"There are no Wolves in Newbury" - only rats!

Hi all, WolfGeezer here, popping my blogging cherry. Although now that I have discovered the existence of this site I see there are several references to me and pictures of my models on here going back years. I have been persuaded into joining this GoG X challenge, which will be the first of any such challenge for me, so figured I should start with a quick intro post.

While I love playing all these games since J introduced me to all this stuff about 13 years ago, it took me a couple of years to really start to enjoy the painting. I loved the list building, deployment strategy, on the fly probability calculations, responding to the opponents plans and of course the fickleness of those dice!

Painting itself seemed to take way too long to get end products that I still really couldn’t be proud of. How I wish I had Duncan Rhodes to guide me like my 10 year old son has, rather than making it up myself. Unlike most of the guys here I have largely remained a one trick pony wolf. Starting with a Space Wolf Ven Dred and Rogue Trader era Grey Hunters, my collection grew to about 15k points in 5^th edition. With all the points reductions for Wolves since I suspect it is still around the same even though I’ve probably got another 5k in old points.

After 3 or 4 years I picked up a Tau army through a couple of Ebay lots, added some new shiny (some of which made it out of the box, none of which have actually made the gaming table) and the whole army has probably only seen 3 battles. Perhaps they would have seen more action if I had changed my tactics from shooting once then charging. I can still remember how much Jamie laughed the first time I used them, charging them in against his plague marines to pretty much zero effect. I've almost built a White Scar army, used once to table Jamie's Necrons to a number of cries of broken aimed towards my flyers. I picked up the base of a Custodes army just before this challenge was announced, so given Tau and Wolves will have new releases this year I fully expect them to remain in the box until at least 2023. 

The primary tale I expect to tell on here this year is not of Wolves, or Tau or White Scars, but Skaven, my one and only AoS army. While not part of the original GoG adventure I have been brow beaten encouraged to join in this madcap plan to paint 2000 points. I start a little ahead of the rest in theory as I have a number of models basecoated and some are even half painted.

However, my rate of painting is 10-20% (Ed - it's not that high) of these guys so a major challenge for me and I’m not yet ready to start as I still haven’t finished my biggest ever project - my Forgeworld Warhound Wolfhound Titan. That needs to be at least mostly finished before I start the Skaven and has itself exhausted most of the goodwill of my wife over the last 2 months as I take over the dining table for the weekend and my son who doesn’t understand why after 5 minutes painting I wouldn’t want to play Football/Carcasonne/Yahtzee/Chess/Monopoly or preferably being shot by him in Stars Wars Battlefront or racing him in Forza (whatever number it’s up to now?) The next post will cover my Wolfound as I think he deserves one, but for now here’s some of the Skaven boxes that have been calling me for the last 5 years that I have been ignoring up to now next to the WIP Titan.

   

30K terminators and a dollop of Dystopian Legions

I put these terminators together in Aug 2015 and they have been languishing in a foam tray ever since. They represent the start of another push at getting more 30K stuff done and some games played. I love the setting but we’ve given it a woeful amount of time especially in light of the number and quantity of forces we have.

These were put together from Scibor bodies, Anvil heads and shoulder pads and GW terminator arms. I liked the chunkiness of the Scibor bodies and thought they looked good as prototype Terminator armour.

I’ve done heavy battle damage and wear on all my previous 30K stuff so these took a similar pounding from the sponges to distress them. I like the look of it on the power fist knuckles. Looks like they been smacking the crap out of stuff!

I’ve also been getting all of the DL stuff undercoated and it all stands ready now. Sadly they weren’t paying attention and the GoGX Sylvaneth army slipped into the queue in front of them. I still do intend to get them to the table this year.

The termies have helped my Net tally but the recent Sylvaneth haven't. Figures for the year are now:

Purchased: +85

Painted:      -48

Net:            +37

I'll need to concentrate on the Sylvaneth over the next few months to ensure that they are done to deadlines however I am still determined to get the bulk of my unpainted 30K stuff finished and make good inroads into the DL & PC stuff.

TTFN.

Hat in the Ring for GoGX

I was enjoying an evening in my hotel in Budapest. Work was over finally for the day. Room service had just delivered dinner and the Merlot was going down a treat.

Then my ipad pinged as a message came through: "GoGX is a Go"

I like to think that this code phrase sparked a sleeper cell in to action and off I went on a journey of discovery and intrigue... but that's not what happened. What actually happened was "WTF is GoGX?".

You see when I travel my personal mobile stays on airplane mode or as we like to call it "Don't call me Shirley" mode. Anyway Jabber is not available to me so I was oblivious.

