Ghost Nebula

WARMACHINE!!! This summer will be colossal fun ;-)

2012-02-03T16:16:00.004-05:00

Hey everyone,

Having just seen the latest news from Privateer Press I can honestly say I am sold on getting in Warmachine properly. Whether I get just a small force to start playing or whether I get seriously into it I don't know, but I need to get my hands on some of these new monster miniatures!

Here are the models for Cygnar and Khador's colossals. Giant warjacks that will be coming out in a new supplement in July this year.

On a side note, let's enjoy a company that gives us five months of advance notice of sweet models being released rather than clamping down on rumours, even if it's the Hobbit movie backers who are behind the GW info lockdown.

Here is the Khador one next to a heavy warjack. For those who don't play Warmachine, that warjack is on a 50mm base and so is a similar size to a dreadnought, though less boxy in the shoulders. These new models are BIG.

Here is Cygnar's offering next to an Ironclad heavy warjack.

Now I don't know how these will work out on the tabletop but they look so good I think I might get them just for the collection if nothing else. This might be the final push to have me playing Warmachine too. If nothing else, I want to run one of those models as a Dreadnought, just to mess with an opponent's head :-D

All the best.

Pete

Deathwing command squad almost ready to take the field.

2012-01-31T04:33:00.004-05:00

Hi everyone,

There hasn't been too much going on my gaming world for the past few weeks. It's been busy at work getting back into things after the Christmas period and my gaming buddy is also a teacher, so schedule matching can be a task. I've managed to play a few more games of Dreadfleet with my girlfriend and we've started working through the campaign in the book. Sadly I've had a complete lack of success in the game no matter what we try and my record now stands at ZERO wins with SIX losses....oh boy :-)

I've been working on my Deathwing painting though and putting in a bit of brush time each day, even if it's just ten minutes. It doesn't seem like much at first but all of a sudden I notice that I've completed big sections of models by the end of the week. I recommend snatching those few minutes each day to work on models, perhaps while you wait for dinner in the oven or while you play a song or two. I'm surprised at how much it can help without seeming like much effort.

So here is my command squad arrayed in full glory with Belial at their head. I'm glad I was persuaded to go for the second armour highlight layer (Menoth White Highlight) as it's brought them out nicely. They aren't all finished but now they look like a nice squad when put side by side, instead of some loosely similar bone-white figures.

I painted their left shoulderpads black as a nod to the original Deathwing story in an old GW anthology book. This was before the current Caliban and Heresy fluff but is the origin of the white armour. In essence, the Dark Angel 1st company terminators arrive on their homeworld to find that it has been taken over by a genestealer cult. In the final battle to cleanse the taint, they paint their armour bone white in the tribal ritual of Deathwing, symbolising that they are already dead and so have no fear. Their armour was originally black and it's noted that they left the left shoulder with the Crux Terminatus in the original black, as a mark of respect for the Emperor.

Belial and the Lysander sergeant stomp up the field. This squad hits nice and hard in assault, especially with the banner and apothecary to give them FNP. I often split Belial off as he can take on small squads alone most of the time and it gives me a nice variety of threats.

****Can anybody give me good advice on how to paint up Belial's sword to look like shiny obsidian? I guess some kind of highlighting similar to what you see from NMM would be good but I've not really done that before. Suggested patterns etc. are welcome.****

Here is one of the finished terminators up close. I really like the combination of Grey Knight, Space Wolf, Space Marine and Dark Angel bits and the look that they create. The lightning effect on the thunder hammer is much nicer than my first attempt (on Lysander) so I might go back and redo that one to make it look better. It's time consuming but looks good in my view.

Here is the brotherhood banner, originally from the Grey Knights set. It's not totally finished but I got tired of painting such small details and wanted to get on with the rest of the models. I've been talking with Tim from the Tau of War and he thinks the border should be brightened up. My girlfriend agrees but they each think different colours would work. Tim favours a bright red, whereas Edina thinks gold would look good. I can't decide between the two or whether I should just keep the green. Also, I can't decide if I should repaint the sword to be black with lightning effects instead of the silver here.

So that's where I stand for the moment with my army. I've got a plan for a centrepiece model using a Dreadknight conversion as a Deathwing dreadnought but I can't justify spending on that until I've finished painting these. I have to pay off my student loan first and so extra gaming expenses must be curbed until they can be properly justified (i.e. painting everything else).

Deathwing. Do they need some plasma on their side?

2012-01-05T08:11:00.008-05:00

Happy New Year everyone and I hope you had a wonderful time over the holidays. I took my girlfriend home for a Christmas in England and it was really nice.

I've finally gotten more settled with my career as an EFL teacher and I'm getting the chance and time to work on hobby items. My Deathwing command squad are now well on the way to being painted. I gave up on assembly line painting the whole army and I've switched it out to just working on a single unit since I was becoming unmotivated. Now it feels good to be back in the painting vibe again and I'm looking forward to bringing the pain against my fellow 40k-playing teacher just as soon as we can schedule a game around teaching, preparing, relationships and his being a father :-)

I'm currently running my Deathwing at 1500pts but I've been told that people here tend to play more frequently at 1750, which makes me think about the future options for my army expansion. I've promised my girlfriend that I'll avoid buying things until I'm finished with painting the current batch but it doesn't hurt to plan ahead. I'm thinking about adding a plasma cannon to the army in one form or another since my army has no low-AP firepower and relies on assault to take out armoured troops. I know we're good at that with the multitude of hammers available but sometimes you need to thin things out at range.

Here is the first of the options I'm thinking about. This model has long attracted me but since it was only available in metal and I'm a klutz with superglue and metal (apparently), I put it off. Now it is available in Finecast, I might just find a place to have the pimp-daddy of the Dark Angels riding around on his jetbike dropping plasma cannon shots on people's heads. I'm a little concerned with the Finecast quality problems but I have absolutely no hesitation in calling up GW customer services as many times as necessary if there are miscasts in the kit. Hopefully, of course, I'll get a top notch kit first time.

The other choice is to bring some plasma cannon dreadnoughts to the field. Now I know that I won't get the model shown above, but it's so lovely that I thought the picture deserved a repost ;-) I could pick up a venerable dreadnought (or two) and get some nice plasma on the field along with a couple of armoured stompy robots. To be honest, with the mix and match modelling I've got going on now, I'd probably get a venerable kit and a Furioso kit so I'd have variety. I could use the Frag Cannon arm to represent a plasma cannon and it would look neat to have the different Blood Angel parts available.

Choices are good to have and I will enjoy mulling these over as I paint up the rest of the Deathwing. I should have a picture update of the command squad soon.

All the best,

Pete

My girlfriend kicking my butt at Dreadfleet :-)

2011-12-01T04:23:00.014-05:00

My girlfriend, Edina, recently expressed an interest in trying out Dreadfleet. She got to watch me and another teacher who games play out one of the scenarios of Dreadfleet. While it confused her quite a bit with the language (she's trilingual but hasn't read up on nautical terms in English) she said it looked like fun.

I decided on to play a simplified game with her so that she could get to grips with how the game works without getting overloaded. In our first game, there was no wind, no fate cards, no captain duels in boarding actions and no special ship actions. We just kept it to the basic stats, the mechanics of moving and shooting, and the skill in positioning your ships to fire at the enemy. She took the Heldenhammer and Grimnir's Thunder, against which I had the Bloody Reaver and the Curse of Zhandri.

Edina moves up the dwarf ship Grimnir's Thunder

Now, while she may not have spent a lot of time wargaming, Edina quickly figured out that she could get my Flagship between her two ships and....well....blow it to pieces.

This is the result of her first volley

I'll point out for the above picture, that we're not using any hit modifiers so in the full game it would be worse since you get a bonus on the first broadside of the game. Still, ending up with being set ablaze twice, having a fire on deck (which can add more set ablaze cards, losing my rigging and taking hull damage is a big bit of pain, even for my notoriously resilient flagship.

"Pete, I want to shoot you with that one now!"

Playing with the funky turning tool. This game is really quite easy to get used to.

Repositioning to chase down the Bloody Reaver

Come on lucky red dice. Let me set Edina's ship on fire. Note, this is before the Curse of Zhandri died a briny death at the hands of the Heldenhammer's massive broadside.

Sad face as the Bloody Reaver is pinned in the corner of the game board by Edina's ships. They were wounded but I didn't like my odds of surviving.

The last sight seen by the crew and Captain of the Bloody Reaver

After my unceremonious drubbing, Edina was keen for another game. We decided to switch up the ships and this time I introduced the special mechanics for each ship (getting an extra order, rerolls etc.). In short order though, this game turned into a brawling, multiple boarding action and her dice came up hotter than mine, again leaving me defeated.

Me when the game was still in the balance. ***Not shown, Pete's sad face at losing shortly afterwards.

We've since played another game including wind and fate cards, which Edina handled well and we enjoyed. Naturally she won again, so her wargaming record is now a perfect 3-0 and I've now had four losses in my four games of Dreadfleet. Still, it's a fun game so you won't hear me complaining about getting to do something enjoyable with people I like.

Next on our list is a bigger game on Saturday, perhaps one of the scenarios, and some painting of the ships. We're also looking into other board games that we might be able to play together as it's a lot of fun and fits into our schedules nicely.

All the best folks,

Comments, criticism, advice, questions and merciless mocking will all be appreciated ;-)

Pete

Cheesing it up with Draigowing?

2011-11-27T04:58:00.009-05:00

Hey all,

After rummaging around in the various gaming bits my dad brought over to Bratislava when he visited, I found my batch of metal Grey Knight Terminators that I got in trade before leaving the US. As I counted up how many bodies, arms and weapons I had, a thought struck me....Draigowing. While I don't have that many terminators, using Draigowing means I can make a 1500pt army with perhaps 15 figures all in all.

For those who aren't familiar with the term, Draigowing is named after Deathwing and is another all terminator force that can be played, this time with the Grey Knight Codex (the other one is Loganwing with Space Wolves). It involves using the special character Kaldor Draigo to unlock Paladins (2 wound terminator dudes) as troops and having a nasty, deathstar-type army list.

To sum up the list:

- Draigo
- Librarian
- 10 Paladins with 4 psycannons
- 5 Paladins with 2 incinerators

Add a few upgrades and it makes 1500 on the nose. Compact and deadly, I hope.

Here's what I have to start working with.

Sterm with a Storm Shield will be Draigo and the brother captain will be the librarian.

My long range firepower component.

The rest of the big squad.

My incinerator squad, still short a few arms unfortunately.

So here is the next project that I'll be working on alongside the Deathwing painting and Dreadfleet, though my girlfriend has expressed interest in helping with the latter. She played two games against me last night (winning both) and is quite a fan of the ship-based boardgame vibe.

I am a little short of weapons and other bits for these guys. You'll notice that I have an extra four bodies in the first picture with no arms for them. It's a bit of a bummer but I might just use regular plastic terminator arms for them and then paint them up as another Deathwing squad if I need to expand the army.

Of course, if any readers have spare Grey Knight terminator weapons they might be willing to part with, please get in touch ;-)

Also, any tactical thoughts or advice for this compact army is much appreciated.

All the best,

Pete

PS: Next post is about me getting my butt kicked at Dreadfleet by my girlfriend.

Awesome girlfriend syndrome ;-)

2011-11-13T13:59:00.009-05:00

Hey guys,

So my great girlfriend officially became awesome last night when she started painting her first model and it is looking really good. This is her first ever time picking up a paintbrush for models and she picked out the pieces to assemble her terminator from my bits bag. I'm really proud of what she's done and here is her guy next to the Deathwing Lysander I'm working on. I've given up batch painting the army for a while in favour of finishing single models and squads. I'm tired of doing the same old stuff and I want to get some nice finished models out there.

I love the way she's done this model already. I should stress that this is an unfinished model (hence the blu-tac arms). In fact we're off to paint a little more tonight, which is a great way to round off the weekend.

All in all.....she rocks and I love her

Pete

PS: I think my P3 Morrow White is cursed. I knocked it over on my friend's black table when I was painting with them and look what happened again....

Dreadfleet gameplay thoughts. Sorry no pics.

2011-11-01T17:05:00.002-04:00

Hey all,

Recently I managed to find a couple of hours to play some Dreadfleet and see how the game actually pans out when it hits the tabletop. Sadly I forgot to take my camera to the game (despite putting it on the counter) and so there are no pictures. Still, a brief look at what we experienced of the game so far is still nice to see.

Three of us played the fifth scenario in the Dreadfleet play list. This is the same one that was featured for a turn on the GW website prior to the game's release. It was a good challenge since we had our first game with 9 ships on the field in total but all three of us are 40k and/or fantasy players who've been around miniature games for quite a while.

Once you get the hang of the turn pattern, the game plays nice and quickly. Its biggest shift if you're used to GW games is the alternating model activation concept. Starting with the player who wins initiative for the turn, the two sides take it in turn activating ships and running through an entire set of actions with that ship, then the other player goes. It gives some nice tactical implications to the game since you can clear the movement path for your ships and combine attacks if you play your ships in the right order. Of course your opponent can alter that with their plans so you have to keep on your toes a bit.

In a nutshell, each ship gets to issue an order (full speed ahead, repair, hard a port etc.), move, fire a broadside and then fight a boarding action if they are in base contact. You're even able to fire on a separate target even if you are locked into a boarding action that is ongoing. It's a nice touch that keeps all of the ships valuable while they are on the field, especially if they get locked into boarding actions and can't escape from them. In our game, my ship ended up fighting off boarding actions from two ships, attacking back to the one in front and then firing at the one to its flank.

The Fate deck seems to be a much maligned around the interwebs as it brings in random events and moves the wind counter around the table. I think it has been somewhat exaggerated in its power, though I suppose with a particularly strong draw of cards, you could produce big effects (somewhat like drawing a straight flush in poker at the start of the game). Basically you draw a fate card per player, per turn and resolve both. Our game was six turns long, though we ended on turn 4 I believe so a total of 8 fate cards were played. They gave some boosts to shooting, damaged one or two ships slightly and generally made the game more fun and crazy to play.

The changing wind counter was also not as powerful as I thought it might be. In the course of our game it started in the middle of one long edge, then move to one short edge, onto the next long edge then back to the short edge. Certainly not a massive gameplay shift though it did have implications as my flagship ended up failing a command check at the end and being unable to move enough to get out of the path of my opponents' flagship and fleet. Quite a dramatic end to the game all in all.

In essence, the elf warship made a run for it but was gunned down by the combined Dreadfleet. The Black Kraken (mecha-squid) was then tied up and battered to pieces over several turns by two ships on my opponents' side, my tomb kings ship got flattened by the enemy flagship. The skaven ship was fired upon from all angles and finally went down to the surviving elf dragon auxiliary. In the end, my Vampire Lord flagship did the most damage, sinking two enemy ships before finally being sunk.

MVP award goes to the Dwarf dirigible auxiliaries who, despite only getting one dice of broadside per turn, managed to make my flagship list badly for a turn (no firing), killed the first mate (lowering my command score), started a fire in the powder room (draw D3+1 damage cards if you don't roll 3+ at the start of the turn) and finally put the final point of damage on the titanic warship, sinking it right after it sank the alliance flagship.

So my feelings on Dreadfleet?

It's a good game. The models are excellent quality, the game is fun, it plays differently do other GW stuff but that's fine, it's self contained and it doesn't take itself too seriously. The price is a bit high but in general, it gets a thumbs up from me. It's not a wargame, it's not competing with Spartan Games or the like, it won't be further supported but you will have a good time playing it.

All the best,

Pete

Dreadfleet unboxing.

2011-10-16T05:35:00.006-04:00

So Dreadfleet arrived and I got to experience the fun and excitement of opening a new boxed game again. I've not managed any assembly yet but I had a great rummage through all the plastic bits checking out the details and also have read the rulebook.

Everything that comes in the box spread out on the bed. Mmm new game :-)

So here is the game spread out and making a mess on the bed in our apartment (NB: Tolerant girlfriend helps here). There is a lot of stuff in the box and the actual box is both deeper than and made of sturdier cardboard than I recall the AOBR box being.

The ship sprues

The ships are impressively detailed. If you haven't already had a look at the sprue pictures on GW's website, then go and browse through them. It's been said around the blogosphere and forums that Dreadfleet really showcases the quality of GW's injection moulding technology and I tend to agree with that. Whatever you think of the aesthetics of the Dreadfleet models, you can deny that they have produced some very detailed pieces that fit together extremely well. My favourite parts are the top decks where they have tiny little cannons that fit to the gunwales very well. The Skaven cannons even have power cables since they are warp lightning cannons and that is some very small detail.

Rulebook, card decks, dice and the top of the big terrain sprue.

The rulebook and cards are both nicely printed. The colour layout and many diagrams of the book are to be expected from GW offerings, along with a generous helping of John Blanche's artwork and pictures of the models and terrain in the GW studio. The cards are quite thin but seem good quality so far. We'll see how well they stand up to play. I like that there are a bundle of plastic zipper bags inside the box so you can put all of your loose cards in together and make sure things don't get lost. I recommend getting a few small elastic bands to keep the different decks (Fate, damage, status, auxiliary etc.) together.

The gaming mat spread out on a normal single bed.

So the game mat. This is a very nice thing to have and I look forward to seeing how the ships look on it once I get them assembled and some layers of paint added. The material is a thin, feels silky and folds away nicely. I think it is about 5'x3' but here you can see it spread out over a regular single bed. You won't be short of playing space for your ships this game, that's for sure.

My girlfriend modelling the mat as a sarong (while remaining anonymous lol).

While she declined to show her face to my blog readers, my girlfriend did comment on how nice the mat was and her intentions to use it as a summer sarong if I get bored with Dreadfleet and don't want to play any more.

Well that's all for now folks. Sadly I left my clippers in the UK with some other modelling gear so I'll have to pick up a new set (plus some spray primer) before I get started on assembly. Some of the pieces are very fine and you want to be careful when removing them from the sprues.

More thoughts on the rulebook and other stuff soon.

All the best

Pete

PS: My girlfriend has started asking about her playing the game with me and is interested in painting one or more of the ships. Methinks I have a winner here ;-)

I bought Dreadfleet. Yarrr me hearties.

2011-10-03T11:41:00.014-04:00

Taking to the High Seas

Well despite being on the bandwagon and not being happy about GW using resources to produce the non-expandable and non-standard scale naval game that is Dreadfleet, I ended up buying it.

Quite the dichotomy it would seem. I'll admit that it took me some time to be swayed over to actually purchasing Dreadfleet and there were a number of factors that got me interested. Here's a short list.

- The game looks fun.
- I have limited free time to play now that I'm teaching full time and at funny hours. This game is self contained and so easier to organise.
- I've come to like some of the models and the included terrain is really neat.
- I want variety from painting Deathwing models and these ships are all quirky and different.
- I love the gaming mat
- In a way I quite like a game that doesn't tempt me into buying more models.

The Skaven Ship monster is very cool.

I like the styling of the flagships.

I like the islands with extra scenery bits on top. The skull ones are OK but this one and the fortress one I'm in much in favour of.

Now I'm not going to argue in favour of this release as a long term naval wargame compared to Spartan Games. They are different things and satisfy different markets. I might even pick up some SG fleets and use this battlemat to make a good-looking playing surface.

I was also considering picking up the Warmachine two player starter set (for about the same money) when this was all released and that did have me tempted. In a twist of fate, the very fact that the game is expandable put me off the WM set. I just don't have the time or money to invest in it to the level I want to right now and I'd rather get a good fun game to enjoy than be constantly wishing I could field the force I'd like to in a WM game.

From a painting point of view, I'm also keen to try something new compared to 28mm level figures. The thought of painting up armies in consistent colour schemes isn't that appealing to me at the moment since I'm stuck into the Deathwing right now. I want to have fun painting these ships in radically different colours and styles.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I'll be sure to post up pictures when the set arrives and give you all a good look at the game, plus thoughts on how it plays out.

All the best

Pete

PS: I'm not stopping general wargaming by any means, just reorganising priorities based on the time I have to put towards them.

PPS: Next on the blog list is a big series on the utility, or lack thereof, of the different battleforce sets for 40k gaming.

How white is bone? Deathwing painting help please!

2011-09-14T04:06:00.003-04:00

Hey everyone,

I really need some help and thoughts with respect to painting up the bone armour of the Deathwing. I have thus far painted most of my models in three stages:

- Bone white spray
- sepia wash
- highlighting with Menoth White base.

Now I started to paint up the next layer of highlighting with Menoth White Highlight and had a pause. Do you think it is too bright of a jump or should I continue to do this with the other Deathwing models?

L-R: Bone spray, sepia wash, menoth base, menoth highlight

It is possible of course for me to mix the base and highlight colours to have something in between but that carries the penalty of mixing paint to the same level for 27 terminator figures. I'm not sure if I have the patience for that haha.

Please pass on your thoughts so I can decide how I'll brighten up my models (or not).

Much appreciated.

Pete

Bringing out the Dark Kin from Commoragh

2011-09-11T04:26:00.012-04:00

Hi everyone,

So now that my Deathwing force is well into the painting stage, is complete at 1500 and just needs a couple of units to make it to 1750 (see other post), I'd like to talk about another army entirely.

Deathwing are, to me, the epitome of a durable, slowly moving elite force. There aren't many of them so you have to concentrate your attacks carefully but they will weather a storm of fire, never run since they are fearless and will often surprise you with just how long they can plough through the opposition when the chips are down. You can trust in your 2+ armour and 3+/5+ invulnerable saves all while gunning the opposition down with storm bolters, assault cannons and cyclones, or pulping them in assault with lightning claws, power fists and thunder hammers.

If Deathwing are the proverbial brick outhouse, now I want to have a try with the glass cannon that is the Dark Eldar army.

This might just be the most awesome cannon ever :-)

I've really enjoyed the tactical challenge of having to carefully consider each and every move I make with my small, elite Deathwing force and from all counts, playing a mechanised Dark Eldar force brings many of the same thinking challenges. Knowing that you are very vulnerable to shooting and assault from pretty much anything in the game makes me feel like I'll have to have razor focus all the time. Now that can be a tiring way to play but it is exhilarating too.

So having read a few tactica articles on Dakka and considered the kind of army I'd like to play here is my 1500point army list.

HQ
- Haemonculus.
- Haemonculus.

Elites
- 3 Trueborns with blasters in a Dakka Venom (two splinter cannons)
- 3 Trueborns with blasters in a Dakka Venom (two splinter cannons)
- 5 Incubi in a Dakka Venom (two splinter cannons)

Troops

- 7 Wracks with an Agoniser wielding acothyst in a Raider (flickerfield, aethersails, shock prow).

- 7 Wyches, haywire grenades, razorflails, Hekatrix with agoniser in a raider (configured as above)

- 7 Wyches, haywire grenades, razorflails, Hekatrix with agoniser in a raider (configured as above)

Heavy Support

- Ravager, 3 Dark Lances and Flickerfield
- Ravager, 3 Dark Lances and Flickerfield
- Ravager, 3 Dark Lances and Flickerfield

NB: To bring this up to 1750, I'd probably add another Haemonculus and ten Kabalite warriors in a Raider.

Rargh! We've come for your souls.

Army Selection Thoughts

Despite the tasty selection of characters in the codex I decided to start off with cheap Haemonculi to bring some paint tokens. With one token I get FNP, two tokens give me furious charge and three make me fearless. The first one is really key for a fragile dark eldar army and will make my Wyches even nastier in assault. I'll probably put one with each wyche squad.

For the elite selection I knew I wanted some nasty shooting and assault ability. The blaster trueborn are a tried and tested way to kill off tanks and terminators. Putting them in a dakka venom lets me move 6" and fire 3 blasters plus 12 poisoned splinter cannon shots out to 36". If I need to move 12" I still get to unleash the dakka since poisoned weapons always count as defensive. I added Incubi because the models are really nice and they will let me take out armoured foes or those with FNP that I don't want my wyches tied up against.

For the troops I started with wracks who bring their own pain token. With poisoned weapons they can put a nice hurting on an enemy in assault. I see these as being effective troops to tie up the more basic enemy forces that I don't want my wyches engaging or to sit on an objective if needed. The wyches are nasty assault units that can kill off enemies with the agoniser, threaten tanks with haywire grenades (possibly on turn one if the opponent deploys on the 12" line) and tie up big assault units because of their CC invulnerable save.

All of my raiders get a flickerfield (5+ invul) since they'll be in danger most of the game, aethersails to make sure I get a turn 2 assault, redeploy rapidly or tank shock at speed, and a shock prow in order to make tank shocks. It not only adds a threat to armour but lets me tank shock units to put them in a good position for controlling the number of models who can hit me back.

The ravagers are tank and heavy infantry hunters. Because they can move 12" and still fire all three weapons I think it will be very tough for a foe to stop me getting side armour shots. Also it lets me redeploy a lot of force very quickly that can reach out and touch hard at range.

The downside

So while this is an exciting army idea I hope to get started on soon, the inevitable downside is pricing. GW has made it quite costly to mechanise your army and having to shell out some £20 for each raider, £18 for each venom and £30 per Ravager makes it a big investment, even before I put troops in them.

Still it's a nice project to look forward to.

Thoughts, criticism and jokes all very much welcomed

Pete :-)

Taking the Deathwing up to 1750 points

2011-09-01T16:52:00.011-04:00

Hi everyone,

So my Deathwing army painting is progressing at a decent pace now that I've gotten myself settled in Bratislava and been able to unpack. One of my new coworkers at the language school is also a 40k player and will be introducing me to the gaming club here soon.

The army as it is so far.

I'm happy with the way that the models are turning out so far. I need to test out some highlighting as I'm not sure how much more I want to brighten up the bone armour and how extensively. Should I just do edge highlights with a brighter shade (I used Menoth White Base so I can do Menoth White Highlight next) or should I look to brighten up the armour more in general? Not sure on that one yet so I'll be doing a test on one of the grunt models before I apply it to Lysander/Belial/etc.

Now the army comes out to just over 1500 points with upgrades and I hear that a lot of people here game at 1750 so I want to increase my army size a bit. With 215-230 points (depending on upgrades) to play with I have some options. I don't really want to add more terminators since the current lot are such a mix of styles (GK, SM and SW) and I like the variety. Plus I already have 27 terminators to paint and I don't need more ;-)

I've been thinking about one of the new venerable dreadnought kits and the techmarine with servitors. I know the latter is not a power unit by any means but I've always liked the model and now that it's in the easily-assembled Finecast format, it's something I can consider. Superglue still hates me but the lack of weight on the Finecast means even I can assemble the models.

Some groovy venerable dreadnoughts

A good picture of the Finecast techmarine from the always excellent 40kbitz blog. Go and follow it ;-)

Any thoughts or advice for boosting the army? I'd like to keep everything in the same bone-white though I don't mind painting Ravenwing in that colour if land speeder is the way forward.

If only Sammael on Jetbike was available in Finecast, he'd be on my list for sure :-)

Thanks for reading,

Pete

PS: The other option is to leave the army at 1500 and move onto my new crush of a Dark Eldar Skimmer army. More to come on this soon ;-)

PPS: I got my new Windsor and Newton brushes as a birthday present to myself (27 years young and still playing with toy soldiers).
Deathwing Lysander approves of my new brushes!

WFB Orcs and Goblins using just a sprinkle of GW for flavour. Pt 3: The army list

2011-09-01T14:02:00.006-04:00

Ok, time for the final part of my making an Orcs and Goblins army post series.

Here is the model list from the last post. Now it's time to point it up roughly and see what it comes to.

