Vampires Suck (Part 2)

And so, having taken an entire evening to play only three turns of an error strewn game, Pete and I reconvened for round two of our breaking out of the old armies.

This time we opted to go for just 1000 points to speed things up and we also actually studied our army rules before playing, which helped.

We had both clearly spent some time thinking about what went badly as we had both altered the balance of our forces with an aim to improve performance.

Realising that I had struggled to cross the board, I opted for a much faster, if smaller, and hard hitting force. Pete, meanwhile, had reduced the attacking wing of his army which had found itself strung out and isolated (his Lord had only narrowly avoided defeat against my Vampire), but had maintained his infantry line.

High Elves

High Elf Lord - Giant Blade, Heavy Armour, Shield

High Elf Mage (Level 2 Wizard) - Ruby Ring of Ruin

16 High Elf Spearmen - Full Command 

12 High Elf Archers - Champion

12 Lothern Sea Guard - Full Command

15 Swordmasters of Hoeth - Full Command

Tiranoc Chariot

Vampire Counts

Vampire Count - Sword of Kings, Enchanted Shield, Talisman of Protection, Heavy Armour, Nightmare

Wight Lord - Charmed Shield, Heavy Armour, Skeletal Steed

Necromantic Acolyte (Level 2 Wizard) - Sceptre of Noirot, Nightmare

7 Black Knights - Lance, Barding, Full Command

5 Black Knights - Lance, Full Command

3 Bat Swarms

3 Fell Bats

Deployment

The armies we'd picked somewhat dictated the nature of the battle we would be having. My hammer units were going to aim to get across the field as fast as possible, and Pete's archers would seek to whittle them down before the arrived.

Meanwhile, my flying units would attempt to get behind his lines, whilst his chariot would seek to plough into my flank.

At least we understood each other.

Interestingly, this is the shape of many of my games against Pete, be they Blood Angels vs Alpha Legion in Horus Heresy, Resistance vs UCM in Dropzone Commander or Soviets vs Flak 88s in Bolt Action.

Turn One

Getting the first turn, I immediately made straight for the enemy lines, angling the smaller unit of Black Knights to address the inevitable advance of the Tiranoc Chariot.

Meanwhile, my Fell Bats flew up the flank of the Elven army, whilst the Bat Swarms loitered behind a wood.

Magic achieved nothing...a recurring theme.

For some reason I didn't get any pictures of Pete's turn, but he moved the Chariot up and opened fire with magic and missiles, killing a couple of Black Knights.

Turn Two

The Necromancer got on with his main task of bringing back fallen Knights, and the Vampire declared a charge at the centre of the enemy line...which failed.

To try to stymie the Chariot, I threw the Bat Swarms in its way, whilst the fast moving Fell Bats got behind the Elves.

Being somewhat out of practice at this game, I hadn't spotted that I'd left the Bat Swarms in the way of a double charge from the Chariot and the Spearmen, an invitation that Pete immediately took.

Meanwhile, a much more effective round of shooting and magic took almost half of the Vampire's unit out of action.

The Bat Swarms could have withstood the Chariot by itself, but a ranked unit hitting their flank led by a hero with a magic blade was too much to bear and the fluttered away into the night sky.

Fortunately, the Chariot fumbled its overrun roll and failed to contact my cavalry.

Turn Three

So far, things hadn't gone amazingly well and that sinking feeling grew as the Necromancer failed to bring back and Black Knights twice!

With nothing else to lose, I issued a charge into the Archers with both my Knights and the Fell Bats. I lost another Knight on the way in but won the combat and drove the Archers back.

Sadly, the other unit of Knights failed it's charge and to add injury to insult a miscast from the Necromancer (who was having an absolutely smashing turn) killed one of the Knights.

Fortunately the stumbled forward enough to be out of the Chariot's charge arc. Small mercies.

Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for the Vampire's unit and they were suddenly on the receiving end of a flank charge from the Swordmasters.

There followed some furious book-flicking as we tried to work out if the rest of the unit could fight if the Wight Lord the were in contact with issued a challenge - we reasoned that they couldn't as they weren't in contact with any other models, please let us know if we were wrong.

Meanwhile the Elf General and his Spearmen charged the Necromancer's unit and things were looking bleak.

