The Covenant of Antarctica sail in!

I'm on a bit of a hobby frenzy at the moment, knowing that any day now my hobby time will be cut to zero and who knows when I'll get it back (I've just realised that this sounds a little like I'm going to prison, doesn't it?!).

Anyway, having culled a bunch of things from the garage and sticking them on eBay, the second prong of my hobby attack was to paint stuff.  Ingenious, eh? :)

So, here are the first of the things I've recently painted, my Dystopian wars fleet.  Ronseal Wood filler from a tub for the base as this holds it's shape marvellously for the waves and showing the direction the ships are travelling (as some are somewhat hard to tell the front from the back!)

Lots and lots of ickle ships

I went with the paint scheme from the box, blue and green distortion camo and decided to have quite a rough sea to make them stand out.

All the big ships and a Time Orb by Jove!  No idea what it did when I bought it, but how can you resist a TIME ORRRRRRRRRRRRB!!!!!

I'm really rather pleased with the results...... and someone tell me that we will play this game at some point.......  Right?  Lads?!?!?

Finally - some proper Bocage!

So, after literally years of playing Flames of War set in the Normandy countryside against Dave’s British Infantry, I’ve finally gotten around to making some nice bocage.

We’ve been through a few different options to stand in as bocage, from the original pieces of square foam lightly coated in green paint (the Silverback was particularly enamoured with those!) and resin 28mm hedges as they were tall enough to block LoS (although just the wrong scale and had no dirt bank).

So the pic below shows the 8 feet of bocage that I’ve put together over the past couple of weeks in between other projects.

Pretty simple really, plasticard base, square of blue foam in the middle, brown grout to slops the sides to the edge of the plasticard, dip in sand and add a few pieces of kitty litter as larger stones. Dark brown emulsion coat, drybrush light grey and pick out large stones.

Glue gun used to stick clump foliage in different greens to the top, stick the metal tree stems through the foam and glue gun in place and hey presto – some very difficult terrain for all to struggle through :)

I left some with gaps and used model railway fences and a stile to give a bit of variety (and also make it easier to navigate those pieces per the rules I would think) but I thought I’d leave any T-pieces or cross road pieces to Dave if he felt like making them as a project!

And probably just in time for Nick's FJ to defend against Allied attack ;)

(And yes, I do know they are set up on a beach instead of the countryside in this pic, but that's where they were drying when finished!)

Blood for the... oh you know the rest

Good Evening.

Blood for the Blood God! Erm, sorry. That just sort of slipped out...

Anyway I said I was aiming to complete a squad of Bezerkers by the end of the Jubilee Celebrations and I've got damned close. I'm out tomorrow as the Wife has asked nicely if we can go shopping and then tomorrow night is Gog night so this is as far as it goes.

Is it ok to park the Rhino here?

Another 10 Bezerkers then and their Rhino transport just about ready to join the World Eaters. Just the basing to go which involves sand, washes and 3 highlight colours so hopefully sorted by the end of the week.

For those of you who know this army you'll be blanching no doubt at the fact that this is the 4th squad of Bezerkers thus pushing the total number of these frothing maniacs to 40. Don't worry though as Kharn tends to take care of a few of them each battle!
 

Blood for the Blood... look do I have to keep saying that?

Paint scheme is dead simple (in fact the basing is the longest job!). Base coat is sprayed using a Desert Sand colour from Humbrol. Then paint on Mechrite Red and Boltgun Metal. Finally add 2 layers of washes: Gryphonne Sepia and Baal Red (have to try the new ones soon to see if they give the same effect).

Thanks to the yellow tinged Sepia and nice Red they go a slight shade of orange...
 

I have a Shield. Call the Avengers!

I will have to work out how many points of World Eaters I've now completed - got to be 2,500 at a minimum. Will also see about getting a picture of the whole army sorted out as well: might need a wide camera angle for that one.

So what's next? Oddly no more World Eaters for the minute. I have a variety of squads and vehicles that I could add such as Bikers, Possessed, CSM + Rhino, Predator, Obliterators but I want to hold off now until the new Codex is released as I'd hate to invalidate anything.

In the meantime I've picked my next painting project and this will leave the GoGs with their jaws on the deck.

Yes it's time to break out my historical gene. We had such a great game on Saturday of WW2 that I am clearing the decks and starting up my Flames of War dudes...

... the Green Devils, Fallschirmjaeger, are coming to a tabletop near you soon!

The Fleet comes in!

I have finally finished my DW Kingdom of Britainnia fleet.
I've been staring at these on the shelf for a while so it is nice to have them done and floating with the rest.

