Armies on Parade 2014 - Southport

So I managed to get to Armies on Parade and this time I would face some competition, albeit there were only 3 entries [not including the stores] so whatever happened we were all going to get a prize. First up was Chris Draper's Ogres. I think Chris was actually in the year below me at school, we hung out a bit, I remember him coming along to a LARP event on the Wirral once.

Anyway, he does a lot of commission painting now so we had a chat about what he does, but he's currently too busy to keep a blog going so I can't share more of his work.

However, the Ogres were full of character and with plenty of Basil on the board to give it a leafy feel. 

Some very interesting individuals

It was all the little details that made this.

I particularly liked the lurking spider and handily he made good use of the Hallowe'en cobwebs to decorate the board.

I may be wrong but think this was done by a guy called Tom, who went to Lost Boys Gaming Club. It's been so long since I last went I may have got it mixed up but the plague marines were fab.

Consistent throughout, lots of little details and all excellent quality.

He deserved a medal just for painting Cultists, you know how difficult I found painting mine!

Nice little blue glow effect too.

Gotta love the eyeball in the Hellbrute.

Some cool Greenstuff sculpting on the Vindicator and I love the little old skool familiar joining the squad.

Lovely, if you can call plague marines lovely.

The store's effort, an Iron Warrior's fortress.

Once again full of character [although the manager did admit the board was the work of a previous manager]

Still the Army was created for the parade and the board is still no longer a requirement and they weren't in the competition anyway.

Lets sacrifice the Fist!

Love the chaos glow.

And my effort. I sadly bottled it a bit. I was a little late getting there and hadn't been able to set up the night before so with 20 minutes I didn't fill every nook and cranny as I'd hoped but did put as much new stuff as I could down.

I would have liked to put more and the manager was prepared to let me do so but in the end if I did it would have taken longer to pack away and that would have made me late leaving and would have caused issues on returning home.

So the end result was that Chris's Ogres took the win, I came second and Tom came third. I'm happy with that because I didn't add a whole lot to my army. There's a small amount of regret but I am pleased to have a different looking medal than another gold.

It's also nice that the other guys efforts were recognised, Chris was up till 1am painting the night before so that alone deserves credit.

Overall I'm just glad I got to take part, although sad I never got to create my original board, which I may have been a little upset if I hadn't won and I'd actually made it. 

Still, Liam won the Bolton AoP so go check out his blog if you haven't already.

Nu nids, missing nids and repackaged cheaper nids, nids, nids!

From out of the blue there's a rumour about a new Tyranid model up for pre-order next week. The Maleceptor/Toxicrene looks mildly interesting, moreso for the crazy sounding model than the leaked ruleset. It may actually be very good but I'm not particularly gifted at how these things can perform game-wise so I'll just have to let the interwebs tell me if it's any good. However, something was pointed out to me yesterday by the Southport GW manager and that is the Zoanthrope has 'SOLD OUT'. Now please note this is not 'temporarily unavailable' it has SOLD OUT. If you want to see what a temporarily unavailable looks like check out the Tactical Objective Cards, [because they're always temporarily unavailable!] So the question is if the Zoie has gone why is that? Is a plastic model, finally available, maybe three in a box with alternate bits to make Venomthropes in the offing? Who knows but it seems odd.

Meanwhile pre-orders have also gone up for Wrath of the Hive Mind a £100 set for what looks to be £135 worth of bugs. This looks like it should be every bug collector starter kit, a Hive Tyrant [although it ominously doesn't show it with wings, fingers crossed you get those too] a Tervigon. 20 Termagants and three Warriors... plus 3 bases of Rippers

This makes a decent core to your army and fills all your basic slots. I suppose the £105 Tyranid Swarm box also does that if you make your Carnifex into Old One Eye, but I still think this new box set is great, although I'm not sure I can justify getting it myself.

Otty's Inquisition force

Otty sent me a text message the other day asking if I could showcase the first completed figures of his Inquisition force. And why wouldn't I? Aside from the fact I'm desperate for some new content Otty is an amazing painter and converter. He's been alluding to this mythical army for the last couple of years [speaks the one who has 20 year old figures that have just been painted, although this does contain miniatures of equal history] and finally here they are:

Got to love what he's done so far, I see a lot of INQ28 stuff online, inspired by John Blanche and Otty seems to be tapping the similar grimdark future gothic anachronisms of the 40k universe. Here's what he had to say on the Facebook group:

First figures completed for my new inquisition army. Tried to paint to my best ability and I have stuck to my rule of converting every model, largely wearing dressing gowns with some metal. They are some of the first models I ever bought- over 30 years ago , proper vintage. These three are the first of a unit of 10 inquisitional all infantry. Hopefully more to follow.

And who doesn't want to carry two Storm Bolters! I can't wait to see what else he gets done, there's a lot of playful character in these miniatures which reminds us you can still have fun in the future where there is 'only war'.

Hope you like them, I recall he's also got some crazy Lord of the Rings conversions he may share if you want ;)

Terrain is everything - Project Ω - Realm of Battle Board - The following post has scenes of a graphic nature

 So here's what Polyvine does to Realm of Battle Boards. You can actually see in some areas it's OK

But in others it's just frosted/dusted and there's no explanation of why some areas dried 'dead flat' and some areas just flat wrong!

This tile isn't so bad but I think that may be the photography. The funny thing is I was up in the loft building drawer units and looking out on it drying from up high and little did I realise those brush marks weren't going to fade away.

The flat tiles are nearly the same, again in places they're not too bad,

but when you get cloe up you can see it looks like it's been covered in dust.

