Tuesday 31 March 2009

Look, a bandwagon, cool, all aboard...


I have to admit, the whole painting points idea is growing on me, so in the best traditions, I'm going to get involved. As listed here on Lone Pilgrim I'm going to try to keep track of what I have painted. I'm not the quickest, and I don't really have a score from last year as I wasn't even back in the hobby till the last few months, but the scoring will of course be something like this:

  • Infantry = 1 point
  • Terminators or Bikes = 2 points
  • Character or Dreadnought = 5 points
  • Vehicle = 10 points
  • Superheavy vehicle = 20 points

The models have to be up to a standard that I am happy to put them to one side with, so that will generally mean that they will get a set of base colours, washes, second layer of colour and at least one highlight.

For last year I have 9 points (which is one tau complete, one black reach terminator and 11 tau and 1 drone needing the second layer of colour and highlight so I'm awarding myself a half point for each). This year I don't have any points yet, but all I need to do is give my first GH unit a bit of a highlight and I'll have 10, so I'm pretty sure I can beat last years total ;)

I'll put a little counter on the right somewhere to keep track of it all once I get my first points. Perhaps this will result in a bit more forward progress on it all, and I might even get those highlights done and a few pics of that first unit up on the web.

Friday 27 March 2009

Intro gaming session...


... that sadly left a bit of a sour taste.

As I said in my previous post, the missus and I went in for an intro battle session for her to see how she likes the game. All in all it was really good, and she really genuinely seemed to enjoy it up to the point at the very end when the GW hard sell fell into place, but that is the last I'll say of that, on to the good stuff.

A couple of weeks ago, I went in to order up the new wolf guard model, and Mrs. G was with me, and while I was faffing around making the order on the computer, one of the lads in the shop got talking to her about the game. Ended up he talked her into coming in for a taster session. I was all up for this as it'd be nice to have a game or two with her. We went in at the weekend, and had 2 hours with one of the staff, we did a little painting, and then had a game with the shop black reach set. We had to kill the war boss in less than 3 turns otherwise the stompa in the background would wake up and annihilate us all.
It was quite a funny game, the two bolter armed combat squads were charged by mobs of boyz, while the dread was wiped out in the first turn by the warboss who was then charged by the termies and captain. The combat with the regular marines was amusing, despite only rolling 4 or 5 dice in a turn, and the orks regularly rolling 15-20 dice, the marines ended up winning or drawing the combat in every round. Highlight was the deffkoptas charging the marines already in combat, orks losing the combat (the deffkoptas completely failed to kill a single marine) and they then failed their break test and ran away.
In the middle, it was almost the opposite, despite all terminators being in range to attack the warboss, and directing every attack against him, it took two full game turns to kill him due to some shocking rolling to wound. In the end we won on the last dice roll of the turn, just before the stompa started up so winning the game. I have to admit I was feeling the tension towards the end as I really wanted us to win (Mrs. G and I were on the same team against the member of staff)

Sadly despite it all, I just don't think she'll be a convert to the cause, just isn't really her thing.  Oh well.

bG out

Tuesday 24 March 2009

Much progress


So quite a lot has been going on recently:
  • I got the wolf-guard battle leader model (the new one) which is awesome, I've got him cleaned and mostly undercoated and I can't wait to paint him up.
  • The first unit of GH are up to a more than table-top standard, are just awaiting some light highlighting and some detail work but I'm going to move on as I want to get a force together. I'll try and get a few pics up soon.
  • I've got all my eBay models stripped - Dettol works wonders, the paint just fell away, I could almost just rub it off with my fingers and it came away as a single piece. I'm going to be putting together a second squad of GH, and a squad of 12 BCs that I plan to drop-pod onto the table.
  • I've got a whole load of arms, weapons and other bits on the way to make up the models, I will just have to make one more order from bitsandkits to get a load of axes, hammers and other assorted items to act as CC weapons for the BCs.
  • Finally my fiancĂ©e and I had our painting and gaming session in the local GW at the weekend, she liked it but I'm going to make a separate post on that.

