New year, new experiences

Starting off with a trip to the medics to deal with a scalpel-related accident! No permanent harm, just some medical grade super glue and a fascinating conversation with the nurse about the variant uses of superglue! Starting off '24 with a bang, as it were.

Ghosties

 

 These have been a solid grind over the break but pending a last run of highlights now slightly delayed by said earlier stupidity but they've come up really well and I'm super pleased with the results. Two full hordes of Bloodworms or Svcarecrows (probably Bloodworms) will be a nice change from the glass cannon Reapers I've been using in KoW up until now.

I'm doing a bit of a rejig of the army to account for some of the changes in the last Clash of Kings to rebase some Ghosties into new units and to fix the fact that I put some of my LgInf on the wrong sized base...

 2024 Plans

This time of year I normally sit down and have a think about what's on the block for the year. I figure it's some painting projects and some gaming projects:

Painting:

• Finish my 15mm Renaissance Spanish
• Clear the 40K blacklog:
• Deathwatch and Space Marine Combat Patrols
• Inquisition and second Breacher Kill Teams
• Maybe get an Arbites squad and paint that....
  
• Start (and maybe finish) a Tomb Kings KoW army
• Clear the Flames backlog:
• Sheridans for 7 Days to the River Rhine
• Volksgrenadier Heavy Mortars
• Repaint my Early War Germans
  

Gaming:

• Play some full size 40K games
• Play more ADLG
• Play some 7DttRR
• Play more Kill Team

Next Time
Well, stupid injuries will slow progress. I've booked in a Kings of War game with Blogger Tank in a couple of weeks so hoping to have that whole army redone and rebased for that.

And the guns went quiet...

 ...on Christmas Eve. 

Between the socialising, the shopping and the genuine come-down after a fairly insane 2023, I haven't painted a lot (but I have made lots of progress on my Karlach-led BG3 playthrough instead) but I have finished the things I was working on last week. 

The Scriptor Mortis is done: 

A few extra highlights, fanging rust all over the metal bits, tidying up the candles and putting some squiggles into the book like he's writing and boom! I've also got most of the base coats on 20 Chainrasps to finish up the actual army (although I am still having thoughts about buying a Nagash to use as the actual giant in the list....)

I painted my Cadian Ordnance battery! It wasn't especially difficult given they're mostly flat green with some tiger stripes on the gun shields but fixing up the crew and redoing the shoulders and generally just getting the whole thing assembled was a bit of a pain, especially after they nearly sailed off my balcony while I was priming them.

This finishes up my Imperial Guard Combat Patrol so hoping to get them out for a run over the holiday break. A solid dig around my bits box also suggests I might still have enough bits to make the crew for the third heavy lascannon if I wanted to.

Finally, I got the Apothecary Biologis built for my Deathwatch:

This is the first time in a long time I've had to break down a Primaris shoulder to replace the blank pauldrons with the embossed Deathwatch and chapter (this one is an Ultrasmurf) shoulderpads and boy I'd forgotten what a PITA that job is. At least when the last Aggressor turns up, I know those things have separate shoulders so that's one less drama llama.

Blogger Pooch has sent a half-squad of Infernus marines from the new Leviathan starter my way which are more of the same and ooooof. They're going to be a pain. But this is where I live. I made this rod for my own back and I'm going to stick with it. It does mean that I will have all the bits for a Space Marine Combat Patrol too.

Finally...

Happy Holidays all. I hope you all have a safe and enjoyable Christmas and New Year and a glorious 2024.

Next Time

The finished Ghosts and, if this appalling weather keeps up, I'll attack finishing the basing on the whole box along with getting some more Deathwatch done and maybe, just maybe, some other bits and bobs from the painting pile.

Ghosts and goblins

Okay, no goblins. That way madness lies!

 

So I'm still working on ghosties and the Scriptor Mortis is *almost* done. I've got a few more highlights to do on the skin and bones and work out some way to get some scribbles into the book that I definitely should have painted BEFORE gluing it together....

I mentioned a couple of weeks back I was waiting on some more 3D printed basing material and lo! it has been applied to both the Scriptor and these Butchers:

 These Butchers are the first base of these Ghosties I've actually finished completely. They've been painted, based, flocked, had the flames done and I've put water effects into the puddles too. They're still drying though. Yep. That old chestnut.

