Let Battle Be Joined!

It was a quiet club meeting this week, post-Nationals, so Scotty and I booked in a couple of light skirmish games to while away the day.

We started with Scotty's first, and my second, game of Kings of War Vanguard. I brought out my Elves and Scotty brought the Kingdoms of Men. We just played the basic scenario from the quickstart rules - a meeting engagement.

It's all on!

The game mostly started simply as we advanced towards each other, although I pulled some shenanigans to plink off a couple of early shots at Scotty. These resulted in him returning fire with his arquebusiers and shooting my Gladestaker off the board. 

Human Spearmen advance to protect their general

 The Human Spearmen advanced and bunched up around the Leader of Men. The Elven Mage, sensing an opportunity burned all of my power points to boost a lightning bolt into the bunch. Two of the Spearmen were killed and the Leader of Men wounded.

 We maneuvered our forces around a bit for the next couple of turns, plinking off shots and spells before we all finally got stuck in.

The Knight Charges the Prince and is charged by Tallspears in response

 The Knight, who had rapidly redeployed, charged the Prince and took him down to 1 wound remaning.  He was unhorsed by the Tallspears and while the Foot Knights continued to batter the Prince, he was healed by the Elven mage and fought on to victory over the Foot Knights.

Scotty got some revenge for the lightning bolt at this point with a boosted fireball into my bunched up Tallspears, wounding a couple and damanging the Prince. Again.

WIZZARD! 

In an effort to stop these shenanigans, the respective generals charged the opposing Wizards and promptly dispatched both of them. Scotty had his Leader and an Arquebusier left on the table and I had my Prince and two Tallspears when the game ended.

It was a fun game - the power mechanics gave us some entertaining options (even though we mostly used them for extra dice) and it was a pretty even match in terms of capability.

Warmachine! 
So this one didn't start all that well. Scotty pulled MacBain and Pirates out of his bag and I pulled out Feora1 and all her setting infantry on fire nonsense. The game definitely turned out to be much more evenly matched than we thought it would be.

Turn one went as Warmachine first turns tend to. We both ran up the board, Scotty rapidly repositioning his Pirates to fight my Warjacks, not my Flameguard.

Protectorate Turn 2 - shenanigans! 

 Turn 2 saw the Daughters arrive from ambush on the table edge and Feora getting into position to feat on the Pirates. The Daughters sacked First Mate Hawk (because she scares me!) and Feora feated on the front rank of Pirates.

The Flameguard attempted to sack the Freebooter. Badly. Scotty's turn didn't start well, as none of the fire went out and he passed one tough roll on his burning pirates. However, he promptly used his munted but Failsafed Freebooter to trample over my Flameguard and attempt to batter Pyrrus. Pyrrus proved his worth as he rolled insane damage with his spear and shield and battered the Freebooter out of existence...

... leaving him open to being charged by everyone's favourite electro-sword wielding Italian, Savio Montero Acosta who gave him quite a lot of what-for. I sent Feora out from her hiding place to get Savio, which she royally did, but it left Scotty a lane to send in the Vanguard to take revenge!

Squeaky Bum Time

Both of us had been steadily accumulating points and so on my left, the Vanquisher was actively trying to remove the three pirates that were occupying his zone. Man, I miss the +2 to hit off Choirs. Although, I didn't have a choir at this point as they'd been well pirated. 

The Vanguard went into Feora and smacked her repeatedly. I'd forgotten that she was a beefcake and just took it. In her turn she powered up the Hand of Judgement to end MacBain! Which he promptly didn't. So Grogspar ran in to give MacBain Gang Fighter and he had a jolly good crack at wrecking Feora's favourite warjack. He put a LOT of dents in it, but not enough to put him out of action.

Its over! 

Feora tried to pull some shenanigans, and fired a boosted flamethrower shot around and across the Hand of Judgement and tried to end MacBain by styling on him. Disappointingly (?) she flubbed the boosted damage roll. So, to avoid MacBain trying on some dodging nonsense, the Hand of Judgement decided to club him with a P+S 20 flaming club.

35 point Warmachine armies are great fun. There's not a lot of room for jank, nor is there a lot of room for mucking around. We had some boss solos and some useful units and a couple of warjacks. Hopefully we'll get some more games in. Warmachine is a cool universe with some great models and

And more! 

We also played a game of Keyforge, by MTG designer Richard Garfield. It was a lot of fun. Scotty's evil combination of Brobnar, Shadows and Dis beat out my intellectual combo of Logos, Mars and Shadows. It was Scotty's first and my third games of Keyforge and it's a lot of fun. We both enjoyed the challenge - me to remember back three months to when I first learned and Scotty to learn with my fairly sketchy teaching! We'll definitely play it more as a late in the day club game.

Next Time
The first part of May's special project....

Models and ramblings

Guardsmen! 
Wielding arguably the worst weapon combination in a Guard army in 40K, the missile launcher and grenade launcher, is the support section for my second squad. Squad one was lascannon / melta, two is rockets and grenades and the third is the rapid fire squad with an autocannon and plasma gun. A quick pic:

Whoosh!

The assault section for this squad comes next, and then I'll be onto the final Guard squad to fill out the platoon. It's not been as much of a grind as I anticipated.

Macchi!
This came out of a mysterious box of mystery that Scotty won in a raffle at Charicon. As no one else needs a Macchi C.202 for Mid War Flames of War, it came my way. It was painted, but I've washed and highlighted it and added the yellow cowling and the white nose. I'd like some numbers and things for the hull. I'll need to go and have a dig through my transfers folder to see what I can find. In the meantime, it'll do:

Neorrrrwwwww! 

