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Monday 12 September 2016

Part Deux - The "I'm a Dad with no Time or I'm a Slow Painter" Challenge

I guess you could call it ironic.

I post a Blog entry about not having time to paint and lo and behold I don't find the time to follow up the post with an expansion on the topic.

Until now that is.

There was an awesome amount of interest in my little idea (my most ever read blog posting!) but some people wanted to take it in different directions which I have no issue with at all solongas it doesn't stray too far from the initial idea

So, here are the expanded guidelines:


  1. This is not a competition. There is no prize. It's not a painting competition nor is it a tournament. It's a friendly little nudge to get the lead pile reduced.
  2. The army should be a compact little 1000pt force. My army will be selected from WFB 3rd edition and will adhere to army lists in Warhammer Armies. My original idea was for others to do the same. It still is really but people should feel free to use extra 3rd rules printed in White Dwarf such as Gyrocopters and Iron Claw Goblin Catapults and also Realms of Chaos. If you really want to collect a 1000pt force from a different edition then please do feel free but bear in mind that if you want to play games with a different edition at BOYL2017 then you'll need opponents playing the same edition.
  3. Compulsory troops and unit minimums are reduced to a third of the specified numbers (rounding up) so, as an example, a 3000 point Wood Elf Army should have 30 Archers but as we're playing 1000pts you only need to include 10 Archers to fulfill your quota of compulsory troops. Minimum unit sizes do not drop below 5.
  4. The Army MUST be painted (shields and banners included).
  5. The Army must be painted between now and BOYL2017. The minis can be stripped and repainted minis you have painted before this challenge but the repaints must be done in the "now to BOYL2017" time frame. If you have miniatures already painted you want to include then these are additional to you 1000pt painting target and you can pick your final 1000pts from all available painted models.
  6. Miniatures can be of any manufacturer and time period.
  7. I reserve the right to impose extra rules to this list should I see fit.


I hope that covers all bases and if not then ignore me and do you own thing, No one died and made me king after all!


So, what have I finally settled upon painting and why?


I was originally going to do my Nordland Empire Army that is mainly made up of "Casting Room Miniatures" Renaissance range (http://www.castingroomminiatures.com/collections/renaissance?page=1) but there was some interest expressed in doing an Empire force. So I backed down.


I chose Dwarfs and suddenly more and more people started being interested in the idea, three of four of which chose Dwarfs too so I thought what the heck, let's go back to Empire.


Why Pick Empire?


Nostalgia.


It's my main reason for gaming.


For those of you who don't know my older Brother is the Oldhammer Legend "Erny" of "Erny's Place". When we were growing up, and Ern dragged me into the hobby, we had 3 main armies we used: Orcs and Goblins, Wood Elves and Humans that were originally deployed as Bretonians but morphed at one point or another into Empire (I'm sure Erny has mused on this subject at some point). We did also have a smatteirng of Skaven (we lacked the funds to build these up into a significant army) and Undead.
Like most others of our age group (I was pre-teen and Ern was early to mid teen) our forces were made up of Heroquest minis (both the original and Advanced flavours) Fantasy Regiments, a couple of Regiments of Renown,a few metal command groups, a smattering of metal citadel and marauder minis and quite a few non GW minis picked up from our local Gaming Shop (the legendary, but sadly now departed, Guardroom in Dunstable that advertised in the pages of White Dwarf in early issues). These troops were mounted upon squares cut from card that quickly got warped and damaged at the corners.











These troops were joined shortly before the release of 4th edition with a few miniatures of the new Empire range, namely Knights Panther and Marauder's Flagellents (still my favourite Flagellents GW have ever produced).

It's this old Empire army of Erny's that I want to imitate. My "Casting Room Miniatures" figures will be my non GW infantry and will be mounted upon laser cut MDF (the cardboard route, whilst nostalgic, does not appeal). They'll be joined by a small unit of Flagellents (well, 8 as per the list) and a unit of Knights Panther (They have to be Knights Panther, anything else won't give the correct nostalgic whiff).
This whole thing, using small armies and using 3rd ed, is about pressing the reset button and returning to basics. For that I need an army that feels like it did when I first started.


