Christmas looooooot

  Clearly there was a mix-up at the North Pole and the naughty/nice lists got confused along the way because I did pretty well for myself in the Christmas gift dept.

  Wargaming related, I got a Terminator Squad (see below) and a couple of the "Winsor & Newton Series 7 " paint brushes, which from what I've read are some REALLLY nice high end brushes.  I haven't gotten to use them enough to pass a final judgement on them, but just my initial reactions are.. best brush I've own.  I love the weight to them..  now has it made my painting any better.. NO, but I will say I noticiably enjoy using them more than my other brushes.  After a some more usage, I might post something about them.

  Now me doing some real painting.  I wanted to make this unit able to be customizable, so I cut out and magnetized it all.  

Maybe I should have asked santa for a new cutting mat that doesn't look like shit.

Then priming and painting began.

  While the primer was drying, I whipped up a set of terminator sized bases.

Since most of this army has a cloak of some kind (animal or otherwise)  I figured I have to do something for these guys.  After they're all done and painted, I might take another crack at this one.. feels a little too thick to me.  

Annnnd without further a do... the almost completed test model  (I always do the last little touch ups once the whole unit is done).  The cyclone missile launcher on top is also removable/magnetized.  

I feel like he's wearing a cooking apron backwards.. maybe black just isn't the color.

December 8th Toys of Tots Tournament

  I have been meaning to write something up on this, but just haven't gotten around to it.  My local GW store had a Toys for Tots tournament that I participated in. Everyone was supposed to bring a toy as entry fee that would be donated so ultimately how I did in the tournament didn't matter.  They finally found a way to make me a charitable person.  *shakes fist in the air*  damn you!!!!!!!!!

  Now lets get down to the good stuff. It was a 1500 point standard tournament.  I believe that at 1500 points Ogres aren't that great.  500-1000 point games, we're great!  2000+ point games, even better!  1500 is that magical spot where once you buy all the characters/core you need to function at that level, you've got no points left to bring the good stuff.  I chose to run a list with a single Firebelly and max out on shooting.  

  The basic rundown of the list was:

Firebelly

1xBulls

1xIronguts

2xUnits of 4 Leadbelchers

Ironblaster

Maneater Sniper/Scouts

Since in this format, you either win or lose (none of that minor victory/loss nonsense), I can choose to fight when I need to, or I can stay at range and play points denial.  

Game 1:  Got any cheese? (Skaven)

  Ahhh the little rat bastards.  I both love and hate playing skaven because it can go either way for me.  I get my ass handed to me, or I do the handing.  

  My opponents list essentially was:

Lvl 4 wizard

Lvl 2 wizard

BSB

Plague Monks

Clan rats

Skaven Slaves

Gatling Gun

Rat swarms

Warped lightning cannon

Jezzails

  They were kind enough to start our morning off with a basic pitched battle, no pesky strategy required that early in the morning.  After we did our regular deployment, I don't think he was expecting me to say.. oh I have scouts.  He had his shooting units on one side of the board and his BSB close by. So the maneaters popped up over there, plenty of potential targets.

  I got first turn so this meant that the Maneaters couldn't charge into the Jezzails, so I moved them forward a bit and took some sniper shots at the BSB.  My thinking here was either, I take out his BSB leaving him to take leadership tests without rerolls or I would at the very least scare him into turning as much of his army to deal with the maneaters as I could.  My sniper shots did that trick, picking off the battle standard bearer top of turn 1.  

  If the maneaters could survive the shooting and magic phase, I would be able to take out the little fire base had on the hill and then my own shooting would be free to sit back and pick him apart.   My opponent knew this as well as I did so he fired everything into the maneaters as well as turning 2 units to face them.  At this point, even if the Snipers didn't survive, getting him to redeploy half his force, taking out the BSB, AND drawing all the rats shooting and magic for a turn meant they did their job regardless if they survived or not.... which was good, because they were cut down to a single man... err ogre.  I rolled boxcars on their panic check and then another pair of 6's on their flee so the boys ran off the board.

