Warhammer Underworlds - Ironsoul's Condemnors pt.3 - TO DONE! 🔴⚪

Afternoon #Warhammer Community I've been #PaintingWarhammer Underworlds Ironsoul's Condemnors... Leftfield once again and completely off-list but if you recall when I last painted this warband I only did one of them on Red Planet BASE!🔴

I really wanted to complete the trio and I'd also secured some 3D printed chapter badges and crossed sword decals which I wanted to compare to my freehand attempts.

Additionally, it's a nice exercise in seeing how easy it is to replicate the scheme, having had a break between the first four and the final two.

Although the red is something I'm fairly familiar with and the silver is pretty basic.

So it's not surprising that there is very little difference.

One day I will get round to painting my Primaris, I think they'll look pretty cool altogether.

I'm still struggling with my photography, so I decided to try old Camera360 again and my favourite filter - Velvia is not what it was.

Far from the enhanced, saturated reds and oranges they're become completely blown out.

And another Great Big Wooden Stamp of Approval.

And on the white background, which actually makes them look much better I think.

So, here we go with the 3D Heresy icon, which ended up much smaller than I expected and hard to define the crossed swords. And, the crossed sword decal, which did exactly what I expected it to do. No doubt that'll be my weapon of choice. There's faffing with gloss paint, but actually it's probably quicker than the freehanding and much more consistent.

And in comparison to the blue bases ones. It's still clear that's the better option, but not one I'll be exploring for the Primaris. 

There we go.

#BattleReport - 1,000pts Imperial Knights v Chaos Knights

Afternoon #WarHamFam and #WarhammerCommunity I've been playing TENTH! #New40k We're persevering, I think this is my 4th game of 10th edition now, which is double what I played of 9th. Anyway, I was taking my Knights [Lancer and 3 Warglaive] against Liam's Chaos Knights [Rampager, Desecrator and War Dog Carnivore]. We're still confused with setting up. We got Dawn of War, but the mission was the Ritual, where you deploy objectives in No Man's Land [that's all I read]. I won deployment and took the near side, trying to keep the terrain between me and Liam's big guys so I can put my objectives out of his reach. My secondary was 2VPs per unit killed [yeah right], while Liam had to defend his home objective for 3VPs per turn! I was so screwed

He won first turn and sent the Rampager up the board and deployed an objective. It was at this point I read the 'fine print' of the mission. You can only deploy an objective within 9" of an existing objective. So, as I'd moved the bulk of my army to the other side of the board, away from the only objective in my deployment zone I was utterly and completely screwed. One of the Warglaives weathered the opening salvo fromt he Desecrator with some fantastic saves. My turn I used the Lancers Bondsman ability on my Warglaive to Advance and Charge the Carnivore. I managed to get 6 wounds on it.

Then I discovered [as did Liam] how utterly brutal the Chaos equivalent is in combat as it ripped the Warglaive to pieces with absolute ease. The only bright side being it went overkill and the Warglaive blew up, but only did 1 more wound on the Carnivore. With the scent of blood in its nose it loped toward my second Warglaive.

And just mauled it to pieces. I was getting spanked at this stage. The complete failure in deployment had already left me 13pts adrift with no chance to perform and Ritual objective deployments and I'd lost 2 knights already.

Some good news though, the remaining Warglaive smashed through a walkway and got its sights on the Carnivore - managing to strip its remaining wounds, no explosion.

My Lancer bounded round the refinery, shot its Lance at the Desecrator with no damage. It had already taken 7 wounds thanks to the Desecrator. It then took a load more from this turn of shooting, I think there were 5 or 6 wounds left.

The Rampager Tank Shocked the Lancer and it stripped the remaining wounds. I used the fight on death strategy to get some attacks back. I think I got 12 wounds back on it, or strip most of its wounds off it.

We were close to calling it at a night at this stage. Despite the early success on the dice the deployment had destroyed any chance I had. My dice rolling had been shocking since. BUt I had my last Warglaive left and it's Melta Lance was still sufficient to bring the Rampager down

So we went another turn and amazingly the Warglaive did enough with Trophy Hunter I regained my only CP and if I could survive another turn I'd be getting an additional 3 for killing Liam's Warlord.

