Post Convention Malaise

 I took a week off after playing ValleyCon last weekend because by the time I got home I was absolutely shattered. I've also barely picked up a brush, but have invested some time and energy into thinking about lessons from the weekend and also how we might reach a point where infantry armies are a think in MW Flames of War again...

Here's a gallery of the armies from the event:  

Simon's Afrika Korps (borrowed from Blogger Scotty)

Octavia's Germans (borrowed from Blogger McBeth)

Blogger McBeth's Americans

Gus' British

Blogger Tank's Death or Glory Boys

Tom's Soviets (the only one!)

Blogger Pelarel's Brits

Chris' Armoured Panzergrenadiers

Steve's Brummbars and lunacy

Richard's Best Army Death or Glory Boys

Bob's British

Graham's Americans

Paddy's Secret Tech Italians

 

Connor's Afrika Korps (borrowed from Blogger Pooch)

TO Scotty's Hungarians

My Italians!

Not sure that's quite all of them but it's most of the armies that played. Clubmate Richard's Best Army winning Death or Glory Boys are really stunning and Blogger Pooch's Afrika Korps, being run by McBeth Jr (who also came in 5th with them!) also looked great.

How did the event go? Not super well TBH. Turns out M14/41s are outclassed against allied armour in MW. Definitely felt like the changes in the last dynamic points update hit my choice of force pretty hard and while M14s have always been the worst of the 'medium' tanks in MW, the much larger numbers of Grants and Shermans (which are definitely usable now and that's a great thing!) meant that my usual ability to simply outnumber my opponents didn't really work out. Also, Grants going to SA 4 at some point (which probably tells you how rarely I've seen Grants on table lately...) made my usual plan to outflank them and just get lucky also didn't really work out!

I lost my first three games against various combinations of Grants / Shermans / Valentines and then rolled through a pair on infantry companies on for the last two games, coming in 10th out of 20. When things worked the way I had played during practice games, it worked fine. But all that medium armour was not something I'd gone up against. Sofia's 4 90mm guns and Paddy's 8 Semovente 75/34s were definitely something I should have made room for.

Given the lesson from the weekend was that Semovente 75/34s were the secret tech, my thanks to Clubmate Richard for the supply, I now have enough to run them when Blogger Tank and I take these Italians out again to Panzerschreck doubles event later in the year. We'll be taking these with one other new addition - air support:

Battlefront sent us some spot prizes - these hilarious objectives. Blogger Tank gave me his so we had a pair and we decided to add those to our Panzerschreck army. I'm *tempted* to see if I can acquire another pair and use them for my Germans. Seems too funny not to TBH. 

Next Time

Painted UFOs and some other hilarity!

Pooch's April- More bugs, but this time Vikings too?

Another month down, and more progress to show for it, and yep, there were more bugs. Because of course I painted more bugs!

1. Paint something bought before 2024

Starting with not bugs. I picked up these Vikings nigh on a year ago, and I'm not even sure what game I was planning to use them for. Regardless, when one of the locals suggested we played some Tribal, I took the opportunity to paint up a warband of Vikings ready to play the game.

The miniatures all come from Gripping Beast, and are finished off with the gorgeous shield decals from Little Big Man Studios. Also coincidentally, you can pick up the rules for Tribal from Potbelly Miniatures!

Warlord and Champion with flag

First batch of Viking Warriors

Second batch of Viking Warriors

Third batch of Vikings, this time some Berzerkers!

I also had a few small pieces of terrain, which will help have a cool looking table for the game too. These are all from Renedra Miniatures

Houses with scattered pots

Many fences!

I've already got a game of Tribal scheduled for May!

2. Paint something bought in 2024

It wouldn't be a month of this blog without me posting some Tyranids, would it?

Another big bug, this time a Malceptor

A big brain to cause big psychic damage!

Little flying bugs- great for capturing objectives!

Showing off the wings!

It's a unit of ten, so this is the other five!

I'd say next month will be something different. But you know it's going to be more bugs...

3. Play a game of 40k each month

I didn't just play one game of 40k this month, I played a whole tournament of it!

I took the Tyranids out to our club's Valleycon competition, playing five games over a weekend, and I had a blast! Visually, the Tyranids looked brilliant, and I got a number of really nice comments about them. In terms of their performance in the games, overall they won 3 lost 2, and the two I lost were really poor match ups for me, but I kept my player morale up, and didn't let them affect my enjoyment over the weekend- which was my goal.

I got far too engrossed with the games to take many photos, so here is just two!

An Ultramarine Repulsor getting eaten by a Psychophage.... pity about the Terminators inside it.... 

Maulerfiend doing mauling. Fiendishly.

I'm really enjoying my 40k resurgence, I might need to find a different style to play for May tho!

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

I FINALLY got my 15mm ADLG Celt army out for a game, taking on a work in progress army of Successors.

The Celts.... did a lot of charging. And got some good dice. Including a very rude set of 6's when attacking with chariots into Elephants, which meant that I came out on top. Having spent so much time on them, it was great to get them out on the table and actually play a game with them. Given the rest of the crew has been really enjoying their ADLG, I feel like many more games are in my future!

Chariots vs Pike. The chariots EXPLODED.

Medium Sword vs Cavalry however was more swingy....

And that's it. I know some of what May will bring (and yes, there will be more Bugs), but I'm sure there will be some suprises in there!

Pooch

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