Golden Troll

What two posts in a day I hear you say ;-)

Myself , Luke Foster et al have decided to go to Golden Troll for the Saturday Open, a 35 point tournament held in Chorley, Lancs, at the end of October 2011. The UK Hardcore Series Final is being held on the Sunday, which is the main event, though there are numerous other activates such as the Saturday Open that Luke and I are attending as well as a couple of Mangled Metal events, see the link here for more details.

Golden Troll is a dual list affair so I firstly I decided to take the same epic Severius list I took to York as it performed well and I liked using it.  I’d probably drop the Daughters of the Flame unit for something better if I’m honest, but they’re painted and I’m not that fussed on getting the list that much more optimal.  For the second list I decided to take prime Severius, mainly because he is my favourite warcaster in the Protectorate faction and I’d have a fairly relaxed painting schedule to complete for the event ;-)

The lists:

eSeverius

*Blessing of Vengeance

*Reckoner

*Reckoner

Choir of Menoth (min)

Exemplar Errants (min)

Exemplar Errants UA

Daughters of the Flame

Covenant of Menoth

Vassal of Menoth

pSeverius

*Blessing of Vengeance

*Vanquisher

Avatar of Menoth

Choir of Menoth (min)

Exemplar Errants (min)

Exemplar Errants UA

Temple Flame Guard (min)

Vassal of Menoth

Both lists are actually very similar, sharing a lot of units and both warcasters are fairly similar in play style.  This is something that will disadvantage me as far as in a competitive sense as the word is to ideally create two very different lists, making it harder for your opponent to choose which to play against you with, e.g. one list jack heavy and the other infantry heavy etc.  To be honest I don’t really care as I’m not expecting to be up there with the best and I’m taking what I’ve got painted and what I like to use!  I’ll probably learn from this experience and perhaps try out some other casters, units etc who will give that diversity and tactical flexibility.

I’ll write a few lines on the pSevvy list as discussion on the epic list can be found in previous blog entries.  This list as noted above shares quite a few units with the epic list, I included Errants again as they are probably one of the best units in the game and pSevvy’s spell list augments them to frightening stat lines with Eye of Menoth and Defenders Ward spells I so often combine, MAT 8 – P&S10 weapon masters is rude, even their crossbows become deadly under EoM.  With Defenders Ward these guys become DEF14 and ARM18, add in some cover and they’re very hard to eradicate.

I chose the Avatar for this list as pSevvy doesn’t have any battlegroup spells and EoM plus the Choir make this jack hit incredibly accurate and hard hitting, +3 to MAT and his weapons P&S.  The Blessing of Vengeance is a must with pSevvy as his Ashes to Ashes spell becomes very powerful indeed with his character jack.

I chose the Temple Flame Guard to accompany this list as they are a decent tar-pit and perform a little better with EoM.  They never really do a great deal in games and just die horribly – a bit like Meatloaf in all of his films – LOL!  The unit was originally ten strong and the list had a Crusader jack instead of the Vanquisher, but reducing them down to a minimum sized unit allowed the Vanquisher to sneak in!

The Vanquisher is the last element of this list to be painted and I decided to replace the Crusader because the Avatar does that job so well I didn’t need a second melee jack.  The 4” AOE of continuous fire is frightening to many opponents and similarly to the Avatar it ends up getting +3 to its attack and damage rolls (Choir and EoM), its blast damage can be deceptively high and can obviously be boosted as well as setting the target on fire.

Vanquisher work in progress, its all magnetised!

I have play tested this list a few times and am happy with how it plays.  I feel that the TFG are a bit slim at 6 models and they basically stand in front of pSevvy as a meat shield, maybe I’d be better spending the points elsewhere, say another Vassal and Gorman Di Wulfe for example, but I spent ages painting them and they’re in the list now!

Apologies!

It’s been a long time since I last posted, I’ve just not been 100% lately and painting takes a back seat.  However I’ve been a busy bee in the last week and finished a unit of Temple Flame Guard.  The photos below show the finished product, hope it was worth the wait!

