Daemons – Page 3 – Musk's Miniatures

Glowing Green Paint Effect

So I’d always planned on doing the Bloodletter’s sword green and the armour of the sorcerer green, so I once again cooked up a one of kind or in this case a two of a kind colour that looks like it glows. The key to the glowing effect is to go very bright/light with the highlights and start very dark with the lowlights. Washes and glazes are also essential to my technique. I’m not sure I can make it work with any colour but it works with green and blue, I generally use it on power weapons or magic weapons. Purple can work too, but you have to highlight up to pink and that scares some people.

To get the effect seen here I had a black base coat. I then painted Orkhide Shade over it, the new GW Foundation darkest green. Then I really needed an inbetween shade, but I didn’t have one so I mixed Orkhide Shade and Vallejo Game Colour Sick Green. Then I think I did a pure Sick Green highlight, I can’t remember exactly it was yesterday. To keep the colour dark and scary I mixed up a wash of about 5 parts water, 2 parts old GW Green Wash, and 1 part Black Ink. Basically a much darker green wash, but still thinned so it would flow into the recesses.

After that dried I got out Sick Green again and starting working up the highlights. I didn’t really have a good inbetween shade, so I mixed in an old GW Jade Green. With the mixed colour and then pure Jade Green painted on as a highlight I then did a second wash. This time a thinned down Waaagh Green Ink which is an extremely old GW/Citadel product. When that was dry I started highlighting Jade Green again, but I also wanted to darken a few spots so I used the new GW Green Wash just in a few spots.

Then more Jade Green and the first green glaze. GW used to make them, they were under appreciated by their clientele I wish I had them all, but I only have a few, they have red lids. Vallejo makes some glazes, I saw them at Imperial Hobbies today. After some Jade Green and green glaze I wanted to go more extreme so I got out this bottle of Green Grey Vallejo Model Colour #971. I mixed this with the Jade Green on my P3 Wet Palette. I then painted this pale highlight on. Then another green glaze then an even paler extreme highlight was done and it was off to my bedroom to take the photos.

As I mentioned I went to Imperial Hobbies today and bought some more paint and a couple of brushes. The brushes were disappointing but they were cheap. Tomorrow I will go and buy some Deserres brushes that I’ve gotten used to, they hold their point pretty good and come in all sorts of sizes. I also bought some very bright or light colours which I’ll use on the Tzeentch and Slaneesh models I seem to be doing up, but mainly they are for the future. The Mr. Color Steel and the Flat Green will get used sooner, as might the Sky Grey.

The Gale Force 9 flock I bought the day before to use on the Goblins and other bases going forward. I’m trying to use a variety of material, instead of just sand all the time.

3 WIP Chaos Models

Today I’ve done a lot of painting, I got up early and I kept at it for most of the day. I’m working on three different chaos models. The first is my second test bezerker, the second is an old OOP Bloodletter which I’m painting up to be a generic lesser daemon, but mainly I’m practicing my dark purple skin tone technique, the final model is another old chaos model, this one is still in print, non-the-less mine is lead and will serve as a Herald of Tzeentch come Sunday at Strategies.

What I really should be working on is my Astronomi-con Vancouver army, but their is a method to my madness. The Khorne Bezerker is serving as a test model for my Forgeworld Khorne Terminator Lord conversion. The Bloodletter is a test model for a bigger daemon. Even the sorcerer could be argued that it is a test model, as I need to get that flashy look for my Slaneesh Sorcerer I’ll take to the tournament.

Well with all the time I put in, I could have put in even more, and none of the models are finished. I had hoped to start on three other models today, but tomorrow will do. I did a lot of work on the Bezerker’s red armour, the Bloodletter’s purple skin, and the sorcerer’s grey robe.

The model I’ve done the least on since the last blog post is the Bezerker. I finished the purple flames using the Foundry Royal Purple Triad pretty much as they intended. I’ve been having brush troubles today. Several brushes were retired and I couldn’t find a good ‘0’ or ’00’. I’ve been focusing on speed and buying and using bigger brushes, that now when I want to paint flames or fine highlights my tools are letting me down. Tomorrow I will invest in some new brushes. I’m tempted to go to Imperial Hobbies because a few gaps have appeared in my paint collection. Specifically I need a green between Orkhide Shade and say VMC Sick Green. I ended up making one…

So the greens on the Bezerker are for his seems or tubes or whatever. I painted them Orkhide Shade then tried to go right to Sick Green but it ended up looking way too Christmas tree-ish. I then mixed a darker green for the other models. I also had troubles getting the green in the tiny gaps without damaging my red or grey highlights. The other thing I did on the Bezerker was it’s ‘silver’ metallic stuff. I didn’t use silver, but rather GW’s Chainmail. This was way too shiny, so another dark gunmetal colour would be nice too. I can darken Chainmail with Badaab Black and Devlan Mud wash but there is always a risk of spillage or seepage, so I think I’d prefer an even simpler metal. I have Boltgun Metal but I think something even darker than that would find many uses in my painting.

