Lizardmen Progress: Chameleon Skinks Painted - Plus Minotaurs

Some more Lizardmen progress today. Spent a little bit more time on these chameleon skinks than the regular skinks as there are only 8 of them at the moment. Wanted to give them a different paint scheme to regular skinks as well - to distinguish them on the battlefield. I wanted to include at least some red, as the rest of the army has red as its spot colour (usually on the shield, or on the mount/beasts). So I decided to try a red 'stripe' of scales:

Lizardmen Chameleon Skinks Front

Lizardmen Chameleon Skinks Back

I thought it worked well :-D. Also had a few pressies for my birthday (always nice to get hobby gifts), in the form of Moloc and Enkomi models from Forge World and a Stormtalon! A nice start to the Minotaurs army. Would have got these sprayed today but the weather in sunny Nottingham has moved towards the.. er... stormy side.

I actually really like the Stormtalon model. I know it has gotten some stick on the internet, but it's really cute in person! Check out this size comparison shot with the Stormraven:

Cat included for reference...

Can't wait to get it painted. Also ordered some Minotaur decals from FW, so expect transfer shenanigans in a future post (new territory for me).

In closing, here's my obligatory 6th edition comment: "It's awesome and cinematic, I can say no more" ;-P. Also, there are a load of crap rumours out there so don't believe everything you hear! Wait a couple of weeks and get the book in your own hands before you make judgements. I'm already planning a day of 1000 point games with multiple armies to test everything when the final rules are out.

Darth Meer

Lizardmen Progress: Skinks and Campaign Markers Painted

More Lizardmen progress today! 20 Skinks have now been painted. As 5 point models, they sure are a lot of work to paint. These two units of 10 will be used as cheap redirectors, and to surprise the enemy with quick-to-fire Javelins when they leave solo-wizards and war machines unprotected :-D.

20 Purple Lizardmen Skinks

First unit of Skinks

Second unit of Skinks

Skink backs

The shields were painted with the new GW paint Evil Sunz Scarlet, which I have to say is pretty damn close to Blood Red. Although it actually covers a little too well over white, I liked the slightly translucent effect of Blood Red, and the new red turns out a bit darker overall.

I also finally painted up my army markers for our Blood in the Badlands campaign. We're just entering the Summer season now, but better late than never I suppose! Will still get plenty of use out of them, and beats using skinks as place-holders. The markers are simply banner tops stuck into a greenstuff 'hill'. The names on the markers are the names of my army generals - anyone guess where these suitably Lizardmen sounding names come from?

Lizardmen Campaign Markers

On the 40k front, my Baal Predators have been highlighted! Just a quick phone photo for now, as I'm experimenting with weathering powders and am waiting for the sun to come out in sunny Nottingham so I can spray varnish. I've tried rubbing alcohol but it REALLY didn't end well... Expect a post on my adventures in weathering powders when the sun does eventually appear, and the wind dies down to lower than hurricane-esque speeds.

Blood Angels Baal Predators

Darth Meer

Lizardmen Progress: Temple Guard and Saurus Painted

Quick painting progress update for my purple Lizardmen today, along with some quick phone photos. Finished the first 10 of both my Temple Guard and Saurus units. I'm painting in multiples of 10 because I tend to get depressed when I see a unit of 40 saurus sitting on my desk ready to paint... Also, as with all my warhammer fantasy, no highlights on these bad boys! I just don't see the point when you have hundreds of models in an army... its all going to get lost in the sea of models anyway.

Lizardmen Temple Guard

Temple Guard are awesomely detailed models, although slightly annoying when you've spend ages painting the backs of shields when you can't actually see them! Took a bit more time with these than I would my core saurus troops, owing to their badass status. The colours on the saurus-type models work really well, I was a bit worried my skinks colour scheme wouldn't carry over well.

Lizardmen Saurus Warriors

Weirdly most of the detail is actually on the back of these models - and yes I am insane for painting each scale separately.

Lizardmen Temple Guard Rear

Lizardmen Saurus Warriors Rear

Darth Meer

A Declaration of Intent Plus Some Gaming Progress

Right... first off, apologies for lack of posts last month. Hobby dried up for a few months due to post Christmas lul and a small game called Skyrim. A few of you may have heard of it... I hear-by declare to post on a more frequent bases, and not let a video game eat up my hobby time. Until Mass Effect 3.

Warhammer Fantasy:
Now that's out the way, onto the hobby. I played the first game of my new Warhammer Fantasy campaign last week. We're using rules from Blood in the Badlands, tweaked a little to match our Campaign Fluff. Speaking of which, we use a Facebook group to organise games and post fluff documents and stuff - if you want a copy of our background and rules let me know.

Now the game... Lizardmen vs Skaven. I know it's not an excuse but I was pretty tired and ratty during the game, so that might have helped my opponent CRUSH me. Even after the first turn I could see the game sliding away from me, even after the Skaven were forced to deploy counter-productively due to the scenario. Maybe Skaven just like eating Lizardmen for breakfast!

