I got a game of Warhammer in this weekend – the first of the year! To inspire me to paint more, I chose to forego the Dark Elves (many of which remain unpainted) in favour of the Wood Elves (only a couple of special characters unused). The army was planned on the assumption that I’d be fighting Chaos – but there was a surprise twist with my opponent, who decided to bring his Bretonnians instead.

Still, after the initial panic attack, I realised that we had a lot of forests that could be put down and I’d just have to stay out of reach of the nasty nasty lances.

Terrain was set up pretty much as a straight line down the middle of the table, consisting of a tower, a wall, four forests (after the Wood Elf free forest was placed) and an interesting candle holder that was sat near the scenery shelves, shaped like a dragon holding a crystal. On the agreement that we first remove the candle, we decided that it would make a great centrepiece for the game, and the story went roughly along the lines of ‘Bretonnian lord wants forest dragon crystal to bling up his castle, Wood Elves don’t like people wandering around the forest’. Nothing too major.

Using the forests to funnel the lances into really obvious traps didn’t quite work – they were a bit too obvious. Slowly, over the game, I picked off all the peasants and foot troops but failed to make much of a dent on the knights – including a combined charge from Wardancers, Dryads and Glade Riders. It reinforced my belief that Wood Elves should never, ever engage to the front of a unit. And that I should probably have used the ‘Killing Blow’ dance. Also, angles of possible fleeing should be considered, as my Warhawk Riders drew a combat and automatically fled – though they would have rallied automatically too, they went through a block of peasant halberdiers and were wiped out. They could have quickly reached the other side of the battle (the one with all the knights) and helped with some rear charges to destroy a knight unit or two.

That being said, not too much of the army was destroyed – Wood Elves are very, very good at staying out of the way.

At the final tally, there were only 70 victory points between us (Wood Elves very slightly ahead) for an extremely solid draw. Hopefully we’ll have a rematch at some point, since that Bretonnian lord still wants his bling, and the Elves didn’t do enough to put him off yet – all they did was clear out the riff-raff from his army!

My gaming has been suffering recently. I’ve definitely been on target with ‘spend less’ – although the temptation to grab a new rulebook or two has been pretty strong, I’ve managed to avoid it. Unfortunately, real life has been getting in the way of getting any actual gaming done – I’m busy, my gaming group is busy, no-one ever lines up a day together. I have, however, used a few days off of work to get ahead on my Dark Elf painting.

The particular style of batch-painting that I favour is ‘do every model at once’, meaning that my current batch is about 60 Corsairs. The downside to this is that until you pick up a model and examine it, as I did this week, it becomes difficult to work out how far away you are from completing. I’m just about entering the final detail stage, which for me means that I’ll be dividing models up into groups of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ for particular things. The first will probably be gemstones – every model with a gemstone goes in one group, which becomes a small batch for painting. When that’s finished, I’ll go through the batch checking out models to see if they need anything else done – belts, buckles, whatever. If they don’t, then I can actually call that model finished! So for me, entering this ending stage is very exciting, because the psychological obstacle of having sixty scowling warriors staring at you on a painting table makes the sense of achievement that much greater. And the increased sense of achievement will make me want to play more, meaning it’ll be more likely that I manage to organise a game!

Another thing I was doing with my free time was planning a role-play campaign. I’ve got a rough skeleton story sketched out, I just need to flesh and structure it a bit more and see what it becomes. My gaming group also have a role-play campaign going that was geographically inaccessible to me, but has fortunately moved closer, that I’m now invited to. That’s a weekly affair that will score many many points on the ‘play more’ part of the deal, and possibly save me the trouble of buying new rulebooks – role-play groups are great for borrowing and sharing books, or buying second-hand. That should also help nip the temptation to spend in the bud.