Temple Flame Guard unit - front view

Temple Flame Guard unit - front view (zoomed)

The Temple Flame Guard are a basic melee unit for the Protectorate, they have fairly basic stats, but their redeeming features are that they are a cheap points cost, fairly quick with reach.  They have Set Defence and Shield Wall order so can be a very effective tar-pit unit.  Spells such as Defenders Ward make this unit excel in this area.  I find that in games they seldom get back their points, but end up drawing a lot fire as people just want to kill them, maybe it’s because they wear skirts to battle, who knows! 

Regarding the painting of these models, I tried to take my time and get them looking as good as solos, which is obviously very time consuming, partially adding to the long time between my blog entries.  The skirts were painted using the Menoth Base to Menoth White Highlight layering technique I’ve used on all the Protectorate clothing so far.  Similarly the Sanguine clothing technique was used – both are detailed in the Protectorate faction book.  What was difficult about these models however was the boundary where the white meets the sanguine colour, it was very easy to allow the shading washes to bleed into the other colour by mistake.  I ended up painting both the white and sanguine together, i.e. base-coat both colours, then wash both colours, tidy up the bleeds, re-basecoat and wash until the join was good.  I applied a black lining technique between the two stark colours to aid the neatness of the joins and hide any tiny mistakes.  See photo below.

Temple Flame Guard trooper showing white/sanguine join

Once the major base coats were done the rest of the model went as normal, finishing up with the finer details last.  I used two different methods of shading the gold, to differentiate gold armour and the weapons’ gold.  It might have looked a bit ‘samey’ without this.  The armour was washed with chestnut ink to make it a warmer shade, whereas the weapons were dulled with a black wash – basically I wanted the man to stand out from the weapons.  Prior to painting I decided to crack off the shields as painting these separately would be easier, as well as looking better in the long run.  The drawback is that the join is less strong than when assembling the model in one go.  Some of the shields will undoubtedly fall off during the rigours of the gaming board!  One tip I picked up recently regarding the gluing of pre-painted components is to use super glue acceleration spray as this sets the glue before it can 'fog' up the paint work, plus it is really quick!  I have heard however that super glue acceleration spray makes for a weaker bond, however I haven't noticed this and I'd say more the opposite (in my personal opinion).

Some more photos, 360 degrees:

Post tournament ramblings

Its been a couple of days since the Hull Vs York ICC and I've just about recovered, events just seem to tire me out these days - listen to me I sound like an old man!!!

I'll insert a photo of the whole army here when I have the energy to do it, so probably next week ;-)

Insert pic here you lazy man!

So I wrote a list for assassination as I knew time would be tight and out of four games I didn't do it once, nor did I get the opportunity to attempt it!  I'm not really sure why things went the way they did, maybe my opponents just knew what I would do and avoided it.

I ended up winning 3/4 games on scenario and the fourth on tertiary (VP's).  I think that on reflection the eSevvy list works equally well on scenario, I lost the roll off for first turn on all four games and had to go second each time.  I ended up feating on my second turn on all four games and moving the enemy infantry off objectives and scoring with my own, instantly putting huge pressure on my opponents to get back into the game or caster kill.  I defended eSevvy well and I don't think anybody took a point of damage off him all tournament.  So perhaps it all worked out, but for different reasons to what I had planned!

I'll write up a detailed battle report in the next post, but for now I'd like to express my gratitude to Brett Wilkie for organising the event, that we all enjoyed so much, congrats to Manners for captaining the winning team and the York lads for being such sporting and generous hosts.

Covenant done

Having been on holiday for a couple of days this week I managed to sneak a few hours of painting in and got the Covenant of Menoth done last night and today.  I chose to base the two priests on the same colour scheme as the Choir and matched the white/sanguine robes as well as the additional purple colour.  I painted the details on the book similarly to the scrolls on the Choir, again for continuity.

Covenant of Menoth (front)

Covenant of Menoth (rear-left)

Covenant of Menoth (rear-right)

So the 'book' is the last piece for my eSevvy list for this weekends tournament.  I'll try and add a few whole army shots if I get chance later, but suffice to say I'm happy with the way each miniature has come out :-)

Reckoner finished!

Its been slow, very very slow progress, but I got there!

Reckoner (left side)

Reckoner (front)

Reckoner (right side)

Reckoner (rear)

I'm happy with the final result however it just seemed to take so long to accomplish!