Of course I signed up immediately and in an effort to finally paint all the stuff on my shelves I've opted to, er, well I've decided to, erm... look the simple matter is I want to do an army that isn't Chaos so yes I've gone for a completely new army... sigh...

The Daughters of Khaine.

And I can't even show you any models as I don't own any! The Battletome has just been released so I'll be getting to grips with that once I'm back from my next trip to Budapest. Lord knows what the GoGs will have signed up for by the time I get back...

Anyway I'm officially in and looking forward to getting to grips with the good guys who worship the God of Slaughter... um. Right.

Tzeentch comes to the SilverFox Challenge

Well hellooooo Bloggerland!

The SilverFox Challenge continues apace although that pace has slowed recently due to work travel. That said it looks like it's about to go a bit mad around here as someone mentioned GoGX...

But that's another post entirely...

Here then are the next entries in the 2018 Challenge! And today we're going all Tzeentch. Well except the last chap but more on him soon.

First up 20 bases of Brimstone Horrors. Love these little guys as they were so easy to paint. My aim was to try and present a carpet of flame rolling towards the enemy and I decided against trying to paint the teeth etc as they would distract from the overall effect. That and I wanted to get them done quickly!

 

And next up we have one of my favourite units so far to paint: Kairic Acolytes. These are foot soldiers of the Disciples of Tzeentch faction.

The skin was the piece I wanted to get sorted first. I opted for a base of Rakarth Flesh and then 2 washes: 1 with Sepia and 1 with Reikland Fleshshade. I'm pleased with the results.

 

Next came the armour and loincloths. Blue is the traditional colour for Tzeentch so was a natural choice. There are actually two different base blues involved although not easy to see to be honest...

The face masks went through a couple of colour choices before settling on Gold. I haven't washed them down at all as I wanted them to be shiny and standout.

 I'm pleased as well with the way the parchment came out on the scroll.

The weapon blades started pink and have toned down through the use of violet washes and white dry brushes. I opted for these colours as I get bored painting leadbelcher weaponry.

This is the command squad. You'll note the lack of banner. And no musical instrument. These boys can't take those staple members of the command squad and instead have a piece of parchment and a bird-handler. The bird is, er, not here yet. He's out somewhere...

The shields took a bit of working out colour wise. Again I didn't want to overpower the rest of the model so opted for black. I've used a couple of coats of Gloss Black Wash to make it a little more shiny. The leadbelcher rim and decoration has not been toned down either.

 "Do you have time to discuss our Lord and Saviour: Tzeentch?"

The big stick is a Glaive. No I don't know what it does either! I'll find out when everyone else does.

And now the one who isn't Tzeentch. In fact he's not even Games Workshop.

One of the bonus rounds in the Analogue Challenge was Childhood. My Dad introduced me to Spaghetti Westerns when I was a kid and I've loved them ever since.

The music of Ennio Morricone is second to none when it comes to film scores and my first LP was the soundtrack to the Dollars Trilogy. 

 So here is good old Clint Eastwood as the Man with No Name. Il Buono.

I took a few liberties with the colours as I don't paint historical figures.

I don't have a game ready for him so he'll be a nice display model for now.

And yes he does have his cigar!

B/Fwd 520

Brimstone Horrors 80
Kairic Acolytes 200
Il Buono 10

Total so far 810 / 3650 or 22% complete!!

Still on Target...

GoG X is upon us!

I’ve decided to go out on a limb and branch out with a brand new army!

“Leaf it out!” I here you cry!

Sorry

I realise that you didn’t log on just fir me to wattle on with puns.

J

So….I made the mistake of mentioning that the GoG blog was nearly ten years old. After a flurry of texts I found myself staring down the possibility of a brand new army. AoS is much more favoured these days than 40K so it seemed natural for the next Tale of X gamers to be an AoS thing this time round.

Who to choose?

I’ve got quite a few other projects going on so I didn’t want a horde army with tons to paint in it. I also fancied painting something a bit different and one force stood out as one that no one else seemed to have already.

I saw the Sylvaneth and they instantly caught my eye as they offer what looks like a unique painting experience as they are very different to pretty much everything else in terms of textures and details.

So the Sylvaneth have become my next AoS force. Hence the trees puns. Six months to do 2000 pts so I have to get cracking. I had a look at the army list before buying (a first) and as it turns out the starter sets really are a great place to start with these fellas. So a few of those and some other bits and bobs soon took me to 2000pts (gulp!)

