An Ogre’s Tale: Part I
October 3rd, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
Journal of the ogre tyrant Morag the Hungry
As recorded by Kresh, his faithful gnoblar scribe and joke-teller
Today the butchers smelled an unusual scent wafting on the air. They said it would be good eating. Boss agreed so we marched after it with his buds.
We found a lot of scary-looking thinlings in lots of metal armor. Some rode horses. One rode a dragon! He seemed to be thier leader. If I had a dragon, I’d be a leader, too.
We met them in battle, and at first the leadbelchers did quite well, making grand noise and knocking several bare-chested thinlings off thier horses. 2 of the ogres got lost in some woods though. They didn’t show thier faces until later. I could still smell them though so they must not have wandered far.
Then the horsemen all charged, and so did the dragon. Some of the ogres tried to get away, but it didn’t work. Dragons must really like ogre meat the way it ate one of the leadbelchers. The big scary armored knights though, they met Muscles the Butcher and his boys. They had a right good fight there, and a couple of the boys went down (good eatin’ later!) but they held them scary men up for a long time.
Then the dragon came in behind the boss’s bunch and tried to breath all over them. It smelled pretty bad, but not worse then some of Muscles’s gas so the boys were ok. I think them other gnoblars hanging around the boss’s legs got sick from it though, ’cause they never tried to hit anything after that.
Boss must not have noticed the dragon’s breath because he just charged on after a bunch of armored men with a biiiiig banner that hurt my eyes. They whomped em good when they charged in. And the Boss, he got to that banner man, squished him up good, then tossed him into that aweful maw on his belly. Smished up scary man reminded me of last gnoblar that got under boss’s foot. Not pretty sight.
Then dragon sneak up behind boss’s gang and start eating his iron gut guards. Good thing Grinder the Butcher had worked his mojo, becuase one of the boys got his gut almost ripped off, but it grew back and then he swung up with his big stick and knocked the scary smelly pussy man off the dragon. Too bad the banner bruiser get willies and run. Other ogres think he know where more food was, but he didn’t. He just lose nerve. Boss find out later, eat him, give banner to iron gut that knock off pussy-man. Now he’s new bruiser.
That’s about when the gorgers started showing up and eating thinlings. Some leadbelchers decided to get some thinling meat before gorgers ate it all, and between them they kill or scare away whole lot of men with not much armor on them. Ogres always like meal with more meat anyway. Iron not taste as good. They still fill men’s banner with lots of meat before heading home.
Muscles and his loud friend finish killing scary armored men on horses and decide it good time to head back towards camp, taking banner with them for new apron.
By then though, fight was over and everyone head back to camp to cook dinner.
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The Ogre Kingdoms are Coming…
September 6th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
So I finally broke down and got a hankering for square-basing. I had dabbled in Warhammer Fantasy Battles before using the cheap dwarf models from the Skull Pass set. Alas they just didn’t do it for me and I wound up setting the game aside for quite some time. With all the sci-fi I’ve got going on now (3 RPg campaigns, 40K, EVE, watching SG-1 and Galactica…) I really felt the need to cleanse the palate with some good old fashioned fantasy mayhem.
Now, there’s a few things I didn’t like much about WHFB the first time we met. I didn’t enjoy the big blocks of unwieldly infantry for starters. Playing dwarfs made this dramatically worse with thier pitiful move allotment. For you WHFB players out there, imagine being used to everything in your army being M6 skirmishers all the time, then adjust to just blocks that don’t want to move. So I wanted an army with at least a decent bit of speed to it so I could feel like it actually moved on the battlefield instead of crawled.
After spending a good deal of time painting and still never quite finishing off a complete 40k army, the thought of building and painting those blocks of infantry is depressing. Multiple units with 15-20+ guys each and every model virtually identical in every way. I’d have to paint 150-300 models to complete an army. That sucks at my rate of model painting. So I wanted an army that had as few models as possible while still being viable and fun.
Beyond that I was pretty open. It needn’t be a beginner’s army. It could be good at shooting or stink; good at magic or not. In the end, I settled on the Ogre Kingdoms. For my first 2000 point army I’ll only need to build and paint a scant 25 models. Each one is larger then most I’ve done so I’ll get to enjoy painting on a somewhat larger scale, and I can put some more effort into them. It’s also feasible to convert most ogre units from the plastic kits in the battallion box set, which is a big draw to a customization nut like myself. So, I ordered up my fist half of the army and some new paints to flesh out my vallejo range for use on ogres. They should be arriving later this week 
What’s more, I’ve signed up to play the part of some raiders that wander around the map in a new campaign in town. So I should be seeing some action fairly soon with them. As I get the army converted, built, painted and played, I’ll be keeping you up to date on how the venture pans out. Personally, I’m really looking forward to this
Updates and Chaos Marines
August 2nd, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
Ok, here’s the skinny on what’s been going on in the downtime:
Footslogging chaos marines have finally finished up.
