Battles: Fantasy, WOC Vs Empire and Bretonia 2500pts (quick report)

So, today I went to the GW and played a relatively large fantasy game. I was running a fairly odd list with a total of :

15 marauder cav
20 marauders
5 knights
36 warriors
1 lord on jugger (Khorne)
a lvl 2 on disk (tzeentch)
a lvl 2 on foot (nurgle)
a BSB on palanquin (nurgle)

And that was about it. In the end my knights and lord were tied up by battle pilgrims (30 of them) and my nurgle bunker got hit by a big block of bretonian knights and my marauders got hit by 20 empire knights then the rest was shot to bits. Finaly the two knight units broke my units and just mannaged to get into the lords unit on the last turn and kill them. I had great fun and loved using the jugger lord. I need to try and find a way to get my lords unit of knights in a position where they can avoid hold up units like the pilgrims. Oh well.

Thanks for reading,

Jacob.

Armies: Why don't we stick with just 1 army?

Now when I say this it is not to the hard core gamers or the people that just paint for the fun and might end up with the odd game every now and then. I'm talking to most of us that are in the middle.
 Why don't we stick with our armies all the way through?

First, lets compare it rugby teams. You stick with your team right through to the end generaly whether they do well or are in the bottom end of the league. Now lets take a look at armies we hop about with them all the time. Now I'm not saying this is a bad thing just look at the comparison, there are not that many people that will play say imperial fists and nothing else for longer than a few years. Sure they migfht be their favourite but there will always be new stuff that screams to be collected. In fantasy books change in effectivness quite quickly with new releases. So the top tounementeirs have to switch about but why should the rest of us.

Lets get into the meat of this post. Why we do it. It's because of how much of our lives it takes up, we have to change it up now and then I thin k this is good. I like both fantsy and 40k and thing every player should play at least 1 or 2 games of the opposite game of their choice. More than anything else you might l;earn new tactics or tricks to use in your favourite system.

So, just think. About it. I'd love to hear your reasoning behind why we jump about and also from anybody that does stick with their army or anything really. Thanks for reading.

Jacob.

Visitors: blog and post naming importance.

So, I was looking at the figures on google anylitics for my space wolves blog and this blog the other day and noticed a massive percentage difference between my amount of traffic from search engines. Here are the figures from Gamers World:

740.00 (87.47%) Referring Sites
61.00 (7.21%) Search Engines


45.00 (5.32%) Direct Traffic

And here are the figures for Space Wolves-Ragnar Blackmane


146.00 (51.05%) Referring Sites
134.00 (46.85%)Search Engines

6.00 (2.10%)Direct Traffic 


Now, as you can see this blog gets lots more reffering sites hits because of how many blogrolls etc it is on and gets slightly more direct traffic because this blog has been out there for longer. But as you can see there is a lot more search engine traffic for the space wolf blog. This is because of the fact that the name is so much better, searches for both space wolves and ragnar blackmane will find it whereas this blog has a bit of a bad name becase it won't be searched for by most wargamers. This is because of the fact that when I created this blog it was for video games as well, that stopped very quickly but it was too late to change the name. At some point I may relocate but that won't happen for a while yet so back on topic. The fact that I get more percentage of traffic from the space wolves blog can be a good or bad thing, the good thing is that you get a larger reader base, the bad thing is that you get some of the internet trawlers not as nice as the FTW blogger group and the other people that look at blogs like mine so you can get more spam and nasty comments. your choice.

Thanks for reading,

Jacob.

Overviews: an outsiders perspective, Blood angels and Nidz.

I thought I'd give my opinions on the rumors and the new book for these armies, remember I don't look at rumors that regularly but I have picked up bits here and there:

NIDZ

The nidz seem to be a really game changing army that need some serious thought, my wolves will be ok because of all the monstorous creature hunting things and I hope that my marines can cope with manouverabilty and high strength weapons. The book seems like it really works together and I think it may be an antidote to guard with all the deepstriking high strength monstrocities. Whether that will make them overpowered is yet to be seen.

BLOOD ANGELS

These bad boys seem ike they could be on par with if not better than the space wolves, some of the stuff sounds cool especialy the assault cannon raider and it sounds interesting to have succesor chapters included. I don't think I will be getting an army of these but I may get one or two bits just to paint up.

So, do you like this style of overview, thanks for reading,

Jacob.

Tuesday Gaming: a double bill.

So, two (well three but it was off this week) weeks of Dark Heresy have gone by and lets have a run down of what has happened:

Week 1: I was off and the team fought Dark Eldar, the chaos sorc that we were working for got killed and his assistand Jeeves turned out to be an even more powerful psyker.

