Sea of Green

Despite having painted up an entire Warriors of Nurgle army made up of very old miniatures in the last year and a half, I haven't actually played a game of Warhammer: The Old World in just over two years.

I've also never used a Chaos army in any iteration of Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

I'd like these facts to be borne in mind in what follows.

Pete and I arranged to play a 1500 point game of Warhammer: The Old World last weekend and I saw this as an opportunity to finally get my 'new' army on the table.

Pete has also been building an army of Orcs and Goblins and was keen to give them a try.

My army consisted of pretty much everything I've painted, all with the Mark of Nurgle:

Winged Daemon Prince

Chaos Sorcerer Lord

9 Chaos Warriors

25 Chaos Marauders

3 Chaos Ogres

1 Chaos Chariot

1 Warpfire Dragon

Pete's army seemed to consist of a billion greenskins. More precisely I think it was:

Black Orc Warlord

Orc Shaman

14 Black Orcs

20 Orcs (two hand weapons)

20 Orcs (spears)

20 Goblins (spears)

20 Goblins (short bows)

2 Orc Chariots

3 Stone Trolls

Giant

The scenario we rolled up forced deployment in the centre (so no refused flank shenanigans) and pretty much guaranteed we would largely just smack into each other and see what happens.

Orc Turn 1

The Orcs opened up with a predictable surge forward and the Shaman summoned the Foot of Gork to come slamming down. Fortunately, only the big toe grazed my lines and a single wound was done to both the Chaos Warriors and my Chariot.

Nurgle Turn 1

Given that I had nothing to shoot the incoming horde with (before anybody mentions it, the game was half over before I realised the Warpfire Dragon is technically a stone thrower), I surged forward in return, trying to guess the distance I needed to ensure the Orcs were unlikely to teach my lines.

In what proved to be a terrible idea, I dispatched my Daemon Prince over to my left flank to contend with the Goblins and Chariots - essentially taking him out of the game.

Meanwhile the Dragon lurked on my right flank, ready to pounce.

Orc Turn 2

Charges were made and, fortunately for me, most of them were failed. Only the Giant made it into contact and proceeded to make heavy weather of the Chaos Warriors, which proved surprisingly resilient and also began to chip away at the Giant's wounds.

Nurgle Turn 2

With the Orcs very close, my heavy hitters sprang into action. The Chariot and Dragon slammed into the Orcs with two hand weapons and drove them back, narrowly missing out on breaking the unit and turning the flank.

The Giant and Warriors of Nurgle continued to trade blows, with the Warriors managing to win combat thanks to some truly terrible dice from Pete.

Orc Turn 3

More charges were declared and again failed as the Black Orcs missed out on getting to grips with the Marauders. However, the Chariots were now in position to wreak havoc on the next turn as they had evaded my Daemon Prince (who you can just about see dicking about with Goblins in the background).

However, the Stone Trolls did make contact with the Chaos Ogres, narrowly winning the fight. The Ogres failed the subsequent break test and were run down.

If only there had been a general nearby.

Nurgle Turn 3

Realising that they were probably doomed, the Marauders charged into the Black Orcs as it was their best option of survival, whilst the Warpfire Dragon moved to threaten the rear.

It was at this point that I found out about it's breath weapon and it managed to clip the back of the Black Orcs, killing a couple of them.

with the Giant having been reduced to a single wound on the previous turn, I was hopeful that the two remaining Warriors and the Sorcerer could finish him off.

The Sorcerer, seeking to hasten this outcome, managed to miscast a spell, which proceeded to kill both Warriors and not hurt the Giant, which wasn't wholly under the template because it's huge.

Predictably, the lone Sorcerer was squished with a headbutt whilst the Marauders were driven back by the Black Orcs.

The only bright spot in this fluster-cuck of a turn was that the Marauders were driven so far back that only one of Chariots would be able to come screaming into their flank.

Orc Turn 4

Waarrrgghhh! Chop! Chop! Splat!

Things turned out for the Marauders pretty much as you'd expect, apart from the fact that they rolled insane courage on their break test and held their ground.

However, in other news, my Chariot finally lost combat, broke and was run down by the three...count 'em, three remaining Orcs.

Nurgle Turn 4

All that was left for me to do was charge my Warpfire Dragon into a losing fight in the vain hope of breaking the general and creating a wave of panic that caused the whole army to flee...assuming that's a thing that can still happen.

Anyway, it didn't work.

