I´m not saying that I´m back

 But for the first time in ages I did find motivation to pick up my brushes and slap some paint on a few goblins. And it actually felt quite good to be painting again. Let´s see what happens.

These will join my goblin horde that numbers around 60 gobbos at the moment. Perhaps I should dig them all out for a head count and a group photo.

New unit of Boyz

 Here´s another project that was started a few years back and only finished today. Twenty one classic Ruglud´s armored orcs. I remembered having 12 of these painted when I took the bull by the horns and decided now it´s time to complete a unit of 20. When finished I set everyone up for some photos and it turned out that I ended up with 21 tin clad commandos. But that was a happy suprise. They look good in three ranks of seven orcs each.

The whole unit. As I can´t paint much free hand I used transfers for those shields.

And from a different angle.

A close up of one of the troopers. Armor is Typhus corrosion on black base with

Ryza rust and leadbelcher dry brushed on.

Musician, standard bearer and champion.

Sometimes it can take a lot of time - Dark elf war altar

 I think we´ve all been there. You start a new project and for some reason or other you just can´t get it finished. It gets overtaken by something new and more interesting. That´s just what I experienced with this dark elf war altar. Started back in january 2017 it sat in WIP stage for seven years until I finally got around putting the final touches on the model.

The model is made up of five altar guards one of which is carrying a standard and of the altar itself.

The guards in the front are a crew member from a dark elf repeating bolt thrower and

a Marauder miniatures dark elf warrior.

The guards on the back are two witch elfs and the standard bearer another 

crew member of a repeating bolt thrower. All slightly converted for their new roles.

A closer look at the banner itself and it´s bearer.

I wish I could remember what that demon idol was. It used to be part of a larger model that sawed in half to make it fit that wooden platform used to carry it around. It´s large I know but these are religious fanatics and can manage it.

Into the year 2024

 Last year was not as active for hobby activities as I had hoped for. I´ll try my best to do at least a little bit better during 2024. To start off I finished two little minis that I´ve had for a while,

First one is this elf beastmaster war boar. Brown fur with drybrushed higlights.

Black snout, legs and hooves. Bone for tusks and a metal nose ring. Pretty simple.

All six boars I have as a group.

And finally their masters,

The second miniature finished is this Mithril Miniatures M202 Ioreth the healer.

Her face and fingers was almost to small for me to paint.

She will be yet another addition to my ever growing high elf baggage train.

Not sure if just a cup of water will do much good for that fallen elf warrior.

Closing the year 2023 with a bang

 Or actually multiple bangs as the last thing finished for this year is a lead belcher organ gun. With all sorts of things going on there has been not that much time available for hobby activities. Yet I´m happy to have painted at least something. This is one of those models that has sat for months unfinished on my painting station so getting it done was quite satisfying.

My leadbelcher model was missing it´s original wheel that I replaced with 

the ones you see here. And I had only four of the six crew models. 

That is not a problem as per army book the gun comes with three goblin strong crew.

The gun from behind. There´s a lot of details both on the carriage and the gun itself.

And the gun shield is very detailed too.

Another view from the side. Can´t remember where these replacement wheels came from.

Finally Lead belcher organ gun as represented in Army book.

Gnovember is here again

 It appears that both september and orctober vent by with not much hobby activitiest around here. To kick my self out of painting stopur I started working on some Old School miniatures gnome sappers. It´s gnovember anyway.

These guys are small. I have to admit that I had some hard time with those tiny faces and some of the other details too. But they turned out good enough for my standards. These chaps will join their bearded brothers in my slowly growing gnome warband.

Baggage train group shot

 This is something I´ve been planning for a while but only now on my short vacation got around doing. That is digging out all my high elf baggage train models for a group shot and posting it here. To be honest finding everyone was a bit of a challenge. I have quite a few model cases and did not remember where most of the elves were in. Rummaging through different foam filled bags and boxes I came around miniatures I had somewhat forgotten I had. And eventually found all the elves I was looking for.

Let´s begin with a bird eye view of everyone. Four carts or wagons, sixteen individuals, a few animals, barrels, boxes and few smaller supply items.

In the left back corner an elf weapon smith can be seen holding a new part for a bolt thrower. In front of him a is a pair of merchants leading their horse away from an unlimbered cart.

An artist is about to start a new painting depicting a wounded wardancer. Next to them two youngsters are playing with their wooden swords.

A group of camp followers is spending their time reading and listening to music.

An elf lady is getting some food from a cart while a kid is threatening a goose with his bow.

Here we can see some hay being moved while another cart is getting loaded.

The hay foraging is closely watched by the army´s quartermaster. These elves are army regulars as can be told by their blue and white clothes (my high elves wear those colors). The civilian camp followers have much less uniform clothing.

As I have an elf casualty model lurking somewhere I plan on adding him and a healer of some sort to this group. And I got a tip on a nice elf bowyer model that I intend to buy in near future. So expect to see more of this baggage train in the future.

More camp followers

 As of lately I´ve been mostly painting epic scale eldar but have managed to put some paint on other stuff too. Here´s two more camp followers for high elf baggage train.

The chap on the left is a Lammings miniatures peasant with pitch fork. I chopped off the original head and replaced it with one from the old Warhammer fantasy regiments elf. I also repositioned his hands a bit.  I´ve had that other miniature for years and simply can´t remember which manufacturer made it. He represents an elf quartermaster. Here checking his files to be sure there´s enough hay collected for the army´s horses.

