Saturday 16 March 2024

One PG-13 Greek?

I have been doing a lot of work on my Mycenaeans this last week and I'm really happy with how progress is ticking along. First off, the strike wing of the pre-Trojan War list: 

The chap in the blue sash is (GASP!) Museum's model of Priam of Troy but in a twist, I decided the model was great and he'd make an excellent General. Irony of ironies, he'll be subbing in for Nestor in the Trojan War Achaean version of this list. 

Overall, I like the group but I am umming and ahhing about whether to repaint the chariot outers as cowhide in the same way I'm going to do the figure of eight shields on the spearmen, mostly to break up the overwhelming wall of tan. I think I'll do some spearmen and see how I feel about the cowhide. If it works, the chariots might get redone.

Next off, some formed bowmen: 

Unlike my skirmishing archers, these are all wearing boar tusk helmets and carrying actual swords and they look great. Once again I did the dirty on the Greeks, I subbed in the figure for Paris from the Trojan heroes pack - I like having character models in my units and this unit of bow isn't getting the full blown standard and musician (because all the generals in this army are Included) so I thought I'd use it.

Finally, and two of the bases I like most, are the two Myrmidons:

You can see Achilles in the centre of the right-hand base with the standard and musician. The chap in the centre of the other base was a bit PG when I ran the contrast paint over the skin and discovered it just kept going. 😆 I like the fact these bases add a huge whack of colour while still sticking pretty close to the tan / bronze / black palette of the rest of the army.

Achilles was the first of the Greek heroes to make an appearance. Agamemnon, Odysseus, Ajax and Diomedes will be used on the various Spear generals (alongside Nestor in his chariot) to add some serious amount of character to the general bases.

Next Time

It's club day and I'm helping out Blogger Pel with a teaching game of Late War Flames of War so will be helping a new player navigate how Tigers kill Cromwells. I'm also playing another test game with the Italians so will give them a burl against a MW British Para outfit with Churchills (!) I'll keep working on the Mycenaeans as well - I'm really enjoying how the army is coming together. I also need to get into some camp work at some stage...

Saturday 9 March 2024

AVANTI SAVOIA!

 AKA once again I reveal secret pre-tournament tech. Club day this week was an outing for my Flames of War mid-war army for our club competition in April. The list is: 

Compagnia Carri

  •  M14/41 HQ
  • 5 M14/41
  • 5M14/41
  • 4 Semovente 75

Compagnia Motociclisti

  • Motociclisti HQ
  • Motociclisti platoon
  • 4 47mm Elefantini
  • 3 Breda HMG
  • 5 L6 Carri

Support

  • Captured 25pdrs
  • 2 Lancia da 90 autocannoni

They attacked Pelarel's British Rifle Company and Crusader Company in Toehold! Pelarel deployed a Rifle Platoon, his HQ, some 17/25pdr Pheasants, 81mm mortars and 25pdr artillery with some 6pdrs in ambush. Off table were his Crusader HQ, two platoons of Crusaders, a Rifle Platoon and some carriers.

Pel mostly focussed his deployment in the centre with the guns and rufles deployed around the central hill:

I decided to push both sides of the Toehold deployment because while I pondered a dedicated shove on the objective on my right (behind the village) the closeness of the two lead me to decide to make a cheeky shove on the left as well to try and split the defences. I pinged one of the Pheasants in the first turn and thought to myself "well, that should solve that problem" and mean my right hand push should be bothered. Oh boy was I ever wrong.

By the third turn, I had pushed hard forward, wore the 6pdr ambush and threw A LOT of MG dice in reply. I got three of the 6pdrs and again, thought "well, that should solve that problem." Still wrong. Pel carried on his just infinite ability to roll successful Last Stand test and his well located CO kept the 25pdrs unpinned and his remaining AT guns in the game!

His reserves all arrived on his right flank and had a pretty torrid time of it. The first platoon of Crusaders met a bad end at the hands of the Lancias from downtown and  the Rifle Platoon was reduced to below combat effective in a disastrous assault when the Elefantini and the Motociclisti scored MANY hits. At this point I tried to put as many tanks ready to assault the hill as I could and the L6s tried distracting the 25pdrs:

I missed a couple of pics from turns 4 and 5 where all of Pel's reserves were on. His Carrriers were in the village (aand the centre hill also had 5 Crusaders on it! In those two turns I lost all of my M14s, my L6s and the Lancias. In return, I got all the Crusaders. In turn 6, Pel tried to assault the infantry platoon with his mostly intact one and my defensive fire was stupid while his saves were appalling!

