New table, new terrain! [Part 7]

Another week, another post.  This time, more terrain for our new gaming table.  First up we have the 2 ponds which I started a while ago and finished about a week and a half ago.  Really like how they came out and how they look.  The most time consuming part was the tufts of tall grass each needing to be drilled, then rolled and glued into place.  Each has 3 little plasticard fish hiding around the weeds or grass.  Finished it off with some printed, laser-cut lily pads.

Here's a shot of pond 1.

And here is pond 2.  The resin really works well for water effects.

This Sunday we made it over to Kevin's for a game night finally.  While my brother fought his necrons against  Chris' Tau/Eldar alliance I painted up some more terrain.  First we have a building from Pegasus.  Lots of grays dry brushed on here.  A nice checkerboard floor too.

Here's a view of the outside, which has a little Chaos graffiti.

Here's the next building I painted, one from the cities of death sets.  Lots of details to pick out on these and it took a while to finish.  There will be a tree in that small square once I get one for it.

Here's the inside.

Finally I dry brushed all of the foam terrain here was left to paint.  There were 2 small ruin pieces, the large ruin, and 3 urban wreak markers.

That's all for this now, working on a Leman Russ at the moment so you can expect that in the next few days. As always comments and critique are highly appreciated.

Commissar Sebastian Yarrick

So, I had my third battle report from last weekend's event all set and ready to publish when blogger had a derp and decided to kill it.  So instead of spending an hour rewriting that I'm going to do a quick post on a model I painted today, you may have guessed who it was from the title.  It's Commissar Yarrick!

This is the first Special Character I have painted for my Imperial Guard army.  It's also the first Finecast model I dealt with, though I have a few more waiting for paint.  I really like this model and really liked painting it.  I'd say I probably spent about 4-5 hours painting him today.  Really like the way he came out, but really not that glad with the way the photos came out.  I think it's about time to get a new camera.  I may try and take some better pictures tomorrow.

Battle Report: Learning 6th Event: Game 2: Guard Vs. Nids GAME OVER, MAN!

Finally got out to an event over in Rochester, NY yesterday at Millennium Games.  It was not really a tournament but a set of three games to let people learn to new rules and see how theirs lists would work out under them.  Multiple lists were allowed and prizes were handed out by a raffle at the end.

The format was 1500pts with three 2.5 hour long rounds.  Since this event was really just for fun and learning I wanted to try something that I had not really done before, bring a list with a minimum of vehicles and large number of infantry.  With the reduction in cover saves I really didn't know how this list would work out, last edition 4+ saves were good, but I was a bit worried about the 5+.  I also wasn't sure how this list would react to different armies.  I've used a vehicle heavy Guard army since I started playing in 3rd edition.   I just love tanks.

Here's my list:
HQ
Company Command Squad(Power Fist, Med-Pack, Standard,Vox, Plasma Gun) + Chimera
Fast
Vendetta Gunship
Troops
Vets 1 ( 3Plasma Guns, Grenadiers, Power Fist) + Chimera
Vets 2 ( 3 Meltas, Demolitions, Power Fist) (In Vendetta)
Infantry Platoon
Command Squad (Vox, Power Sword, Commissar, Power Sword, Standard)
5 Infantry Squads (2 Commissars, 7 Power Swords, 2 Vox, 3 Flamers, 2 Grenade Launchers)
Heavy Weapons Squad (3 Lascannons)
Heavy Weapons Squad (3 Missile Launchers)
Special Weapons Squad (3 Sniper Rifles)
Special Weapons Squad (3 Grenade Launchers)

Vehicle Count: 3
Infantry Count: 101

I don't think I ever made a list without a Leman Russ before, and with the new Squadron rules taking a pair of them isn't so bad, even with the limitation of having Hull Points.

