Army Focus - Warhammer Fantasy Dogs of War

 

It's been over a year since I last dug out one of my collections of painted minis for a photo-shoot (although there has been a couple of looks at some prepaints inbetween), this time I've settled on my Dogs Of War army for Warhammer Fantasy.

 

Dwarf Slayer Pirates, my favorite unit in the army

I started this collection back towards the end of 5th edition when the Dogs of War army book was released.  At the time it was a great innovation, a selection of wacky units that could either be fielded as a complete army of mercenaries or added to normal armies to add more variety (although I won't deny it was open to some abuse).  GW also continued to add more of the 'Regiments of Renown' in White Dwarf.  I enjoyed fielding this army at tail end of the 5th edition period, but one thing that always bugged me slightly was the lack of 'generic' mercenaries, everything had to be special unit, almost always led by a hero.

 

Spikey!

Then came along 6th edition, and all the previous army books were thrown out in one go and the game radically reworked.  A couple of PDF's were released with what ere supposed to be 'get you by' lists until the books were done.  Dogs of War never got a new book and I'm stuck using those lists to this day, however, the lists aren't actually that bad.

 

Heroes and Wizards

Inevitably with such an old list Dogs of War sit low on the power curve, but there's a lot you can do with these flexible lists.  They provide the best of both worlds, the 'Dogs of War' list is a generic list featuring normal unnamed regiments, such as heavy cavalry, light cavalry, dwarfs, marauders, pikemen, crossbowmen etc.  Then you have the 'Regiments of Renown' list which features all the special regiments from the previous book and White Dwarf, and you can use these regiments in an army based on Dogs of  War list.  It's good because you can theme a Dogs of War army however you like, but still add the wacky (and sometimes powerful) Regiments of Renown.

 

One of the 6th ed changes was to take the Halfling Hotpot out of the Empire army and put it into the Dogs of War army

There are two painting eras shown in this army, as easily seen by the two basing styles, the older style ones were painted when I was about 16, and the flocked ones after I returned from university.  I'd like to find the time to repaint the older part of the army, but it's not on the current priority list.  I'm not really planning on adding anything else to this army either, but it's still a collection that I enjoy and wouldn't want to part with.

 

5th edition; when two giants and a wizard was a suitable regiment

When being used this army is often joined by Dwarfs from my Dwarf army, Marauders from my Chaos army and any cavalry I can lay my hands on to represent light cavalry in particular, but occasionally some heavy cavalry can add a little punch.

 

Flying crossbowmen

Old School Silliness: Warhammer Arena of Death

Gaming and drinking only goes together so far, and after a few beers the other night me and Mike were fully aware that a proper wargame was out of the question, but we still needed something else to play.  Mike came up with an idea and suggested we play an 'Arena of Death'.  For those that don't know 'Arena of Death' was an article in an old White Dwarf (must be well over 10 years ago) that pitted the greatest lords in the warhammer world against each other in a knock-out tournament.  Idea accepted off we go to look at my collections to select 16 candidates.

We tried to spread the competing minis from different armies, and didn't have any specific requirements except the 'rule of cool' and which minis from my collection we thought we the hardest. The rules used happened to be the latest that I have in my collection, which are not necessarily those from the latest editions of the books (since the move to hardback I've not been keeping my library up to date) with a lot of the monster rules being taken from the Storm of Magic expansion.

The competitors are;

1.    The White Dwarf carried by Gotrek & Joseph Bugman
2.    A Keeper of Secrets
3.    A Lord of Change
4.    The King of Bretonnia
5.    The Green Knight
6.    Orion, King of the Woods
7.    Vampire Lord
8.    Archaon
9.    An Emperor Dragon
10.  High Elf Lord on Griffon
11.  A Manticore
12.  Black Orc Warboss
13.  A Giant
14.  A Slann
15.  A Treeman
16.  Thorgrim Grudgebearer

Round One

The first battle, I had high hopes for the White dwarf and mates, but an initial draw against a greater daemon made me a little wary.  I shouldn't have been though, short work was made of slaanesh's servant and the White Dwarf progresses to the next round.

The second greater daemon this time vs the King of Bretonnia.  A bit of a surprise for us both and partly due to Mikes famous inability  to roll dice the King sailed through with an easy win!

The poor Green Knight really did not stand a chance here and the avatar of the elvish God tore him to shreds.

Generic Vampire lord vs the everchosen of the Chaos gods?  Win for Archaon of course!  After the defeat of both greater deamons Chaos look to have a contender here!

 Another foregone conclusion here, the valiant Elf prince soon met his doom down the throat of the Emperor Dragon.

 The closet match of the round this one was going down to a single wound on each side, but ultimately the Manticore got the win.

Well this was short, the Giant clubbing the Slann over the head and making mincemeat of him, in retrospect the Slann probably shouldn't have made it into the competition.