- Warboss on boar
- 40 Black Orcs
- 10 Boar Boyz
- 75 Orc Boyz
- 60 Night Goblins
- 2 Speak Chukkas
- Giant
- Arachnarok spider

Lords
1x Black orc warboss on boar = 160pts

Core Units

25x Orc Boyz with shields, boss, musician and standard = 175pts

25x Orc Boyz with shields, boss, musician and standard = 175pts

25x Orc Boyz with shields, boss, musician and standard = 175pts

20x Night Goblin archers, boss, musician and standard = 90pts

20x Night Goblin archers, boss, musician and standard = 90pts

20x Night Goblin archers, boss, musician and standard = 90pts

Special Units

20x Black Orcs, shields, boss, musician and standard = 295pts

20x Black Orcs, shields, boss, musician and standard = 295pts

10x Boar Boyz, Big Uns, Shields, boss, musician and standard = 255pts

2x Goblin Spear Chukkas = 70pts

Rare Units

1x Arachnarok Spider, flinger = 320pts

1x Giant = 200pts

Total army points as shown = 2390pts

So there you have an army that comes out to just about 2500 points. I don't know WFB that well but I understand that magic plays a solid part in it these days so perhaps some points tweaking to include some shamans would be a good idea.

That's all from me for now. If I get the time and funds to kickstart this project I'll be sure to keep you all in the loop with how it goes.

Thanks for reading.

Pete :-)

New brush time. How about Windsor and Newton Series 7s?

2011-08-22T14:34:00.002-04:00

This is just a brief interjection before I get on with part 3 of my Orcs and Goblins posting.

I'm painting up my Deathwing now and I've come to realise it's time to buy some new brushes. My current set have been going for over a year now and while they're in decent shape, they're forking quite a lot not, making it hard to keep the detail painting going. My GW brush forked a while ago after just a month or so of use, so that's no help.I've heard rave things about the Windsor and Newton Series 7 brushes and wonder if it's time for me to invest in a set of them.

Does anybody have any experience with these brushes and what sizes to pick up? I was thinking of a size 2, a size 1 and a size 0 so I would have a range to work with.

Thankyou

Pete

WFB Orcs and Goblins using just a sprinkle of GW for flavour. Pt 2: Saving money ;-)

2011-08-21T04:56:00.004-04:00

To continue our look at making an orcs and goblins army on something of a budget, here are some price comparisons and ideas for saving those precious dollars/pounds/euros/florints/yen etc. ;-)

I know that many people buy from online retailers who offer discounts but for this post I'll keep everything on RRP or it will get very confusing with all the different places you can buy. Also, I'm rounding everything up to the nearest £ so don't have to type endless .99 etc.

1x Orc Mega army from Mantic (96 figures) = £100
1x Orc Ax horde from Mantic (30 figures) = £25
3x Night Goblin regiments = £63
1x Giant = £31
1x Arachnarok spider = £36
2x Goblin bolt throwers from Ramshackle Games = £9

Total = £264

Now if I want to be even cheaper, I'd drop the night goblins for now and either the giant or the spider, making the total around £170. Either that or I'd track down a set or two of the Goblins from the old Battle for Skull Pass Warhammer set. If anybody has the gobbos models from Skull Pass they'd be willing to sell/trade (I have metal Grey Knight Terminators), please drop me a line ;-)

Skull Pass Gobbos, have you seen us?

So the basic army I can build from this is as follows:

- Warboss on boar
- 40 Black Orcs
- 10 Boar Boyz
- 75 Orc Boyz
- 60 Night Goblins
- 2 Speak Chukkas
- Giant
- Arachnarok spider

Now for a brief comparison of cost vs GW sets.

- Orc Warboss = £17
- 4x Black Orcs = £104
- 1x Boar Boyz = £16
- 6x Orc Boyz = £108
- 2x Night Gobbos = £42
- 2x Spear Chukkas = £38
- 1x Giant = £31
- 1x Arachnarok spider = £36
- 1x O&G Battalion (15 boyz, 20 gobbos, 5 boar boyz, 10 spider riders) = £60

Total = £452
Difference = £188 looking at RRP, or

To be fair to GW, the spider riders in the battalion are extra, so I should knock £19 off the difference to account for buying a set of them to match.

Adjusted difference = £169.

Not a bad saving in my mind. Once you add in the discount from online retailers, you can knock a bit off each total as both Wayland Games and Maelstrom Games stock Mantic and offer shipping within the EU.

Ordering from both (and Ramshackle) to take advantage of the prices on offer, I come out with a total of £224 delivered for everything.

Part 3 coming soon where I put together something of an army list and ask advice from more experienced WFB players.

Pete

WFB Orcs and Goblins using just a sprinkle of GW for flavour. Pt 1: Inspiration

2011-08-18T04:39:00.016-04:00

Hey everyone,

I recently had a crazy idea about Warhammer Fantasy. When I first started with GW I was mainly a fantasy player and had a dwarf army. Since then it hasn't piqued my interest compared to 40k and other tabletop miniature games that are availablhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gife. That is with the exception of the greenskins. Much like my 40k ork army, which I was sad to pass on (especially after painting 80+ figures), I love the character of the WFB orcs and goblins army.

To me they hearken back to the days when Warhammer and 40k were less streamlined and dark worlds. There was more of a light-hearted dorkiness to a lot of the units and gameplay mechanics that I love. Perhaps it's something of the nostalgia for those innocent early days of wargaming :-)

However there are two big problems for me:

1 - I think the WFB orc boyz look really goofy and I don't like the proportions.
2 - It gets really expensive to make a horde army, especially with GW's prices on basic core unit boxes. I'm not inspired by spending £100 on two units of orcs who will make up basic regiments.

However, I've been browsing the web a bit as I wait for my training to start for my new job and have found a company that can help me out with my two major objections. Enter Mantic Games Orc range

I really like the character of their models compared to GW and the price is great too.

The GW orc looks to me like a caricature with its heroic proportions, where the Mantic orc is hunched and menacing.

I also really like the warboss on a boar that Mantic have going.

Their boar boyz, in my opinion, outdo those offered by GW as well.

GW's boar boyz

Mantic boar boyz

So the models live up to my standards, certainly with respect to making large blocks of troops. I know that there will be more repetition of model types using Mantic orcs as they are not the same kind of multi-part kit that you find from GW orcs, but in a big regiment of 20+, I think the difference between them will be less noticeable than when comparing individual figures.

When browsing the Mantic site, I notice the following deal for an Orc Mega Army

For £99 retail you get:
- Orc Krudger (warboss) on boar
- 10 x Plastic Resin Gore (boar) Riders with Command Group
- 20 x Plastic Orc Greatax with Command Group (Two handed weapon)
- 20 x Plastic/Metal Orc Morax with Command Group (Twin axes)
- 45 x Plastic Orc Ax with Command Group (boyz)
- (Enough little snotling-like additions on the sprues to make two or three bases)

Mmmm greenskin horde

Now that a solid bulk of the army is there, what from GW just can't be replicated elsewhere? Well, there are three big things for me that I would consider from GW. These are the parts that add some flavour you can't find elsewhere. When you're just getting the odd bit at GW prices it makes a horde army a lot less daunting.

- The Giant. Great model, lots of options for construction and fun to play with.
- The Arachnarok spider. Expensive but a really nice big plastic kit. Plus forest goblin riders are just cool.
- Night goblins and forest goblins. The little buggers are just awesome and have the fun of fanatics, netters, spider riders. I am also a big fan of Warlord Skarsnik.

So a possible purchasing block could look like this:

- Army deal from Mantic.
- Additional Boar boyz and orcs from Mantic
- Giant from GW
- Arachnarok from GW
- Couple of Night goblin regiments with fanatics from GW.
- Some forest goblin spider riders from GW
- Skarsnik and Gobbla from GW

So there's the gem of my next idea to go alongside my Deathwing army. Part 2 of this post will look at some cost savings from using the Mantic range. Part 3 will put up a basic army list using the models I've found.

All the best,

Pete

Painting display models

2011-08-08T16:17:00.006-04:00

Hey everyone,

Been very busy recently getting myself settled into my new life in Bratislava, Slovakia where I'm teaching English (for more info see here http://pete-teaches-in-bratislava.blogspot.com) so not much time to do anything wargaming related. I've managed to keep up to date on blogs and internet news for the most part but haven't broken out the brushes or even taken my models out of their packed state since June 28th when I put them away before flying here. Since I haven't yet managed to find any gaming groups around here and I'm not sure I'll have lots of evenings free to play wargames, I was thinking of getting a fancy model or two to really go to town on and make into display pieces.

The two possible models that have caught my eye for now are:

Ruby from Studio Mcvey

...and the completely crazy option of Elspeth Von Draken on a Carmine Dragon from Forge WorldRaaargh

Mmmm, insanely fine detailing

Now the difference between this two are primarily scale and cost. Ruby fits on a 50mm base and costs about £27 shipped, whereas Elspeth would set me back something like £80 shipped. Quality-wise I would trust Studio Mcvey more but then again this is a new model from Forge World so the moulds are likely to still be good.

The main concern I have with both of these is making sure that my painting lives up to the quality of the models.

Have any of you painted models that were intended almost entirely for display? If so, how do you suggest going about it, especially for something as big as Elspeth? What's the best way to maintain interest during such a long and complex project? What techniques should be mastered before going about such a task? Paint in pieces then assemble? Create a fancy base for the model in case I want to game with it in the future?

As you can tell I'm both excited and intimidated by the idea of either of these models. Who knows, with a good enough effort over time they might even be somethiing I can sell for a profit. I can dream right? ;-)

All the best,

Pete

Simplifiying 40k for a children's summer camp....in another language ;-)

2011-07-01T05:03:00.004-04:00

Hey everyone,

So I'm in Bratislava, Slovakia now and about to begin the exciting job of teaching English for the next year. It's been very fun so far and I'm relishing the opportunity to soak in a new culture and get new life experiences.

Big thanks go out to Old Shatter Hands for his networking to get me the job over here and giving me lots of insight into places to go and things to do while here. Props also for his helping me start learning the complex and very multi-layered Slovak language.

Later today I will be taking a bus with my new colleagues out to a summer camp the language school is running for children. During a meeting with the owner of the school, he asked me how I came to know Old Shatter Hands. When I explained that it was through wargaming and explained the basic premise to him, he thought it might be a fun activity to play with some of the kids, if I'm willing to bring the models.

Now I only have my Deathwing and there are only a few of them (27 total). Given that the children are going to have variable comfort and skill levels in English, I'll need to bring the rules waaaaay down from their current level so that we can have fun games but not get completely lost in the combination of poor rules and language barriers :-)

So my thirty second rules ideas are something like this:

- Giving regular terminators a 5+ save, SS termies get a 3+ save.

- Storm bolters are 2 shot. They need 6s to cause a wound (skip the hit and then wound mechanic)

- Assault cannons are 4 shot, needing 6s also. Cyclones are 1 shot needing a 3+ to wound.

- If TH termies get into combat, they need a 3+ to wound (again, combining hit and wound rolls). LC termies wound on a 5+ but get two attacks. Regular termies need a 6 to wound with one attack.

- I'll probably include the run rules so the assault termies can rush up a bit.

- Each team/player has to choose if they want a shooty or an assault squad.

I will be leaving out Belial and the Librarian from the game (or use them as objectives maybe) to keep it simple, which gives me 3 assault squads and 2 shooty squads.

So tell me what you think people. Does this look like a fun game that will interest the kids and give them a chance to use English, without completely confusing them?

Any and all advice is gratefully received.

All the best

Pete

Everyone's a king when there's no-one left to pawn - sacrificing units

2011-06-21T18:47:00.008-04:00

But what do you do if the only things to sacrifice are Astartes?

Hey everyone,

So the post title is a lyric by Razorlight but I had to think a bit about sacrificing units in my game tonight against Blood Angels. It was an interesting list the my opponent brought and I had to really make some tough calls about which units to keep and which to lose.

My Deathwing 1500pt list took on a Blood Angels army consisting of:
- Astorath the grim
- 5 jump pack Death company (DC) with Lemartes (uber chaplain). All with power weapons.
- 5 jump pack Death company, all with power weapons.
- 5 terminators with assault cannons
- 5 lightning claw terminators
- 5 tactical marines
- Death company dreadnought with Blood Talons

Now this isn't a very balanced 1500pt force but it sure packs a lot of punch if it gets the charge on you. Plus the death company get furious charge, feel no pain, rerolls to hit when charging and rerolls to wound (plus Astorath makes the opponent, i.e. me, re-roll successful invul. saves). Very nasty.

I quickly realised when my early shooting phases didn't kill off the jump troops that I would have to sacrifice units while the rest of my army moved to deal with the threats of charging Blood Angels. The death company with those characters hit so hard on the charge that you're pretty much bound to lose a lot of guys, or the whole unit if you lay with Deathwing five man squads.

Thankfully I spent a lot of time talking with Old Shatter Hands about the necessary sacrifice tactics he played with when using Tau and having to block the opponent's movement. The Kroot bubble wrap, Piranha blocking and accepting one charge in order to prevent multi-assaults etc. were all in my mind during this game. The harder part is that I had to accept the loss of ~250pt units as part of my sacrificial strategy.

As it played out, I whittled down my opponent's non-DC force with firepower and focused assaults while I fed in two units and the librarian to control the rampaging Death Company attack on my left flank. My army as a whole mopped up the entire BA force through careful shooting followed by concentrated assaults, then brought the weight of thunder hammers to bear on the rampaging Death Company and special characters. I had to use the assault rules to my advantage when I charged into the existing combat by making sure that I only made it into base contact with one or two DC marines and not the characters, meaning the new attackers could only be hit by a few shots each time. In the end it paid off and the Deathwing cleared the table, losing two entire squads, the librarian and a couple of terminators.

The victorious Deathwing posing on the GW gaming table.

Sacrificial tactics.

So here is my take on the steps of sacrificing units.

Do you need to sacrifice something?
If you don't need to have a unit die for a greater purpose, don't put it in a place where it can die. Simple really but something that people (me included) forget at times. You should sacrifice things when they will help your overall strategy, save a better/more important unit, tie up an opponent's powerful unit or act as bait that puts him in a vulnerable position. Otherwise, I would try to keep your toy soldiers alive as much as possible. They can't help you if they die for no reason after all.

Which unit will you sacrifice?
There are two main factors to consider when it comes to choosing who will die for your victory.
- The first one is who is close enough to get into the right position. Clearly if you have only one unit that can block your opponent, they are the ones with heads on the chopping block. The more your forces are set to work together and overlap, the more choice you will have about who to use for your sacrificial strategy.
- The second is to choose the unit you can most afford to lose. Most of the time you will go for your more basic choices over the expensive elites (choosing scouts over losing a squad of terminators) but remember what each unit is capable of. Assault terminators can kill like nobody's business but if you have scouts on the objective near the end of the game and a dreadnought coming to get them off it, the terminators are perfectly viable to give up in exchange for the win. In my case I gave up a ranged Deathwing unit led by the librarian in order to allow my thunder hammer squads to get the charge on the DC marines, giving them better odds to win.

What is the purpose of the sacrifice?

This one is the really key point that you need to keep in mind when considering your tactical options. You must have a good purpose for your unit or you will simply be throwing them away, which makes your models feel sad ;-)

You can sacrifice for a number of reasons including:
- Stalling your opponent e.g charging a dreadnought with a mob of fearless orks. Even without a power klaw, those orks will last a long time. They can't hurt the dread but they have taken it out of the game for a number of turns. Unless it's a Blood Talon dreadnought it probably won't kill that many orks per turn and will spend the game locked in a combat it doesn't want to be in. The Tau under OSH are masters at this as the Piranhas, drones and kroot all stall your opponent to give more time for the shooting elements to do their work.

- Blocking your opponent's movement. If you have a unit of Furious charge Blood Angel terminators in a land raider, you have a threat range of about 20" (12" move, 2" deployment, 6" assault). If I can move a unit in the way of the Land Raider you have to get past that first before getting into the assault you want to be in. Now I know that in this case my blocker would have to be a vehicle or the Land Raider could tank shock through, but the point stands. I've headed off a potential charge by Nobz with a couple of gun drones, letting me get the charge the next turn (plus another round of firing). Think about your opponent's likely avenues of movement when you start the game and plan on how to block them if you need to.

- Saving a more important unit from dying. Let's say I'm the one with a unit of Death Company led by a chaplain. If I get to assault, my damage output goes way up compared to if I am on the receiving end of an assault. In this case, I would happily sacrifice another unit to my opponent so that they are left close enough for me to get the charge on them (Note: This plays also into the bait tactic below). As mentioned before, you could also choose to save a scoring unit that is on an objective and might give up a very strong elite unit for this purpose. In the case of OSH's tau forces, he would give up a unit of 10 kroot (70pts) in order to save the squad of crisis suits (150+ pts) hiding behind them and let the army as a whole have more firing time. In my case, I let a character and a ranged unit take the killing charge of the enemy assault units in order that my counter-assault folks could return the favour.

- Baiting the enemy forces. Now this one is a tricky thing as it depends on your opponent wanting to kill your bait and expending effort doing so. The trick when baiting is to put your sacrificial unit in a position where your opponent can go for it, but will have to change his line of attack to do so. Putting a single dreadnought in line of sight of a broadside across the table is not bait most of the time, it's a target. Putting your expensive HQ unit (e.g. 3 Crisis suits + Commander) on one flank where your opponent can get to him if he just moves a couple of units is more like it. The idea with baiting is that you make his army start to act piecemeal, rather than as a whole. I will lose my bait, but you won't have the units that moved in position to deal with the rest of my army which is now moving to act on my plan. Of course, when doing this you should endeavour to use units and positioning that will be good even if the bait isn't taken. In my crisis suit example, if you ignore the suits, I'll be able to put a lot of fire on the flank of your force, which vehicles hate. Bell of lost souls did a good article with thoughts on baiting (http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2009/01/goatboys-40k-thoughts-for-week-baiting.html)

That's it from me for now. I'll probably post a little bit more this week but time is rapidly running out for me as I gear up to head off to a new country (Slovakia) and a new career (Teaching English). I fly out a week from now and it's both exciting and scary.

All the best

Pete

I hate it when people give up before they've lost.

2011-06-15T16:02:00.003-04:00

My last opponent could take a lesson from this pooch.

Hey everyone,

So my Deathwing got to play in a 3k points game last night and it was mostly a lot of fun. I teamed up with the Tau player I played against last week to take on a guy with 3k of orks. It looked like it was going to be a really great scrap but sadly the ork opponent just started getting despondent and downhearted really early on in the game and it took me giving him tactical advice to get him to actually try and play again, which made the game drag a bit.

Essentially he was upset that our turn one and two shooting really smashed his ork forces and he didn't think he could get into assault with us. Instead of really making an effort to maximise his gameplay to at least do damage to us, even if he still lost, he seemed happier to mope about and just resign himself to saying that he brought the wrong army and that game wasn't really winnable.

Sigh.

My side was winning when we ran out of time (turn 4) in the overbooked GW gaming space but I'd almost got to the point when I was going to make him swap sides to take my Deathwing so I could unleash my inner ork and kick some ass ;-)

Battle Report

Army lists were (approximately as these are from memory)
- 1500 pts deathwing.
Belial, Librarian, Assault command squad (apoth, banner), 2 assault squads, 2 shooty squads)

- 1500 pts Tau
Farsight, bodyguard. 6 crisis suits (firestorm, BC&PR), 6 stealth suits, 48 fire warriors, 20 kroot, 8 pathfinders, 1 Piranha, 3 Broadsides, a bunch of drones, 2 devilfish

- 3000pts Orks
Ghazghull, PK warboss, 10 Lootas, 10 Burnas, 20 Nobz kitted out, 80 boyz, 2 trukks, battlewagon, killa kan, 8 warbikers, Looted wagon with boomgun.

Basically the battle was a turkey shoot in turn 1 (understandable) and for turn 2 my opponent liked my advice to use the devilfish and drones as blockers (thanks Old Shatter Hands) so we could funnel the orks towards us and slow them down. It was pretty successful and our opponent didn't really hit us with enough to truly cripple us though I think he could have killed off the Tau player's flank if we'd had time for another turn or two (and if he'd been playing them like orks....as I would have).

His key problem was letting our shooting dictate his plan and footslogging ineffectively. If you're coming at us on foot, you should be moving and running as far and fast as possible from turn 1. When your trukk with Ghazghull and nobz gets stunned on turn 1 (leaving it in LOS of the broadsides again), you get that power squad of nobz out and get running as far forward as you can. You get your units into assault with the maximum prejudice and using cover as much as you can. Your killa kan should move and run from turn 1 too. If he loses the klaw, he's still on assault duty for taking out vehicles or tying up battlesuits in assault.

He chose to shoot with his boys mobs a lot more often than I would. In my book Boyz get to shoot when they are about to charge into assault, or for a turn prior if they are shoota boyz. Nobz don't shoot as their firepower is nothing compared to their ruthlessly powerful assault abilities. When you stop your boyz mob from running in order to take 2 rokkit shots (BS2) at the front armour of a devilfish (12) you've not really grasped where ork power lies. Also, a S8 AP3 large blast weapon should be aimed at the tightly clustered crisis suits to kill them with instant death instead of the 12 fire warriors nearby, no matter how cool it looks to cover 12 models instead of 3 and 2 drones.

When I got him to use his forces in a more effective manner (multi-assaults, using Ghaz's waagh, killa kan vs devilfish etc) the battle really jumped back into contention from where he seemed happy to leave it in turn 2.

It was still a fun game to play and it would have been nice if we'd had time to bring the game through a full turn 4 (we cut it short) and played turns 5-7. I think the orks would have probably lost, but they could have ripped up the Tau flank and it would have been an effort for the Deathwing to bring them down finally.

So don't let me see any of you blog readers giving up on games that aren't going your way. My charge to you is to persevere until the end. It ain't over until the last dice is rolled!!!

Pete :-)

Apologies if you were offended.

2011-06-13T16:38:00.003-04:00

Hey everyone,

I was just notified that my blog managed to have the picture in the last post changed from that of the groovy looking professor into that of a naked young man displaying himself haha.

Now I'm not sure if my account got hacked or if, more likely, the image I was linking to was replaced by an adult one at the same page location.

In any case, I have removed the offending picture and uploaded a copy of it from my hard drive. I'll also be changing my account login info too, just to be careful.

Thanks all and hope everyone is well,

Pete

Heartbreak, a bad friend, good friends and some wargaming too :-)

2011-06-07T18:13:00.009-04:00

Hey everyone,

Sorry it's been a while since the last update but life is very busy, as ever. I'm in the middle of a CELTA teacher course to qualify and train me to teach English as a foreign language. Thanks to Old Shatter Hands, I have a job in Bratislava, Slovakia but first I have to pass the rather intense course. I'm really enjoying it but I hardly have time to do necessary lesson planning and homework, let alone get much time for wargaming or blogging.

This gentleman is what I think I'll aspire to be like as an English teacher ;-)

While I don't normally like to rant on my blog, I'm going to use it to let off some steam since I haven't really had a chance to head down to the pub with friends and vent. I'm sure the end of the course next friday will be a day with a few drinks for sure :-)

Anyway, I just wanted to say how frustrating and heartbreaking it is when you have someone who you were really close to, thought very highly of and made an effort to stay in touch with just shut down and give up on the friendship. It feels like such a kick to my judgement that I thought so highly of a person who then completely fell through and out of your life. On the other hand, it has made me really recognise the value of the truly worthwhile people in my life and make more time available to be in contact with them and cherish the good feelings.

Rant over ;-)

On the plus side, I've made a number of good friends already on my course, both among the fellow CELTA trainees and the students in the school. I've got an invite to Spain by one student, Santiago, who restores classic motorbikes and wants to take me riding in the Spanish scenery. Ilariah, a lovely Italian girl, overheard this offer and declared that instead I must visit Italy, so there's another destination. I've got a few more Italian contacts, one guy from Bucharest, Hungary, a few Japanese folks and a chap from Romania.

I've also got two trips planned with one of my coursemates, who will be studying in Russia. We're both big on history and will be going to Auschwitz in Poland, then to Pripyat, the city next to Chernobyl in Ukraine. I think we both recognise the truly historic nature of the events associated with each and, as citizens of the world, feel that we ought to experience them, despite the intense emotions I'm sure we'll both feel because of it.

One of many scenes of the abandonment of Pripyat.

I'm enjoying everyone else's blog updates, especially Old Shatter Hands with his contribution to a great charitable project supporting Doctors without Borders

PS: I took my Deathwing to their first loss last night. It was a 1500pt game against a gunline Tau army commanded by a new player. He was still getting into the swing of the rules but was a lot of fun to play against. In short, it was a bloodbath and ended with just 2 models left alive, Farsight and a bodyguard.
The forces were:
27 terminators
vs
48 Fire warriors, 7 crisis suits, Farsight, 6 Stealth suits, 3 broadsides and max shield drones on everything.

In short, I gave him first turn and deep-striked everything. My aggressive movements with the 3 initial squads started rolling up his lines but then my last 2 squads mishapped and were destroyed, putting me down by 500pts. In the end, I battered my way through all of his units but then the last terminator was taken down by Farsight in assault. Great game and a good morale booster for my opponent, who told me he hadn't won with those Tau ever before.

(Wedding) Favour to ask. Following my other blog.

2011-05-29T07:48:00.005-04:00

Hey everyone,

I'll do hobby stuff first. My Finecast Dark Angel Captain is cleaned up now and I'll be getting him painted up as pretty soon. Not too much flash but unfortunately there is a distinct mold shift on the model. It's not too much and I'm not worried about it, but I would suggest taking as close a look at your new model as you can before you purchase. If the mould line/shift went over major detailing, that would be a bigger issue.

Ok, that done, it's on to the main reason for this post.

I've started a blog about writing custom wedding readings for people getting married. The URL is (unsurprisingly) http://customweddingreadings.blogspot.com

Essentially, I will be working with couples who want to have something really special and personalised written for their wedding day, but perhaps don't have the ability to really write down what it is that they are feeling. I have one example up of something I've done for a wedding so far and more are to come.

If this is something that interests any of you, I'd love to start building up some followers and since I'm in the early days and looking to build awareness, any family or friends you have who are getting married can come to me and I'll put something together for them for no cost. Just tell them to mention that you recommended they speak to me.

Thankyou all and feel free to get in touch if you have any questions at all about the new site.

Pete :-)

I wasn't going to buy Finecast....I really wasn't

2011-05-28T15:39:00.006-04:00

So in a remarkably foolish and immature decision, I figured I would stop by the local GW to see the Finecast models in person before I continued on my way to hunker down and work hard in Starbucks/Costa. I brought all of my grammar and teaching books, my notes, my pens, even a separate keyboard to plug into my battered laptop. That's a sure sign that I was actually intending to be responsible.

It started off innocently enough with me heading into the (very busy) store and the employees there all greeting me by name. Great guys and I have to comment on how nice it is to go to a store that has the hobby feel I remember from GW back in my pre-teen years (15 years ago...wow, I'm old). The guys working here are just all around awesome individuals and they have created a real atmosphere of fun in the place.

I managed to get a game in too, though I hadn't planned to or brought my models. A guy was looking for a 750 game and one of the blueshirts offered me his Blood Angels and asked me if I'd play the guy. I took a real Deathstar of assault terminators, a Sang Priest and chaplain in a StormRaven, just for the fun of it. My opponent was a decent enough guy but was a bit frustrating to play against with a bunch of rules quibbles and rolling behind terrain. Not a huge deal really as I was playing casually, but the blueshirt got mad at him when he told me mid-assault that his bolter-armed Grey Hunter squad actually had a power weapon then mentioned that I didn't ask, when I queried why he didn't say so at the start of the game (when I had explained my non-WYSIWYG). It wasn't a huge deal but the guy took a while to realise why it came across as questionable. Still, I managed to use the mobility of the Blood Raven to let my terminators eat his Blood Claws, Wolf Priest and Grey Hunters (hidden power weapon or not). The Raven also took out his dread, a rhino and survived his Long Fangs' attentions all game. A decent game all in all and I won on killpoints when we cut the game short because of the store closing.

Anyhoo, back to the Finecast models. They are pretty nice I must say.

