I May Have Been A Bit Rash…

OK, firstly, its been a while since my last post on this blog. They are some good reasons for this which I may or may not cover during the course of this ramble.

Next Thursday, I have a couple of good friends visiting for a game of Warmachine. This is obviously not earth shattering news (unless you can’t believe I actually have friends); however it has set a deadline for painting some of my Cygnar.

Why? Well, I’m one of these crazy people that insists on painting every single model before playing with it. No game seems as real or excites my imagination without little PAINTED toy soldiers on a table with nice scenery. This is unfortunate as it takes me ages to paint anything.

I could blame the crazy job that leaves me travelling around Europe all the time, or the family which with young kids is also very demanding. However those would just be excuses. The truth is, I’m a slow painter. My steadily deteriorating eyesight doesn’t help and neither did Halo: Reach (excellent game by the way); but even still, it takes a long time for me to paint anything.

This is where deadlines like tournaments are great. The only reason my Blood Angels, and in particular the latest addition, a Typhoon, were finished was because of A Small Matter of Honour and Calnage.

The aim is to paint little and often. So, by next Thursday I’ll have 15 points of Cygnar painted and finished. Hopefully.

For the record, I have started tonight by painting the kitchen…

In other news, myself and a couple of conspirators are planning a Warhammer 400000 campaign weekend next year under the working title “Lost Stars”. The emphasis will very much be on a fun style of gaming and it will probably use a 1500 point doubles format. More details will follow once we’ve actually got organised.

In the meantime, if you like 40K doubles, there are still tickets available for the GCN South Champion of Champions tournament, being hosted by Spiky Club in Reading on the 14th November. Cruise over to their website if you are interested!

Carnage at Calnage

I have a soft spot for the Warhammer 40000 doubles format. In most doubles tournaments I’ve attended the worst competitive urges (my included) have been blunted by working in a team. So, I was really looking forward to Calne Gaming Club’s annual 500+500 tournament, Calnage. It did not disappoint.

Our first game was against two marine players; one sporting three assault units plus scouts, the other with two units of attack bikes and a tactical squad. We played the classic ‘draw’ scenario, Capture and Control and both placed our objectives on the left of the battlefield. Unfortunately they stole the initiative and we suffered a bit in the first round of shooting, losing both Typhoons. In response, we did pretty much nothing. From this point, we were surrounded with assault marines and attack bikes closing in on all sides. Our only chance to threaten their objective was lost when my scouts arrived on the wrong side of the table. From then on, it was a desperate fight to keep our own objective which we did, scoring a surprising draw.

Game two, was Seize Ground against Mike and Caesar’s very mobile eldar. Some how, most of this game degenerated to a missile slinging match with the pixies eventually getting the upper hand. However it was too late and we had solid control of two objectives, with the third contested.

Game three, and Necrons. At this point I must say I have a poor record against Necrons at combat patrol level and I raised at eyebrow at seeing the Destroyers and Immortal, and especially the Scarabs. This Animation mission was going to be a problem. On turn two things looked pretty poor when Dave’s Chaplain, Combat Squad, and Razorback all disappeared under concentrated Gauss fire. To follow that, my assaulty combat squad got bogged down in Scarabs; not good. Then everything changed in turn four, with my Sanguianary Priest and Combat Squad free of the Scarabs; and two live Typhoons, I boldy said “I’ve had enough, we’re winning this game this turn.” Our opponents (and Dave in fairness) were a little shocked and continued to plan their counter attack using two tomb spiders. The Typhoons removed one Necron Warrior squad, my combat squad removed and ran down the other one, and that was that, game over as the Necrons phased out.

Our big wins had put us on the top table against Spiky Club’s James Karch and David Richardson, with Space Wolves and Imperial Guard. The normally very civilised James, had four sick Thunderwolves of doom (shame on you James), however that was less of a issue than the scenario. We started in one of the quarters, and had to escape from the opposite short board edge. Simple (ish). First turn started well with my scouts escaping immediately and the Typhoons putting large holes in David's infantry platoon. Unfortunately the Thunderwolves got stuck in the following turn removing the Ultramarine’s Razorback, and David plucked both Typhoons out of the sky. Leaving them to their fate, half of my Blood Angels scampered way.