The Bloodletter got his skin finished off. It came out pretty well, but eventually I just had to say enough because I have bigger models to work on and I need to get them done within two weeks. Thankfully I’m unemployed… The skin was painted GW’s Liche Purple twice. I let black come through, I missed painting a little bit of stuff on one shoulder, I thought it was a necklace but it was his collar bone. After that I think I did the first part of Foundry’s Royal Purple Triad, but perhaps before that a custom dark purple wash. Then I worked up the Royal Purple Triad followed by a thinned old purple wash. Then it was basically Royal Purple Triad Highlight along with some glazes. I might go slightly pinker maybe to Warlock Purple on the big fella, we’ll see how it looks and how much time it takes.

I also did some striations. Yet another place where I needed a good sharp point. I actually have some really tiny brushes, but I need zeros and double zeros too.

The Sorcerer got a pretty surreal grey robe. I didn’t use that many different greys, basically just GW ones, two Foundation ones, and one regular one. In fact I chucked out a light grey, which doing some inventory I think I need four colours and I’m going to try non-GW ones, preferably in the dropper style bottles. Sometimes they come out too much, but generally they are pretty easy to work with, for super common colours I like the flip tops like black and white or metallics which I keep out of my P3 Wet Palette.

The robe got a wash of Badaab Black but that didn’t go as well as I would like so future washes were custom made by me out of old Black GW Wash. I did two, one thinned and one really thinned. I also built up the highlights to Astronomicon Grey, but then I went even higher mixing in some white. I also painted in lowlights. This was partly to get rid of unwanted shine, but mainly as it looked good. I got the aforementioned thin brush and painted black lines into folds. I also painted on more folds than were sculpted using various greys. This is a technique I use on skin too, such as the striations.

After I was satisfied with the robe I touched up the black and waited until the Bezerker was ready to do green. I wanted a different green, working towards an old pot of GW Jade Green, possibly going even brighter. I started off with Orkhide Shade, leaving some black showing on all three models. Then I did a mix of Orkhide Shade and Vallejo Model Colour Sick Green. Finally pure Sick Green was applied then a custom wash made from an old GW Ork Flesh Wash mixed with a tad of Shadow Black Ink.

Then I deemed them good enough for tonight and tomorrow I will finish them mostly and try harder to find a job. I might go out tomorrow night, so I don’t think I’ll put in as many hours painting, but I’m in the home stretch for all three models, so it will be time to work on three different Chaos Space Marines.

Game 2 & 3 of Warhammer 8th Edition

And two more losses. I’m beginning to think I’m the worst army list selector in the world. Night Goblin mercenaries have leadership 4! Of course they were in range of both my general and the battle standard bearer when they panicked and ran in the first game, from Salamander fire. Didn’t know they shot that far and force mandatory panic checks. I don’t know much about the army lists I don’t own, playing something like 5 games since 4th Edition.

Anyway this was week two of the Strategies Mighty Empires campaign and I was tied with two other people for last. It was also mandatory mercenaries week and in my defense I didn’t have any options. I did Nurgle daemons as I own them from my 40K army the Diseased Sons, I just painted more, a movement tray, and ranked them up to give 8th Edition a go. The only other fantasy models I own besides one or two more chaos champions, mostly all on round bases, was my 4th Edition Night Goblin army.

