Trying out the Atomic Mass Games version of Star Wars: Legion

AKA Return of the Scarif Beach Party...

 Blogger Pel and I decided it was time to give the new version of Star Wars: Legion a go. Given the wildly varying views on the internet and the bits and bobs that we'd respectively read it seemed like the best thing to do was give it a go. 

We both went through and built lists with a bunch of things that needed to be tested. Pel bought a couple of vehicles so we could see what happens when armour and vehicle damage play out and I bought the Dark Troopers (for armour) and a double-sized unit of Storm Troopers to see what that did.

The mission was a Bunker Assault with Sweep and Clear as a secondary objective - that was looking to defeat enemies in all areas on the board for VPs. Pel had Ordnance as his advantage (for a once per game bombardment) and I had Garrison (adding another Prepared Positions unit.)

The game began with both of us reading the orders rules to understand how we actually started with our commanders off the table and then working out how Prepared Positions worked. I deployed half my army (in the end) because Shore Troopers and their mortars, as well as my Storm Trooper garrison. Pel deployed his blaster cannon and his Rebel Veterans.

The first turn was VERY slow as we worked out how everything worked, looked up rules and abilities and double checked things we thought might have changed. By the end of turn one, I'd plinked some damage on the Snow Speeder and killed some Rebels and Pel had started a campaign on the giant unit of Storm Troopers but the amount of damage done to either side was fairly limited. 

Turn two and three were fairly violent - the Storm Troopers spent the whole game excessively suppressed and it was only Director Krennic standing next to them that kept them from panicking. The Dark Troopers armour and two activations did horrific things to Pel's Wookiees while Pel's rotary cannons destroyed most of my infantry.

This is about where we ended up. Darth Vader went screaming across the board and dispatched two reduced units of Rebel Troopers, the Taun Tauns and Dark Troopers continued to handbag each other and a Dewback had a good crack at Han Solo for not much of anything.

We called the game there as the Empire was ahead on VPs and while I was down to 4 Shore Troopers and one Storm Trooper in my line, I still had an angry Vader and most of my Dark Troopers still kicking while Pel was running out of infantry and the Dark Troopers dealing with the Wookiees blunted the Rebels attack. Also, Pel cannot make white-die saves in Legion.

What did we learn?

• Most units don’t deploy on table unless you have Prepared Positions. 
• Most units walk on the base edge. So unless you have range 4, you’re not shooting much of anything in turn 1, which isn't a bad thing. Speed One Darth Vader might struggle to really impact a game but that's just an inducement for transport.
  
• New cover rules are just straight better. 
• The flat hit reduction from v1 meant that the more attack dice you had, the better. Whereas the new cover rules allow for units to survive longer and they're more likely to be panicked than just shot off the board. Sharpshooter is a VERY good rule now.
  
• New armour rules just straight better, especially getting rid of the Armour with no number on it.
  
• Crit fishing is still a valid strategy for killing units with armour but it's possible to overwhelm armoured units with regular firepower. But dealing with armour is something that you need to have.
  
• Suppression doesn’t grant cover.
  
• That rule always seemed weird. Happy to see the back of it.
  
• Double sized units are interesting but not game breaking. 
• The recover Suppression markers using red defence dice, not white ones, and while it helps, they're also harder to hide since a 10 man unit takes up space!
  
• Pretty much all the simplifications are improvements we ran across are improvements. 
• The loss of fidelity on things like vehicle damage didn't measurably impact the game and having vehicles simply having a degraded state that requires a white die save to do more than one action is great.

The new battle plan setup is really good too. Picking out primaries and secondaries that your army can achieve and advantages that fill gaps in your army's capability is a nice way to go. We aren't on a 'who had the biggest bid to be Blue Player' stupidity either.

Overall? 

Well pleased. I think we'd both agree that this version is better than the last one. Most of the simplifications improve the overall feel of the game. The scenario generator is both more fair and more interesting. Dropping a turn and increasing the size of a basic army up to 1000 points doesn't seem to have much of an impact. I think at the end of three turns, the score was 5 - 3 and getting either of us to 12 by the end of Turn 5 was....looking unlikely. 

We're already looking at new models...

Next Time

Some more colours have been added to the Immolators. Well, black. I'll be pushing to get them done this week... 

Painting white...