Two of my favourite minis fighting each other here, it took a couple of rounds due to the Treemans toughness, but the Dwarf High King wasn't going out in the first round, no way.

Round Two

Although the King got lucky in the last round he was totally outclassed here, the three dwarfs made epically short work of him and his mount.

Another close one, we favoured Archaon before the fight, but Mikes dice rolling interfered again and the mighty Orion took the day and a surprise place in the semi's.

 Ha, this didn't last long at all, the Emperor Dragon sails into the semi's

The end battle of round two and no surprises here either, the second Dwarf makes the semis.

Semi-Finals

 The first semi then, getting serious now.  Despite a good start from Orion he just wasn't tough enough to weather the torrent of attacks the three dwarfs put out and finally met his match.

We really weren't sure which way this was going to go, sheer brutal stats or fancy magic items?  It was a close one, but Dwarvish awesomeness won through in the end.

The Final

The final then, Dwarf vs Dwarf (see I knew Dwarfs were the best that's why I have so many of them), it took a few rounds but ultimately the White Dwarf and friends struck down the High King and claimed the throne for himself.

There we go incontrovertible proof that the White Dwarf is the hardest character in Warhammer fantasy.... Well at least when he brings two of his mates along....

P.S. please don't be too harsh on the paint jobs some of them are 20 years old!

From The Painting Table #13

I've had two quiet months in a row now on the blog, and although it wasn't planned I often find gaming and painting takes a back seat in the summer as my life fills up with other things.  This time the main culprit is the fact that I bought a second hand Xbox 360 which came with Skyrim, and I've got a little bit addicted to it, couple this with holidays, family stuff and a new role at work and I've found it difficult to find much spare time.  All this aside I have painted a few bits over the last month or so...

First up we have this addition to the Eldar army for 40K, a squad of wraithblades, great models, not so sure about the rules, a mere one attack seems to limit their potential.  I tried a bit of an experiment with the energy shields and gave them a coat of gloss varnish , I think it works.

This is a bit of a random LOTR figure I dug out from the pile, mainly because I wanted a Legolas for my Hobbit collection, but didn't want to pay the price of the new one, this one does the job nicely.

Next we have one of the new dwarf Gyrobombers for my warhammer fantasy dwarf army.  It's not a bad piece at all but I was a bit disappointed when the new Dwarf book came out that the dwarves didn't get one of the really big impressive kits that absolutely every other release seems to come with at the moment, where's my dirigible GW?  having had that little moan overall I'm pleased with the new book, nothing radically changed, but lots of little tweaks that make the army that little bit more competitive and also fun to play with.

This is what I really want!

The Gyrobomber was a pain to paint with lots of intertwining runic decoration, and another big thing for me was that this was the first time I'd seem a new style GW flying base with round attacher.  You wouldn't believe how happy I was when I first saw this piece of plastic tumble out of the box!

The joy this piece of plastic bought me is indescribable

Finally we have the last two mercenaries that came with my first deadzone package, the forge father woman Freya and the psychotic Judwan assassin Wrath.  They're probably the worst models out of the set, which is why I left them till last.  The second package from the deadzone kickstarter is due soon and I'm definitely looking forward to it.

From The Painting Table #12

Here we go again with another collection of newly painted minis for your perusal.

Starting with this classic Dwarf Lord min for Warhammer fantasy.  Covered in Runic Gromril armour this is one tough cookie.

Next up we have these three objective markers to use with my 40K space marine army.  I believe they were originally from the 3rd ed boxed set, although I got these with some other bits off ebay.  The little side coils were painted with boltgun metal, like the rest of the piece and the given a thin coat of blue wash, it's not something that I've tried before, and I'm quite pleased with the final effect.

Moving away from GW and to Mantic games now and another merc for deadzone.  This time the kickstarter exclusive Project Oberon.  Project Oberon belong to the species 'the nameless' who are among my favourite races in the warpath universe, hopefully we'll see a few more of them in deadzone at some point.

Onto flames of war now with this Soviet T34/85 obr 1943 from Battlefront.

And finally this German Sd.Kfz.22 armoured car from Zvezda's art of tactics range that I will also use for flames of war.  I've bought a few kits from the art of tactics range over the last few months and although this is the smallest of those it was also the biggest pain to build.  This was clearly due to the difficulties due to the shape of the vehicle, but I wouldn't advise just 'snap-fitting' this together like they suggest is possible.  With a little work however you can get a good result out of this cheap little kit.

Dwarf Week - An End

So here we are at the end of this week having a look at part of my dwarf army, and now we're going back to where we started with some more lords and heroes.

First up King Alrik, or more often for me, lord with sheildbearers, a great model and a great concept, I think the fact it reminds me of asterik, which  I loved as a child helps.

