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.

A few greenskins

Felt like needing a break from space elfs and fouond myself a few goblins to paint. I´m always looking to expand my gobbo infantry horde and wolf riders are an absolute must for any 3rd edition O&G army. Suprisingly good troops for goblins.

 This has to be one of the crudest goblin sculpts that I have. Very little details on a very small model.

 These guys on the other hand a pretty nice ones. For both I used some contrast paints but ended up finishing the paint job with regular paints. Really like that musician with the twisted horn.

 Two wolf riders in front of Fogou models farmhouse I got from supporting their kickstarter. Nice piece that will go well with my desert themed IG. Need to be painted though.

Very different riders. The closer one is bigger hand has good details. The spear armed one is small, ugly and has not much details.

Boars´n gobz

Oh my! It´s been almost a month from my last posting. I must have been a lazy painter/writer or pretty occupied elsewhere. In truth the RL was quite hectic through the whole may with Finnish baseball season starting (my son plays that) and my job taking it´s time too.

Something has gotten painted despite being preoccupied with other duties. I got a couple of animal handler boars and a new handler for them.

So now the unit stands at two handlers and five boars. Desperately looking for at least three more hogs make it a more usable fighting force. Anyone willing to help?

The handler with standard is a Grenadier Elf standard bearer. Very much in style with the Jes Goodwin sculpted Citadel one. And who says a animal handler unit can´t have a standard?

My previous posting was about my growing goblin horde. At that time they were two short of 40 but no more. I thought I had ran out of gobbos to paint only to discover not one but three of the spear armed Iron Claw ones and that I think 90´s axe wielder. He´ll fit in even if he´s not that oldhammer. I might not keep the duplicate Iron Claw gobbos so if anyones wants to trade for gobbos or elf boars please take contact.

It´s going to be a busy summer but I will publish something more during june I promise. I´ve returned to painting high elves BTW. Creating one of those units I don´t have yet in my army.

Goblin horde update

When building a 3rd edition O&G army you are facing a pretty high obstacle - troop minima for O&G is 80 models. And it is quite natural that when you get those 20 orc boyz, 20 orc arrerz, 20 gobbos and 20 stickas painted you propably want to do something else than lowly goblins to boost your ranks. That happened to me too.

A couple of trolls, a chariot and a few other things later I was ready to continue with gobbos. I didn´t set a exact number like how many gobbos I eventually want to field. I sort of just started picking up an odd gobbo here and another one there. And I painted them when I felt like painting a gobbo. At some stage I lost count on how many guys I have.

Today it´s a been a really pretty day here in Finland. It looks like the summer is on it´s way. So I took my gobbos outside and arranged them for a head count. And to take some pictures. Most of these have been presented here before but there are a couple of new ones too.

Front view of the unit. 

Bird´s eye. 6x6+2 is 38 goblins. 

Newest additions. The one furtest to the left is a repair job. His

spear was broken. Replaced it with an elf spear. Mace gobbo

is midhammer but blends in well enough. 

A pre slotta fanatic. These are a must for goblin units. 

From a bit different angle.

Standing at 38 now the next logical goal would of course be 40. That would mean that they could lose 10 of their number before having to test for breaking. 

General, army standard and a gobbo

The year of slow painting and blogging continues. Due to real life responsibilities and over all laziness the following three models are all that I´ve finished since the last posting. But again they all are important additions to my slowly growing green skin army.

First off is this Marauder MM22/6 Orc General on Armored Boar. He will get to be the general of my army and eventually he´ll have a band of gruntas as his personal unit of bodyguards.

So far I haven´t had a army standard bearer for green skins but this old boar boy will remedy that. A lovely model and very different in style compared to the Marauder general. The dull red color of the standard and his loin cloth will serve as the unifying element for the gruntas unit that will follow in the future. I´ve installed small magnets to both the boar and the rider so that they can be easily taken apart for transfer.