I think role-playing games are one of the best kinds of games for a frugal and/or social gamer – you might well buy a few expensive rulebooks, but you can bet that someone else in the group has done the same and that becomes a pooled resource. To get started, all you need is to borrow some dice (or still rather frugally, buy your own set for a few pounds) and there you go! I’d heard somewhere that they first took off in popularity around the time of a recession, where people were watching their spending and to have a game based almost solely in imagination was a very frugal way of enjoying yourself – it may not be true, but it sounds plausible!

So to recap, I’ve had a lousy time of not playing enough games. Real life has been interfering, preventing the planning of games nights (for my board games fix) and regular wargaming opponents. But it looks like regular gaming is getting back on the agenda, and if there’s one thing that I’ve learned from my new year’s resolution experiment, it’s that having a real plan of action (not just a hopeful goal) will make all the difference. So you can expect next year’s plans to be much more solid!

Well, it’s been a little while since I posted last. I’ve been a bit ill, again. Tonsillitis, for the first time in over ten years, which I can thank my son for – I seem to catch almost everything he does.

I’ve had a few days off this week as a chance to recharge my batteries, and to get a bit of headway on some of my projects and year’s resolutions. I think, since I am still thinking about my resolutions late in March, I must be doing pretty well at them.

The filing continues slightly ahead of my target, and I’ve worked out that it takes just under an hour. If I stick on a podcast and get going, I can get it out of the way nicely. I’ve just thrown away the first bin liner full of shredded documents, which feels good.

I’ve started driving lessons again, helped by the drop in stress that I’ve stopped looking for a new job. I’ve got to get back into the swing of driving, get used to the car, build up my confidence a bit more, then I should be ready to book the test. So I ought to be able to take a test by June or July, at the latest, allowing for long waiting lists.

The eBay sales have been slow – I got so close to the end, I didn’t bother doing any more work for a few weeks because I was ‘so close’. Still, I think I can push through that with the last few days of time off, and see if I can finally get one of these tasks crossed off. Since I’m not putting time into this one exactly, I don’t think I can start the German lessons even when it’s crossed off.

We had to cancel our planned Family Tree meeting a couple of weeks ago because of illness, but we’ve scheduled it in again for next weekend. Luckily, one of Jen’s cousins has already done a good chunk of work on their side of the family so we should have quite a head-start on that one.

Wargame Tools Datafile Creator has gone off to some friends for testing! I’ve got a list of tasks to finish before I give it out further, and the second program (the Rosterfile Creator) has had some good progress so far. Both parts should be out in open test by the end of the year (almost definitely by September), very easily.

The unwelcome revelation is the Dark Elf plan. I counted over 150 models, and given how much of the year is left I’ll be needing to paint 4 of those a week (and some of those are cavalry or monster models!) to reach the target. While not impossible, I have all these other things to get sorted too (alongside a full time job and a family) so I doubt this one will succeed. With my batch process of painting, I know that many will be finished in one week (after several weeks of no progress), so this is difficult to gauge but I am going to prioritise and say that all the Corsairs will be finished first, then the Cold One Knights. Then I’ll have to pick something else (probably the Dark Riders). Ultimately, this resolution will not be finished and I know it. Still, there’ll be a lot less for me to do next year!

That being said, I’ve been able to get most of the models assembled, based and undercoated ready to go. While the weather holds this morning, I’m going to get another batch sprayed and that will give me all of the Corsairs ready to go. It’ll be my largest batch yet – about sixty models, altogether!

I may yet be able to finish it – as I reached the end of my Wood Elf army, I went to stay with my parents for a week and spent the whole time painting. Needless to say, you can make a lot of progress when you plug away like that!

(Originally posted to A Year of Frugal Gaming)

If I’m going to get anywhere with my resolution to have all my Dark Elves painted by the end of the year, I’ll have to have a plan ready before I lose too much time.

Having ransacked the shelves and boxes that house my collection, I’ve taken stock of the unfinished models. When I say ‘ancient’ below, I’m referring to the (mostly, if not exclusively) Marauder miniatures that Games Workshop sold in the mid-1990’s. I expect most of those models are also made of lead, and were carved by hand using flint tools.

