The Death of Varantis Revised

Last weekend I replayed the First two scenario’s of my short campaign (see post below). Only this time i played the Necron invaders and my good friend Peter was gallant enough to offer his imperial guardsmen to stand in the path of the onslaught…ahem…

For the first mission, a 400point combat patrol, i took two squads of basic Necron warriors, a swarm of scarabs (6 bases) and a Storm Cryptek as the commander. Peter fielded a rather kind imperial guard list with 1 chimera, used by the platoon command squad, two infantry squads of one which contained  his commissar. Added to this he deployed a mortar squad and a special weapon squad with sniper rifles.

Necron deployment

Guard setup

We set up the battlefield similarly to last time, with Outpost 4-19 in the centre of a 4’by 4’ table. I got the first turn and advanced with my units, holding the scarabs back to avoid having them blasted form the field by the instant-killing multilaser and autocannons. Because dawn had not yet arrived the human infantry was partly cloaked in darkness, and only a few of my robots managed to score a kill. The gauss fire did manage to shave a hullpoint of the command chimera that was advancing slowly up the centre of the table.

The first and last advance of the Cryptk and his guards, maybe if I finish painting them the dice will be nicer to me...

 Next it was Peter’s turn to open fire. Using the faint traces of the emerging dawn one of the snipers took aim at a Necron carrying a large glowing staff, and accurately put a bolt right in one of it’s glowing eye sockets, causing it to fase out immediately (exit stage left for the Cryptek...He’ll be Back...). Subsequently lasgun and heavy weapon fire poured into the unit of Necron warriors that had been guarding the Cryptek. Mortar fire rained down from the skies, and after that torrent of fire only two remained standing. Only to see five of their fallen brethren rise again due to rather efficient reanimation protocols.

The alien menace reanimates!

 Duting the following turns I advanced with my units firing a withering hail of fire into his infantry units and wrecking his chimera with gauss fire. The Scarabs meanwhile crept up the left flank, ready to pounce on the Commissar and his loyal guardsmen. The Platoon commander emerged from the wreckage of the chimera with his flamer bearing retinue, who doused the offending Necrons in promethium. Unfortunately for the brave guardsmen (can you see where my heart lies?) only two of Necrons were destroyed by the fire. The following fase saw my scarabs plunge into combat with the commissar and the platoon command squad die in a hail of gauss fire.

the last brave moments of the platoon command

 Meanwhile the remaining units of Peter’s guard were trying to secure his right flank by firing everything they had at the oncoming Necrons. Three of which continued to advance and clash with the mortar squad. Some rather abysmal dice rolling on peter’s side saw the combat between the two units drawn out over several turns, with the snipers joining in the fray and even an remnant of a infantry squad joining in. Eventually the mob of guardsmen took down the last Necron, clearing their  table quarter just as I killed the commissar and his bodyguard. That had us both at 4 VP (a table quarter each, First Blood for Peter thanks to the deadly sniper fire and a Linebreaker VP for me).

Scarabs swarming the commisar

 The dice gave us one more turn of shooting, but that failed to cause any meaning full casualties. We were about to call it a draw when we realised that Peters snipers were just a few inches away form claiming another table half, and a full turn of movement saw his loyal sharpshooters turn it into a solid guard victory....

The Game winning snipers advancing cautiously into unknown territory

Minicampaign: the Death of Varantis

Last weekend my friend Ron and I started a 40k mini campaign I dubbed 'The Death of Varantis', about a necron incursion on a distant imperial world, garrisoned by a small Valhallan contingent. It's mainly meant as a try-out for a bigger campaign we want to play later this year.

The campaign was to last three battles, each influencing the next:

1. Combat Patrol
Two small forces clash over the remains of a suddenly silent imperial listening station in the northern regions of Varantis. the winner of this patrol gets to choose the scenario for the final battle, and pick any objectives in his own deployment zone instead of randomly determining them. The loser is gets to send a kill-team in the next mission. VP are awarded for table quarters (3VP each). All units that survive this mission will gain the prefered enemy special rule int he final battle.

Outpost 4-19

My small combat patrol arrived at the outpost just before dawn, finding it eerily quiet. in the forest green will 'O Wisps seemed to dance arround, only to emerge out of the darkness and reveal themselves to be hulking metal monsters, carying weapons that could skin a man in seconds and obliterate whole armoured vehicles...
Which is exactly what happened....

