Big city fight

A few weeks ago I played a large game of 40k at my local club, Murphy's Heroes. The game was a 2000 point, guard vs guard battle royale, on a cityfight table. We had 4 objectives; three statues (Yarrick, Dante and the Last Stand at Macragge) and a tomb along the middle of the board.

My opponent Erik used a cityfight army (two platoons, penaltroopers, a sprinkling of heavy weapon squads, russ, demolischer, hellhound and a griffon and a company commandsquad with lord commisar and primaris psyker) and promptly rolled the cityfighter warlord trait, giving all his troops a 4+ save in ruins (we had agreed on ruins giving a 5+) and move through cover....

My army consisted out of my Hollan infantry company(see the post below), bolstered by a squad of grenadier veterans, two squads of penaltroopers and an Aegis Defence Line.

I lined up my defence line a few inches away from two objectives (the tomb and Yarrick's monument). With both 2nd and 3rd platoons behind the line, and first platoon in a ruined manufactorum behind them. The ratlings infiltrated in a large chapel ruin on the right flank, with the psykers in support. the sentinels and penal legions outflanked, the veterans and roughriders stayed in reserve.

Eric concealed most of his units in the ruins, taking advantage of their warlord trait. He concentrated his units on my right flank because he realised that trying to take the two objectives just inches form my defence line would be suicide.

2nd platoon in position

3rd platoon in position

A clear view of the enemy....

Because of the rather long time it took to move and shoot with so many units on the table, we only managed to play 3 turns. The first turn was marked by some abysmal dice roling on both sides, resulting in most of my units having gone to ground, and Eric losing both his penal legionaries to a series of abysmal leadership tests and his demolisher to a lucky lascannon salvo (got to love orders...), giving me First Blood.

Aglimpse of the 3rd Hollan, bravely gone to ground behind their Aegis line

In the subsequent two turns my left flank spend their time slowly being blasted to bits behind their defence line, making good use of the gone to ground rule and the 'get back into the fight' order. Eric in the mean time made his way to the first objective on his side (Dante) and advanced upon the second objective located on my left flank. Luckily for me most of my reserves turned up on the 2nd turn and started to advance upon the last objective at full trot.

The cavalry advancing upon the battle of macgrage monument (left) with Dante's collumns behind.

Ready the Charge.....

The sentinels took 2 rounds to kill eric's hellhound that was wreaking havoc amongst my support units: the snipers, mortars and the psykers. My main force managed to stop Eric's armoured transport, forcing him to walk the last yards, and leave his command HQ guarding Dante's Collums. A withering hail of virtually all of Eric's available units destroyed my hopes of grabbing the objective, as both the penal legionaires and the rough riders disappeared in a hail of lasgun, missile, heavy bolter, and battlecannon fire.....In return an rather  accurate shot of my master of ordnance, aided by some good mortar fire (before their untimely demise at the hands of eric's hellhound), wiped out his command HQ, getting me the Kill the Warlord objective. My focus on trying to kill Eric's units had me forgetting all about our true objectives, and although my second unit of penal troops and the veterans made a valiant try to dash towards some objectives, it was not to be, and the battle ended with Eric in a 'sollid' 3-2 victory point advantage.....

The initial setup was rather unfavourable to Eric: I had two objectives only a few inches form my lines. One turn of movement would have brought my two platoons forward, with enough manpower to weather a few turns of fire. Especially after I claimed the First Blood vp, Eric had no other choice to advance despite the massive firepower he was facing. His advancing unit's took horrendous casualties (just like mine), and probably wouldn't have lasted another turn, if only.....

This game showed that 40k is quite a reasonable game system if you're fighting with two non-fearless, non 3+ save elite armies. When fighting guard vs guard all the aspects of the game matter: cover matters, leadership matters, movement and assault matters, vehicles matter; every unit can contribute. Barrage weapons actually cause pinning and orders make all the difference. Only problem is that a turn takes forever with close to 300 infantry and half a dozen vehicles on the board.

I thoroughly enjoyed the battle, and next time, we'll start earlier, get our full 5 turns and I'll show those pesky camouflage wearing, Yarrick impersonating cultists what a real unit of guardsman can do....

