Some more undead

I'm painting up some more undead for a KoW game I have planned for the 28th of November. These three I've managed to base whilst the others I've knocked off are sitting on my table waiting to be based up. I enjoy painting but basing figures annoys me to be honest. These use a mix of foundry and GW paints with some washes added for extra depth.

Thrudd

I finally got around to finishing off Citadels famous, and somewhat brainless, Barbarian Thrudd. Citadel did a number of these back in their glory years and as a collector I had to paint one up. What chance they would produce figures like this that don't fit into any game? None of course. Sad really because Citadel did some fantastic figures over the years that were simply done for the fun of it (yes I know WD had the Thrudd comic but he didn't fit into any of their gaming systems). I have Sanity Claus  sitting in my pile of minis to be cleaned and undercoated so I paint him up for Xmas this year. Anyway enough of my crapping on...

Ogres

I've posted pics of some of the Ogres I've painted over the last year but haven't posted any decent pics of the Ogre figures I did before that (other than in battle reports). The Jes Goodwin Ogres figures are brilliantly done and I had fun painting these and thought I would share these whilst I'm finishing off the latest batch of figures that are sitting on my painting desk.

Ogre or Ogryn? I use him as both!

I have another batch of Marauder Ogres that I'm painting up for my Kings of War Ogre army (at present I only have enough for Ogre allies) including three of the Landsknechts Ogres - the latter are brilliant figures but a tad intimidating to paint. But with my Osprey book on the subject with it's lovely colour plates I should be able to handle them. Might take me a month of painting though... 

I'm back!

Well it's been a month and a half since I posted anything. I have a good excuse for four of those weeks as I was on holidays in the US taking the 3 Firth kids to Disneyland and a driving tour of the mountain states visiting National Parks. But since I've been back which was early October I've really struggled with painting. Until the last week at least when I finally got back into some sort of grove and finished three unit filling figures for my two KoW armies (Humans and Undead). I also took a pic of a heroquest fimir that I finished just before I went on leave - this being a very long term project I have on the go where I have a couple of years to finish figs for the game as my eldest is too young to play it yet.

With the kids at Canyonlands National Park in Utah (they like this one!)

Old C-series citadel knight

Night horrors box of bones - great filler material for my KoW units

I love the old arcane armourial decals!

A healthy shade of green...

odds and sods

My latest work really is hard to summarise in a heading as a number of the figures have nothing in common. At best I have 3 chaos figs, a fantasy human and a gravestone. Bit too long for a heading...

Gladiator

Chaos agent from Chainsaw Warrior

I love these!

Chaos thug and dwarf

Some citadel undead

I've been a bit slow posting these figures up as I used them in the two KoW games I played recently. The ghost horse actually glows in the dark as it is painted with fluoro yellow and green paint. Looks really cool but I can't really show that in a photo. Anyway here they are:

Mounted liche (Mouth of Sauron from the original Citadel LoTR range)

rising from the grave

Ghost horse

another arcane armourial transfer comes in handy

skelly spearmen

cool filler material (I love the old citadel grave markers!)

Playing Kings of War with my son

Well playing might not be the right word. But I did have a muck around game with my undead and humans with my son Zac which he enjoyed - especially when he got to roll a lot of dice. And f you have played KoW before you will know that it is a dice fest - a very enjoyable one at that. Anyway I took a few pics of the game which was interesting to run. Here they are with some brief comments re what I learnt at the end:

Humans with ogre and giant allies

Undead

Zac overseeing the undead line (he wanted to play the werewolves!)

undead first moves

Zac look on as the forces clash in the centre 

The ogres hit the Revenant King in the flank - he routed

The soul reavers (chaos warrior figures) and undead cavalry destroy the human centre

Giants rout a unit of skelly spearmen that held them up for a couple of turns

After dispatching the foot and mounted knights the reavers turn on the ogres who have been held up by a horde of skellies

Mounted liche charges the human cannon battery

Wraiths and undead trolls finish off the other unit of ogres

The pitiful remnants of the human army prepare for the final onslaught

Where it finished when I called it

So what did I learn? Well from the perspective of the undead the reavers are well worth it and I need to add a unit of mounted reavers to my undead army. I have sufficient mounted chaos warriors for this so all I need to do is paint them. The horde of skeletons did their job too holding up the best foot troops the human army had. The wyvern rider wasn't well handled as I attacked too quickly with him and as a result he got hit in the flank. In hindsight he is better hitting units that have already been engaged on their flank. The catapults were pretty useless too - the more games of KoW I play the more I think artillery isn't worth it.

As for the humans? Well for starters I need to upgrade the troop of cavalry to a regiment. I need to add some better units too which I do have undercoated ready for painting - another unit of foot knights and mounted sergeants. I could add a horde of retainers with double handed weapons (pole arms in the KoW lists) which might be handy too. Bowmen are crap and I only field them to add numbers. The problem I had with the army was that it contained a lot of average troops but not enough heavy hitters that are capable of destroying enemy units reasonably quickly. And ultimately that was the difference - once the undead breached the line in a couple of places they could simply roll it up with flank attacks. The humans couldn't breach the line in the first place. Mind you I used humans and ogre allies against goblins down at my local wargame club about a month ago and the result was the opposite - indeed I was somewhat surprised how one sided it was. So it might simply be an issue with not having enough of the better troops which I can fix easily.