The Desecrator came in and I was once again able to weather the storm thanks to Rotating Ion Shields. I was also Honoured now, giving my a 5+ FNP. Liam just made it into combat.

I think this was his total whiff, with only 1 attack hitting home. In my turn I was on 4 CPs. We struggled a bit with the command phase as I had to take a Battle Shock test - failure would mean no stratagems. But Shoulder The Burden is used in the Command Phase and gives me +1 to Move, Toughness, Save, Leadership, OC and adds 1 to the Hit roll. We figured it worked, but if he failed the Battle Shock we'd take it off. Luckily he passed. But he was down to 2CP

I threw Squires Duty on for improved +1 Strength, AP and Damage, as well as Trophy Claim for +1 to the Wound Roll. I shot in combat with the Melta Lance - still hitting on 3's [due to modifiers] and rerolling a 1. Wounding on 2's [reroll a 1] and doing D6+5 damage. The Melta Gun, hit on 3's wound on 4's D6+3 damage. But not enough, the Desecrator survived and smooshed him real good for his temerity.

I'll say it again - deployment was flawed from the beginning, because I just hadn't read the mission properly. But aside from that this was the most fun game of 10th we've had, even if I did get slaughtered. Lesson's learned - the Carnivore is brutal, kill it from distance. Lancers need to charge, do not let it get charged. Read the mission rules properly! But that comes down to unfamiliarity. The more we play the more the missions will make sense. Having the cards really helped for us both, but there is still a lot of back and forth to the rules to understand, stratagems, terrain rules, battleshock, the mission and also the pre-game roll offs. All that previous knowledge is lost and we're not confident enough. Checking the rules repeatedly disrupts the flow and energy of the game, which is a shame. 

#BattleReport - 1,000pts Eldar v Tyranids

Afternoon #WarHamFam and #WarhammerCommunity I've been playing TENTH! #New40k again, this is a while ago, so I'm not sure how much I remember but it was a chance for a few of us to get together. This was Scott's Aeldari versus Otty's Tyranids.

Scott and Liam had quite the array, with a Wraithknight, Avatar, Wave Serpent and some Wraithguard. 

Otty had some Carnifex, Tyrannofex, Zoanthropes, Hive Guard, Termagants and Genestealers/Broodlord

I think we got first turn and, as always, got as far up the board as possible. 

I'm pretty sure the Tfex got a really good shot on the Wave Serpent, but thanks to a stratagem was able to shrug off half its damage, keeping it alive. With hindsight I think this was a pivotal moment. If that Wave Serpent had have gone down it might have changed everything. We did however kill the Rangers in the Tyranid Capillary Towers... 

Which gave the Avatar the perfect launching point. Concentrated fire on the Tfex put it down, with the Wraithknight, Avatar and Wave Serpent taking out their biggest threat.

Scott and Liam had been able to make great progress, both in board control and damage to the Tyranids. We were already floundering. We were struggling to put any damage on those big 3.

And the Avatar stepped down from the Towers to wipe out the Zoanthropes.

I think we lost so much more after this and although I thought the game was a bit more 'fun' than previous attempts I know Otty was unimpressed. Our rolling was unspectacular, we were out-gunned and the constant rule checking didn't help the flow of the game. Not having the stats for the nids on cards I was constantly switching between the 2 Indexes giving the rules for both factions. It's not a great way to play. The actual game rules - if we played more and got the core rules down that might help but definitely having the faction rules to hand will be of benefit. I've a better report coming though with my Knights, so look out for that.

#BattleReport - 1,000pts Imperial Knights v Astra Militarum

Afternoon #WarHamFam and #WarhammerCommunity I've been playing TENTH! #New40k so my second game and after an awesome game of MESBG the night before Ben and I still wanted a crack at 40k, just 1,000 points to get familiar. I went with my Knights, much less bang for my buck since the first game, but I do get my Lancer, even if it means I have to take just three Armigers [2 Warglaives and 1 Helverin]. Whereas Ben had 3 Leman Russ [1 being his Tank Commander], a Rogal Dorn and 2 Techpriest Engineseers. We drew the Ritual mission - one objective each, one in the middle and the ability to make an objective in no-man's-land if it is within 9" of the centre. It was a diagonal setup from half the board and I won first turn.