Hopefully a bunch more posts and pics in the near future.

Monday 9 March 2009

A more detailed 1st battle report


So here is my battle report, the first part is meant to be somewhat story like, read it in your head in the most inspiring voice you can think of, at the very least, try the voice from the narator of 300 (the local GW SM force are called the spartans so its fitting):


The Wolves squad charged forward at the sight of the enemy, eager to join battle and win glory for Russ no doubt. The fools couldn't even hit one of the chaos rhinos at range, probably unused to wielding the melta weapon as anything other than a club. Thankfully we spartans, and our eldest, most noble warrior in his iron sarcophogus was more than up to the task, disabling the chariot with ease. They died in droves to the massed firing of the 3 squads that exited their transports and faced them. They weren't incompetent though, merely out of their element, for a mere 3 of them faced up to the assault from 10 of the enemy marked by tzeentch and striking first, and not a single one fell. They took 4 of their foe with ease. As we joined them we killed 3 more, and cut down the others as they turned to flee.

To our left, our brothers rained assault cannon shells on the hated vindicator, tearing its weapon free, and penetrating to its heart, rendering it a useless lump. They charged forth, and struck a hefty blow to a rhino, blowing it from this world with a single, crackling upper-cut from a power-fist. The khornate troops that faced them were no match, and were soon fleeing from the field. As the dust settled on the second phase of the battle, it was obvious we would seize the day.



This was my introduction game at the local GW to get me back in the swing of playing, refresh the rules and all that. It was only a couple of turns as there was only an hour in which to play. I don't think the sides were particularly balanced either, but I did get to run out my somewhat painted grey hunters unit which was nice.


Space Marines:

10 Grey Hunters with melta-gun, captain with power-weapon (acting as a regular tac squad, no special rules)
2 x 10 Marines, flamer, missile launcher, captain with bolt-pistol and CC weapon
6 Terminators, storm bolters and power fists, captain with power-weapon, mounted in Land Raider Crusader
Dreadnaught with multi-melta


Chaos Space Marines:

10 Marines with mark of Khorne in Rhino
10 Marines with mark of Tzeentch (+1 I) in Rhino
10 Marines
Vindicator


Set up was on a city type board, 4'x4', a grid of streets like a naughts and crosses board. Rolling for mission we got capture and control, my objective was the central ruins (imagine the bottom middle square on the naughts and crosses board) and the chaos objective was the opposite square, deployment was pitched battle. I placed one combat squad with missile launcher on my objective, another with ml up in a ruins on my left hand side, and the crusader with terminator and a combat squad next to them to go up the left side. The wolves, last combat squad and dreadnaught were on my right. The chaos side deployed the vindicator opposite my land raider, and the three rhinos in a column opposite the wolves et al. (I was going first and the member of staff didn't steal the initiative).


Turn 1:

I move the wolves, combat squad (cs) and dreadnaught forward along the road on my right, the cs remained in cover behind a ruined building, and the land raider and second cs forward on the left. The cs up in the ruins fire the missile launcher at the vindicator, but it sails
off into the distance somewhere. The crusader then opens fire with its assault cannon, rolls 2 rending hits, blows off the main weapon, then proceeds to do the same again immobilising the vindicator. On the left, the wolf with the melta-gun takes a shot at the lead rhino and completely misses, as my opponent pointed out, and I have to agree, being a wolf he's probably more used to using it as a club than a gun. The dreadnaught then stunned the crew of the rhino.

Chaos now have nothing on the left, and the lead rhino on the right can't move, so I think his plans were a little scuppered (I'll point out that the sides were far from even for this game, at least it seems to me so it was always going to be a bit unfair) but he moves the two rhinos, the one carrying the khorne troops towards the centre, to provide some cover for the left, and the other to the right. All troops pile out, and the two squads from the rhinos that moved fire on the wolves. They kill 7 - ouch! The tzeentch squad from the stunned rhino then charge the wolves. However, they fail to kill a single wolf, despite rolling something like 30 dice in the attack, and I even managed to kill one of their number.


