The Joys of Shopping

On Saturday Sarah and I went shopping and ended up in a shop called Home Sense, it is a derivative of TXMaxx but only sells home wares. As I walked through the aisles of china and glass I found these horrible metal representations of a WW2 fighter. I laughed at its cranky and silly style attempting to be a classic British Fighter.

Then my 40K brain kicked in and I realised this was an Orky Fighter already to go. The cockpit opens so I can put orks in and there is plenty of room for rokkits, big shootas and the compulsory Grot hanging off the side!

All of this, pre painted and metal for a staggering £12.99

Bargain and will fit nicely with the Speed Freaks army

The Grey Knight you see there is merely for scale purposes and plays no part in my fledgling Ork Force

Daemonic Testers

Right. Camera died on me tonight. Brilliant. So after much begging I used the wife's and after much more pain trying to get the thing to work I decided to read the manual...

So here we will see a Bloodletter and a Daemonette; painted up in the colours for the army. For those with slight colour blindness the Bloodletter is in red. Both are from the new plastics and paint really nicely.

The thing I'm most looking forward to with the army is the fact that every unit can be a different colour - it's the first army I've done that doesn't rely on total uniformity. The Soul Grinder is going to be a nice shade of yellow in honour of the Custard Marines. Meanwhile, all I've got to do now is work out what to do with the bases.

Month 1 will see me painting the Bloodletters and the Flamers. Oh and trying to finish my Chosen for that other army of mine!

Playing areas.........

Just showing off the new industrial/starship interiors scenery that is now more or less finished!!

This has caused a few late nights recently as I really got into it! My study turned into a little scenery workshop. I fully intend to do more, especially the 3D block sections but as I got my final exam looming for my degree, I've sadly been forced to do some work instead on playing with toys :-(

One interesting additional advantage of the 3D blocks is that because they are so chunky they can be safely stacked. If I knock together a few more of those and some walk way sections this should all be very usable for a Necromunda type game.........

...or 1949 Secrets of the Third Reich game in a Nazi research bunker..

...or Legends of the Wild West Firefly style!!!

Test Figures

Thought I'd better try my hand at the new paint scheme whilst I still have a chance just it case it turned out to be a massive pain in the bum!

Thankfully the free Terminator figure from White Dwarf gave me the perfect vehicle to try the scheme without actually touching one of the figures slated for the army.

This is just the under coat spray of white, topped with Bad Moon Yellow and then Blood red quarters. I halved the helmet but probably won't do that on the normal marines. I did give me the idea of making each type of squad (ie Tactical, Assault etc) have different Helmet schemes. I'll think on that some more.

Eddy

Because i gotta have faith... Ooooh, i gotta have, faaaaith....

Right, from the cryptic title to my post, the bigger George Michael fans amongst you (I'm looking at you Silverback) may well have deduced that I'm talking about faith. Faith in my ability to draw up an unbeatable list that I'll use to beat all the rest of you? Heck no. I'm talking about good, honest faith points that a full Sisters of Battle army will produce, as that's the army I'm now intending to take (assuming the marine codex isn't so exciting that I lose my head and go for them instead!)

I currently have a witchhunters army, but it's pretty heavily skewed towards the inquisition (who nobody expects, due to fear & surprise being their chief weapons, well, fear surprise and....) so I thought I'd chuck all them inquisitorial folk out and get a full Sisters list in place for this little tale

Now then, for the list.....

Canoness w. eviscerator
Canoness w. blessed weapon (I know, I know, 2 canonesses is a bit beardy, but Palatines are just rubbish by comparison!)

9 Celestian retinue w. heavy flamer, flamer, Veteran sister with eviscerator & rhino
9 Celestian retinue w. heavy flamer, flamer, Veteran sister with eviscerator & rhino (one each for the Canonesses - count as retinue so give them some protection once the Orkal hordes hit home)

10 sisters - heavy flamer, melta gun, VSS with power weapon & rhino
10 sisters - heavy flamer, melta gun, VSS with power weapon & rhino
10 sisters - 2 x melta gun, VSS with power weapon
10 sisters - 2 x storm bolter, VSS with power weapon

Exorcist
Exorcist
6 retributors with 3 heavy bolters

Only 4 troops compared to everybody elses hordes, but as sister squads are 10 bodies min. squad size, I need to take celestians to get space in the rhinos for the Canonesses!

