New Church League Painting Weekend

Painting Weekend

With EvilFuzzyDoom

This weekend I got some painting and photography in, and since the fine lads plugged gave me a plug on the Scrumcast last week I figured I'd show them off (especially since I haven't gotten this round's league game in yet!). I also played a 3-man round-robin night and test-drove eGrissel, so I'll be putting in a little bit about what I found with her as well.

Very first things first, I'm still not sure what to run against Cygnar in my League game this round - I'm playing against Sloan or Constance Blaize, playing Capture the Flag, one caster, 15 points, Highlander. Any advice on facing this lot would be really appreciated, since I've never played against either!

Next up, my first thoughts on eGrissel! (Ha ha, you have to read things to get to the pictures! Or you could just scroll down... oh no! I gave the game away. Nuts, now noone will read this twaddle. Nevermind, it's too late now...)
So we all know she's got Dash & Inhospitable Ground and whacky Fell Blast thingies and stuff, not to mention a nifty model which is hands & feet above her Primal incarnation. This isn't a review though, that's for Bakaryu to cover some time soon! I'm certainly not going to steal that thunder. He'd probably go berserk if I did.

I found myself with two buddies (Beaumains and Nonchalance) and an evening at The Church (our fondly-named regular gaming venue). We decided to have another 3-man mini-tournament, because we've realised that 3-player games suck a bit. They decided to run T4 Harbinger and Mortenebra, respectively. I agonised over my cards for a while and eventually settled for playing the models I know best, to give myself a leg-up while learning a new caster. It ended up being a devastating anti-infantry list:

Grissel Bloodsong, Marshal of the Kriels (*6pts)
* Pyre Troll (5pts)
* Troll Impaler (5pts)
* Dire Troll Mauler (9pts)
Trollkin Fennblades (Leader and 5 Grunts) (5pts)
* Trollkin Fennblade Officer & Drummer (2pts)
Fell Caller Hero (3pts)
Troll Whelps (2pts)

This, it turned out, was not awfully helpful against two armies of four 'Jacks plus support:

Tiers: 4
Harbinger of Menoth (*5pts)
* Crusader (5pts)
* Crusader (5pts)
* Crusader (5pts)
Avatar of Menoth (10pts)
Choir of Menoth (Leader and 3 Grunts) (2pts)
High Paladin Dartan Vilmon (3pts)

Tiers: 4
Master Necrotech Mortenebra (*4pts)
* Harrower (9pts)
* Reaper (6pts)
* Slayer (5pts)
* Slayer (5pts)
Warwitch Siren (2pts)
Warwitch Siren (2pts)

I won't go through detailed battle reports since both games ran pretty much the same; we played Close Quarters with the same table set up each time. I advanced swiftly up to my target objective and jammed the opponent with Dashing Fennblades on the left side, running 14" and charging 10". My beasts did the same up the right flank, moving ridiculously fast.

My second game against Menoth had a bit of a hiccup when Beaumains used Harby's feat to prevent me advancing - this stopped the Fennblades, but I spammed Flaming Fists and all my beasts & Grissel shuffled up, and I dropped Inhospitable Groud to prevent Menoth's Jacks moving more than 4". I got the charge both games, and took a turn or two of attrition before my opponents pulled a very impressive assassination run - with the Reaper & Harbinger respectively, after having to scythe their way through my beasts. I also forgot to feat (twice!) against Menoth, which was probably my undoing.

eGrissel herself mainly stood at the back, but when she got stuck in she performed pretty spectacularly: she single-handedly took out a Crusader in melee and her Quake shot turned out excellent for putting Heavies on their behinds. I'm convinced she's a lead-from-the-front kind of gal who can super-solo her way through just about anything. Dash is just there to make sure her boys (wussy man-whelps that they are!) can keep up! I also feel that I should be making more use of Inhospitable Ground - being able to engage the enemy's frontline and knowing that nothing can get close enough to touch your Warlock is just pure gold.

Next time I run her, she'll be bringing Champions instead of Fennblades, since they'll benefit more from her feat and don't need the same damage buffs to put pain on jacks; the only thing she really loses over pGrissel is the ability to boost damage output through Calamity & Heroic Ballad. The nicest thing about using her is probably that I have an excuse to fit a Fell Caller in her list - I've found running pGrissel that they just get in the way!

Yes, get on with it!

Anyway, now I give you pictures!

