A very old WFB 3rd edition article you may find interesting

I recently came across an interesting article on the Warhammer World Championship held in 1989 in a very old edition of GM magazine that I had back in the day (long story why I came across this which I don't need to replicate here!). What really caught my eye was the "gamey-ness" of the winning army. The winner (and this is no criticism of the winner BTW - one works within the rules as presented) played with a 7 cannon army! Now if one has played 3rd edition you will know how deadly cannon are. Personally I find the 3rd edition rules for cannon to be poorly written as there is no need to check for range which makes no sense - that did come later in White Dwarf 147 or thereabouts - it is in the rules for the new empire army that preceded 4th edition. I plan to try these amended rules out in the next month when my undead army will be ready to fight my Bretonnian forces.

One other thing to note is this - from what I can recall 3rd edition WFB competitions forbade the use of flying troops. These are the very thing that can negate war-machines such as cannon. I also seem to recall a limitation on wizards to second level magic - again a limitation that favours war-machine heavy armies. To me this is the antithesis of the oldhammer movement. Would love to hear your thoughts on this and I hope you enjoy the article (apologies for the size of the file - I want to make sure it is readable!).

First work of 2015

I've knocked a few figures off since the 1st of January but have been a bit slow in taking some pics of them. Anyway here they are:

Chaos sorcerer, thug and dwarf

Another undead rider and witch (a necromancer for my undead)

2 wraith and a ghost

Talisman thief and priest/minister

I've been experimenting with different ways of highlighting black as the usual grey highlights are a tad dull at times although I was happy enough with the witches highlights which were done in grey. So I've used blue highlights on black on four of the figures above and green on one (Sauron from the first citadel LOTR series). I'm inching closer to a finished plague cart as I only have one wheel and the wood to paint - hopefully I'll have a pic of a finished plague cart next entry...

2014 review and plans for 2015

Well it is that time of the year - to look back and what one has achieved (or not) and make some plans for the coming year. I went through my collection yesterday and from what I can work out this is what I painted in 2014:

About the only questionable things here are some of the space orks - I was painting some of these this time last year and cannot recall when I actually finished the first batch. Apart from that I know the rest of the figures pictured were done in 2014 and considering how slow a painter I can be I'm pretty chuffed at the result. Some of the figures pictured are slow burn projects I have going that I'll post about in the coming weeks and months.

So what else did I achieve that I really wanted to do? Well I played my test game of WFB 3rd edition whilst on paternity leave which I had wanted to do for ages. I also GM'ed a game of Rogue Trader (the Battle at the farm) which my wife and a friend played. The wife played it well too although in the end as the ork player she got done by a scenario which is badly balanced (if you go for the loot that is - call in reinforcements and I've been told the game changes dramatically).

Anyway so what do I have planned for 2015? In no particular order it is:

• Complete my WFB chaos army by adding a unit of thugs, thug bowmen, beastmen and chaos dwarfs noting that I've made decent progress on some of these units already. If I add to that lot it will be a bonus;
• Complete my WFB undead army which involves painting up all of the metal undead riders that I've collected plus zombies, ghouls, carrion and the plague cart. I've made some progress on some of these already so I should be able to finish the lot off by the end of 2015;
• Finish the base figures for advanced space crusade (2/3rds are done and the rest are in an advanced stage)
• Finish two of my dungeonbowl teams and play a game of dungeonbowl with my mate Mike;
• Play a game of Dark Future in the lead up to the release of Mad Max Fury Road; 
• Play another game of WFB 3rd edition - this time using my undead;
• Play Dragon Masters, Curse of the Mummy's Tomb and Warlock of Firetop Mountain at least once.

Other than that I'll continue to work on my slow burn projects as they add a nice element of change to my painting table. Those projects are:

• Heroquest;
• Advanced Space Crusade;
• Talisman;
• Dark Future;
• Golden Heroes minis; and
• Figures for mighty empires/Dragon Masters

Will be interesting to see how I go with all that!