Battle Report: Cam Lights It Up....Honestly...

Greg's crack pilots in the briefing room

Last week Dallas hosted an Aeronautica Imperialis game - 6mm scale futuristic air combat, set in the Warhammer 40k universe. The outcome was frankly disturbing for everyone concerned, as Cam absolutely lit up the game.

The scenario features Ork fighters and fighter-bombers, including some kind of "suppa bomba" or something (basically an Ork B-25), attacking Imperial armoured vehicles. An Imperial fighter squadron was on hand to defend - and if they felt like it, attack the Ork vehicles as well. Both sides (critically it would turn out) had some AA defences on the ground - two flak "wagonz" for the Orks, and three Hydra AAA vehicles for the Imperials.

Dallas, Brian, Dave V and Bill took to the air for the Orks, while Cam and I flew the Imperial side. Cam had a section of two Thunderbolts and also controlled the AA. I had a squadron of five - that's five - thunderbolts, including one ace. We faced an ork flight of about 10 planes (?), including the new super bomma (which looked awesome - Dallas did an amazing job on it).

I was pretty sure we would rip the Orks - "we" being my awesome, five-plane squadron. Cam would chip in. Little did I suspect that Cam had his own, three part strategy:

1 - Amazing accurate AA fire.

The Imperium may have a mixed record on planes, but obviously has some kind of advanced optics lab for its AA guns

2 - Blazing hot dice rolls.

Cam's AA gunners slaughtered Ork pilots with red hot rolling

3 - Super star ace pilots.

"Hard deck my ass! We nailed those SOBs!"

The Orks raced across the table. I pushed ahead to engage. I had Brian and Dallas lined up in my sights, and was reaching for the kill-stencils when it emerged that my ground crew had loaded the Thunderbolts with paint rounds. We missed everything, while Brian started to blast my pilots. I lost one fighter in the first round, another one damaged, and all of the swearing in the world was not helping.

Dallas and the gang were feeling pretty smug, then Cam opened fire, and the tables turned rapidly. Cam's flak batteries picked at least two ork planes per turn. Cam's fighters - he had two of them - managed to damage an Ork tank, shoot down three Ork fighters, and generally cause mayhem.

The orks strafed and bombed, but thanks to Cam, they basically flew home empty-handed - those that flew home at all. I should note in their defence they did everything they were supposed to do, complete with some wonky flying that kept us guessing. We also had made an error on how easy it was for the Hydras to hit - we were hitting on "5"s and "6"s - it should have been "6"s. Still, Cam rolled plenty of those. I don't think it would have made much difference.

Also, Bill had a tough outing with the big bomber - Cam's flak venitlated the thing(of course), although it was not shot down. But just about every single bomb and strafing run did not wound any vehicles. In addition to great gunnery, Hydra tanks are apparently manufactured with unobtanium armour.

My superstar pilots? Out of five planes, three were shot down, for only one - ONE - kill. We were a net burden to the Imperial side. We won as it was, but our margin would have been greater if we HAD NOT EVEN PARTICIPATED. What a great feeling. On the plus side, I think I won some pretty sweet initiative rolls. Pretty lame when that is your main talking point, but there it is!

Dallas took some pics of the game. I look forward to seeing them on the blog - in particular the huge Ork plane from Forge World. It looks awesome. Thanks again to Dallas for hosting, and to everyone for coming out. If Cam keeps this up, may God have mercy on us all....

"Thanks for winning those initiative rolls, Maverick."

Crazy furball over the target zone

Ork Blasta-Bomma - poor focus due to Ork cameraman cr@pping himself from flak

Imperium Facing Sludge Shortage

The Imperium is facing a shortage of the key armoured maintenace substance known as "Carceno-lube", an important coolant for Shadowsword tread assemblies, thanks to a daring raid by Orc bombers(z) and fighter-bombmers(z) on the toxic sludge facilities of planet Toxo IV.

Toxic sludge facilities burn, filling the planet with deadly fumes that will probably cause some kind of Nurgle plague- just another day in the Imperium...

Last night we tried out Aernautica Imperialis, the F*** World 40k air combat game which uses the Epic scale fighter planes. As seen previoulsy in this blog, Dallas has been on a little tear of a "project", painting up a hefty Ork squadron, some Imperial fighters, and some great new terrain made of spare bits and junk from around the house.

