End of year musing

Another year goes by, another pile of miniatures bought, some even painted. As is traditional, I have been looking through my blog for the year, it's a useful reminder of the highs and lows of 2010. The high of the year for me has been the expansion of my painted armies, with my chaos, dwarfs and orcs and goblins armies all reaching around the 2000 point mark. Additionally, I have two 1000 point armies in wood elves and daemons, useful starting points for expansion. These are likely to be the areas that will get the most attention in 2011, though I do have plans for another army. More on that in the new year.

From a hobby perspective, I guess the year was a big one with the release of 8th edition. It certainly seemed to ruffle many a forum feather. From a personal viewpoint, it's had little effect on my collection, having always been a fan of basic core infantry. The main impact has been on my ogre-sized units, which I now collect in blocks of 4 or 6 rather than 3. Other than that, it's been business as usual for my army building exercises. In gaming terms, I think I am enjoying 8th more than 7th, the game has improved in more areas than it has declined, so on the whole I am enjoying the game.

The end of year event was fought yesterday - a 3000 point battle featuring two fully painted armies! The combined forces of chaos warriors and daemons fought against the massed infantry ranks of the Empire. It was a fine spectacle to behold, though I was unable to get any decent photos. It made me think how much more I enjoy the game when using painted figures. I did reflect on the rather haphazard nature of the growth of my chaos army, something I am hoping to address in the new year. For those who remember such things, I will be redesigning my army around the champion/retinue system. More on that in the coming months.

After a brief break from the hobby in the past couple of months, I am feeling the urge to pick up the glue and brushes again. Happy New Year indeed!

10 reasons why I might start an Ostermark army.

When I started this blog one of the main purposes was to log my progress on my armies and painting projects. Most of my posts do just that.

Another reason for the blog was to jot down any thoughts I was having at the time. Often these thoughts will be fairly random and short-lived, but occasionally they will develop into something a bit more substantial and with the potential of actually developing into something concrete (or should that be plastic). This post is one of these, a series of ideas and musing that has developed in my head over the past few days and now I just can't seem to get rid of it. If I write it all down, I may be able to forget if for a while and come back to it later. So here are 10 reasons why I might start an Ostermark army.

1. Ostermark is a rural region in the north of the Empire, bordered to the north by Kislev. It is often subject to raids by chaos marauders and the like. Meanwhile, in the real world, I live in Cumbria, a rural county in the north of England, bordered to the north by Scotland. The lands around the border were contested by the Scots and Cumbrians for centuries (the region was known as "the Debatable Lands"), and raids by reivers were common.

2. The largest city in Cumbria is Carlisle, the Border City. It contains a fine castle and remains of a stout town wall. The wall gates were originally guarded by two huge bastions known as the Citadel. The coat of arms for the city (shown above) contains a red wyvern, which matches the red beast shown as the symbol of Ostermark (there's a picture of this in the Uniforms and Heraldry of the Empire book).

3. The colours of the state troops in Ostermark are purple/burgundy and yellow/white. This would make a striking army different to the usual red/blue garbed soldiers.

4. One famous regiment to originate in Ostermark are the Deaths Heads, masked warriors bearing halberds and wearing red and black uniforms rather then the typical purple and white. These would make an interesting modelling and painting project and add some real character to the army.

5. Life is tough in Ostermark and the locals are hardy folk, though not particularly well equipped. This suggests to me a preponderance of spearmen, archers, crossbows and hunters, rather than blackpowder armed troops. However, garrisons at the border would be well equipped, so the army would not be just a bunch of peasants and farmers! Not only would this make for a characterful army, but it just happens to match most of the figures in my current collection.

6. I often fight against chaos armies, so there is plenty of opportunity to develop a scenario based campaign around these two armies.

7. Because of the proximity of the border with chaos (Kislev) and the Vampire Counts (nearby Sylvania), there is a strong opportunity to include a witch hunter theme in some of the regiments.

8. There is a suggestion is some of the background material that ogres are quite common in Ostermark. I could include ogres as allies or unit fillers.

9. Similarly, there is a suggestion that dwarf slayers often roam into Ostermark from nearby Karak Kadrin, obviously seeking out undead or chaos monsters to slay. One of my other armies is dwarfs, which desperately need some shaven-headed berserk troops.

10. There is a long-term project that could develop, incorporating units from both Ostermark and Ostland, probably my two favourite Empire provinces.

Now that I have that off my chest, perhaps I can get back to real painting instead of head in the clouds dreaming!

Christmas is Coming!

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, please don't step on the frog, or something like that, I never was one for carols.

This little chap represents a big part in my warhammer world. He's the toad from the Talisman board game. It was the first game I ever bought from Games Workshop, back in the 1980's. Me and my brothers and friends would play for hours, first with the original set and then later with all the expansions added on. Good times.

Eventually I progressed into other boardgames such as Heroquest and from there it was perhaps inevitable that I would take up Warhammer. Once the switch was made from boardgame to wargame, my old set of Talisman languished in the cupboard for many years. A few years ago I was surprised at how valuable they were to collectors and sold it on ebay, making a tidy sum, though with a hint of regret.

Recently, the game was re-released by the Black Library and I bought it in a nostalgic moment.The game was subsequently taken on by Fantasy Flight games, who have released a number of expansions. And that's where this little chap comes in. He is part of the FFG version of the game, which includes plastic figures rather than cardboard pieces. I painted him up very quickly and will eventually get round to all the characters.

How does this relate to Christmas? It's the one time of the year I can persuade my rapidly growing teenagers to gather round the table for a board game, and Talisman is the one we always seem to come back to (that and Cluedo). So this year I am hoping to surprise my family with these new additions to the game. It's become as much a part of Christmas as turkey, tinsel and TV!

Arcane Ruins

I am slowly building up my terrain collection, with this set of arcane ruins the latest addition. As you can see, I have mounted it on the base piece that comes with the Citadel Wood. One of the trees is currently sat in a swamp, the other two are still be used in other projects I have in mind.

The remainder of the ruins set I will use as an altar with a removable monolith, hopefully this will give me some variety/choice.

The painting is mostly washes and glazes over a light grey colour, with little bits of drybrushing here and there. The ground is covered with woodland scenics flock and foliage. This was done to tie it into the bases of my daemon army, after all it's quite likely that they would be attracted to magic infused places like this one.

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?