Next Steps - 10e 40K

So I can get a bit - just so - about things and when I discovered that the Imperial Guard Combat Patrol had some of the new Ordnance I had to find a way to do it without buying the new models since the crew would look completely different from my existing Cadians. 3D printing to the rescue: 

 

Thanks to my local guru Che over at Potbelly Miniatures, the two new guns have been printed and I'm reusing some old crew from weapons teams that are no longer part of Cadian platoons. I've raided the bits box and remade a bunch of the arms. Are they perfect? Not at all. But at least they match all my existing Cadians. This will also mean I can get the Imperial Guard Combat Patrol out over the Christmas break!

Next Time

I'll paint the guns! I'm also working on an Apothecary Biologis from the new Leviathan kit to fill out one of the two missing models for my Deathwatch Combat Patrol too. 

Pooch's November Update

Wait. November is gone too? So there is only one month left of the year? I mean, there is less than one month because I am always late with my blog updates!

Goodness me, I'd better get a crack on with some painting....

1. Paint a platoon for Flames of War

We have our annual Flames of War event to close out the year for our club. This year's theme was mid war infantry forces, and I couldn't face painting up any more of my DAK due to finishing up a huge commission of Fallschirmjager which pretty much killed any motivation to paint my own Germans!

So instead, I found my US Paras, and then realised that as a part of Operation Torch they were supported by aircraft from the USS Ranger- specifically F4F Wildcats! 

Cue some searching online for STLs and an order to Potbelly Miniatures....

Zoooooooooooom!

2. Add something to armies I have already painted

First up we have some more of the brilliant 3d Breed Wild West figures, continuing on my Cowboy theme for the last month or two. These Daughters of the West are super characterful figures, and were really fun to use a bunch of different colours on. I also finished up a Native American who I had in my "to paint" box for.... a lot longer than I'm willing to admit!

The first three. Pistols and Winchester Repeating Rifles

The second three, Pistols and a Shotgun

The final one with another Winchester, and the Native American scout

Secondly I did manage to finish up another Marvel character, this time it's Ghost Rider! This was a figure I wasn't acutally planning on getting finished, it just sortof... happened. It was a lot of fun doing the wet blending on the flames!

Flaming motorbike is very, very cool

Originally I'd painted the chain silver, but this is so much better!

3. Finish up a piece of terrain

The great 4Ground assembly line continues, this time with Johnston's Church! Overall it was a pretty easy build, and now I've just got one more 4Ground building to go, and one month to do it in.

Looking awesome!

4Ground including internal details like the cross is just so good.

I've got one last 4Ground building to make, so that's December's goal!

4. Play a game a month, that was different to the last month

So, initially I was going to talk about playing more Dead by Lead, because we played more of that and it was a heap of fun.

The scene for this month's game- a bar room brawl!

Three different gangs getting down to brawling!

Multi-level brawl!

How the brawl ended- that is to say badly

But to achieve the "different to last month" I'd have to talk about playing Silver Bayonet with my kids, where the two of them worked together (reluctantly at times) to overcome one of the solo scenarios!

This was the table the kids built, before fighting a whole lot of Wolves!

5. Paint a Hundred Years War French Army for ADLG

Just the one base for this completed this month, some light-er knights.

I should really be painting more Knights, but decided to paint these just for something different.

And that's it- on to December!

Pooch

Putt putt motorcycles

 This weekend was our club's annual memorial event for our late friend Nick, who we lost 8 years ago. A restricted MW Flames of War event lead me running an absurd Italian Motociclisti company you can see here: Telegraphing my Super Secret Tech again

Game 1: Valley of Death 

Clubmate Richard walked his British Rifle company into the Valley of Death (in hindsight, I needed to attack in this game and do this with motorcycles to draw obvious comparisons....) and basically shoved so much stuff up the board, I didn't have the material to stop him! 

 

My Semoventes eventually saw off his Death or Glory Valentines (they chose death over glory) but everything took too long and my force was way too small to hold off all that infantry, even once I'd managed to remove Richard's carriers and Valentines. 

 

 On the left of this photo you can see the highlight of the whole game - the remnant of my AB41 platoon which was overrun and captured by thieving British infantrymen. They had the gall to try and shoot up my Semoventes before MGing the cavalry desperately riding to the rescue! 

Game 2: Bridgehead

The second game saw me attacking around the flanks of Bob's Grenadiers. These two photos sum up the game: 

 

On my left, most of my army ran into an entrenched Assault Pioneer platoon and in the end, after six or seven turns, I had one 47mm gun on the objective held by 4 81mm mortars. A stalemate if ever...

 

 On my right, I thought I should be able to comfortably roll up 3 PaK38s and a couple of SMG teams before Bob's reinforcements arrived. When I lost an entire infantry platoon counterattacking into one gun (literally, one team at a time....) that whole thing fell apart. 

