What if I told you....that it's possible to forget how to nerdgame?

 

Boy oh boy is it possible.

A bunch of the nerds piled round to Pooch's garage yesterday for some games and upon our collective arrival discovered that we'd all brought models but apparently our communication skills did not extend to who was bringing the terrain. It was...not our best work. So Pelarel and I had a crack at Zone Raiders again, while Scotty took on Tank's Orges and Pooch's Goblins had a crack at McBeth's Undeads in Kings of War. Highlight images from Pooch and McBeth's KoW:

Clash of battlelines. The big empty base is a test Legion of Zombies

The Undead meet the Goblins on the flank

Vampire Infantry demolishes Goblin Hordes

And in return, the Goblin artillery annihilates a Vampire champion!

Tank and Scotty played in the sun and only these two photos came out. Tank's Fleabag riders are some of Mantic's really cool models. And Tank's painted them beautifully.

And Scotty's done a clever mod to enable him to use his Warmachine Mercenaries army in KoW. I love these cav too! 

As for me, it was great to play Zone Raiders again. Pel's Reclaimers absolutely smashed my Zone Stalkers twice. Pel's d20 rolling does him no favours in DnD but hells bells, it comes good in Zone Raiders. Reclaimers v. Zone Stalkers, when you haven't played a lot, was a pretty tough match but I'm determined to give it more of a blat. We did use all the rules this time round (with our own missions and deployments) as well as some of the more simple battlefield conditions. It definitely feels to me like a game with the same level of depth as Infinity, but without quite so much of the complexity. My photos in the dim garage light didn't really come out but I did get these two.

After gunning down the Zone Warden, the Jaeger lines up the Armiger Captain

The Armiger Captain sets overwatch

I have done literally no painting over the last week, despite schlepping to my friendly LGS to pick up a few key paint components that were preventing me from working on my Primaris Kill Team. But I have done a massive tidyup in my games room leading to this:

 

That's almost all my 28mm collection bar my 40K and Impetus, all carefully boxed up and away from dust.  It was really good to do a bit of repair work and sort out the mess. There's still at least three or four more of these to come!

Doing this meant I could take down the project table and move it to the shelf next to my painting desk. This is all that's left from the 2020 project plan:

And that's *with* me adding a whole bunch of stuff from my shame drawers. There are a couple of unopened boxes under my desk, but they'll come out when I've made more of a dent in this last run.




Next time
I'll have finished the Primaris. I'm sure of that. And I'll be working through the last 50PL of Khornate 6mm as Pooch and I have powered through our plans and so we're thinking we'll wind up the stupid at the end of June with ~350 - 400 PL in the bank. And then we'll actually put all the stupid on the table some time in July. 

Crusading Against the Goblins

And so it was that the Order of the Green Lady, under the command of an Exemplar of the Brotherhood, invaded the lands held by the evil goblins and were violently repulsed by the sheer force of their explosive artillery!

I was going to write a serious narrative battle report of this game but TBH, I haven't quite got the brain for it today. Instead I will show you the photos and reflect on the first game of KoW I've had under these rules.

This is MY forest!

Feeling slightly outnumbered

The Goblin Centre

Turn two charges go well. Then.....not so well

The slog begins (and ended four turns later...)

The Unicorn resists the Stikkerz and the Treeman prepares to take revenge

Having seen off the Forsaken, the Goblin King bravely leads from the rear

And as his forces are overrun...

...The Goblin King attacks!

Thoughts
First off, it was two really cool armies facing off. Pooch has done some EPIC work on those Goblins and it shows. 

Secondly, I got smashed! I took a lot of Pooch's goblins down but not enough and not quickly enough. His artillery was staggeringly effective at whittling down my Knights and that legion of Stikkerz is HARD to move! While I was unlucky to lose both the Order of Redemption and one of the Orders of the Brotherhood in one turn, banking on charging past Pooch's chariots with my best unit was ropey even by my standards and I was rightfully punished. I learned how my army *should* work and which bits I need to add to the list to give it a bit more...staying power. I've also got a few ideas about how to use some more buffing / defensive magic in support of the knights.



