Squee!

It's been a pretty slow week under the brushes this week. With the Film Festival on locally, I'm definitely struggling to find time for painting! 

I have done some stuff. I finished up a HMMWV I picked up at Panzershreck. I needed one more HMMWV ITOW to be able to put my HMMWV Scouts and ITOWs on the park at the same time. It's mostly for those games where I don't want to put the whole LAV formation on the park. 

I also painted some rats. Why you say? Because I had been considering ordering them from Forge World when Pooch discovered a set for 1/10th the price on Anvil Industries and got me those instead.

So these are lovely. They're really detailed and delightfully armed. There are two of each variant in the pack and with a set of ridiculous armaments. Perhaps the best gem though is that the kit comes with two hands with the remotes on them. I'll absolutely have to get another Cawdor sprue to build a couple of gangers to be my bomb rat delivery systems.

The photos are a bit ropey - the light is really bad and I'm posting way later than I normally try to. But that's winter! Next time we play some Necromunda, I'll get some better piccies of the lunatics in action.

Next Time
We start our 1000 point 40K narrative comp next weekend so I'll grab some photos of that and hopefully get some from the others here too. I've got a few things to finish for that between now and then, which might be pretty tough given another fairly busy week of movies but I'll get there. No idea how, but it's play it painted or not at all.

I join Team Chicken

Team Chicken

I have joined the ranks of Team Chicken! Pooch got there first, but he hasn't posted his ranking entry in Team Chicken yet. You might see it in a couple of days. In the meantime, I've painted a couple of Cadian Armoured Sentinels for Scotty's narrative campaign. I think that's the army mostly finished bar one more squad to complete and a new Ordo Malleus Inquisitor. 

Sentinel 5

Sentinel 4

I'm keen to have one more, since a squadron of three seems most correct. It'll probably have another long arm because I love the asymmetry of it, although I am oddly tempted to put a missile launcher on it because the Sentinel missile launcher looks cool. 

The question I'm now asking myself is should I buy six more and have a Sentinel Squadron? Is that a bad idea? It's probably a bad idea...

Next Time

Maybe the last of the stuff for Scotty's campaign or a couple of other little doodads that are currently on the painting table as that last part might take a few days. And it's only five more weeks till I hit the 12 month blogging mark and I'm going to need something special for that. I've got an inkling what that might be now but I'm not telling! 

Con-crud and actually some finishing touches.

TY Doubles!

So I basically forgot to take any real photos because we had 5 really good games against 10 really good dudes all of which could have gone either way. I snapped a couple of quick in game ones though just for the laughs:

Fellow blogger Pooch's IPM1s crushing the traffic on their way to crushing out M60A1s. This does not count as concealing terrain and no, no cross tests were required. 

A LAV broadside. This is in game, as Tank duelled successfully with the T64s on the left of the shot, I broadsided the BMP2s in the forest on the hill with 8 LAVs. I *hate* BMP2s.

If you do want to see some really nice photos of all the armies that were there, check out the TY Facebook group.

For a few details (for our few readers who weren't actually there!) the weekend was doubles event, 140 points, one set of support on 8x4 tables. Tank and I played double-Marine M60s and LAVs and went 2-1-2 for the weekend. We *could* have won all three of the games we didn't, which was nice. We also got a lot of compliments about bringing the Spooky for air support. It would have been nicer to have had it *be* an AC-130 rather than Harriers, which were disappointing (mostly because Tank and I fail HARD at 5+ firepower rolls.)

There was a lot more NATO than I think either of us was expecting - TY (especially in 15mm) hasn't been capable of supporting a comp like this for that long in NZ and, as Pooch pointed out, 140 allows those high-end NATO tanks and I think a lot of people took that opportunity. Not us. We do things the hard way. We'll both be glad when TY2 comes out as the Starting Step order and morale rules made a huge mess of a bunch of us over the weekend. Three tank platoons....ouch.

We laughed a lot and none of the games were a complete blowout even though we screwed some things up with half on / half off choices and deployment choices - in fact, the majority of the games over the weekend were 4-3 or 3-3 draws. As always with this weekend, the food was excellent, the beer was good and a fortunate acquisition of good coffee saved us from morning misery.

Heavy Support

I finished my Heavy Platoon this week as well and did a bit of assembly to get some stuff done for next week. I did wind up looking at some box art and realising I've left the gun shields off all my lascannons. And y'know what? I'm okay with that.