Game 2

My second battle was against Aaron (hyv3mynd from synaps3) and his Tyranids.  You can check out his version of events here.  Below you can see his list:
Tyranid Prime (warlord) + whip/sword, toxins, regen (bio)
Tyrant + wings, devourers, old adversary, regen
Hive Guard x3
Zoanthropes x3 (all telekenesis this game)
Termagants x30 (warlord here)
Tervigon + claws, toxins, 3 powers (bio), cluster spines
Raveners x6 + rending
Shrikes x3 + whip/sword, toxins

Mission 2 featured the Hammer & Anvil deployment with The Emperor's Will as objectives.  Below you can see our terrain set up,  I have the right side of the board and he had the left.  You can see his objective next to the gray ruin and mine was in the building centered on my side.  We both wanted to set up terrain to our own favor.  He wanted to cover his advance and I wanted to protect my troops so they could shoot more before they got nom'd.  I think that my warlord caused my units within 12 to have move through cover but I do not recall what his was.

Aaron gets 1st turn and deployment so I get to go second.  We both deploy right up on the edge of our zones,  he wants to close with me as soon as possible and I wanted to open fire as soon as possible.  He doesn't have any reserves but I reserve my Vendetta with Melta vets inside to outflank.I put the 20 man blob and platoon command in the far building.  The rocketeers and large blob are in the center.  In the nearest building is a lascannon squad, the grenade launcher squad, and my Company Command in their Chimera.  In the rear building are the snipers with the plasma vets just beyond that in their Chimera.

Turn 1

The nids begin to advance through cover,  the flyrant comes flying at my lines and so forth.  The tervigon spawns 17 gants but rolls doubles so they will be all that come out.  They move to hold his objective and get a skyfire nexus.  How amazingly useful...  The thropes cast some invul bubbles and buff the flyrant.

The flyrant shoots up and shreds my Lascannon teams and the 4+ cover is not nearly enough to save them,  Aaron takes 1st blood.  

I move nothing, and begin to fire upon the bugs. My objective is nothing of note. I order bring it down for the missile teams against the flyrant and then first rank fire, second rank fire on each of the blobs.  The 20 man blob downs a ravener and other shooting kills 1 gant.  No other harm is done.  

Turn 2

The tyranids advance again, gants and tervigon remain in cover the shrikes move up again and the ravenors prepare to assault the blob.  The flyrant flies over the 30 man unit and lands at its rear near all the sergeants and the commissar.  For shooting, the hive guard attempt to de-mech the plasma vets but fail to cause any damage.  Zoanthropes attempt to wipe out the missile teams but all of their crushes only manage to kill 1 team.  Still, it's enough to force a morale check.  The flyrant dishes out some pain to the blob and kills 2 sarges and a commissar as well as some troopers.  Look out sir! wasn't doing to well here.  Don't think the troops liked their leaders much. 

 The raveners assault the 20 man blob, I think overwatch causes 1 wound and striking first does not help me much either.  They end up killing more than half of the unit, though we're stubborn and hold fast.  The missile teams pass morale prepare to unleash some more rockets.

In my turn I roll to see if the Vendetta comes in but it does not.  I move my platoon command squad to cover the side of the 30 man blob, though I probably should have just charged for the extra attacks.  I shoot at the flyrant but fail to do anything.  I cause 1 wound on the terivigon and wipe out the shrikes.  I think one of the zoanthropes died this turn.  In the assault phase the raveners finish off the infantry and consolidate towards the platoon command.

Turn 3

The tervigon begins to come towards my lines, bringing some of the gant blob with it.  The tyrant flies over my command squad's chimera and toward the nearest table corner.  The ravenors continued to move at the PCS.  Both of my Chimeras are blown this turn, the plasma vets get pinned but the company command is not thanks to their Regimental Standard's morale reroll.

The Tervigon assaults the blob but the gants fail to follow.  The raverners engages the PCS and wipe them, they consolidate towards the plasma vets.  The tervigon takes a wound and kills a few guardsmen, they hold, even without their commissar.

The Vendetta arrives and outflanks this turn, I zoom it onto the board and shoot at the zoanthropes, killing those that remained.  The plasma vets shoot at the raveners and cause some wounds, killing 1 I believe.  Shooting from the CCS grounds the tyrant, even though it could not wound it, a lasgun brought it down to the ground. Combat with the tervigon continues to grind on.

