The ETC is a hardcore team event where you bring your filthiest list or you go home. I played it back in 2009 with Team Ireland and this year I was invited to play for Team Wales at relatively short notice as they needed to replace a last-minute cancellation.  I thought I was lucky when the Welsh asked me to use a Warriors of Chaos army as it would mean that I could use an army that I already had rather than paint up a new one in a hurry. Unfortunately, the particular niche that my army was intended to fill in the Welsh lineup required a fairly specific build and I ended up having to paint up almost everything I needed anyhow. The only parts of my existing army that I could use were my Sorceror on a Disc, my Chaos Knights, my marauders and my Chosen (which were pulling duty as halberd armed Chaos Warriors in this list). I had to paint up 50 more Marauders, 11 Chaos Warriors with Halberds and a mounted Chaos Lord of Khorne to bring the army up to spec and this was bolstered with a Hellcannon borrowed from one of the other Welsh team members.

Somehow, and with significant assistance from my wife, that lot got painted up in the three weeks or so that I had before the event and I took off to sunny Montreux. That part of Switzerland is a beautiful place and Montreux itself is particularly stunning.  I was staying at a Youth Hostel just down the lake shore from the event hall and my walk to and from the tournament every day was just incredible. The ETC itself is held over two days with three games on each day. Our first game was against the Greek team who were a good tip for the winners’ podium and so we weren’t expecting to take much away from that. Sure enough we got destroyed – my game vs their Dark Elf player ended 16-4 against after a methodical demolition job. The Hellcannon did well to eat a War Hydra in close combat but that was the only real bright spot for me. Next up we played team Norn Iron and I was feeling good about this as every time I’d played them in previous events, I’d won. Sure enough, I blew through their Dwarf player and scored 15 points for the team. Our final opponents for the day were team Netherlands where I got schooled 20-0 by a Vampire Counts player.

After a hard day of wargaming we headed into the town where we quickly realised that Montreux is not for people like us. Unless you are fabulously wealthy your entertainment options are going to be extremely limited. We sat and had horrendously expensive pizza and then sat on the beach drinking spiced rum until the small hours. The whole weekend was blisteringly hot and, as the town is sheltered by the mountains, there is no wind so the air stays warm even at night.

The next day we were ready for more punishment and we were drawn against Team Belgium to kick off. I played against a Dwarf army that was practically identical to the one I’d murdered on the previous day except this time everything went wrong for me. Another 20-0 shoeing ensued. After the Belgians we were drawn against Hungary where an Empire army proceeded to pull my army apart and then jump on the bits. Some horrendously bad dice sealed the deal and handed 20 gift-wrapped points to my opponent. I don’t like to blame the dice too much in games because generally losing due to dice means that you are leaning on luck rather than good play to win, however this was about as bad as I’ve ever had and I’m not sure that I could have done things differently. My Sorceror failed 7 leadership tests in a row and fled off the table, 8 out of 10 Chaos Knights failed a strength test and were killed by a Dwellers Below, 34 attacks from halberd-wielding Chaos Warriors of Khorne scored 4 hits and no wounds on the Arch Lector, two hits from a mortar killed an entire unit of Marauders in a single turn. Stuff like that. Finally we were drawn against Team Scotland who ended up beating us narrowly and me handily. By this point there was nothing to play for for either team so we all kicked back and had  a relaxed game. I played another Empire army and, once more found that I had no way to protect myself from his magic and warmachines. Still it was a fun game and we’d hit our team goal of not coming last.

In the end we came 24th out of 28 teams and we were thrilled to win the award for most sporting team. We celebrated with more spiced rum on the beach then I bade farewell to Captain Matt and the rest of the lads and headed back to the hostel. I took a lot of pictures over the weekend; pictures of Montreux can be found here while pictures of armies and miniatures from the ETC itself can be found here.

After my adventure in Switzerland I had a couple of weeks before I was off on a real holiday to the US. In that time I managed to finish painting up an HQ choice for my Grey Knight army. The figure is Castellan Crowe but I will generally be using him as a standard Brotherhood Champion and attaching him to a Razorback squad. Following my experiments with the armour of the Grey Knight Terminators, I decided to try a different tack for Crowe. His armour is heavily shaded and highlighted with Charadon Granite and Vallejo Ivory respectively. Rather than leave the silver areas flat and highlight the edges, I chose to accentuate the curves of the armour plates by painting in the sharp reflections and then contrasting these with deep shadows in a non-metallic metal style – although I was using a metallic colour as a base. This was much more successful than the Terminators were although it was time consuming to achieve. Originally his sword was blue but I painted myself into a corner when I was doing the banner and needed a strong colour that would contrast with the blue field of the banner and so I repainted the sword yellow and repeated this for the chained blade on the banner itself. The runes on the blade were done in blue and a weak object source lighting effect was added by means of a blue glaze. The other detailing was done to match the Terminators except the cloak which was painted a pale yellowish brown to complement the sword and had a triple stripe painted on the hem with some freehand lettering added.

More pictures of Crowe are on the Grey Knights gallery page.

Originally this was part of the 8 armies initiative that I was doing along with some friends from work. The idea was that we would all build up WFB armies together and play against each other as well as enter some of the local tournaments as a group. Progress has been spotty for most of the people involved and, while most people have at least a couple of units painted up each, no-one except me actually has a playable army. I’ve ended up with about 3000 points of Chaos Warriors with a strong Tzeentch theme and visual connection so I’m scoring it as a win. Some of the units have been showcased here already – particularly the Chaos Knights and the Army Standard Bearer but most of the army hasn’t been photographed properly until tonight so here is the rest of it as well as some writeups for the more interesting pieces.