***

We called it there as I'd been comprehensivly battered.

It had been a really fun game where I'd learned a few important lessons about my new army:

1. Don't send my general off on a wild goose chase.

2. Paint up a few more Warriors of Chaos and Chaos Ogres to given them some backbone.

3. Remember that the Warpfire Dragon is also a stone thrower.

4. Don't leave the Chariot unsupported.

5. Don't rely on the Marauders to kill stuff.

6. Remember that Gaze of the Gods is a thing.

I am going to scour my lead pile to see what I can do to bulk out some units, perhaps splitting the Marauders into two speedbump units.

However, I did enjoy a game with an army that was so direct and resilient, it's a very different feeling to my Undead, Wood Elves and Bretonnians, and it was definitely nice to finally play a game with these miniatures.

Anyway, happy October!

Path of Damnation: Damned, but not Lost

Regular readers of the blog will know that just over a year ago I sold my soul to Nurgle and set out to create a Warriors of Chaos army for Warhammer: The Old World using only models that were collected in the dim and distant past by a teenage me.

I have now put the finishing touches to that army by adding a handful of models and a command group to the Chaos Marauders, the unit I began with.

My own personal rule for this army was that it needed to fit the Oldhammer brief and only feature miniatures which were produced in the early 90s or before, and there were to be no duplicate models.

The aim was to get an army which evoked the cover image of Realms of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned).

I've drafted in every metal Chaos Warrior, Chaos Thug, Beastmen, Chaos Dwarf, Barbarian, Minotaur and monster that I could lay my hands on, supplemented with a handful of plastic miniatures from Heroquest and Warhammer Quest.

Perhaps the most recognisable model in this batch is the dynamically posed, and taller than I remembered, Warhammer Quest Barbarian.

He will take the role of unit champion, but I may need to lighten his skin at some point as I think he lacks a little definition.

Also from the boardgame department is this Zombie from Heroquest. I've come to really like this sculpt and have started to look for ways to use more of them in other projects.

Although he's joining a unit of, very much alive, Chaos Marauders, he's also a nod to the fact that the first Nurgle army list did allow units of Plague Zombies and Plague Skeletons.

I've also been drafting in a handful of Blood Bowl star players, who are very much Chaotic in nature and add a flamboyant amount of mutation to the army.

This is Dieter Hammerlash, one of a very early batch of star players, whose star card I first got from a copy of White Dwarf.

Although he could quite easily have been given a Tzeentchian flavour (he has a touch of the Pink Horror about him), I've gone for a more fleshy look and just added a weapon.

The most obvious Blood Bowl player of the bunch is also the most fitting for a Nurgle army: Bilerot Vomitflesh.

I was presented with a conundrum of how to get his very 'football' look to fit in, and so I opted to turn him into a musician, by giving him a bell ( which I think is from the Grenadier Undead Mammoth I wish I still owned) to dangle.

I also added a shield on his other arm to make him a little less sporty looking.

The final miniature and standard bearer for the unit is Slarga Fourstrike (which I've discovered the internet often, wrongly, refers to as Slarga Fourstrike - check his card).

I commited Oldhammer sacrilege and pinned the banner, which was cobbled together from my bits box, in place and left him at that.

I'm really pleased with this one.

And there we have it.

A 2000 point Warriors of Nurgle army for Warhammer: The Old World. Admittedly it's probably not very good and needs a hefty chunk of magic items to get across the points threshold, but that's pretty normal for Chaos armies.

This army has been at least 37 years in the making and I'm actually a little bit choked up to finally have the Chaos army (or at least a variation of it) that I planned so long ago.

In other news, I've printed and painted some rock formations.

They're not really exciting enough for their own post, so they're here.

Acquired: 15

Painted: 79

Lead Mountain: 698

Path of Damnation: Organised Chaos

After a bit of a hiatus, I've finally got around to working on the last few models for my Oldhamner Nurgle army by completing the command models for my unit of Chaos Warriors.

This includes a Chaos Sorcerer of Nurgle. Along with a standard bearer and a musician bringing along a little bit of star quality to the army.

This is because two of these models are actually converted Blood Bowl star players.

The Chaos Sorcerer, however, has nothing to do with Blood Bowl and is one of the frankly excellent range of metal Chaos Champions that were released around the same time at Realms of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned.