Next time
We're starting a 1000 point narrative campaign in August and I need to finish a bunch of things for that. So it might be that stuff. I'm also working on some little terrain projects and starting to assemble and rebase my Teutons for KoW. Oh, and I've got some sabot bases to use my Warmachine army for KoW in the meantime, so there's a serious glue-up and basing exercise there to come.

I'm also bearing down on a whole year of blogging every week so there'll need to be some kind of exciting post for the anniversary.

Finishing touches? Not so much.

And while this goes up on Sunday, I'm writing it Friday since I'll be playing Team Yankee all weekend!

I have actually done some stuff this week but it hasn't been all that productive.

My heavy platoon is a perfect example of doing it wrong. I should be fielding many many mortars. But that's lame. And I love the Cadian lascannons. So MOAR LASCANNONS! It was a tough call not to roll out more autocannons but I have a plan for that. 

I've also sorted out the nose instrumentation of my Valkyrie thanks to a busted up Chimera comms array I found in my bits box. It just sort of completes the model. 

I did the base as well, which I hadn't done. On Pooch's advice, I've painted the stand black and I think I like it better than clear. 

Bonus Inquisitor!

I was doing a bit of repair work on this guy after he was attacked by a large ginger daemon that lives in my house and I realised I'd never posted him up here.

This was my first Inquisitor that I cobbled together out of a Grey Knight Paladin and some bits from the Deathwatch upgrade sprue. The hooded head just really makes it look awesome. Also, plain old humans in Terminator armour are REALLY bad. So I'm going to build another one. I think the next one will be swinging the hammer in both hands. Then I can field a detachment of Inquisitors with Hammers. And that will be cool.

Next time
I'll finish up the heavy platoon and put together a quick write up of the TY event with some photos. There look to be some interesting armies coming for it so I'll try and take some decent pics.

SPACESHIP!!!

I feel like that's a post title I've used before. And, not to put too fine a point on it, it's one I'll likely use again... 

I've finished the Valkyrie. Including the door gunners. Who made me use some VERY bad words. Repeatedly. But they look cool so it's fine. 

Exterior

Top down you can see the tiger stripe camo. I figure the underside should be blue-grey (and it is) and the topside should have the same vehicle camo as the rest of my army, given that it's a transport and ground attack aircraft and will be seen from the top! 

Front on she looks pretty sweet, including the armament. Multilaser. Hells yeah. I was slightly vexed that the normally seethrough canopy had ben painted but actually it looks pretty cool. The nose is missing some instrumentation (can't be helped with internet buys sometimes) but I'll pick those up sometime soon and fix them on the front. 

Port side you can see the kill markings (pre-placed optimism!) and a couple of nicknames for the pilot and gunner. Seemed rude not to have those there. Mortis is easy but Ordinatus? It's from the Latin 'to direct' so I'm reading it as 'Deadeye' because I can.   

Door Guns! 

The wings are magnetised so you can see the door gunners! They fill the door wells quite successfully and I wish I'd actually been able to fill the interior with actual troopers. It would look super cool. 

Next time

I'm working through the heavy platoon at the moment and when that's done, the Cadian infantry platoon will be finished. I've got some Sentinels and a Leman Russ to do (and I might get a second) and a platoon of Scions half built. Most of the bloggers are at a Team Yankee event next weekend so there'll definitely be something from there too.  

Pooch’s June update

What? June is gone? We are halfway through the year?

Yikes.

1. Paint a new 40k army

I had visions of painting more Krieg infantry but instead I painted up a series of psykers- a Primaris Psyker and 3 Wyrdvanes with their handler.

The Psykers all got simple greenstuff masks, which just helps them feel more Krieg-y.

As for the handler, I have actually had this idea built since like... January. After the desolation of the Krieg civil war, it fit for me that they would be extra hateful and skeptical of anything that could fall under the sway of the dark gods, so Psykers would have “minders”. In game terms, he is a fourth Wyrdvane.

2. Create a table of terrain to support a new game
Did this in March!

3. Make a modular terrain piece
I haven’t given this any thought, probably should?

4. Paint a Naval Fleet
Done! Did it in March

5. Finish something for an army I haven’t used in a year and take it to a tournament
On track to have this done for next month!

6. Buy a starter box and paint all of it
Did this one back in February

7. Paint every miniature for a game I own
Did this one too!

8. Paint a Space Marine Hero each month
On track here too, with another one painted. This one has the squad’s special weapon, a Plasmagun!

So that is six Space Marines, for six months so far....

