Another Bad Idea

Convic is Melbourne’s largest Fantasy tournament. It has 120 players and is know for bringing the best of the best out of hiding with their A game armies. This year instead of composition, Convic will be using a slightly modified version of the system used at the WFB European Team Championship.

(40K fans see the bottom note)

Armies are 2000 points, 2250 points, or 2600 points depending on the “tier.” Tier A armies are considered the hardest to beat so they only get 2000points. Conversely tier C armies are considered soft and get 2600 points. Everything in the middle gets the usual 2250 points.

When calculating victory points at the end of the game, once you have the result, then add 10% to any category A army’s losses rounding off as normal. Any category C army would conversely have its losses reduces by 20%.

There is only one tier A army: Daemons
Tier C is deemed as Beastmen, Ogre Kingdoms, Orcs and Gobbos and Dogs of War.
Everything else falls into Tier B.

Personally I was a little surprised to see Dark Elves in Tier B and the new Beastmen book in Tier C. There were additional army restrictions that significantly changed the balance of many of the army books out there now.

We’ll start with a listing of the general composition rules:
Tier B and C amries may have 6 Special and 4 Rare Choices
Max 1 of each Rare choice (max two for High Elves)
Max 2 of the same Special choice
Max three of the same core choice unless it is a ranked infantry unit without missile weapons
Max three chariots (including characters and units)
Max 3 units of flyers (including characters)
Max 45 models with missile weapons with a range of 20”+ (not including war machines, characters and chariots)
Max 5 War machines
Max 9 Power Dice

Magic:
The max any army can have is 9 dice. Bound items count as a dice and there are a huge pile of other restrictions.

The max number of dispel dice per army is 10. 1 scroll counts a 1 dice. Two scrolls counts as three. Three scrolls count as 5 etc..

Army specific restrictions:
Every army has a pile of restrictions that are just too long to list. I will mention the army with the least restrictions. Orcs and Gobbos. They can take a max of 6 fanatics and they can take two of a single rare choice.

I list the Orc and Gobbo restrictions because that is the army that I am going to take to this mess. While I was initially put off by the system completely as it banned most of the fantasy armies I owned, I did have a moment of clarity in the shower one sleep deprived morning (where I get most of my bad ideas). I would take orcs. The idea of a horde of cheap as chips boyz sounded really good all of a sudden. I had experimented with orcs at one point and just lost every time. I was just outclassed by my opponents at every turn. Maybe this point difference could make a difference I needed. Sounded like a good plan. (maybe)

I decided to give it a go. The idea became how many boyz could I fit in 2600 points. I ended up with a silly number that I could never get done in time. Hmmmm that wouldn’t work. Also, that army lacked the characters and hard hitting units necessary to actually win games. I refined my idea. I am an old school Chaos Dwarf player of many, many years. Going back to an army theme idea I came up with after a few tasty beverages.

The Chaos Dwarf liberation army.

As stated in old fluff: Black orcs were created magically from the ordinary orcs by Chaos Dwarf Sorcerers in an attempt to engineer a superior slave. However the Black Orcs were too strong -willed, so they led a revolt and many of them escaped from the lands of the Chaos Dwarfs and can now be found among orc societies across the Old World.

Basically the idea of the army is that a group of Black Orcs lead an army of escaped orcs and (hob)goblins across the World’s Edge Mountains into Old World. Hilarity ensues (or something). I have not finalized my list yet but the army will have five big units of orc boyz, a big block of Black Orcs, some war machines, a giant and some black orc heroes.

Lots and lots of boys. Now I have painted the orc horde for my 40K swamp orc army and I was really over it by the end. I really wanted to do something different model wise. I got to thinking about what an orc refugee would be wearing as he crossed the World Edge mountains… Probably the skins of anything he kill in his path. Heavy cloaked orcs. Yeah, that’s the ticket! I watched the Dark Knight again and had an idea. The boyz in the background have heavy furs draped over them like Batman when he is shrouded in his cape (with just the faces showing). The boys in the front rank have thrown their furs back and their arms and fronts are exposed with the furs hanging down their backs. If that makes sense?

I jury-rigged some armatures to sculpt on top of and a few days later I have the foundations of my army done. Our camera has just come back from the shop so look for pictures of this monstrosity shortly. 300 dice, 150 bases and 120 orc heads... Wow.

(Note: There is a major 40K tournament 2 weeks after Covic called Killcount. It is a 1750point tournament. I will be spending so much time on the orc army that I will not be able to finish my long suffering Alien themed Nids for this tourney. Because of this I have mounted my orcs on round bases and they will be appearing modified two weeks later as a feral themed Ork list. I will be adding boar/ bike boys and weird boys to the mix. I am making two sets of nobs (one for fantasy and one for 40K) and additional special weapon boys. )


To make up for my lack of piccies this time around, here is a photo of me in front of Bagend in Hobbiton (New Zealand).