Gaming with my mate Liam

My mate Liam, he of the scratch built Warhound and Warlord fame dropped me a line the other day asking if I wanted a game. He'd only just got 6th edition so how could I refuse the opportunity to 'pop his cherry'. If  you look back in the history of my gaming crew you may get a feel for how long it's been since I gamed with Liam and also the all night parties he used to hold in his house were legendary and I owe a certain amount to them that has resulted in my continued relationship with my then girlfriend and now wife, but I digress.

Liam now lives near Bolton, about 40 minutes away and so I pootled up there to have our first game in about 20 years. Before I get to the game here's a little treat, if you look back at all the ebay sales he's done you should know he can paint like a fiend and you can see that in these giant eagles he made out of war griffons.

The full swoop of three eagles for his high elf army. So well painted it's frightening.

OK, so here's the battle 1,500 pts, Dawn of War setup, Purge the Alien-  Eternal War Mission. I had the 'nids, obviously and Liam was using his Dark Eldar, my first time fighting the naughty space pixies. Liam won the roll to setup and first turn. From many discussions I've had with Liam he has a firm belief he is cursed with bad luck, I therfore was hesitant to attempt stealing the initiative and confirm his belief, luckily I failed. Most of my force was lined up as you see, with the adrenal stealers in the crater top left and the Ymgarls in the Shrine of the Aquila, which is where most of his Grotesques were hiding.

You can just about make out the Grotesques and two Ravagers in the ruin. A couple of Webway portals appeared either side of the Shrine.

The Ravagers moved of cover and targeted the Tyranid Warriors, their high strength weapons insta-killing the entire unit. First Blood to Liam and one kill point. Everything of mine moved up, some shooting happened but the Hive Guard could only reach the Grotesques and managed a couple of wounds.

Liam's next turn and a squad of jetbikes came screaming out of the portal. [you've got a love his bases!]

The entire unit blasted across the battlefield and deftly pirouetted to face the direction they'd come just in time to see the mass detonation of the cluster caltrops they'd scattered as they overflew the genestealers.

Despite casting Endurance [the ymgarl marker was my reminder for this] on the unit only one stealer survived and the Broodlord took one wound courtesy of the cluster caltrops.

Meanwhile a unit of  Helions, including his Warlord Baron Sathonyx flew into the ruined shrine, one inexperienced Helion flying straight into a girder.

The Hive Tyrant/Hive Guard managed to put a hull point or two on one of the Ravagers, their chameleon like armour coating making them very difficult to hit. The Tervigon had spawned 10 termagants and pooped out.

Inside the grim facade of the Shrine Baron Sathonyx urged the Grotesques to hold fast and let the Tyranid horde come to them.

The Mycetic Spore landed just shy of being sucked into the webway portal. The Devgaunts swarmed forth and fired point blank into the Helions, doing serious damage to the flyboys and girls. Everything else converged on the ruins, ripping through the weakened walls to get at the Grotesques inside.

The Trygon reached the Ravager and smashed it to pieces, I'd forgotten to test for instinctive behaviour but he passed retrospectively.

The Reavers blasted across the battlefield, their cluster caltrops annihilating the Devgaunts this time. Meanwhile the Helions moved to assault the Trygon and a unit of Wyches scrambled onto the wreckage of the Ravager to take potshots at it too,

The Hormagaunts continued to assault the Grotesques but another unit of Wyches came out of the webway portal, they moved to get a decent position to assault next turn. The Termagants were down to two at this stage but were eventually wiped out as was the Broodlord and stealers. The Mycetic Spore got blasted too, if I recall and I'm guessing the Hive Tyrant given how many VPs Liam was racking up.

Eventually the last chance I had was the Trygon to assault baron Sythorax and take out his unit, getting points for killing the Warlord and the Unit. Everything was going to plan until I remembered yet again I'd forgotten to test for Instinctive behaviour and this time it failed so all the damge the Helions received would now be on the Wyches in the wreckage of the Ravager as they were the nearest target. Unfortunately this would be AFTER they got their strikes due to me assaulting through cover. Thus the Trygon was slaughtered before it could even get into combat with them. In the end I was pretty hammered. We were playing into the early hours of the morning and with the Trygon going postal on the Wyches I had little chance of salvaging any respect. I think I'd scored one VP and had another for Linebreaker but Liam was up to about 7,8 or 9 VPs before I called it.

