Blood Angels X

The Blood Angels continue to progress. I have finished the basic painting on my Terminators and Dreadnoughts, so they just need basing and army-painter to complete them.

Really pleased with how these have come out, and no just have 40 marines (2 Tactical squads, a final Assault Squad and 2 5-man Devastator squads) left to go and all the Marines for the entire company and its support are done. I then need to make a final decision if I am going to do the drop pods or not.

Dystopian War Crosses

I have uploaded the PDF I printed out to make the decals for my Prussians. Please fell free to use on your own vessels. To get the white border I printed it on white laser jet paper (actually, I printed it on paper and had a local copy store, photo copy it onto the laser printer) and trimmed the decals very carefully to shape and then applied them.

Hope you find these as useful as I did.

Prussian Cross Decals PDF

Club Night 20th July

At the second attempt Luke and I managed to get the penultimate campaign game played. All that is left now is a grand finale as the Axis forces make their final grand assault on Tobruk. Out first attempt was aborted due to the need to look after children at the last minute, but meant Luke and I still got a board game in. In this case it was Axis and Allies D-Day, and everything went the Allies way and as the Axis I barely manage to make a fight of it until the last turn, but was still fun.
Still, a week later we managed to launch Ariete against a mixed Indian and armoured force in a hold the line scenario. The massed Italian armour advanced in a cloud of dust, with the AB-41 recon unit advancing out ahead towards the nearest objective, held by allied infantry.
I assaulted this light armour straight into the Indian defences and drove them back, pushing them off the objective.
A second assault by a supporting tank platoon took over from where the armoured cars had been destroyed by the Bofors guns and almost wiped out the defending platoon, dominating, but not taking the objective.
The Allies then sprung their ambushes, with the hidden 2 pounders firing into the flanks of the armour, with the MGs shooting up the supporting motorcilisti troops (we have a house rule for the desert that a foxhole can count as concealing terrain for the purposes of ambush, if what is in it receives concealment). In response I hurled all my armour into the area around the objective.
Unfortunately I chose to join a platoon that was just below half strength with my company commander, and despite both units being fearless, failed my motivation check, and the re-roll from the C-in-C. I now needed to push the enemy off the objective to claim victory before I had to take a company morale check. But Luke continued to deny me, by just getting his reserve Stuarts in a position to deny my victory time and time again (1 turn it was only by managing to re-crew an abandoned tank).
Despite how close I got, my troops were all bunched up and under continued artillery fire and anti-tank gun fire, and finally casualties mounted before I could drive the enemy back, and my company broke. To add insult to injury post game I had a battalion destroyed and another damaged in the campaign.

Club Night 22nd July

Steve K and I got out my Teutons and Polish-Lithuanian alliance for another game, this time with Impetus. Steve took a small, but deadly force of Teutons, while I took a larger, but individually weaker force for the alliance.

Set up was fairly simple as there was little room for subtlety between two forces primarily made up of knights with a smattering of light cavalry. I had the Lithuanians on my right, with the main Polish command in the centre and another on the left. The Teutons only had two commands. A large knight command containing the Brother knights and Brother Sergeant, deployed opposite the Poles and a command primarily consisting of Livonian and Prussian light horse against the Lithuanians.

All the command thundered forward, and impacted after a small exchange of bow and javelin from the lighter cavalry. The slightly heavier Teuton left began to drive back my Lithuanians and looked as if they were going to turn my flank, with one unit of cavalry breaking through and looting my camp.

In the centre and left it was fairly balanced as both sides pushed and shoved but failed to achieve a breakthrough or decisive combat, until I finally managed to bring a second unit against the enemy commander and his brother knight and cut him down, breaking his command and the enemy army. Unfortunately with the casualties I had taken and the sacking of my baggage my army was also demoralised and both armies quit the field with neither able to claim victory.

Above: The Polish centre attacks, Below: the Lithuanian flank is driven back

General musings

I seem to have been a bit slack in posting the last month and a half. Some of this is because I haven't been gaming as regularly, and wont be for a couple of weeks. However I have finally got back into my painting and am working to complete enough of my Blood Angels for the first 400k league game at the beginning of August.

