Call of the Hunt: A Tale of 4 Armies

This journey back into the nostalgia of my Warhammer armies has brought home to me how much I've changed as a collector, gamer and painter.

And no unit has done this more than the final unit for my Wood Elf army: the The Wild Riders.

Yes.

You're right, they're not Wild Riders, they are actually kitbashed from the Glade Rider box. This was a time when money tighter, Glade Riders were rubbish and the metal models were unappealing.

I don't think converting Wild Riders from the Glade Rider kit was an original idea I had, I'm sure I saw it on a forum somewhere, but as the plastic box contained swords, spears and other assorted weaponry, all that was required to 'convert' the Glade Riders into Wild Rain sets was making a few appropriate choices when assembling the models and filling in the holes in their backs where the cloaks (with moulded on quivers) were attached.

The less-than-skillful filling with blu-tac (yes, you read that right) was inexpertly covered with either spears or some of the millions of small blades that came on the different sprues strapped across them.

All in all, they are a passable job that is clearly different from the Glade Riders (especially with the different colour palette) and has never caused any confusion on the table. The only slight problem is that in Warhammer: The Old World someone has had the bright idea to give them shields rather than have them getting extra attacks on the second round of combat, so at some point I'm going to have to find a way to add those.

I'm terms of painting, I did very much the same thing as I did with my Wardancers: softening the orange of the robes, evening out the leather, giving the wood some variation and adding vibrancy to the skin, hair and stitching.

The horses were done the same way as the Glade Riders: darkening the hair and adding a coat of Apothecary White contrast paint over the somewhat scratchy drybrushing I'd done to smooth it out.

As I was doing this it became apparent just how sloppy I was when building these models. Lots of plastic tags needed trimming properly and the mould-line police would have a field day. I was also scruffy with my painting and had left plenty of details unattended.

I think this is because I wasn't yet using magnifying glasses when painting and hadn't quite worked out how bad my eyesight had become. It was blogging and the associated photographs that brought this to my attention and these were done pre-blog.

It's scary to think that I just didn't see the issues; or maybe I was just more chilled about such things then. At tabletop range they looked fine.

Barring a couple more Wild Riders (to turn the one unit of 8 into two units of 5), a kitbashed Spellsinger and my Grenadier dragon, that's they whole army ready for action. I've also got a couple of Great Eagles that were switched over to Lord of the Rings that can come back over to square bases, but I'm going to take a break from The Old World for a bit and leave this army where it is.

Importantly, what I now have is an army that I can use against people outside my regular gaming group as it has the official base sizes.

I'm toying with the idea of trying out a tournament for the first time in many years, although I must admit to being a bit nervous.

I'm the very definition of a casual gamer these days, skipping backwards and forwards between systems and the events I'm more used to are 7TV events where the rules are treated like guidelines at best -and that's by the designers.

Warhammer events are a different kettle of fish. People actually take them seriously and there's league tables, standings and the sort of stuff that makes people act weird.

I might dip my toe in by trying to arrange a game with someone at a FLGS over the Easter holiday and see how I feel going forward.

I'm really pleased with what I've done with my armies, it's been a proper nostalgia hit. However, observant readers will have noticed that in this Tale of 4 Armies, I've only worked on three of them.

The Skaven currently remains untouched for a few reasons. Firstly, I've been busy with the other three, but I also know that Skaven armies are big and will be a lot of work. I'm tempted to move in a different direction with them as I'm tempted to give Age of Sigmar a try with the new edition coming out in the summer. By chance the models I have are almost an exact replica of the units in the current Vanguard box so I know I have a viable force.

In their place I'm considering cobbling together a Chaos Army from the old models I reclaimed. Something in the vein of the weird and wonderful offerings in the original Realms of Chaos books.

Alternatively, of my old armies the only one missing is my Lizardmen army which got sold about a decade ago. I don't really miss them as they were from my 'drown it in ink' phase and so didn't look great. However, I do actually have some 5th edition Lizardmen and Skinks knocking about, so revisiting them could be an option.

Anyway, these are decisions for another day. I need to paint something else for a bit, bring back some variation to my life and actually start lowering that Lead Mountain again.

