Kasrkin! Ho!

 So it's been a couple of weeks and I have managed to do a couple of things.

Kasrkin!

I've finally finished this squad after far too long having it sitting around waiting for attention.  How long? I found a photo on my phone when I assembled the Sergeant. In 2018. Eesh. 

This one goes in the class of great GW multipart kits. The poses are excellent, the options for building cool stuff like the aiming guy, the prepping to go round a corner guy and even enough poses to mean that I didn't have to build the two plasma gunners looking the same. I've gone with a simpler palette, in some respects, from the rest of my Cadians and elected not to go ham on the armour trim. We don't need camouflage in the Kasrkin Corps. Straight green is real mans camo. Pleased to have them finished for playing some more Boarding Actions too.

Boarding Actions

Speaking of Boarding Actions, assorted highlights from my first two games of Boarding Action. First off, my Guardsmen took on Scotty's Imperial Fist scouts and their Bladeguard escort. 

I learned early on that playing Guard in Boarding Actions is going to involve a certain amount of challenge in unpacking and making best use of both Orders and Voxcasters to really play to their strengths. The new Cadian units are really effective though with two special weapons the combo of their Born Soldiers and Shock Troopers rules help with the confined spaces.

Scotty won the match in the end as his scouts got to a couple of objectives way quicker than I could and while Bullgryns absolutely flatten Phobos Marines, I was too far behind to catch up.

 We played a second game, pitting my valiant Cadians against some rascally daemons of Khorne and Tzeentch, a most unholy pairing.

This one was both easier, because lasguns heck up daemons and less easy because Scotty kept passing his blasted daemon saves. But my Kasrkin and their Commissar bravely charged a bunch of Bloodletters and forced them to stay in their deployment zone...

...while my Bullgryn went down in a hail of Flames as it turns out 2+ saves don't really hold up against quite that many attacks. I think I won this one in the end by virtue of hemming the daemons into their side of the board with a lot of bodies.

Next Time

I'm going to finally get to work on finishing my Renaissance Spanish. 

Workbench....

 Bit of a miscellany of 28mm stuff for the last few weeks:

Lets start with a callback. Blogger Scotty has convinced a bunch of us to give the new 40K Boarding Actions a go (alongside giving the second edition of Kill Team a punt) and so I've dug out my Imperial Guard and are bringing them up to date to get into both of these. The new codex (Shocked? Me? No.) has removed heavy weapon teams from Cadian squads so I've managed to cobble together enough spare models with a rapidly approaching out-of-production Command Squad box and my bits box to make up the necessary bits. 

I've added three new special weapon troopers, the same again in regular troopers, a new model to the Command Squad (and noting that, even with new codex blergh vibes, I love the design choice to make the Command Squad an HQ unit with the officer built in) and, off to one side, a Cadian with a Needle Rifle because you can have that in Kill Team, but not in 40K! 

Secondly, I painted a unit of Bullgryns, completing my collection of Imperial Permitted Abhumans (alongside my Ratlings and Imperial Beastmen!): 

These are some of the BEST models GW has in the Imperial Guard range. I have a soft spot for the metal Ogryns that came out in 2e but I don't love the plastic Ogryns in this kit. I do, however, love the Bullgryns. The tracklink armour, jerry cans as water bottles and the sheer mass filling out the volume really gives away the sense of scale of these chonky bois. 

I took them out for a run in a Boarding Action at our last club day but I'll save the thoughts on that for next week!

I'm also working on my fourth to last (!) unpainted Underworlds Warband, The Dread Pageant. 

I'm enjoying building the palette on this one. I'm borrowing pretty heavily from stock but then tinkering moreso than usual when I do that and I like where it's going. This one looks like a really curly one to run as the models in it seem to want to hover between alive and dead for as long as possible. Should be a really interesting challenge to run. 

Next Time

My finished Kasrkin and some thoughts on Boarding Actions as a way to play 40K.

Pooch's January 2023 update

Well, here we are, the first progress post of 2023!