However, I hadn't counted on just how resilient Black Knights could be when you'd properly read their rules, and we were both reminded of just how squishy Elves were.

In an amazing turn of events I won both combats, including an amazing use of the Charmed Shield turning aside a cleaving blow destined to take the Wight Lord's head.

I was still surrounded but I had the opportunity to charge one last time. There was still a chance.

Turn Four

I managed to raise a few more Knights into the Necromancer's unit before the charge was sounded again and the ploughed into the Spearmen and the Vampire's unit went into the Lothern Sea Guard.

In other news, the Fell Bat went into the MN age because why not.

Unfortunately, the Elves became a much tougher nut to crack and whilst the Sea Guard were driven back, the Spearmen and the Elven General cut down the Necromancer's unit and turned to encircle the Vampire.

Enemies crashed in around the Vampire who took the opportunity to issue a challenge to the Elven Noble, who bravely accepted.

Despite the Black Knights hacking and slashing their way through Elves, and cutting down the enemy General, soon only the indomitable Vampire Count was left standing...surrounded on all sides...

Turn Five

...I think you know what happened.

Final Thoughts

Overall this was a much more successful game, not only because we were much more competent, but actually there were the seeds of a decent plan.

Had I made the first charge in turn two, I think that things might have turned out differently, as with more Black Knights to play with, I'd have lasted longer and, more importantly, the Swordmasters were looking the wrong way at that moment.

Things might also have gone better if I'd not stupidly wasted my Bat Swarms.

What we both enjoyed was the fact that despite my first couple of turns going badly, I almost dug myself out of the hole, which speaks well of the way the game works.

I still need to get my head around the fact that powerful charges are less likely to blast through enemy units, and I really need to think about how best to take advantage of magic in the game.

I could do with rolling less miscasts too.

We'll probably do this dance again soon, and I suspect that things might get a bit 'scaled' up, if you catch my drift.

Vampires Suck (Part 1)

Pete and I have been putting off (for lots of varied and valid reasons) playing Warhammer: The Old World again for about two months.

Therefore, when we were finally able to schedule a game, we dived in with enthusiasm, picking 1500 point armies and both neglecting to re-read the rules since we last played.

This led to a game that featured probably the most book-flicking, rules checking and take backs that we've had since we played our first game of Horus Heresy.

As you'll read on you'll realise that the image above never happened as I allowed Pete to take back his charge as we realised after the fact that the Black Coach was ethereal and without a magic weapon the Elven Lord was charging into purgatory.

There were many such moments, I shan't be listing them all.

Vampire Counts

I've not fielded my Vampire Counts army since giving them a hefty spruce up earlier in the year and so I'd not really engaged with the details of how different they are in Warhammer: The Old World to previous incarnations.

This ignorance meant that I picked an army which was pretty similar to what I used to field in 6th and 7th edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle: blocks of undead troops to lock the enemy in place and fast moving hammer units to hit the flanks.

One thing I noticed is that there's a lot more restrictions. For example you need an ethereal character to include Spirit Hosts, and I like this kind of thematic element.

Vampire Count (Level 3 Wizard) on Nightmare - Flayed Hauberk, Master of the Black Arts, Shield
Necromantic Acolyte (Level 2 Wizard) - Sceptre of Noirot
Tomb Banshee
20 Skeletons - Full Command
20 Skeletons - Full Command
25 Zombies - Full Command
3 Bat Swarms
3 Spirit Hosts
7 Black Knights - Full Command, Lances, Barding
Black Coach

High Elves

Pete's been busy building up his High Elves for some time, replacing the army that he sold a good chunk of after the demise of Warhammer Fantasy Battle.

I think the Dragon Princes, Griffon Rider and Spearmen are part of his original army and the rest has been added, but I could be wrong.

Just like myself, Pete went for what would have been a fairly big standard High Elf army back in the day, with a little bit of everything.

