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Dave Fraser

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  1. Afraid I’m not able to pull the trigger on this yet due to uncertainty about moving house but if I’m able to swing it I’d love to joins you guys for some miniature oggling, can you ensure you bring your award winning army down for some added eye candy as I never got to see it due to missing Blood and Glory too.
  2. I’ve already had confirmation when I bugged you on WhatsApp but I was feeling left out so figured I best come and troll you here too. Banning my TK was just evil, who wrote that awful text about compendium scrolls anyway?
  3. Do the maths on the averages. you get about 30 wounds out of that against a 4+ save. So chances are you delete a screening unit. If you have set your charge up right so nobody else can pile in then it's a nuicance because they don't want to charge you because you hit first again but any decent shooting & magic should do a dent, or if anyone has -1 to hit floating around they'll just take the charge and probably kill those 15w. It's an option with a few risks (I'd add cogs into my list if going for it) but I think other armies do alpha strikes better.
  4. 2018 In summary Played 1x2 day event, 2x1 day events and played roughly once a month. Painted way less than usual. About 180 models for the year. Got in the cabinets at heat 2, so that was a big tick for me. 2019 Plans Paint up all of the models for at least one of the factions I own. Sell off more of my junk (and part 1 might contribute to this as everything done on an army may make me willing to sell them!) Play down the club a bit more regularly
  5. Dave Fraser

    Hopes for the AoS FAQ

    KO hardly have a cornucopia of options. 4 regular characters, 1 special character (1 of which is in every list, 1 of which in a few and 3 which rarely hit the table) 1 battleline unit 3 non-battleline units (of which you regularly see 2) 3 boats (of which you regularly see one and sometimes one other) KO are not OP as a rule, there is one build which is and this is the build you see at tournaments because the rest are mediocre at best. What KO are is rather boring. The majority of the army is there to shoot you off and then there is one unit which is there to fight you in combat but is a glass hammer so it has to smash you off or it's probably dead.
  6. So assume the typical backstory about playing as a kid, dropping it for beer & girls, getting a grown up job & life, stopping with beers & girls and finding myself a little bit bored & with spare time on my hands. I started back up around 2006 from memory, which would entirely make sense, out of uni I spent a couple of years working out what the hell I wanted to do with my life bouncing around a few jobs, then spent 3 years getting an accountancy qualification. This put me in my late 20s and sports etc had started to tail off from my previous 4-5 days a week and I had free time to fill. At this time in my life I lived on my own and I didn't own a TV. I got into 2 hobbies around then: 1. Online gaming - COD4 mostly, a bit of battlefront after that tailed off but I wasnt really wired for it 2. Painting models I didn't start gaming until 2009, so for the first couple of years it was just painting figs because I wanted to paint figs. This was me just picking up an old army and painting up all the remaining models I had still sitting around unpainted because I never got rid of my collection. I think what kicked me into gaming again was splitting up with my partner of the time. I now had all my weekends free with no commitments and a painted army, so figured why not give these tournament things a go. So I then spent the next few years smashing through a bunch of tournaments (I think I topped out at around 10 in a year at the highest) and then painting up new armies to open up different playstyles for me. But the main thing has always been I still enjoy painting the models. As I said I'm a qualified accountant and was working pretty long hours at times in what is considered a reasonably stressful environment and I found painting helped me unwind and relax after work. I then got myself down the road of trying to collect every single army for WFB so my collection grew rapidly but I was always painting too, so I ended up at 11 painted WFB armies when WFB got blown up. For AoS that 'catch em all' mentality doesn't really fit, so I've stopped trying to get them all and sold some off now. But I'm still painting to relax and I'm starting to enjoy trying to paint to a slightly higher standard. I'm not at competition painter levels yet and don't know if I'll ever get there but I think I'd like to see if I can paint an army or two up to the best army level as my next objective. So painting is to relax but I've also started to stretch myself with it too and to expand what I can create & learn as I do so. And it's that learning part which I'm enjoying more than anything else.