Week 2: They are about to drop down in a drop pod and I decide to run off to the armory and see if I can get back in time, how silly I was as I just get beat up by a marine real bad. The rest of them drop down and screw up the mission by killing each other (the GM dropped a hint that we may get bonuses for killing each other as long as we did it descretely). We make some story up about them getting back up to the ship and they are about to drop down again, one of our players still had it in for the nurgle/lightning sorc and lops his head off so he respawns as a nurgling (we have now called nurgling in my pocket) and he is owned by one of the other sorcs. I should get possesed soon!

Week 3: The GM forgot the rule book so we didn't play, instead I played a game of blackreach with a few extra bits against a mate, we only played a few turns so just called it a draw. Then I watched some guys playing D&D (dungeons and dragons) but with some twists to make it more like fantsy hence why it was allowed in warhammer club (it is also run by the owner of the club). Overall the club is really working because everyone is just there to have fun.

So, what do you think,

Thanks for reading,

Jacob.

Building: Khorne Lord on Jugger and missing bits on rhino.

So, I'm sorry I have'nt posted in a few days, our internet connection went dodgey and then when it was fixed pictures wouldn't upload because it went faulty again. Now, on with the post. Since I last saw you I have been busy with all sorts and there will be a variety of posts this next week but the main two modeling things have been what is shown in the pics below:

The door on the front should have been painted befor but I had lost it and the guy on the top was a bit of a brainwave I had when rooting through my bitz box. I thought it would look cool to have him actualy holding the storm bolter. I quite like it.

This khorne lord on jugger is one of the refinements to my chaos army that I will be doing befor calling it finished or at least as finished as an army ever is. I already have plans to do touch up's and rehauls of some models after the army finishing project. I'm thinking off perhaps to other way off projects, one being a terrain finishing project and the other being a touch up project.

So, what do you think, thanks for reading,

Jacob.

Controversial: Transfers (to be (done) or not to be (done))?

Hi, sorry for not posting over the last few days but i have been adding the finishing touches to the units you have seen the pics of and started building another model, that is a chaos lord on jugger.

So, onto transfers, I find there are 4 levels of transfer goodness, here we go:

1) sloppy tranfer with nothing over it,
2) neat transfer with matt varnish over it
3) neat transfer with basic highlighting/shading painted on with matt varnish over
4) neat transfer with very good highlighting/shading painted on with something that melts the transfer in so it doesn't stick out (can't remember what it's called) then matt varnish over it.

Now, round my area people either don't use them or do them very well but the few young players that use them are normaly someware between 1 and 2, neat without varnish.

So, how is it in your area and do you agree with using them, I don't mind as long as they enhance the model,

Thanks for reaing,

Jacob.

Tutorials/Army Finishing project: Rhino pretty much done and flat colours, freehand tac squad arrows and line highlighting.

Hi, recently i finished the painting on this rhino, well I say finished, I still have the gun and a side door to go but hey I said pretty much. Anyway here are the pics, no transfers have been used, the arrows are freehand:

So, here is the army finsihing project as it stands, then the tutorials at the bottom:

4pts 2 half done land speeders for terran hands, tutorial: not sure.

2pts LR-built-painted-needs some slight changes tutorial: repainting.



-2pts 5scouts- built tutorial: cloth



4pts Rhino-built-primered tutorial: getting nice flat colours and possibly line highlighting.



2pts Dread-needs some repairing and some redoing tutorial: adding to models.



5pts 5assault marines: built tutorial: adding the combat image.



1pts some reapir work. tutorial: probably none.



SPACE WOLVES Tutorials: not sure yet



3pts Drop pod-built



10pts 20 grey hunters- built



-1pts 5wolf scouts-built



3pts 4long fangs-built



4pts Whirlwind-half built



3pts 4wolf guard- built



2pts Rune priest- built



2pts 10 blood claws- need highlights









P.S. I have included the wolf guard joining units in that units cost.









Warriors Of Chaos



6pts 5knights- built-primerd-1 nearly done. tutorial:washes and magic









3pts warshrine-primered-more being added. tutorial: scratch building.



5pts 12 WoC- built primered. tutorial:adding to units maybe



3pts 12 WoC-need details. tutorial:fur



12pts 15 marauder cav- built tutorial: painting black skin maybe more



10pts 20 marauders- need details tutorial: wood



-4 Palanquin- built- partialy painted tutorial: intricate nurgle



-6 to do but +3 when done Lord on disk tutorial: probably fire



-3 odd dude from Games Day- built tutorial: random models.