Elven Lord on Griffon - Lance, Heavy Armour, Additional Hand Weapon
Elven Mage on Horse (Level 2 Wizard)
25 High Elf Spearmen - Full Command
11 High Elf Archers - Champion
12 Lothern Sea Guard - Full Command
15 Swordmasters of Hoeth - Full Command
6 Dragon Princes of Caledor - Full Command
Reaper Bolt Thrower

Deployment 

We matched up fairly evenly in the deployment phase, with both of us loading opposing flanks with fast, hard-hitting units. My opposite flank was anchored by the Bat Swarms that were aimed squarely at the Repeater Bolt Thrower.

It was clear that the battle would be decided by the cavalry.

Turn 1

Pete advanced cautiously with his Lord and Dragon Princes and stood still with the rest of his line, unleashing a volley into the massed skeletons.

On my turn, the horde began to shuffle forwards and I suddenly realised how slow this version of the army was. If the Elves weren't going to come to me, I was going to struggle to get across the board with anything other than my Bat Swarms.

The few casualties caused were negated by the new way that Invocation of Nehek works, without needing to cast a spell. Broadly, I like this change, especially as the High Elves were repeatedly casting Drain Magic to neuter my magical ability.

Having said that, I did manage to cast a Spiritual Vortex to impede the advance of the Dragon Princes as my own faster troops also edged forward, trying to dance around who was going to get the charge.

Turn 2

Whilst the rest of the Elves stayed put and delivered another desultory round of shooting that was going to be healed at the start of my turn, the Elf Lord boldly charged into the Black Knights and killed the Hell Knight in a challenge and the overkill removed another Black Knight as I hadn't quite got my head around how the Indomitable rule worked.

In my turn, my line shuffled forwards, but the Spirit Hosts and Black Coach pushed forward to threaten a charge on the next turn. The Banshee ran up through the woods and screamed at the Dragon Princes, killing one.

The Vampire challenged the Elf Lord and we very quickly discovered that we had not tooled up our characters effectively as they both failed ineffectually at each other. Technically the Black Knights won the fight through combat resolution but the Griffon rider held his nerve.

At some point during these two turns, the Vampire suffered damage through a miscast. Magical ineptitude was to become a theme.

Turn 3

The Elven line continued to remain immobile and send arrows raining down on the incredibly slow moving horde approaching them.

Meanwhile, the Mage got himself out of the way of potential charges, whilst the Dragon Princes charged the Banshee, intent on slowly killing her with combat resolution.

The Vampire and Elf Lord again failed to hurt one another, but this time the Vampire miscast a dispel attempt. It didn't cause damage, it was just embarrassing.

Desperate to kill something, the Black Coach charged the Archers, who fled rather than face inevitable destruction.

The Spirit Hosts also charged the Spearmen, but failed to make contact.

Meanwhile, the Bat Swarms were finally able to charge the Bolt Thrower and killed one of the crew. Also, the Banshee managed to scream another Dragon Princes to death and avoid crumbling.

However, despite these moderate successes, things were about to get ugly. Not fully understanding hot The Dwellers Below worked, the Vampire managed to wound himself again when he succeeded on casting it and falling under his own template.

To add injury to insult, the Elf Lord managed to sneak a wound through the Vampires various saves, killing him and initiating the inevitable destruction of the whole army.

At this point, we called the game as we'd frankly taken ages to play three turns and it was getting late.

Final Thoughts

The differences between how this army worked and how I thought it worked were quite noticeable, and my main takeaways were as follows:

• Vampires no longer seem to be the blenders that they once were;
• I really need to examine how to use undead magic better, I feel the lack of the old Vanhel's Danse Macabre crutch;
• Fear and Terror ate not the weapons that they once used to be;
• I need to examine the army list to do something about how slow things are.

In fairness, I suspect Pete was feeling frustrated with the reduced impact of his shooting, and he also needs to re-evaluate how he equips his characters. However, I do suspect that if I'd made it to the Elven lines, the Swordmasters would have ripped through my Skeletons and Zombies.

You'll get to see how we both learn from our experiences when we clash again in part 2...

Final Countdown: A Tale of 4 Armies

When I set myself the goal of getting my existing Warhammer Fantasy armies tidied up with their backlogs fully painted, I didn't think that I'd have two of them done by the beginning of February.

Admittedly, the Bretonnians were already done, but I have got my entire Vampire Counts army fixed, touched up, in some cases repainted and everything from my Lead Mountain finished off.