I did learn a few things from that game and changed my next list up a little bit. Unfortunately we had to build our 3 characters (to lead 3 armies) at the start of the campaign, and have specific army build requirements so pretty limited by my choices. This is what I came up with:

Warhost of Zlatlan - 2000 points

• Lord Kame-hameha, Slann Mage Priest - Level 4, Lore of Light, The Focussed Rumination, Cupped Hands of the Old Ones
• Saurus Scar-veteran - BSB, GW, LA, Luckstone
• Saurus Warriors (35) - Full Command, Spears
• Saurus Warriors (20) - Full Command
• Skinks (10)
• Skinks (10)
• Temple Guard (20) - Full Command, Banner of Eternal Flame
• Stegadon
• Salamander x2

I basically swapped out my chameleon skinks and block of skink/krox for another saurus unit, another sally, and some cheap skink redirectors. I'll report back on how it fares next Wednesday (maybe take photos). Spent a few hours of last weekend painting some Temple Guard so should have some photos of them too soon.

Warhammer 40,000:
Preparing for the 40k Doubles tournament and 40kUKGT. I'm basically taking Mon-Wed off next week to get some painting done ready for these two tournaments, so will definately have photos for you next week. Lists wise, I'm partnering up with Tom Rogers at the doubles with the following list:

Blood Angels - 875 points

• Librarian - Termy Armour w/ Storm Shield, Unleash Rage, Fear of the Darkness
• Terminator Assault Squad (5) - Thunder Hammer & Storm Shields
• Assault Squad (5) - Razorback w/ TL Lascannon
• Baal Predator - Flamestorm Cannon, Heavy Flamers, Dozer Blade
• Stormraven - TL Lascannon, TL Multi-melta

Imperial Guard - 875 points

• Command Squad - Meltabomb, 2x Meltagun, Autocannon, Chimera
• Veteran Squad - 3x Meltagun, Lascannon, Chimera
• Veteran Squad - 3x Meltagun, Autocannon, Chimera
• Vendetta
• Leman Russ Battle Tank - Plasma Cannons
• Hydra

We came a lowly 99th last year, so hoping this brutal list will allow us to crawl a bit higher in the rankings!

If you've read this far, I congratulate you! I promise there will be more photos in the next post. And hopefully a new poster as well! Until next time folks,

Darth Meer

Lord Kame-hameha, Slann Mage

Just added the finishing touches to my slann, he looks pretty badass!:

Painted the critters on the Slann's throne from real life references. Especially like the snake:

Finished washing and drybrushing my temple guard too, next comes the major time sink of painting the scales.

Stegadon EotG Finished!

Its taken me a while but ive done it! The stegadon is such an amazing model, everytime i look at it i find another detail to paint!

Also been working on the Slann today, finished most of his palanquin (just have the critters to paint) and base coated the Slann himself. Managed to get the palanquin stuck on level too, all id id was jab a blob of greenstuff and superglue up the hole and balance him very carefully onto his flying stand. Used a few paint pots to keep him level until the greenstuff dried overnight and voila, a very stable and non-wonky slann!

Purple Lizardmen Army of Zlatlan - Sprayed

Its been a while, but my 2000 point purple army of doom lizardmen is finally built and sprayed! Been a bit mental this last month so haven't done as much hobby as I would like. Things are starting to settle down now finally so should get back on track. 

Anyway, sorry about the naff photo, i didn't really have chance to set up a light box and whatnot:

My 2000 points army of doom consists of:

• Lord Kame-hameha, Slann Mage Priest - (Level 4, Lore of Life, The Focussed Rumination, Focus of Mystery, Battle Standard Bearer, Cupped Hands of the Old Ones
• Skink Priest - Level 1, Lore of Heavens, Ancient Stegadon (with Engine of the Gods)
• Saurus Warriors (20) - Full Command
• Saurus Warriors (20) - Full Command
• Temple Guard (20) - Full Command, Venom of the Firefly Frog
• Chameleon Skinks (8)
• Chameleon Skinks (8)
• Salamander
• Salamander

Had 2 games with versions of this list and think I've almost cracked it, true I lost both the games... but gained valuable data in doing so! Few tweaks I need to do for future games though, one of which is to swap Cupped Hands for either a Dispel Scroll or find 5 points from somewhere and swap it for Becalming Cogitation. The reason I lost the last game was due to the fact that my opponent (you know who you are) pit of shaded my slann during the 2nd turn before i could us him to buff my saurus line for the impending combat, or at least attempt to dwellers bellow a unit. You would think a Level 4 wizard would be enough magic defence, but I was wrong! Anyway, I honestly do not see a need for Cupped Hands, you WILL have throne of vines up most of the time, and in all the games of had of 8th edition i have never actually seen a miscast!

