Look - lead!

"Oh," I hear you say. "You're back, are you? I know we hadn't agreed anything, but it seemed fair to expect the next turn in the ongoing saga of The Bridge Over the River Chai oh, you know - sometime soon after the last one was published? A week seems reasonable?"

"And now you tell me you still don't have it? You've got a lot of nerve showing up here, let me tell you!"

Yes, I suppose you're right. Nearly a month has passed since the last report on those crazy orcs and dwarves. It may gall you to know that the contestants are now busy on their eighth turn, but I have yet to even start writing up turn five.

Lets explain: its all to do with New Years resolutions, you see. Having spent the year week after Christmas firmly ensconced in the bosom of my family, I wasn't able to do much by way of hobby work. I was only able to return to the business of modelling work on or about the time of the New Year - a time rife with idiotic promises of life improvements. I decided to pledge to myself that I would not assemble/strip/prepare another figure until I had finished painting everything that was 'hanging around' on the desk.

Now, you may recall at some junction that I was planning to proceed into some sort of Chaos army, possibly based on Nurgle. That wasn't going to happen with my desk in the state it was at the end of 2012. I would have liked to show you a picture, but so taken with my cause was I that I didn't even hesitate  to get to work. So you'll just have to believe me.

The next part of the story is this: I now I have a nine month old living in the house. That's not a surprise - I've was here when she arrived, but far from becoming less demanding, it appears that little girls require more and more time as they get on (and, according to my experience of women, the increment is exponential...).

I mention this because it means I only have a small window of hobby opportunity available. As far as I am concerned (and you, no doubt), the business of hobby work - the actual stripping, gluing and painting parts - are different to the writing about the stripping, gluing and painting parts. I lost that argument - as far as my wife is concerned, its just hobby time - if I choose to spend it writing about the hobby as opposed to just doing the hobby, well - that's my own stupid fault.

So, in order to satisfy me new years resolution, I was required - nay - forced - to paint, leading to Turn five just falling by the wayside.

See - not so judgemental now, are we? I'm the victim here!

Anyway, rest assured, I'll get on with Turn 5 (and the rest) from this week onwards.

Still, I ended up painting some stuff.  A ghost (spectre/wraith/ethereal of your choice), a skull chucker, a corpse cart, a chaos dwarf bazuka and thirty two goblins. Also, I repaired Onowitz Mann'fluh - cos I broke him.

A brief note on the goblins. You've come across the terms strategic and tactical. You are reading a blog about wargames, so of course you have. In information technology, these terms are used slightly differently. Strategic describes the right thing - the correct approach, the gold standard. Most of my modelling work is strategic. Tactical describes quick and dirty - its not great - it just gets you over the hump, as it were. The thirty two goblins were tactical. I had purchased a bunch of goblins a long time ago. They were painted, but not especially well, as I thought. I stripped the metals, but the plastics I had just left. They just happened to be on the desk (due to reorganising). When I looked at them, it occurred to me that if I just gave them a black wash and rebased them - well, they would do. So that's what I did. I'm not especially proud of it, but as you'll see, this move has launched my meagre forces into 'army' status.

Now, there are pictures. And some more explanation.

Right, so on to the payload. Today started like this:

Given that going to work would have resulted in instant death (you know - health and safety and all that), I stayed home.

Much better.

With this sudden injection of time, I decided to take all of my painted stuff, put it on a table and take pictures. For you. Apparently, pictures are worth thousands of words. Here are thirty two thousand words worth of pictures:

It feels appropriate at this junction to highlight that I had no access to special lighting, which accounts for the fact that the flash managed to darken (romanticise?) most of the pictures.

Sorry.

Now I ended up in this situation where I had all these figures on the table. Having looked at them, it occurred to me that I might be able to split them all into two different forces - opposing forces.

Risking the wrath of The Minister of the Interior, quickly laid out a potential battle - between the Undead and the Goblins (with friends!):

So that's what I've been busy with.

Friends?

Oh? What now? You saw some modern figures? Okay, okay - you got me. There are some current edition things in there. Specifically, the goblin bolt thrower? Yes, and the crew? Sure, okay.

As I said:

Tactical.

Milestone Reached!

