The Stonehorn cometh.....

Hi Folks.... Have been away from hobby stuff for a while due to work travel and a vicious bought of Flu, but have been back for a couple of weeks and have managed to finally complete work on my Ogre Stonehorn, this is the other large monster in the Ogre army and is less suitable than it's friend the Thundertusk. For the first couple of games I am going to try and run it with the two units of Mournfang, just line them up and ram them down the throat of my opponent in an alpha strike. Hopefully this should take care of a couple of my opponents units.

This is also the first model I have painted with an airbrush, I only used it on the fur of the model and then finished the rest off with a brush. I have never used an airbrush before and it does take some practise, it is a bit of effort to mix the paint and then clean the brush each time but painting the actual model is a lot quicker and I think the effect is pretty good. I started off with a dark brown and then gradually lightened the colour each time up to a bleach bone colour right on the tips of the fur. I like this model, originally out of the two monsters I preferred the Thundertusk, but now the Stonehorn is finished I think my opinion is changing and the pose of the rider and the more forward stance of the monster makes this model look really cool on the table next to the other units.

Next up I need to finish off my other two Forge World Rhinox riders to complete a unit of four which I will be using as my second Mournfang unit, this will bring the army up to 2400.

Shanghai Streets.

I have been slack in my Bloggings of late - this has mainly been down to two factors. The first was that I was laid out for a few weeks with a particularly vicious Flu bug, the second was that I have spent several weeks working away in Shanghai. I am the first to admit that I am not a fan of China or Shanghai. Its crowded, very crowded. It's noisy, even if you are on the 23rd floor of a hotel you can hear noise. There isn't any point in the day when you cannot hear something. Its a strange place of weird extremes, there is no graffiti or litter which implies that people are considerate of each other and their surroundings but one trip on the metro network shows that this is not true at all and people will trample you if it means getting on the train before you.

Shanghai has grown incredibly quickly in such a short space of time and I am not sure it or its people have had the time to deal with it. In the Financial district there are all these amazing buildings and Malls, but then you will find a row of houses that have been there for a hundred years. They are there purely because no one has developed that land yet, you can imagine when they were built that the area was nothing more than the beginnings of a city next to the river and now this row of moderate houses built for farm workers are within a hunted metres of the tallest building in China, and the Chinese stock exchange. 

This picture was taken in the Bund, an area of Shanghai near the river where all the newest and tallest buildings are. You can see the Pearl Tower, once the tallest building in Shanghai along with the ever increasing skyline of one of the fastest growing cities in the world. We were walking to visit the Shanghai World Financial Centre (commonly know as the Bottle Opener due to the look of the top of the building, Google it and you will see what I mean). The skyline looked cool and just for a brief and rare moment there was no traffic on the particular piece of road that was in front of us, in this rarest of moments I managed to grab the picture. 

Blogging from behind the wall........

So here I am behind the firewall that is China, logging in through a VPN to bring you the lastest from Shanghai... well there isn't really anything to tell to be honest.

So hobby related activities have been greatly reduced to practically nothing. I did however manage to make a visit to the GW store in Shanghai to pickup a bunch of the new Lord of the Rings army books. It really could have been any GW store in the world, the minute I walked in I was surrounded by a couple of very enthusiastic Chinese GW staff asking all the same questions and following me around bestowing the virtues of the hobby that I have been involved in before most of these guys where born.

The prices were exactly the same, although most things in China are anyway. The guy that runs the store actually used to be the area manager for the south of the UK and he is only there for a couple of years to get things up and running, as time went by more slightly overweight, slightly smelly Chinese nerds came in to start playing and I took some slight comfort in the fact that no matter what colour, race or religion you are - nerds are the same the world over and we all get excited over well painted toy soilders - and that's a good thing.

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The Secret Project

Well I am off to China for work for a few weeks and I know some of you just can't wait to know what the secret project is. So I am going to let you know.... to be honest I couldn't keep it a secret. It's going to take a while to get to the table top, but my next big project is Chaos Dwarves. Ever since the new models have been released from Warhammer Forge I just could not resist, so I have painted the first model to get the scheme right and then I will be set to make a start on the main units.

I haven't really decided on the list yet, but there will be plenty of war machines and warriors. The general will be mounted on a Bale Taurus for sure with some very specific items to allow him to take on some units on his own. The model in the picture is from the command group and is the Champion of the unit. The paint scheme is outlined below.

One of the iconic units is Chaos Dwarf armies is the Bull Centaurs. There are currently no new models for these and I am not that keen on the old ones. Bull Centaurs are now counted as Monster Cav and thus need to be on 50mm square bases, their stat line is also pretty chunky and the old models just don't do them justice size wise, so my conversations are a little bigger than the old ones. Half an Ogre, and half Juggernaut and a bunch of Green Stuff. So this is where I am up to right now, next step is get the Core units done.

The paint scheme for the Dwarves is as follows: -

Base Coat.

• Mechrite Red/Scorched Brown 50/50 mix.
• Baal Red wash.
• Paint metal areas Boltgun Metal. 
• Black wash whole model. 
• Baal Red wash the red armour areas. 
• Black wash the metal areas. 