First up, I present my painted Trolls so far, photographed on the first sunny day we've had in a while:


You'll notice that I've gone with the standard blue skin, and I'm glad I did - it's so much fun to paint! I also went with red for the quills and the odd piece of clothing, which nicely rounds out the "primary colours" look I've stumbled upon. I will confess for my sins that I use Citadel paints on my little trolls, since I'm an ages-old 40k player and I seem to have them lying about. I just don't feel comfortable brancing out at this stage and it must be said that Devlan Mud is the sexiest thing ever to have been made. I'm on to my third pot since I discovered it, and I've got paint from the 90s that I still use from time to time. It looks particularly good over the "tartan" (which is almost a canary yellow before the wash goes on).

Here are my painted casters, Primal Madrak & Grissel. I'm not particularly happy with pMadrak, I sort of forced myself to paint him since it felt a little silly to not have a painted 'Lock; you'll notice that his face in particular is a bit... gluggy. I think I left it 'til last and the paint on my pallette was drying up. I don't like the sculpt very much and I keep telling myself that I'm not going to be using him that much, except for the part where he's one of my League Warnouns and he's responsible for my two wins so far... hmm...



Grissel is a different kettle of scrounged up Troll feed. I really, really like her rules but again am not very impressed with the model. She looks small and lacks facial details, while there's no end of fiddly finicky bits on her actual armour. It took me three or four tries to actually build up momentum to finish her; she saw play for about a month just in her basecoats, which changed a couple of times (when I paint trolls I do so over a white undercoat, then I block in all the colours with their shades, then work each colour up through basecoat to highlight) - uhmming and aahing over which bits of pGrissel's kit would be metal and which would be leather meant that there were a few coats of grey or brown just about everywhere on her.



Eventually, I put together an album covering her 360 degree view and stared at the pictures for a couple of hours until I could figure out what bit was made of what, then went at it hammer and tongs. It took me a weekend or so, and I still don't like her very much. I'll probably end up using the eGrissel sculpt all the time once she's painted - the model is just that much better in my opinion.

Next (although I painted them first) come the Fennblades. I'm pretty happy with them, especially the Drummer. You'll notice the tartans (or lack thereof) are a flat yellow - that's actually Citadel Bubonic Brown, which I'm finding a nice contrast with the Hawk Turquoise I'm using for the Trollskin. I keep staring at these fellows and wondering who painted them...

Below are my beasts. Motley chaps they are, they're a lot of fun to paint after I've blocked in all the base colours. The Impaler was the first Troll I painted, so is a little sub-par (it took me a while to settle on a colour scheme), but I'm happy with all the others. I found with the Mauler in particular that, while covering every exposed bit of skin with Citadel's Mordian Blue Foundation Paint is dull and half-arsedly brushing Hawk Turquoise over same with a worn-out size "0" brush is torture, for some reason highlighting that by gradually mixing in Ice Blue and then Skull White is some of the most fun I've had with a brush in my hand. It certainly beats painting space marines any day.

Oh, and here's a Mulg. He's Mulg. He was surprisingly easy to paint, using successive drybrushed layers of Adeptus Battlegrey, Codex Grey & Fortress Grey on the stones, and some weird mixes of Scorched Brown, Graveyard Earth, Snakebite Leather & Dheneb Stone on the club. It definitely got a layer or two of Devlan Mud at the end as well, to tie it all together.


This actual weekend, I got around to painting my Krielstone & Stone Scribes, who I've been meaning to paint for some time now. They're pretty much as per spec, with the exception of their robes (Scorched Brown highlighted up with Graveyard Earth) and the gold on the SSE's scroll cases - they're Scorched Brown to start with (isn't everything?) followed by a very watered-down wash of Dark Angels Green, a heavy drybrush of Shining Gold, a light drybrush of Burnished Gold, and a very light drybrush of Mithril Silver.

The Stone itself was quite a lot of fun to paint, getting about eight coats of different greys (with a final thin coat of Foundation Paint Astronomican Grey) and the standard-issue mud treatment. I wasn't all that happy with it after the mud went on, so I gave it another very light, single-direction drybrush of Fortress Grey with a bit of white mixed in.

While I was painting them, I also painted up my Runebearer, since he shares pretty much the same outfit as the Stone Scribes. I also found him a nice break from them when he came round in the queue (I paint in batches, one colour at a time. It comes from trying to stay sane while painting platoons of Imperial Guardsmen!). I like the model and I'm pretty happy with the way he turned out.


SO! That's it for the pictures of tiny little trolls. I'll leave you until next time with the recommendation to watch Roman Polanski's The Tragedy of Macbeth, which is absolutely where I stole the idea of baby-poop-yellow tartan from.