New Goblin Spider Riders/Orc Warboss!

 This has been on the cards for quite a while...

I got the Goblin Spider Riders out of the Orc and Goblin Battalion; I've worked out a 500 point army based on the contents of that box and the Orc Warboss I brought on the same day. I used the experimental way of painting the Goblin skin that I did in my previous blog some months ago, however one problem I have always had with Orcs and Goblins is that I find painting the same model over and over again quite dull. I soldiered through it but to be honest these sometimes feel more like work than actual fun. Still, for me painting is a means to an end anyway, and I wouldn't do it if I didn't think I was going to get a game out of it at the end. An odd sentiment, given that I've only played 2 games in Games Workshop so far this year, and they've both been Lord of the Rings games...

Wouldn't want one of these in your bath...

So with these, I stuck to the colour scheme used before, as I said. However, this time it didn't work quite so well; I suffered from the curse of the white undercoat. When you miss a part with the black undercoat, what you're left with is a part of the model that's, well, black. This usually happens in what would probably be a shaded part of the model anyway so you can get away with it to a certain extent. Not so easy with the white undercoat, where you're left with a white splodge that looks like you can't paint properly. You can't tell from the photo because of the lighting (you try it at 1am!) and also because it most often occurred around the back of the model, but the mistakes are there. I also think I was a bit heavy-handed with the red; the colour is only really supposed to be used for decorative purposes in this army, and the abundance of feathers made the use of it a lot more frequent than it probably should have been. Still, they do look like an army, though I have yet to see what the effect will be like when I put the whole thing together. Stay tuned...

Are you talking to ME???

Honorary mention to this fellow, who will be leading the army. I actually painted them at the same time as the goblins I painted before... but I completely forgot to paint the Snotling on his shoulder! That was a part of my motivation for doing the Spider Rider Goblins next; I use the same mix of Snakebite Leather for the skin of the Goblins as the Snotling so I could tie the two together here. The overall effect of the paint scheme works well for this Orc Big Boss I think; it's mean, it's gritty, he's got this huge f**koff axe that even the best of us should know to keep away from (in actual fact, it's the Tormentor Sw- er, axe, which on the off chance you take a wound from it and survive, gives you Stupidity for the rest of the game. Not much use in low points games because it's rare you come across anything with more than one wound, but that doesn't mean I won't come across any ethereals that I'll need a magic weapon to deal with...) and I really like the mask because it's impossible to tell what he's thinking, though his posture suggests that it won't be anything good.

So what's next for the army? Actually, nothing at all just yet. I have this sort of rule: For every 250 points of army I collect, I have to collect 1 piece of scenery. That way, by the time I have a sizeable force, I might actually have a collection of scenery to play with it on! Fences and walls will therefore be next, very boring, but I've never painted them before so it'll be worth giving it a go. After that, the Orcs for the army maybe, though I have Space Marines and Lord of the Rings stuff to paint as well so we'll have to see.

See you soon!

17/8/2011: Resident Evil

I'm actually thinking of writing to Bandai and asking them to rename their Resident Evil Card Game like this:

RESIDENT EVIL: NEW AND EVER-MORE INVENTIVE WAYS FOR MATT TO GET HIMSELF KILLED.


Not hard to see how this one went, but it's worth noting that Dave had decided to play the hard version of the game - where all the monsters do 10 more damage than they're supposed to, and any effects are applied twice. This - plus my overconfident stupidity - is what cost me in the end...

At least it won't take so long to set up now that we've got it - there's 6 core items that are included in every game, and the remaining 12 can either be a pre-set that the game suggests, or 12 of whatever the hell you like. I think Dave was all for the latter but I think that could lead to a very unbalanced game if you don't know what you're doing so I insisted that we follow the 'Classic Horror' pre-set, at least for now.

Because we knew how ferociously hard the enemies in the mansion could become, we didn't venture in there for about an hour, instead using our turns to build up our collection of weapons in to something we could actually use. My character was Claire Redfield, and her effect is making her ammunition count as 10 more than what it actually is - invaluable, as I then don't need to draw so many ammo cards in order to fire the big guns. I had to make sure I got my hands on the full-bore machine gun - you need a lot of ammo to use it, but I had the character that would have made it all the more easy.

I have a peculiar gaming mantra: while I tend to play defensively, I'm also aware of the benefits of taking risks - after all, as I'll happily tell anyone who'll listen, not taking risks is how Napoleon cost himself Russia. So after building up a sizeable collection of weapons I was the first to enter the mansion, and I was building up a good set of kills and commendations. I never got so far ahead of Dave that he wouldn't have been able to catch up if he'd killed the Uroboros plant - that monster is worth 8 commendations and as soon as it dies, the game ends. The fact that it can kill most of the female characters and a significant number of the males in one fell swoop usually decides the matter without the need to count up your commendations, and I only avoided this because I'd come across some herbs earlier in the mansion that boosted Claire's health from 70 to 90. Nonetheless, for a while it all seemed to be going my way.

This was never going to end well for Claire...

And then it happened - I went into the mansion with 45 attack points and came across a Hunter. In the normal game, that would have been fine. In the Hard game, I fell just short of being able to kill it, and it wasted me for 50 points. In a moment of intense stupidity I decided to go back to the mansion without healing myself, with about the same amount of attack points, and came across a Licker. And again, had this been the normal game, I'd have gotten away with it. But no. There was the licker with 50 attack points, and me with 45 and about half my health. The ensuing battle was very short.