The Necrons advance under cover of darkness

I deployed a small platoon with some roughriders and a hydra flakgun as support. Ron had two small groups of warriors, a handfull of immortals and an annihilation barge, which lived up to it's name and annihilated my army, save for a lone vox-operator  and some brave lads under command of Commisar Voss.

mental note: don't bring a Skyfire gun to an infantry fight...

Ron's army was very firepower heavy and having the first turn managed to either supress most of my unit's or kill them outright, and a few failed leadership tests saw my chances of victory evaporate.

'Brave' vox operator Balyushin

So I selected my valorous kill-team , trying to include as many of the survivors from the previous mission, representing the few surviving stragglers and vehicle crew under command of Commissar Voss, trying to destroy a necron communications node. If I succeed I get to force three of Ron's Necron units into reserve in the final battle. All I needed to do was avoid getting bogged down in the permafrost swamps of Varantis....

Commissar Voss and his 'dirty dozen (ten actually)'

My luck had left me however and the first time my boys tried to take down a squad of necron brute's they got stuck combat for close to five rounds, meanwhile giving Ron a chance to acrue Klaxon counters and get his other brutes into position.

The not so killy kill-team at work, trying to take down some necron brutes

 
Allthough commissar Voss managed to get to the objective through sheer tanacity, he failed to make his gettaway, being gunned down by the alarmed guards and leaving the necron Cryptek in command of the Node.

The necron Cryptek on his node...

Now all that lasts is the final battle for Varantis, to be fought in the ruins of the capitol. Hopefully I'll be able to fight Ron to a standstill, even with the odds against me. I think I need to paint some Glory Boys, because there is little else that can get trhough those AV13 Barges of Doom....

The Fate of the Daemon-Prince

Last weekend we played a game of 40k at the club, and I(we?) had a blast. After our 2000 point grand mêlee of a few weeks ago we decided to pick slightly smaller forces, so we could actually finish the game. Erik fielded a small detachment of his guard army, and I took my revamped (thanks to the new codex) Sons of Malice chaos space marine warband. We played 750 point game, with The Relic as the mission (a important piece of equipment lies at the centre of the field, the side that claims it at the end of the battle wins. It can be moved, albeit rather slowly.

 

The Relic

 Erik fielded an infantry platoon, reinforced with a griffon heavy mortar and hellhound flametank, and some rowdy penal legionairs. I had a winged deamon prince, 3 chaos spawn, two small units of Raptors (jump-troops), a 5 man squad of Chaos Marines and two units of chaos cultists.

The guard patrol returns in full force

The table had an outpost of cargo containers in one corner, with some barricades and barbed wire surrounding it. diagonally across the table were a number of obviously eldar ruins, some of which infested with strange green crystals (random archeotech). I won the roll for table halves and picked the side with the outpost, mainly to deny it to Erik, and give my deamon prince some cover. Obviously the guard had send out a patrol in force, looking for the chaos marines preying on the eldar remains, only to return empty handed and finding their left behind comrades turned traitor.

The Chaos warband emerges from the compound

The First turn saw my forces attempt a heavy assault on the left flank, with the deamon prince, spawn and a unit of raptors advancing quickly. Seeing a large deamon prince land right before them  Erik's guard opened up on it with all available firepower. I thought my prince would be relatively save swooping high in the sky, unfortunately there is a change that a flying creature hit by fire while flying is brought crashing to the ground….The mighty prince of chaos was brought low by a humble imperial guard flashlight lasgun, and subsequently vaporised by close range firing of most guard units. So much for the Might of Chaos and 2 vp’s for the Imperial guard (Kill the warlord and First blood)… The Griffon meanwhile started pounding my cultists who were cautiously advancing towards the objective.

'Comrade, take that relic and let's split...'

The rather early demise of my deamonprince coupled with a few bad dice rolls on the charge saw my advance on the left flank falter. On the right flank however my raptors charged the Hellhound, and the Aspiring champion tore into it with his power maul, wrecking it. Subsequently they bounced over intervening guard infantry squad and assaulted the platoon command. Another round of appalling dice rolling saw my champion stranded in a challenge with the guard lieutenant and my spawn stuck in a never ending battle with Erik's lone armoured sentinel. In the mean time my troops did manage to reach the relic and started carrying it of, all the while being pounded by the Griffon. With both flank attacks grinding to a halt and casualties amongst my relic bearing cultists mounting fast I needed a miracle to turn the tide.

