It's the Five-O!

So I've had this rhino half painted sitting around for a while and having seen a VERY stupid army list on the internet this week, I thought I should finish it as a trasnport for my Arbites Exaction squad. 

Painting this much black wasn't exactly a hardship - I've done it a lot over the years. :) There's one last job, which is to cut the join in the top door through the transfer which I thought I'd do after it was stuck on since the gap in the top doors of a rhino isn't square. Hopefully it'll work. I've also got an STL floating around to replace the kit storm bolter with a sweet remote-control-looking storm bolter and hunter-killer mount so at some stage I'll get that printed and swap out that turret. 

Next Time

Waffentrager and hopefully the first stage of my random project...  

Stompy robots are stompy

I took my House Cadmus Imperial Knights out for a couple of practice games at the club against Blogger McBeth's Thousand Suns: 

in which his magic and infinity rerolls plinked a Cerastus Castigator for 27 wounds pretty much with nothing but bolt guns and Lethal Hits in a single round of shooting despite me passing an improbably number of 4++ saves. He took most of my Armigers and dinged up the Errant pretty badly (with more Lethal Hits) but the Lancer impaled Magnus with a degree of good luck to effectively close out the game. It was a learning exercise for both of us - picking up rules we'd missed and understanding how to deploy some of our kit to best effect. 

Then I took on clubmate Ryan's Eldar and ho boy. Like, I knew Fire Dragons were vicious but wow. They did some spectacular punishment (with their infinity rerolls) and Grandad Eldrad making me pay 2 CP for Rotate Ion Shields to try and save my Castigator. Ouch. 

The whole game pivoted on the explosion of my Castigator  in the end - it plinked some wounds off the Errant and the Lancer and did some serious damage to my Moirax but it also blasted all of Ryan's Howling Banshees, Fuegan's second life and the last of the Storm Guardians that were protecting the Seer Council and other than some Warpspiders in my back field ripping my Sisters to bits, his offensive basically stopped dead with that carnage.  

I learned a few things about Titanic as a rule which gives me a bit more confidence on doing secondaries with my big knights and also dealing with stuff in buildings as well as some of the shenanigans that can be committed by the ever-cheaty Eldar. Knights are a good army and they're pretty forgiving for an inexperienced player. I'm looking forward to getting my Guard out sometime in future for funsies. 

Painting? 

I decided I should paint something just to keep the pile moving so I did some JU87 Stukas for Victory at Sea: 

Just something quick and dirty to keep my hand in. I haven't been in much of a mood of late and there's a pile of half done projects on my painting desk that just need doing so I decided I'd start on one of the easy ones. 

Next Time

Workbench. I've pulled a little present I got myself many moons ago out of the box and will start work getting it together. What I'll do with it when it's done, no idea. That's a future me problem and future me has plenty of those.  
 

Things that make you boom?

They're so stupid. Nearly 20 years ago, at the Tank Museum at Bovington I wanted to stick my head in the barrel of a Sturmtiger that they have there. It's that big that it'd fit my sizeable melon. But I've wanted these in a Flames army for ages so here we go: 

 

So first off, this is not the most fun kit in the world. I love the fact that the two hulls are unique with some little details like missing tools, open hatches and similar. I elected not to build the one reloading as that seemed more for a diorama than for tabletop use.  

This was also another random camo scheme - I've been finding that if I just google patterns, I find something I want to paint. As much as I've refused on some of my LW German armour, I am enjoying painting a few interesting camo schemes that'll drop in amongst an army that will mostly be dunkelgelb. I went pretty light on the foliage as it didn't make much sense on a beast like this! 

Early War Begins...

I can't imagine ever using these in Late War but if there's anything more iconic than the Stuka in Early War, I'm not sure what it is. So I bought and painted some! I spent a bunch of time finding an interesting camo and marking scheme which hasn't shown up super well in the photo because dark green base coat with a darker green geometric pattern doesn't... 

I've got a few more things on the plate and then the Panzer Is and Panzer IIs are coming out of the box to start on the mad effort that will be completely repainting my EW Germans. 

There are a few who might note the tail insignia are wrong and what should be on there is not what's on there. I reserve the right to not put that noise on anything, historical correctness be damned. There's no reason to put that into the world. So I've put some spare Balkenkreuz on the tailplane instead to keep a marking on the tail.  

Next Time

Practice games with my new Knights I suspect. I've got some part-finished Waffentrager on my desk but I haven't decided what kind of camo to do on them. The same ambush   

...and the decisions weren't the worst...