So far this year I have cleared the Malifaux stuff I had. Now the DW stuff is done and I have moved back to the Pulp City figures. I've got several of the ARC to finish as a priority and then I can move onto the last of the citizen figures that I recently got from Reaper.

That is going to keep me for a while but then I have to decide what to do after that. I have a sneaking suspicion that it might be Dropzone Commander ;-).

World Eaters Recruit a Large Fellow

Well hello! It has been a while hasn't it?

To be honest somewhere between Xmas and going to Australia in April for work I lost my wargame mojo. Still playing although not as often as I'd like and certainly no painting of note!

I needed something to get me back in. As nice and as fun as the skirmish games are I will always fall back on my major love which is 40K. Sci-Fi, big armies and lovely miniatures always pull me back in. So I decided that the only way to get back in to painting was to pick up something I really wanted to paint and the skirmish games be damned :-)

After much investigation of the shelves I came across a Daemon Prince - not exactly hiding as he's huge but sulking most definately. He'd been built and undercoated ages ago and yet never painted for some reason.

Armed with some of the new GW paints I set about painting him up for the World Eaters.

Do you like my Axe?

His skin is Mechrite Red washed with Reikland Fleshshade. Then I layered up using Mephiston Red and then Evil Sunz Scarlet. I was tempted to go one shade higher again but opted against as he'd be orange...

I've been Painted!

I thoroughly enjoyed painting this chap up and I've now resolved to finish off some of the other World Eater units whilst the mood takes me. You'll note some Bezerkers in the background above. That's the final squad of 10 and their Rhino which are on the table now. Aim to have them completed by the end of the Jubilee Celebrations.

Red Bull gives you...

Not sure what's next after the Bezerkers but I have just transferred some Obliterators from the Iron Warriors (on their way to being sold) and will be getting the cutting tools out soon to bulk them up. See if I can shoe-horn some firepower into the army!



Hopefully be back soon with further updates on the World Eaters...

Second game in a week! Is the Apocalypse nigh?

So, Dave and I were chatting and we realised that we hadn’t played Flames of War in an absolute age, despite the shiny new rules that Battlefront had recently released. So, without further ado, we arranged a game!


I set up the scenery and it reminded me just how nice a board FoW has when set up. 40k tables are all very well, but the organic nature of FoW boards looking “real” as opposed to 6-8 pieces of terrain dropped on the table was a nice change.


We randomly rolled up “Dust up” a new scenario where we deployed half our force in opposite table quarters, dropped a couple of objectives in those two quarters and had the remainder of the army coming on from reserve at the other side of our long table edge.


Dave was using commandoes and deployed mortars, MGs and a platoon of infantry as close to the middle as he could. I was using Heer and deployed one infantry platoon, MGs, two PaK40s to watch for the tanks I was expecting him to reserve and two AA armoured cars to watch for the Hurricanes…..

The view from the Axis side - Dave's objective is by the house on the right, mine is the red one at the top in the middle of the picture

Dave got first turn and moved the infantry towards the objective nearest the middle of the table, I fired at him and whittled the unit down over a couple of turns. Given how good commandoes are in CC (they hit on 2s!) I wasn’t intending to go any closer to them. I had also sneakily placed my objective closer to Dave’s side of the board for my reserved tanks and assault guns to charge into later in the game whereas Dave had banked on assaulting through the middle to grab his objective. Which of our cunning plans would succeed…..


Dave’s infantry hunkered down after being shot by the MGs, Henkels and with a small assault by my infantry platoon - I managed to wipe out all of his bases within 10cm of my assaulters in the first turn, thus winning and so this little surgical strike forced Dave back without exposing my platoon to his ‘orrible knives.  I decided discretion was the better part of valour and fell back to the hilltop,

Turn 2 came and3 STuGs raced on the board away from the rest of my force and Dave’s face when he realised that he only had a dug in PIAT team to repel them was priceless! Dave then got his artillery park on and they unlimbered ready for the following turn.


I then managed to get my Panzer 4 platoon on and the STuGs machine guns got lucky hits on the plucky MG defenders and assaulted the PIAT team. Despite bailing out one of the STuGs, the PIAT chap was ground under the tracks of the assault guns….. I now had to keep the commandoes 10cm from the objective for a turn.

Throwing caution to the wind – the forward commando platoon surged forward as the cavalry arrived for Dave in the shape of a squadron of Shermans and another platoon of commandoes – but would they be in time?

