We BOTH scored First Blood?! (a.k.a. Beer League, Game 2)

Back in October I played the second game in the Winnipeg 40K Beer League.

Host: DaveV (me)
List: List 1 (Mixed-Mech Swordwind with Farseer and Wraithlord, available for viewing here)

Guest: CharlesJ
List: List 1 (Crimson Fists led by Pedro Cantor, list available for viewing here)

Beer (the important bit): Sapporo

We played The Relic scenario with Vanguard Strike deployment. This was another close game, filled with (un)lucky die rolls.

Below is a photo of our setup, looking north and east. The Farseer is in the Wave Serpent with the black tailfin, deployed close to the Wraithlord try and forestall Wraithsight and keep it in action. The Fire Storm is in the rear, since its guns almost cover the length of the 6'x4' table.



Here's a closeup of Charles' fancy Contemptor dread. I tried to keep the Eldar over 24" away from its gatling guns.



Here is the relic, set up in the exact middle of the table. Whoever controlled it at the end of the game would score 3 Victory Points. A model could pick it up and move with it, but not faster than 6" per turn, due to its fragile nature. It's the power core from the downed flyer in the 4th edition boxed set - a relic indeed!



The festivities started immediately, as Charles deep stuck a drop pod with Pedro Cantor and two 5-man squads of Sternguard Veterans.



The Crimson Fists whiffed with their combi-meltas, and in response the Eldar shot a few of them away.  The Wraithlord charged Pedro's squad. Charging into terrain, the Wraithlord would fight an Initiative 1, simultaneously with the Marine Power Fists.

Indeed, both sides scored First Blood, the Sternguard and Wraithlord wiping each other out at Initiative Step 1 in the bottom of the first turn!



Ater the smoke cleared, Pedro and a couple of Sternguard were left in the Eldar deployment zone.



The Fire Dragons took a lot of fire, so they went to ground, leaving a couple alive. The Marine chapter master figured he'd charge them for an easy victory, but the Dragons nailed Pedro with a snap shot (gotta like Strength 8, AP 1), scoring a VP for killing the enemy Warlord.



In the pond to the right in the photo below can be seen the wreckage of a landspeeder, shot down by the Fire Storm as it deep struck onto the table.



After taking some fire, a lone Sternguard was left to try and take revenge against the Dragons...



...who blew him away with yet another snap shot.



Several times in th successive turns some Marines seized control of the Relic, only to be shot down by fire from dismounted Dire Avengers and their tanks.



I threw a Serpent to the east, in order to draw the attention of the Contemptor, which shot it down in one round of firing.



The Fire Dragons meanwhile had mounted up and joined the Farseer in her tank.



The remaining Dragons dismounted with the Farseer, then blew up the Contemptor with a lucky shot. Below, Charles surveys the carnage and the crater left by the dreadnought's demise.



The rest of the game did not change the VP standings established in the first two turns; the Relic lay unclaimed at game's end. The MVP award surely goes to the Fire Dragons, who weathered tons of enemy fire and managed to put the kill shot on three enemy units.

VP's for Eldar: 2
VP's for Crimson Fists: 1
Result: Eldar Win

Below are a few other dead soldiers, the detritus of a fun evening.



Thanks again to Charles for a great game!

Ruined Hamlet Thoroughly Ruined

A few days ago I posted a few photos of the Bolt Action Ruined Hamlet that I'd assembled. Now it's been painted (and used in a game even!) so I thought I'd post some photos of the completed pieces and a bit of a description of how they got there. WW2 French infantry models from Crusader Miniatures will help to illustrate scale.



After assembling the pieces and filling gaps with greenstuff, the models were based on 0.060" plasticard. I bought a package of the stuff from a local hobby shop, and was shocked at the price ($20 for two sheets). Has the price of oil skyrocketed when I wasn't looking???


The Ruined Hamlet kit included a couple of extra rubble piles to place against the walls or in the corners. I used these to fill empty spaces on the bases, by sticking them together and filling the gaps as necessary.


Texture for the bases was provided with copious quantities of texture gel medium. I left some smooth spots in the middle of the buildings for painting in floors later.


The whole thing was sprayed with Krylon flat black paint.


Colour was built up with an allover heavy drybrush of Citadel Mechanicus Standard Grey, followed with Fortress Grey. The plaster bits and lintel stones were drybrushed with Citadel Dheneb Stone.


The wooden roof beams and floors were basecoated with Citadel Scorched Brown and highlighted with Calthan Brown. On the main level floors I painted striped of Calthan over the Scorched Brown to represent wooden floorboards. The wood was drybrushed grey and black scorch marks applied with a large stippling brush. On the floors I went over the scorch marks with stippled Mechanicus Standard Grey.


Some black scorch marks applied to the walls and voila, one Ruined Hamlet reporting for duty!

Extremely Belated Battle Report - "Siler Road" - 15mm Sci-Fi

Federal armour in a village - what could go wrong?

Following on Dallas and Mike's cool game from last week, I wanted to belatedly post some pictures of a game Mike F and I played four weeks ago, pitting the Nova Respublik and their new DOE gunships against the sinister Control Battalion.  There are a bunch of pictures in this post, validating Dallas' recent assessment of my blog "style".

Control Battalion, pre-game

Federal column advances, led by Siler tanks

Nova Respublik Motor Fuzileers enter the table to launch their counter-attack

For rules we used Bolt Action (Brian - at least we are not using Lord of the Rings :).  The scenario involved a Nova Respublik counter-attack against a Federal Army spearhead led by a pair of Siler tanks.  I wasn't that specific other than the Nova Respublik wanted to stop/slow/knockout the Silers.  Really the game was an excuse to roll out the DOE gunships and Silers!

