Thursday 28 April 2011

Baggage...

Started work on the baggage model over the last couple of days, I knew all those matchsticks I bought many years ago would come in handy!  I rummaged around in the ol' bitzbox and found a couple of really old imperial warhorses that can be turned into nags.... Also found a pouch of chariot/wagon wheels (sadly not the yummy chocolate kind) I'd bought way back for my chariot racing game in preperation of making a ton of wacky racers - cool!  I had the right ingredients for a pretty decent model that will be a great centre piece for the "ambush/raid" scenario I'm planning for the Skull Island campaign.  Will be painting it over the weekend I hope.  As well as that in order to try and get my High Elf painting back on track I've drybrushed all 20 of my spearmen in one sitting, should be able to bang them out over the next week in time to hold off Rich's troops in battle 2 of the campaign - Forced Landing.  I've uploaded the scenario onto the BR page and will update it with army lists and the results soon.  The elves will be led by Prince Andris's able advisor and lifelong friend Webril Feylight

 Webril Feylight

Tuesday 26 April 2011

Kurnus's Pride - part 2

Finished my High Elf White Lion Chariot and it looks absolutely amazing even with my rather pedestrian painting skills!  I love the iconic feel to chariots and the images that they invoke, there will certainly be some Tiranoc chariots coming soon I think - just as soon as I can sell a kidney to fund it!

That said I once had in mind to field an entire Gobbo army purely of Wolf Riders and Wolf Chariots, mostly because I loved the idea of a purely nomadic tribe, picking up and moving from hunting ground to hunting ground and raiding Humie outposts, picking back up before more organised resistence is formed....hmm may have to revisit that idea when the Elves are done.....

Talking of which I have started painting my fiery mage Webril Feylight.  With a flaming sword and staff the model is looking really good and I couldn't wait any longer to get stuck in.  It has disrupted my painting plans as I was due to start on the spearman unit next but there you have it I'm a creature of impulse.  I've also had an idea to create some baggage items and treasure pieces for later on in the Skull Island campaign so it looks like they'll be postponed even longer - poor sods.

Talking of Skull Island better crack on with the next scenario and start having a think on how my poor 800 points will cope with the vast multitude of men 1000 points can bring to the party....

Thursday 21 April 2011

Skull Island Campaign begins

For weeks I have preparing for a WFB campaign with my mate Rich, my first campaign in years and my first with Rich (himself a novice to WFB) so it had to be good.  Hours flew by as I at first pondered the shape of the games and the various conflicts and indeed gaming systems that could be used within the campaign.  Firstly I needed a map, that always cleans out the ol' cobwebs and gets the creative juices flowing.....

right then... so a map.... I needed inspiration, glancing round the room I spotted my daughter's favourite emblem and Skull Island was created.  I will attempt to take a pic of the campaign map but as it is drawn onto a whiteboard at the mo, the quality might not be any good.  We decided that we were going to pit the might of my High Elves versus the puny humans of Rich's Empire troops.  With the adversaries decided it remained to pick names for our characters and devise a history for each to add more flavour to the games and invest more into the history of why we were fighting over a piece of rock off of the Lustrian coastline.



As this was my campaign I decided to think through a basic shape but allow the game to grow more organically with a battle only directly deciding the future of the next one and so on.  With that in mind yesterday we fought our first battle as a naval engagement using the ManO'War rules, a cracking game from GW sadly out of print now and not even available as a specialist game - boo! hiss!

I have attached the background and a battle report on the BR page.

Prince Andris Deftblade

Wednesday 20 April 2011

Kurnus's Pride rolls into the Grotto....

Yesterday the peaceful solitude of the Grotto was interrupted by the sound of massive paws pounding a frenzied beat, an almost inaudible swish of greased axles and the whisper of displaced air as an enormous Lion Chariot of Chrace - "Kurnus's Pride" coasted in.  Boy oh boy is it an awesome piece of work.  I just had to have one when in the Army book for High Elves I spied the artwork of a gigantic lion tearing into a Cold One.  Although I don't know any Dark Elf commanders I'm positive that my lil kitty cats will be brilliant mousers against the pathetic rat things that comprise the massive Skaven horde that will be arrayed against my glorious Asuryan and tear big lumps out of the puny apes of Rich's Empire troops too! 

