Battle for Rynn's World - Part 2 coming up

Carrying on from last week's Battle at the Farm, this week we'll play part 2 of our mini-campaign. In the previous game, Crimson Fist Space Marine Captain Pedro Cantor was grievously wounded while holding off an Ork rampage at the Farm. Many of his men escaped, bearing off his all-but-lifeless body with them...

But being a Space Marine, and possessed of a constitution and recuperative powers far beyond that of a normal human, Cantor has recovered enough to direct his remaining force to link up with other Imperial regulars and militia in the planetary capital, New Rynn City. Cantor and his men have reached the outskirts, and are about to make contact with a unit of Planetary Defence Force Militia, when a reinforced Ork patrol arrives on the scene... 

Rogue Trader Imperial Guard Assault Squad

Imperial Guard Assault Squad ready for duty.

A new addition to participate in our 25th Anniversary Mini-Campaign - an Imperial Guard Assault Squad.  These troops will take part in the next part of our mini-campaign this week.

Each trooper carries a pair of laspistols...not scary, but somewhat useful.

Equipped with jump packs, the Assault Squads are intended to close quickly with the enemy and engage in close fighting.  I don't think pairs of laspistols will scare anyone, but the squad is equipped with a pair of plasma guns, weapons that were actually pretty effective before they were neutered by stupid rules like "gets hot". Plasma guns are "following fire", had high strength and hard-hitting save modifiers - pretty good covering fire for the other troops.

Each squad has two plasma guns for support - and in RT, plasma guns are actually useful.

RT-era sergeant, ready to lead the troops.  A chain sword is actually useful in RT 40k...

The jump packs are actually Space Marine backpacks, but the jump packs of the RT era were huge metal turbofan deals (close in look and size to the assault packs worn by the Space Marine assault troops of the contemporary lineup).

Snapshot from the 40k Compendium, showing the jump packs - pretty close to the Space Marine packs...

Back when I collected my first Imperial Guard "army" in the early 90s, I opted for Space Marine jump packs in place of the enormous metal jump packs.  I think GW even realized the metal jump packs were out of kilter - when you look at the graphics in the 40k Compendium, you see jump packs on the Imperial Guardsmen that look very much like the back packs of the Space Marines.

More jump troopers.

Our campaign kicked off last week with a re-fight of the "Battle At The Farm".  Our next game will feature the Marine survivors trying to connect with Imperial Guard troopers from the garrison holding out in the capital of New Rynn City.  I'm sure these newly-painted troops will dominate the table top...

Battle at the Farm 40K RT Battle Report

As teased previously on the blog, last night we finally played the "Battle at the Farm", the first battle of the planned mini-campaign pitting Conscript Greg's Crimson Fist Marines and RT Imperial Guard against Thrugg Bullneck's Space Ork Raiders and the rest of my RT Space Orks.

The Battle at the Farm, as every 40K enthusiast knows, was the original scenario included in the ur-40K rulebook, "Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader", published by Games Workshop in 1987. As the year 2012 represents the 25th anniversary of "RT", we'd collected some armies and planned a mini-campaign to commemorate it.

"Bultha's Rise"...

The eponymous "Farm"

The battle pitted three 5-man Crimson Fist squads, plus Captain Pedro Cantor, against Thrugg, his hench-ork Hruk, and four 5-ork squads with bolters. The Marines deployed around the Farm. The Orks entered play from the east, Thrugg's patrol's goal being to recover some schwag he had stashed earlier in the farmhouse. He also carried a communicator with which to summon reinforcements. Thrugg will do this only as a last resort, however, since he wants to keep his schwag to himself!

Conscripts Frederick and Mike A. each took a squad and deployed opposite the Farm. Conscript Mike F. and me took the others around the leeside of Bultha's Rise and made for the orchard.



Carnage on the ridge as the Marines open fire!

Things didn't go so well for Mike A. and Frederick as the Marines (and their plasma missiles) decimated the squads, leaving only Hruk and two other survivors. They pulled back out of range and followed the others around the Rise.