This is the point where the Pheasant finally gave up and ran away after I shot the Rifle Company CO off the table with my Motociclisti, Pel's infantry platoon routed and the 6pdr quit the field. The game was still very much afoot!

And yet, the following turn it was over:

Pelarel's last round of shooting with 2 81mm mortars and his carriers removed enough of the 47mm guns that the last one failed his 3+ Last Stand (AARRRGGHH) and fled and meant there wasn't much I could do to reasonably assault the objective so we called the game there. 

 Had the one gun stuck around and removed a carrier, I think I would have tried to carry the infantry assault but it would have been a tough ask to both take the objective with that infantry platoon and then hold it as Pel would have broken off any carriers who survived the assault and would have MGed my tiny platoon to death as it stood around in the open! 

It was a much closer game than either of us expected - when I'd removed most of his AT guns before his Crusaders arrived, Pel reckoned the game was mine. By turn 6 when all my armour was toast, we talked about calling it there but one round of good shooting by me hauled the game back to a contest. 

Thoughts? 

I mostly like the list but I'm umming and ahhing about the 9-point platoon of L6s. It's pricey and while I deliberately used them to distract Pel's 25pdrs so mine did the work I needed them to (noting that they absolutely did not do that....grumble grumble) I could have achieved the same with a 6-point platoon of AB41s. It's not *another* assaulting platoon but I'm also middling on whether I need that.  So a bit more thinking to do there. 

Test Wheels

I haven't had a huge amount of hobby time this week but have invested what I did have in prepping my chariots and, since the horses, bases, and actual chariots (if not crew) were ready, I thought I'd take one through from end to end to see how it came out and I'm pretty happy: 

 I realised I needed to put a very gentle wash over the metals to give them a bit of depth and given all my Heavy Spear for this list will be in Dendritic armour, like this charioteer, that's going to look much better. 

Next Time

More chariots and if hobby time allows, I'm going to get stuck into the Myrmidons and formed bowmen. Then it's just 12 bases of spear to go and this army will be done!

Saturday 2 March 2024

Playing catchup and preparing for new things!

There's been a lot of 40K excitement going around my gaming group at the mo and I've definitely enjoyed playing some 10e so have decided it's time I got in for a real game. For some reason, though, I decided that I should do it with something stupid:

 

I've repainted my original Freeblade Errant to match his colour palette with my Armigers so I have a coherent House Cadmus lance. I removed all the transfers, cleaned up the panels and replaced all the transfers. It was a fairly easy job to do but I'm pleased with how it came out. Here's the whole lance together as a 1000 point list (with Callidus Assistant Assassin):

I'd like to get this up to a full 2000 by adding a couple more big-boi knights, specifically the Cerastus knights but sweet Christmas, they are $400 a pop down here and that's all sorts of stupid.  I do have a list that is a Knight Lance getting some assistance from our favourite lazy Inquisitor too and so that might be the logical endpoint.

And since not buying a Cerastus Lancer made me sad, I did something fun. I started on my Mycenaeans:

First off the Light Foot Javelin. These are the key skirmishers for me as the army doesn't have any light cavalry (obviously!) so the full six allowed bases seemed like a good idea. I've put aside four of these to be chariot crew for my Light Chariot Javelin (and to make them distinct from my Light Chariot Impact.)

The second set are some Light Foot Bow and Light Foot Sling. The Light Foot Bow are mostly intended to be Support for Nestor's Pylian Spearmen in the Trojan War list but I have options in the core list for them too. The slingers were just a nice novelty.

I began with the skirmishers since they seemed like a good test of the paint scheme. Plenty of skin, boar tusk helmets on the javelinmen and linen outfits for all. They do feel a touch monochrome but I also expected that going in and it's come out pretty much as anticipated. In some respects, it's not much different to doing a Dark Ages army - I'm just working in a different palette of brown!

This is my first experience with Citadel Contrast Paint and I'm mostly pretty happy. The finish is a bit inconsistent depending on how vigorously I shook the pot, and it very occasionally produces some white spots of primer, but overall, I'm happy with the look and the speed to finished that I get with it. Also it was a chance to test out the basing - given the monochromishness of the whole thing, a bit of green seemed like a good idea.