First up is the Chaos Knight Champion. When I painted up the Chaos Knight unit a while ago, I painted each of them individually as I wanted them to stand out. This looked good but it made it hard to determine which of them was the unit champion as they all looked ‘special’. So I decided to convert up a champion figure who would stand out in a unit of individuals. I cut and greenstuffed a Chaos Steed so that it was rearing up, greenstuffed the rider so he was leaning forwards in the saddle and then reversed the grip on his lance so he would be stabbing downwards rather than holding it at parade rest. After that it was time to paint him and I needed the colour scheme to be just as eyecatching as the pose. For this I decided to go back a little to a slightly older version of the Chaos lore and make the champion a corrupted Bretonnian knight who has succumbed to the insidious wiles of Chaos. This reflects the older, more Faustian background rather than the current barbarian-centric version. The idea was that his original armour and barding has fused to him and become his chaos armour and the iconography of Chaos is bleeding through and subsuming the older Bretonnian heraldry. I did a a fairly simple heraldic pattern – per pale azure and argent lozengy gules, in the first two fleur de lys or. This was repeated on the armour plates of the horse barding as well as on the rider himself, his breastplate is in pale to match his arms and his shoulderpads bear the charges, blazons and fields of the appropriate side too.

Next are a brace of Chaos Sorcerors. I have two in the army, both with the Mark of Tzeentch. One is on foot and generally goes in the Warriors unit, the other is on a Disc and hunts alone. The disc-rider is one of the first units I painted for this army but I never got around to photographing him. He’s the limited edition version released to celebrate 10 years of GW Italy and GW Germany and is a really nice figure. I’ve done him with the tentacles fading from purple to pink with a fairly standard blue and yellow scheme for his armour and robes. The Sorceror on foot is likewise in blue and yellow and I’m particularly pleased with the highlighting on the back of his cloak.

10 Marauder Horsemen were another early addition to the army. These were painted fairly fast but came out looking good despite that. I used these guys as test beds for a lot of the techniques I’d use to knock out regular Marauders as quickly as possible later on. I tried not to make them too uniform so the horses are different colours and I’ve used a limited palette on the riders to make them all individual while still keeping them coherent as a unit. They have spears and a full command group which isn’t optimal and they’ve been left on the shelf for the past few games. I’m pessimistic about their effectiveness in 8th edition and they are a low priority for most lists I build these days. I guess they could be decent warmachine hunters but any army with warmachines is likely to have enough missile fire to shred light cavalry with ease. In a similar state of limbo are ten Chaos Warhounds that were added shortly after the horsemen. These are very quick to paint and also don’t seem to have much of a role any more.

The Chaos Knights have already been featured on this blog so I’ll only quickly recap these. I painted them all as individuals to reflect their status as warrior nobles amongst the rest of the army. Each of them has a different theme going on that transfers from the steed to the rider and includes the barding. Generally these ride with the Battle Standard Bearer who has also been featured previously. I run these guys with the Mark of Tzeentch and the Banner of Rage. The Battle Standard usually carries the Blasted Standard and this combination makes the unit pretty terrifying as it is frenzied and has a 4+ ward save vs all missile fire. Because the frenzy applies to the whole unit, it also means the steeds benefit which can be vital when hitting units with a high static combat resolution. Many people seem to have written off heavy cavalry in 8th but these guys are very often the army’s MVPs.

A block of Marauders grew organically over the army’s evolution. Originally there were 15 but as 8th added more benefits for larger blocks of troops they expanded in stages to their current headcount of 30. These have flails and are usually fielded in horde formation. I’ve painted them with a palette of only five or six colours to tie them together and they are definitely fast and dirty as far as quality of finish is concerned. I also have Wulfric the Wanderer and, when playing in a game where special characters are allowed, he joins the Marauders to give them his special deployment rule. In other games he’s either left on the shelf or is fielded as a regular Exalted Champion.

A Warriors of Chaos army of course should have Chaos Warriors in it and mine has 19 in a single unit (the extra spot is usually taken by the Sorceror on foot). As with the Marauders I’ve tried to mix the colours up while sticking to a fairly limited palette. I’ve used four or five different armour colours and three or four different cloak and fur combinations. These were all painted very fast – for some reason every time I played at a tournament I’d discover that my list required more warriors than I actually had ready to go so I’d spend the night before each event speed-painting half a dozen more.

Finally I have my block of Chosen. These are somewhere between the Knights and the Warriors in theme. I’ve made them all different but not to the same extent as the Knights, rather there are repeated colours in the unit but they are in general more individual than the warriors as befits their status. The champion has stone coloured armour, the rest are a mix of dark blue, pale blue, red and purple with one in particoloured blue and red armour.

You can find more images including some work in progress shots on this gallery page.

I was competing in the WFB event with my (mostly complete) Warriors of Chaos. Armies are small at 1500 points and the event features some strict composition rules that prohibit most of the nastier elements. No more than two total magic levels are allowed for example along with a blanket ban on named characters and restrictions on flyers and large targets. My army at its core is largely unchanged from previous events. The rundown is as follows:

Sorceror of Tzeentch; Ironcurse Icon, Spell Familiar (General)

Exalted Champion of Tzeentch; Chaos Steed, Blasted Standard (Army Standard Bearer)

5x Knights of Tzeentch; Full command, Banner of Rage

19x Warriors of Tzeentch; Full command, shields, War Banner

10x Chosen of Tzeentch; Full command, halberds, Lichebone Pennant, Favour of the Gods

30x Marauders; Full command, flails

The tactics are fairly straightforwards with this force, the Sorceror goes in the Warriors unit for some protection and to bolster the line with his close ranged magic, any of the infantry units acts as an anvil while the Knights are a hammer.  The Knights are a very strong unit even at higher points values and I expected them to be devastating in a game of this size.

First up was a Dwarf army. Mostly it was based around large combat blocks led by a king borne on a shield and bodyguarded by Hammerers. Two smallish Quarreller units, a couple of bolt-throwers and a Grudge Thrower were his only shooting units. He moved forwards, I moved forwards and managed to avoid his big block of hammerers for long enough to smash through his lines. By the time he’d brought the Dwarf King and his bodyguard around to bear, I’d demolished all of his support and was able to charge him from all sides with everything in my army at once. Not even Stubborn, elite Dwarves led by their king can handle that kind of punishment and the game was a massacre. I’d lost my Battle Standard Bearer to a challenge but my army was otherwise fully intact.

