Badger, badger, badger......ok this is not a guilt post - just my turn :)

So this is my first attempt at doing a goals post. This is a bit scary as the rest of the Regiment will bare witness I am the worst magpie, possibly in the universe. So setting goals that will inevitably be distracted from by new shinies is.....well lets say ambitious. So lets do a summary. 2018 saw me take up 40k after nearly 30 years of resistance and within a year I have a Tyranid army AND a Space Wolves army. I also picked up Kill Team - of course I can field 'Nids and Spez Wolves (and Tau BTW because I had bought and painted them for Armaggedon) but no, I magpies into Necrons...and so you may see the issue.

Team Yankee is next. Thanks to Richard and Pooch my enthusiasm for 6mm Team Yankee wained and with Stripes bringing the USM into the game I launched into the world of 15mm Team Yankee. Remember December was great fun and I am looking forward to Nationals next year - where the Marines may get an upgrade.

Blood Red Skies was the next new thing for 2018....cool dogfights in WWII - really enjoy the game but I am not sure the uptake in the group will allow too many more games. However my plan is to take this one to work - I reckon the kids will love it. Right - what could possibly be next - BATMAN! Knights Models have a fantastic range of figures and I went all in on my favourite Batman villain The Penguin, I have loved the painting project on this one.

So as 2018 continued what could possibly be next - well I bought into Necromunda. I made up the Goliath gang from the core box, picked up a couple of extra Orlocks for a gang I had from the previous version and of course I needed to create a table of terrain to play on. All for a game I haven't played anyone at yet :(.

Next is DRACAM - or Dracula's America. This one scratches the Old West and the Fantasy itch. A terrific game and one I am looking forward to playing more of. We had a campaign day recently and I am keen to see my Skinwalkers progress even more.

In the previous photo you would see another side project - Walking Dead - All out War. I have also picked up a few bits and pieces on the way as painting or modelling projects - here are some Zulu that I am sure one day I will use for something....

These are just the new games and figures I collected this year. FoW V4 is still in the mix as is a newly discovered enjoyment of Warmachine thanks to Scott and McZermof. So as for 2019, well the Xmas period saw a new game enter the Tank Engine realm - Cruel Seas. MTBs screaming around the high seas shooting eachother up - who could resist. So this is my main focus for the early months of 2019. A few other members of the Regiment have been dragged along kicking and creaming (or should that be screaming????). My big goal for the year is to consolidate. Finish my TY US Army list for Nationals and possibly Panzerschrek. Finish the painting pile (yeah right) and start playing Necromunda!! And here's the biggy - NO NEW GAMES IN 2019, unless GW re-release BFG or we find a new........

What's on the calendar for 2019?

Following hot on the heels of Pooch, here's my plans for 2019 as I stick to 2018s posting schedule for the last time. I'll clearly have to badger the rest of the crew a bit more as well.

Games to play:
Some more 40K: I really like 8th and I want to play it more. I've found a level of silly that I'm comfortable with and the new missions in 2018 CA look fricking cool. And it would be good to get some Kill Team out again too - probably playing a campaign day with the nerds should get on the cards.

Oh, and I assembled this yesterday as part of my holiday WIPs:

Clank clank, I'm a tank! 

TY and FoW: I'm enjoying both and interested to look at some LW lists for FoW. I'd love to break out my beloved (and terrible) 653 Schwerepanzerjager Abteilung but that's going to be a wee wait for a new list. So it will be interesting to see what turns up in the new books. I found all my old beach landing fortifications recently, so those lists might be worth digging out too.

DracAm: Still loving this. It's a great game, lots of fun and is all sorts of silly. Plus it doesn't require painting anything!

Batman: I have all the bits I need now to play and enjoy Batman. And I think I understand how to use Batman effectively in a crew. I think. Whether I can do it or not is a different question. Green Arrow is still something of a mystery.