The resin has a rubbery nature to it, which takes out the biggest complaint I have of resin in general; that it chips when you try to trim it and is brittle. The blushirt whose army I used grabbed me when I was near the painting table and asked me if I would like to put together a sternguard since it needed doing for the display in the window. It cuts off the sprues very easily, flash is easy to remove by carving, superglue takes to it very effectively and the bond formed is very strong (I tried to pull off the combi melta hehe). The total time for cleanup and assembly was about two minutes for the model and I did a second just as fast.

While people were gushing about the detailing, I'm not convinced it is any sharper than most of the metal precursors, it just looks that way as metal detail is harder to see than resin detail. Certain models do look great though. We all agreed that the mounted Gandalf model actually looked like Sir Ian McCellan and someone had a Njal Stormcaller where you can see the individual fangs in his mouth. Good stuff, but most of them just look good. The model strength is high and they wiggled the Terror of Arnor model (large and winged like the Balrog) around by its wings, then dropped it a couple of times from 6-8 inches above the table with no damage.

My only two complaints about Finecast are that there are some small casting error.s You can see a few small air bubbles in some models. You can also notice mould-shift in some of them, which can take out detail, but it's a lot easier to trim this down than metal. Some of the flash is quite annoying though as it forms in spikes coming off the studs on the Mk5 shoulder pads. It's hard to carve this off without taking the stud too and these were the biggest problems for bubbles too. Given that they are small detail points, one bubble was enough to kill the stud entirely.

Ultimately, I think that Finecast will be decent for the standard character figures but it will really shine when the larger metal kits are brought around to the new material. I think things like the O&G Azhag, the Ogre Kingdom's Gnoblar Scraplauncher (thinking of you and that commission job OSH), Inquisitor Kazaramov etc. will really benefit from the new material. By taking so much weight off what can otherwise be small joints, it will make the assembly and use of the big models so much more pleasant to deal with.

One of the blueshirts commented on the price rises too. His understanding was that prices were going to go up anyway, but he conceded that the timing of the price rise was probably a mistake. They were happy to chat about the bad timing of the multiple issues GW has raised in the last few weeks, agreeing that they probably should have been spread out more.

So why did I spend money on things that were too expensive and I'd already said I wasn't going to get?

Because the store is really excellently run, I wanted to support it and for once, I got a deal from GW.

A Dark Angels chapter master (Ten pounds fifty) finecast model they had on the shelves was mis-packed. It contained two body sprues and no backpack/head sprues. The staff offered to sell it to anyone who wanted instead of sending back to HQ as you would just need two plastic heads and backpacks to have two models. There was a young kid there who, when he realised I was thinking of buying it, begged me for the other body. He only had four pounds something on him, but I decided that was enough for me. His face lit up with a big grin and I felt like I'd done my good deed for the day. I'll probably paint up this guy in Deathwing colours then either sell him, or donate him back to the store. Still, it's a mark of how much GW has changed when six quid for a single (incomplete) model is a good deal.

This is what I have, except that I'll be using a more modest helmet and adding my own plastic backpack/banner.

Perhaps the whole karma malarky does work because when I got to Starbucks, the exhausted looking (but cute) girl at the register asked me what drink I would like and was so relieved when I just asked for a plain coffee. I guess they've been having a day of difficult orders. We chatted for a bit since I was a barista for six months or so in the States and I know the challenges you get. After a minute she 'accidentally' rung my drink up as a partner beverage :-)

So all in all, I've had a great day, despite not doing the work I need to do. I think it's time now to head home and be responsible. I have a lesson to plan and grammar structures to examine for my teaching course. I can't put it off any more. Perhaps I'll even tempt karma one more time on my way out of here and see if the barista girl is free for a date sometime ;-)

All the best

Pete

PS: I'm a wuss and didn't go chat to the girl. Ah well ;-)

Tonight I can write.....of a Deathwing battle and some more poetry ;-)

2011-05-24T18:01:00.005-04:00

So I took the Deathwing out to play tonight.

After carrying around a big box of models during my teaching course today, the stage was set for a Deathwing battle at the local GW in Cambridge. I got the impression fairly quickly that most people there were playing fairly unfocused lists so I was a bit worried I'd be seen as a power gamer, but I figured that the disparity in codex age between me and my opponent (Space Wolves) should even things out.

We played pitched battle annihilation and my army was simple.

Belial, Librarian, Command Assault squad (with apothecary), 2 assault squads, 2 shooty squads.

My opponent brought (roughly):
- Wolf Lord with wolf claw and storm bolter
- Rune priest (jaws and living lightning)
- 5 Wolf guard in terminator armour, 2 wolf claws, 2 power fists, 1 thunder hammer, assault cannon
- Venerable Dread (AC)
- 10 Grey hunters
- 15(?) Blood Claws led by a Wolf Guard w/ PF
- 5 Wolf Scouts (sniper rifles and missile)
- Vindicator
- 5 Long Fangs (Multi-melta, heavy bolter, plasma cannon, lascannon)

I knew from his armaments that he hadn't really put together the list for killiness, but figured it would be a good first game for the Deathwing anyway. I won the dice off and gave him first turn. He deployed fairly evenly with Grey Hunters and Long Fangs on one flank, Vindicator, WG and Lord in the centre, then Dread and Blood Claws with Rune priest on the other flank. He reserved the scouts for outflanking. This seemed a waste to me since they had heavy weapons but hey ho.

To counter this, I deployed one shooty squad with the Librarian on the flank table edge facing his Dread and Blood Claws. All other squads were deep striking.

His turn 1 had nothing much since he had no targets. He moved forwards with everything but left the vindicator sitting, now separated from his mini-deathstar of lord and WG. My turn 1 brought in Belial and the command squad, and another assault squad. Belial et al. set up in my opponent's rear corner with LOS to, but out of charge range of, the dread. The other squad landed between two buildings with LOS to the Vindicator's flank. A few missiles later and I'd stunned the dread and blown up the tank. My shooty squad also killed some Blood Claws.

Turn 2 he continues to move forward on his right flank, which seemed a waste since my entire force thus far was on his left. His Wolf Guard wheeled around to advance on my guys and the Blood Claws elected to shoot rather than charge Belial's squad. Terminator armour and FNP saved them and the Librarian stopped Jaws being cast. My turn 2 gave me the second shooty squad who I deepstruck in place to block and shoot the wolf guard. I once again stunned the dread and charged the Blood Claws with Belial's squad. He took two wounds and we lost one terminator, but stomped the Claws, making them run, only the WG and Priest still alive. I consolidated so that they would be within 6" and unable to rally next turn

Turn 3 puts his fleeing units almost off the table. He gets to charge the shooty squad with his Wolf Guard though and with some good shooting and wolf claws, pulls them apart before I could fight back. I get my last squad and strike them to the flank I'm rapidly taking. I stun the dread again (damnit, just die), move Belial to escort the fleeing models off the board and get my power hitters in position to counter assault the WG if they get into combat with the assault squad near them. The WG are very killy, but I've got a huge amount of hitting power on offer to overwhelm them if I concentrate it.

Turn 4 lets him just get the charge on one of my assault squads, but the lord and one WG aren't close enough to strike. I get some good rolls with my lightning claws and tear up three of his guys, then the hammers/fists come into play and we're reduced to the cyclone guy on my side, his lord and AC on his side. I then shoot the DCCW off his dread, letting me charge it and PF it to death then my command squad assaults in to kill the lord and remaining Wolf Guard, their 3+ Storm Shields (thanks FAQ) saving them from the wolf claws.

He has 1 kill point (shooty squad), and has killed 10 terminators. I have 6 kills points (7 if the WG leader of the Blood Claws count) and we call the game as it's getting late.

Now clearly my opponent made some major errors and didn't correct them later. The wolf scouts should have been on the table in turn 1 to use their guns, the devastators (whose loadout would benefit from less diversity) needed to be better placed from the start and, when it was clear I was hitting just one flank, should have been moved to counter on turn 1. Instead they holed up in a building with great LOS to my flank that had no models on it. The end result was that I took on around 1000pts of Wolves with my whole army and mashed them. Good opponent though and kept smiling through to the end. If we'd had time I'd have danced out of his range and kept throwing missiles at his remaining troops. Or if I decided to be more casual I would have footslogged over to his scouts, hunters and fangs who'd hunkered down in a few buildings and tried to fight them out, just for kicks.

The Deathwing are nice, no question, but very different to play with. You have to use deepstriking (with Deathwing Assault) in many cases because you can't risk a long range gunfight against most foes. With that in mind, I can see that picking the DS locations can make or break your game from the start. I think this army is going to be very tactical to play and a real challenge when facing a less casual player, or even one who realises I might DS and castles up. Deathwing also suffer a problem of cracking Mech, especially walkers. Against vehicles I have hammers, fists and some chainfists but I have to think twice when facing a Dread that can pulp me pretty badly.

Overall I had a blast playing my new army and the GW store here is really cool. The staff were excited about Finecast but didn't try to sell me anything and just loved to talk about the hobby. It made me feel like I was in the GW that I grew into the hobby with and not some of the more sales-focused ones I've been to recently.

Thanks for reading all.

To finish off we have poetry.....it's good for you

I think this is my favourite poem I've yet read. It was shown to me be someone who I was close with and resonated with me deeply then, and still does as I look back on things. I hope you enjoy the flow, words and emotions too.

I'll culture you gamers yet ;-)

Tonight I Can Write

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Citadel Finecast and a Neruda poem.

2011-05-20T16:42:00.003-04:00

Hey everyone,

Today I went into the Cambridge GW and chatted with the staff there since I'm going to be living here for a month and need to get some game time in with the Deathwing before I head to Bratislava and possibly have a dearth of players. The guys working there were very cool and nice to talk to. They didn't try to sell me anything, were interested in my models and happy to chat about a bunch of different stuff.

However, when it came to Citadel Finecast, they clammed up hard. They've been told firmly from higher up that if they say too much they will be fired for it. The big reveal will be next Monday and despite me asking questions in a dozen different ways and them really wanting to tell me things, they didn't. What I gleamed was (take this with as much salt as you wish):

- They've been reading the blogs etc and 80% of it is wrong. They think people will be surprised at how wrong they are.
- Finecasting is a fundamentally new technique (they would neither confirm nor deny if it was resin)
- The detail of the models is a serious step up and makes Forge World look merely OK.
- No other game company will be able to afford to invest and make this technique happen. GW has been working on it for a while.
- While they didn't say exactly, it seems like the models will be receiving new sculpts and so on. They hinted that those expecting an exact recast in resin were wrong.

What they didn't comment on:

- Are old metal blisters going to be phased out and replaced by finecast? Will there be a sale? Are they just going to be melted down?
- Are all metal kits going to be moved to finecast, including big ones like Greater Daemons and metal warmachines?

All in all the two blueshirts were really nice guys. They invited me to their gaming night, didn't push sales, listened to my expressing the current upset with GW and responded fairly. Summed up:
- Finecast misunderstood
- Price rise is annual and expected. GW profits aren't that high because of reinvestment into model kits etc. It's not the big cash cow some people think
- FAQ writing was slow but seems to be better now. Also game designers work 2 years or more out on things so it's hard for them to predict rules conflicts and devote their time to FAQing new issues since they have moved on to later products
- The ban on online retailers shipping to Oz is not their speciality, but they speculated that GW may open a moulding plant over there, as the did in the states and prices can be brought in line.

All in all, good guys and I'm looking forward to seeing the Finecast models. I hope to be truly surprised and impressed at GW's work. But, it has to be said I have some scepticism. I can't see how much more detailing they can add to models so we will have to see.

I couldn't decide between the following animal pics so you get both ;-)

Now for something completely different. Thanks to someone I used to be in good contact with who showed me their favourite poem (Tonight I can Write), I found and fell in love with the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Here is a poem called unity that I read this morning and liked. Enjoy :-)

There is something dense, united, settled in the depths,
repeating its number, its identical sign.
How it is noted that stones have touched time,
in their refined matter there is an odor of age,
of water brought by the sea, from salt and sleep.

I'm encircled by a single thing, a single movement:
a mineral weight, a honeyed light
cling to the sound of the word "noche":
the tint of wheat, of ivory, of tears,
things of leather, of wood, of wool,
archaic, faded, uniform,
collect around me like walls.

I work quietly, wheeling over myself,
a crow over death, a crow in mourning.
I mediate, isolated in the spread of seasons,
centric, encircled by a silent geometry:
a partial temperature drifts down from the sky,
a distant empire of confused unities
reunites encircling me.

Breaking with the long time girlfriend that is GW...

2011-05-18T19:26:00.005-04:00

I wasn't sure how to title or phrase this particular blog post until I was chatting with Old Shatter Hands on gmail and we came around to the topic of GW's actions of late. To sum them up for those who aren't familiar:

One - The new wave of Dark Eldar models are really nice. The 40k online community is generally all in favour of them, the models, prices not too bad for GW and all is well. Hope blossoms.

Two - GW decides now all info about new things will come out a week prior to release. No exceptions. No excitement for what's coming next. No seeing plans for model releases in advance (like almost every other game compan), nada. You will get it with 7 days warning and like it!!!

Three - GW announces they are basically recasting their metal figures into resin to reduce costs. I'm on the fence about this one. Cheaper figs is good but resin can be warped, bubbly and is fragile. I don't see certain sculpts lasting well (Lelith for one). Now we find out that they are actually going up in price by about 10% average (a few £/$ per figure). Oh, they are there to reduce GW's costs and shaft us? Gotcha

Four- GW announce an annual price rise to jack everything up a few % more than inflation. Not out of the ordinary but coming along with the rest makes me a sad panda.

Five- GW orders online sellers in the UK to stop shipping outside the EU. For people in Oz/NZ it is actually cheaper to buy forge world models than GW models because of the screwed pricing (box of terminators for £48 anyone? Nearly double RRP). The online retailers helped that but no more. A lot of down under gamers have expressed their imminent migration to Warmahordes etc. Hey GW, how about making prices virtually the same across the world or at least within 5-10% on the same product?

So me and OSH start chatting and here is the the conclusion.

OSH: I dont even care...I feel like I have broken up with a long time girlfriend and I am in the stage where I kind of remember the good times, but if I think about it hard all those bad times come back to memory

Pete: Ok, that's my blog title right there. Consider it stolen (I'll credit you lol)

OSH: Haha, go ahead. Really its like that. It's time for a break up. GW is the girlfriend that doesn't appreciate what you do...

Pete: Such a good analogy

To me the key point is that GW just doesn't seem to want to communicate with the playerbase and community. OSH sent a list of FAQs to Jervis, got a response, but half of the questions were not addressed when the actual FAQ came out and sometimes we have to wait months or years for simple rules questions to be addressed.

GW's pricing has always been at the high end of the market but now it's gotten to the point where I just don't care to play any more. Not that it is that much more expensive with the annual hike (a few £ per box set) but with the other issues of the game, corporate money-first attitude, lack of player base connection and communication, it's just a little more than I care to deal with.

I'd rather support games companies that are more interested in their players and have a more vibrant feeling to them. GW feels like they've stagnated, despite some of the best fluff and background out there.

From now on, I'm going to do what Steve Holy suggested. (He is one of the many good country singers who came to the studio when I was working in radio in the states)

For me it's going to be Infinity and Malifaux, with some Warmachine if I want a bigger game.

On the other hand, I'll be keeping up with my Deathwing since they are a finished army and you can't deny the terminator models are pretty sweet. In fact, model quality is something I don't really look down on GW for. For the most part they are great and their plastics are really nice. I did so much mix and matching with these Deathwing and I think they look great for it. I'm also going to put out a WOOT for the Army Painter colour primers. Saved me so much time on basecoating.

Infinite babes?

2011-05-15T09:07:00.004-04:00

****Disclaimer, sexism towards wargaming figures occurs in this post ;-)****

Blog followers, I have a confession to make.....I sometimes get a crush on female wargaming miniature sculpts ;-)

Instead of considering this a problem, I've decided to relish it and use it as motivation for future gaming. Enter Infinity, the game.

Because I'm lazy and want to get on with linking pics of Infinity ladies, I'm going to blatantly crib info Old Shatter Hands wrote about the game(thanks bud).

The game is set in 175 years in the future of our world. This is very important, because in the game you'll find all the contemporary world powers represented in the game. There is a huge Asian conglomerate power, the Yu Jing, that features units and troops from China, Japan and other Asian nations. Americans have been fused with the nations of the UK and Russia, and become a power, less advanced technologically due to isolation from Earth and the Human Sphere for a century.

The game can be incredibly detailed; your futuristic soldiers can doctor wounded comrades, hack into enemy computer systems, and use camouflage to move undetected across the battlefield. At first it sounds complex, but the core rules are fluid, simple and easy to learn. You'll never need more than 4 dice at a time, in contrast to 40k where you often find yourself digging out 20-30 dice from your stash.

What I like most about it, is that although it's still based on a "you-go, I-go" turn system, your enemy can react to your moves in your turn and vice versa, making for a game that engages you throughout its entire length. You don't have to watch your opponent move and shoot uncontested during his turn, you get to fight back.

I haven't even mentioned the miniatures yet. They are, in my humble opinion, the best miniatures available on the market today. Every model is expertly sculpted with near flawless anatomy, posed in dynamic and fluid stances that imply action. You have to see for yourself. It's hard to look at a 40k miniature the same way after you realize what Corvus Belli has achieved with this range.

So of the factions available I find myself drawn towards the Ariadna (Old European) and Haqqislam (new Islam). I'm going based on the models I like most because I understand that this is a much more balanced game than 40k so there are no worries about picking a faction like Witch Hunters in 40k to find your play group is running Wolves, Blood Angels and Grey Knight Shunt-punching Dreadknights.

The low model count and limited investment also work well for me with my travel plans. Here are the two starter sets I will be picking up to start my Infinity gaming.

Haqqislamn
I agree with OSH on the quality of sculpts that Corvus Belli produces and the casual assurance of the female Ghulam figure on the right makes me think she is a real soldier. Nice feminine lines without the exaggerated effect you get in some other companies' miniatures.

AriadnaSome more great models and if we focus on the female Khazak (as we should in this post), you will see that she is definitely projecting a rough and tumble sexy look. She looks more than capable of handling herself on the battlefield or off it...(giggity?)

Haqqislam anti tankFrom this model, I have learned that tank hunting definitely requires stopping in mid-run and sticking a shapely backside out so that you can see the foe coming. Presumably any tank or TAG (Infinity's armoured suits) crew will be distracted by the lovely curves on display long enough for you to put a rocket through their armour.

Ariadne ChasseurThe Ariadne have clearly learned the booty shunt move too (much more fun that the GK shunt punch). Your eyes will be stuck to her until you realise she's stuck a grenade on you with her adhesive launcher.

Ariadne Caledonian VolunteersHere a sexy, plaid skirt wearing young lady appears to have wandered into the battle and is now all flustered and cute. Wrong, she just wants you to think that while her buddy on the right takes you out or she can show you the business end of her grenade launcher.

Haqqislam OdalisqueNow this lady may be a seductress (it's in the fluff, look it up) but she's smart, sassy, sexy and stalwart too. She can fight in platform boots too. Oh yeah

Ariadne Para CommandoNow here's a lady who has clearly watched Date Night and remembers the alleyway scene (Watch the trailer and skip to 1 minute in). Yeah, she knows about the killshot.

Szalamandra SquadronNow this figure is from the Nomads faction rather than Ariadne or Haqqislam but I love the sculpting on her. To me she's saying "Once I'm done posing, I'll get into my TAG suit (it looks like a giant Crisis suit) and totally kick your ass."

So there you have a short trip through just a few of the babes of Infinity. I'm definitely planning to get an army started with some eye candy and build up a fighting force around that. One great strength of a balanced game system is that I'm not going to lose out by taking certain models or not taking others. As I understand it, almost any force can deal with almost any other force if played well.

Nicely sculpted female figures all the way ;-)

Pete

Unnoficial Codexes and 40k detective fiction.

2011-05-04T16:32:00.006-04:00

Hey everyone

So my Deathwing are fully assembled now, including Captain Lysander as the command squad sergeant (superglue still hates me but pinning sorts that out). Just waiting on my Army painter Bone White spray before I get to actually tying together my divergent models with a colour scheme.

Of course, being a wargamer I wouldn't be considered 'normal' within our community if I didn't have an extra project in mind. It hit me when I was reading through the unnoficial Kroot Mercenaries codex that came out in 3rd/4th edition Chapter Approved and then was updated for 5th edition. It's completely unofficial and not endorsed by GW, but I think it would be a blast to play and model for.

Essentially it takes the Kroot of the Tau codex, those put in the Imperial Armour 3: The Taros Campaign, adds a few more and ties it all together into a fun codex. It's not a powergaming choice by any means, but definitely has character. To represent their mercenary nature, the kroot shapers who lead each squad can be equipped with a variety of guns (storm bolters, flamers, melta, kroot rifles etc.) and other weapons (power swords, eviscerators, various kroot charms). Ultimately it's an army that puts a lot of Kroot on the table, with their attendant strengths and weaknesses. Put a few flame templates down and I'd be pulling models off left and right but let me get the charge through a forest and I'll hit hard up front.

How about some heavy support to start us off?

Greater Knarlocs are a nice way to munch up your foe. Now if only they didn't cost £40 each form Forge World

Jump infantry kroot and their shaper wielding a chainfist equivalent...fun.

You can have squads of sniper kroot. Deadly until your opponent flies his heavy flamer land speeder next to them.

Kroot shaper council with kroot hounds. Like a unit of nobz except not as diversified, limited to a max of 5 members, cannot get invulnerable saves or FNP, no furious charge and get Instant Death from Strenth 6. On the other hand, you can get a buttload of attacks on the charge and they are just plain fun. Bring it on you greenskins.

The downside of the fun codex is that you are stuck with one box of plastic kroot, metal krootox and hounds, and forge world's expensive resin selection to make it all work. I put together a 1500pt list and I think that I could make it, with a bunch of converting from 5 sets of Kroot (80 figures total), 4 krootox, a set of LOTR Wargs for hounds (OSH's idea) and some Dark Elf Cold one knights to give me knaroc mounts (after a Greenstuff sculpted beak). Relatively affordable and with fun conversion options. It wouldn't have all of the cool kroot choices (Great Knarlocs, vulture kroot) but would be fun to play and quirky to convert. A project for another day perhaps.

What are your thoughts on codexes like the Kroot Mercenaries or the Lost and the Damned? Have you collected them or played against them? Would it benefit Games Workshop to bring them back as playable?

In other news, when I'm not working on my English Language teaching course's pre-course homework (somehow that doesn't seem fair), I've been putting together a novel pitch for Black Library Publishing. Until I started this I'd never considered writing detective-type fiction in any setting but I've found that 40k and the Inquisition suit me just fine. I'm enjoying taking a lowly interrogator who's recently bereft of his master and putting him under the command of an Inquisitor who doesn't want him, doesn't much like him and has tasked him to bring an escaped psyker to justice.

I don't want to give away too much on my setting and plot as I think it's quite creative and could (hopefully) pique the interest of the submissions editors at Black Library but I can tell you that this interrogator is working in an environment that is anything but comfortable and is worried that he can't trust his own mind. For the first time, I'm making a conscious effort to have every character I introduce to the story be critical at some point in things. I've written too much before where I would add characters like "a soldier", "the ship's doctor", "a henchman". That's not to say there isn't a place for such characters, but if they only warrant a title, then they should only warrant a small place in the proceedings.

Take care all,

Pete

PS: I'm a responsible wargamer. Despite being seriously tempted to add an Infinity starter set to my Wayland Games spray paint order to make the most of the shipping cost, I refrained. Doesn't mean I won't pick up some Haqq'Islam when I get to Bratislava and start earning some money.

PPS: If anybody has some of the metal krootox models they don't want and would part with for a modest price, please get in touch with me.

My deathwing army in pictures!

2011-04-26T07:49:00.004-04:00

Hey everyone,

So I've been bouncing around a lot recently between countries and then from place to place since being back in England with family and friends. Still, I managed to spend a couple of hours over a few days getting in some geek time and assembling my new Deathwing army (the Death-Grey-Space-Knight-Wolf-Wing). Once I figured out how everything was going to go together, it was a lot of fun to do and there were only a few niggling challenges.

I built this army from the following components:
- 1 Grey Knight Terminators boxed set
- 1 Space Wolf Terminators boxed set
- 2 Space Marine Terminators boxed sets
- 6 AOBR terminators
- Bits from the Dark Angel veteran and Ravenwing sprues
- Additional CC weapons (Thunder hammers and storm shields mostly)

There weren't any major issues in terms of scale except that I noticed the shoulder pads were slightly different sizes. As I recall it, the Grey Knight pads were a little bigger, which was fine on other arms, but using a space wolf or regular pad over a Grey Knight arm could sometimes be a tight fit. I persevered though and once the glue had set, everything looks like it fits just fine.

From the components above I created 2 shooty squads (Assault cannon and storm bolters), 2 assault squads (TH/SS, Sergeant with LC, CML), one command squad (TH/SS, Apothecary, Banner), a Librarian and Belial, Master of the Deathwing.

Here they are

So now, onto the individual squads and pics. I had to carefully figure out the allocation of weapons and arms because of the mismatch of kits that I was using. I made a big chart with each model listed then added columns for legs, torso, head, L weapon, R weapon, L shoulder, R shoulder, Head. I didn't want anybody to stand out too much as completely Grey Knight, wolf or terminator so I tried to give everyone at least one piece of each kit style. I think it worked out fairly well.

Belial and Librarian

I decided to tweak the army so that I could include a Librarian in terminator armour rather than a small tactical squad. Partly it's for the psychic defence but also it just seems more fitting to have everyone in Deathwing armour. By adding the librarian the points go up to 1535 so if I need to cut back, I will drop the banner from the command squad and the two chainfists in the shooty squads.

Belial is armed with the standard storm bolter and sword of secrets rather than LCs because I liked the modelling opportunities of using a Grey Knight sword and storm bolter. He is made from: Deathwing legs, Terminator torso, Grey Knight left and right arms, GK sword and storm bolter (the latter decorated with Dark Angel bits from the upgrade sprue), hooded DA head, terminator right shoulderpad, deathwing left shoulder pad, wolf guard cloak decorated with dark angel icons and pieces.

The Librarian is less diverse: Wolf legs, GK torso, GK right and left arms, GK storm bolter, GK falchion, GK staff, terminator shoulder pads, DA bits hanging off rear belt area

Command Squad

I know there are only four members here. The sergeant will be represented by a Captain Lysander model I was given. I haven't got any superglue or expoxy yet so he won't be assembled just yet. I can't decide whether or not to try to use some greenstuff to adjust the imagery on him or just say to hell with it and paint him up in Deathwing colours. With the amount of other styles in here, what's one Imperial fist going to matter? ;-)

The apothecary and banner bearer gave the extra challenge of needing to have TH/SSs while only having a single hand free. I managed to cut and bodge it so that they have the hammer and shield in the same hands and I think it came out pretty well.

Assault Squad 1

I really like how dynamic a lot of the poses are on these models and it was a lot of fun to make some really badass looking terminators. I've never played with the assault kind before and I'm looking forward to beating some face when I get time to actually play them

Assault Squad 2

I love the pose of the sergeant in this one and just wish the focus had been more even. I'll have to play with more photography later. The squad's CML is made from a chopped down Ravenwing Typhoon missile launcher. It fits quite nicely though there was a big hole in the side where I'd cut off the part that fits into the landspeeder. Luckily one of the flowing scroll pieces from the Ravenwing set covers that gap nicely.

Shooty Squad 1

I decided that the shooty sergeants with power weapons would get to wield the two-handed grey knight halberd and I think they came out looking tasty. These were the most troublesome modelling bits though as the GK torsos seem to be very slightly wider than regular torso pieces. Since each arm had to be angled the right way to match up with the other arm's hand placement it meant a complex series of multiple spidery-finger-holding-glue steps were needed. They came out nicely in the end though. I love the belt-fed Wolf Guard assault cannon. You can really tell the step up in quality and complexity when comparing these kits that were designed years apart.