This blog starts just for one reader. Local gaming stalwart Kenny was giving out little 3D printed models at ValleyCon earlier this year and he handed me one and said he expected to see it on the blog. So here we have one very very cute Stone Troll who now lives in a small pot plant in my living room:  

 

 It was a lot of fun to paint. I have this model in 28mm and I enjoyed doing this one in whatever scale this is. 20mm maybe? Kenny did a stunning job on the print - the details are super crisp and clean. It was an easy paint. 

And the Lancer! 

It is done.  As are the new legs on the Castigator but photos of that anon. I've had a frustrating time with yellow as I have done every time I've painted models for this army but I'm well pleased with how it's all come out. I think I'd like to add some lightning bolts between the emitters on the shield to fill it out a bit more.  

 

 My favourite bit of the whole model is, weirdly, the pennant hanging off the lance. GW intended this model to be front on   with the lance pointing straight ahead. No, says I. I wanted this defensive, hoplite-style pose and that meant the penant wouldn't work. 

So I've been staring at that pennant for like three weeks and a couple of days ago, I had a brainwave and it's worked out really well. The fact that it's the same pennant as the one hanging down in the centre made me happy. 

Photos of the full force next club day when I have enough space and enough light. Late on a midwingter Sunday was optimistic because I gave the Errant a tidy as well while I was at it. 

Next Time

Back to the 15mm train. Got some Sturmtigers and Waffentrager screaming for paint. Maybe even the Stukas that are sitting here tormenting me....  

Decisions were made....

So the Lancer is not built and there are a couple of reasons for this. One of them stems from me standing around in my office trying to work out how I wanted the legs to look and realising that I couldn't make it work the way I wanted to because it felt completely unnatural (for a robot) to stand like that. And the second stems from how I decided to fix it. 

The one bonus about building a second Cerastus Knight from GW plastics is that the leg assemblies are identical. Can you see where this is going? I decided I needed to swap the legs so I snapped the glue on the hip assemblies from the Castigator and rebuilt those legs to now be the legs for the Lancer. The Castigator gets a complete redesign and now looks like this: 

They're now the other way around and the Castigator is now leaning slightly back on it's right leg and stepping forward with the left. The legs had to be glued on given how the hip assemblies came apart so I've left all the armour plates separate so I can paint those and then I really only have to muck about with gunmetal. It'll be a challenge. 

Unsurprisingly, this has also created the opposite problem with the Lancer. Until I exactly work out how the arms go on, I am going to be challenged finishing the torso. But I had to start somewhere so start we have: 

 

 One Lancer head! Next I'll do the gunmetal and all the piping on the torso and procrastinate about the arms a little bit longer but I aim to have these done in the next couple of weeks. And if I get bored, Sturmtigers. 😆

Also, I had a great game against Pel's Gencon Paras with my Italian Guastatori yesterday that was pretty well on from turn one and I didn't take a single photo. What a mess. Given some scheduling drama llama, it's going to be workbenches for a bit but I have some cool stuff on the to do list so it's not all bad. 

Next Time

Knights and this random thing that's been sitting on my desk waiting for me to paint it since ValleyCon so I'm going to do it...   

Weekend workbench

I had a busy run getting some stuff ready for a couple of games of 40K last club day so first there's those. The Outriders: 

They didn't have a stellar day out and kept getting killed before they got to do anything. A bit vexing given the amount of swears that went into getting the shoulders on. But one day they''ll get to hit something and it'll be awesome. Next, a couple of the new generation of Land Speeders:  

They're both sweet models and while they were both garbage on the day thanks mostly to some shockingly poor dice on my part, I am optimistic that the pairing will be quite effective if I can roll some decent dice. 

 

Finally, instead of finishing assembly of a Knight that I *should* be doing, I painted some King Tigers I picked up at Panzerschreck instead.  

 I went hunting for new camo patterns and found brown tiger stripes as an option. I quite like it (and I don't think the photo does it justice) but it was a nice change. As I go through tidying up my Germans, I'm going to be doing some more camo schemes on other things. I quite like that I can keep some consistency with the Dunkelgelb and the foilage. 

Next Time

A Knight. I hope. And another run up against Pelarel's GenCon army after it pipped me last time I'mma have another go!   

Post-event lazy blog post....

 Ahoy readers. It's been a lazy couple of weeks on the blogging front since I haven't been in much of a place to post things. My hobby time has been filled with doing stuff. So, in the interests of getting restarted, here's as many armies as I managed to take pics of from Panzerschreck XXIV!  