Being unemployed and them being close to table ready, I grabbed one unit, which turned out to be 50 models, threw in a Night Goblin Shaman to help me in the magic phase, as in every game of 8th Edition I’ve played I’ve faced a Level 4 Sorcerer, that’s how I chose the army for this week. It is impossible for Chaos Daemons to have a level 4 magic user in a 1500 point game. If I make and save some gold in the campaign I can add up to another 250 points to my army. But that is going to have to wait two weeks, because I’m going to a cousin’s wedding reception next Sunday. Even the three fanatics I felt a little guilty about taking didn’t really do much, they killed a few Night Goblins and a Plaguebearer or two…

I just realized I forgot my animosity rolls. Oh well I forget lots of rules…

This week I got to choose early, first even of the campaign events and took Building Boom and wanted to challenge Sidhu but he wasn’t there, so I ended up fighting Corey and his Lizardmen. He had a Slann, Temple Guard, regular Sauruses who were the mercenaries, some skinks with blow guns, the big triceratops lizard and three salamanders. Once again we rolled up lots of terrain and lots of it magical. I played the second game on the same terrain approximately we rolled what type of rivers and stuff were on the board. No one ever went in the mysterious forest. I’m beginning to think I should hide behind the scenery, but the Nurgle Daemons don’t even have any ranged attacks and I generally lose during the magic phase, though this week was a bit better.

Anyway I’ve been thinking a lot on what I could do to try to make this army competitive. It is tough at this points level, but I think the long term solution is another unit of line infantry and I’m thinking Daemonettes. Short term the Herald of Tzeentch will be added if for no other reason than defensive magic ability. I also hope to slowly build up some Fiends of Slaneesh, but until then the Beasts of Nurgle will get to come out and play. Nurglings just seems so much worse than other options, even Beasts are no prize. Nurgle appears to have the worst daemons in fantasy, but Plaguebearers are super popular in 40K, getting Feel No Pain and all.

Here is the quick version of the two games, as neither went terribly long. In the first game, my small army in terms of units, finished deploying first and then my scouts didn’t really have any place to go in no man’s land. The mission was a modified version of “Hired Guns” which uses I think mission 4 deployment.

In the first game the Nurglings went on my far left flank as I figured they might have a chance at killing Skinks. The Plaguebearers went in front of the end of the river where the fighting would obviously take place. Fantasy is so predictable in terms of where H2H will take place, I even tried to cast a movement spell but it was mainly a failure, I didn’t get to move far enough to get into H2H and it was ruled I had to go through my own fanatics. I thought the Hand of Gork should pick up the unit, then put it down in a new place…

Anyway there is a good picture of deployment. The dreaded Stegadon, that’s what the big dino is called, rampaged towards the Plaguebeares and despite me trying the tricky magic spell charge, got the charge on me. The Plaguebearers of course held, but that thing is tough to wound. So eventually the Temple Guard got to flank charge the Plaguebearers. The reason the Plaguebearers got flanked charged was the mercenary Night Goblin archers got hit by Salamander flames, which can go surprisingly far. These cause auto panic checks and despite getting two tries to roll 8 or less the Night Goblins panicked and ran, never rallied and disappeared off the board leaving Slim and a lone fanatic at the end.

Before all that happened the Skinks advanced to within 8 inches of the Night Goblins so I remember to send out the fanatics, but one of the many rules is they can’t go through terrain. So I had to redo it as at first I sent two towards the Skinks and one towards the Temple Guard. I also peppered the Temple Guard with 35 arrows and some magic. Despite all the crap I threw at them, they still got the flank charge.

Slim and the Nurglings charged the Skinks. I beat them up and pursued and wiped them out, but this left Slim kinda out of it positionally. The Nurglings went on to charge the Sauruses in the side which obviously didn’t go well. Slim turned himself around and flew back to try and rally the Night Goblins and to charge the Temple Guard in the rear.

I can’t remember all the details, but basically Slim needed to make his leadership test on 8 or less as I lost combat by one after the Plaguebearers were weakened further. He failed, twice! This cost him his last wound. This kinda left my battle standard bearer and a few other Plaguebearers and of course one lone fanatic. I was not lucky with them, I think they killed more of my stuff than his.

After Slim died and the Night Goblins fled I conceded. I then had to wait around to try to get a second chance to win my first game. Eventually I did get to play Sidhu.

His army had a big unit of the elite Skaven with Halberds. That unit also had the Grey Seer, a chieftain and the battle standard bearer. I through a tonne of shots and spells at it, but couldn’t halt it in the end. He also had two Doom Wheels which again I hit with piles of arrows, fanatics, Plague Swords, well maybe none of those, but goblin fists, I think Slim had a go at them too. Both survived with one wound and two respectively. Those things are pretty sick, they get shooting attacks, move randomly but fast, so you can’t stand and shoot them, the rats get 2D6 hits, they get Impact hits which as they go before everything are making me think some chariots will get painted for the goblins eventually. I own one or two unpainted ones.