Shooty Squad 2

The final squad. This one seemed a little bit static in poses with the pieces I had left so I did my best to make my chainfist wielder look very dynamic and threatening. I think it worked out. Still, it would have been nice to have some more cool pieces left to work with but hey, you work with what you have.

Next steps?

So the next part is clearly to base and paint these guys. I'm going to use the army painter bone spray to get the basecoat done, then wash with a sepia tone before I start bringing up the armour tones. Those who read the original Deathwing story printed way back in the day when you could still field Genestealer patriarch's will hopefully like my painting plan. In the story, the Dark Angel terminators wore black armour then, when they marched on a city full of Genestealers and didn't expect to live, they painted their armour bone white, in the tribal tradition know as Deathwing. When the rest of the chapter came looking, the surviving terminators asked that the armour was kept that colour to honour the fallen brothers. This gave rise to the Deathwing armour colour of the current edition with one exception. In the story, the left shoulder pad, with the crux terminatus was kept black to honour the Emperor. I'll be doing this with my models and it gives me a good way to mark out the librarian (blue shoulder) and apothecary (white shoulder).

For anyone who wants to make this army or one much like it, I definitely suggest giving it a try. It's a blast to fit all the different terminator parts together. If I was doing it again I would probably use:
- 2 space wolf boxes (for the CC weapons and assault cannons)
- 1 assault terminator box
- 1 grey knight box
- 1 terminator box
- 1 ravenwing sprue (for typhoon => cyclone missile launcher conversions)
- 1 dark angel sprue

Thoughts and comments are welcomed

Pete

Back in the homeland of Games Workshop.

2011-04-17T04:46:00.004-04:00

Hey everyone,

So I know there has been no blogging for a while but I just left me job, moved out of my apartment and changed countries all in the last few weeks. Still, now I'm back in the UK for a couple of months, getting a certificate to teach English abroad then, thanks to Tim at the Tau of War, I'm probably heading to Bratislava, Slovakia. Very excited about that one. I've decided I like being FROM England rather than living IN England though I'll be in and out seeing family and friends undoubtedly.

So the next two months is quite busy as I have to:

- Get my CELTA course certificate
- See family and friends (it has been two years after all)
- Paint up and sell the 21 metal Grey Knight terminators I got in trade before leaving Maryland.
- Start building my Deathwing army
- Write one or two submissions for Black Library Publishing. I still love writing and it would be great to get something published.
- Use the NHS's services to fix my various injuries (cracked knuckle, broken toe, sprained toe, sprained(?) knuckle, stiff knee) before I go off abroad again.

On the last note, I did a lot of Mixed Martial Arts training in the US and got in a fight before I left. I figured you may all appreciate a shot or two of me in action. I was sooooo tired by the end and my opponent had 15 lbs weight advantage so it was exhausting when it came to the grappling. I lost the fight by decision but handled him nicely on the feet, though couldn't match his power on the ground. Good times and he is still one of my closest friends. What a bizzare and wonderful sport :-)

Me landing a kick. No, he's not fat, that ripple in his stomach is from the impact.

After the fight with funky hair due to my cornerman's towel. That was our instructor as referee. Great guys both of them.

1500pt Deathwing army list, transportable in 1 battlefoam tray ;-)

2011-03-28T09:51:00.007-04:00

Happy monday everyone, So I've been gathering together various models and bits from friends and GW to put together my crazy-hybrid model set Deathwing army. I'm looking for some tactical thoughts on the loadouts for each squad, working within the limit of models I have/will get.

Models
- 1 Box 5 Grey Knight Terminators (GKT)
- 1 Box 5 Assault Terminators (AT)
- 2 Box 5 Space Marine Terminators (T)
- 1 Box 5 Wolf Guard Terminators (SWT)
- 3 single Assault on Black Reach Terminators
- 1 Captain Lysander model
- Bits from Dark Angel Sprues
- 5 robed tactical marines from DA sprues

Weapons
- 11 Thunder Hammers/Storm Shields (5 from AT, 4 from SWT, 1 from GKT, 1 from Lysander)
- 9 Lightning claw pairs (5 from AT, 4 from SWT)
- 3 Heavy Flamers (2 from T, 1 from SWT)
- 2 Cyclone Missile Launchers (T)
- 5 Assault Cannons (2 from T, 1 fromt SWT, 2 from Dark Angel Sprues)
- 5+ Chainfists
- 10+ Powerfists
- 15+ Stormbolters
- 2-3 Power weapons

Army List for 1500 pts

- Belial, probably equipped with lightning claws due to his high Initiative - 130pts

- Deathwing squad (215), 5 TH/SS, CML (20), Apothecary (30), Chapter Banner (25) - 290pts (Belial leads)

- Deathwing squad (215), 3 TH/SS, 2 LC, CML (20) - 235pts

- Deathwing squad (215), 3 TH/SS, 2 LC, CML (20) - 235pts

- Deathwing squad (215), SB/PW, SB/CF (5), 2 SB/PF, Assault cannon(30)/PF - 250pts

- Deathwing squad (215), SB/PW, SB/CF (5), 2 SB/PF, Assault cannon(30)/PF - 250pts

- 5 Tactical marines (90), meltagun (10) - 100 pts

Total = 1490 pts if I've added up correctly. I recall it being 1500 even when I last did it so may have mis-remembered a pt cost here or there. For 10 pts I'd probably add a couple more chainfists.

Basic Tactics
Pretty straightforward. Deathwing assault with one assault squad (or Belial's) and the two shooty squads to establish a turn 1 presence. Tactical squad holds home objective. When the enemy responds to the turn 1 terminators shooting them, drop the assault squads behind them and hopefully catch in a pincer movement of sorts.

For objectives missions I'll drop the shooty squads near the objectives and hold them with fearless terminators.

Suggestions, tactical advice, hate mail and the like is all welcome ;-)

Fail Gamers Birthday Bash Tournament over the weekend.

2011-03-21T10:11:00.005-04:00

Good morning all.

So this past weekend I played in the Frederick All Inclusive League Gamers (FAIL Gamers) tournament for their second Birthday. The Fail Gamers have been a great place for me to meet good people, get in a bunch of games, enjoy the forums and have an all around good time with some wargaming. I haven't totally taken advantage of all they do (40k, WFB, Flames of War, Warmachine, Malifaux, Dystopian Wars, Dark Heresy and more) but I've still really enjoyed my time here.

So the tournament was primarily done for the club members as a thankyou for all the support and time they gave to make the club run as well as it did. To this end the club folks got a small advantage. Each player received a ticket for: Painted army, well-painted and based army, WYSIWYG, then one for each 3 months of club dues paid. You could redeem tickets for special wargear, battlefield conditions or unit rules, only once per game.

The rules were mostly balanced. I took one that let my deffkoptas call down a S6 AP3 ordnance blast that always scattered 2D6 and that was reasonable. Only one rule seemed truly broken to me and it was only broken for one army. Mow Em Down let a unit make normal ranged attacks when assaulted by a unit prior to assault instead of normal assault attacks. The guy with a Farsight bomb bought this for each of his games, making his unit nearly untouchable. Thankfully I didn't play him and so I was good overall.

My Games

Of three games I won 2 and lost 1. The first and third games were great fun (not just because I won) and game 2 was meh. I ran my 1850 ork list from the last tournament minus the grots and 20pts of wargear.

This photo says it all. 6 models survived the game....total!

Game 1
Drop pod and stormraven blood angels here. 5 objectives which we placed in the table centre, agreeing we'd prefer a punch up ;-) He got turn 1 and dropped down into my backfield with 2 Blood Talon Furioso's, then managed a turn 1 fleeting Death Company dread (also blood talons) into my ork boyz. The lootas were flamed out of cover and ran, one battlewagon was magna-grappled and shaken then the boys got hacked up by the DC dread (blood talons hurt!). In my turn I punched back with the nobz and deffkoptas, slaughtering marines left and right. It turned into a glorious brawl across the field where the power of diversified nobz prevailed over the power of blood angels who reroll everything (so it seemed). By the end of the game I held 4 objectives and contested the 5th. He had one drop pod and an immobilised Furioso on the table, phew. Great game and a friendly opponent.

Game 2
I knew this was going to go badly from the start. It was about surviving, with each unit over 50% strength gaining you 2 VPs, under 50% 1 VP and 0 for dead units. My opponent brought razor/dread/dakka pred/tempest speeder spam marines with MSU and a counter assault of 10 TH/SS terminators. He had 34 possible VPs vs my 22 possible, so I would have to kill 6.5 of his units with no losses just to draw. The deployment rules let you go anywhere on the table more than 18" from your opponent, turn 1 the entire table was difficult terrain. My opponent put his two min tac squads far forward to push me back then castled up on a hill on his board edge. He then used a ticket to buy a rule that stopped me getting scout moves then siezed initiative on a 4+ because of the same ticket.

That was pretty much the game. I got alpha-striked, then shot up every turn while trying to move through difficult terrain and rhino blocks. The nobz were wrecked by the terminators, led by a Librarian who'd cast null zone. All in all, I got tabled badly. Not much fun. My opponent didn't cheat and wasn't rude, but brought a mean list, gamed every advantage of the special rules and didn't crack a smile at all. Two upsides were that I got tabled quickly and went down the road with the GF to have a free wine tasting from a winery where my other friend works before game 3 and that my opponwnr got sulky when he won 3rd place, despite tabling two opponents. Length of time as a club member was the tie breaker for the tournament top winners, hehehe ;-)

Game 3
Game 3 was against Blood Angels again. Deployment was spearhead and you gained VPs for each unit in your opponent's deployment zone on turn 6 (all games had defined end turns). My opponent brought a few assault marines, 2 flamestorm Baals, the Sanguinor, a Furioso Librarian Dread and Mephiston. HEROHAMMER!!! :-D

It was a fantastic game and, though I tabled him, I was nearly tabled. The pic is from the very end of the game. The Baals rushed forward in their scouting moves, flamed the boys then got klawed/glanced to death. Sanguinor was mangled by a first turn nobz assault, the marines folded, the lib dread killed one nobz unit then got rokkited by the deffkoptas. Mephiston just rolled through so much of my army with his jump pack/Strength 10/Preferred enemy trio of psychic powers then came undone when we had a showdown between him and nobz. My last turn of the game let me kill off his last assault marine and claim a narrow victory due to tabling.

Great tournament and I had a bunch of fun.

PS: I killed the titan on day 2 with broadsides but it took 5 turns because of the void shield repairing every time and them making cover saves. Another tau player I loaned broadsides to killed it on turn 2 and won the knight titan model. It was fun seeing all the ways people used to kill it (Deep strike fusion crisis, Broadsides, Jetbike seer council, DS zoanthropes etc.)

PPS: If anybody is interested in a knight titan model, one of the club members has set up moulds and is thinking it will be ~$85-100 to cast them up depending on number of interested people. Let me know if you are interested and I will pass on contact details.

The poetry of the Space Marine First Legion

2011-03-18T10:38:00.003-04:00

For those who haven't seen this before, let's have some poetry. This poem is by a poet called Lionel Johnson and is titled The Dark Angel. Read to the end, it's a very good piece and discussion follows afterwards.

None of this is my work but it is very thought-provoking and so hopefully people enjoy. Please visit the links given at the end.

Pete

The Dark Angel
DARK Angel, with thine aching lust
To rid the world of penitence:
Malicious Angel, who still dost
My soul such subtile violence!

Because of thee, no thought, no thing,
Abides for me undesecrate:
Dark Angel, ever on the wing,
Who never reachest me too late!

When music sounds, then changest thou
Its silvery to a sultry fire:
Nor will thine envious heart allow
Delight untortured by desire.

Through thee, the gracious Muses turn,
To Furies, O mine Enemy!
And all the things of beauty burn
With flames of evil ecstasy.

Because of thee, the land of dreams
Becomes a gathering place of fears:
Until tormented slumber seems
One vehemence of useless tears.

When sunlight glows upon the flowers,
Or ripples down the dancing sea:
Thou, with thy troop of passionate powers,
Beleaguerest, bewilderest, me.

Within the breath of autumn woods,
Within the winter silences:
Thy venomous spirit stirs and broods,
O Master of impieties!

The ardour of red flame is thine,
And thine the steely soul of ice:
Thou poisonest the fair design
Of nature, with unfair device.

Apples of ashes, golden bright;
Waters of bitterness, how sweet!
O banquet of a foul delight,
Prepared by thee, dark Paraclete!

Thou art the whisper in the gloom,
The hinting tone, the haunting laugh:
Thou art the adorner of my tomb,
The minstrel of mine epitaph.

I fight thee, in the Holy Name!
Yet, what thou dost, is what God saith:
Tempter! should I escape thy flame,
Thou wilt have helped my soul from Death:

The second Death, that never dies,
That cannot die, when time is dead:
Live Death, wherein the lost soul cries,
Eternally uncomforted.

Dark Angel, with thine aching lust!
Of two defeats, of two despairs:
Less dread, a change to drifting dust,
Than thine eternity of cares.

Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not so,
Dark Angel! triumph over me:
Lonely, unto the Lone I go;
Divine, to the Divinity.

Lionel Johnson

"As far as I am aware, 'The Dark Angel' and the sin it refers to specifically concern dissident sexual desire and the poem was probably expressive of Johnson's struggles with his homosexuality in a Christian setting..." [Professor Jane Wright]. Johnson's conversion to Catholicism in 1891 was the primal drive for his later repressed state, there is a streak of angst and self-loathing running through the poem, a plea for understanding both at a personal level and the greater issues of acceptance within the context of his religious beliefs. The polarity of his poition was almost impossible to reconcile and this is reflected not only in The Dark Angel but in other works too.

So what can we deduce from this and are there any links (real or imagined) to 'our' Dark Angels and what of the influence upon the game designers of the day?

In many ways we can see echoes of the poems sentiments within the psyche of the Dark Angels Chapter. They are engaged on a crusade to atone for their own deep-rooted catastrophe of so many falling to Chaos, and to ultimately find redemption and forgiveness reflecting the need for them to wipe the slate clean – by becoming even purer, even single-mindedly more loyal.

But these were not merely internal struggles of conscious as Johnson, like the DA, needed to physically hide their "sin" from those of higher authority too. Johnson for legal reasons (homosexuality was only decriminalised in the UK in 1967, and in Scotland in 1980), the Dark Angels to keep themselves out of the gaze of the suspicious Inquistion. It's basically self-preservation which drives the motives of both – a common human condition.

Despite there being no official acknowledgement as such, we must conclude that the poem did influence the backdrop of the Chapter, and Lionel Johnson is indeed the first Dark Angel. The combined coincidences not only of both names but motives too are just too great to pass off as mere chance. Interestingly and possibly in an attempt to 'hide' this literary connnection, the original founder of the Dark Angels was once named "Lyyn Elgonsen".

Poem copied from poet's corner, scroll down for The Dark Angel.

The points of discussion I posted are taken from an excellent piece at The Dark Fortress and are not my own work. Please visit this site for all of their excellent Dark Angels background, tactics, photos, artwork etc.

More Deathwing love. Must resist the urge.

2011-03-17T10:38:00.005-04:00

So I'm definitely tempting the heck out of myself in my last month in the US. I know that I have various costs ahead of me (travel, teaching course, renting an apt in Europe etc) yet I can't stop the desire for a sweet looking Deathwing army.

The good thing (sort of) is that I will be including Grey Knight terminators in the army and they aren't even release until the beginning of April, when I will be too busy preparing to move to even consider buying plastic crack. Also, buying GW models in the UK is cheaper than over here, even paying with $. For example, a box of terminators ($50) from the Warstore will sell for $40 yet I can buy from Wayland Games at a discount in pounds and the boxes come out to around $35. Sadly GW seems to price the US models on an exchange rate of around 2:1, which we haven't seen for some time.

In the meantime though, I'm just sourcing various lovely Deathwing models from which to take inspiration when the time comes I can actually start my army.

Here is a particularly awesome rendition of a Deathwing captain by the talented Scibor. If you look around you'll find many of his/her sculpts for 40k models and they have the same intensely sharp detailing and creativity. I am in no way able to recreate this but I will be happy if I can get some good hoods and robes going on my terminators.

Here are some really nicely modelled Deathwing terminators. Can annybody identify the parts of the leader model? I see Marneus Calgar's body and I suspect the belt-fed bolter is part of the Marneus figure too but the hands and the sword look different. Thoughts?

Pete

Can you kill a Knight titan with 500pts?

2011-03-14T10:04:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone,

I have a two day tournament coming up this weekend and I only recently found out about the second day.

Day 1 is a three round 1750 point 'regular' 40k tournament that I'll be taking the orks to and having a good time. I'm fairly confident I'll do alright in this one and it should be a good time.

Day 2 is where things become interesting.

We have to kill a knight titan.

Everybody in the tournament gets a shot to kill this beast (it's 1 of 250 resin casts for an old Games Day) and the one who kills it fastest gets to keep the titan model. Not bad and certainly nothing to lose by taking the game.

Rules:
- Titan is (I think) AV13 front, 1 void shield, 2 structure points super heavy walker mounting one warhound class weapon and a chainfist-thing. We've been told that there are no turbo laser destructors. If so, it'll be silly.

- I get 500 points of troops but must follow normal FOC (ouch)

- Game is on a 6x4 table, playing DOWN the table so there is 6 foot of ground to cover.

- No painting requirements but WYSIWYG and no proxies.

I ruled out my orks as soon as I saw the rules. The nobz and warboss would have no problem krumpin in with power klaws but they will take a minimum of 3 turns to reach it. I have no drop pods or collection of melta marines to drop my power armoured troops against this beast so they were likewise out.

Instead I'm going to try to claim it for the greater good.

I've borrowed 2 broadsides from Old Shatter Hands and I have a railhead at home. I'm going to run them with minimum Fire Warriors and a TL-Fusion commander. Each broadside will be placed 0.00001 mm from the table edges at the far forward line of my deployment. This should give them range to the titan while giving better odds for any blast weapons to scatter off the table. The Hammerhead will sit in the middle so I have max separation of targets to reduce the chance of scatters catching two units. I'm going to try to alpha strike the beast in turn 1 and hopefully drop the fusion commander into melta range on turn 2 if my rolls aren't so hot.

If anybody has any thoughts or ideas, please chip in. Also, if anyone has 2 broadsides they could loan me before next weekend I would be most grateful.

Pete

Gosh darn you GW and your temptuous ways.

2011-03-09T10:37:00.004-05:00

Hey everyone,

So despite winding down on my time here in America (leaving April 13th) and trying to sell off the vast majority of my wargaming collection.....I am getting tempted to collect a new army.

How is it that we can be hooked so powerfully by these pieces of plastic, pewter and resin that sensible ideas like dropping the hobby for a while due to impending travel drift out of our minds and are replaced by the urge to create a new army of tiny toy warriors?

However it happened....I want to get and play a Deathwing army

I trace this particular new urge to a few factors:
- I don't want to stop the hobby, despite planning on country hopping.
- I can make an army of all terminators and only have to transport 25-30 figures.
- The new FAQ makes them better on the tabletop.
- I like the idea of having mixed armament squads
- I read the original story of the Deathwing in the novel compilation Deathwing when I first got into the GW hobby at age 10 or so.

So let's bring on the Deathwing.

Games Workshop has managed to create a rather awesome collection of plastic terminators for various armies and I like them all.....so I want to create a fun mishmash army. I will use various boxed sets and enjoy the mix of armaments that playing deathwing will allow me to take advantage of. I also have a great love for plastic models and will use it whenever possible since metal and resin don't click with me. I swear my skin exudes chemicals that prevent superglue from working on anything I'm holding, no matter what it's made from.

Army 'List'

To start with, the army needs to be led by Belial, the master of the deathwing. He allows Deathwing to be taken as troops as well as Elites, giving you 9 slots to fill with terminator goodness. There is no model for Belial so I'm thinking of using the Chaos Terminator lord as a base for him with lightning claws or converting using spare bits from the other sets I'll get.

Here's a good example of a Chaos lord Belial Conversion from Dakka

I cleary need to have some regular terminator boxes, for the cyclone launchers if nothing else but with the other sets on offer I can make some beastly combinations and fun models.

So I will start with two boxes of regular terminators and one box of assault terminators to give me some good models and basic options.

Who doesn't love hammers, claws and missiles?

Next up for me is the extremely cool Space Wolf Terminator set. This comes with a great selection of ranged and melee weapons (love the belt-fed assault cannon) and as long as I cover up some of the more obvious wolf imagery, I think it will add character.

By adding Belial to the mix, one Deathwing squad can be upgraded to have a banner and an apothecary. That's right, feel no pain on fearless terminators. Until today there was no obvious way to get a terminator-armoured apothecary and so conversion was the only option.

......then the new Grey Knight terminators set was released, including a sweet banner, apothecary, multiple great weapons and some fantastically ornate armour pieces. Clearly I'll have to fiddle around with the parts and perhaps use some green stuff to edit the many Inquisition symbols but I think they will make for great Deathwing models. Also, if I spread the Grey Knight pieces out over the whole army and add some robes with Green Stuff then the army as a whole will be coherent.

Last on the list for now is to add some Dark Angels' bits from the conversion sprue to help maintain a theme of Deathwing, particularly given the multiple sources of models I'll be using.

So there we have it. Games Workshop has tempted me back in again and I'm thinking about this quite strongly. It'll make for a good longer-term project too that I can take with me to whatever new country I'm living in and will give me a nice creative outlet for when I want to just nerd out :-)

Pete

Lots of models on offer for modest prices.

2011-02-17T10:09:00.003-05:00

Hey everyone,

So since I'm leaving the US in a couple of months to begin the next crazy adventure of my life country-hopping and hopefully living in South America, I have to get rid of my entire collection of models.

Below is a list of everything that I have. At this stage I'm looking for cash only rather than trade since I can't take much with me and there are plenty of costs ahead of me (flights, visas, certification to teach English abroad etc.)

Still, I'd rather my collection go to people who I know will enjoy it and take good care of it than just be put on faceless Ebay.

There are no prices on this. Just get in touch with me (pgwallin@gmail.com) if you're interested in something and we can discuss.

I'm hoping to sell the marines, orks and Tau as complete armies but I'm open to discussion on everything.

All the best :-)

Pete

40k
2500-3000pts Pete's chapter marines (95% painted, TT level)
Captain
5 sternguard, 6 terminators, MM dread,
5 scouts, 25 tactical marines, Rhino
Land Speeder
~10 Devastators
Land Raider Redeemer

10 Grey Knights

Other models
- Lascannon Dread
- Marneus Calgar (painted)
- Honour Guard (primed)
- Marneus + HG (primed)
- Tau army (all painted): 2 Helios, 3 stealth + MD, 6 Gun Drones, 12 Fire Warriors, 12 Kroot, 2 Piranhas, Hammerhead, Skyray
- Ork Army (85% painted): Warboss, Big Mek, 20 Nobz, 40 Boyz, 20 Grots, 8 lootas, 8 burnas, 6 deffkoptas

Warmachine/HORDES
- Harbinger of Menoth (almost painted and assembled)
- Skorne Battlebox (mostly assembled)
- Trollbloods battlebox
- Trollbloods battlbox (primed)

RamshackleHuntsman spider tank (~30% painted, needs a base)
- 8-10 trukks / half tracks etc.
- 30-40 figures, resin and metal. ~10 painted

Ork Tournament list for the sausagefest

2011-02-13T11:51:00.004-05:00

Hey everyone,

So thanks to Old Shatter Hands' prodding, I am going to go and play in the Sausagefest tournament next weekend in Glen Burnie with my orks. I played a game with some friends yesterday, taking on 1850 pts of marines and Tau with an ork list.

I feel a little bad as my friends are pretty new to the game and I was testing out a tournament-style list but it was still a good fight. The dice were good to me at key points in the game and I played effectively to hold the objectives by turns 5-6.

My list was as follows

HQ
Warboss, Power Klaw, Squig, Cybork – 110 pts
Big mek, Kustom Force Field, Eavy Armour – 90 pts

Elites - One nobz as troops because of warboss
8 lootas – 120pts
8 burnas – 120 pts
9 nobz, Painboy, 3 Power Klaws, 2 Bi Choppas, Waagh banner, 9 Cybork bodies – 355
10 nobz, Painboy, 3 Power Klaws, 3 Kombi Weapons, 1xAmmo runt, 10 Cybork bodies – 373

Troops
21 boyz, 2 Big Shootas, Nob, Power Klaw, Bosspole – 176 pts
21 boyz, 2 Big Shootas, Nob, Power Klaw, Bosspole – 176 pts
10 grots, Runtherder – 40 pts
10 grots, Runtherder – 40 pts
Trukk, Red Paint Job - 40pts

Heavy Support
Battlewagon, Red Paint Job, 2 Big Shoota – 105 pts
Battlewagon, Red Paint Job, 2 Big Shoota – 105 pts

Total – 1850 pts

So it was a fun list to play and simple in execution. The vehicles head forward covered by the KFF and drop off the nobz into combat. The burnas ride in the trukk and do drive-by flaming while the boyz and grots move up the field or head for objectives. The lootas give me a bit of long range anti-vehicle.

Overall I like it but I think it will struggle a lot against a mech-heavy list as there is little available to really threaten armour outside of assault. My collection is quite limited and I have only the models above plus six Deffkoptas.

I'm thinking of dropping the warboss, burnas and trukk (270pts even) to add 3 units of 2 TL-rokkit deffkoptas. I think the drive by flaming is fun, but the trukk is very vulnerable to even light AV fire and the warboss is very fun, but not necessary like the KFF mek. Hopefully by being able to throw out some rokkits and scouting for first turn assaults I can mess up the opponents in the tournament.

New List:
HQ
Big mek, Kustom Force Field, Eavy Armour – 90 pts

Elites - One nobz as troops because of warboss
8 lootas – 120pts
9 nobz, Painboy, 3 Power Klaws, 2 Bi Choppas, Waagh banner, 9 Cybork bodies – 355
10 nobz, Painboy, 3 Power Klaws, 3 Kombi Weapons, 1xAmmo runt, 10 Cybork bodies – 373

Troops
21 boyz, 2 Big Shootas, Nob, Power Klaw, Bosspole – 176 pts
21 boyz, 2 Big Shootas, Nob, Power Klaw, Bosspole – 176 pts
10 grots, Runtherder – 40 pts
10 grots, Runtherder – 40 pts

Fast Attack
2 Deffkoptas, Twin-linked rokkits - 90 pts
2 Deffkoptas, Twin-linked rokkits - 90 pts
2 Deffkoptas, Twin-linked rokkits - 90 pts

Heavy Support
Battlewagon, Red Paint Job, 2 Big Shoota – 105 pts
Battlewagon, Red Paint Job, 2 Big Shoota – 105 pts

1850 on the nose.

Thoughts?

Learning to improve and grow from losses.

2011-02-04T10:54:00.008-05:00

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be. ~Douglas Adams

Hey everyone,

So while the title could have a 40k slant, it doesn't really (barring the following brief passage).

Of course you should do your utmost to recognise the lessons learned in a defeat on the tabletop as ways to improve both your character, skill in the game and understanding of your army. I definitely fall into a bloodthirsty pattern in games and try to kill my opponent's army off, sometimes at the expense of the objective. I've either lost or been pushed to a draw in a game where otherwise I've smacked my opponent around. I've learned to take the losing in good humour, not to get mad when the dice don't play and to just enjoy the experience of playing toy soldiers with the good people I've met through wargaming.

So, warhammer stuff over for now. It's time to write about what I'm really feeling.

******************************************************************************

First up is an admission. I played a strong part in really screwing up friendships because I was being selfish in pursuing a possible relationship, out of fear in fact. I wasn't the only person involved in what happened but I've got to accept a good portion of the blame. I think the friendships might have a chance to be rebuilt with some time and a chance to talk through things but it forced me to stop and really think about my life and future.