I even tried adding a second coat, hoping the application would fix the initial opacity. I added a bit of water and it went on so well but could not do anything for where the Polyvine had already gone milky.

Eventually I just put them in the garage and time was no healer.

    

So the 40kaddict does not recommend this product for any hobby surfaces!

Tuesday Nights alright for fighting

Not only has my hobby progress been hit by the loft converison but gaming too has taken a backseat. I had to rain check [for my American readers] postpone [to everyone else] a game with PeteB due to parenting/decorating committments but I'll catch up with him again soon. However, I did get an opportunity to face Ben and his dreaded Necrons that will be descending on Blog Wars

This was one of my three lists I wanted to take, and had the Manufactorum Genestealer datasheet which was perfect for snatching the objectives, for which you get a point for each one secured every player turn.

As you can see there weren't many ruins/buildings for them to hide in but this amount of terrain is consistent with Blog Wars 7 [although apparently that was because people started deploying before terrain had been finished setting up]. Anyway, as Ben had Imotekh I was looking forward to the Stealers being targetted for a quick First Blood but hopefully weathering the storm thanks to Night Fighting and cover. Unfortunately I won first turn but I didn't manage very much, my Hive Guard failing to put even one wound on Ben's Quad Gun. I was hoping to snatch First Blood and portect my Hive Tyrant who I suddenly realised couldn't damage any of his Barges so instead took down just 5 Necron Warriors

Interestingly I also discovered that my Skyhield is too big to deploy. It will not fit within the 12" Dawn of War deployment zone. Although it takes up less surface area than the Imperial version the Capillary Towers have a bigger footprint. This could be a concern going forwards although the rule book does state that the best solution for not being able to fit everything on is to increase your deployment zone, otherwise it comes on as onging reserve. Of course this doesn't move so it wouldn't come on at all. Hopefully as long as it's at the back and I don't deploy anything on it further than 12" it shouldn't be a problem but it's definitely something I should check with Alex beforehand. To be honest I think it's only of value in the Purge the Alien mission and if I can have any excuse not to take it I'll snatch his hands of ;)

Ben deployed behind his Aegis [obviously as who would deploy in front of one?] and pretty much stayed there for the game while I racked up VPs claiming objectives. Ultimately the Hive Tyrant would fall to combined Quad Gun, and a variety of Tesla fire. A big loss for not much gain. I'm not entirely sure what he could have done to turn the tide given most of his weapons were ineffective against his barges but a big loss nontheless.

I would eventually charge the Overlord in Command Barge with my Tervigon and Carnifex which prompted an interesting debate on the fact you specify if you're attacking the vehicle or rider/driver so if I attack the vehicle should I still be susceptible to the Overlord's Mind Shackle Scarabs? So instead of the quick smash we were locked in combat for a couple of turns until eventually I managed to penetrate and blow it up... only for it to resurrect at the end of the turn! It then went on to wreak havoc across my backfield while the now exposed Carnifex was gunned down before it could even cross the Necron defence line.

I think I was quite lucky in this face off in that the Stealers and Deathleaper eventually took down the Wraiths and continued to score VPs. Sadly my Mawloc did not turn up to take advantage of their tightly packed formation and the pheremone trail left by Deathleaper which prevents scatter from Deep Strike within 6". It would eventually turn up and do very little. I also got into a tussle with some Scarabs with Hive Guard and Warriors being particularly resistant to their bitey metal mouths. A stalemate/war of attrition followed for most of the game.

The Triarch Stalker got what he wanted and the Genestealer leaped from the ruins for another protracted melee, while I 'forged a narrative' around it. The rending claws of the Stealers would eventually win out but once again becoming exposed and suffering the consequences.

And that was all I took, our projected 3 hour game [although BW is 2.5hours] lasted 6 hours, we finished at 1am. In the first three hours we got to about turn two or three. By turn four I was slaughtering Ben 13:3 but as we progressed through to turn six Ben managed to secure all three objectives and whittle me down so much he had 9VPs in quick succession. Add in Slay The Warlord, First Blood and Line Breaker and I think it ended 17:14 to him.

A couple of interesting notes include when his Gate of Infinity put a unit of Immortals on my Skyshield! The Other gate mishapped Imotekh and his Immortals onto Deathleaper. I initially put the Stormlord in Ben's backfield where he could do nothing [although apparently those Gates are not one shot deals]. However, I decided it would be more fun to put Imotekh within 6" of Deathleaper and trust my Mawloc ot gobble them up. Which he did to a degree but Imotekh was safe. With hindsight if I'd displaced them across the board it would have prevented a few VPs from happening which may well have won me the game but you never can tell.

Overall I was disappointed, the Skyshield really is ineffective in this mission and a Quad Gun would have been handy. The Psychic Phase is rapidly becoming a waste of time. With only three Warp Charge in this list and the limited powers and not a Catalyst between them it feels pointless even casting anything, so much for this much vaunted 'phase'. Also one Tervigon feels very fragile, when you have to there tends to be some split fire but spawning out first turn, which seems to be the norm for me.

The Stealers were OK, they certainly tied up the few bits of his force that pushed forwards, and when i suggested he should have moved the barges up to try and contest he pointed out the very reason he didn't was because of the Stealers. So they still bring the fear factor at least.

I mentioned to Ben recently that his Imperial Guard should adopt the Victorinox badge as their symbol. They're like a Swiss Army knife with a tool for every job but I realised his Necrons are even more versatile. Once again though I was close to victory and threw it away, I've still to beat them although if we'd stuck to 2.5 hours I would have probably won the game about 6:1