40Kegger 6 Army Showcase

This past weekend the 40Kegger Tabletop Wargames Club held it's 6th tournament event, 40Kegger 6. These events always involves 40K and kegs of beer. This year the event also featured a charity drive fundraiser for Manitoba Mutts Dog Rescue!

It was a two-day event. The first day was a 1000-point sigle player tournament, with three games. The second day was a two game doubles event, with each player on a two-man team bringing 1500 points to the table (basically, an Apocalypse sized game).

The following are a selection of photos I took of the players' armies on the second day.

My personal favourite arny was Thurston's Astral Claws force, featuring loads of "Forge World" models.





Fabio's powerful Eldar force (Fabio won the first day's Single Player event).



Dan's Orks (I played a fun game with him first day).









MikeS' powerful Tau.





Lance's Tyranids; I especially like the kit bashed Tervigon on the left.



I had a fun game Saturday against Charles' Necrons.









Matt's Chaos (MikeA and I played against him and Neil second day).



RobL's Ultramarines. The flyer is sweet.





Homer's 'Nids (MikeA and I played Homer and RobL second day).





Christoan's Space Wolves. (Christian won Best Overall for the weekend!)



Byron's beautiful Chaos forces (he and I played a nail biter of a game on Saturday).





Byron's heavily converted flyer is a work of art.





The lighting effects on these Necrons are done with real electronics!





This fellow just brought a few models for show and tell. Stunning work.



Wings masked with mesh and then oversprayed.



My doubles partner was Conscript MikeA, who brought an Eldar Wraith force.



I brought a Swordwind army, led by Asurmen himself. The defense line is from WarGamma; I converted the quad gun to a long-range laser.

15mm Egyptian Mech Infantry for Fate Of A Nation

UAR Mechanized Infantry from Battlefront

Ok, ok, so I am officially diverted. Not that it takes much - I have a pea-brained attention span when it comes to this hobby. I have been painting away for much of the late winter and "spring" on my Legion Project, but as Prairiecon 2014 approaches, I put down the GW stuff to do some 15mm Arab-Israeli war stuff for the Yom Kippur War game we will be running at the Con.  The items were drawn from a big order of Battlefront stuff I had made back when they came out with the "Fate Of A Nation" supplement last fall.

Assault rifle stands and BTR-152 APCs

A few tanks led to some APCs, which led to some AAA guns, which led to...well, I just figured I might as well get everything built and based, and just paint a bunch of it while I'm in the mood.  So here is a platoon of Egyptian mechanized troops in 15mm from Battlefront.

This isn't even a whole selection on the UAR force chart...it's 1/3 of one...

These troops are from the Six Day War in 1967, which is the subject of "Fate Of A Nation", and not the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which has been my interest so far. But these would not be terribly out of place in a 1973 game, and at any rate, I want to try "Fate Of A Nation" so I might as well paint this stuff up.

A "Blindicide" team...what's with all the Belgian AT weapons in the Middle East? Did Belgium have some kind of special anti-tank crown corporation?

The gaming allure of the 1967 war is similar to that of the 1973 one in that you can legitimately fill the table with tanks, but I want to get some infantry in there as well so I started with the Egyptian mechanized foot sloggers. 

BTR-152s - the SUV of 1967...

The UAR infantry castings are OK - I suspect highly similar to Battlefront's NVA/PAVN castings from their Vietnam War range, although I don't know for sure. That's a fun thing about 15mm scale...with some slight changes and different paint, you would never know the difference when it comes to a lot of the infantry...the sculpt quality is a little worse than Peter Pig, same with the casting quality, but not by much.  And the thing I like about a Battlefront pack is that you get pretty much everything!

A surprising amount of detail on the interiors...well done on that score

The BTR-152 APCs are OK...they are mixed metal and resin, like a lot of Battlefront stuff.  My only gripe is that the resin walls of the troop compartment were pretty thin, and three of them broke in the package, requiring some careful repair (one was too far gone, so it gets to be "battle damaged" - I'll worry about that one later).  Also, some more thought should have been given to the front wheel wells in the resin mold - they are not straight, and end up set to point the wheels inward.  It looks a little funny when you seen the vehicle from straight on, but basing the vehicle obscures it enough.  Besides - Soviet-era construction was a little whacky, after all...

Apparently 28 guys squeeze into these two vehicles...I bet that is a lot of fun...

And so here are six infantry bases and a blindicide bazooka team (apparently the Egyptians did not use the RPGs in 1967) along with a pair of BTR-152s to use for a ride into battle against the IDF.  This does not even comprise an entire selection in the force chart - I will need at least one more group similar to this, as well as the command elements (MGs and recoilles rifles).