Tank and my Bradley ACAV and Bradley Cavalry

Dan and Greg's M1 + M1A1 "horde"

Bloggers Pel and McBeth's British

Gav's Germans and his partner...

...Rob's Swedes

Blogger Scotty and his absent partner Wilson Pooch's Germans

Clubmate Chris' Germans and his partner...

...clubmate Ric's Americans

Chris and Wayne's Franco-German Alliance

Connor and Simon's (painted by Blogger Pooch) Americans

Russell and Graham's East Germans

Octavia and Richard's Grade 1 WARPAC Russians

Andre and Smudge's Israelis

Finally....

Phil's French, and his partner...

...Ian's UN Canadians

Ian deservedly won Best Army with these Canadians - they're absolutely stunning with one of the best white treatments I've ever seen. He shared his whitewash recipe with me and it's all drybrushed. I was, and remain, in awe. The presentation is just delightful. 

 

Finally, it was a great weekend. Excellent company, excellent food and some great gaming. TY is a solid  game when played for funsies on 8' x 6' tables. It was a lot of laughs. Rumour has it that EW Blitzkrieg next year for the 25th Anniversary of the event - that'll be just as absurd as anyone could want. 

 Next Time

I've been doing a bunch of work on my Deathwatch for 40K and I'm about to start a new building project....  

Workbench weekend

So, given the long weekend here, I got stuck into some serious construction. I picked up a few models for my Deathwatch recently with a view to making a bit more an effort to get them on the table. 

 I started with a couple of Storm Speeders. Honestly, when 8th came out, Dark Angels or Deathwatch was a coin toss and DW came out on top. So this is a nod to the  fact that I loved the 2e Landspeeder as well as having a sensible tactical use in bringing some mobility and some decent armaments. 

Secondly, a bunch of Primaris Gravis Marines, or Phat Bois, as I've taken to calling them. These 8 marines and a Gravis Captain will join a couple of Aggressors to become an Indomitor Kill Team brining some much needed firepower to my DW collection. I haven't bought a Land Raider to put them in yet but so help me I am tempted. 

Finally, a unit of Outriders had to go into the collection. I picked up the amazing Outrider Chaplain donkeys ago and have never put it on the table. This unit solely exists to get him on the table. 

 It was a solid reminder of why I LOATHE GW's Primaris Easy Builds for Deathwatch. I had to commit some serious violence on the shoulders in order to chop off the moulded pauldrons and replace the left hand ones with Deathwatch shoulders and the right hand ones with embossed chapter pauldrons. Ugh. But they're done now so they're the first that are going on the painting queue. 

 Next Time

I dunno. I'm thinking I'll break out X-Force for a game of 40K this weekend and I am musing on a game of Kings of War too as I haven't played that in ages.   

In which I have views about heroic 17pdr crews...

Blogger Pel is taking his British Paras to a Flames comp at GenCon this year so we had a bit of a test game to see how they went. 

We rolled up "Killing Ground" as a mission and I put the objectives as far apart as I could. Pel wasn't really in a position to make use of the flank deployment zones as that would have left the objectives underdefended against my fairly quick armour! One objective was held by a Para platoon and the 6pdrs and the other by a mortar platoon and 2 17pdrs with a second Para platoon and a Carrier platoon in a position to move one way or the other. His Bofors platoon was in ambush - it's a feared weapon against all my FA3! 

I pushed the objective defended by the minefields with my L6s, M14s and a Paracadutisti platoon with Lancia da 90s and Semovente 75/34s providing overwatch. I realised that the Semoventes were basically not going to be much chop as an AT weapon so they settled in to bombard the Brit infantry. I started the game failing to get any successful Elite rolls and failing every 2+ Avanti roll I made bar one in the first two turns!

This next pic was turn 2/3 after Pel sprung the Bofors ambush and, mercifully, only popped a could of L6s and brought on his Churchills from reserve in the right place (chagrin!) 

 

I'd managed to pop one of the 17pdrs with a Semovente bombardment and the second Semovente bombardment kept the mortars pinned, allowing my Paracadutisti platoon to advance largely safely.  The Churchills unsuccessfully engaged the M14s and in the exchange of fire between the remaining 17pdr and the Lancia da 90s the 17pdrs emerged victorious killing one and the other failing it's Last Man Standing test.

Meantime, in hilarious times, Pel's armoured cars arrived in completely the wrong place so decided to see what a 15mm Besa could do to a Semovente. Short answer, not a great deal. The 17pdr passed a Last Man Standing Test.

