Brennan and the Final Frog Leg...

Well!  this is my second OWAC and it has been a great ride.  I've had a wonderful opertunity to paint an army that I never thought I would own and actually get a game in with it.  All round a wonderful oldhammer success! And a big thank you to to the over-lord for leadership, cheerleading and being an overall solid leader.

My childhood wargaming didn't involve Warhmmer Fantasy until I was a little older, maybe 14/15.  By that time, 4th edition Warhammer was the newest, greatest thing, and I missed out on the Slann.  I knew about Space Slann from RT, but I was a little too obsessed with Imperial Guard and Orks (with a k) back then to dig into where the idea for those froggy fellas came from.  Later, as my love of old minis turned to the games I hadn't played.  When I realized what I had missed and promptly did the old eBay search for Slann.  I then learned that, somethings would have to wait. But luck was on my side, about 12 years later, I got an opportunity to buy a Slann army at a very decent rate.  I begged and bargained with my spouse and viola!  I now have a bounty of frogs!

What's that? You played a game with them, how'd it go?  I hear you asking.  It went OK. Short version, I lost.  I played against undead.  We played 3rd edition warhammer and used the lists from Warhammer Armies.  We played around 1200 points, so small armies.  I had what was painted at the time, without anything in the realm of a magical upgrade.   Well what does that mean?  Lots and lots of frog infantry!  What I think the army needed was a few more heroes and some cav and light stuff to screen the main advance.  I felt like my flanks were too vulnerable and I didn't have the material to strike out at new developments.  I didn't role the best spells, but there are ways to mitigate that risk too (rings, rings for everyone!).  I also think I need some cheaper, points wise, support troops.  So I'm going to add:
2 units of 8 cold one riders (5 were painted last month)
1 unit of 20 braves
1 more wizard on palanquin
1 unit of two animal handlers with 6 cold one hounds
1 unit of two animal handlers with maybe 5 saber tooth's

The cold ones will get go up the middle, supported by infantry and the hounds will just try to get in the way.  I've have more hounds, but getting them is challenge, unless I just use alligators from the foundry or something like that.

I'd also love another unit with blowpipes.  That is going to take some serious patience to acquire.

So here's what I did:

LV 15 hero with 2 Handed Weapon and Heavy Armor - 117

LV 15 Wizard on a Litter - 199

15 Eagle Warrior with 2 handed weapons and a standard - 240

15 Alligator Warriors w 2 handed weapons and a standard - 208

16 Span Band with shield and standard - 170

10 Venom Tribe - 120

5 Scouts with poison and shields - 70

5 Cold One Riders w/ Light armor and shields - 185

For a total of 1309

A huge congrats to all the competitors who attempted and completed the challenge.  This is one of the best groups I have ever had the pleasure of working with in wargaming and I hope the OWAC continues for many years to come!

Brennan's Lizard Riders (185 Points)

Hey Ho, Let's Go

Hey Ho, Let's Go

Hey Ho, Let's Go

They're forming in one short line

They can't charge without planning

The Lizards have like no minds

Lizard-Krieg Plop...

Its June and I painted some cold one riders!  I found out that running a infantry only army was going to give me some headaches in a game that James and I played.  The long and short of it, was that I really could have used something that could charge out of the line a little faster than armored infantry.  I'm used to using some light cav to screen my flanks too.  Slann don't really have that and cold-ones are a bit of challenge to use in third ed.  You have to plan the charges a turn ahead, they suffer from stupidity and they smell really bad.  I think I will deploy them in the center, so any potential targets will have a harder time getting away.  I think flank security duty will have to go to some animal handlers.

I went for a green lizard for the blue froggy.  I realized that I ended up doing the exact opposite that most folks do!  Maybe I should have done yellow frogs...  Kinda late now though!

I really enjoyed shading and coloring the mouths, with all the tongues and the teeth.  It really brought the model to life.

I counted the riders as wearing light armor and carrying shields.  The stats say they have spears, but umm my guys must have lost theirs or something....  That brings me to 185 points for June! 

Brennan and Confused Frogmen (240 points)

Happy May!