Steampunk Nerf Gun

Two weeks ago me and my friends attended the first event of Chronos, a new sci-fi larp. We had a blast playing a bunch of rough miners exploring a new world infested with weird locals wielding all kinds of bladed weaponry. Because we were noncombatants we only used some small self defence weapons: most of us only had a jolt (or two), and two or three knives between the four of us. Having only done one other sci-fi larp, and that being indoors, I decided to try and give my Jolt some visual modifications.

Jolt before mod

 
 I must admit I quite like how it turned out. You can see the result of a few hours filing and gluing below.

Jolt during mod

 And painted like 1890's steampunk-gun:

Jolt after mod

The Thin Red (Dead?) Line

Last friday I played a game of 40k against my friend Ron and his marauding band of Orks. For the first time in years I used my all infantry imperial guard army, consisting out of one platoon of Praetorians and two platoons of Mordians, supported by ratlings, battle psykers and roughriders. I spent some of my precious (cough) time painting up the last models and was looking forward to trying them out in Sixth edition. Below my proud army on parade.

4th Hollan 'Emperor's Own' Motorized Line Infantry Regiment, 3rd Company, 'the Ostriches'

Grenadiers, psykers and company scout troop sentinels

2nd platoon and the Lancers

Captain Smith, Ponsonby, Arthur C. Drake and his command squad, with Roger the Ostrich, the company mascot

The battle itself was an enervating affair. The table setup looks quite open, but the walls across the centre of the table blocked a fair bit of line of sight. Each of us had an objective to defend, and we played across the length of the table. This meant that I didn't have much chance to capture the enemy objective. The only unit capable of reaching the enemy objective were my outflanking sentinels. I decided to dedicate one full patoon on my right flank to try to assault the enemy objective. They were supported by the mortars, psykers and ratling snipers, whose task would be to try and take out as many of the orks between third platoon and the Ork objective (which was left to a few late arriving gretchin to defend) as they could.

the battle field, with my objective just out of sight behind the bunker

Flight of the Intruder

When the ork flyers came out, I noticed that they looked less 'orky' than I expected, and that with a little love and DIY, they could make a very reasonable imperial ground attack fighter craft. below some foto's of my current work-in-progress Imperial Guard Vendetta-without-transport-capacity.
 

For the build I used the pilots and their seats from my Valhallan Valkyrie. Since I painted it's widows an oily brown, I had noneed to put them in the Valkyrie. The lascannon heads originate from a number of cadian heavy weapon team sprues. Other than  cutting and filing some ork-bits of not much more needed to be done. All that remains is to make the cockpit windscreen fit properly.

Mustering the Infantry

This week I have a game of 40k planned against orks. Because I haven't got the new chaos codex yet, I decided to bring out my Imperial Guard foot army.Since I intended to finish this army this year as well it seemed like a good time to try and at least finish some more models for the match.

just out of storage...

Since it's only 1500 points, I can't use many extra units. I always use three platoons of three squads, costing me about 1000 points. Next in are my rough riders and ratling snipers. My psyker battle squad has been three guys short for the past few years. Last year (Sinterklaas) I got the last three as a gift, but never got around to paint them.

So now I have! All that needs to be done now is base about 120 guardsmen.....

pre-Devlan-Mud-Dip

Hopefully I can post a few pics of the battle and the army in full after the game friday. Below a small preview of the first platoon of the 4th Hollan ' Emperor's Own'  Line Infantry Regiment, 3rd company ' The Ostriches'.

1st Platoon + auxiliaries

The destruction of Chaos

This week I played a game of 40K against my friend Peter's guardsmen again, but decided to take my chaos space marines instead of my trusted Valhallans. Even though, to fill out the points, I took a deamon prince with the Lash power, I was massacred completely. After four turns not a single marine remained.

I brought 10 chaos marines, 8 berserkers in a rhino, 5 lesser deamons, 8 raptors, a dreadnought and a defiler, a Slaanesh sorcerer with Lash and a deamon prince with lash.