Thrugg and the boyz hotfooting it around the Rise.

Marines open up on Hruk's boyz

 

Sneaky Marine with missile launcher in the Farm building

 

The Marine players, Greg B., Dave V. and Bill, spotted Thrugg's flanking maneuver and threw a speedbump towards the orchard... a lone Marine with captain Cantor following behind!

First the boyz took care of Brother Beaky...

...then proceeded to light up Captain Cantor!

Cantor and his Marine companion confronted the Ork force in the woods, taking out a couple of Boyz in close combat, but the rest of the Orks surrounded them and opened up... even Cantor's 3+ refractor save couldn't stop that many bolter shells!! (Remember, in the RT era, power armour gave a 4+ save and Marines were only T3!) 

Fists break from cover, making for the Rise, and safety from the approaching horde

Even after disposing of Cantor, Thrugg realized that there were still too many Marines and not enough Boyz left for him to feasibly accomplish the mission without reinforcements. Thrugg needed to take a whole turn to activate his communicator and then roll a "6" to succeed in contacting the main force, which he miraculously did! The reinforcements would arrive in d6+4 turns... and when they did, every Marine left on the table would be considered lost! I rolled a "1"... for once, an excellent result! This meant that the Marines had only 5 turns to exit the table from the Eastern edge or be considered killed!


Mike F's surviving boyz repositioned from out of the woods and opened fire on the fleeing Marines.

Here at last was Thrugg's chance. As most of the Marines bugged out, there were only three Marines left behind to guard the Farmhouse and the hidden schwag bag. Thrugg seized the opportunity to charge in, fillet the Marines with his brutal chainsword and spirit away his ill-gotten gains before his reinforcements arrived... the dice were thrown for his two close combat attacks and...

...he whiffed. Big time. We saw more singles in that combat that at Happy Hour at the Palomino Club (Winnipeg reference). Seriously, there were alot of "1"s. Thrugg took out one Marine and died, broken and alone, and poor.

The game ended and victory points were calculated... four Marines had escaped at 1VP each. Three Orks lived, each worth 1/2 VP. No other bonus points were gained by either side [EDIT: The Orks picked up two bonus VPs for successfully calling for reinforcements - thanks Dave V. for the reminder!], so the game turned out to be a Crimson Fist vistory, four points to three-and-a-half. A nail biter!!

"War is Gilles" - attributed to Captain Pedro Cantor

An excellent game! It was great to play the original 40K scenario which, in over 20 years of playing 40K, I'd never before played. It had some real role-playing elements that are generally lost today, and was a ton of fun.

Thanks to Greg for bringing the Fists and to the guys for coming out. Watch for the second game in the mini-campaign next week, when the surviving Crimson Fists attempt to elude the Space Ork main force and rendezvous with an Imperial Guard force!

Game This Week

Well, our intentions this week have been a bit obvious, but still, here is the formal notice - this week we will be playing classic Rogue Trader 40k, "The Battle At The Farm".  The scenario will pit Pedro Cantor and his small band of suriving Crimson Fists against Thrugg Bullneck's Ork patrol.

Order of battle for Thursday night's game...

The game will kick off a mini-campaign of linked Rogue Trader games set in the battle for Rynn's World.  Will Pedro Cantor and his survivors take out the Orks before they raise the alarm? Or will Thrugg, Hruk and the boyz stomp on this final mini-pocket of Crimson Fists en route to victory on Rynn's World?  Come by on Thursday night to find out!

Thrugg Bullneck's Space Ork Raiders

Inspired by Conscript Greg B.'s excellent Crimson Fists post, here's some pics of Thrugg Bullneck's Space Ork Raiders getting ready for the Rynn's World "Battle at the Farm" mini-campaign.

Thrugg (right) with Hruk, trusted squad leader and right-hand Ork, with Hruk's squad behind him.

First squad of five Boyz.

Second squad.

Third squad.

Looking forward to the game on Thursday, should be a classic!

Rogue Trader Project Finished

Pedro Cantor and his surviving Crimson Fists.

