the hands of Fred and so he charged him (also trying to improve his reputation after retreating from the field of battle in the last engagement)

Neither Fred nor Edwin did any damage, but Gorfang used the opportunity to charge in with his chariot, killing the new Baron Edwin!

The wizard used a transport spell to move the Knights Panther across the battlefield straight into combat with the Night Goblin spearmen unit, The Flaggers.  They were so startled as the knights suddenly charged them out of nowhere that they didn't have time to throw out the fanatics until after the charge happened.  Incredibly, both fanatics annihilated the entire unit of Knights Panther. 

Grom the Paunch made a surprise appearance and tried to be a hero (and eventually take over the Waaagh if/when Gorfang inevitably failed) and charged the rear of the unsuspecting Reiksguard on foot. Taken completely unawares, they routed and Grom ran them all down, barely stopping before running into the large orc mob The Reds.

Grom the paunch surprise rear attack hits home

Things were looking bleak for the Empire, but after watching both Lord Edwin and their foot counterparts get run down by chariots, the mounted Reiksguard decided to try and defend the honor of the Reiskguard order and charged into the flank of The Reds.  The orc mob was not prepared at all for this with their attention focused on the carnage in front of them caused by Grom.  The Knights killed 5 orcs on the charge, the orcs broke and fled from this flank attack, and the Knights ran them down! Skullface and Oglok the 'Orrible manage to escape, but the Flaggers night goblins failed their panic check, and this was enough for Grom to decide that discretion was the better part of “hero of the day”, and fled the field to let Gorfang take all the blame for this debacle.

Against all odds, the Empire forces under young Lord Edwin had repelled the last gasp of Gorfang’s Waaagh and saved Nuln from an imminent sacking.  Edwin, even in death, successfully "led" the Empire forces and was given credit for defeating and dispersing Waaagh Gorfang and saving Nuln, restoring honor to himself and family by avenging his father's death.  Over the years "Baron Edwin" becomes an honorific title, assumed by whomever in the family takes over as the new Baron of Lietziger, along with the family heirloom Dragon Blade.