  Once all my guns were in range, I was able to unload into the rats.. slowly taking down their number.  My firebelly rolled Flame cage as one of his spells so I was able to force his plague monks to not move.  This made them non factors in the game till the end at which point I had destroyed the rest of his army and sent my entire force to deal with them.   I tabled my opponent at the end of turn 5.  Losing his bsb, and having half his army out of position is what really did him in.  Had he just assumed that his shooting would take out the maneaters, I think the game would have been a lot closer.  

  Ironblaster was a piece of shit this game.  5 turns of firing and it managed to hit ONCE taking out 90 points of lightning cannon.  I only mention this, because be prepared for a reoccuring theme.

Game 2: Dirty Hippies (aka Wood Elves)

  This was the "top table" game.  My opponent had tabled his first round match-up as well.  Wood elves... uggh.  In tournament play, I've only managed to beat elves one time with my ogres so I knew I'd need some luck to beat them... especially since the elf player was actually good!

Lords: [305]

[305] Spellweaver (Lore of Life) + L4 + Dispel Scroll + Hail of Doom Arrow (General)

Heroes: [187]
[187] Noble on Great Eagle + BSB + Light Armor + Dragonhelm + Amaranthine Brooch

Core: [478]
[96] 8x Dryads
[96] 8x Dryads
[160] 11x Glade Guard + Musician + Standard Bearer + Banner of Eternal Flame
[126] 10x Glade Guard + Musician

Special: [195]
[195] 3x Tree Kin

Rare: [335]
[285] Treeman
[50] Great Eagle

Total = 1500pts

  The scenario was deploying diagonally across the board.  For every unit we would roll a die. On a 1, that unit had to come in from reserve.  

  Manditory blurry photo

  This battle was pretty one sided for the most part.  My scouting maneaters didn't phase him.  He sent just enough troops to deal with them and with his speed was able to turn them back into position cause little to no effect.  Most of his units spent their time in the woods making my shooting ineffective, he didn't need to come out of the woods to kill me and he knew it.  I had to press forward as best I could while being shot and magic'd to death.  In another tournament format, I would have hung back and tried to keep the loss to a minor one, but in this all or nothing format, I had to just throw what I could into any fight they could find, and none of those fights were the ones they wanted to be in.  Dweller's below took out my general and most of the ironguts, so my most effective fighting unit was majorly crippled. 

  Again, my ironblaster wasn't worth it's salt.  I managed to get hits on the treeman 3 times... and all 3 times, I rolled a 1 to wound him. That treeman will have a story to tell to his sapling about the time he caught 3 cannonballs out of the air.  

  Aside from the single treeman in my army, I don't have any Treekin/dryads.  After seeing them in action, I think I might have to pick some up.. if I ever finish the laundry list of other projects I'm doing.

Game 3:    Knights Knights and more Knights (Empire)

  My opponents are was:

Luthor Huss

Mounted lvl 2 wizard

Hero on pegasus

HUGE unit of Inner Circle Knights

Large unit of Reiksguard Knights

Cannon 

Mortar

    The game was capture the hill.  After turn 5 we would roll a die to see if the game ends, if not, it keeps going.  This game ultimately came down to me keeping his largest knight unit away from the hill.  The maneaters popped up next to the smaller knight unit and was able to tie them till turn 6, when they finally destroyed what was left.  I lined up some charges for him that would put the large unit out of position at the end of the game and lucky enough for me it worked.  I eventually got tired of my ironblaster failing to wound anything and had it function as a speedbump that ultimately kept the knights away from the hill.  At the end of turn 6, we rolled and the game ended with me having 2 units in control of the hill.  

