End of 2016 Sumup

 About time I did this before we get into 2018 right?  Well first up is those miniatures you didn't see but which I did paint up in 2016 but did not post because I was tired/lazy/unreliable (delete as appropriate).
  First up is a unit of Not-UNIT which will find themselves fighting off Daleks and Cybermen in a Doctor Who game soon. A pity a lot of Crooked Dice Miniatures' Not Doctor Who range is disappearing under the watchful eye of BBC lawyers, in the advent of the official Doctor Who game from Warlord (if it ever comes...)

Next up some miniatures needed for a Mordheim game at Warhammer World this weekend. Some for the random encounters table; the big guy for my own warband.

The ogre is from the Attack of the Ogre Horde Heroquest Expansion. Because the best thing about Heroquest is it's figures here he is with every other Heroquest figure I have that is painted (wizard not painted by me by the way)

I did have some Judge Dredd and a Sea Devil photographed too but I messed up the focus. Like I said   - unreliable.

127 models painted this year compared to 73 last year. Wowsers (yep I'm gonna use that word). I put it down to the challenges I put myself under. The Four Gamers and my own challenge to paint a Blood Axe warband certainly kept me going. I'm not particularly motivated by quantity - if I painted one fabulous Greater Spined Dragon all year I'd be happy - but it's a good measure of my painting speed and my commitment.

Gaming highlight of the year. This monster! - http://littleleadpeople.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/bring-out-your-lead-epic-warhammer.html

OTT, slow, insane and all consuming - I needed to go home after it. But a mind blowing gaming spectacle I'm likely not to experience again anytime soon. Thanks to Snickit, Garth and everyone else's name who I have already forgot for the experience. Incidentally it was also my post with the highest views this year. Over 600.

Release of the year - Blood Bowl. Yes I know it's not a new game and really the tinsy number of changes GW have made to the league rules and Gutter Runners are over-powered or insignificant but it's back and thousands of people are playing  across the world who have never played it before.

It's a fantastic game (in my humble GW's best game) and it always has been and it's great to see that passion for it back among so many even if the core of the game has not changed one jot. And it means I can get games of it without travelling on a train to Rotherham or Doncaster which can only be a good thing.

On top of that I admin'ed the Oldhammer Facebook groups for a while which was hard and in the end too hard (started to feel like kinda like a job). They're great groups but as with that type of forum there's a lot of crap which is unrewarding that comes with it. Shout out to Warlord Paul, thansants, Steve Casey,  James Taylor, Steve Klatcheff, James Armstead and Chris Sabick for protecting the community from the spammers and monsters.

Image courtesy of Realm of Chaos 80s blog

Other highlights included finding an amiable bunch of gamers spread thin but wide around the North of England ( a few of which are Oldhammer admins or were at some point) but play like minded old games but sometimes D&D and sometimes less common fare like Pulp Alley.

2016 was a great year for gaming. Next year more GM'ing, more scenery, finish the Four Gamers challenge, more focus ( I have a project spreadsheet!) and a MASSIVE Doctor Who game in March co-GM'ed with thansants (more on that later). On top of that I'm getting married. Peace.

Tale of Four Gamers : Nerves of Lead Part 1

In time for this year's Bring Out Your Lead, four wise gamers decided to resurrect the Tale of Four Gamers challenge from yesteryear (now resurrected again as Tale of Four Warlords in the current White Dwarves).

The mission to paint 100 points of troops a month using the army lists from Third Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle, blog about it and then beat the snot out of each other in a 1000 point ruck. It seems they had a wonderful time of it. Orlygg's fantastic account of the battle is here.

I prodded a few others to continue this fine tradition for BOYL 2017 and so thantsants , Matthew, Adam and yours truly struck a deal to continue this fine tradition. Matthew had the idea to make it 150 points a month for 10 months.

Warlord Paul agreed to adjudicate and call us to his office if we didn't do what we promised.

And so we four struck out on our quest in September : well apart from Adam.

Adam left his painting to the last minute and then got too hungover to start it. But that's another story.