Cam and I played the Imeprial side, with four Thunderbolts, and a trio of heavy flak guns defending the three different Imperial sludge reclamation facilities.

Imperial pilots are briefed for their patrol over the vital toxic sludge reclamation facilities.

Frederick, Dallas, Mike F and Bill took control of the large Ork squadron, which included two "bommerz" (looted Imperial Marauders - excellent conversions by Dallas) and 8 "fighta-bommerzs" (or was it 10? or 12? as an Imperial pilot, I think I had an incentive to exaggerate the number of attackers).

As a certified F*** World hypocrite (yes - I bought Epic Tau), I was a bit wary of the new AI rules. Certainly the book lived up to Forge World's reputation for rigorous production controls (the Q&A addressing typos in the book was filled with typos itself).

Yet my concerns were misplaced - as is so often the case with GW's non-40k games, the rules are great. They are easy to understand, play quick, and use simple maneuver cards that provide some challenge in terms of aniticpating the other side's moves without needing a bunch of charts or (something that is in my subjective opinion one of the least-appealing sights in table-top wargaming) a hex-map on the table.

The game was fast-paced. Lucky for me, Cam's two fighters took the brunt of the early fire from the Ork squadron (or is it Skwadrun?) and he lost a 'Bolt in the second turn, while our flak guns missed. At that time, we wondered how useful they would be. HA! As the Orc attack wave broke up to engage the different sludge reclamation facilities, they started to pick the Orc planes out of the sky. In fact, our rolling got pretty awesome. I may never roll that hot again, and Cam was even winning initiative for us!

Artist's rendition of rolling by Cam and Greg during last night's Aeronautica Imperialis game.

The "play of the game" had to be the moment when Dallas, after carefully lining up in the 6 o-clock spot of Cam's last fighter, had a chance to blast it. However, Frederick has also lined up a bombing run on one of the plants, and with the flak gunners demonstrating eagle-eyed accuracy, the Orks put the mission first and allowed Frederick to take the first shooting action, and he attacked the factory (and my apologies to Frederick - I can't recall if he hit the thing or not...)

Quote Dallas - "I've got a bad feeling about this..." The Imperial flak guns opened up, and blasted his fighta from the sky with a direct critical hit...

All in all, the Imperials shot down all but one Ork plane. But the Orks really pasted the targets, destroying one plant, severely damaging another, and knocking out one of the flak guns. Mike F in particular gets an Ork squig coupon (or would have if his pilots hadn't been shot down on the second-last turn) for a red-hot strafing run that absolutely pasted the second factory, and gave the Orks the victory - although I'm sure Gav Thorpe would agree that the Imperial side won a moral victory after shooting down almost the entire Ork attack force.

Gav Thorpe: "Definitely a moral win for the Imperial side..."

No doubt the Imperial pilots, thinking they had done well, were surprised to return to base and learn they had been demoted to Colon Servitor Fifth Class for not protecting the precious toxic sludge reclamation facilities...

The Sludge-Busters

The warning klaxons sounded suddenly, so loud they pierced the almost-deafening mechanical noise of an Imperial sludge-reclamation facility operating at full capacity.

Shift-Supervisor Second Class Jax Paxton checked his wrist-chrono. "Too early for midday nutrition period..." he thought. "I wonder what th-"

Paxton's thought was rudely cut short by an inch-thick bullet from an Ork Big Shoota entering, and then rapidly exiting, his temporal lobe. As Paxton's lifeless corpse dropped to the metal decking, overhead a flight of Ork Fighta-Bommerz streaked past, trailing black smoke from their overloaded turbine engines, skidding across the sky to make another strafing pass on Imperial Sludge-Reclamation Facility (Vraks Pattern) Ref. 32-Z. Looted Marauders, gaudily painted in Orkish "go-fasta" red, loosed shrieking volleys of air-to ground rockets against their targets.

Imperial ground defences sprang into action, the shining trails of anti-aircraft tracers arcing into the sky, here and there exploding into jagged black shards of flak. Thunderbolt interceptor aircraft of the Imperial Navy weaved across the sky, lascannons and heavy bolters spitting at the Ork aircraft crossing their sights. But can they drive off the attackers before the facility and its precious toxic sludge reserves are destroyed by the manic Ork Flyboyz?

