Lovely paintjob
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Thanks. I appreciate it 
For some reason, GW never seemed to produce a complete command team to go with their 92 goblin range. They did make three standard bearers, but no musician or official champion.
If you look at contemporary pictures, the studio armies seem to have either gone without the musician and used one of the more heavily armored “normal” goblin troopers as champion, or simply used some of the older command figures.
I did mostly the same thing, being mainly constrained by what I was able to get my hands on. The musician is definitely a late 80’s citadel figure (seen here: Goblin Spearmen / Goblin Command Group) , but I haven’t been able to find pictures of the other two. They do look a lot like Kev Adams goblins from the era though.
For those of you keeping count (probably noone), this marks my second ever “full” 20 figure unit. It’s only about a fourth of the points compared to the Chrof warriors though.
The family and I are going off on vacation in a few days, so this blog will go on a short hiatus. Hope everyone has a good summer.
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Worthy of a White Dwarf feature - looks amazing! Dripping with 90s nostalgia 
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Thanks, you are very kind. I do keep finding small mistakes whenever I look at them, but I guess that’s just human nature 
Overall though, I’m quite happy with the result. Just 15 more to go before I have the amount I want, but I’ll take a short break and paint something else first 
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I’ve been doing a bit of digging into the (small) mystery of where exactly the figures in my goblin command team are from.
As mentioned previously, the musician is a later “C”-series citadel goblin. He’s actually named Dimbo Ear-trumpet, if you can believe it.
The standard bearer is an Iron claw goblin. The knobbly legs tipped me off - they are very typical of Bob Ollys work.
Last but not least, the champion (who really is just a normal goblin in armor) is a Marauder MM30/3 goblin
I acutally got him with one of the old Marauder plastic shields, which I suppose should have clued me in, but I switched it for a smaller citadel one, as I thought it fit the figure better.
So there you have it. Three miniatures from three different brands, all though they would all be absorbed in the main fantasy line by the early 90’s, so I think its appropriate to keep them together here as well.
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I’m back from vacation, more or less, and painting again.
There’s another Warhammer Renaissance event by October. I don’t know the format, but assuming it’s going to be 1200 points again, I just need to paint two bolt throwers to have my revised army list ready.
However, while away, I got a couple of invitations to various games - all of them at higher point values, and all of them leaving me just a couple of days to paint whatever I needed. This obviously meant going for the most points-dense unit I could get hold of, i.e. Bull Centaurs.
I didn’t actually manage to finish them in time, but as it turned out I could only find time for one of the games (the missus started giving me “the look” when I suggested going away for several consecutive days and leaving her alone with the kids for the final part of our summer vacation), and that was a 2000 point 7th edition game (using the Ravening Hordes list), so I had to field several other unpainted units as well.
This was a small gathering and I paired off against a Skaven army. Amusingly, my opponent had brought a very “elite” (by Skaven standard) army, so I both had more units and more actual troops than the rats.
I advanced in the center under cover of heavy artillery fire from my Earthshaker and Death Rocket. These didn’t cause too many casualties, but were very effective at slowing down the Skaven and, crucially, shut down a large unit of Jezzail and some kind of plaque trebuchet (don’t know the name) with the Earthshakers special ability.
My cavalry advanced on the left and, after some skirmishing with a couple of rat swarms, charged into the unit containing the Screaming Bell and Grey Seer. Here, the Bull Centaurs killed the rat sorcerer, but were themselves cut down in turn, which caused the Hobgoblin Wolf riders to flee off the table. The Skaven unit then continued forward and attacked my Blunderbusses. These were beaten and fled, but rallied on the next turn and the Screaming Bell unit had to charge them again to finish the job.
On my right flank, a unit of Gutter Runners appeared on turn three. I had stationed my Hobgoblin Hero there to guard the war machines, but he was cut down by a hail of shuriken. At the same time, the Screaming Bell tolled and blew up the Death Rocket along with a couple of nearby buildings.
My Hobgoblin Archers turned to face the Gutter runners, but were swiftly cut down.
The earthshaker got off another shot at the Screaming Bell, but only hit a couple of clanrats before the Bell struck again and blew up the Earthshaker.
Meanwhile, I continued forward in the center. My Sorcerer lord flew behind the Skaven line and killed a ratling gun and the Rat ogre Pack Master in the magic phase. The presence of the Lammasu also caused the Storm Vermin to flee - right into my waiting Black Orcs.
With no one to guide them (and under the influence of a Death Spell which gave them minus 3 to leadership), the Rat Ogres failed their stupidity test and slowly lumbered forward. This let me charge them and drive them off.
