by Dicemonkey

[Original post]

I am sick of painting blue after my Smurf and ogre armies and decided to take a break and start on my long neglected Saurus cavalry horde army starting with the carnosaur. I get tired of the cream and red or blue and red I always see so decided to go green and bone.

This model is proof of the million monkeys with a million typewriters parable. Trish morrison sculpted something nice after tons and tons of poo.

I spent maybe 3 hours or the carnie, he still is not done the slann I painted in under an hour. The throne is a pain in the butt with all the fiddely bits so I may never get in the mood to finish it all the way off.

by Gaaargh (Mark)

I built one last night using a template from here;

I used corrugated sign-plastic - I had a sign that used to hang over my desk at work when I was a supervisor.

One side will have a rose window, and doors, and be the entrance to my evil chapel.

For the cuts, I just didn’t slice all the way through (in most spots) and then cut in at an angle to empty the slot/hole. I imagine you could do the same with foamcore.

I chose the plastic because I had it lying around - in my terrain bits-pile. I’m considering creating the stonework sides by glueing plasticard to it, similar to the stuff you have in the courtyard on yours. Or is that wallpaper?

The dimensions when finished are;
3-3/4″ x 3-3/4″ x 10″

I’m also adding a rose window & doors to one side.

So, I printed one of the designs from Hirst, and then painted it with incredibly watered down paint for the glass.

I also built a set of doors, and scribed a woodgrain on them.

What you see is one side of the tower as it will be on the base, but it will also be the front of the chapel that is the display board.

The areas right around the window, and door will remain as they are, and eventually be the darker area on the model.

The final colour I intend, is something like that of many of the buildings in Westminster. You Brits know the name of that colour?

The bricks are, on the front, scored foam core, and on the other 3 sides polly-fixit scored with and xacto, or mechanical pencil while wet. They are 1″ x 1/2″

by Patrick the Hellfury

I got tired of staring at the leftover bits of my city fight stuff and decided to do something prcatical with the Ad Mech pieces I have.

This project arose out of the need to keep people from flinging the dice across the table and knocking my models over.

So I made a dice mill out of it. Just drop the dice in the top and they tumble into the little fenced courtyard.

Its still WIP, as I havent installed the tumblers into the building yet, nor have I glued the pieces totally together. The walls have been glued in sections. The only thing keeping this thing standing right now is friction.

The dimensions are 6″ wide, 8″ long, 9&1/2″ tall.

The whole point of it is for:

1. To keep the dumb motherfuckers who like to roll their dice across the table. And when I mean acoss, I mean the majority end up on the floor, after the have bowled my models over. (True story and happens more than I am pleased with. It is made specifically to not allow the use of larger than 16mm dice as they wont tumble down, thus banning the heavy model killing dice from the table.)
2. To make a functional terrain piece for my COD table. Most of the terrain is usefull for models, but this one counts as an intact building. Meaning it cannot be interfaced other than it blocks line of sight through it. So for all intents and purposes, it is an inert thing on the table only good for rolling dice, keeping track of turns, and being intact terrain.
3. It keeps the table tidier. The table looks like a battlefield as opposed to some fat asses attempt at making it look like a D&D table. I am all for the suspension of disbelief. Thats the reason to get into the finer details of modelling and painting, to suspend disbelief.

Thanks to John over at Plastic Legions, I got to snag this pic of our Mighty Empires Campaign. Thanks to the last two massacres, I was able to initiate a bunch of challenges and stuff. Land Grab meant that I could pick an additional tile (though not the mountain tiles as I had wanted to grab), but the Wood Elves got to select one of the first events. And they selected Scouts! We challenged the Dwarfs, and so I got to deploy after my opponent, Billy, and I was guaranteed the first turn.

Little did I know that it would be to no avail.

1500 pts. vs. the Dwarfs.

