Belated Battle Report - Imperial Guard Reports Harmonious New Years Success

Captain Tewl of Lazy Company, the 869th Cadian Timeservers, part of the Toxo IV defence force, reported overwhelming success on the defence lines against yet another attack which ocurred on New Years Day and involved military forces who at first appeared to be servants of the Chaos God Nurgle, but were in fact over-active teenagers wearing green who had consumed too much "Toxo Special" the night before.

Renegade forces cower in their trenches - they should have stayed there...

Intervention of a Ravenwing Space Marine force proved completely unnecessary, but at least sped up the destruction of the fake Chaos forces, which included bogus Terminators, "Chaos Space Marines" wearing armour made of cardboard and showing no sign of the endurance typically conferred to the followers of Nurgle, a Chaos dreadnought which appeared in hindsight to be a green erector set with mud stuck on it, a "Predator" and a couple of "Rhinos".

Imperial Guard troops sit tight and take pot shots at the Renegades, chewing up vehicles and troops

All imposters were destroyed at minimal loss for the heroic Imperial force. There was, however, no sign of the fake "Typhus" persona who had been causing false alarms in the sector last year.

Mike F's Space Marines roll out to kick the enemy while they were down

Thanks again to Dallas for hosting a New Years game, not to mention forgetting about the cheesy special rules that apply to Nurgle Marines! Mike F's Marines looked great, and so did Dallas' renegades (at least until Mike and Cam blew them away). Hopefully Dallas can add a couple of more pictures - the slaughter of the "Nurgle" side being so complete that were barely able to capture images of them...

Epic 40k battle report - Conflict on Toxo IV

Table showing the three "sludge production sectors" that were objectives.

Last night Dallas hosted a game of Epic 40k, pitting the Tau against the Imperial Guard for full control of some vital toxic sludge plants. It was the battlefield debut for my Epic Tau. Yes, that's right - Epic Tau from Forgeworld. What the f***k was I thinking? Well, I got them - years ago! and I managed to paint them. Last night they went into battle! I have to say I am pleased to finally have seen them on the table.

The Tau had a cadre of Crisis Suits, Stealth Suits, Broadsides, Hammerhead tanks and infantry in Devilfish APCs. They also had some human auxiliaries, representing Imperial Guard units who had defected to their side in return for not having to worry about Commissars any more.

The Imperials had a storm trooper company in Valkyries, backed by Vulture gunships, a detachment of Sentinels, a mechanized infantry company and a tank company, backed by a battery of Basilisk artillery pieces.

Cam, Mike F and Brian took the Tau, and Dallas and Bill rolled out with the Imperial Guard.

Imperial Guard storm troopers enter "flavour country"

The scenario was a classic "take two out of three" objective grab - each ojbective representing an important sludge factory, along with the housing which would naturally be concentrated very close to it so as to maximize worker productivity and minimize commuting.

The Tau started in control of the three objectives, but could place only their traitor milita on the table. The Imperials would be allowed to "drop" their storm troopers and sentinels in on the first turn, and from there it was all on!

The Tau move out from their occupied objective, led by their Hammerhead gunships.

The storm troopers made a tough assault in the first turn, capturing a sludge plant and defeating a traitor infantry platoon and artillery battery. This was a great firefight, as Dallas and Brian tied the result rolls again and again, meaning that round after round was fought.

A Leman Russ tank company - one of the most devestating units the Imperial Guard can get.

In the second turn, Bill rolled the mechanized infantry in to capture a second sludge sector, while the Tau concentrated on the third. Realizing they would need to capture a second sector to win the game, the Tau side began a careful advance against the storm troopers and the sentinels.

Tau deploy from their Devilfish APCs - thanks to markerlights elsewhere on the table, the Devlish can send guided missiles all over the place to p*ss off their opponents.

The upshot of the careful advance was a lot of headaches for the storm troopers and sentinels, and especially for Dallas, who got to enjoy exposure to the mobility of the Tau suits, markerlights etc. While the Tau were not able to kill many units in the factory sector, they did wreak havoc with their weapons which caused extra blast markers.

Mechanized infantry secure an objective.

We called the game for time a little after midnight - each side had one sludge sector firmly in control, and the third was contested. The final turn was a bit of an anti-climax, with both sides failing to issue engage orders successfully, meaning that what would have been a wicked cool firefight was falling down toward a Verdun-style grind for both sides.

It was great to play Epic 40k again - I just love the rules. The Tau are definitely tough in the game. The suits are super-mobile, the Hammerheads are lethal and the markerlights and guided missiles, while not causing too much harm on their own, made the Imperial players mental ("the missiles come from where???"). While I can't say I will be adding more Epic Tau figures (which don't seem to be that available from Forgeworld anymore regardless) I will paint up the Epic Tau flyers that I have, and I may try to convert my own Manta using 40k bits so they can take out Titans.

Thanks to Dallas for hosting, and for everyone who came out to play! I definitely enjoyed it.

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...