Wednesday 28 May 2014

Finish line in sight

I said that I would have some images of the infantry latter in the week didn't I. the Hohei Chutai is almost complete, with only a machine gun platoon and the command banner teams (another WWII army with flags! but now the Russians aren't unique.)

with 10 bases of infantry, 2 light mortars and a command sword team in each platoon, coupled with the night assault rules and the choice of being the attacker, these guys are always the powerhouse of the Japanese forces. If given the choice of targeting their artillery, machine guns, tanks or infantry; my first bombardment will always be targeting these insane buggers. Oh and just try and pin them down, I dare you, its next to impossible.

Monday 26 May 2014

First Commision, new computer and the Liebster awards

Good Evening folks, I hope everything is going peachy in your neck of the woods.

Once more I must apologise for my lack of communication, but a blog is merely a place to share ones thoughts, and I am afraid I must heavily edit those least I lose anyone to my terrifying rants.

However, digression aside, welcome back. There are a few things I wish to talk about Tonight. First and foremost is that, until recently, I have been labouring under the yolk of a woefully outdated computer. But no longer! With a great weight lifted from my wallet (honestly, I blew my budget so quickly I had to dip into the Orc funds) I can now work without having the machine crash every 25 minutes, which makes blogging so much easier I can tell you. You can therefore expect more content on a much more regular basis.
one of the commanders of the Light Sensha division, equipped with the fearsome *snigger* type 95  Ha-Go 
Secondly is the completion of the first part of what I am calling my first proper commission (I painted Hamish's trolls for him a while ago, for which I apologise profusely to everyone who has been eaten by them, but that was in repayment for a certain amount of travel). My good friend Jayden over at The imperial patrol passed his Hohei Chutai (Japanese rifle company)into my keeping over the last month and the results are just now being finished (University and work have interceded to delay progress). However, here are some pictures of the first completed miniatures.
Nikuhaku squads, trust the Japanese to devise suicide squads to take on Russian armour

came out fuzzy, but some light type 92 70mm Howitzers, man my Fin's have a deep hatred for these light but violent weapons 
 So with the first wave of support platoons done, and 20 stands of infantry almost complete (you will be seeing them latter in the week) it seems I need to soon pull my finger out of my metaphorical arse and get my Finnish Jalkaväki kompany painted.

To finish tonight I would like to make a quick mention of the Liebster awards. My good friend Herman made a mention of it in the comments of my previous video, and my interest was piqued. I didn't really know how to feel about it, convention is that the nominator asks 11 questions of the nominee, who then nominates another group of young bloggers and so on. I will say now that I have always disliked this style of, for lack of a better word, pyramid scheme style of secret sharing (secrets are secrets for a reason, and I could crush people with the skeletons in my closet). However, awareness of other like minded blogs is a good thing, so you may see a post soon highlighting my favourite blogs to visit. We will see.

That's all I was going to talk about tonight. I hope to be back latter in the week with the finished Hohei platoon. Till then, have fun, stay classy, and rattle 'dem bones.

Tuesday 6 May 2014

Wood Elves, the character quandary

Hello again everyone. My post's seem to be few and far between at the moment, with uni and work taking up so much time and so many topics being talked to death I just haven't felt like blogging. One such topic is, of course, the brand spanking new Wood Elves that everyone seems to see as "meta breaking". My Two cents (or should that be ten cents these days, hard to tell) is that yes, it is a nice book. It delivered most of what Woody players wanted with just minor tweaks to keep balance pretty much perfect from my vantage point. Fluff units are cool additions (heres looking at you Glade Riders and Wildwood Rangers) and special characters are not over the top. However, their is one pair that I had an interesting chat about earlier today with good friend and Kiwi Hammer contributor Sam Campbell.

The sisters of Twilight
The Twins are back and, shockingly, they are now found in the Hero section (theoretically allowing you to take a dragon in both lords and heroes) and still have their wondrous ability to come back to life as long as the other is still hanging round on the battlefield. The problem arises, in my eyes at least, when you go for the cheep option (if you count 275pts as cheap) and put them on their loyal Great Eagle Gwindalor. Being now on a monstrous beast rather than a monster as they are on the back of their dragon, the sisters suddenly find themselves as a SINGLE monstrous cavalry model. The wording on page 105 of the baby rulebook (under charecter mounts) states...

"Very rarely, a character will have the option to ride a monstrous beast. In this case, the whole model is treated as having the troop type 'monstrous cavalry' and follows all the rules for both characters and monstrous cavalry"

Then, under monstrous cavalry (page 83) it states...

"Monstrous cavalry always use the highest wounds characteristic the model has, rather than automatically using the rider's"

Forgive my nitpicking but to me that sounds like the singular model of the two riding on Gwindalor would therefore only have 3 wounds between them, as the MODEL uses the HIGHEST WOUNDS CHARACTERISTIC! Theoretically then after sustaining three wounds both the sisters would then be removed from the table, and their special rule would have no time to proc.

My question is was this deliberate wording that may hint at a change of pace closing in towards the 9th edition rules where monstrous cavalry characters will not be instantly benefited by their steeds, or was this an accidental afterthought by GW during the creation of the book. I'm pretty sure its going to be the first thing to be included in big, bold lettering when the first Woody FAQ comes out.

Thats all i wanted to ramble about. Also would people see two Lvl 4's, The sisters on dragon and a Battle standard captain to be a viable character set up for the new Woodies. Captain Jebson Signing off.