So what's to learn from this? I setup really wrong, I'm always of a mind to close the distance, maybe once in a while I need to hang back and draw the enemy forwards, get them to commit and then steam roll in. Dark Eldar were a whole new prospect for me so I should be better prepared next time. I dunno how to counter the jetbikes, their cluster caltrops were awesome, who needs assaulting from reserve when you can drop those babies on a fly-past. I also positioned the stealers wrong and the Ymgarls got toasted by the Helions by assaulting in cover - a total waste. Not my finest hour and I have to agree Liam does roll an awful lot of 1's and I did manage a lot of 6's so I did have some advantages. Statistically there seemed a lot of anomalies but I look forward to a rematch soon and maybe making some better tactical decisions.

Terrain is everything - Another Eldar Defence Line

The more scratchbuilt defence lines I showcase the more I find. Spyrle kindly commented on my previous Eldar Defence line post and shared his own version, instead of a structure solely woven from wraithbone it's part bone with a forcefield created by the wraithbone pylons. You can check out the finished article here.

The link has a step-by-step guide to how they were made and as the pylons were resin casts it's also a neat introduction to casting. I really like acrylic force fields but having cut clear acrylic sheet in the past I know how hard that can be to get a nice edge. Still with saving time on the casting process you can spend a little more for the tidy finish. Alternatively you could look at transparent polypropylene folders and use them for the force field. Easier to cut, perhaps a little less durable but you could make them a little oversized for the gap and that way they could curve to fit between the pylons. You could even use the plastic from a 7Up or Sprite bottle - pre-curved and coloured!

But it's a really cool idea by Spyrle and very much reminds me of the Webway Gates and Energy shields from Dawn of War:

Also, specifically check out page 2 or Spyrle's step-by-step guide as it includes some links to other Xenos Defence Lines, including Grubnards that prompted Spyrle's comment [thanks again for contributing].

Be prepared

Just a little thing, an obvious tip we all know but maybe just not thought about. I've got quite a few empty pots from my washes and having spent a great deal of time mixing lighter highlights of base colours I finally got round to using a pot for a lighter mix. Now maybe my hesitancy is due to the paints being 'locked' in that colour now. The turquoise, and more importantly the white can no longer be used for their prime function or for mixing with other colours, but there is a very good reason for biting the bullet and preparing a pot of paint like this - time. 

The thought of mixing a highlight and the amount of paint in involved, sometimes more comes out of the bottle than I need and if I get bored part-way through I've wasted paint, then I may not even bother to do the bit of painting I wanted. Having a pre-mix like this means I can pop it open, paint some chitin for just 20 minutes or even less and that way it breaks up the monotony of the Tervigon in particular - so much chitin to do!

I appreciate this is like teaching you guys to suck eggs but this is something I could have done years ago and just never bothered, now I have I can't believe I left it so long before I did it. Preparations like this not only save you time but allow you to fit painting into time you wouldn't normally attempt and also overcome those reasons for not painting in the first place.

Terrain is everything - "Space Zombie Barricade"

Perusing the old TerraGenesis forum I came across another take on the Aegis Defence Line, this time for Necrons. As I'm so keen to share any home made versions of the Fortifications now available in 6th I find I'm going to help promote them here whenever I can, hence the extra post today.

So here's Neal Crankshaw's "Space Zombie Barricade". It's made with laser-cut cardboard which not everyone will have access to but it may give you some idea how to create your own version and it is possible with scalpel, skill and a LOT of patience ;)

Now that's not all from Neal, his blog nothingunpainted.blogspot.co.uk has some neat stuff, not least one item I've mentioned before. The Warhammer World Big Display Post included this image of a Blight drone:

I mentioned I'd seen a cool thread on making one from scratch on TerraGenesis but couldn't find it anymore.  Well it turns out Neal was the one that created it and here's the finished article, not bad at all don't you think? Maybe we can get him to post the WiP shots on his blog...

