Arjan's workbench

Will peer pressure work for me?

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 10:03:46 +0200

Probably the last post on this blog (but you never know). I joined a new one called 'a tale of some gamers'; as the title indicates this is a group blog and hopefully this will mean that the frequency of posting will be somewhat higher and more stabile.

For the people still interested in my 'battle experiences' who followed this blog (that would be Jos and Nadia?) you can find the new blog here.

Thanks to everyone for visiting, reading or even responding to this (attempt of) blogging ;-)

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Finally, the battle report!

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 13:20:11 +0200

Preface

This was to be the second battle of my new daemonic army. Because of the rules change, daemons and mortals of chaos have become two army types and so my chaos worshippers have been separated. Which means more paint work to do?
In their debut battle (a bloody draw against my own Empire army commanded by Hans (who seemingly threats his goblins that bad that they hide out in the deepest cupboard they can find), had learned my a lot about the in- and abilities of a pure nurgle daemon army. The lack of fast moving units would and magic defense could be even more felt against High Elves.
The first problem could not be solved (just a little by using my ?flying nurgling? Furies). For magic defense I decided to invest in a battle standard bearer with the ?Banner of Sundering??? Rather expensive in a 1500 points battle, but I know that Arjen usually takes armies with a magic punch. On top of this I went for three heralds and upgraded them all to level one magicians. (Not just tactics; my painting tempo forced me to spend points in my characters? not enough nurglings available?)
This was the composition of the Nurgle army: two units of ten Plaguebearers, with full command; two units of three Nurgling bases,; one unit of seven Furies/Flying Nurglings; one unit of two Beasts of Nurgle and the characters; three Heralds of Nurgle, all of them level one casters and one of them carrying the battle standard.
The High Elves were more or less composed in Arjens normal style: Two units of twenty spearmen, an unit of ten archers, two units of five Silver Helms, a mage on foot, one on a steed and a hero/general on a steed. And then the stuff that really worried me, two RBT?s and a unit

g
HHHHH g sssss sssss
HrbtH rbt msssss sssss m ppppp sssss ppppp
HHHH aaaaaaaaaa mhhhhh hhhhh sssss mmmmm sssss
ppppp ppppp

TTTT WWWWW
HHH DTTT WWWWW
HHH TTTT WWWWW
HHHHH

f f f f bb ppphh ppphh
f f f nn bbbpp bbbbb
pbpb pb
H: Hill, T: Tower with D:door, W: Wood
g; general on steed, rbt: RBT, mm: mage on steed, m: maage, sh: silver helms, sp: spearmen, sm: swordmasters
f: furies, bn: beast of nurgle, pb: plaguebearers, hp: herald on palanquin, h: herald of nurgle

Not really on a correct scale but it gives an impression of the starting positions of the armies. The High Elves put their infantry on one flank, cavalry and shooters on the other. My units of plaguebearers with the heralds in them were facing the infantry. The beasts of nurgle and furies were lone hunters on my left flank.
My Nurglings ?infiltrated? into no mans land, one unit hiding out in the woods, the other one inside the tower.
Magic
All of my mages got the XSXDSSDF spell (#1); having only level 1 casters and shabby dice rolls makes Nurgle magic choices a bit limited. The high elves mage on foot got arrow attraction and HEVAY SPELL, the one on the steed took fire magic and got two types of magic missiles. I decided to use the BANNER OF SOMETHING on the fire lore. Fire and regenerating don?t mix that well and I was very afraid to see my army being decimated before reaching the elves.

