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.

New year, new toys

 Happy new year folks! 

So this was a little present I decided I deserved earlier this year and it's been sitting under my desk for well over three months waiting for me to clear the deck of projects that needed doing so I could do this big boi. 

I started just before Christmas with the assembly and playing about trying to replicate this sweet pose I found on the interwebs. I only had to chop a few tabs off the right leg to get the wider stride and otherwise, the model is stock. It wasn't a quick build by any stretch and I will curse the ammo belt for the Castigator cannon till the end of time as a clever bit of model design and a miserable bit of a assembly.

I need to find a better way to take more front on photos of models this big! I need a better white backdrop for them but this is the best we can do for the moment. 

Here's the whole collection:

 

 This is about 1650 points of Imperial Knights which is, to my mind, enough. I've got a nice little 2K list with a Deathwatch Veteran Kill Team, a Corvus Blackstar and an Assassin that rounds this out. Should be fun to have a run with.  

Next Time

I'll be getting into painting some 15mm Team Yankee in preparation for this year's Panzerschreck doubles event in Palmerston North. Got some Brads and some M109s to paint! I've also been getting some prep work done to sort out my Fortis Kill Teams for 10e so will be hopefully getting the DW back on the park soon (once some more bits arrive from Germany....) I'm aiming to get back to the regular weekly posting next week too after the fairly grindy end of 2024.  

Been a while

 Been a busy December so far with not a lot of time or energy for painting but I have finally got there! 

My second unit of Imperial Navy Breachers is done: 

This means that in a couple of weeks, I'll be playing some boarding action with blogger Scotty and running an Imperial Agents patrol of: 

• Inquisitor Kyria Draxus 
• Rogue Trader Entourage with Voidsmen
• Imperial Navy Breachers
• Imperial Navy Breachers
• Inquisitorial Acolytes
  

for a pleasing 480 points. Is it good? Oh, hell no. Will it be awesome? Yes. 

It also means I have cleared the way for some summer projects. One will be resurrecting my Deathwatch with the new Index and the other....wait and see!

Remember December

Wanze approach the objective

A solid 2-1 record for the day (and third equal) with a solid lack of photos. The last game was a bit lunatic but I won a game of Valley of Death with three Kleinpanzer Wanze taking an objective and surviving a couple of rounds of shooting from Hans Rudel and a Last Man test to win the game. 

The rules for the event were:

• 70 points Late War
• No Top Armour 2
• Only one unarmoured unit

And it brought out a bunch of medium tank lists - Cromwells, Comets, Jagdpanzers, Panzer IVs, Turans, Shermans, Chaffees, T34.85s - pretty much everything. It was brilliant.  Glorious victory on the day went to clubmate Richard running Hero Sherman 76s. It was a cool list and he played it well (I know, he beat me 8-1!) 

Next Time

Starting on my summer projects. Expect some workbenches...

Eine kleinepanzer nachtmusik?

 Turns out panzer wanze is German for armoured bug. Who knew? i mean, people who speak German, sure, but not me! 

It's bearing down on that time of year again when I reveal my secret tech for our club's annual Flames of War event in memory of clubmate Nick. This year, I'm taking my favourite LW German archetype - turrets are for chumps and adding to this year's stupidity are three Kleinpanzer Wanze:

 

Is bug. Is so cute! I'm sure this will be terrible, like all my Remember December lists, but meh. They're fun.

Tune in in a couple of weeks time to see how we go! 

Next Time

Whatever happens between now and RD!  

Short and sweet

 Not much this week. 

I played in a one-day Kings of War event at the club yesterday and won three games out of three, part of the epic victory for Team Good. There's part of me that thinks the combo of ogres and light infantry and cavalry was the genius list build that got me over the line. I suspect however it was my opponents rolling dice like this that also had something to do with it in almost ever game:

Shoutout to blogger Pelarel for the last game of the day and that, while explicitly the worst of his die rolls, is also an adequate illustration of his dice in that game more generally. My shooting against the slow undead definitely came to the party for the first time in the day too which certainly helped!

Workbench

I finished up the backlog of Mehadistes for Silver Bayonet Egypt as well: 

Another Grenadier on the left, the Occultist (because no one else would be so gauche as to wear orange) and then a light cavalryman and his dismounted version. I have a couple more civilians that I could paint up for this unit but we'll see how we go.

Blogger Tank has been tinkering with his table setups and has come up with a new one he wants to try out so the timing is great!

Next Time

I have one more squad of Imperial Navy Breachers on my desk that I want to finish and a quick project for our annual club memorial event in December so probably those!

Big guns on big tables

There's been a bit of a renaissance of Team Yankee at the club summed up somewhat by clubmate Paul who exclaimed "why didn't you tell me you were playing this?!" 

Bloggers Tank, Pelarel, McBeth and I played a 140 point doubles game of Team Yankee in advance of next year's Panzerschreck event in Palmerston North. "Practicing is cheating" has been a catchcry for the last few years but given we've not played a game of TY in a while, playing some practice games seemed like a good idea. 

So Tank and my M1A1 Armoured Combat Team & Marine LAV company took on Pel and McBeth's Challenger Armoured Squadron & Queens Dragoon Guards.