Turn 2:

On the left, I move up the crusader so it can see round the central building, and the terminators disembark. The cs on that side also moves forward, and would run in the shooting phase to get them as close to the objective as possible. On the right, the cs and dreadnaught move forward to charge the combat involving the wolves. The only shooting is from the land raider that kills one khornate marine, and the storm bolters of the terminators that kill a further 3 (this almost backfired on me as only 2 of my terminators could then get into range of the squad for combat. The terminators then charged (those that couldn't reach the squad charged the rhino), as did the cs and dreadnaught on the right. In the combat with the terminators, I chose to resolve the rhino combat first, and it was a mighty uppercut from one terminator caused the rhino to explode with a 5" blast radius, killing 1 more khorne marine but not harming the terminators. The ensuing combat with the marines was a success, killing 2 despite the captain completely failing to hit anything with his power-sword. The marines then fled, but got away to run off the edge of the board. On the right, the combat wiped out 2 more of the tzeentch marines but not before they killed two of the spartan marines (the wolves stood up to more combat blows and survived). The chaos marines then turned to flee but were cut down.

There wasn't too much left for chaos to do, the remaining squad fired all it could on the wolves but couldn't kill them, and then time was up for that session.



I really, really enjoyed the game, and it is super fast compared to the games I remember for 2nd edition, and I can see how tactics are much more important in the newer versions. I couldn't really call this a victory as I'm sure I was gone easy on, and the sides were horribly unbalances (I couldn't guess at the points difference, but I imagine it was large). I'm looking forward to getting some more units painted up so that I can put together a small force and go join the evening battle club and get in a few more games as soon as possible.

Sorry for the long post, cheers, bG

Friday 6 March 2009

First 40K Game


O.K., not too much to report, I had my first game of 5th Ed, my first game in over 12 years, and LOVED IT. Went into GW for an "academy" which was a blast, the manager guy there who took me through it all was sound and a great fella, someone who I'm sure could open a can or two if he wanted to, but was so good with me. I'll see if I can post a report after the weekend (I have a rather expensive stag do to attend and the beer will be flowing), I'll do my best to make it interesting as well. I have to say I love the new edition, really fast, pretty easy, and you have to be good on tactics, I sucked quite a bit, but got lucky, and the wolves did a sterling job even if they were mascerading as a tac squad. I also got some ideas for future conversions, including a wonderful Hamlet GH.

More soon, bG

Tuesday 3 March 2009

New Acquisitions


So I haven't had much painting time of late, so nothing to show there I'm afraid, but I have had far too much ebay time, and so my Wolves army is expanding (model wise, it'll be a while before anything is painted).
So, to go with the 10GH I am currently painting (see a couple of posts before) and the 1 black reach termie that I got with WD, I now have:
10 metal bodied Blood Claws badly needing to be stripped
17 metal GH bodies that are stripped, but have not arms etc
A devastator squad missing the heavy bolter backpack that need stripping as they appear to have been dipped in paint.

That all came to £30 plus about £10 postage for over 30 metal miniatures, not bad I think. I have to admit, that although the plastics are getting better, and the pose-ability is really good, they just can't match the detail on the metal bodies, so I'm dead happy to have these in my army, and it'll also allow me to differentiate units nicely. All I now need to do is source a whole bunch of arms, pads, backpacks, weapons and bases, but I have a feeling that when I finally get to my old model stash, a lot of that will be solved.

I've also got a case from KRmulticase coming my way. These seem really good, a lot of variability in the foam inserts, and at only £21, the combination I've chosen should be able to hold 54 largish termie sized or heavily armed miniatures, and 80 smaller, bolter armed and fire warrior miniatures.

Well thats it for now, maybe a painting update in a few days if I get a chance to sit down and do something one evening. Thanks for dropping by, and as ever, comments are always welcome

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