While it felt like a loss at first, actually being in the relationship I wanted wouldn't have been the best thing for me. I've come realise that I don't have a good idea of what it is that really drives and motivates me in my life. I don't have a greater goal that I'm moving towards and never really have. The major emotional connections and hope that I experienced in my life (with my ex-wife and this recent situation) came from the relationships representing a chance to escape the uncertainty. I was afraid of not really knowing myself and what I wanted and if I could make the relationships my goals and drives, that would let me avoid confronting the fear. Let me point out at this point that this isn't the best way of doing things ;-)

But it's amazing what can come out of losses and how much you can improve. I'm not only talking about learning to deal with Nob Bikers here (sorry, couldn't resist. I'll always be a geek at heart).

From my ex-wife I realised that I really wasn't looking for the same things in life that she was and that we could grow into a much better people not being with each other. We were best friends (still are) who had a good relationship. For much of the time the major issues could be glossed over because the friendship was so strong. After we separated though we have both gone from strength to strength and learned about ourselves. We've even managed to keep the friendship and possibly improve it even. I'm very fortunate to know such a good person.

From this recent situation I realised that it's probably not right for me to look for a serious relationship until I really know what path I'm going to walk in my life. It's also not right to risk friendships for selfish motives because you may lose much more than you gain and even if you 'succeed' in getting what you want, the pain you cause isn't nice for those involved. I also found the courage to stand up to my fear and admit that I don't know who I am really supposed to be and that it will take time to find that out.

So in order to help find that out.....

.....I'm going to explore the world a bit more :-)

I travelled for just shy of a year before I went to university and it was really good for me. Now the wanderlust bug has bitten me again (it was probably a sneaky Lictor) and I want to see where it will take me.

I have a two part idea, which is currently very loose but that's fine for now as it will start to tighten up as I consider all the angles.

My mother's boyfriend, who I've yet to have the pleasure of meeting since my Xmas trip home was cancelled by the snow in the UK, is very high up in a physics / engineering / renewable energy field and he travels all over the place doing really high level work (Japan, Europe, Australia just recently). I'm going to see if I can get to go along with him, even unpaid on some of this and get a feel for what he does. Perhaps get some future career contracts and use it to boost the resume while I save money doing whatever else I can do. This will necessitate going back to England at least for a while and I'm not totally sold on that yet, but I'm considering it for a bit. It'd definitely save money on the immigration front but on the other hand, if I got residency here then could go travelling for a bit too, that might be the best of both worlds.

For myself, I want to go to Argentina and Chile. I'd like to explore the Andes mountains, the high-plateaus and spend time at the space observatories down there if I can. I've really started to explore my fascination with the cosmos around us and how we play into this incredible universe around us. I'll probably try to take a full year to do this and travel around if I can. Nothing rushed, just exploring the world and myself at the same time.

I feel like it could be quite a religious exploration too (in my own agnostic way) if I get to really be in such a humbling, amazing place and spend time looking/listening to the instruments on space. My image is of being on the roof of the world and talking to God, If God to you means the sheer wonder of this natural world and the cosmic surroundings.

Any resemblance to a defence laser is purely geek imagination running wild

In my most fancy imaginations, I even get to write a book about self discovery and the nature of life, the universe and everything with what I've learned ;-)

Inevitably there is a lot to be done to make any of this happen. I need to gather together funding, figure out whether I even try to get permanent residency or just let my expiry date in June come around, get rid of all those excess possessions that I really don't need, spend time with family before I go off gallivanting again, learn Spanish so I can get around in South America and really put my mind into creating a defined plan.

And you though mathammer took a lot of work.....

Thanks for reading (if you made it this far). As always, more now in fact, thoughts and ideas are very much appreciated.

Pete

Won't be blogging for a bit, life is on a downer.

2011-01-27T17:26:00.003-05:00

Hey everyone,

Now I know my blogging has hardly been the most active recently but I was getting back into the swing of things bit by bit and enjoying some warhammer with good friends.

Sadly, my friends and I have had a pretty serious falling out and I don't know if we'll be in touch much, if at all, let alone playing Warhammer.

It hurts a lot on a number of levels that I'm not going to go into and it remains to be seen if anything can be salvaged from the situation. Unfortunately, while I understand why it has gone the way it has, I wish I could speak to them a little bit to understand exactly what was said and why. In any case, it's not my place to initiate contact so we'll just see how it goes.

I look forward to keeping up on everyone else's blogs and hopefully life picks up soon and I hear from the people I care about.

Thankyou

Pete

Battle Report; I unwittingly cheated :-( In other news, go check out a hot wargaming chick ;-)

2011-01-17T12:02:00.005-05:00

Happy Martin Luther King Jr day everyone.

In a bizzare twist of the usual things, my otherwise holiday shy employers have decided to give us the day off today and so I have time to write some reflections on the battle I played with friends yesterday.

First up though, I have to help out an awesome, hot wargaming friend of mine Courtney. She and her husband (sorry boys, she's taken) are my new 40k gaming buddies and best friends for life stuff in general here in Maryland.

One of Courtney's greatest passions is nail polish and while it was not something I knew much of before spending time with her, I am impressed at the artistry and work done on a different palette with a different medium than with miniature painting. I know that few of my readers are likely to use nail polish, except for Old Shatter Hands on weekends ;-), but for those who have wives or girlfriends who might be interested go and sign up as followers to her blog Polished Casual. Courtney is a wargamer too so she will probably return the favour and check out your blog if you have one.

So the battle report and my cheating (Oh the shame).

To clear up my dastardly behaviour, I will detail the cheating first. I played as orks and declared the Waagh on turn 1, letting me get right into assault. This is not allowed as, in the words of the codex:

"This may not normally be declared on the first turn as a proper Waagh needs some momentum behind it."

I completely failed to read this ahead of the game and so cheated my way into combat on turn 1, not cool. In addition, any ork unit rolling a 1 for the Waagh run takes a wound as the boyz fight. I also failed to do this for one unit.

That aside, here's a short battle report.

We played 2vs2, 1000pts per side. I took my vehicular assault orks, my teammate Chris had shooty marines and we faced off against Iron warriors on foot and nasty Tyranids.

In turn 1 we took a few hits from shooting but nothing much. I then waaghed my way into combat with the iron warrior squads for big casualties on each side while Chris largely missed with his shooting. In fairly short order we started crushing the Iron warriors flank but then the outflanking Genestealers (each led by Broodlords) showed up on Turn 2 and pretty much tore our army apart. The ork's momentum was lost after the first power charge, the nobs were whittled down by Hive Guard (no FNP on S8 shots), took their revenge then were eaten by the Hive Tyrant and her bodyguards. The marines kicked hive guard butt, were ravaged by the Genestealers, finally wiped them out but we ended the game with about 7 marines left vs a Tyrant & Guard, 8 Genestealers & Broodlord, plus a full CSM Havoc squad. We conceded on Turn 5.

Key lessons:
- Don't cheat, read your rulebook AND codex fully ;-)
- Orks need to hit the lines in one block. Trukks are vulnerable to light weapons. My nobz were stuck in a stunned transport so they boyz hit the line without them.
- Only models within 2" of an engaged model may fight, so your big mob of boyz might not swing with full numbers. Keep this in mind when picking fights.
- Outflanking Genestealers are very dangerous. You need a way to take them out before they hit your lines as few things will deal well with them in combat.
- Even losing games are fun when you play with your friends :-)

So thankyou to Matt and Kira for playing against us (Husband and Wife team no less), thanks Chris for being my team buddy and D'oh me for not reading the rules properly.

Thanks for reading.

Pete

PS: Now go see some nice nail polish pics ;-)

Revised 1000pt ork list after speaking to Old Shatter Hands.

2011-01-14T08:41:00.002-05:00

Hi all,

So having taken some time to talk tactics with Old Shatter Hands and get his vibe on orks, I've decided to tweak my list. In his experience, ork lists do well when they focus on a certain aspect rather than trying to generalise, especially in smaller point games.

So my list which comes at you piecemeal gives the opponent the chance to deal with each component in turn i.e. shooting out the transports and their contents, then turning attention to the footsloggers coming behind. He thinks it would be better to send everything upfield and into the enemy's face in transports or to keep it all on foot and max out on bodies.

So I've decided to go vehicle heavy and smash face that way. The burnas are out, nobz are tweaked so I can get another battlewagon and two deffkoptas (scouty, sneaky, harassers)

- Big Mek (35) with KFF (50)
- 6 Nobz (120), 3 PK (75), Waagh Banner (15), Big Choppa (5), Painboy (30)
- Trukk (35) with RPJ (5)
- 20 Boyz (120) with, 2 Big shoota (10) Nob (10) PK (25), BP (5)
- 20 Boyz (120) with, 2 Big shoota (10) Nob (10) PK (25), BP (5)
- TL Rokkit Deffkopta (45)
- TL Rokkit Deffkopta (45)
- Battlewagon (90) with RPJ (5) and Big shoota (5)
- Battlewagon (90) with RPJ (5) and Big shoota (5)

Now we will be hitting the enemy lines probably on turn 2 with both boyz mobz and the nobz. Add in some multicharges if possible and I should be able to crush the foe. I'll be using the trukk and battlewagons to block off my opponent's shooting while the assaults go on and can always tank shock them off objectives. Deffkoptas are there to scout on turn 1 and mess with the opponent's starting game, possibly getting side armour shots or assaulting into small heavy weapon squads.

1000 point Ork army list for a 2 vs 2 game. Please critique.

2011-01-13T11:34:00.004-05:00

Hi everyone,

This Sunday I have a 2vs2, 2000 pts a side game with my friend Chris playing marines and orks against a husband and wife team with Tyranids and chaos.

Crazy fluff aside, I have had to put together a 1000pt list ready to take on both Nid big bugs (I'm sure a Trygon will show up) and a Chaos marine foot army (if he plays his usual style).

Here is what I came up with when pointing up my choices. I'll also add my other model options at the end so people can advise based on what else I own.

Thanks,

Pete

- Big Mekk (35) with Kustom Force Field (50)
- 8 burnas (120) in trukk (35) with Red Paint job (5)
- 8 Nobz (160) with 4 Power Klaws (100), 2 big choppas (10), Waagh banner (15), Painboy (30)
- 20 Boyz (120), 2 big shootas (10), Nob (10) with Power Klaw (25) and bosspole (5)
- 20 Boyz (120), 2 big shootas (10), Nob (10) with Power Klaw (25) and bosspole (5)
- Battlewagon (90) with big shoota (5) and red paint job (5)

Now this adds up to a neat 1000pts and has a few options of where to take the fight. The basic plan is to head toward the enemy with the battlewagon (Nobz) and trukk (Burnas) covered by the KFF. The Mek may bail out before the final charge so he can give KFF cover to the following footsloggers. We do a drive-by flaming and a nasty Nob unit charge to hit the enemy first then follow up with the boys hitting the line a bit later.

My other idea is to replace the Burnas with Lootas for a firebase on the home field. I would then put the nobz and Mek in the trukk and one of the boyz mobs in the Battlewagon. I'd also like to get some grots on the field for the fun of it as I love the models and feel like a horde would be nasty to play but that would necessitate dropping some of the Nobz etc. so likely not worth it.

I also have the following models:

- ~6-8 more Nobz, mostly slugga/choppa, two Kombi weapons, 1 big choppa, 2 power klaws
- Warboss with Power Klaw and attack squig
- 8 lootas
- 6 TL-Rokkit Deffkoptas
- Battlewagon model (both are stand-in models from Ramshackle Games)
- 20 Grots with 2 runt herders

So thanks all for any thoughts or advice and I will fill you in on the game after sunday.

Please feel free to suggest a good complimentary 1000pt marine army to pair up with this.

Pete

Ork unit breakdown and probable army list Pt 2: Elites

2011-01-07T10:49:00.018-05:00

Okay, finally got around to Part 2 of my Orky guide.

The Elites section of a codex is typically where you find some of the most effective units, though usually they appear in small numbers. The ork codex has a good selection on offer and they all have ups and downs. I will include both tactical concerns and modelling/cost ones, since both have a place in this hobby.

As before, pictures are taken without permission from Games Workshop's main website. Go there for more details on models and some more great images.

Without further ado, let's get started.

NobzThe Nobz are the biggest and meanest orks after the warboss and have a solid set of stats. They have the usual low ballistic skill for orks but come with +1 strength, initiative, wounds and attacks over boyz. With furious charge and 2 combat weapons, this means each nob will have 5x S5 attacks on the charge and two wounds mean they can stick around to keep fighting longer.

The Nobz are also perhaps the most customisable unit in any codex that I've seen with each one being able to take any of the equipment allowed (rather than the usual 'for every 5 members, 1 may exchange....' etc.). The equipment list is long too and includes: sluggas, shootas, kombi-weapons, big choppas, eavy armour, waagh banner, power klaws, ammo runts and bosspoles. This variety allows for the nasty Nob trick of making each model unique, allowing you to spread non-instant death attacks around so that each Nob takes a wound before any needs to be removed. That means you can take 10 wounds on a full squad of 10 and will only have to remove a model once the 11th wound is dealt. This can help Nobz stick around a lot longer than the enemy would like them to.

Also in there is the option to add a Painboy, who gives the unit Feel No Pain (and the choice for cybork bodies 5+ inv save), making them even nastier and more resilient. While I don't plan to do it (both for game and conversion/cost reasons) I have to point out the incredible power of Nob Bikers. The entire unit may choose to ride bikes. When accompanied by a painboy and warboss (the latter making them troops) you have a complex wound unit with 2 saves (4+ cover and FNP) where Str8-9 shots can be assigned to the warboss to prevent Instant Death, multi-charges are very easy and they can pretty much wreck anything in combat with a profusion of power klaw attacks. You generally have 1 turn to deal with this unit as it will turbo boost 24" on turn 1 and be ready to assault you come turn 2. It's not invincible by any means and is expensive, but it is very nasty to deal with and a threat that cannot be ignored.

For me, I used the Nobz boxed set, an AOBR nob set and some converting skills to mix up 2 units of foot nobz. I have 16 models total, 6 power klaws, 3 big choppas, some kombi-weapons, a waaagh banner and plans to convert a painboy or two. I will probably mix these models up a bit in two units and transport them in trukks or battlewagons (covered by a Big Mek KFF) to get into krumpin range ASAP. Looking forward to seeing how they turn out on the table.

Pros:
- Solid melee fighters with staying power and option for FNP
- Customisable and wound allocation
- Fast threat that can't be ignored easily when transported upfield
- Can be troops if a warboss is taken
- Nob Bikers
- Good value ($25 retail) set with loads of gubbinz that fits nicely onto AOBR models

Cons:
- Slow if forced to footslog
- Expensive points wise (20 base) and more when customised.
- Not the best initiative so can lose to nasty CC units (though their staying power helps offset this to some degree).

Mega Nobz
The Mega-armoured Nobz are actually a cheaper way to get smashy powerklaws onto the table than a regular Nob with a klaw. Costing 40 pts (vs 45 for a PK nob) they also get a TL-shoota and a 2+ armour save. On the other hand they lose the upgrade options (save for kombi weapons) and are slow and purposeful. The latter basically means you must have a transport for them as being stuck in the backfield and only moving 1-2" with bad rolls will not help your game at all. Be wary of fighting against power weapons or powerfists because they have no inv save and will go down to Instant Death. Choose your fights carefully.

These guys do really tempt me just because they are so fun and orky. I mean, strap a few hundred kilos of metal to an ork and point him on his way is such a greenskin mindset. My big downside though is that they are so expensive ($20 per model) if you don't convert. Still, a fun unit that is killy when it hits and definitely attracts your opponent's attention.

Pros:
- Cheap Power Klaws, 2+ save
- Nasty assault unit that draws attention

Cons:
- Slow and Purposeful.
- Require a transport (and if it's popped, see previous con)
- $20 per model :-(

Burna Boyz
Now these orks bring some versatile flamethrowers to the table and can be a real nightmare if used well. Essentially they are orks with a flamer (S4, AP5) who can use them as power weapons if they don't fire them in the shooting phase prior to assault.

In my view there are some good times to use them in the latter role (vs Power Fist terminators) where their low initiative doesn't matter and the power weapon is key, but generally I prefer them to use their flame templates. Given that they are the same as Boyz stat-wise (and cost nearly 3x as much), they aren't going to stand up to dedicated assault troops well enough to warrant frequent hand to hand.

A great change in 5th edition for the burnas is that there are no partial hits on flame templates any more and with no roll to hit, orky BS doesn't matter at all. If each burna boy can cover 2-3 marines with a template, then the hits really add up fast:10 burnas, 30 hits, 15 wounds, 5 dead marines, follow up with an assault move and you'll probably take out that marine squad. It gets even nastier in vehicles as you can either drive up beside (or tank shock into a clump) your foe, drop one template coming out of the wagon and multiply the number of hits by the number of burnas. So 5 marines covered by a template equals 50 hits with 10 burnas.

From a modelling perspective, these guys come in the same box as the Lootas and have the option to be lead by a mek. I don't really see too much utility in the mek but you might find space for a kustom mega blaster to add some punch. Money-wise, your best bet is probably to buy 2 boxes (giving you 10 bodies total), make up 8 lootas OR burnas then buy a box of boyz and use those bodies to make up the 8 of the other elite unit. Much cheaper than buying repeat boxes of the same.

Pros:
- Flaming burney death on a large scale
- Power weapon assaults can slaughter certain targets
- Good boxed set combination with Lootas

Cons:
- Expensive per model with no more survivability than a boy
- Vulnerable to assault threats
- Boxed set provides odd numbers (multiples of 4)

Lootas

Lootas are definitely one of the premiere elite units in the codex and one that few players should (or will) leave out of their army.

Each loota brings a deffgun, which is essentially a Heavy D3 autocannon. A unit of 10 will fire between 10 and 30 shots out to 48", more than enough to put the hurting on enemy vehicles and mess with a mech player's day. You roll once for the unit each turn on shots though so the damage output is variable and you can certainly have a bad game where each turn you get the minimum shots. Conversely a bunch of 5s and 6s will have you wrecking light armour like nobody's business.

The downsides of lootas are fairly simple. They are regular boyz who can have leadership issues, cost a bunch of points (15 each) and come in a box that only makes 4. It can be costly to build up large units but their guns too look very cool with a mix of tech from all the different races.

Pros:
- Great range unit that swats light armour or high Toughness targets through torrent of fire
- Relatively cheap for high damage output potential
- Tempting target, taking heat off your advancing boyz/nobz/etc.

Cons:
- Relatively small units with low leadership (max unit of 15 doesn't give much mob rule leeway)
- Variable damage output with the usual orky BS
- Annoying boxed set comes in multiples of 4 (great models though)

Kommandos

Infiltrating orks here who get to move through cover. Their classic use is for first or second turn assaults on foes who cannot react in time but they act as nice area denial troops too. Leading them with a PK nob who gets first turn auto-hits on a vehicle your opponent thought was safe is definitely mean. One option is to use them in conjunction with Boss Snikrot too. Though you lose the PK nob option, Snikrot lets you bring the Kommandos on from reserve on any table edge. Woe betide those Long fangs who though they were safe on the rear or flank position.

Pros:
- Area denial and/or first turn assaults
- Snikrot gives tactical utility

Cons:
- Smaller units with limited survivability
- Expensive models ($38 metal set of 5).

Tankbustas

The tankbustas bring some orky mayhem to the mech environment of 5th edition. Each ork has a rokkit launcher and must fire it at the nearest enemy vehicle in LOS, regardless of range. They can also come with tankhammers (S10 assault weapons vs armour), AT grenades and bomb squigs who go scuttling off to blow up nearby vehicles. Definitely a lot of fun and with great potential.

The key weakness of Tankbustas that must be mitigated is their requirement to shoot at the closest enemy vehicle. If you have LOS to a Land Raider 40" away but there is a squad of marines right next to you....tough. This means you need to plan carefully with tankbustas so you can deny them LOS to the targets you don't care for.

Pros:
- Lots of rokkits
- Bomb squigs let them engage multiple units
- Tankhammers can be swung from atop trukk boarding planks :-)

Cons:
- Glory Hogs means they must shoot vehicles
- Smaller units with limited survivability
- Expensive models ($38 metal set of 5).

That's it for elites. I'll try to be faster on the other parts of the codex so I can get on and put my final list up.

Ork unit breakdown and probable army list Pt 1: HQ

2010-12-15T11:42:00.007-05:00

So now that I'm rolling on my way towards a Greenskin army, I thought it might be fun to do a little run down of each unit so that those less familiar with the codex can get a feel for what is on offer to a budding Warboss. I will give my understanding of the ups and downsides of the unit, my personal feelings for/against them and would appreciate any feedback from followers. For those who like more tactica reading, there is a pretty comprehensive ork article series on DakkaDakka though I feel some of the info is a little dated when looking at the current metagame

I will state up front that I like to play tough games, but that I tend towards having more fun than tournament level play. To me though, you don't have to have a random collection of units for it to be fun. I think you should take the character of the force in question and then mould a list that you are happy with (and can afford) in order to play.

All pictures are being taken completely without permission, mostly from Games Workshop's website, though since I'm advertising for them and soliciting suggestions on what I should purchase from them, I hope no legal action will be forthcoming ;-)

So without further ado here is the ork codex....

PS: I'm excluding special characters for now.

Warboss:

The warboss is pretty much a face-beating whupass kind of ork (WS5, 4 attacks). He brings instant death immunity to most weapons through his T5 and with a power klaw he will hit at a nasty S10, charge or no charge. At 85pts with a Power Klaw he is very affordable too and can be customised with other weapons and tricks. The warboss also allows a unit of Nobz to be taken as troops.
I've seen three main types of warboss being taken.

- Foot warboss. Usually a Power Klaw, perhaps Eavy Armour, an attack Squig (+1A) and hidden in a mob of boyz/nobz to add punch. Cheap and solid.
- Mega Armoured Boss. Here we trade mobility for a 2+ save and Power Klaw. This boss really needs transporting, perhaps in a battlewagon with a retinue of MegaNobz. A more expensive choice but will hit hard and stay in the fight.
- Biker Boss. By adding a bike you give him T6 to non S10 weapons and add a lot of mobility to his assault options, making him a great tank hunter. Typically a power klaw will be added so he can deliver both dakkacannon shots to side armour at S5, then carve up the rear armour with a S10 power klaw. With 6 attacks on the charge (with an attack squig) he's got a good shot at landing a hit even on a cruising speed vehicle and strength 10 messes up the rear armour of most things.

From my perspective, the foot warboss is an easy and cheap deal because you get one in Black Reach and the model is badass. I've converted my single warboss to include an attack squig stolen from the Grot box set's runtherder. I will be getting another Warboss from Black Reach soon and plan to convert him to a biker boss so I can choose between them.

Big Mek

Now here is a star unit for the orks who comes in two main flavours. The first is a go-to unit for lots of players, for very good reason, and the second is fun, unpredictable but potentially lethal.

I am of course talking about the Kustom Force Field Mek and the Shock Attack Gun Mek.

The Kustom force field gives every ork unit within 6" of the model a 5+ cover save and vehicles count as being obscured. This is a great deal up front but when you lead a unit with the big mek, only a single model from each unit needs to be within 6" so you can cover 3 mobz easily. In a a vehicle the 6" is measured from the hull. This gives a classic footslogging formation with a big mek boyz in the middle, two more either side and perhaps a grot screen up front, all benefiting from the cover save field. Or the infamous battlewagon spam where you'll have 3-4 battlewagons next to each other, grinding across the table with AV14 up front and a 4+ cover save. You have 2 turns max to deal with them before they are in your face and disgorging nobz & boyz, often lead by Ghazghkull Thraka. The last nasty trick is the Kan wall where you get 9 Killa Kans in front of a wall of boyz. The Kans give cover to the boyz and the KFF mek gives cover to the Kanz.

When facing a KFF mek, you pretty much have to accept the cover save and deal with it through careful target priority and volume of fire. Against footsloggers, I would probably focus fire on the mek's unit to force wound allocation on him and wipe out those he is with. If you manage to bring the mek down, good, if not just keep working away at the boyz to cut down their assault power. Vs vehicles I would shoot at the KFF mek's trukk/wagon. If you manage to immobilise or stun it, the other vehicles will have to decide whether to huddle for the save or move out forwards and perhaps give you another turn of firing. Against Kan wall, I would just pick on Kan squadron and shoot until it goes down. Use blockers against the other squads if need be until you can do the same to them

The Shock Attack Gun is a relic of the older, quirkier editions of the Ork codex when it would add all sorts of zany battlefield antics while occasionally doing something deadly. I think this unit was really updated well to fit into the current editions of 40k. It is still random, a bit funny and can end up doing horribly powerful things.

To sum up the rules. It is a large blast, AP2 weapon which has a strength of 2D6. With an average roll of 7 on the dice that makes it dangerous enough, but when you roll a double (or 11) then crazy things start to happen. I can't recall each result but they range from:
Bad - placing the blast marker over the big mek (low roll), giving the opponent a choice of target
Medium/Funny - making the weapon hit the nearest unit to the target (friend or foe), teleporting the Mek into assault with his target (60" assault potentially)
Outright Nasty - On a double 6, everything under the blast template is removed from the game with no saves of any kind. Yes, that does mean you could lose two land raiders full of assault terminators if the dice go that way, or a titan if you're playing apoc.

In conclusion.....

I know I've missed out the weirdboy. I have no play experience with this unit and don't intend on getting one for now. The dakka articles make some comments on them.

In model and collection terms, I want 2 warbosses, a KFF big mek and a SAG mek. The first warboss will be the AOBR footslogger, the second will be a biker boss converted from AOBR. You can't knock the value of the boxed set when trying to make an army in the current economic climate.

The KFF mek model from GW doesn't set my excitement field buzzing so I will probably convert one from the Mek you get in the Loota/Burna boxed set. I think that with some guitar string wiring coming out of the Kustom Mega Blasta barrel hooked up to a techy backpack (finally, a use for my spare Tau gubbinz) I can have a nice KFF mek.

The SAG mek on the other hand is an awesome mode and I would love to field one in game for the fun. Just look at the snotling digging his nails in not to be fired through the warp. On the other hand the model is $30 and that puts it over the cost of the great new plastic sets (nobz, lootas/burnas, stormboyz) so the value is a little tougher to assign. I'd definitely like one but dropping $24 (after online 20% discount) is a bit steep for me. We'll see. I'd love the model but unless I can find someone selling it second hand for cheap I think I may pass or convert my own.

So that ends my first foray into orkdom. I will be back soon with Pt 2: Elites.

Thoughts, comments, criticism, insults and outpourings of adulation are all welcome

I'm back into 40k and this time I'm green ;-)

2010-12-14T13:15:00.008-05:00

After a long absence, I am back into the blogging scene and ready to go.

Lots of things have been going on with me recently that filled up my time but I have been gaming a reasonable amount. Two good friends of mine I met in the last few months both decided to get into 40k and are now a wargaming couple. Since Old Shatter Hands from The Tau of War loaned me his wargaming table and terrain to make way for his new baby I had a great setup to show them how to play on.

Playing and teaching the game to new people got me really excited to get back into things and when OSH decided to offload his small collection of ork sprues onto me, I took the plunge. I've always wanted to make a characterful greenskin mob and turn my AOBR set into something that can really be played at a decent game level.

However I have to do it on the cheap and so the challenge has been laid down. Can I make a fun, tough ork army list that I will enjoy playing without breaking the bank?

So, like any wallet-respecting ork general, my army is coming from the roots of Assault on Black Reach. This set (should you have been under a rock since 5th edition launched) gives you a power-klaw warboss, 5 Nobz, 20 Boyz, 3 deffkoptas and a bevy of marines.

Ignoring the power-armoured forces, you have a nice solid base for an ork force. I have one set of painted AOBR orks and got another set from OSH minus the warboss. To this I decided to add two boxes of the new plastic grots (cheap and fun) and a set of the plastic Nobz. I'm off to England for Christmas and I should be able to inherit another black reach set of orks when there so I will have a veritable horde of green bodies when I'm done.

