Miniature Monday 58

Hello everyone, and welcome to a new episode of Miniature Monday, coming to you live from my delayed lunch break! I got quite some ground to cover and, as usual, very little time, so let’s dive straight in!

The week started with great ancitipation: I had a game of The Old World planned for the Saturday morning and a game of Conquest for Saturday evening -aka, the perfect schedule, as it leaves the afternoon for family activities. So, the week started with me building new stuff for Conquest (the Chosens of Conquest I bought last week). Then, it pivoted to painting as my opponent said that they would rather play at 1k points. No problem, here’s a quick Predator:

Coming back to the big chunky Conquest minis from the smaller Old World ones was a good reminder of how different it is to paint them. Applying speed painting techniques to these big (and yet textured) areas is really a breeze and this was done in around 30 mins (minus the basing).

Then, the situation changed again (did I ever tell you how unrealiable my clubmates’ agendas are?) and it seemed that there would be no Conquest game for me. No problem, let’s pivot to The Old World then. Here’s 5 Wardancers for my Winter Court, originally miniatures for my Free Folkks (ASOIAF) but I’d say they fit quite well: the are all carrying two weapons and look woodlandsy enough.

I was quite satisfied with them and I’ll be happy to have them fill the role of Wardancers (my favourite unit of Warhammer Wood Elves). I also put them on square bases straight away, which makes doing the movement tray very easy since there is no painting and basing involved (for the tray I mean).

With the hobby done, it was time to meet my opponent on the field of battle. Standing in front of the Winter Court was a throng of Dwarves, ready to chop down some trees. We were playing at 1000pts on a 48×48″ board, in what was our first real battle of The Old World. There was also another table and, before (briefly) describing the game, let me just say that it was lovely to partake in the evident happiness of my clubmates of having back the system and universe which had brought them into miniature gaming. To be clear, all of them had “moved on” and regularly played AoS, 40k, ASOIAF and whatnot but of course there was some evident sentimental attachment to Warhammer Fantasy. We’ll see how it does at the club in the future, of course -we’re a small club so a “new” sytem needs to gather with a lot of traction in the initial phase to be able to find games reliably.

Anyway, the dwarves had only a handful of units (10 quarrelers, 10 thunderers, 2 cannonts with an Engineer) around a big block of 17 longbeards + 2 characters. I had a fully “minimum size unit” army, built around what I had painted or at least rebased/made movement trays for: 3 units of foot archers in various forms (glade guards, waywatchers, deepwood rangers), 3 units of cavalry (glade riders, wild riders, sisters of the thorn), 2 eagles, a shadowdancer with his troupe of 5 Wardancers, and a Waystalker.

My opponent stood basically still for the whole game (very dwarfish of him), but a disastrous streak of 1s to wound on his cannons early on and my superior shooting and mobility gave me the upper hand. We called the game round 4 when my eagles had gotten into his cannons (not before one of them sprayed my wild riders with nails killing them all) and his longbeards were being decimated by my shooting.

Judging from a single game is of course pointless, but I was surprised by how smooth the game went:we were both checking rules for the game and our armies and still finished in 90mins deployment included -granted, my opponent had WHFB experience, but I had none. The caveat is that my army had a lot of skirmishers (very AoS-y) and there were very few combats and those very simple/one sided (eagles vs cannons, my wild riders trampling a poor unit of quarrelers). There was also a second table playing Ogres vs Beastmen at 2000pts and they finished in under 3 hours, so that was reassuring as well. So, I am ready for more Old World it seems!

Then, the situation changed again: a different clubmate had a last minute change in the family activities and was free for the evening. So I quickly packed up my W’adrhun and got to the club for a cheeky 1000pts game of Conquest, against the Spires.

Again, Conquest was just a great experience for a rank and flank game. It was my opponent’s first game (you might notice proxies and empty stands but I will happily play against pieces of paper and beer cans if that gets more people in the hobby) and still we managed to play 6 or 7 rounds in under two hours, so that we didn’t have to borrow to much time from our sleep. He was pretty happy with the experience and Conquest keeps being greatly received at the club, which makes me hopeful for the future and motivated to keep painting my W’adrhuns!

Still, due to family schedule I know I won’t have time for a game in the next two weekends, so it will be mostly hobby stuff for a while, unless I manage to get a game on a random Friday evening at a clubmate’s place -which is something we’re discussing but let’s see if it happens. Anyway, tune in next week for the results from the hobby: I have some more Old World stuff on the table and the great recycling project goes on!