Samurai Cavalry! (in plastic!)

Super excited about seeing these guys from Wargames Factory

Samurai Cavalry

Totally messes up my plan for purchasing a fantasy army though.  I was going to use my Bretonnian knights as Dogs of War heavy cavalry but with these figures out I might try and build a straight samurai army.  Kind of a shame as I really liked the viking huscarl figures but I can't figure a way to include them and samurai in the same army.
Even using dogs of war I would most likely end up using a majority of the Rising Sun line (the ashigaru spearmen look like great pikemen) and having one or two units of bearded viking marauders would look out of place I think.

So my revised plan would be the following
Samurai cavalry to represent Dogs of War heavy cavalry or Empire knightly orders
Ashigaru spearmen to represent Dogs of War pikemen or Empire spearmen
Ashigaru muskets/archers to represent Dogs of War crossbowmen or Empire handgunners/archers
Samurai Warriors to represent Dogs of War paymaster bodyguard/Empire swordsmen or greatswords
I could add artillery if I can get my hands on some 28mm cannons for cheap and crew them with any extra ashigaru.

Thought about using the figures to proxy a high elf army but the high elf rules seems only appropriate for samurai and not ashigaru.  The empire or dogs of war books seem more appropriate, maybe warriors of chaos but the warriors lack ranged weaponry.

Anyways, need to toss around some 2000-2500 point lists with a few books and see which one results in the cheapest competitive army using the Rising Sun line.

The Price of Gaming (Games Workshop Style)

It's probably common knowledge to anyone who plays wargames that Games Workshop is increasing prices again.  I kind of understand the business side of things and totally understand that this is a hobby so it's not like raising the price on food, but still it is kind of depressing to see a hobby get more and more expensive.  Especially so when extra funds are limited and when I want to get back into Warhammer Fantasy gaming.

One fortunate thing about Fantasy games though is that there are a lot of companies out there that produce fantasy figures at a much reduced price compared to GWs.  GW (in my view) kind of has the futuristic grimdark setting monopoly (no other company could produce space marine like figures without getting a lot of legal flak) but in the fantasy realm they don't (a dwarf is a dwarf whether it is a GW dwarf or a non-GW dwarf).  So I've decided to build a Dogs of War/Empire army using figures from other companies.

It's going to be much cheaper and hopefully after a coat of paint look just as good.  I decided not to do a dwarf army (see previous post about Mantic Dwarves) as I really don't like their playstyle and besides, I can always fit dwarves into a Dogs of War army if I decide to buy some Mantic Dwarves in the future.

I already have a bunch of knights, heroes and wizards from Bretonnia that could easily fit in with any DoW/Empire army so part of the army is already made.  I just need infantry and I think I'll take those from Wargames Factory.

I could use their Samurai Warriors to represent swordsmen/greatswords/paymaster bodyguard (armed with katana), the Ashigaru Yari Troops as pikemen/spearmen, the Ashigaru Missile Troops as crossbowmen/handgunners and their Viking Huscarls to represent norse marauders/flagellants.

As an Empire army using the vastly different styles of models might be awkward but for a Dogs of War army not so much I think.  After all the Dogs of War are mercenaries from all over the world.  I just hope the local gamer folk don't mind me using alternate figures to play Warhammer Fantasy.  Admittedly I could just try and get ancients/historical gaming going but that I think is going to be harder as it requires investment from more people.

In a galaxy far, far away...

Oh my it has been a while since I last posted anything.  Not much to say other than been busy with stuff outside of wargaming.

Some friends and I got into Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Reminded me of my old World of Warcraft days only back then I didn't play with any of my friends, but had a nice guild that kept me in until teacher school got too time consuming.  Never got back into the whole MMORPG since then.  Being a teacher takes up a lot of time outside of school surprisingly.

When Old Republic was released, things changed.  Being a fan of the Star Wars universe made it easy for me to decide to try it.  Thankfully my friends played and we now have regular gaming nights which is nice.  So that, I suppose, is where most of my free gaming time has gone.

