Game Night with Luke, 27th June

I headed round to Luke's and played another game using the Wizards of the Coast ships, but this time with an amended set of rules for bigger fleets and free movement, and the addition of shields, while the basic combat mechanism remained unchanged. I again took the Imperium and took a fleet of 4 Star Destroyers with a horde or TIE variants against a hodge-podge of Rebel vessels.

I concentrated my forces on one flank and moved forward into a big left hook discouraging TIEs as I advanced. By concentrating the massed fire of the big Star Destroyers I took down one ship after another, knocking out parts of the Rebel fleet with my entire fleet.

I had a few nervous moments towards the end as my two damaged Destroyers were destroyed by waves of superior fighters overwhelming my TIE screen, including the spiteful distraction of Darth Vader towards the end, but I also destroyed Luke Skywalker and the Millennium Falcon in return. I really look forward to trying these out again.

Club Night 20th April

It was AGM night so most of the evening was taken up with talking and planning for next years show. Fortunately nothing was too controversial so we got through it reasonably quickly. Although most members headed off home after the AGM as it was Salute the next day Luke and I stayed on to play a game of Wizards of the Coast Star Wars Battles

This is a very simple set of rules on a square grid, where you can either move backwards/ forwards or left/ right. Despite the limited movement the rules actually play quite nicely. A simple damage system with stat cards that get flipped to the damaged side after a certain level and a nice command point system for getting bonuses it played quite well. Luke as usual had dreadful dice rolls so the Empire crushed the Rebellion (as is right and proper!). I believe there are some modifications to these rules that don't use the grid for some free movement. As Luke is getting loads more of the ships for the classic Star Wars era we will quite probably give these a go.

Club Night 5th August

My Blood Angels got their first run out in the club 40k league. I had managed to flat coat them, but unfortunately I got a slight whitening on some of the models so I need to revisit them and see if I can rescue them. Any ideas?

My first game was against Ian's Dark Angels. It was going to be interesting as both being marines we would be fairly similar and I had no idea what I would be facing. It turned out there were two elements to his force, 3 units of Deathwing lead by Belial, and 3 tactical squads led by a chaplain with his command squad, supported by scouts and a vindicator.

I finally decided to deploy some of my army on the table as we played a capture and control mission with spearhead deployment. I started with two assault squads, both with a sanguinary priest and supported by a land speeder on table, with the plan to launch them in opposite directions using the terrain to cover them before they could assault, avoiding the giant shell from the vindicator.

My squads bonded forward, coming under some desultory fire from the scouts and one of the tactical squads, but mostly staying out of sight. My deep striking reserves then arrived with the help of descent of angels. The veterans arrived immediately behind the enemy objective, declaring a heroic intervention to charge the terminators defending it, while the two death company units spread out to support them.

Here is where I took my first serious set-back. Both the chaplain with his combi-melta and the land speeder with the multi-melta missed the vindicator, leaving it free to fire accurately at Astorath and his Death company killing all but the Blood Angel hero and one of his crazed companions, while the chaplain and his squad came under fire from Belial and his escorts and a tactical squad and were also reduced to the chaplain and 1 death company.

Fortunately it wasn't all going against me. I had run one assault squad away from the enemy chaplain when I realised they were too far away to assault, and the other squad was working its way through a terminator squad, despite the re-enforcement of a tactical squad. And the veterans were having more success. Another tactical squad had hurried in to support the terminators that had been their initial target, but having lost the combat, the tactical squad fled from the combat with such speed they left the table.

The land speeder then moved around the rear of the vindicator and destroyed it, while the final assault squad had dropped in ready to support the other assault squads while the chaplain and his companion proved no match for Belial and his terminators, but Astorath and his survivor demonstrated how terrifying a full squad would have been by destroying the scouts in a single combat.

Almost all my unit were now in combat, with one assault squad reducing the command squad to just the Interrogator chaplain, and the other two combining to destroy the terminators and all but one tactical marine who stubbornly held on, while I moved the other units around to avoid Belial until I could launch a co-ordinated attack, but luckily my heavy flamer managed to kill two of them.

I finished off the survivors and moved my assault squads and surviving veterans into a position to attack Belial and his Deathwing, while one assault squad hurried back to claim my own objective. I then launched my final assault and took down Belial by sheer number and some poor armour saves.

I had managed to claim a total victory by wiping out the enemy, but I had learnt a lot. The death company can still get killed by massed small arms fire, and their pistol fire is better to sacrifice in place of a run when they deep strike to spread out so they are not as vulnerable to template weapons. Ian's army was good, but he needed to be more aggressive, probably by deep striking his terminators, and maybe in the longer term getting some Rhinos for his other marines. But at least I managed to start this league with a victory, lets see if I can maintain my momentum.

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.

Club Night 13th May

Robin came up the club and bought his Salute Terrain for us to try out a full game of Gruntz. Me and Ben took some New Israelis and Luke took the Kra'vak. Benm and I split our forces, Ben took the majority of the infantry, the APC and the large walker to move through the built up area on one side of river. I took the heavy armour, flyer with power armoured infantry and the jet-bikes on the more open side.

