White out

Snowed today, it being winter and my living in Canada doesn't really make this that odd, but none the less I felt inspired and decided to make good use of some free time and get onto some Carthaginians. The lighting was great too. So in a rare frenzy of motivations I cleaned and undercoated 50 spearmen and 6 infantry command, took two coats of citadel skull white, and since I didn't think that using a sprayed undercoat would be a very good idea it took a while. Well to be honest living in an apartment, undercoating by hand is less hassle for me than spraying, and I worry about it graining out on these little wee men. But so far I like working in this scale, their is a good balance of fine and blunt detail, I say blunt detail in a manner similar to good theatre, the kind of visual cue that you can see from the back of the house but remains understated. Two good examples of this are the shields which I really like, and mostly, the beards. Because I have one and they rock.

While cleaning these little chaps up I noticed that about half had linen armour and the other half had only tunics. Sweet, at two poses per attire option that gives me two visually distinct Battlegroups. When and if I add a third Battlegroup of protected spear I was thinking of going with the Old Glory 15s Libyphoenician Spearmen. Only bad thing about it is now I tempted to model the tunic guys up on medium foot bases as Peoni foot. Thankfully the models are low enough in price that its only half deluded to do both. (insert evil laugh here)

As far as painting goes I really like Carthaginian soldiers on the Rise of Rome cover, although he seems to be having a bad day the guy getting Pilum-ed in the lead elephant looks rather dapper. Else where on the cover, and page 26 of Immortal Fire dark red tunics seem to be the going style. That's nice as it matches my 40k army. So I am going to go with red tunics for both BGs and white linen army for the one that is apparently better funded. Maybe they are in the Navy.

Will do some more research on the shield, but I am not the best painter so they will likely be rather simple. Will continue to use Citadel paints as I already have them and will use inks to add details, but I am not trying to over reach with my painting and won't likely be going for crazy details.

Didn't really think base coated miniatures warranted a pic yet so hold on until I get some base coats on them.

Night

40k in a smaller scale.....

Keeping with my ongoing goal of living my entire life in poor taste I thought I would throw down a 40k list. My friends and I have always had fun playing with smaller lists, but on regular sized boards (ie: 6x4), if you can only game once or twice a month its sometimes as nice to play two small games in one night rather than one large. Espeacially if your involved in a map based campaign, something which my old 40k group did which was awesome fun. It went for months (longer than we had hoped), but then a baby happened and the only results we could see was that your really didn't want to live on that planet.

So I was flipping through my notebook (or rather the one I just filled) trying to find a guitar riff I came up with awhile ago, and I came across a list that was the result of much playtesting and had proven results. Its only 1000 pts and doesn't have any vehicles (other than 2 rhinos) but it is still fairly mobile and has enough firepower and close combat prowess to adapt to most situations. It has done quite well in regular battles as well as doing very very well in Cityfights, which leads me to believe that it might just have a shallow learning curve in Planetstrike, which I own but have yet to play.

As you may have deduced I am a chaos player, and I have been for likely almost 20 years, I used to have an eldar army in 2nd edition, but stuck with Chaos for their tactical flexibility and low model count, which helped make them affordable. I personally don't and doubt any others do agree with the Chaos faction of the 40k Mythology's goals or morality, but their fluff is delicious. I went from custom chapter, to repainted black legion (don't ever, ever do that), and have now come up with a cool piece of fluff for an army I have been tinkering with for long enough to be embarrassing.

But I will save my fluff for another post, onto the list.

HQ:

Lord of Khorne
- Mark of Khorne, lightening Claws, wings, meltabombs.
- 155 pts.

Troops:

T1: 10 Chaos Space Marines.
- Lascannon (meow), plasma gun.
- 185 pts.

T2: 8 Khornate Berzerkers.
- Trooper with Plasma Pistol.
- Champion with Powerfist.
- Rhino.
- 258 pts.

T3: 8 Khornate Berzerkers.
- Trooper with Plasma Pistol.
- Champion with Powerfist.
- Rhino.
- 258 pts.

Fast Attack:

5 Raptors.
- Champ with Powerfist.
- 140 pts.

Grand total: 996 pts.

3 scoring units.
5 kill points.
32 models.

Ok so alot of people might look at this list and think I just suffered a concussion. That I can't even see the obvious fact that this is an blatant case of over powered units with not enough bodies spread around. But with 32 guys in power armour, half of which are fearless I am not too worried.