Another baggage train posting

March went by without me posting a thing. Let´s make april a bit more active month. To be honest I´ve been slowly painting a thing or two but nothing  that I felt was worth showing. My perivous posting motivated me to order some stuff from Midlam Miniatures. Here are the ones I got to build up my high elf baggage train / camp followers.

So it´s two youngsters playing and a cart with driver. As you propably

notice I swapped the drivers original head for a 80´s Fantasy regiment

elf head for him to fit in better with the rest of the camp followers.

Those new chaps will be joining this group I started a few years back.

I might have to rebase these to make them look the same.

BTW I you know good 25mm scale models for elf civilians let me know in the comments. I plan on making this group even bigger.

Baggade train upgrade

 In between painting other things I wanted to upgrade my elves baggage train a bit. It´s just a hay cart and some winged livestock this time but I´m hoping to add a few more items in the future.

Cart, goose, chicken and rooster.

Same stuff but from a bit different view.

Javelin armed high elves finished

This took longer than I planned as I almost lost motivation to finish the last two models for this unit. Anyway here´s something you don´t see every day. A ten strong unit of javelin armed high elves.

Mostly Jes Goodwin Citadel sculps. Some with small conversions as there

are not that many models with javelin around.

Far left is a Marauder elf and 2nd from left a Harlequin miniatures elf.

Simple weapon swaps here. Swords to javelins.

Elf doggos and keepers

 Animal keepers are one of those more obscure unit types of 3rd edition WFB. And close to my heart. I had paited a keeper and four warhound back in the day. Finally I found time and motivation to expand that unit with another set of four hounds and a keeper.

Animal keepers: to the left is an original warhound keeper.

The other model is a wood elf champion but with that wolf hat of his

he is IMO a perfect animal keeper.

Would love to have a few more doggos to make it

a more efficient unit.

Wood Elf Falconers

 It´s more that five years since I wrote an article about one of the lost units of WFB - the wood elf falconers. Yesterday I finished the fifth and final model for my unit of five falconers. I used Jes Goodwin sculpts and added modern resin birds to models as there really aren´t good falconer models to work with. Enjoy!

Please link your falconers in comments! Would love to see what models others have used in theit units.

Gnovember posting

 Dug out these three little warriors and slapped some paint on them. As I don´t think I have any unpainted gnomes left they will be my gnovember contributin this year. Perhaps I´ll get me some more for next year.

They will join my small warband sowly painted over the years.

Starting to have hard time with such tiny faces. My eyes aren´t getting any younger I´m afraid.

Three javelin elves more

Hi all! Finished three more of the javelin armed high elves. So it´s only two models left to get this unit ready. 

 Citadel elf warriors: Lun, converted Gwyddion and converted Babd.

Showing their shields.

All eight finished models.

Guest Editor: LM on Playing pickup games with WFB 3rd edition

Hi everyone! Here are some thoughts by my regular gaming opponent LM about pickup games. Enjoy and be sure to check out his wondelful models @flankingmaneuvers 

Playing pickup games with WFB 3rd edition

In my opinion Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3^rd edition is best enjoyed playing pre-made scenarios with an Umpire, but sometimes you just want to design your own army list for a points-based game with your opponent. Here are some general thoughts and house rules on how we do it.

 

Army Selection

We’ve been playing games mainly at 3000 points which seems to give you enough room to field some of the more interesting units, but it still forces choice in which units you leave home. Other than magic (see below) we’ve used the lists from Warhammer Armies as printed.

 

The army lists have worked fine, but it must be noted that nobody’s been really trying to break the system and we like to change our army composition from game to game. Undoubtedly we could’ve found min-maxed killer armies had we wanted to.

 

Magic

Although wizards are quite pricy and their magic points are limited, we’ve decided to limit the maximum spell level to 3. We also reroll the following spells: B2.14 Vortex of Chaos and B3.15 Vorpal Hurricane of Chaos. Maybe the vortex spells are not too strong in a big game, but we don’t like how they affect the game.

 

Terrain

The table system given in the Advanced Rules section of the rulebook is fun if you have the time to do it and I’d recommend trying it out atleast once. But to be honest usually we just throw something interesting on the table and dice for table edges.

 

Deployment Rules

The same goes for the deployment rules in the Advanced Rules section. Fun every once in while if you have the time.

 

Game Length

Games are played until one (or both!) of the armies are broken (see below).

 

Army break-point

We play our games until one of the armies reaches 50% of their units dead or routing. We calculate this as full units and add characters separately to the total. So for example, in a 3000 point game, 1500 points of forces dead/routing will cause an army to break and the game to end.

 

We finish the game at the end of a player turn, so theoretically it is possible for both armies to break at the same time and the game could end up in a draw.

 

For a shorter or a longer game the break point could be set at some other level. For example, a quick 2000 point game could end at the loss of 750 points.

 

Baggage

Since we’re not playing with Victory Points as per rulebook, we decided to add a new incentive into fielding a baggage train. For an army that brings a baggage on to the battlefield, a 5% bonus is added to their break-point. But if the baggage is lost, it counts as a loss double its value!

 

 

Table size

While a 3000 game will fit on a 6x4’ table, we’ve found that a 8x4’ table gives more opportunities for cavalry and skirmishers to use their advantages and flank marches will not be as accurate. For a 2000 point game, 6x4’ seems to be fine.

 

Conclusion

The main motivation for this article was to write down what we’ve been doing for the past 5 or so years. Maybe it is of interest to other oldhammerers still playing with the orange rulebook! I would also be interested in hearing how others organize their games of WFB3.