This model, along with a small handful of nuglings and a single Pestigor, is one of the factors that convinced me to sell my soul to Grandfather Nurgle, as I couldn't see a scenario where this model would fit into a force dedicated to one of the other powers.

The standard bearer is based on Dorjak Sureclaw, a Chaos Star Player for the second edition of Blood Bowl. He was a somewhat lacklustre player, having fairly average stats, a couple of minutes not skills and the claw mutation.

It always seemed odd to me that he had the Sure Hands skill as he wouldn't be handling the ball with his claw. Mind you, his other hand is massive.

The claw and big hand perhaps suggest Dorjak might be more suited to the service of Slaanesh or Tzeentch, but the gods of Chaos are fairly easy going when doling out mutations.

I'm not massively happy with the banner. It feels a bit too simplistic but I'm never great with free-handing.

Also from the second edition Blood Bowl stable of Star Players is my musician, Galmen Goreblade, who was much more useful in a Chaos team, being fast, strong and having the Mighty Blow skill.

I really like the fallen noble aesthetic of this model.

To make him a musician I have used the same trick I used on my Age of Sigmar Skaven. Giving him a bell-flail. This is also a nod to a very old model in the Chaos range that has a similarly blank helmet and was armed with a mace and a bell.

And so there we have my full unit of Chaos Warriors on foot (the Warhammer Quest model will be the unit champion).

I want to do something more with the banner and there hasn't been an edition of the game where 10 expensive and easily avoidable heavy infantry haven't been a bad choice, but perhaps having a sorcerer in their ranks will bring the enemy to them.

I just have a handful more thugs/Beastmen/marauders to finish off and my Path of Damnation will be complete.

Acquired: 11

Painted: 50

Lead Mountain: 723

Protagonist vs Antagonist

In the run up to Christmas I was still in a Fallout mood, but obviously was unable to buy more with festivities around the corner and not knowing what I was going to get.

Therefore, I once again turned my attention to using what I already had: a pile of unpainted miniatures and a 3d printer.

And the result was a 3d printed Vault-Tec Poster Girl and a kitbashed version of a Fallout 3 character, the Antagonizer (the ants are models I already had and are from Crooked Dice).

Both of these models demonstrate a certain amount of ingenuity on my part and I'm quite proud of both of them.

Easiest to talk about is the Antagonizer, who is a character that you can meet in Fallout 3 that is engaged in a superhero-supervillain conflict with the Mechanist in the town of Canterbury Commons. 

Your character can intervene in this situation, taking one side or the other. A third option exists, which was the path I trod, where you kill both of them because you repeatedly say the wrong thing.

Interestingly, there is an official model for the Mechanist in Fallout Wasteland Warfare, but not for the Antagonizer (yet). I suspect this is because whilst there are plenty of robots for the Mechanist to command, there aren't any Giant Ant models, which is odd, as they are a fairly frequent hazard.

However, I did have a model from Crossover Miniatures called Whiskers knocking about from my proxy Marvel project. I liked the model (which is clearly Catwoman inspired) but had not found a use for it. Until now.

The model comes with a range of heads and tails, but the best fit is one with cat ears that needed filing off and antennae (bits of staple) adding. I also filled the hole in the base of the spine for her tail.

It's a fairly good fit, although the mask covers the whole face and the armour is somewhat less spiky. However, a nice touch is the knife strapped to her leg as the Antagonizer's weapon is a knife called the Ant's Sting.

Painting was quite interesting as it's quite hard to get a clear image of the character in Fallout 3 as she's mainly encountered underground. The colour of her armour can vary quite a lot between images. I when for black and gold as I felt it would be in the right ballpark without just being a mush of browns.

I'm really quite pleased with the outcome, although I need to put some though into what profile I am going to use for her in the game, and I probably need to put together a custom card.

The Vault Girl came as a part of a Humble Bundle of Fallout files and STLs I picked up before I had a 3d printer. She's actually the model that demonstrated the limits of my FDM printer when I first got it as its thin limbs small details proved too much for tree supports and even a 0.2mm nozzle could handle.

However, I've found a way around the problem.

Or more pertinently, a YouTube channel called Painted 4 Combat has with a tool called Resin2FDM.

Basically, this is a plug in for Blender that allows you to thicken the supports from pre-supported resin STLs and make them suitable for printing with an FDM printer.

The 'lite' version of the plug in is free to download and obviously required me to download Blender. However, despite never using either program, it was really easy, especially as the channel's guide video walks you through the whole process.