In the end, I assaulted Semovente 75s into a forest and nearly routed the defending grenadiers but on the right, I lost all my troops, including my CO, an the company broke and I lost!

Game 3: King of the Hill

My last game was against clubmate Pat, running late '43 Grenadiers.  

I deployed a bit conservatively with some of my troops, hoping to be able to send the second infantry platoon to ride to the rescue of whichever objective looked like a goer. In the end, this is what it looked like: 

I threw SO MANY dice at that building full of grenadiers and didn't kill a gosh darn one. And the assault was shot off without even trying by the time I had to do it. In the end, Semoventes into a forest again and the expending of a whole infantry platoon to pare back Pat's defences (and his utter inability to unpin his HMG platoon) squeaked me home in that forest. 

Thoughts?

This list was not great. Turns out (and no one is shocked) that 5 stand platoons on motorcycles, that don't make them meaningfully faster doesn't go well - especially once you add Passaglia Bombs and the Motorbikes, making them 9 points each! But I suspect it might still have some legs as a second formation alongside an armoured company. Being able to get some small supporting infantry and a bunch of useful things (and some HMGs, but hey) as core assets in a company could be hugely useful. 

More Thoughts

The important thing about RD is that it's a fun day out with a bunch of friends and an excuse to get together, talk a lot of stupid and remember the passing of one of the best of us and that was the day I had. Many, many laughs over some utter absurdity. 

Next Time

Some painted models of some sort and a bit of a workbench pending the arrival of some bits off a local auction site...

Sunday workbench

It's been a quiet weekend in the windup towards the festive season as I've just been pottering around, tidying my painting desk and getting ready for a bit of dedicated work over the holidays.

 Some Success

I've finished some Spanish! 

 

These two Medium Cavalry Carbine might, if I'm honest, be the most useless thing I could have painted. They're not in the starter list I was planning for, which is kind of stupid but I decided they were easier than starting a Tercio! But it does mean that I have some options if I can get the Kiel and one of the two Tercio done, then I have a list I can field while I suffer through the third Tercio....

I've also rebased some Nighthaunts I found as a unit of LgInf Butchers:

 

The unit I wanted to use for this is out of stock pretty well everywhere so I gave up and prepared for a different outcome. Our friendly 3D printer over at Potbelly Miniatures is making me some more basing material so that massive grind will finalkly get done over the break methinks!

Things I was going to take photos of...

...but it's absolutely chucking it down today so priming is incomplete.  I've also done a bunch of other prep for the Christmas break - built and started priming some M551 Sheridans (a gift from Blogger Pooch) that I'll use in 7DttRR - a game for '24); all the Chianrasps I need for two Hordes in my Kings odf War Nightstalkers and finished off a couple of models for Necromunda (a game I need to play again in the new year.) 

 I've also spent a bunch of time reorganising huge whack of my model storage, something that's been quite pressing now we're living in a much smaller space! One of my gaming clubmates, who's a dab hand with a laser, is doing some really solid work developing some stackable storage trays for me and when they're done, I'll definitely share the immensely satisfying moment of all my 15mm Flames models in their storage trays. The test set was SO pleasing. 

Next Time

It's Remember December at our gaming club and I'll be making hoon hoon noises with my Italian Motociclisti. It won't go well but we'll have fun and that's the important thing. 

10e Combat Patrols? FUN!

So I tried my first two games of Warhammer 40K 10th Edition at yesterday's club. 

 

Our first combat patrol was Grey Knights versus Heresy-era Alpha Legion. In my first turn, the Grey Knight Terminators and their Librarian commander teleported across the board after losing one of their number to a savage lascannon shot in the first shooting step!

 

My Strike Squad eventually charged up the left flank and destroyed Scottty's Havocs and the Terminators waded into the Tactical Squad and slowing cut them to pieces for the loss of a second Terminator. And then Scotty's Contemptor (Helbrute!) turned around and came back from heading for my side of the board and committed absolute murder. Those powerfist hits wrecked my Terminators. In the end, the last three Strike Squad powered into Scotty's commander sending him to his doom before they too were ripped to bits by the Contemptor.  

We re-racked and had a second game, where I took Scotty's Adeptus Custodes (hereafter referred to as Custards) against his stunningly lovely Heresy-styled Black Templars. I've never played with or against Custards before and by the gods it was brutal.

 While Scotty's big squad of Acolytes and Neophytes blitzed my 10 Sisters of Silence out of existence, the squad of Custards and the Shield-Captain shredded a Primaris Repulsor transport, the 5 Assault Intercessors housed within and then crossed the field scoring VPs the whole way and finished off Scotty's entire force for the loss of one Custard and some damage on the Vexilliarius. It was brutal.