The gants all shuffle around again to max out cover.  The tyrant turns and shoots my CCS to death.  The raveners charge my dismounted plasma veterans.  Overwatch manages to cause a few more wounds thanks to some lucky plasma gun hits.

The veterans must have been ready for action because I dish out quite a few regular wounds before he gets his attacks.  Then the powerfist strikes with them and causes some more wounds. In the end only 1 ravener remains alive while I lose 2 guardsmen.   He fails morale due to a lack of synapse but I fail to catch him.  The tervigon combat continues but the blob falls back this time.  They wind up right on top of the objective.

The lone ravener flees, making sure to keep an eye on the guardsmen just insane enough to fight them in close combat.

On my turn the Vendetta hovers forward and the mela vets dismount.

I move the melta vets forward and begin to open fire.  The melta vets shoot melta and some shotguns, but I also toss a demo charge and frag grenade at the gaunts.  All this only manages to kill about 6 of them.
Plasma vets put a wound on the last ravener.  The blob rallies and shoots at the tervigon dropping it to 1 wound. Most everything else fires at the tyrant leaving it with only 1 wound.  The vendetta hits the tervigon as well but rolls only 1s to wound.

Turn 5

The spawned gaunts on his objective shoot and assault the vets, the hive guard do nothing.  The Tervigon and tyrant both assault the blob.  The Vets and the blob are both wiped out.  

On my turn I take out the tyrant with lots of my fire.  The tervigon is able to absorb the rest, but I forget to shoot my grenade launcher special weapons squad.  We have to end the game here due to time.

Summary

In the end Aaron had 5VP to my none, since he took first blood, slayed my warlord, held his objective, and contested my own.  Had I fired my grenade launchers, it could have ended up 5-3, but my only hope of really winning would have been to pull the gants off of his objective somehow.  Overall this was a very fun game and it was great to finally play against Aaron as I have seen him at several events and have been reading his blog for some time now.  In this case I don't think player placed terrain worked out too badly as we both got what we wanted out of it, but it still looked kinda cinematic with my guard trying to hold their line against the encroaching alien menace.  Still, I think for tournaments that TO set terrain would be preferable.

My vendetta rolled a lot of 1s to wound this game but still preformed okay.  It didn't die, so that was nice too.  With this game in the books I was impressed with how this list preformed.  Coming into this set of games I really expected a lot worse.  Warlord traits are hit or miss, but I think they are a cool addition to the game

Game 3 sometime later.  I may just want to spend tomorrow night painting.

Battle Report: Learning 6th Event: Game 1: Guard Vs. Guard Action!

Finally got out to an event over in Rochester, NY yesterday at Millennium Games.  It was not really a tournament but a set of three games to let people learn to new rules and see how theirs lists would work out under them.  Multiple lists were allowed and prizes were handed out by a raffle at the end.  

The format was 1500pts with three 2.5 hour long rounds.  Since this event was really just for fun and learning I wanted to try something that I had not really done before, bring a list with a minimum of vehicles and large number of infantry.  With the reduction in cover saves I really didn't know how this list would work out, last edition 4+ saves were good, but I was a bit worried about the 5+.  I also wasn't sure how this list would react to different armies.  I've used a vehicle heavy Guard army since I started playing in 3rd edition.   I just love tanks. 

Here's my list:

HQ

Company Command Squad(Power Fist, Med-Pack, Standard,Vox, Plasma Gun) + Chimera

Fast

Vendetta Gunship

Troops

Vets 1 ( 3Plasma Guns, Grenadiers, Power Fist) + Chimera

Vets 2 ( 3 Meltas, Demolitions, Power Fist) (In Vendetta)

Infantry Platoon

Command Squad (Vox, Power Sword, Commissar, Power Sword, Standard)

5 Infantry Squads (2 Commissars, 7 Power Swords, 2 Vox, 3 Flamers, 2 Grenade Launchers)

Heavy Weapons Squad (3 Lascannons)

Heavy Weapons Squad (3 Missile Launchers)

Special Weapons Squad (3 Sniper Rifles)

Special Weapons Squad (3 Grenade Launchers)

Vehicle Count: 3

Infantry Count: 101

I don't think I ever made a list without a Leman Russ before, and with the new Squadron rules taking a pair of them isn't so bad, even with the limitation of having Hull Points.

