Gaming Night - Super Dungeon Explore

Last night I went to my Local Friendly Neighbourhood Gaming Club and as it was something of a spur of the moment thing I hadn't organised a match up or anything There seems to be a lot of interest in boardgames at the moment in the club so I was quite happy to stand around and watch a game of Last Night on Earth, a zombie apocalypse board game. It seemed a bit more complex than the game of Zombies!!! I played the other week but there were certain advancements as in proper objectives and a gamer playing the zombies. I think if I was just going to lay down on a zombie game it'd be Zombies!!! it was a little more fun but it depends what you're after.

Following that we got a game of Super Dungeon Explore in. It's like Heroquest, band of adventurers enter a dungeon and try get treasure and beat the baddies. What's different is the cute Manga Super Deform characters and the 80's video game metaphor used throughout. The figures are awesome and it was really fun to play with loads of swapping of potions to regain health and lost 'lives'. By the end of the game our intrepid band of four heroes was reduced to just two but we had a laugh. Worth checking out.

I've had most fun on gaming nights playing these games but I can't help feeling like it's a waste of a night. 40k is the thing I want to do but it's a pain getting all the miniatures out and it's slightly more anti-social as it is a competition most times between you and the guy you're playing with. With the boardgames it's fun and you can have a laugh, there's less invested in it so if someone dies horribly everyone giggles but at the end of the day it's a bit of fun. When I played 40k last week I realised what a difference a few weeks off made.

So I'm struggling to come to terms with the fun and frolics of the intangible against the serious but experiential benefits of 40k. It's like choosing between playing Angry Birds and Dawn of War? Still, it's all good so at least I had a good night.

'nids part 35 - Tyranid Warrior to Hive Guard conversion pt4.

Wassup! Here we go with the usual Hive Fleet painting, I'm pretty sure we decided this was Hive Fleet Gorgon before the Codex came out and rather neatly they're is a Gorgon in the Codex that has an interesting story and no figures painted so we aren't messing up anything.

As you can see, that's a BIG gun!

Here's the right side view, I wanted the claw to be grasping the pumice stone on the base but if I'd have bent the claws any more they'd have snapped right off.

Back view, I removed the top little tail spine as I thought the torso would have been obstructed by it, I was wrong. Tilting the tail section so it's more horizontal just meant the torso was flatter too, not as upright as I thought it would be.

Top view, so you can see the detail on the crest.

Left side view, I was enjoying the new green tongues so despite their being no Toxin Sac upgrades I went with green instead of the usual pink. This would help differentiate broods of Hive Guard, if necessary, I'm hoping to kit bash another two of these.

From the front, yes that REALLY IS A BIG GUN! I think the claws worked out well, still to do all their highlights and the Bonewhite highlights.

Here's a side-by-side comparison  of my Hive Guard and Warrior. I think their profiles are significantly different, it helps that all my Warriors have their weapons in their lower arm sockets, whereas the Hive Guard is upper. There isn't a huge difference in height, the crest rises to nearly the same height as the warrior but I think optically you arfe fooled into thinking it's shorter due to the pose and the head being smaller and lower down.

And to finish off a front and three quarters view, there's no mistaking these are very different beasts. I think the thing with 'nids is I could turn up to any event say its a 'gribbly beast with synaptic bogey fronds' and no one can argue as they're 'just 'nids' . Who knows the Codex and who thinks they're a difficult army? Why would they complain about anything. It's like Orks and looted vehicles. Slap some plasticard and small rivets on a G.I.Joe tank and it's been 'looted'.

'nids part 34 - Tyranid Warrior to Hive Guard conversion pt3.

Warrior to Hive Guard conversion v2.0 as I continue to mine gold from my amazing bitz pack I work on the second Hive Guard this time here's a shot of adding the end of the crushing claw to the torso. The inside of the base of the claw is gouged out a bit to have a channel. With a bit of flattening at the top of the Warrior torso this should then fit snugly together.

Here it is in place. One mistake I made with v2.0 was that I had sliced off a few millimetres of the base of the claw to make the 'crest' not stand so tall. This time I forgot so it stands prouder than I was planning for.

One reason for this is that I wanted a little variety in height for these two Hive Guard. I have some third party plastic 40mm bases that are 2mm lower than the GW counterparts. I'd opted to use these to make this Hive Guard shorter than v1.0 but thanks to the taller crest they are roughly the same height, although their profiles are markedly different. Also of note is just how far you have to position the legs - right on the edge of the base. If you mover them forward any further the figure becomes unstable, thanks to the size of the Impaler Cannon.

