We’re back at it again at Hammer the Backlog, the weekly mini painting, productivity and accountability blog. In a week filled with diversions and distractions, I am once again sick as a pig with a head cold. Join me for another week of making up excuses and painted models. Lets read on together to see how badly this week’s big distraction disrupted the overall project.
SCORECARD
Haha! Not at all! Take that, project! So the big distraction was that Tim, from Mountain Gremlin Games, invited me down to Wexford for a 1,500 point battle between my 5th Edition Bretonnians and his 4th Edition (and older!) Orcs and Goblins. Foolishly, in retrospect, my biggest concern was that I didn’t have enough men for a 1,500 WFB battle. Oh, Mick, you sweet summer child.
So anyway, in a rush to get more men done, I didn’t paint any Empire models done this week, and instead rushed to get a unit of 5 squires done by Saturday.
And get them done I did! Did I actually need them? No, not at all. I think the game Tim and I played might have been the first game in Warhammer history where Bretonnians outnumbered Orcs and Goblins.I’ll get a bit more into that later in the blog. But at least from the painting side, I got five models painted.
So where does that leave the quarterly progress? Still all good, thankfully. We have 5 weeks left, weeks 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13. And we have 20 footsoldiers left to paint. At 5 a week, that gives us plenty of time to get them done, and then either take a week off to get the end of quarter video and battle report filmed and edited, or to get some bits and bobs painted.
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
This week’s models were a real treat, to be honest. No matter what I do in Hammer the Backlog, I always come back to these damned 5th edition bretonnians.
These five were snatched at random from the pile of 9 or 10 squires that I ended up with when they came back for The Old World.
I decided to paint them as differently from my bowmen as I could, while still keeping them looking like they come from the same army. Especially since they really are very similar models, with broadly the same look, armour and equipment. In fact my bowmen command groups are actually squire command groups.
So I went for light and dark leather tunics, with each squire wearing a hood that matched the heraldry of a particular knight from one of my knights of the realm units. The idea being that the squires have all been banded together into a unit to go and beat the ground ahead of the knights and flush out prey from them to hunt down.
I am delighted with how they turned out, especially since with so many browns and other natural muddy colours, the ugly phase on these models was really quite specially ugly.
My favourite is definitely this guy, who looks more like Barry Keoghan than a model specifically sculpted to look like Barry Keoghan would. My only regret is not giving him black hair.
C’EST UNE ARMÉE!
So, I will admit, the goal of army planning for me has never been to win, or even to make a competitive, or functional army. For me, the number one goal is that it looks good and matches a theme. I guess that’s why I’ve always been a collector, painter and displayer, more than a gamer.
So when it came time to pack up the Bretonnians for their trip to Wexford, it was pretty much a no man left behind approach to army making. The only Bretonnian or Bretonnian adjacent model that didn’t make the field was the Green Knight, but he did make the trip in the box anyway.
The 5th edition Bretonnian book allows for Men-at-arms with light armour, swords and shields. A combination I don’t think GW ever made models for. Or if they did, they were back in the pre-history days. So even my Grudgrebringer Infantry, who are painted in the same style and based identically, got the call up. In fact, I think this might be the best use of these models, so they are more or less permanently joining the 5th Edition Bretonnian Army.
Even my beloved, Jean-Luc le Normal, got the call up. Just a completely normal knight on foot with a two handed sword from the city of Mousilon. No further questions please.
I even wrote my list out (scribed?) in my faux mediaeval leather bound diary from Carcasson. The city, not the board game.
Here’s a link to the list, in readable format.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-BeSEUOfxqMLdXSMm64sJhtll7cA8V-47Fyv0UGOIg0/edit?usp=sharing
LA BATAILLE
A rowdy bunch of Orcs and Goblins, seemingly on the trail of some hidden treasure (almost certainly a product of their bizarre “minds”) stumbled across the small Bretonnian village of Petite Village. Finding it full of wine and beer and humans to fight, it seems like they decided to stay.
With a small force of Knights, backed up by mostly squires, commoners and peasants, the Red Duke set out to bloody the Orcs’ noses for them, showing them that the Lords of Bretonnia would not simply sit back and let the orcs run rampant. Without a large showing of knights, the main aim was to give the Orcs a warning to move on rather than attempt to wipe them out on the field of battle. The King will believe that, won’t he, scribe? No! Don’t write that bit down! Stop, why are you still writing?