I set up for the final shove on the objective here - over the next turn I set about clearing a minefield, removing the Carriers with my CO, flamethrowering the Bofors off the board and machinegunning a lot of the Para Platoon. Pel made 11 3+ infantry saves. Out of 11 as I tried to sort them out. In the end, the Semoventes did the heavy lifting, destroying both the mortars and a lot of the Parachute platoon. The second Parachute platoon arrived in the centre of the table and, after killing my CO in assault, set about trying to prove they were better paras than the Italians. The 17pdr passed a Last Man Standing Test.

The photo below is, I think, turn four or five where I decided to ignore the Churchills and break through the little gap between the minefield and the wood and drive onto the objective. Pel made sure my Paras were definitely toast by then but incoming fire on the M14s was lacklustre, killing only one. But the 17pdr passed a Last Man Standing Test.

The game finished up with my last three M14/41s on the objective and Pel's first unit of Paras and his CO wiped out. His response was to bail all three of the M14s (!) with the infernal 17pdr and the Churchills and move up his second para platoon to retake the objective. 

 I had one turn to see if a bombardment from the Semoventes and the last couple of L6 tanks could wipe out that second Para platoon and break the army but no such luck.  I got a few of them, but not enough to do the job.

It was a good match and while I doubted that attacking the objective protected by the mines a couple of times, not having to drive into 6pdrs AND the ambushing Bofors guns seemed like the right choice. Genuinely, I think if that 17pdr had run, it was a whole different game - when there are Churchills on one side, honestly it feels like if you get the big guns out of the way, in this case my Lancia da 90s, it made for more of an uphill struggle. 

Still, I'm happy with the list and will definitely run it again. If I was playing at a round 100 points, it would be slightly different (I'd be running Engineers instead of Paras I think) but the concept is sound.

Next Time

I'll be doing some painting over the next week. Who knows what you'll get! 
 

Back baybee!

 Greetings readers, tis I! It's been a few weeks - I've been travelling a bit of late and haven't been home to game or to commit hobby time.

But it's a long weekend here for the Monarch's Birthday so figured it was time to get some catchup work done.

 First off, I finished off the squad of Adeptus Sororitas for my Imperial Agents collection. This gets my Knights army done and dusted and will allow me to also run the Officio Assassinorum detachment that I affectionately call X-Force. It's dreadful but it'll be SO much fun to run.

 I'm only middling about saying I enjoyed painting them because honestly, I don't think I did. Even with the miracle sauce that is contrast white, this was hard yakka. Having said that, I'm really happy with how they've come out and they look great with the two Immolators that they're going to be riding around in with their special friend Inquisitor Greyfax.

Shortly before I went away I spent my ValleyCon award on some new toys for my Late War Germans, partly inspired by blogger Tank's ValleyCon army (which I'm keen to iterate on) and partly for just stupid: 

The Waffenträger are just a solid way of getting some cheap-ish long 88s on the park when I don't feel like the challenge of running Jagdpanthers and what's not to love about the Sturmtiger? It's lunatic but I think it could be a very entertaining addition to some of the more cheap and cheerful

There's also a box of Stukas awaiting my attention but I need to do some thinking about magnetising the weapons...  

Next Time

I'm helping Blogger Pel test the list he's taking to GenCon so will try and do a write up of that. I'm breaking out what I think might be the best Italian build I can come up with so I'll be curious to see if it does the business. I've also got a couple of boxes of Space Marines that are demanding some assembly for getting my Deathwatch up to par in 10th so will be getting onto those shortly.

ValleyCon '25

It was a great weekend! The format of running bulk medium tanks was a lot of fun. Of course, the lazy post-event blog is the photos from the army parade:

Tom's Panzerschule

Richard's Russian SUs

McBeth Sr's Tankovy

Russell's Tankovy

McBeth Jr Jr's Clausewitz Panzers

Julian's Recce and TDs

Sofia's Desert Rats

Graham's Shermans

 

McBeth Jr Sr's French

Steve's Brigade Panthers

Ric's Comets

Tom's Tankovy

Bob's Chaffees

My Brigade Panthers

 How did I do? Fourth equal, one point behind friend Bob's Chaffees that gave me SO much trouble in the fourth round. And Best Painted, which is a nice result for me. I like the cleanliness of my summer Germans and the foilage adds a nice touch. I was, when I did it, and remain, very pleased with how the ambush camo came out on the Hetzers and the Jagdpanzer IV/70s. 

Next Time

I'm aiming to finally finish my Soroitas squad. I've done six of them now so just four and a cherub to go...