Other gaming coming up will be completing my Malifaux stuff before I end up ordering more stuff over Gencon as we are able to order the limited edition models from the web-store, which is a nice touch from the guys at Wyrd. I also have the latest Dystopian releases for my Prussians and the Helldorado rulebook on order so once these are released I will have some nice new releases turning up, and hopefully inspiring me.

Towards the end of this month I will try to get back in the swing of updating every week after Friday club night. Thanks for hanging in and still reading!We are not far off the 200th post now!

Club Meet 9th July

I had arranged a game on Friday with Chris D, but he had to work, so we rescheduled for Saturday. He took an my Teutons and I took a Polish-Lithuanian alliance using Vis Bellica and the first outing for my figures from last years show game since they have been on used on the game.

It was an exciting game, with most of it decided by a huge fight between the bulk of the Polish knights and the Teutonic brothers, as both sides drove parts of the other back and ground each other down. Once the flanks had been turned by the Polish alliance the Teuton centre begun to become enveloped and gradually the elite Teutons were destroyed and the Poles took victory.

Above: The opposing battle lines, Below: Teuton brothers

Above: Battle lines close, Below: The battle in the centre Above: The confused melee on the left as the Poles destroy the enemy infantry

Blood Angels XI

I have been able to make some serious painting progress and get the latest batch done with Army painter.

Above: Scout Squad, Below: Chaplain conversion based on Dante's Body

Above and Below: More images of the chaplain

Above and Below: Terminator Librarian conversion

Above: Another image of the Librarian, Below: My converted Astorath the Grim high chaplain

Above and Below: More images of Astorath

Above: Librarian after army painter, Below: Astorath after army painter

Club Sunday 3rd July

On Sunday we played the first turns of the final campaign turn. First Steve H attacked Simon and was narrowly repelled, while Steve H launched a vital attack on Bardia, which he had to take if he wanted to have any hope of avoiding a an Allied defeat and reliving Tobruk, so I entrusted the defence to Rick who valiantly held, despite the impenetrable might of the Infantry tanks in the attack. The final games was Steve K again trying to break out of Tobruk against Scott. Again my subordinates excelled themselves and defeated the British attack.

Above: The outskirts of Bardia, Below: British defences prepare to meet the DAK

Above: The British attack, Below: and are destroyed by massed MG fire

Above: Again Italian light tanks sweep around the British flank, Below: DAK Panzers drive into British defences

Above: The British attempt to breakout of Tobruk, Below: Ricks new (and beautiful) artillery OP team!

Blood Angels VIII

I have continued to make progress with my Blood Angels. The Sanguinary Priests are done ( a step by step guide for these will be up soon), Vanguard Veterans are complete, my scout squad is done and 3rd assault squad.

My plan now is to paint my characters (Astorath, Chaplain and Librarian) so I have my army for the club league finished but for transfers and basing. After that there is just another assault squad, couple of tactical and devastator squads, my terminators and the dreadnoughts and the army is done unless I decide to go back and actually finish my drop pods, but probably not for a while.

Club Night 1st July

Luke, Steve and I dusted off my 6mm Epic and played a game of Futurewar commander. Steve and Luke took the Imperial Guard and I took my Eldar. Initially it went all in the Eldar favour as Luke failed repeated command rolls and the Eldar jet bikes swept forward and drove back the guard. On the other flank the heavy tank and the Titan pinned down the Imperial armour and prevented it advancing.

It begun to swing when the enemy infantry were pushed back into the city ruins, and the enemy artillery came in to play, while on the other side the Imperial heavy tanks finally bought down the Titan.

It came down to a close finally with the Eldar jet bikes trying to get the guard infantry out of the ruins and the armour swinging forward on the other flank as the Eldar heavy tank was destroyed leaving the flank with no armour support.

The Eldar reached their breakpoint first, but held on, but the guard reached there and their battle group broke gifting the Xenos a narrow victory.