Billy’s terrain placement involves hills on opposite ends of the battlefield. The Dwarfs have three warmachines, so I would get to stare down a bolt thrower, a cannon, and an organ gun. His right flank has two lines of Thunderers with command, while Iron Breakers hold his center. The large block of Dwarf warriors and another unit of Thunderers guard the Dwarf infantry flank from harm.

Like an idiot, I take pictures of my army facing my deployment, so this is going to be confusing. I built the army list before I knew whom I’d be playing, so there are Glade Guard Scouts in it. This is my left flank. I Scout my Waywatchers and Glade Guard Scouts into the forest. Behind them, a line of Glade Riders and Wild Riders with Noble on Stag.

The picture is incorrect. While the Glade Riders are shown to be on the inside line, I later redeploy them to the outside line to compensate for the Wild Riders’ loss of the Fast Cavalry rule (for including the Monstrous Mount). I place the noble on the far left, however, to try to keep him safe from gunfire. It almost doesn’t matter.

The Dryads follow the line while the Wardancers skirmish to their right. My spellsinger with Calaingor’s Stave and Dispel Scroll (again, the list was pre-written) stand just before the Dancers. The idea is to cram as many key units into the forest template as I can and Treesing my way up the field. Though it would possibly be useful to try and cast his second spell, Ariel’s Blessing, my plan is to Treesing on two power dice every time.

The rest of my line is bows. They are two units of Glade Guard Archers, to be exact.

With first turn in place, the Scouts leave the woods to make room for the army, while the Waywatchers advance to the edge (this is before I learn what the Organ Gun can do). The Wild Riders fill up the woods while the rest of the army (minus the bowline) march behind. The Spellsinger sings the forest with its cargo up the table.

My shooting is pathetic. Waywatchers and Scouts volley into the nearest Thunderers units. BS 5 with lethal shot nets a single kill from 7 arrows. The Glade Guard fare little better by shooting at the middle unit of thunderers.

The Dwarfs stubbornly hold their ground and refuse to move. Of course that means they open up every gun and fire at my advancing army.

A cannonball fires and lands straight on top of my General’s face. I expect the worst until his Forest Spirit save shrugs the cannonball off. The Organ Gun deals 8 hits to the Waywatchers and kills them outright. And the Bolt Thrower deals a single wound to my bowline.

And then the Thunderers answer my arrows.

Five glade guard simply disappear. To their credit, they fail to panic and continue to fire arrows at the enemy.

The Wild Riders do not have any line of sight, and I’m left with a choice. If I advance them to the forest’s edge for a charge next turn, they will surely be shot at. With the cumbersome stag in the unit, the best they can do is march off to the flank as the Scouts scurry out of the way.

Glade Riders march into the line of sight of every gun on the left flank in the Dwarf army. They are protecting the Dryads from two full Thunderer volleys.

With nowhere to go, the Spellsinger attempts to gain Ariel’s blessing upon the Wild Riders, but the Dwarfs resist the casting.

The Glade Guard continue to shoot and wound maybe 1 Thunderer in any round.

A cannonball barrels through the Glade Riders, eliminating two Dryads and a Wardancer. The Organ Gun and Thunderers completely eliminate the Glade Riders, and the rest of the Thunderers attempt to whittle down the Dryads to no avail. The Dwarfs’ left flank Thunderers reform and protect the Warriors flank, as the resolute fighters begin to wheel to engage the right.

A bolt thrower fires into the flank of the Wild Riders, and nearly finish things off right there. But the hit Wild Rider, showing a fortune befitting his noble leader, halts the bolt with the help of forest spirits.

The Wild Riders reform and prepare to declare a decisive charge. Dryads charge the Thunderers. In combat they kill enough to outnumber them with a Fear causing unit, causing them to flee and die.

Seeing their comrades completely obliterated, the center Thunderers also turn and flee. The War Machine crews stoutly ignore the ruckus and calmly level their guns.