So far everything has been assembled in a fairly stock way with the exception of the Nobz. For those who haven't read the ork codex, this unit brings a set of 2 wound combat machines who can be customised greatly to fit the task at hand. The problem with AOBR is that you only get the basic slugga & Choppa Nob who, while hitting with 5 S5 attacks on the charge, doesn't really take advantage of the power on offer with wargear.

So out came my clippers, X-acto knife, files, saw, glue and bitz box. Old Shatter Hands recently took on an Ogre Kingdoms (OK) commission painting army and let me root through the remaining sprue pieces for things that could be used. Orky Know Wotz imagination let me get all excited at the chance of kitbashing some neat power claws out of punch daggers and the like. The Ogre hands are pretty much the exact same size as a Nob hand so you can just clip and swap with ease.

After a brief clipping, cutting, snapping, gluing and bodging session, I had my first ork with a power klaw converted from the Black Reach set.
For those who like details I used, one curved OK punch dagger, one small sprue cylinder offcut, two OK knives cut in a curve, a shaving of sprue (as a strap) and a couple of gubbinz to make it look more mechanical. 15 minutes work and we have a free power klaw, another 10 minutes for klaw no.2. Woot.

Soon after this my boxed sets arrived and I contemplated the great variety on offer from the Nobz kit. There is sooo much in this box and I've only used a portion of it so far despite using pieces of it on 11 Nob models.

Here is my Wrecking Krew all kitbashed to Orkish perfection. In this picture (not great, just a camera phone) I have 6 power klaws (3 boxed set klaws, one counts-as buzzsaw from the set, 2 homebrew), 3 big choppas, a twin-linked shoota (far right), 2 kombi weapons and a Waagh banner (from an OK banner).

I'm really happy with these guys. They have such character, are going to be a tough prospect on the battlefield dishing out S7 big choppa hits and S9 power claw hits on the charge while being able to play with wound allocation and survive a lot of fire. I still have leftover bits to use on the next AOBR set I will pick up from England. Plastic is a joy to convert and it simply wouldn't be orky without some 'Mek Adjustin' ;-)

So here's to a greenskin holiday season. I hope life is going great for everyone.

Pete

It's been a while and lots of things have changed but I've got some mojo back

2010-09-29T10:53:00.010-04:00

Well thankyou to any readers who actually read this piece as it's been a good 6-7 weeks since I updated anything on the site here. I apologise to everyone and I'm getting back on the horse as far as enjoying my hobbies go.

To sum up for those who haven't followed:

- I separated from my wife just over 2 months ago
- I've had to find a new friend network and try dating for the first time in quite a while(you think tournaments are scary lol)
- I've been spending a lot of time at my new martial arts gym
- I can't really get enthused for Warmachine as I was getting into it when the whole split happened (plus I've grown to dislike metal models)
- Old Shatter Hands has been a great friend and also gotten me having good fun with 40k again so I'm happy about that.
- I've gotten my mojo back for writing and have finally got the last chapter of my current novel on the way to completion after several months of lagging.
- I'm feeling good about life in general and excited to face the opportunities and challenges ahead of me.

Ahem, so with that quick summary out of the way, what's to talk about?

I've been having a great time playing some 40k recently on a smaller scale. Two of my new friends got totally suckered into the game through me and are splitting black reach (husband and wife) so I've played some demo games with them and recently I played a great 750 pt game with OSH.

To be honest I think I could get used to small games quite happily. While I find AOBR games to swing drastically one way or the other they are still quite fun and playing at 750 is a great way to get a good game without too much power on either side. The time investment is a lot lower too, which is important for a busy person like me and a father to a newborn (OSH). I like that we set up and played two full games on a small table in a short time on saturday, where our bigger games suck up a lot more hours than you have free sometimes.

In other news I'm writing at a slow but steady pace on my steampunk/fantasy novel. I'm about 30% through the final chapter and just need to make sure it rounds off appropriately dramatically. I'm excited to finish this one as I have so many more ideas running around in my head, especially now that I've picked up some good novels to get my juices flowing. For steampunk I have Boneshaker and Dreadnought by Cherie Priest along with The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder. For my future dystopian work I picked up the Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood for the princely sum of 81c from my local second hand bookstore.

To sum up my upcoming ideas (all working titles):

- Ghost Stars.
A lone ship sent on a desperate mission to end a war in humanity's favour runs into to trouble when the captain and special military weapon's officer die suspiciously. Alone in the lonely darkness of the Eagle Nebula, the newly promoted 2nd in command must lead his crew through the risky path ahead, all the while wondering if there is a traitor in their midst.

- Voice of God, Voice of the Universe
In the near future, civilisation has collasped in the wake of a global conflict whose exact origins have been kept secret. The Vocare Dei religious group has created the only known semblance of order left. Their domain is central east coast region of the former United States (centred around Washington DC) and they rule it with an iron fist. When Dana Swyler, a lowly cleaner, stumbles across a hidden relic of the war she is chased by the government and an underground resistance force, both looking to further their own ends.

- Most Ancient Deceit
Detectives in (LARGE CITY) are on the trail of a murderous vigilante. Somebody is killing off drug dealers, gang members, mafia and other criminals with gruesome and efficient methods. As the detectives work their case methodically and uncover more evidence, things point towards a killer who is more than human.
***Might do this one as a 2 parter, first half with the police, second half with the killer explaining the other side of things. If you like the C'Tan you might like this idea...... ;-)

Then when talking on a blog the other day about Dystopian steampunk I came up with a new idea. The post was discussing the apparent clash of dystopia and steampunk as the author considered the former to be futuristic and the latter to be historic in setting. To me, the dystopia describes the nature of the setting (decaying, oppressive, negative etc.) rather than anything specific about it's timeframe. I can see future dystopia (40k), fantasy (WFB) and steampunk (Malifaux) setting examples quite easily. In responding to the post I scribbled out an example story idea before realising that I really like it and might use it myself. Just came up with this this morning so it's the least fleshed out in my mind but I like it nonetheless.

- Fillis and his pretties.
The brilliant, but sociopathic, Doctor Fillis breeds a revolutionary strain of bacteria that will allow fusion of the human body with steam-powered machinery, allowing criminals and other undesireables to be remade to serve as a society's labour force. The bacteria spreads too widely though and much of the population is killed or crippled. Those with genetic immunity who survive rebuild society to ensure that they are never threatened by the mechanical-human hybrids the, now-escaped, Fillis created. Breeding is only allowed with other immune people and tight controls are placed on the hybrids. Protagonist comes in and messes with the way things are.

Well that's about all from me now. I'm planning to get some more 40k games in soon, will get my painting back up to speed. I've also got to finish up the Harbinger of Menoth painting and assembly guide I started work on so lots left to do.

Sadly the camera I used for other model pictures was my ex's and now I have to get a new one. To make up for the lack of eye candy in this post, please enjoy the following cosplay sororitas pic ;-)

Picture from Grimdark on DeviantArt.

My first cast models have arrived! Woot!

2010-08-05T15:58:00.002-04:00

Okay, so some good news for me right now :-)

Curtis at Ramshackle Games received shipment of three figures I sculpted for him a few weeks ago. You can see two of the figures below.

The third figure was another corpse marker. It's a curled up small person with a knife in their back. Curtis did point out I could have done it a little bigger as it's somewhat of a dead hobbit (his words) but they came out nicely in the sculpts.

In any case I now have 8 sculpts of each figure to distribute as I see fit, which is cool. I'll be painting a set up as soon as I get the time and energy so I can send pictures to Curtis for the webstore (he's been very busy with his Fantasy Orcs) but if anyone else nearby would like a set, let me know and I'll see how I can best get them to you.

The only caveat is that you must blog about Ramshackle games and how cool it is ;-)

All the best to everyone,

Pictures coming when I get home.

Getting very busy and sadly have lost the vibe for warmachine right now.

2010-08-04T11:42:00.003-04:00

Hi everyone.

First of all, apologies for not being more on top of the old blog process. I've been working out a lot of things with my wife's decision that we need to separate and I've been on quite the emotional rollercoaster. Big thanks go out to Old Shatter Hands for being a great friend and keeping me involved in things (your baby shower was so fun!).

Emotionally I'm getting better with things and I think I've started to create the mental separation that I need to get on with my life and start moving on from the pain and hurt. Hopefully my wife will have all of her stuff moved out soon and I can stop seeing her clothes, our pictures etc. and feel so sad. Also the quicker she moves away, the sooner I can stop thinking about how she's managed to start dating someone already.

The bad news too is that I have really lost my interest in Warmachine right now. I think it's because I got into the game fairly recently and now it is associated with such a difficult time in my life that I just feel like I don't want any part of it for now. Thankfully I haven't spent much money on it yet and there is no need to get out of the game, but I do hope that in time I will rediscover the fun of playing it.

In other news I've joined the rather hardcore and extremely fun Frederick Fight Club. I've done nearly 4 hours of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, pad work and Mixed Martial arts training the last two nights and my body is aching so much. I'm planning on doing 2 hours per weeknight and 4 hours on saturday to make the most of my monthly fees ($100 per month is not cheap on my salary) but that does cut into hobby time a bit. Still I figure that I will be pretty ripped, stacked, cut, chopped, diced, torn or whatever words you like in just a few weeks. Perhaps it will put off my 40k opponents if I become a cage fighter and give me a psychological edge :-)

I think I will be able to put some more energy back into the hobby as I get more time to hang out with friends and come to terms with the major changes I'm going through so thanks to everyone for reading and posting. I appreciate all messages of support and I have been following people's blogs with interest, even if I don't always post.

All the best

Pete

Can the power of the blogosphere find me somewhere to live?

2010-07-28T12:20:00.002-04:00

So I hope everyone is doing alright,

Due to the difficult situation mentioned a couple of posts ago, I'm thinking of moving into Washington DC proper. Currently I live in Frederick, Md, which is a great small city and really cheap but I think a change of scenery physically would help my mental scenery to change.

The issue is that I don't have a huge salary and I will be on a reasonably tight budget. So what I'm wondering is if anyone knows anybody (friends, family, whatever) who might like a roomate for a rent in the $700-800 region.

Ideally I'd like to be as downtown as possible in DC and close to a metro station. Perhaps this is a reach but you never know until you ask.

Thanks in advance to any offers.

Pete

Keeping Busy Part 1.

2010-07-23T13:27:00.002-04:00

Hi everyone,

So the blog is going to shift a little bit for the near future as I'm going through a bunch of stuff in real life. This particular post could apply to gaming as well though so it can stay.

The merits of keeping busy.

So since I'm starting to deal with things I've stepped up what I'm doing a whole bunch and I have plans that need to be worked on.

Done:
- Make plans with OSH to hang out. Looking forward to seeing how his wife is looking now with the incoming baby.
- Planning to bike into DC tomorrow and enjoy the good weather. I'm going to do a museum or two and try to meet up with an old friend from college who moved here.
- Tomorrow night, going to grill and have a beer with my buddy Boxer (morning show host for 98.7 WMZQ-FM) from work.
- Emailed a writer's group in my town that I can join. I have novels (steampunk, space thriller, dystopian sci-fi, horror) and children's stories that I want to finish/start and having a group of people around will be good for me, both for this and for generally keeping busy.

Planned:
- Join the Mixed Martial Arts Gym in my town and start really training again. I have done Tae Kwon Do, Karate, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and more in my life but I want to get that fighting spirit (and body) back again.
- Paint up more models when I have a bit of downtime; don't want to be sitting around feeling lonely or sad.
- Learn to draw so that I can add illustrations to my children's stories. That way even if they don't get published for real, I can make copies for friends and family.
- Get out and go hiking, biking, swimming or whatever while the summer weather is still so good.
- Finish my almost complete novel! Grr, been doing this for too long now.

Phew, it looks pretty good so far. I'm quite excited to get going with all of this and I think it will be good for me.

On a modelling front it will help as I will have limited downtime (hopefully) and so whenever I get a chance to paint I will really enjoy it. Doing for a short time can also be good as you get to do bits here and there on models that don't seem like too much until you realise you've finished a whole batch and never got bored or discouraged because it was only done in parts.

All the best to everyone and thanks for the good wishes.

Pete

Everything on hold. Real life problems :-(

2010-07-22T14:56:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone.

Unfortunately my blog and hobby time are going to be completely on hold for the immediate forseeable future due to some pretty major things going on that will be dominating my life.

While I may get some time in to do painting or whatever, right now I can't even concentrate mentally on anything but what's happening to my life. Even that is hard and so any painting stuff will probably just be used as a way to unwind and try to gain some control over what's going on.

Unfortunately nothing is definite about how the situation will resolve and in some ways that is the hardest part.

Thanks for all of the support you have given and I promise to come back as soon as I can find the time and emotional energy.

All the best to you and I will keep checking in on your blogs.

Thanks

Pete

Great humour piece from Privateer press.

2010-07-13T16:45:00.002-04:00

***The following is completely the work of the Privateer press team and was taken from their website without permission. Please go there to read the original Privateer Insider article and to browse the others. They are a collection of really interesting pieces describing things from the perspective of the PP team. One week might be an editor, next a sculptor, studio painter, artist, playtester, photographer etc. They are like GW's daily updates except that they don't feel like an advert for whatever latest product is on offer. Highly reccomended. The following piece made me laugh so much that I nearly spat out my lunch at my desk - not advised if you want a promotion lol. Hopefully you enjoy***

Typos come with the territory for an editor. Most of them we fix without a second’s thought, but occasionally there are those that make us pause to appreciate the glory of an error-induced perspective.

I’m not talking about the use of “there” instead of “their”—that’s just the wrong word—but about the slip of the fingers on the keyboard that turns “the” into “teh,” “dragon” into “draggon,” or “glory” into “gory.” (Ha! “The gory of an error-induced perspective.” Yes, I can appreciate that. I’m a terrible typist myself.)

For example, before handing over the Trollbloods story for editing, Doug warned me he seemed to be having trouble typing Gunnbjorn’s name. “You’ll have to keep an eye out for any stray Bunnbjorns,” he noted. Whether your mind goes to buff Swedes or rabbit ears, the image isn’t exactly what we had in mind for our new trollkin warlock. Then again, perhaps a conversion is appropriate . . .

While I polish up some awesomeness for your Gen Con enjoyment, here are a few sentences showing the entertaining effect of some of my favorites among the typos I’ve seen—or made!—lately.

A small group of trollin crept through the brush.

Trollin are actually the members of a kriel who have to crawl home after a night of carousing, I think.

The leader scammed the stone construction in progress below.

He was such a good salesman he could sell stone to a wall in the middle of a quarry.

Doomshaper is no fresh-faced walrock.

No, that particular wall of rock has been around for a while . . . “Warlock” seems to give many of us particular trouble, and this is only one variation. Also common are warrocks, which I gather are a new weapon class; warcloaks, which besides being snazzy are actually pretty darn useful in the field; and warclocks, which I must admit have a certain Dr. Doom appeal. Plus it’s always handy to know when it’s teatime.

Guts and Gears podcats are great to listen to while painting.

Their album Stray Thoughts is a howl.

Such complexes were used by skorne breaders to develop their enormous warbeats.

Enormous breaded warbeets would be yummy! But, alas, we get only aspiring DJs out to spawn a skorne revolution in techno-bone-crunch-hypno-groove.

Perhaps if he had a hungred trollkin warriors with him he could take it.

Appropriately enough, it takes only a few trollkin to make up a hungred. Fewer if any are full-blood trolls or they haven’t had any breaded warbeets in a while.

The ink contains enough poison and noon-organic material to resist the trollkins’ regenerative powers.

Tattoos made with such ink become invisible for several hours in the middle of the day, making that the perfect time for job interviews and meeting the parents of potential mates.

Dragonspawn are a vicious funtion of draconic blight.

Because what’s more fun than blight? Making dragonspawn from it! Crunchy on the outside, oily on the inside . . .

The Lancer raised its sock shield to intercept the Revenger’s spear.

Spear-repellant textile production is a burgeoning industry in the Iron Kingdoms. Cygnar prefers athletic styles but has yet to master moisture wicking, while Khador is developing a proprietary wool blend from the coats of several indigenous ovine species.

40k is still fun.

2010-07-08T21:57:00.002-04:00

Just a quick post to mention something that I came to think about after my game with Old Shatter Hands last weekend.

40k is still a lot of fun.

Recently I've been getting frustrated with the direction that GW is taking their business practices (and prices), codex releases (or lack thereof) and becoming more interested in alternative games. I'm not going to stop looking into new things as the freshness of Warmachine/Hordes is great, Nuclear Renaissance is so cool and cheap and other games still pull me (must resist flames of war) but the actual game of 40k is still fun.

I really had a blast challenging OSH and playing through each turn of firepower, movement and brutal assault. I like matching up distinctly opposed force styles and having a raging wargame to work with. The space marines are still awesome, even if BA are a tad powerful, and trying to play the Tau as a modern force is a great challenge.

If only GW was a bit cheaper I'd love to buy some more Tau and finish off my own army to 1500-2000 points. I think it's a testament to the fun still in the game that I can be pulled so strongly towards a company that has a number of practises I don't like.

That's all really. I just realised that my blog recently has been moving away from 40k a lot and I wanted to put in that I still enjoy it. Once I get my Tau army done I will happily play with them or my marines and not buy anything else.

Pete

PS: I'm on the last chapter of my novel...fina-fricking-lly. Now I just need to finish it off, go through and edit/rewrite the whole thing and then start sending it off to publishers.

Battle report vs Old Shatter Hands. Blood Angels against tau.

2010-07-08T16:25:00.005-04:00

Hey all,

So I've been lax in reporting on my game last saturday with OSH but I've finally got some energy to get typing. No pictures sadly because I forgot my camera. OSH got some on his phone so if he passes them over I will upload.

EDIT: A photo has come. This shows the critical moment before my Lib Dread got the charge.

So Blood Angels vs Tau. This was a chance for me to try assaulty marines and for OSH to get some field experience on the Multitrackers versus Targeting arrays debate seen here.

OSH took (roughly, this is from memory) the following, based on his 2k list brought down to 1500.

HQ - Shas'El: plasma rifle, missile pod, targeting array, target lock + 2 gun drones
HQ - Shas'El: plasma rifle, missile pod, targeting array, target lock + 2 gun drones

Elites - 3 Crisis suits, 2 fireknives (plas/missile), 1 fireforge (fusion/missile), all with targetting arrays.
Elites - 3 Crisis suits, 2 fireknives (plas/missile), 1 fireforge (fusion/missile), all with targetting arrays

Troops - 6 Fire warriors in devilfish
Troops - 6 Fire warriors
Troops - 10 kroot and 5 kroot hounds

Fast Attack - 8 pathfinders with devilfish
Fast Attack - 2 Fusion Piranhas

Heavy Support - Broadside + 2 shield drones
Heavy Support - Broadside + 2 shield drones

After dealing with the blood angel codex organisation issues discussed here I came up with a list to fight against the Tau.

HQ - Librarian with Blood Lance (4d6" S8 AP1 Lance) and Wings of Sanguinus (move like a jump pack).

Elites - 5 Sanguinary guard with banner, because they are very cool.
Elites - 3 Sanguinary priests to give my troops Feel No Pain and Furious Charge.
Elites - Librarian Dreadnough with the aforementioned Wings of Sanguinius and Might of Ancients (+D3 attacks).

Troops - 5 assault marines with meltagun and power weapon on the sergeant. No jump packs and in a rhino.
Troops - 5 assault marines with meltagun and power weapon on the sergeant. No jump packs and in a rhino.
Troops - 5 assault marines with meltagun and power weapon on the sergeant. No jump packs and in a rhino.

Fast Attack - Baal Predator with twin-linked assault cannons and heavy bolters.
Fast Attack - Baal Predator with twin-linked assault cannons and heavy bolters.
Fast Attack - 3 Land Speeders. Multi-melta and flamer, multi-melta, assault cannon and heavy bolter.

I was trying to play a nasty tournament-style list. It's a long way from what I would usually play but I went with it to give OSH practise for the NOVA open he's going to, where BA will undoubtedly be well represented. I did choose sanguinary guard because they are cool though, and I equipped the landspeeders WYSIWYG rather than just going melta/flamer. A bit more expensive but more characterful in my view.

I will go generally over the game as it's been a few days and I can't remember exactly what happened on what turn.

OSH goes first. My Sang Guard are deep striking, Baals outflanking. His firepower blows up one rhino and knocks the storm bolter from another. In my first turn everybody hustles forwards at high speed (woah, fast marines) with my speeders turbo boosting and my librarian dread jump pack running some 15"+. The foot librarian hits the piranhas with blood lance but no penetration (S8 vs AV11).
OSH proceeds to immobilise my damaged rhino, kill 2 speeders, blow the MM from the third, knock off the dreads DCCW and kill a marine who is on foot. In my turn I get the Sang Guard and pull off a critical move. Thinking like I'm playing warmachine, where clearing a charge lane to the caster can win the game, I jump my lib dread into a small gap between a devilfish, fire warriors and drones. My speeder then comes up and flames the troops, opening a charge gap to the crisis suits behind the drones. The sang guard blow up the devilfish with their inferno pistol and the dread charges into combat. Even with only a S6 force weapon, he wins combat. Doesn't catch the crisis team though, but sadly for OSH, they run from the board. One flank is now collapsed.
OSH retaliates next turn by killing the dread and shooting a couple of sang guard with the piranhas. His broadside also pastes my librarian who'd moved out to get a blood lance shot. Otherwise, he's pretty backed into a corner on the 4x4 board. My turn gets me both Baals, one on each flank. I basically grind forwards with my marines, one squad assaulting and beating the kroot over a couple of turns, the speeder flames out the pathfinders and I move forwards.
OSH keeps fighting and downing marines but he's too hemmed in and my pincer movement ends up having only his crisis team still alive by turn 5 and facing a lot of foes.

Victory for the Blood Angels.

So BA thoughts...

- Blood Angels are fast! Having up to 18" movement on all rhino chassis vehicles is a huge deal and let me clear the board with ease. I was restricted much more by terrain than by distance. Scouting/outflanking Baals are super nasty too.
- Jump pack librarians seem a little unfair, particularly against Tau where they can't damage them in assault.
- Blood Lance is nasty against big tanks but is still a single S8 hit and will roll low on a number of shots. It does better if you can line up multiple units to take a hit. I consider it a powerful but well balanced power.
- Getting furious charge and Feel No Pain is extremely good for assault troops.

Tau thoughts

- I think I'm with OSH on getting +1 BS for crisis suits rather than multitrackers, particularly against MEQ. At range his suits would be almost deathrains (66% hit rate vs 75%) and then when I got into plasma range I'd be hit by BS4 AP2 shots. It is particularly nasty against Blood Angels as I had no wound allocation games to play. If he'd fired missiles too I could have stacked the plasma shots onto particular models and gotten my FNP saves on others. As it was, I had no save at all (see next point) and my marines went down fast.
- Markerlights are great in terrain. OSH got some good hits (5-6) on certain turns and would strip my cover saves as well as boosting his hit rolls. I'm just glad he didn't have any seeker missiles.
- Facing a footslogging Tau army is quite tough as they can put out a lot more firepower than the usual mech force. On a bigger table, I think I would have been a lot more challenged to win. The smaller table and the librarian charge really made it work for me.
- Drones can be used very very effectively as movement and assault blockers. They also carry pinning guns which can be used to penetrate rhino armour. Don't ignore the little guys if they get behind you or you might end up HAVING YOUR BAAL DIE TO TWO LITTLE FLYING TOASTERS WHO GET A PENETRATING REAR ARMOUR SHOT AND ROLL A 6. Ahem, caps lock off. Me and OSH definitely laughed about this one and it was a great comeback moment that weakened my right flank.

We discussed what OSH could have done to change the game and I don't think there were any big failings. The dice and table were kind to me for sure. I suggested that in the tournament he should be willing to break the HQ suit off from the team to take a charge if need be. Had that happened, I would have probably killed the Shas'El but then lost my dread to a full team of Crisis suits with fusion and missiles. Not losing that flank would have let OSH hold me off a lot more effectively.

I look forward to reading about how his tournament goes as at 2k he will have a lot more railguns. We both agreed that heavy tanks should be ignored in favour of rhinos for railguns as a hit will always at least glance and slow the attack.

Thanks for reading and thanks OSH for the game and for loaning me the models.

Blood Angels Codex review.

2010-07-04T10:45:00.006-04:00

Hey everyone.

So last night I managed to play a game against Old Shatter hands' new tau list, albeit pointed down to 1500. Since I'm dog sitting at a friend's house and forgot to bring my models OSH brought his Blood Angels so I could use them. We thought it would be a fun experience for me to play a more assault style and good practice for him as BA are undoubtedly going to be heavily represented in the tournament.

The battle report will come later when I get time and energy to write it up but I wanted to drop a few thoughts on the BA codex as I hadn't read it until last night.

So my first impression is to do with GW editing. The photos and fluff are really nice and well laid out (wish they had a model for the Stormraven) but the various rules? Gah, a total mess.

For starters, the order of the entries. Tactical, Assault (ok troops first, sounds good), then devastators (ok, switch to heavy support), then veterans (jump to elite), terminators (good still elite, maybe it was a printing error), nope dreadnoughts next (HS), bikes (FA?), scouts (troops), Drop pods (ded. trans.), Land Speeders (FA), Rhinos and variants (mixed FOC), Baal (FA), Land Raider (ded. trans.), Storm Raven, Techmarine, HQs (at least they are together, except for elite chaplains sneaking in there, oh and elite sanguinary priests, oh and elite sanguinary guard). Whew, what a mess.

Why is it so hard for GW to have things logically laid out. Go down the FOC, warmachine does it and it works fine. HQs, elites, troops, fast attack then heavy support. It's not that hard and it doesn't cause issues. The army list at least goes with this logical format, which is good or I might have given up before making a list.

I'm also not a fan of how GW scatters rules around the book like crazy. I was constantly flipping from army list to wargear, then being told the rules were on a model's page and then finding that in the messed up order from before. Why don't all the wargear rules stay in the wargear section? Except those in the main rulebook (power fists, grenades etc.) just keep the rules in one place. Or, better yet, have the rules on the model pages and the wargear section.

Anyhoo, formatting aside, the army is really good.

You get the strengths of the regular marine codex but with so many more options as well. Having fast Rhino chassis vehicles is extremely powerful and this helps step the codex up in the mechanised race of 5th edition. Assault marines as troops is nice, but really brought up to deadly by having the discounted rhinos (dropping jump packs lets yuu get a 50pt rhino at a 35pt discount...and it's fast) and getting FNP and Furious Charge-causing Sanguinary priests. If you need to sit on a home objective you can always take tac marines or scouts, but assault marines in rhinos will really hit your opponent in the face quickly.

Fast, scouting Baal Predators are nasty. I outflanked them, which was a nice way to keep them from the Tau firepower early on but even if going second, go 18" in the scout move and pop smoke (that's allowed now). With a 12" deployment you are now 30" across the table before the game has even begun. You could easily get side/rear armour shots on your opponent on your first turn. Very nasty and it forces them to be dealt with early on.

I like the psychic powers, though they aren't the be all and end all. Blood Lance (4D6" range, S8 AP1 lance attack) sounds nasty but remember that it's only a S8 hit and so your librarian could, like mine, fail to roll high enough to damage even a Piranha's AV11 before getting hit with a railgun and dying badly. The Wings of Sanguinius (move like a jump pack) is a pretty neat power, made horribly powerful by putting it on a Librarian dreadnought. It's fair to say that being able to jump my dread into a small gap in front of Old Shatter Hands crisis team, clear the charge lane and assault a total of 18" from my starting point was a game-changing move.

The special characters seem pretty cool but they are a bit more toned down than some of the regular marine SCs, so I'm good with that. Sure Mephiston eats anything for breakfast but he's only one guy and costs as much as a land raider. I think that the melta/flamer/Thunder hammmering Vulkan armies can be a bit nastier overall.