These two are the final nails in the coffin of this particular section of my personal challenge. A mounted Vampire Counts and a Wight Lord Battle Standard Bearer.

One of them has been in my army for a long, long time, whilst the other was constructed totally from my bits box.

The Vampire Count has been built to represent the Red Duke, the main villain from the Circle of Blood campaign pack and the body was taken from an Empire knight (I think) I had kicking round. The armour reminded me of that worn by Gary Oldman in the Dracula movie in which the main villain was Keanu Reeves' 'English' accent.

He's mounted on a spare Bretonnian Warhorse as the Red Duke is Bretonnian, so that makes sense. The head is actually the original one from the model serving as my Necromancer on foot. The cloak comes from a Frostgrave sprue, the sword is from the Empire Militia kit and the shield is actually from the Zombie Dragon rider.

I had to get a little creative with the right shoulder pad as the Bretonnian arm I used didn't match the left arm. However, I turned to that most useful of kits, the Horus Heresy Leviathan Dreadnought, and carved something appropriate out of the ball socket on the spare foot.

I'm not sure if it comes out ont the photos, but the armour is done with Fleshtearer's Red contrast paint over silver, again trying to evoke Gary Oldman...but also, he's the Red Duke.

I still have a transfer shortage and so Salamanders decals were used to match the Black Knights. Also, it looks like a dragon, and armoured vampires are Blood Dragons, so it works in my head cannon.

Overall, I'm pleased with him. I now have all the Undead characters I need for the Circle of Blood and I have three different Vampires to lead my army: on foot in an infantry block, mounted with Black Knights, or on a Zombie Dragon being shot by cannonballs.

My Battle Standard Bearer is from the ancient Skeleton War Machines boxed set. His name is Reaper as he used to carry a scythe and be holding a decapitated head.

Due to breakages he got repurposed into a BSB Manny years ago, but his banner was actually the horned skull from the from of the chariot. Rebuilding that model meant ripping this one apart and so he got stripped, repainted and a new banner added.

I'm quite proud of this banner.

Long time readers of the blog will know that I usually avoid freehand like the plague. However, given the fact that I couldn't really lay a transfer over the stitching on the flag, I felt I had no option.

I went for stippling with a variety of blues the creat the sky, and then did the same with great for the land, which I carefully edge with pale grey to give it definition. The tower is a very simple affair with only notional highlighting, but I think it works.

The banner doesn't quite fit the colour theme or mood of the army, but that helps it stand out, and I like the idea that it's a tapestry torn from the walls of his castle and restitched together.

With these two models done, I've now completed the 'revamp' of my army. I still can't quite do full armies for the Circle of Blood as the first scenario requires 1500 point force drawn only from Skeletons, Zombies, Ghouls, Spirit Hosts and Skeleton Horsemen (which aren't a thing in Warhammer: The Old World), led by a single level 2 Necromancer.

I will need to put some thought into how I tackle this. Perhaps I can draft in Tomb Kings allies as the Skeleton Horsemen, get some Dire Wolves (as their battlefield role is similar) or more likely add a unit of ghouls.

However, that's for later. My Vampire Counts are done for now and I'm moving on to rebasing my Wood Elves.

In other news, I went to my first show in a long while and attended Vapnartak at York Racecourse. As ever, there were lots of excellent boards on display, my favourite was possibly this Battle of Scarif table done in a very small scale.

Display boards are great for getting ideas, and although this board was trying to sell me a medieval game, I was more interested in where the Trebuchets came from.

They are apparently from WizKids and come as a single piece, either painted or unpainted. Either way they are significantly cheaper than Games Workshop's offering and looked really good on the board.

Shows are a great way to remind yourself of lapsed projects and this Venetian board (which I don't think was actually for Carnevale) made me recall that I still have some Gondoliers to paint.

Obviously, going to a show meant buying a few things, and one of the best features of Vapnartak is their bring and buy section, which always provides a bargain or two.

This year it provided a Mordor Troll still on sprue for Lord of the Rings and a painted Bretonnian Knight, who is destined for the back of a flying beastie.

Still on a Bretonnian theme I picked up a box of Fireforge Mounted Sergeants to use as Mounted Yeomen. They were reduced in price so 16 models ended up costing about half the price of 3 from Games Workshop.