The perks of starting with a bit of leave means that I have made some great progress on all five of my objectives. Will this level of progress be maintained? Absolutely not!

1. Paint a platoon for Flames of War

Starting the year off with a quintessential German unit, an armoured panzergrenadier platoon for my Afrika Korps force.

The models completed this month are an add on to those previously finished- so I actually painted up three new bases of infantry, as well as the awesome plastic 251 halftracks from Battlefront Miniatures.

Not much to say about them except that I continue to be really happy with how the DAK are coming together, and I love how massive this army is becoming!

The full platoon is quite large!

Worn and weathered halftracks, I especially like the crew figures to finish them off

Next up for this category? Might be onto the US to create my army for Valleycon.....

2. Add something to armies I have already painted

First up in this category is no less than two Warhammer Underworlds Warbands, both of Stormcast Eternals. I took them each out for a game and they were..... not great. 

At least they looked cool with their Canny Miniatures bases right?

Farstriders

Steelheart's Champions

And second up in this category is my first Marvel Crisis Protocol miniature for the year. I have a vauge plan to finish up one a month, just to try and work through the back log of miniatures I have sitting there.

But first, Heimdall!

Looking menacing and awesome!

The rainbow bridge effect was created by playing with Contrast paints

But wait there is more! Thirdly in this category is a whole mess load of Thirty Years War Germans, for my Imperial German Army for ADLG-R. These have been in my "to do" pile for a good while, and over the Christmas break I genuinely put in a bunch of effort to make sure that I painted all of the models I had for this army. 

Everything that I finished this month, which included....

...two bases of Late Pike and Shot, with regimental guns....

...two more bases of Late Pike and Shot with regimental guns....

...three bases of Croat Cavalry...

...and two bases of Commanded Shot tokens!

Naturally, now that I have painted all of the models I have for the army, I have now ordered the last of the models from Khurasan to finish the army off!

3. Finish up a piece of terrain

Terrain this month is two Wild West Buildings from 4ground, part of a large order I picked up at the start of last year, that arrived very recently.

The part assembled buildings are some of my favourite from the range!

Only the first floor of Rogan's Bar is new

Sadly for me they had changed the colour of the green they used for Rogan's bar, meaning that when I was adding on just the first floor, it looked just a bit daft. Cue a repaint, and it is now looking great!

4. Play a game a month, that was different to the last month

The game this month is our rescheduled Remember December event, with a group of us getting together to play games of Late War Flames of War, and reflect on our good friend Nick.

I brought along my 82nd Airborne paras, who were really solid. The British Shermans were largely ornamental, and I think I would have been better served in every game with US Shermans or M10s. They looked brilliant tho, so that was a win!

Jagdtigers looking brilliant

Until one Jagdtiger got itself killed by a Para bazooka in assault!

This Jeep was hit by a 128mm shell from a Jagdtiger

My Para HQ walking away after killing two Panzer IVs (or more, capturing them)

This was the Shermans not being ornamental

Defensive position of Paras!

Nick's Staghounds, well run by Bob

All in all, it was a great competition. Timing of games was challenging, 85 points of Late War in an hour in a half encourages some very fast play! 

On reflection, I should really have run tanks, but I can remedy that for the next competition!

5. Paint a Hundred Years War French Army for ADLG

And here we go on a brand new ADLG army! I didn't manage to get the light right for the photos, so I'll have to do a bit better on that front in February.

Paint one base for ADLG

I am not sure what basing I will use for the army yet (that will wait until I have finished a few more bases so I can do them all at the same time), so for now we have six foot knights, which were a great way to start getting my head into heraldry!

The first three, including "ugly rugby jersey" in the middle there.....

And three more to complete the whole base

Next up? Crossbowmen I think....

Paint one Knight for ADLG

And the first knight has been completed too. I deliberately chose a complicated-ish heraldry, I'm going to be challenging myself to get even better at painting it over the year!

Stripey lance? Weird Heraldry? Perfection

And that's it, on to February!

Pooch