Digging about in the sand...

 I'm going to stop writing blog titles in French eventually but for the moment, here's a recap of the recent encounter between my Silver Bayonet French Mehadistes and Blogger Tank's Highlanders at the club yesterday.

But first, for the purposes of the thumbnail, this amazing little vignette made up from a game between Bloggers Tank and McBeth in Kings of War: 

Goat vs Hippogriff

  

I had a very close game with Blogger McBeth at KoW, thinking I was toast at the end of turn 3 and by the end of 6, winning 2 VPs to 1 VP. McBeth's been doing a bunch of work on Kingdoms of Men as an army and I think he's cracked the core of a pretty effective build. And then Blogger Tank stomped them with his rampaging Dwarven goat riders... 

 

To Egypt! 

 

To set the scene, Tank's been investing in the appropriate terrain and models for Egyptian Silver Bayonet and it looks amazing:  

We played scenario 3: The Tomb of Records with some fluff modifications for this table appearing very much to be outside. The two units appeared from the centre of their respective board edges, spreading out across the table to locate the secret entrances to the Tomb.

The French advances in skirmish order across a wide front, with Jean-Francois Champollion taking a brave lead into the desert.

The Scots stuck together, lead into the fray by their brave piper! Tank managed to flip the first couple of objectives discovering some interesing objets including a cursed headdress that gave his sassenach Marine +2 damage! He would have been quite fearsome if he could hit anything...

From nowhere, a series of revenants prowling the desert attacked the two units. 'Amira Shaheeda Abdul-Aziz sent this one packing with a single swipe of her scimitar. Other revenants were similarly dispatched across the board:

Jean-Francois Champollion and his unit uncovered a number of objectives in and around the pillars of the fallen temple and, terrifyingly, attracted the attention of a pair of Werejackals! Mercifully for the French, they seemed more interested in the Scots.

In a wholly ungentlemanly act, Brigadier Guy Beaudouin shot the Scot's piper to attract the attention of another revenant who devoured the poor Scotsman and then prompty felled the next Highlander sent to retrieve his corpse. I won't mention that Monsieur Champollion might have also aided in that particular endeavour.

Jean-Francois Champollion discovered the entrance to the Tomb of Records and sent 'Amira Shaheeda Abdul-Aziz in first (she is very brave, after all) and Guy Beaudouin fell bravely protecting the entrance as he failed to hit a werejackal and it tore a chunk out of him before he was shot down by the Highland Captain.

On the far side of the board, away from the entrances we were all trying to get into, a melee of epic proportions occurred. Theophile Beaudelaire became the first Highlander slayer of this round of Silver Bayonet but couldn't hit the side of a barn otherwise!

His excellent shooting briefly saved the Maltese Hospitaller but the Highlanders saw him on his way leading to a mad dash to the exit for all of us! 

The game was a tie in the end, with both of us getting five models into the Tomb of Records and losing three each on the field. Tank lost a pair to a single revenant and nearly lost two more to werejackals and a MUMMY (sweet Christmas they're terrifying) while I lost all three of my casualties to honourable fisticuffs! The Tomb of Records is a really fun scenario with lots of moving parts and a lot of randomness. Two of my poor soldiers were struck from on high, one by rocks and another by a rain of bones!? Madness, mercifully not for Marc-Antoine Longchambon on that particular occasion.

Once again, Silver Bayonet proving to be a delightfully fun game. We've taken to abusing the 'roll a double, have an event' from just initiative rolls into pretty much any opportunity. It definitely makes for a more entertaining game, if somewhat longer as the units have to deal with both all the monsters AND each other.

Next Time

An entirely reasonable question. I'm going to try and finish up the other four models for this Silver Bayonet unit, I've got ideas about turning some old Warmachine models in to a Kings of War army and a pile of Imperial Agents to paint in advance of the rapidly approaching Codex drop...

Allez les Français en Egypte

 I've finished the first models for the French in Egypt for Silver Bayonet in preparation for a game with Blogger Tank:

 

Jean-François Champollion,
Conservateur des Antiquités Égyptiennes du Musée du Louvre
and his fearless unit of Méharistes

 

They're a great set of models and they have come up beautifully. I've made a lot of use of Citadel Contrast White to deal with all the coats and cloaks and honestly, I'm pretty pleased with how it's worked.

I've still got the camel-mounted soldier to finish but figured I'd get the ground troops down first! I'll be working on him during the week and maybe the other couple of models for the unit that I think I'll potter through, including another camel - if I can work out how to make a Heavy Cavalryman. 

