Quick update

Another unit finished.

Nothing special just some Epic Land Speeders for my Iron Warriors.

Takes the Tally up to 217.

TTFN

Iron Within!

Iron Without!

I've finally finished the massive batch of Iron Warriors infantry. I started these at work in January and have been chipping away at them ever since whilst doing other projects.

66 Marines made up of:

35 Tactical marines with bolters
15 Breachers including 3 with las-cutters
5 Support marines with plasma guns
5 Heavy support marines with heavy bolters
5 Heavy support marines with las-cannons
1 Narik Dreygur

Now this is a good basis for a force but I just need to work out what to add next. I've got some Rhinos, Dreadnoughts and a Spartan. There is also a gang of Terminators to shove in along with Perturabo himself.

Tacticals, Support and Heavy Support.

Breachers. I love the look of them! I reckon GW would do well making a plastic kit of them.

Batch painting 66. Don't do it. Just don't.

'ikkle old plasma gunner.

I was surprised how much fun the stripes were to do. I was slightly dreading it when I started it but it was one of the most enjoyable parts of painting them.

This has also done wonders for my tally on the 365 challenge.

Day 137 : 212 Figures painted.

Get in!

TTFN

Game 22

Game 22 was a blast!

The Silverback has borrowed more Epic stuff then most sane gamers could imagine from BFG. Sooooooo much old school Epic stuff.

For this bash The Silverback chose the Squats to face my Iron Warriors. 2K points a piece. I had no idea what I was about to face.

The Silverback had set up his table with the scenery he'd gotten for DZC.

It. is. glorious!

We got stuck in straight away with me shilly-shallying around for a move or two and then it started to rain......heavy explody rain. FML. Squats have long range artillery and they could easily reach my whirlwinds. Ouch!

That sort of dictated the course of battle from that point as there was no way I could let those guns hammer me turn after turn. I tripled up a tactical unit and got them right up to the guns. A risk as they would take some fire before the next turn and it wasn't guaranteed that I'd get the initiative but I had to take the change.

The Assault marines and Land Raiders started to move in as well to support them.

Silverback started to advance his troops up to meet the marines and the slow moving form of a Squat Zeppelin drifted forward blasting marines as it came. It walloped the advanced tactical squad badly but not before they had destroyed one gun and stopped the other from firing.

The marines tried desperately to bring down the war machine but they were running out of guns!

The other side of the city had been a much more measured firefight between the two sides but the Land Raiders hardiness meant the squats could not advance. The second assault squad sat on an objective from the end of turn one given the Marines a tecnical victory if not a moral one. They'd taken too much of a shoeing to claim that.

Great battle! Great Table!

TTFN

Not blogged much but...

 ..I've not been idle.

Work on the Epic stuff has been continuing with lots of prep work being done on both the Iron Warriors and the Orks. As we are sticking with it for the time being we have reached the point where we need to start playing proper games with better objectives. With this in mind we've started to put together some markers to use.

Being a bit of a hoarder I tend to keep the inserts and waste pieces from MDF kits. They are finished and cut pieces that can prove very useful. Its also lots of fun sitting down and seeing what fun things you can make out of them!

One generator, some cargo pods and a missile silo. With a bit of sand to texture the bases these'll be ready to paint.

As an alternative objective or a piece of scenery I knocked together a little cargo lander. I might well make a couple more and a little space port to add to the scenery.

Painting all the Epic stuff I've bought recently will take a while but I am chipping away at it. Nearly done are some Land Speeders for the Iron Warriors and the start of my ork force. They actually take longer to paint than I thought they would.

I'm still plugging away at the 28mm Iron Warriors as well and they've had their transfers and weathering done now along with Army Dip and matt varnish. Just the basing left to do.

I think they've come out pretty well.

TTFN

Game 21

The run of Epic games continued with Game 21 being a mash up between 2K points worth of Urn's Word Bearers (using the Black Legion list) and a combined force of Junta's Luna Wolves and my Iron Warriors. (using the Space Marine list)

As we are new to the game we've kept the objectives simple with two objectives that have to be held a full round to win the game.

New units for us to try were Assaut Marines, Whirlwinds and Urn's Deamons. It all started fairly sedately with the Iron Warriors assault marines moving up on the right flank whilst the Word Bearers pushing forward on the left flank.

The Luna Wolves moved up to try and dent the chaos marines but their shooting was lackluster.

A chaos response was brewing behind the hill.

The right flank was fairing better with the Word Bearer's devastators taking a shock pummeling from the new Whirlwinds followed by fire from the advancing Iron Warrior Land Raiders.

The left flank chaos counter attack was fairly decisive and horrible forcing the Luna Wolves away from the objective. Summoned daemons are nasty!

The situation on the right flank went rapidly down hill as the Iron Warriors Land Raiders could not shift there Word Bearer armour and the assault marines lost an assault with the Word Bearer Devastators.

Desite having artillery support the right flank failed to hold their objective and even a last minute dash from a lone Luna Wolf Vindicator was not sufficient to stop the Word Bearers from taking the day.

TTFN

Epic esculation

Game 19 happened the week before last as Urn and I took our first steps into the world of Epic.

First impressions?

Awesome. Not ever having look at the actual rules until recently I never realised the amount of movement in the game. No static armies plugging away at each other. Zooming units rushing forward to grab objectives and batter the enemy! Great stuff! Good job I’d already bought loads of the stuff ;-)

The game itself was full of our trepidation as we pushed forward fairly innocent of the impact of our actions and the subsequent vulnerability that we would expose units to as they were committed to the battle. The range of choices on orders is great and, as I am coming to prefer alternate activation games, the rules felt new and fresh. I can see why its fanbase has stayed loyal.

It was nice to see Land Raiders as the hardly vehicles that they are meant to be.

Game 20 Mark Epic

The following week Urn and I roped in Junta, Silverback, Silverfox and Gareth (who needs a nickname) in for games of Epic. Urn took Gareth and the Silverfox through a game whilst I helped Silverback and Junta. I say helped, what I mean is ‘tried to not misguide them completely on the rules’.

After Junt had gotten a cheeky win in what was the first game for both of them, I played the silverback who took the game in style. The highlight for me was charging his Land Raiders and putting down some serious smack as my tactical unit took out most of the tanks.

However, the Silverback, never slow to utilise an effective tactic, promptly did exactly the same to me but with greater effect! After that my forces were whittled away effectively by his in a better position. He’d actually won the game in turn two because of my disappearing Land Raiders but we played on for the practice and the fun of it. He won it in turn three and four as well before we called time on the game.

A good evenings gaming especially as I think we’d converted all four of them to Epic!

I’ve been making progress on additional units for my Epic IW and have managed to get some tanks finished.

These are ultimately going to be my AA hunter units but for now, until I get some old painted stripped off a load of models, these are going to proxy for Whirlwinds.

Also completed are five units of assault marines. So far I have been pretty impressed by the models from vanguard that I’ve seen and these are no exception as they have a lovely amount of detail for figures of this scale.

This takes my 365 Tally to a fantastic 146! More progress has been made on my 28mm Iron Warriors but then it stalled as the transfers I had were too big. I’ve ordered some of the proper ones from Forgeworld and this’ll be another 66 finished once they arrive and I can get the last of the weathering and basing done on them.

TTFN