I chose the undead.  I have had an (un)healthy obsession with walking corpses since my formative years and this challenge gave me a chance to let it free.

The necromancer Neil L Far-Aged comes to 60 points, the four ghouls come to 32 points together and the mummy another 80 points making a grand total of 172 points!

The ghouls were lovely to paint and despite being from different ranges they look great together.

It's nearing mid-October and I'm yet to get painting on the next 150 points so I'd best get to it pronto!

Bring Out Your Lead - Epic Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd Edition 'Rise of Morcar'

Over at the Oldhammer forum some ambitious types had the idea of running a game based around the idea of a massive Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd edition battle based around on the attempt of the Forces of Evil to summon the Ultimate Dark Lord from Heroquest Morcar. The idea was for this to be the ultimate battle between Good and Evil with literally no limits to the types and number of troops.

   Ambitious? Maybe. Foolhardy? Definitely. Fun? Hell yes.

  Luckily we had weazil on hand to try and interject some kind of order into this chaos and set some objectives and GM this spectacle. One one side were the forces of Good (Men, Elfs (High and Wood) and Dwarves) and on the side of the forces of Evil were Chaos, Orcs, Goblins, Fimir, Undead, Skaven, Chaos Dwarfs.....I think almost all races from the Old World were represented although I'm not sure if there were any Dark Elves or Nippon (but I may be wrong!).

The game started with the Fimir force in the centre of the table with Bran the Blessed and the Wizards of Morcar at a standing stone attempting to summon the Dark Lord. Realising this the Forces of Good came onto one side of the table to thwart this while to rescue Evil came in on the other. Other  standing stones were there and were needed to be erected and used to power the ritual at the main one. It was Good's job to demolish them or stop them being erected.

The Fimir in the centre got torn apart by the invading forces while the Evil Hero Bran the Blessed fell. Two other standing stones eventually fell, the Elven forces managing to hold off the Chaos and Undead on one flank.

Meanwhile another stone had little chance due to the departure of the Orcs and the dastardly but inevitable treachery of the Skaven. (The Skaven general was heard to snicker 'We only got included in Advanced Heroquest ...' in the dying embers of the battle). Meanwhile dragons turned up to slay two of the Wizards of Morcar while the other two used to magic to fly away away from the main stone which was looking increasingly under threat as an Earth Elemental appeared to knock it down in the final moments of the battle which saw the death of Morcar's sorcerers. It still stood but as a testament to Evil's shocking defeat.


Sorry if it all sounds a bit vague it probably is but as you can imagine with a game that took 8 hours and approximately 5000 troops it was quite hard to keep track of the forces I was commanding let alone the bigger picture. But it was still a thing of outstanding spectacle ( "glorious chaos").

I'm on a mission to try and find all the pictures of this battle (of which these are just a taster) that there are and I have done a good job of collating a lot from Facebook and people's blogs. Would be great to hear from you if you have some!

 If I get enough and can discern went I may even set up a more detailed report and summary if possible but will certainly seek to find a way to publish them all!

On a parting note here were the objectives passed to me by weazil which made me chuckle. They ring true on some many levels ;)

  

Blood Axe Warband Update - Oddboyz and Snotlings

One unit I really wanted to include in the army was Snotlings. The thought of them being turned crazy by being hurtled through warp and throwing some smackdown on a space marine within his terminator armour was, and still is, quite funny.

  For this I need a Shokk Attack Gun and to have that I need a Mekboy while the little guys need a Runtherd to be allowed to be taken, it all coming together in a beautiful kind of way.

I acquired most of the snotlings from the talented Mr Rusty Painting. I painted the snotlings in brighter colours than the rest of my Ork force, as I didn't want them to be dwarfed simply because of their size and figured Warp transit does strange things to one's colouring.

One of the snotlings got so scared by his journey he couldn't control his bowels.

Keeping these guys in check is the Runtherd. 

I've decided each oddboy type will get its own signature colour and this one gets a brownish-yellow colour that reminiscent of an explorer's get up. This synchs with my vision of runtherdz as collectors and organisers of strange creatures rather than slave drivers.