The Shermans moved on the double to try to get near the objective that I was threatening with my armoured assault and the now half strength commando platoon assaulted after the defending Germans were pinned by the mortars – this was going to be an important assault……

Dave managed to get 2 bases into contact with 2 of mine after desultory defensive fire from my pinned team and he needed 2s to kill…… and rolled a 2 and a 1. The different thing about assaults in FoW is that the losing team, assuming they have bases within 10cm of the attacker, roll a morale check to see if they can counter-attack. Had Dave killed both bases I’d have had no base within 10cm and so would have lost, but I passed my morale check (thanks to the CiC re-roll) so I piled back in and killed two of Dave’s squads. He then passed his morale check, counter-attacked and with two dice rolled…. A 1 and a 4. These commandoes clearly hadn’t sharpened their knives properly.

My counter attack killed the last two squads to finish his platoon, but FoW also makes you test morale at the end of the assault step if you’re under half strength and have lost units in the assault, even if you win the assault. So I promptly failed my test! Fortunately though, my consolidation had taken me back into command with the CiC and his re-roll meant the battered survivors stayed in the fight. Had Dave won that assault (and passed his morale check), he’d have had the objective close and it would have been tight as to whether I’d be able to dig his squads off it quickly enough.

As it was, my tanks destroyed the charging Sherman platoon (double shots when shooting an enemy who moved at the double in their turn) and consolidated their hold on the objective – A German victory!

All in all a really good game and we agreed that it was great to get the FoW figures out again. It’s a nice little ruleset that has just the right mix of realism and good game mechanics for me and the tabletop just looks great with the scenery pieces we have and the figures all painted up. I shall be expecting more games of this to come and Dave’s been muttering about Omaha beach if anyone else is interested…….

Rumble in the Streets

Deciding that we really needed to get Pulp City going, Eddie and I faced off with the herioc Solar and his trusty she-lion Stalker were patrolling the streets alongside the half alien Tritonius when they happened upon a trio of dastardly apes causing trouble downtown.

Not thinking of their own safety they piled in to stop the Evil simians from breaching the peace of the streets of Pulp City that they had sworn to defend!

To keep it simple we had a straight fight with no resources and no plots, just a punching fest :)

The teams size each other up....

After a cagey start as we all moved forward Apebot suddenly cucked a massive car at Tritonius but his haf ape, half android mind had miscalculated and it fell short, much to the heroic Tritonius' relief!

Solar then took affront to this attack on his team-mate and, pausing only to  rip a street sign from the ground, he hurled it at the sneaky Howler who was capering in an evil fashion.  His righteous aim was true and the monkey ate signpost :)

Ker-rung!!!!!!

Howler then tried to retaliate with a drive by shooting, but Solar was quick to warn stalker who dodged the hail of bullets.  The silly monkey was so keen to cause carnage that he hadn't realised that he'd run right into range of Tritonius who chucked a nearby dumpster at his foe, causing him to eat another piece of street scenery!

Ker-rung!!!!! Again!

Chimp-Cho then performed a cowardly Yie-Ar-Kung-Fu move, hurting Solar but leaving himself ripe for a counter-attack and Solar downed him with a single sun powered punch for his Temerity!

Solar then finished off the greviously wounded Howler before the raging robot Simian Ape-Bot charged into Tritonius and laid him low after chucking a car at Stalker and missing with his rolls.  Outraged at these events, stalker piled in and used his prowl token to good effect, hurting the robot as he capered over the fallen hero.

Alas, Stalker's part in the tale was to come to an end when he was smashed by the vengeful robot and to add insult to injury thrown at the flying Solar who crashed unceremoniously to the ground!  dragging himself to his feet with an oath to save the poor citizens of Pulp City, Solar pulled himself from under the unconscious body of his friend and used flaming fists to devastate the mindless robot.

Both Supremes were now low on wounds and the first go on the next round would be crucial..... Out-thinking the deranged robot, Solar seized the initiative and gathered all his strength for a Trump re-rolled, power diced super-smash-charge needing to take the robot out before he could retaliate and these were my dice :)

Just what the Solar ordered

Working out that this did 1 more point of damage than was needed to take down the robot due to an average defensive roll from Eddie, the streets were now safe and a victorious Solar stood in the streets that were littered with thrown cars and destroyed equipment.

Really good fun and nice and quick to play even with lots of flicking through the rules to work out what we were doing.  Once we work out the basics and get quicker I think we'll fly through games of an evening, which is a definite plus for me.  And in what other game do you get to chuck dumpsters at genetically engineered monkeys?  :)