What the Mycenaeans called 'iqiya' in Linear B

Chariots! The lexicon for words associated with chariots alone in Mycenaean Linear B script is very long but a bit of casual googling and some research paper reading later, I have learned the Mycenaean word. And here they are:  

I finished up painting the last of the infantry this weekend. The Heavy Spear were a real challenge to get based as they're SO close-formed but they worked out in the end. I have a funny feeling that when I have played a couple of a games I'll get a really good look at all the mistakes there are from working polyfilla and paint inbetween the spearmen and I'll have a few shields to fix and gaps to cover in the basing material. 

Overall, the palette is fairly limited which made getting it painted easier and is probably a lesson for future projects in 15mm. The black and white cowhide has definitely given the army some pop and presence and I'm stoked with how that came out across the army. All told though, super happy and can't wait to get it on the park in three weeks or so. Still really unsure if it's any good but that's a future me problem.

And a random single model

My roleplaying group will be finishing up our Dragonlance DnD adventure fairly soon and the plan is to give the 40K version of WFRP, Imperium Maledictum, a burl. I'm going down a route where I don't tend to go and trying out a sneaky rogue character. This chap: 

will be my Ordo Hereticus Penumbra - an Acolyte of an Inquisitor who sneaks about the place looking for evidence of heresy. Quite why he's off doing this thing for a patron outside the Ordo is currently a secret between the DM and I but the party members will discover it relatively quickly I suspect. He does not yet have a name but I'm pondering that at the moment.

Our DM has intimated that life is fairly cheap in this game and the possibility that we're going to lose PCs is very real so I am going to use this as a motivator to paint the Inquisition Kill Team box. If this one dies, an increasingly unhinged series of Acolytes will follow, each time radically altering the play experience.

Next Time

It's our games club's annual competition weekend so I'll be blogging late on Sunday or Monday. It'll probably be a bit of an album of the weekend and a quick review of how my Italians go.

Well, I was *going* to finish the painting...

 But I didn't. I have finished some more spearmen though:

 

These are the first three bases of Heavy Spear for the Mycenaeans. I mixed through three different angles of spear to keep the silhouette (for want of a better word) interesting and on the right-hand base is a leftover chariot crewman who's still in full Dendritic panoply so just dropped in to change the look. In the middle is the first Heavy Spear general - behind that big bronze shield is Ajax! 

 

The last three bases of spear are primed and laid out for painting with a few block colours done so other than the awful experience that will be basing these units, I'm really close to finishing. Quite excited.  Also, the last piece for the Mycenaean camp arrived yesterday so that'll be coming together in the next wee while too.

GAMES!

I played my first "proper" game of 40K yesterday with blogger Scotty. 1000 points on an absurdly small board and, had I realised this is what we'd be doing, would probably not have gotten the Knights out.  But I did... 

As it was, it was a glorious victory to the knight lance, I learned some useful lessons about turn timings and a very handy side conversation with a spectator about critical hits. Highlights for the game were here:

where two Armiger Warglaives went into battle against some Pink Horrors, did almost no damage thanks to Scotty's absurd ability to roll 4+ invulnerable saves and then in his turn they Fell Back and the Soul Grinder rolled in and did 24 points of damage with it's giant claw, deleting the right hand Armiger without even spending it's remaining attacks. In response? I sent in the big boi:

 

The Armiger Fell Back and the Errant, having come fresh from dispatching the Tzeentchian Daemon Prince with his Thunderstrike Gauntlet fired the Thermal Cannon into the Soul Grinder. I did 22 damage and the Soul Grinder went away. The end of the game was me trying to kill the Changeling with a Callidus Assassin and singularly failing to do so.  

It was good to get a run through on the mechanics writ-larger than Combat Patrol but I think I'd like to play 1000 points on a full size table maybe? This felt a bit close quarters to me...

 

I also played a game of Star Wars Legion with Blogger Pel and his "Late Rebellion" force with Ahsoka Tano and all the Clan Wren! I ran a fairly conventional Imperial force although I tried double mortar and found that it's still not to my liking. 

The highlight of the game for me was Boba Fett jetpacking out from behind that barricade, wrist-rocketing and carbine-ing the Rebel Officer to claim his bounty and then wrapping up Sabine Wren in anti-Jedi whipcord. I made the glib remark that this was him proving who was the better Mandalorian:

 

Immediately following that, Tristan and Ursa Wren promptly blasted him into next week. Better Mandalorian my butt. 

In the end, it was a close game, a 3 -1 win to the Empire (thanks to that cheeky extra bounty VP) and a round of combat where Ahsoka Tano rolled six hits (out of 10 attack dice?!) against a unit of Shore Troopers and I saved all six, losing two models to Pierce hits. Had she just demolished that unit as anticipated and takenfewer turns to hack down Iden Versio, she could have caused me no end of problems...