  7. So like virtually everyone else I've been working on Nurgle. First up was a couple of trees, yeah I'll need a bunch more, but it was a starter for 10 to get me going, I don't want to overbuy on them. Following on from that I started with adding Rotigus to my existing Nurgle stuff. This model is a joy to paint. You can do it with a basecoate & wash and it will look pretty decent, you can then spend as much time as you want pushing the shadows & highlights further and get all the cool effects you want, picking out details and basically doing fun stuff with the model.
  8. Models don't excite me as much as the other warbands, probably because they're not significantly different from the AOS ones on the whole. Leader is cool tho.
  9. So the only tournament I'm currently signed up to for 2018 is GW Heat 2 which is mid April. I've got a few armies I could choose between to take: Sylvaneth - Dreadwood, painted it at the end of last year but still not played a game with it. Blades of Khorne - I've got a reasonably chunky khorne army, I enjoy playing them but it's mostly an infantry horde so not the most interesting visual spectacle. Maggotkin - Triple GUO would be the list I'd like to play but currently I use a non-GW model for one of my GUO so would need to buy and paint another just for this event. Skaven - I've got a pretty hefty Skaven army, so could put something together. Might encourage me to paint up a handful of models I've had sat for a few months that I should really get round to doing. Moonclan - An army I really enjoy playing but the basic grots aren't painted terribly well, I would probably want to put some effort into making them look better. Tomb Kings - They'll be quite a unique army, can't imagine too many people will run them these days. Not terribly well painted however. I don't want to take a top competitive list, playing that way isn't of interest to me right now. But I also don't want to get crushed into the dirt every single game. What I'm trying to decide around is more relating to whether I try to take an army and try to get myself a painting nomination. Most of my armies are nicely painted but I don't think they quite hit those heady heights so I'd definitely have to put a little more effort into trying to push their quality a little further.
  10. So I posted up my intentions for 2018 and you know what wasn't in there despite having seen the preview pics, Nurgle, but you know what is now in my to do list... Nurgle. That said it's not an awful lot that I need to add to my army, currently I own the following nurgle stuff all painted up: 1 Exalted Great Unclean One (FW model) 1 Great Unclean One (Alternative Plague Daemon nurle from Mierce) 1 Herald of Nurgle 30 Plaguebearers 3 Nurglings 6 Plague Drones 7 Beasts of Nurgle That by itself does not make a 2000pts force. So what I'm looking at is a fun excuse to run my big monsters and the reviews by Facehammer & The Black Sun (Chris Tomlin) discussed a Battalion using 3 Great Unclean Ones and that just sounds like ace fun and a good excuse to get my big gribbies on the table. This lead me to the following list: eGUO 500 GUO 340 Rotigus 340 (new special character GUO) Battalion 160 30 Plaguebearers 320 5 Blight Kings 160 5 Blight Kings 160 Total 1990 The list is 10pts away from what I'd wanted which was to be able to drop 5 Blight Kings down to Nurgle Chaos Warriors and then have 100pts for a summoning pool available. The alternative I've been considering is dropping the exalted down to just a regular GUO (given the new GUO is bigger it doesn't feel very special anymore so would assume people will not be too upset by this). That then frees up 160pts, so I can then drop the blight kings to warriors giving me 230pts, which could become Festus because I love his model and have it sat waiting to do and also he has some tasty rules, plus gives me access to the rotbringer spell that makes 6's mortal wounds to basically turn the plaguebearers into an offensive unit as well as defensive. The second list just feels a lot more rounded and means I can actually use the contagion points for something other than trees but it's not using the eGUO as what it is that is always something I'm wary of doing.
  11. There was the original poster that showed a bunch of models with the page broken up like shattered glass. It had 2 so far unmentioned factions pictured in Stormcast Hunters & Blood Warriors.