Ho boy. Why do I do these things to myself? Two solid days effort on the turrets of my Immolators and here we are with two mostly complete turrets for my Immolators. Thank goodness for contrast paint is all I can say. The contrast has done a nice job of just putting in some shadows in good spots and letting me just tidy up the flat surfaces with some Vallejo Cold White (easily the best white. Easily.)

 

This was one of those kits when you start painting and wish you hadn't put the whole thing together but I say that having had a heck of a time getting the drivey-handles sitting in the right spots so even if I hadn't assembled them, they'd have superglue-based misery all over them instead. 

Overall, happy with how they've come out. Be interesting to see what they look like when I finally put the stained glass on. GW recommends a coat of varnish to help the paint stick so that'll be step one and then getting stuck into the stained-glass bits. I know what I want to do, so hopefully it'll come out gleaming! I'll be getting to work on the hulls next but not super sure where to start with those. Tracks and work up?

I've also finished a second Navigator for my Imperial Agents. I think they're a nice addition as a unit leader for Breachers as they can keep Deep Striking stuff away from my very squishy humans but also can shoot a pretty solid mind-bullet as well. 

Nice to paint a second one this many forevers after the last one and have them come out looking pretty much the same. Once I've done the Sisters as well, I'm going to break out the Veiled Blade detachment and do some seriously silly Assassin shenanigans,

I also managed to polish off the repaint of the rest of my Team Yankee infantry which, as it turns out leaves me with two full Mech Platoons, two full Para Platoons or one full Marine platoon which is a pretty good outcome I reckon. Got a couple of new toys arriving this week to finish off a platoon of M551 Sheridans for a game next weekend too.

Next Time

I'll be getting the Star Wars Legion out for a game with Blogger Pel to try out the second edition. I've got reasons to be optimistic the changes are good. Will let you know how it goes!  

A few quick updates!

 Bit of a short blog this week. Too much chorin' to be done!

Testing for ValleyCon?

So I took the Brigade Panthers out for a run and ho boy. 

It was a pretty rough handling for clubmate Pat who was trying to make Jagdpanthers work and having already given that list up it validated that decision. Bulge Jagdpanthers are too pricey to make a list with enough fat to sustain any number of losses. Jagdpanthers are definitely in the 'reach out and crush someone' class but the rest of the list is also too pricey to really work within the confines of the VC list builds for this year.

I did enjoy the Brigade Panthers though - I don't think I'm going to have many long games at ValleyCon - having seven Aggressive Reluctant Panthers does not encourage conservative play so I'm not going to.  Should make for some hilarious matches.

Sororitas! 

Blogger Scotty flicked me the limited edition Sister so I thought I'd give the paint scheme a punt and see where I landed:

 

I'm middlingly happy. The white came out well enough with some aggressive use of Contrast White which makes me happy because I really did want to paint them in the Order of the Sacred Rose.

However, I've already abandoned the red bolters for black on the unit and I'm going off to have a serious think about my insistence that all pineapple grenades are green and the webbing all being in black. Blogger Pooch suggested I paint them all as gingers, which I do like, but I need a better method than this one! 

But, it got me enough confidence in the painting white to start on this:  

Got a long long long long way to go and there are TWO of them! 

Next Time

 

Expect progress on the Immolators! 

 

It's not practice. It's not....

First off, let me be absolutely clear. 

We are NOT practicing for Panzerschreck. We are just remembering how to play Team Yankee. 

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. 

Tank and I took our Bradley Mech / Bradley Recce doubles list out for a run against Pel and McBeth's Cheiftan / Warrior Mech doubles list at the club in a game of Outflanked!

Bit of a slow start as we looked up a bunch of stuff and figuring out how we have always adapted to playing TY on 8 x 6 tables (this is the correct size table for TY at this size and you cannot change my mind) and remembering how night rules work, finding out that Thermals are better than IR (and that the Brits don't have any) and remembering how ranging in with the same spotter happens!

The British ran an armoured spearhead straight up the guts toward the front objective lead by the Challenger Is:

 

The defending US shelled a bunch of the British AA out of the game (except the Rapiers....) and ambushing Cobras went after the British Abbots. The Abbots survived and a second Rapier volley deleted the Cobras. This is where we learned read Hunter Killer in more detail. Lesson learned. 

As we rolled rapidly into the final phase of the game, the horde of British armour arrived on the front objective and we finally managed to start really shooting at each other. A few Chieftains and Brads went down to incoming fire before the shove:

The ROMOR covered Challenger Is bowled into the Mech Platoon and pushed it and it's associated Bradleys off the objective which was taken by a Warrior platoon.