The outcome is a pretty dame good print. Still not as good as a resin print, but definitely better than my previous efforts and certainly good enough to use.

The model comes with a sculpted base that I was able to print more conventionally, although I did manage to clip off the pegs from. The feet of the miniature before realising there were holes for then to slot into, making gluing the whole thing together a bit more awkward.

As you can see, when painted, the details are pretty good. The undersides of arms and keys are a little less good, but, as I said, I'm really happy with it.

Painting was done really simply with bright colours and the outcome is a model that I actually think is better than the pvc miniature of Nora that can in the starter set.

I've not yet had any success with other sculpts as I've been away since Christmas Day and the one miniature I did try was a Carnevale sculpt that hasn't worked, however I'm looking forward to trying out a few more sculpts.

On the subject of Christmas, Carnevale and Fallout, Ive gad a bit of a haul this year. Mrs Cheaphammer took advantage of Black Friday at Element Games in Sheffield to make the pounds stretch a little further and I now have the latest Carnevale starter set, World's Faire After-Party, and the Hollywood Heroes set for Fallout Wasteland Warfare featuring characters from the TV series.

They were also running a paint lucky dip which garnered me a Camo Green that will definitely see use and a Purple airbrush paint which might not.

On top of this I got a haul of Horus Heresy boxes that actually have me pondering whether to start a new army. The Predator and Jet Bikes would fit perfectly on not my Blood Angels army, but the Mk II Assault Troops come armed with chainaxes, which aren't available to loyalist marines in 2nd edition, which we've stuck with.

This is making me consider starting a traitor, specifically World Eaters or Sons of Horus, or Blackshields forces. However, I'm also tempted to create some converted Angels Tears for the Blood Angels.

I received the Ravening Hordes book for Warhammer: The Old World, which contains the army lists for Orcs & Goblins, Beastmen, Tomb Kings and, most importantly for me, Warriors of Chaos. 

This allows me to run my Nurgle army in Warhammer: The Old World, and the Arcane Journal adds rules for Warp Dragons making the whole army game legal.

Finally, as part of this year's 7TV Secret Santa, I received this handful of Robin Hood themed miniatures from David.

It's a sprue of Oathmark Humans, who can easily be kitted out as Merry Men, but might also serve at Rangers of Gondor or Ruffians in MESBG. However , there's also a couple of Norman soldiers carrying a chest and so, given that I've at least one Norman miniature in my backlog. I might very well venture into a Sherwood Forest based project next year.

All in all, it's been a good few days, giving me plenty to be cracking on with.

Acquired: -52 

Painted: 532

Lead Mountain: 246

Honour Your Ancestors

There are many plastic Dwarfs that have emerged from the subterranean halls of Games Workshop and they have gone by many names.

However, whether they are known as Dwarfs, Squats, Fyreslayers, Kharadron Overlords, or the Leagues of Votan, they can all trace their lineage back to the same ancient heroes.

Technically, the first multi-part plastic Dwarfs were made of the amazingly named 'psychostyrene' and came in blister packs of three for the amazing price of 75p.

Yes, I absolutely did pick up a pack with my pocket money, but sadly they disappeared long ago.

What I do have though, are these guys...

These are the Dwarfs from the Fantasy Regiments box, which boasted of 60 miniatures for £9.99 and contained 10 models of some x fantasy races: Dwarfs, Wood Elves, Dark Elves, Orcs, Goblins and Skaven.

Calling them multi-part was a bit of a stretch, given that this boiled down to two head options for each pose, alternate weapons for the Orcs, Skaven and Dwarfs, and optional shields for everyone except the Wood Elves.

As, you can see, I haven't retained any of the hammer options to replace the default axes, and a couple of the shields aren't original, but I did manage to make use of some spare Dark Elf crossbows to offer a bit of variation.

The cunning 'strapped-to-the-back' kitbash trick has allowed me to put together four rangers as well as the five clansdwarfs and also give a better look at the whole models.

To be fair, for almost 40 year old models (they were released in 1987) l, the hold up pretty well.

Yes, they are pretty much monopose and only rank up diagonally, but they are characterful minis that paint up.well. aldo, slight changes like the heads, weapon options and positioning of the shields (and crossbows) make for just enough variation.

The decision to use the crossbows was driven by a couple of factors. Firstly, I genuinely thought they were for the Dwarfs as I do not have any of the Dark Elves. Secondly, several of the Dwarfs had scarring on their backs from prior assembly and painting.

