Horus Heresy arrives.

   Recently Games Workshop released their latest game, based on the battles of the Horus Heresy. It’s an interesting direction for the company to take. Forgeworld have been producing some fantastic miniatures based on the background that has been created by the writers over at the Black Library.

   But is it a good game. Firstly, Games Workshop has outdone itself again. I am quite happy to say again that they produce some of the greatest looking models for a box game. The models they can now produce out of plastic nowadays have come along way from the monopose models I brought as a teenager.

  Despite the game being based around the battle of Calth, Games Workshop have been very clever by creating models that are featureless enough to allow a player to paint them as any of the eighteen legions. This is great, but it leaves me with the problem of which legion.

   I’ve been a diehard Space Wolf player for twenty years so do I carry on with them or do I decide to go something a little more heretical. Over the years both the Night Lords and the Alpha Legion have inspired me. Do I go with them? I guess owning Armillys Dynat, an Alpha Legion character, gives me a good incentive to go for them.

   I do find that the terminators are a little to Ultramarines for my tastes. They match the Terminators that Forgeworld have produced, which is great. But if I want to go with Space Wolves then I need more fur and wolf tails than straps of leather. This, to me, is the only downside of the models.

   Once you open the box you get, as you would expect from Games Workshop, a vast amount of things. Aside from the sprues of models, you get dice, floor tiles and the rules. All of which are fantastic looking. I am a big fan of the fact that you rearrange the tiles in different patterns to play the different scenarios.

   The rules are straightforward and well presented. I’ve read all sorts of rulebooks. The best ones are clear and concise. The worst rule books are the ones hides rules in lengthy text that stretches over several pages. Here we get a good document that takes us through how to play the game in a nice simple manner. There is also the bonus of its layout matching the design of the Forgeworld Horus Heresy books.

   The use of cards is a great little touch. It allows us to have all the details we need to hand, without having to constantly consult a book or endless pieces of paper.

All in all this is a great little box set and I can’t wait to add it to my collection.

Back, and about time to.

So sorry, real life got in the way and I’ve not blogged in a while. I have, however, been painting. My current status stands at 444 models painted this year. I am trying to get to 500+ in a years. It’s an achievement, but I doubt that I’ll get there. It's touch and go at the moment. It's another 57 models, and I do have two weeks off. Maybe it is, but real life has a knack of getting in the way. 

 

  So what have I been painting. Well a couple of Panzer 4’s for my WW2 German army. My gaming friends and I are soon to be playing a large tank battle. These are my two contributions. They are nice models, with plenty of detail. A quick spray, and some metal work and camo stripes and the models are done. One, as you’ll notice has a tank commander. I intended to get a third, and possibly a . I’m coming down with a nasty case of Maltmanitis* and want lots of tanks.

  My US Airborne are now done. They went to the gaming day, that I was working towards, and performed admirably.  I prefer using them to my Fallschirmjagers and so I’m wondering if there needs to be some tinkering with my list. The recent release of plastic Fallschirmjagers from Warlord are a good incentive to look into fixing these issues.

  So next up on my paint table is a selection of historical and fantastical. On the Historical side, I’ve got a second unit of Hanoverians for my Napoleonic’s. I’ve just finished one unit, so the second won’t take long. I ‘ve got my colours all lined up. Further down the line we’re talking about going back to Romans vs Celts (or German’s in this case) so I’ve recently purchased a unit that I’ve wanted for a while, Celt Archers and their more hairer Germanic twins. I’m looking into digging into these two units.

Fantasy side, I’ve got lots of little odds and ends, that I’ve bought this year and not painted up for Lord of the Rings. You can see and Orc Siege Bow at the bottom of the below picture. Plus, I want to start adding to my Tomb Kings army.  It got stalled around the 2000 point limit as I ran out of enthusiasm but with the recent release of Age of Sigmar I’m excited to go back to it.

I did mentioned that I would discuss Age of Sigmar. I like it. It’s not Warhammer, but it’s not meant to be. If you want to play Warhammer, there’s eight editions for you to play. Choose your favourite and enjoy (mine’s sixth). But if you want something different there’s now Age of Sigmar.

