Character spotlight, top 5 named characters in Warhammer

Well with a new project looming (very hush hush here) I really felt like doing a quick post on my favourite characters you can find strolling the tabletop, and no they are not all orcs. For me a great character needs to have some awesome fluff to back up what he can do, so a mix of combat effectiveness and back-story is going to play a role here. All righty then, where to start...

NUMBER 5

 

Heinrich Kemmler

The Lichemaster himself. What sort of a man could possibly warrant an entry in an army full of vampires? Heinrich can. A solid stat line (for a wizard), a monster dispel ability (he counts as a Level 5), loremaster, and the ability to resurrect Grave Guard with every kill he makes. To boot he has the most powerful Wight King in the world under his command and stands as equals in an alliance with the greatest vampire of the age. He can also be found as a villain in one of my favourite of the Gotrek and Felix saga. what's not to like?

NUMBER 4

Kholek Sun-eater

Badass levels are already increasing. Kholek is an underused but amazing Character. Sealing the doom of his race with oaths so foul that the sun itself turned away its face in disgust, Kholek now forever wanders the world under a perpetual tempest. as a monster, he has a nightmare of a stat line (WS8, S8, A7, W8, the list goes on), a 3+ armour save, multiple wound rule and the ability to hurl lightening bolts at his enemies. Sigmar preserve us!

NUMBER 3

The Sisters Of Twilight

what do the twin embodiments of a fractured elven psyche riding on top of a forest dragon account to, why the sisters of twilight that's what. Only the Everqueen now knows who the sisters Naestra and Arahan used to be, but who cares when it creates such an awesome Duo. Kind, compassionate Naestra has weapons to ensnare rather than kill, while cruel, capricious Arahan laughs at the carnage that she commits. with ranged attacks galore, a fearful combat profile (thanks to there dragon Ceithan-Har) and the ability to spring back to life unless both of them are killed in the same phase, the twins are a brilliant creation that has much better fluff than most of the other Wood Elf characters. though I have yet to verse the twins in a game, I know that I would rue the day if I don't have a cannon or two around to aid me...

NUMBER 2

Ungrim Ironfist

who are the biggest bad-asses in the Dwarven realm? The slayers of course. Who is the second best slayer in the world (behind you-know-who)? Why the king of the slayers of course! Ungrim, unfortunately, is the last in the line of the slayer kings of Karak Kadrin since his soon met his doom at the hands of the Chaos Giant he had just killed. Having beaten Chaos invasions, defeated Golgfag Maneater in single combat, smashed the army of Queek Headtaker, slain the dragon of Black Peak, and wiped out the Orc hoard of Gnashrak Badtooth, he is one of the Old Worlds greatest generals. In game he is a powerhouse, with the abilities of both a Dragon and Daemon slayer, the Axe of Drago and a cloak made from the skin of Fyrskar the dragon, Ungrim would be able to easily slaughter any character on this list. Well, if he can get to them that is (damn these stumpy legs!) 

And finally

NUMBER 1

Malekith the Deceiver

What more is there to say. Malekith is, well, Malekith. The greatest of the sons of Anerion. Cursed with Immortality, riven by hatred and consumed with the humiliation of his scaring. Malekith is by far and away the biggest, most evil bad-ass in all of Warhammer (on par with the devil himself, Archaon). Profile in excess of a combat lord: check. Power of the greatest of wizards: check. 2000 years of back story including, but not limited to; the orchestration of the war of the beard, wiping out an entire city that displeased him, the killing of a Phoenix King and fighting his way out of the Realm of Chaos: check, check, check, check. Oh, and Awesome weaponry and protective items: check. There is quite literally no fault in this Elf. It also helps that, due to a prophesy, he can only be killed by a male sorcerer. Definitely my number one pick.

I would just like to point out that this is in fact only my opinion. If you feel I have wronged a character by not putting him here do speak up, its always interesting how people rate there favourites.

If in doubt, send the marines!

Oi, Listen up you lout's. da real Admiral's back so e is, an' not too late ta get some bashin' done! Even managed to gets me a right handy li'll birdy ta carry me inta battle.