Now, I planned on doing a little more in depth battle reports this time, but the pictures to do so did not really turn out all that well.  I had my camera set to macro all day and so most of the times I tried to take a full table shot it turned out very blurry.  So I will just be posting some summaries and thoughts on what I or my opponent may have wanted to do differently.  

Battle #1

My first battle was against "C4" with a list that was somewhat similar to my own, here's an approx:

HQ

Company Command (Vox, Standard, and I think an Autocannon)

Troops

Vets with Meltas in chimera

Vets with Meltas in chimera

Infantry platoon 

Command Squad with 4 Grenade Launchers

2 Squads; 1 with Lascannon and GL and one with Autocannon and Grenade Launcher

Heavy Weapons Team with Autocannons

Infantry Platoon

Command Squad with 4 Flamers

2 Squads; Both with an Autocannon

Heavy Support

Leman Russ Battle Tank with 3 Heavy Bolters

Fast Attack

5 Rough Riders

Scout Sentinel

Mission 1 was Dawn of War Deployment with Purge the Alien objectives.  We both set up a nice defensive line with infantry and vehicles in good cover.  He gets first turn and we don't have night fighting so I roll to seize but I fail.  Here's the best picture I have of our deployment.  

Turn 1 he begins by advancing his Chimeras and a couple of the infantry squads.  For shooting he focuses on my snipers and my 2 heavy weapons squads.  With the Leman Russ he shoots the snipers and kills 4 along with a few men from the large blob.  Autocannon and las fire kill 2 of the Lascannon teams, and heavy weapons wipe out all of the missile launchers. Neither of my units fail morale. He gets First blood and ends his turn 1 with 2 VP.

I move up my lest side chimera with the plasma veterans as well as the grenade launcher squad.  Everything else stays put to fire at his units now in the open.   I order bring it down against the Chimera and first rank second rank on the blobs.  The Vet chimera fails to pen on the side of his own chimera but the plasma vets inside manage to rapid fire it to death.   The men disembark and the center blob fires at them and kill a few. The grenade squad fires at an infantry squad and manages to kill 4 or so but they pass morale.

I've got 1 VP for the Chimera.

Turn 2

In this turn C4 tries to finish off the snipers and Lascannon squads.  Battle cannon and las fire kill the sniper and some more men from the center blob and he manages to kill the Lascannon team with plasma and las fire from the infantry and veteran squads on the right hand side.  He also kills off the three riflemen from the grenade launcher squad on the left and strips a hull point from the veteran's chimera. I pass all my morale checks so he gets 2 more VP. His scout sentinel comes in on my right and shoots at my platoon command, killing one man.

I shift more men into firing positions now that losses are taken from the front.  My Vendetta comes in on the right side but fails to pen the side of the Russ,  I rolled 2 1s.  The multi laser from my chimeras fails to do anything to his remaining Chimera.  I return fire again with infantry and force a couple more morale checks on 2 infantry  and one veteran squad.  2 of them fall back but only a few inches.

Turn 3

He shuffles more troops forwards and finally brings the Rough Riders out from behind a rock.  He was hoping to bring down the Vendetta and then assault any survivors.  He begins by firing a lot of heavy weapons at the gunship,  I think in all it was about 10-12 Autocannon shots, with 6 of them rerolling from bring it down.  He rolled a six with the ordered unit but failed to pen.  He then shoots some melta and his chimera at it as well, it continued to zoom on unscathed.  The Leman Russ shifted a bit and shot at the 20 man unit doing a lot of damage, only a few men remained.  Other losses are negligible.  He assaults my platoon command with the sentinel but fails to wound, I win combat due to my standard,

He remains at 4 VP.

I try again to destroy his Russ and remaining Chimera as they should have been the easiest to kill with what I had to fire, however I fail to do anything to either of them.  So, my grenade launcher squad fires on the right and finishes off the infantry squad they had been targeting all day.  I shoot some other units but they all either pass morale or fall back only 3-4 inches.

