Deathwing. Do they need some plasma on their side?

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 :-)

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?

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 ;-)

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.

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.

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.

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.