Middle Earth

Well you might not be, but I'm pretty excited about the upcoming Hobbit release. Prices are the only thing that is slowing me up slightly, but it's payday today and GW will probably get their man. I've bee doing some painting inspired by Hobbit related stuff...

Rangers of Middle Earth

Shadewraith and Grimnir's Thunder

Two more ships for Dreadfleet now.

First up the Shadewraith. Simple paint scheme: Celestra Grey base, Green Wash, Celestra grey layer and white extreme Highlight. Then there's a few splodges of very thin green/grey paint wash, to break it up and give a bit more variation. Done, and easily used on any other ghostly model you might see.

Bloody Reaver and Skabrus

I've finished the Bloody Reaver, which was a bit of a pain in the arse, due to being a cut and shut of three ships and a castle.

Gary Mawlock

I've had a week off work, so managed to finish my Mawlock in between the weather being good enough to lay Mrs. H's Patio. Basing was a bit of a brain ache, as it would have eaten anything organic, so I've gone for something quite minimal. I call him Gary. Gary Mawlock.

Sloan's Rangers (Gun Mages)

Here's a little more painting for you, this time of a Warmachine bent. I'm pretty happy with how these all turned out, but the pictures are actually nicer than the models in real life. Which is nice

Back in Black 13th

Love these models and the normal gun mages. Great concept well executed. Oddly small, but we'll get on to that in a minute...

Relic entertainment

I had a game of 6^th Edition 40K last night down at the Wakefield Warriors club. It was a marine on marine affair, but very much livened up by playing a mission that’s new to sixth. We were playing relic, with the short table edge deployment type, which was nice and new. Both my opponent and I were getting a bit more confident with the rule set now, and although we forgot to roll for night fighting in the first turn and got thoroughly confused about vehicle and transport moving, the rules galloped along at a fair old lick. I’m pretty sure that unless you play two armies with mixed saves in every single unit (Space Wolves I’m looking at you) then they play a little faster than the 5^th edition rule set. In the end I think that I lost the mission (5 points to 1) due to not combat squadding my tactical squads and feeding the little combat squads to his Deathstar unit. This thing was a destructive force of nature, featuring 5 lightning claw terminators, a chaplain and Pedro Kantor, from Land Raider Crusader. That’s +1A, Re-roll hits and Wounds at AP3 on the turn that they charged. The Lightning Claws guys delivered 16 Wounds on to my tactical squad. Ouch. What I should have done (and normally do) is split the squads, leave the heavy weapons at the back and feed the terminators half a squad at a time, to keep them away from the relic. 

The other mistake I made was that I deployed my Sternguard in drop pod badly, to take out one of my opponent’s scoring units. Not sure what I should have done, but I definitely didn’t do it right. Perhaps I should have dropped them further to one flank, so that they dragged more of my opponent’s units out of position.

Relic was fun and the secondary objectives work nicely, and the deployment style was fine too. It gives a narrow front and deep deployment zone, although you can’t get too far away from the enemy, especially now that all vehicles can go 18” in a turn if they want to. That gap is very easily closed in just two turns for assault armies.

Warlock of Firetop Mountain

Not that one

I had a cunning plan the other day. Holdenstein Jr. is terrible at reading, and really terrible at reading aloud to me. It's not that he's actually bad at reading, he's quite good, he just hates it. Then while trundling around blogs followed by blogs that I follow I came across an interesting genre. The Fighting Fantasy playthrough blog. Honestly I don't know who came up with the idea first, but it is both simultaneously genius and the saddest thing I have ever seen.

That gave me an idea: I have a box full of game books upstairs and a son who won't read to me, so I embarked on playing Warlock of Firetop Mountain with Holdenstein Jr. The rules were simple. No cheating (except in the annoying Maze of Zagor- and only then to ignore irritating repositions), re-roll on skill of 7 or 8, Holdenstein Jr. gets to roll the dice for us in combat, and every couple of entries we swap reading duties. I'll also make the map. Thus the project is both entertaining and informative. I make him add up his attack strength too- that's maths covered as well as English.

And a bit more painting

The release of 6th Ed. 40k has been positive in  that it's persuaded me to paint. Here are some pics!

Brother-Sergeant Chronus

 So first up we have Chronus, who was a bit fiddly, but ultimately quite a nice job, after removing all his Ultramarines insignia.

Aegis Defence Line

 Next, another 40K painting job, the Aegis defence lines, which can be used as a fortification in the new edition. Don't know if I will, but of course they can go in normal terrain.

Gobber Bodger

And finally a Gobber Bodger. I love this model dearly. Would love to know who sculpted him, but PP don't seem to want you to know who sculpts their models. Nice though. It was painted using the new GW ork triad of paints, which are very nice indeed.

Next up, Kara Slone from Warmachine and some Vanguard Vets for 40K

Finally some painting!

Those twin perils that stalk most wargamers over thirty have well and truly struck over the last couple of months. I speak of course of work and family. Still I managed to do a couple of things. Firstly get a little (with the emphasis on little) painting done and secondly I managed to meet up with my old school chums Dave and Duncan for a little bit of 40K at Dave's parents house (Yes we are all nearly 40 and none of us live any where near Dave's parents). I'm sorry to say that I had a few bad matchups, with my Nids taking on Space Wolves and Dark Eldar (which was utterly soul destroying) and my cleansing Flames marines (that's vanilla to you) taking on some Thousand Son's. Twinned with some poor tactics I got 3 losses. Still. The games the thing and everyone had a very good time.

