Beastman Skeletons for the Horde

The build up for the 10k point Vampire count Skeleton horde continues. The majority of my skeletons are of the older style variety. I have been adding to them slowly when I realized that they are the same skeletons as in the tomb king skeleton warrior box. So I picked up some Tomb King skeletons. The problem is I don't want to use the tomb king shields. So I have a bunch of skeletons and a lack of shields. I started convert some Skeletons to have chaos shields and I found my supply of beastmen shields left over from me building gors with two hand weapons.

The skeleton sprues came with a beast skull so shield problem solved.

I never used the beast skull heads but I saved all the bits. I will add the beast shields and a little more variety to the skeleton mix. Some of the skeletons are not going to have shields but the majority will and that's good enough for me and you never know if in the next Vampire count book there will be an option for skeletons with no shields.

I have almost finished twenty more skeleton spear men to add to my original twenty to form a horde of forty.

More skeletons with hand weapon and shield. The 10k point list I am working toward has a 40 skeleton with spears horde, two forty skeleton with hand weapon and shield and a thirty two skeleton with hand weapon and shield, for 152 skeletons. I have sixty four painted and ready to go so only eighty eight to finish.

ColKG

Oop Citadel Mummies for 10k of Undead

I have been challenged to another game of Warhammer fantasy battle third edition by Chuckaroobob. I have been building up my Vampire count army to be able to field a 10k point army for Warhammer fantasy battle 8th edition. While talking about the army build up to Chuckaroo he said if   I made it to 10k points for 8th edition he would play a 10k point game of  3rd edition Fantasy battle. Sounded like a good plan tome so challenge accepted. The big hurdle for the 8th ed army was assembling 2500 points of core troops and I just about have it now. In 3rd edition you need 50% of the army in troops so 5000 points. After crunching some numbers I needed to pick up some more points. One of the most expensive units are the Mummies at 80 points each and the list allows ten so to evil bay I went. I was shortly rewarded with an inexpensive lot of oop citadel mummies.

One is missing a foot and the other an arm but I did mention they went cheap. I decided to fix the missing foot first.

I added a piece of brass wire to form the armature for the new foot and them pinned the model to its base.

Later with the first round of greenstuff. Another few rounds of greenstuff and it should be ready to go.

I would actually like to get a total of twenty mummies but probably only four more of the citadel Mummies. I will probably pick up a few packs of the Reaper bones mummies and with twenty mummies coming in at 1600 points I will have the 5000 point mark of troops easily cleared.

ColKG

Beastmen verses Lizardmen

The Beastmen return to the battlefield against Joshua R's Lizardmen. Joshua brought two lists and gave me the choice between a more friendly list or his tournament practice list. I chose to face the practice tournament list. This may not have been the best choice of the day.We playyed 2500 points.
My list consisted of a Beastlord, A lvl 4 Great Bray shaman with beasts, Slug Tongue and a Wargor battle standard bearer with the Beasts banner. The units were 40 gors with additional hand weapon, 40 ungors with spears, 40 Bestigors with the Banner of discipline, two units of six harpies, two uints of five chaos hounds, one group of eight ungor raiders, one group of nine ungor raiders and last a second unit of 15 Bestigors.
Joshua's list had a Slaann priest, two skink priests, two scar veterans on cold ones, a skink unit with a kroxigor, one unit of chameleon skinks, three units of regular skinks, two salamders and handlers, a big block of sarus warriors, a stegadon and an ancient stegadon.

The start of the battle with both sides deployed. I used Slugtongue's famine ability and put wounds on several  of the Lizard units. I placed the big units in the center and placed most of the fast movers on the far left. Joshua centered his Sarus unit and stegadon across from my big units.

First charge the Chaos Hounds go after the chameleons and have three killed.

They then break and run.

First magic phase, The Great bray shaman miscasts.  So much for my magic phase.

The Great Bray Shaman is sucked into the void along with nine ungor spearmen and an ungor raider. With the lvl 4 dead I only had Slugtogues level 2 casting ability to fend of Joshua's Slann and skink priests. The good thing about units forty models strong is, losing nine models didn't cause a panic test.

Joshua's turn, he moves out and the haounds and skinks start their dance in the center.

My turn the Harpies and Bestigors charge in.

The Harpies are shot up and flee. The Bestigors take four dead but charge in.

After everyone swings and the Bestigor win.

The skinks move up and taunt the Bestigor horde.

Both stegadons and the Lizardman cowboy charge in.

The salamander burns down a chunk of the Bestigor herd.

The Ancient Stegadon drops ten Ungor Spearmen.

Slugtongue falls after failing both regeneration saves.

The Bestigors win their second round of combat and the skinks break and run.

The Bestigors charge the fleeing skinks and catch them, wiping the unit out. This would be the high point for the Beastmen.

The Bestigor overrun off of the table.

The Beastlord charges out of the Bestigor herd to challenge the Lizardman cowboy and save the wargor battle standard bearer.

Thanks to the wounds put on the Stegadon by Slugtongue special ability, the gors finish of the Stegadon. The Beastlord and Cowboy draw the challenge but he fails the morale test and breaks. The Gors pursue and catch him.