Paint needs removing 

• 1 Dark Pegasus, without rider
• 1 Manticore with partial rider
• 1 badly damaged Hydra that has been glued, puttied, pinned, and soldered and still won’t stay together. I really don’t know what to do with this one, except corrosively strip the various layers of adhesive and paint off, and maybe try something new (like magnets). It’d be nice to get it back together, but I have a bad feeling I’ve ruined it.

These models will need some extensive work on them. I got the Dark Pegasus and Manticore in an eBay sale, and they don’t have (complete) riders. I’m planning to put a Crone Hellebron conversion on the Manticore eventually, but I’ve not started looking at parts to complete that yet. I don’t want to rush them just to fit within the year’s resolution, so I may treat these models as 'bonuses’, if I have the time to do them.

• 19 ancient plastic swordsmen
• 1 ancient Corsair that needs some repairs (weapons missing!)
• 4 ancient Corsairs

Unassembled / modelling required 

• 2 modern Cold One Knights
• 4 modern Black Ark Corsairs
• 3 ancient plastic swordsmen that need a weapon swap.
• 2 Gamezone harpies

Undercoating required

• 1 modern Hydra needs a nice base added (bits of enemies, etc) before undercoating.
• 20 ancient Corsairs
• 2 ancient bolt throwers and 1 modern one, all with their matching crew. I may delay the ancient bolt throwers to try and give them a bit more sex appeal, since they are rather... blocky.
• 7 ancient Cold One Knights
• 10 Dark Riders to undercoat (horses already undercoated).
• 12 ancient Witch Elves
• 6 ancient Crossbowmen
• 12 ancient Black Guard
• 1 ancient command group
• 2 ancient assassins
• An ancient male sorcerer
• An ancient Morathi model (with clothes on!)
• 1 Chariot crew
• 1 modern Hydra Beastmaster team
• 1 modern Sorceress on foot and 1 mounted on Cold One
• 1 modern Master on foot and 1 mounted on Cold One
• 1 modern Assassin
• 3 modern Cold One Knights
• 1 Malekith on Black Dragon
• 1 Lokhir Fellheart

I do have an additional Cold One knight, left over as I got four ancient Cold Ones without riders as an eBay win and inherited a rider without a steed from a friend of a friend’s old bits box. But I’m unsure yet whether or not to make a Black Chariot with four Cold Ones pulling it, or two regular chariots, or have a Black Chariot with three creatures and use the spare to bolster the Cold One Knights. Having three chariots would be fairly nice... Although I often face cannons (boo).

Unpainted

• 10 Dark Steeds
• 12 modern Crossbowmen
• 4 modern Witch Elves
• 1 ‘middle-child’ Beastmaster team for the (damaged) Hydra
• 6 Mengil Manhide’s Manflayers

So my first task will be to assemble the remaining Cold One Knights and Black Ark Corsairs, and perform any repairs on the existing models. Then I can devote a bit of time to painting each week before the good weather comes and I can undercoat the bulk of the models, which will give me a lot more to work on! I figure I can probably get about 2 hours a week, spread across evenings and the weekend, to chip away at this mound of metal. I’d rather hoped that there would be more models ready to paint, so if I got the time before undercoating weather came along I’d be able to get ahead on things. No matter, I like a challenge!

I played my first game of Warhammer in 2010 at the weekend, and since a lot of my Dark Elves are organised in piles on shelves according to how ready they are for painting, I decided to take out my Wood Elves for the day.

It was a standard 2,500 point Pitched Battle, against my standard foe – the Empire. I went with an archer-heavy army, with a few fast units and led by a Treeman Ancient (because why the hell not).

In the second turn, due to a skin-of-the-teeth break test after a skin-of-the-teeth combat resolution, the Treeman broke, fled, and was caught by a skin-of-the-teeth pursuit. If he’d had teeth, he might have survived. Despite having lost almost half the army by this point in exchange for very few casualties, I still managed over the remaining four turns to not be completely wiped out, and succeeded in make a very good loss out of it. This was helped in part by the amazing power of the Glade Guard longbows at short range – becoming both more accurate and more deadly kept the whole lot of them alive.

