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 This game was a touch frustrating, partly because of TYs outdated rules regarding morale for single tank platoons and partly because Bob's dice were on fire!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...
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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. :)