A Tale of Duelling Gamers: July

Here we are at the end of July, and the beginning of the Tzeentch contingent. I went into this month with $24 accumulated fro prior installments, and no really strong urge to paint Slaanesh stuff (plus I have not quite figured out how to convert the things I want to do just yet!) For reasons of cheapness and wanting a more 'templar' looking Tzeentch force, I've chosen Mantic Basileans for the basis of these guys. The paladins and paladin knights have excellent cultish robes which makes them look like an order of warrior mages, and the sisterhood make excellent female marauder cultists. Therefore, this month's work has been as follows:

1 Avatars of War lord of Torment (Sorcerer Lord)

12 Mantic Basilean Paladins (Chaos Warriors)

5 Mantic Basilean Panther Lancers (Marauder Horse)

Behold the fearsome might of their purple cats - because if you are Tzeentch you don't have to use normal coloured cats.

And another angle. I have not made a command group in this batch, but since the Mantic boxes have ten figures, I'm thinking of doing it for the second half.

Behold the sorcerer lord and warriors.

Minor free hand work on the banner. This is actually the first sculpted banner I've free handed. Previously, I've only free handed shields and banners made from metal foil.

The lord's staff broke during painting. It was VERY thin, and bent very easily... it came off and I don't have a drill bit small enough to fix it - need to borrow one from El Presidente Gregor.

Yup. They look like blue and yellow dudes from this angle also. Note the Greek Hoplite helmet I fitted to the champion, cut from a figure I bought years back at Eureka Minis.

Well, that's about it for july, except the budget report:

Well, the column headings are missing... so that's GW Price, what I paid, a blank space, total remaining budget, savings over GW, and monthly savings.

A Tale of Duelling Gamers: Really BIG stuff.

Another month ends, and I've painted... two figures.

One of them is REALLY big. Does that make up for it? I mean REALLY big. Big enough to make your head bleed (if someone threw it at you really hard). Also really cheap. 

So, without further ado; June's output.

Behold; $16.80 worth of Papo Chimera. Papo is a french toy company which makes some very nice animal figures, and some really sweet mythological beasts. This was 20% off at the toy shop in Hampton Street. Also Deamon prince wings, and 3D printed base.

This month's out put. The chimera and a character made from a Reaper Bones snake demon lady thing.

Snake demon lady thing.

Back of snake demon lady thing.

The mighty flank of the mighty chimera is redolent of might.

Papo's take on the Chimera reminds me of something I saw in a book on ancient Greece - a redware pot or something, where the Chimera's snake head is actually the tail, instead of an extra head on the front.

UPDATE: Actually, this ancient greek sculpture.

Yup, it has a back end also.

The figure is too large for the base, so I added some carved polystyrene to angle him upwards, so he's kinda swiping with his paw. It doesn't loo completely right, because he's posed to be walking on it...

Rar! I am a mighty chimera! Fear the way I look WAAAAY cooler thant the GW version and cost a mere $16.80 plus wings! Rar!

And here's the entire army as it now stands. This is about 1400 points, without magic items and customisations etc. It'd probably be pretty useless and inbalanced in a fight too...

Stand by for the eventual appearance of the Micro Generators, which will be rapdily followed by bamboo groves (I've got them finished, but not the people's choice ishoo which has to be posted first!) and then I'm going to tackle some Malifaux projects.
And eventually, more Slaanesh. Possibly a chariot or warshrine this time.

A Tale of Duelling Gamers: And then it was June.

Behold! June! Which means time to report on another month's progress and make wildly inaccurate statements about this month's progress!

Last month was slow. I had many terrainic things which demanded attention, and stuff I ordered from the US has STILL not arrived. It seems to be in some sort of postal hinterland... So I did not do the characters I had planned. I DID paint ten more warriors. Then I packed them with the other twenty, and have no idea which ones were from April and which from May...

As a solution to the whole 'where are my characters?' problem, I dropped into Mind Games while I was at the Face/Off tourney and got some spawn. And when I say 'Got some spawn' I mean 'Bought ridiculously cheap Bones figures to use as spawn! Huzzah!'

The army so far, including the ten new warriors, and the two spawn. Not including flash or a good photo really...

Yes, one of my spawn is Cthulhu. That's how I roll.

Behold my budget! The prices paid on the spawn might be a bit off, I'm pretty sure they were $10ea, but Mind Games always pull the price stickers off when they sell things for some stock-control related reason...

This month has got off to a good start. I originally planned to paint ONE WHOLE FIGURE! Then I checked the price, and realised I could afford TWO! Yes, the Chimera is only $69! So I will paint the might of my $16.80 toy shop Chimera (with wings from eBay) and a hero made from a $4 Bones snake woman! Huzzah! And the snake woman's almost done, just needs a base!

Now to go make toad themed terrain for the Woolongronks!

A Tale of Duelling Gamers: Onwards for the greater glory of May!

Here we are in May. Not James May, obviously. That would be rather icky.
And what does this mean for AToDG? Well, it means I built another 10 Chaos NotWychs at Gregtopia last night (there is a photo, but I am lazy and the camera is at the other end of the house), and I am planning devious plans and so on. I have ordered a pair of rather nifty Reaper figures to use as characters:

Apparently, she's some sort of Succubus Warrior. She certainly has more clothes on that most of the Succubi Reaper make.

