GoblinWatch 2020 continues with a small goblin on a big spider.
I’m not a big fan of the model, to be honest, and I kinda rushed to get it done. I hope they do a new version of it someday, like they did with the Loonboss on Giant Squig. In fact I hope they revamp the whole Spiderfang side of the Gloomspite Gitz range, I love spiders and want more of them.
Despite not really digging the model I’m looking forward to playing with him, either when The Ongoing Situation comes to an end or I crack and start trying to play Warhammer alone.
Late in 2019 I bought a large batch of Gloomspite Gitz from a friend, at a bargain price. I didn’t know exactly what was in this batch, other than a couple of Arachnarok Spiders. When the first batch arrived in the post, I was alarmed to discover that it contained more than 100 Shootas and Stabbas from the old Battle for Skull Pass starter set. Then a second batch arrived, containing even more of them. Somewhat intimidated by the thought of painting so many models, I stored them away and focused on other projects.
Then, a month ago, an Age of Sigmar escalation league started up in Edinburgh. What better motivator for getting through all my unpainted Gitz?
Last week on Wednesday I took stock of my horde of Stabbas and Shootas and decided how many I was going to paint. I painted 2 units of 20 Stabbas and 1 unit of 20 Shootas last year, so I thought it would make sense to aim for being able to field 2 units of 40 Stabbas, or a large block of 60, plus a unit of 40 Shootas. So I needed to paint 40 Stabbas and 20 Shootas.
That Thursday I got out my airbrush and engaged in a marathon priming session, getting some 80 models ready to be painted. As well as the infantry, this included 10 Spider Riders and a Scuttleboss. When I was done I began painting the first batch of 10 Stabbas.
Then, on Friday evening I came down with a cold, but managed to finish the first batch of Stabbas. In total I had spent perhaps a little over 3 hours on them. That’s amazing! I am really astonished by how better tech and more experience have combined to enable me to blast through projects like these.
Last weekend, with all my social commitments cancelled thanks to my cold, I finished all 40, getting through each batch of 10 in about 3 hours. Here they are:
On Monday I was feeling a little better, but decided not to go to work. I hate catching illnesses from my coworkers, but I hate transmitting them even more. With not much else to do, I painted the old Night Goblin Big Boss you can see at the top of this article, who I’ll be using as a Loonboss.
Over the course of this week I painted these 20 Shootas. Again, I don’t think I spent much more than 6 hours on them altogether.
With everything that’s going on I anticipate a lot less socialising and a lot more being stuck at home. Being a productive hobbyist will be a good anchor, I think. Hopefully can have small amounts of friends over for games, but I don’t know how smart it is to play at the game shop or that sort of thing.
Shrug. Look out for each other, okay? Just like these gobbos do.
I’ve never painted squigs before, so this is somewhat of a milestone. I think they came out really well.
You can run these in units of 5 (plus a herder) or multiples of 5. I think when I paint more squigs, or if I come back to these, I’ll do something to make half of them a bit distinct from the others. I’d like each group of 5 to look a little bit different. Not wildly so; just some variation in patterns, highlight tones, whatever.
Here are the handlers!
I friggin love them, gang. Kinda bummed I couldn’t build the alternate versions of them where the musician is holding a pair of cymbals and the prodder has a mushroom-on-a-stick instead. I guess that means I have an excuse to acquire a second box, or perhaps pick up the new Start Collecting?
What’s next? Well, I was going to paint Hrothgorn’s Mantrappers because I want to start playing them in Underworlds. Then the local Age of Sigmar escalation league started up and gave me a big incentive to crack on with my Gloomspite Gitz. All my hobby plans were thrown into disarray, but now they’ve coalesced again and I have a detailed plan for how I’m going to get the Gitz done. So that’s what the next couple/few months will be filled with: more goblins, spiders, and squigs.
I am not ashamed to say these were a rush job. The painting time was quick - I estimate about 5 hours - and consisted of little more than a zenithal basecoat followed by a few splashes of Citadel Contrast paint.
Despite the low time investment, I’m really pleased with the results. There’s lots of contrast between colours, light and shadow. The colour scheme is unusual without being garish or too unnatural, and all the details are crisp and clean. Most importantly, the recipe is easily scalable for when I get around to painting more Flesh-Eater Courts models.
I had a busy weekend, taking part in two Warhammer Underworlds tournaments.
Dundee
The first was on Saturday in Dundee at Highlander Games. It’s about a 20 minute walk from the train station (nearly everything in Dundee is), but in this case I was walking into the wind, being pelted by sleet, hail and snow most of the way. But it was worth it. The tournament was in best-of-three format, and 8 people showed up.
I took Rippa’s Snarlfangs because I’ve been focusing on them recently and didn’t feel like running Skaeth’s Wild Hunt again. To build my deck I consulted a couple of tournament decks and Can You Roll A Crit’s recent article about the dog-goblins. I ended up taking all the flex out of the deck I’d been iterating on for the past few weeks, putting all the focus on aggro. I removed objectives that were pulling in different directions. I also removed all my extra mobility power cards. This was a mistake.
