Gathering of Might - Massive oldhammer undead vs Empire and Dwarf Battle

 

The game was about 5000 points per side. In the red corner weighing in at several pounds of chunky painted lead was old 90s Nagash who was being backed up by a number of mighty Sylvanian Vampires. Across the table was the allied forces of Dwarf and Empire being led into battle by the Elector Count Marius Leitdorf of Averland together with his illegitimate son Ned Neederlander who was bearing the army battle standard. The Dwarf force as ever was led by the largely undefeated Drong the Hard. Many cannons were also in attendance.

Every single model was fully painte which was over 400 models!. The Vampire Counts and Averland Empire are my armies. My brother Ed (BerserkerBlade Blog) was fielding the Dwarf and Tomb King sides.

In fact, it was so many models, I had to reduce the scenery significantly to make space for the number of units compared to what I would normally use!

Now, there's no way I could battle report on this whole thing. In fact it took about 7 hours just to play it to a reasonable conclusion - and that was moving pretty quickly, but I wanted to record the event. I rarely do a battle this big, and a lot of the fun is the spectacle!

Marius is shown above in a rather costly unit of knights. I was just able to finish the Imperial battle Standard in time for the game - I have named him Ned Neederlander and have a bit of a back story going on where he is the illegitimate son of Marius Leitdorf- or possible his nephew. Nobody knows whether Marius or his brother Wilhelm  Leitdorf (my other general) sired the child one drunken night in a tavern. The one thing we do know is that he's embarrassing for the family and they've been trying to kill him off ever since by giving him a big flag and a horn and sending him off down the front!

The first shot of the game from the flame cannon roasted about a dozen skeletons! Ed holds the template in place over Nagash's unit as the war begins!

Of course, the undead weren't defenceless. Vampire Bats saw off some of the artillery and return fire from a trio of Screaming Skull Catapults put a dent in a few too!

The Steam Tank ran rampant - running over skeletons while fighting with its own malfunctioning boiler! At T10, it proved very hardy until a Vampire Lord with a double handed weapon started putting dents in it!

A near miss for the undead - Nagash faced Marius in the middle of the field. NAGASH IS A juggernaut of power, but Marius charged with a full 7 frenzied attacks. Needing 4+ to hit and then 6s to wound it didn't look good, bit the Runefang was with him and he scored 2 wounds which doubled into 4 wounds on the Lord of the Undead! Unfortunately, on Nagash's turn he healed the 4 wounds back, but for a moment he was almost toppled by the Elector Count! 

In the end, Nagash proved pretty unstoppable. The Slayers held up one end of the field well, but the undead tool the victory and pushed harder towards Averheim.

Let's hope Marius and Drong escaped somehow to fight another day!

Warhammer Empire - Averland Army

Continuing the army showcases, today we have my old Empire army. This force has come together in quite interesting ways, as Empire models are now incredibly expensive to get hold of, so I had to be a bit cunning about waht to buy. Some models are still available from Games Workshop as they have been amalgamated into Age of Sigmar's free cities, so the Helblaster was easy to find, but most other things took a bit of effort. Handily, I was given a load of old Battlemasters models. I hadn't actually heard of Battlemasters before last year's forray into old fantasy. Essentially it's an old board game made with GW intellectual property that featured a range of pretty good plastic sculpts. In this army, the halberdiers, kinghts and crossbowmen are all Battlemasters sculpts.

I remember when the first pikes came out for Dogs of War when I was younger and how exciting it was to have a new weapon in the game. If you're not familiar with old fantasy, it would probably seem strange to think that at the time there were about a dozen weapons in the game shared between all armies (two hand weapons, hand weapons, double handed weapons, spears, halberds), so something new was really exciting. The pike regiment are Landsknechts by Warlord Games. I'm really impresed with the models, and I've been using them as an allied in regiment in games using the dogs of war rules. Pikes are mean too - fighting with 4 ranks is brutal when it's not uncommon for a unit to attack with only one rank. Actually, the pikes do have an interesting thing in there - my first paper bnner in a very long time! It turns out that the secret is to varnish the paper a few times before you start painting to stop it from curling up. 

The crossbows from the Battlemasters set are pretty good, but their bows have very triangular ends, so I shaved down the bow part to make them look better. Their faces are a bit lacking in detail too, but they do the job, and I like the feathers.

Handguns (below) are from the 6th edition box set. I'm not really a fan of the more modern plastics as I think the proportions for these guys are better. Handguns are a real mixed bag in old fantasy, as they only fire every other turn. With 2 ranks, you can fire them every turn by slowly rolling them forward, so a rank shoot each turn. In theory, I still think they're pretty shite, but being as they decimated a whole unit of Orcs in their first game, I can't complain too much. 

There are a few metal characters in the force - with a Knights Panther Grandmaster model being used as my general, metal wizard (below) and a Reiksguard captain leading the halberdiers. I was happy with the patterning on the Wizard's barding. I've done some patterning and stripes throughout the force and have been quite happy with the results. It's a lot of work though as I'm painting the yellow over a black undercoat. My one tip is that Balor Brown makes a good base for yellow as there's nothing brown about it and it's basically Averland Sunset, but is easier to apply!

I think the army is at about 1200 points so far, but 1500 is pretty close, as my planned list involves adding a great cannon and Outriders, all of which are built and 2 outriders are already finished. There's also a Steam Tank in the works. 

 

Warhammer - Empire Helblaster Volley Gun, Averland

Just a quick post today to share a few pictures of this Empire Helblaster that I've painted up. I started working on this thing just after finishing the Skaven force that I shared last week. This is actually a more modern model and is the current plastic edition of the gun. I've painted it in black and yellow, which is the colours for Averland. I wanted a punchy scheme that was going to be relatively easy to apply. 

Despite just painting a bunch of Skaven in yellow and black, these guys are painted in the reverse order - with the black areas applied first and then the yellows layered on top. With more black than yellow to get through, it just made sense. I've always had a soft spot for Helblasters ever since I was young and used to stare at the pictures in the old 5th Edition Battle Book for endless hours. 

It has been a great source of amusement that for some reason, one of the crewmen came out with more than a slight resemblance to Owen Wilson. Maybe it's just the way the hair is painted, but I now know the perfect head if someone wants to recreated Shanghai Noon in a tabletop game! 

Owen Wilson struggles to work out what to do with his ram-rod thingy...

That about rounds it out for this one. I have some really ancient Battle Masters Empire sculpts that my brother recently gave to me that will be forming the backbone of the force. They're old single-pose models from a pre-historic time. I'll be interested to see how decent or not I can make them look with a proper paint job.