In fact, the guy with the shield on his back is hiding a pretty nasty gouge which had been made by a somewhat corrosive glue.

They'll look perfectly good when mixed up with a few more interesting metal miniatures, which leads me to...

This chap is not of the same provenance as the rest of my Dwarfs, being a 90's sculpt. He's also clearly a Ironbreaker (a heavily armoured Dwarf) and so can't really firm a unit with my hand weapon and shield crowd.

However, he was remarkable easy to paint.

Due to the amount of armour on display, I did all of this batch with a silver undercoat, hit them with a wash of Nuln oil and then worked up the other colours, allowing me to get them done pretty quickly.

Finally we get to these two heroes.

On the right we have Sven Hammer helm, the Dwarf hero from Advanced Heroquest. As it was released in 1989, Sven is a touch more spritely than the rank and file, and shows how quickly Games Workshop were moving forward in their development of plastic miniatures.

On the left, with the unfeasibly large axe, we have the Dwarf from Warhammer Quest from 1995. Already you can see an aesthetic change towards massively long beards, comically large weapons and more dynamic poses, something that would ultimately result in Fyreslayers balancing on their bizarrely unburnt beards (no, I'm not a fan of them).

These two, along with the Heroquest Dwarf, went on plenty of adventures with me as I tended to play the Dwarf in our games.

Looking back it does seem odd that I never got around to building a Dwarf army, but I think that the immobile gunline of Warhammer Fantasy Battles wasnt really appealing. Also, by 4th edition I could get a wider range of plastic Skeletons, High Elves and Goblins more easily, prompting me to focus on them.

It's a shame because I've really enjoyed painting these and so I might have got more Dwarfs for niahed at the time if I'd known.

As it happens, I now have the very beginnings of a Dwarf army by mixing my metal and plastic miniatures together. It is only a beginning as the entire force is currently less than 500 points in Warhammer The Old World.

I am.very tempted to keep going, but as with my Nurgle Warriors of Chaos army, I'd want to keep it strictly Oldhammer.

Alternatively, I might just have enough to think about old scenarios such as those from Terror of the Lichemaster or Bloodbath at Orcs Drift. It's something to think about.

Acquired: -73

Painted: 447

Lead Mountain: 325

Path of Damnation: What a load of bull!

With the recent addition of several hard hitting characters and monsters, I figured I should probably get another unit on the table.

This also gave my another reason to procrastinate about the standard bearers and musicians that are needed for my Chaos Warrior and Marauder units.

Therefore, I took a different bull by the horns.

This unit of Minotaurs with function as Chaos Ogres in my Warhammer: The Old World army because the teaming hordes of Chaos have a somewhat rigid structure dividing them into Beastmen, Warriors and Daemons.

I, however, refuse to be bound by such restriction, and also don't have that many more options regarding units to add to the army.

I'm not sure how useful just three Minotaurs/Ogres will be, but that's what I have.

 

 

The unit champion is a lightly converted Warhammer Quest Minotaur, and these were a truly feared sight for adventurers, particularly when you drew three of them in the first room of the dungeon and immediately died.

The light conversion is a hand replacement, giving him an Ogre spiked gauntlet I had left from making a Bloodbowl team many years ago. This is to give him two hand weapons to match the rest of the unit.

I actually have two more Minotaurs like this one (although one has a club) but opted not to use them because I want the army to have no duplicate models in it. Also, the fact that he's bigger than the other two makes him an imposing champion.

The other two members of the unit are metal second edition Bloodbowl Minotaurs, hence the large pads and spiked gloves (additional hand weapons).

They are significantly smaller than both the Warhammer Quest model and the 'modern' plastics (which I hate, btw, just for reference). These were the 'big guys' of their time but stand no taller than a Primaris Space Marines.

This was from a time when something being the equivalent of seven or eight foot tall would be rightly viewed as imposing.

The final model is a curiosity, because I have no idea what this pose is meant to be representing. As a single piece model I'd that he's just a natural consequence of having to sculpt in a flat plane and try to make him visually different from the other guy.

He's also the reason why I didn't try any conversions to give the unit double handed weapons as I have no idea how I could go that on this model and make his pose look remotely natural.

This unit was unbelievably quick to paint and leaves me with about half a dozen metal models left to do from my initial plan to complete the army.

Acquired: -73

Painted: 400

Lead Mountain: 372