Earlier this year, as GW (sort of) marked the 25th Anniversary of the game Rogue Trader, I embarked on a little anniversary project of my own - collecting and painting the small detachment of Crimson Fist Space Marines featured in "The Battle At The Farm", the starter scenario from the original Rogue Trader game.

A sergeant holds some kind of scanner...or maybe a cell phone from the grime darkness of the far future...

The detachment consists of Commander Pedro Cantor and three five-man squads, one of which has a missile launcher.  By the standards of the current 40k game, the detachment represents a rounding error beneath an Apocalypse template, but in the Rogue Trader game it's quite a few troops.

The missile launcher was very difficult to assemble...it did not fit well with the pewter shoulder pads.

To help them stand out a bit, I added some after market bits from GW with the famous "fist" iconography.   This makes them look a little sharper, and also compensates for the fact that the Crimson Fist decals do not fit at all on the old Rogue Trader shoulder pads, and my painting skills are not at all up to the job of painting the logos by free hand!

Another officer with a Crimson Fist PDA.

These figures were fun to build from a nostalgia standpoint, but GW's current lineup is much easier to work with from an assembly and modelling standpoint.  It took a fair bit of hacking to get the pewter bits on.

A close up of the officer figures in the detachment.

I painted some test models a couple of weeks ago, while in the midst of Curt C's painting challenge (which was for historical figures).  Now that the challenge is over, I got back to these in fairly short order and they painted up pretty fast.

Pedro Cantor - ready to lead his survivors - an old Rogue Trader model.

To represent Pedro Cantor, I tracked down a very average looking Space Marine Sergeant figure that closely resembled the drawing of the character in the Rogue Trader book (and also had the right equipment - pistol and a power fist).  I hacked the shoulder pad off to replace it with another of the newer pewter shoulder pads.  I also applied a newer pewter backpack (again, with a handy "fist" symbol on it).

Close-up of the missile launcher dude.

One thing that really stood out when painting these old figures is how spartan they were - the models are not draped in scrolls, shoot-the-demon reminder scripts and other stuff.  And they have no skull symbols - none! It's refreshing.

So we are ready to play "The Battle At The Farm" - and kick-off a little mini-campaign set in the battle for Rynn's World.

Rogue Trader Project Update - "Beakie" Test Models

"Bravo One to base - no sign of an Optex photo studio here - over."

Although I have been working on a fair bit of historical stuff recently as part of my vain attempt to crack the top tier of the Analogue Hobbies painting challenge, my sci-fi pile is still there.  In particular, I am working to create the classic detachment of Crimson Fists from "Battle At The Farm" so we can do a little Rogue Trader campaign in honour of RT's 25th Anniversary.

I tried to add to some stowage and bits to the all of the models.

Last month I acquired some classic "beakie" marines, gussied them up with some current aftermarket pewter parts, and I have finished a pair of test models from the group.  The pewter bits are from a Crimson Fist/Imperial Fist upgrade pack available direct from GW.  Getting them mounted on to the beakies took a bit of hacking, but they managed to sit eventually....

Sergeant is on the left, with the extra fancy shoulder pad, scanner/TV remote, and snobby helmet.

This is a very, very fun project. Working on these models brings back a lot of good memories - and also a lot of respect for the current Space Marine models. While I am not wild about the scale creep, and there are certainly some ridiculously stupid models in the current range, the current plastic Space Marine models are nice to work with, and they make you forget just how tricky it could be to get the poor beakie fellows assembled back in "the day". As you will see in later posts, the missile launcher guy I put together doesn't look quite right...but still looks better than the one I worked on when I was a kid painting them with enamel paints from Testors :)

One other super fun thing about these old models - NO SKULLS! Now THAT really takes you back...

Warhammer 40K 25th Anniversary

This past weekend was the 25th anniversary of the game that I play the most, Warhammer 40,000.

The local Games Workshop store participated in the anniversary, hosting events such as a speed painting contest and an Apocalypse game. It was a good day to catch up with fellow hobbysists, meet new people, talk modeling and gaming, and reminisce.