Peter's force consisted out of a company command squad, a platoon with 3 squads and a mortar squad, marbo, 5 stormtroopers, penal legionaires, a hellhound, a manticore and 2 chimera's for the command squads, and last but not least, a vendetta.

whenever I do not play with my guardsmen , I always feel outgunned when looking at my opponents armies. This time doubly so because I played with reasonably expensive marine units.

The mission gave each of us a single objective to defend. The battlefield consisted out of a eclectic mix of Peter's and my buildings, with a sprinkling of craters in the centre to give some cover to troops trying to cross no-mans land.

My plan was to leave my tactical marines on my home objective, confident they could hold of any pesky guardsmen trying to assault it. I decided on a pincer attack, with the berserkers, sorcerer and raptors forming one pincer and all my big models the other.

the Chaos warband before...

My assaulting units where whittled down by Peter's fire, and subsequently stalled by a few infantry squads, who were, apart from the manticore that was ripped open by my deamon prince, the only guard casualties. that combined with some abysmal charge distance rolls stopped my assault, quite literally, dead in it's tracks.

The might of Chaos and the imperial navy face off

In the meantime, on the other side of the battlefield, my trusty chaos marines were surprised by a combined assault of five plasmagun toting stormtroopers, the penal troopers and convict-marbo. After a single round of gunfire, a lone marine remained. Feeling desperate the marine charged convict-marbo, wounding but not killing the famous guardsman, who in the subsequent turn cut the marine down with his poisoned blade. 

Convict marbo taking care of business

This left Peter with complete control of the battlefield and all 9 possible victory points....

Lessons learned; need more bodies! this game has certainly inspired me to continue painting my cultists form the black-reach box. My next match with chaos marines will probably be with the new codex, so I need more marines to compensate for the loss of deamons.

Finishing Armies: setting a goal

As mentioned before I'm in the process of trying to finish my 40k armies. Both my Valhallans and my Hollanders (Mordian/Praetorians) are almost done. The Valhallan army is now at 1500 points, but I want to paint just a few more models so I can swap out Marbo's Valhallan Comrade for a normal special weapons team.  Below a pic of my painted Valhallans in pre-battle manouvres formation (eg on a kitchen cutting-board)

For my Hollanders (I should arrange them in the garden one time and shoot some pics) I need to paint a handfull of command models, three sanctioned psykers and finish converting and painting three Ogryns.

My Chaos marine just got a boost form the Dark Vengeance box, so as long as I haven't found anybody to swap my dark Angel marines with, that leaves me with 6 chosen, a hellbrute, 20 cultists and 8 possessed to paint.

I'm going to try to paint all the above before the end of the year. That may not seem very ambitious, but in between work, wife, kid, house, other hobbies and sleep, time to paint is scarce. I'll start keeping count once I figure out how to put a score counter on this Blog....

Dark Vengeance

Almost a month since my last post. Vacation and a dying PC does that to you apparently. This week I bought the new 40k basic set. Mostly because it contains the small rulebook so you don't have to lug the 2,5 kg tome around every time you want to play the game. But also because of the chaos space marine models. And boy are they something.

I'd seen the pictures floating around on Warseer and Faeit, and they look nice on the sprue, but only once they are assembled you get to really appreciate the amount of detail and posing of the models, which is absolutely fantastic. I think these are the best models ever put in a starter set by GW.  I've started to assemble them, and once i get around to painting them I'll post a couple of pics. for now you'll have to do with these (the pics don't do the mini's justice, I just wanted to show you I'm assembling them to give me a reason to continue working on them);

Cultists assembled

The hellbrute assembled

Chosen, to be used as champion(s).

Cadians vs Valhallans; The Scouring

Yesterday I played a game of 40k against my friend Peter. I played with my recently finished Valhallans and Peter took his nicely painted cadians along (my pictures don't do them right, sorry Peter). It turned out we had brought rather similar lists, but with variety to make things interesting. I fielded the list mentioned in my previous post. Peter fielded the following units (mostly determined by what he could fit in his transport bags; we both really should get a driver’s license and a car):

-Primaris Psyker (using Biomancy)

-2*5 stormtroopers, one unit with plasmaguns and one with meltaguns

-Marbo’s Penal Bunkmate

-PCS with flamers in a Chimera

-4 infantry squads with grenade launchers and assorted lascannon/missilelaunchers

-Heavy weapon squad with autocannons and a missile launcher

-Penal legionaires

-Melta veterans in a Chimera

-Vendetta

-Scout sentinel with autocannon

-Demolisher

-Manticore (Ouch!)