Next in line was a tide of Chaos Daemons. This featured a horde sized unit of Bloodletters, supported by Flamers, a Herald of Tzeentch on a disc, a single Bloodcrusher and all led by a Daemon Prince. he set up with these last two holding a flank by themselves while the Bloodletters held the centre and everything else skipped forwards to take targets of opportunity. I wasn’t sure how to take the two big guys on, especially after they demolished my Marauder block but then they carried on through into the Chaos Warriors and were summarily dispatched on the first round of combat much to my relief. Meanwhile my Sorceror had almost single handedly destroyed the Flamers with repeated applications of his Flickering Fire of Tzeentch spell and theChaos Knights had charged down the Herald of Tzeentch who’d been caught out in the open. This didn’t go exactly as planned due to my Exalted Champion’s sudden inability to roll dice but after a coupel of rounds the inevitable occurred and the Daemon was sent howling back to the Warp. All this time I had been (pleasantly) surprised by my opponent’s reluctance to commit his Bloodletter block. He’d danced around some difficult terrain in the centre of the board and was perfectly content to let me come to him. On my last turn I’d destroyed everything else in his army and was in position for a combined charge but decided that I’d already won and that charging in would only give him the opportunity to score some late victory points while it would be impossible for me to improve my situation. Thus I ended my turn as soon as it started and took a convincing win.

Finally I played against a very nice High Elf army. The lady who it belonged to ended up taking home the best painted army prize after a judging call between her army and mine. Her force consisted of a noble on a Griffon, a large block of Swordmasters, a block of White lions, two units of archers and a repeater bolt-thrower. I wasn’t really sure how to deal with the Swordmasters and, frustratingly, I hadn’t rolled any useful spells for dealing with them. I love to cast Treason of Tzeentch on great-weapon wielding Elves but I didn’t have anything that was likely to help me in this game. Luckily for me, she hadn’t rolled any good spells for her mage either so things evened out for me. The odds got better when she wiped out her own unit of Swordmasters in a calamitous series of miscasts over three turns. The first one wiped out half the unit and they panicked only to rally right on the table edge, The next turn saw another miscast and the mage took a wound and then finally a third miscast on turn three killed the mage and triggered another panicked flight, this time off the table. Having neutralised her own most dangerous unit for me, she had precious little with which to stand against the heavily armoured horde crashing down upon her and a resounding victory resulted from the mopping up operation.

By the time the victory points for all three games had been tallied I’d managed to pull out a clear lead and won the Best General award which handily will be most of the price of the Codex: Grey Knights that I have on order.

An entirely rewarding day out with good opponents and fun games, see the full gallery of pictures from the event on this page.

I took the Chaos Warriors that have been slowly taking shape over the summer and Mario took his new Tomb Kings. Originally the plan was that he’d come over to my place yesterday and we’d have a few tutorial games to get him up to speed with the rules as he’d never played WFB before, what actually happened was that he had to do some work-stuff at very short notice so he sat at my table working on his spreadsheet while we discussed the more theoretical side of the game and I bashed out a few speed painted Chaos Warriors to bring my list up to size. This meant that the games at the tournament today were his first ever. “Don’t be a wuss” I said over his concerns that he might not be ready, “You’ll figure it out, it’s not rocket surgery.”

There was a Warmachines event happening simultaneously with the WFB tournament in the same hall so there were only ten players which is about half as many as usually show up. Mario met his first opponent, a Bretonnian player while I was matched with an Empire opponent. My general was a level 2 sorceror on a disk who didn’t manage to do much of anything during the game due to having only one useful spell (Gateway) which was always shut down by the pile of dispel dice that my opponent was able to muster. As soon as he died I realised I’d bought him a Spell Familiar so he should have had a bit more utility. I also realised about this time that I had paid for a Chaos Spawn but I’d forgotten to pack one in my case so I was down a bunch of points. These things collectively displeased me. Despite my forgetfulness and the loss of my general to a wildly optimistic round of shooting from some Pistoliers I easily won the game mostly thanks to the Chaos Knights and their superhuman ability to kill things. Wandering across to check on Mario, I was heartened to find that he’d won his game too so Team Acony was off to a great start.

Next up for me was a High Elf army and Mario faced off against a Skaven horde. This one started badly for me and went downhill fast. My Chaos Knights smashed into a mid-sized unit of White Lions and got butchered due to some terrible dice rolling for armour saves. Only the army standard bearer survived and I just managed to keep him alive long enough to finish off the last survivor from a unit of Dragon Princes who had previously been on the wrong end of an Infernal Gateway. My hero popped the last Prince then fled and died. Without my Knights, I was very much on the back foot but the Warriors managed to pull things back a little. It wasn’t enough though and the game ended with a convincing Elven victory. Across the hall, Mario had been tabled in short order but had learned from the experience.

For the final game, I drew a Skaven list (a different opponent to the one who’d demolished Mario) and Mario was matched up with a Dwarf army. My game was very back and forth with many points that could have swung a decisive victory for either side. Highlights for me were Gatewaying the Plague Furnace off the table in my first turn and having my Marauder Cavalry survive the battle after actually managing to kill things. Low points were having a Skaven unit break my Marauders and clip the General as they pursued, the next turn the Marauders rallied, the general lost combat but didn’t die and the pursuing rats hit the Marauders again who they broke again and pursued into the general who was already fleeing and thus had to flee again – right off the table. Sigh.

In the end though I’d killed almost everything on the Skaven side and had managed to preserve most of my expensive units (characters aside) so pulled out a win. Mario hadn’t been so fortunate however, he’d found out the hard way that the only army that can beat Skeletons in a long-drawn out meatgrinder are Dwarfs and at the end of his game there were still a large number of stunties standing up while none of the Khemrian forces remained on the table.

Out of the ten players who took part, I came third and Mario placed eighth. Both of us tied for most sporting player and I won the best painted army (by dint of being the only player at the event with a fully painted force no doubt). A good time was had and those of the group who didn’t take part still turned up to watch and cheer Mario and I on so even though they didn’t play, they still got a little stoked for action over the winter.