9. Paint a stand-alone force
Did this one last month!

10. Update and improve a table of terrain
Working on this one at the moment, will be done for next month!

11. Paint something napoleonic
No further progress on this one, it’s firmly on the back burner. I mean, technically I have done it with the unit I have painted, but I feel like that doesn’t count...

12. Finish what I should have last year
Only one of these left, and I haven’t touched it since last year. Maybe next month?

So that means half way through the year, I have finished 5, with 2 in progress for July, 2 which are on track for the year and the rest I haven’t done much with. All in all, not bad!

But now it is time for  Mortywatch!

I have completed the build, and the painting of the first sub assembly. And I am loving it!

Add caption

Next month, more Krieg, a couple more categories done and more progress on Morty.

I hope....

Pooch

Gang Warfare

It's been a tough week of not getting a lot of painting time but I have managed to get the Cawdor 99% done with a little experimental detailing left to do. 

Cawdor

Like I said last week, the whole gang is mixed blue and linen and aiming to look a bit dirty. So just a few pics rather than a long and rambly description. 

The mob

The boss and his offsider, with possibly the worst heavy weapon in Necromunda

Cawdor polearms. Because a gun works best strapped to a 6' pole right? 

Close up lunatics

The mad bomber and the sniper. Yep. Sniping with an autogun because that's how we do. 

I'm missing a second champion to play against Tank and Pooch's boxed gangs, but GW have (vexiungly?) just dropped a magnificent Cawdor bounty hunter from Forge World who will make an excellent champion too, so he's gone on the shopping list. And if I'm going to Forge World, I'll have to pick up a weapons kit and another sprue of dudes to make up some other variants...

On the experimentation front,  I picked up some Typhus Corrosion and Ryza Rust from GW yesterday and I'm doing a few experiments on how these two paints work together to give a rust effect. I want all the blades and spikey bits to look really rusty and tetanus-y. Seems like it'd fit well with the fluff.

Valkyrie!

I'm stiff fighting with the door gunners. It's very hard to get them to sit right when you can't take the hull apart. That's often the way with auction purchases. Mercifully the wings still come off so it's not impossible, just stupid hard. But I've got the tiger stripe on, repainted the whole thing in the right shade of green and have mapped out a bit of a transfer plan to make it look super cool. 

Next time

The Valkyrie will definitely be done and as blogger Scotty is working out a 1000 point narrative campaign to run through August, September and October, I have a few things I'll need to buy and get built and painted for that. On the plus side, doing that will just about get the Guard company finished too.

Club day!

Tank and I had a couple of games at the club yesterday to test some TY and play our first game ever of Necromunda2.

Team Yankee
Fellow Regimenteers Pel and Scotty suggested testing out TY on an 8x4 at 90 points as a test for ValleyCon 2020. Pel particularly wanted to find out if the extra 2 lineal feet impacted the game and Tank wanted to give his work-in-progress Israelis out for a run.

Scotty and Pel played a corner-corner mission and Tank and I had a run through a long table-edge mission (Contact). I'm not going to run through a full blown battle report as we made a bunch of mistakes and derped around a lot so this was more about trying some stuff out so I'll throw up some nice piccies and jot down some post-game thoughts.

I took basically ALL my Marines (less some LAV-Ms and a HMMWV Scout Patrol) and Tank bought Magachs, Merkava 2s, Israeli infantry and Skyhawks!!

Pre-hoon moves! 

Hoon hoon!

The turn after a flight of Skyhawks shot down my Cobras, they returned and made some of my M60s unhappy!

Israeli infantry removes LAVs. Easily.

Airplane-based revenge!

LAVs take the objective!

In the end, the game was lost by Tank rolling reserves and then having them scatter onto the wrong flank two turns in a row. It was a bit of a disappointment as, had either of his infantry platoons arrived on 3 - 6 (instead of 1-2) then I'd have had a VERY scary platoon standing on the objective facing down four LAVs and 3 M60A1s.

So what did we learn? That being able to ram a dozen LAVs across the board in turn one and force the defender in Contact back towards the centre of the board and away from the objectives was good. The extra linear feet gave out some flanks for me to hoon around on but also meant that either of us could have rammed through gaps in the line as neither of us could really cover board-edge to board edge. It also made the flanks vulnerable to aircraft as most AA screens won't cover all of that - short of playing WARPAC with Geckos and Gophers.