Games to try:
Kings of War. I have a Teutonic Order army for Impetus that is just plain awful but it would drop into the 'Brotherhood' list for KoW as faux-Bretonnians. Pelarel has recently acquired a fair whack of Mantic Undead so we could have a jolly good match there I think.

Kings of War: Vanguard. As an alternative use for the three Frostgrave warbands I have. It looks like a really interesting game and warrants at least a round or two. Speaking of which, I'd like to go back and play some Frostgrave too. Pel has suggested a couple of really simple amendments that would dial back the amount of insta-death that happens with the odd bad roll.

Cruel Seas. I got a bit ranty when Warlord didn't put Italians into Blood Red Skies but they have redeemed themselves with the Italian fleet in Cruel Seas. Oh, so sexy. And the game doesn't look bad either.

Adeptus Titanicus. Having dug out some old titans and knights, it seems like it'll be worth a go. Should be good for a laugh if nothing else.

Projects

40K:

• Rogue Trader Kill Team
• Inquisitors
• Imperial Guard company for my Ordo Malleus and Ordo Hereticus Inquisition armies
• Terrain

Team Yankee:

• More Marines
• M60s and Humvees
• Some CH-46s if I can find some for the second Marine platoon to ride in. If anyone knows where I can get some 1:100 scale CH-46s, let me know! 

Other:

• Black Canary and Objectives for Batman
• A bit of terrain for my 15mm FoW / TY board
• A Magister Link for Infinity
• Repainting a bunch of my Malifaux Arcanists for DracAm 
• Some random Elves for expanding my Elven warband for Frostgrave / KoW Vanguard

Blogging
I'm going to try my level best to keep this up. I think I've managed around two dozen posts over the last six months, so 52 shouldn't be too hard. He says, ambitiously.

Next time
Some painted models! Something new and interesting. Promise.

Setting some goals for 2019

Apparently McZ's near-constant reminders of his blogging successes has finally worn me down, and it's time to get myself back into this blogging thing. Perhaps it's not enough sleep after a family holiday. Who knows, but here we are.

Since it's me, these things start with:

1. A list of things I want to achieve next year, and
2. setting myself a timeline for doing updates

The plan

Now, onto the plan. Since there are 12 months, it seems appropriate to have 12 goals. So in no particular order:

1. Paint a new 40k Army
2. Create a table of terrain to support a game
3. Make a modular terrain piece
4. Paint a naval fleet
5. Finish something for an army I haven't used in a year and take it to a tournament
6. Buy a starter box and paint all of it
7. Paint every miniature for a game I own
8. Paint a Space Marine each month
9. Paint a stand alone force for a game
10. Update and improve a table of terrain
11. Paint something Napoleonic
12. Finish what I should have finished last year

Without a doubt I will paint more than this, especially since commissions don't count!

I have got a plan for each of them, which will become clear as the year progresses. But to give you a clue on #8 I bought a full blind box of Space Marine Heroes, netting me one of each. 

I've got a plan for what Chapter they will be too. Given I am going for one of the more complex chapter colour schemes, I am going to paint one a month to ensure I do a proper job of painting them!

Updates

I'm not game enough to commit to a weekly update like McZ, instead I'm going to go for a much more manageable monthly update schedule.

So that's the plan, look out for the first update in January to see how I am getting on!

Pooch

Some reflections

And a couple of little things off the workbench:

These two are Lesser Entities for Dracula's America. On the left, the generic Lesser Entity and on the right, a Hellhound, the custom summon for the Crossroads Cult. The only difference is that the Hellhound is A LOT faster than anything else, otherwise they're both D6 Grit summons. The generic entity is an old Malifaux Neverborn and I think the hound is the old Mordheim War Dog. These additions were gratefully received from the collection of our own Tank.

Most importantly, these two will mean that when I'm playing DracAm and summoning greeblies, I am summoning easily identifiable greeblies! I still have a D8 grit generic Medium Entity to paint.