Spare tire on the back...nice touch

How much more stuff do I have? Well, for the Egyptians, more infantry and lots and lots of tanks - T-55s, IS-3s, PT-76s, and some BTR-50PKs to boot.

One more pic of the bazooka team

For the IDF? Well, you don't need a lot of them for a "Fate Of A Nation" game, it seems.  I already have a pile of M51 Sherman tanks and also Centurions painted up.  I want to add a mechanized infantry platoon for them as well.  I'm hoping I can knock all of this stuff off by the end of June...barring further diversions, that is...

15mm YKW - More T-55s and Terrain Project!

More Prairiecon preparation... just finished six more Khurasan T-55s given to me by Conscript Greg. I painted them the same as the previous three, so now we're fully stocked up with a whole company of flammable materiel...

Should be good to go for the convention game at this point. I remembered yesterday there was one more thing to do - a bit of terrain for the "Chinese Farm".

Greg's been researching this one a bit, but hasn't been able to come up with too much in the way of photo evidence of the battle. I decided to do some "pipes" terrain just to represent some of the irrigation equipment at the experimental farm.

Materials: some scrap plasticard, a few cheap flexible drinking straws, and some plastic tubing. Doesn't look like much at this point does it?

Amazing what a lick of paint can do! I painted the ground in the same style as the bases on my tanks and infantry. The piping is Mechanicus Standard Grey highlighted with Codex Grey and Fortress Grey, spiffed up with some Modelmates Rust Effects.

Should do for some ground cover at the Experimental Farm.

It'll work for generic sci-fi purposes as well. A worthwhile project for a weekend afternoon I reckon.

Now back to the NHL Eastern Conference Finals, Game 2... currently tied 1-1. Go Habs go!!

Puppets War 40K Ork Warbus and War Buggies

Escalation has been the watchword in gaming activities this year, including but not limited to Warhammer 40K. We've planned some massive games for later summer and fall, and preparation is well underway - we've been working on terrain as well as new models like our Imperial Knights. And there's more to come!

So in this spirit, I've completed some new models for my Rogue Trader-era all-metal Space Ork army. I just posted a writeup on my Forgeworld Flakk Gun, and this post will show off some non-GW (but very cool) models from a Polish outfit called Puppets War.

This is the Orc Warbus. I already have one of them in my Ork army but in connection with the Flakk Gun project, I wanted another (you'll see exactly why, just below).

The Warbus is a cracking model indeed. It's a hefty chunk of solid resin and comes in several parts: cab, bed, rear cap, "cow-catcher" plow, mirrors, machinegun barrels, rear mudguards, wheels, and optional tracks (together with other greeblies like window grilles and passenger benches for the bed). The parts tend to be a bit brittle and can be difficult to separate from the runners. They also have a slight tendency towards miscasting in places - but that's not too much of an issue with this model as it's an Ork vehicle after all ;-)
 

I added the stubber I had left over from the Imperial Knight I built earlier this year.

The model went together without major issues - unlike the first one I built which required significant plasticard/greenstuff intervention.

The model was painted GW Khorne Red with a light tan stripe - GW Rakarth Flesh. The whole vehicle was treated to a wash of Agrax earthshade or Nuln Oil (sorry I forgot which) and weathered extensively with sponge chipping, Tamiya mud-pen, and powder.

I just love the bolted-together ramshackle look...

You can see the racing stripe a bit better in this shot. I did some significant weathering on that.

Flakk gun fits nicely in the cargo bed! I sank two locating pins in the bed (visible in the top-down photo) that slot into corresponding holes in the base of the gun model.

Ready for action! Look out, IG Vendettas...

The other bit of my Puppets War order were these two War Buggies.

They come with the option of flamer, stubbers or rocket launchers. I liked the flamers so that's what I went with.

The fuel pipe is a bit of wire cut and superglued to fit. Nice and flexible to accommodate a crew-ork.

The flamer operator is a spare RT-era heavy-weapons Ork from my "inventory". All I had to do was cut off his base tab and glue him in. he's painted to match the rest of the force, in "Red Star" camo pants.

Here's a better view of the flamer fuel tank and crew-ork.
 

The buggy is pretty easy to assemble - it comes as a chassis with separate wheels, light pods, fuel tank, weapon and exhausts.

I distinguished the two models by painting a stripe on one, and this one without.

I just love these old RT metal Orks. So characterful and mean-looking, but not over-the-top like much of the current range.

I highly recommend the Puppets War stuff for its cool design and great value. The Warbus cost 25 euros and each Buggy rings in at 15 euros. Shipping is very reasonable too, at 4.99 euros for the entire order.

Looking forward to getting these guys out on the battlefield this summer!