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! 

Earthquake workbench

Stupid earthquake waking me up at 0508 in the morning. It was a biggie and a damned inconsiderate start to the day.Put a bit of a dent in the productivity plan for the day too which was entirely vexing as I've got a wee project I'm working on for club day next weekend! 

More Menite Basileans

First? a set of ridiculous wings applied to the back of my Exemplar Bastions to make them into Elohi. I went for something slightly absurd to make the "this can fly" vibe super clear:  

Secondly, the thing I really didn't want to do and a random day off gave me the nudge to get it done. The Exemplar cavalry has all been rebased into Paladin cavalry: 

 

They've come up well and were, even compared to some of the smaller models, easier to get off their bases but SO much more of a pain to mount. There's a bit of cleanup on some fill to do on the feet but that's a tomorrow problem.

One base to finish - just waiting on four more pairs of wings from my friendly neighbourhood 3D printer and the army and project will be done, never to be thought about again, just played with and enjoyed. We've got a 1750 point one-day Good vs Evil narrative day coming up in November and I've got a couple of lists for Basileans I want to try, one of which needs all those cavalry! 

And then?

 

This is a lovely 3D print done by my friendly neighbourhood 3D printer Che, over at Potbelly Miniatures, and will be coming out to play in an upcoming Shadowrun campaign as streetsam Zoya Viktorivka Markovna, one of a pair of bountyhunters, alongside her baby sister Yevah Oleksandrivka who's a talented witch and will be played by Blogger Pooch. 

I went for the white cyberware off the back of using a bit of contrast paint for the fine details on the skin and I kind of love how it came out (given my initial plan was for bone) and it's been great fun to try and bend the character creation to fit the model (and I've made some very suboptimal build choices but I don't care.)

Next Time

I've got another game of 10e against Blogger Pel's Blood Angels (which I expect will go VERY badly) and getting the Basileans out too. 

In the grim darkness of the far future....

There is only a very silly game. 

 So I was going to write up my whole game with Blogger Scotty and, as per usual, I stopped taking photos about 40% of the way through the game. 

This, however, is the highlight: 

 

 I'd been dinging up Bel'akor with Thermal Spears, Hunter Killers, Krak Missiles and a Culexus Assassin and left him on 1 wound so the brave Commissar, leading the last remaining parts of my Penal Legion squad charged the Daemon Prince. I rolled two hits, two 6s to wound and the whole game held it's breath as Scotty needed 2 4+s to not die and promptly rolled two more sixes! It was EPIC. He then promptly ended the Penal Legion squad, cut up my artillery and finally found himself very dead as an Armiger Helverin took the centre objective and noted the large wings and promptly Anti-Flyer 2+'ed Bel'akor back to the warp. 

So first real game of 10e was a good success. The rules feel mostly pretty good and I like how much it's slimmed down from the 8e / 9e bloat. There's not *too* much to remember and once I get weapon stats down and things like that, I'll be much happier.

Scotty admitted he didn't bring the Soul Grinder since it would probably have chewed me up pretty badly but I had plenty of anti-armour stuff on the board and reckon I could have given it the beans. I also need to tinker with the list a little bit - the tank commander definitely needs to be giving out 2 orders a turn and the Imperial Agents contingent needs a second look. This one worked, but only because I was playing against daemons. I reckon it'd give Tyranids a good go too but probably a bit middling against a more general list.

Anything I don't like? The stupid 60x44 table just vexes me for no real reason. I understand exactly *why* it's like this but come on. Otherwise, while I remain unconvinced I'll ever play in a comp (unless it's big enough to have a real drinkers bracket for me!), I'll be happy to play it casually and use all the nice models that I have! 

The long dark night time of aggressive troops...

I played a game of Late War Flames of War against clubmate Chris, breaking out my Volksgrenadiers and their new 12cm mortars against his Brigade Panzergrenadiers. I wanted to try this list out as I think it has game in both attack and defend missions (but never maneuver!) and elected to defend against the Panzergrenadiers. Who also defended. Uh oh. D/D missions.

We wound up rolling up Night Patrol, and given that neither of us had ever played it,  we thought it was worth a blat. It was a slowish setup as we worked through the completely different game setup and we were both a bit baffled about what correct decision making looked like but I think both of us could play it again. Chris reckoned playing it in a tournament would be a tough ask to finish the game and I am inclined to agree. It definitely feels like if you're going to defend you need to know how to play, and how to win, these missions.

Here we are at the end of my first turn:

  

On turn two, almost nothing happened as we both kept our heads down.  Chris and I had occupied these two houses below - me defending my objective and him waiting for enough of his half-tracks to remount to come up and try and shove me out. We spent most of the game pounding the other players building and Chris came off second best in the end. But not well enough for me to assault him out and finish the platoon the quick way.