Find out on Thursday as we try out Forgeworld's "Aeronautica Imperialis" rules for aerial combat in the world of Warhammer 40K. Usual time, usual place!

Aeronautica Imperialis (with Epic 40K models)

I blogged about a mini-project I started a few weeks ago, inspired by Fawcett Avenue friend Ethics Gradient and his blog "Another Slippery Slope" (see our Links section).

I enjoy painting tiny airplanes because a) they're relatively inexpensive, b) they paint reaaaally fast, c) they look cool, and d) it's fun to game with them.

This project coincides with my recent sci-fi mania in that it involves Games Workshop "Epic 40K" scale aircraft. I decided to paint Orks and Imperial aircraft in a quasi-historical theme, the Korean War of the early '50s. Orks=MiGs, Imperials = F-86 Sabres and Corsairs. Here are the results...




These are Imperial Marauders that I converted to the Ork cause. I thought they looked alot like Ilyushin IL-2 Sturmoviks, which the North Koreans used, so I went against canon and painted them up Orky. First I added some greenstuff to the nose for extra armour, to the wings for some Orkish-looking reinforcement, and to the engines for the Ork-standard issue heat shielding.


Ork aircraft...

And a close-up of the "Honchos"


Here are the Imperial planes... the silver ones are smaller OOP Thunderbolts and the ones in the foreground, the larger current ones. The latter are kitted out as Corsairs for ground attack, in the "Navy blue" scheme with low-vis tactical numbers.

Since I had six old T-bolts I painted some with black and white stripes and some with yellow and black... both of these schemes were used on sabres in Korea.

A close-up of the "Corsair".

Lots of fun to paint. Looking forward to a game with them soon. Maybe a ground attack mission against some of Greg B.'s Epic Imperial Guard...?

Imperial Test Model

I wrote this morning about testing out a colour scheme for my Epic Imperial Thunderbolts, based on the Korean War USAF F-86 Sabre. Here's my attempt:

I'm pretty happy with it, except that there doesn't seem to be anyplace to put the Imperial eagle... I was hoping to put it either on the wing surfaces or on the rear fin. Oh well.

Lazy Sunday

So after cleaning the house on Sunday, I was looking for something to do. Inspired by fellow blogger Ethics Gradient (http://anotherslipperyslope.blogspot.com/), I'm starting (in a limited way) some Imperial and Ork airforces in Epic scale. On Saturday I had bought a pack of Epic Ork Fighta-Bommas at a local shop and I decided that this would be just the thing for a Sunday evening project.

I'd also decided that the "theme" of my air forces will be based on the jet fighters of the Korean War. I always really liked the look of the Mig-15s and F-86 Sabres and I have already collected and painted a lot of 1/300 Korean War aircraft, so it was a natural!

The Orks will be the North Koreans, of course. Even the design of the Fighta-Bommas lends itself to this, they have a very "cockpit-forward" orientation and a chunky design that puts me in mind of a MiG. Plus, the Orky red colour scheme suits a North korean theme, too.

The Imperials will be the Americans. I haven't decided whether to paint the Thunderbolts in a bare-aluminium Sabre scheme, or to go with something a bit different. The design of the Thunderbolt, with its very long nose and its cockpit at the base of the rear fin, reminds me of the Corsair... so a US Navy blue scheme is an option. But Corsairs weren't jets, so that would screw up the "1950s jet combat" angle. I'll likely paint a test shot in aluminium with yellow accents, similar to the Sabres in Korea, before I finally decide.

Anyway, here are some Ork planes:









Of course, after painting the planes I still felt like doing something hobby-related, so I decided to make some 6mm terrain out of old junk I had in my bits box. This will also further my Epic air force project as they can be used for objective in bomb runs, etc.

The structures represent chemical plants, power facilities etc. I used some bits of old model kits (mainly engine parts for 1/48 tanks that I never used, because I don't display the engine), some plasticard, and a few safety caps off syringes and old insulin vials I had around (the cat is diabetic). Here's what I ended up with, before priming and painting:



and with some Epic-scale building for size reference:



Like I said, just a lazy Sunday ;-)