Approaching the town and seeing the foul greenskins lining up, the Duke saw no infernal gunpowder weapons or other dishonourable weapons of war, and so didn’t stop to pray for the Lady’s blessing. Instead, he would goad the greenskins out of the town with peasant bowfire and then smash the Orcs apart under lance and hoof when they over stretched themselves.
Easily spotted by the amount of uncouth screaming and shooting, Pierre’s regiment of peasant bowmen scored first blood, killing one of the pair of boars pulling some sort of ramshackle construction. Easily a week’s eating for the village on that boar.
To the Bretonnians’ surprise, the Orcs had a magic user, firing searing bolts of revolting green energy towards the peasants and squires. A few Bretonnian subjects met their end, but none of the irreplaceable knights were injured.
The Lady Madelaine, a fire Wizard from the Duke’s court, hurled fire spell after fire spell into a hulking unit of hideous trolls, throwbacks to an earlier era. Her efforts were stymied at almost every turn with the cowardly tricks and trinkets of the Orc magic user. Frustrated, she reached out with her mind to shut him down, but came off the worse and forgot one of her spells. It would be months of study to relearn it!
The remaining squires pushed forwards, into range of the large huddle of cowled goblins, who seemed to be preoccupied fighting each other over mushrooms. To their surprise, three metal ball wielding lunatics were pushed out of the unit towards them, tearing their own bodies apart in their frenzied swinging. One of the lunatics careened into a house, splatting itself against the wall. A second spun back around and into the squabbling goblins. The third, however, came right at them, mangling all of the remaining squires and several men at arms.
With the orcs now close enough, the knights charged. Although the Duke, with his Grail Virtue, could not feel it, a strange sense of dread overcame the knights as they charged. Despite a fairly close run clash, the knights turned tail and uncharacteristically, ran. The Duke, bewildered, was dragged off with them. Luckily, the foul disorganised beasts weren’t able to keep up and the knights lived.
The closest unit of bowmen did turn tail and run, straight off the battlefield.
On the far side, the orc chieftain seemed to possess some weapon of foul strength and trickery, turning a fairly advantageous clash for the knights into a slaughter, killing two noble Knights, their heavy plate armour offering no protection whatsoever.
With all of my units defeated or fleeing, we called the battle there. None of my characters were killed in battle, and only a few knights lost their lives. With most of the casualties coming from the peasantry, and the Orcs given a stern lesson that they cannot simply sack a Bretonnian village, it was a great victory for the Duke.
LESSONS LEARNED
This was a very interesting experience for me, being as it was the very first full game of Warhammer Fantasy where I didn’t buy, build, paint and select both armies. When Jim and I play, I pick the two sides, try to make them equal-ish, making sure I get every painted model on the board.
In this match, though, it was very clear that Tim’s Orcs had a more focussed selection, bigger units and magic weapons and items to beat up my heavily armoured knights, focusing on weapons and magic items that remove armour saves and cause fear. In-character excuses aside, it really was a heavily one-sided whipping for my poor equestrians.
Tim and I took turns misremembering and interpreting 5th edition rules. I think it would be a stretch to say we played a 5th edition battle, using 4th edition magic and probably having at least one rule from every edition of WFB mixed in there. Having said that, Tim was a very gracious host with an amazing period army, who was very accepting of me bumbling through the rules. I can’t recommend Mountain Gremlin Games enough.
Even better than the game was seeing my old friend Owen for the first time in about 15 years. Owen and I trained together, and probably gave each other PCS for about 10 years, and hilariously never even knew the other was into Warhammer the whole time. It just never came up! Owen also took all of the better photos from the battle!
So what lessons did I learn? Well, if the Bretonnians are playing another game in the future, I would definitely bring more knights and fewer peasants. You might as well play to the army strengths. Another issue I had was placing characters that were immune to psychology in units that weren’t; completely wasting that expensive trait as the character is carried off with his fleeing troops. A full strength unit of Grail Knights would fix that. And finally, if you’re playing Hero Hammer editions, I guess you should lean into the Hero Hammer side. I think the total amount I spent on magic items was about 80 points, when I really should have tooled up my heroes with weapons and armour to justify them being there.
Well that’s it from me for another week.
Thanks for reading all of that long one, you’re the best eggs.
Hammer the Backlog 
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