As reported on several blogs, GW released a limited edition model, the central figure of the original Rogue Trader cover by John Sibbick - a Crimson Fists Space Marine Captain sculpted by Juan Diaz (see above).

Conscript KevinH and myself each pre-ordered the fig. I think that it's a beautiful sculpt, capturing the lines of the classic models. It will make a great objective marker for my games. Kevin also painted a very cool Crimson Fists Terminator test model, a photo of which is located here.

Kevin and I have both been playing 40K since the beginning. It's been a bit of a rollercoaster ride over the years, what with the various editions of the game and some, shall we say, uninspired game design choices. Does anyone remember the RT-era Vehicle Manual with its clear targeting grid? Talk about stopping the game and bringing you "out of the moment".

Admittedly, the 40K rules mechanism itself is somewhat old-fashioned. IGO-UGO? Rulers and tape measures are good things? Seriously? IIRC, games like Crossfire did away with such impedimentia back in the mid-90's. Still and all, 40K provides a fun, cinematic tabletop experience for gamers throughout the world. This is due partly to the interesting background fluff provided in the game materials and the Black Library fiction. Also, it is due in no small part to the various communities that have grown up and matured over the last quarter century, supporting the 40K hobby in its various incarnations: tournament play (like 40Kegger, Astronomi-con, Mechani-Kon, and AdeptiCon), miniature painting sites (CoolMiniOrNot), online community forums (Bolter & Chainsword, Warseer), numerous 40K related blogs, and a multitude of small, unheralded gaming groups that constitute maybe the bulk of the gaming populace.

Rumour has it that the 6th(!) edition of the 40K rules will be coming out sometime in the summer. Time will tell whether this is a good thing or not. I have actually liked the codices that have come out in the last few years, so here's hoping for some more balanced armies and clean rules.

Apocalypse Game

As I indicated above, MarkG, the manager of the local GW store, had organized an Apocalypse game. There's no real balance to such an affair, what with the appearance of super-heavy vehicles and gargantuan creatures. The theme of the day's scrap was "Good" versus "Evil", with a 1500-point limit per participant. Accordingly, I brought my modified 1000-point 40Kegger list, with the addition of a Scorpion Super-Heavy Grav Tank.



The Scorpion was proxied by my old Armorcast Tempest. There's no longer any rules for the Tempest, which is a close fit to the Scorpion, since both are armed with turreted TL-Pulsars.



The factions that played were as follows:
- Good = Blood Angels, Eldar, Imperial Guard, and Space Wolves
- Evil = Chaos Space Marines, Orks, more Orks, and Tyranids

It was an objective game on a 6' x 12' table, with objectives located as follows:
- 2 in the southwest third
- 1 in the northwest third
- 2 in the middle third
- 1 in the southeast third

Both sides bid the maximum time, to try and go second. The Good side lost the resulting tiebreaker die roll and set up first, deploying about half our forces in a shallow line from west to east, both flanks anchored with pairs of Blood Angels Dreadnoughts, with heavy weapons teams and two super-heavy tanks in the southeast third of the table, along with the Wraithlord, some Marine characters, and a Predator tank. We also spread out lots of barbed wire and minefields throughout No-Man's Land, to try and channel the enemy infantry.

The photo below is taken from the western table edge, looking east.



The forces to the southeast:



Three loaded IG Valkyries, a SW Land Raider full of troops, BA Terminators, and the bulk of the Eldar skimmers were held in strategic reserve.

The Evil side set up, from west to east, some Chaos Marines in the bunker and in the ruined buildings, a big Ork mob of Kans led by a Stompa, and a Heirophant Bio-Titan. A couple of Tyranid Zoenthropes anchored each end of the line. Various Daemons, Chaos Marines, the Doom of Malantai, and a 120+ strong Green Tide of Orks were left in reserve.



The Heirophant is a 10-wound, Toughness 9 monster that's larger than a building. Yikes!