Check out Neal's blog for more cool stuff.

An answer to my secret shame

A while back I opened up, quite literally, the secret shame of my figure case. Since then I've managed to transition a lot of figures to my aluminium case and all the termagants and big guys fit neatly into that box in a variety of takeaway boxes and bubble wrap. However the CORE drill case is still a bit messy. 

My dear wife had mentioned some craft storage boxes at Home Bargain. I wasn't too keen as I didn't think individual spaces for figures would result in a compact storage solution but the Hormagaunts and Stealers were getting out of hand and my mate Ben had evangelised their use and as I stumbled upon a whole sheet of laminate floor underlay foam that is perfectly suited to making the plastic boxes more figure friendly I broke the bank and invested £1.79 in the medium sized box for 18 figures.

Currently I'm looking at a list with around a dozen Hormagaunts and a dozen stealers so this would handle three quarters of them and hopefully make it easier to deploy and pack away. Here's the underlay foam, its about 3mm thick and I put double sided tape down

Having measure the internal space at a convenient 10cm I cut the foam to fit, peeled off the backing tape and pressed the sponge into place.

All 18 'cubbies' for my figures.

I looked at individual squares to top the cubbies off but it looked untidy, I'm sure one sheet would be neatest but maybe not the most secure so I went with three strips. Additionally you can make out some of the dividers have sponge too, they now all have it so there are no hard surface 'impacts'. Originally they were all cut to fit perfectly with the dividers but a simple rectangle serves the same purpose.

The stealers are just a fraction too big, often their claws pressing into the foam but these ones are fine. Newer stealers won't fit at all. The Hormagaunts are very specific in that only ones with limited claw and arm spread fit. The advantage being that these poses that are more 'compact' are perhaps more stable and less prone to wobbly model syndrome which is a bonus.

Thrilled with my success I actually went back for the larger 24 cubby case, each space bigger than the medium box and the whole thing costing around £2.50. All my stealers could fit into the box and amazingly the broodlord too! I'll share that one too when it's done, need more double sided tape.

So this is quite a viable option compared with a proper case until you hit the real problem being the 3mm underlay costing £22. Apologies, there may be alternatives, you may be lucky like me to have some stored somewhere or a friend who's just finished laminating their floor or you could buddy up with your gaming crew to share the cost. Alternatively you could look at this sort of foam which you can buy cheaper but also comes in loads of packaging too.

Warhammer World - Ultramarines

Next up smurfs, it's the boys in blue the Ultramarines. I see a lot of dislike on the net for them which is a shame, my epic force was predominantly Ultrmarines they're relatively easy to paint it's a shame they've become whipping boys for elitist chapter whores. Saying that I didn't take an awful lot of pics but here's a nice command squad.

Another large scale forge World sculpt like the Blood Angel Death Company model already shown

By the looks of these I think they are the actual Ultramarines from the new 6th Edition rule book, a much darker and toned down blue. Some of those pictures really show the grimdark reality of the 41st Millennium and the new tone of these Ultramarines illustrates this, a perfect transition from the prighter command squad above.

1000pt battle report - nids Vs Marines [6th Edition]

My third 6th Edition game and it was round to PeteB's for our second showdown. Obviously still a lot to learn for both of us. I've had the advantage of the full rules but I haven't actually been reading them religiously so it wasn't too much of an advantage.

PeteB had a tactical squad split in two, 8 man assault squad, razorback, Stormfinch, terminator squad with Librarian and an aegis defence line with quad gun. I had the usual suspects Hive Guard, Tervigon, Trygon, Prime, 11 Hormagaunt, 10 Devgaunts, 6 Stealers and Broodlord with Iron Arm and Warp Speed. My Warlord [Prime] had the ability to allow an extra Run dice or a reroll for any unit within 12", PeteB had something that meant my Reserve roll had -1. As you can see it was Vanguard strike deployment with the Emperor's Will 'Eternal War' Mission - my hive node objective behind the Tervigon and PeteB's ammo cache next to his Rhino behind the Aegis Defence Line.