Some reflections on getting back into this
I've enjoyed getting back into blogging about random gamer nonsense. I enjoy reading other people's gamer nonsense so it's as much about being part of that community as anything else. It's been a good motivator, especially when it comes to Sunday morning and I realise that I've got nothing interesting to blog about and I need to paint something to have something to post! My collection of half finished models has been greatly reduced as a result of this. I am now, vexingly, staring at a pile of mostly unprimed, half assembled stuff.

However, I have realised that it won't make me do things I don't want to do. Eisenhorn is still unfinished (coming as no surprise to any of you.) And it doesn't help me get large projects done unless I can break it into blog sized pieces. Events and competitions are still going to be the main motivator in that regard.

Next time
Some WIP shots of my holiday programme (with hopefully a couple of finished products in there, although lets see how that goes eh?) After that, a bit of a think about what 2019 holds for me gaming and painting wise. Maybe, just maybe, that'll encourage some of the other nerds to get back to writing about their own nonsense.

I didn't finish a thing so workbench post...

Just a short update this week - with Christmas around the corner and the necessary shenanigans that come with it, I've not been so inclined to pick up a brush. So instead I've been prepping a few of the good finds I've picked up off TradeMe and things I've been wanting to do in the last few weeks.

I dug this old Necromunda Bounty Hunter out of my bits box and decided that he'll make an excellent addition to an Inquisitorial retinue. It has some of the charm of GW models of that era - the legs akimbo, carrying more weapons than you can use an staring straight ahead. But I'm oddly fond of it and a dude in a duster is always a good look.

Because named Inquisitors seem to be something that I find quite desirable to have in the collection, I picked up Coteaz. It wasn't a complete model, but the seller on TradeMe graciously included two different thunder hammers to replace the one the model would normally come with. The next 40K event I play at (some time next year) will be the stupid Malleus army with some Grey Knights, Ordo Malleus Inquistors (Greyfax AND Coteaz) and some Guardsmen. Should be fun.

These came from the Kill Team Astra Militarum box (hence the weapon loadout) - this is still something I intend to put on the table at some point when I've painted enough Guardsmen for it - but they also will act as a retinue for Inquisitor Greyfax. They were a blast to assemble and I'm looking forward to putting them on the table.

Finally, I've managed to add a third Assassin to my roster for 40K which means that I *can* put the stupid assassin detachment on the board if I want to. And I might. But this alt-pose original Vindicare (that came still in it's 15+ year old blister!) is a model I've been looking for to hang out with the Callidus and Eversor I already have. Now just a Culexus to go...

And then, the pinnacle of all my stupid - Fyodor Karamazov. Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor and owner of the most impressive armchair in the 41st millennium. This big boy turned up on TradeMe and I could hardly say no. It's so mad as to be necessary in my stupid collection of stupid. It wasn't the easiest thing to assemble without instructions but much referring to the internet later and boom!

'Where does all this silliness lead?' I hear you ask. Well, I must answer, it leads to the most lunatic thing I can do. The Spanish Inquisition. All my Inquisitors on the table at once. It'll be stupid.

Next time
We'll see how the last work week of the year goes shall we? I've started running the DnD 5e campaign "Princes of the Apocalypse" for the nerds and I'd like to put together some thoughts on 5e and Princes too so be warned, there'll be a nerd essay in your futures.

Meep meep, I'm a LAV...

It was Remember December yesterday, an event held at our club in memory of fellow gamer and great friend lost to us far too young.

Pelarel took up the reins this year and ran a one-day Firestorm Team Yankee event. We were 7 a-side, with the NATO forces being made up of two Marines, two West Germans, two Brits and a Dutch and the WARPAC rolling out with one Polish, one Afghansty and five Russians.

I'm not going to go into blow by blows but just a summary of each game and a couple of piccies of my ugly-ass MASSTER camo-ed LAVs hooning about the place.