And then there´s that freebie evil warrior I got a couple of weeks ago. Trying to get a slaaneshian look on him but not sure if I´m going in the right direction. We´ll see.

As last here are both the general and the standard beare with the gobbo n:o 32. Gobbos are now a pretty good sized unit but as I have two more model waiting I think I need to aim for at least 36. A 6x6 block would look good on the battle field. Or maybe 40 is good number. Don´t know. The more the merrier? Just love those little chaps. Fast to paint and their sculpts are full of character.

A small but important addition

Have to admit, I´ve been pretty lazy both painting and blogging. I do have  multiple projects on my panting table but this little fellow is the only one I´ve finished since last blog entry. In that last entry I mentioned getting a musician for my unit of gobbos and here he is.

He is a Marauder miniatures MM30/6 goblin musician. The sculpt is By Aly Morrison if I´m not completely mistaken. This line of models is from 1989 but in my opinion the face and clothing are pretty close to stuff that came out during red era and afterwards.  The totally oversized weapon is also something that we got used to seeing starting from 4th edition WFB.

This was propably not a very popular model back in the days as I couldn´t find a single painted example of him online.

The instrument is a drum of some sort. It clearly has a piece of animal skin stretched over a wooden frame. Studs or spikes that hold the skin in place can be seen in the picture. One can only wonder how well that instrument would last if pounded with that huge mace of his as he appears to be doing.

This little gobbo is an important addition to my army because in 3rd edition WFB a musician ads a +1 to leadership rolls when testing to make a second or subsequent manoeuvre. With the goblin´s Basic LD of 5 you need all the help you can get.

Let´s hope february will be a bit more productive month for both painting and Vanhaa Vasarointia.

Greeninforcement

What a way to start 2018 - with some goblins. They could actually be called reinforcement too as these ten chaps take my gobbo strength from the army book minima of 20 to 30. In 3rd edition WFB that actually means quite a lot. The unit can now lose seven green skins before and not have to test for panic where it was just five before.

 All ten of them. The first three on the left are Citadel

C12 Goblins and the rest come from the Iron Claw line.

A closer look on the C12 goblins. That chap with eye glasses

is simply a lovely sculpt. 

Iron Claw goblins in the middle.

And the ones on the right side. Lost of teeth visible.

Please don´t mind the drawn-by-a-5-year-old-goblin shield. Just

wanted to show you the nice details of the back side of this sculpt.

The feet wrapping, belt and pouches, studded leather armor. I like it.

The unit these guys are joining is still missing a musician. And when I get one I will propably need at least one gobbo more to get their total number to 32 and break point to 8. Or should I aim for 40?

And now I hate to decide what to paint next.... Ruglud´s orcs for big uns? High elf cavalry? High elf chariot? War machines for green skins?

The greeny vs. The skweeky

Yesterday I had a chance to play for the very first time with the new O&G army I've been painting. Just a normal pitched battle vs. LM's skaven with 2000 point limit. I didn't have much choise of troops as I have just a tad over 1000 points of rank & file ready.

We used full deployment rules and as I had my wolfboys as an advance force I was able to make the skaven set up first. It also allowed me to designate a flanking force. 

All pictures by me and LM.

The situation after scouting moves and skaven turn 1. The skaven line from bottom to top: beastmasters with giant rats, ally chaos dwarf mortar, clanrats, a jezzail, slaves, clanrats, slaves, ally chaos dwarfs, behind trees a jezzail, stormvermins and scouts.

On the top right behind the trees is the main orc unit of 28 boyz. On the other side of that forest is the orc general and his three troll bodyguards. The light green area marks the orc baggage train. Next the the yellow field is unit of goblin stickas. Then in thin line orc arrer boyz and in deep formation gobbos. Another unit of orc arrers and a goblin chariot are just outside of this picture.

Here´s the end on the long goblinoid line with chariot and arrers facing the giant rats. My mecrenary giant and a orc shaman were sent to flanking action. They would enter on turn 3 from skaven right flank. My plan was to try to hold the center with a weak force and try to crush the flanks with my main units.