Luke started with most of his force on my side of the river and had to take a power generator on the opposite side and the town, so he would be moving away from me and the objectives where near to him.

I closed as quickly as possible and started engaging the aliens, destroying the skimmer droid quickly and closing my bikes to the infantry sheltering behind the walls, while the alien heavy tanks used their anti-grav mobility to rush over the other side.

I moved my flyer into the middle of the bridge and de-bused and laid down heavy fire in all directions and inflicted heavy damage and destroyed one of the tanks that had moved to engage my armour, but in return they came under heavy fire and were almost wiped out.

Ben was making good progress on the other side, especially under the devastating cover fire of the walker, while my dice rolling was poor, and Luke's was very good, so I lost my armour and my jet-bikes, but on the other side Ben had driven them back and the aliens had no choice but to withdraw from their invasion.

Club 29th Apil

As Friday was the Royal wedding and we had no interest in watching we headed up the club early for a full day gaming. We started off with some games for our Operation Crusader Campaign. While Rick defended with Ariete against Steve D's British I was to fight another defensive action with my RECAFM (an Italian reconnaissance formation) against a British attempt to break through towards a break out from Tobruk which if successful would open a route to through to Tobruk.

While Rick was successful and even managed to destroy the supporting Infantry tank formation I was ruthlessly crushed very quickly as my armoured car formation where held back in reserve, the supporting fusileri where ruthlessly cut down by the machine gunned on the British Crusader tanks.

Next we set out to prevent the British attack out Tobruk. Having fallen back to opposite this break out we had re-enforced the defenders so we had a good numerical superiority, and with engineers even managed to out out some Barbed wire.As the British moved forward under cover of darkness with supporting infantry tanks we launched our platoon of L6/40 light tanks down the exposed flank and begun to attack their machine guns and mortars. This forced them to turn their tanks around and by some miracle we survived their gun fire. This brave attack was enough to distract the advance and prevent British victory.

The Axis then had an opportunity to launch an exploitation attack which I did, launching the victorious Ariete south at a battered British armoured regiment trying to break a weak pint in the British lines and isolate the forces attacking towards Tobruk. This should have been an easy victory as we had a major numerical advantage. However the ability of the British tanks to move and fire was decisive and they destroyed many of the Italian tanks. However while they were doing this the motociclisti platoons had moved on from their flanking manoeuvre and taken the objective to claim victory.

Above: The Italian armour advance.
Below: Italian air-power attacks (unsuccessfully) the British armour

This means the Axis have now made a another major thrust south which the Allies will have to respond to as we start turn 5 and the penultimate turn.

After all these games in the evening I was joined by Mike to take on Ian and Colin with my Eldar against the ongoing raids of Colin's Dark Eldar. This was a thoroughly enjoyable and close game. With three objectives evenly spaced along the table we had a firebase of Guardians and Dire Avengers with harlequin and war walker support on one flank and a mobile force of primarily Warp Spiders and Jetbikes on the other flank.

But it stared going wrong from the start when they stole the initiative and went first avoiding out heavy fore and destroying the warwalkers, and most importantly getting their raiders a lot closer to our lines. However we started to pull it back as we used our manoeuvrability to hit and destroy units were we wanted.

As the game progressed casualties mounted on both sides. In the games clear highlight my Farseer found himself in combat with a Talos, but somehow managed not only to survive, but to destroy it! By the end of the game all that was left were our two generals, a single harlequin, the second Talos and an immobilised Raider. With no troops to take objectives and both sides virtually wiped out it was a clear draw!

Painting Blood Angels IV

No actual painting this time (although I have finished the Army Painter on the last few Death Company and the missile launcher on the tactical squad which I somehow missed!), but some small details. I was looking at some old White Dwarfs and saw an article on Bobby Wong’s Blood Quest conversions (see here), and there was picture of one of the models pre painting with a simple plasticard blood drop instead of the skull on the chest and I thought this would be a great way to add some Blood Angel detail to my models, especially the assault squad and vanguard veterans that have no classic models in them. An hour later and some thin plasticard, careful knife work and super glue applied with a cocktail stick and I had some nice blood angel detail added to the minis.

Painting Blood Angles III

I started 'dipping' the models tonight. I used Army Painter strong tone applied with a brush and then lifted off so it was left in the recesses and didn't settle too much on any of the large flat areas of the armour. It has changed the colour slightly and made everything darker., but experience from my FoW Italians has told me that the flat coat can change the look of the colour again so I will need to just wait and see. Doing the few death company I managed seemed a bit pointless against the black, but the lighter areas still needed the shade so has to be done!

Above & Below: Some 'dipped' figures and some still to go to show the difference. Very shiny as still wet!

Above: Tactical Squad, Below: Captain and Honour Guard

Above & Below: Assault Squad

Below: Death Company

Painting Blood Angels II

I have been busily painting my Blood Angels successor chapter and now have a number of units ready for Army Painter and basing.

