• Played Ogres a few times in WHFB. Got beaten enough that I figured it must not be the army for me, so I sold/traded them for High Elves.
• Played a game or three of WHFB with the High Elves at one of the Circle City Circuit tournaments and felt pretty good about how they play, though I did get trounced most of the time.
• Won a painting contest at Circle City Circuit #2 with a Ultraforge Treewoman. There were only two other entries, though.
• Painted a High Elf Battle Standard Bearer to very high standard for the Scibor Painting Contest. I also entered Pandora, Candy and my Lord of the Feast. Pandora was chosen for the final voting.
• Assembled and painted more than 50 points of Hordes Circle Orboros for my eKaya army.
• Played in a Warmachine invitational tournament where I won game 1 and lost the other two rounds.  No worries, though. I got to hang out with some good friends and talk about painting with some folks.
• Started playing Warhammer 40,000 again since Games To Die For is running a 40K league starting at 600 points. I bought into Dark Eldar. Played my first three games and ended up winning just one against Imperial Guard.
• Bought a Wacom Intuos4 Medium tablet and Painter 11 with which I’ve done some practice drawings. They didn’t turn out as well as I hoped.
• I’m currently taking a Life Drawing class at Ivy Tech to try and improve my drawing skills.
• Sold/traded a lot of the smaller miniatures games and CCGs in lieu of those I can find opponents (and models) for. I’m still working on dropping Infinity and Malifaux. I also unloaded a bunch of roleplaying books to clean up stuff I know I’ll likely never use. I’m keeping Pulp City and MERCS for now.

I guess that’s not all that much for almost 8 months.

In the near future I hope to post some pictures of the models I’ve painted and maybe some digital/traditional art I have done.

I’ve been mostly working on getting a 50-point army for Khador in Mark II Warmachine painted, just so I can play a fully-painted army for once! I also picked up Wood Elves to more or less replace my Ogres as my Warhammer Fantasy army of choice. I even sculpted my own Treeman! This weekend I picked up the Blood Angels codex for Warhammer 40K to replace the Catachan army I started a few months ago. Something about painting a ton of those models really bothered me.

As for the Gallery, I have added the Warmachine models I’ve painted so far. Check them out here.

• Tyranid Hive Tyrant
• Tyranid Tyrant Guard
• Tyranid Warriors (improved!)
• Tyranid Genestealers
• Tyranid Zoanthrope
• Tyranid Lictor
• Ogre Kingdoms Bulls
• Ogre Kingdoms Ironguts

Enjoy!

His List:

• Warriors of Chaos x10 (Extra Hand Weapon & Shield, Mark of Slaanesh, Champion, Standard)

My List:

• Ogre Bulls x4 (Crusher)
• Gnoblar Fighters x20

As is the case with most of these games, we didn’t set up any terrain. We just deployed and ran forward for the most part. I sent my Ogres and Gnoblars at a bit of an angle to see which one he decided to go for. He opted to head for the Ogres, so I tried to get the Gnoblars set up for a flank charge. I know that Gnoblars won’t do well in close combat with the Warriors, but maybe it’ll help when the Ogres show up. due to Bickering one turn, they didn’t get to combo charge with the Bulls, so the Bulls just charged the front of the Warriors. They killed one or two with impact hits and a couple more in combat. He was able to do a couple of wounds to the Ogres. The Warriors stood their ground. The Warriors attacked the Bulls next turn and killed two of them, leaving me with 7 attacks back. I did very few wounds and lost combat. The Ogres ran 11 inches and the Warriors did not catch them. The Warriors tried to charge the Ogres, but just missed them. The Gnoblars charged the flank of the Warriors and won combat, sending the Warriors running. The Gnoblars were an inch from catching them. The Warriors were able to charge the Gnoblars, win combat and send them running and were caught. The Ogres finally rallied and were able to rear charge the Warriors and wipe them out.

A very fun game that seemed to go back and forth.

The second game was against Greg, who has been challenging me since the league began. He is playing the new Skaven, who I have played against once already and won, so I had no real worries.