This month I bring you the last of the planned regiments, 15 Eagle Warriors with a Standard.  I kept the froggies blue.  The Eagle Warriors are wearing an Eagle Suit.  They have a great two-handed weapons and have a shield.  I do have some shields that are more Aztec-like, but I like the idea of the Slann having adapted some materials from their contact with the Old Worlders.  So shields and the smattering of swords seems to give the army the right feel, to me anyway.  I have to say I love them.  The great wide faces, big eyes (which make them a breeze to paint) and the feather suits!  Note, the talons on the end of the suits legs and sleeves.  Also, there is a bit nice fringe on the end of the legs to make them look more like bird legs,

I did some research and for the Aztecs, the more wealthy you were, the more likely your suit would be made from other textiles, but made to look like feathers, rather than actual feathers. That gave me license to go the way I wanted with them.  I thought about doing a couple of all white suits and maybe a black one, but they are +3 elites and in the end I decided to give them a uniform appearance.  I like to have move variation in uniform the lower you are on the Elite scale.  I varied the base brown slightly, from nut browns to a conker brown.   When I play them, I will probably use another, more fancy Slann as a hero to make the character standout nicely.

The one challenge, like I had with the Alligator Warriors, was the fact that there was only one Eagle Warrior casting produced.  You can vary the base mounting slightly to give some variation, but unless yu are far better sculptor/converter than I am, you will end up with a fairly uniform appearance.  Especially if you want them wearing near identical suits.

In summations for May we have:
15 Eagle Warriors with 2 handed weapons and a standard - 240

Brennan's Slann on a plate! - 213 points for April

It looks like a meal, no?

Well, I thought I would need an easier month somewhere in the mix and this is month that I needed it.  I did the mage priest on on litter and a scout.  This brings the scout unit up to five.  I'm very pleased with how the scouts came out.

 

It feels like the photos are a little blown out.  I wonder if I used too much light or the black backdrop was too much...

The litter was a bit of a challenge.  I tried a couple of different basing options, but I decided to go for the old, everybody gets their own seat approach.  It allowed the littler to built in the manner that looked most, err, reasonable to me.

There are a lot of different elements that are nice with the litter.  I really like the little pile of grapes(?) at his feet and there is a frog under one of his haunches.  There are some frog legs coming out from underneath one of the pillows.  Lots of little touches like that.

You can kinda see the grapes and a set of frog legs.

Total for April:

LV 15 Wizard on a Litter - 199

1 Scout with poison and shield  - 14

And a nice little work in progress army shot for the road...

Brennan's Gator Boys! A March post for 208 points

Beware the frogs of March!

March brought out the first of two units of suit-wearers for the Slann.  The "suite-wearers" or knights, as some explorers called them, where elite forces/warrior orders in Aztec society.  My apologies to the more verbose and literate, but I chose to be extremely brief on the subject.

I did get a bit of chuckle out of a unit of frogs wearing alligator skins as heavy armor... Kinda a role reversal eh?

The unit provides some heavy hitting power to the Slann.  Heavy armor and double-handed weapons means that these frogs can keep the same pace as the fellas with light and shield but not loose protection when they use their macy tails to full effect.

15 Alligator Warriors w 2 Handed Weapons and a Standard = 208 points for March!

Next month is up in the air, it will either be a frog on a shelf or the 15 Eagle Warriors....

Brennan's February Slann or the Frog Men Cometh! (226 points)

Ere we go, ere we go, oh wait, wrong game and wrong army all together!  Sorry, that happens to me when I paint a bit of green!  Oh I know, I know, made the Slann blue and not green, but the game master said it was ok...  And the scouts have green shields!

This month I decided to tackle the biggest unit and some extra figures to make up the points.  Seeing as it was the shortest month of the challenge, this was not the wisest decision, but I got there in the end.

The most significant hurdle this month was the variety of the castings.  The Slann were not a huge range and the figure options in some of the units can get a bit limited.  Just wait till I get the unit of 15 Eagle warriors done.  All one casting....  It's worse than napoleons! I might as well declare them clones and give them blasters....  But that's a challenge for another month.

I tried to keep the colors and the other elements of the unit of Slann Braves fairly consistent, which gives the illusion of a limited about of uniformity.  In another list, in another time, these may serve as unit of Bull Slann, but that's a wicked maybe.

The images below should show some of the color combos I used to give an air of uniformity.  I mixed in some less armored and commanding fellows.  Just to give it some contrast from the suit wearing more professional warrior types, which are to come in the following months.