Now for the mini tutorials:

Getting a flat colour: now for this the GW foundation paints are a godsend, I always use this on my main colour then follow that with the right colour then highlighting. Now there isn't much more to it than that.

Line highlighting: this is a great way of getting basic highlights on your models, I know use a variety of techniques together but line highlighting is the easiest. You simply get a thin brush and use the side of the brush to go round the hard edges of the model. You want to go round most edges with a slightly lighter colour than your base then pick out a few high places for a very light colour, you can go further than that but to start with two highlights is fine, sometimes you only need 1.


Free handing tac squad arrows: for this you first need to find a nice flat are, then mark out with small dots halfway up each side of your rectangle, the top middle of your rectangle, these marks will make your arrow head so join up the dots then fill in the triangle. Next you have to draw the tail which i did by guessing but you can measure if you want to. Now there is some leeway with this because some people like a longer tail and a shorter arrow head but this is the way I do it.

Thanks for reading,

Jacob.

Discussions: #15, The Good Guys of 40k

So, I was thinking, who are the good guys of 40k, is it the imperium fighting aliens and chaos, but also destroying plaents with pollution and ignoring any way other than their own, is is the advancing Tau, only fighting when they are provoked or people disagree with them and even after fighting offer their enemies a place in their own ranks, is it the illustrious Eldar, preserving rarther than advancing or is it chaos, trying to destroy everything and let the galaxy become completely natural (well, that's one view another is cold hearted, greedy killers). Which do you think, tell us people, if I get some results then this may become a poll.

Thanks for reading,

Jacob.

Tutorials/Army Finishing Project: Sally squad finished and conversions on regular guys.

Hi, recently I have finished the 10 sallies, here are the pics:

If you look carefully at that last picture, you'll notice that the power fist is metal with blue and green washes, now this is my new theory for power weapons. It always says in fluff that they are sheathed in power so this wash gives that effect. All it is is thraka green and asurmen blue or watered down blue. On power swords and claws you would still do the power line as well of course. Now, here comes the tutorial:

Coverting regular guys is quite a rtecent thing. I've found though that just a few small conversions in a unit really makes it pop. Now if you look at my guy with bolt pistol and bolter, his strong pose really makes him look real, whereas the guys just holding bolters normaly stop the unit from looking over the top. So, I know that this isn't really a tutorial but just think next time you build regular guys, could I change that.

Now, onto the Army Finishing project standings, I am noow on 11 points.

TERRAN HANDS AND SALLIES

4pts 2 half done land speeders for terran hands, tutorial: not sure.
2pts LR-built-painted-needs some slight changes tutorial: repainting.
-2pts 5scouts- built tutorial: cloth
4pts Rhino-built-primered tutorial: getting nice flat colours and possibly line highlighting.
2pts Dread-needs some repairing and some redoing tutorial: adding to models.
5pts 5assault marines: built tutorial: adding the combat image.
1pts some reapir work. tutorial: probably none.
SPACE WOLVES Tutorials: not sure yet
3pts Drop pod-built
10pts 20 grey hunters- built
-1pts 5wolf scouts-built
3pts 4long fangs-built
4pts Whirlwind-half built
3pts 4wolf guard- built
2pts Rune priest- built
2pts 10 blood claws- need highlights

P.S. I have included the wolf guard joining units in that units cost.

Warriors Of Chaos
6pts 5knights- built-primerd-1 nearly done. tutorial:washes and magic

3pts warshrine-primered-more being added. tutorial: scratch building.
5pts 12 WoC- built primered. tutorial:adding to units maybe
3pts 12 WoC-need details. tutorial:fur
12pts 15 marauder cav- built tutorial: painting black skin maybe more
10pts 20 marauders- need details tutorial: wood
-4 Palanquin- built- partialy painted tutorial: intricate nurgle
-6 to do but +3 when done Lord on disk tutorial: probably fire
-3 odd dude from Games Day- built tutorial: random models.


Thanks for reading,

Jacob.

Terrain: home made Fantasy/40k stepped 2-tier hill.

Hi, the other day I made this hill, the next one will probably come with a tutorial, suffice to say we learned a lot of tips and the next one should be a breeze. I will be painting it in a greyey brown moonscape-mordor type thing hopefully with sand mixed in to make it a rough coat.

It was made out of insulation board (high-density polystyrene), all we did was cut the bottom piece roughly then cut a little detail before using a candle to burn bits away, remember, less = more with this. If you want the odd deeper gash then first cut a rough hole then burn. Next we cut the top piece and did the same thing before sticking it carefully ontop of the larger piece with PVA glue (elmers white glue if your in the USA). Then we textured the surface via burning again and finally I stuck together and burned some random bit of 'rock' then stuck them on.

