Great Battle of Maroubra Pass

 Finally, after a great jounrey across the coninent, two great friends take on separate armies to become enemies. Orcs and their hated enemy, the dwarves clash on the Maroubra Pass!

Aiming to use the Old World Rules (mostly) we set up a 1500pt army each and set about to war!

Dwarves take 2 cannons, the Goblobber, 2 units of Thunderers, a unit of Clansmen warriors led by King Alaric with his flying hammer, and a unit of longbeards led by their hero.

The orcs bring  their General Rotten Potata and the boyz, a unit of arrer boyz, a unit of Big uns arrers, a unit of Black Orcs, Wolf boy gobbos, a stonkin' Chariot, stone trolls and a rock lobba.

Turn One

The orcs advance and the first blood goes to the Rock Lobba that instantly scores a direct hit on on of the dwarf cannons.

In turn, the Goblobba scores a hit on the rocklobba, but doesn't do enough damage to disable it.

Turn Two

The orcs adavance again and the trolls stumble forward, woken from their stupidity. The chariot rumbles down the flank, and the wolf riders make good ground on the other flank.

The dwarfs reveal their secret plan as miners tunnel up in front of the wolf line within range of their blasting charges. Terrified by the noise and in panic from the fire, they turn and run uncontrollably. The Goblobber misses all.

Turn Three

The Evil SUnz Arrer Boyz move through the woods and fire at the miners, killing one. All other units advance, taking fire from the dwarf cannon into da boyz, ripping through three and missing the General Rotten Potata. Both rock lobbers crush the enemy with the orcs taking out the remaining dwarf cannon and the dwarf lobber restroying the majority of the arrer boys.

Turn Four

The Arrer Boys suffer a direct hit from the goblobba before they charge the miners and get a face full of blasting charges reducing their numbers, but Gazza the Assazza challenges the Prospector to a duel and plunges his dagger through the dwarf champions eye. His fellow miners grit their teeth and make a mental entry into the book of Grudges.

The stonkin' chariot decides to take a short cut through rough ground and breaks part of the axel and maims a boar, charging on noetheless under their masters whip.

Now in range, the thunderers begin to let loose their volleys, cutting down the orcs as they advance.

Having lost the last of his unit, captain Sharthelmet decides he 'as 'ad enuff of dis hogshit - and legs it all the way back to where he came from.

The orc lobba sends a hewn stone into the dwarf miners.

Turn Five

The Black Orcs and the General charge the miners and break them, running them down and slaughtering them all. They press on down the flank, withing range of the longbeards.

The chariot careens off the grassy mound to get shot to splinters by the waiting thunderers. The Thundereds in return get flattened alongside a quarter of the clansmen. The King, horrified and eyes wide in shock, loses his nerve and the entire unti breaks and runs. They pass the Goblobber and they, seeing their king in flight, run and leave the great engine behind.

Turn Six

The Black orcs charge the longbeards and a bloody massacre it is, but once again, (mostly due to forgetting the rules about stubborn, and the magical banner), the dwarves break and are run off the battlefield by the Black Orcs and Rotten Potata. The elite green unit turns around and the Thunderers are sandwiched between the Black Orcs and the Boyz.

The remaining Thunderers on the other side are charged by the 'Ead 'Untas Big Uns and cut down, but do not break, fighting with more honour than the king himself!

The dwarves fall and the green tide wins a glorious victory.

With one final command, the orc master sends  one last rock hurling into the fray, crushing friend and foe alike.

"And dat will learn 'em..." he snorts. "Essept they're dead."

Near complete Chaos Army of Nurgle

 It all started with the Realm of Chaos books and now it has almost come to completion.

Just a handful of nurglings and a mounted general to go.
I do like the look of those new pestigors though.

This is really the combination of what has become three distinct armies over time, rather than the enormity of a Chaos 3rd ed Nurgle Army, due to Games Workshop continually changing things with every edition. Now they would be split into Beastmen, Daemons and Warriors of Chaos. I havent even added the diseased flagellants, (now in my Empire army) or the plague skeletons, plague zombies and plague cart in (which are now in the undead army).

My terrible and very old sculpey version of the Greater Demon of Nurgle has finally started to break apart and even with a few modigications, he's looking in bad shape.

Might be time to retire him.

I could never afford the '87 Citadel models and even now I can't really afford the GW models either, now being sold at some $250 for a single Great Unclean One, but what I can afford is a $12 print from Temu with some great detail.

I speed painted it in 2 hours using white drybrush, base colours druybrush,and 3 washes of glistening blood, green shade and skeleton horde brown.
Highlights and done.

I also finished off my special metal Chaos Knights and the load of Battlemasters that I had accumulaed. I quick speedpaint on most of them and a bit of mucking about, but they are more than passable for the table.

Then my magnifiers broke!

Chaos Marauders, Warriors and Sorcerers

I bouht these marauders originally out of a desire to get some Chaos Thugs for the long, long goal of collecting the grand Army of Nurgle 3rd edition ever since I picked up a copy of the Lost and the Damned all those years ago.

There hasn't been any really good models for Chaos Thugs since the old metals of the late 80s, but I thought I'd give these a go. As it turned out, the models were very janky and did not fit together well. The heads were ok, but nothing great and even though they were sold as Marauders, they really lacked a kind of ferocious appeal.

I took ages to assemble them and still didn't like the bodgy half-capes that came with them. The standard was boring and I made no less than five attempts to base them, putty the gaps, and muck with them to get them into some kind of good form.