Both of us learned a lot more about how our forces worked and would make some changes for a rematch, which we will totally have and hopefully it'll be much tighter. I'm definitely looking forward to having another crack at the evil little green monsters.

 Totally hooked. Loved the simplicity, the speed of play and the flavour - my army feels like it should and Pooch's is perfect. Pondering a second army already. A proper fantasy one this time. I have a few ideas up my sleeve.....

 Next Time
I have made it to the hobby store for some more blue ink, so the Primaris are back on the menu to get done this week. I'm also thinking about trying to sculpt some greatcoats on the crew of my Raupenschlepper Ost mit PaK40s and getting them wintered up to move into my Grenadiers (which are hopefully winging their way here now!)

Tentacles! Wings! Cauldrons of Blood!

I got a few things finished up this week, despite having to do some 1:1 scale painting in the house! 

Kings of War

Just one addition to my KoW army this week - a Nolzur's Marvellous Miniatures Displacer Beast. It's a cool model and will be a sweet 'Beast of Nature' in my KoW army. I was, quite honestly, tempted by a Nolzur's Drow Drider  (because that thing is creepy) but I decided this one, painted more like a European Lynx (than the traditional black panther vibe from DnD), would work well.

Having added only one new thing, two of the last four pieces are on the workbench at the moment. Sadly the last two are likely to be on hold till after the UK lockdown is complete so I can order some of the Oathmark Elven Light Infantry from Northstar in the UK.

Epic Apocalypse

Time for my contribution to this year's stupid. It's another 100PL month, so I could finish up my Khorne!

 First off, the Daemon Primarch of the World Eaters, Angry Ron*. Sadly, Angry Ron doesn't exist in 8th edition in this form so he'll proxy in as a Forgeworld Kytan Ravager (which isn't remotely as epic, but will do) and a second Bloodthirster. Because I have two.

Tower of Skulls, Blood Reaper and Cauldron of Blood

The rest of May's effort is the remaining Khorne Daemon Engines. Each of these will proxy for one of the Forgeworld superheavies. The Tower of Skulls will play as a Hellforged Mastodon, the Bloodreaper as a Hellforged Falchion and the Cauldron of Blood as a Typhon Heavy Siege Tank. Amazingly, I still have two more of each of these in the box...

Finally, this is what 310ish PL of World Eaters and Khorne Daemons looks like. Next on the stupid front will be a start on the Death Guard, beginning with the Greater Daemon and some Pox Walkers I think.

*Angron. But come on. How could I not?

Next Time
Fingers crossed, with the easing of the lockdown here in NZ, I'll be doing some garage gaming next weekend and should be able to bring you an after action report of the Order of the Green Lady's crusade against Pooch's evil goblins! If not, I've got some KoW stuff on the workbench that's moving along and I've started on my last Deathwatch Kill Team. 

Pooch's April Update

Wow, April was LOONY. Lockdown, work was crazy, working from home and everything else that was going on.

And I am massively delayed in getting this blog post up, so sorry for that. But, I did lots of painting and preparation, so that makes up for it right?

1. Paint a Kings of War Army- In progress!
This month was pretty monumental in making progress onto finishing the goblins. Excitingly, this month also was the start of me basing them too. I used one of the Green Stuff world rollers, and a variety of other pieces to make the bases.

I am ridiculously happy with the finished product, here is my first legion of Goblins.:

The legion base, fully painted.

The base, loaded with Goblins

Close up on the 3d printed Dwarf statue

More pictures next month, when I have hopefully finished the whole army......

2. Create a table of terrain to support a game

No progress, I looked at the packets of terrain I had to build, and then promptly put it at the bottom of the queue. I bought some more stuff to add to it tho.... so that counts as progress?