And the Ghoul Queen. This is the Bones version because I am cheap, and didn't really want the little ghouly servants the metal one comes with.

These will be an Hero on an Arabyan Carpet and a Sorcerer respectively. When they arrive. This does leave me with $26 left over, according to cunning calculations carried out by my budgeting spreadsheet-o-matic. I had $11 left over from last month, which rolled into this one you see. $26 is kinda useless for Chaos. I can buy a character. Hmmm.... I think I have enough characters. Unless I think of something crazy (or I decide to drop one of these characters from this month's to-do list and end up with more money) I might roll that over into next month.

Also, vote on the new poll to decide what I'll be doing instead of painting for Ishoo Ninty-Too (which is almost upon us!)

A Tale of Duelling Gamers: April Retrospective.

Gadzooks and other foul oaths guaranteed to offend a 16th century audience. Here we are at the end of April, and what the heck happened to my month? I'm not doing the usual thing of going "OMG! I worked SOOOOOO hard and I painted all the time and I only just got things done!" Oh no. Readers with long memories and facial hair to match will recall my almost super human painting speed. I'm more annoyed that it took me THE WHOLE MONTH. Seriously, what's with that?

Well, time to make excusses...

er...

Well, I was actually pretty busy over the school holidays with the holiday program and a few other things. Also the bases I ordered (plain ones mark you!) only turned up on Thursday. And the shields I ordered STILL have not arrived. So there was a pretty big chunk of holiday time where I was not able to do anything and built terrain instead. I guess that's something. Also,it explains why the promised freehanded shields have not materialised.

Anyway, here's the fun part:

The Slaaneshi Hordes! I'm trying to come up with a name for the lord (besides Lord Emo Fringe). I kinda like Gavrillo, but he needs a title. Something like 'Lord of the Enticing Promise'

Here are all twenty of his chums. Dark Eldar models are stupidly fragile. The champion's back banner came off before I even painted, and one of the razor flail things is now two segments long.

Chaos Warriors! I Choose YOU!!! (because that old Slaanesh=Pokemaster joke never gets old...)

Another angle, not sure why I took this actually...

An attempt to show the lightningy blade on Lord Emo Fringe... er... I mean Lord Gavrillo Of the Whispered Endearment.

The champion is understandably annoyed at my slow progress.

And now for the REALLY fun part!

ACCOUNTING!

Er.. yes. Seriously, I think this is really cool. This is a screen-shot of my spreadsheet showing things.

See, this is part of the reason I wanted to start this whole shebang. To show that you can get things done cheaply. Anyway, this is my month's budget. As you can see, I blew it on 26 figures. A lord on deamonic snake thing, twenty of the finest warriors, and five chosen who also look like Incubi. So, at GW prices, I blew $189. Except I got them from eBay and CanCon, so I actuall spent... $81.70.
And what does this tell us?
Well, that you CAN get an army cheaply if you know where to look and what to look for. Stand by for future months when I economise even further by using ONE GW model to make TWO chaos things at once!

Also, this is my first experience of Fine Cast, and I'm not impressed. Seriously, the blades on those incubchosen snap if you sneeze near them.

Er... anyway, that's probably it.
Watch out for further updates, slow painting progress, and also go to The Dweller's Bellow's Tournamnet Called Face/Off because I'll be there showing terrain and building Table 1 which they might be raffling off or something. I dunno. The Ginger Thunder only emailed me last night.

A Tale of Duelling Gamers: Lord Emo Fringe

Here we are, the 20th day of the challenge, and I have painted (but not based) by Slaanesh Lord. The original owner had done a fairly terrible job of pinning and assembling the steed, and an even worse one trying to green stuff the gaps. I did my best to salvage the situation, but it's not possible to sink new pins, so I had to work with the existing ones and putty. The glaive blade had been replaced with a flail, and there was no back banner. So I made a new blade from a Dark Eldar Wych Razorflail, and stuck some sort of dark eldar back banner thing on. Also a DE head. With an emo fringe.

A Tale of Duelling Gamers: The second rank.

Tremble mortals as you behold the second batch of painted-but-not-based Slaaneshi Chaos Warriors! Quake in fear of their lilac fabulousness! They need their shields, but those have not arrived yet. They need four more members, but I await the bases. They also need a banner, but I await inspiration for a design.

With these chaps and chapesses done for the moment, it's time to rebuild the Chaos Lord on Deamonic Snake figure I got from eBay. Part of the tail appears to be missing, his head was swapped for a marauder's and his weapon was converted to a flail. So I need to do a bit of work on him.

A Tale of Duelling Gamers: First Figures.

Here we are, half way through the first month, and I have finished painting the first eight figures. They're not based - I always do whole units at a time.

As usual, my flash screws the photo a little. The champion's amazingly thin backbanner snapped during painting. NO surprises there really. The shields I have ordered are not here yet, but they WILL have free-handed shields.

A Tale Of Duelling Gamers: The Beginning.