In a excellent display of combat prowess, the Ultramarines cut down the puppies and began the long walk off the board. In the end, it wasn’t enough and David and James got a well deserved win, and with it first place in the tournament. Much to our surprise (especially considering how pretty James’ Thunderwolves are) the Dead Presidents won Best Army.

All in all a fantastic tournament!

P.S. And happily we also managed to pop down to Triple Helix Wargaming in Westbury on the way home where I got even more Warmachine stuff. Yippee!

Return of Commander Dante

A couple of nights ago I got around to playing my first Warhammer 40000 game in about three months. Unusually, my opponent suggested playing at 2000 points. Given the general chaos surrounding my life at the moment, I happily agreed and then thought (at the last minute), err what am I going to take?

A few super busy days at work made the decision for me and out came my 1750 ASMOH Blood Angels list with a couple of minor changes, and a 225 point special character (because he was already painted).

When I finally rolled in to muppets (late of course), my opponent was waiting with a Chaos Space Marine army which had two special characters, Kharn and the big man himself Abbadon. The scenario was annihilation with spearhead deployment; and unusually for me, I took the first turn and deployed everything.

So how did it go? Well, the Chaplain/Dante tag team were incredible in close combat, although not quite good enough to take down Abbadon in one round. Dante’s Hit & Run capability could be extremely useful in the future and this game it saved him from a couple of combats I didn’t want him involved in. Kharn died very quickly to melta weapons (once separated from his bodyguard) and Baal Predators can chew though normal Chaos Marine squads. The Blood Talon equipped dreadnought was simply rude, eating a unit of marines in a single round of combat.

In the end it was a very convincing win, although in fairness had my opponent’s heavy support arrived earlier things would have been messier for me. Anyway, great game! I almost feel inspired to paint more stuff…

Hobby On The Move (and cool dice)

Like many people, I travel a lot for work. This is not helped by the fact my office is a 1000km away from my home. Although some of my free time away tends to be taken up with business stuff, I also spend a good portion bored in hotel rooms (normally updating my blog, reading, etc).

To try and make a bit more progress on my eldar (it is painfully slow at the moment), I’ve put together a little painting kit to haul around on my travels. This is based on the rather excellent Feldherr MINI case which fits very nicely in the bottom of my laptop bag.

This little lot went over to France last week which was great, but the big thing will be to take it to Sweden this coming week. Unfortunately this means getting through airport security which could be entertaining.

Of course all this said, my kids gave me a new book for Fathers Day(Unseen Academicals by Sir Pratchett) so that might go instead. Oh, and I must remember to ask how Sweden are doing in the World Cup (according to my Danish boss).

On a completely different subject, Blatchfords (the prosthetic limb people) celebrated their 120th anniversary this weekend. As part of the festivities the guys in their machine shop made some steel dice, and thanks to my father, I have two of these special D6s. As far I as can tell these are perfectly weighted.

Ideal as leadership dice for my Blood Angels. Unfortunately the chances of getting ten of these in teal for my eldar is slight to say the least!

The Dead (Imperial) Presidents

Myself and follow Dead President, Dave OJ, actually managed to chat about our 1500 points doubles list last night (just after a game as well, a draw if anyone was interested… ok probably not interested). So based mostly on the models we have, this is what we came up with.

Will it work? Probably not. However there are enough interesting and different types of units to keep us both entertained which is the main point of the exercise. Anyway without further ado…

The Order of Sanguinius, Chapter of the 4th Founding

	Reclusiarch (jump pack) Honour Guard (sanguinary novitiate, two flamers, power weapon, jump packs)	155 190
	9 Tactical Space Marines (meltagun, missile launcher), Space Marine Sergeant (power fist, storm bolter) Razorback (twin-linked heavy bolters)	203 55
	Vindicator	145
		748

Ultramarines, Chapter of the 1st Founding

	Ortan Cassius, Master of Sanctity	125
	Dreadnought (two twin-linked autocannons)	125
	9 Tactical Space Marines (flamer, missile launcher), Space Marine Sergeant Razorback (twin-linked heavy bolters, storm bolter)	170 50
	Two Land Speeder Typhoons	180
	Thunderfire Cannon	100
		750

We will use this for two of the events we are attending, however Calnage in September is 500 point combat patrol doubles event, so we have no idea what we are planning to take, apart from one Blood Angels Typhoon (because I need to paint it!).