The idea of the hill was to provide a useable piece of terrain for both 40k and Fantasy, I think it has worked but the painting will make a big difference as it decides where it is. There is plenty of open space to put movement trays etc on without it being too bare. I think it looks pretty good, how about you? Anyway, here are the pics:

So, tell us what you think, thanks for reading,

Jacob.

Thoughts: Updates because your bad? Somebody elses philosophy.

So, today i went to the Preston GW and played a couple of games of 40k with my wolves, it was great fun to play 40k again after playing fantasy alone for a while. But, when I was talking with some of the guys there one of them was half joking half talking seriouly talking about how Necrons really needed an upgrade and that it was unfair that marines got a new one virtualy every week (egsageration I know) then another guy said in the same way that was because Marines lose so GW feels they need updates whereas necrons can win when played right. We then got into a discussion about the fact that nubes always go for marines.

Now, that philosophy about marines being well, FAIL! is interesting to me, I don't belive in that, do you nplease tell me. Now the other thing is that marines are poster boys and that's whay they always get picked, so I was thinking that we could put together some posts on how to do some articles on different armies and starting builds etc at different points values (1000-2000 pts) then how they are easy and hard to play with, now these don't have to be collected together but just have a think about you favorite army and whether you could put a post up on your blog doing what I described above.

So, tell us what you think, thanks for reading,

Jacob.

White Dwarf: 250th post: #361, TYRANIDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First off I'd like to say this is my 250th post and that I have really enjoyed posting more often and will kepp it up through this year. Second is that I got this moths white dwarf really early on the 11th of December rarther than the usual 23rd-25th this means I can do a review early right, well no as it's christmas so I only finished it this week, hence this is out on time not early. Anyway enough of my ramblings onto the real post (please click on post title to read full post:

So, this moth contains:
Editorial
Tyranid designers notes
Skaven scenarios
Legion of the damned
Evil LoTR (strategy battle game) tactica
new releases
Colin Graysons army masters
Eavy metal legion of the damned
army workshop tyranids
Modeling workshop  tyranid invasion.
Battle Report: sallies V tyranids!!!

New releases- Codex Tyranids (well duh), £15
Trygon/mawloc, awesome model and very nasty in the game, £30 (worth it in my opinion, its worth more than the £25 canifex)
Ravenor brood, lookin good and plastic, better poses too, £27 for 3 (odd price tag)
Pyrovore, meh, looks decent, £20 (good value)
Gargoyles (plastic and great wings for conversions, chaos furies now have models, kind of) £17.50 for 10 (another odd price)
Venomthrope, £12
Hive Guard, £12 (for 1 or 2 not sure, probably 1)
Battleforce, 8 stealers, 12 temagaunts, 12 homogaunts and 3 warriors,plus 3 ripper swarms.
Legion of the damed squad, £20 for 5, £8 for 2 hvy weps, £10 for 2 legionairs (2 different sets) 5 more guys coming out next  month.
Please view post to read rest of review.

Fluff: a collection of background.

Hi, Jacob here, I should be back posting regularly from now as I am back at school and have a proper routine. So, onto the real post:

I had an idea today, I have always loved reaing other peoples fluff and background stroies but I find everything is scattered about the place, so I was thinking, if there is any interest then I could get people to send me their fluff then I could publish it on the internet as a document using this document sharing site I know. So, if you would be interested then please comment or drop me a line at:

jacobgamer@live.com

If I get around a minimum of 10 people then I think I will probably go ahead with this. Thanks for reading,

Jacob.

Polls: How to base my wolves, answers!

So, the poll is now closed and I have the results, here they are.

Base no.1 gravel, grass 2 (15%)
Base no.2 gravel, snow, melted snow 4 (30%)
Base no.3 grass, snow, gravel 4 (30%)
Base no.4 gravel, snow, ice 3 (23%

Votes: 13

So, it's tied between 3 and 2 and on my space wolves blog it was a tie between 1,2 and 3, overall that means a choice between 3 or 2, and I like 3 slightly more so that is my choice, here is the pic:

So, what do you think, thanks for reading,

Jacob.

Thoughts: New Years Resolutions

Yea yea I know everyone is doing this but I am going to go ahead and pot up mine:

1. Finish army finishing project.
2. Build up some proper tactics with an army that I like and is effective (ie Space wolves and warriors of chaos).
3. Keep this blog updated with interesting content.
4. To do the random bits that pop up in the year like buying new stuff and to have them done with and not just left around.

So, not to big a list but then again the army finishing project is a big thing. I hope you had a gret christmas and a happy New Year. Thankks for reading,

Jacob.