The Thunderers rally and hastily form a defensive line surrounding their War Machine. The cannon’s engineer briefly considers grape shot, but decides not to dishonor the defending line. A cannonball takes out more Dryads, and a Wild Rider, while the Organ Gun whittles the rest of the marauding tree spirits down to two.

The Dryads charge, break and destroy the cannon crew, advancing into the cannon. The Wild Riders trample the Dwarfs and crash into the Organ Gun crew behind them, who break and die. The cavalry advance and try to destroy the organ gun.

The Dwarfs attempt to rally and turn the line with their fighting troops. The Thunderers whittle down the strong unit of Glade Guard.

The Dryads and Wild Riders are completely open while they fail to destroy either war machine.

The Spellsinger has been very busy. His spells have delivered the Wardancers into charging range of the approaching Iron Breakers. It’s an attempt to keep the general’s flank from being turned, but it’s also probably a tactical mistake.  They dance a killing dance, and win the combat, but are unable to break the hardy unit.

The inevitable warrior charges come through. The Thane has a staggering number of attacks that strike first while the Wardancers dance faster than a charger can attack.

It’s not enough. The Wardancers dance their last dance under a crush of axe and hammer.
The situation pauses the battle as the Dwarfs try to figure out how they are to advance. The Iron Breakers go first and the Warriors go second, declaring a simultaneous charge and thus split the combat as they engage the Wild Riders in the flank. The Dwarf Thane growls something about being left out of all the fun.

The Dryads charge from hilltop to hilltop, damaging but failing to kill the last weapon crew.

The Wild Riders resist the charge, but the Thane shuffles to the front and breaks the unit. They flee off the battlefield, leaving the captured Dwarf standard and their own behind.

The final tally: 290ish pts. difference in a 1500pt. game. A Marginal Victory for the Dwarfs.

Things I could have done to bridge the Victory Point gap:

1. Once it became clear that my Glade Guard and Waywatchers were not going to have an affect on the battle, I should have played Victory Point denial and hid them behind forests and terrain. In the end, my Scouts challenged one quarter, his units claimed one quarter, while I claimed one with a single unit of Glade Guard. The other unit would have claimed another if it hadn’t been shot below Unit Strength 5. Potential Points saved : 63 for the half unit of Glade Guard, 168 for the Waywatchers, 100 pts for holding another quarter.
2. Hold the Wardancers back and give the two solid Dwarf units a charge on the Wild Riders so close to the table edge? I would have lost the Wild Riders earlier, but maybe the Dwarfs wouldn’t have had a chance to redeploy. Also, the Wardancers would have been safe from shooting as the Organ Gun crew was eliminated. Perhaps a flanking charge into the warrior block would have given me a chance. Potential Points saved: 91 pts for a half unit of Wardancers (assuming close combat attrition)
3. Use the Waywatchers to shoot at the Warmachine crews, not the Thunderers. This all by itself would have saved me some grief. I distrusted my dice, however, and thought I’d have more gains with the Thunderers. So 7 shots, 6 hits, 2 against the crew. The odds were against me killing any, but I wonder if focused Glade Guard, Waywatcher and Scout arrow fire would have stopped the Organ Gun?

Assuming all of this worked out, perhaps I myself could have squeaked out a Marginal Victory, or at least a Draw. Of course, everything would have been different in the presence of normal deployment and first turn roll off. Next week I’ll have 1 Empire Point to spend. I wonder if I should bother upgrading my meager holdings or if I should raid for gold?

by Hordini (Jordan)

[Posted on the OT Zone, registration required]

I got a digi cam for Christmas.

Here’s some quick pics of stuff I’ve been working on. I know they aren’t great, I just snapped off some stuff.

These aren’t quite finished - still need to highlight the bases, paint the boots, waffenfarbe, cuff titles, etc.

Comments and criticism on the minis and the photos is appreciated.

PaK38s with command:

Gun 1:

Gun 2:

Oh yeah….any advice on how I can improve my crappy dorm room lighting situation?

I have the regular overhead lights and a desk lamp….and as you can see it looks like shit.