Turn 1

My demons got to start so it was a ?all forward? turn. Every unit except for the nurglings moved forward. The plaguebearers headed a little more to the right side, the beasts of nurgle turned a little to the right. They were supposed to hold up Arjens cavalry for a while (and perhaps even beat a unit). The furies flew forward and landed just in front of the little hill, outside charge range of the silver helms but close enough to be able to attack the bolt thrower on the hill next turn. Magic was uneventfull, shooting even more?.
Arjen moved his cavalry forward at maximum speed, one unit to the left of the mountains, the other to the right side. His infantry moved forward as well. The spearmen lined up to pass the tower on the left site to support the silverhelms, the swordsmen moved to the right of the tower to face my plaguebearers, the second unit of spear men secured went in support with the swordsmen.
His general positioned himself behind the two RBT?s(!). Arjen was (and is) very worried about the amazing powers of my Furies, so he offered his most powerful character to stop them?
In the magic phase the value of the BANNER OF SOMETHING was proven. I managed to dispel all Fire lore spell and the RING OF SOME ONE. However my unit of Beast of Nurgle was cursed with Arrow Attraction. And that was what happened next: the beasts got transferred into nail cushions. One was killed right away, the other got one wound. So much for my plans to hold up the silver helms with the beasts.

Turn 2

To cope with the threat of the silver helms I marched the plaguebearer unit with the general further to the left, facing the high elven cavalry, but outside their charge. The single beast of nurgle marched to the right, in support of this plague bearer unit. The nurglings in the tower did not move, apparently having too much fun inside.
On the right flank my nurglings marched as far as possible forward, reaching a position on the right flank of the spearmen. The second unit of plague bearers, with the two heralds inside, moved a little further ahead, stopping in front of the swordmasters (in charge range) and spearmen.
And off course, my furies charged the RBT on the hill?
In big contrast to the previous magic phase, a spell came through. With a total power dice roll I managed to cast WHAT SPELL. The impact was horrendous: More than half of the spearmen on the right were killed, or should I say, blessed by Nurgle.
In the close combat phase neither the crew of the RBT or the Furies managed to hurt each other, the crew broke of fear and were caught by the Furies, who ran in the Elven general in the process.
In the Elven turn the silver helms spurred even further forward, ending their movement with a slight turn facing the plague bearers and the beast of nurgle. The spearmen marched further, reaching with their front the left flank of the tower.
On the right flank Arjen turned the remains of his spearmen to face the Nurglings and decided not to charge the plague bearers with the swordsmen (or did they fail the fear test when they tried to to do so? Can?t remember exactly).
Magic and shooting was pretty uneventfull, besides sending back a few plague bearers to the Courts of Chaos. In close combat the Elven general and the Furies fought off a draw (they would continue to do that for the remainder of the battle).

Turn 3

At the start of the turn, the battle was split in three: On the left flank my unit of plague bearers with general was facing two units of Silver Helms. I had support of a single beast of Nurgle and the unit of Nurglings hiding in the tower. The elves had one unit of spear men coming to their aid, but this unit would have to pass the nurglings. The elven archers could give some fire support, but were to far away to join the battle themselves. I felt our changes were pretty even; the silver helms would probably charge my plague bearers, but did would be a charge in the front and my unit would probably hold. The spearmen would not be able to reach the battle in time, so I would be able to fight them off one after the other.
On the right side things were looking rather well. My nurglings were in position to charge the thinned out spearmen, even threatening the flank of the Swordmasters . I was going to make a gamble (brilliant tactical maneuver) here: Not charging the sword masters (who I also really fear), by marching to the left, using the tower to get out the charge range of the Swordmasters. This would make this unit very vulnerable for an attack in the rear by the swordmasters, but hopefully I would be able to out march them.