In the end, I was massacred. But I didn’t make my usual mistake, which is misjudging charge ranges of the enemy or misaligning units to allow their targets to get out of sight or out of my charge ranges. My biggest enemy was being too close and not well hidden from the two Helblaster Volley Guns, which rolled incredibly well this week. The two Great Cannons took the brunt of the bad luck, almost never getting an opportunity to fire (most common result – cannot fire next turn), and I can’t actually recall them wounding more than one Glade Guard... I had great sympathy, despite how many of my units those cannons have claimed in the past.

All in all, another enjoyable game and some good practice in using skirmishers and fast cavalry again. I think while I work on the Dark Elves this year, I’ll be playing with the Wood Elves a bit more often, and try out a wider range of tactics.

I’ve just put my first post up at A Year of Frugal Gaming.

Hooray for me!

First post on miniature wargaming! About time!

I've noticed over the past year that this hobby is not designed for random searches on a work computer. More than once, I've been blocked by an internal filter from searching for sites that describe 'paint stripping model acrylic'. It got worse when I tried to look for 'latex' - I quickly clarified that with 'model latex rubber' and wished I hadn't! These are, of course, perfectly innocent search terms to a wargamer but some overzealous web monitors don't always get the context...

Unrelated to these searches, I came across A Year of Frugal Gaming last year. It is a one-man project to 'spend less, game more' and is extremely interesting - offering game reviews, money-saving tips, modelling projects on a budget and advice on how to make some money from your hobby too! One of the most useful tips was how to remove paint from plastic models... effectively, completely, quickly and without damaging the model.

The secret is Dettol antiseptic disinfectant.

I too, now, know the joy of wandering around a house in marigolds, holding a toothbrush and stinking of disinfectant. I have, in my collection, a lot of partially painted and poorly undercoated models from the mid-90's, when I started collecting Dark Elves. I've been looking for a way to strip the paint from these models for a long time, so I can start again with the experience I've gained since then. There's models undercoated white (a nuisance for an evil army to paint over), most of them done with car body spray rather than proper acrylic spray (it was cheaper back then...) and most effective paint-stripping techniques have a tendency to melt plastic.

What I've Learned While Dettol De-painting:

• Wear marigolds, and remove wedding rings!
  My fingers began to itch the first few nights I did this, and a couple of days after a particularly brutal session I spotted lots of skin flaking off. Marigolds are essential.
• Honey-coloured disinfectant
  I initially tried a lime green Tesco variety, figuring it would be cheaper and just as good. I was wrong, it was a complete dud and barely touched the paint.
• About 24 hours is right
  I've not yet performed the experiments to work out how long is too long, but I imagine that anything that works as well as this will eventually damage plastic models.
• Put down paper, or take it outside
  Not the time of year for it at the moment, but toothbrush scrubbing will make a mess and the paint scum flying off tends to stick to things like sinks and kitchen worktops and really aggravates spouses and mothers. I found that scrubbing under the surface of the Dettol is better, but not great once it's really mucky.
• Paint will come off as a gloopy scum
  This will stick to and stain your toothbrush, and float in the Dettol and get onto other models. Keep a piece of tissue near by to wipe your brush on.
• Wash models off after stripping
  I used an overnight soak of warm soapy water.
• You can reuse the bowlsUp to a point, you can use a bowl of disinfectant more than once - but it's slightly less effective each time and will collect a lot of paint scum in the bottom (this makse cleaning the models harder).

I was very pleasantly surprised by how well this works, and even my mother-in-law pitched in and brought me a bottle of Dettol last week. She explained that she wasn't sure whether I wanted the original one, or the new purple one 'that smells of lavendar'. I briefly contemplated an elf army that smells of lavendar, and as fitting as that may be I opted for the original in the end. There may be a missing market niche for thematically scented base inserts... anyone have any thoughts on that?