DUELLING PAINTBRUSHES 2: Prologue.

Duelling Paintbrushes 2 starts tomorrow. I've got my rats built and ready, but there's still time before I can paint them. What a perfect time to make a new army case for them to ride around in!
For games with a lot of figures, like warhammer (especially when you play skaven!) I prefer an open plan egg-crate foam case to one with individual compartments. So none of these new fangled cloth army transporter style cases for my rats! It's old school all the way with the traditional home-crafted aluminium briefcase. But how hard is it to prepare your own case? Well, Grot'll show you...

Note: Greg's son is past this stage, but it seemed a pity to waste a perfectly good piece of vector art. And I couldn't really be bothered doing a small hippo playing with Thomas the Tank Engine to ensure absolute fidelity to the original.

Well, there it is. I suppose you are wondering about the price. Well, the cases can be had for about $30 at Bunnings, and the underlay was $30 at Target. I got the single bed size - you can get a double bed size for only $10 more, which, come to think of it, would've been a better plan... A single underlay should easily be enough for three cases, possibly four.
And now to the important part, where I reveal the full and awesome might of Clan Skitterklaw!
My agreed upon, legal, 1000 point skaven army will consist of:

Warlord (208pts)
Dragonhelm (10pts), Great Pox Rat (30pts), Shield (3pts), Talisman of Preservation (45pts), Weeping Blade (30pts)

Warlock Engineer (80pts)
Skaven Spells of Ruin, Warpstone Tokens (15pts), Wizard Level 1 (50pts)

Clanrats (197.5pts)

• Clawleader (8pts), Musician (4pts), Poisoned Wind Mortar (65pts), Standard Bearer (8pts)

25x Clanrats (112.5pts)

• 25x Shield (12.5pts)

Clanrats (215pts)

• Clawleader (8pts), Musician (4pts), Standard Bearer (8pts), Warpfire Thrower (70pts)

25x Clanrats (125pts)

• 25x Shield (12.5pts), 25x Spear (12.5pts)

Stormvermin (165pts)
Fangleader (10pts), Musician (5pts), Standard Bearer (10pts), 20x Stormvermin (140pts)

Rat Ogres (128pts)
Packmaster (8pts), 3x Rat Ogre (120pts)

Total: 993.5 points.

According to cunning calculations (the best kind of calculations!) this should take about... 13 days to paint.
Which leaves ample time for the Clan Skitterklaw Expansion Force - a not-so-legal 1000 points which will be added to this legal 1000 points to form a legal 2000 points. Actually, a bit more than 2000 points when I have tooled up the characters. And there might even be some more time left at the end of the month for terrain, or possibly 500 more points to make a nice round 2500 points.

I paint worryingly fast...

World War Two For Hippos: Ishoo Sixty-For Bee: Pretty Pictures of Normandy Beaches

Well, it took a little while, but here they are! Pictures of all four sections of the Normandy Beach set. Some members of the USMC have agreed to pose for the photos to give them scale, although they are at present not painted. That's a job for another day...

DUELLING PAINTBRUSHES 2: MEXICAN PAINTOFF.

Last year Greg and I ran the Duelling Paintbrushes Challenge. This year we're back for Duelling Paintbrushes 2: Mexican Paintoff. And it's gotten bigger. Much bigger. Not only will it be longer, and not only will we paint more figures, there will be more participants. Much more. And probably a mini-tournament at the end to give our newly painted forces their baptism of fire.

Dueling Paintbrushes 2: Mexican Paintoff is a painting challenge. The rules are simple.