I suppose I could split T1 up and just give them both plasma guns, but I don't see that being a step forward. T1's job is to either deploy well and start shooting or move to a good spot and start shooting. The plasma gun shooting on the move helps ease the pain of watching 20 pts walk across the table. Eight rapid firing bolters isn't too bad either. I also think that the most survivable way for my army to field lascannons is in infantry squads. I am a big fan of units of havocs with them, but need the 3rd scoring unit more.

I handed the plasma pistols to troopers in the two identical Berzerker squads as losing 60 pts to a "Gets hot" result has happened and isn't something I am even considering doing again. The Raptors are a good backfield threat, like a defensemen with a hard slapshot, and with their deepstriking are able to deal with artillery or soft gooey bits in an enemys army.

My seemingly budget HQ choice is actually quite the threat solo or with the Raptors (two deepstriking units helps). He hearts tanks, HQs and infantry, he has so many hugs.

Rhinos do what they do, and then become hurdles.

Feel free to comment on this and any other lists or rants that I post here.

Games on, Go Canucks Go !!!!

Oh yeah we just scored while I was proofreading !!!!!!!

First list Late Carthage 650 points no date restrictions

So if I do keep this blog up (and that would be a rather large surprise to say the least), it is likely that my love for writing up army lists will become a big part of it. Seriously its one of my favourite things to do, I don't know why but it keeps me off the streets and out of trouble.

So here is my first list, its a 650 point Late Carthage list that I tried to make that could play without any time restraints. I also made a point of using what I already have, and trying to keep the cost down. I really like the Old Glory Carthaginian models and am relieved to know that I can easily make either a Late or Early list with them, I just have to find something to represent the Sardinian/Corsican/Ligurian medium foot. I find the Syracuse/Carthaginian conflict to be as interesting as the Punic Wars, and if I make a Greek Army it will likely be a Syracusan army or one that can play as both.

Enough rambling, here's the darn list:
(note individual BG point values intentionally omitted out of fear of legal trouble)

Inspired CinC, 2 Troop Commanders and a Fortified Camp.

2 BGs of 6 bases of African Spearmen.

3 BGs of 4 bases of Numidian Light Horse.

1 BG of 4 bases of Armoured Gallic Horse.
- I think the points are worth the upgrade, I don't have access to a lot of armoured troops.

2 BGs of 6 bases ofNumidian Javelinmen.

2 BGs of 6 bases of Drilled Spanish Scutarii
- Drilled has to be worth the slight cost increase.

1 BG of 6 bases of Balearic Slingers.
- Eat rocks.

1 BG of 4 bases of Libyphoencian Cavalry.
- Like the Gallic Horse, but drilled. Sweet.

Grand total?

650 pts even.

Which seems to be a popular size for a game, at least in Britain and since I live in the Commonwealth its not a bad gamble. As you might guess all of this will be made with Old Glory 15s, and I tried to make the list as multi-ethnic as I could as I think it is a beautiful part of this armies fluff and would make for a more visually interesting army. Going to continue working on the Spearmen this weekend, and I might have access to a camera on sunday that isn't attached to my Computer or my Cellphone.

Go Canucks Go

FoG 15mm first steps = Peoni Civil Unrest

Evening all, I hope this post finds you well.

Since FoG is the main motivating factor for this blog I figured it would be a good place to start, so here we go. Recently I joined the Field of Glory Forums, my handle is JackfromVancouver, and set about trying to find a game. One of the things that I did was start a poll to see which scale was more popular (first in my area then later worldwide) thinking that even though I want to build armies in both (and have some 28mm models) I should likely lean on the more popular one first, as it offers a higher chance of getting a game in sooner. After a while it became abundantly clear that 15mm is more popular, so I started looking at manufacturers, at which point I fell in love with Old Glory 15s. I like their uniformity of scale, their good balance of fine and blunt detail, and most of all their excellent pricing.

So I called all the hobby shops in my area, and found out that Imperial Hobbies on number 3 road in Richmond carried them. This isn't a huge shock, I have been a customer of Imperial since grade 4 (30 in two months if your wondering), and their selection is just mindblowing. Not even taking into account their gaming section its an awesome comic shop. So I wandered on down with two ideas in my mind......

Fluff is a term that is tossed around in 40k circles of the sense of interest in the story of one particular army, often this is a primary motivation in army selection. Not really sure whether or not this term even applies in the realm of FoG, but since this blog will deal with both FoG and 40k and I am not mood to resort to Jargonism, it will do for now.

