ValleyCon 2020

So a lazy blog post from me because I spent the weekend running a Team Yankee competition at our annual club event and hanging out with blogger Scotty, while he ran the 40K event. I was going to paint. That didn't happen. I did have some nice food, caught up with a bunch of people and had a ball watching the TY. So, instead, you get a bunch of photos of the armies and models to look at, none of which are mine!

Team Yankee - Army Parade

Blogger McBeth's Brits

Blogger Tank's Israelis

Blogger Scotty's West German Leopard 1s

Russian T64s

Blogger Pelarel's British

An Iraqi-American Alliance

Blogger Pooch's IPM1s 

A Franco-British Alliance

Wargamer on Tour's Czechs

East Germans and Best Army winner

US Marines - Commended Painting

French

Blogger Richard's Russians

Blogger Pooch's US Airborne

Berlin Brigade British

Iranians

Team Yankee Army Parade Highlights

Blogger Pooch's Sheridans and M60s

Blogger McBeth's Chieftans

Blogger Tank's Pereh Missile Tanks

M60s with modelled ERA

Berlin Brigade Chieftans

The Best Army Objectives

Iraqi Hinds

Wargamer on Tour's Frogfoots...Frogfeet....planes. 

Team Yankee - Highlights

Marine Artillery

Les Mirages!! 

Wargamer on Tour's Czechs attacking! 

Blogger Richard's Hinds

Blogger Pooch's A10 Flight

Wargamer on Tour's Airwing

Surrounded! 

Errr....

Chieftans hull down

The West German attack stalls

Iraqi Armour and American Recce

Gazelles and Rolands 

When Pooch's Shillelaghs don't do the business

Tank's Merkava's had this one....for a bit.

Age of Sigmar, DBMM and Warhammer 40K

Tyranid Harridan

Purple Sun of Shyish 

Cadian Leman Russ makes an impossible climb

Classic Imperial Fists

A plague horde overrunning a wrecked Devilfish

Burgundians attack the Poles

Greeks cross the river to attack the Bithynians  

Harlequins vs Adeptus Mechanicus Ironstriders

Clubmate BBs Eldar battling the T-Riptide T'au

Ogors and Skaven battling it out for soup (?)

Hero of the Warhammer World, Gotrek the Slayer, leads the Sigmarines

Swiss Pike

The Greek Shieldwall 

Mounted English Longbowmen

More Swiss Pike

A Lord of Change - and check out that base!! 

The Blue Scribes

Fish Elves on Flying Shark Lizards!

Maybe my favourite pic of the weekend. Clubmate BB deploys an actually flying Flying Wedge! 

Next Time
Tank and I are playing some games at the club next weekend I think. I'll take some photos and run up a batrep of a run in between his Delaque spies and my Cawdor lunatics.

Good summer weather for painting. Indoors!

First productive blog post of 2020.

Adding Stuff to a 40K Army

Sometime last year, I picked up a mint set of Colonel Schaeffers Last Chancers, made by GW in the last days of Warhammer 40K Second Edition. They're a great looking set of models and I am super happy to have them. I've finished the first six this week:

Warrior Woman and Shiv

Rocketgirl and Fingers

Hero and Scope

 Disappointingly, this unit is missing from 40K 8th Edition but a bit of craftiness means I can still use them. A Catachan Imperial Guard Vanguard Detachment will allow me to put them on the table. The HQ is Colonel Schaeffer himself and the 3 Elite choices will be a Veteran Squad with special weapons and a rocket launcher team, the Catachan Sergeant Harker (subbing in for Ox) and a Commissar, because what Penal Legion doesn't go into combat with it's own law enforcement?!

The Stupid
Man, painting 6mm is EASY. And so much fun. And it looks SO good. Here is my Month 1 6mm Apocalypse force:

DAEMONS!!! 

I love the classic Bloodthirster, who's almost as big as a 40K infantryman, and the Doomblaster subbing in as a Cannon of Khorne. The Bloodletters look amazing (the casts aren't the crispest, but at this scale, it's fine) and the Fleshhounds were some of the easiest things ever.

I rebased the Fleshhounds from 25mm bases to 40mm for them to be easier to deal with and got Month 2 based up while I was there:

Predators, a Lord on a Juggernaut, 2 Helbrutes and a Land Raider

Next Time
Some photos of the games at our annual gaming club convention. I'm TOing the Team Yankee event so will definitely pick some of the cool stuff and show it off there as well as the best of the rest of the event. Lazy blog post, I admit, but I'm expecting to spend the weekend mostly painting so I should get some things done to post as well.

Scott’s Lot for 2020

It has been quite while since I dropped a post, but I am back.

This is my what I need to do for this year post, I am not regimented enough to do monthly things I tend to just aim for a goal and go for it. With that in mind here is what I have planned for this year.

• Update my Grey Knights for 40k when the new book is released in January. I plan to play these guys at Valleycon on 18/19 Jan and then redo them when the update brings me all the goodness and jank that 40k dish out with each release.
• 500 points of Epic scale Imperial Fists with Knights for the craziness that is Apocalypse.
• For Fields of Blood this year (September 2020) I am building a themey Alpha Legion List. I have been quite taken by the Horus Heresy books and just love the deceptive nature of the Alpha legion. I have plans here and will share them as I make progress.
• Finish up my Spartans for Mortal Gods. Not much to do here just need to do it....you know the feeling.
• Learn how to use an airbrush. This is one that will take time and I will share my experiences. I have an old airbrush and a compressor but just need a couple of lessons from Pelarel to give it a go and try it out.
• Make a Late War WWII Flames list. A game I have played but never really played much. I really enjoyed our remember December games last year and I am keen to put some effort in here.
• Using my freshly learned airbrush skills (see above) paint up some of the terrain I have sitting awaiting some attention.