Thoughts?

 Mostly pretty happy. The stripped back rules for 10e more generally are reduced to their simplest in Combat Patrol. Given my experience with 8e, the leap for CP wasn't that hard - and the very cleanly designed unit cards were really good to make that easy.  I asked the occasional question to sort out the order of operations and learned some useful things about how wound allocation works and that sort of thing. A quick QRS of the keywords was a thing I definitely should have made for myself.

I definitely figured there's some nuance I have currently missed (like understanding the trade-off of attaching your characters to things) and I'm genuinely curious about the balance in some of these boxes I will be definitely running out the Guard at some stage over the Christmas break to give them a tryout.

Also...  

I also built a cool model (as a reward for assembling flatpack furniture) which is part of my Christmas break Ghosties Completion Programme (TM). The Scriptor Mortis:

will be a proxy for a Nightstalker Mindscreech. In the Nighthaunts army, this is the one serious spellcaster and so this particular model really just slots in beautifully. I'll also be assembling and painting some Chainrasps to proxy in as either Scarecrows or Bloodworms depending on my mood. 

Next Time

I'm grinding Renaissance Spanish cavalry as I'm still painter blocked on the Landsknechts and the two remaining Tercios.

Finally wading into 10e 40K

 Yep. I've got a decent collection of the various types of Imperium models in my collection and I enjoyed playing 40K in 8e. I didn't really get into 9e as it really just felt like a rehash of the same rules bloat as 8e so it's been sitting, taking up space, for a couple of years. Blogger Pel played a couple of Combat Patrol games recently and that sounded like it might be right up my street so figured I'd look at my collections and work out what I could reasonably do....

 Good news, I have most of the bits of three combat patrols. Bad news, I don't have all the bits for any of them. The easiest route was Grey Knights - Blogger Scotty hooked me up with a couple of spare Terminators and access to his bits box and boom, army done. So here we go:

First off, Librarian Aurellios: 

This is, amazingly, a GW Finecast and it's surprisingly good. I painted it up donkeys ago - I had this idea of fielding a Supreme Command detachment in 8e of Grey Knights in a Guard army just for the lolz.

 The main beef of the army is a Brotherhood Terminator Squad:

One of the things that appeals about Combat Patrols is that the weapon loadout of the troops simply doesn't matter which means my love of Warding Staves as a sweet looking bit of kit is simply fine. This squad can, if you want, be swapped for a Nemesis Dreadnight which is both super cool and a really derpy model. I've been looking at some conversion ideas to make it look less like a baby carrier online...

Finally, half a Strike Squad makes up the rest of the army:

 

The heavy weapon is wrong but I'm not changing that. It seems like a bunch of work for no real benefit. This is another one of those mometns where the weapon loadout not mattering makes me happy. 

I'm hopeful that this is fun and somewhat balanced. It would justify picking up two models to finish the Imperial Guard one and three models to finish the Deathwatch one. I'd be well pleased if it could be managed and might be a light enough introduction to 10e for me to get into it.

Next Time

A report on how it went hopefully and some thoughts on 10e. Plus I'm trying to focus on getting my 15mm Renaissance Spanish moving again which is proving harder than I thought.  

That's not how you rob a train...

It was club day and we decided that another game of Dead by Lead was required. This time we thought we'd try out robbing a train! Blogger Scotty's Amish Gangsters (yep....) defended the train while Blogger Tank's Apache AND my three-man Western Tribute Band both tried to rob the train!

In the style of the train robbery in Legends of the Old West we gave ourselves horses to make running down the train a little easier. Tank's Apache warriors doubled up on their horses and the two gangs went after the train from both sides!

Both gangs arrived at the train but the Apache made the first move, leaping into the passenger car while the Tribute Band tried to knock out the Amish mercenary, Alice, in the train cab, but she was well protected in the iron cab.

The Tribute Band rode up alongside the train and Tuco fired off all his six gun at Alice, doing a great job of shooting her in the legs! Meanwhile, two Apache warriors had boarded the train. The first wore a shotgun but the second landed on board only to have the Man with No Name take a perfect shot and knock him dead.

Tuco went down immediately to the second barrel of the shotgun and as more Apache boarded the train, the Amish gang leader Ma Baker waded into the fray wielding her cane with fury seeing off a couple of Apache soldiers. The Man with No Name's hat and poncho were riddled with bullet holes from the Amish gangster on the coal car (he was VERY lucky!) but his luck wasn't much chop shooting back.