With my Bondsman ability I was able to Advance up the board with the Lance and a Warglaive. That left my Helverin on my home objective [not realising that was literally pointless - you only got VPs for objective's in no-man's-land]. Which meant my Warglaive spending his shooting turn creating an objective in no-man's-land something of tactical genius. The Helverin scored some wounds on the Tank Commander.

Ben's turn and the Techpriest managed to heal most of them and confer a 4+ invulnerable save to it, as did the other Techpriest to the left Leman Russ. Shooting happened and the Lancer weathered a lot, not sure how many wounds, I think it was down to 12, but not as much as Ben hoped for. One Warglaive got taken down to 6 damage . Then in my turn I got to charge with the Lancer, but Ben got to Overwatch, doing a little damage, but the Rogal Dorn was going to die with both free Tank Shock and the Lance... 

But it didn't. Tank shock did it's 6 mortal wounds, and the Lance got two penetrating hits causing 16 wounds - which should have killed it. But, a Rogal Dorn has a special rule to shrug one penetrating hit once per game, so 8 damage got removed, 14 damage received. Then we realised my Lancer should have taken a Battle Shock test as it was below half-strength. Naturally I failed that roll, but why is that important to do it retrospectively? Well, you can't use stratagems on Battle Shocked units and Tank Shock is a stratagem. So the Dorn suffered only 8 damage total! Meanwhile my Warglaive got into combat with the Tank Commander

The Tank Commander would eventually fall, giving me 5+ FnP on all my Knights for fulfilling their oaths. My Lancer continued to be shot at in combat, but he passed battle shock so at least he could get re-rolls. He went on to destroy the Rogal Dorn, but my Warglaive got overwatched as it moved to capture Ben's home objective [out of shot behind the alien rockface]

By this stage I'd been racking up VPs holding objectives in the board and securing secondaries. My Lancer fell to the tanks though. Ben had only scored a couple of secondaries and suddenly he's down to 2 tanks and his Techpriest, who swarmed the Warglaive. They were beasts chopping at it with their axes. 

But I assume the Armiger, had an amazing saving throw against those axes - need in 5+, the two that got through then scoring 4 wounds but 5+ FnP saving some of them.

Ben lost another Leman Russ, down to his last one, I think on all its wounds but my Warglaive severely damaged, so it didn't take much to finish it off and as it got to midnight we called it.

A close game in respect to the forces we deployed - limited models, high durability for both of us and those techpriests went some way to making the tanks match the Knights with their invulnerable saves and FnP. But, I managed to keep him in his deployment zone, which meant he didn't score any primary objective points. We didn't even bother to count the score in the end which felt underwhelming for both of us, which is a shame as we both agreed it was a good game. Certainly better than my first 10th game but Thursday night MESBG had been such riotous fun, with everyone familiar with the rules that the constant checking of the massive 40k Core Rule Book and Data cards etc. It just made this game feel like a chore. Add to that it was just the two of us, where you don't have a partner to riff off and share the experience, so the banter gets heightened it was incomparable to the fun we'd had the night before.

We'll continue to persevere, but we've had so many games of other simpler systems and I'm convinced my lack of desire to win with other folk's figures makes the end result irrelevant compared with the experience of hanging with my mates just throwing dice. Put it this way, when we were rolling for the first priority on MESBG we both got the same numbers twice. We could have just done that all night and I bet if doubles had come up every time we'd have had a blast!

#BattleReport - 1,000pts Imperial Knights v Tyranids

Afternoon #WarHamFam and #WarhammerCommunity I've been playing TENTH! #New40k Despite having a backlog of #MESBG and #Turnip28 [not] battle reports to record I thought I'd do this while it was fresh in my mind. Leviathan is due today, with my rulebook, but Otty, Ben, Liam and I decided to give TENTH a crack. Naturally, nobody had printed the Core Rules, or Quickstart Guide and only one of us had their Index rules and datacards printed out. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusion as to who had prepared in some way...