  I went 2 -1- 0 for the day, and scored the maximum number of points for paint and sportsmanship(aka soft scores) so I was pretty happy.  That would have put me in either a 2 way tie for 2nd place, or sole second place(not sure how the other guy did in his last game) with my only loss coming at the hands of  the overall winner.   

  Fun day, 3 games against new 3 new opponents.. none of which were dicks... and lets not forget the most important part of the day.. Some kid got Rock em, Sock em Robots for Christmas.... which is what someone brought as their donation  (I brought a Barbie doll because I figured w/ the group of nerds that would come to a Warhammer tournament there would be an abundance of boys toys)

Let's do some wizard math!

Let me start off this post by saying, shit's about to get nerdy up in here... and that's coming from a guy who writes a blog about "little army men."

Today we're going to talk about Wizards and rolling for spells.  I'm sure I'm not the first person to do this, nor will I be the last.  I started this quest of nerdiness because I wanted to know what are the odds of getting the spell I wanted for a Lvl 3 wizard vs a lvl 4.  I couldn't find any definitive answers online so I decided to do the math myself.

In case anyone doesn't know, the way magic spells work in the current edition is that there are 6 different spells.  You roll a die for every wizard level you are and you get the spell that corresponds to that number.  (Example: If I'm a level 2, I will roll 2 dice.  If I roll a 1 and 5, I get the #1 and the #5 spell in the list)  Since you can't have the same spell twice, if you roll a double, you get to pick any of the others from the list.  (Example: I roll of two 3's, I can change one of the 3's into a 4.  Thus giving me spells #3 and #4.)

The only way to figure up these odds is to write out all possible dice combinations and see which one meet our criteria.  For the charts below, we are assuming that I want the #6 spell.  This is just for simplicity sake, if you wanted the Comet of Casandra(#5 on the list) the chances are EXACTLY the same.

Level 1 Wizard

I didn't do a chart for a level 1 because you can't roll a double on 1 die so the odds are:

1/6 = 16.66666666666667%

Level 2 Wizard

So as you can see, there are 21 possible combinations and 11 outcomes that give us what we want.

11/21 = 52.38095238095238%

Level 3 Wizard

There are 56 different combinations of dice rolls for a level 3.  40 of which will give us our desired result.

40/56 = 71.42857142857143%

Level 4 Wizard

There are 126 different combinations of dice.  Only 5 of them will not give us a 6 or a double.

121/126  = 96.03174603174603%

Level 5 Wizard

I didn't type out all the different combinations of 5 dice, I don't see the point in it. There is only one combination of 5 dice that won't produce our desired result:

1 2 3 4 5

Anything else will give you the spell you want.  Doing a bit of Googling, I've discovered there are 252 distinct combinations.

251/252 = 99.6031746031746%

So in other words if you have a level 5 wizard and you don't get the spell you want... the dice really are out to get you.

As messed up as this may sound, it was actually kind of fun doing this.  I think my next Mathhammer project will be charge probabilities, specifically for things with Swiftstride (Roll 3 die and discard the lowest.)

1500 point WFB tournament coming up on Saturday.  I hate 1500 points with Ogres because by the time you buy characters and core choices, you either don't have many points less, or you have the bare minimum of models on the table.

Tomorrow, I'll try to post my list... but I'm still working on it.  It was attempting to squeeze a lvl 4 heavens slaughtermaster into a list and that brought on this whole probability thing.

Oh hi there.. I remember you.

  Wow it's been a while since I've really posted much here.  Mostly because I've not really had much that I was like "ERMAGURDDD!!!! I MUST SHOW THE WORLD DIS THING!" but given that I've had people asking why I haven't posted, I figured I better get something up or else I'll lose the few of you who actually read this.

  I said I was going to get picture of my last minute painting efforts up(even though they are substandard even by own substandards)  so lets knock that out of the park real quick.

 My comet spell marker

Steam tank/ironblaster

  This ends the photo portion of this post, the rest is more about things I'm want to work on in the coming future. 