It was a slow game with all of this infantry and C4 was not the fastest player, so we ran out of time at the end of my turn.

Summary

C4 brought a lot more long range firepower than I did and it really showed.  He was able to bring that fire to bear and take out my vulnerable units early on which led to his victory.  I am not sure why he advanced so much,  he could have held fast and forced me into the open while firing with all of his heavy weapons.  However, once he began moving up I felt as if I should just hold and fire from cover.  Had I moved up I certainly would have gotten more kills, but would have also sustained more losses.  I'm not sure if it would have balance out for me.  

From this game I learned that I definitely did not have enough  long range heavy weapons to face a battle of attrition like this one was.  It was still fun to play.

Next summary should be up tomorrow and is against 'Nids.  It was also a fun game.

Hobby: Slat Armor for a Leman Russ

So, because I now have a tank hunting squadron of Leman Russ hulled vehicles I decided they will need extra armor.  I have bought the FW extra armor for the Chimera chassis in the past and am really happy with it, but I wanted something different for these tanks.  I decided to go with slat armor, which operated by detonating explosives before they reach the hull of the vehicle and taking away much of their penetrative power.

Below You can see the frame all layed out over a pattern I have made on a sheet of 3x5 card.

Next I added a few vertical supports and glued it all together with plastruct plastic weld.  Really happy with this product for use with plasticard and the like as it actually bonds the materials and won't be anywhere as brittle as super glue for this application.

Next I begin to add the slats.  I used 2 pieces of balsa to give a uniform spacing and a little tub of basing dirt to hold it in place while I laid each slat.

After a little while I had all the slats glued on, so I just had to give them a little time before I trimmed them all up.

He is the final result.  I really like the way it came out and I will definitely go forward with this project.  I will need to buy some more strip styrene in order to finish the other 5 for the squadron.  Will be adding magnets to the hulls so that they are not permanent.  None of the 3 vehicles have sponson weapons, so this was much easier because of that.  It would be possible to do with sponsons though and I think that it would look pretty cool on a Russ with sponsons as well.

I'm going to be adding some plasticard details to the Baneblade I am reworking in the near future.  At the least there will be mud flaps such as the ones on the FW super-heavies.

Thanks for stopping by.

Damaged Goods.

So, I finally received my rulebook today.  Still have not gotten a reply as to why it was late, but that's beside everything.  I was really glad when I heard that it arrived, we were late getting home from out of town and only had time to grab our stuff before disc golf but I grabbed it for the ride over.  When I picked it up I noticed a glaring dent on the lowest edge, so I took a picture before I even opened the wrapper.  There are lots of dents around the edges, and the box was undamaged.  I don't know if they were playing catch with it or what...

There were some on the back too...

If it was not for the folded corner and that big dent I probably would not be complaining.  So not only did I get it late, but it's damaged too.  We'll see what GW has to say when I get a reply.

So far the book is great though, they do a good job of explaining everything, much better than in the past, and everything seems very clearly worded.  The full color pages are nice and the new art was great to see.  Cannot wait to play a few games!

New table, new terrain! [Part 6]

Well, just go an email on Monday that my 6 ed rulebook is shipping.  A week after I got an email saying it was "dispatched."  Oh well.

Over the last few days I have been very productive on the terrain front!  A couple nights ago I built the base for this small swamp after I finished painting my Heavy Recon Grenadiers for my Dust Warfare Axis army.  The next day I got out the paint, some resin, and these GW plants and whipped this out. The water is really murky, I just mix some paint right into the resin.  They sell dyes but this really works fine and has not yet had a negative effect on the resin.

When that was done being poured I finally painted the sentinel and dead pilot to finish up this piece.  I have been working on this on and off for over a year, don't know why it took me so long but it did.

Sunday I started out by making the bases for a duo of ponds to be used for terrain.  Not really picture worthy, but it took a little while to get them how I wanted them.  Next we went supply shopping.  Lots of stuff was purchased, spray paint, glue, resin, stuff to make trees, craft paints for terrain, plasticard, and some other nick-nacks.  I was looking for pre-made trees like I've seen at Millenium Games tournaments but they did not have them at my hobby shop, despite having a huge selection of model RR stuff.  They sell higher quality single trees and I got one of those to use as one of the random happenings from Mordheim.  We had to buy the raw materials for trees instead.