The other gamble I took was marching the other unit of plague bearers on the left flank right in front of the silver helms, forcing them to charge (or at least make it almost impossible to maneuver around me). The beast of nurgle moved a little to the north (what turned out to be a little too much) in such a way that the silver helms would not be able to charge it, and that the beast itself would be able to support the plaguebearers in the next turn.
The unit of nurglings on the right flank had charged the spearmen and chewed them up in close combat! The noble high elves just managed to kill one nurgling and were auto-broken by fear for the little critters. To make victory complete Nurgle?s little ones ran the spearmen down and attacked the swordsmen in the flank. (Gna, gna, gna?)
In the Elven turn the Silver Helm declared a charge on the unit of plague bearers. Luckily for me, only one unit made his fear test so only five cavalrists and a mage charged. However Arjen also declared a charge with his second unit of spearmen on the Beast of Nurgle and they turned out to be in range?
This resulted in i) a killed beast but even worse ii) a unit a spearmen making overrunning in the right flank of the plaguebearer unit fighting the silver helms (Since magic and shooting were uneventful, I will skip these phases here). In the combat that followed and the resulting daemonic stability test, nearly all of the plaguebearers were killed, leaving the general and three of his daemonic minions standing. But they were still standing!
On the right flank things worked out a lot better. The nurglings went on, beating the sword masters and sending them o a route, catching them on the run and killing off the Elven elite! This brought them face to face with the second repeating bolt thrower.

Turn 4

This was the last turn we actually played due to lack of time. On the left flank, my second unit of plague bearers charged the unit Spearmen who were flanking my general in their flank. My second unit of nurglings tried to charge them in the back, but was out of range (so this unit of nurglings spent the entire battle inside the tower, only to come out to do nothing?). My other unit of nurglings however were giving a great example on ?nurgling behaviour? by charging the repeater bolt thrower.
The following battles were very one sided (joy ;-) The spearmen were beaten by the plague beares and the Heralds, broken and caught on the flee. In their pursuit the Plague Bearers ended just in front of the unit of Silver Helms that had failed their fear test in the previous round.
The battle between my general and his? court? (a palanquin of nurglings and three surviving plague beares) versus the unit of Silver Helms with the Wizard continued. The elves had lost their momentum and fighting at their normal elven strength, the resilence of Nurgle daemons proved too much. My daemons won the fight, but the Elves passed their break test.
In their turn the Elves made their last charge: The second unit of Silver Helms charged into the unit Plague Bearers containing the Heralds, only to be beaten off and sent running of the field.

Conclusion

For the first time I can remember a ?tactical maneuver? went well!

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What's another year? or two...?

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:42:45 +0200

So after a long silence finally a new post on this blog... What can I say in my defense? Euhmm.. another long silence.....

So what happened on the workbench during those two years? Not so much as I hoped for, but still I managed to finish some projects. The most prominent of the being a Nurgle hero on a Palanquin and a Nurglish Hell Cannon.

Work in progress at the moment are units of Plague bearers and Nurglings. The split up of the Hordes of Chaos into Daemons and Mortals gives me in potential one extra army and above all the need to paint (and even buy ;-) new recruits to get enough units to form legal armies. This means that my plan for painting warmaster are once more delayed...

Hopefully I will manage to bring you (who?) update on a more regular basis from now on. Or just enough to keep my ex-collegue Nadia from sending me notices..

A battle report about my Nurgle daemons against Arjens High Elves (see picture) army is in the writing; stay tuned.

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Over the top or not?

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 20:51:27 +0200

(An update of my blog... like there is an audience left... like there once was one...)

Next weekend I am heading for Nottingham for the Call to Arms tournament. This year using my Sister of Sigmar to defend my last years title of 'most sporting opponent'

The ladies have been given a fresh paint job, their bases have been cleaned and a little bit upgraded: ready to do business.

However, a small dilemma came up when I was working on my Matriarch. In my bits box I found the remains of a Bretonnian Knight and I used a part of his helmet to 'pimp' hers. Now I am not sure if this is an improvement or not, so the question to you all is: Should it stay or should it go?

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Tournament report

Fri, 06 Jan 2006 14:46:19 +0100

(I know, I know, but better late than never....)
The evening before the kersttoernooi I still needed to paint/finish several models: a spawn, five chaos hounds and above all: my Great Unclean One. Once more I was helped out by Anke and Wouter; the latter lent me his chaos hounds for the tournament. A little sad was that I had to play the tournament without the mental support of my brother in arms Arjen, he had a little flu. Rather logical in fact after those contacts with my Nurgle army....