The model is excellent and it's stat line is fairly impressive for the relatively low points cost, a total must have and the final componant for my 2000 point army, but I get ahead of myself guess I'll have to blog about how da Gobbo has got to this point!  I just couldn't help myself had to blurt out how cool it is to have a new chariot (I love chariots, even designed a game once that was all about chariot racing, play tested it and it was good too......)

Anyhoo better get back to the backstory build up....

Tuesday 19 April 2011

First battle....

As any hard bitten gamer will testify to, you gotta play man, you just gotta play! da Gobbo's no different.  Just as soon as I had put together the figures and chucked some slap on them, the Fae were ready to rock and/or roll!  My army consisted of only the models in the IOB box set and I had to download the sample army list off of the GW site as I had no army book but I was champing at the bit to unleash my pent up fury!

Oh how I was gonna smash novice player Rich and his puny rat-things... oops...well....maybe not quite smash....

Things did not go entirely according to the plan, I cannot remember the blow by blow as this was about 2 months ago but lets just say curses to Skaven magic and their wacky war machines! I showed all the tactical nounce of a 4 week old spaniel.  I do remember letting his warmachines pound my low toughness/saving throw infantry to little green glowing pieces without reply, his warlock chucked warp lightning about like Zeus on speed.  My Griffon mounted general wasted his time and talents pulping a clan rat unit and putting them to flight but this was only after a couple of rounds of combat.  My Sword Masters who stood poised to mince his Rat Ogres, quailed at the sight of the mutated monsters, failed their fear test and were promptly dispatched..... all in all it was a disaster!! eeek!!

Back to the drawing board....

Like a Phoenix...

It seems fitting that the rebirth of my fanatacism for gaming goes hand in hand with the choice of my first new army in quite some time - the mighty High Elves, loyal elite warriors of the Phoenix King!  You just gotta love the pointy eared ones, totally iconic of the fantasy genre Elves are an almost mandatory requirement for the Warhammer enthusiast and as soon as I saw the new Island of Blood figures I was hooked in!  Just like an addict I was jonesing for  holding the sprues in my hands and getting the painting started - I was back baby!

My first ever army way, way back in the day was an alliance of Wood Elves and Dwarfs that I bought from a mate of mine and going back to the Elves (albeit their rather more sophisticated cousins) seemed perfectly natural.  I also love the idea of an elite army, precise in it's execution of whatever task you set before it.  Need a long range army that destroys it's enemies from afar? Step forward units of Archers, Sea Guard, Eagle Claws and devastating Mages.  Want to get up close and personal? Try out the awesome Sword Masters, White Lions, excellent cavalry and magnificent Dragons.  Another great thing about the army for someone who is just getting back into the hobby is that because it is an elite army it is also a relatively small one!  No unit after unit of miniatures to paint (my last army was an immense Skaven horde!) So you can be good to go in a relatively short space of time if you prefer to play with painted figures, which I do.  That said I just wanted to get stuck straight back in so I bought a big can of spray undercoat and the whole army from the IOB box got glued and sprayed in a single weekend and I was ready to face my mate Rich's Skaven scum!

Monday 18 April 2011

Welcome to da Grotto!

Welcome one, welcome all to da Gobbo's Grotto! 

This blog will I'm sure be just like every other gamer's blog - battle reports and whatnot.  But guess what I don't care!  I just want a place to be able to share my enthusiasm for all things gaming with the world. I've just got back into the hobby after a break of about 5 years only to discover that you never really destroy the geek gene only suppress it's symptoms for a while....

This blog will be a glimpse into my inner gaming geek and the celebration of it's rebirth.....