 I was havin' trouble naming da blasted thing, but since it et 'alf the stores onboard (as well as plenty of dem wippersnappers crawlin round da place) i decided to name him Right Bastard. 

speakin' of dem li'llens, da Marine core ain't comin along to bad neither. Wid a Bit more trainin' dey might even give dem hooligan's a run for dere money. Har Har Har.

Sad Passings

British comedy has felt a massive blow over the last two weeks with two of there veteran actors sadly passing away. Both Rik Mayall and Sam Kelly were parts of my childhood, with the young ones and Allo Allo helping form my love of comedy. Though these are tragedies for all comedy lovers, they are not the great loss this post is about.

taking a much loved machine to binary heaven

After a 7 year struggle with over heating and corruption, I must now say goodbye to my faithful laptop. That small bundle of silicone and plastic has served me faithfully through my formative years at university, where I first felt the pull of the warhammer tournament scene. It was older than 99% of the miniatures in my collection, it has survived earthquakes, floods, snow and rain (and I mean that quite literally, it has been impacted by all but shrugged it off).

Most notably however Toshi (yea I had a pet name for it, so what) was fundamental in the set up of this very Blog. it possessed a small, unregarded little hole in its chassis that would accommodate a memory card from my camera. Without it I am looking for new ways to bring the photos from my table to your screen. I must ask patience while I work through this difficult time.

Normal posts will hopefully return latter today with the (almost) complete Pirates.

this post is dedicated to Toshi the Toshiba, may the 8-bit angels sing you to your rest (though when I thought about that the only singing I could think of was the sound a fax machine makes. Computers might like it)

Toshi the Toshiba (2007-2014)

Where in the world is HMS. Distraction?

I never really think hard about the power of the internet, sending its tendrils out all over the world in a mass exodus of binary information. However this morning, as I was trying to reformat the blog to allow for a wider section to display the basic text of the blog I came across a page of viewing statistics. I was rather surprised. Naively thinking that most of the traffic perusing my whimsical ramblings must have been coming from the Australasian region where I, funnily enough, reside turned out to be totally and utterly false.

New Zealand is only THIRD in the line up (though still makes up the entirety of the subscriber base), behind the USA and Great Britain. Now upon thinking about it, this wouldn't be a huge realisation. New Zealand is a tiny country compared to the motherland and ol' uncle Sam, but it was the nations further down the list that sparked my interest. places like Turkey, Poland and Germany. Nations that I wouldn't have expected to be trawling English Wargaming blogs at all (well I know Poland and Germany both have pretty good wargaming scenes, but surely they have enough of there own blogs as it is) Even China rated higher on the list than Australia, which was the biggest surprise of the investigation.

I am now left wondering how many of these are just cursory glances over (maybe thinking it was a blog about sailing. Maybe) and how many of them are actually stopping, hitting translate, and reading through the musings of a 22 year old student from the deep (deep) south of the globe. Its interesting to muse on....

Finish line in sight

I said that I would have some images of the infantry latter in the week didn't I. the Hohei Chutai is almost complete, with only a machine gun platoon and the command banner teams (another WWII army with flags! but now the Russians aren't unique.)

with 10 bases of infantry, 2 light mortars and a command sword team in each platoon, coupled with the night assault rules and the choice of being the attacker, these guys are always the powerhouse of the Japanese forces. If given the choice of targeting their artillery, machine guns, tanks or infantry; my first bombardment will always be targeting these insane buggers. Oh and just try and pin them down, I dare you, its next to impossible.

First Commision, new computer and the Liebster awards

Good Evening folks, I hope everything is going peachy in your neck of the woods.

Once more I must apologise for my lack of communication, but a blog is merely a place to share ones thoughts, and I am afraid I must heavily edit those least I lose anyone to my terrifying rants.