 Over the final couple of turns, a whole hail of ATGM fire rained down on the Chieftains and ended a solid most of them and then  the M1A1s coming in from reserve finally reached the battleline - one platoon outflanked the ROMOR Challenger Is and managed to destroy a single tank - reminding me why I hate Team Yankee as Tank and I rolled a ridiculous number of very untimely ones. Cross checks, firepower checks, everything. 

In the end, the other platoon of M1A1s rolled into the flank of the defending British infantry and in a succession of consistent 4+ rolls, Tank came alarmingly close to wiping out the whole platoon of British infantry - he got them down to a couple of teams before the M1A1s retreated from combat. We were dangerously close to pulling off a Hail Mary on this one. We were definitely a turn late on the counterattack mostly off the back off late reserves.

 It was a good game and lot of remembering how TY works and how it's different from Flames. Both the lists are solid and once we get a bit slicker with the armies, we'll be fine for doubles. It also got me to get a bunch of TY work done. I've finished up my last Bradleys: 

And got the two Mech platoons painted / repainted to go in them!

 

It's definitely better than it was. I still need to work out a way to get the chocolate chip details onto them but I'm happy enough that these can go on the table like this. I've still got another 8 bases to repaint to get a full Marine platoon back on the park but that won't take long.

Early War!

With the announcement that Early War will be coming out for Flames of War later this year, I'm going to be repainting all my classic EW German Panzer Is and Panzer IIs and I'm going to add some half tracks to my very old (but some of the best BF scuplts) German Pioneer infantry so on a whim, I built the first one: 

It's rather cool and I'm looking forward to getting them out and running at some point! Thanks to Che over at Potbelly for the excellent prints of the pioneer bridges! 

Plans?

Finally, in a surprise discovery, I had a Weetbix Warhammer game of ADLG with McBeth so we could both try out some "bad idea or worse idea" armies - him with Medieval Scots and me with Hussite. We both deployed badly, made some shocking tactical choices and then threw appalling combat dice when it mattered. 

 I think the end of the game conclusion is the Medieval Scots have legs but that Hussite might just be too niche if you want to actually have a fun game. If you want to make Fort Hussite then it's probably fine but it's not the right army to try and play aggressively. 

Next Time

It's time for my annual games of Magic the Gathering....

Weekly workbench

I've made the decision (for better or worse) to merge my winter and summer painted German collections. I've been finding that I keep wanting to use models for one that I already have in the other and that was a pretty good sign that this was a bad way to go forward.

So with that in mind, I'll be going through and cleaning off the white weathering and adding on summer foliage instead like I have with these Panthers and Wirbelwinds: 

Exciting? Not really. The whitewash came off really easily and a quick drybrush of some Middlestone to bulk up the slightly washed out yellow was pretty quick and easy. It also means I'll be putting ambush camo on my Jagdpanthers (which I'm excited about) and some late war

 I'll be trying this out as a Brigade Panzer Company from the Bulge book as a test for an event in April. The list is: 

• HQ Panther
• 3 Brigade Panthers 
• 3 Brigade Pathers
• 3 Brigade Panzer IV/70s
• 4 Brigade Wirbelwinds
• 4 Volkshetzers
• Brigade Assault Platoon 
• SdKfz 250 Recce
  

Good? Almost certainly not. But there's a lot of it and most of it is sending 75mm KwK 42 (L/70) rounds downrange so I'm going to go with a 'shoot first, win quick' plan. 

 40K?

Of course. I've spent some time putting together my one permitted unit of Sisters of Battle: 

That's a selection of the squad (ie. the ones who can stand up unassisted!) but it's a really nice kit. I think I'm glad I've only got one but there's a lot of character in the models, despite the mono-pose nature of GW multipart kits these days.

They're going to be painted as Order of the Sacred Rose with white armour and black and red highlights. It'll be a nice contrast to my Deathwatch! The Immolators that are coming down the pipe will be even more amazing in white!

This has also opened up the last bits for both getting what I think is a pretty solid Knights + Imperial Agents list on the park but getting them done will also give me the last bits that are required for running the  assassin-driven Veiled Blade Elimination Force which we will be calling X-Force from here on out. I've got enough things to run it and I'm definitely keen to give it a whirl. I suspect it's terrible but that's never stopped me before!

