Hordes is my new hobby

I fell out of miniature gaming for a while but now I'm back with a vengeance. I've for the most part moved on from Games Workshop games, mostly due to their recent pricing decisions. I love their models and wish I had the income to afford all of the new Ogre goodies they just released but alas, I do not.

My Trollbloods however have been growing. Hordes seems to offer far more bang for my buck than Warhammer did. Every new thing I buy is unique and brings something different to the table. Every game I play is a unique experience. That and their pricing scheme and lower model count works a lot better for me.

I've bought a ton of stuff recently, to the point where it is almost easier to list the stuff I don't have than what I do. I've also started to devote some time to actually painting things. The last time I blogged I hadn't even primed a single Trollbloods model.

Recently I basecoated black my entire Trollbloods army. I did it using regular paint rather than spray paint as my main obstacle to painting was that I couldn't spraypaint in my new apartment. With that hurdle out of the way, I went to one of the local stores and picked up the Trollbloods Paint Kit as well as the Privateer Press Wet Paint Palette Kit. I now have quite a few models with their skin painted Trollblood Base and I just for the first time began experimenting with highlighting (beyond just drybrushing) and mixing of colors. It's pretty exciting and I hope to have a fully painted Trollblood some time in the near future.

With that said, I present to you my current work in progress, my Dire Troll Mauler:

From Instant Upload

Trollbloods vs. Khador 1/15/2011

I played my first game of 2011!

I took my Trollbloods against Rob's Khador this past Saturday and emerged victorious. With this win, I am officially undefeated in the new year.

This was also my first scenario game and was the "Convergence" scenario played at 35 points. Rob took a Kharchev list that he will have to detail and I took a pMadrak list.

My list:
pMadrak
Dire Troll Bomber
Axer
Impaler
Impaler
Krielstone Bearer + 3 Scribes
Stone Scribe Chronicler
5 Champions

I got the first turn so I deployed my Madrak brick with the Bomber off to one side and the two Impalers off to the other. On my first turn I advanced as quickly as possible and stopped just short of the center circle zone. I also cast Sure Foot on the axer who was chilling in the middle of my brick. On Rob's turn, he did the same but moved some Bombardiers into the circle to prevent me from getting a free point. The Bombardiers shot at my champions to no avail (dealing only 3 damage to one of them).

On my second turn, I moved the Champions, Madrak, the Axer, and some of the Scribes into the circle. I didn't have the threat range to charge unfortunately. I moved up one of the Impalers and shot at one of the Bombardiers doing only 6 damage (I think), not enough to kill him. I moved up the Bomber and gave him Far Strike hoping he would be able to lob two bombs into the Bombardiers and kill all three for me. Alas, it was not to be. I rolled a 5 on my first to hit roll (boosted even!) and then rolled another 5 on a non-boosted to hit roll. Really horrible luck.

On Rob's second turn, Karchev towed his jacks in so that they could charge into my Champions and attempt to tear my brick apart. The combination of Sure Foot, Defensive Line, and Protective Aura served me well though and the jacks failed to accomplish anything significant. They manage to kill one of my Champions (after he passed 3 lucky tough rolls in a row) but that was it. Rob then proceeded to try and charge another unit into my bomber but they fell short. Finally he had a unit of Turions (I think?) that had 3 spells. He had all of them cast a spray spell at me which actually ended up doing more damage to his own guys than they did to mine. He had a series of rather painful misses that accomplished nothing for him.

On my turn, Madrak cast Carnage and feated. The result was one of my champions that was unengaged charging into his tightly clumped infantry and singlehandedly mowing through almost all of them. My Axer moved into combat with the three warjacks and began Threshering. Now that they were all in melee range of my warbeast, I had the Chronicler trigger Charge of the Trolls on my Champions (they actually attacked at this point). And my champions began to tear apart the warjacks. I crippled the arm on one, did some damage to another, and destroyed the third with a final charge from one of my impalers.

On his turn, Rob went for the caster kill. He towed his one jack that was still in good shape out of combat and into position for it to charge Madrak. It did but failed to kill him due to Madrak's Scroll of Grindar's Perseverance which kept him alive.

When Rob's turn came around again, he conceded. I had almost all of my models left (one champion had died) and was getting ready to finish mopping up his warjacks (and Karchev) and was going to have no trouble keeping Madrak away from him for the rest of the game.

It was probably one of the more fun games I've had in Warmahordes since I started playing. I enjoy playing against the straightforward beat their face in style of Khador much more than I do playing against Steve's sneaky Cryx.

My Next Project Poll

It's been so long since I've done anything miniature related that a whole bunch of awesome new miniatures have come out that I would love to get my hands on. The only problem is, funds and time are limited, and I can't seem to decide what I want to get next.

So, here are my options:

1. Start Dark Eldar. Games Workshop released all of these awesome new miniatures with a really fun sounding army book. I already have a smallish Ork 40k army but I've never really gotten into 40k that much. Should I give it another shot with a fresher army?

2. Buy More Skaven Stuff. There are TONS of really cool Skaven models to pick up. I haven't bought anything for them since the book came out (I only have the old 7th edition battalion), and between the Island of Blood, and the first two minis waves, there's a lot of cool stuff to pick up.

3. More Trollbloods. I've been really enjoying games of WarmaHordes recently (even though I haven't played too much) but my current selection for armies is so limited. I really need to enchance with some more variety but I'm torn between this and a Games Workshop project. Games Workshop, surprisingly, seems to give me a little more bang for my buck (at least in terms of number of models) over Privateer Press but I'm probably more likely to play games of WarmaHordes.

4. Orcs & Goblins are due out in the Spring. I could just wait for them and then start up that army if they turn out to be really cool. I'm really intrigued to see what they do with the first book of 8th edition.

5. Buy Nothing. I am so far behind on painting my stuff. Should I just suck it up and paint my old models instead of buying a bunch of new stuff that I'll build and then never paint (or maybe even never actually play)?

There's a poll to the left, please vote and then let me know your thoughts in the comments.

It's a New Year

Wow. It's been a really long time since I've posted anything.

Life really got away from me for a while and it doesn't look like it will be letting up any time soon. I now have a wedding to plan for, another move to plan for, and I'll be starting grad school at the end of the month. I'm going to try and start this blog up in the new year but try to ration my time with it a little better. Posts won't be nearly as frequent or probably as in depth as they were before but I'm going to try and aim for a post a week or so with whatever my miniature related thoughts of the moment are.

I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays and I'm looking forward to seeing all the miniature related things everyone accomplishes in the new year!