The tournament itself went quit allright! A respectable fifth place (of 28), where number 1 till 6 finished rather close.

The first battle were against Bart, playing high Elves, and I almost had it won. Everything started fine: killed off mages, archers, rbt's and dragonprinces, just three infantry units to go. Unfortunately I could not resist the temptation and charged my Unclean One into an unit spear elfjes instead of placing it tactically in my plaguebearers. Anyway, the big daemon went 'pop', failing it's instability test, and from then on the only thing I could do was damage control. However, thanks to the good start, it was just a minor defeat.

Round two against I played a Lizard army, against ' veteran ' Benny who for the first time in years played warhammer. Lizard men are really an 'angstgegner'of me and this turned out to be just such a battle.

His army was rather tipical: three large Units of Saurus, two small groups of skinks and 1 battery salamanders. And off course a bad ass Slann and two skink priests.

At the right flank my ogres got in trouble being outmanouvred, outshot and finished off by skinks and a block of saurus. The left flank however was more or less under my control (spawn and marauders holding off another saurus Unit). The battle would be decided at the central. Thing were looking very good when I charged a large Unit saurus temple guard containing the Slann with: a spawn (right flank), plaguebearers (front), unclean one and nurglings (left flank)
and LOST!! Even worse, the unclean one FAILED his instability test once more!!!....

After I was reanimated,it turned out that Benny had unknowingly and unwillingy cheated by using two mutually exclusive combat bonnusses. So we replayed the battle and again I LOST (with a CR difference of just 1). I turned out that this unit of frogs with the fat path had all kinds of upgrades and could withstand a charge by four units. But this loss did not lead to daemonic poofs, therefore on to next round.

In this round Benny's Slann casted a nasty spell which heavily decimated all of my units around him, but these continued fighting thanks to immunity for psychology. His salamanders charged into the big center battle as well, attacking my nurglings... In short: Thing were looking bleak. Thanks to father Nurgle, the unclean one went berserk in this round and instead of loosing I this combatround!! All this resulting in an autobreak of lots of his units: the salamanders, temple guard and slann!! (I love terror). This was the turning point and I had won the battle!

Third battle used a special scenario where in order to win you had to have the the largest unit strength within 6 inch of a point on the battle field. I played against Gideon, who played a Slaanesh army. That meant that my slow army would have to fight an awful fast one....

It was a very tense battle, with all units cramped on a very small part of the battlefield. Due to the scenario I had a little advantage, because manouvring was hard with all units moving to one point. Both Gideon and I managed to fore a desicion nor made (big) mistakes . But at a given moment the dice turned very serious against Gideon (two round off themselves each other miscasts, a battle between my ogres which were charged by marauders and dragon ogres won against all odds) in such a way, that this became in fact determinative. In the end Gideon gave up and so I won again!

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Help is under way...

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 19:50:38 +0100

With a nasty deadline getting near, but there's hope...

Apart from my wife Anke, who promised to help me tomorrow with the bases, master painter Wouter Lute has send me a preview of the Chaos Spawn that he has painted for me!!

Way to go Wouter!!And many many many thanx!!

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Still not ready and only one day left...

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 19:47:34 +0100

With just one day to go till the yearly highlight of my Gaming Club... And still my army is not finished!!!

Tomorrow will be a long, long, hard working day :-[" class="middle" border="0">

Here you have my general, a greater daemon of Nurgle, which just need some minor tweaking (and a base)....

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First Blood

Mon, 24 Oct 2005 20:49:43 +0200

Last week (on holiday) I played my friend Arjen's High Elf army with my brand new Nurglies. We were able to play two matches and both managed to win one.
Unfortunately the photo's of the battles were not good enough, so here's an old one of Arjen and me...