Mekboyz get a blue uniform reminiscent of the jumpsuits car mechanics wear (which made sense in my head at least) This sculpt is woefully underestimated in my opinion - just looks at the detail of the gubbins on the gun - it has an egg timer, a tap and all sorts. As my fiancé pointed out it's really steampunk! 

The contraption looks like something the Doctor would assemble from odds and sods lying around in the Tardis. I imagine the Mekboy follows the same MO but probably doesn't know how the resulting machine works. It just does....

Until next time...

Blood Axe Warband Update - Completion and Vehicles

It's with great pleasure I can announce my Blood Axe Ork warband is complete in time for BOYL. And with a week to spare!

I'm quite proud as it's a bit of milestone for me as I have never created a force from scratch with a deadline, more just pottered around growing a force organically as I see fit.

Sometimes it's hard going painting units especially so if the troops are uninspiring and uniform - but not so with this one. You may have noticed around 70% of the figures have been sculpted by the Goblinmaster Kev Adams that being the reason did not have this problem at all. His humorous and 'humanisation' of Orks breathes a new life into painting making it effortless. These greenskins have a variety of moods. They are bored, bemused, smug,  mischievous - none of the universal violent rage you often see in Ork models.

If you'd like to see the Goblinmaster in action himself he will be sculpting faces by request for charity at BOYL this Saturday. Something surely not be missed! There's more detail about this on Orlygg's excellent blog here.

Over the next few days I'll be showcasing the different characters and units of the force but right now I need to confess I had a big helping hand from Mustafa Bekir of Pantheon of Chaos fame. The land raider at the back is the centre piece and if its design seems slightly unfamiliar it's because he scratch built it only using materials from the 100¥ shop!

The construction of it is magnificent and really catches the sense that it has been kept running by being patched up after being stolen from an Imperial force. The painting complements it's battered design perfectly.

I'd already base coated my own Rhino when this had arrived in the post from Japan. Once I saw this paint job I just had to try and replicate it! After applying Mustafa's recipe this was the result.

I think the two vehicles have a good consistency in style now. I even tried to paint the blood axe symbol and vehicle numbering by freehand to link them together.

Until the next instalment....

Blood Axe Ork warbike

Another edition to my little blood axe warband.

I'd picked this model up in a job lot in Oz with hundreds of other already (badly painted) mostly plastic miniatures. I decided not to strip this one as it was already painted close to the colours I had intended but this did mean many hours of removing mould lines on a painted miniature! I might think differently next time...

It's a second edition 40K ork plastic warbike, one of the few minis in this warband who I think wasn't sculpted by Goblinmaster, Kev Adams.

He's a bit smaller compared to many of the other minis but I like that he is bit overweight with his burgeoning pot belly. I need to add a flag to the pole on the back of the bike but first I need to make sure I get most of the rest of the warband done.

Blood Axe Orks Big Mob

  Sorry that I've been away for away too long ...

  Pesky real life got in the way in the form of buying a house. While I have been painting the setup at the new place in only slowly getting less chaotic and so hindering me from blogging about them or actually finding them!

  Anyway to make up for this here is a whole unit I've painted which is part of a Blood Axe Ork Army I'm preparing.

Here's pics of the unit split out:

And now altogether:

The army list is being drawn up using the rules from 'Ere We Go which is a supplement to Rogue Trader, the very ever first incarnation of what would become to be known as Warhammer 40K.

Each Ork Clan gets it's own list (a clan has it's own cultural identity) and the untrustworthy, human mimicking Blood Axes can employ humans and Ogryns in their number which attracted me due to the variety this allows me.

The army is being prepared for a Rogue Trader 'tournament' at Bring Your Own Lead in August (from the 5th to the 7th) which is probably the biggest 'Oldhammer' event in the UK. Like minded individuals play the games and field the figures of Games Workshop's golden past - it's not to be missed if you can get there.

http://bringoutyourlead.co.uk/