Army of Gusseldorf - Byron's wrap-up post

The miserly, and flamboyant, esteemed Baron of Gusseldorf, Byron Harmon,

and his flappable army of Gusseldorf (pun intended)

Army

Rank and file                508 pts (42%)

    Halberdiers x 18

    Greatswords x 10

    Handgunners x 10

    Archers x 10

    Dogs (and Handlers) x6 (x2)

War Machines            100 pts (8%)

    Cannon

Characters                   597 pts (49%)

    General on Griffon

    Heroes x 3

    Wizard (and a witch)

    Assassin

                            Total: 1205 pts

Pictures of the army!

Hunting dogs!

General Duke Wilhelm flanked by the princess and  Olbrecht.

The archers of Gusseldorf in a skirmishing formation

Cannon ready to fire, with the handgunners nearby lead by Hans die Gans.
(And Gustav the assassin lurking behind)

Duke Wilhelm of Gusseldorf upon his trusty Opinicus, Rudolf. 

The Helblitzen of Güsseldorf. - Honk Honk! We are Hear! - Led by the timid prince.

The Landsknecht of Gusseldorf - Duck. Duck. Attack!

Olbrecht the wanderer

Reflections

Last year I started my reflection with the following observation: "Being largely unemployed made the challenge much easier for me. I imagine that if I were employed and/or had kids that meeting the monthly requirements would have been especially difficult."

How right I was! This year, in the middle of OWAC, I got a job, moved to another state, then moved again into a house with my partner and her three kids! My free time has evaporated! 

I felt much less engaged and creative this time around. I struggled to name my models and develop their backstory let alone get paint on my minis. One thing I enjoyed that I truly lacked in my previous Dark Elf army was banners. My dark elf army only had one banner and it was a banner cast onto the mini so there was little room to improvise. With this army I really enjoyed making up goose puns for the banners. 

Interim

Between now and the next OWAC I need to finish the remainder of my Gusseldorfers, sculpt up some more Gusseldorfers (knights, and a queen). I might then start sculpting some nordic dwarves.

Next OWAC

I am very enthusiastic about the next OWAC. I have an odd collection of old citadel and marauder wood elves. I have so many ideas! My plan is to paint them up like hippies from the 60's! I'm gonna sculpt extra flowers in their hair. I've created a random name generator that pays homage to the naming conventions of Forendron's last stand. I've gonna give them some banners with toxic positivity slogans on them like "We gave peace a chance!" "Good Vibes Only!" as well as some alterations of beloved hippy songs! And, if the timing works, I'd like to recreate the famous Olley "Pint Pals" with elves smoking. 

Minis at my Disposal

A set of Scarloc's archers

16ish marauder 4th ed spearmen

10 dryads

Durthu

Wildcats and a handler

Hunting Dogs and a handler

A few Waywatchers

Some wizards

and a few other odds and ends that don't quit add up to full units. 

Adrian's dwarves - Wrap Up of the unnoficial sequel of Snow White's tale

Army wrap-up post.

The army finally return home with the seven dwarf engineers and Snow White.

"Doc": Hey, it was not that difficult to escape with at least part of the treasure.

Ulther: Ahem.

"Doc": Well, it took some help.

King Kazador: Hey, you were seven at the start of this mess, didn't you? where is your other friend?

"Doc": That's right, what will be Dopey doing again? where is he?

"Sneezy": I *achooo* I have seen him walking up the northern path fighting the orcs.

"Doc": At this point I think he must have reached the chaos wastes.

Another month, another OWAC finished!

Some of the last six months were a bit intense, the typical treacherous miscalculation of the available time here and there. Several working trips. But in the end, planning ahead saved the day again. That and the lack of painting fatigue as my motivation was pretty high.

Again like my eldars, this is my main fantasy army after all. Many of the models were sitting in my desk for ages waiting to be finished. I wanted to give 'em a coat of paint finally.

The OWAC has turned in a mix of opportunity to work on lots of unfinished projects...but the temptation to start new ones or add new units.

The objective was clear, adding several oldhammer units to my multi-edition dwarf army. However, the main army colour is mainly greens and that was slightly wrong if I wanted to add Kazador, so I changed my mind with the main army no #1 rule about colour variation. That was the reason to alter the blueish to teal of the armours, shields and banners that sits perfectly with my main host as it represents single units.

I would lie if I said that it was just as planned... I simply started painting and it was like the perfect colour.