To save time I’d arranged the table beforehand, shifting terrain pieces until we were both satisfied with the setup. The table was diagonally split in half by a road, with some ruins along side of it. One short side had some fortifications and a bunker(building AV14) near it, the other a large dilapidated arbutus precinct (building, AV12). My photography skills turned out to be less than stellar, so unfortunately there’re but a few.

We rolled The Scouring, with a diagonal setup. As it turned out I had the 1 and 4 point objectives in my deployment zone, with peter both 3’s and the 2point objectives ending up in no-man’s land.

Peter reserved his vendetta, stormtroopers, penal legionaires and sentinel, I left the roughriders and valkyrie with melta veterans in reserve.

Peter's setup (please ignore the Vendetta in the corner)

My setup

The Valhallan 532nd

As mentioned previously I am busy  painting and finishing my Valhallan army. The last year I played a number of games at a thousand points. But now I'm painting it up to 1500. I selected the units partially because they were what I had lying around and partly to have a good mix of different units to show my friends, who were new players at the time, the different rules and mechanics of the game.

For those interested a short armylist of the Valhallan 532nd regiment:

-Company Command Squad; RPG (you should never refer to them as Missile Launcher, unless you're looking to taunt the dice-gods), Vox and Boltgun for the officer, loaded into a Chimera armoured transport.

-Primaris Psyker

-Marbo's Valhallan Comrade

-Platoon Command Squad; 3 Grenade Launchers and a Vox

-3 Infantry Squads; Flamer, Heavy Bolter, one squad with a Vox and another with a Commissar

-Mortar Squad

-Lascannon Squad

-Veterans; 3 meltaguns

-5 Rough Riders

-Valkyrie with Rocketpods

-Griffon

-Leman Russ Battle Tank Squadron; 2 tanks, both with hull Heavy Bolter and Heavy Bolter sponsons.

-Hydra Flakgun


Here are some pictures of the HQ and elite units of my Valhallan army. Hopefully I'll be able to show you more pictures of my army later this week.

The Company Command Squad

The Primaris Psyker and Commissar

Marbo's Valhallan Comrade

A Confession

A confession: I don't like miniature painting. On our attic lies at least a few thousand euro's worth of mainly GW produced plastic and metal miniatures, with a mild sprinkling of historicals. Enough to last most wargamers a lifetime.... Last week, while trying to paint my latest 40k purchases, I realised the only models I do sort of enjoy painting are my 40K imperial guardsmen. Luckely for me, I have been collecting these for the last 15 years, so I have a reasonable collection to pick from.

I decided to cast aside my current project (A Sons of Malice Chaos Space Marine Warband of which I may show you some pictures later), and first try to finish the two imperial guard armies I've had lying around for years, mostly painted but not quite finished.

So first to arrive on my painting station are my Valhallans, a force I started to paint recently to use against a few of my friends who finally started wargaming last year (amazing what a baby and bit of peer-presure can accomplish). After that I have my trusted Praetorian/Mordian infantry army lying arround, waiting to have the dust brushed off and almost finished for the past 5 years or so. And on the horizon blooms a veteran Catachan jungle fighters strike force (must finish other armies first, must finish....).

The start of something new

Well than then, here goes my first attempt at blogging. I'm not what one would call tech-savvy; I don't have a MSN or Twitter account, my family shares one computer (and my wife's E-Book) and my phone doesn't even have a camera on it. Still, there's a first for everything. My passion for tabletop gaming has had me lurking on the net, watching other people share their growing collections and gaming experiences.

Last weekend I decided that maybe it would be fun to try something similar. So without further ado I present to you my first Gaming and Painting Blog. Enjoy, and please tell me what you think of it.

Maarten