His List:

• Skaven Clanrats x24 (full command(?), spears, Ratling gun)

My List:

• Ogre Bulls x4 (Crusher)
• Gnoblar Fighters x20

Well, in this game my overconfidence and thoughtlessness was my undoing. I moved the Gnoblars and Bulls much like before, but the Skaven weren’t taking the bait. He stood still so I’d have to move into range of his gun. I eventually marched the Ogres forward to try and minimize the turns he’d get to use the Ratling Gun against me. In one turn he fired the gun, rolled doubles, but did not hit anything. Second go around, he was able to put a wound on an Ogre. I eventually charged his 6-wide unit of rats, but he’d moved close enough to prevent the Bull Charge. Pretty much the Ogres took it in the face and lost combat, ran, and were caught. The Gnoblars ended up going against the left-behind Ratling Gun and killed it. Eventually, the Clanrats fought the Gnoblars and beat them down. A total loss for me.

A fun game, as always, but I know that charging the big unit of rats was a uber-bad decision. Oh well, it was still a game counted toward the league.

My record in the league so far: 4 wins, 2 losses.

My list:

• Bruiser (Siegebreaker, Wyrdstone Necklace, Heavy Armor, Luck Gnoblar)
• Butcher (Bangstick, Dispel Scroll)
• Bulls x3 (Bellower)
• Bulls x3 (Bellower)
• Ironguts x3 (Bellower)
• Ironguts x3 (Bellower)
• Leadbelchers x2 (Bellower)
• Gnoblar Trappers x9

His list (from memory):

• Empire Wizard w/Lore of Fire and Wizard’s Staff
• Battle Priest w/Great Weapon
• Empire Hero w/ items that gave it ASF
• 2x Great Cannons
• 10x Greatswords (Full command)
• 20x Spearmen (Full Command)
• Detachment of Handgunners
• 20x Spearmen (Full Command)
• Detachment of Swordsmen
• Flagellants x5
• Knights x5

Based on my having played WHFB more recently, it was for me to sort of “demo” the game to Joel. As such, many things were forgotten and/or screwed up completely. A few things I know we messed up was:

• Forgetting that if the Ogres outnumber the Empire in CC and win, the Empire troops auto-break. I’m not sure how much this affected the game really.
• Giving his Knights 2 wounds. This I think was pretty big. I had no proof that they weren’t two wounds (one for the horse and one for the rider), so we went with that. As a result, the Ironguts spent a lot more time on them than should have been necessary.
• Screwing up calculating the Knight’s (and maybe others) armor save. I know at first, I was starting from a 3+ and subtracting the STR modifier from that. In reality, they have a 1+ (Full Plate 4+, Barding 1+, Shield 1+, Hand Weapon & Shield 1+).
• Forgetting Fear rolls. Duh!
• Forgetting about bait and flee tactics!

Overall it was a fun game that I think we both learned a lot from. Here are some highlights. The Gnoblar Trappers deployed to try and charge the Knights or at least distract them. The Knights ended up getting the charge, but the Trappers at least killed one and the Knights pursued off the table. The Cannons fired as much as they could with one exploding in turn 2 or 3. Lucky for me, most other times, Joel rolled a Misfire. For the most part neither of our Magic phases did much. When he’d try to cast Fiery Blast or Fireball, I was able to dispel it. On my Magic Phase, with the exception of the last turn or two, all my spells were dispelled. The first few close combats ended with the losing unit fleeing and getting caught by the pursuer. Two of my units rolled snake eyes for their flee roll.

In the end, due to the huge cost of Ogres versus the costs of Empire soldiers, I won the game. We didn’t bother being exact about the points difference, so I don’t know to what degree I won. As always, it was a really fun game. I am a big fan of Warhammer Fantasy, but then again, I don’t generally play against tournament level players or armies.

By the way, Joel’s blog details the progress of his Empire army. I highly suggest going and checking it out!

Go check out the Gallery here.