  12. I predict daily updates will fall off relatively soon. Is your project 365 based on 365 hours or models, I've seen people do both, looks like models? FWIW I tend to only log things per month and run a +/- swing against the run rate of 1/day. There will always be periods where you're working on large complex model, go on holiday, family stuff, etc etc that gets in the way, so you generally don't track along at a regular rate. These lulls are then offset by things like a unit of 30 basic dudes where you suddenly chunk out a whole month's worth of figs in a single lump. Hope you find it motivational to do, it's always something I've enjoyed having a log of but it's not a specific target for me this year.
  13. Only it's not all that you painted in that picture. Where are the stack and stacks of terrain! Loved hearing about those Lords of Change, sounded like you came up with a great process and smashed them out the park.
  14. I’ve included a pretty significant pre-ramble setting out how I’ve come to my goals as much as anything I needed to run through this process to get everything square in my mind. Gaming: 2017 saw a bit of a change of mentality in my gaming. AOS: I started off the year with my usual focus on attending events and running competitive armies (TK at Firestorm Fours, Order Gunline at Heat 2) with an eye to prep for the 6 Nations in June. Then due to ‘real life’ TM it all went on hold and the last 2 day event I attended was Heat 2 in April and I stepped down from the 6 nations. As a result I’ve been playing down the club a lot more and had less desire to run cutting edge lists. I think what I need to find is the lists I enjoy the most and just stick to them. Currently I’m going to try out a Moonclan list. I didn’t run them loads last year but when I did they were a lot of fun. I’m signed up to heat 2 but I would not be surprised if this is the only event I go to this year. I might attend some 1 dayers if they’re local but I’ll only be travelling further afield for social weekends not caring about the gaming. Guild Ball: If I’m honest I think the writing is on the wall despite the competitive scene seeming to be booming right now with events selling out in minutes and the world championships doubling in size (more countries not just doubling through on those already playing). I don’t see where the game can go from where it is now, given what SFG have committed to, that will make it better and without growing/changing it won’t bring in new players. But I’m not a game designed and I didn’t in the slightest forsee the AOS rewrite being as awesome as it has been. Last year I suffered from: 1) Not playing regularly 2) Switching teams frequently I find that I can’t play GB without playing it relatively competitively. The game frustrates me when I make silly mistakes because you get punished hard for them. Therefore I think I need to stop jumping around between teams and just play something repeatedly. I’m going to give it a few months as there is a really cool group of locals who I enjoy playing with but if the game continues to frustrate me then I may start to step away from it. I’ve been a pundit for 3 years and run 3-4 events per year so the important thing for me would be to hand that on if I do decide to stop. Shadespire: It was a late addition to my gaming but one which I’ve loved. The nature of the game makes this less of a tabletop wargame and much more a board game/CCG. It turns out that I love board/CC games when done well! I can’t see how you don’t play this game competitively either but unless they ridiculously accelerate the release schedule then I don’t think I should have an issue with that. There is a clear end game in that the cards are numbered (x/437) so there is a finite cap on what is ‘Shadespire’ (note the game is actually called Warhammer Underworlds and Shadespire is just setting/series within that, so they can release future sets should the choose). Other Games: I played next to nothing else (actually I think it was nothing else) despite having a bunch of other miniature games all painted and ready to play. There are a couple of reasons for it: 1) Interest in games 2) Available opponents 3) Available time Some games like Saga simply don’t interest me to play these days. The people, models & game system are cool but it just doesn’t speak to me. Others like 30k/40l or Bolt Action I don’t want to spend the time learning a new ruleset and integrating into a new playgroup at the moment. I’d need to fully drop AOS/Guild Ball before this would become an option. Others Like Malifaux and Epic I know there are a few people playing but I’d have to put the hard yards in to find the players to play it and relearn the rules and get back up to speed. As a result they’re of no interest to me. I’ve sunk time into trying to get GB ticking along in the local area, I can see enough players now going that it seems to be