Monday, November 23, 2009

Blogging the Beasts 6 - Enter the Herdstone!

 Aside from the imminent release of the new Beastmen Book, there is one other mitigating circumstance that has had me back working at my beasts with a vengance- The Lost Games Club's first annual Warhammer Fantasy Championship Tournament!  We have held 40K championships for several years now  - at these events the winners names are immortalized on a club trophy and they earn a year of bragging rights to rub in the faces of friend and foe alike.  Whats more, is that since I am no longer a Grey Knight and the conflict of interest has been lifted I am eligible to compete!!!!

Strangely enough - and I know readers will find this hard to believe [Sarcasm alert!] I may also have already been running my mouth that I was coming to crush em all!!!! SO.... I guess I really ought to at least show up despite the fact that it is widely believed that while they really do have something to fear on a 40k batlefield I sorta suck at WFB. In fact they have suggested that I even consider including the European tournament circut rules that would allow a so called 3rd tier army like the Beasts an extra 500 points in tournament setting!!!!!!  Oh man that'd be awesome - but then they would just move from blaming any victory I might find on the extra points instead of Morghur - so no go.


Now my Morghur horde is well tested (and VERY destructive) but as noted above everyone seems to rack that up to the character and loadout instead of any input/skill from me - an autopilot army if you will.   I have decided to take something else instead - in part to challenge myself and in part to force me to use the segments of my army that I know will carry over to the new army book (herds, hounds, chariots) so that I can really ensure that I have a good grasp of my core when the bells and whistles change.

 herdbirthday.jpg


As such I have been preparing mentally for the tournament by hanging out at the Herdstone website - absorbing as much knowlege about Beast tactics and army composition as I can. Also I have been picking the brain of my buddy Brett who is also a long time reasonably successful Beast general who has a great command of the WFB and 40K metagame (theory hammer/listhammer as some call it).  Both sources led me to one conclusion - I want minotaurs.

This in turn leaves me with a few problems

  1. I have only one minotaur model - the unit filler piece


  2. I hate the rest of the current existing minotaur models


  3. I know that plastic Minotaurs will be out this spring - So do I really want to put much money or effort into something  when the new ones might be totally awesome and a fraction of the work?


  4. I have only a few weeks before the event so major sculpting etc is a problem.


  5. Im kinda low on cash - so I have only finite resources to adress this no matter what decisons I make.










So what to do ?!?

Well I knew I could address 1 and 2 by coming up with some of my own model conversions - by being different than the unit filler but similar/equal to each other they will stand well on their own in the army.

To address #3, I decided that whatever I make has to look cool and be well made. That way If I like them better than the new releases in the spring I can detail them out properly but IF I like the new ones better, then I will still have a great unit that someone will want to buy from me for enough money to pay for the new models.

Point 4 means that I will have to find some bits that will be easy to work with and make conversions the mainstay of the model. I contacted a bitz seller on ebay and had the few parts that I really need shipped asap. The main parts ordered are the upper half of the champion horse heads(the one with the horns) from the new marauder horsemen set and a bunch of marauder and marauder horsement sheilds. These will be used to make the minotaur heads and to replace the gut plates. I also ordered a few other plastic horns and spikes and a few minor detail pieces. Everything else I need will come from my bitz box.

Finally point 5 has led me to using a bunch of the Ogres that I already have in boxes in my games room as the basis - they are the right size, I have plenty and while I had great ambitions to build an ogre army at some point, I really dont see that happening until they have a new book themselves.

Tune in next week to see what I actually make......

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