Pink Horrors

I picked up a dozen pink horrors recently on ebay, but when they arrived I realised that some of the metal arms were missing. A quick search in my pile of unpainted figures and I found some ghoul arms. I also added some twisted tree roots from the wood elf sprues. I like the slightly more mutated result on a few of the models.

I don't know if 12 is a good number for a unit of horrors, it just happened to be the number I had available. I do have another 10 that I painted some years ago, which I might add to this unit. But I think first I should try them out in two smaller units and see how they get on.

It's interesting to see the difference in painting styles of the two units. The older unit I painted by layering and blending. It gives a very smooth look, but is quite time consuming. The newer unit was speed painted, mostly glazing and stippling in quite a loose manner. It's difficult to compare the two because of the different colours, but I definitely like the time savings involved in my current technique. It allows me to paint more models!

Dragon Ogre Shaggoth

A bit of a contrast from the teeny tiny nurglings of the previous post, this shaggoth is a model that I have had "in progress" for a long while. For several years I have had the old dragon rear half and the body of a minotaur lord glued together. It's only in the past month that I finally picked up the gauntlet, adding the chaos spawn smaller arms and the bloodthirster head to complete the model (well, some fairly rudimentary greenstuff work was required too). I like the dynamic, aggressive pose that results from all those chunks of metal.


When it came to the colours, I was initially tempted to paint a dark colour scheme, possibly even a black hide. But I decided that it was a chance to add some colour to a mostly metallic army, so I went for this green hide instead. I think it works reasonably well with the flesh tones, though I can't help thinking that a dark red might have been a better choice. Then again, the splashes of red gore on the model stand out more against the green scales. I guess I am undecided!

Now that I have finished this brute, I am keen to paint up some more chaos units to add to the Warriors of Chaos army. I have some marauder horse that have been assembled but unpainted for around two years, so I should really get those done. I also have a fair few marauders that I would like to try out some ideas on, which would add some numbers to the army. But possibly most tempting of all are some lovely old metal ogres that I have patiently collected from ebay. Which should I choose?

Cute nurglings

 The daemon army has come to a minor halt this last couple of weeks as I turn my attentions to a couple of other projects. However, I am determined to add at least one regiment per month. For this particular month I can smugly claim to have two regiments.

Nurglings are pretty easy to paint up, so adding six bases to the army and calling them two regiments is maybe a bit of a cheat. But I do actually intend to use both regiments. They scout, so can take up advanced positions in deployment and hopefully threaten artillery, small units of shooters, enemy scouts and the like. Daemon armies seem very fragile to my eye (though I have never actually fought with or against them as yet), so I am a bit obsessed about countering artillery and shooting.

Keen eyed observers will have noticed that these little bands of mischief makers contain a few surprises, in that some of the models are not nurglings. A quick scrabble through my bitz box and I found a few old familiars that helped to add a little variety to the mix.

She Who Must Be Obeyed

Here's something you don't see very often; an old Warzone figure I picked up from a sale bin about ten years ago. I knew it would be useful at some stage. I chopped off it's rather clunky arm and replaced it with a plastic daemonette claw, trimmed down the badly sculpted loin cloth to a more fashionable mini skirt and painted it up to match the daemonettes. It's stood on a 25mm base to act as a herald in that unit, though it's not a very good fit, all those arms/claws get in the way.

My time on the army has been limited in the past few weeks, though I have also managed to churn out a few nurgling bases. I will post pictures of them in the next couple of days.

Handmaidens of Slaanesh

Oh dear, I seem to have started another army. But wait, this is one army that I really think I can finish in a matter of months rather than years. Daemons are high points cost, so the number of models per army is low, typically well below 100 for an army of 2000 points. So that's one reason. I also have the models already, so I won't have to hunt round for bargains. But the main reason is that these are some of the few models my wife actually likes and she said that if she could ever be persuaded to play, it would have to be these models. And as we all know, "yes dear" solves 90% of all problems so daemons it is, for the next few months at any rate.

This unit of 18 daemonettes will be added to 10 horrors, 5 screamers and a Tzeentch herald I already have painted from a few years back. That's over 500 points to get me well on the way. I will probably concentrate on the Slaanesh regiments to start with, to get some smaller games started with my new pupil. Ultimately I would like to use the army myself and would like it to contain one core unit from each of the deities, but that's not a short term prospect. For the time being, it will be mostly Slaanesh, with a reasonable slice of Tzeentch and a smattering of the other two.

First game with 8th edition (finally)

It seems a long time since 8th edition hit the shelves. The pre-order countdown, the buzz on the internet, the wait for the parcel to arrive, it all built up to an exciting wait for this old nerd. But then one thing or another seemed to get in the way of actually playing the game, until last night. Finally, the moment of truth arrived, my Chaos Warriors took to the field against an Empire army. The game was a straight forward pitched battle and we left out the terrain effect charts, we were just concentrating on the rules changes. Having read quite a few forum posts about how vicious and quick the new game was, I was expecting a bloodbath.

For my army I pretty much stuck with my old style of small blocks of warriors (12 strong) and slightly larger units of marauders (18 strong), with a unit of 5 knights and 5 marauder horse and a couple of characters, one of which was a sorceror so I could try the new magic rules. My only change from 7th edition was to bump up a unit of ogres to 6 strong, to see how monstrous infantry performed. The Empire army was similarly built along fairly traditional lines, though there was a horde of 40 spearmen to contend with and a big unit of 12 knights. The rest were fairly typical blocks of 20 melee troops or 10 missile troops, with some elite/special infantry in smaller blocks.

I like the new movement phase, it's clean and easier than of old, no problems encountered. Charges are much easier to resolve, the random element can seem a nuisance but it's clear that the game is no longer about getting the charge so this turned out to be less of a concern to me than I first thought it might.

The new magic phase is a blast (ha ha). The random winds of magic, the casting restrictions (or lack of), it just seemed more exciting. We both managed to get off  a handful of spells, but none caused massive casualties, even the much feared Infernal Gateway was not devestating. We both threw plenty of dice to cast, but not one irresistible force came up.

Shooting had a bigger impact, artillery are obviously much improved without having to guess ranges. I was certainly glad that my marauder horse were able to take out the cannon after it's first shot blew away 2 ogres and a chaos knight. Anti-artillery measure will definitely be uppermost in my mind when I make future lists.

Combat was more involved. I like the fact that the whole unit gets involved in rolling some dice, not just standing at the back of the unit to make up the rank bonus. In one combat between 40 spearmen and 18 marauders with flails, there were half a dozen casualties each side, but most of the other combats were much like 7th edition in style, with just 1 or 2 per side. This might have been down to the heavy armour saves of the chaos warriors of Tzeentch and the Empire knights, so more games will be needed before I can say too much here, but it felt reasonably balanced to me. I was pleased that my chaos knights still managed to carve a fairly bloody trail through the enemy, just at a slightly slower pace maybe than of old.

I really enjoyed the game, the rules seem well laid out and pretty logical, with less "fiddling" and guessing in game. The changes it will cause to my armies are minimal, though I have always collected infantry blocks as the core of my armies, with cavalry, shooting and magic as support elements, so maybe it's just a case of the current game designers having a similar mindset to my own. I can't wait to get more games in, trying out my other armies and moving on to the scenarios in the back of the book. I am one excited old nerd!

One last thing, this is the 100th post of the blog, so it seems fitting that it should be about the new version of the game I have played for nearly twenty years. It's certainly feels like the dawn of a new era. I have lots of ideas floating around in my head, on what to add to existing armies, starting new armies, getting my terrain collection painted up, etc. so there's plenty to do. Enough perhaps for another 100 posts......