Acquired: 10
Painted: 216
Lead Mountain: 849

Muster of Malevolents: A Tale of 4 Armies

For some reason, probably laziness, when I originally painted my Treeman (Steve) and Treekin I fairly thickly coated them in Bestial Brown paint, picked out a few details, splashed them with Devlan Mud and pretty much called it a day.

As such, unlike the rest of the army, revisiting them now called for more than just tidying things up. Therefore these four got stripped back to bare metal and started again.

In Steve's case (no, I can't remember why he's called Steve, he just is) he was bought second hand and so was already painted. As was my way at the time, I didn't strip him then and just painted straight over the top of the original paint job, meaning that there was a thick layer of oozing sludge to dispose of this time.

Another side effect of him being bought second hand is that he has the wrong left arm, which not only presents the fact that it's from a different type of tree (if you look closely enough), but also that it doesn't really fit. A fact I've tried to cover with the addition of a few plastic roots from the Wood Elf sprues, which I've also used to cover a few gaps in the metal sculpt.

In terms of painting, I began with a coat of Wyldwood contrast and used drybrushing and other contrast paints to get some other shades into the wood. I'm not sure how successful I've been.

Leaves and moss were picked out and either highlighted (leaves) or washed (moss). A few fungal growths were picked out on his arm and back and then his eye sockets were made glowy green (I think you can just about see them).

He's simply done, but a big improvement, looking much more like actual wood than he ever did.

I'm looking forward to getting him on the table as the changes to cannons (D3 damage rather than D6) and Forest Spirit ward saves (negated by fire rather than magic) should make him somewhat more survivable than in the dark days of 8th edition.

Sadly, ordinary Treemen have lost their ability to cast a bound spell and Treemen Ancients (whilst being wizards) pack a lot less punch than regular Treemen. However, Steve will probably remain the heaviest hitter in my army and something my opponents will be forced to do something about, freeing up my more lightly armed threats.

The Treekin unit were painted much the same as the Treemen except there were many more vines to pick out and, as they are later models they are dripping in Forest Spites and, of course, skulls.

I've gone with blue for the Forest Spites for a few reasons. Firstly, I have a pot of Talassar Blue contrast paint and I like it. It also makes them pop, especially against the orange of the leaves on the base, livening up what can end up being really dull models.

These are the closest unit I have to a regular front line unit, meaning that they will probably spend a lot of their time trying to die as slowly as possible to hold up the enemy advance.

In 8th edition I regretted not having six of them so when the opportunity arises later in the release schedule, I suspect I'll pick up another three, even though I'm not overly keen on them.

I've no just got the Wild Riders to go in order to get my army fully rebased, and I'm hoping this can be achieved before the end of the month. I've enjoyed this process but I'd quite like to turn my attention to actually painting a wider range of models again and start chipping away at the mountain once more.

Acquired: 10
Painted: 208
Lead Mountain: 849

A Cluster of Radiants: A Tale of 4 Armies

I've had a little bit of a hiatus on the process getting my Wood Elf army rebased and polished up for use in Warhammer: The Old World.

Partly this has been down to getting distracted by Five Leagues From The Borderlands, partly down to life always being busy in March and partly down to the weather being terrible and not being able to take photos.

However, some limited progress has been made. Namely, I've got my characters done.

I have no idea if my current crop of characters will cut the mustard in The Old World, however, I did tend to run rather light on them in 6th/7th edition, and I suspect that might still be the case now. Elves are expensive, and so too much investment in characters leaves you somewhat short of Toughness 3 bodies in your army.

With all three, I've focused on brightening them up, treating the initial paint job as a base coat and highlighting up. The spires moulded on two of them have become bright blue rather than dirty green, and I've brought more gold into all three.

Obviously, they've also all been rebased.

The Glade Lord is, in my opinion, the best model in the old range, a really ferocious and heroic looking model. Yes, he's on a tactical tree-stump but that makes sense for Wood Elves.