With each unit as it own "clan" inside my dwarf hold, I think I can mix them well and will probably guide toward that direction with some of my other unfinished units of the pile of shame. 

Don't worry, you'll probably see the next batch, there are like several hundreds of unpainted dwarves where these lads come from. Unfortunately nothing so awesome like the Dragon Company. For now?

One of the rarest units in my collection. I started way back in the last days of 5th edition and early days of 6th. Too young to see these on the shelves of a citadel store. I was a curious dwarf collector, so I had a glimpse into the oldhammer catalogues...

I first asked Mariano about some bugman rangers that I missed in my collection... he came with an opportunity to add the Dragon Company to my ranks... and here I am, even I have now a bunch of preslotta dwarves here and there and finishing in my third edition of the Challenge. It needed to be treated some additional care.

Lovely unit to paint. As I said in June, I'll come back to the banner and some small unfinished details but I think that so much effort expent in that unit is pretty rewarding, because not only it pops-out, it is also a satisfying unit to paint despite the small amount of different sculpts.

So, lets summarize

The Host of King Kazador

King Kazador of Karak Azul - 494 points

Runesmith - 78 points

14x Dwarf warriors with full command - 244 points

10x Hammerers with standard bearer - 202 points

10x Troll Slayers with musician - 141 points 

Prince Ulther (Hero) + 14x Dragon Company Iron Breakers and full command -  430 points

Organ Gun - 65 points

Flame Cannon - 119 points

Baggage train - 100 points

Snow White

A mine

Total: 57 dwarfs, 1 human, 1 pony, 1 unanimated pile of rocks, 1873 points

Now, time to prepare the next OWAC. I have an idea in my mind, as I wanted to jump into the Horus Heresy and it seems that beakies are the new black.

Until then, Adrian’s out!

ZeroTwentythree's Post-OWAC5 Undead Wrap-up Post (2,089 pts)

Post-Challenge Wrap Up

"Season of the Liche"

Mighty, Bright Winged, Slightly-Off, Lord of Undead, ZeroTwentythree, with his Mighty, Slightly-Off Undead Army

Based on this year's Intro Post, one would have thought I was planning to paint a pretty straight forward undead force. A fast-attack "wing" for my always growing undead army. But here we are. Things don't always end where they were planned at the start. I'm not going to say that's necessarily a bad thing. I had a lot of fun with this army challenge.

All of these photos are larger than I usually post, click/tap to enlarge.

Full army glamour shot

Full army glamour shot

 

The Liche, dismounted, treating Candyman, Phil the Spectre, Sexy Wraith, and other friends to some soup & salad at his henge cafe, The Slab & Ditch.

Step 1: Soup & salad. Step 2: skeletons.

This wasn't even supposed to be part of my challenge army, and it's not exactly old, but it fits the fast attack & death from above themes well!

Cavalry. This is probably where things first went awry.

We come with PEACE

My own version of the Plague Cart emerging from the Field of Bones, re-animated OWAC-ers in tow.

CAW!

The Liche sets out from his swank and freshly redecorated tumulus accompanied by The Overlord, Assistant Overlord, The 'Nurp, and Rainbow Death

Aside from the substitutions, a lot of the "extras" were... well, extra. I didn't plan on painting a large portion of this, or any of the terrain. So this was a very ad-lib army. The core remains the same: liche, infantry regiment, two small cavalry regiments, a plageue cart, and carrion. And much of that was on the table from the start. It just took a weird twist. Of those, only the cavalry figures were swapped out. So here's the grand total, re-calculated from scratch because somewhere along the way I screwed up the book-keeping.

Army Totals

 

The Liche (lv.15) w/undead horse, pistol.................................... 247 pts 

Candyman - Undead Hero (lv. 10) w/Army Standard, lt. armour........... 150 pts

Overlord (lv. 5 necromancer)........ 60 pts 

Assistant Overlord (lv. 5 necromancer).....   60 pts

25 Skeletons with light armour, shield, spear, musician, standard....... 378 pts
6 Death Riders w/Lances, Shields....... 138 pts
6 Death Riders w/Lances, Shields....... 138 pts
3 Carrion........................................................ 135 pts

1 Plague Cart....... 100 pts
1 Nightmare Legion with light armour, shield, spear....... 14 pts

Phil the Spectre.....................................................200 pts.