Next Time

A once over on how my new plan for ValleyCon goes. I'm sure it'll be fine. <narrator's voice> It was, in fact, not going to be fine. </narrator's voice> 

I've got some Bradleys still staring at me demanding some sort of attention to get them finished to give me the nudge to get on and start re-chocolate chipping all my TY infantry...

Nerding out about boxes

 First off, I got the Deathwatch out yesterday for their first game and before I did, I managed to get this collection of lunatics painted:

They rewarded my hard work by refusing to make a charge, with a reroll, for three turns. It was infuriating. And the whole time, Blogger Pel's firebase was giving the rest of my force no end of grief because these idiots, and their angry priest, couldn't roll a decent charge. With a reroll.

Blogger Pel's murder marines, in particular his insane Death Company of flying murder, gave my Deathwatch something to think about. That many chainswords will cut up Terminators just so well. I have a lot to learn about how to really make this army work but it was a great lesson.

Also, I had a test game for our upcoming club competition in April and got my butt thoroughly handed to me by Blogger Tank. I knew Clausewitz lists can be brittle but ho boy. Being very reluctant got me very dead - a bunch of bailed out results and the army just stopped dead. And then ran away.

Finally, nerding out about boxes. I moved to a much smaller house a couple of years back and copious storage was not part of that puzzle so I've been looking for cunning plans to make storage of my models a somewhat simpler proposition. Some of it has been aggressive downsizing of the model collection (which is definitely a work in progress!)  but the rest has been working with clubmate Ryan and his laser cutter and we've reached peak storage genius:

 This fits in an off the shelf plastic box and holds my entire Flames of War collection. It's half and half Germans and Italians with a random little diversion into MW Pacific War Australians. It's awesome and I'm super happy to have all my toys so well stored! 

Next Time

Getting this storage sorted out has made me get a few things out of the box that still need to be done so I'm going to get off my butt and finish them. Especially with some cunning plans coming down the line for new toys....

More Space Marines!

 Miracle of miracles! A thing arrived from overseas at a convenient time! Blogger Pooch and I got a swag of bits from a bits place in Europe and it arrived just in time for me to want to paint the things! 

So this has given me the opportunity to paint three more Primaris Marines - two Pyreblasters and one Hellblaster: 

The Hellblaster was one of those sets of arms that I kind of just love and provides a little bit of cinema in the squad. The Pyreblasters are pretty basic but that's kind of the only way they go together. But that means I can take these two pictures: 

First, my 'ranged' Fortis Kill Team - with Hellblasters and Desolators to provide overwatch and a Watch Master to keep them from getting trapped in combat and make sure I'm getting special issue ammo every single turn. Plus he's a boss model! 

The second is the 'close quarters' Fortis Kill Team - with Assault Intercessors and Pyreblasters to get in close and deliver Watch Captain Artemis to kick bad guys (are we the bad guys?) into next week. 

I've managed to assemble most of a list with my existing collection and a little bit of paint stripping and repainting and I'll have something that can get on the table which I'm really looking forward to. I'm not sure it's super good but it'll run and we'll see how it goes. If I've learned anything from all my games with my Knights of late, it's that I need to try a few things to see what's missing.

Next Time

Probably a bit more workbench stuff - I still have some Bradleys to finish - and some piccies from club day! 

Bringing back Deathwatch for the umpteenth time...

And not because they won the LVO! 

I've been getting back into painting Deathwatch with the rerelease of the index list before Christmas. The first new additions are a pair of Desolator Marines and a new Assault Intercessor:
 

It's been fun going back to my old roots with these and its such a simple paint scheme that I can kind of hammer these out fairly smartly. I'm basically a few models short of rebuilding the army into something I think will be quite fun to play with although likely a bit not good.

Once I've done a bit of paint stripping and some bits arrive from Germany, I'll be able to run two squads of DW Terminators, which are fun, as well as three different Kill Teams and a bunch of support stuff. If it's half decent, I'll probably pick up some bits to see if I can make it actually decent! 

Next Time

This was both late and short. Next week will be more workbench but with less real life and more hobby time, hopefully a bit more to show for it! 

Ready for a comp in July...

In January! What is this nonsense? This might mean we have time to...practice? Playing 140 point TY on a large table presents a series of new and interesting challenges but I think we're really looking forward to it.

To begin with, the M109s have been done and added to my burgeoning artillery park:

 They were pretty easy to do and having the top of the turret covered in stuff made for a slightly easier painting effort as it wasn't worth trying to make the camo go around them! There's also enough detail on the slab sides of the turret to not make that a misery either.