And here's the big difference, extra armour plates from the Termagant upgrade sprue. You've bound to have loads of these, I use two of the pentagon shaped ones with the slightly more ridged triangular plate as the final one at the base. This better reflects the more armoured nature of the Hive Guard, when you see the actual model the head is protruding from the carapace with both a crest at the front and back, with the front one obviously being smaller.

In the end I was so pleased with this addition after I painted v1.0 I painted up three armour plates while they were attached to their sprues and just glued them in place on the finished model, you'd never know they hadn't been their all along.

Fall of Arminius - Game 3, Tyranids Vs Blood Angels

Last match of the day and by this time I'm  dead on my feet. Dawn of War set up, Annihilation with a Secondary objective: 2pts for killing 2 units in close combat, 4pts for killing all enemy troops in combat, representing taking them prisoner.

So, up against Blood Angels. I put the Hive tyrant, Tervigon and the Devgaunts down, all he places is Mephiston. I don't do much and eventually he brought on his troops and vehicles. My Hormagaunts and Adrenals come on in the top left, the Gaunts head for an assault squad but the pinch point between the two terrain pieces mean not all of the 21 get to assault but after all the hit rerolls for scything talons, and wound rerolls for ST+1 Adrenals and Toxin Sacs means that he has to make 13 armour saves! But with a Priest attached to the squad I think I sliced and diced only 2. In return he butchered them with bolter and chainswords

The Doom had popped in the spore in the bottom left of this shot, he took a few of those Assault Squad lives but he was instakilled by gunfire. This made me chuckle and laugh as I pointed out he could no longer claim the 4pts for killing him in combat. We then looked closer and as it says "enemy troops" we decided that as he was an Elite he still had a chance to go for the 4, but he had a lot of troops to kill yet.

As you can see below, the Blood Angels assault squad is pretty unmolested on the left so I think they went through the Adrenal Stealers too, including the Broodlord! I also think my Trygon Prime had popped up in front of the Baals but Mephiston had swooped in and sliced the guy to ribbons like he wasn't even there. I think I've purged most of that horror from my mind but 6 wounds were no way enough!

The Hive Tyrant didn't do much in the game, he tried a bit of shooting it may have penetrated but nothing came of it.

As the game progressed it started to look conceivable that my opponent could in fact do a clean sweep of my troops through combat alone so I tried to make this a possibility. I could have hid my remaining forces and tried to eek out some small satisfaction in hiding but that would be no satisfaction - Tyranids will attack and so the warriors and Termagants all moved forwards to shoot and assault where possible. I'm not sure if they were successful, those darn FnP save negating most of my unsaved wounds.

Mephiston continued his massacre of Monstrous Creatures by felling the Tervigon. I'm not entirely sure what his rules are but if he had some dice rolling to add to his attacks I'm pretty sure they were always the maximum possible, he was a beast and made mincemeat of my most dangerous figures.

Last to be brought down was the Broodlord and all that remained on the table was the Biovore [heavy support] so he did manage the clean sweep of troops which surprised the organisers.

I know that sounds pathetic, that I had 45pts remaining and did so little damage but I think he had to work for all those points. He didn't suffer for it but I think there was definitely a challenge there, even if it was a foregone conclusion.

In the end I placed 14 out of 16, I think I could have done a little better but I'm happy with that. I think with a bit more experience I could be less surprised and more focused on the game. The biggest concern for me is one echoed around the net at the moment and it's Space Marines. Actually Space marines aren't that bad, sure they've decent armour and can shoot straight but it's the non-codex Chapters that are a concern. Experiencing, Space Wolves, Grey Knights and Blood Angels on the same day, all marines with extra benefits - a nightmare. It's bad enough facing those accurate shots and getting through their power armour but when they're getting back up again and ripping the earth apart beneath your feet then it's irrelevant whether they have three or four tanks, which is my usual concern given my lack of anti-tank, as the marines themselves are nigh invincible.

So, more games to play, this was a baptism of fire, not just in competing but keeping organised. 2,000 pts is an awful lot for me and in preparation for the Warhammer tournament I'm going to concentrate solely on 1,000pt battles, to get used to my options, tighten up my play style and become more familiar with my force.