"But wait" I hear you cry "don't you have a whole load of those miniatures already painted - how are you going to get painting points?!?!?!?" Well, it's true, I do have about 750 points of that lot already painted. However, my cunning plan is to use those spare months to produce a cityfight board with all the scenery that I've had sitting around for what seems like years.... Hopefully my fellow GOGs will award me points for producing that instead of sisters as that'll give us something nice to fight over (especially for those of that brought flamers to the party... Like me!)

So that's the plan for now, but be sure to check back in an hour, when I'll likely have changed my mind & my army list ;)

The Ork Freak of Speed, or something like that

So my brain has had a thunk about things and this is the plan for 1750pts

HQ - Wazdakka Gutsmek - 180pts

Troops - 4 Trukks with 11 Boyz and 1 Nob in each. 3 Rokkit Launchers and 1 Big shoota. The Nobs will carry boss poles and a Power Klaw - Total of 623pts

Troops - 1 squad of 5 and 1 sqaud of 4 Warbikers - 225pts (troops due to Wazdakka)

Elite - 5 Nobs and a Painboy on Bikes, 4 big choppas, 1 rokkit shoots, Cybork bodies, grot orderly - total ( wait for it and take a breath) - 360 pts

Fast attack - 2 lots of 3 deffkoptas, 2 in each in rokkit launchers and 1 with a Kustom Mega Blaster, 2 will also carry buzzsaws in each group. Total of 360 pts.

Giving a grand total of 1748 pts

Thoughts, comments, opinions????

Whilst Varistat makes his mind up...

Well clearly a new edition of 40K is justification for the start of a new army. That coupled with the imminent arrival of a new codex for the Emperor’s finest, I was obviously left with but one choice…..

Marines it is!

Already having an excessive, if somewhat dusty, number of Ultramarines knocking about, I decided that I really couldn’t bring myself to paint a whole army the same colour again. Thinking of my options, I found myself considering different ideas such as different colour shoulder pads, patterning or shapes on the armour, I even considered the heretical idea of camouflage! As I wanted a force that would be striking on the table top, I was left with only one option….

Howling Griffons!

Their heraldry is bold, bright and should be relatively easy to do as a paint scheme…. ….I’ll let you know if I still feel that way in about 1750pts time.

So now we have strawberry and custard flavour marines but what to do with them? What sort of army am I going for? The oh so short list of my wargaming victories stands as testament to my complete inability to design killy-uber-mean armies. They tend to be more like the Monty-Pythonesque suicide squad from ‘The Life of Brian’. This might be why I am more interested in them looking pretty.

I decided that I wanted to see just how mean a marine infantry could be under the new rules. Running, rapid firing and holding objectives is what I want them to keep themselves busy with. With this in mind, I’m planning (obviously just a rough plan prior to the appearance of the new codex) to go with five or six tactical squads. Now this clearly isn’t a particularly glamorous design for an army but having had a new hole torn into me by horribly unbalanced marine armies in past, I have a moral objection to marine lists in which landspeeders outnumber guys in power armour. Believe me its very possible and one particular game was so one-sided that I actually came third as the difficult terrain scored more kills than I did.

Two other factors have led to my decision. Firstly, having read the designers notes for the new codex in White Dwarf I realised that they seem to be making an effort to make to bring the marines back to their original incarnation as an Infantry Elite supported by a few flashy bits and bobs. I like that original view of them. It’s the one that first fired up my love of 40K in the Rogue Trader days and I love that the new edition is moving back in that direction. Secondly, as we are going to be playing games at paired 250pts, 500pts and every multiple of 250 thereafter, I thought that the good old marine tactical squad would be a great building block as we move through the different points thresholds. Their resilience coupled with mass bolter fire and a “miss”ile launcher should hopefully give me strength and flexibility. Well that’s the plan…….