Next Time

The end of the Greeks is in sight and I think I'll pick up some other painting projects too. Gotta do some repair work on my Italians for our upcoming comp and I have some things that really just warrant getting painted.

Almost there!!

 It's been a solid weekend of hobby time this weekend and I've taken fullest advantage of it to really break the back of my Mycenaeans. 

I started with the second batch of chariots - these are the ones that will be in both armies. These are Light Chariot Javelin Elite which will fill as close a role to light cavalry as I'm going to get in this army. I've got some very low expectations of their effectiveness but they look cool:

 

Once again, cowhiding the chariot skins has given them some pop and in a success of mathematics, I'd saved enough javelinmen to swap out the supplied Dendritic crew for something that makes them clearly different. 

 

Then the bigger job, grinding through all the spearmen:

These proved to be a bit of a challenge due to some mathematics failure on my part when I ordered the models from Museum but there were enough spare and relevant models that I could kind of fill the bases out with some spare Myrmidons and, if you look super closely, Aeneas from the Trojan Heroes pack! The base on the left of the front rank is my Medium Spear general for the Trojan War army with Agamemnon and Odysseus on the base. Ajax and Diomedes will make appearances as the Heavy Spear generals in my Minoan / Mycenaean army.

Finally, I polished off the camp:

Nothing too complicated but a beached trireme on the shores of Asia Minor, accompanied by none other than Helen of Troy. The clever idea of the day was to steal a couple of transfers from an Adeptus Titanicus transfer sheet to put the necessary eyes on the trireme. I tried free-handing them but did such a terrible job I decided I'd run with this.

Where does that leave me? Six bases of Heavy Spear and a second camp for the non-Trojan War version of the army to do. Kind of excited to get both versions of that list out for a run. 

Next Time

I've lined up a game of Star Wars Legion with Blogger Pel that I'm really really looking forward to. Also some progress on the Heavy Spear and my last practice game with my Italians! 

Pooch's March- wait, what do you mean we are a quarter done?

So, here we are. Already a quarter done in the year, which I have not yet come to terms with. My progress towards my goals has continued well however, and it's probably about time I painted something for myself that wasn't a Tyranid....

1. Paint something bought before 2024

Tada! Look, it's not a Tyranid!

The Wurmspat are the last Warhammer Underworlds warband that I own, themed all around the gifts of Grandfather Nurgle. I decided to paint these as a palatte cleaners, I was getting really sick of the tyranid colour scheme, and a big commission that I had been completed. I just needed somethign that was small, contained and would be a chance to use a bunch of colours that I hadn't been using.

The three Wurmspat

So much tiny detail!

The first close up....

The second close up....

The third close up....

But not only that, over the Easter weekend I got my airbrush out and finished off some DAK tanks for the first time in..... months. This was to make sure I had the tank options that a friend needed when they borrow the army for an upcoming tournament.

Two Tigers, looking swish in the weathered desert scheme

One of them brought a Panzer III along as a buddy!

And two StuG D for good measure

The Tigers and Panzer III come from Battlefront Miniatures, the StuG Ds come from Zvezda.

2. Paint something bought in 2024

You didn't really think I was going to not paint Tyranids this month right? 

The Harpy. Such a great model, so very bad in the game

I'm super happy with how the wings have worked out on this!

More Barbgaunts!

Even more Barbgaunts!

Trygon!

Back of Trygon!

Norn Emissary

"Do you have a moment to talk about the Great Devourer"

I'm VERY close to the 2,000 point list that I'll be running at Valleycon in a month or so (eeek!) 

3. Play a game of 40k each month

I managed a couple of games this month- it saw the Tyranids fighting the combined forces of the Black Templars and Imperial Knights....

Canis Rex killed many, many bugs

But once the Psychophage peeled back the armoured shell, Sir Hektur didn't last long....

And then the Tyranids decided to munch on some living metal Necrons....

The Norn spreading the good news

Many Necrons!

Imhotek the Stormlord got eaten by a Psychophage. Nom nom nom

The extra special bit about fighting the Necrons was that the army was painted up by McB and I, meaning that this game was the first time they had ever been used, and was a great way to share the brand new army with the person who commissioned it!

Plus, I'd never played vs Necrons before, so it was a blast!

4. Play a game of not-40k each month

The initial plan for this was to play Underworlds, but timing didn't work. So instead, over the Easter weekend the kids and I played Gaslands! 

The kids did some extra paint jobs to some Gaslands cars I had already completed, and we played a slightly simplified (but admittedly not by much) version of the game.

The cars racing!

Missile vs Police Car was.... unfortunate for my police car.....

And that's it, on to April. Yes, April will still have more Tyranids...

Pooch