Finally, I popped by the Crooked Dice stand to say hi to Karl and pick up the Resistance leaders from 'V'. My 7TV: the 80s Kickstarter is due to be delivered this month and it includes some more Visitors, and so I figured I'd need to start the fight back.

So I've achieved a good amount, but I've also gained miniatures. However, I'm pleased I'm now at a point where I can, according to my own rules, add to the Vampires as I see fit.

Acquired: 10
Painted: 146
Lead Mountain: 851

Flying Horror: A Tale of 4 Armies

The commitment to delve to the bottom of the bits box throws up some fairly problematic situations along the lines of: how the hell am I going to use those?

When the problem facing me was a veritable bucketload of monopose plastic bats, I feel I may have come up with a pretty good answer.

The old plastic swarm kit, which I believe was initially made for Warhammer Quest, was simultaneously great and terrible.

Whilst it successfully provided an affordable way to add swarms of Bats, Rats, Spiders and Snotlings to your armies, it was a very rare individual who wanted all of them. On top of that, the uniform monopose nature of the sculpts somewhat undermined the concept of a swarm.

Alternatively the models could easily be scattered around an army as base decoration quite easily. Well, apart from the bats, which sat upon chunky flight stands that looked like they'd been impaled.

Therefore, when it cam to making use of my truckload of them, the first thing to go was the stands.

I had a good look at different manufacturers' bat swarms and opted for simply gluing them together in clumps to give the impression of a confusing swarm.

I used plastic glue for this to form a longer, stronger bond, but the time it took to dry did present some issues with things falling off during construction (largely because I was a bit impatient). The trickiest element was getting a strong enough bond on the base bat to build from.

When it came to painting I opted for keeping it really simple. Going for a Grey Seer undercoat, Black Templar contrast drybrushed with Eshin Grey and Administratum Grey.

Although I'm fully aware that bats aren't black and this makes them a bit cartoony, I'm completely happy with this as the Vampire Counts army, not to mention the whole Warhammer world, have always been more than a bit cartoony.

The teeth and tongue were picked out in white and pink respectively and given a coat of Skeleton Horde contrast paint, whilst the eyes were dotted white and washed in Hexwraith Flame for added spookiness.

I've made sure the unit ranks up because I didn't check the army list before making them; in Warhammer: The Old World Bat Swarms are skirmishers, but this hasn't always been the case. However, my careful construction will at least help with storage.

I've always liked Bat Swarms in my Vampire Counts army as they make for a good blocking unit, protecting the flanks of my cavalry, as they can keep up with them.

All in all, I'm really pleased in how these have turned out. Very few things in my hobby please me more than making a 200 point unit for this army game out of things I had no intention of ever using.

Call me petty, but I consider these things as a degree of compensation for what Games Workshop  did to my Undead in 1999. It's what Cheaphammer is actually all about.

#neverforgetthesundering

I still have a load of the metal Bat Swarms knocking about, but they ended up being based separately for more generic fantasy skirmish games, and I'm not sure I'm going to bother to bring them back over to this army. Much as I like swarms, I'm not sure I need even this many.

Beyond that, I genuinely only have a couple of character models to go and my Vampire Counts will be done to the point of no backlog.

To top things off, I think Bat Swarms were the only models I hadn't done for the Vlad's Army feature pack for 7TV, so you can expect an imminent start on that.

The terrain piece I've done was actually bought last week to be carved up and used as a base to pin the bats too until I decided to just stick them together.

It's a Renedra kit and I took the opportunity to play with how I do stone using something I saw on a video. After a base of Grey Seer and Black Templar (I don't have any black spray) I sponged on some Administratum Grey followed by Grey Seer on the edges and corners.

I them proceeded to wash it with three colours at once: Nuln Oil, Agrax Earthshade and Seraphim Sepia. I did different colours in different bits and merged then whilst they were wet, which has ended up giving a much more mottled and natural look than a flat colour with a single wash.

I'm really pleased with this and will probably pick up the other kits in this set of ruins to do the same with.

A really successful 24 hours. 21 models off the Lead Mountain, but I'm only counting them as 7 models painted given that it was all so simple.

Acquired: -12 
Painted: 144
Lead Mountain: 831