Nationals! 
So this was going to be a long-ish report, but I completely forgot to take any pictures and, TBH, you've seen two of my three opponent's armies on here before! Blogger Pel ran a hilarious easter egg driven Firestorm in Switzerland (!) and gave all the losers cheese. It was epic.

I played three games - two against WARPAC Tank companies and one against a WARPAC BMP company. The first game was basically a replay of my game with Pooch at Charicon, but with McBeth in command. This time, my dice weren't awesome but they were good when they needed to be and eliminating most of McBeth's AA early, and surviving a gun battle with some T72Ms was critical to making it through the game intact.

The second game, against the BMP horde, was frustrating as hell. I hate playing that army. It isn't fun and it isn't even challenging for the BMP player. It was an interesting game while it was nighttime because I could hide relatively successfully from the BMPs, but once the sun came up, I lost most of my power in one turn. Game over.

The last game looked seriously dire against Scotty when I lost a bunch of M60s cheaply against T72s (I know not to get into a gunfight with them but my choices were limited!) but his inability to roll 6s to hit my Hammerheads that were holding the objective meant that I had three turns to get reserves on and quietly shred his back lines. He was justifiably frustrated and we called it a draw when I got enough vehicles onto the objective that his killing one a turn was never going to end but if he popped my last couple of tanks, which wouldn't have been hard with T72s, we'd have timed out and that was half an hour neither of us could be bothered spending!

Lessons? Tank and I will be taking double M60s to Panzerschreck and taking 4 A10s instead of 4 Harriers. It's worth the cost I think. My last game with Scotty was testament to the need for some insanely long-range, unstoppable AT to deal with those tail end of the game shenanigans against tough targets.

Next Time
More Guard, I expect. I'm pushing through the infantry at a fair clip and just trying to get it done. I have acquired a Valkyrie as well, which I'm looking forward to getting into, but I need to get hold of some door guns for it because it can have door guns. So it should.

Preparation...

It's the NZ Nationals next weekend, being run by fellow blogger Pelarel, and he's geniusly (?) agreed to run a one-day TY comp and a two-day TY comp. As I've got many things to do over Easter, I'm just playing the one-dayer but that was motivation enough to paint the 5 M60A1s I need to complete my army.

I've rambled enough before on this blog about the vexatiousness of having to use airbrush paint without an airbrush but a bit of dedication this week, in and around work, led me to this point:

9 M60A1s, painted in MASSTER camouflage. The last five made me so mad doing them but I mixed them in with the first four and they fit like a glove. Very pleased about that.

Here's the whole army for the Nationals - 80 points of Marines! This (less 10 points) will be my contribution for Tank and I when we head for Panzerschreck later this year for the doubles TY comp. 

The list is:

Marine M60 Company

HQ M60A1

2 4x M60A1s

HMMWV TOW Platoon

Marine Platoon with additional Dragons and SMAWs, mounted in AAPV7s

LAV Company

HQ 2x LAV 25s

3 4x LAV 25s

4x LAV ITOWs

2x LAV-Ms

Support
HMMWV Stinger Platoon
AC130 Spooky masquerading as a Marine Harrier Flight

I also painted this guy, while waiting for the IDF Sand to dry:

He's painted in my standard Cadian camo and, like Pooch, my Ambot will be pretending to be an Ogryn bodyguard for my officer. It's an amazing model, made out of an amazing kit. I loved painting it and being able to give him the same blobby camo and yellow shoulders as my infantry makes me super happy.

On another note...
I played Kings of War yesterday and it was excellent. Without writing a long review that will reiterate everything the internet has ever said about it, I really enjoyed it. It was logical, with outcomes I expected and lots of fun. Scotty, using his Warmachine models and me, using my Teutonic Order, had a hoot and we ripped through a game in a shade under 90 minutes having read the rules once. Very pleased. So now I need to look at rebasing my Teutonic Order, which I'm not unhappy about, and adding a few bits and bobs. I've got some of the Fireforge Pegasi sitting in their box looking tempting at the mo. Looking forward to getting them put together, but painting white barding again....I am less thrilled about.

Next Time
How I did at Nationals! I'm also trying to make a dent in the Guard infantry and also paint a special project that you'll see in May.

Meep meep, it's a jeep?

Not really a jeep, but an Imperial Guard Chimera. 

It's numbered 005 since it will be the ride for my Command Squad and their officers and support - the Ogryn bodyguard and Primaris Psyker. Also, I had to put the old-school hull stripes on. They just look cool.

Front on, showing off all the heavy bolters and the heavy stubber. Many ordinary rapid-fire weapons are the order of the day. 

It's been an interesting project. My attempts to make it a heavy flamer armed vehicle weren't all that successful (trying to munge the old Chimera kit with new Chimera kit parts) so I limited the changes I could make to a new hatch and heavy stubber, and making the turret heavy bolter plate fit the old turret. It's been fun though. I'm unlikely to do another one, so this has been a hoot.

It has made me more encouraged to crack on with the Leman Russ that's in the paint queue and it's got me thinking about Sentinel Squadrons becuase they look cool.

Next Time
I'll be working on the M60s for the next week so hopefully a full photo of my complete TY army for Nationals will be in the offing. I've got some HMMWVs and Sergeant Yorks to paint but once those are done, I suspect that'll be the TY army complete.