Some weekend images

aah, but which weekend? So much progress on so many things and so many photographs and that's not even including the treasures from my parents loft. I've got content coming out the 'wahzoo' so much I feel it's too much, I'm struggling to keep everything coherent and just a couple of tweaks to the nu-blogger interface could help, like duplicating blog posts or allowing you to edit the scheduling in the list of posts instead of just within the post edit itself. Still it's an improvement functionally although I'd appreciate a little alternate shading on the post list as well just to differentiate all the posts. Moving on, this was my workspace the other day, see what I mean about so much on my plate

 

Anyway, this is the layout for a battle between my son and nephew. Things have been a bit strained recently family-wise and this is the first time they've played 40k together in months. I'd set this up just before they came home from school and my intent was just to drop them in at the deep end but I hadn't left the room for more than a minute before I was being called back. They eventually took the hint though and my son used his Eldar versus his cousins Tau.

They ended it in a draw, but I'm not sure how many turns they got in but again it was 500pts and I don't think they did more than 3 turns at the most so it's another shadow of doubt over what will go down at Warhammer World in June and whether my son will last the first match, let alone all three at 1,000pts...

 

It was also Gaming night last night, no pics, but I had a showdown with PeteB and 1750pts of 'mighty, mighty Eldar' as they say. I managed to scrape a win, but not having played for weeks and only then fielding 1000pts I was a bit frought trying to keep up the pace and not dawdle too long over decisions. Highlights included:

• All my reserves turning up on turn two, without a Hive Tyrant and Hive Commander
• All my deep strikes and outflanks arriving pretty much on target and where they needed to be
• My new Hive Guard with a 50% kill ratio, every time
• A 'golden 15' spawn from the Tervigon

PeteB played a good game, with Eldrad casting plenty of powers to buff his troops and make my psychic efforts pants. I'm going to treat him to some unit markers so he knows what power has been added to which unit. So watch this space Eldar fans.

'nids part 33 - Tyranid Warrior to Hive Guard conversion pt2.

Here's where I want to make a decent Impaler Cannon. You can do it cheaper, use a Venom Cannon, and add some Flesh Hook spikes to the tips and it's done. No one in their right mind would be needing Venom Cannons so it's simple. Except aside from the talon underneath they are butt ugly and I want something a little meaty, if a little more costly in the real world. So to make my Impaler Cannon you will need the aforementioned Venom Cannon, Warrior Flesh Hooks and also a Carnifex/Hive Tyrant Stranglethorn Cannon.

I think the MC arms of the Stranglethorn Cannon are too big, but you could use this as is too, it's certaily better than a Venom Cannon, so I cut the barrels off both.

Then I turn the Stranglethorn Cannon upside down and glue it to the VC barrel. The spur on top can be sliced flat and this allows the SC pipe to mount semi-flush so you end up with a different looking gun to both the donor weapons. Then by trimming down the smaller flesh hooks, bending them and adding another three trimmed hooks you can get all your Impaler ammunition sprouting from the muzzle. Rinky dink right?

The torso of the Hive guard has now been primed so here are the different views so you can get a feel of it's construction and pose - Right Side

Left Side.

Front and back.

Here's where you have further options, the head. Now I had one of the Genestealer heads with the implant attack. These guys fit the 'blind' Hive guard and I was hoping to secure these for the project and if you have a Genestealer sprue you may well have spare heads regardless of bioform to fulfill this roll.

However, I felt it was actually too small so I looked at the Termagant sprues, the simple posed Macragge ones that I'd ended up with 3 halves minus their leg halves. So a quick slice and I have a slightly more proportionate head to sit on the shoulders.

So what does this look like altogether? Well, here it is blu-tacked for your perusal. I thought it would be easier to paint with the arms unattached so I can get into all the nooks and crannies to do the Turquoise Chitin.

And the other side with the Stranglethorn Cannon 'ammo feeder' arm in place

So that's the construction, no green stuff, all bits I had around and not 100 miles away from the Finecast altrnative, with some advantages:

• Customisable - heads and poses
• Cheaper - even if you were to buy all the bitz brand new I worked it out as £9.30 from one bitz store
• Uses up your own bits store, really who wants a load of Venom Cannons knocking around?
• It's fun to do, unless you lose a finger cutting - one scalpel blade did shatter in the making

So what do you think?

Up next is painting, and the start of Hive Guard v2.0 with added armour but what do I do with only one Warrior Rending Claw? 