The first battle was won by me. Arjen's army consisted of two units Silver Helms, an unit of Elryrian Reavers, 16 or 20 spearmen, 10 archers, two RBT's, two level 2 mages and a commander on a dragon. My flying nurglings (furies) managed to silence the RBT's early on in the game. Key moment was when I managed to cast 'unseen lurker' on my unit Plaguebearers, charging them into the commander on the dragon. By pinning this unit and earlier on in the game 'teleporting' my Exalted Champ into an unit Silver Helms I could dominate the battle field.

The second game was won by Arjen, with a slightly changed army. A chariot and smaller unit of Swordmasters replaced his spearmen and he improved his magic defense. I forgot to keep my Ogres in cover of my generals leadership when I was seduced into trying to pin down his dragon once more. Result: Ogres fleeing of the table after their terror test and an army split out over the field. Arjens tactics and much faster army dominated after that the battle field ;-P

It were good games (I had not played Arjen for a long while) with good fun and I learnt a lot about how to play a Nurgle army (or so I think...)

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Nurgle?

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 14:52:20 +0200

Two years ago I won the best painted army award at the local Christmas tournament; price was a Lord of Nurgle model. As I was thinking about starting a second Warhammer army at the time (something different from my trusty Empire break test failers), I accepted this sign from the gods and started to paint and the search for cheap second hand miniatures...

Now I have taken up the challenge to get this army ready for the next Christmas Tournament (18 december), so I made up a list based on these rules:
* 2000 points and legal ;-)
* minimize the number of models to paint
* maximize the number of models combat ready
Resulting in this list (all comments welcome, no playtests done yet):
2000 Pts - Chaos Roster - Nurgle's Christmas Circus
1 Great Unclean One @ 600 Pts
1 Chaos Sorcerer @ 170 Pts
Mark of Chaos Undivided; Level 2 Upgrade;
1 Power Familiar @ [50] Pts
1 Exalted Champion of Nurgle @ 184 Pts
Mark of Nurgle; Great Weapon; Chaos Armor;
1 Enchanted Shield @ [10] Pts
1 Gaze of the Gods @ [30] Pts
14 Plaguebearers @ 224 Pts
4 Nurglings @ 160 Pts
7 Furies @ 105 Pts
4 Chaos Ogres @ 260 Pts
Standard Bearer Std; Great Weapon; Heavy Armor
1 Big Chaos Ogre @ [64] Pts Great Weapon; Heavy Armor
13 Chaos Marauders @ 109 Pts
Musician Mus; Standard Bearer Std; Flail
1 Chieftan @ [16] Pts
5 Warhounds @ 30 Pts
1 Beast of Nurgle @ 75 Pts
1 Beast of Nurgle @ 75 Pts
Total Roster Cost: 1992

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The flying circus of Nurgle

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 14:38:04 +0200

At the moment I am working at my Nurgle army for the Christmas tournament of the local club. One of the units I want to use is a bunch of Furies, however, I don't like the Fury models that much and found these alternatives:

Flying Nurglings!
The wings are made of the Undead knights helmets and they are turning out quite allright.. IMHO.. ;-)

Now just these seven little buggers, a spawn and a big fat Unclean one......

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Warmaster?

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 14:30:45 +0200

Ever since Lex persuaded me in playing Warmaster, I am working on an empire army. The basic idea is to make a 'copy' of my Warhammer army. However, these minies are too nice, every time I work on them I find new details!

At the moment all my painting time is spent on my Warhammer Nurgle army (deadline: 17 dec) so these halbediers will have to wait a while before reinforcements will arrive...

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First Post

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 11:10:45 +0200

Hmmm...

I blog therefor I exist

Hope to have the discipline to use this blog as a journal on my painting of Warhammer and Warmaster miniatures...

Will have to master our new digital camera (amongst other things)..

Well..

Here we go..

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