I've also decided to give a little heraldry to the army and use a stylized leaf as a general symbol for the army.  The standards are going to be a mix of cloth and feathers.  The feather standards will all have some sort of stylized sun.  The lad are cold blooded after all!

The scouts below carry on the stylized leaf but in a green/black combination.  I was also surprised to see the scouts in pants, but hey even frogs need to protect the under carriage.

And before we get to the final points for the month, lets have group shot.

So!  for February we have:
16 Spawn Band with Standard = 170 Points
4 Scouts with Poison and Shields = 56 Points

For a monthly total of 226 points!

Brennan's Slannuary? - 237 Points

January Slann...  or is is Slannuary?

I'd like to be frank, it has been too cold for my poor Slann.  I've had to keep them in an aquarium in the house and away from the cool mud they love so much.  If I take them away from the heat lamp, just for a little painting, they get quite upset!  I think I was hit by a little dart from a blowpipe one evening...

I needed an easy start to the challenge, read as not too many figures or shields, so I went for the venom tribe and a hero to lead the whole affair.  It seems to have been a wise choice, as Nurgle's blessing has been with the household off and on since xmass, and the hobby time has been minimal.

Also, I am not always the best planner, and I had to blitz paint a 40 man IEF platoon for WW1 right before the start of the challenge.  I'm pretty good as mass painting, 4 days of mostly evening work, and the whole thing was ready to go into action.  We used the WW1 mod for Chain of Command if you were curious.  However, forcing myself to slow down and do some real quality can be a challenge after that.

I went for blue froggies, because I didn't want to do them in green (I did green skin tones last time) and I though having a nice dark blue figure would help make some of the brighter cloths and other elements on the figures stand out. I also wanted natural tones for my Slann.  I wanted to keep a muddy jungle off-white tanny vibe.  There are a lot different influences on the Slann, but the pre-columbian Mesoamerican is certainly the strongest, so I broke out some source material and dug in...

Which was mostly this fine work:

So I present....

Croak Lord Mitzocowatel:

The Venom Tribe:

And the group shot:

That makes:
LV 15 hero with 2 Handed Weapon and Heavy Armor - 117
10 Venom Tribe - 120
For a 237 point kick-off to the challenge.

I hope you like them as much as I do and thanks much for reading the post!

Brennan's Slann Renegades

Well here we go, round two.... FIGHT!

For the second Old World Army Challenge I've decided to go with the Slann.  It's a collection that I picked up this year.  I've always wanted a Slann army and I have kept my eyes open, but it certainly took a while for an opportunity to come up!

My rough plan is, that this a group of Slann who are going to take the fight to the dry legs!  No more sitting around waiting for the emperor to act!  So this will be the following a Slann warlord, who does have a member of the wizard/priestly caste supporting his cause.  It also works well with James' undead thingies.  We're hoping to run a couple of games based around a necromancer who has gotten out of hand in Lustria, and the Toad-Emperor isn't that bothered about him, but my fellas are.  Should be a fun game or campaign. 

So the planned army is (using the 3rd ed list in Warhammer Armies):

LV 15 hero with 2 Handed Weapon and Heavy Armor - 117

LV 15 Wizard on a Litter - 199

15 Eagle Warrior with 2 handed weapons and a standard - 240

15 Alligator Warriors w 2 handed weapons and a standard - 208

16 Span Band with shield and standard - 170

10 Venom Tribe - 120

5 scouts with poison and shields - 70

For a total of 1124

Here are the lads in a box - sadly, many figures never escape the box

 Sample of an eagle warrior, a scout, venom and a band member

 Band member, alligator warrior, and two more band members

Here the leader himself, Croak Lord Mitzocowatel

Nathan's slann army

Finally got of my arse and took some pics of my slann army. I won't go through the points value of hat I painted as one could check my other posts for that. I will note that the pics include 4 troglodytes that I painted prior to the challenge and 2 slann and one lizardman that I've painted since. My plan over the next few months is to do a few figures a month to beef the force up to a level where I could use it in a game against some of the other warhammer armies that I have painted. Anyway here are the pics:

Me wearing my 1980s era Fitzroy jumper - fits the topic I reckon!