 First combat occurred between the goblin wolfboys and stormvermin. I charged with the wolves as I didn´t want them to be shot to pieces by that jezzail and skaven scouts. I also wanted to give time for my orc boyz and general and his trolls to ove in. Gobbos lasted for several rounds though being pushed back multiple times and not winning a round of combat.

To my suprise the skaven center didn´t push hard in the beginning. Only the chaos dwarfs moved forward to counter my boyz and trolls.

The chaos dwarf mortar managed to score a direct hit on gobbos killing 5 and forcing a panic test but the brave gobbos held on.

Gobbos before being mortared.

Gobbos after being mortared.

On the orc far left goblin chariot charged the giant rats and their handlers and managed to push them back.

On my turn 3 the flanking force entered the battle. Mercenary giant stayed loyal to the orcs and was now threatening the skaven right flank. Orc shaman cast a mystic mist on the mortar and the closest skaven clan rat unit.

Around turn 4 our centers started closing on each other. A total of two plague cencer bearers and two fanatics were released clogging the battle field effectively. The cencer bearers decimated 12 goblin stickas and the rest did the only reasonable thing and fled the field. My fanatics fell short of their target but were blocking the slaves pretty effectively.

Goblin stickas after being hit thrice by cencer bearers.

On turn five everything went terribly for the orcs. First both my fanatics died by rolling snake eyes. Then the wolfriders who had fought the stormvermin for so long finally broke. And because of that the boyz mob panicked. Just when everything would have been ready for them to charge the skaven. Then skaven scouts managed to sling shot down a troll and the orc general broke. My right flank vanished in seconds.

At that point more than half of my troops in points value were either killed or running and that was the break point we had agreed on. Orcs and goblin fled the field. The skaven were victorious.

Thank you LM for a good game once again. I´ll be back!

--------------------

This was my first time playing 3rd edition WFB with green skins and I learned a lot.

- Goblins are not as bad as you would think

- Orc arrers are pretty useless as missile troops, I´ll use

them as bow wielding boyz in the future

-  I sould have contested the center with my best troops,

it takes a way too much time to march from the flanks

to get to where the action is

- Don´t expect your orcs to manouver like elves

Hell on two wheels

Well - not exactly. Just a goblin wolf chariot I finished a few days ago. I´ve been very busy painting my O&G army as we are playing in two weeks and want to get everything needed ready. I´ll be GM:ing a three palyer scenario with orcs, dwarfs and goblins and we´ll have at least one pitched battle with 2000 point armies. That will be skaven vs. O&G so we are expecting to see a lot of running away and all sorts of cowardise. And if we have time I´m hoping to face the dwarfs too.

The chariot completed is a MD9 Goblin war chariot. The original paint job is pretty flamboyant and in my opinion too neat for goblins so I took another approach to subject. I tried to get it look like old dry wood that has been out for long and discolored. For some reason I had a viking ship in my mind. Perhaps it was the idol on the joke what caused that image.

The model I have was missing one of the wheel scythes so I replaced both wheels with plastic ones from a 90´s high elf chariot and made new blades from plastic goblin spear points. I didn´t like the shaman crew gobbo and used an arrer instead. The standard pole was left out mainly because I suck at painting banners.

The wheel on this side is listing a bit as it was fixed with some green stuff and I wasn´t careful enough with securing it´s position when drying. After all I´m not too sad about it. It´s gobbos - their equipment should look like it´s been put together by a five-year-old.

Finally a top view as I wanted to show you the river sections used in these pictures. Those are from Oakbound studios and are designed by Fimm McCool. Very good quality pieces of scenery.

Now I just need to finish one troll and that will take my O&G rank & file point value well above 1000 points. Four days to do that - I think I can make it.