Anyway you can see deployment. He had mercenary Blood Knights as that was his other evil army. They did nothing effectively, though everything charged the Plaguebearers in the end and after they got hit by the Dreaded 13th spell I conceded. Before all that happened I deployed the Nurglings on the right flank and moved the Night Goblins away from the river so the Fanatics would have more room to go crazy. They didn’t do that great, Sidhu kept making saves with the damn Doom Wheels but I’d have to say they did better than game one.

The Night Goblins got off one volley of 35 arrows and managed to hit the Doom Wheel a pile, but did zero wounds. Before that happened and despite setting up fairly far back, both Doom Wheels rolled very high, survived driving over the flaming barricade (the barbed wire) and smashed into the Nurglings wiping them out.

They overran and drew out the fanatics and ultimately made it into H2H with the Night Goblins.

Night Goblins with Short Bows have no armour save at all. So even 50 die pretty quickly when anything hardier than a sneeze kills them. In my real Night Goblin army I’d have more of them, more fanatics too, and would have a Great Shaman leading that unit and my Warboss leading the other unit. Plus I’d have my huge block of spearmen to occupy the centre and take the charge. My goblin army is designed to stand around and shoot, the warmachines and magic do the damage and when the enemy gets frustrated he has to risk fanatics and lots of arrows and spears plus lots of goblin heroes.

Plaguebearers get stuck fighting in a river

So yeah two loses and no game next week for me. Eventually I will earn some gold and can add up to 250 more points more to the army which will allow Slim and my Heralds to buy fancier toys, but more Plaguebearers and Nurglings is not the answer. Maybe the Beasts can be useful, but I think I’d rather have 2 Fiends of Slaneesh than one Beast of Nurgle. Also the long term solution is another unit of line infantry. 10 Daemonettes with Full Command is 150 points which is 1.5 Beasts of Nurgle or basically 4.2 Nurgling stands. The Daemonettes will have more attacks at 21, the rank and standard bonus, and likely fight before the enemy helping to soften them up for the Plaguebearers. Nurglings have lots of wounds, but they are only toughness 3 and basically always lose combat and just disappear with their Leadership of 5, even 8 isn’t a big improvement.

Nope next month maybe after I get a job if I seriously try to turn this army into something that maybe wins a game, I’ll have to do up at least 10 Daemonettes maybe even 15. Here is my army list, the best one I can make with the models I have painted:

Daemon Prince with wings and level 1 magic ability 370pts
Harold of Nurgle, Battle Standard Bearer, Slime Trail and the Banner of Unholy Victory 200pts
Herold of Tzeentch, Flames of Tzeentch, and Spell Breaker 165pts
29 Plaguebearers, Full Command and a magic banner for 403pts
3 Beasts of Nurgle 300pts
With my last 62 points I can buy five more Plaguebearers or if I get it painted, the Fiend of Slaneesh

About the only magic item I can take that might make a difference is switching from Icon of Eternal Virulence to the one that allows me to re-roll failed to wound rolls. I’ll have to think on that some more. he Harold of Tzeentch will get painted, but after that I need to paint my 2010 Astronomi-con Vancouver army, or at least the remaining 5 or 6 models.

Completing a custom cork base

Welcome back intrepid readers to another post on working with miniatures completely devoid of stylish purple text. After letting the glue dry on the multi-part OOP Daemon models and more importantly between the cork tile and the plastic GW cavalry base, it was time to finish off the base and securely mount the model.

The first thing I did was test fit the model and I got out a sharpie and traced roughly where the feet would go. Then I looked in my toolbox for two part resin epoxy. Finding none I decided rather than bike to Canadian Tire I would just use super glue to pin the model to the base.

Perhaps if the model was plastic this wouldn’t be necessary, but as this model was multi-part metal and was to serve as a Herald of Slaneesh in a Chaos Daemon Warhammer army, pinning the model to the base would be the wisest course of action. I got out a piece of metal rod that I got in a whole bag from a hobby or craft store. I got about dozen two feet long pieces in 1994 and I think I’m on the second one. I estimated how long of a piece I need then got out heavier-dutier snips and voila a short ‘pin’. I made sure it was long enough to go through the cork and the plastic by comparing it to the thickness of the base.