Oh, and if anyone is interested in attending, details of the Sad Muppet Society’s very fun doubles (its not a tournament) 40K  tournament are available here.

Putting (Cocktail) Sticks Up Elf Bottoms

Firstly, apologies to anyone who is reading this post expecting something else...

Anyway, time for an update on my Eldar project. Despite needing a bit of green stuff, I’m rather chuffed with my prototype Dragon Knight (cough, Shining Spear), and together with his two squad mates they are ready to be undercoated.

Unfortunately there are only three of the right type of Cold Knight head in the box, so the Exarch is going to have to wait until I’ve got some more Cold One Knights before I can finish him. I also want to do something special with his helmet to make him stand out a little more (he already has a Dire Avenger Exarch body which is a good start).

Luckily, my sons have been conspiring with mum in Games Workshop(bless them), so I’m under strict instructions to wait until after Father’s Day.

The final Cold One from this boxset has been converted into my first normal Guardian jetbike. To beef up his shuriken catapult (it is supposed to be twin-linked after all), I’ve added a second top loading ammo clip. Happily this guy was easier to convert than the Shining Spears which is just as well, because I have another seven to do.

This brings my back to the title of the post. Before undercoating each rider to mounted on a colour-coded cocktail stick to make painting easier, and to make sure each rider is matched to the correct mount. If I get the chance, I’ll post up some photos before I start painting these chaps.

And before I sign off, my final modelling project is a Typhoon for my Blood Angels. Apart from a moulded shoulder pad (only had one Blood Angel shoulder pad left, typical), there is nothing too usual about this model; except for the magnets used on the flying base (and gunner). I’m hoping this works ok because I want to use the same system on my eldar tanks because it will make them so much easier to store and transport.

A Small Matter of Honour

After getting home late Thursday, I spent Friday doing the last finishing touches to the Order of Sanguinius. After putting on a coat of matt varnish on the last three models, it was snow time! With a mixture of artificial snow and PVC glue to hand, about twenty models were ‘snowed’. To speed up the drying time (I wanted everything packed and ready to go Saturday morning), all the models got put in front of a fan heat for a bit.

Anyway today was the day for our club’s annual Warhammer 40000 tournament, A Small Matter of Honour. To recap, my army list is here. So how did it go?

Well the first game (annihilation mission) against Marc’s eldar was really close until the final turn when Marc took advantage of a bold move on my part, claiming two kill points from my razorback and squad onboard. Unfortunately I couldn’t finish off any of Marc’s transports in return. Just for the record, Eldrad seems to the busiest pixie in the galaxy because he seems to be in every eldar army I see these days!

The second game was against Simon’s Tyranids (hundreds of them!) playing Seize Ground. Suffice to say I should have deployed on the board to thin out his numbers a little bit. Combined with my general indecisiveness we run out of time on turn four. Unfortunately Simon (who in fairness had loads of scoring units) had two of the four objectives and easily bagged the win.

After lunch was my third game, this time using the full 1750 point army rather than just 1250. Now on table 17 I was playing Neil’s Tau. For game we were playing Capture and Control with a Pitch Battle deployment. As per normal I outflanked what I could and kept the rest in reserve.

Lucky for me, Neil Kroot’s also outflanked and arrived first, far too close to my table edge. This preceded a rush up that side of the table, trying to survive the three railguns determined to blow my vehicles apart. Once my Chaplain and Honour Guard got onto Neil’s objective and defending fire warriors, the game once decided and it was not pretty.

For my final game I faced Chris’s Dark Angels, playing an annihilation mission. Chris deployed quite defensively along one flank but moved his Chaplain and assault unit too far forward to engage my assault bikes. When my forces arrived the following turn that unit was swamped.