They Pursue into the second salamander.

This ends up setting them up for a flank charge by the Saurus unit.

The Suarus tear up the Gor and the Beastlord is out of the combat.

The Gors break and the Saurus overrun into the ungor flank. Shortly after this we called the game, a win for the Lizards.

I am still getting a feel for the Beasts but they did better than I thought I would. Using units of forty models works better than smaller units. The question is determining when to go into a horde formation. The Bestigor herd contributed very little to the game jammed up behind other units and unable to charge in. A second small unit of Bestigor worked good. I had planned to use it as a unit to go for the watchtower if we played that scenario but it was able add to the battle. The chaos hounds didn't work so well but I will give them another try. Slugtongue worked great and will probably be back in the army for the next game.

Going forward, some plans for the army. I have finished rebasing the ungor spear men and added a few more to make another ungor unit. i have picked up some ork boars and plan to make some razorgors from them. probably three individual razorgors and a couple razorgor chariots. I was planning to play in the fantasy league but between family and work I am only going to be able to play sporadically. I plan to get in games when I can and keep working on the Beasts, even if the rumours prove true and GW drops their army.

ColKG

Ungor Spearman rebased and another Herd formed

After getting in a few games with the Beastmen using 8th ed Warhammer Fantasy Battle I have decided to take the plunge and rebase my collection of ungors with spears and hand weapons onto 20mm bases. The funny part is some of the older metal ungors were originally on 20mm bases, then I rebased them onto 25mm bases to match the last army book with mixed herds and now rebasing them all back to 20mm bases.

The freshly rebased Ungor herds. In the previous army book the ungors only had the option of being armed with spears. They also didn't have any option to use the ungor command models from earlier editions. The solution was for me to just mix in the hand weapon armed and command models in and play them as spear armed ungors. In the new army book they returned the options for hand weapon armed ungors so I have decided to split off the unit of hand weapon ungors. This leaves me short of the target forty models in the ungor spear man unit, but I have a plan.

The one casualty of the rebasing, a hand weapon armed ungor broken.

After much pinning and readjusting the ungor is back on the base.

After a bit of greenstuff it is ready to go.

To round out the units I pulled out my last eight ungors from the oop Beastherd box, trimmed them down and based them on 20mm bases.

So after fixing the broken ungor, building the eight oop ungors and pulling a musician from the ungor raiders I have two units to add to the army. I will have a forty strong unit of Ungors with spears and shields and a ten model unit of ungors with hand weapons. It leaves me with a left over standard and a spare ungor body. the banner I can just add to the back of the spear unit for a forty one strong unit and I am thinking about using the extra ungor to convert an Ungrol Four Horn special character. The Fantasy league at Gaming Underground starts up next weekend so the ungor will be seeing the table soon.

ColKG

All Tanks: Disposable Heroes goes Heavy Metal

Hi Kids,  We decided to try something new, Disposable Heroes without any infantry.  One of the lads bought a couple early war British tanks and wanted to test drive them, so I gathered a few Huns tanks to see what would happen.  Since they were Matildas I had a pretty good idea, but maybe I'd get lucky...  you never know.

 The two Matilda's are showroom fresh, haven't even been painted yet! Poor guy's paints are out on loan!  Backing them up are two Schneider P16's, one of the sexiest halftracks ever! (Although with a snub-nosed 37mm gun they are almost useless.)  IIRC all these are 1:56 from Company B.

 Facing them across the table are two Pz38T's from AGN and two Pz4's from Westwind.  I know, I know, I still have to build the Pz4's with the snub-nosed 75mm gun.

 The long view: Huns will start at the far end, the Brits at the foreground.

 The 38t's head for the high ground, the 4's go into the ruins.  Green chips signify that they have already been activated for this turn.

 The Brits spread out as well.

 Climbing the central hill, the Matilda slows down to 2 inches a turn....

 Setting up with some good lines of sight....

 First blood to the Huns!  A P16 catches fire!

 Revenge!  A 38T takes some return hate mail.

 Three weeks later, the Matilda finally reaches the top of the hill, where nearly every Hun vehicle can see it.  And hit it.  Which happens many times over the rest of the game.

The Hun tanks start blasting away at the Matilda, all to no effect as its armor is hugely thick.

 The second Matilda sneaks through the village and blasts a Pz4!  On the right, the 38T starts accumulating hits, most of which penetrate.  The triangles denote penetrating hits.

 Same shot but slightly wider, showing the two Matildas.

 The P16 sneaks around the flank while the ground floor Matilda closes in.

 A violent death seems imminent for the 38T, as it has suffered 6 penetrating hits, is immobilized and has three dead crewmen!

 After bouncing 7 or 8 hits off the Matilda on the hilltop, the sole surviving Pz4 switches targets to the P16 closing in.  In early war even the P16's gun can cut through the side armor of a Pz4.

The end of the game, all the Huns have been killed, three by the Matilda on the ground floor.  I'm telling ya, early war is a lot different from what all the Nazi propaganda would have you believe!  There's nothing wrong with a Matilda, its armor is super and its 2pdr gun is pretty good!  Just goes to show you want the counterattack at Arras could have accomplished!