Above: Tactical Squad, Below: Death Company (Taken with flash so you can see them!)

Above: Assault Squad, Below: Honour Guard

Above & Below: Sanguinary Noviate

Above & Below: Company Blood Champion

Above & Below: Commander Remiel

Above: Commander Remiel, Below: Detail on Remiel's shields on his shins.

Below: Remiel and his honour guard

Club Night 25th February

On Friday, Duncan joined me for his first game of 40k in a very long time. He has lots of Cryx for Warmachine and so used them as proxies for Daemons (with some nifty labels so we all knew what was what and there where no surprises!).

Our first game was an annihilation mission which I feared would play into the Daemons hands. Luck began to play to my advantaged though as the Bloodletters and one of the Daemon princes tied to deep strike near my men and failed so I was able to place them far from my troops. However his Plague-bearers arrived near my Dark Reapers and immediately attacked the Howling Banshees who had deployed to defend them. Despite the power weapons the great toughness made this very difficult.

This however freed up the Masque to attack the Reapers themselves while the Scorpions dispatched the surviving Daemonettes after they had been whittled down by Guardian fire. They then joined the Shining Spears in destroying their second Bloodthirster (they had destroyed one in the game against the Warlords) before moving on to help out the Banshees.

The Bloodletters and the second greater daemon had now gathered and began to attack the Guardians. Despite the withering fore they made it in and inflicted casualties and wiped them out.

As they pushed into the defensive line the game came to an end with victory for the Eldar.We had time for a second game, this time based around capturing objectives. After a vicious and bloody fight involving numerous close combats both sides were decimated and neither could claim victory, although as I had the only unit of troops on the table I claimed I could actually win while tar Daemons could not.

Painting Blood Angels

Inspired by our big 40k game recounted here I have finally made a proper start on my Blood angles successor chapter, originally to be called Sons of Sanguinius, now possibly the Sons of Baal or the Choir of Baal. Still don't need to decide just yet. The plan with these is to paint them faily flat and quickly and use Army Painter to finish them off, so I broke out my Citadel spray gun and my compressor and my new spray booth and set to work.

Above: Some Marines base coated in GW Foundation paint Red,
Below:The honour guard in gold and Librarian in blue

Above: The first part of the force base coated,
Below:a close up of the force

Above: Honour gaurd after a thin brown wash to add some depth and guide painting,
Below: The complete force, with half having received a spray of blood red from above to rich up the colour and provide some deep shading where the foundation red shows through.

Above: Close up of the Blood Red sprayed force
Below: Death company finished except for bases and Army painter. Detail picked out and some hard edge highlighting applied to weapons and armour, but otherwise flat colour.

Above: More of the Death Company ,
Below: A Death company member (the flash has changed the colour slightly)

Above & Below: More close ups of the death company

Reading, Warfare 21st November

On the 21st I headed up to Warfare at the Rivermead centre in Reading. This would be a nice change of pace for me as it was the first show I have been to for a long time where I am not running a game so I would have time to look around and try out some games.

My first stop was the usual hellos and to catch up with the regulars and then to look at some games. I immediately ran into Mike and Les at the Peter Pig demo game of Washington's Wars. As Les was showing Mike how to play I joined in, and fortunate for Mike I did! The rules are usual Peter Pig style with tweaks to give that period feel and are good fun. Mike dallied on the left flank, while in the right I led the British forward, while the Indians swept around the American flank, carried the first objective and was descending on a second by the end of the game, while Mike was still short of even pushing back the Rebels he was facing.

Next up was a wander around and to look at some products and games. Again I found myself underwhelmed by the general material on sale. That is not to suggest it was lacking in quality, as the vast majority of traders now carry a wide range of high quality products. However they are all very similar and nothing really stands out from the crowd. I yearn to see something that is going to excite the gamer in me and really tempt me. AS it was the only purchaser I made were planned, some PanzerJager Is and L3/33s for our desert games.

As far as games go, it was a similar story. All very good and generally high quality, but nothing that really grabbed my attention and made me look a second time. The most memorable game was the skirmish wargamers fight around a stage coach. It had everything a game should, interesting terrain (rolling hills covered in teddy bear fur, looked stunning) and a strong focal point of the stage coach in the centre of the table. I know the 54mm scale helps, but these games are run once with items the members own, so really clubs that plan their games and build them together should be able to consistently achieve a similar standard.

For the afternoon I joined Robin in a participation game of his new Gruntz sci-fi rules being done in conjunction with GZG. I really enjoyed them, although 15mm they are small unit size. The game we played I controlled 3 vehicles, a bike squad, a couple of infantry squads and a large walker and that was plenty for a game. The rules obviously owe some inspiration to the Partizan Press Hordes and Warmachine systems, but that is not a bad thing as they are very solid and easy systems. I quickly had me head around the rules and the games was flowing very easily. This is what Sci-Fi should be and what recent editions of WH40K seem to have lost. Find out more at Robins blog at Gruntz.biz