Purple Nurple Lv. 5 Hero w/ Undead Horse w/H. Arm., Shield, Barding............ 48 pts

Rainbow Death - Lv. 5 Hero w/ Undead Horse w/:. Arm, Shield, Lance (shhhh... they think they're a unicorn & noble rider).. 45 pts

Sexy Wraith.............. 150 pts

Dragon.............     0 pts
Undead Hero (lv. 10) w/ lt. armour, shield.......................... 58 pts

Undead Hero (lv. 10) w/undead horse, lt. armour, shield... 68 pts

Wight.................................................................................    100 pts

Henge w/stone circle, soup, salad....................................    unlimited skeletons

Total........................ 2,089 pts

A fun project! It's really going to be hard to switch gears (and mindsets) to something different. I could probably stretch this out into a "part two" next year. Or I could switch back to a more serious undead contingent. I still have all the original cavalry I had planned to paint, after all. Maybe a return to sci-fi/40k? I suppose there are any number of options...

...skrtch..skrtch...skrtch...

...hiding in the shadows.

Shadespyre's OWAC V Wrap Up Post - The Completed Kingdom of the Gnolls (or is it Goblins?) (2871 or 2773 points)

OWAC V - The Completed Kingdom of the Gnolls

July

We interrupt this OWAC for some health news:

Veterans of OWAC IV (where I painted Lizardmen) may remember that my progress was interrupted by a spell of serious back pain, but OWAC disaster was averted by my having been ahead of schedule before that. And I've been bothered on and off by it ever since. Well, in June, I finally had an MRI scan on my back showing (as I long suspected) that I have a severely bulging disc in the lumbar region which is the cause of my many symptoms. Currently I am waiting to see a consultant to discuss whether I need surgery (spoiler alert - yes, I damned well do!) and what that involves. That, and its possible impact on OWAC VI, is for the future.

Right now, the impact is that I can't bend or stretch much, or walk far or stand up for long. Which means I can't access much of my mini collection (which is in the loft) or get in any floor level cupboards or even reach the high shelf which I have been stashing my Gnolls on as I finished them. Which was bad planning, it turns out. Fortunately, good planning means that I took a few army pictures way back in April of the almost completed project. So those are what I can share this month.

And now, back to your regular scheduled OWAC!

Where we started:

This is the first picture of the planned army, although even at this stage it was a little bit dishonest! There are no cavalry models here, for a start - not because I didn't plan to include them, but because at this stage I was hoping to get more of them and so wasn't sure what the final unit breakdown would look like. 

Now here's our old friend, Gnoll #1. All these colours made it through into the final army, including the "I've really no idea why I used this" pale blue. But he's a bit dull. I don't think I'd have been too happy churning out unit after unit looking like this, to be honest.

As it was, I think I'd painted 50 or 60 of the little fellas before I forced myself to address the issue. And then along came good old Waleran, Earl of Worcester with his checkered coat of arms (and checkered history) bringing us the bright red and yellow heraldry that saved the day. Thanks, Earl Wally!

Where we finished:

These pictures were taken in mid April, and contain almost everything that ended up being painted (the two children are the main omission, I think). The tents rather dominate, don't they? I'm pleased by the size of the army - I had to spread it out on the floor because I couldn't easily get it on a table, on my trusty old Citadel grass mat. The red and yellow flags and shields stand out quite nicely, I think.

I could repeat all the pictures from the previous blog posts, but that seems a bit redundant. Go have a look back if you want to!

"Final" Army List

There are two versions of the army list, one which runs as close as possible to the 3rd Edition Orcs and Goblins list in Warhammer Armies, and one which is based on it but tweaked to better reflect the "Great Goblin" statistics from 1st and 2nd Edition. The simplest way to achieve this was to define my Gnoll statline as being the same as Half-Orcs - which means I can use all the points values for characters that are listed in Warhammer Armies, and results in an easy to calculate 1/2 point saving per Infantry model or 1 point per Cavalry model. I then conjured up a new statline for Lesser Goblins, again based on 1st / 2nd edition stats, and awarded it a points value of 2, as it is worse than both Goblin or Halfling in 3rd edition...!

	M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A		Ld	Int	Cl	WP		POINTS
Great Goblin	4	3	3	3	3	1	3	1		7	6	7	7		5
Lesser Goblin	4	2	3	2	2	1	4	1		5	5	5	5		2

Because of this, the army lists will now have two different points values. The only massive change is that in the "Gnoll" list the Chariots have been completley re-built using the 3rd edition rules and so are both better and much more expensive. Also I made the little Jester a Gnoll rather than a Goblin as he is in the O&G list.

