Saturday 30 May 2009

Club Night 29 May

This Friday saw Steve run a Napoleonic Naval, pitting me and Luke, each in command of a 74 against Steve with a pair of British ships using Action under sail rules.

All started well with me tacking to cut between the two British ships, although they had seen what was coming and turned so I missed any racks. And Luke also missed me as he was following a bit close being for my tack!
My first broadside hit the British 60 and bought down its fore mast and damaged its missen mast.

Then I got carried away trying to turn behind the smaller British vessel and forgot about the wind. I have to make a mistake like this at least once a naval game with written orders, and so proceed to turn into the wind, snap the top of my fore mast and leave myself drifting as the 60 gun turned around me and racked me with two broadsides. Fortunately being a small vessel and with the masts i had bought down earlier blocking a number of batteries I got off lighter than I should have.

By this time I had sorted my vessel out again and was back under sail and proceeded to turn around the Brit and try and close to board him. I eventually succeeded in closing with him, but my first attempt failed to grapple. My second attempt was more successful after I realised I had been using a D3 for the last 3 hours and changed to the correct D6, rolled over 3 for the first time in the game and began to board the Brit.

The Royal Navy put up a brave fight, but my superior size and number bought the British vessel under my command. We ended the game now, but didn't look great for me, as the second British vessel was closing, and my companion ship was disengaging after a couple of devastating broadsides had killed a number of crew, while its return broadsides had blown off a section of mast, and there consistently put ever subsequent volley through the gap where the mast had been.

As no sign of the Essex horses, this weekend will be more on the drop pods, in between watching Chelsea in the FA cup final and popping home to help Dad put up a new shed.

Wednesday 27 May 2009

Drop Pods Part 1

Having placed my order for the Essex horse for the Oddzial Osmy figures I could do nothing more to them, so I returned to an ongoing project.
The Sons of Sanguinius

These are my Blood Angels successor chapter that started out as a 1,500 point force and are now a full company plus extras. And not one is painted yet! The main ongoing job at the moment is scratch building a pair of drop pods for my dreadnoughts. Based on the templates from the old French GW site they are foam core and plasticard with all sorts of kits bits for details. One is on to the detailing stage and the other has just had the major parts assembled so will be ready for detailing next. Hopefully they wil look the business when painted.

The whole company is a very assault orientated force, entirely capable of deep striking.
Commander and Honour Guard with jump packs
Chaplain and Death Company with jump packs
Librarian in Terminator armour with Terminator escort (Teleport Deep Strike)
Veteran squad with jump packs
4 Tactical squads in Drop pods
4 Assault squads with jump packs
2 Devastator squads with Drop pods
2 Dreadnoughts with Drop pods
2 Land speeders (these use to be able to deep strike, so in my apocalypse game they still will be able to)
Scout squad - infiltrates in to recon the drop zone, not technically deep strike I know but close!

Other than 5 plastic drop pods (and the ongoing dreadnought drop pods) I have the entire force assembled, and awaiting painting. I plan to prime them with red paint, foundation paint the details, add some slight highlights and then use army painter and see how it goes. Just need to get round to doing it!

Tuesday 26 May 2009

Crawley Wargmes Club Legendary Battles

Yesterday saw the forces of the Empire defending the walls of the town of Grunberg from forces of Skavern, Daemons and Vampire Counts. Outnumbered 3 to 2 Steve and I had a tough job ahead of us, especially as the half the army under my command would not arrive till turn 2.

When my force of Empire Knights and Kislev lancers did arrive, I discovered the town's defenders advanced deployment had worked well and pinned the enemy back on the first table well away from the town walls. I proceeded to ride into any unit in charge range and do my best to die valiantly.

8 turns later saw the end of the game and the forces of evil taking the game 93 points to 83 (each of 5 objectives scored points each turn you held it equivalent to the turn number, so 1 point in turn 1, 2 in turn 2 and so on). They had not even assaulted the walls but the loss of the manor, temple and bridge cost us the game.

High points for me was the sole surviving free company passing his fear test and trying to hold the manor single handedly against 20 Bloodletters, the Militia archer pin cushioning 2 charging black knights and my consistent total inability to hit with charging knights!

If I ran this again I would have put the walls nearer the enemy deployment as I had planned for this to be the focus of the game and instead it barely featured. But despite this everyone said they had fun and I'll learn for the next huge game I run, just need to get my Blood Angels successor company done and an Apocalypse will have to be played!

First Post

Welcome to my Blog!

I have spent this evening going through my new figures from Fighting 15s. From Oddzial Osmy, a Polish company, they are Teutons, Poles and Lithuanians for next years club show game. I already have the command pack for the Poles so knew what to expect. Brittle metal, separate weapons and horrible horses. So why on earth did I buy them then? Because I have yet to find another range of figures that really represent the eastern European look of these figures, especially for command.

The next thing to do is to order some Essex horses to remount them on. Works with a little filing around the saddle where no one notices. Once I sort a camera I'll try and post some pics.

After that I added the new Empire and LoTR to the MM website. I look forward to seeing what is on the sprue for the Greatswords as I have foot Reiksguard in my army, but some well armoured bodies plus some knights heads would be a godsend rather than trawling ebay for the next rank for my unit.