Game One: Free for All against Richard (from his musings)

Attacking across the front!

Wub wub wub

Is one platoon of LAVs enough to put down an Afghansty platoon (hint: no.)

So more LAVs go after the other one! 

Just because Richard's Hinds are amazing and you should look at them  

I don't know why, but whenever I play Richard it's a game where one or other of us seems to play only at the low end of the bell curve. This time it was Richard. One of his two Afghansty platoons seemed to spend every single turn of the game pinned and I'm not sure he made an armour save all game.

The game turned early when two T64s went down to my Hammerheads and the third one fled. At that point, I could largely roll about the board unhindered as Richard's justifiable wariness of my HMMWV Stingers kept the Hinds at bay for a few turns. When they finally did arrive, Richard saved well and it was only my otherwise unoccupied Hammerheads shooting three of them down that solved the Hind problem. In the end, this meant I could soften up one of the Afghansty platoons with LAVs, AAVP7s, Marines and a Spooky and eventually roll in for the kill. But to be fair, I had to kill the Afghansty to a man to take the Objective with a very badly mauled Marine platoon that was only just left in good spirits. A great game and a good way to start the day.

Game Two: Hasty Attack against Bob

How it started...

...and how it ended

I always enjoy playing against Bob and his T64s, especially the company commander (see above, in the middle of the kraal of LAVs), were amazing. Beautifully painted and modelled. This game was a touch frustrating, partly because of TYs outdated rules regarding morale for single tank platoons and partly because Bob's dice were on fire!

9 T64s is a hard ask for an army like mine when I have a limited supply of primarily ambush AT weapons. I got lucky and got two T64s with ITOWs from ambush and got 5 T64s under the template with cluster bombs in my second turn. I thought, yep, this should be fine. Then Bob made saves on 6s. And not for the first time. After I lost a bunch of LAVs and Bob lost a few T64s in close combat with Marines, I managed to ram four platoons onto the Objective on Bob's side of the board knowing he basically had to drive all his remaining tanks over to contest or I won.

And then for a bunch of turns he shot at my Hammerheads and ITOW HMMWVs and I shot at his T64s. I got one, and eventually he got the rest of my AT weapons - that man was rolling saves like a BOSS. It was a hilarious game and a good contest to pit a light armoured company against the best of the WARPAC.

Game Three: Bridgehead (it's not Cauldron) against Reg

Marines attack!

T64s are too late! 

This game was a rough one for Reg. His small and elite army was surrounded from the get go by my horde of LAVs. I had LAVs behind his front on my right in turn one and Marines behind his front on my left in turn two. Having removed the threats to my AC-130, which didn't arrive until it didn't matter, and removing most of the dangerous AT assets (although Reg's saves on his Hinds were epic!) fairly swiftly, it was just a matter of time before I took one or both objectives. Reg's reserves (T64s) singularly failed to arrive until it was too late by which point I had taken one objective with most of a Marine platoon and had two platoons of LAVs sitting on the other one. Because of scattered reserves, he came on in exactly the wrong place to be able to deal with both.

In the end, NATO scored an operational victory in the campaign, having made a run on Berlin (thanks in no small part to yours truly throwing back the Afghansty in round one) and successfully prevented the WARPAC from breaking out of Germany. Pel ran a great campaign and his dice for NATO counter attacks definitely helped us out more than a little! We're planning on trying a followup from STRIPES next year to carry on the silliness.

On a completely not related to the event note, I also tried out some Amera Plastic Mouldings hills under my base cloth yesterday. Very nice. They sit well under a fleece base cloth and hold onto the board well enough. I got a couple of the little ones and I'm sorely tempted to get some of the bigger ones. Most impressed.

And a painting update:
I've started on Eisenhorn. But I haven't finished him yet. I did get these two gems off the painting desk though:

MOAR ASSASSINS!