• Start painting November 1^st.
• Finish painting November 30^th.
• You must paint a complete, legal wargames force/army/warband/gang which is the minimum ‘sensible’ size for your chosen system (eg: 1000 points of Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer 40,000 or Bolt Action, 15 points of Warmachine/Hordes)
• You can assemble and undercoat before hand. Or you can be arrogant and do it all during November and make everyone else feel slow.
• Time permitting; you can add further figures and units or terrain features themed to your army.
• Everyone who meets the challenge is declared the victor.
• Everyone who fails to meet the challenge is declared a weedy git and scorned by those who win.
• There will be a mini-tournament at the end where participants will field their armies. We don’t know when just yet, but it WILL happen. Oh yes. 
• Those without an opponent because of their chosen system will play against each other in an epic session of ‘Eat Poop You Cat.’
• You must report your progress on your blog. Unless you are embarrassed and private in which case you can mutter about it on Facebook where only the select few will ever see your genius.
• Until Greg steals your images and puts them on his blog exposing you to the full glare of public scrutiny.
• Please add the blogs of all other participants to your Blogroll.
• Use of Hippos has been authorized.
• The person to paint the most figures will probably be Owen. That does not mean he wins. He just plays with Skaven.

Ishoo Sixty-For: World War Two For Hippos - Normandy Beaches

If you are going to play the Normandy Campaign, chances are you will eventually get the itch to refight the D Day landings. Which is understandable. And epic. You'll need beaches. Lots of beaches. Big beaches. But do not lose heart!  A beach is not an insurmountable obstacle! Let Drill Sergeatn Cleetus P. Grot III explain.

And there you have it Hippo fans! It's not really very hard to build a single beach module - you'll probably want at least four of these so you can set them up next to each other as a four-foot long beach front to fight over.
Pretty pictures are now available of the whole set.
Anyway, that's about it for the World War Two for Hippos fortnight. I'm working on Chaos conversions right now, but we have not seen the last of Oufsette Des Frite - the other parts of town will be built in future!

The Warhammer Cookbook: Araby

Time for another installment of the Warhammer Cookbook! This time we turn our attention to one of the areas of the Warhammer World of which little is known, and no official armybook details... Araby!

Top Dog Gaming Online!

I've decided to start a new blog about my game designing activities along with RPGs and Board Games in general. You can check it out at Top Dog Gaming!

Annual Terrain Compometition 2012 Results!

It's been a big year for the TFH Annual Terrain Compometition this year, with way more entries than ever before. And it was a tough decision since all of the entries made good use of tekineekes from the blog - in some cases even modifying them to do other things! In the end, it actually came down to the quality of basing in both categories. The runners up were just edged out by a slightly better base on the winning entry.

Enough waffle! On to the anouncements!

JUNIOR CATEGORY:
All of the entries here again came from my school wargames club. This year we ran several sessions looking at making Dark Age style terrain so we can play SAGA. Not everyone could make every session, so in the end things were a bit rushed. Anyway, here are the runners up (apologies in advance about the two houses - I know Tristain built one, but I cannot remember which one, so I've left the names off. I'll add them when I find them out!)

AND NOW... THE WINNER!

Congratulations Brendan! You've won the magnificent prize of:

• A Certiwotsit of Viktoriousness
• An official, hand built DaFROG'S Racing Hat branded with the glorious emblem of TFH
• A shiny TFH badge
• A $50 TFH Custom Terrain Voucher

Congratulations to all the enterants - you'll be getting a Certiwotsit of Runner Upness and a TFH badge each at the first LSCWC meeting of Term 4.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for...
THE SENIORS!
First, the runners up in no particular order...

AND NOW... THE WINNER!

Congratulations to Pete for his Mordheim Prison. He'll be recieving the magnificent prize consisting of:

• A Certiwotsit of Viktoriousness
• An official, hand built DaFROG'S Racing Hat branded with the glorious emblem of TFH
• A shiny TFH badge
• A $50 TFH Custom Terrain Voucher

Congratulations to every one who entered - you will all be receiving a Certiwotsit of some kind which you can hang proudly on your wall so that you draw the envy of other men and the adulation of women (well, we can but hope!)

Well, that's it for this year. Keep up the good work chaps!