Back in the old days I would run him on his own as an Alter Kindred, with the Helm of the Hunt, the Amber Pendant and (sometimes, the Hail of Doom Arrow). After firing off his own volley on the first turn he would run about (with M9) slaughtering whatever he came in contact with and breaking units by himself.

Sadly, this role doesn't seem possible in the new rules and there isn't really a unit I own he can join where a great weapon would be a good idea. He might not see action for a while.

My Spellweaver began life as a Waywatcher character that I picked up cheap as he was missing an arm. I improvised a staff from a banner pole and a Dryad's head and he took over as my chief magical support, moving forests about and generally being annoying.

From what I've seen, magic is going to be incredibly important in The Old World and so I expect to get a lot of use out of him. I'm not sure what spells he'll be casting yet, but he'll be invaluable in terms of magic defence.

Finally, the army battle standard bearer (BSB) began life as a High Elf Shadow Warrior and simply got an army swap. Again, I think I picked him up second hand.

BSBs can be invaluable in bolstering the morale of the main line, and even though I never expect my Glade Guard to do much in combat, being able to hold for a turn longer than expected can be crucial.

This character is the most likely to be given a magic bow, allowing him to add to the volleys of the Glade Guard he supports.

And that's it for now. These three were painted last week and I've been waiting for a chance to photograph them. I have more in the pipeline that I finished today, so depending on the weather and the time I get home, you might see them tomorrow.

Acquired: 10

Painted: 204

Lead Mountain: 849

Whirling Death: A Tale of 4 Armies

Progress continues with getting my Wood Elf Army rebased for Warhammer: The Old World with what are, to my mind, the quintessential Warhammer Wood Elf unit: the Wardancers.

I say this in full knowledge of the fact that many will consider Glade Guard or the mighty Treeman to be more iconic. There might even be folk out there that idolise the heady days of the four-horse chariot racing between the trees.

However, Glade Guard (Archers) and Treemen are arguably lifted straight out of the pages of Tolkien (whilst the chariot was a gloriously silly thing), whereas Wardancers have always felt very much a Warhammer concept.

Although I may be wrong about this as almost all of Games Workshop's IP is nicked from somewhere, Wardancers make Warhammer Wood Elves different and are responsible, I think, for pushing the design team in a more tribal direction over time, away from the well used tropes of Middle Earth.

Although I didn't strip these models, they did need fairly extensive work doing. I used my original base coat and wash paint job as a starting point and set about highlighting up pretty much every aspect of the models.

I was somewhat surprised to discover how slack I'd been at trimming flash from these models, and so there was a fair bit of tidying up to do.

The miniatures are from a range of iterations of Wardancers and I think the guy with the spear is the oldest of the bunch.

As well as cleaning up untidy paint jobs, I also took the hair and leaves to brighter yellow and green respectively to give the miniatures a bit more 'pop' on the tabletop.

Simultaneously I calmed down the orange, using Ratskin Flesh, as my Trollslayer Orange had dried up and I'm impatient. Having said that, it gives them a more earthy tone that I like.

I also took the time to get some difference between some of the browns use on the models, something I'd not bothered with previously. This also adds some visual interests.

As I'd used orange on the model, the orange leaves aren't as crucial for this unit, but it does tie the army together well.

I've now actually managed to physically rebase the entire army except for the Treeman and the Treekin as they are currently having layers of sludge removed from them. The characters and cavalry are next in line for the tidying up treatment.

Acquired: 10
Painted: 201
Lead Mountain: 849

Awakening of the Wood: A Tale of 4 Armies

And back to the forest I go for, I believe, the only unit for the Wood Elves that is actually still available on the Games Workshop website: Dryads.

Not that I ever buy direct from GW; that way madness lies.

Dryads are one of those kits that I remember to actually be a bit of a pleasure to both assemble and paint. They used to come in a box of 12 (it's 16 now) and had enough bits and variation to make every model pretty unique looking.

They also had really dynamic poses for the time, and really sinister look, so I can see why they have remained part of the Age of Sigmar range.

In fact, I think that the Dryads might have dictated the direction that the Sylvaneth (that the copywritable name GW gave to Wood Elves) range went in.