In this post:

Terror of the Lichemaster milestone reached!
Undead army milestone reached!
Two educated men outsmarted by a camera!
I buy a modern citadel product!

Lets start at the bottom of the list.

I went to visit Andre in order to play my first game of Warhammer 3rd edition in twenty years. You can find him on the map. Its always nice to actually meet people that you have only dealt with digitally. They never live how or where you would expect them to, and they never look how you thought they would.

Once the niceties had been attended to, Andre showed me his gaming set-up. I'll talk about that in another post, but two of the things he had on the table were the Citadel Battlemat and, well, another Citadel Battlemat. What blew my mind is that it is not the crusty paper roll that was produced a few years ago, but its actually a cloth (or cloth backed) 6'x4' gaming mat.

You can iron it.*

So I bought one. It meant I had to have a conversation with a GW store worker (marine?) with a serious BO problem, but even so, the product is still worth it.

In fact, so pleased was I with the thing that I broke out the figures and took pictures. It makes staging much easier for me. These are the pictures I will show you today.

What I won't do, is show you pictures of the battle.

I know, I know. I'm sorry. I had left my camera at home, you see. As the proprietor of a blog, it is simply irresponsible. Were blogging a licensed activity, my license would be revoked.

Fortunately (no doubt for Andre as well), Andre is married to a very nice woman, who has a very nice camera. She offered to lend it to us, and the two of us had a go with the thing. I don't think I'm a stupid man. I don't think Andre is a stupid man.  We combined our intellects and assaulted the camera with verve.

We were overcome. In the end, we decided that it was better for our own states of mind that we play than we dither with his wife's extremely powerful and confusing camera. Also, we would have had to do a lot with the lighting. And we hadn't played Warhammer 3rd ed. for twenty years - we reasoned that you, dear reader, would be forgiving. Like men released from prison after a twenty year incarceration, our minds were only on one thing.

I can summarise the battle very simply: I took Undead. He took Wood Elves. No Wood Elves were harmed in the prosecution of that battle. The treeman (technically not a wood elf) was also unhurt.

Now that you have dealt with your disappointment, we can move onto a silver lining of this specific cloud. As a result of preparing for the game, I had to paint some figures. Let us bask in their glory now.

Stage 1: Buying into the game

For the purposes of constructing my army, I've used the Warhammer Armies book. I realise that we are amongst gentlemen here, old-hammerers of distinction and class, so I know of no compelling reason to enforce the distasteful habits associated with vendor-supplied army lists. But, as I consider Warhammer Armies a thing of beauty that has largely informed my interpretation of fantasy warfare, I have elected to bind myself to its tenets. 

So, in order to buy into the game, as it were, one requires simply this: a General, 20 skeletons and 10 grim reapers (skeletons with two handed weapons). 

Although I've discussed this milestone before, I thought it would be nice to look at the thing again. And it allowed me to play around with my figures, scenery and the new battlemat.

31 figures!

Stage 2: Cleaning up a bit, really

Just another 10 grim reapers. I pictured this as I thought this would be the next logical step for those pursuing an undead army. I like the figure 20 more than I like the figure 10.

41 figures!

Stage 3: Enough units to manoeuvre with 

What's that coming over the hill? Is it a monster?

I suppose it sort of is, as it's not an animal, vegetable or mineral. It's a liche, to be sure, with 20 of his favourite zombies.

62 Figures!

Now feels like the right time to some close-ups. Below: grim reapers!

Zombies! And the liche:

Skeletons, comprising of enough of the Nightmare Legion to be considered the Nightmare Legion:

Stage 4: Inviting some friends to play

I've had these chaos dwarves hanging around for a while. They looked bored. As an open minded, 21st century, equal opportunity employer, I thought it prudent to offer them an opportunity with my undead.

Figures: 72!

And you can see them a little closer too, if you like. Looking at the picture, I see that I have forgotten to  do any highights to the banner, which I destroyed earlier in its life through varnishing. I've corrected the damage, but it looks very flat.

Hooray for chaos dwarves!

So, what we have here is a legal (*cringe*) Undead Army. Let's talk about the milestones.

For some unknown reason that I cannot surface, an assortment of figures following the same broad outlook on life (and death) becomes an army when it reaches 70 figures. Less than 70 figures? Gang. 70 and onwards? Army. I don't know why.

