The Tale of Four Armies

 So, I've made a bit of a rash promise to myself.

Yesterday, I was writing down my new year's resolutions and an idea struck me that I posted before it was fully formed.

It was to work on four armies for Warhammer: The Old World: Bretonnians, Vampire Counts, Wood Elves and Skaven...at the same time.

This initially appears to be a massive undertaking, but three of those armies are already assembled and painted to varying degrees and the less said about the last one the better (that's the rash bit).

The aim is to get all four armies to specific goal points during the year and play some games with them.

I'm not necessarily going to do work on each army concurrently, or weekly, but I think I will aim to get something achieved with each of them every month and possibly do a round up post in the manner of the original Tale of Four Gamers articles in White Dwarf.

So without further ado, let's look at the challenges I've set myself.

Army 1 - Bretonnia

Challenge: Be able to play each of the scenarios of the Circle of Blood campaign pack with fully painted forces.

Initially, this seems fairly straightforward as I recently announced that my army had just about hit 2000 points of fully painted miniatures.

However, the scenarios offer a specific set of challenges which mean I'll need to paint more units. Not were they designed before the inception of Pegasus Knights, most of the scenarios allow only a single character and put restrictions on what units can be fielded, meaning that I can't currently field an army for any of them.

The first scenario, Night Battle at Mercal, for example, allows only a single unit of Knights Errant and the rest must be peasants. I think I can currently get to about 700 points of the 1000 required.

Also, I just need more knights if I'm actually going to use this army in games with other people.

However, one thing I don't need to do are the special characters as my recent attempts at kitbashing have happily solved this problem before it arose.

Army 2 - Vampire Counts

Challenge: Be able to play each of the scenarios of the Circle of Blood campaign pack with fully painted forces.

Yes, it's the same challenge but with a slightly different focus.

Actually fielding the different armies for each scenario presents less of a challenge to my current army despite the same limit on characters. However, I'm really not happy with the appearance of some (most) of these units as they were done at a time when I really wasn't enjoying painting and some very dodgy strategies were employed to get the army on the table.

I present Exhibit A.

Therefore the main focus of this challenge is to get to the point where I'm not embarrassed to put them out on the table. This will involved highlighting and detailing what are essentially badly done base coats on units like the zombies, and in some cases stripping models to start again.

I also need to sort myself out with a model for the Red Duke himself.

Army 3 - Wood Elves

Challenge: Rebase and restore the army to at least 2000 points.

So these boys need moving back over to Warhammer basing from Kings of War. I'll also need to dig out those models that didn't make it onto the multi-bases and give them the same treatment the rest got (washing and matt varnish) during the first rebasing.

I also want to have a look at highlighting these models up a bit because they seem somewhat flat to my eyes now and I'd like them to pop a bit more.

In all honesty, this is probably the easiest of the four challenges to achieve, something that can't be said for the last one.

Army 4 - Skaven

Challenge: Paint up and play a game with a 1000 point force of Skaven.

So this is the big one.

What you can see in the picture above represents only about 500 points of Skaven, and half of that is the Grey Seer. I'm hoping either Rat Swarms or Giant Rat packs make it into the new edition, as I think painting up the swarm models will be quick and simple.

Even getting all of these done is going to be a bit of an effort.

The Final Challenge

So there we have it. However, I'm going to throw in one final requirement for myself, which ties in to one of my other resolutions.

Challenge: No new models may be bought for an army whilst there are still models for the army in the Lead Mountain.

This should keep me honest and prevent things getting out of hand with four armies on the go.

Admittedly, I don't actually have anything to paint for the Bretonnians, and with the launch date for Warhammer: The Old World having been announced, that's a dangerous position to be in.

Mind you, my first order of business for them is 200 points of peasants, and there's no way I'm paying GW prices for their Men-at-Arms or Bowmen kits. 

This is Cheaphammer after all.

Acquired: 0

Painted: 0

Lead Mountain: 890