The Seetroll event was a doubles tournament with each player bringing along a 1500 point army built under a zero comp system. Originally my plan had been to go along with Mario and his Tomb Kings but he was unable to go at the last minute so I roped in New Guy Ryan as my doubles partner, thrust my daemon army into his hands and ran a couple of test games the day before the event to shake down the new rules. Ryan had played 40k previously some time ago but had never played WFB, for my part I’d never played 8th edition before so this was a pretty steep learning curve for both of us. I wrote both of the army lists based largely on what I had painted rather than on any optimal list-building considerations, despite this however the two forces worked well together. We had:

Daemons:

• Herald of Tzeentch (General with Daemonic Robes)
• Herald of Slaanesh (BSB, Level 1 wizard with Siren Song and Soporific Musk)
• 23 Horrors with full command
• 27 Daemonettes with full command and Siren Standard
• 5 Flesh Hounds plus Karanak
• 6 Flamers

The Chaos Mortals fetaured:

• Sorceror Lord of Tzeentch (level 3 with a Disc, Golden Eye of Tzeentch and Infernal Puppet)
• Exalted Hero (BSB, on a chaos steed with the Blasted Standard)
• 5 Chaos Knights of Tzeentch with full command and Banner of Rage
• 15 Chaos Warriors f Tzeentch with full command (hand weapons and shields)
• 15 Chaos Marauders with full command (flails and light armour)
• 10 Marauder Cavalry with full command (spears and shields)
• 10 Chaos Warhounds

I’d finished the Chaos BSB the week previously and had started work on the Warriors, only 7 were painted by the night before the event but a late night speed-painting session got the remaining 8 done in time for us to field two fully painted armies. When we got to the event we found that named characters weren’t allowed so Karanak got swapped out for two ordinary Flesh Hounds which were kindly lent to us by one of the judges.

There were two games for the event both using the Meeting Engagement scenario from the book. Our first was a mirror match versus a Marauder heavy Warriors of Chaos army and a Daemon army based on a huge block of Plaguebearers. We lost this game despite some sterling work from the Chaos Knights. We’d actually run out of time before the game ended and there were still two turns left to play when we finished, this was something of a bonus to us though because things were starting to get really ugly and, if we’d played the last turns then the result would have been worse for us I think.

The second game was against the rather unlikely combination of Lizardmen and Orcs. This one went much better for us, we were able to control the battle much more and this brought us a conclusive victory – the Orcs had been largely wiped out along with most of the Lizardmen with the exception of the large block of Saurus warriors that we’d successfully avoided engaging all match.

We were expecting a mid-table finish on the balance of our win/loss record and were hugely surprised when our names were called to receive the third prize. First doubles tournament for either of us, first 8th ed event for me and the third and fourth games of WFB ever for Ryan meant that this was quite the result for us. On the train home Ryan was eagerly planning out a Daemons of Khorne list to pit against the rest of us.

The Warhammer Fanatics’ event was a very different affair, minimal comp (only some specific army restrictions and clarifications) and a 2250 points limit. It was also much better subscribed than the Seetroll event. My army (which to my shame wasn’t fully painted) was as follows:

• Sorceror Lord of Tzeentch (General, level 4, Disc, Golden Eye of Tzeentch, Ogre Blade, Spell Familiar)
• Exalted Hero of Tzeentch (BSB, Blasted Standard, Chaos Steed)
• Wulfrik the Wanderer
• Chaos Sorceror (Infernal Puppet)
• 5 Chaos Knights of Tzeentch with full command and Banner of Rage
• 17 Chaos Warriors of Tzeentch with full command and Razor Standard (hand weapons and shields)
• 10 Chosen of Tzeentch with full command, Lichebone Pennant and Book of Secrets (Halberds)
• 10 Marauder Cavalry with full command (shields and spears)
• 10 Chaos Warhounds
• 24 Marauders with full command (light armour and flails)

The events of the previous weekend had demonstrated that small blocks of weak troops are now a waste of time. Go big or go home. I wasn’t ready to put down a block of forty Marauders in Horde formation as our first opponent did last week (in fact he had two such units!) but I certainly needed to beef up the marauders. I inflated their numbers to 23 and put Wulfrik in the front rank to add some punch and give them his surprise deployment rule. The Warriors also saw a marginal increase in size although they didn’t really need it. They were bodyguarding the level 1 sorceror in this list and proved to be a very valuable unit. Before playing many games of 8th I’d been wavering over the role of the Chaos Knights. I wasn’t convinced that five of them plus the BSB were going to be a viable force. The test run at the Seetroll event demonstrated very clearly that these were still a ridiculously powerful unit even at the minimum size and that I needn’t worry too much about filling out their number.

There were three games over the course of the event and my first was against a Dwarf player with a fairly standard melee-focussed army. He had an Anvil, a large block of Longbeards, a large block of Warriors, two Gyrocoptors, a cannon and a Grudgrethrower. A Dwarf Queen carried to battle on her shield and a couple of Runesmiths rounded out the force. He played very conservatively indeed and didn’t use the anvil to push forwards as he really should have done, as a result he handed me complete control over the battle and I was able to demolish each of his units on my terms. At the end of the battle he had no surviving Dwarfs at all and I hadn’t given up a single victory point. Only some really incredible flee rolls coupled with some terrible pursuit results kept him in the game past turn four.

