Hoon hoon!

Forgive the rough photos - the early morning sun gave me an opportunity to take some semi-well lit but they've not come out that well. I really need to get a lightbox for these piccies! 

Gaslands

This has been on the list for a while and I finally got off my butt and finished them Below are my Desert Raiders for Gaslands. 

The Command Truck. With .50 cal, bazooka, rockets and a minion! 

Twin .50s in the roof box

Rockets! 

Zoom! Note RPG warhead in the backpack!

The vehicles all have drivers and the cars have co-drivers too (and both of them have AK-47s!) - Zvezda do some 1/72 scale moderns and the arms fit surprisingly well on the Gaslands crew models. The truck cab didn't really want to fit two crew so the co-driver is out the top with a bazooka. That vehicle is heavily overarmed and so I expect will be generally driving slow and blowing stuff up with it's absurd armament.

I really enjoyed this little project and I think I'll do another set at some point. I need to find another semi-coherent set of Hot Wheels that really float my boat. I'd love to do a set of seriously industrial vehicles but they tend to be made smaller than the cars because they'd be dumb big otherwise.

I had a little solo test game where my two Citroens raced each other to the end of my gaming table and back. Gaslands is mechanically quite simple but I suspect would be very interesting with more vehicles and a more complex track. I'm genuinely looking forward to playing a bigger race with the lads.

FOR THE EMPEROR! 
Pooch graciously reminded me last weekend that I hadn't painted something to add to one of my 40K armies (according to my 2020 goals), so I hammered through the half finished Priest from Blackstone Fortress to go into my Guard army. I need a priest to give +1A to my Guardsmen when I order them to 'Fix Bayonets' (something I do much much too often!) so he'll be a hoot.

Next Time
Literally no idea. I'm going to be away for a few days so if it's going to be anything impressive, it has to get done in the next couple of days. Seems....unlikely.

But I will be working on a new dimension of the Stupid over the next couple of weeks. Pooch happened to find me a classic Epic Great Unclean One and some Nurglings which means a parallel build of Death Guard and World Eaters is now on the blocks. And I've still got some options for Thousand Suns up my sleeve. And some Slaaneshi daemons. Chaos Undivided here we come?

Some games and painting

100 Point Team Yankee

We had some visitors down at the club for a TY day and we broke out the 100 point games on 8x6s as a semi-serious exercise to make sure it would work in a tournament setting (and lo! It does!)

I was planning on running my Marines but with a shortage of WarPac players, I borrowed a Russian army and gave that a burl. It went....badly. It's a very steep learning curve when you've not played with them before and I got firmly kicked in both my games. The first one wound up being a really challenging Dust Up where I very nearly beat back an attacking ANZAC force, but my troops holding the objective didn't last long enough to buy me enough time to get reserves! I also totally forgot to take a single photo.

In my second game, I tried defending against Marines to see if that would make the learning experience easier. No spoilers, but it didn't. My dice were appalling and my opponents were not. It was most vexing. I also made a bunch of stupid mistakes...

But I did take a few photos of a very beautifully painted Marine army and very much enjoyed the game.

So WarPac army? 
I'm much less averse to the idea than I was. I think I'd like to give it another whack before I go down too many rabbit holes about things I could do with Afghansty (yeah, if I'm going to do it, that's probably how it's going to be done) or I see how close I can get the current Iran list from Oil War to look like mid-80s Jordanians, in the hope that Battlefront decides to do a Jordanian army at some point.

Workbench! 
I have been making alarmingly slow progress on my Gaslands vehicles, mostly because I haven't really been able to think of how I wanted to paint them. But I've made it this far:

Next Time
Finished Gaslands cars and month 3 of the Stupid since next Sunday makes it technically a month since I last did something. Technically.

Sunday Workbench

I've been a bit all over the place with working on stuff this week so I've not managed to finish a thing but have managed a few random bits and bobs along the road. So here we go!

Australians
I built this army as part of a Morganfest competition (where the tables, armies and scenarios are fixed, the players move) where Tank and I built Aussies and Japanese for a game drawn from the battles around Gona, Buna and Sanananda in the middle years of World War 2.

I definitely took some liberties (like using the cut down 25pdrs, which are far more appropriate for Kokoda than later) but they were too cool not to do.

Most of the army got a tidy up and repaint a few years back when Tank and I took a doubles army of Marines and Australians to Panzerschreck but I never got around to finishing the job. So I've gone through and tidied up the third infantry platoon, the 25pdrs and a pair of Vickers HMGs. I've got another pair of Vickers on the painting table alongside a sniper (I know, but I had a spare...)

I've also ordered a pair of Sentinels to go with the one I already have as part of proxying these as MW Australians and some PIATs (all from Eureka in Australia) to make them LW compatible. I am having ideas of making up some Matilda II Frogs and treating those as Churchill Crocs for a LW army.

Gaslands
This is one of those games I've wanted to play for ages and somehow, it didn't take much to get some nerds on board. I found some sweet French cars in a model store in Australia and decided they'd be the basis for my first set of Gaslands cars.

They come from a set of desert rally vehicles so I think I'll stick to that sort of a theme and am going to paint them up as a kind of desert pirate crew - some random desert camouflage and some sort of emblem for the crew which I haven't worked out yet. I've got a spare roof box for the car on the right too which I'm quite keen to fill up with a different weapon load out. I'm definitely going to do some more and go for a more post-apocalyptic vibe the second time around.