3. Complete the 6mm Apocalypse Challenge- In progress!
Well, another month, and again, I finished up the 6mm in the first few days. I mean, finishing it on day 3 was slow for me!

This month it is 3 Leman Russ, a third Hellhound, a Salamander Scout Vehicle (converted from a spare hull, and 3d printed crew), and a base of Rough Riders (who are ABSOLUTE TRASH).

This month's painting, I have been sure to remember to put them all in this time!

Close up of my converted Salamander Scout Vehicle

Oh, and I repainted the Valkyrie objective, and finished up a wrecked Warlord Titan head from Adeptus Titanicus!

And that's 200 PL of Imperial Guard!

But then McZ said "why don't we just paint another 50 PL? And so I did:

"It's a Baneblade!"

4. Run a narrative campaign for the group

Planning is well underway, but the whole lockdown thing means that no progress so far.

5. Add a new detachment to one of my 40k armies (In progress!)

Add to the Death Guard? Nope!

Add to the Krieg? Nope!

Add to the Storm Lords? Absolutely.

And here is the first model completed for it, a Space Marine Lieutenant. Made from a spare Space Marine hero, with parts out of my bits box. And a beaky helmet, because it is known that they are the coolest. It's missing a tuft from the base, but I am short on stock (and can't remember which tuft it is that I need to order!)

6. Buy a starter box and paint all of it

Nothing further here, I haven't seen a starter box that tempts me. Any ideas?


7. Paint a Space Marine Heroes Series (In progress)

Wait, more progress here too? I managed to get my hands on 8 of the Space Marine Heroes Series 3 blind boxes, in the hope that I would get one of each of the six different variant models. I got 5 of the 6. Damnit!

Still, I painted the 5 I did get, while I wait for the 6th to arrive from eBay....

The completed 5- more yellowy in this photo than in person!

Nurgling along for the ride doing some flailing

8. Update a 15mm Napoleonic army for Blackpowder

Nothing further here.... Not even the lockdown could make me start this one yet!

9. Paint a stand alone force- DONE (again)

I have two young kids, therefore Frozen is a feature of my household. Last year I bought myself some figures to make a Frostgrave warband, loosely based off the movie Frozen. And in lockdown, I finally actually did something about it!

The whole warband!

The infantry- Fireforge Scandianvians

The unique infantry- Priest, Marksman, Ranger, Barbarian, Thief. All potential RPG characters for me, who have now found a home!

The main characters, and two very large dogs!

Elsa and Anna, who got a new ice sword to match the one she got in the second movie.

And Olaf, in the sculpting stage

And painted!

10. Update and improve a table of terrain- DONE

The Wild West town of Whisper Creek has slowly been expanding over the past couple of years as I add more and more of the exceptional 4ground models into my collection. At the start of lockdown I had a bunch of boxes of kits staring at me, and they had been staring at me for the better part of a year (if not two!), so over Easter I built everything I had to do for my Wild West town!

Here are some snapshots of two of the most impressive parts of that, the Sassy Gal Saloon, and the passenger train.

Three stories of awesome

Leadlight windows!

Interior detail!

Stairs!

Yes, you can do circles in laser cut MDF!

This is a big locomotive, and was a complex build

Carriages!

I will be getting all of this out onto the table for the narrative campaign (whenever we are both able to run it, and can schedule it in!), so will make sure to have some much better pictures then.

11. Paint a Flames of War Army (In progress)

A short update on my US paras. Basically it amounts to SIX new infantry stands painted. Not exactly monumental, but progress none the less. The issue is waiting for more models to arrive!

No new picture, because they look EXACTLY the same as the ones you saw last month....

12. Finish what I should have finished last year- DONE (again)

This one is some more 15mm vehicles, 3 Panthers in fact which I was meant to have done for the DDay game we had last year. Nice and simple!

And that's it, May will be equally big, I promise!

Pooch

Remember to wash your hands, Morty is watching.....