1.  Given that allies are the legal in the current edition of 40k, I am thinking of mixing in some guardsmen with my space marines.  They'll help me make up for some of the short-comings of running an all bike army.  Also, it'll give me an excuse to pick up some miniatures from Conquest Miniatures.  I am thinking that I can use the Woodland Indian War Party boxes as my guardsmen squads. (You didn't expect me to buy off the shelf guardsmen did ya) 20 guys for 44.00 is not a bad deal at all (36.00 if TheWarStore gets them back in stock.)   I'll just need to convert up some special and heavy weapons for them but I think that would be too difficult.  If you poke around the Conquest website you'll find they have enough various models to do all a really awesome Command squad and other things... (Comanche Rough Riders Squad anyone?!?!?!)

2.  I am currently reading the rulebook to Dystopian wars.  Locally there seems to be a pretty good core of players, the models look freaking awesome, oh and it's cheap. You can pick up any of the starter boxes for about 40.00 on amazon.   Any game that can have tanks, giant robots, naval battles and giant airships can't be bad right?   I've not finished my first pass of the rulebook so I don't want to pass judgement on it as a game just yet, but the backstory and models are great.  

3.  Flames of war is still on the agenda of things to build/play.  It's literally on my Amazon Christmas list.  I've not bought anything for myself because I've been spending all my wargaming funds on 40k right now.  I'm determined to get myself to the point that I feel like I am tournament ready before I start expanding out too far.   

I was also asked what I thought about the new Hobbit stuff GW is coming out with.  Well to be honest, I don't care for it.  I've had friends who really liked the LotR game when it came out, but i currently couldn't tell you anyone that actively plays it.  If some other miniature company were doing it, I might give it a shot, but this is GW and GW pricing.  I am not going to pay 85 dollars for 3 troll models and a little fireplace for a game that will be all but an afterthought soon.  I'll admit that since there are 3 movies coming out it will keep interest in the game for a while.. and GW will continue to shit out sculpts of every minor character and costume change in those movies, but they're limited by the source material.  WFB and 40k are their products and they can just make new things up. With a licensed product like the Hobbit I don't think they'd be allowed to invent Bilbo's Half brother, Scarface Baggins... covered in spikes and skulls like every thing else GW likes to invent.   I can see the fallout of that now actually... Matt Ward invents an army of Superhuman genetically enhanced hobbits that makes Sauron look like Nanny from the Muppet Babies. (yeah that's right.. Muppets Babies reference) 

Hopefully my next update will be in a timely manor, but anyone who's read this for any amount of time knows, I'll post daily for a month and then go dead for a while.

Tournament fail

Sunday's tournament didn't quiet go as planned.  I managed to stay up and get everything painted(admittedly my ironblaster tank is a bit substandard... even by my own standards.)

So I started the day with a flat tire.  Not a "I need a little air" flat, but a "it's come off the rim" flat tire.  After dealing with that, I made it on time.  I got all must stuff unpacked, talked with my partner really quick, and then I found out 3 fantasy players showed up.  So sadly they decided to turn the team tournament into a single person 40k tournament and just give us 3 fantasy players our money back.  Everyone was very appologetic about the turnout, but I don't blame them. 

One of the other fantasy guys and I did play out our first round game.  It was blood or glory.(the aweful standards based scenario from the rule book)

I think this was the first run in I've had with the tomb kings, at least in a tournament environment.  I have a blurry picture of the start of the game to post later. 

The game was pretty one sided.  I lost the 2 gnoblar units and 1 ironblaster. He however lost everything but 1/2 of a unit of tombguard, who were going to start crumbling at the loss of their general when he finally gave up the match. 

Great player.  I feel like I say that more and more, but the guys who play fantasy here are all really fun to play against.  Competitive but not assholish.  I only hope they're thinking the same of me.

So I have two lessons learned from this.