Apocalypse
I blame blogger Scotty for this. He got some of the AT Knights and I decided I wanted some too. I'm almost certainly never going to buy a Cerastus Knight from Forgeworld so I got the AT versions instead!

These two Lancers will go on table as Super Heavy hunters or escorts for Angry Ron when I get him out. They are super detailed and surprisingly posable for the scale. I am looking forward to painting them.

Next Time
We're playing some more TY on 8x6 tables in a week's time so I'll report on how my Marines get on for those games. I'm ditching the air support altogether for these games. We'll see how that goes.

In which your author paints MASSTER and more white....

...and regrets some of his palette choices. Again. 

Things what I have painted

First off, here's Month 2 of the Stupid:

The first chunk of my World Eaters - two Predators, a Landraider, three Helbrutes and a Lord on a Juggernaut. I hate myself for picking ANOTHER white army. You'd think I'd either know better by now or that I'd be good at it. Clearly, neither of those things is true. However, they are a nice counterpoint to the horde of red that is the daemons.

I also *finally* finished my 15mm Team Yankee army as I played a game with clubmate Russell (more on that later) and decided that it was about time I painted the last 5 M60s. So here is the 2iC and the third platoon of 4 M60A1s. So with that finished, I think that this army is pretty much done. I'm umming and ahhing about getting two more Sergeant Yorks for the army and I'm working up a plan for some chopper transport for my Marine platoon but otherwise, I think I'm done with Marines.

The question now is "should I do a WarPac army?" I'm tempted by a second TY army as I have enjoyed painting the modern kit. My first instinct was ANZACs but we are suffering locally from a dearth of WarPac armies so that's led me down two other routes. I'm tempted by Afghansty, especially with Battlefront indicating that a HiP kit is due later this year or potentially by Iranians, who will be painted as Jordanians until such time as a Jordanian list becomes available. The slightly vexing thing there is the kit mix for the Jordanians falls somewhere between the Iraqi and Iranian lists from Oil War. We'll see.

Games what I have played

Clubmate Russell is running a 100 point on 6x8 tables event later this year and we decided to play a test game. Here are the two photos I remembered to take before we'd even started. At the top, my right flank and it's spearhead:

And then Russell's right flank and it's spearhead. This is why 8x6 tables folks!

First off, it was a great game. Russell is a very very good player and I always find playing him to be a real challenge because I am not. I generally find that I like to just put in a competitive showing! While in the end it was a 3-3 draw because we ran out of time, it didn't feel like there wasn't a chance for a result. Russell's dice had been appalling for most of the game and I had managed to get my Marines in place to stop him winning on his right.  I think one more turn he would have been broken as I only had to remove one BRDM and two Gaskins to get there. If I hadn't picked a dusk attack and suddenly failed to see properly at the last, it would have been easy! 

Just as importantly though, it was great playing on an 8x6. My terrain collection is very Eastern Europe farmland themed so there's not a huge amount of LOS blocking terrain. It's not super dense either but interestingly the size meant that there was a decent amount of room to move around outside the ranges of most weapons, which is a nice balance. It also made spearhead SUPER relevant because in a game with 48" of ground between deployment zones, you can spearhead very aggressively. I spearheaded first with a view to beating his Carnations with my M60s and taking their objective, missing the fact that Russell could make a 40" road move with his BRDMs and be as close to me as possible in turn 1. And then he went first. Not ideal. 

I also played my first game of Apocalypse with the 6mm stuff yesterday too with Scotty and Tank. It was more about learning the mechanics of the game (which are fascinating, different to 40K and quite a lot more brutal) and trying to see if making no changes to the stats would work in 6mm. The conclusion, at this point, is that we'll leave command and deployment in inches and move everything else to cm. That avoids turn one Bloodthirster charges which, while I doubt would be all that effective, would be unfun. In principle though, it worked really well and putting 500+ points on a 6x4 in 6mm will be AWESOME. And it'll look great. I had better get to basing up my old Titan Legions buildings. 

Next Time

Almost certainly a painting / workbench blog as I am starting to have to pick up some of the more taxing tasks on the table of doom. I'll be prepping the bases for Month 3 of the Stupid and painting some sweet sweet initiative markers that one of my Wednesday night DnD crew ran up on his 3D printer. 

Last Chance for Last Chancers!

And with no small amount of effort, I managed to paint a thing!

Demolition Man and Grease Monkey

Animal and Brains

Ox and Heavy Bolter

Colonel Shaeffer himself

The 13th Penal Legion 'Last Chancers' 

And a goal from the list of goals! I have added something to my Imperial Guard army in January. Well done me. I think I'd love to give these guys an outing in Kill Team as well, less Rocket Girl and Ox, since Guard are not allowed heavy weapons for reasons.

I really would love to see these guys make it to actual 8th Edition as they would be hilariously fun to play. But I'll get them out at some stage for the lolz of it with the mad Catachan plan.

Next Time
I've stripped off the paint from some really nice cars that are getting made up for Gaslands so maybe those. If I can get them done, it might be time for a test game and I'd love to blog that here. I'm also working on Month 2 of the Stupid so expect that at some stage. Given that this time it's World Eaters in their Heresy livery - I only wanted one giant blob of red in my 6mm army - they're probably going to take a bit longer...