As for the rest of the army, I’m probably going to include two dreadnoughts, especially as I have two sets of the marine contingent from the Black Reach boxset. After chucking in a commander (but before squad upgrades) I should still have 700 odd points left to play with. What to have?? Not to sound like I’m designing my army by what is in the AoBR boxset but Terminators deep striking under the new rules should be fun! I never liked having to put deep striking units somewhere ‘safe’. Now at least you don’t automatically throw away hundreds of points if Lady Luck shakes her head. I’ll feel much more inclined to have a crack at putting deep strikers right in the thick of it. It is what they are meant to be about after all.

So whats next after Troops, HQ, Dreadies and an Elite? Make the Termie unit bigger? Two terminator units? This is where I’ve ground to a halt. I’m just going to have to wait to see what new goodies they are going to treat us to in the new codex.

I can’t wait!

God this actually sounds like I vaguely know what I'm doing...............a momentary lapse I'm sure.

I'll do Marines!... o, wait... Daemons!... no, wait...Guard!...no, wait

Well, as the cryptic title of this post alludes to, I don't know which army to collect for this epic struggle....

As with many gamers, my loft is absolutely chock full of miniatures I bought so I could do Army X. Will I ever get around to doing Army X? Of course not. Will that stop me buying enough miniatures so that I can one day do Army Y which has about the same chance of being made as Army X? Of course not. That's why I think this tale is such a great idea, as it may well force me to get the pieces down for Army X and actually make it a reality!

However, a detailed review of the miniatures in my loft proved that actually I didn't have enough miniatures to make any 1 single army, just enough to make several part armies.

Oh dear.

That meant I was going to have to buy more figures to sit in the loft.

And even worse, it meant I had pretty much no guidance as to what army to collect and make for this.

So whilst everyone else involved has decided and is planning out their armies, I'm currently considering them all..... Given the nice shiny new AoBR boxsets have landed and I've traded away my Orks for Marines, surely a Marine army would be a great idea? If so, which sort given the new codex gives so many new options..... Or should I use them as Chaos Marines with some conversions? Or should I use all those daemons I have sitting around for a daemon army? Or should I use all those imperial guardsmen sitting around and make an army of them, presumably just in time for the rumoured new codex early next year?

I don't know. I just don't know. And I now only have 2 weeks to decide. Although I'm using the excuse that the marine codex isn't out until 4 October to give myself some breathing space.

If that inspires me, it'll be Marines. If not, it'll be daemons.

Or Guard.

Or Chaos Marines.

Possibly.

The Plan: Tale of the 6 Goggers

So there we were looking at all our mountains of unpainted miniatures and moaning (well we are Grumpy afterall) about the lack of time to paint it all when suddenly up pops an idea; why don't we emulate the White Dwarf article and do our own version of the Tale of X Gamers? This way we can paint small bits each month and still remain sane (remain? hmmm, me thinks sanity left a while ago). Why not we said and thus was born our Tale.

The plan: Paint 250 points every month from 1st October 2008 for 7 months (end April 2009). This will give us a legal 1750 point army just in time for the Sad Muppet Society annual 40K tournament, A Small Matter of Honour, in Basingstoke.

So we've all gone off to pick our armies, some of us much quicker than others (I'm looking at you VariStat Man ;-)). During the 7 months we will use our newly painted 250 points every month in battles that will make up a mini campaign that is taking place in the lesser known system of Braggina Riteous. You'll probably see the results of those battles posted here.

We have a point system worked out to determine a winner etc and we'll detail this a bit more as we go along. At the end of this we intend to have firstly an Apocalypse game with all 6 1750 point armies which should be awesome (this will be fought on the world of Fleming Bond). And then we have another idea up our sleevies for a real ending to our Tale, something that will get the drink flowing and the dice a rolling - although for now that is staying under wraps until we've sorted out the details.

So there we have it. We're off into the world of the Tale of 6 Goggers; we'll all keep you posted right here at AGOGonline on our progress at least once a month (it's worth a point after all) and you might see our new armies out there soon.

Wish us luck; I think we might just need it - especially given our track record for being distracted by other gaming systems at the drop of a hat.... cowboys? Oh let's......... :-)

The Daemonic Fox Awakens

Yes it's true; I'm going to produce a Chaos Daemon Army.