Havoc squads were worth thier weight in pure awesome.
Lesser Daemons proved thier worth as a backup unit or as a cheap objective camper.
Any icon other Chaos Glory doesn’t work well for me, because the squad will break while under half strength. My dice betray me often on this.
I also learned what you can really do with joe chaos marines and what they can and can not handle. My intuitive grasp of how I can use my troops has improved.
I’ve alos learned to think farther ahead for what I want my units to do. You have to when your mobility is so limited.
I gained an appreciation for a cheap Karmoon special squad of chaos terminators. They get the job done well once you learn where to plunk them down.
Now, with this experiment wrapping up, I’m moving back into my old favored grounds with a mechanized list. But, still looking to shake things up a little and broaden my tactical horizons further, I picked up a few things I wouldn’t normally.
I’ve taken a chaos lord of nurgle in power armor with a daemon weapon for my sole HQ. He rides in a rhino with some plague marines. I normally don’t care for the randomness of daemon weapons, but I think this one will work out well with the new poisoned weapon rules in 5th Edition.
2 Chaos Dreadnoughts are also seeing some table time, and I have to admit I like the crazy little nuggets. Pop a missile launcher and a CC arm on them, pop transports or let them charge around like maniacs. They absorbed an obscene amount of fire ni thier first time on the field and still got one across the board to pull a scoring unit off the objective. For a piddly 100 points each, these guys are pretty brilliant for me. they’ve also sparked conversion ideas I’ll be working on, but that will probably take some time.
I also got around to making some objective markers. I used some nice reaper minis, mounted on the bases I use for my chaos marines, then painted them like they’d been turned to stone, with all thier old gear still hanging on them. Figure we’ve got a few old artifacts on the statues to fight over. Or even to revive them. Whatever, it’s still chaosy.
Recent Musings 5-18
May 18th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
Well, it seems it decided to eat some posts. That’s annoying. all set now, though.
Lately it’s been a question of just what I want to work on. There’s the chaos marine footslogging army that still needs some paint. There’s an inquisition army waiting in the wings. There’s an Ork army that only lacks 4 vehicle models to have everything I need to build it. And there’s more chaos marine ideas to work on, too. And let’s not forget the Warmachine army that’s been languishing for some time now (never seem to find enough local players!)
I’ve about come to the conclusion I should try to stick with chaos marines. They’re the only 40k army I’ve never seriously considered getting rid of, and they do still offer a lot of neat modelling options, even if a lot of them got gutted from the codex with the last rendition.
Among the chaos projects hitting the table is a revival of the sculpted daemon princess. That project got buried (figuratively and litterally) some time ago when I started trying to avoid the Lash-prince because it just felt so darn cookie-cutter. That’s more or less a death-knell o my interest when it because a sea of sameness. However, it’s still useful for any other prince version, and unlike the idea I have of using Monique de Noir from Reaper minis, it’d actually be tournament legal (yay for greenstuff casting hybrids!).
To that end I’ve started poking around with some more sculpting supply options. I’ve basically given up on attempts at mold-making with Flex Rubber. It’s just to darned time-consuming and labor-intensive. Back to good old OOMOO for me. I’ve heard something like a Mold Max 1000 latex compound is good, but haven’t found a good supplier yet. Ah well. As an added bonus, the extra supplies will give me the chance to refine my molding and casting techniques for customized bases. I’m trying to nail down a good consistent result and it’s basically going to require 2-part molds instead of the 1-parters I’ve been using. Hence, I need more molding material.
When the dice hate you
May 9th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
This is a subject I think we’re all familiar with. Sometimes the dice just hate you. Maybe you didn’t get them a card for thier birthday, or you didn’t sacrifice enough (chocolate) bunnies, or whatever, but they despise you.
For me, it’s usually just a bad roll here or there. But recently I enjoyed a streak of it in one game. Playing my chaos marines I needed to make 4 morale checks (one of them a re-roll, one a regroup check) all in the space of about 2 turns. Being from shooting, they were at Ld10. So there’s only a 1 / 12 chance of failing any given one of them.
Well, I failed 3 in a row to kick things off. The odds of getting those rolls? Something like 1,728 to 1. And, being chaos marines, we are well aquiainted with fear and decided to take our slightly-below-half unit with attached HQ running off the board with no chance to rally. And this was the evil mean Khorne marked squad, too. The havoc squad ran too, however, they got thier heads back in the game on the next morale check to rally.
We weren’t done fleeing in terror before the awesome might of the space faries and thier magic wands (of DEATH) – I mean, Eldar. Not long after Some termies decided enough was enough and made tracks as well.
The lesson here? Icon of Chaos Glory is my new best friend!
also, sacrifice more chocolate bunnies on the altar of diciness (also known as my mouth). It may not work, but it’ll taste good!