Nathan's April Slanns (200pts)

A small lot of slann to finish things off. Now I didn't need to do these for the purpose of the challenge but if I ever want to field a 3000 point army of Slann I need to meet some minimum unit sizes. With that in mind I finished off enough figures to ensure that. Here they are:

Nathan's second last month of Slann (276pts)

Amazing what a deadline can do. I'm not able to paint anything during the last week of March due to some family commitments - that had me thinking that I might need to use my mulligan this month. But I thought that it was worth a try getting enough figures painted and in the end I got over 200 points done pretty easily. A lizardman hero that is worth 120 points on his own helps of course - overall the figures I completed are:

- Lvl 10 Lizardman hero 120 points
- 2 venom tribes 24 points
- 3 spawn bands 30 points
- 2 warrior priests, 1 with a standard 36 points
- 3 lizardmen 66 points

Grand total of 276 points. I'm a decent way through a few other figures which I will make April pretty easy too. The also ensures I have the minimum numbers of troops for a 3000 point army which is what I'm ultimately building toward. Anyway enough blabbing from me - here they are:

Nathan's Slanns (213pts)

Well I made it for another month - just. Another mixed bag of figures as it keeps me interested. In points values here they are:

Bull slann rider with shield - 33 points
3 warrior priests - 36 points
1 spawn band - 9 points
1 venom tribes - 12 points
1 giant spider - 45 points
1 level 10 hero with blowpipe - 78 points

213 points in total.

Nathan's January Slann (218 pts)

Well I made it - just. Another mixed lot of slann this month as painting figures from different units helps me from getting bored. I just need to remind myself from time to time what I need to have done by the end of the challenge for my force to actually fit the Warhammer Armies list! Anyway points wise this is what I finished:

- giant spider 45 points
- Slann beastmaster 12 points
- Slann on cold one - 33 points
- 2 venom tribes - 24 points
- 2 spawn bands - 20 points
- 3 lizardmen with two handed weapons - 72 points
- 1 warrior priest - 12 points

All up 218 points worth. I also painted up a 40K slann which I can use as an animal handler as the figure is holding an axe but I won't claim him. Anyway here they are:

Death to the Dryskins No More...

... or at least for a while. I contacted Iannick a few days ago to let him know I'm withdrawing from the Old World Army Challenge and promised more info for a blog post.

At the start of this month, I painted forty models in seven days.

None of them were Slann.

Nathan's Slann wizard and friends (209pts)

Well as the post notes I did a wizard for December. For something a bit different I did a wizard mounted on a cold one rather than on a litter which is the other option for slann wizards that are level 2 or greater (level 1 wizards in 3rd edition are pretty useless). I used a spare warrior priest as a lizard as I like the figure, it is unarmoured and fits onto a cold one pretty easily once one removes the slotta tab (well as easily as the actual cold one riders do). A level 15 wizard on a cold one is 209 points on it's own so that would have been enough for the month. I thought that was a tad too easy so I painted up a few pygmies which I want to use as an ally contingent at some stage. Using the 3rd edition army lists gives one 123 points for a wizard; the additional figures values depend on what you use them as - even if one picks the most expensive options they don't add up to much! Something I can work out later. Anyway here they are:

Clarence's (Quindia Studios) Slann Wizard - 199 points

Dread Lord Biddliplop, Watcher of Rain and Master of Deadly Wind, absently thrummed fat fingers on his warty knee. The dry skins stumbled down the trail below, bald panic plain on their faces. He supposed it was plain on their faces anyway... he always had trouble recognizing emotions on their tiny features. They had been in the process of looting treasures from the sacred tombs of the Jade Reaches when his warriors set upon them. Scattered and encumbered with gold, they proved no match for his ambushing army. The survivors were unaware that the Cold Ones in pursuit were herding them toward a narrow valley where his elite Eagle Warriors stood arrayed. Perhaps he would order his litter forward and unleash his magic on the thieves once the trap is sprung...

Nathan's Slann: 220 Pts

Well I've managed to meet the target for the first month at least. My approach to this has been a bit different than others as I haven't worked on whole units - what I have done is to do figures from different units so I wouldn't get bogged down painting similar figures. That is how I'm going to approach my painting each month and I'm reasonably confident it will work.

Clarence's (Quindia Studios) Slann Spawn Band - 228 points

Spawn Bands form the majority of warrior slann and are drawn from local jungle settlements or districts of a town. All Slann are obliged to perform a length of military duty in these bands. Those that distinguish themselves in battle may rise to one of the elite orders of Slann warriors...