Next I used the pin vise to carefully drill into the rear foot of the Slaneesh Daemon. I didn’t want to drill through the foot, which wasn’t exactly thick. After a few minutes of patient twisting I had a hole of sufficient size. I then used super glue to fix the metal pin to the model. Then I place the model over the cork base and figured out approximately where I’d need to drill a hole in it. Go slow with your drilling and this time you do want to go all the way through.

Using a judicious amount of super glue on the pin and both feet of the model I fixed the model firmly to the cork flooring material. Then it was time for some more test fitting, I even decided the model deserved a head. t also deserved ‘scenic scatter’ basically little bits and bobs to make the base unique. I tried one of the big resin skulls, but in the end didn’t like it and went with a piece of an old 2nd Edition 40K box set Goff and another 28mm Black Cat Bases skull.

After they were secured to the model using Weldbond, it was time to thin some white glue and put it strategically on the base to secure beach sand. This needs drying time, several hours, but when that has past shake off the excess glue and seal the entire cork and sand base with another layer of thinned down white glue. This is apparently important.

This was my first time using cork to fancy up a miniature base. It wasn’t hard at all. Remember to go slow, use solid basic techniques, measure twice, cut once, and when in doubt pin the model.

These Slaneesh Daemons are not a high priority in my painting queue, in fact I have to make some custom movement trays again and do yet more basing, this time 54 Night Goblins. Oh boy! Eventually they will be primed grey as discussed previously, but first I may use a little green stuff to fill gaps in the multi-part metal model. I’ll leave the ride unmounted until most of the way through the paint job.

First Game of Warhammer 8th Edition

And I lost…

My re-based Beasts of Nurgle

I actually did well. I got screwed over a little by the campaign getting nothing useful for an event and having no choice but to fight the guy everyone was afraid of, John and his Dark Elf army. My Plaguebearer horde preformed well, but everything else except Harold, the Herald of Nurgle performed poorly and suffered because of all the points invested in the 40 Plaguebearers lead by the army Battle Standard Bearer.

I’m back home but still sweating from carrying miniatures twenty plus blocks. My plan was to put together 1500 points of painted Nurgle Daemons, show up every week or so, play a game or two try to have a little fun. So much for my plan, next week is mandatory mercenary week in the campaign. Lucky for me I have a second army, luckily they can ally, unlucky for me that I will have to base them and make movement trays…

Late last night I was scheming up plans to re-base my troublesome Plaguebearer musician conversion and add some magnetic umph to my Battle Standard Bearer, I even had elaborate plans to make my big honkin’ banner even more over the top. I was also thinking of painting another plaguebearer, not terribly ambitious plans. Now it is in my best interest to finally base my goblin hordes and to bring some ranged fire power and increased offensive magic.

If I was doing a pure 1500 Daemon army, I’d definitely have a Herald of Tzeentch at 115 points for a level 2 wizard, the Nurgle Herald is 115 points too and he isn’t even a wizard yet, I spent 275 points on him for the game and although he helped me defeat three Dark Elf units I still lost the game. Nurgle has such low initiative and relatively few attacks it may be the weakest of the four powers, especially after regeneration was neutered some.

I did take a lot of pictures and I do have some thoughts for next week, but I’m just beat. I think I’ll save this as a draft and revise it later. I think some down time, especially considering I’m operating on about 3-4 hours sleep is in order.

Well I’m back, I didn’t take a nap, but I got next week’s army list worked out and I got the funky drummer drumming so if I’m going to get this done this evening and impress my new blog network, I better get typing.

Here is the army I ended up running at Strategies today:

LORD: Slim, Daemon Prince with Wing 320pts
HERO: Harold of Nurgle, Herald of Nurgle, Battle Standard Bearer, Banner of Unholy Victory, Level One Wizard, Noxious Vapors, Slim Trail 275pts
CORE: Netherworldly Mathematicians, 39 Plaguebearers, Full Command, Icon of Virulence 523pts
SPECIAL: George Jr’s, 5 * Nurgling Stands 175pts
RARE: Slimey and Esmaralda, two Beasts of Nurgle 200pts

So yeah I didn’t win but I had to play the dreaded Dark Elf player he had a Hydra, a level 4 Wizard, Cold One Knights with a Hero, Dark Riders, Witch Elves, and two squads of crossbowmen. I never saw his army list and although I did my best, it seems I remember rules that hurt me and perhaps a few turns of Fear checks or sixes from Poison never happened as they were supposed to.