Meanwhile, my goblins and a unit of chaos dwarfs took care of a unit of clan rats while my Sorcerer Lord charged and drove off the plague trebuchet .
In the end, we didn’t tally up points, but it was quite clear that I’d won by a fair margin. Not too bad considering that I’ve never played 7th before.
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Any comments on the effectiveness of blunder buses?
Well, first and foremost that I haven’t yet learned to use them optimally 
In the Warhammer Renaissance tournament (where they can’t move and shoot), they absolutely helped me win the first game, but then practically did nothing for the next three games. That’s more on me though, as I made a series of positioning mistakes.
When using the Ravening hordes list, they can at least move and shoot, which makes them much easier to handle, but I didn’t maneuver them very well in that game and only managed to kill a couple of clan rats before they got steamrolled. They did hold up my opponent’s most expensive unit for two turns though, so on balance they probably did as well as you could hope for.
My experience so far is that their psychological impact alone will make the enemy allocate resources to dealing with them. The trick then is to make sure that you get more out of that deal than they do, and that’s not totally easy.
I currently field them as a very small unit, so even taking a single casualty reduces the strength of their volley from S5 to S4, so going for a unit of, say, 15 might be an idea.
Other than that, I really think they are best used to bottleneck some crucial part of the battlefield. Make sure that their flanks are covered and that they aren’t facing something that will just shoot them from further away, and the enemy will have to think very seriously about how to get past that particular obstacle.
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Even though I don’t have a game lined up in the immediate future, and they aren’t part of my “revised 1200 point army” plan, I figured I might as well finish the Bull Centaurs now that I’d gotten a start on them anyway.
I’ve kept their color scheme in line with the original ‘Eavy metal one, which is basically the same at the Chorf warriors, but with black-and-yellow tunics and more elaborate headpieces. I think they look good.
I’m also using their bodies as a testing ground for the Great Taurus I’m going to have to paint at some point down the line. I wanted to differentiate their “natural” red skin from the armor, so I started from a reddish brown and worked up to orange from there. It is perhaps still a bit too naturalistic, but I think I can make it even redder by adding a coat of ink somewhere in the process. For now, they get to stay as they are.
I have an Epic: Armageddon tournament coming up in September, and a few practice games leading into it, so right now I’m prioritizing an Ork Landa and warband that I need to paint up (Goff colors), but after that I have my battery of Hobgoblin Bolt Throwers lined up for painting.
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This is very helpful, thank you. I’ve got 16 now painted up so I might have some flexibility. I agree with the psychological effect point.
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I’ve more or less painted all the epic units I need for the moment, so it’s time to get back to the fantasy stuff.
I said I’d move on to the hobgoblin bolt throwers next, but upon further thought, that doesn’t get me much closer to a fully painted 2000 point army, and I don’t really need them before the next Warhammer Renaissance event (planned for october 26th).
The totally responsible thing to do would be to go for 10 additional Chorf warriors, so that I can better field the three required units under 6th/7th edition rule, but I really fancied painting something else, so I picked up my black orcs instead. I’ve gotten some training painting checkerboard for the epic goffs, so I might as well put those skills to use.
First step was to pick a good flesh tone. I went for a Nostalgia ‘94 “Dark Cherub Green” (any resemblance to other paint names is coincidental. This blog does not claim ownership over any copyrighted brand names #pleasedontsueme ).
The other Nostalgia ‘94 paints I’ve tried have all felt slightly weird to paint with, but after two layers they have certainly produced some clean and extremely bright results over a white undercoat (see the green and red on my goblin unit for reference). This one also has a nice color, but it applies very unevenly. Here’s an example after two layers:
I tried a Vallejo Deep Green on a second figure, but that’s too light. I then painted a layer of Dark Cherub Green over the Deep green, but that just came up patchy, and is still too light.
Finally, I tried a Deep Green mixed with black on a third, which is much more even but a bit too bluish for my tastes.
Finally I just gave up and went back to pure Dark Cherub Green for the final three of the first batch. It’s the color I like best and I’m hoping to even it out a little as I apply highlights. Well see…
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The first batch of black orcs are done.
These were a surprisingly big hurdle to get over, for a variety of reasons.
As mentioned previously, I struggled to get the skin right. I do think they eventually ended up in a decent place, but it took a long time to get there.
Secondly, I tried to copy the original box art and all though the color scheme is very simple, there’s just a lot of actual detail to the figures. Partially, this is probably simply because the figures are very large, which means there’s a lot to be painted, but I also think the sculptor (Alan Perry, if I’m not mistaken) managed to get a lot of fine detail into these, relatively early, plastic sculpts. I also had to do a bit of free hand checkerboard, which takes time.