For grins, a WIP of the current state of my last four Bradleys. These have had their tracks and the one crewman largely done and now it's just the grind that laying in the details and the camo process to get them done and then just a repaint of a bunch of crewman and an entire infantry platoon...

Finally, a group shot of my contribution to the two-player nonsense that Blogger Tank and I will be running.

Tank will be bringing another 9 Bradleys, more M1A1s, some M106s, another pair of Cobras and a platoon of Chapparals to keep the nonsense away in classic Desert Storm US Sand to look completely different to my MASSTER camo! 

 Next Time

Brads? Deathwatch? Games? It's anyones guess!

Hive Fleet Fashion Faux-pas

 Hat tip to Blogger Scotty for the blog title for today. :) 

I took my House Cadmus stompy bois out for a run against blogger Pooch's sneaky Tyranids. I've got this theory that my knights specifically need high rate of fire support so I added in a squad of Grey Knight Terminators and an Exaction Squad, mostly looking to use their [Precision] ability to snipe out Broodlords, and a couple of assassins.

 Here's House Cadmus and its Imperial Agents allies:

 

 

and here's the green and purple of Hive Fleet Fashion Faux-pas ready to swarm over the board!

By the top of turn 2, I'd lost the Exaction Squad to Lictors, the Grey Knight Terminators to a brood of Genestealers and the Armiger Moirax to the other Genestealer brood. Oof. Definitely didn't feel like the game was starting as well as I'd hoped...

But there was some revenge as the two Warglaives sent the Winged Hive Tyrant into the ether and deleted some Tyranid Warriors with some close range melta gun shots. This became a feature of the game in some respects, as one of the few things with many wounds and no invulnerable saves, I popped six out of seven with cheeky melta shots in combat.

On my right flank, my one Helverin refused to die to Lictors and with some help from the Errant, eventually saw them off. Meanwhile, Pooch's Gargoyles and Termagants were happily sitting on the no-mans-land objectives ticking up points and I was too tied up trying to get out of my deployment zone.

In the end, I sent the Castigator into the middle of the board to a) see off the Norn and b) take the centre objective to start scoring it!

And for a solid four rounds of combat the Norn did NOTHING except pass it's invulnerable saves to avoid being sworded while flailing ineffectually at the knight. The Castigator at least spent that time blazing away at squishier targets including removing the Gargoyles and the Termagants while thumping the Norn and achieving bugger all. Finally, I sent in the Errant as well and Pooch's ability to roll 4+ invulnerable saves finally gave out. 

What did I learn? Knights remain tough as nails and even an inexperienced player like me can make them go. I have two data points that prove to me that the correct agents addition to the list is Sisters so a squad of Sisters of Battle, a couple of Immolators for them to ride in and Inquisitor Greyfax to lead them is likely the next purchase here. I also learned you can't arrest a Broodlord.

Pooch's army worked absolutely as intended, pinning me in my deployment zone and scoring as many points as possible very quickly but it also behaved as he explained - get well ahead and run out of steam in the late game as the powerful units get killed and hope you're far enough ahead.

In the end, I squeaked through by 7 points with my secondaries coming good late in the game. The Castigator was alarmingly close to dead, all the Armigers were gone and both my assassins arrived, did almost nothing, failed their charges and died!

Workbench? 

And despite all that, Blogger Pooch graciously and generously offered to airbrush the basecoats on my new TY vehicles to save me the misery of base coating them the old fashioned way (10 coats of airbrush paint applied with a brush) and hopefully that'll help me focus on getting Panzerschreck ready! 

So I have some M106s, M109s and some more Bradleys to do. I need the M109s for Panzerschreck, the rest is for other builds at lower points values. Given Panzerschreck is in July, I figured I'd start with the M106s since they're the least necessary! 

With M113 FIST for scale

These took a few hours from whoa to go, considerably quicker than spending oh-dearie-me hours just on the basecoats.  There has been a bit of a process to remember how the scheme works and how I get a consistent finish bit I think it's pretty good. I also had a crack at a slightly different method for the pseudo-chocolate chip on the crew. I'm not super happy with it but I like it better than my previous attempts so there's going to be some repainting in my future! 

Next Time

More TY and I've started on some Desolation Marines for my Deathwatch for 40K. They're exceedingly silly but should see the table reasonably soon.