In the end, Alice was still alive in the engine, Angel Eyes was on the roof of the caboose as the train left the board and the passenger carriage was absolutely awash with blood with dead gangsters and Apache and the couple still standing tripping over the corpses of their comrades. In the end neither the Tribute Band or the Apache managed to loot the train but the Amish didn't defend it so well either. 

It was another hilarious game of Dead by Lead which we all enjoyed. And thanks to Tank, we rocked out the epic train. It was awesome.

Next Time

I've been doing a bit of work to finish up a Combat Patrol of Grey Knights (thanks to Blogger Scotty) so I can finally give 10e 40K a go...

Dead by Lead- Jailbreak!

Following on from a very enjoyable game with McZ, a few of the other Regimenters were keen to try out Dead by Lead too.

So, over the weekend we tried out Scenario 2: Trials and Tribulations. There were three of us, so we changed the scenario up to have one crew coming from one side, the other from the other size, and the defenders in the middle!

Conveniently the 4ground Sherriff's Office has two jail cells, perfect for this game!

A view of the table before the crews were placed and the game began!

On to the game....

"Look Sherriff, I already told your deputy all I know. I was just minding my own business yesterday, when this whole thing went down.

Now now, no need to pull your Iron. I'll tell it you, just.... just keep that in that there holster...

Whisper Creek was quiet, nobody was renting a room at Rogan's, even the saloon was empty. There was a train coming tomorrow, but nobody wanted to be out in town after yesterday.

A couple of the locals had come to blows over who's brand was on a particular set of cattle, which resulted in some words being thrown, and then some bottles, and then a couple of bullets. Now, all of that was normal fare in Whisper Creek, 'cept there turned out to be a troop of Cavalry who were in town, and they decided to make a whole thing out of it.

And so it was, that the two leaders ended up in the cells, waiting for the train to come with the new Sherriff, as well as the car to take the cattle away to Bloodstone to sell.

4ground make SUCH GOOD TERRAIN

Now, the Cavalry didn't reckon on the trouble they had gotten themselves into. Their Sergeant was there, taunting the folks in the cell, unawares that around the town, a whole bunch of trouble was getting all set up ready to start.

Trouble.

When one of the Cav, Jebediah his name was came out of the General Store (after taking more than a few things off the store owner's hands), he was quickly met by a hail of bullets from one of the locals, heading to free their boss. He ducked quickly behind a mule, which saved him, but the mule didn't have the same luck....

RIP Francis the mule

Now, that particular local hadn't reckoned on Butch coming out of the Sheriff's office, with both barrels of the shotgun primed and ready to rock. With an almighty bang, that local was a goner.

Shotgun at close range.

Now, this whole thing had kicked off right royally by this point. From the other side of town, the other group of locals (Ma's Boys) were moving up to the Sherriff's office, intent on getting Ma out.

From the top story, Butch emerged, holding his Winchester Repeater. He took aim at a local hidin' in an unfinished building. He stood up there, paused, and a crack rang out, followed by a hard thump as the feller fell from his hiding spot.

Butch coming out of the Sherriff's office

Butch might be regarded as a pretty good shot, but he was never regarded as a smart man. So while he was there, aiming carefully down the road, making that great shot, what he wasn't doing was looking around him, and seeing the person standing right at the bottom of the stairs, pistol raised in his direction.

The six shooter rang out, six bullets fired faster than a fly beats it's wings.

And that was the end of Butch.

Splat.

While all of this was going on, at the same time the locals had gotten their way into the Sherriff's Office, where one hell of a scuffle was occurin'. The Sergeant was hard pressed, trying to fight off one of the locals, the two tuslin' over a Bowie knife.

Brawl!

Jebediah, hearing that his boss was in trouble came runnin', only to end up on the wrong end of a tomahawk...

More Brawl!

Fightin' in the Office was bloody and brutal. More and more of the locals piled in, first fighting the Cavalry, and then fightin' each other. The Sergeant was overwhelmed, and during all of that, both Ma and the Chief were able to get free.

I don't know whether anyone got out of it, because pretty soon all that was left in that office was a whole bunch of dead and wounded folks, and not a whole lot of anything else.

A ridiculous amount of Brawl

And that's all I know Sherriff, honest. Now can I go...?"

Another brilliant game of Dead by Lead, it remains a ridiculously cinematic and enjoyable game. The rules play quickly and simply, with plenty of opportunities for cinematic elements, and great moments where things did, or didn't work out!

We will for sure be playing more....

Pooch