I placed my order with Element Games and true to what the other GoGs said, they proved themselves to be well priced and delivery was quick. I’m just waiting on the arrival of some other hobby supplies and these will get started…..well once I’ve finished my tray of terminators. 

Quite a stack to get through.

It always sounds so simple at the beginning…… doesn’t it.

TTFN

Wolves and Deamons and Un-dead....oh my!

 Hello,

So I'm new and this is my first post, but given that I was introduced to war gaming by Eddie Artillery at Junior school over 30 years ago I've been around for a while.

As a typical gamer I have a limited attention span and far too many projects on the go at all times so a challenge that focuses me to finish something is always welcome. For AoS I usually play Un-dead, now my Skeleton archers buffed by a Wight-King giving me 90 odd dice are great but maybe I should do something else, something different, Chaos maybe, Order or Destruction?

Immediately I thought that this would suit my Wolfen project. I always liked the Confrontation Wolfen, great sculpts, a different race to the Elf/Dwarf/Orc fantasy stereotype and they are frecking giant man wolves, so whats not to like. I thought that maybe I could proxy wolves for Stormcasts to get an Order aligned army in but after much deliberation I went with Beastclaw Raiders. Not only are they similar sizes but the look of the figures kind of match the snowy northern wastes style of the Ogors. It would also give me an excuse to do snow bases, something I've wanted to do since I started a Game of Thrones Zombie, John Snow North of The Wall project that I haven't finished yet.

I already have 2 of the Wrath of Kings Goritsi Kickstarters from Ebay and a couple of specials packs from the badly run CMON Black Friday sale, along with a few Confrontation originals from Ebay, and I have a set of Werwulf archers coming from Meirce Miniatures latest Kickstarter as well. All of those coupled with a Beastclaw start collecting set (great value) and I'm most of the way there. One more start collecting set and that's 2000 points. So £40 to spend and I get to finish something I've been planning for several years and play with it.... brilliant.

Then somebody mentioned going to Lenton!!!!

Now I can't use CMON and Rackham figures at Warhammer World as its a purely GW place, which I get and as I want to go I'm going to have to pick something else to do, but what.

I have a Mournghul, some Terrorghiests and Varghiests to finish off for the Un-dead, add a Vampire Lord on a dragon and it would be done, but again that's just adding to my Un-dead horde. Really not a lot of work needed to finish them off, maybe too easy to be a challenge, but again only a £40 cost.

Lastly (well not lastly actually, I have some Bretonnians kicking around somewhere as well as 2 long OOP dark elf chariots that would go great with a Dreadlord on a dragon or 2, and High Elves, Chaos Marauders, Beastmen, Gargants, Skaven, Lizard men etc but they'd all cost too much to finish so weren't seriously considered) .......so lastly there is a Deamons of Khorne force. 30 Bloodletters a Deamon Prince, Skull Cannon a kit bashed Bloodthirster from those bits left over on the sprue after you've finished making one. I need a bit more for this, another Bloodthirster 10 more Bloodletters.....Its not Un-dead, its Lenton compliant but its not my first (or even second) choice, so what to do.

Well really there is only one thing that you can do given these circumstances......that's right I'm going to do all three. 1000 points a month, easy.

Wish me luck.

The blog gets all growed up!

We're hobby butterflies, seemingly utterly incapable of keeping our minds on one thing..... so a passing comment from Eddie about how the blog was TEN FREAKING YEARS OLD led us down a meandering path of increasing geek-based excitement and has meant we've agreed to mark the occasion with something awesome..... as Britney might say, we've decided to "hit me baby one more time"!

The blog was started to chronicle us getting a new army painted from the large amount of unpainted figures we all had on our shelves of holding.  I can happily confirm that we now all have far, far more stuff on our shelves than we did back then and so we're going to do another "Tale of X gamers", but this time there are 7 of us instead of 5!  The idea is to end the work with a playable army of around 1,500 2,000 and spend a weekend in Nottingham at GW HQ being utter geeks!

So, the rules.....

a) paint at least 250 333 points of models (cumulative counting is fine so you can work around real life) from March until August.  Your 250 333 points must be uploaded to the blog by the end of each month or suffer relentless mockery from the rest of the participants until you've caught up......
b)  Attend GW HQ on the September weekend to celebrate!

To start things off, I'm going Empire/Free peoples s I've had a box of stuff hanging around for about 10 years that I've occasionally added a bargain eBay win to.  This is the start of me getting it sorted:

Lots of troops planned, at least one monster and some warmachines I should think..... exciting times!