WFB – Dark Night of the Soul

It’s two in the old ante meridian. I’m staring at the hobby desk, looking at my Vampire counts, and I don’t quite know what’s happened here. Questions throng my tired mind, and they demand answering.

Somehow I’ve gone from “wouldn’t it be nice to have my old Vampire Counts army back?” to “I have forty-five new Zombies and thirty new Ghouls and three new Corpse Carts and three new Banshees to paint on top of all the repainting and repairs and I need two bags to carry the army as it is and even then it seems to demand over £150 in new pieces just to join in with eighth edition effectively…”

… and that feels like work, kids. Worse, it feels like work I have to pay for, and work I don’t want to do. In my hobby time. Which is supposed to be my time, damn it.

WFB – All Aboard the Clapham Omnibus

I live in London now. This is presumably a good thing, although I haven’t had the chance to do masses of exploring just yet, as it’s still busy busy busy research season and I have nine days to produce something like eleven thousand words of material. No pressure, then.

However, last night I did manage to sneak out and pay a visit to some nice chaps who claim to be the Clapham War Gamers. Rain very nearly stopped play (ten minutes into the walk, the heavens opened and I spent fifteen further minutes cowering in a bus stop) but I just about made it in time to play some WFB against a nice enthusiastic chap of Teutonic extraction (hi Max!) and his nasty Skaven (boo, Skaven!).

WFB: Revamping Lord Ruthven

So!

I have now played a game or two with the Vampire Counts. Here’s the 1500 point list I used in the one that wasn’t a total embarrassment (and considering I forgot to set up 90 points of my army or enforce the taking of any Fear tests for the first four turns, imagine how embarrassing the other one must have been – or just click the link, y’know?)

Here’s the list I ended up using (badly).

WFB Is Not Plug And Play

So, it’s been a month, and the case foam has turned up, and I… sort of still haven’t actually played a game with my Vampire Counts, owing to an outbreak of Real Life, and the deadly West Midlands Man Flu. This is Not Good. I haven’t even written an army list. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about army lists, but haven’t actually gotten one down.

The thing is that I’m not really a fan of pick-up games, or indeed of points matches; in an ideal world some chaps who want to play a game can sit down and discuss scenario, forces and so on beforehand, negotiating the objective and style of play like civilised adults.

For a variety of reasons, some more valid than others, this doesn’t get to happen as often as I’d like, and so sometimes I do actually need to make lists happen. Now I like my lists to reflect the way I imagine my army is, because at heart I’m a little fluffy bunny hoppity-skipping through the forest… but I’m a bunny with a steel core and if you try to run me over, I want you to break your front axle doing it.

WFB: Order of the Black Cross

Originally, my Vampire Counts bore out the observation that background happens in play, not before it.  A generic Army of Sylvania rapidly became something a bit more personal, as battles were fought across army lists and editions and even games (it must be noted that my Vampires were most successful in the realm of Mordheim, after all).  As I go forward into whatever-I-end-up-doing-now*, I want to hang on to as much of that continuity as possible.

The Order of the Black Cross were Sylvania’s token, tiny circle of Knights Templar.  Like everything else about Sylvania, they were a poor showing in the centuries before Vlad, with a mediocre record in the joust and a minimal presence in the great Crusades against Araby and occupied Estalia.  Even the ominous and looming Castle Templehof (Sylvanians are not an imaginative folk when it comes to names) was of note more for its architectural extravagance and extensive catacombs than its strategic solidity.