Review Warlord Games 10th Doctor Who

10th Doctor Model Collection

The 10th Doctor comes as a high quality metal model in a box with four assistants, Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Donna Noble, and Wilfred Mot.

The models are a larger scale than usual, the Doctor is 40mm from the bottom of the base to the top of his head. The models are 'to scale': most 28mm models are not true scale, having exaggerated 'cartoon-like' heads and hands and different vertical and horizontal scales.

The sculpting is excellent, being very life like. I have to say the moulding is perfect, and I mean perfect! You can take the models straight out of the box and paint them.

10th Doctor Miniature

The only one I have painted so far is the Doctor himself. The model was really easy to paint as everything is clearly defined. Now, I am not claiming in any way to be a professional painter; I am a pretty average wargamer when it comes to painting, with only mediocre skills whose main aim is to get something acceptable onto the table as fast as possible.

So the photo gives an idea what the average person can achieve.

Rear View

I used Tamiya 'Pavement Effect' paint on the base after building it up with Milliput.

Scale Comparison With 28 mm Mini

The photo show the 'to scale' 40mm high Doctor model with a 28 mm 'wargame style' Warlord Games Bolt Action metal mini.

Rose Tyler is next.


Disclaimer: I wrote the as yet unpublished Doctor Who "Into The Time Vortex" wargame rules for Warlord Games

Age of Sigmar: Flesh-Eater Courts Starter Set Review

Abhorrant Ghoul King On Terrorgheist

My first reaction to AoS was decidedly negative because of the terrible launch decisions but I started wheeling out some of my old fantasy armies, when the General's Handbook came out and I could build a fair army to play an opponent,  and discovered the game was great fun.

But I had no intention of buying any new models, none whatsoever ye ken, under no circumstances, and then I wandered into my flgs and saw the starter set and the models were Oooooooh and the price was reasonable and.........

 Abhorrant Ghoul King On Terrorgheist

Centre piece of the army is a monster kit, that can be assembled as a giant undead bat or dragon. I chose the bat and used it as a mount for my Ghoul King.

Abhorrant Ghoul King On Terrorgheist

The paving on the base is scratch-built from plastic card, fish-tank gravel and sand. I wanted to give a ruined ancient city look to match the fluff in the Battletome, that I also sorta bought (but second hand on ebay - honest).

Crypt Flayers

One also gets the bits for three 'small monsters' that can be assembled to give a variety of running or flying characters of 'heavy' troops. I chose to build them as Crypt Flayers.

Crypt Ghouls And Crypt Ghast

Finally, you get some cannon fodder, ten crypt ghouls let by a Crypt Ghast or you can upgrade the ghast to an independent character, the Crypt Ghast Courtier.

Against The Seraphon

The box contents are a playable army of around 600 pts or so, depending what options you choose to build.

You are short of ordinary foot, so I use 20 Oldhammer Zombies as ghouls to pad out the army. These are crummy models - too big for the stands so they stand shoulder to shoulder in a ranked army more like Guardsmen than Zombies - but fine as fillers for my Court.

Crypt Flayers Kill A Lizard Monster


So what did I learn about the army in its first tryout against Seraphon.

Weeell......

Advantages
You have some highly mobile units that can be across the battlefield in a flash of wings.
Your units hit hard on the attack.

Disadvantages
Crummy armour save, you need to use your unit's advantages to take out the opposition before they wear you down

I also learnt a few things about AoS
We already have 'codex-creep': (i) 'new' armies like Seraphon and Courts are much tougher than old armies like Slaves to Darkness and (ii) winning the initiative can have a sizable impact on the balance of the game.

So there we are and, of course, I shall not buy any more.

No really, I can give this up whenever  want....

New Map of the 40K Galaxy

Things are going to hell in a handcart. My Chaos marines seem to be on the march.

40K 8th Edition News

You know all those expensive codexes you bought: well you can throw them away chaps and chapesses. They will not be compatible with 8th edition.

But fear not if you feel that you have not quite given GW enough cash yet - there is a last chance to buy unusable, useless codexes on the GW site - no doubt at full price, obvously.

Sea Lion Campaign Supplement

Operation Sea Lion, the new Campaign Supplement is out on preorder at Warlord Games.

And I believe you get a free special model if you buy direct from them.

I am very proud of this one. It is the most whimsical supplement that I have written for Warlord and,  IMHO, the best.

Age of Sigmar - Oldhammer, Slaves to Darkness

Lord Frak the Faithless, Chaos Lord on Daemonic Mount

Age of Sigmar has, since they sorted it out a bit, given me an excuse to make some of the Oldhammer armies in miniature that I always fancied but couldn't afford. One of them was Slaves to Darkness: I give you my 'Despicables'.

All the units but one were bought for reasonable sums second hand from eBay.

My Chaos Lord is assembled from spare bits that an eBay seller kindly bunged in the box for free.

Drok the Dumb, Exalted Hero of Chaos

This is a new Reaper Bones model purchased for two of our Brexit Pounds.

The Dark Knights of Destruction, Chaos Knights

The Knights of Baneful Blue, Chaos Knights

The knights are the heavy hitters of the army.

Chaos Gorebeast Chariot

Very useful on the charge as a follow unit to the knights. This was a well made and painted model that I only had to blend in with the rest of my army by freshening up the colours.

Chaos Chariot

This model had been coated in araldyte so required cleaning and disassembling in paint stripper: horrible job but the results are good.

Chaos Chosen

In Humbrol 'multicolour' metallic green.

Chaos Warriors

The cannon fodder for holding ground.

The paint jobs are designed to suggest a non-specific Chaos Army but sinister, with lots of glossy black, dark metallics and various multicolour sprays - highlighted with bright metallic green and blue.

The army works out at about 1000 pts which I think is optimum for AoS.

Taking the objective.

We played a three-objective scenario where one got a victory point for each objective held uncontested at the end of each turn, with one unit coming on each turn. First one to 12 points wins.

Drok grabbed the objective nearest me, which was fine but I made the error of moving on my slow units first with a vague idea of keeping my army together.

Contesting the middle objective.

That tactical mistake allowed my opponent, Simon E., to grab and hold the middle objective for two turns (as well as the objective on his side of the table) before I got mobile units in to contest.

I never recovered from that initial two point disparity and lost by 12 points to 10.

Fun game.