After this mauling I was firmly in first place and so my second opponent was the Dark Elf army in second position. This battle used the Dawn Assault scenario which mixed things up a bit and led to some interesting developments in setting up. The Dark Elves featured a huge unit of Spearmen in horde formation, a respectably sized unit of Executioners, a Hydra, two units of Harpies, a unit of Dark Riders, a Sorceress on a Dark Pegasus, two repeating bolt throwers, a small unit of Crossbowmen and a minimum sized unit of Cold One Knights led by the Highborn. By turn two I was convinced that I had lost, my Knights had crashed into his Spearmen and been filleted thanks to the Cauldron giving them the Killing Blow ability, the Cold One Knights were tearing chunks out of my support units and Wulfrik was nowhere to be seen. I’d managed to get most of the Executioners to murder themselves with the Treason of Tzeentch spell but I couldn’t see how I was going to score many victory points from this army. Luckily it seems that Chaos Warriors are the new Daemons for 8th edition, even a complete numpty can just keep pushing them forwards and expect not to lose too heavily. So, despite my army getting smacked repeatedly in the face for the first half of the battle, it absorbed the abuse the Dark Elves were piling on it and came back out fighting.  Wulfrik turned up on turn 5 and helped the surviving couple of Knights to finish off the Spearmen, The Executioners were wiped out by the Warriors and the Marauder Cavalry and the Chosen had finished off most of the Dark Elf support units. All that was left by the end were half of the Cold One Knights, the Hydra (which had failed to engage anything in the entire battle) and the Sorceress. My Lord was dead but the Warriors were still intact. The last turn had the Warriors facing down the Cold One Knights and the Hydra, I moved them backwards to make the charge less reliable and my opponent decided not to risk it. I was pretty sure I’d lost but was optimistic that I’d done enough damage to score some points. As it turned out I’d lost by 155 points which resulted in a draw.

After that bloodbath, I had dropped to second place so my last game was against the new tournament leader with his Goblin army. This battle was the Meeting Engagement scenario with the added twist that each player could kill one enemy character before the battle (and score full victory points for it). Rather unsurprisingly my opponent chose to remove my Sorceror Lord from the battle and I deprived him of Skarsnik in return. His army was almost entirely Goblins with only a single Orc present (a level 4 Shaman), it featured a horde sized block of Squigs, two hordes of Spear Goblins, a couple of small units of archers, a Doom Diver, a rock lobber a unit of Trolls and two minimum sized units of Wolfriders. Various Goblin Shamans, a BSB and a goblin Warboss were scattered around the list to fill it out. Again, this battle was one that went very badly for me to begin with and ended up turning around due to the incredible resilience of Chaos Warriors. Wulfrik turned up on turn 1 and destroyed the Rock Lobber before getting wiped out by the Squig herd, the Chaos Knights took on the Trolls, routed them and carried on through to the archers but couldn’t catch the fleeing monsters and also triggered every fanatic in the army in the process. Despite this a couple of Knights survived and slaughtered the archers. My level one wizard sent a Purple Sun of Xereus towards the Goblin line but fluffed it and it went across the Chosen instead. Luckily they all survived but it demonstrated how neutered my magic was without the Sorceror lord. By comparison the Orc magic was devastating, the various direct damage spells did very little thanks to the high toughness and thick armour of the Chaos army but the Waaagh! spell was used in almost every turn to staggering effect. Goblins that can get in surprise charges that always strike first and can reroll misses are not to be underestimated and this was the downfall of Wulfrik’s Marauders, the Chaos Knights and the Marauder Cavalry. Even the Warriors, who had easily been the most reliable unit in the army prior to this match ended up failing break tests and running away from the cackling Greenskin tide. At the end of the game I’d caught up a little but I had still clearly lost. In the end there was a 560 VP difference which translated to a 12-8 loss.

I’d scored 38 tournament points in my games which put me in 6th place on battle results, I dropped some points on the soft scores due to the unpainted models in my army and so my final placing was 7th. I wasn’t particularly unhappy with that despite the fact that I’d dropped so many points in my second and third games. the opposition was very tough and the games were hard fought.

This figure and twelve Chaos Warriors are the only parts of my list that weren’t already painted. I’m confident that I can crank out a dozen warriors in a week so it was a relief to finally declare this guy done and move on. It often happens to me (and I’m sure every other painter in the world) that I’ll start working on a figure and it just won’t come together. The figure will then get sidelined while I work on other things and sit partially done on my painting table for ever – let me tell you about my Dwarf Rangers that probably need less than two hours work to finish off but have sat in a case for four years. This figure was one of those that I couldn’t get on with at first. It started off as simply the normal metal Chaos Lord on Daemonic Steed figure with no modifications. I liked the figure but had no clue how to paint it – especially after I finished the rainbow-hued Chaos Knights regiment that you can see in this update.  Somewhere along the line I decided that I needed a mounted battle standard bearer and this figure seemed an obvious place to start from. The conversion is very simple; the hammer was cut off right above the hand and was replaced with a spear from the Marauder Horsemen sprue. The banner itself and the banner top also came from the Marauder Horsemen and I swapped the head for one from the Chaos Mutation sprue.  I also decided that I didn’t want the steed to be a Daemonic Mount but instead to be a ‘normal’ Chaos Steed so it got rebased onto a regular cavalry base.

When it came to painting this figure I really had no idea how it was going to end up. In the end I pretty much just threw paint at it until I could see something worthwhile emerging then tidied that up. Originally the armour and barding were to be a pale rosy lavender so I started with a bright pinky-blue basecoat and glazed it with Hawk Turquoise. That didn’t work so well and I ended up repainting it in a greyish purple which ended up getting highlighted and declared good enough. The horse was going to be black with flamey accents but that didn’t look so good with all the detailing on it so it ended up a chestnut colour instead with reddish hair. Finally the banner. I painted it blue then yellow, highlighted that right up and then sketched in the freehand design in the centre using Black Ink. Once I’d got something I was happy with I blocked it in and highlighted the pattern. At this point I realised that somehow I’d finished it. This was a nice surprise so I built up a taller base from smaller square bases and greenstuff to help him rank up properly (he overhangs the sides of a base even more than the plastic Knights do) and slapped some varnish on him before I could talk myself into doing more. He’s a little fussy and there are some messy areas but from 3 feet away he looks fine.

The full Warriors of Chaos Gallery is available here.

