Planning to Paint More Goblins

I stayed up late last night reviewing the big red book and revising my Warhammer Orks and Goblins army list. Basically I decided I didn’t need an ork general, I’m not trying that hard to win anyway. The only reason I wanted an Ork Great Shaman was for the improved leadership and access to the Big Waaagh spell list. I wondered if I couldn’t accomplish the same thing in another manner. I still could not afford a big unit of orks on foot, so I went with just the goblins, that’s right my entire 1500 point 8th edition army list has two orks in it. One is a Level 2 Shaman for access to the Big Waaagh spells, as some of them are very good, at least for Ork magic, the other is a bully leading my rock lobber crew.

Here are the gory details, it is all painted but the warmachine crew, the Night Goblin Warboss, and of courses bases and shields…

• SPECIAL: Rock Lobber with bully: 75pts
• RARE: 2 Doom Divers: 160pts
• CORE: 65 Goblins with spears and shields and full command: 345pts
• HERO: Goblin Big Boss, Light Armor, BSB, Spider Banner: 110pts
• HERO: Ork Shaman, Level 2 Wizard, Waaargh Paint: 110pts
• LORD: Night Goblin Great Shaman, Staff of Sneaky Stealing, Mad Cap Mushrooms, Amulet of Protectyness: 245pts
• LORD: Night Goblin Warboss, Sneaky Skewer, Potion of Strength, Talisman of Preservation: 130pts
• CORE: 29 Night Goblins with bows, full command, and three fanatics: 183pts
• CORE: 24 Night Goblins with bows, full command, and two fanatics: 142pts

This army is more 8th Edition and even more so, the current O&G army book, I think I liked the previous ork and goblin army book better. Even though I’m not sure they are particularly combat effective I purchased all three of my warmachines and I will add to this arsenal as the army grows. How else are goblins going to hurt big tough things? The large block of spearmen was also non-negotiateable, if I ever get it finished, damn straight I’m fielding it, 345 points isn’t that much. With the 110 point Battle Standard Bearer it has the potential to deal out a lot of damage with all those poised attacks. I also discovered the Steadfast rule which will really help my goblins, especially at 2000 points when I get to add more Night Goblins and a big ork unit to the mix.

Picking this army list took a long time as I agonized over the magic items. A lot of the more interesting items are Goblin or even Night Goblin only but there are a few good Ork only ones. There are also a lot of new common magic items which are often better/cheaper than the army list specific ones. At 2000 points I’ll have even more points for heros and magic items but I won’t be adding another lord choice I had to work hard to squeeze two Night Goblin Lords in at 1500 points. I don’t have a painted model for the Warboss, but I might have one in a blister somewhere. I have plenty of plastic goblins I can use for war machine crew. So having to buy one more goblin isn’t a deal breaker, besides there are some nice new models. I have at least 40 Orks laying about, as I always planned to do one big unit with choppas, but now I’m thinking of giving them shields for the parry.

Yet more shields I’ll have to paint. Warhammer Fantasy Battle can really tire out a painter like me who likes individualistic models and usually does minor conversions and puts extra details into their models.

In yet more time wasting and avoiding doing the laundry I looked into Warhammer’s number one competitor, Warmachine. I’ve seen people playing it in stores, even yesterday people were playing it despite the fact 8th Edition just came out which is getting a lot of push from the local gaming store owner. Hordes and Warmachine basically have a new edition for 2010 too. Not sure if this is accidental or not. It’s big appeal besides not being part of the evil empire as some people call GW, is it requires less models. Of course most of the models are metal, but there are plastic starter sets now.

I’ve long wanted to move more into skirmish games as the Diseased Sons, even the Nefarious Fire aren’t that portable. My Warhammer Fantasy Armies are worse as I haven’t played them in so long, I haven’t tried to transport them. The best thing to do would be to buy a dedicated case for your armies which I’m going to do for the Servants of Decay. I have several miniature cases, some homemade, others made by Charon and GW. I’m thinking of getting a Battlefoam one as they precut the foam for you, but spending money is an impossibility so to play Warhammer at Strategies I’ll need to figure out how best to transport stuff on monster bases. When I got the Charon case I ordered one bigger, monster sized, foam layer, but I’d actually prefer if my whole army fit in one small compact case. Hence the appeal of smaller, skirmish sized games.

Skirmish games are more portable, which as an apartment dweller who currently can’t host games, I need to consider more and more. Warhammer used to be something you played in your parent’s basement, or if you’re lucky at a local club night, now it seems you need to travel to find opponents for the games you used to play with your friends. I don’t have a car so portability is a bigger and bigger deal for me. Something to work on in 2011, as I already have more than enough on my plate for 2010.

I’ve been doing a little painting and now that it is evening hope to make some real progress. I still plan to finish the test models, hopefully in the next day or two. Then it is on to the Nurgle lesser daemons so I have a legal, if not necessarily effective, 1500 point Warhammer army. Then it is full speed ahead to finish my Astronomi-con Vancouver army.

Oh here are some links I’ve discovered recently that might be of interest to anyone who’s read down this far:

• Wargamers World is a new online store promising OOP GW bits.
• One of the 40K blogs I followed recently painted one of GW’s modular plastic gaming tables.
• He found two other examples of people painting these, one used pastels err pigments.

Well my computer seems to be having issues and it keeps getting later, tomorrow hopefully I’ll be more productive so I’ll have better photos to post online. I’m using my Cool Grey AwesomePaintJob.com wash and it is real hit and miss, the pigment separates in this, the red one, just like in all the old GW flesh washes pots I ever had.