So, another game handed to Dave via my reckless abandon. To be fair, going in to the mansion again without healing myself was the worst idea I'd had in a long long time, and it cost me, but in all other respects I think I played quite well. Always looking forward to the next one, which won't be for a while because I'm extremely busy in the evenings and probably most of the days next week.

Painting blog coming up next, see you soon...

New Space Marine Scouts

Hello! It’s been a while since I’ve posted on here for a number of different reasons, namely holidays, band and work, but I’m back now and I’ve got t-shirts or pictures, hopefully, if I can get it to work, for everybody.

Firstly, a quick note about the role-play: The regular readers, if any, will have noticed I’m not posting any more blogs that relate to things that went on at Role Play club. Just so we’re all clear on this, I’m still in the club, and the only session I’ve missed since I joined was the week I was on holiday. And I still play the games and I really enjoy them. But the obligation to blog them up every single time I did it was, I have to be honest, more work than fun, so I won’t necessarily be doing it again. Or at least, not any that relate to the club; if I do some home games I might think about it but I’m a long way away from that yet.

So, on to the main event: Space Marine Scouts!

So what’s brought this on? Well, judging by the fact that a great many – if not all – hobbyists paint or play Space Marines at some point, I found the temptation too hard to ignore. It will be a nice change to play with a ‘good guy’ army, and having Space Marines as the heroes of the universe lends a nice protagonist nature. What I didn’t want to do was get a Space Marine army by getting a Battleforce, or Assault on Black Reach; no standardised forces for me thank you. I much prefer the idea of a bitter struggle, a desperate fight for survival and really developing the characters in my army. Enter the Black Consuls…

All the Space Marine Codex has to say about the Black Consuls is this: “Recorded as annihilated at the Siege of Goddeth Hive, 455.M41. Current status unknown.” Deliberately vauge, but I think that’s the whole point: To a certain kind of hobbyist, it’s nice to fill in the gaps for yourself, and I’m one of them. The codex doesn’t say where Goddeth Hive was, who wiped the Consuls out, or why, and I’m not going to assume responsibility for this. What I am going to do is create the chapter again, after a desperate attempt to rebuild its former glory. What I will say is this: Though the chapter is now active, its master knows not to make a show of it just yet. They are nowhere near the strength they need to operate in anything other than the utmost secrecy…

Inspired by an article in a recent edition of White Dwarf, I decided to gear the army around Cities of Death, which so far has lended itself to how I’m doing the paint job but there you are. It fits in with the idea of remaining in the hive to rebuild the chapter. All Space Marines start out as Scouts, everybody knows that, so Scouts was the best option for me to go with. I gave them a Heavy Bolter because I’m picturing having to deal with more infantry than vehicles, and besides with the reduced ballistic skill of the Scouts I feel they would appreciate the ability to fire 3 shots per turn rather than 1. With Scouts, Hellfire rounds is an option that I fully intend to employ, but I need to be careful when and where; just because they can do something doesn’t mean that they should.

Sergeant Collatinus leads his brothers into yet another conflict...

For the painting, this is the colour scheme described in the codex, black and gold. I don’t know how I’m going to reconcile the shoulder trims should I decide to include regular Space Marines in the army – the colour scheme changes with each company – but I’m a long way from that at this point, and Scouts don’t have shoulder trims, so problem solved. I’ve done some battle damage on them as well; I wouldn’t usually be inclined to do this with Space Marines because they do make an effort to look after their armour and equipment so battle damage on Space Marines is not as common as you might think. However, the idea I wanted to get across here was of seasoned campaigners; they may be out on missions for weeks or months before they get a chance to come back and maintain their equipment, and would doubtless get in to a few fights along the way, so most of these models are going to be damaged to a certain extent. One thing that worked out very well I think was the appalling damage to Sergeant Collatinus' right eye, done by being a bit clever with a modelling knife, red paint and a purple wash, giving him the look of a man who's just lost an eye in a fight and still wants to come back for more. I am pleased with the way the skin tone and fatigues work with the armour; colour selection was actually quite important for this. One thing I wasn’t too happy about was the freehand; you can’t see it on the photos but I was trying to paint their squad number on their shoulder pads. The insignia on the left shoulder didn’t work out too badly, but the Roman numerals on the right shoulder looks like they were done by a 6 year old with a white chalk. I might have to re-do those at a later time; it’s not something I make a habit of because I don’t like going over old ground but I do want this army to look quite good so it will probably become necessary.

Now I know what you’re thinking: Where did I come up with the name? Actually I didn’t come up with it at all. As they are the Black Consuls, I thought I’d name them after, well… consuls. So I dragged up a list of consuls off Wikipedia and named Brother Sergeant Tarquinius Collatinus after one of the names I found. With my usual approach to things I will probably name them all in order. Now, if you know anything about the Roman approach to names, you’ll know that there was usually a ‘praenomina,’ which would be the equivalent of your first name. The consuls were no exception but the choice of first names was very limited and in a formal setting you’d usually be called by your family name anyway. So I decided to leave them out of my army, reasoning that 2 names were quite enough for a Space Marine to be getting on with!

So what’s next for the army? I’ve brought a captain for them, and I’m quite excited about this one because it’s not a model you would typically see leading a Space Marine army. However I’m tied up in some other projects at the moment, not least of which the Goblin Spider Riders I’ve been painting on and off for a couple of months now. Who knows what will come next? See you then…