I picked them up a while back to add as acolytes to my Inquisitorial holdings and while Shadow War: Armageddon was still a thing. With the beta Sisters of Battle codex out in this year's Chapter Approved, and rumours of a Kill Team: Inquisition out there in the world, my hopes for an Imperial Agents codex that I can actually use are considerably higher than they were so getting these done seemed like a good idea.

Next time? 
A surprise. I bought something kind of awesome off TradeMe last week and if it arrives in quick time, it'll be here next week. If not, well, I'll post something else. Regardless, it will be a surprise...
...
...
...
Okay, I admit it, I'm tired of committing to things and then not feeling like actually doing them. So this time I'll just commit to having something painted for a blog post next week. :)

OO-RAH-ER?

I have no idea of what the noun is for something more oo-rah-y than a regular oo-rah.

But I think it's hard to argue that the AAPV7 is worth an oo-rah! They are so big, ugly and daft that they're amazing. And now I can 40-Mike-Mike some things. As transport units in Flames of War / TY go, they're certainly excellent and I will be using them to transport a Marine platoon through a river at some point during Remember December.

With all that said, I hate the kit. I’ve done a lot of building of Battlefront resin & pewter vehicles over the years and I've come to accept that there's a certain amount of work that needs to be done to get tracks to fit properly. Both of these casts were miscast enough that the back panels aren't square to the rest of the vehicle and no amount of finangling, without taking a Dremel (which I don't own) to the front of the track housing, would have made them fit properly.

So while I am pretty sure I'm going to be getting another Marine Rifle platoon to make this up to a legal army, I'm going to be getting some helicopters for them to travel in. CH-46 perhaps?

I've also finished painting Ordo Hereticus stalwart Katerina Greyfax:

40,000 years in the future, crossbow!

This is a great model and she's been sitting on the to-do bench for AGES. I've also got a small platoon of Scions who will be her escort (and maybe, one day, part of an Imperial Guard Kill Team) which will probably hit the painting table soon.

Next time: 

I'll definitely be blogging how the LAV company goes at Remember December and I'm umming and ahhing about what moves to the painting table next. I've got a tiny bit of sculpting to do to finish my Cherubael so it might just be Eisenhorn...

OO-RAH!

Entirely gratuitous photo of an AC130 taken because of the background

The LAV company rolled out for it's second game and first real outing as a painted force. Playing against Scotty's West Germans, my grand plan was take out his AA, use the AC130 to wreck all his infantry and hope that his Leopard 2s didn't get me before then. We were playing an Encounter, meaning my 12 platoon army had a distinct advantage over Scotty. Of course, TY hasn't caught up with points-based reserves yet so all his good stuff was on table.

Scotty's AA goes wide

Scotty went first and shoved his Leos (with their 32" terrain dash! WTF!) up my left, as far away from my ITOWs as possible. His Gepards rolled in behind to keep the scary AC130 away. 

First attempt to remove Gepards.

Hoon hoon! I'm a goon! 

I pushed up across the board, hoping that in a target rich environment, I could sneak past the Leos and give the Gepards some 25mm Bushmastering. This is where I learned two very important lessons. Leopard 2s are ROF2 on the move (!) and Gepards are AT11. Over the next couple of turns I lost 7 LAVs to the Gepards. Ow. 

Scotty got a bit aggressive with his Leopards so I threw the Marines in. A couple of lucky hits with a SMAW and a Dragon and the Leo bailed out. His buddy, thinking better of fighting all those Marines, did a bunk. He passed his morale test though and this is where Scotty and I learned that TYs morale rules are the old V3 FoW ones and they basically make one tank platoons really kind of awesome.

I got a bit aggressive with my LAVs too...

Right before I got Geparded...

...because I forgot LAVs were ROF3 on the move.

...and promptly got shot to bits!

The Marines pushed forward and finally Dragonned (?) and LAWed the Gepards out of existence allowing the CO to call in a Spooky to rain down some hilarity on Scotty's left flank.