Panzerschreck XXIII

Bloggers Tank and I had a great run at the event coming a creditable fifth with a 2-1-2 WDL ratio. Not bad for us at all and the Italians performed exceedingly well. I ran the list back down to two separate 100 point builds, one for Manoeuvre missions and one for Defending!! 

The spectacular air support, while entertaining, arrived precisely once in five games, in the last turn of the last game and destroyed precisely one stand of Fallschirmjager. But it got some good laughs and that's all I really wanted.  

Here's a quick album of all the armies I got pics of in the Beauty Pageant: 

Tank's and my Italians

 

Brian and Tom's KV-5 toting Russians

Blogger Scotty's ARPs added to...

...Blogger McBs US Armour

Russell's Americans who comboed with....

...Graeme's even more Americans!

McB Jr Sr and McB Jr Jr's FJ / StuG / Dicker Max Germans

Cameron and Andrew's American Combo

Phil and Ian's Elite of the Elite FJ + Panzers

Jamie and Brad's Best Army Italian / German Alliance

Next Time

Tank and I will be playing on his new shiny Egyptian terrain for SB. It's gonna be awesome. 

Initial camel

 I promised a camel and a camel ye shall receive! A bunch of us have taken the opportunity to run up new Silver Bayonet units in light of the Egypt book drop. I have dived in to do the 'other' option I was going to do when we started this game and am doing some French camelry!

To begin with, the leader of my unit, his local scout and a medic from the Knights Hospitaller (serving under some protest...) have gotten painted over this weekend: 

On the left is Mubarak el-Zakaria, the Native Scout and on the right is Frater Annibale Tollossenti. In the centre strides their fearless leader - Jean-François Champollion, Conservateur des Antiquités Égyptiennes du Musée du Louvre. I decided that if France were to launch another expedition to Egypt to fight the Harvestmen then they'd obviously employ their foremost Egyptologist and thus Champollion has been summoned from his post at the Louvre to lead it.

The Champollion figure was a 50/50 pick with another one from Perry's 'Savants' pack - the other is in the box waiting for paint as a Occultist. The Native Scout and Hospitaller came from North Star's pack designed for Silver Bayonet and both are lovely models, if it a touch 'posey' for my taste. I invested far too much time thinking about painting the Hospitaller and finally settled on a hybrid of their uniforms over the existence of the Order.

I've started on the base coats for the rest of the unit: 

 

This is the core of the unit, a Vivandiere, a Sapper and a pair of Grenadiers. ‘Amira Shaheeda Abdul-Aziz is a local with plenty of supernatural hunting experience. The model is a Reaper one I picked up as a possible DnD character but she's perfect for this. I really like the movement in the sculpt and this model was a chance to veer a little bit away from the relatively consistent palette I'm using for the whole unit.

Caporal-fourrier Jean-Baptiste Thévenet is my Sapper and is a conversion of the foot musician from the Camelry command pack - I just chopped off the trumpet and slotted in a woodsman's axe. I had hoped to find a shovel (a vastly more useful tool in the desert) but finding one that was scaled correctly defeated my, Pooch's and McBeth's bits boxes.

 The two Grenadiers, Marc-Antoine Longchambord and Théophile Beaudelaire round out the foot contingent of the unit. I've decided that the French Camel Corps are clearly elite (I've ridden camels and frankly, managing them as mounts must make you special!) so I'm running them as Grenadiers to make them a little more robust than normal Infantrymen. 

Finally, and arguably the reason for this whole little project, is this:

The Camelty Command Pack, both on foot and camelback, had this matched pair of models and I could hardly not do it. So Brigadier Guy Beaudouin will be riding into battle on his trusty camel Bâtard (that's a nod to the Terry Pratchett fans out there) and wreaking havoc. Or, if previous experience is anything to go by, having his mount shot out from under him!

Perr's release of the 'Savants' pack was just the thing I was looking for - it gave me the chance to have a bunch of civilian scientist-types with some local support and a matched unit of soldiers for doing the heavy lifting. It has resulted in a unit with a more close combat focus that I was intending as only the Grenadiers and the Sapper can provide covering fire but it should be fun to run regardless.

I've still got a couple more models to do - another soldier and two savants (an Artillerist and Occultist) in the first instance but figured I'd focus on getting the core unit done first so I can get them on the table! The remaining question will be how I'll cope without the finest soldier in the French Army, Georg Bitterlich of the Wurttemburg Battalion to do most of my heavy lifting....

Next Time

Tank and I are teaming up for our usual Panzerschreck shenanigans. What could possibly go wrong...?