Having learned the lesions from earlier in the day I was far more aggressive in this game in the turn three virtually won the game on kill points. To Chris’ credit, he hung in to turn seven when he was finally wiped out.

At the end of the day I managed two big wins, and two loses, so I’m pretty sure I failed to finish in the bottom half of the results table (my aim to prove I’m not super competitive all the time).

However much to my huge delight, my Blood Angels won Best Army! Considering the competition, including Greg Bachelor's Space Wolves (pictured above), I’m really chuffed.

A big thank you should the guys from muppets for organising a fantastic event, and congratulations should go to Greg Bachelor, Ian Courtney (Space Wolves) and Rob Uter (Tau) for claiming the top three places.

UPDATE: The results are now up on the Sad Muppets' website here. I managed to finish 12th in the end and had the second highest VP total.

Medic!!!

Next weekend is the highlight of my gaming year. On the 8th May is the Sad Muppet Society hold their annual Warhammer 40000 tournament, A Small Matter of Honour. Anyone who has been reading this blog will probably already be familiar with my Blood Angel’s successor chapter, the Order of Sanguinius, and my long journey to get them ready for this tournament (too much work, not enough painting time!).

However the good news is that I’m almost finished! So without further ado here are the last three models…

   

The last few details on these guys will be finished Friday night once I’m back from Denmark (leaving stupidly early tomorrow and still haven’t packed).

I’m also really happy to get a medic into this list because I’m always liked the concept behind them since they first appeared in White Dwarf 102.

Once these are finished, I can start back on the eldar!

More toys

It has been some time coming, but here is my double (quad) autocannon dreadnought. Brother Daniel. He was converted using the land raider lascannon sponsons so except modifying the guns, he was pretty quick to make.

And one of my objective markers...

Still need to finish three more models but almost there. Roll on Operation Snowman in May!

The Green Tide

It is a little scary. I have been in this country three weeks now and I'm not even traveling next week. Probably just as well with the Iceland thing. Anyway as a result I've been at club loads this month and I've been able to actually play some games.

This week was the third test game using my list for A Small Matter of Honour in May. This time playing an annihilation mission against an Ork Horde with 60 Shoota Boyz, two Battlewagons, three Killa-Kans, and a unit of Megaarmour Nobs, all in 1250 points. Without going into to details, suffice to say concentrating on single elements or units worked brilliantly.

In particular the autocannon dreadnought did wonders against the Kill-Kans and Battlewagons (killing both of them on side or rear armour); and my tactical squad cut though two Shoota Boyz units in close combat. The only unit I couldn't deal with was the Megaarmoured Nobs but I suspect my HQ could have done the job if they were not at the opposite end of the battlefield. In the end I won six kill points to three.

I am especially surprised how vulnerable Orks are in assault if charged, as I rate Shoota boyz as the best basic troops in the game. Still I'm sure if my opponent got the charge it would be a very different story.

Next week I plan to use my 1750 list for the first time, however I still need to finish the sergeant for my second tactical squad and a sanguinary priest. However first things first, this Saturday I'm off to Salute in London on the GCN stand and helping on a Rules of Engagement demo game.

Descent of Angels

Well, I tested my 1250 point Blood Angels army tonight against "The Pinto", one of the best 40K players at our club  and I'm rather happy to say they worked quite well. Matt is one of the original members of Muppets and we have played each other many times over the years. Although previously Matt did nasty things to my old Blood angels army, I'm probably just ahead on our encounters.

We played an annihilation mission with pitched battle deployment and Matt bought his Space Wolves. His army consisted of three Grey Hunter packs (two in Rhinos), Terminator Wolf Guard, Long Fangs, a Rune Priest, and a blood crazed Lone Wolf. My list was my ASMOH list which can be found here. Matt deployed centrally so his units could support one another, and I kept all of my units in reserve to take advantage of my greater mobility.

Because of (my lack of) deployment, the game really kicked off in turn three, when Matt kindly removed the main guns on my two tanks which turned up the previous turn (one of the Baal Predators and the Vindicator). In return my Chaplain, Honour Guard and Scouts managed to wipe a unit of Grey Hunters, and positioned themselves to get the second unit the following turn (which was duly cut down). Their advance was only slowed by Matt's Wolf Guard who finished the Honour Guard and Scouts. Unfortunately they cracked against the Chaplain leaving him free to chase them and move into the Long Fangs.