Turn three and I got no reserves so spent a relatively quiet turn shuffling things around and lining up my SdKfz 250 Recce tracks to go after Chris' Stummels because this happened:

 

In an absurd turn of events, the King Tigers were basically stuck between my minefields and Chris' and their main contribution to the game was rolling 6s and absolutely ruining the recce tracks you can see below! Chris said later on that he should have brought them on later and instead brought on his second platoon of Jagdpanzer IV/70s on his right to stop my Recce making a cheeky run for the back objective (which I was totally trying to do!)

Chris rolled up on my fortress with his SdKfz 251/16 Flamm tracks and did some great unpleasantness for a couple of turns but I kept up a respectable return fire with panzerfausts (I lost the shrecks early) for, in the end, a whole lot of nothing!

We reached a stalemate on the right where those flak hlaf-tracks in the top of the photo pushed my remnant assault platoon back to the bulletproof cover of the craters while three Jagdpanzer IV/70s sat off to the right electing not to cross the hedge given the additional +1 to cross checks at night. I managed to range in both my 8cm and 12 cm mortars on the remnant of his infantry platoon and eventually thrashed them into next week over nearly six turns...

And this is where the game finished up:

Unpictured were my Brigade Panzer IVs cleaning up the second platoon of Jagdpanzer IV/70s while my Brigade Panthers finished off the work started by the Assault platoon and killed Chris' first Jagdpanzer VI/70 platoon. They went on in the following turn to bail out all of the half tracks on the objective to emerge victorious. 

So this was both of our first time playing the Defend / Defend Night Patrol game. Possibly not a great choice for Chris with his Brigade Panzergrenadiers but I think he managed a cunning middle ground to keep all his half-tracks on table. He said afterward that his big mistake was putting that objective in the open where he had to be on it and there was some proposition I got the first turn. Shuffling it just up the street so he could be in the church and defend it would have made this a very different game. 

Night was hard work for two armies who are mostly Trained at best - my artillery was next to useless and most shooting at concealed, gone-to-ground infantry was on 6s with the extra +1 for night. So it was a grind but a really enjoyable one, just because it was such an unusual mission. If you've never played it, read through the game setup VERY carefully when you do because it has a completely different order of operations. Also, minefield placement really matters. 9/10, would play again. 

Next Time

Bit of a workbench. I'm working on a character model for an upcoming game of Shadowrun then another one for the game that follows that (Vecna, Eve of Ruin for DnD5e) and trying to finish up the last of the KoW conversion - I've had some wings 3D printed for the 'Elohi' proxies and while they're a bit silly, they should do the job of clearly denoting that these things fly! 
 

September Workbench

 One more rebase for KoW....

Also, I have done many other things!!

 Flames of War

This is the last unit I needed for my Late War Volksgrenadiers. It's a unit I have, for some reason, held off on for a long time but for not obvious reason - heavy mortars: 

They were easy enough to do and other than remembering how to make my snow recipe again, an easy job to paint. So I've finally finished up ALL the bits that have been sitting on the to-do list for Flames until the release of Early War for v4. And, honestly, that'll be a complete repaint of a very old army. I suspect my Christmas break might be taking all that paint off...

Kings of War

 The rebasing grind has carried on and I've got two more bases done - a second unit of Ogre Palace Guards and rebasing my Holy Zealots into my Men-at-Arms 'Swordsmen' lead by Vice Scrutator Vindictus as another horde of infantry.

This leaves me with only two bases left have basing material put on and two more left to rebase completely, which are the two I have been deeply reluctant to start - full metal, multipart cavalry. They were exceedingly unfun to do in the first place on their own bases, getting them onto a unit base is going to be a whole thing. But they are the last two bases that need doing...

Warhammer 40K 

I'm hoping to get my first real game of 10e in a week or so with my Imperial Guard so decided I had one fairly important task to do before then - giving my Last Chancers a quick touch up and change: 

I'm going to try running a tank company so will have limited infantry support other than a large squad of Cadians and a generic 'infantry squad' which is a great reason to break out the Last Chancers. Given the constant changes in squad makeup for Guardsmen between 2nd edition and 10th edition, all sorts of stuff is wrong but rebasing Rocket Girl and Fingers onto a single base and making them into a weapons team.

Next Time

40K hopefully. Probably some more KoW too. I'm *so* close....

A fairly conventional club day and blog post

Team Yankee!

This weeks club day included a game of Team Yankee - a game I haven't played in ages. With new dynamic points, it seemed like it would be worth rolling out some M1A1s and seeing how the really big bois run. 

Clubmate Tom rolled in with a really cool Polish list - taking some of the good kit - T72s with ERA and Songsters - and attacked me in Escape. 

I'm going to preface what follows with a caveat - I didn't get reserves or air support until the third turn and that makes winning in Escape fairly difficult when your only reserve is 40 points of M1A1s. Also, I picked the wrong end of the table, deployed badly and then didn't play to my failing to get reserves. Not to take away from Tom's game at all - he played it well knowing that there was an inevitable pile of M1s arriving behind him!

