Winter War: Environment Rules; Ogre Kingdoms, hobby hints
Following on from yesterday's Winter War scenarios article, Adam Troke has written Winter War - Environment Rules, which suggests rules for fighting over frozen lakes, inside blizzards and the frightful sounding Doom Hail.
While I was in the Studio catching up with Adam about his article, I saw Tom Webster-Deakin's Ogre Kingdoms army. Tom has been working on the army since summer, when he used it in the Warhammer Doubles Tournament, and has spent this week undercoating an extra couple of units with a view to painting them over his Christmas break. His army has some interesting little touches that I thought you'd like a look at:
Tom always begins a new army by picking up the relevant Battalion set and Hero to lead it. The Ogre Battalion gave Tom a core of fighting units (Ironguts and Bulls) and a unit of missile troops (Leadbelchers). For his initial Hero Tom added an Ogre Maneater to use as a Bruiser. Once he'd finished painting what has become the core of his army, Tom added some more specialised units: a Butcher for magical support, three Yhetees for a bit of speed and a unit of Gnoblar Trappers for a few more missile weapons. With his force quickly growing in size, Tom has recently added an Ogre Tyrant - a more fitting leader for an expansive Ogre horde. You often see Ogre armies finished with snow effect bases to represent their tundra homeland, Tom's ogres have obviously marched south in search of fresh plunder.
Leadbelchers must spend a turn reloading (the technical term for stuffing the barrel of a cannon full of scrap metal) before they can fire again. In the heat of battle it can be easy to forget which units have fired and which haven't. Tom has cleverly gotten around this by not gluing the scrap into the end of his Leadbelcher's weapons; he simply removes the scrap when they have fired and replaces it when they have reloaded.
Units of Gnoblars tend to contain upwards of 25 models. These types of units don't tend to suffer the odd casualty here and there, but suffer casualties in droves (every general needs some warriors to soak up the enemy's ire, after all). Tom speeds up play by basing his Gnoblars on a range of larger bases to make set-up and casualty removal easier.
With all of the important models in an Ogre army (i.e. not the Gnoblars) being multi-Wound monsters, it helps to have something to keep track of their Wounds with. I've seen a lot of people use dice but it's all too easy to pick these up and roll them in the heat of battle. Instead, Tom decided to make some counters by gluing Skeleton Warrior heads to 25mm round bases. The Skulls Bitz Pack is ideal if you don't have any spare Skeleton heads to hand.
Tom made this turn counter by gluing some of the slate from the Warhammer Basing Kit to a 60mm round base, and painting the turn numbers onto the slate. He then glued the look-out! Gnoblar from the Ogre command frame onto a 25mm round base and painted it to look like a statue. Finally, Tom drilled a hole through the bottom of the 60mm base into the Gnoblar's base and glued a small length of paperclip between the two so that the Gnoblar can be rotated on the spot.