Sorry not many images for this post but maybe this will help tide you over

Here are some thirty Necromunda Palanites I am going to use for cultists in the Alpha Legion List....

30 Palanite Cultists...

Until next time, Scotty....out!

Good Gravy!

Frostgravy? It's just....nah. I'm going to leave that alone. It's too early in 2020 to start with that kind of nonsense.

I'm not going to narrate you the games - they were all so very mad. I lost my wizard in the first game after he took 8 damage to get off a great spell, which promptly did nothing, and then he was shot in the head by one of McBeth's archers! Otherwise, in both games, I had a turn where a significant proportion of the enemy wizgangs were removed in one fell swoop which rather swung them in my favour.  

Thug loses fight to statue. And then gets crumbled through the floor by McB's wizard.  

Other thug stalking a treasure hunter

McBeth's wizgang 

On the table next to us, Scotty and McBeth's padawan apprentices duke it out

My Templars stare down Scotty's thieving thief! 

The Padawan Apprentice advances across a wide front

An Undead Knight gets into the Elven backfield

Taking on a wizard with a Templar. I wound up stealing his life! 

My thugs make quick work of the Padawan's backfield

The number of dice marking wounded dudes is many....

*slightly belated hat tip to Scotty’s Padawan Apprentice for sharing his photos for me to share with you!

Thoughts?
I'm looking forward to second edition to see what kind of tweaks have been made. We halved all the damage in our games to see if it made the annoying "I rolled 28, you're just dead" experiences less irritating and it definitely did that. The most damage you could easily do was about 6 in one go. Having said that, we probably should have also used the 'wounded' optional rules and I think that might have worked quite well.

The after-game system still feels a bit too swingy - I got 8 scrolls in our second game, one of which I kept. That 700 additional gold is A LOT. It only takes a couple of games to get some serious coin in and upgrade your soldiers to be the best they can be. At the end of game one, I had enough money to spend 100 keeping my Wizard alive and buy two Templars and a Knight for game 2 - and they're the most expensive dudes there are!

Next Time
My first month of 6mm daemons and an addition to my Guard army too with a bit of luck.

Pooch's goals for 2020

Well, 2019 is done and with the success of keeping some sort of record of what I was doing, I'm going to do it again this year.

So what are the 12 goals then?

1. Paint a Kings of War Army

The rest of the guys have got, or are working towards a Kings of War army. Now that I have two fully completed 40k armies, it only makes sense for me to make my long term project for the year completing a cool as fantasy army. I have an evil scheme, but you will have to wait till the end of January to find out what!

2. Create a table of terrain to support a game

I need to get better at having terrain. Therefore I am carrying this one over from last year so that I keep making more.

3. Complete the 6mm Apocalypse Challenge

McZ has already laid down the rules for this one, and I actually have my first.... 4 months prepped I think?

Since McZ has shown what he is aiming for in the first month, seems rude to not do the same?

4 Leman Russ. Because... it's Apocalypse, and they are awesome.

4. Run a narrative campaign for the group

We had an absolute blast playing in the 40k narrative campaign, and importantly for me, it got me out playing games. So, I want to do that too!

There are a few options, Dracula's America could be cool, as would the Walking Dead or Necromunda. Watch this space!

5. Add a new detachment to one of my 40k armies

Don't know what this will be, but I do know there are lots of cool things dropping for 40k at the moment, so I am making sure I have some flexibility to add to the armies I already have....

6. Buy a starter box and paint all of it

That one was fun this year- let's do it again!

7. Paint a Space Marine Heroes Series

"But Pooch..." I hear you cry, "...you didn't like painting Storm Lords".

Apparently finishing them gave me a new perspective. There are two other series of Space Marine Heroes, one comprised of Terminators, one comprised of Death Guard. Not sure which I will do, because both of them are pretty awesome. This one won't be a monthly challenge this time however!

8. Update a 15mm Napoleonic army for Blackpowder

A couple of us at the club have large 15mm Napoleonic armies, which haven't been used in a year or so. We had a test game of 15mm Blackpowder, and it was really enjoyable- so much so that I am keen to add the extra models and things I need to complete my armies for it. It's mostly command stands and things. It'll either be French or British- not sure which.

9. Paint a stand alone force

There is something really nice about having a force that is done. No more units to add, no more organic growth (so the exact opposite of my Krieg army). I'd like to do another of these, and perhaps use them as a painting experiment with new techniques?

10. Update and improve a table of terrain

Again with the terrain. I need more terrain, because terrain makes tables look cool. Simple as that!

11. Play a game each month, and share a photo of it

The bulk of my hobby time is in painting and modelling- but I enjoy the gaming side of things too. So I'd like to do more of that, and putting it on this list will help me stay on track.

12. Finish what I should have finished last year

Believe it or not, there were still things from last year that I didn't manage to get done, for a variety of reasons. So, I want to get them done!

And that's it!

Pooch

Morty is watching.....