It's not a bad effort after I took a week off last week and spent it playing boardgames with my excellent nerd friends. This is as close to tabletop as I got: 

I enjoy an occasional game of Magic cards - at least this year I got to summon the Reaver Titan, even if I didn't get to crew it or attack with it...maybe next year.

Next Time

I'm running out my Wallachians for a game or two at our next club day and we've got our club annual competition coming up in April and I'm quite keen to give my list for that a run just to make sure I'm not completely crazy.


Friday 1 March 2024

Pooch's February update- 2024 is well underway!

So that's it, February is done too, so what have I made progress on then?

I'll give you a hint, there is still a lot of bugs!

1. Paint something bought before 2024

I promised bugs, and this month I managed to complete the last of the Tyranids I bought in 2023- which feels like quite the milestone! 

First up is a Tyrannocyte, a tyranid drop-pod-egg-thing, which I had spent a long time hating, but now quite like!


And second up is yet more Termagants- I actually finished enough to get me to 40 termagants, but decided that rather than show you just more Termagants, that I would show you the three weapon options I have ended up with, using Potbelly's awesome 3d printing services.

Fleshborer, Strangleweb and Shardlauncher!

2. Paint something bought in 2024

So, since I finished up everything I bought in 2023, that means the expansion of the Tyranid swarm is entirely new spend- not a bad thing, because it's a sign that while I am buying more things, I am also keeping up the momentum in getting them finished. 

Having a hard rule of "no playing with it until it's painted" is helping me a lot too!

Zoanthropes. Because nothing says "evil space bug" quite like they do!

A Pyrovore. Because why not have a bug that sets things on fire?

Front view of the fire spider!

The Pyrovore kit also comes with Spore Mines, which are just fun

Tyrant Guard. Slabs of genetically enhanced bulk, with the sole purpose of defending my characters

They did not skip any gym days.

A lot of these units have become key parts of my army list thinking at present, all while I iterate towards the list I take to Valleycon in a couple of months!

And with that, we are up to 1825 points painted...

3. Play a game of 40k each month

Just the one game this month, which saw my Tyranids fighting against Chaos Demons.

The game was a really interesting one- I scored really hard in the first three turns, then promptly got slaughtered and lost pretty much my entire army. But because I had gotten enough points in the first few turns, I ended up with the win! 

Tervigon and Pyrovore vs Belakor. Belakor killed a LOT of models!

More 40k to come!

4. Play a game of not-40k each month

In my "not 40k" I have continued the spaceship theme from last month, this time trying out Battlefleet  Gothic, which is making a bit of a comeback with our local group.

I took command of the Tau component of the Demiurg/Tau fleet, and we successfully introduced the Greater Good to some Khornate Chaos Space Marines. 

The Greater Good was successfully spread, but not before many ships were lost, including in some truly horrific boarding actions (I mean, Tau vs Khorne Bezerkers in the close confines of a space ship was never going to go well for the Tau!)


It was nice to come back to BFG, it has been..... more than a decade (maybe even two!) since I last played it, so was fun to come back to it and see how the refined rules play. 

Maybe I can play Tyranids for that too...... 

.....Bugs.... in..... SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE.....

Pooch



Saturday 17 February 2024

Lazy week...

 Real life has been going on this last week after a bunch of painting and flagging progress last week and I haven't been in much of a mood, nor blessed with a lot of hobby time. 

First off. I painted another Tyranid for a bit more palette cleanse and he found his way into another potplant:

I've got a few more random 28mm figures floating around on the to-do pile which is slightly reducing the pile of shame on my desk to a point where I *might* be able to see the to-do pile, as it were. On that note, I also did a couple of super easy models to start on my Inquisition Kill Team: 

 

Yep, this is what happens when I have about four hours of hobby time in a week! I do the easy stuff! :)

Finally, we have our gaming club annual competition in a couple of months and I figured that I should probably make some minefields for the army. Handily I've been sitting on a collection of old CDs for making Flames of War minefields. I've got a whole extra set to do for my European-based armies, but these will do nicely for the Italians I'll be running. 

I've started on the second 15mm Spanish Tercio, but not made so much that I could justify claiming it for blog content. I did take all the Mycenaeans out of their box and check everything had arrived. It has and I'm even more excited about getting to work on them! 