After shopping we headed over to Kevin's for terrain work/ game night.  My brother and I got to work priming all of the buildings(expect the church, it still needs a roof) either brown or black.  It was nice out so we opted not to do the spraying in the basement this time.

Most of the buildings will be black, with the mechanicus ones getting a reddish brown base.  The bases will either be urban or sand waste to match my table so they got the black or brown paint as well.  My brother helped me out and really made a mess of his hands with the spray paint.

Once that was done I cracked open those new craft paints and got to work.  Here are the first two buildings.  I opted for a somewhat simple painting job as I have a lot of buildings to do and they are just terrain.  The buildings get a drybrush or two over the primer and then I picked out some of the key details.  Same goes for the bases.  It's pretty fast and looks pretty good.  Not my best work, but for this it really gets the job done and is much better than the unpainted buildings we have been playing on for the last 5 years or so.

Monday night I started out by doing a bit more on the ponds.  I did some sanding and filling where required on the clay and then added some sand and texture around the outside (it will end up matching the sandy part of the table there) as well as some places in the pond where it will be a gravel bottom.  From the outside to the waterline will be static grass and tall grasses, perhaps some cat tail like plants like the ones around the mini-swamp.  In the water will be algae like stuff, some lily pads I bought, and some fish I am going to make from plasticard.  Most of the bottom will be mud.

Since I could do no more on the ponds until the Elmer's dried I started to work on some trees.  Since they didn't have the multi-packs of the cheaper trees we opted to make our own using the Woodland Scenics supplies available at the hobby store.  We bought the largest armatures they had and 3 boxes of the fine-leaf foliage; dead, olive, and medium green.  Here are a bunch of the wire cored armatures.

Here you can see how it works.  You bend the flat armature into a 3d shape, then you tear out little tufts of the foliage and superglue them to the branches.  It takes some patience and a lot of time to do each tree, but it's really kind of fun.

I built 4 trees so far one with the dead brush, 2 olive colored ones, and one medium green one.  My brother wanted a scraggly looking tree so he built the one in the lower right.  I really like Woodland Scenics for this kind of stuff, they have a great selection and it's usually good to work with.  If you want great looking trees I really recommend doing it this way.  It may take some time but you should be very happy with the results.  It's amazing how lifelike they look when seeing them in real life rather than through my mediocre camera.

Well, my rulebook is set to arrive tomorrow so you may expect a reaction to that tomorrow.  Otherwise I won't be getting much terraining done until perhaps Thursday due to Tuesday disc golf league and Wednesday being Independence Day here in the USA.

I ran out of room on google for images for this blog, so now it's become a pain to add them to my posts.  I first have to upload them elsewhere then add the image URLs one at a time.  I may just cave in and buy 10gb of storage from google for the 2.50 or so a month that it costs.  May not. I still have 2 free gb at the other site so we'll see how my patience lasts.

They wait for me in the forest.

Unrestrained rage.

Not really having a local gaming store that I care for I pre-ordered the 6th Ed. rulebook last weekend. I could have just picked one up at the thrice damned Jester's Cap (they banned my grandma you know.) But I didn't want to give them my business. Monday I got a message that it was dispatched by GW. I was really hoping to get it a day or so early but when it wasn't with the mail on Friday I wasn't really that upset. But Saturday has come and gone and no one from my gaming group has received their copy. We ordered it early, nearly as soon as we found out. All in the hope that when we each got to our respective homes from our jobs on Saturday that the book would be there waiting, ready to show us what the future holds. Instead we got nothing. But I pre-ordered and this is the price I pay. So I go to sleep tonight somewhat angry and upset. Our weekend of trial games will not be. So we will not get to play the new rules until next Sunday. At least there was the FAQ glad I can understand that without the rules... Oh wait.

Thought for the day:
Hope is the first step on the road to Disappointment.

Have been pretty busy working on terrain. Maybe I will post about that tomorrow sometime.

To everyone who did get the rules, have fun with them.