Control Battalion infantry advance behind their Claymore APC

Control Battalion mortar teams set up for the firefight

The DOE makes the first visit - ouch for the Federals...

Mike F took the Nova Respublik side, and I played the Control Battalion.  Here are a bunch of pictures of the game. Short game summary - lots of stuff blew up, and while Mike generally failed his rolls to even have his air support arrive (unlike Dallas, who failed his air support rolls in our game the following week to decimate his own attack), when the DOEs did show up, it was pretty devastating.

A DOE lines up Control Battalion targets

DOE propaganda 

The Siler suffers DOE pains - the hits immobilized the tank!

The Control Battalion doesn't feel pain - lucky for them...

Another aerial photo - note the ultra-aggressive advance of the Nova Respublik APC at the bottom

The Silers were tough - meeting out a lot of punishment - also missing a lot.  But they put out some serious abuse on the Nova Respublik armoured vehicles.  However, they were stopped, so the game ranks as a win for Mike - although one with a pretty steep cost in toasted NR vehicles and troops.

This squad was feeling pretty good (in as much as the Control Battalion "feels" anything) until the DOE came 

Another view of the carnage in the village

Control troops huddle in the ruins

Siler dishing out the pain! 

Immobilized Siler still exacts a toll...

Close up of a Nova Respublik Red Eagle - Siler bait

It was fun to get the DOEs out on the table for a first game! Thanks for Mike F for coming out for the game.

Some 15mm World War 2 Stuff

15mm Panzer IV-Hs - the one on the front left is from PSC - the others are Battlefront

After a grumble about running out of photo space on the site, I tried to use Flickr. I loathe the various free photo-sharing sites, and this renewed attempt to employ one lasted about fifteen minutes. So I am now bent over by Google. It was just a matter of time anyway!  So with that out of the way, finally a new post!

Another view of the PSC Mark IV

I had not done much of this since Curt C's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge wrapped up earlier this year, but the WW2 bug has got me again. I have a pile of 15mm stuff waiting for attention, and I am starting to move through it. Just a few pics of some recent worktable progress on more 15mm WW2 material - German and Russian stuff from the Eastern Front.

A Mark IV-H from Battlefront - I barely managed to get the armoured skirts attached...

For the Germans, some Mark IV-H panzers.  One of these had been painted some time ago - and had already seen action on the gaming table (too bad it could not help its larger friends during that game, but anyway)- but the other two are new models.  One is from Battlefront, and the other is a test model from Plastic Soldier Company.

The PSC Mark IV panzer models are lovely, whereas the Battlefront models - which look nice too - are pure hell to put together.  On the other hand, the Battlefront Panzers are available with the Zimmerit finish, which may matter to some folks. I highly recommend the PSC Panzers, so long as you don't want (or don't care about) Zimmerit on the tanks.

I started basing my 15mm vehicles while working on my Golan Heights Project.  I liked the overall effect, so I have started doing this for my WW2 15mm stuff as well.  So far I'm pleased with the results, although the grass was maybe a little lighter than I had hoped.

And now the infantry...

Some 15mm Russians from Battlefront...about 1/100th of the total force I will need...

Russians are up first. You pretty much always need a lot of Russian troops for almost any Eastern Front scenario, so this is the first step in tackling a LARGE pile of stuff. These are Battlefront castings - but I have some Peter Pig ones coming up too. And I am doing a few on individual bases, for skirmish gaming purposes.  More on that in a later post...

It will be a while before enough stuff is accumulated to play a game, but Dallas mentioned the other day that the 70th anniversary of Kursk is next year.  I think that will serve as a nice motivation to get through this pile and fill a table with flaming tanks next year...

(Storage) Space, the Final Frontier

So, it has happened. Both Greg and I were working on blog posts today and we got the same message when trying to upload photos:

Whoops! You're out of space. You are currently using 100% of your 1 GB quota for photos. 

So now "Blogger" (i.e. Google) has us over a barrel. Start paying for extra storage space, or revert to a text-only blog. Since we are both pic-whores (sorry to speak for you buddy but you know it's true) I guess we all know what's gonna happen...

[please imagine this space contains this image]   

:-(

I know, I know, Blogger is free and I shouldn't complain, but I'm a real...

[please imagine this space contains this image]

and it annoys me greatly to have to pay for something that used to be free.

Future Shantytown / Modelmates Rust Effects Review

A few weeks ago, I saw a post on TMP that linked to a blog post promoting a model-railroad "rust in a bottle" paint product that looked very slick. Always being eager to snap up new products that enable my laziness as a painter, I found a source for the magic elixir in the UK and ordered a bottle (not cheap). After 10 days or so it arrived:

I had several half-finished 15mm corrugated iron shacks laying around that I had assembled and basecoated with Boltgun Metal, but (as you do) had lost motivation to finish. Being that I had wanted to run a 15mm sci-fi game soon, I recognized the szygy-like convergence of factors... half-finished terrain plus easy rust paint product plus running a game to use the terrain equals motivation to finish the project! So off I went...

The Rust Effect stuff is actually opaque, so after basecoating with Boltgun Metal, Dheneb Stone, and Astronomican Standard Grey, and layering Ultramarines Blue and Shadow Grey, I applied a wash of GW Gryphonne Sepia mixed with Devlan Mud and let it dry.

 Then the Rust Effect was liberally applied to the metal parts!

After that I painted the windows and solar panels in the usual "gem" style.

I added some faux-Korean characters for that "indeterminate future space language you'd find in a makeshift shantytown" look.

I'm pretty happy with how this project turned out. I think that the Rust Effect product will be quite useful when painting heavily weathered and/or Nurgleized stuff. It certainly worked a treat on these shacks. Easy to use and great looking results - how can you put a price on that???

Modelmates Rust Effect - 10.01GBP including shipping to Canada from Model Hobbies Limited