PeteB got first turn, did some shooting, took out four Devgaunts  and a Hormagaunt and may have put a wound on the Prime. The Hive Guard targetted the only things in range - the assault marines and killed 2. My infiltrated stealers, who'd lost two to first turn fire leapt from the ruins intent on mayhem.

The main horde surged forwards, the Tervigon spawned 15 and pooped out with three 5's. The Termagants surrounded my objective.

The marines hunkered down behind their defences, firing at anything that moved.

The Stormfinch burst onto the battlefield in a roar, blasting away at the Tervigon, taking a wound. The Terminators teleported onto the battlefield but Servitor XXIV misjudged their co-ordinates and for fear they would materialise inside a cliff face emergency aborted the teleport and returned them to their strike cruiser. Meanwhile the assault marines took to the skies on their jump packs and fired into the oncoming brood of Hormagaunts. The Razorback reveresed, it's tactical squad disembarking to take up position next to the objective. Most of the fire was directed at the Genestealers killing all and leaving the Broodlord with 2 wounds.

The Hormagaunts and Prime charged down the Assault Marines but the gaunts couldn't survive the withering overwatch fire. The Prime was eager to avange their demise through rending claws and Bonewswords but forgot how to use them and failed to wound a single marine.

The Broodlord channeled the power of the warp, adding 2 attacks to his 5 on the charge, his +1 adrenal strength taking out the sergeant and perhaps 1 other marine [but his rending claws failed to bite], not before he suffered another overwatch wound.

The Devgaunts scuttled thought the ruined Administratum building. The Hive Guard were picked off by the hovering Stormfinch, not before they'd both managed to shoot it while flying but failing to penetrate or glance it's armour.

The Devgaunts charged to help the Tyranid Prime in combat, their combined weight too much but for a single marine.

The Trygon had been busy slithering forwards to support the Broodlord [who'd managed to kill another marine, not throigh rending and with 3 attacks from Warp Speed], suffering wounds on the way but bashing down the defence line as it went.

The Stormfinch had hovered to score wounds on the Trygon and having spent a turn chastising Servitor XXIV the Terminator squad appeared in blinding light and sharp crack.

The Tervigon moved back to add support to the termagants on the objective.

Storm Bolter and Assault Cannon fire did serious damage to the Termagant numbers but the Tervigon's cluster spines hit, wounded and killed 2 of the terminators in return.

The last of the Assault marines was killed but not before the power fist wielding sergeant hammered the Prime into the dirt. The Devgaunts scuttled off to try and take on the Terminators.

Finely the dormant Ymgarls emerged from hibernation in the ruins and headed to support the Broodlord who'd finally managed with 7 attacks to kill the last two Marines, but still no rends in in three rounds of combat and 21 dice rolls! The Trygon ploughed into the Razorback...

four Smash attacks tearing it apart and suffering two massive explosions that failed to wound the towering beast.

More firing from the Devgaunts, Termagants and Tervigon managed to kill two more Terminators but the repositioned Stormfinch was desperate to gun down the remaining gribblies.

To finally silence the destructive Quad Gun the tervigon tore it to pieces like confetti.

A wound was put on the Librarian, who promptly charged along with the remaining terminator into the brood.

The Devgaunts and Tervigon joined the fray, the Tervigon graciously accepting the challenge of the Librarian but resulting in stalemate.

The Ymgarls and Trygon high tailed it back to the fight but couldn't reach the battle before the end of the game.

We rolled one xtra turn of combat where the Tervigon squished the Librarian but the terminator remained.

End result was a win for me. PeteB got shodachi [first blood] and was in my delpoyment zone and killed my Warlord [3kp]. He contested my objective but I had his, and was in his deployment zone [4kp]. So I won, narrowly. Still an awful lot to learn, so many 'modifiers' and I've still got to remember existing ones like instinctive behaviour - the Trygon was out of Synapse a few times and I forgot to roll. Not too much of a big thing but when rage gives you +2 on the attacks its worth remembering.