On top of that, when it came to painting, a brown base coat with a wash, followed by picking out the leaves and eyes got them looking good very quickly.

So much so that when it came to rebasing this unit, I felt no need to do any repainting at all, except for changing the eye colour.

In fact the only irritating thing about the unit was that they came in a box of 12, but the minimum unit size was 8.

Fortunately, there were enough spare bits on the sprues for me to fashion three extra Dryads emerging from the ground, something that looks much better following the rebase thanks to the Green Stuff World leaves, giving them an ambushing vibe.

I then took my total to 16, and two units by adding the metal special character model Drycha to one of the units as this was still cheaper than buying a second box.

Amusingly, now that Dryads are available as boxes of 16, Warhammer: The Old World allows you to take units of 5...plus ca change...

Drycha serves as the Nymph (unit champion) for the unit, whilst a conveniently placed animal skull identifies the Nymph in the other unit.

You'll notice that Drycha and the second unit have a more yellowish hue than the first. This is to make the units distinguishable on the tabletop (the first unit also have leaves).

Previously I had achieved this by giving them a light drybrush of a bone colour, as I was aiming for a silver birch sort of effect. However, during the rebase I gave them a coat of Skeleton Horde contrast paint to make them less jarring.

Apart from unit numbers, the reason I didn't originally use Drycha as a Branchwraith (a Dryad character) was that I had a plan to convert one of the Juan Diaz Daemonettes.

It's nothing more clever than Dryad bits stuck to the Daemonette body: notably replacing the claw arm with a Dryad arm and having lots of branches protruding from her head and back.

I'm aware that the camera really suggests that over ten years ago I really should have thinned my paints when doing the skin. However I'm leaving this model as it is for three reasons.

Firstly, I didn't want strip the model as I like it and I'm not sure that I would achieve the same effect again. Secondly, adding even more paint could just ruin it. Finally, the overly thick paint gives her skin a 'bark-like' texture which seems appropriate, suggesting that her alluring appearance is an illusion.

I'm only counting eight of these as having been painted, as one unit and the Branchwraith only had their eyes done. Still, it's nice to make some quick progress towards getting the full army done.

Acquired: 10

Painted: 193

Lead Mountain: 849

Hail of Doom: A Tale of 4 Armies

 TWANG!

Continuing with the rebase of my Wood Elf army, I've turned my attention to the core of the army; the backbone of the Asrai; the thin brown line...urgh...that sounds wrong...the Glade Guard.

In Warhammer: The Old World, the Wood Elf army requires at least one unit of Glade Guard to be included. This rule takes me back to the 3rd edition Warhammer Armies book and the reason why I never started a Wood Elf army back then...because in 3rd you had to include 30 archers before you could pick anything else.

As it happens, I do actually have 30 archers in total, but felt like a lot to a teenager getting by on pocket money and deliberately unspent lunch money.

Anyway, I basically followed the same approach as with the Deepwood Scouts, the major differences being that the cloaks are a lighter colour and so needed more definite shading and highlighting to get them consistent and as they aren't wearing hoods I decided the hair needed to be more vibrant than it was.

Going through this process with 20 models took me back to the reason why I wasn't a more motivated painter in my youth: batch painting.

As a teenager, Warhammer Fantasy Battle was the primary reason I was buying miniatures (along with a chunk of Bloodbowl) and I found the chore of painting whole units overwhelming and so never got very far.

I think that if I'd been playing something with more individual character models (perhaps even 40k) I might have learned to enjoy the process sooner.

Anyway, getting all twenty done was a bit of a slog. I did have a bit of remodelling to do as I wanted to remove the two standard heaters from the units as they are a bit of a gift to the opponent on units that don't stand up well in combat.

I previously only included them because tournaments were insisting on a certain amount of standards in an army as some factions gained an advantage from not having them. They had their benefits as I could use them as bait to draw an opponent in, but I've decided to forgo standards for now.

The only model I've painted from scratch in in this batch is the somewhat large headed unit champion that older readers might recognise as Torallion Leafstar, the Elven player character from Advanced Heroquest.