Before I put all the pics up, I spent last night scheming how to re-base some models and now after a visit to the craft store on Main Street I’ve got enough magnets to make the two more movement trays I need, plus it appears I need to paint the bases of 54 Night Goblins by next Sunday, as it is mandatory ally day.

First of all Darren the store owner wanted us to play a random scenario with random terrain. This resulted in the Watchtower scenario with 7 pieces of terrain much of it magical and confusing. It also took a long time to set up the table and figure out what did what. I avoided maneuvering into the fancy terrain, but my opponent John who had the bigger army couldn’t and for a while the terrain had killed more Dark Elf models than my Nurgle Army. Eventually the Netherworldly Mathematicians found their mojo and hewed through three Dark Elf units. The rest of my army didn’t do much and I will be revising my list for next week and the week after accordingly.

Due to the mission I had to deploy first but go second. John had the “Scouts” campaign event which trumped my scouts, the Nurglings and the fact I should have gone first as I started with control of the Watchtower technically. The all CORE Horde Army which I ran and plan to run with my Orks and Goblins is disadvantaged here as only 20 models can fit in the watchtower according to the rules. This along with my inability to make key saves or unwillingness or naivete in not somehow buying better saves cost me the game.

I deployed sensibly. Slim my daemon Prince hid behind the Elven Way Stone and despite my caution with him all game, he eventually died to enemy shooting costing me the victory. Next week he was going to have the Trappings of Nurgle but I just remembered I made him a non-Nurgle daemon and then of course he can’t afford it anyway in a 1500 point game… DAMN now I need to revise next week’s army list and I was so proud of it too. Too bad daemons can’t use common magic items. I’m not painting another daemon Prince and Slim would really benefit from the armour save and regeneration that the Trappings of Nurgle provides. If he didn’t have wings, I still couldn’t fit it in at 1500 points… Back to the army books and redrafting next weeks list. At least I don’t have to redo my 375 points of mercenaries.

Scout Moves

There isn’t a lot I can do at 1500 points using the Daemons of Chaos List, the best I can come up with while still spending less than 375 points on LORDs is to make Slim a Level One Wizard with the Lore of Metal and hope to get the one defensive spell, if I don’t get it, I still like the Lore of Metal’s offensive capabilities and plan to use it instead of Nurgle’s Lore and instead of Fire unless I play Wood Elves.

So after the enemy deployed my Nurglings showed up I put them just over 12 inches away from the dreaded War Hydra and the almost as dreaded Cold One Knights. They didn’t last long but they did allow the Plaguebearers to get the charge bonus and eventually wear down the Dark Elves. I didn’t have a good answer in the magic or shooting phase and I didn’t take on the War Hydra when I had the chance, next time I might be tempted to charge it just to keep it from using its’ breath weapon which killed 11 plaguebearers in a single shot later in the game.

As you might have gathered, the Dark Elf player got first turn and took the bait. He charged the Nurglings with both the Hydra and the Cold Ones. The Hydra did not roll well enough but the Cold One Knights and their hero were way too much for the Nurglings dealing 15+ wounds counting instability rolls which accounted for the last six I think.

With the Nurglings gone there was nothing to be done but charge down the hill with the Plaguebearers. I think I need to roll 8 or higher and I rolled ten. The first round of combat didn’t go well, neither did the second. Harold my Herald refused to fight the Dark Elf hero in a challenge the second round, sulking at the back. He is much more valuable alive as he was my Battle Standard Bearer, my only wizard, and was worth D3+1 Combat Resolution. Despite looking there was no rule that said his banner didn’t work in the back rank. Harold had Pit of Slime and his unit was in H2H from the first turn until the last when I yielded pretty much. So he was strictly a defensive magician. Next time my Battle Standard Bearer won’t be my only wizard if at all possible.

I think a Herald of Tzeentch is the long term solution to this problem at 1500 points. But short term I’ll be bringing an allied hero wizard and giving Slim a go in the magic phase as a Level One Wizard in his own right.

I took a picture of how the Dark Elves deployed. His mysterious river, there were two, along with the Haunted Mansion gave him some grief, I think he would have been best just to ignore them and deploy wherever he wanted. The central watchtower and the speed of the Dark Riders prevented the Beasts of Nurgle from doing much. Their initiative of one ensured they ultimately died to the Purple Sun. Nurgle really suffers with the increased emphasis on initiative and presumably Slaneesh benefits.