And so it begins. The six month oddyssey that is A Tale of Duelling Gamers commenced five days ago, with the traditional mis-information about it all being my idea posted on more than one blog. Let me just clear that up now. Greg challenged me to the original Duelling Paintbrushes. I just wrote the rules and posted them on my blog.  Then we collaborated on coming up with the ideas for the next two versions. A Tale of Duelling Gamers was my idea, BUT we collaborated on the rules. I do not seek to take credit away from the Hoodling. Mostly because he will unleash his mangler squig on me, and that guy is so fearsome he can actually wear a paper hat and make it look bad arse.

Now on to the real stuff and the reason you are here.
Basking in my magnificence.
Wait, what? That's not why you are here?
Fine. Have some pictures of my meagre progress then.

Behold mortals! Month One's complete collection. Man that's small. 26 models. Okay, so The Cookie Monster, Elmo, King of Warhammer, aka Nookie, lord of the many Nicknames, the Eternal Youth (ie: Nick) is doing 12, but this feels stupidly small for $200. Okay, I paid less than that due to the wonders of eBay etc, but still...

Now I suspect you are thinking "WTF you hippo riddled looney! Have you been sniffing the gloo again? Why are you making Dark Eldar when you promised Chaos Warriors? Well, I am doing SLAANESHI chaos. And I think that the plasitc chaos warriors do not look hedonistic enough. Slaanesh character all wear form fitting, sensually curvaceous armour. Chaos warriros stomp around in heavy plates and big boots. Fine for Nurgle and Khorne. Not so much for Slaanesh or Tzeentch. So I am converting Dark Eldar for a lot of my Slaaneshi army. Here are 16 (because I ran out of bases...)

"Hold on one more minute you hippo crazed madman," I hear you cry, "It's the fifth day and you've assembled sixteen guys? WTF?" Well, okay, I didn't start on day one. Day one, day two, and day three were spent doing things which earn money. Ie: building Mount Morin. The magnificent mountain seen above and the result of my first commission from my Bolt Actioneering associates at the LRDG. With that out of the way, and a little more commission stuff from the Muppets almost done, I'm pretty much free to work on ATODG.

Next time, Hippo Fans!

A new challenger appears!

Since I last posted about Duelling Gamers, there has been a huge influx of new participants. Some of whom have even built blogs for the occassion! I've been updating the list on the previous post, but thought it was worth mentioning for those who probably didn't notice (because I wasn't mentioning it).
We now have a mighty EIGHT CONFIRMED GAMERS! And a wobbly maybe. More than half are not HGC members, which is a first. We've even got an Englishman. Who will probably be a bit startled when he calculates prices in AUD.
We now have two Dwarf and two Wood Elf armies, a pair of 40K participants, and even a father-son duo (although they are in competition with one another!).
Stay tuned for the kick-off on Tuesday!

A Tale of Duelling Gamers is almost upon us!

The beginning of A Tale of Duelling Gamers is only just around the corner! We've got four firm commitments to the six-month challenge, plus one somewhat wobbly 'maybe.'
The duellists are:
Owen (Terrain For Hippos) -WFB - Chaos Warriors.
Greg (The Hoodling's Hole) - WFB - Dwarves.
Justin (Holiday Hobbyist) - 40K - Orks.
Pete (The Breathless Host) - WFB - Wood Elves
Matt (Hobby Hideout) - WFB - Chaos Dwarves - Maybe.
Chris & Son of Chris (Moruya Marauders) - 40K & WFB - Something.
Nick (Carrot and Stick) - WFB - Wood Elves
Rupert (Not About To Grow Up) - WFB - Dwarves
Nick (Den of the Eternal Youth) - WFB - Chaos Warriors.
Stand by for frantic paintbrush action in the grand traditions of DP1-3!

A Tale of Duelling Gamers: It's Duelling Paintbrushes, Jim, but not as we know it!

Duelling Paintbrushes is taking on a new format this year. We've painted whole units, and whole armies in a furious speed-painting contest. This year, it's time to relax a bit, and look at collecting a whole, viable army over a six-month period, starting in April.

Allow me to quote the 'player pack' (for want of a better term)

The Objective:

To build up a Warhammer/Warhammer 40,000 army over a period of months, reporting on progress along the way. The challenge is designed to show new gamers how they can build up an effective army without blowing their budgets over a period of months, and how this can be a much more relaxed process than the insane flurry that is Duelling Paintbrushes. We also aim to show how, through cunning application of buying second hand or on special (or from Mantic!) you can acumulate $700 worth fo GW stuff for a fraction of the cost.

You can find the whole document on Google Drive.

The event is not limited to HGC members (actually, no DP event has been limited to HGC members, apart from the original - and that was a one-on-one mano-a-mano duel with gauntlet throwing and everything...) or even people in this country. If you are interested in taking part in a spot of community blogging, mixed with community service (showing young 'uns that it's not too hard or expensive to get into Warhammer IS a community service to the wargames community!), drop me a line.

If you've got any questions about the rules, let me know so Greg and I can think deeply about them, and then either dismiss you out of hand, or (slightly more likely) make changes. Or you could go and join the conversation on the Wargamer AU Forum.