Basing was also done in the same way as the Deepwood Scouts and I'm really liking the splash of colour the orange leaves bring.

I'm pleased with the progress this week as I feel this was a hump I needed to get over and the Wood Elves will start to move more quickly.

I've now bought some of the newer sized bases for the Dryads, Treeman, Treekin and cavalry (no, I did not pay GW's ridiculous prices for these) and so will crack on with rebasing the rest of the army. I'm aiming to do less repainting with the Dryads, so I should hopefully have them ready soon. However, I do intend to strip the Treeman and Treekin as I really want to do those models justice.

Acquired: 10
Painted: 176
Lead Mountain: 850

If You Go Down to the Woods Today: A Tale of 4 Armies

Well, it's not really a big surprise given that I said I'd be moving on to my Wood Elves.

I've moved on to my Wood Elves.

Specifically some Deepwood Scouts, which are essentially Glade Guard with the ability to skirmish and, well...erm...scout.

I distinguished my Scouts when I first built and painted them by giving them hoods and making their cloaks a darker brown, which is more than enough to make it clear on the table top.

Now that they are back to proper skirmishing, rather than that bizarre checkerboard ranking they had to endure in 8th edition, it's even clearer.

As my Wood Elves are much newer than my Vampire Counts army, there wasn't that much that needed doing on them.

I gave each model a wash of Agrax Earthshade and a dry brush of Ushabti Bone to pick out details. I then went back over the skin, stitching and gold trim to highlight them up.

The drybrush didn't look right on the cloaks so I gave them a coat of Wyldwood contrast paint.

I finally decided to give the bows and arrows a more wood-like colour and so went with Baneblade Brown and a coat of Skeleton Horde contrast paint.

Finally I finished off the arrows with white fletchings.

Obviously, the big issue that needed addressing were the bases. I'd previously transferred this army onto MDF multi-bases for Kings of War, and opted for moving them back over to Warhammer: The Old World onto the new 25mm base sizes to give me an army I could to take to play with outside of my immediate gaming group.

I'm not certain I'm going to go to events, but it gives me the option.

I figured popping them off MDF would be fairly straightforward, but I was wrong. It was a real challenge to get them off what were incredibly strongly bonded bases without snapping any legs or feet. In fact, the force needed actually broke a couple at the waist joints (yes, I assembled plastic miniatures with super glue, what of it?).

I'd never been fully happy with my basing of my Wood Elves, either for Warhammer Fantasy Battle or Kings of War. I think this because I'd gone for more browns, which had made everything look a bit drab.

So this time I aimed for a dash of colour to provide contrast.

My initial basing was done with Stirland Mud and a few small stones glued in place and washed with Agrax Earthshade. Then I added some Battle Zone Field Scatter from Javis Countryside Scenics which is pre-mixed flock with varied colours including grey and pale orange stone and darker, more wintery green static grass.

The final touch was some Autumn Leaf Litter from Green Stuff World to add that splash of colour. It's not actually as vibrant in real life as in the pictures, but it does set off the brown models and should really tie the army together as I used orange for some of my elite units.

I ended up doing more work on this unit than I intended, but I'm really pleased with how they look now. I've started in on 20 more Glade Guard to get the core of the army done before I start moving to the more unique units.

Acquired: 10
Painted: 156
Lead Mountain: 851

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

The Battle of Four Armies

It's Christmas, and that means one thing in our little world of wargaming...Christmas Wargaming Fun Day! It's one of the few times in the year that we get to do big games, and this year was no exception.

Originally, we were going to use the day for learning about Dropfleet Commander, which we all backed as part of a Kickstarter campaign over a year ago. Wes received his PHR fleet back in October in the first wave of posting, however Matt finally got his Shaltari on Christmas Eve, and both Pete and I are still waiting.

Therefore, we needed something else, and into the breach stepped Kings of War. I broke out the Wood Elves I re-based earlier in the year, Pete supplied his Dwarfs, and Matt brought both Bretonnians and Empire, as Wes has never been a WFB player, and so doesn't have an army.