Why? Well why ever not? Actually this was very nearly an Eldar army but having looked at the vast mountain of unpainted stuff I decided, quite sensibly for a change, that I should really paint an army that I've already got a fair bit for; so here come the Daemons.

The other reason for this army is my poor old Lord of Change. Once upon a time he was a great winged creature that terrorized the armies of the universe wherever he went; in particular he used to upset my Aspiring Champions but that's a different story. Then along came the new Chaos Codex and suddenly he wasn't a Lord of Change - he'd morphed into a Greater Daemon without wings. This upset him, together with his Flamers and Screamers who had somehow become Lesser. So they went and sat on the shelf.

Until now.... now they're back and this time it's Chaosy.

I'll get a picture up once I'm back in the UK of the bits as they stand but my initial army list (subject to massive amounts of change) looks something like this:

HQ - Lord of Change with options
Elites - 4 Flamers
Elites - 2 Bloodcrushers
Troops - 10 Bloodletters with trimmings
Troops - 10 Daemonettes with extra curves
Troops - 10 Plaguebearers with extra stuffing
Troops - 10 Pink Horrors with the Changeling upgrade (read it; it's great)
Troops - 4 Nurgling bases (T3 and cannot be instant killed! yay)
Fast Attack - 5 Screamers
Heavy Support - Daemon Prince with Tzeentch stuff
Heavy Support - Soul Grinder cos it's lovely

As I say this is subject to massive change; right now I have all of that except the Plaguebearers and Pink Horrors - those I'm going to keep for as long as possible in the vain hope that some new plastics come out?! OK maybe not

October through December will see me painting the Bloodletters, Daemonettes, Flamers and re-doing enough of the Lord of Change to make sure I qualify for the painting points that month!

This is going to be fun!!!! :-)

Paul goes all chaotic

Nice greenies sir! I've dug out my chaos marines and will be painting a troops unit for the first month. My preliminary army list looks like this:

October: Chaos Marines with guns and over-heaty guns. (painted green).
November: Ummm probably some sort of commander (painted green).
December: More Chaos Marines possibly with tentacles. (Painted green with green tentacles).
January: Big chaos hurty stuff to kill things. (Quite probably painted green).

I did think of posting a complicated blog detailing the precise and detailed multi-layered painting techniques I will be using but then I thought "Oh bugger it" and decided I'm going to paint em green and dip em!

Paul (AGOG Whipping boy)

The Orks Begin...

Well here we go, eyes down and getting ready for the big push from 01 Oct.

I have done a very scary thing this morning. Over the past 2 years I have slowly amassed Orky stuff so I can create a great Ork Horde in one go. Well in preparation for our mammoth event, I went around all the various hiding place in the house, garage and subterranean cave and put all my Orks in one place. I have recored the moment for prosperity, and now I need to go hide them all again before the long haired general gets out of bed. The worrying thing is that I am still to take delivery of two sets of Orks from AoBR(A).

Why orks, well they were my first love in WHFB, and I have always wanted to have a 40k Ork Army. With the new releases I knew this was the time, and with more due out in the new year I firmly believe that this is the time to get all Orky.

But I am not going down the standard 130 Ork list with loads of fearless squads etc. Over the years I have played Mr McCoys Speed Freaks on several occasions and love the imagery that this force created. So I am going to do 1,750pts of Speed Freaks, including Nobs on Bikes (probably with a Pain Boss for good measure), loads of trukks and more bikes.

The picture of my stuff shows that I already have 15 Bikes, 4 of the new trukks and a couple of buggies. Let alone all the various boys and Nobs I have hanging around. This combined with 6 Deffkoptas will make a good core force. No Kommandos (I have 20), no Mega Armoured Nobs (I have 10) and no Lottas (I have 15). I dare say that these will be made and painted at some point so I can turn my force into an Armaggedon style Army, but for the purposes of this tale, they are currently not in the list!

That is the plan and that is what will be .... well until I see exactly what is being released in Jan/Feb. So it shall be written so it shall be painted.