For those curious I play on the Master Gnost-Dural server on both sides.  My friends and I started a guild on the Imperial side under the name Imperial Medical Service.  All the characters so far are doctors (mine is bounty hunter named Dr'akagi, cookie for those who know who I named her after, lol).  I have to wonder if anyone notices the connection.  Republic side we aren't nearly as organized my main is a Jedi Sentinel named Paro'cena.  I've got alts of all the classes as well but they are really just crafting bots for the most part.

On the tabletop gaming side of things, I haven't really done much.  I sold off some of my Deathwing (the black reach squads and the land raider) as I wanted to finance a new fantasy army a few months.  Unfortunately I haven't seen anything that I would like to play in Fantasy.  I have a bunch of miscellaneous fantasy models and I was thinking of building a Dogs of War army but they seem kind of underpowered.  That is until I saw the fan based 8th edition Dogs of War book (Regiments of Reknown here).  What surprised me about this book was that Adepticon adopted it for their tournament so it must be fairly well balanced.  I'm going to look at it over the next couple of weeks and see if I can make a competitive army with it without breaking the bank.

Oh yeah, one last thing before I sign out.  Orctoberfest 2012 will be Fantasy this year.  Hopefully I can get enough people to break even or make a profit (profit meaning more prizes for everyone!)

Stomach flu sucks & Mantic Games armies

D&D adventure this weekend was cancelled due to me (the DM) catching my daughter Penny's stomach flu (which I probably gave her because I work at a school and who knows what crazy things the students have).

Oh well. Got around to making a new figure for our Goliath ranger, Sergeant Enforcer, and did some shopping around on the Reaper Miniatures website for some random hero figures for a future dwarf army I am planning. I need an army for next year's Orctoberfest as I sold off my old Bretonnians (I kept the newer models) and thus don't have a 2500 point army anymore.

What sucks is that I can't get to 2500 points with my Bretonnian army without shelling out an obscene amount of money. Even if I go all cavalry I need to buy some 2 or 3 boxes of knights which will run over $100 but then I have no archer or men-at-arms support and everything else is taken up by characters. To get the proper support I'd need to shell out another $100 just for some 200 points of archers and/or men-at-arms.

Enter Mantic Games. My god are those models cheap, good looking and so plentiful! One of their dwarf box sets which retails for around $100 is around 1500 points in GWs books. Then add some characters and runes and you've got close to 2000. A few more cheap box sets and it's easily 2500 for less than $150 or so. It also helps that I've got 3 28mm scale catapults that I can use for grudge throwers to help round out the army.

To help finance this new army I did have to sell some other things first though. Out went my AoBR Deathwing, my Deathwing Land Raider and some tactical squads I didn't use anymore (thankfully I made profit on those so I can replace the Deathwing stuff if I wanted to later). Once those make it to their destinations I'll place an order for a new Dwarf army. May not be GW but whatever, I can still play casually and at independant tournaments.

Project Updates

Summer is here and with school over and done with I have a lot of time to dedicate to finishing all of my projects.

The space marine army is coming along nicely and I've put together all 40 marines. The squad breakdown is:
Tactical Squad 1 - 10 space marines, Flamer, Multi-melta, and sergeant with power weapon
Tactical Squad 2 - 10 space marines, Flamer, Multi-melta and sergeant with power fist and combi-melta
Devastator Squad - 10 space marines, 4 missile launchers
Vanguard Squad - 10 space marines, 2 Thunder hammers, 2 power weapons, Sergeant with Relic Blade and custom turbine-style jump packs (looks like the old Rogue Trader jump packs from way back)
I also converted a model that is armed in the same way as Vulkan He'stan so I will most likely paint this up as a Salamanders army.

Haven't done much with the Bretonnian army but it is so far going to look like this:
2 units of 5 Knights of the Realm
2 units of 5 Questing Knights
1 unit of 3 Pegasus Knights

And lastly my one of a kind Dark Elf Executioner Cavalry is now primed and one model has been test painted. Sorry no pics of this unit yet.

I hope to have more updates (with pictures!) by the end of the week.