However, digression aside, welcome back. There are a few things I wish to talk about Tonight. First and foremost is that, until recently, I have been labouring under the yolk of a woefully outdated computer. But no longer! With a great weight lifted from my wallet (honestly, I blew my budget so quickly I had to dip into the Orc funds) I can now work without having the machine crash every 25 minutes, which makes blogging so much easier I can tell you. You can therefore expect more content on a much more regular basis.

one of the commanders of the Light Sensha division, equipped with the fearsome *snigger* type 95  Ha-Go 

Secondly is the completion of the first part of what I am calling my first proper commission (I painted Hamish's trolls for him a while ago, for which I apologise profusely to everyone who has been eaten by them, but that was in repayment for a certain amount of travel). My good friend Jayden over at The imperial patrol passed his Hohei Chutai (Japanese rifle company)into my keeping over the last month and the results are just now being finished (University and work have interceded to delay progress). However, here are some pictures of the first completed miniatures.

Nikuhaku squads, trust the Japanese to devise suicide squads to take on Russian armour

came out fuzzy, but some light type 92 70mm Howitzers, man my Fin's have a deep hatred for these light but violent weapons 

 So with the first wave of support platoons done, and 20 stands of infantry almost complete (you will be seeing them latter in the week) it seems I need to soon pull my finger out of my metaphorical arse and get my Finnish Jalkaväki kompany painted.

To finish tonight I would like to make a quick mention of the Liebster awards. My good friend Herman made a mention of it in the comments of my previous video, and my interest was piqued. I didn't really know how to feel about it, convention is that the nominator asks 11 questions of the nominee, who then nominates another group of young bloggers and so on. I will say now that I have always disliked this style of, for lack of a better word, pyramid scheme style of secret sharing (secrets are secrets for a reason, and I could crush people with the skeletons in my closet). However, awareness of other like minded blogs is a good thing, so you may see a post soon highlighting my favourite blogs to visit. We will see.

That's all I was going to talk about tonight. I hope to be back latter in the week with the finished Hohei platoon. Till then, have fun, stay classy, and rattle 'dem bones.

Wood Elves, the character quandary

Hello again everyone. My post's seem to be few and far between at the moment, with uni and work taking up so much time and so many topics being talked to death I just haven't felt like blogging. One such topic is, of course, the brand spanking new Wood Elves that everyone seems to see as "meta breaking". My Two cents (or should that be ten cents these days, hard to tell) is that yes, it is a nice book. It delivered most of what Woody players wanted with just minor tweaks to keep balance pretty much perfect from my vantage point. Fluff units are cool additions (heres looking at you Glade Riders and Wildwood Rangers) and special characters are not over the top. However, their is one pair that I had an interesting chat about earlier today with good friend and Kiwi Hammer contributor Sam Campbell.

The sisters of Twilight

The Twins are back and, shockingly, they are now found in the Hero section (theoretically allowing you to take a dragon in both lords and heroes) and still have their wondrous ability to come back to life as long as the other is still hanging round on the battlefield. The problem arises, in my eyes at least, when you go for the cheep option (if you count 275pts as cheap) and put them on their loyal Great Eagle Gwindalor. Being now on a monstrous beast rather than a monster as they are on the back of their dragon, the sisters suddenly find themselves as a SINGLE monstrous cavalry model. The wording on page 105 of the baby rulebook (under charecter mounts) states...

"Very rarely, a character will have the option to ride a monstrous beast. In this case, the whole model is treated as having the troop type 'monstrous cavalry' and follows all the rules for both characters and monstrous cavalry"

Then, under monstrous cavalry (page 83) it states...

"Monstrous cavalry always use the highest wounds characteristic the model has, rather than automatically using the rider's"

Forgive my nitpicking but to me that sounds like the singular model of the two riding on Gwindalor would therefore only have 3 wounds between them, as the MODEL uses the HIGHEST WOUNDS CHARACTERISTIC! Theoretically then after sustaining three wounds both the sisters would then be removed from the table, and their special rule would have no time to proc.

My question is was this deliberate wording that may hint at a change of pace closing in towards the 9th edition rules where monstrous cavalry characters will not be instantly benefited by their steeds, or was this an accidental afterthought by GW during the creation of the book. I'm pretty sure its going to be the first thing to be included in big, bold lettering when the first Woody FAQ comes out.

Thats all i wanted to ramble about. Also would people see two Lvl 4's, The sisters on dragon and a Battle standard captain to be a viable character set up for the new Woodies. Captain Jebson Signing off.