Planning to wash and drybrush the army this week, completing the basecoat, then on to the arduous task of painting all the scales individually... fun!

Converting Lizardmen Chameleon Skinks

For those who are like me and cringe whenever we hear someone say 'just green-stuff it', total model conversions are difficult. So I was surprised when I found myself wanting to convert some regular skinks into chameleons. This is because the metal models are HORRIBLE, and at £8.50 for 3, my planned twin units of 9 would come to a mammoth £51... plus you only get 3 poses!

So I ventured into this escapade the only way i knew how, the easy route. Simply put, I used a hair-dryer to bend the skinks tail so that it was curly, and green-stuffed the googly eyes by rolling a small ball, placing it over the current skink eyes, and pressing a round file into it (slightly to the front of the ball so it doesn't look too weird). Took me no time at all to convert 18 models!

Here's my attempt anyway:

Simple, but effective.

Watch out for the rest of my 2,000 points lizardmen army of doom soon, going to finish building them this weekend and get the purple on! It would be 3000 points but ive been restricted in my model purchasing until i have finished my Blood Angels, bloody women!

Stegadon - Work In Progress

As promised, here's what I managed yesterday:

Just go to do the little details on the steggy, and finish off the howdah and crew (which aren't far behind). And yes, those are purple skinks - im going for a chosen of Tepok army.

Doh! Someone Needs to Assassinate Adam Troke…

The game against Si last night didn’t exactly go to plan… i lost. Of course i could use the excuse that this was my first proper 8th edition game, but then we would be missing out on all the other excuses i could have used, namely:

1. The Mission.
Battle for the Pass is the WORST mission for warriors of chaos, especially against High Elves. It took me 3 turns to even get close to his front lines as he (being the true pansy elf player he is) deployed far within his 24” deployment zone (for those that don't know, Battle for the Pass is played long ways with both players deploying on the short edges of the board). The way we had to deploy also made the chaos force very cramped indeed, making it hard to manoeuvre.

2. The Mysterious Terrain.
Really not sure about the new mysterious terrain rules, its probably a bit too random for my liking. An example: A unit of high elf spearmen overran into a wood, which turned out to be the freaky fungus one which makes them stubborn. They then preceded to get charged by a unit of warriors, a warshrine, and a unit of marauders in the flank. Thanks to being stubborn they held for 2 turns before being wiped out! This held up half of my troops from reaching the elven battle line at all, leaving my other troops unsupported and cost me the game. True i should have probably charged the warriors into them and let them sit there for 3 turns chopping away at the spearmen on their own, but i didn't want them to be tied up – so charging everything in the vicinity seemed a good plan at the time…

Also that bloody Wyrding Well! Si sat his unit of swordmaster on top of it. My hellcannon managed an amazing shot that killed 11 (!), only for him to drink from the well and recover 8! Of course this unit of swordmasters then charged my unsupported warrior unit.

3. No Final Turns.
By the turn turn 4 ended, it was 11pm. I had to get up for work at 6am so really had to call it a night. Unfortunately the final few turns are where chaos makes up its victory points (especially as the distance between the armies was so great).

4. High Elves
I think that says it all… Always strikes first, re-roll all hits, fight in an extra rank, cheap magic items, obscenely powerful elite infantry… Ouch. Some may argue that their army is too expensive, but they cant say much when a unit of knights (230 points) is destroyed by a 100 point bolt thrower in one turn…

5. Bad Rolls
I know its the age old excuse, but i really did have BAD rolls. Every single roll Si made had a 6 in it, I'm pretty sure i didn't see a 6 during my entire game. Sometimes the Dice Gods just aren't on your side.

All in all, not a very good game for chaos. Anyway, rant over. I’m building up a lizardmen army at the moment, so let see if high elves can handle the servants of the old ones! May put up some photos of my stegadon (hopefully finished) this sunday if i get time.

-Meer

The Warriors Amass!

Thought I'd get this blog rolling and post a few photos of the army I'll be kicking Si’s arse with tonight (don't worry I'm not going to upload ALL of it, only the shiniest models).
Meet Sorcerer Rashaverak, the Plaguehost. He’s a Level 2 Nurgle dude with the staff of channelling, basically a backup caster if my Level 4 Tzeentch on disc every fails, and he’s not that bad in combat either!


Next is Exalted Hero Asarok, the Condemner. His job is to sit with my unit of knights and hit the flanks of those already in combat with my Warriors. He’s also got a nasty surprise against High Elves with his ASF sword, meaning he gets to hit first! Something i doubt a High Elf player is used to.


And last, but certainly not least, is my converted Chaos Giant. The only reason I'm taking him is because he looks cool, as he’s probably going to drop dead to bolt throwers/spells/archers in the 1st turn.


So there it is. Got the blog off to a good start. I'm working on my Blood Angels and Lizardmen armies at the moment, so expect updates on those! I've invited quite a few other people to post blogs on the site, so you should be hearing from them pretty soon.

- Meer