The Good side fired at the Heirophant and the Stompa, infliting 1 wound and a drive hit, respectively.

The Evil side made a general advance, killing the Wraithlord with fire.

Hilariously, the Edmonton GW store telephoned in a random orbital strike onto the center of the table, inflicting some damage on the Kans. Below, Mark takes a photo commemorating the strike. The Winnipeg store subsequently returned the favour...



Some Daemons had teleported within the southeast corner. They were gunned down by close range firepower and a Rune Priest's psychic ability. The two Zoenthropes also fell to Marine missile launchers.





A dying Daemon managed to drop a Vortex Grenade, which stayed on the table to cause havoc. It was scary, but didn't end up doing anything of significance.



The Blood Angels Terminators teleported in the middle of the cluster of buildings in the northwest, setting up a next turn charge against the Chaos troops holding an objective.

In the centre, the Stompa was immobilized by the Scorpion, halting the advance of the Kans if they wanted to stay inside its Force Field.

To the far west, the platoon of infantry mounted in three Valkyries can be seen to have arrived onto the table, trying to control the westernmost objective.



In response, the Doom of Malantai deep struck and the Ork Green Tide used a Flank March to come in on the whole western half of the table, destroying some Guardsmen, some Marines, a Rhino, and a couple of Dreadnoughts. Things were starting to look bad for the side of Good.

That's a lot of Orks...



To the east, the bug Bio-Titan kept moving, unperturbed by the volume of fire directed at it.



Concentrated Evil fire ended up immobilizing the Scorpion and blowing off its main guns.

More Edmonton hijinks ensued, as another strike damaged the Guard's Stormlord Super-Heavy.



The rest of the Good reserves were finally committed, with three of the Eldar skimmers coming on in the southeast, taking control of the objective there, as a BA Dreadnought finished off a small squad of flank-marching Chaos Marines. To the west, the Warp Hunter and Fire Dragons supported an assault by the Space Wolves from their Land Raider.

The Doom of Malantai was killed by the Dragons, the Terminators cleaned out the buildings to the northwest, and a LOT of casualties were inflicted on the Green Tide (the Warp Hunter alone killed 17 Orks with an Aether Rift). That STILL left over 70 Orks in the mob...

...who proceeded to kill off the Space Wolves assault squad, pull the gun off the Warp Hunter, and wipe out the Fire Dragons, leaving the Autarch to yell defiance from the wreckage of her destoyed Wave Serpent. Nearby, some allied Blood Angels wish her "good luck".



The game had started at 1:30 PM; time was called at 5PM.

Surprisingly, the Evil side's steady advance was not enough; they had lost control of the one objective they held in the northwest. In the southwest, the objective nearest the Ork Green Tide was contested by Good forces. The Valkyrie-borne Imperial Guard controlled an objective to the far west.



In the southeast, despite taking a lot of hits from the Bio-Titan, Good forces managed to retain control of another objective.



Final Score: Good = 2 objectives, Evil = 0

All in all, it was a fun game, only slowed down by the enormous close combat in the southwest half of the table. I also liked the random orbital artillery strikes. Those were something no-one could really plan for, adding a certain fog of war to the affair.

Some Random Thoughts

When 40K first came out, I would have never guessed at its present level of popularity. To me it was just another game for me and my friends to play, like the classic versions of Traveller or Dungeons & Dragons. (Yes, I am that old.)

The current state of 40K is interesting. It is the most played game GW makes. GW is the dominant company in the miniature wargaming hobby. You can generally find an opponent to play in many major centres in the world. However, 40K and GW have competitors for our hard earned dollars. Companies like Privateer Press and Battlefront Miniatures make competing miniatures games that are well-supported by their own communities. Various homebrew rules are still written and played, since it is in the nature of a lot of gamers to tinker, and the possibilities of miniatures gaming are many and varied.

GW's business, and mini-gaming in general, is dwarfed by more generally accepted activities like computer console gaming. Despite its recent success, mini-gaming is still a relatively niche pastime. It will be interesting to watch the future changes in both GW and 40K.