Anyhow, the latest addition to the collection of painted figures is this unit of Chaos Knights. My Warriors of Chaos army has a Tzeentchian theme to it and for me, the standard black and brooding colour scheme doesn’t really work. Additionally as these are amongst the most elite warriors in the army (actually they are pretty elite compared to most things in any army), I wanted them to be individualistic and unique. So it is then that I decided to paint them each with a different colour palette to show their status as the warrior nobility in the warband. These are really nice models and come with a variety of options for heads, shields and weapons – more than enough of each to avoid any duplication. They are also big, the barded Empire warhorses as used by the Knightly Orders for example are about two-thirds the size of these monsters. You will need to take care when assembling them and when attaching them to their base to make sure that the unit will rank up (mine doesn’t) as they overhang significantly on both sides of the base. I’m expecting that I will buy a second box for a larger unit (hello 8th edition!) and they will be planted at the extreme backs and fronts of their cavalry bases so that they can rank up between these. That’s something for another day though.

The first figure I completed was the champion. Actually he may not be the champion after all as I’m still somewhat undecided. All of the figures that aren’t carrying a standard or a horn could reasonably be used as the champion as they are all distinctive enough. This guy at least has a lightning charged sword which may tip things in his favour. He’s painted over a white basecoat (they all are actually) with Orkhide Shade which was washed with Thraka Green and then highlighted and glazed with a variety of greens and purples to get a nice rich effect on the armour. The horse is Thraka Green over the white undercoat and then highlighted and tidied up with thinned down Goblin Green and Skull White.

I did the sword purple with purple lightning all over it and this is a cool effect that’s easy to achieve if you take it a step at a time. First paint on very thin lines roughtly where your lightning will go, these can be quite broad and should be about a half shade above the base colour – the same sort of difference you’d use for a highlight. Then you highlight the centre of these lines in a slightly more erratic way so that the highlight follows more closely the final line of the lightning itself. After this you paint in the lines of the lightning bolts in a very pale colour,  I printed out some photos of lightning to use as a reference for the way that it forks and flashes to and fro. These lines need to be very thin and some need to be  painted in as almost invisible wisps in very thin paint. Finally take some pure white and highlight parts of the line, major branches and so forth. It’s time consuming to do it properly but it looks really nice.

Next up was the Bone Knight. I put this guy together specifically thinking that his weapon, shield and armour detail would look good in bone. He’s done in my normal bone style which is yellowing and aged looking rather than stark and white. It starts off as Snakebite Leather and gets highlighted up with Bleached Bone and Skull White. His horse and the detail trim were painted grey and the mail barding on the horse was given a pale bronze effect by washing Chainmail with Gryphonne Sepia and then highlighting with a mixture of Mithril Silver and Burnished Gold.

I tackled the standard bearer next, and I’d decided I liked the idea of a yellow knight. Blue and yellow are traditional colours for Tzeentch and I wanted to feature them both. I didn’t want this guy to look like a Tonka toy though so I kept the yellow dirty by painting it onto a Snakebite Leather base and highlighting with Bubonic Brown and Golden Yellow in a hatching pattern rather than as a smooth highlight. The banner was done on a base of Hormagaunt Purple and highlighted up with various blues. Finally a starfield was painted on with a Tzeentch icon painted in as if it were a constellation. I may redo this later as I’m not 100% happy with it but it’s good enough for the tabletop at the moment.

By now the end was in sight and I went for the musician. This was the blue one to balance the yellow standard bearer. The base of Mordian Blue was give the same treatment as the green armour on the first knight although this time using blue and purple washes and glazes. It was highlighted with Ultramarine Blue and curlicues painted in with very thin Enchanted Blue on the flat parts of the armour and shield. The metallic pieces were painted Mithril Silver and then washed with successive layers of watered down red, blue and purple inks. They were then highlighted with Dwarf Bronze and Burnished Gold. This was an experiment that I had no idea on how it would end up but I’m happy with the result.

Finally I tackled the lancer. My Chaos knights will all be fighting with hand-weapons but, in the interests of making the unit look less uniform and also because I really liked that particular weapon, I equipped one with a big choppy lance. This guy was originally going to be white but I decided that this would be too bright and so it ended up a very pale dove grey. This is Codex Grey with a Devlan Mud wash and then highlighted up with Fortress Grey, Space Wolf Grey and Skull White. The horse is Devlan Mud over the white undercoat and then highlighted with Graveyard Earth and Kommando Khaki.

You can see more pictures of the Knights on this gallery page.

We’ve been keeping up steady progress on the 8 new WFB armies that were introduced in the previous update. Dawn and I have made the most progress by far but things have been coming along nicely with the others too. Grazyna has begun work on her Empire Knightly Orders in earnest while Mario has been assembling a horde of skeleton warriors. There was a bit of a pause due to the Easter holidays but despite that a lot has been completed. Dawn has painted most of her initial 500 point force and I have completely painted mine (ok, it was only 27 figures but still…). Dawn’s initial unit of 20 Night Goblins has been done as have all of her Squigs and the mounts for her cavalry. She only needs to finish off the Goblin and Savage Orc riders to hit her first target.

Meanwhile on a different painting table not so far away, Adam and Caz have been working through their piles of plastic. I gave Adam a painted Warhawk rider for his birthday to use as a hero and he’s added a large unit of Dryads to form the core of his force while Caz has been up to her elbows in Ghouls.

On the gaming front, things haven’t been so good. We had a couple of battles to get people familiar with the rules and the different army dynamics. Mario faced off against my Warriors of Chaos first and then against Dawn’s Greenskins and found that 500 points of Tomb Kings is not a very solid force at all. We’re going to push for 1000 point armies which will help him out a bit but he’s definitely going to find things are an uphill struggle in smaller games.

My initial 500 points is entirely done now. It consists of the Sorceror on a Disc, 10 Marauder Horsemen and 15 Marauders with flails. I also painted a familiar for my Sorceror which is magnetised, a second magnet has been greenstuffed under the disc so that he can ride shotgun as required. Next up for me are five Chaos Knights and a converted battlestandard bearer.

As it happens the eight players are four real life couples; there’s me and my wife Dawn, Adam (the friend who started this whole thing off) and his wife Caz, Mario (the Game Director) and his girlfriend Grazyna and finally Jan-Eric (my boss) and his girlfriend Sarah. Conveniently all of us except for Grazyna and Caz all work for the same company which is also located within scatter range of the local game store.