Highlights. 

• Mechrite Red on armour. 
• Blood Red on armour. 
• Mithril Silver on metal areas. 

Final Touches. 

• Wash armour Baal Red again. 
• Apply 2 thinned washes of Sepia.

Flesh.

• Tallern Flesh. 
• Ogryn Wash. 
• Highlight with Tallern again. 
• Final highlight of Bleach Bone (if required). 

Beard.

• Midnight Blue base layer. 
• Dwarf Bronze the jewels in the beard.
• Black Wash the beard. 
• Highlight Shadow Grey.
• Wash with watered down Blue Wash. 

Ogre progress

So my new found addiction to Warhammer is proceeding at a great rate, I have managed to get several games in over the last few days and I think what I would consider my favourite Ogre list is taking shape. I have also started on my secret Warhammer project and painted the first model and converted one other which really looks cool, and in all honesty I doubt I will be able to keep the project secret for that long (so expect secret project pictures soon, probably).

So to the list. In the last few games I have played Orcs and Goblins, the new Vampire Counts twice and Chaos Warriors twice. I lost the O&G game, although it was very very close, the reason I lost (I think) was my opponent rolled an immense number of 5+ saves on his Savage Orcs and sometimes that happens, the tactical error I made was charging my unit of Mournfang in to a unit of Black Orcs and keeping the Thundertusk behind instead of getting it in too. The trick with Mournfang is charge and kill, if the combat goes on for more than a couple of rounds you are dead. Black Orcs hit pretty hard and have a decent save, so it wasn't a good matchup for the Mournfang.

The first Chaos Warrior game was also a loss, in this game I tried the double Mournfang list, I destroyed the whole of his army, but I could not shift the 30 Warrior unit that had a couple of champions in it. This was mainly due to how I tried to deal with it. In the second Chaos Warrior game I killed all the rest of the army and then manoeuvred my units to multi charge the large Warrior unit and this worked a treat giving me a good victory in this game.

I won both the games against the Vampires, to be fair the General was inexperienced with them and it was his first few games, but i'll take the wins. In the first game the Ironblaster took out the Vamp general and the army crumbled, in the second game the Mournfang charged forward and destroyed a large Zombie unit in one go and overran into the General. Vamps - General = not good.

So overall I am loving the Ogres at the moment. The double Mournfang at 2400 lvl are awesome, I am still in two minds about the Thundertusk and am yet to try the Stonehorn (still waiting to be painted). I think i am fixed on the Character setup that I am going to use for the time being and will probably go through those in another post in the future. A unit of Ogres with Ironfists and a unit of Ironguts make up the core and these vary between 8 to 10 ogres a unit (including characters). So essentially the main army is decided, the final choices are between the Thundertusk/Stonehorn or actually not using a monster at all and going for an Ironblaster or two, Leadbelchers or Maneaters. A few more practise games will no doubt help, but the fact that any of those units is viable is testament to the Army Book.

One Elf to save them all......

So I have been playing a few games of Lord of the Rings recently, it has been great to get back into it after spending the majority of my time with other systems. Being away from a certain system for a while can be a good thing, when you go back to it again it makes you realise how good it is and reenergises you again to do some new models.

Some of the guys at the club I play at in Hemel are going to the LotR GT in a couple of weeks so I have been helping them out with some practise games. The Dwarves of Durin have had a run as have the Goblins and next week I will be rocking out the Ents for the first time in a few years. The system really is great and the models are awesome, although I think the guys at the club maybe regretting asking me to play some practise games as I haven't lost a game and have been ruining hobby :-) not what you want when practising for a GT.

One of the guys is trying a Fellowship/Eleven hero army but was struggling to get them completed so I painted up a Celeborn to help him out and its a model that has been sitting in my "to paint" box for a few years. After getting back into the system after a year or so away has inspired me to paint up some of those models that are still in boxes, I might even get round to the Mumak that has been looking at me half built for several years. So if your hobby is getting a little dull, go back to one of those game systems you haven't played for a while, it can give you a great new perspective.

Hobby wise work continues on the Ogres, the BSB is complete along with a Bellower for the Ironguts. I have also started on my new project, its a secret project that might take a while to complete but when it hits the table its going to look awesome.

Mournfang Complete

So the first Mournfang Unit is complete, and if I do say so myself looks awesome. As I mentioned in the previous blog I wasn't that keen on the models when they were released but in the flesh they look really good.

I used two units in a game at my local club in Hemel against a Chaos Warrior army, I lost the game but only because I couldn't shift his massive horde of Chaos Warriors, the two units of Mournfang pretty much destroyed the rest of the army on their own. The best charge was both units of four hitting a unit of 30 Khorne Marauders with fails, the Marauders went first but after the dust had settled 6 Marauders were left for the cost of 4 Mournfang, not bad. The Mournfang also accounted for 10 Maurader Horseman, a Chariot and a Warshrine. I backed them up with a Thundertusk, and in the first fight the Thundertusk ability of making other units strike last was awesome, but that was all. After the first turn it got bogged in combat with a chariot and then died to a fireball so I am still not convinced it's worth the 250. Going to try the Stonehorn in the next game.