After two turns of all out charging there was a period of a turn or so of maneuvering waiting to see who won the one H2H fight. The Plaguebearers prevailed and followed up catching the hero and killing it. Then I took an absolute beating in the shooting phase but still charged the crossbowmen and saw them off too, though by then I was down to a single row of Plaguebearers.

About now the Purple Sun finally got cast, but the first time it did nothing. The Witch Elves came out to play and the Crossbowmen who had taken control of the Watchtower got to meet Slim. I learned I couldn’t multiple charge the Watchtower which is lame and prevented the Beasts from charging for another turn. I should have marched then while maneuvering. I maneuvered them, but always moved at slow speed when I flat out didn’t have to. That’s inexperience for you.

Slim got to charge the Crossbowmen, despite them standing and shooting and bringing him ultimately down to one wound and me forgetting my Thunder Stomp! I won and chased those Dark Elves out of the tower. Slim being a monster couldn’t hide in the tower. The routing Dark Elves were ultimately charged by the Beasts, killed and the Beasts succeeded in escaping one Purple Sun only to be killed by another faster one, 30 inches of movement in one turn!

After getting burnt, losing their regeneration for the remainder of the phase there were a lot less Plaguebearers. They were still more than enough for the unit of Dark Elf Crossbowmen in front of the Haunted Mansion. It was much more surprising when just two surviving Plaguebears both carrying magic standards managed to win a round of combat against the relatively fresh Witch Elves, who broke, were caught and killed.

Alas I didn’t have enough staying power and the crossbow bolts and Purple Suns eventually removed all my models but the aforementioned two Plaguebearers. I put their banners away during the game, but with my new supply of magnets and some more cinematic basing, they might stick around for more than a photo op. My DIY musician with my home-made Gong of Despair will hopefully be no problem once I make my custom 2 Plagubearers taking up four models worth of space mini movement tray.

A lot less plaguebearers than I started with

As I said next week is mandatory mercenary week, I’m probably not in last but with only one campaign point and being stuck in the jungle in the upper left corner, I’m close to the bottom. But I know I’m not trying very hard to win, played the toughest opponent almost to a draw, and with a lot of effort can probably field a better list. Luckily I’m unemployed so can devote say three days to making movement trays and basing goblins to produce this army list for next week:

LORDs: Daemon Prince, Wings, Level 1 Wizard 370pts
HEROs: Harold of Nurgle, Battle Standard Bearer, Banner of Unholy Victory, Slime Trail 200pts
CORE: 29 Plaguebearers, Full Command, Icon of Eternal Virulence 403pts
Mercenary HERO: Night Goblin Shaman, Level 2 Wizard, Mad Cap Mushrooms, Amulet of Protectyness 130pts
Mercenary CORE: 50 Night Goblins with short bows, Full Command, 3 Fanatics 245pts
SPECIAL: 4 Stands of Nurglings 140pts
Leftovers: one more Plaguebearer 12pts

There you go, that army hopefully has more offensive and defensive magic. Slim is still vulnerable but hopefully 50+ Night Goblins will cause some worry. I think the Plaguebearers will do better deployed in depth, it was the banners and the bonus points of combat resolution that won for me, not my extra attacks and the pitiful few kills I actually managed. Slime Trail is a really smart use of 10 points and makes Harold exactly 200 points which is more reasonable.

Next week I have the mercenary Night Goblin Shaman with the Little Waaagh magic, but future 1500 point armies will have a cheap Tzeentch Herald I think. I’ll just put him on foot and hide him behind some squad, say the Plaguebearers. I’ll give the Beasts of Nurgle another go someday, the Purple Sun was a bit of bad luck, more defensive magic might help, but just getting stuck in would help too. I also plan to assemble and paint a Fiend of Slaneesh for the speed. I think the model currently retails for about 35 dollars Canadian so that might be something to buy, though I already own one from a trade many years ago. Fleshhounds are the other option I own that will add speed and higher initiative troops quickly and easily to the army.

First up is more basing, more movement trays, and yet another Plaguebearer. I also will get some non-Nurgle Heralds and my one Fiend of Slaneesh assembled and hopefully painted in the next two weeks.

While editing this post for the third time, to make it better and add a link to Urban Source where I got my sheets of magnets, I also thought since flamer template attacks are all the rage, Nurgle usually has one, but it is too many points to give to Slim at 1500. I’m going to have to paint more stuff or at least field more stuff and use a higher points value, maybe in week three if the campaign goes better.