Tank has been trying to work out how to get a good list out of the Israeli army and the conclusion at the end of this game we had a good chat, especially looking at what Pel was running with his Chiefs on the table next door, and there is definitely a list pushing Merkava 2s as a mainline tank and finding some of the silliness, like ITOW Jeeps and Perehs to make up for the AT19 on the Merkava.

We'll also all be at Panzerschreck in Palmy in a few weeks and so will be playing 140 points on an 8x4. While I think our crew reckon these games might be a touch too large but 90 on an 8x4 didn't feel too bad, much to my surprise.

Necromunda
So we had a bit of a technical fail, in that Tank left some of the key documents in the library at Casa del Tank but Battlescribe filled a few of the gaps for us and my hazy recollections of Necromunda 1 did a solid stand in (and, amazingly, were close to right!!). The game was really cinematic and some of the actions were super fun.

Rivet gun??

Axe cop looks down on the Goliath Leader having ineffectually lollipopped a frag grenade down there

The guy on the right has a 'Renderizer' and wow did he ever renderize! 

The Cawdor leader was shot with a stub cannon (!), failed to wound, pinned, failed to grab on and fell! 

The game was a lot of fun. GW have rolled in the best of Necromunda1 with some of the cleverness and slick rules of 40K 8th ed. Pretty pleased so far with how it went and we'll need to play some more - it'll be much more interesting once we get into some scenarios too.

We did learn that the Overseer Leadership skill is probably a bit broken once we worked out how it was supposed to work and that Blaze is the funniest rule in the game. I am going to have to get a weapon kit from Forgeworld (ignoring the screams from my wallet) and probably the bomb rats too since they're really badly funny.

Next time
The Cawdor are going to get finished and, if I can figure out how on earth to mount a couple of heavy bolter gunners, an Imperial Guard Valkyrie! Pooch and I picked up a pair on a local auction site and mine *really* needed it's door gunners. I've managed to get the bits but getting them reattached to an already assembled model might be a real challenge.

Guardsmen and not Guardsmen

Cadians

Third squad complete:

Now I just need to finish the support squad and my platoon of Guardsmen will be complete. I'm starting to wonder if I need a fourth squad of dudes for the company and, given that they clock in at a shade under 100 points, it's not like it'll be hard to fit in. The question is whether or not I want to paint another squad.

Not Cadians! 

I've started working on the Cawdor too:

The studio scheme is black and blue and it was a bit dark for my liking. The Cawdor are supposed to be trash pickers and scavengers and black / dark brown seemed to be a colour that would hide the dirt  so I went with a dirty linen colour to go with the dark blue instead.

I think I might also have to look at a lightbox. If I'm not taking the photos first thing in the morning, when there's loads of sun, I'm finding it hard to get a well lit picture.

Next time
The rest of the Cawdor and some photos of our first game of the new Necromunda as Tank and I give it a crack. We're also testing out a larger scale game of TY on an 8x6 table. Should be interesting.

Workbench update

So the cold and the jetlag has really put a dent in my productuvity this week and I think after the insane amount of stuff I did before I went away, it's going to take a while to get back in the swing of having things done for Sunday blog posts. But I have done some work this week.

Cadians
I got the base coats on the last infantry squad and while I was hoping to get them done today, the ability to concentrate for long periods hasn't really been there (thanks jetlag. Ugh.)

But rapid fire squad is coming along nicely. In the meantime, I also got the support squad assembled and based ready for priming. 

I rather like the idea that I'm deploying a platoon with sensible platoon level support. Not 9 mortars. One of these lascannons probably should be something else, but they just look so cool!

Fellow blogger Scotty is planning a narrative campaign (at 1000 points!) so I'd super keen to drop my Guard into that, led by one of my fearless Inquisitors. Who, you ask? The current plan is Greyfax because the model is awesome and I haven't put her on the table yet. And Karamazov seems like that would be stupid. 

Not Cadians
Because Cadians seem to have been a bit of a staple for me for a while (but so close to being done with the infantry!) I thought I'd get the Cawdor gangers built. The models are delightful, albeit not as poseable as I'd hoped, but definitely provide a better mix of options than the old metal range. I have close combat weapons!

Pooch, of course, reminded me that Forge World have also made some alternative weapon loadouts. And they look amazing. And I'll probably have to get them too. *Have To*. You understand. 

Next time
The finished Cadians, obviously, and probably a couple of test Cawdor models. Although, looking at the pile. maybe even my tidied up Khemrian skeletons for playing Kings of War Vanguard might make the cut. If I can remember how I painted them to add in the last couple of models!