Oh yeah! Painting the models!

We've all done it. Played with the 'primer army'. You get a new unit assembled and want to play it to see if it was actually worth buying. As much as I try not to, I usually end up with a unit or two that's not painted on table. Even the tournament standard of three-colors is a thorn in side of some players. You spent hours painting your whole army up only to have your opponent show up with glue still drying on his units. I played my fully painted AND based Skaven army of 200+ models in a recent game. My opponent had one unit that was primed.

You don't have to be a great artist to get three basic colors on a model. There's a lot of quick, easy ways to paint up models to at least give them a little flavor on the board. You can go for a quick white primer coat, wash, then drybrush. Dipping is another quick and popular method. I don't understand why people dump on dipping so much. It's quick and easy, and if prepared right, can give you some cool results.

I like to play with painted models but not the bare minimum. Everyone's skill is at a different level but there's a lot of ways to pump your painting. Practice is always the best, but challenging yourself is even better. If you got a local GW, ask about painting competitions. They're a great way to learn new tricks and get pointers on your technique.

Blogs are another great way. There's a ton of really good resource material out there. My current favorite is a blog called The Painting Corps. The guys there are incredibly talented and track down good tutorials from all over.

Massive Voodoo is another site I go to often. I think they're German but also have some of the best sculpts and painting I've ever seen. They're tutorials are pretty easy to follow too. I've been using their priming technique for my Lizardmen with some decent results. Massive Voodoo also has articles on art theory in the event you're inclined towards the heavy artsy side.

Painting by Tinweasel: good work, decent tutorials. A little sparse on the progress photos but cool results.

The other resource I use is Cool Mini or Not. You want to see what a cool Vampire Counts or Empire army looks like, go check it out. Its a great place to get new ideas on old armies.

Those are my favorites. Let me know if you have anything that you use regularly to help amp your skills. Books, websites, other people. I love learning a new technique so if you got something cool, let me know. Once I get my new camera, I'll some progress shots of my own stuff up. Until then, be seeing ya.

Four Pillars of Great Success (7th edition)

In 7th edition, there's many ways to win. Everyone has their own formula to what makes an effective army. Fantasy is one of those beasts where you can still take the weaker units of your army, so long as you can use them effectively, you might pull the win. Fantasy functions best when you can blend the abilities of your individual units together. It's called "synergy": the product is greater than the sum of the two parts. There's a few things that I try to remember when I play any fantasy army.

There are four principles that were taught to me that really improved my game: Deployment, Combat Resolution, Don't Fight a Fair Fight, and Psychology.

Deployment is the fastest way to lose in WFB. In the current Fantasy edition, Player A places a unit, then Player B places a unit. This goes back and forth until everything is down. Then the Heroes and Lords are placed and the game begins. This style of deployment let's you react to what your opponent does. It also let's you pick off smaller units with stronger ones, put your cavalry in a good charging lane, figure out how to get into a flank charge, etc. If you don't deploy well, or worse, rush the whole deployment phase, the game can be over before it begins.

Combat is decided by who can generate more resolution than the other side. You do this by killing other guys, standard bearers, battle standard bearers, complete ranks past the first (up to 3), outnumbering your opponent, flank and rear charges. It's very rare that all these elements will be in the same combat at once, but I've seen some crazy things happen in combat. If you have a unit that can't generate combat res through killing other guys, you have to give it ranks or a banner. If that unit can't really get ranks because its expensive, it better be able to kill some stuff. Combat orientated units need to be able to generate combat res somehow, or you're just wasting points.

Don't Fight a Fair Fight. THIS DOES NOT MEAN CHEATING. It means picking fights you can win. I'm not going to send my lone unit of gnoblars against a block of Chaos Chosen, even though I still managed to pass my Break Checks on double 1's two times in a row. My nickname was 'Gnoblar Leadership' for a while at the local shop. Now, a fair fight is usually one-on-one, head-on with equal numbers. That's not what you want. You want to hit units from the front and the side in the same round. You want to bring that fast, strong unit to smash up that 10 man archer unit. This uses the other two principles together. Deploying correctly, or at least well enough, and figuring out how to get a unit to win in combat let's you take out units and make it look easy.

