Monday 31 August 2009

Club Night 26th and 28th August

On Wednesday Luke, Duncan and I gathered for a game of the Doom boardgame that had provided us with the rules for our club show game. Although I had played the very similar fantasy game, Descent, this was the first time I had played Doom. And very fun it was too. Duncan and I managed to complete mission 1 with only a couple of deaths each! By the end of the game I had found a BFG, but seemed to be unable to hit anything with it, but if I used a trusty chainsaw I could carve through anyting Luke threw at us!

On Friday, Duncan and I dusted off Advanced Heroquest and had a little game. Other than Duncans quite appalling luck againnst my repeated critical hits it was not hugley memorable, but was a hell of a lot of fun. So much we are going to try and start off a campaign by doing one game a month on our tuesday nights. Lets hope we can actually keep it going.

And on a final note, I have finally buckled! I am not a massive fan of Space Hulk and was only mildly interested when it was announced, but those Blood angels figures are GORGEOUS! So I will be adding two more Terminator squads to my blood Angels army when it arrives later this week!

Club Night 22nd August

I set up another Warhammer, this time against Simon and his Empire. I thought I would stick with what I know and take my Beastmen. A Wargor, Battle Standard Bearer, a Shaman, 3 Herds, some hounds, 2 units of Bestigors and 3 Chariots should give me enough to take on whatever simon laid down.
As it turned out Simon had some Knights, swordsman, spearman, crossbows, handgunners, flagellants, a volley gun and the essential cannon, all lead by a captain, with a warrior priest and a wizard on attendance. I won the roll for first turn and made the Empire go first as I was out of range of most of their shooting. The crossbowmen felled a couple of Ungors, while the cannon misfired and would be unable to shoot next turn.
I advanced across the table to meet him. Another turn of fire was weathered, and then I started making mistakes! While the chariots all crashed into the flagellants, I forgot to charge the swordsman with the herd on my left, and forgot about the dark heart so did not declare a charge with my Slaanigors against the knights. I tried to use the Wild Hunt from the Staff of Darkoth, but it met a dispel scroll. Although I had cut through a number of the teh craxed fanatics, my core unit if bestigors with my general was in front of the knights, and too close to even consider fleeing from the charge. The small ray of light was my Slaanesh spell I usually cast on y own troops to frenzy them, but instead I frenzied the handgunners so instead of firing they charged my other bestigors and got themselves killed!

On my left the Empire Captain on his Warhorse and the swordsman crashed into the herd containing my battle standard bearer, beat it and ran it down. The only advantage was the Empire general was now along way from where the rest of the fighting was going on. In the centre the knights charged and broke my bestigors, but luck was now on my side and they out ran their pursuers.

I rallied my Bestigors ready to face another charge from the knight and my ambushers arrived. The ambushers found the Empire artillery turned around and blew them away, but in the centre this time my Bestigors held and then turned the combat back against the knight and broke them and they fled, not to rally in the game. This was really the turning point, in the centre I had overrun into the volley gun crew, the Chariots had detroyed everything on my right flank, and my centre was turning to the Empire right.

The next couple of turns saw me break the remaining Empire units, the cannon destroy the volley gun by firing over its target unit and bouncing into the war machine, whose unlucky crew where being beaten by my herd. By the end of the game I had managed to pull back what looked like potentially a defeat to a victory as my forces closed in on the sole remaining Empire troops, the gun crew.

Away from the club I have finally finished building the BF110 for Colours, now I just need to get this mammoth model painted!



Thursday 20 August 2009

Club Night 18th August

Luke and I decided to try one of the other scenarios from Future War Commander. We decided Luke would take the Imperial Guard covering the evacuation of the civilians before the Eldar assault arrived. As I had twice the points Luke did I chose to take three Titans to put him under some serious pressure. Unfortunately that was only the plan! My command rolls where a bit poor and my force arrived in very disjointed groups.
And Luke's command rolls where not bad! With one of my infantry commands refusing to turn up, the other one came under orbital bombardment. The first salvo suppressed most of them, the second was perfectly on target and was a pin-point strike, destroying my entire command. In the centre my assault troops debussed and then I failed my command roll so they stayed in the open, while again Luke rolled fantastic command rolls and had about 5 successive turns of fire , destroying them.By the time he had bought down one of my titans, it was all over for the Eldar assault. Luke's luck and the effectiveness of Imperial Guard heavy weapon troops when they are already deployed had been my downfall.

Club Night 14th August

Friday Duncan and I did a little Warhammer, matching Slaaneshi Daemons against the forces of the Empire. After we had a good laugh about the fact that even using Army Builder I failed to pick a correct army by forgetting to add my Furies in completely. After some furious scribbling we did out first game, and suffice to say I lost!
We then set up again and tried a second game. Below you can see the Daemons advancing on the Empire centre. You will notice on the left of the Empire line the unit that gave me all the problems, a Steam Tank! I just had nothing in my Army that could counter it, and once it had contacted a unit it was just a matter of time before it destroyed them.Unlike the first game I managed to contact the big spearmen unit led by a Warrior Priest and finally break it. Despite the casualties I inflicted that Steam tank had done enough to edge it on victory points for the Empire.
If I decide to take this army to WOFF I will need to think how I'll cope with big gribbles. The Steam Tank is the worst, but I will need to be able to take down tree-men, giants and the like. Back to the drawing board...