In some sub-par defensive positions

Army defending their favourite TV show...

 I made a bunch of long range ATGM shots in the first turn and polished off some Monkey T72s and a few light vehicles but lost most of my Bradleys (who weren't properly concealed from the return fire because I didn't think through my first turn properly). Tom pushed slowly and deliberately up the whole front and having the good T72s definitely gave him better odds of landing shots, even with RoF1!

Air support finally arrives and is roughly handled

Turn three and my Abrams and Harriers finally arrived. The Abrams removed Tom's Gaskins and wrecked a Dana but couldn't get a bead on anything heavier from the base edge. The Harriers weathered a phenomenal amount of fire (and left Tom and I looking up loads of AA rules) but their cluster bombs managed to miss everything of substance.

 The LAV-ADs, having had no air assets to go after in the whole game, rolled out and gave the Polish BMPs an absolute hiding with their GAU-12s. It was pretty effective but they went down in a screaming heap to some T55s and T72s.

Polish T72s roll onto the objective

 So in the end, I needed a to hit a very specific pair of T72s with a couple of shots from my Cobras, which I didn't. I probably had a turn where I could (and should) have moved my infantry across the table to defend that objective but like I said - Tom played well! 

It was actually a good game and I would like to play it again. It was interesting to poke around the list and see what else I could do with it. Basically I concluded that probably need to fit in some M106 mortars and shift the infantry out of the Bradley company and into a Mech platoon so that I could have four more Bradleys on table. That would have given me measurably more AT firepower and a smoke bombardment which could have given me better opportunities to focus TOW2s into the T72s.

Kings of War

The rebasing of the old Warmachine army is nearly done - I have four more units to rebase and a couple more that need flocking and then it's all done. This current batch is pretty much the last of characters: 

Reznik1 proxying as a Dictator, a War Wizard, a Mounted High Paladin and a Mounted Abbess. Nothing too big or clever but good uses of the old models.

I took the army out for a run yesterday and it went surprisingly well - I got a 2 - 2 draw with Scotty in a very very swingy game and then clubmate Ryan got pinged by some very lucky boxcar Nerve tests by me. The cool thing was learning that the army standard bearer can hand out Aegis Fragments making the fairly beefy army beefier.  Downside? 10 year old superglue is a PITA and I have got a very big and irritating repair job on the blasted Errant Standard Bearer. It was a nuisance in the Warmachine days and, it turns out, still is! I'll be giving a few variants on this army a go in the foreseeable future.

Next Time

Good question. The to-do pile is diminishing nicely so probably a bit of a mixed bag of whatever I feel like painting this week! 

Mad rebasing efforts

 So I've been doing a BIG rebasing effort on moving my Warmachine to Kings of War and it's come on a treat this last week. 11 new bases done, three more nearly ready for flocking and three more waiting for basing.

This collection of single models will be a Priest and a pair of High Paladins - using the High Reclaimer as a lowly priest offends my Warmachine knowledge but it's a sweet model and I wanted it. 

I did a couple of bases of Sisterhood Cavalry. These are obviously not riding around on cats but I think I can live with that proxy. I'm going to keep the Unit Leader to make a mounted Abbess too. They'll ultimately go in to support the two units of Paladin cavalry that are coming down the pipe as flanking units.

Then, the logical extension of units and the reason this whole conversion became a workable thing. These two bases of Knights Exemplar from my Menoth collection will do solidly as Paladin infantry. On the left, with two handed weapons and on the right, with hand weapons and shields. It was a nice easy pick up and rebase an boom done.

For grins, a couple of units and here's where the Warmachine vibes really start coming out. The unit on the left is a Zealot Rocketeer unit and a Redeemer warjack who will proxy in as Men-at-Arms crossbowmen and the second unit is a Regiment of Ogre Palace Guards. So the Devout and Dervish warjacks, and their favourite caster Amon ad-Raza, are the first of two Regiments made with light warjacks. And if you thought this through to it's logical conclusion, there are two Hordes of Ogre Palace Guards coming with heavy warjacks. Those bases are going to be heavy!

Finally, a couple of the big bois - Kreoss 3 rides in as the hero Gnaeus Sullustis and Severius 2 will be Danor the Wizard, a model that seems quite good in that it has five spells and can cast all of them every turn...

I've also done another base of Sisterhood Infantry and prepared a second of the two bases of Paladin Infantry as well so there's more of this to come alongside, with a bit of luck with timing and the excellent work of Che over at Potbelly, I'm actually coming dangerously close to be able to get this army on the table so will be booking in a game at our next club day to try and push me over the finish line. I think at this stage I've got six more big bases and a few other random models to finish...

Next Time

Kings of War and maybe Necromunda, maybe 40K. Not sure yet!