holding up and others are now starting to run events but I’ve not got the time/energy to put that into another game right now. Modelling/Painting by Game: 30k: Sell everything. I’m never gonna play it because they’re sticking with 7th edition ruleset and I’ve not got time for that in my life. 40k: Realistically will I ever play the game – probably not. Do I want to paint the Eldar army I have in boxes… Maybe, I’ve had it for at least 7 years and painted very little, it’s probably a sensible time to commit one way or the other. WM&H: I’m definitely never going to play this game. I have a pretty large unpainted Mercenaries army. I do actually quite enjoy painting these though on the rare occasions I turn my hands to it. Commit to painting or offload, no idea what is a ‘good’ force in the game these days so just paint what I like. Relic Knights: Another dead game for me. Just a case of do I care to paint up the rest of the Doctorine faction or do I just pick a unit out as and when it takes my fancy. I do need to sell off the other faction I have and don’t care for (Cerci). Darklands: Gamewise this is clearly dead in the water. Rulebook was overly complex and most of the people I know who were playing have moved on. That said I really like the models and enjoy painting them. I’m going to continue to paint up the stuff which I have, there is the option to use these in other games. Still waiting on a load coming through from old old kickstarters. Guildball: I’m pretty close to owning all the factions, so most likely I’ll do this in 2018. Question is what’s next. GB is in an interesting place for me. The core game I’ve always loved but I can see where it’s developers SFG can only realistically do so much more with the game before it basically falls over due to model bloat/loss of faction identity. That said the remaining investment for me to be ‘complete’ is relatively small, so I’m happy to plow on with getting them all built & painted (about 30 models outstanding). Shadespire: This game has grabbed me, so as a result I want to stay close to the releases and pick everything up. The bonus of Shadespire is that each release is only 3-7 models per box so keeping up isn’t difficult and I want to buy them for the cards anyway. AoS: It’s been my main game system for years but I’m increasingly becoming less fussed with it. This comes down to time rather than not liking the game or the background. I’m definitely trying to pare down my collection and avoid buying new factions in the name of chasing the competitive meta. RESOLUTIONS 1) Continue to downsize the unpainted mound – I’ve done a reasonable job of not buying new stuff this year but I should continue to clear out the old stuff I don’t want/use. I’d done an ‘easy’ cut of this in 2017 selling off some of the really old projects that were complete armies but I’ve still got plenty more that can go: Kharadron Overlords – painted the core of an army just need to add about 15 of the flying bubble dudes and I’ve got the standard netlist. Once painted I’m quite likely to sell it as the playstyle looks dull. Stormcast Eternals – I have an army in boxes, I just need to get it all painted up. Could be a fun army but they’re so common and I like different, so I’ll probably sell it. Seraphon – An old army that I can flip over to AOS now they have some decent abilities for the game. Don’t need to paint much to have an army complete and then I can sell it off as again I have little desire to play them. Deathlords – I’ve had this in a box for about 15 months now. The models are big and cool, I definitely want to get round to painting them, I’ve just been too focused on painting stuff for gaming to get to it. Hopefully my slowdown on AOS will finally allow me to do this. Don’t see this as a play army but as a ‘looks cool’ army. Skaven – Have an army painted but have a bunch of models I’d like to add to it. 3 more Stormfiends, Thanquol & Boneripper, Verminlord Deceiver. 2) Continue to sell off unused painted models (Still got multiple AOS armies to shift and really should get rid of more of the older WFB stuff I’m still sat upon). 3) Buy & paint all new Shadespire warbands (I’ll be buying for the cards anyway so I want to try and keep on top of the models) 4) Focus down on gaming – In 2017 I committed to cutting back to just 2-3 game systems: AoS, Guild Ball & Shadespire. In 2018 I want to return to ‘git gud’ principles and focus on playing the same faction for a large chunk of the year until I’m actually playing it well instead of flitting about constantly and being frustrated that I’m losing games I feel I should win. Note this doesn’t really mean gaming more, but when I game not constantly swapping. 5) Paint at least 1 high quality monster (last 2 years I've done this and really enjoyed it, should do more than 1 but I always get stuck in army projects).
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