There was a bit of deliberation initially over army choices but eventually we all figured out what we wanted to play. Jan, Sarah and Grazyna have never played before, Mario, Dawn and Caz have played a bit but Adam and I are the only ones with any significant experience in painting and gaming.

• I’m doing Chaos Warriors as I have a few boxes that I won just before leaving Dublin that have sat in the cupboard of shame for the last year or so.
• Mario is doing Tomb Kings
• Grazyna eventually settled on an Empire army after debating the merits of Bretonnians and Lizardmen
• Dawn will play Orcs and Goblins
• Adam has started a Wood Elf army
• Caz will be fielding Vampire Counts
• Jan-Eric is a newly fledged Skaven player
• Sarah has chosen Dark Elves

The last few weeks have seen our dining room table overwhelmed by six new armies being assembled and painted (Adam and Caz preferring to paint at their own apartment). The new hobbyists are getting painting and modelling help from those with more experience and in general it’s a pleasant way to spend an evening.

It also keeps me honest as when I’m painting by myself it’s easy to get distracted and wander off to do something else, whereas with a bunch of us painting together I tend to just get on with it and finish things. As a result I’ve completed my first unit instead of doing my usual trick of getting it half done then leaving it for months in a semi-complete state. On the left you can see my Marauder Horsemen unit which are awaiting varnish.

Jan has been blitzing his Clanrats to build confidence before starting work on Queek Headtaker and Deathmaster Sniktch. The photo here shows them mostly basecoated with a wash to come.  Mario and Grazyna have made inroads into the Tomb Kings, Dawn has been painting up Night Goblins archers and Squigs while Sarah has found that the plastic Corsairs are trickier to assemble and paint than they look. Grazyna got off to a bit of a late start compared to most as she spent a while agonising over which army to play. In the meantime though she helped Mario with his cavalry.

Bearing in mind that some of the people involved have never before tried painting miniatures, these work in progress photos aren’t too shabby at all. Everyone is keen to come across and do some more painting and tea breaks at work tend to revolve around purchasing decisions and discussions on paint schemes. I’m looking forwards to adding another army to my collection and having a group of friends to share the hobby with.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be reporting on the progress that each army makes and reports of the battles. I’ll also ask the various players to write about their experiences and print those here too.

• My wife is somewhat interested in Warhammer
• I have two painted Warhammer Fantasy armies
• I have one of the spiffy Citadel gaming tables that has been used precisely once since obtaining it the day they were released
• I only normally get to play at tournaments
• My wife has never actually played WFB

Clearly then the answer was to challenge the missus to a round of toy soldiers!

I offered her the choice of armies and, somewhat unsurprisingly, she chose the Daemons leaving me to command the Dwarfs.

Her army looked like this:

Lord of Change, level 4 Wizard, Daemonic Robes, Flames of Tzeentch, Power Vortex

Herald of Slaanesh, Battle Standard Bearer, Banner of Unholy Victory, Etherblade

Herald of Tzeentch, Flames of Tzeentch, Daemonic Robes

10 Horrors

12 Horrors

15 Daemonettes, Full Command

14 Daemonettes, Full Command

5 Screamers

5 Flamers

A pretty solid list, I recommended that she swap the Screamers for Flesh Hounds but she wanted to keep the Slaanesh/Tzeentch theme going.

For my part I was going to try to reduce her magic phase as much as possible but other than that to take a fairly soft army.

My Dwarf army featured:

Thorek Ironbrow

Runsmith, Master Rune of Balance, Great Weapon

Thane, BSB, Master Rune of Valaya, Rune of Courage, Ancestor Rune

17 Longbeards, Great Weapons, Shields, Full Command, Rune of Slowness

14 Warriors, Shields, Full Command

10 Thunderers, Shields

10 Thunderers, Shields

15 Iron Breakers, Full Command, Rune of Courage

Organ Gun

I was going to take it easy on her but I wasn’t going to take a wholly inappropriate army. My two major blocks were immune to Fear and between Thorek, the Runesmith, the Valaya rune and the Balance rune I felt I could weather the magical holocaust that was brewing. I didn’t want to shut it down altogether though, the point of the game for me wasn’t to win but to show Dawn how to play and for her to have fun – that meant letting a few spells through.

I set the table up and Dawn won the roll off for table edge.

My deployment was a pretty standard castle formation, I had Thunderers on a hill against the table edge, Thorek on the back line with the Iron Breakers and Longbeards in front of him. The warriors and the Organ Gun protected the exposed flank.

Dawn set up in a loose line across her deployment zone using the coaching inn at the centre of the table as cover for her more fragile or tempting targets (honestly who builds a coaching inn on a plain of skulls anyhow?)

She also won the roll to start and made me go first. I decided not to hasten my inevitable spiky demise and left my units exactly where they were for the first couple of turns. Thorek struck the Rune of Wrath and Ruin to deplete the numbers of Daemonettes but only killed three of them, Dawn spent her first turn manoeuvring around the coaching inn, The Daemonettes containing the Herald decided that they were completely out of position and ran down the deployment zone to follow in the tracks of their diabolic sistren. Screamers moved up beside the leading Daemonette unit and everything else shuffled forwards. Between bad dice rolls on Dawn’s part, few spells being in range and my pool of dispel dice the first Daemonic magic phase achieved precisely nothing.

The second turn was pretty much more of the same. Thorek runed up the Screamers and killed three of those. Unfortunately for me they were out of Thunderer range so I wasn’t able to finish off the unit. Dawn moved stuff closer still ready for a charge, the Flamers sprinted up to take positions behind the wall of the coaching inn’s well yard and, in a bold move the Lord of Change flew over the building in front of my entire army. Another poor magic phase saw me escape without casualties once again but Dawn managed to draw blood when the Lord of Change fired his Flames of Tzeentch at the Anvil of Doom and killed one of the guards.