Club Night 11th August

Hi There! Been a bit lazy about updating, so you are going to get bombarded with posts tonight. First up is last Tuesday game with Ryan. We finally got round to doing our much postponed and delayed 40k of Orks against Blood Angels. We decided to make it 1,500 points and to do a Planet Strike to top it all off! Ryan took the role of the Orks and defenders and set up the board, two defensive lines occupied adjacent corners with an automated lascannon in each, in the other two corners two bastions as part of more defensive lines. Then in the very centre a huge bastion with a quad-autocannon, protected by aVoid Shield (cunnin' Orky know-wots!).
Despite using scorched skies to increase the effectiveness of my fire storm, with the bastion in the centre impervious I only succeeded in destroying the two automated lascannons. The Sons of Sanguinius then leapt into the battle field. Three assault squads flew in on their jump packs, supported by a dreadnought in a drop pod. Their initial fire was ineffective, and they had dropped too far from the bastion to assault it that turn. Their the Ork reinforcements started to turn up led by a bike squad. Fire from the bastions (we had replaced all the heavy bolters with more Orky big shootas) began to take their toll. But then the Death Company arrived and swept the Bikes away with a terrifying number of attacks. A well place melta bomb finally bought down the central bastion and forced the gigantic 30 strong mob out into the open. Proving they can have even more attacks they assaulted one of the Assault squads and annihilated them, before the Death Company retaliated destroying the boyz before they fell under the counter attack of the Nobz and their Warboss. My tactical squad had arrived by now and opened fire, only to be assualted by the Warboss.

By the time the dust settled over 35 Orks had died and over a dozen Marines and their Chaplain. All that was left was one very angry (and slightly lonely) Warboss! Away from this one Assault squad of Marines was single-handedly taking the other half of the battlefield. They destroyed a mob of Orks who had deployed from a trukk to stop them, jumped across to put an end to the Deathkopters, then jumped back to occupy the empty bunker. Unfortunately this is where they took their losses. Down to 3 from their starting 5 through the victorious assaults, they took a pot shot at the trukk(now quite useless as it had lost its big shoota) with their plasma pistol. It proceeded to be destroyed, roll on the trukk damage table, before shooting off out of control directly towards the marines, and exploding, leaving a bemused Sergeant alone. And alone he was as he was the last surviving Marine. The Orks still held this world and another attempt would have to be made to wrench it form them.

Tuesday 4 August 2009

Club Night 31st July

Friday night saw myself, Luke and Ian, joined by Mark, to try out our first full game with the Impetus rules. Using the 10mm figures we have for POW/Vis Bellica, based on 60mm wide bases, we pitted Sarmatians against Romans. We mostly followed the army lists but freely ignored them to fit the figures we currently have.

Luke and Mark set up as the defenders with the Romans, securing their left flank with a river, and their large Cavalry command, consisting of a number of units of Cataphractii, no doubt manned by renegade Sarmatians. In in the centre there was an allied Warband command, and then two commands of legionaries with auxilla and artillery support. Against them Ian and I deployed the Sarmatians with our infantry levy on the centre, the young nobles and some nobles on our right, the majority of the nobles under our charismatic C-in-C on the left, with some light cavalry and skirmishers on the far left.

The game began by a general advance by both sides as we go to grips with the intricacies of movement, disorder and discipline, especially with the impetuous Sarmatian noble cavalry.

On our right Ian's Cavalry careered across the dry river bed in various degrees of order and swept away the first lines of Roman light cavalry, but the the rogue heavy cavalry began to get into action and it became a lot tighter. With both the opposing centre commands rolling double 1's for initiative they lost a level of ability and two poor commanders uncertainly glared at each other but did little else.

On the left flank I manoeuvred the light cavalry and skirmishers through the woods to try and turn the Roman line, while my Impetuous nobles headed off for the Roman legionaries. Coming under bow and artillery did not deter me and I crashed into the lines, destroying the artillery and chasing off the archers. Unfortunately this bought me into contact with the second line of the Roman commands, which was the legionaries proper. With the heavy darts (treated like Pilums) and their long spears negating my charge bonuses, I bounced, rather unsurprisingly, and was swept away as the famed legion advanced.


Meanwhile on the left, despite some jammy dice rolling from Luke, Ian was beginning to swing it back in the Sarmatian favour again, after having looked a lost cause. Getting round the flanks of some of the Roman heavy cavalry with the nobles from the infantry command was proving to be decisive.

Meanwhile in the centre the Warband finally burst into life against the Sarmatian centre. Although they creaked, they did not break, while one of the large war band units fell under hails of Javelin as they charged and then some sturdy dice rolling. This bought the turn to an end and time to tot up some loses. The Sarmatian general had fallen, braking his command, as was the other cavalry command on the right. In addition all out units took 1 loss to represent the impact of the loss of our dynamic commander. However Ian had done enough (all I had done was lose our C-in-C), by breaking the Roman Cavalry and Warband. All these losses and subsequent routs of command, meant that both armies had broken at the same time. The Sarmatian invasion of the Roman provinces falling back, while the battered force sent out to block them retreated to its forts.

We all really enjoyed this game. Although we found as we played we missed little nuances fo the rules, this is not unusual on a first run through, but the basics where quickly grasped, and above all were fun.

This will be my last blog for a bit as I am off to a wedding which will interfere with gaming!! However I am working on a Bf-110 for the Skirmish Wargames game at colours and once it is more than an indistinguishable pile of green plastic I wil post some photos.