Psychology is extremely strong in the current edition. Demons of Chaos and Vampire Count players will tell you. Fear and Terror change the game dramatically. Forcing your opponents to take multiple Leadership Checks in a turn is another way to utilize psychology. Low leadership units suffer the most against psychology, but an unsupported strong unit can suffer even more. Units that are Immune to Psychology are the first response when it comes to armies built around Fear/Terror units. ITP units are great but come with their own problems. In 8th edition, the rumor mill has been churning with changes to Fear and Terror, specifically making them not the devastating forces they are today. I've had many a combat lost by 1, and be forced to roll double 1's instead of normal Leadership minus 1.

These are just some general guidelines I follow when putting together an army for 7th edition WFB. Do you do something different? What mantras do you follow for Fantasy?

Blog Highlight - Little Green Monsters

Hey there, I just found this guy's blog. He has some of the coolest Chaos Warrior conversions I've seen in a while.

http://xenite.wordpress.com/

In a world where Chaos is usually all spikey and standard looking, this guy gets some serious credit for converting up a pretty unique looking army. Check him out.

8th Edition Rumors

Ok, can't hold it off any longer. The Warseer Forum seems to be the place to get on top of these rumors. I know I'm not on the cutting edge here but I figured if I'm going to talk about it, I should at least have a way to show it.

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=253845

The only thing in the rumors that I really have a gripe with is the movement stuff. Charging with random movement removes a lot of control from the general. Plus the War of the Rings game already has this kind of charging system. I really think this is someone wishlisting but I've been surprised before. I'm kind of bummed that charging probably won't let you go first, which is a big deal in the current edition, but with combat changing to allow more models to fight it might not be so bad.

Again just rumors here. Is there anything there that's exciting to you? Is it going to let you field that one unit you love but gets slaughtered in every game? I'm digging the idea of bows shooting in two ranks standard for my Wood Elves. Same thing with being able to field Eternal Guard and Tree Kin instead of an army of super-skirmishers.

Resources

One thing I will give credit to the Internet for is that there's a lot of information out there. With Warhammer being as complex and customizable as it is, its nice when someone can put it together for you in one (or a few) places. There's news sites, blogs, and forums that dedicate so much to the hobby, I'm just going to list a few I use.

For news, I like Bell of Lost Souls. They hit on a bunch of different hobby games which is nice. Its cool to see the other stuff, like Warmachine or Flames of War.

There are so many blogs dedicated to wargaming, there's no way to know them all. But From the Warp does a wicked decent job at putting them together. Check them out for a ton of great blogs.

Like any hobby or nerd related medium, there's podcasts. My personal favorite, Podhammer.net. Australians talking Warhammer; funny accents, good coverage. What more could you ask? World's End Radio is also good if you play 40K too.

Now, gaming is just one aspect. Painting is a HUGE element of my hobby. I've always been an artist so the fact that I get to paint these things is golden. I probably go to at least double the amount of painting blogs than I do gaming ones. I'll put together another post with all the painting stuff I go to.

Until then, check ya laters

True Purpose

I want to get into a little bit more about what I really want to do here. Like I've stated below, I love WFB. Its a challenge regardless of what the conditions are for the fight. It's not about who you bring to the fight as it usually is with 40K, but about how well you control your army. Even the big nasty units can be taken down by a well executed plan with lesser units.

I have only played in 7th edition. I know, I know. A lot of people are going to have issues with someone whose view of the game is narrowed by the fact they didn't play in previous editions. But I've played a lot of 7th edition. I help out at the local GW teaching people from the 40K to learn how to play WFB. With 8th edition coming out, I want to see how the game really changes. With the rumors floating around the net about the up-coming edition, I'm pretty excited. I don't want to go into all the rumors that are out there, but I will hit on some of them.

As a final note, we don't what will actually be true until the book comes out. So until then, grab some salt, dust-off a flame-shield, keep an open mind, and enjoy the ride.

Fresh Start

After thinking about it for a while, I've finally decided to actually make an account of some of my Warhammer experience. I've been playing a little over a year, which isn't much compared to some people. I started out in 40K but I quickly got hooked on Fantasy when I picked up the Ogre Kingdoms. Since then I've started a Skaven, Empire, and most recently, Wood Elves. I like the weird armies that have a lot of character. I think the real enjoyment of the game comes from having a good time with the people you play against. If both players have a blast, neither side feels like they've lost something, except maybe an hour or two.