Match 1
My first match was a goblin-off against Zarbag’s Gitz. This was a good matchup for me because my warband and deck is all about killing things, and the Gitz have plenty of easy-to-kill, non-threatening fighters.
My dog-goblins got to work, hacking and pillaging, with Rippa quickly becoming a 7-wound beast thanks to Sudden Growth and another +1 Wounds upgrade. I underestimated Snirk the fanatic, however, who eventually managed to kill Rippa. Way ahead on glory, I still took the win.
Game 2 was more one-sided as I managed to kill Snirk early. Moonclan grots and squigs were deleted left and right, and I pulled into a strong lead.
Match 2
There were 2 other Rippa’s Snarlfangs players at the event. For my next two matches, I had to play both of them. In a aggro-off, when you probably both have very similar decks, it really comes down to the subtle differences in those decks, card draw, and luck of the dice. Fortunately in match 2 I managed to pull ahead in both games thanks to the power of crits, plus some lucky card draw.
Match 3
Going into match 3 I was pretty exhausted after the tension-filled rollercoaster of the previous Rippa-off. My opponent had chosen to add a little extra mobility to his deck rather than get rid of it all, like me, plus a lot more plink damage. This meant he could out-position, out-maneuver and out-damage me. When the dice didn’t go my way, I was defeated roundly.
Dundee Denouement
In the end I took 3rd place. In fact, all 3 of the Rippa players were in the top 3, with my opponent in the 3rd match taking 1st. A good day for dog-goblins.
Thanks again to Highlander Games for putting on a great event!
While I was at Highlander a trio of Dundee friends popped in and said hello, which absolutely made my week. I miss living in Dundee a lot and being able to see these folks more often.
Also, on the way back to the train station I met up with another friend who gifted me a bunch of unpainted terrain she wasn’t using anymore. I am lucky to have such incredibly generous people in my life. More on that soon!
Glasgow
On Sunday I travelled through to Glasgow for a tournament at the Drury Street Bar & Kitchen. This time it was a best-of-one format. I don’t think I’d have gone if it was best-of-three - two of those in one weekend would definitely have been too much.
I swapped out Pit Trap (1 damage when an enemy is driven back) for Tracking (+2 move), learning a lesson from being outmaneuvered the day before. It also makes scoring Gathered Momentum easier because I don’t have to rely on Inspiration to get up to 5 move. You can see the final decklist here.
14 people attended the tournament, which is an excellent turnout for Scotland. It feels like the scene up here is growing!
Match 1
My first game was against Paul, the tournament organiser, and his Zarbag’s Gitz. Once again I went into this matchup feeling confident, but I was schooled on a few rules and subtleties of how the Gitz work. They’re very complicated! I would not recommend them to people starting the game. For example, Snirk’s inspire reaction shares the same reaction window as the Snarlfang’s extra attack, so can be used to block it once per game. I’m glad he didn’t gotcha me with that!
Despite managing to keep the pressure on him with my wolves I wasn’t able to stop him from scoring most of his objective-grabbing objectives and get glory from keys (and key-like things), so we ended up with a quite close 23-19 finish to me.
Match 2
Grymwatch. Finally time to let rip. The deck excelled against them, able to turn all those little 2-wound fighters into glory bombs. At one point I got 5 glory from a kill: Amberbone weapon, Trophy Belt, Tome of Offerings, plus a surge. It really is a very fun deck to play when these big swings happen.
Meanwhile my opponent had a very disappointing opening hand and was never able to get his machine started. I hope it wasn’t too bad of a game for him :s
Match 3
The nasty nasty Wurmspat. I was a little bit worried going into this - when your deck is built around turning enemy fighters into exploding glory bags, a warband with only a few very tough fighters is hard to profit from.
My opponent deployed very defensively, I deployed aggressively. It was clear very quickly that he was going for a Temporary Victory or Supremacy, so I attacked and put the pressure on, managing to deal 3 wounds to each of the 2 Blightkings by the end of the first round. I was also able to get Stabbit onto one of the 3 objectives in his territory, locking him out of his early glory swing.
At the start of round 2 stabbit killed both the blightkings with a spinny attack and a wolf chomp. What a hero! The rest of the game consisted of Fecula sitting in the corner, becoming impossible to kill with a few upgrades. We finished 10-4 to me.
Awoo!
Somehow this meant I won the tournament, taking home my first trophy. I don’t really go into these things expecting to do well, let alone win - I mostly just try to have fun games for me and my opponent - so I was very surprised!
Thanks again to Paul for running a great tournament. I’m already excited for the next one.
I was pretty worn out after such a busy weekend. Thankfully I had this Monday off work, and got some rest.