Dem olde wolfboyz

With the completion of this unit I now have roughly 600 points of O&G rank and file ready. An achievable goal for me could be 1000 points of rank and file by july because then I could field a 2000 point greenskin army. At the moment I´m looking for both trolls and black orcs as they would bring rank & file points up faster and with less paint job than boyz or gobbos.

Most of the models seen in this posting came to me from a Finnish net auction I won a couple of months back. I had a couple of wolves and riders before but that auction gave me enough to field a 10 strong unit. A couple of the wolves are not originally made to go with a rider but will do just fine in the mix. And I´m not completely sure if all the riders are real wolf boys. But they fit and I´m fine with that.

Front view of the unit. The leader in the middle of the front rank is riding a larger

wolf than the normal troopers. I think that one might be from one of the gobbo chariots

as it has some sort of harness around it´s body.

 From side. The trooper furthest to the left has a wolf that I think is a 

vicious giant wolf from BC2 monster starter set. The trooper was missing

his cleaver and got an axe replacement.

The trooper with spear and shield will become a standard brearer 

later when I get inspiration to paint a flag of some sort for him.

As next I will be working on a MD9 Goblin war chariot and a couple of fanatics. The chariot is missing a wheel and the scythes so I´m going to do some converting there.

My blog is now very close to hitting 20000 views. To celebrate that I will hand out something oldhammerish to one of my followers. So when the counter reaches 20000 I will draw a random winner from my followers and send him/her an oldhammer suprise!

´till next time!

Oldschool gobbos

I´ve done a lot of blogging (at least on my scale) lately but managed to push my O&G army forward a bit too. A couple of these gobbos were ready about three weeks ago when I had completed a unit of orc arrer boyz. The rest have been done after that.

General view of the unit.

The unit is 20 strong including a banner to meet the troop minima for O&G as per WFB: Armies. I might expand it later as I have a couple of extra gobbos waiting. In 20 models there are perhaps 18 different sculpts which is nice. A lot of variety in this one. I really haven´t done any recearch on them but I think there are C12 goblins, Iron claws and Grom´s goblin guards there. Could be something else too.

Top view.

I´m always strugling with banners and shield and was very happy to choose a very simple desing for these guys. And as they are gobbos they are not known for their artistic skills and it doesn´t matter if their shield look like they´ve been painted by a five-year-old.

Front look from another angle. Put my favorite 

skulps in the front row.

As my orc boys are just in need of final highlights I can now say that I have a ´legal´ O&G army in my hands. Minimas on 20 boys, 20 arrer boys, 20 goblin arrers and 20 gobbos are met. But to be a playably army it still needs characters, more units, fanatics etc.

 With shield and light armor gobbos are worth 4 points. And still suck.

The next unit to be painted is a group of ten wolf riding gobbos and their steeds. All metal, all oldschool.

 Thumb selfie and a wolf boy.

Easter orcs

My orcs & goblins project is moving on in schedule. I want to have WFB: Armies troop minimas done by july this year and with both gobbo and orc arrers done and orc boyz very near to completion I strongly believe I can make it.

As these arrer boyz were in black undercoat when I posted this it means that it took me just under one month to get a unit from start to table-top-quality-ready. That´s pretty much the maximum pace at which I can paint because of work and other real life responsibilities.

Everyone was first sprayed black. Then basic colours were applied and models washed with Agrax. As last stage I did some high lighting. I´m satisfied with the result. Individual models are not that great but as unit they look good enough for me from a couple of feet away.

Full twenty strong as is the O&G´s troop minima in WFB: Armies.

Some sort of banner needs to be painted but I´ve not yet 

come up with an idea for that.

 The command group would really need a musician but I don´t have any

appropriate models for one. Anyone care to sell or trade?

 Harboth´s archers, 80´s arrer boyz and a couple of early nineties in there I think.

The standard bearer is a Marauder skulpt.

Just one more shot from a bit different angle.

I´ll finish this posting with two thumb selfies. These gobbos are the first two of twenty that are the next in line to be painted. Lovely models both.