Of course, I've yet to mention Warlords recently announced Doctor Who game. I can't wait for this to come out. I think it might cost me quite a lot so I better invest in a new, better paying, job then. Nothing wrong with owning a couple of hundred Daleks is there?

Bye for now.

*Maltmanitis: Noun – a condition that cause the patient to buy tanks in large numbers.

Sorry about the delay.

Welcome back,

  I’m sorry about the length of time between blogs, work trips and an active social life has left little time to blog. My main focus has been painting. Since my first post I’ve manage to play

two more games of Bolt Action.

  Firstly my Fallschrimjagers took to the field against 750 points worth of Brit Commando’s and were well true and driven off the field. Model of the match was the sniper who took out my opponents MMG with his first and only shot of the game. My friend then blew him into many small chunks with a  well placed mortar shell.

More recently, my ‘Mericans took to the field and though they lost the game, mainly caused by two rounds of fire from a Stuka Zu Fuss which did lots of pin markers. Despite this the game was highly enjoyable and I’m looking forward to using them again.

This is despite my air observer deciding to ignore the big scary tank but get the plane to attack his own forces and my Bazooka spectacularly failing to do anything against such a big tank.

The force is now getting closer to being finished. At the time of writing I’ve got a squad and a half, an anti tank gun, and a machine gun team and that’s a 100% painted. From there I will be adding to add some shermans in. Tanks 

Other than that, recent projects include slowly working through my mass of Lord of Rings models. 1 Eagle, some High Elf Swordsmen and Rangers of Gondor have gone through my painting table. Nothing spectacular but nice to get some more models done.

No basing yet, I’ve got a large number of models to base and I’ve got an upcoming week of where they’ll get done. I don’t enjoy basing, but once it’s done the models are improved.

More excitingly I’ve managed to win three Grey Company models of Ebay. These were only produced for a small time before GW removed them L and so go for a price on Ebay. Not as bad as Halbarad, which was produced at the same time which I saw going for £400, for one single model, shocking.

My Lord of the Rings project has two aims. Firstly, to get one of each variant model produced. This is going quite well and I’ve got just over two hundred models left to go, which is falling rapidly.

The second aim is slightly harder and that’s to have enough models to play through each published scenario. This is slightly harder and contains over seven hundred models to go, but the number is falling and I’m quite glad that GW have stopped releasing new models as it means I’ve got chance to catch up.

  Throw this into learning how to use my camera to get the best looking photo's. Would help if I painted to an Evay Metal standard as well.

And with that I’m off to paint.

Next time Oldhammer and the Age of Sigmar.

Welcome

Hi,

  Welcome to my blog. Over the years this is going to my record of how I deal with my lead mountain. Well, lead, white metal, plastic, and resin mountain. I'm a war gamer with lots, and lots, of unpainted models.

  So we're going to start with the current project.

  So this is project number one. Our current wargaming project is a series of games based around the D Day landing. For this, I'll be using a US Airborne army. We're using Bolt Action as our rules set. Honestly, this is not a game that I like. I have issues with the dice pulling mechanisms. Apart from that, it's a good little game.

Now, this is my whole force, around about 1100 points. The core of the force is 4 squads. 3 squads are 8 men and the fourth squad is a ten man squad, with various support choices. Long term plans for this army is tanks, lots of tanks. I can see some M3's on the way.

  Other projects I have on the go is Lord of the Rings. I'm a massive fan of the books and the films, so I was over the moon when Games Workshop begun producing models. I've got several thousands models and more to come. This includes a Smaug. So watch out for them.

I'm going to start on a Tomb Kings / Vampire Counts army for Age of Sigmar. These will be on a square base to allow me to make them backwards comparable for older editions of Warhammer as well. 

This is a brief overview of current projects. I've got more projects on the go. Romans, Napoleonic's, Tau, Space Wolves, Alpha Legion, Pirates, Cowboys and ACW, to name just a few. 

See you all soon.