Phase One: Handbags 

The Challengers attacked up the American right flank, straight into an M1A1 platoon in ambush. The two Bradley IFVs and M1A1s did a sum total of nothing to the Challengers. An effective start.  From here we withdrew around the walled farm and repositioned to draw the British forward. See how that manoeuvre turned out later on...

Meanwhile, the two recce screens met around the town and some Scorpions tried some cheeky shots at an oncoming LAV platoon who promptly opened up with their 25mm Bushmasters and set the Scorpions packing. The second Scorpion platoon hiding behind the houses met the exact same fate at the hands of the Marine gunners:

Around the nearby airport, a sum total of not much was happening other than some recce Bradleys taking position near the taxiway and then spending the subsequent five turns exchanging ATGWs with some British Swingfires for a sum total of one bailed out vehicle. Ever. The middle of the board really didn't much enter into the game in the end.

Phase Two: More Handbags

In an effort to limit the amount of handbaggery, the second British Challenger platoon arrived from reserve and bravely attacked the flank of our second M1A1 platoon (which had arrived the turn prior) before we could overrun the objective. Turns out the whole RoF1 and no Advanced Stabilisers kind of really sucks super hard as they promptly missed.

Meanwhile, on our right flank, our opponents pulled this incredible shenanigan to stop our M1A1s taking an aggressive flanking charge on the Challengers:

This unsporting manoeuvre will live on in infamy! Especially as what followed was a sequence of poor armour saves, remounts and last stands that lead to the total loss of the M1A1 platoon after a sequence of handbags. Turns out that there's a point where rolling 1s does hit hard. When the British infantry and Challengers rolled towards the objective that's just out of shot behind the walled farm there, I took great pleasure in putting some HMMWV Stingers into a stupid wall too. Just to make a point.

However, on our left, everything came up roses. The M1A1s survived the flanking manoeuvre and, with the arrival of the last of the LAVs and the M1A1 company commander, overwhelmed the British Swingfires and Scimitars protecting the objective to score a  win for the Americans.

 Thoughts? 

Challengers are HARD. No RoF2 on the move is painful. We also developed some good ideas about how to commit shenanigans with helicopters and came to the collective view that in a world with Rapiers and Chaparrals and Geckos that fixed wing aircraft that aren't A10s might be a bit garbage. 

But playing large games of Team Yankee on 8' x 6' tables is the best way to play it. It lets NATO and WARPAC play doctrinally correct games and while it requires some scenario specific tweaks to make sure that the extra depth and breadth doesn't break the game, they're pretty straight forward. 

Will be playing more! 

Next Time

Good question. Something basic I suspect! 

So I took a week off...

 ...and achieved nothing much substantive! I managed to have a great game of 40K at the club and took one photo before we started and then forgot to keep going (!) and then had a very salutary lesson in Kings of War from clubmate Ryan who learned me that my all-Paladin Basilean list might be a bit rubbish. 

 I was trying to get this done for my 40K game last weekend and fell short by what I thought would be a couple of hours. It was closer to another solid day's work to get it done after finding some casting issues with the shoulderpads and a lot of patience with the putty to fix them well enough:

 This is a Knight Moirax, a Mechanicum version of the Armiger chassis. It's an interesting combo of tools that should go nicely alongside my two Warglaives and Helverin - the main gun is for popping Marines and the claw will rip vehicles a new one.  I wanted to add the small Mechanicum knight to the list before I add a Cerastus Knight Castigator to the list to have a nice mix of both kinds of knights.

Once that Castigator is done I'll be able to put a Knight army on the park. I've got a build with two large knights and four small ones that still leaves room for about 350 points of various Imperial Agents which I think should make for a lot of fun builds and also shore up some of the weaknesses of a list with lots of very big guns. 

More DnD hilarity

Our next DnD campaign is going to be a run through the Vecna: Eve of Ruin and our DM and I had a lot of very silly conversations about running a 'Suicide Squad' type party - I went as far as building Captain Boomerang as a Drow Ranger (because obviously Drow are Aussies - they come from the down the under(dark) place that's full of spiders!)  - but given the campaign hook it seemed an opportunity to go a bit mad. So I went off to Spelljammer: 

I give you Commodore Everett Storm, Giff Privateer. Commodore at least in his own head. A master of blade and pistol, he's been running cargo, legit and not-so-legit, from the back room of Clive's Den on Garden (that's a deep cut for the TSR Spelljammer game fans from the 90s) all over Realmspace. He's slain more Neogi than you've had hot dinners. He wears a cape made from the shells of Umber Hulks. He once escaped an Elven naval vessel hiding his faithful Hammerhead, Realmspace Dancer, in the landing bay of an abandoned Dwarven Citadel. 

Some of those stories are true. These days he's mostly retired, spending his days regaling travelers with tales of derring-do on the decks of all mannder of void-faring ships and hopefully getting them to pay for the drinks.

Character-wise, he's a Giff Rogue with the Swashbuckler archetype. The species / skill combos will make him a crack shot with his pistol and then a Zorro-like figure with his very worn cutlass at close quarters. He's surprisingly agile for an old Giff despite being an absolute unit. Personality-wise, I'll play him as a mix of the Han-Solo-esque lovable rogue (who definitely doesn't drop his cargo and run at the first sight of a Neogi Mindspider) and a gruff old soldier off on one last big adventure to save the multiverse. 

Next Time

Club day and more hilarity will ensue!