I’ve already started on another six (including musician and standard), but after that I’ll move on to something else. Maybe the last four wolf riders I need to field a legal unit of those under 6th/7th ed rules.
I’ll eventually bring the black orc regiment up to 15 (with big boss), but I don’t think I’ll necessarily move past that. They are elite troops after all.
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It’s certainly been a while, hasn’t it?
The next six black orcs are finally done, but it took me much longer than I’d hoped, for two major reasons.
The first reason is just general life-stuff getting in the way. Work has been busy, I had to go on a business trip for a week, the kids have been sick and so on. I also went an Epic: Armageddon tournament a couple of weeks ago, which sorta took up that whole weekend.
Secondly, these were simply an unparalleled pain in the rear to paint. I went over some of the reasons for this in the previous two posts, and the same still holds true. The skin is difficult to get right, there are a lot of detail to the minis (and the metal ones are, predictably, even worse than the plastics), and freehanding checkerboard takes time.
That last part (painting checkerboard) is really exacerbated when having to do so on uneven or curved surfaces like the drummer’s cross strap and the banner. My standard-bearer had lost the top of the banner pole, so I used one of the newer plastic ones and tried to free-hand paint my best approximation of the original design.
Here’s another nice little detail I hadn’t noticed before; a human-skin drum. Kinda gnarly really.
I dearly love these models – to me they represent peak GW orkishness – but I really, really don’t fancy painting any more right now.
In any case, a couple of my last ones, including the Big Boss, have had their weapons broken off at some point in the past and need to be pinned and glued back together, so I couldn’t do it right away even if I wanted to. Consequently, they get to stay as a unit of 12 for the moment, even though I want to bring them to a unit of at least 15 at some point.
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Phenomenal work! Really enjoying following along.
Also, I’m sure it must’ve been tempting to paint nipples on that drum; you demonstrate admirable restraint. 
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Oh no… that’s totally a mental image I’ll never be able to get out of my head 
Lets just imagine that it’s the skin of a nipple-less mutant. Yes, that’s better
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Never thought about it that way
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The final four hobgoblin wolf riders are done. Well, I technically have 10 more lying around, but that’s for another time. At the moment I’m happy with my single unit of 10.
I normally wouldn’t use such a large unit, but using the 6th/7th Ed Ravening Hordes list, you have to, so there you have it.
At this point, I’m fairly certain I could technically field a fully painted 2000 point army under any of the three lists I’m concerned with (Ravening Hordes, The Old World and Warhammer: Renaissance), but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop at this moment. Thing is, I would have to use one of the characters on a large monster, neither of which I’ve painted myself and both of which are fairly poorly painted. I’d also generally only be able to field my army in one configuration.
Consequently, I’m going to press on. I need another 10 Chorf warriors, if I don’t want to be forced to field three units of 10 under the Ravening Hordes list, and I’d like to strip and repaint one of the monsters. At the moment I’m leaning towards the Great Taurus, but do let me know if you think that’s a mistake.
I’ve signed up to a painting challenge over the next seven months (Gathering of Mighty Painters), where I’m doing Groms Goblin Horde from the 4th Ed Core set. This mostly isn’t relevant to this blog, so I won’t spend too much time on it, but it will take up some of my painting time. I still do think I’ll be able to finish my 2000 point army before new years, which would be nice.
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Hello,
I’m going to another Warhammer: Renaissance tournament this weekend.
It will be a team tournament, with each player using an 800-point army and teaming up with another player to form combined armies of 1600 points. Winds of magic cards are shared, and each team can only bring one copy of each magic item, but everything else is unique to the player.
I’m teaming up with an empire player. Generally, good armies had to team up with good armies and evil with evil, but we were the odd ones out, so we were given an exemption. The story is that my cunning Chorfs are raiding the eastern Empire and have duped a disenfranchised imperial noble into believing that they are simply good Dwarves out to settle a grudge.
“Goblins you say? Those are obviously slaves that we use as cannon fodder [This isn’t actually a lie - Ed]. Everyone knows that dwarves hate greenskins, so that makes total sense, nothing to see here, move along please”. 
Anyway, my partner is bringing a fairly hard-hitting army of mostly knights and Reiksguard on foot, so I’m acting as the more defensive part of the army. Here’s my list:
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Once again, I ended up being quite busy with life-things, so I haven’t had the time to do a write-up on the recent tournament until now.
Just to recap: This was a Warhammer: Renaissance team tournament. Each player brought an 800 point army and teamed up with another player for three two-v-two games…
My allies were an empire army consisting of a mounted general, a unit of mounted Reiksguard, a unit of foot Reiksguard and a great cannon. I’ll note immediately that the cannon didn’t manage to fire a single shot all day, as my teammate kept rolling misfires. Ouch.