Fall of Arminius - Game 2, Tyranids Vs Grey Knights

Finally, a Red Planet board and suddenly my army looks sweet on it. I think there were five objectives with points for controlling each at the end of each round. This is at the end of my first turn. All my Hormogaunts have barrelled up the right flank into that cover, towards that objective, the Warrior brood following in their wake. The Tervigon spawned to capture the objective in the fuel tank. Meanwhile the Devgaunts advanced into the crashed Aquila cover.

The Tyrant hid behind the building, trying to draw a bead on any transports with the Biovore milling around his feet. One major cock up was that at some point the Devgaunts were not in range of the hive node objective, they were just a couple of inches out, that would come back to haunt me. Additionally it was revealed that any unit would count as scoring to capture an objective, not just troops. So my major advantage on seizing lots of objectives went out the window.

This brood of Stealers spent the entire game camped on the objective, not ideal but someone had to do it. There were a couple of teleport homers, servo skulls or some other weird GK equipment camped out next to the objective but if I got within an inch [or two?] they were destroyed, so at least they did that. 

Hormagaunts were bullteproof within this terrain. The Land Raider Crusader seemed unable to do anything to them it's bolter shells pinging harmlessly of the ruins. Meanwhile the Barbed Strangler may have done some damage to the Grey Knight unit camped in the ruins opposite them. The Biovore may also have been successful and the Hive Tyrants Venom Cannon might have done something but the overall feel from my opponent was a belief that Tyranids are a 'template based shooting army', so I must have done something with them.

First up reserves, the Spore Pod deep strikes, next to an objective, the Doom gets out and sucks the life from some of the squad in the ruins next to it. The Ymgarls surge forth from the ruins of the crashed Aquila Lander. Sky Slashers dop in next to the Crusader [no I don't know why either]. Adrenal Stealers come on at the back there on the right. Devgaunts move into cover, 1st turn spawned Termagants move to capture hive node objective and 2nd turn spawned Termagants secure the Fuel Tank. Hormagaunts capture their objective but remain mostly in cover ;) and the Warriors don't move much through cover.

Shooting takes place but I'm not sure if much happened but you can see the Prime suffered a couple of wounds at some point :(

The Hive Tyrant has suffered one wound, his Heavy Venom Cannon penetrated a couple of times but even with the -1 [or is it -2?] to the damage chart I was rolling 1s and 2s anyway so didn't do any damage.

The Ymgarls mutate to slashing claws, meaning they slice through this squad like butter, they may have been stuck in combat but eventually they consolidate. Next turn I was left with a mutation decision. There was a squad that had disembarked I think I was on tentacles +1A so I would be mutating for slashing claws +1S which I would need to take out the Dreadnought. If I took out the squad I'd then be unlikely to penetrate on the next combat on tentacles so I was forced into tackling the Dreadnought which blew up. Afterwards I was told the squad was worth more points and would have handed me a better result but at the time the mutation was dictating what I should do.

No more pictures I'm afraid so I'm hazy about the remainder of the battle. At some point the Doom got killed, that Toughness 4 is awful for getting insta-killed. Who cares if he's got 10 wounds even one failed saving throw and he's mush. But I deliberately took him to draw fire and his leeching ability worked well so that was a bonus.

I'm not entirely sure about Gargoyles or the Trygon Prime. They must have come on, the Hive Tyrant's Hive Commander bonus is a G.O.D.send for anything coming from reserves. Ultimately though the game was a draw, snatched from my victory. I'd dominated for most of the game, had secured most of the objective but in the last turn the Grey Knights had a unit teleport in next to the Toxin Stealers and beat them off their objective. I was pretty miffed so they may have been slaughtered, so spending the entire game camping made them fat and lazy and no good in combat!

I think I definitely had 2 objectives, the GKs must have had 2 also and the last must have been contested. The GK's had at least 3 Take and Hold points, so that gave them 2pts from the Secondary Objective and if I had 5 more T&H points than him then I got 4 Secondary Objective points, however due to him capturing that last objective he gained that third T&H point which game him the 2pts and denied me 4 as I had 7 T&H altogether. Then to cap it all the Kill Points tot up showed he'd actually killed about 50pts more than me! So if the Ymgarls and charged the squad instead of the Dread I may well have tipped that balance.

So I was pleased in how I'd done but gutted not to have secured a victory at the end. By this time I was knackered, my legs were exhausted and I still had another game to go.