The Eternal Struggle

The next round Erik had his infantry squad come to the aid of the beleaguered lieutenant,and saw his penal guard emerge from the flank.  They took down the last remaining raptors on my left flank and started to advance towards the relic toting cultists, who quickly handed it over to the nearby chaos marines. Combat dice rolling was abysmal, but my Champion managed to defeat the lieutenant, and was granted a roll on the chaos boon table, and was promptly rewarded with deamon hood! The defeated prince (minus the wings) returned to the battlefield, and promptly slaughtered the entire squad, only to reap into the Griffon, flipping it over with a single blow. 

Apotheosis of the Prince

The emergence of the prince completely turned the tables (and than to think just moments before I was muttering that the table is nice, but doesn’t really influence any games.. O how fickle the dice gods are…)

My prince and continue to destroy Erik’s units, the command squad and sentinel dying in rapid succession. In the mean time the squad of penal legionnaires chased down the Relic, destroying the remaining cultists and forcing the last two marines to hide inside the compound. 

The dirty half-a-dozen

A Marine to far

 In the end it came down to a few tense dice rolls. The penal legionnaires managed to shoot down the chaos marine sergeant, but the last remaining marine refused to fall back. Before they could launch a charge the spawn crashed into the penal legionnaires, whom held the legionnaires long enough for the prince to arrive and slaughter the remaining legionnaires to the last man…

The final verdict of the Legionnaires...

That was a very exciting game, which I should have lost i fit wasn’t for the return of the Prince…I’m not sure about the prince; the grounded rule makes it a bit to vulnerable for my liking. The week before I tried a similar list but with a Dark Apostle carrying Skalathrax instead. It was vapourised by the necron army and the dark Apostle killed only a few skeleton robots. There just isn’t enough speed and staying power in my list, maybe I need bikes…..

Aspiring champion Prince of the Match

On Magic, and other random musings...

Back when I started fantasy-gaming the Magic the Gathering CCG became hugely popular. It quickly turned out that other people were able to invest a whole lot more money in the game than I was. And the problem with collectible card games is that if you are able to invest more money, you get significantly better cards and thus greatly increase the odds of you winning. So my small collection of cards was doomed to spend the next decade-and-a-half in an old wooden wine bottle box......

My Magic collection never came close to being this size, my miniatures however...

Until some during the last year some of my friends started to play again, largely because of an internetstore opening a venue in town where they organised weekly and monthly small scale tournaments, most significantly boosterdrafts. The concept of a boosterdraft tournament is that at the start ot the game every player gets a couple of boosters, and through clever system of passing the hands of newly acquired cards along the group they are divided amongst the players. This allows you to select which cards you want, but eliminates the possibility of large, preconstructed decks with loads of expensive cards.

For the last couple of months we have been playing  boosterdraft now and again, and it has been a blast! for less than the price of going to the movies, we have a evening worth's of fun, and get to take an newly gained deck of cards home. It was such good fun that it made me look up my old cards, where I discovered that magic had also suffered from the 'power creep' that seems to be associated with GW codexes and armybooks. Most of the (rather mundane) cards I own are nowhere near as good as the current common cards. The acquisition of new cards has had us playing regular games of magic as well, but this has quickly revealed that still those of us who (again) spend the most money on it get the best decks. And not all of us enjoy the multiplayer games that tend to mitigate the power-imbalance somewhat.

Then I stumbled upon a small amount of Shadowfist cards, hidden in the same wooden winebox, which had been a freebee at the spellen-spektakel game show somewhere in the nineties. I remembered it being fun as well as especially suited for multiple player games. It's theme is stolen form the 80's and 90's action flicks: oriental martial artists and triads, mixed with some good old fashioned Godfather-goons and hightech genetically puritan Germans form the future. To my surprise the game has recently been revived through a kickstarter project, so when the cards are on sale maybe I'll try to convince some of my friends to start it as well. But first I have to get them to play Saga, otherwise I'll have a hard time convincing anyone why I really needed those Anglo-Danes/Saxons....

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).