So on with the pics.

 A Gimli painted by Holdenstein Jr

 A Trygon that's nearly done - any thoughts on basing well received

And a finished Heldenhammer. I might just love this model more than my children...

WIP 'em out

In the absence of proper updates, here's a bit of what they call hobby progress. Although if it's not finished it's not progressed that well.
Starting off with a few 40K models, here's Sargent Chronos, with all his Ultramarine bit removed. The bit in the middle of his chest Aquilla is a Maltese Cross from the Venerable Dreadnought loincloth. He's probably the closest to being fininshed.

Also We have the Heldenhammer

And Bloody Reaver from Dreadfleet. Nice models, but hard work and fiddly!

Hall of Shame 2012

Here's a little game that I've been playing for a couple of years on the excellent (if now a little quiet) Golden Throne forum. Basically you take a census of all the miniatures that you own and haven't yet finished painting, discarding any that definately won't get played with (basically those old ones that you should really put on Ebay). Then you see how many of your backlog you can get painted. If you want you can link it in with a pledge to paint or any of those other games that go around. It may seem daunting at first, but will make you either start paining or start selling! I'll come back and edit this post once I have finished each model, turning the item red in colour.

Part Painted

Vindicator
Sergeant Chronus x2
Bastion
Techmarine
Space Marine Captain
Terminator Librarian
Space Hulk Genestealer
Carnifex
Zoanthrope x2
10 Storm Troopers
Chimera
Imperial Pilot
Bastion
Walls
9 Moria Goblins
Cave Troll
Kreoss
Redeemer
Revenger
Kara Slone
Black 13^th

In need of refurbishment

Land Raider

Unpainted

Space Marine Casualties x3
Vanguard Vets
Venerable Dreadnought
Capt. Sicarius
4 Servitors
Pedro Cantor
Cypher
20x Kasrkin
Inquistor + retinue
Trygon
Tyrgon/Mawlock
16x Genestealers
Lictors x 2
Tyranid Warriors x3
Macragge Scenery
Warg riders x6
Badger Armoured Car
15 Moria Goblins
4 Hobbits @Weathertop
Fellowship of the Ring
Legolas
Glorfindel
Haldir
Lurtz
Rangers x12
Rangers x12
Cygnar Field Mechanic
Dreadfleet Ships x4
Dreadfleet Shids x6
Dystopian Wars Prussian Box set

Back (in denim)

First post in a little while. I would like to say how I've been off doing very interesting things like going to the Arctic with Helen Skelligton off Blue Peter or been abducted by aliens but the truth is that I've been busy with work and Christmas and so haven't been gaming much and certainly haven't had any time to write. This isn't the only game that we played over this period. We payed at least a couple of games of Space Hulk, a bit of summoner Wars, Monopoly Deal (which is an excellent game for a fiver) and various other kids games. This is the first that I've had some time to blog about though.

The other day Holdenstein Jr asked if we could play a game of Warmachine, so I ventured out to the shed to get a board and some scenery and we did. Stryker vs Kreoss again, this time with Junior bagsying Stryker, so I took the partially painted Kreoss and got first turn. We set up across from each other and advanced.

Junior's Cygnar

My Menoth

In my second turn I misjudged some distances which left me in no-man's land with my melee jacks, but able to get first blood by setting Junior's Charger on fire

First Blood

Junior then returned the complement by charging his Ironclad and Lancer in and shooting the Charger at the Revenger. He also disrupted the with Stryker's gun. The Ironclad managed to get a bit of damage done before getting pushed away from the Revenger by its repulsor shield.

Stryker about to pounce

That was a bit of a pain, as it meant no boosting for my best 'jack even though it was in range. I just had to settle for meandering in and trying to hit the Lancer with the Crusader and the flail on the Repenter. Unsurprisingly not much damage was done. Kreoss advanced and set Stryker on fire with Immolation which was nice, although not for Stryker. I also forgot to use my feat, which at the time was a terrible thing.

Junior went for the kill this round. He put a point of focus on the Charger to move round and boost against Kreoss (with some success) put the Ironclad back into combat with the Revenger, and finally charged Kreoss with Stryker, popping Stryker's feat just in case. Junior should have done me then, but fluffed his last two hit rolls and left Kreoss on two wounds. This is where forgetting to use my feat on the previous turn was lucky. I knocked Stryker over and gave him the sort of pummelling that even +5 Arm can't help.

Ooops

So a win for me, but what did we learn? Well Junior prefers Warmachine to Space Hulk, because you can do almost anything, and I enjoyed myself and I think have worked out why I don't like Warmachine. Wait I hear you say, you just said you enjoyed yourself, what's all this about not enjoying Warmachine. That's correct. I enjoyed this game and I have enjoyed all the other games that I have played at this size. What I have never enjoyed is 25 to 35 point games. I think that it's a combination of ever increasing numbers of special rules, totally optimised lists and the Caster kill end to the game that do it. It's a lot of effort for a game that might last a turn and a half or five, and a small mistake or not understanding all of your opponents abilities can easily lead to the end of the game. I would rather have a game that lasts for a relatively predictable time, which Warmachine is at this level.

I hope to be updating the blog fairly regularly now, so check back soon!