Scotty's left flank post AC-130 attack run

Unfortunately, despite a great effort by the AC130 and some good shooting by my reserve LAVs, Scotty finally ended the duel between a HMMWV ITOW and his remaining Leopard 2 (since I couldn't seem to bleeding well hit him!) and rolled onto the Objective.

I called in the Spooky again, hoping to ventilate the Leopard...

The shot that lost me the game

....and learned that the 30mm Aden guns are only AT 7. This meant that I had to cluster bomb the Leopard 2. I ranged in easily enough but missed the to-hit meaning that Scotty held the objective and won the game! 

A couple of hard lessons for me - those heavies are tough but I can swamp them with Marines and SMAWs and Dragons *can* take out a Leopard 2, but I really need to not be relying on that. I also need to be slightly less aggressive as LAVs, while perfectly capable, need to be going after targets that are softer than they are. I was banking on that being Gepards. I was wrong.

LAVs look pretty cool as a force though - I don't think I'm ever going to win games 8 - 1 but I kind of don't care. I haven't ever, really. It has helped me decide how to expand this list to 70+ points - I was umming and ahhing about a second infantry platoon or a second M60 platoon and while people keep telling me TY is a tank game, I think the insane Marine platoons give a really good showing.

Some other photos! 

McBeth, running some East Germans, had a nasty run-in with Tanks' Marine Corps M60s. 

This was McBeth's centre, a couple of turns in...

Some Marines about to do to BRDMs what I did to Leopards!

McBeth attacks up his right flank...

...and runs smack into these two:

Next time

First painting commitment failure. I got most of the base coating down on the M60s for Tank but honestly painting on airbrush paint is a PITA and it sapped my will to live. So they didn't get finished AND I didn't get to anything in the Inquisition pile either. So, I have some AAPV7s to do for Remember December so they're priority now.

I have been having a massive clean out in my games room and have found a few old projects that never quite got looked at so while I'm feeling uninspired by 40K or TY, I'll see what else might come up. 

Dracula's America; The South will rise again!

In between painting jobs, Mr Pooch and I got together to play a quick game of Dracula's America. This is a very fun game with plenty of great elements. I really enjoy the 'success' model of resolving things (much like ShadowRun RPG) and I really enjoy the supernatural twist on the campaign setting. We are all informally running a campaign so it was time that my Dark Confederacy (Zombie Rebs!) led by that dastardly Man in White took on Pooch's Cursed 7th Cavalry (Werewolf US Cavalry?).

The game was dominated by one simple thing. I was rolling d6s. This, of course, meant that any time I had to roll a die, it was going to be a 6. this is a simple rule of fact.

A short picture report follows:

The fine town of Whisper Creek. Mr Pooch has done a fantastic job putting this together.

The 13th Alabama. Led by that mysterious and dangerous Man in White.

Werewolves! 7th Cav! Will they meet their Little Big Horn in Whisper Creek?

Initial set up for Dark Confederacy with Billy on the roof with his trusty 1855 Enfield.

The peaceful inhabitants of Whisper Creek. Why is it peaceful? Oh yes, its because they all worship C'thulu.

In a mission to grab the loot, the 7th Cav found the sack in the very first building they searched, proving even Mr Pooch can roll a 6 on occaision.

The wall o' dead rebs with two still alive compatriots (and a meat shield civilian) suddenly encounter a ball of muscle and fur and teeth that was once a US cavalryman.

Rolling his five attack dice, Pooch rolled 2 successes. The only way the poor zombie could defeat that was if I rolled more 5+. So I did. More than once. In several combats.

The end. Wave after wave of Confederate (dead and alive) swarm through Whisper Creek after picking off both Werewolves and the rest of the cavalry. Here the summoned Vengeful Shade (maybe Stonewall Jackson himself) floats past the Troop leader to plug him in the back.

Pooch was so angry he threw my models on the floor and broke this one (not true).

Love Dracula's America!