1.  I really like my current ogre list.  Maybe even moreso than my deathfist list.  I am able to quickly have 2 hard hitting units(scout eaters and mournfang) in their deployment zone wrecking up my opponents plans and causing him to react to me, while the rest of my artillary battery weakens and destroys everything else.  Also, I love lore of heavens.  Dropping comets is still as fun as it was in 6th edition.

2.  If I want to get my competitive wargaming fix, I'm going to have to up my dedication to 40k.  Fantasy is and always will be my baby, but 40k is what people play. 

Now this is how you do tournament prep... Sigmar style

10:30pm night before a tournament and what am I doing.. still painting.  Well technically I'm not even painting as I am typing here on this, but I'm waiting for the paint to dry before continuing.

Team tournament tomorrow so I'll have someone else to pull me out of mediocrity... and maybe someone blame when it all falls apart.  Just kidding.

One 40k player matched with a Fantasy player.  Take a guess at which one I am.  I wouldn't subject anyone to being partnered with me during my first dive into competitive 40k so I'll be fielding the Ogres of course.  Since the latest rules update to the Ogre Army book ruined the Deathfist combo, I've had to rebuild my standard (and very successful) tournament list.  I'm giving the stand back and shoot the fuck out of you approach.


1 Lord: 323 Pts.   12.9%
2 Heroes: 277 Pts.   11.0%
4 Core Units: 705 Pts.   28.1%
6 Elite Units: 850 Pts.   34.0%
2 Rare Units: 340 Pts.   13.6%


Slaughtermaster, General, Ironfist, lvl4, Warrior Bane, Talisman of Endurance, Lore of Heaven - 323 Pts.

Butcher, Ironfist, lvl2, Lore of The Great Maw - 138 Pts.
Bruiser, HA, Tormentor Sword, BSB - 139 Pts.

10 Gnoblars, Gnoblar Trappers - 50 Pts.
10 Gnoblars, Gnoblar Trappers - 50 Pts.
7 Ironguts, M, S, C, Standard of Discipline - 346 Pts.
7 Ogres, Handweapon & Ironfist, Lookout Gnoblar, M, S, C - 259 Pts.

4 Leadbelchers, M - 182 Pts.
4 Leadbelchers, M - 182 Pts.
4 Maneaters, HA, 4 x Brace of Ogre Pistols, Scouts, Sniper, M, S, C, Std. of Eternal Flame - 304 Pts.
1 Sabretusks - 21 Pts.
1 Sabretusks - 21 Pts.
2 Mournfang Cavalry, HA, Ironfist - 140 Pts.

Ironblaster - 170 Pts.
Ironblaster - 170 Pts.

Total: 2495

I'll probably throw a lookout gnoblar into the ogre unit to make up the 5 last points.

I'll be fielding the steamtank/ironblaster I'm still finishing painting for the first time.  In my limited testing 2 ironblasters is nuts.

I'll get photos of the finished models when I'm done (probably tomorrow through)  but the latest additions/what I'm working on is:

2 Mournfang (just need to base and do some touch ups)

The Blastertank(90% done... just have to ink it some places)

Comet spell marker (I am going lore of heaven after all)

Time to grab another Yuengling and get back to work.  As always, I'll try to get some photos of the ingame action, but I can pretty much promise I'll do my standard 1 blurry photo and thats about it.  

Steamtank to Ironblaster Conversion

  Let me start by saying this has been a total pain in the ass.  The 6th edition all metal Steamtank model used to be the worst to assemble model I ever dealt with (the old Scraplauncher quickly replaced it on the list)

  I've had this model since it came out.  Back in the 5th and 6th editions the steamtank was my favorite piece in my Empire army, but since I no longer play the Empire this model has sadly went unused for over a decade.  Well no longer.

 

    After raiding the my bitz box for anything and everything cool looking and this is what I've come up with so far.  I am going to put more gnoblars on it, but I'll paint them seperately and then glue them on.