Now I had a bit of a dilemma. The obvious choice would be to let fly with everything at the Lord of Change but that would have made for a dull game and, having lost more than one Lord of Change to massed fire, I’m acutely aware of how easy they are to kill if you suddenly have trouble rolling ward saves. In the end I decided not to target the Lord of Change at all, trusting in my pile of dispel dice to protect me from nastiness. Thorek struck the Rune of Hearth and Hold with ancient power, making my entire army immune to fear and terror as well as giving me a reroll on panic tests and break tests. The Organ gun fired at the unit of Horrors containing the Herald and killed a couple, The Thunderers decided to concentrate on the Daemonettes rather than the stragglers from the Screamer unit and a few more fell to Dwarf shot reducing the unit to only two ranks.

Now things were getting hotter! The Daemonettes charged the Longbeards and despite the Rune of Slowness made contact. The Screamers flew out of arc of the Thunderers ready for some fly-past attacks and the second Daemonette unit along with both units of Horrors moved up. Dawn finally had a magic phase that worked and had a particularly lucky Flickering Fire of Tzeentch versus the Organ gun, taking two wounds off the warmachine as well as killing two of the crew. The Lord of Change managed to get Tzeentch’s Firestorm off against the Anvil of Doom and killed the second guard. He then followed up with his shooting attack and killed Kraggi, leaving Thorek alone with the precious relic. Meanwhile the Flamers flung magical flame at the Organ gun and managed to destroy it leaving the surviving crewman to scuttle towards Thorek for safety.

Combat didn’t go well for the Daemonettes as they found the sturdy Dwarfs hard to kill. The Longbeards chopped up a few of the shrieking Daemons and won the combat but the leadership test was passed easily.

The battle was much more interesting now. I still held the centre of the table and was in a strong position, I had moved the Iron Breakers up to threaten the Lord of Change and swung the Warriors out to head off the flanking Horrors led by their Herald. The Lord of Change was a big threat and Thorek still stood defiant over the Anvil of Doom despite the death of all his guards and his assistant. Meanwhile the second unit of Daemonettes was moving up into threat range and the Flamers would be a constant menace unless they were dealt with.

In my fifth turn I went to strike the Rune of Wrath and Ruin but Thorek clearly didn’t have his mind on the job and failed the roll, with Kraggi blasted into a charred ruin there was no reroll and so I rolled on the misfire table. Of course there is no other result possible at this stage except a 1 (why do they even bother printing the rest of the table?) and Thorek blew himself into the halls of his ancestors. With my Runelord dead I was not looking forward to the Daemonic magic phases at all. The Thunderers fired at the smaller unit of Horrors and managed to wipe them out entirely. The Longbeards also wiped out the Daemonettes through a combination of Dwarf steel and Daemonic Instability. Dawn had countered the threatened Iron Breaker charge by flying the Lord of Change over behind my line to the smoking crater that had once been an Organ Gun. I prepared myself for a magical battering but, much to my relief, the Herald of Tzeentch managed to completely fluff his spell, suffering a wound from the miscast and prematurely ending the magic phase before the Lord of Change had even rolled up his sleeves. No doubt severe words were had about that after the battle (and by ‘severe words’ I mean eternities of pain and suffering).

Dawn had charged the Longbeards with her second unit of Daemonettes, and once more the Rune of Slowness failed to protect the doughty veterans. This time, as both of our battle standards were in the fight, I explained the challenge rules and Dawn decided to issue one with her Herald. I accepted with my Thane and the fight was on! Sadly it was also rather quick as the Slaaneshi Herald cut through the Gromril armour of the Thane like smoke and killed him before he could react. Elsewhere the fight was going little better for the Dwarfs, while the other Daemonettes were not so effective at wounding the Longbeards neither were the Longbeard’s great axes able to pierce the daemonic ward saves. In the end the Daemonettes won and and as the Longbeards were no longer immune to fear they automatically broke and were run down by the cackling succubi.

We were going into the last turn and things looked very different to the situation only a single turn ago.  I had lost my General, the main combat block had been chopped up and destroyed utterly. My Thunderers were being strafed by the surviving pair of Screamers, the Lord of Change was entirely untouched and free to wreak arcane ruin over my Dwarfs. On the positive side, both the Iron Breakers and the Warriors were at full strength and there was little chance the Screamers would seriously damage my Thunderer units.

I began by declaring charges with the Warriors against the Horrors and the Ironbreakers against the Flamers. The Flamers fired as the wrathful Dwarfs rushed in but failed to seriously dent the heavily armoured elites. The Warriors on the other hand found themselves just out of range and so their bid for glory came to an ignominious halt three inches from where they set off. As the Flamers were defending an obstacle, the Ironbreakers didn’t get to strike first but in the end the combat was pretty inconclusive. The skill of the Dwarfs easily parried the clumsy blows of the Flamers but the tough fungoid bodies of the Daemons proved impervious to the Dwarf axes. The Daemons won despite the static combat resolution but the Dwarfs easily made their break test. Over on the other side of the table, the Thunderers fired a salvo at the Daemonettes and killed a few but not enough to bring the unit below half strength. It was going to be a bad result for me barring a miracle in Dawn’s last turn.

The Lord of Change declared a charge against the flank of the beleagured Iron Breakers and the Daemonettes swung around behind them to block their escape. The Screamers killed a couple more Thunderers with slashing attacks but there was no risk of a panic test. The magic phase was mostly uneventful, the Horrors and Herald cast Flickering Fire of Tzeentch at the Warriors and managed to kill one between them, the Lord of Change attempted Glory of Chaos but failed and so we were left with the last combat round of the game. This time, the Ironbreakers were not so lucky as the Lord of Change tore through them, killing five. The Flamers added to the tally and the Dwarfs were unable to injure the daemons yet again. At least they were immune to fear due to their Rune of Courage so they weren’t going to break automatically however they had lost by a lot and there was no battle standard for a reroll. I failed the test and they fled, stopping just short of the wating arms of the Daemonettes. The Flamers pursued but got tangled up in the fence and ended up some way behind.

With that the game was over and it was time to tot up the points. I could see that I had lost, it was just a question of how much. There were a lot of dead Daemons but all of my expensive units were dead or fleeing. All the table quarters were contested but Thorek and the Longbeards were a huge chunk of points between them and the final result reflected that. Dawn won by 1210 points which was a massacre. Not bad for a newbie!