I fielded a somewhat more rounded force, led by Azurhazutpal, my level 3 sorcerer.
My army
Our first game was against another Chorf army and a wight/wraith-based undead army. Scenario was “take the village” (i.e. the three buildings).
Apologies for the excessively blurry image - it was the least bad one I was able to find.
Our basic plan was for our empire detachment to stall the undead while I advanced and took up position in and around the buildings.
This generally succeeded beyond what we’d hoped. My Death Rocket got off a very precise hit on the enemy bull centaur unit in turn one, which killed the general (failed his “look out sir” roll) and caused the unit to flee.
My own hobgoblins were stalled by a hit from the enemy Earthshaker, but my warriors and goblin spearmen moved ahead.
With the most hard-hitting enemy Chorf unit out of the way, the main threat was the undead. That player had brought three level 1 wizards with dark magic. He was mainly hoping to get a spell that transforms the caster into a chimera, but there’s a lot of other nasty stuff in the deck as well. However, my own level 3 managed to pretty much shut them down in the magic phase. I don’t remember the exact chain of events, but through a mix of “destroy magic” and “mental duel” winds of magic cards, I actually managed to make all three incapable of casting magic at all, which left me free to lob fire at the enemy.
In the end, my teammate managed to stay out of combat the entire game while stalling the undead, and after some tough fighting I held one building and contested another, which netted us 800 VP’s plus points for kills for a convincing win.
Second game was “take the tower” against high elves and dwarves.
Warhammer: Renaissance uses blind deployment. We’d figured that the elves would deploy on our right where there was a lot of open ground for their cavalry, but as it turned out, they deployed opposite me on the left. This didn’t bother me so much, as I could use the denser terrain to guard my flank, but I was a bit concerned about dealing with a large unit of dragon princes, complete with general and mage.
I needn’t have worried, as my death rocket maintained its MVP status by scoring a direct hit on the unit in turn one (the characters did make their “look out sir” rolls this time). This caused two wounds, which was enough to cause a panic test. The general then failed the test and the entire unit promptly fled off the board. Our opponents took this much more gracefully than I would have.
You would have thought that this early triumph would have secured a win, and for a couple of turns we did have the upper hand. I had a great time lobbing fiery hell at the enemy while my teammate got to charge his knights into a unit of dwarf thunderers, which they defeated and overran.
But then the dwarf flame cannon scored a direct hit on the knights and killed a couple. This forces a panic test which they also failed, and because they’d followed the thunderers right up to the board edge, they then fled off as well, which put the game back on equal footing. So much for knights.
Following this, the combat devolved into an infantry melee around the tower. Here the dwarfs (especially the troll slayers) proved to be superior, and managed to push the Reiksguard on Foot out and subsequently rout them along with my goblins.
In a last effort to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, I cast Eruption on the tower, which would destroy it, along with everyone inside, on a roll of 4+. The first time I tried, it didn’t work, but then, for the very last roll of the game, I got the spell off in the last magic phase and rolled a 5. Boom!!!
This secures us a narrow victory as no one could claim bonus VP from the objective.
This game absolutely turned out to be the highlight of the day, and was probably amongst the best games of warhammer I’ve ever played.
If the second game was one of the most fun games I’ve ever played, the third… wasn’t.
Our opponents were chaos daemons and chaos warriors (both Tzeentch themed), and it could probably best be characterized as a “tournament list”. Both forces were very maneuverable and heavily focused on blasting away with magic, bound spells and ranged attacks, which led to some very uinteractive games against more balanced forces, including ours. It didn’t help that our dice completely failed us the entire game (even my trusty death rocket couldn’t hit anything).
Long story short, by the end of the first round, it was quite clear that we wouldn’t win the game. In the end the game went into the 6th round (you roll at the end of 5th to see if you play a last round), which meant that we almost got tabled, for a 9-1 defeat. A 5-round game would have been somewhat closer, as we lost both our generals and some other stuff in that last round.
This was a “gentleman’s tournament” and bringing this sort of over-optimized armies is generally frowned upon. I honestly don’t think that the two chaos players intended to spoil it, but between wanting to try something new and possibly stumbling over some very powerful combinations when combining army lists in the way we did, that’s the end result. They predictably won the tournament with 23 against 17 to the second place. My teammate and I placed third with 13 points.
Both players were actually quite pleasant opponents and they seemed somewhat embarrassed about the situation (all three of their games had gone in a similar way), so I don’t think they plan to repeat it.
Anyway, despite this last game not being the most enjoyable, the overall tournament was good fun. I don’t know that the format for the next gathering will be, but I very much look forward to it.
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