Here goes then:

 

Name	No	Counts As	Gear	Points
				O&G	Gnoll
King Waleran	1	Level 20 Orc / Gnoll Hero	LA, Sh, 2HW	121	110
Queen Boardica	1	Level 25 Orc / Gnoll Hero	HA, Lance	148	155
Royal Chariots	2	Orc Battle Chariot	2 x Short Bow, Scythes	172	-
Royal Chariots	2	Heavy Chariot, 2 x War Boars, 3 x Gnoll crew, 3 x LA, 1 x Bow,		-	244
Court Wizard	1	Level 20 Orc / Gnoll Wizard		251	240
Royal Standard	1	Level 15 Orc / Gnoll Hero	LA, Sh, Army Standard	141	133
The Aunties	2	Level 10 Orc / Gnoll Wizard		182	170
Court Jester	1	Level 5 Goblin / Gnoll Wizard		45	60
Gnoll Gnights	5	Snortas (Orc / Gnoll)		235	230
Gnoll Boar Riders	8	Gruntas (Orc / Gnoll)	LA, Sh, Standard	221	212
Royal Huscarls	20	Biguns (Orc / Gnoll)	Standard	199.5	189
Gnolls-At-Arms	11	Boyz (Orc / Gnoll)	Standard	102	96
Royal Champion	1	Level 10 Orc / Gnoll hero	LA, Sh, Spear	65	59
Gnolls-At-Arms	20	Arrer Boyz (Orc / Gnoll)	LA, Sh, Musician	220.5	210
Gnoll Clan Riders	6	Gruntas (Orc / Gnoll)	Sh, Standard	147	140
Gnoll Clansmen	20	Boyz (Orc / Gnoll)		170	160
Gnoll Schiltron	12	Boyz (Orc / Gnoll)	Halberd	126	120
L Goblin Archers	20	Stickas (Goblin / L Goblin)	Sh	80	60
L Goblin Scouts	30	Gobbos (Goblin / L Goblin)	Sh	105	75
L Goblin Horde	30	Gobbos		90	60
			Baggage Bonus	50	50
			TOTAL	2871	2773

(Items in bold are characters)

The points don't quite fit the army list in either case, there are a few too many points in characters for the 1/3 limit but this would be easily balanced by adding some Magic Standards (which count as Rank and File if in units) rather than extra miniatures. I could also nudge up the rank and file numbers by incorporating some of the miniatures I haven't included in units so far:

3 Gnolls with polearms

2 Drunken Gnolls

2 Gnoll children

Cyril the Bear

maybe even the cutesy boar piglet?

Obviously, options for allies or mercenaries from elsewhere in my collection, too.

Future Additions & Missed Opportunities

I've whined many times about how hard / expensive it is to collect miniatures of this period. In fact, supply of models was quite an issue with this project - often the prices sought on eBay are ridiculous, but worse iss when the minis just aren't there at all. I assume the mid 80s explosion of Warhammer popularity and greater number of minis manufactured and sold is one reason why it's so much easier to collect an army of early slotta minis than from just a year or three earlier?

Scarcity of models obviously dictated the size (even absence of) some possible units. Less obviously, it made me more reticent to cut up and convert some of the miniatures that I could find, so there are far less weapon swaps and standard bearers than I'd like. If a miniature is rare and also sturdy, you can't even buy any pre-broken ones, it turns out.

Another area I'd still like to explore is adding some of the early Night Goblin models as a unit or two, but the early night-shirted fellows are no easier to find than the Gnolls are. This is how I'd have liked to fill up that 20 Arrer Boyz requirement, and would have been the proper place to pop in some early Goblin Fanatics, too. It wouldn't even have been cheating, as they were pretty much the last range announced before the "C" cataloguing system started.

Another expansion option would be a Monstrous Host, with the obvious choice being a massive herd of hairy piggies! I'd have loved to have done this if I could lay my hands on more Boar models of suitable age. (Perhaps I need to have a chat with Benjamin about how he's populated half a Beastman army using press-molding?)

Coming Next?

Right now, I fully intend to be OWACing again in 2023. I have all the same choices that I had this time around (mostly variations on the word "Elves") plus that Fimir army which I accidentally acquired this year. I'd say at the moment Dark Elves feel most likely, but it's what I feel like come November and December that really counts, isn't it?

Thanks

Big thanks as ever to Our Mighty Overlord for having me along again, and to everyone who leaves comments on my posts here and on Facebook. I'd be painting miniatures anyway, but almost certainly not completing armies like this one. This is a brilliant community to be part of, and I'm ever grateful for it.