I hope Erny sees it as a compliment, that's certainly how it's meant.


Sunday 14 August 2016

The "I'm a Dad with no Time or I'm a Slow Painter" Challenge

I'm a Dad.

In the weeks prior to BOYL2016 I struggled to juggle painting time with the commitments of Dad life (mainly due to my partners shift work and our inability to get our 1 year old Son to sleep in his own bed). The result was a pissed off Misses, a frustrated Son and a failed painting target. I'm sure I'm not the only person to have this issue (indeed, Golgfag1 and myself think that should BOYL ever get a crest the motto should be "I ran out of time").

I managed to get most of it done, such as my Eltharion (although the photo below makes me think he needs a bit more inking). The main thing I didn't get done was shields and banners. Next year I don't plan to fall foul of this trap.


My very good friend "Quick Ben" is an absolutely brilliant painter but he is, by his own admission, quite a slow painter.

This will be known as the "I'm a Dad with no Time or I'm a Slow Painter" Challenge. It's quite similar to the "Tale of Four Gamers" that ran in White Dwarf a few times back in the day and also on a number of blogs recently. The main differences are that a) I have no idea if anyone else (Quick Ben included) will take up the challenge b) the only target is to paint the army by BOYL2017. Maybe I'll add in a "paint an additional character" or something but in principle there's no burden month to month in order to alleviate the time pressures.

So, what am I hoping to achieve? Inspired by the Dark Elf army in White Dwarf 144 I'm setting a target of 1000pts for 3rd edition. Nothing strenuous there. I then want to bring this compact army to battle at BOYL2017. As I'm probably going to be playing in the BFFB (Big F'in Fantasy Battle) on the Saturday I'm hoping to arrange some small battles on the Friday and the Sunday, so likely to be four games in total, two on the Friday and another two on the Sunday.

These are the rules:
  1. The army should be a 1000pt 3rd Edition force and should adhere to the army lists in Warhammer Armies.
  2. Numbers of compulsory troops and unit minimums are reduced to a third of the specified numbers (rounding up) so, as an example, a 3000 point Wood Elf Army should have 30 Archers but as we're playing 1000pts you only need 10 Archers to fulfill your quota of compulsory troops. Minimum unit size is 5.
  3. The Army MUST be painted (shields and banners included).
  4. The Army must be painted between now and BOYL2017. The minis can be stripped and repainted minis you have painted before this challenge but the repaints must be done in the "now to BOYL2017" time frame.
  5. Miniatures can be of any manufacturer and time period, only the rules need to be WFB 3rd Ed.
  6. I reserve the right to impose extra rules to this list should I see fit.
If I can think of any more rules I'll add them as and when (see rule 6).

My initial thinking was to paint my Nordland Empire army up but Gaj of "Warhammer for Adults" has expressed a desire to paint an Empire army this year and in the hope of enticing him into taking part I'm going to turn away from them. I don't want to go for Dark Elves as this may add to the enemy for the BFFB next year (more on this another day). So what army to go for?

Dwarfs.

I've tried to get this army off the group before, 2016/17 I'm finally going to get at least 1000pts of the bearded chaps done.

I already own a lot of the minis I need, they just need painting. The only thing I need is some Imperial Dwarf Warriors, fingers crossed I can get some at a decent price.


So, any interest at joining me in my humble plan at all?

Monday 8 August 2016

BOYL 2016- The Rise of Morcar

OK, there are few words to describe the game that we played out on the Saturday so I'm not gonna try to, all I say is that I've learned a firing squad of Warpfire Throwers may decimate a Barbarian unit but it's actually a speed bump for my own troops, lesson learnt!

A special thanks to Erny for the original idea, Fimm for sculpting the awesome Morcar miniature for this year's BOYL (mine is gonna get the Skeletor paint job treatment to lead my Undead army), Gaj for fleshing out Erny's concept and all who took part in the game.

Here's photo's of the game, lots and and lots of photo's. Some are horrendously blurry but I'm sure you'll forgive that, it's hard to stoop over an enormous table nigh on covered in mini's.................