Next Time

Good question. Something pointful and complete I'm sure. 

Saturday 10 February 2024

More Tyranids?

 More KoW

I had a full scale 2300 point game of KoW with Blogger Tank yesterday at the club and it has become abundantly clear to me that as my clubmates have adapted to fighting the glass cannon that is my Ghosties, I have not adapted quickly enough. 

 I'm not going to get into a full blow by blow but suffice to say Tank offered me some turn two charges (sensibly on his part as the alternative simply wasn't going to happen) and I flubbed almost all of it. My well placed double-charge in the centre failed to break the Royal Guards and the countercharge hit me much harder than I expected.


My left stuck in some tough combats (I could really have used my Horror buff solo there instead of in the centre where it was) and centre held for a couple of turns thanks to Tank double-1-ing a couple of key Nerve tests. All the while I was attacking Tank's left flank:


This was meant to be how I won this game but with a little good luck and a lot of good measurement, Tank had placed his units such that I didn't have quite as many good landing spots for my flyers as I wanted. It ended well for me:

But the total collapse of my centre and left (since I didn't find a way to end either of those combats in my favour!) lead us to call the game on Turn 5 with Tank still rocking his character Warwagon and giant armoured Dorf where I had effectively run out of models to steal the objective markers with! 

It was a great game and as Tank's Dwarf-skill has comfortably overtaken my own, I'm off back to the drawing board to adapt to the lessons I've learned. I've got a couple more tricks up my sleeve yet!

Spanish

I have done the Landsknecht Kiel (yeesh) and I kind of like how it's come out as a dense pike block. It weirdly feels more dense than the Tercios (which it definitely is) but this does have the advantage of not being able to mistake one for the other!

I'm not super happy with the whole army, to be honest, but I have also reached a point of realising that fixing it would require repainting huge swathes of stuff and so I've decided that rather than do that, I'll focus on getting it finished consistently (even if I'm not super happy) and stick more flags on it to make the whole thing pop.  With that in mind, more flags:

Yeah, I added a couple more to the knights and did the first Tercio: 


So just two Tercio's to go now. 

What about the Tyranids?

Many moons ago, while I was living overseas, my wife bought me a couple of models as a painting project since I wasn't gaming a lot. I've been carrying these around for...too many years and decided to paint them: 

Doing an original 2e Tyranid Gargoyle just as a palette cleanser was a lot of fun. I've done about half of another one who will also find a home inside a potplant somewhere in our house. 

Next Time

I'm getting to work on finishing the last two Tercios for my Renaissance Spanish as the Mycenaeans have arrived and that, well, that I'm really enthusiastic about.

Pooch's January update-2024 is underway!

And with that, 2024 is officially underway. Continuing on from 2023, blogs will be on or around the end of the month, so this one is on time... ish.

January was a very Tyranid heavy month (read only Tyranid!), probably the first of a few of the next few months!

1. Paint something bought before 2024

The growth of my hive fleet continues! I took the opportunity of a holiday break to crank through a good batch of Tyranids, enough to get an army ready to start playing games!

11 Neurogaunts

Close up of the neurogaunts

5 Hormagaunts

ANother 5 Hormagaunts, rounding it out to a full 10

Three Tyranid Warriors with ranged weapons

Five Ripper Swarms
\

Screamer-Killer


Close up of the armour plates on the back of the Screamer-Killer

Neuro-tyrant


Back of the Neurotyrant

2. Paint something bought in 2024

But wait, there are more bugs!

But wait there are more Termagants!

Perks of 3d printing is I could add some heavy weapons to the Termagants, this time with some Shardlaunchers

And..... some spore mines. Not exactly glamorous.....

So, that's 1175 points of Tyranids painted so far!

Tough to get them in a single photo!

3. Play a game of 40k each month

I got in a good number of 40k games this month, against a variety of opponents.

Psycophage chomped on some Death Guard.....

The Imperial Guard were a lovely snack too....

Snacked on some Imperial Fists as well

The Screamer-Killer ate a tank too!


4. Play a game of not-40k each month

I didn't manage it in the way I wanted to, but I did play some games of X-Wing with the kids, so I'll count it as this goal, but I didn't have the smarts to take a photo of the game in progress!

I'd best do better on this goal next month....

Pooch