So in summary, the Honour Guard/Chaplain/Scouts combo ate units which the rest of my army had shot into manageable targets. The other unit of note was my new autocannon dreadnought. Despite turning up late he accounted for both of my vehicle kills (two Rhinos). In the end I won five-two on kill points and should thank Matt for a great game (as always).

My next task is to finish three marines for my 1750 point list and to read Black Tide, the latest Blood Angel's novel by James Swallow.

Operation Snowman

I have finally decided on my army list for A Small Matter of Honour, the Sad Muppet Society's annual 40K tournament. Please bear in mind this the aim here is to do (almost) the minimum amount of painting to add to my existing army. To this end, I've got a dreadnought, sergeant, sanguinary priest, and two objectives to finish within the month. Anyway, onto the list:

The Order of Sanguinius, Raiding Force (1250 points)

Reclusiarch (jump pack) 155
4 Honour Guard (flamers, power weapon), Sanguinary Novitiate, jump packs 190

9 Tactical Marines (missile launcher, meltagun), Sergeant (power weapon), Razorback 245
4 Scouts, Scout Sergeant (power weapon, meltabombs) 95

Baal Predator (twin-linked assault cannon, heavy bolter) 145
Baal Predator (twin-linked assault cannon, heavy bolter) 145

Dreadnought (two twin-linked autocannons) 120
Vindicator (siege shield) 155

Reinforcements (500 points)

Sanguinary Priest (power weapon) 65
Furioso Dreadnought 125

9 Tactical Marines (missile launcher, plasma gun), Sergeant (power fist, storm bolter) 208

2 Attack Bikes (multi-meltas) 100

Hopefully this lot will do ok, although there is less mobility in here than I would have liked. However I didn't want to buy any more toys because after ASMOH I will be concentrating on my eldar, especially as my fantastic wife bought me a rather fab present for Easter...

Commander Dante's Retirement

Every year, the Sad Muppet Society (my home gaming club) run a tournament called A Small Matter of Honour. This event is the highlight of my gaming calendar. Partly because I started the tournament, but mostly because the event always has an excellent atmosphere, and it is a chance to catch up with some friends I do not see on a regular basis. Like last year, I'm taking my Blood Angels successor chapter, the Order of Sanguinius. Unlike last year, they have a shiny new codex. Last night I played my first game with this codex and it has changed them radically.

First, the Death Company had to go. I tend to play quite tactically (if I'm awake) so I dislike elements I can not control. Before, the Death Company were kept in check by a Chaplain, but now nothing can stop their Black Rage so they are out (for not being team players). Second, all my tanks (Baal Predators, Rhinos etc) are now fast and two of them can outflank; this makes my entire army far more dynamic.

My first plan was to use Commander Dante and Honour Guard as shock troopers and build my army around that. To this end, I finished my Commander Date really quick and finished the rest of a tactical squad that I had been painting for (at least) nine months.

So, how did the game go? Well, I was fighting a small entire 'tech guard' Imperial Guard army with more plasma than... pretty much an thing else I've ever played. We played a Capture and Control mission and despite going first, I opted to keep my entire army in reserve.

The outflanking Baal Predators worked well. The fast Vindicator was appropriately scary and acted as a bullet magnet. Of course, it didn't kill any thing. The fast razorback was great, almost getting one tactical unit onto an objective. And in the end a single scout won the game by not dying, despite the number of plasma templates landing on him.

And what of Commander Dante? Well, he arrived, stunned a vehicle, watched as his honour guard were slaughtered, ate a unit in close combat, and then died to lasguns. While he certainly helped win the game, he was not decisive.

As the honour guard is more of an anti-infantry unit, I've decided to replace Dante with a Reclusiarch (a three wound chaplain). This gets me re-rolls to hit on the change (Dante missed with most of his close combat attacks) and more importantly, saves 70 points. In my 1250 point army these will go towards a dreadnought with lots of autocannons. Unfortunately that means I have more stuff to build and paint before the end of the month...