So final thoughts. The good:
- Fast Vehicles
- Good troops
- Really versatile army build that can be as shooty as regular marines and hits harder in CC.
- Fun special characters who rock, but don't offer such OTT no brainer choices that the regular marine codex does (25pts extra for MC combi weapon, T6 and FNP on my chaplain...I'll take Cassius thankyou).

The bad.
- Formatting. The book is just horribly disorganised in my view and it doesn't make for good reading about the units. The fluff and army list are solidly set out though, but units and wargear are messy.
- Deep striking land raiders. While tactically I have no issue against it (it's risky), the fluff is just silly. They drop the tanks from Thunderhawk transporters and trust in its armour to hold up. For starters, the enemy should be able to see these big aircraft coming in and shoot at them but mainly it's a silly way to make the land raider seem tough. Dropping 60+ tons of armour will break stuff inside it, no matter how it's made. If it was tough enough to deal with a drop of several hundred feet, then anti armour weapons basically wouldn't work against it, it would be so tough. If it's dropped from, say 30 feet, then why aren't these massive hovering TH transporters at risk from being blown out of the sky? As a more plausible descripion, why not drop it from high up but with with retro rockets that slow it down and then drop off when it lands (see dawn of war IG building deployment)?

Anyway I will aim to write up a batrep soon.

Thanks for reading.

Pete

Chess is a WARGAME!

2010-06-21T11:10:00.003-04:00

Hey everyone,

So this weekend included a great deal of outdoor time in the sun, which was great but I did manage to get a little bit of hobby vibe going on. I originally started wargaming with a WFB dwarf army that I played when I was in my early teens. I tried to build it up but lack of money (even back then it was too expensive) and lack of players near me (I lived in a village of maybe 300 people in Cornwall, England) meant that I dropped it.

Still, having no new models meant I had painted everything up and so I put it up for trade recently. In a great jackpot moment, I found a guy who was getting out of Privateer Press games to focus his money/energy on WFB. We set up to trade and I managed to get a new Skorne Warpack for Hordes...

...and another Trollbloods starter pack plus some rulebooks

The rulebooks are from Mki and so not compatible with the current game, but they have some great background, artwork and modelling tips in them. I am feeling particularly inspired by the Pirates of the Broken Coast book that has all sorts of fun nautical-themed stuff going on. Can't wait to see that one redone for the new edition.

After congratulating me on my shiny new acquisitions, my wife asked if we could get a chess set. We played a bunch before and had a good time doing it but it was late on a sunday and neither of us had the energy to make a trip out to find an open store. Then my eyes fell upon the Skorne Titan Gladiator (the big tusked guy above) and I thought....now that looks like a queen that could take any other piece.

5 minutes with pen and paper plus a few miniatures later, we had a chessboard.

Admittedly it's a bit crowded but I tried to go for things that made sense.

Clicking in will show that Kroot and Fire warriors are pawns, the dreadnoughts and troll impalers are castles (dreads look like castles, impalers throw in straight lines), crisis suits and troll axers are knights (the knight funny movement is apt for a crisis suit I thought), Chief Madrak Ironhide x2 and Cyclops Savages (big sword chaps) are bishops, the queens are the aformentioned Skorne Titan and Gilgamesh from Ramshackle Games, and kings are reprented by the Skorne warcaster and Matilda Grey from Ramshackle.

The game was a complete blast though quite confusing as some of the pieces were bigger than the squares and so it was tough to see where the lines of attack etc. were. Still we had a lot of fun and Emily was great at making relevant sound effects as pieces were taken (it makes the game so much more fun).

So there's a lesson for you. You don't need a $15 chess set, you just need $200 of finely detailed miniatures and a great wife who will play along.

PS: She also said that the painted ones looked a lot nicer and she could see how it would be more fun to play against them in 40k/WM....perhaps I can talk her into helping with painting.

In other news, I finally finished my first Marneus Calgar figure painted in a white scheme rather than as an Ultramarine. (By the way, he is sitting on a copy of the Vegetarian Times cookbook, which has many tasty recipes. It also points out that veggies typically have a slower rate of age-related issues, including decline in sex drive and fuction so I'll be eating my veggie food so I can keep up the good times lol)
Front view

Rear view

And here he is facing off against the Titan Gladiator. You can see the big gaps on the titan model here. I can't decide whether to gap fill it or pull everything apart (it's superglued) and rebuild it with epoxy resin, pinning and putty to gap fill as I go along. Anybody have any thoughts? I'm leaning towards a rebuild because it would be more hassle if it fell apart after being all painted up.

Hope everyone's weekend was also good.

Pete

Played my first game of Warmachine this weekend.

2010-06-14T10:29:00.010-04:00

So after months of moving apartments, managing life, getting used to a new city and being the proud parent to two dogs, I finally got a game in. It was warmachine and so this post will be a little lengthy to help those who've never played get a feel for the game flow compared to 40k/WFB.

The store where the Fail Gamers club plays in Frederick is called Hobby Town USA and it is quite frankly massive. The front part of the store must be 150x150 feet easily. It's about 10 times the size of most GW stores I've been in. It's not just wargames though as there are every kind of hobby option in there. In the back of the huge store is a seperate area with workbenches for radio controlled car fiddling (based on how many people were workign on it) then there is a huge (100x50) track for racing those cars on. Next to that is a long room where they have half a dozen tables set up for wargaming. There is a goodly stack of terrain that the club owns and it was cool to see it looming over us from the shelves.

I found two Warmachine players who were good enough to not only give me a starter game, but one of them sat out so I could use his models. He basically gave me free reign over his collection so I could play a small game with the other guy. What a nice gesture.

Our game was at 15pts, which is the starting level for most WM games and represents a small skirmish (units generally go in cost from 4 to 10 points, warjacks are 4-12, solos 1-5, just to give an idea of the game level). The only model that is free is your warcaster, who represents your general and is critical not only for their power, but because you lose the game if they die.

I was given control of the Protectorate of Menoth, a group of religious folks who would be very happy if everybody worshipped Menoth. If everybody won't worship him, the protectorate would be happy to set everybody on fire. There is a strong theme of faith and fire in this army. My opponent had Cyngar, who specialise in ranged combat and lightning.

My army was (all pics from Privateer Press):
High Exemplar Kreoss is quite well rounded as warcasters go. His combat ability is strong, but not excessive, he has good spells but can't win solely through them and his feat (a once-per-game spell each warcaster has) knocks down everyone in his control area, making them easy for your other troops to hit and forcing them to waste their turn standing up.

Crusader Heavy Warjack. This is a pretty basic heavy jack that hits people with a flaming mace, or can smack them with its open hand (or throw them, headlock, armlock etc.). It's a basic, but well regarded beatstick.

The Castigator brings two open fists (now we can two-handed throw models) that also sport flame throwers. As a special ability it can set everything around it on fire, then wade in with fists swinging.

Holy Zealots bring the power of the massed faithful to Menoth's cause. They are armed with maces, but mostly go into battle to throw their hand grenades. They are a cheap unit that can bring a lot of pain if you let them get too close. Definitely a tough one to face as you either spend precious time/firepower/attacks dealing with them (leaving the other foes alone) or you risk getting grenaded to pieces.

The Paladins of the Order of the Wall are holy warriors who believe in redeeming the populace and can be at odds to the rest of the priesthood who favour inquisitors and cleansing fire. In battle though they bring magical weapons that hit very hard as they are weapon masters (meaning +1D6 damage on each attack).

This army pointed up as:
Kreoss: -5 pts
Crusader: 6 pts
Castigator: 8 pts
6 Zealots: 4 pts
Paladin: 2 pts

Now there was a big change when Warmachine Mk2 came out to make warjacks more useful. In the first edition they became overshadowed by infantry for effectiveness and the game was often called Infantrymachine. No longer though. The revamp to the entire game let the developers up the abilities of warjacks and make them more important. One method was by making warcasters cost nothing and giving them a number of warjack points. These essentially are free points that can only be spent on warjacks. So my 20 point army above is actually 15, as I can use Kreoss to save me 5 points on one of the warjacks. A good idea and it can make playing different casters intersting as they have different points (generally 5-7 jack points though).

My opponent's army was much less melee oriented and his plan was to bring me down at range.

Lt Allistair Caine - think a warcaster who stars in a John Woo Wild West movie. Two pistols, lots of speed and a feat that murders infantry (he gets one free shot at everything within 12", regardless of other models in the way)

Defender Heavy Warjack - A heavy jack with a nasty hammer (burns out jack cortex controls) and the biggest cannon in the game.

Arcane Tempest Gun Mages - Tricksy pistol wielding folks who have access to special ammunition. Like a squishier version of Sternguard veterans.

Arcane Tempest Officer - Leader for the gun mages who also can be a jack marshal, giving him control over a warjack.

Hunter Light Warjack - A very Tau-like jack that isn't so tough but wields a nasty armour piercing cannon designed to take on big jacks and do damage to them. This jack was marshalled by the AT officer, meaning he could fire the same special shots as the mages. Imagine a dread who can fire special sternguard-type ammo....yep, nasty.

The Game

I won the roll to go first. Kreoss gets seven focus points per turn and I gave one to each warjack as they need them to do anything other than move and attack. This means running, charging, special attacks, boosted attacks (more likely to hit/more powerful) and extra attacks all need focus. I knew I would have to close to stop getting shot to pieces so basically everyone ran forward this turn. Running doubles their speed at the cost of any other action. Kreoss didn't run until after he'd cast a defensive spell on the Crusader warjack. He and the Paladin also tucked in behind the warjacks so they couldn't be shot easily. I wasn't too worried at this stage as Kreoss had 3 focus left and each point added 1 to his armour. In my opponent's turn, he used the hunter's armour piercing gun (boosted by the jack marshal's special ammo) to cripple one arm from the Castigator (ouch) then used the gun mages special ammo to push it backwards. The defender killed a zealot and not much else happened.

My second turn I charged in again, getting as close as I could while still being protected. Nobody could reach anything at this point sadly though. In return, the gun mages pushed the castigator back, opening up the Paladin to be shot and he was duly taken to pieces. My zealots also lost two more of their number to Caine's deadly pistols. The defender managed a sniped (extended range) shot into the Castigator and cripplied its legs, meaning no running or charging, drat!

It was crunch time on turn 3 as I couldn't keep taking all this fire without doing anything. I moved Kreoss forwards so that all of my opponent's models were in my control area (a cirlce 2x the size of your focus stat, so 14" in my case) and popped my feat, knocking everyone down. My crippled Castigator waddled forwards, the zealots moved up to bomb the downed defender, crippling the gun arm and my crusader came out menacingly, ready to charge next turn. Kreoss was the star though as he dropped a flaming template spell that killed off four of the gun mages, including their officer. The marshalled Hunter warjack became inert and could only be recovered by Caine getting all the way over to it and spending a turn in B2B...not going to happen. My opponent had to spend his turn standing up but he moved the Defender into B2B with the Crusader, hoping to block off a charge against Caine. The warcaster used his focus and deadly gun skills to wipe out the zealots.

In my turn, I pumped focus into the crusader to give it multiple attacks and it happily smashed the defender into pieces. Knowing I had no way to get Caine this turn, I ducked Kreoss into cover behind the jack. My opponent then used his gun mages to push the crusader back, just far enough for Caine to get a shot. Caine went all out, popping his feat so he got a free shot at my three models, then buying as many shots as possible to try and gun down Kreoss. I took a lot of damage but hung on with 5 points left.

In my turn, the crusader and Kreoss both charged Caine and by using all of the focus we had, managed to land a hit on the tricksy warcaster (he's evasive but not tough) and defeat him. I also move the Castigator into combat with two of the remaining 3 AT gun mages, just in case we don't get Caine down this turn. Phew, close game!

Thoughts on a new game system

Well I really enjoyed my first foray into Warmachine. I can definitely see this being a game I keep up with. Unlike 40k, where I like to stay at range for the most part, I found myself itching to get in close to hit things and make a mess in melee. The models are really fun and the way they play together is very interesting.

The Good
- Sequential models, not phases. Each model does its own thing before the next goes. This is a huge change from 40k where everybody moves, then shoots etc. It adds a whole different layer with the combinations that come up with it. This was a simple game but I figured out to activate Kreoss first when I did his feat so that everyone else could take advantage of the easy-to-hit knocked down foes. My opponent used his AT gun mages to open up lines of fire to my paladin and warcaster for other models to take advantage of. I think this will take a while to get used to as it is quite ingrained for me to consider my own models as cover that can't be removed unless they are totally destroyed.
- Damage grids. I love how the warjacks and warcasters have damage boxes that need to be filled out before they are destroyed. It gives a good challenge to hit them hard enough to bring them down, while still letting units contribute until they are completely destroyed. I don't like how a penetrating railgun round has the same chance to blow up a rhino as a Land Raider once it gets past the armour. Here you can tell the difference between a Cryx Bonejack with maybe 18-20 damage boxes and a Khador heavy jack with 34.
- Spells and funky abilities. Nearly every unit has some cool thing it can do that can work really well with other units. Combinations are a big part of the game and finding the best ways to use your units together is the difference between winning and losing.
- Feats. I love the way each warcaster gets a great big dollop of kick*ss once per game. It really gives you a way to turn things around and make the opponent pay but also adds a layer in that you need to be careful not to pop it too early, or too late.

The Bad
Nothing much so far ;-)
- In the future though, I can see the frustration at playing against somebody who knows the models inside and out and pulls out a combination that I haven't even considered. I'll reflect on this after more games though.
- The expense. I know that I'm tempted by so many models and they can be relatively pricey ($20-45 per warjack). The good thing is that the game can be played from the lowest points levels upwards so there is no feeling of having to buy another $200 of models just to play (like I feel about my Tau).

So hopefully you enjoyed reading this far and I look forward to hearing any thoughts or questions.

Pete

Painted Ramshackle Figures

2010-06-11T11:56:00.005-04:00

Hey all,

A brief update on my painting. I've not had much time to do it what with commuting a lot more now (1hr trainride each way - nice views though) and having two dogs who need a lot of attention. I try to get some done each weekend at the least as my wife (plus dogs) like to sleep in and get extra shut-eye. I take the opportunity to brew up some nice coffee and start painting or writing, depending on my mood.

In any case, the attention to detail needed for the Harbinger of Menoth, the layering needed for my SM honour guard and Marneus Calgar figures plus the sheer quantity of unpainted, large surface area vehicles I have yet to do meant that I was feeling uninspired.

Instead, I went into my massive collection of Ramshackle figures (I have all but about 4 figures that they produce) and pulled out a simple, easy one. It was a chance to work through a model from start to finish without too many worries of complex details or thinking up a fancy colour scheme. Instead I went with the muted look and had fun with it.

This led to a burst of inspiration and before you know it, I've finished off the entire Society Against Mischief (4 figures) as well as doing a mostly finished Oliver Sprockett (from the Society of Intrepid Explorers). Now I have 8 well-to-do Victoriana figures just raring to bring some good manners to those ruffians in the radioactive wastes of the future.

Here we have (L-R) Fidelia St-John Smythe the sniper, Spanny (technically not Victoriana, but she was another cool resin figure to work with), Thaddeus Borlase-Arlington, Archibald Trumpton on Buzzby his vehicle, Oliver Sprockett and his calculating machine, and Matilda Grey the medic.

Here they are swapped around so you can see the parrot Thaddeus has, the cool letterig on Sprockett's printout, and Spanny's rather high-cut hot pants ;-)

Last up is the Society with their vehicle, The Brass Coffin. Sadly the shield broke during our move here but a bit of resin fixed that up. I've also added an assault marine for scale. What's interesting is that he looks pretty bulky compared to the Ramshackle figures, giving you a good idea of what a true-scale figure would look like relative to a marine. Some of the GW human figures are really bulked up when looked at this way. You can see now why Fidelia comes with a dinky small base, since she's supposed to ride in the tank and take down enemies that way.

Also in the photo, note my 3 new Privateer Press P3 paint pots. I have Menoth White Base, Menoth White Highlight and Morrow White. I really like the trend PP have of making base coats for their major schemes (i.e. Cygnar Blue, Khador Red) and then providing a complimentary highlight colour. It really helps keep the tones even and highlighting consistent when you know the pigments are in the same shade. They are really easy to blend as well and water down excellently without getting thin or failing to cover.
The paint pots are like the old-school GW ones with the airtight lid that pops closed afterwards. They come sealed from the factory too, which is nice as I always wondered how I would know if my GW paints had been used by somebody else since they lack any kind of seal. They have about 18ml of paint in them I believe, giving them a price advantage over GW at their similar basic cost. To be honest, I can see me replacing all of my GW paints with these as I run out/dry out of the paints I already have invested in. They really do cover nicely, thin out well and are better value for money. I'm sure there will be a few colours that are challenging to match but I'm happy to work around that. The only downside is that the paints are too tall for my little set of drawers I keep the GW paints in.

I hope everyone is doing well and I will continue to update my progress on things as and when I get time.

All the best,

Pete

Sorry for the quiet - I have two dogs! Also a new Ramshackle Release

2010-06-03T17:00:00.003-04:00

Hey all,

My posting has not been what it should have been recently and mostly I blame the sheer exhuberant nutcase joy of getting not one, but two great dogs.

So here are my two engines of great cuteness and destruction. They have no rules so far (we're trying) but many strength D+ attacks can result from their behaviours.

And just for a funny face moment. This guy makes me smile all the time with his crazy face antics. He's a complete nutcase but also very loving and adventurous. He's happily tried bread, cottage cheese, spinach, sugarsnap peas, icecubes and frozen blueberries without complaint or digestive issues. The little guy must be buzzing with vitamins and antioxidants by now ;-)

In other news, Ramshackle's Curtis got my corpse markers so hopefully we'll see some resin casts of those up for sale on the website sometime. Also he is releasing some new stuff and venturing into Fantasy. I don't play those game systems but I could see the giant making a great venture in a NR battlefield as a result of radation leaking.

The Hill Giant is part of an upcoming range of fantasy models. The range will launch with the Hill Giant and orc archers shown, plus a bolt thrower with goblin crew, a goblin war giant and two mounted goblin mages. Trolls will also be available.

The fantasy models are to compliment Ramshackle Games range of post apocalyptic figures and vehicles. The next Nuclear Renaissance release will be a set of metal bikers and new resin bikes.

Looking good to me. I can't wait.

In focus pictures of my sculpts (yes plural)!

2010-05-17T13:36:00.012-04:00

Hi folks,

Just a quick update since I found a good spot to get in-focus pictures of my models. The new apartment doesn't have the best lighting but with a combination of the wall lights and a lamp, these pictures came out in good focus.

In the meantime, I also sculpted a corpse marker. This was brought up on the Lead Adventure forums as an idea for Ramshackle Games to start making. Since Curtis is busy sculpting many other things, I thought I'd give him a hand and try my skills at making a good corpse.

Here are the two models in all their glory.

Another view

The corpse has a few empty bullet cases on the right of the base, though they aren't so easy to see at this angle.

Here is a better view of the Harbinger of Menoth Base I sculpted and painted. There is a little bit of red bleed from one of the symbols that I need to deal with but otherwise i'm happy.

And here is the base along with the Harbinger herself. I've stopped after the first layers of paint because my white and bleached bone are getting old and gunky. I just bought some P3 paints to replace them so we'll see how they shape up. If nothing else, they are a bit cheaper than GW paints (18ml vs 12ml) and have the nice old flip-top lids that you used to get on Citadel paints.

Harbinger part 2 - the base plus my first completed figure sculpt.

2010-05-12T10:50:00.005-04:00

Hey everyone,

So I've been working on my Harbinger of Menoth for a few hours on and off now. I've primed and started painting her but that isn't really worth showing in my view. I took the radical move to simplify things massively by not using the three acolytes. It's not necessarily a final decision but it really has made it easier to just get started and not worry about the difficulty of assembling 4 models, 2 robe swirls and 3 tiny chains on a 50mm base.

To make up for this, I decided to liven up the base. Using procreate putty, I sculpted out flagstones as though it was a temple floor and painted them up. The two symbols are sculpted and painted to represent the Menoth holy symbol (a kind of cross/ankh) and I added a golden plate with some squiggles to look like carving/writing. I'm pretty happy with the way it has turned out and I may do this with future bases as it wasn't too hard and really looks neat.

In other news, I finished sculpting my first complete miniature. This one was made from the ground up (literally, I started at the base) and is made around a paperclip wire attached to a regular 25mm base. Basically he's a knife and pistol wielding, gas mask wearing chap who I think would fit in well with the Nuclear Renaissance setting. The photo isn't very good but I sent to it Curtis at Ramshackle Games to see if he's interested. If all goes well, this chap might end up being available in resin someday.

At a crossroads with 40k - incoming price rises

2010-05-10T16:04:00.004-04:00

So I logged onto Bell of Lost Souls today to see the latest news and BOOM!

Now price hikes from GW are no great surprise and it shouldn't be a big deal but this one is getting to me. I've got a completed marine army (~2500-3000 points) and a half done (~1000 points) Tau army.

My issue is that I need a goodly investment into my Tau to make it to a standard 1850 point army and I'm getting less and less interested in GW in many ways. The fluff is rich and thick, but stagnant in that nothing changes. Being on the back end of the cool models and rules is annoying as a Tau player and I just don't get the same excitement that I used to. Instead I'm finding myself excited by warmachine and it's dynamic pacing, great models and moving fluff line.

So my question is whether I should take the time and effort to invest in my Tau army. My current list is:

- 2 Helios (plasma/Fusion) crisis suits
- 3 Stealth suits + Marker Drone
- 12 Fire Warriors
- 12 Kroot
- 2 Piranhas
- Hammerhead
- Skyray

And to this I'd like to add:
- 3 Deathrains
- 3 Stealth suits
- 12 Fire warriors (6 converted into Pathfinders)
- 12 Kroot
- 2 Piranhas
- Hammerhead.

This neatly corresponds to 1 battleforce, 2 Crisis suits, 2 piranhas and 1 hammerhead boxed sets. Using prices from The Warstore which are pretty solidly at 20% less than retail I will be spending: $72 on a battleforce, $48 (3x$16) on crisis suits, $40 (2x$20) on Piranhas and $33 on a skyray kit (for the hammerhead) for a total of $193 plus $6 postage, so we'll call it $200 even. Please note that this already $40 odd under retail so it's a good deal right there.

Adding 10-15% (the general tone of the price hike from GW) pushes it up so that I would have to buy one fewer crisis suit to hit the same price level. It's not a huge increase but it's got me thinking about my 40k gaming and what I'm willing to spend.

Also my wife and I are talking about getting dogs, a house and kids in the not too distant future so I really have to think about what I can afford to spend. I think that my enthusiasm for 40k has really waned in the last few months so I'll see where I go from here. Thankfully I have Warmachine and Nuclear Renaissance to keep me excited for new models, and I can still play 40k with my existing armies.

Perhaps I'll come back to 40k in a collecting mindset in the future but I'm not sure right now. It's a shame but at least I have a solid army core to work from for now.

I think the new players coming into the hobby will be hit hardest though. I can't imagine how difficult it will be for an excited young player (like I was) to get an army going when it will involve dropping $200-300 or more. The basic boxed set games are fun but they run out of variety pretty fast in my experience.

Any thoughts or grumbles from other 40k players?

EDIT: I've found a local gaming club in Frederick, Md and somebody there is selling a whole bunch of Tau models so I might be able to get my army finished on the cheap. Perhaps that will be the way to do it and then I can set 40k collecting aside for now.

Harbinger of Menoth assembly and painting part 1. Pinning and putty.

2010-04-27T17:05:00.004-04:00

Hey everyone,

So I spent my first free weekend in about 5 months (two jobs kept me working 7 days a week) in part at the gym, in part doing fun stuff with my wife and in part assembling my new Harbinger of Menoth Model.

The Harbinger is a teenage girl who has been filled with the power of menoth and now is a warcaster (central leader figure) for the Protectorate of Menoth faction in Warmachine. Thanks to this power she doesn't touch the 'unclean' ground and floats about under tether from loyal acolytes.

What this means in model terms is that she is a really intricate and challenging model to assemble.

Here you can see the parts of the model. The only assembly in this picture is that her upper torso and lower torso/robes have been glued together. Essentially the model will have to be made in four stages once painted. Torso and robe swirls glued to base, Acolytes glued to base, chains glued between acolytes and Harbinger, spear/flag glued to Harbinger.
For the base, I'm planning on using Procreate putty to model on some flagstones or the like. This will give it a good look but also let me add an extra binding agent to the small glue points that hold this tall, narrow model down. This will be my first time making a scenic base.
The model is also my first time in pinning a model that really needs it. I've done one set of pinning for a Ramshackle resin model but that was mostly so I didn't have to hold it while the epoxy set. This model will really need it to stay stable and not break on the tabletop.

So this picture shows the pinning I've done so far. The torso pieces have a pin, glue and some procreate in them to cover up the bond. I have drilled two holes in the Harbinger's robe base but only one has a pin in so far. She also has a pin in each hip to hold the small pieces at the top of her swirling robes and each robe has a pin at the bottom to attach to the base. The spear has a length of rod added but more on that later.

This is what she looks like propped up now. I'll have to hold her here while I mark out the position of the acolytes so I can drill the holes for them in the base and plan out where the putty work will go. You can see already that the base is pretty crowded. I kinda wish Warmachine used 60mm bases for models like this.

So here is the flag/spear. This will join to the model by her wrist and by a small nubbin the back of the shaft that pressed into a dip on the back of her hood. In itself it is a very inventive way to secure the piece but the thin, flat shaft is far too flimsy in my view to hold up the weight. I drilled a hole in the base of the flag and glued brass rod from there down the shaft. Near her hand, I bent the rod so that it went up and over, like a handguard, and glued it down. To clean it all up, I used some procreate putty to smooth things out. Hopefully with some filing if need be and good painting it won't be noticeable. I would strongly reccomend doing this or reinforcing some other way because of the weight and small contact points for this part.

Well that's as far as I've got for now. Next on the list is to mock up the acolytes so I can drill out the base ready for their pins. I'll also mark out everything on the base so that I can start puttying up things to look a bit more exciting. Once I glue them in with their pins going through, I'm planning to block off the entire underside of the base with procreate so that the pins are well and truly locked in place and won't break off.

Painting will have to be done in parts so after a wash and some priming we'll be on the way.

Stay tuned...

Pete

Getting your money's worth - using miniatures for multiple game systems. Pt1: Privateer Press

2010-04-26T11:01:00.010-04:00

Hey everybody,

This post is something of a placeholder. I have just started a more detailed project than any of my previous ones since buying the Harbinger of Menoth model seen in my last post (and the end of this one). I will be doing a thorough discussion of that as it involves my first forays into model pinning, painting before assembly and trying to fit really detailed models into a tiny amount of base space ;-) I'll also be doing a review of the Warmachine Prime Mk2rulebook that I got at the same time.

So in coversation about cool warmachine models with Asmo at Boisterous Exhuberance we discussed how a number of the models there could be used for 40k models with little or no change. This got me to thinking about how to save money on the hobby that can rapidly become expensive for most of us. It struck me that simply by using models for two games, you can essentially save yourself half of what you might otherwise spend (some caveats of course).

So this is part 1 and will be looking at Privateer press. I figured that I may as well start with the next biggest fantasy-type manufacturer.

Lich Lord Terminus
Well if you're going to start off with a model, why not make it something that looks truly badass in all the best ways. I have a secret desire to play Cryx in Warmachine and to start a Nurgle Chaos Marine army with lots of goopy, rotten, scary figures. This model with just a little procreate/greenstuff additions would work so well as a winged Daemon prince in addition to being a winged Lich Lord.