Here is a very simple conversion that I used to use as my army standard before I acquired the metal limited edition one.  Its made entirely out of the 6th ed multipart plastic kit, using the champions head and the musicians trumpet added to the top of the standard.

Three very characterful models here, an almost dwarf bretonnian feel to the first figs, then in the middle we have a dwarf wizard with frog familiar (yes dwarves used to have wizards, a loooong time ago, but they were never much good).  Then on the end the dwarven samurai model, I've always been intrigued by this model and wonder at the story a dwarf who has obviosuly traveled to nippon and returned.

These are the other 4 character models from the Grudge of Drong campaign pack (Krudd Mad Mattock was shwon in the miner post a few days ago).  From left to right we have Skag the Stealthy, dwarf hero, Queen Halgar Longplaits, dwarf queen, Drong the Hard, dwarf king and Grung Grudge-Bringer, master runesmith.

And finally I thought the most appropriate place to end Dwarf week would be with Thorgrim Grudgebearer, the Dwarf High King.  This is the origanal model and I prefer it to the current version.

Thanks to everybody for reading this week and I hope you enjoyed a brief glimpse at some of my dwarf collection, for those that don't like dwarves, my normal random wandering blog will return next week.

Dwarf Week - Units & Beer

As we're nearing the end of dwarf week I thought it was about time for some core infantry, but then I couldn't resist throwing a few more interesting things in at the end.

This is an old regiment of renown, 'prine ulther's dragon company', includes a hero (prince ulther) as well as full command group.  They're actaully modeled with two pistols each as well, if only I could still feild dwarf infantry armed with two pistols, but I'm really found of this unit and they still make a nice rergiment of warriors.

Here we have a regiment of classic longbeards.

This unit of warriors isn't so much a unit as a collection of metal dwarfs that don't have a specific home, still it seems other poeple like it as it always gets commented on, of particular note is the dwarf on stilts that I use as the units standard.

Now we get to the beer part of the post, the renowned brewmaster joseph bugman in various forms.  On the left the origanal Bugmans bar bugman (theres now a newer version throwing a chair that I've yet to acquire) and then moving left the 4th ed and 3rd ed versions (I actually have units of rangers from the same ranges to acompany both of these).  I think my favorite is the 4ed. one in the middle.



And finally bugmans cart transporting beer to all the imporatnt places, although with a drunk driver by the looks of things.

Dwarf Week - The Engineers Guild

The fifith day in my Dwarf Week and today a quick introduction to some of my models form the engineers guild, this is a very brief look as I have a lot of artillery in my collection.  Way back in 4th ed I used to feild a LOT of artillery typically taking my entire 25% allowed and almost always 4 organ guns (they were 65pts back then), nowadays I play a lot more agressivly and whilst obviously still feild some artillery, now at 2000 I would normally only feild a couple of pieces plus a gyrocopter.  The new edition has made artillery better, but its also made dwarf infantry a lot better, and I'd rather kill things with axes than guns at the moment.



To start off an old 4th ed. special character the guildmaster of the engineers guild burlock daminson, complete with robotic steam powered arm, its shame hes been got a rid of, I thought he was a bit different to the other very bland kings/runelord characters we often get for the dwarves.

Here is a selection of engineer models, the one on the left from 6th ed when engineers became heroes, the other two are a lot older.

This is my favorite artillery piece in my collection, the origanal flame canon.  I used to play someone who got very upset when it killed his high elves because he said it was too tiny and too stupid looking to cause that much damage.  What I love about it is the crew, the way they look as if they know its going to explode at some point.

Here we have two dwarf war machines that no longer feature in the game at all, on the left is a swivel gun, a form of light canon.  Then on the left we have an old dwarf flame thrower, a real shame that they decided to limit them to skaven only.

Now we get to the most important war machine the dwarfs can feild, the frankly awesome gyrocopoter.  Why is it awesome, (not its stats certainly), its because in an army when everyone can only march 6', this boyo can fly 20' and thats an important ability to have.  These have won so many games for me causing havoc behind enemy lines, blocking marches and making suicidal charges to send people off in the wrong direction, I absolutly love these guys.  Never leave home without one.

Here we have the humble canon, the battle of skull pass version.  The models ok, but not brilliant and the crew are a little two dimensional, but you can get these very cheap off ebay.  The dwarf canon has got a lot better in the new edition as it now cuases D6 wounds indstead of D3, which has changed my opinion of them completely and with the new trend of feilding big monsters in warhammer a gun that can potentially kill most of them in one shot is pretty niffty.

And finally the even more humble bolt thrower, these guys are very cheap and whilst they don't reliably hit, when they do hit the right target (say bretonnian knights in lance formation) they can do a lot of damage for the measly 45pts they cost.