Anyway, Ben had prepared a list of Otty to use his nids - Old One Eye, a Carnifex, 10 Hormagaunts, 10 Termagants, 2 broods of Warriors [1 ranged, 1 melee], Hive Guard, Zoanthropes, Trygon, 5 Genestealers. I had a knight Preceptor with Unyielding Paragon [reduces AP by 1] and Stormspear Rocket Pod, 2 Helverins and 2 Warglaives. If I'm honest I thought Otty was at a distinct disadvantage - lots of little bugs with weak weapons and talons - how could they possibly effect the towering Imperial Knights... Otty got first go, and straight out of the gate the Genestealers scouted forward 8".

Which meant they had an easy first turn charge into one of my Warglaives. Otty had chosen Hyper-Aggression as his Hyper-Adaptation which meant every creature had [LETHAL-HITS] on vehicles/monsters. That means even the littlest bug, a roll of a 6 and it auto-wounds! Oh dear...

I was very lucky though and did some amazing saves with limited wounds across my knights. My Warlgaive managed to kill  just two of the Genestealers, which was underwhelming.

Otty had pushed forward and the Ranged Warrior's were slightly exposed and the Hive Guard with Shock Cannons, although taking some cover were now within range of more guns.

Shots from the top Warglaive, Helverin and Preceptor managed to wipe out the Ranged Warriors and one Hive Guard went down. I think the other Warglaive managed to squish the Genestealers.

I'd made a better impact, but now I had Hormagaunts swamping the other Helverin and OOE+Carnifex needed a 11" charge to get the freed-up Warglaive - Otty rolled a 6 and 1, CP re-rolled the 1 and got a 6 and managed to wipe out the Warglaive. I got to attack back before dying with a stratagem and dished out soem wounds but not enough to make a difference. Meanwhile, my Helverin stomped on a few Hormagaunts. On the far side [out of shot] the other Warglaive took a wound from 5 shots in range of the Devgaunts. Then the Zoanthropes blasted it to pieces dealing the exact amount of damage it had left. That lucky Termagant had saved the day for Otty!

Naturally we were getting all sorts of rules wrong, we weren't both receiving CPs in the command phase, just the person who's turn it was. So I was running out of CPs every turn and we hadn't worked out that vehicles could shoot in and out of combat [for -1 to hit]. As it was I tried the best with my shooting and ended up needing a reroll on the Preceptor to do decent damage on the Carnifex. Then I charged and immediately remembered the plan was to Tank Shock them and roll 14 dice with the potential for six 6's. But I'd spent my CP

As it was the Reaper took out the Carnifex and did a few wounds on OOE, but he regenerated most of them. And then the Trygon burrowed up and charged the Knight from behind.

The Melee Warriors managed to link up with the Hormagaunts and inflict even more damage on the Helverin but I was very lucky with saves and Feel No Pain. Lastly I was swinging at Old One Eye and managed to get 3 hits on him, 3+ to wound...

Unbelievable! There wasn't much I could do after this. 

The Preceptor got smashed by the monsters. I think both Warriors got killed, by the remaining Helverin Autocannons but the Prime survived and the Armiger in combat could only stomp on 2 of the remaining Hormagaunts. We called it as I had little chance at this stage and it was late. 

So, what do I think? I liked the game, just enough rules and complexity, but I hated not having the physical book, or even the Quick Start. It was a nightmare trying to use the app for both Otty's army and the Core Rule .pdf, while also taking pictures. 1000pts feels like as good size while we find our feet. Hopefully, when we're all on board with the rules and familiar with them it'll feel easier but even with this streamlining there were still times where explaining the rules felt just really hard - in direct contrast to Turnip28 and Bolt Action. But we'll keep at it. We all had fun and both factions, that on paper looked great [my Knights and Ben's Astra Militarum] were beaten by the weaker Tyranids and the much smaller but elite heavy World Eaters. Surprising lessons learned for next time. Now to await Leviathan and build some bugs...

Yes, I was the one prepared[ish]