There are a few armies in this ruleset that really catch my eye; Principate Roman, Syracusan, Huns, Pictish, Caledonian and Norse among them. But the lead goes to a neck and neck tie between Marian Roman Legions and Carthage. So my intent was to head on down to Imperial and grab a bag or two of whichever was better represented in their stock, some magnetic bases and then start stumbling through this game on my own. Oddly enough there wasn't a late Republican bronze helmet anywhere in the head count but their was a bucket of Carthaginians, so I picked up a bag of their Command and a bag of African Spearmen and enough magnetic bases to field them.

I had initially budgeted more for this and expected the bags to contain the same quanities as Old Glory has on their online store, however the bags where double the amount (or more) and the bases came in packs of 5 for less than a dollar. I was shocked, for 40 or 42 odd bucks I got 2 battlegroups of 6 bases, 4 complete Command bases (with a mounted officer and a complete infantry command a piece), and enough NCOs, Hornblowers and Standard bearers to make 4 infantry command upgrades. Taking into account the extra two spearmen I got in that bag, and making 4 man Heavy Foot bases with 2 of the infantry command squads, and I think I can make one BG 6 bases and another 8 !!!! My math might be wrong on this however as I couldn't sleep and decided to blog with the time. My math being rather suspect at the best of times.

Seriously for someone that has been wargaming for as long as I have, the sheer value of this purchase staggered me. I could have bought more, but its Christmas and that would have felt like selling out my nephew. That money is going to a certain 8 month old kids drumset, eat that older sister.

Took me a couple days to get my hands on them due to general adult life busyness (why can't I just play with my toys?) but tonight I got in there a bit. I started shaving and filling the flash and mold lines, but my lighting was bad and I wasn't sure that I was seeing it all, there seemed to be so little. This would be awesome if true but I am going to wait until daylight to see for sure, and pull a nice lamp out of the bedroom to set up for this weekends modelling mission. Once they are cleaned up I intend to paint them with my Citidel paints and inks, base them on the magnets and then ponder flocking in this scale. But their is a couple sweet hockey games on tomorrow night, made a chili tonight (with ground beef, bacon and steak. Yup, really all 3), and have a buddy coming over to eat it and watch with me, so we will see how far I can get into that. I am worrying that my usual fine sand flocking technique might result in over sized granuales, but we will capture that bridge once our feet reach it.

Not wanting to waste my motivation I promptly mack-tacked them to the bases and started to initiate some form of Poeni Civil unrest. Yes playing alone is lame, and my cat was laughing the whole time but I honestly haven't gamed in either FoG or 40k in over a year, and my FoG experiences solely consisted of me and a buddy pushing pieces of paper around over beers. I seem to have gotten the Close Combat mechanics down, and am stumbling through the finer points of movement, but definately have a long way to go before I decide to make my ignorance public and hunt down a game.

Just made me want to play it even more though.....

Early stages of advanced Hubris

So it has been many years since I last blogged, but with my ever growing love of Field of Glory (a Historical Miniature tabletop wargame) and my ongoing affair with Warhammer 40 ooo (a SciFi one) I finally had the motivation to start blogging again. My name is a reference to a term a friend of mine threw across a table during a game of 40k, but I replaced his word choice with lazy as I felt it was both more marketable and accurate. I decided on this blog template cause my old one of white on black made me crosseyed, and this one looks sufficiently ancient. Reminescent of a scroll in my eyes, which I hope will help establish some vague attempt at tone.

As for myself I am a plumber living in Vancouver Canada, with my loyal and often disapproving familiar Emma who currently disguises herself as 5 year old rescue cat from the wilds of Vancouver Island. We have a nice enough place with an unparralleled view of the Harbour, Mountains and Stanley Park. Been playing Nerdgames since grade 4 when a member of the chessclub brought in an issue of White Dwarf and asked us if we were interested in playing D&D. Since then I have played maybe a dozen games of chess. I have nothing against chess, just prefer games with more freedom of movement and less predictability.

Recently my gaming group split up and moved to Seattle, San Diego, Australia and Japan, leaving little old me alone with no group. Rather than whining about it I thought I would use it to motivate me to finally finish a FoG army (after at last settling my internal scale debate), and eventually get through an incredible back log of 40k models. However if anyone reading this lives in the Vancouver area and plays 3.5 D&D email me immediately. Sorry no 4th edition please, its too simple, too much like WoW and as such I am not at all interested.

Well I guess thats a decent enough intro rant, time to start on a more specific one.