So, Terminus retail = $49.99, GW Nurgle Daemon price retail = $35, wings for GW prince = $7-20 depending on the parts from GW bitz. We'll say $10 for the wings.
Our saving is now $45 from retail by using Terminus for both games. But The Warstore has Terminus on sale for $38.99 so now we're down by $56 from retail. Not bad!

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Iron Lich Asphyxious
Next up is the Iron Lich 'Gaspy' (think about it). He is a pretty sweet model and is a dead ringer for a necron lord methinks. I'd love to get some necrons but I don't have the time or money. Still, one day.

So taking a retail of $15 for a necron lord and $14 (Warstore discount) for gaspy, we just saved another $15 by combining these models.

NB: There are two different versions of Asphyxious and there is a few dollars between them. In some ways I like the older (cheaper) model better but the one shown here is a little more 'Necrony'

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Karchev the Terrible
Stay away from this one if you don't like complex assembly! I've seen the diagram and it's a challenging set of parts to fit together. using this one for 40k is a little more involved. I think that with some nifty magnetising you could have the head and face armour magnetised so you could replace Karchev's head with Kartoof the ork warboss' head. Maybe a magnetised shoota and you have a much much more badass Mega armoured warboss than anything GW makes. Ghazghkull move aside!

So Karchev retails at $49.99 ($38.99 at the warstore), a Mega armoured Nob is $16 and Ghazghkull is $35. I think we have to use the latter GW model as a Nob is too weedy compared to Ghazzy and Karchev. $35 back in our pocket.

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Major Markus 'Siege' Brisbane
I think 'Siege' will stand in nicely for a thunder hammer equipped Inquisitor. Now I know that not many people play Daemonhunters but he would be a neat model to use if you did.

$9.99 from the warstore and a GW inquisitor is $15. Quick and easy saving.

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Kommandant Irusk
Used with a Russian-themed Imperial Guard force and you have yourself a bad*ss commissar model.

$7.99 at the warstore. A GW commissar is $13-15 depending on the model.

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Testament of Menoth
Now this is a model that probably fits into Fantasy a little more than 40k. Still I'd love to run him as a radical inquisitor in 40k.

$14.99 from the warstore saving $15 for a GW inquisitor

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The Harbinger of Menoth
Ah, my sweet, sexy new model that will probably make me pull my hair out when it comes to final assembly. This young lady is filled with the power of the god Menoth and floats around generally kicking ass. More detail is coming on the model later today. I have to say that I would definitely choose to field her instead of GW's relatively boring model of the Living saint with its little winged cherubs. She just screams badass divine power to me :-)

So she weighs in at $37.99 retail ($28.99 at the warstore) and saves you $20 from buying the GW living saint model.

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Whew, all finished. Totalling up my maths gives me a saving of $158 dollars if you bought all of the above models compared to all of their GW equivalents. Now, it would be unlikely that most of us play Khador, Cygnar, Cryx, Menoth, Nurgle Chaos Marines, Necrons, Orks, Daemonhunters, Imperial Guard, Daemonhunters again and Witch-hunters all combined but still.

Being able to find alternative uses for models can really add character to your forces even if only played for fun. I would probably never take Saint Celestine in a regular battle but for a fun game, I'd love to use the Harbinger of Menoth and kick some butt with divine power. Since I bought the model for warmachine I feel like I'm getting a bonus to play it in 40k at all.

Please drop some comments on this and tell me what you think? Have you tried using models in multiple game systems with success? Any other good Privateer Press models that I've missed out on?

All the best,

Pete

I'm still alive and I've just bought myself some Warmachine

2010-04-22T14:13:00.006-04:00

Much like Old Shatter Hands over at the Tau of War, I have been very busy recently with little or no time for blogging/wargaming stuff. Me and my wife just moved into our new apartment in Frederick, Md and have been busy getting used to life. Of course, we had no sooner got settled than we went back to Bethesda to dogsit for our old neighbours for a bit of extra cash. Now that I've finished at Starbucks (7 day working weeks were too much after 6 months) I have a lot more free time coming up so hopefully there will be more bloggage and more gaming going on.

Now my position in the sales team for clear channel (5 radio stations: Hot 99.5, DC101, 97.1 Wash FM, 98.7 WMZQ and BIG 100.3) is a tough job at times as there are many many thousands of dollars moving around at all times and I have a team of seven salespeople to manage. It's a lot of fun though and I get to meet with some celebrities at times. So far:

- Three Day's Grace
- Shinedown
- Silversun Pickups
- Kellie Pickler
- Sarah Buxton
- Cage The Elephant
- Charice Pempengco
- Vita Chambers

Some of these are big groups, some of them are up and coming but it's all good fun. In any event, I've been lucky to get a little boost in my sales position through the wonder of commission. I'm a salaried employee but a few chances have come up to make some small extra cash on commission for certain voucher sales (http://dcdd.halfoffdeals.com/). I don't make a lot but for the month of march it was nearly $100 on top of my regular pay, yay.

So I bought myself some warmachine...

Since OSH gave me some trollbloods already I didn't buy a lot in the way of models (just one) but I picked up the rulebook Prime Mk2. I'm excited because it's supposed to be a great book as well as having the rules for nearly all of the models in the different Warmachine Factions (excepting a few that came out after the book). Imagine if GW released the 6th edition 40k rulebook with a full colour page on each model/unit for half of the game factions? That would be cool***

So the model I bought is not for playing really but is just for the sheer beauty and joy of painting.

May I present the Harbinger of Menoth

That is some sweet looking model right there. Also, if I never play the Menoth faction in Warmachine, I think it looks far better than the GW model for the Living saint so we might have some Holy-God-Emperor's-Power-Channeling flying saint action as well as Holy-God-of-the-Menites'-Power-Channeling flying warcaster.

All in all I'm pretty happy. Especially because I ordered it this afternoon and the UPS email suggests it might be delivered tomorrow. How's that for service?

Go Warstore :-)

***PS: I should be fair to GW here and say that I'm very impressed with their unit stat summary in the back of AOBR rulebook but it skips over a lot of the special rules.

PPS: Dhinata over at Run'Al is officially the man for helping me out on something that I will blog about if it works. Thankyou good sir.

Forgot one more troll.

2010-04-08T16:32:00.002-04:00

Hey all,

I just realised that one more troll I like and would definitely find cool to play with is the one and only: Mulg the Ancient.

He's really old, has a rune-carved mountain on his back and carries a tree as a club. I've read a few battle reports and it seems like he is quite the beatstick as well. Battlecollege describes his melee abilities thus "Mulg is a premier beatstick. His damage output is insane, if you send Mulg to kill something it will die, guaranteed."

Sounds good to me.

Unfortunately this all comes at a price. While he costs a lot of points, I'm more worried about his cost in dollars. $59.99 retail and $44.99 even with the Warstore's discount is a hefty chunk of change. I will definitely consider it but let's see if that job application goes anywhere first.

Warmachine/Hordes, how well can a 'fun' army play it?

2010-04-05T16:27:00.010-04:00

Good day to all of you at the beginning of another week. So this weekend was very busy for me as I moved into a new apartment with my wife. We'll now be in Frederick, Md, so a little further in the commute but a lot cheaper on rent and a great town to live in. I need to find a good gaming group there now and when I've got a bit more money, the harcore Frederick Fight club Mixed Martial Arts gymn is calling me.

Thanks go to Old Shatter Hands for pitching in and not only helping us load up the van with furniture, but then driving up in his car with more furniture, helping us unload (including a sofa bed that weighed as much as a real space marine!) and then getting back in time to have a birthday celebration with his wife. You sir are the man and I owe you big time.

In addition, he was good enough to give me a Trollbloods Warpack he had lying around and didn't want.
Trollblood's warpack. Privateer Press' picture

So my future plan is to get into HORDES (and WARMACHINE) and see what I can do to build up a small army. Now I don't have the latest rules yet and I've never played so I am mostly free from the lure of the most powerful or popular units. I've also read than in the transition to Mk2, Privateer Press made sure to tone down the more powerful units from the 1st edition and to add utility to the weaker ones so that no model will ever be completely useless on the table (GW could try doing this with the Tau's own Aun'Va...). So my plan is to just collect the models I think are coolest looking or most fun and see if I can make a good army out of them. Some people say that WarmaHordes is all about power playing so we'll see if I can work around that just with fun and good tactical choices.

So my army starts with the warpack above. That gives me the tragic hero Madrak Ironhide, an albino warlock who took up a cursed axe in order to save his people, a troll axer who gets to smash faces and cut down infantry and two troll impalers who throw ten-foot long spears at anyone who gets in their way. What's next?

Borka Kegslayer is a priest of Dhunia (the troll earth goddess) who likes drinking, fighting and sex. He carries a big club called Trauma that causes brain damage, his special feat is a barroom blitz, he's followed by a pygmy troll with a keg and has a spell called Mosh Pit. If that isn't just too cool for school, I don't know what is :-)

The Dire Troll Blitzer is a massive beast with a WW1-pilot-goggle-wearing pig on its back that is manning a machine gun. Nuff said.

The earthborn dire troll is so adaptive that his fists can take on the power of the enemy's weapons. Flying fist to the face with the strength of your super axe Mr. Butcher of Khadov...yes please!

These Runeshapers are so cool that they can make rocks come swirling up out of the ground. Loving the models and loving the vibe.

Now these Kriel Warriors are pretty neat, not the coolest troll models I've ever seen but they are solid. More importantly they let me take....

A CABER THROWER WHO CHUCKS A CABER MADE OUT OF GRANITE!!! Can't really say more than that. It's just a shame he can only do it once per game.

Speaking of big stones, why not carry a rune-carved magic one into battle that will make your buddies a lot tougher? Works for me :-)

Last of all, let's bring out some tough, hard-fighting champions led by a meanie with a pirate eye-patch.

So that rounds me up to:

- Madrak Ironhide/Borka Kegslayer (not sure on the rules for multiple warlocks)
- 2 Troll Impalers
- Troll Axer
- Dire Troll Blitzer
- Earthborn Dire Troll
- Runeshapers
- Kriel Warriors with a caber tosser.
- Krielstone bearers
- Trollkin champions

I have no idea if this a legal army or whether it is balanced/good/effective but who cares? I will slowly move towards this in my collection of Trollbloods and put up posts as and when I get time to collect, paint and play.

All the best,

Pete

Pushing 40k towards realism - making assault armies go home crying

2010-03-30T08:53:00.003-04:00

So here's a thought....what if guns in 40k were closer to realistic in their range?

My reaction? The assault armies would be torn to shreds most of the time.

A real railgun doing its thing.

Let's put together some simple numbers. A space marine is 28mm high and in the fluff is portrayed as just over 2 metres tall (7 feet give or take). One inch is about 25mm and so it's reasonable to determine that compared to a marine, it represents about 2 metres (he's slightly taller than that but is 28mm so close enough).

That means that a boltgun has an effective 'real world' range of 48 metres (24 inches). That is not a long way by any means. In fact, most modern pistols would be more than capable of hitting a target at that range, albeit with some accuracy challenges.

Some quick googling suggests that rifle weapons might typically engage at 300 yards max (http://www.angelfire.com/art/enchanter/range.html) so we can knock that down to 200m just for the rounding and to represent the marines typically engaging at closer range because of their style of combat. However, these are the finest soldiers who are geneticall. enhanced, equipped with the best technology and conditioned to fire with deadly accuracy. Still, we'll keep it to 200m to play safe and easy.

200m/(2m/inch) = 100 inches.

That's right, the range of a boltgun should be 100 inches!

Now we can mess around with this for all sorts of other guns too. The lasgun should be similiar, Tau pulse carbines a little longer perhaps, snipers would be the terror of the battlfield by firing at 200inches and the big ordnance guns are just crazy.

Let's bring it around to my other army of the Tau. Our railguns have a range of 72 inches, which reaches out to a measly 144 metres. Even pistol rounds could go that far, albeit with low stopping power and accuracy.

Taking the rather groovy picture that opened this article into account (that flame is plasma left by the sheer energy of the railgun round passing through the air), we'll use the US weapon's development style of pushing a 2kg projectile to 3000 m/s as a rough idea of what our hammerheads and broadsides can do.

At 3000 m/s, the railgun will put a shot into a tank at 1km distance within .33 seconds. That's pretty nasty. Given that the M1Abrams tank engaged Iraqi tanks effectively at 4000m (http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m1.htm) during the first Gulf war, I don't think it's unreasonble to use 3km as our railgun's engagement range.

So my broadsides have a 1500 inch range for this game, all good?

When you step up to the Basilisk, you start to realise that certain models should almost never be fielded on a 40k table. The damn thing has range in the 10's of km. Ideally you should be able to call down artillery fire from the IG player whose playing on the tournament table at the other end of the hall. Of course, to make the most use of this kind of ranging, you would have to agree to play 40k on much much bigger boards. I think that the use of cover would quickly become more prevalent than it already is.

So who's interested in playing some nasty, shooting 40k with my Tau army now?

Tactica tactical marines.

2010-03-24T20:54:00.004-04:00

Some nice looking marines from coolminiornot.com by Ed209b

I was inspired on this post by Jake over on his blog Holy Cathedral when he posted a general tactica on tactical marines, the cornerstone of my marine forces. I wrote some lengthy comments on his post to add specifics on how to best use these humble troops and figured that it would be a useful way to add a post to my blog (as well as send some traffic his way).

So tactical marines. I generally will run a list with 20 tactical marines if I'm playing with the Grey Knight Deathstar (plus 5 scouts) but without that unit I might bump it up to 30. It's quite something to bring a wall of power armoured bodies to the field and see your opponents recoil as they see the sheer number of tough, armoured, well-armed, ridiculously morale resistant superhuman warriors. Of course, you need to know what to best do with Tactical marines to make the most of them and let them work well with the powerful killing sections (Elites, Heavy support) of your army.

I'm going to be lazy and just post my comments from Jake's blog here since I'm tired of typing :-)

That's a pretty good overall tactica Jake but it could do with some more specifics and detailing on the aspects of tactica marines.

E.g.
- Heavy weapons. When a squad gets to 10 marines they get a free Missile launcher, Heavy bolter or Multi-melta (or pay a bit more for a Plasma/lascannon). These weapons add such versatility that it's almost never worth leaving home without them (with 10 marine squad size). You only lose a single bolter shot at range if you don't move and gain a heavy weapon attack. If you do move, then the bolt pistol can shoot out to 12" in any case. The flexibility that these weapons add are really important.

- Special weapons. A flamer for free, meltagun for 5pts or plasma gun for 10 can add some more punch to the squad. The flamer is great for those times you're close to getting assaulted by a big squad as it can land plenty of hits, or can burn out orks/guard/termagents from cover. The meltagun is commonly taken with the shift to mechanised forces in 5th edition and can always be turned on a regular enemy if need be. The plasma gun and melta are also well suited for knocking out well armoured troops. Adding a few AP 1/2 wounds to terminators will really help your marines do the damage to these foes.

- Grenades. I don't find too much use for the frag grenades in general but remember that they can be used to stop your opponent gaining initiative on you when you charge them in cover. Krak grenades are winners when you remember that every marine has them, they hit at S6 on vehicles, and most vehicles are rear armour 10. I've taken out hammerheads, rhinos and vindicators with this technique. Scouts also have this and it is one way for them to really pay your opponent back for ignoring them.

- Combat squads. Tactical marines can be divived into two 5 man squads at the start of the game (or when the disembark in the case of drop pods). This can be a liability in annihilation missions as they become 2 kill points but it adds lots of flexibility. You can now keep the heavy weapon static, with 4 bolter marines for ablative wounds or fire support, and send sarge (for the CC ability) and the special weapon in close where they can take the fight forwards. Also, this will let you hold two objectives with one troop choice. The weakness is that the squads can be dropped relatively easily because they are small. Still, if just one survives then the opponent must waste lots of fire to bring that last one down, or risk a single model contesting/claiming a vital objective.

- Dedicated transports. The humble rhino gives you an armoured box to take your marines to their obejective and protect them from fire. If it survives after they have been dropped off then it's time to use that vehicle to block assaults to your marines or box in enemy vehicles by denying them movement.
The razorback is somewhat similar but can only carry 6 marines. In this case you'd probably send the close-range combat squad up forwards and then use the razorback as mobile fire support and blocking, like with the rhino. Some do add TL-lascannons to their razorbacks though and leave these on the rear lines with the other heavy weapons. At 75pts for a TL-LC shot, this can be nasty, though expensive. Alternatively you can give them TL-assault cannons and turn them into Baal Predator wannabes that can shred light (and sometimes heavy if your rending rolls well) armour or troops.
I don't use drop pods but there could be great utility in sending a wave of dreads in on turn 1 to mess up the enemy while your main force advances. After they foe is knocked around and has moved to counter your attack, your tactical marines in pods come in and land on the enemy objectives at full strength.
Another nasty trick is to stick a combat squad in a Land Raider and have it sit on a home objective. You can still blaze away with the big guns and your enormous brick of a tank is now scoring. Nasty...

- And They Shall Know No Fear. This is a real key for marines. They automatically regroup even under half strength (as long as there are no enemies within 6") and can move normally or fire. Note also that they don't count as moving when they rally, which means you could stand still and unleash the heavy weapons if you need to. This is a great ability as you can almost always count on your marines getting back in the fight. I found out in a recent game that there is a 3" move allowed when you rally too so you can even set up your heavy weapon shots without counting as moving.

- Combat tactics. This is underutilised in my view, perhaps because of the popular special characters that replace it with other army buffs. It allows you to choose to fail a morale test. This is great if an assaulting enemy shoots you and causes 25% casualties as you can run out of assault range, auto-rally and then hit them up next turn. Or you can run after combat if you lose in the enemy's turn. As long as you roll higher on the initiative test, you will get away, auto rally again and can shoot them next turn.

- Assaulting. I would generally not assault with my marines unless I'm facing something that will outshoot me or gains a boost from assaulting. If there was a smallish squad of orks, I would probably move in, bolt pistol them and then assault as you deprive the orks of their furious charge (now only 33% of hits will wound you rather than %50) and the bonus attack for charging. I play against tau a lot and they can be quite easily tied up with tactical marines, even if you don't win. Broadsides are great for this as you can lock them in combat for the rest of the game sometimes (2+ saves keep them alive though) and stop the railguns from messing up the rest of your army.

- Special characters. While I don't like to use the special characters in the codices, you should be aware that they bring some great changes to the way tactical marines play.
Pedro Kantor changes your marines to have stubborn rather than combat tactics. This doesn't do so much for me but then his key point is making sternguard scoring so he has less of a focus on tactical marines. He does give a +1 attack bubble within 12" though so your tactical marines holding the objective are now that much tougher to assault off it.
Kayvan Shrike. Makes your marines fleet instead of combat tactics. This doesn't really work for my use of tacs but then his boost is for other troops (like assault terminators).
Vulkan He'Stan. Makes your flamers, heavy flamers, meltaguns and multimeltas count as twin linked. This can be fairly potent as your tactical marine firepower with these weapons just went up a serious notch. Even if the tactical marines are moving, the threat of TL melta on the next turn will be a good deterrent for the enemy.
Khossaro Khan. Outflanking marines. Give them rhinos/razorbacks and let that mech madness roll into the enemy's backfield at high speed.

Those are just some extra thoughts on the core unit for marines that you might consider adding to the tactica (and future ones). It's much more of a specific use guide rather than an overall descriptor and hopefully it will give some good help to newer marine players.

So there are some thoughts. Comments are welcome as always and I reserve the right to change my opinions after playing tomorrow night. I think I'll be matching up against Ravenwing so we'll see how my hybrid list handles fast moving bikers.

Sometimes the dice just go your way. Battle report vs OSH.

2010-03-12T09:33:00.006-05:00

Poor sidestriker. The dice were not kind to him.

So last night was the clash of my new 1850 marine list vs Old Shatter Hand's 1850 list. We played at Dream Wizards among the masses of MTG players and some other 40k/Warmachine folks. I noted the prevalence of Deff-Rollas among the ork players now that the FAQ has ruled that they can hit vehicles ;-)

So my list was a heavy tank-deathstar-hybrid sort of thing.
- Captain with Powerfist
- 5 Terminators with Cyclone Missile Launcher
- Multimelta dreadnought
- TL-Autocannon dreadnought
- 10 Grey Knights with 2 Incinerators
- 10 Tactical Marines with Missile launcher and Meltagun
- 10 Tactical Marines with Missile launcher and flamer
- 5 scouts with bolters
- Land Raider
- Land Raider Redeemer

Old Shatter Hands brought
- Fireknive Shas'El with 2 bodyguards (target arrays, a target lock, 2 drones)
- Fireforge (Fusion/Missile) Shas'El (target array)
- 3 Deathrains
- 10 Kroot with 5 kroot hounds (converted from LOTR Wargs, great idea).
- 9 Fire Warriors in Devilfish
- 9 Fire Warriors in Devilfish
- 3 Piranhas with fusion
- 2 Hammerheads with railguns and SMS
- 3 Broadsides with Target arrays, leader with target lock

We rolled up pitched battle deployment and annihilation as missions. In many ways, this feels like the most original way to play 40k to me. Basically we line up and kill each other.

So the game can be described in two ways and it looks very different based on which way you consider. We have the game result and the tactical part of the game.

Game result: A strong victory to me (7 kill points to 4, with the chance of adding more kill points if we played another turn and not many chances for OSH to get more).

Tactical result: A close fought battle.

So what happened to lead to these divergent results?

Basically OSH deployed with a central firebase of the Deathrains, Broadsides and hammerheads, sent his piranhas out wide and put the rest in reserve. I played cautiously with my Land Raiders by putting them on my far right so that they were out of the way of the railguns in the early turns. In the centre I sent my dreads and Grey Knights with the captain. The tactical marines combat squadded and took supporting positions.
As I advanced up the centre with my Deathstar and went to my right flank with the Land Raiders, Old Shatter Hands swung his forces to the opposite flank and kept up a strong rate of fire. The broadsides stayed as an anchor so that they could fire and also so I would continue to come forwards to assault them as there was a big difficult terrain block to my left that would have left my Grey Knights in the open if they'd tried to change direction.
I responded by continuing my sweeping manouvers and gradually caught up with a battered the Tau forces. Overall it gave me a strong win as I dropped a lot of troops and didn't take too many casualties. Tactically speaking, OSH played well and used the Tau strengths to put me in tough positions over which units I would expose to fire.

On the other hand, the dice completely killed him....

I managed to make roughly 90% of all cover saves on my vehicles (from smoke or terrain), his attacks routinely failed to penetrate (even the broasides rolled 1s vs the dread) and when they did, the damage rolls were weak. I had one dreadnought immobilised and with no autocannons and the other lacking a multimelta but it had taken 5 turns of shooting to get them to that point. The Land Raiders were impervious to the few shots that came their way and if I hadn't immobilised my Redeemer on dangerous terrain then I could have been even more aggressive with my heavy armour. I rolled well on shooting in general, really well on assault attacks against OSH's vehicles and generally had a great game. I even started to feel bad by the end as it seemed so stacked in my favour for this game. Only the kroot did well on their rolls as I tried (in vain) to blast them out of cover and claim another kill point.
I'm sure we'll have a rematch where the opposite will occur and I have to thank OSH for remaining a great opponent even when it was all going wrong.

As far as his list went, I think it is fairly solid. The tournament he's looking at is 2000 pts so we talked about adding pathfinders, dropping one FW devilfish (they can use the PF one) and using the points to add another piranha. This would give him 2 units of 2 fast fusion blasters and the markerlight support he will need to deal with heavy cover saves.
In any case, a great (albeit lucky) game for me and I've already offered to swap sides and take Tau against OSH's blood angels soon.

PS: On a side note I met the local Press Ganger (Warmachine/Hordes intro guy) who has offered to show me some cool Cygnar stuff next week if I make it to DW again. Yay for steampunk walkers.

Deathstar Battle Report

2010-03-05T09:05:00.003-05:00

Well, the deathstar got its outing last night against Old Shatter Hands' Tau Cadre. I was trying out a big assaulty unit as a spearhead and OSH was giving pathfinders and firestorms a go.

We played a 1330 points game because I grabbed models in a hurry took more than 1250. My list was:

- Captain with powerfist leading 10 Grey Knights (2 Incinerators)
- MM Dread
- TL-AC Dread
- 10 Tactical Marines (Missile launcher and flamer)
- 10 Tactical Marines (Missile launcher and meltagun)
- Land Raider

And OSH brought:

- Old Shatter hands (Fireknife) with two gun drones
- 3 Fireknives
- 3 Firestorms + 2 Gun drones
- 12 Fire warriors with a devilfish
- 12 Fire warriors
- 8 Pathfinders with a devilfish
- 3 Broadsides with Targetting arrays and 2 shield drones.

The table setup was an urban board and we set it up so that basically I was going to head for OSH's gunline. There was one roadway space for the Land Raider to deploy in and the Tau had plenty of barricades. I was aiming to get as many troops as possible inside OSH's deployment zone. He chose to hold back his crisis suits to deepstrike while OSH and the Broadsides anchored the central barricade. I was nervous setting up my LR in front of the broadsides but there was no choice and I figured that fear was not becoming for marines :-)

So how did it go?

....in short, aggressive movement and poor rolling for OSH meant it was a slaughter of the Tau.

Slightly longer:

I was lucky in my first turn as I moved forwards on all fronts (LR with deathstar in the middle, one combat squad on the right, one in the middle, dreads and full tac squad on the left) and didn't do much firing. OSH used his pathfinders to boost the broadsides and take away my smoke cover save but the railguns only managed to stun the raider. Turn 2 I dropped my deathstar and moved them up. Two incinerators (S5,AP4,no cover or invuln. saves) later and the pathfinders were gone. My other forces carried on sweeping around.

OSH gets both crisis teams in but they both scatter into buildings. He rolls three 1s on the dangerous terrain for the fireknives and loses and wound on the other squad too. One set of fire warriors jump out of the devilfish to rapid fire the deathstar. They are joined by OSH, the broadsides firing SMS and the fireknives. By putting as many plasma shots as possible on the captain, having cover and good rolling, I lose 4 Grey Knights and a wound on the captain. The firestorms don't have much luck on the flanking combat squad either.

What follows is basically a series of nasty assaults from the Captain, Grey Knights and Dreadnoughts to wipe out the centre of OSH's lines. The Land Raider keeps popping shots into the devilfish and Fire warriors, and my full tactical squad sweeps into the deployment zone of OSH. We end the game after 4 turns. I lose 6-7 Grey Knights, my captain and 5 marines. OSH loses himself (bizarre but true), 4 crisis suits, 3 broadsides, a devilfish and a few fire warriors.

Lessons from the match:

- A basic MEQ deathstar is actually quite vulnerable. If OSH had rolled better, or I rolled worse (passed 7 saves on the captain in one turn) then the Grey Knights would have been badly thinned out. Also, their combat success was against Tau forces. A real assault opponent would have been tougher, though striking at S6, I4 is still powerful.
- Land Raiders can be really mean once you have taken out threats to them. By the end of the game it was literally invulnerable to OSH's shots.
- Railguns are not as powerful against AV14 as you might first think. We talked about their effect (or lack of) and then decided that they were possibly better used against Rhinos as they will always glance at the worst. Still, bad luck on this unit was the problem for this game.
- Pinning can sneak up on you. OSH's devilfish popped a tactical marine with a gun drone and the squad then hit the deck, giving me one fewer missile shots during the game.
- Markerlight support is a really key element for many units in the Tau codex. OSH was unlucky to get roasted by the heavy flamer equivalents that Grey Knights have as just boosting his shooting by a little might have spelled the end for my deathstar.
- OSH is one of the most gracious and fun guys to play against, win or lose. We had a fun time and it was so easy to play with someone who knows the rules, doesn't argue over awkward points and just wants to enjoy a game of toy soldiers.

Thanks for the game OSH.

PS: I may have unintentionally cheated at one point. My fearless Grey Knights were joined by the captain when they got shot up. I believe that the addition of such a character removes their fearless status and so I should have taken a leadership check when they got shot up. My bad.