When we started playing Frosgrave, thugs were required, so I picked out a couple and painted them up. I liked the shields, but in the end decided to use some of them for other armies.

When we were discussing playing something other than undead, Robyn suggested a beefcake army of bodybuilders and this was the motivation I needed to finish them off. With heads replaced by chaos helmets, a new standard and a specific model called Hulk Grogan, the unit was finished.

I toyed with the idea of giving all of them black and white death metal make-up, but decided that the helmets were a better choice. Finally finishing off the banner with the symbol Chaos undivided brings them back for dual purpose as the Chaos Thugs I was after in the first place.

After they were finished, I then set to finishing off the new unit of Chaos Warriors that I got second-hand for cheap. I really like the look of these imposing warriors over the Battlemasters and old Heroquest Choas Warrior sculpts, but they cerrtainly fit enough with the thugs and the resculpted Chaos Chosen (Chaos Warrior kit) that I had redone some time back to make them not hunchbacks.

These were originally red, and after a little testing, the combo of dark green, silver and black provided the colour I was after to bring them into the Nurgle paint scheme, as did finishing off the banner with the symbol of the PlagueFather.

A quick wash with the new Skeleton Horde brown was brings the Nurgle Sorgerers up to scratch. 

 

Dragon Ogres

 Picked up these four in the midst of a big bundle deal and originally stripped them back for sale purposes. They are expensive models, but with the new plastics out, they didn't sell at the price I wanted for the old OOPs so instead I decided to do a speed paint on them and did all four in an afternoon/evening.

With the request for a beefcake chaos army, these guys were the beefiest cakes I had, and I decided to keep a majority skin and leatherish tone for the entire model, rather than the accepted norm of a green contrasted dragon body. There is a very slight grey-green drybrush on the scales, but that's it. I wanted them to have an overall solid and earthy tone.

I made up the bases cut form particle board to give them a nice spacing and glued the arms on last so I could get into the detail of the faces. A bit of stone and flock to finish and done!

I must say, after seeing these guys in battle on the tabletop now and their incredible power at wiping out anything in their way, I'm glad I kept them.

Deadcember - Bruce Von Carstien vs the Beefcake Army

 Deadcember is upon us and this year the line up is the new Beefcake Army requested by Robyn, to take on Bruce Von Carstien in the winter cemetary.

I asked if Robyn would like to play a different army than undead and "an army of body builders and rock n wreslters" was the answer. The request motivated me too finish of those terrible Chaos Maruder models that have now been surpassed in quality by the new GW sets, but nevertheless serve as beefcake Thugs, which is why I got them for 3rd edition anyway. This in turn gave me the motivation to finish of the new Chaos Warrior models which are very nice indeed. 

As an extra bonus, the Dragon Ogres I aquired and didn't sell were also painted and added to the army.
I'll do a post on each of these a bit later.

It was also a great opportunity to include Mathog as a Beefcake pitfighter too.

The setting is our snow covered cemetary with a sarcophagus in the centre. Six turn limit - domination.

Bruce leads his army of skeletons with a Wight King, Cairn Wraith and a Spirit Host. 

The corpse cart boosts the skellies, but will it really be enough to hold back the horde of Chaos?

Right from Turn One, Bruce transforms into his Flying Horror form and positions himself close enough to raise zombies in front of the dragon ogres in an attempt to tar-pit them.

This turns out as expected and they get instantly mashed into the ground.

The archer thugs shoot at Bruce, but only one hits, easily deflected by Bruce's arm bracelet he stole from Wonder Woman.

The spirit host attack the archers and the cairn wraith attacks the giant.

The giant spends the rest of the game slamming his club into the ground trying to hit the wraith, and the wraith also fails to wound the giant even once.

Chaos Wizard Dr Kalihaal sends a destructive fireball into the plague cart dealing damage it cannot regenerate. Skeleton archers move through the ruins to shoot down only one marauder.

The infantry on both sides advances upon eachother, ready to charge. Chaos Warriors and The Chosen line up against Grave Guard and skeletal spearmen.

In a single move, the marauders go from skirmish formation to charge the skeleton sword infantry and the battle begins across the entire cemetary. Even with a sucessful cast of Spirits Below to thin the marauders, the conflict does not go well for the undead.

The Marauders, Chosen and Warriors dominate the undead horde and even though the magic of the corpse cart bolsters all three units of skeletons, all take heavy losses. The wight king passes right through the graveyard into the flank of the warriors and instantly cuts two from shoulder to hip.

Bruce transforms again and lands next to Mathog the Orge pitfighter and thrusts his blade of kings through his torso, killing him before he has a chance to retailate.
Such a quick death for such a great model - sigh.

The skeleton archers move up to block a charge path between the dragon ogres and the vampire, as one look is enough to make him flee in panic. 

The dragon ogres utterly destroy the entire skeleton unit in one charge, but two archers reassemble from the smashed bones, not once, but twice, and even one stalwart skelly goes on to regenerate a third time.

In the final round the ghosts finally dispatch the last chaos archer, the beefcakes eliminate the skeleton swords, the Chosen destroy the skeleton spears without taking a single wound, the cart is destroyed, the graveguard annihilated and the wight king decapitated.

Abanonding the spirits, Bruce transforms one again into his flying horror form and flees the battle, knowing that he will have to live with the shame of always being second rate to his peers.