We arranged the game at 3000 points per side (we could/should have gone higher, but I underestimated how many points I could do with my Elves), with the Elves and Bretonnians fighting some kind of border skirmish with the Empire and Dwarfs somewhere at the foot of the Grey Mountains. (No, we haven't abandoned the WFB background - screw you GW!)

The initial deployment saw the Elves face off against the Dwarfs, and the Bretonnians line up against the Empire. One of the downsides of KoW, is that the allies rules really discourage intermingling armies, as you can only gain inspiring re-rolls from your own sides. However, Wes and I did concentrate our archers at the far end beyond the castle, because everything else in our armies was built to charge.

Matt's Empire force was built using the very versatile Kingdoms of Men list, and featured two hordes of infantry, two cannons, a steam tank (beast of war with ballista), a griffon riding general and sundry smaller units.

Matt had created both human lists before he flipped a coin to decide which side he'd be on, to keep things fair. He'd given Wes a very aggressive force, using the Brotherhood list in Uncharted Empires, featuring four blocks of knights, Pegasus knights and a few peasants. The tactical advice we gave Wes was, "get stuck in!"

Pete's stalwart Dwarfs added a flame cannon, a cannon, an organ gun and a block of crossbows, backed up by several blocks (including one horde) of Dwarf warriors and a couple of berserker characters on giant badgers (he was suitably chided by Matt and I for including stuff that wasn't 'warhammery' enough for our tastes).

My friendly and fluffy Elf list had managed to squeeze in a Dragon, a Treeman, a unit of Eagles (Drakon Riders), a unit of cavalry and a couple of fast moving forest spirit units. It wasn't exactly subtle.

And so the stage was set for Wes and I to charge hell for leather across the board, hoping to weather the storm of lead enough to deliver a hammer blow. Techincally, the scenario was loot and kill (I think), but we all knew that this was going to be about who smashed whose face most effectively.

The first two turns went rather predictably, with Wes and I advancing, whilst Pete and Matt braced for impact. I managed to get both of my forest spirit units killed, one with a failed surge into the Dwarf general, and the other by standing in front of the massed firepower of a Flame Cannon, Cannon, and Organ Gun that had been combined in the centre of the enemy line.

In return, we managed to silence the Dwarf Cannon with arrow fire, and one of the Empire Cannons with peasant cavalry.

Turn three was when the inevitable impact came. My Elves smashed into the Dwarf line, with my cavalry ans Eagles breaking the Dwarf horde, but the Dragon and Treeman faltering on their respective targets. It looked like the Elves would get caught in an evelopment as the Dwarfs proved difficult to budge.

Matt did his best to disrupt Wes' charging knights, and the Bretonnians initially failed to shift the hordes of infanty, despite the support offered by flank charging knights. The Empire Handgunners were negated, but with their charge spent, the battery in the centre still dishing out horrendous damage and the Steam Tank and Griffon poised to charge, the Bretonnian position also looked precarious.

However, Pete also struggled with nerve rolls when he piled damage on my expensive units and although the cavalry were eventually broken, the Eagles, Dragon and Treeman held on against the odds, managing to take out the crossbows and Dwarf General, despite taking massive amounts of damage.

Meanwhile, Wes lost all but one of his Knight blocks to Matt's combined artillery, and fierce charging Griffon and Steam Tank. However, the Grail Knights held out long enough to delay the Empire forces, allowing his Knights Errant to win the shoving match with one of the infantry hordes, and turn the flank, eventually finishing by charging all but one of his remaining units into the Empire General.

At the end of the game, Wes and I were delighted that we didn't gain an additional turn, as even a single point of damage would likely have seen the Dragon, Treeman, Eagles, and Knights all run delivering defeat.

As it was, we managed to win by a fair margin due to the hordes and characters we'd killed being worth a significant amount of points, and gaining the additional bonus of securing a couple of objectives to add to our tally.

Pete and Matt pointed out that winning isn't everything and that these games are meant to be for fun anyway, however, we have decided that Pete shall hereafter be known as 'Snake Eyes' and Wes and I have bragging rights for the next twelve months, due to the fact that winning a game of toy soldiers confirms us as all round superior human beings...