So the Undead Army milestone is simply this: it's now an army.

But there is another, richer milestone. I've painted enough undead rank and file to cover the forces of the Lichemaster in The Terror of the Lichemaster. I'm still missing the commander-in-chief, but I'm sure we'll all sleep better tonight knowing that his forces are ready for him when he arrives. Now I need to start working the Imperial side.

So, what's next, now that I have an army? I was hoping to move into another army to create an opposing force for the undead. Having learned from experience from the game against Andre, I realise that I need to spend some more time on the undead, as they're quite bad at warfare.

There are two angles to this - the first is that now that I have enough rank and flle, I can focus on the more interesting things like the war machines and the corpse cart. I have some cavalry to throw at the problem and I believe I've sourced some carrion crows as well.

The second, and probably the route I'll explore next, is that I can pursue the creation of a second army, which could be both the opposing force and, when larger forces are required, part of the undead army.

If we consult the knowledge locked deeply within the tome of The Lost and the Damned, we see that Nurgle is also an equal opportunity employer, seeing the undead as boon members of his armed forces. Things have to be done in multiples of 7, of course, so I'd need to paint two extra skeletons and another zombie, but that is achievable. We see now that this force would not become part of the undead, but rather, the undead would become part of a Realms of Chaos Nurgle army.

In a bizarre and unplanned twist of fate, I have more RoC champions of Nurgle than of any other deity. It must be destinee destanie destany fate!



*Cool iron, use a cloth over it. Iron the material bit, not the grass bit. It's a gaming mat, not a pair of jeans...

More Zombies.

More zombies. Y'know. Loitering...

...as is the wont of zombies.

Another six zombies. I can't believe it. Okay, they're not completely complete, a they'll want some basing, but still. Six extra zombies. That means I've painted seventeen models in one month so far. And the month isn't even over yet!

Here they are, in all their grizzly glory:

Apologies for the lack of staging, but the scenery is in a cupboard which was alarmingly close to my sleeping infant daughter. It wasn't a hard decision to make: you'll just have to do without staging. Let sleeping infants lie...

In related news, however, things are lining up for my first physical game of warhammer 3rd edition since, well, 1992?

Twenty years ago.

If we take a look at Skarsnik's player finder, we might note that there is a man the local sheriff knows as 'Andre':

I'm located at the other pin. We've been threatening violence towards each other for months, but jobs, kids and other real-life activities have thus far prevented our joyous slaughter. But, on Monday, the 27th Day of September (EDIT:August, you retard...), I shall scrounge whatever painted items I can find, mash up some sort of army list and deliver twenty years of pent-up frustration to somewhere South of Hampton.

So I'm trying to get as much stuff painted as I can. Hopefully, I'll post up the list by the following weekend. I also have a secret fantasy that I might actually produce something for the Golden Gobbo - which is still unpainted, unbased, unmounted and, well, un-thought-of. What a backstory, should that entry be able to mark its (his? her? Its? I'm not telling!) debut with glorious slaughter on the field of battle!

But, no promises. New Dad. Still got twenty months before I can't use that anymore...

Look! Zombies!

Now that Oldhammer appears to be sorting itself out, what with forums, painting contests and other bits and bobs, the humble hobbyist is left with nothing but the business of painting.

I've painted some zombies.

Although the blog has been silent for a while, I have been diligently beetling along whenever I've had some space.

Washes have proven to be a loyal friend at this junction. As described in the link, the key thing for me was to move faster than normal. I reckon I spent about six or so hours on them (in total, not elapsed time. Elapsed time was about a month...).

Note the way old-school three in a row slottabase. Usually, I have to destroy those to get the figures out, but this one was still useable.

Anyway, these are the zombies:

I've been painting these as I continue forward with my Lichemaster objective. There are twenty zombies involved in the Lichemaster story - ten for Mikael Jacsen and another ten as part of Krell's contingent. I ended up painting eleven because I appear to have forgotten how to count. Anyway, I suppose that's good news, because then there are only nine left.

I haven't varnished or embellished the bases yet. I hate flocking bases. You can substitute the 'lo' with any vowel you think makes sense, if you really want my view on the thing.