1850pt battle report - nids vs Orkses

I haven't played a game of 40k since Blog Wars so it was about time I rolled some dice. Ben asked me for a game so having heard how his Imperial Guard faced up to Liam's Khorne Space Marines and Super-Heavy Walker I set about ensuring I wouldn't be steam-rolled by his tanks and Imperial Knight Lancer and lo he went and brought Orks to the table!

Psychic Powers Winged Tyrant W Winged Tyrant Tervigon Plain Tr Broodlord Dominion Dominion Dominion Dominion Warp Blast Paroxysm Paroxysm The Horror Onslaught Psychic Scream

The low down:

• Big Guns Never Tire - 3 objectives, one in the middle one in the ruined village and one in the trees
• Warlord Trait - plus 1 to seize the initiative and re-roll reserves
• No night fighting, won deployment, opted to deploy second and failed to steal the initiative.

Ben set up with three Deffkoptas on my left and then two Trukks, one with a warboss in and the other with Ghazgull, both had a load of boyz or armored boyz with them. Then there was a big mob in the middle, another trukk rammed with boyz,

 

another mob in the ruins,

  a mob of heavy shootaz in the the wizards tower with the Ork Shaman and lastly some Kommandos and Snikrot were lurking in reserve with his flyer.

 

I set up across the board but weighted most of my army on the right [my left flank].

I stretched the Termagants out to my right flank so I could at least try and contest that objective but I had no illusions to capture it without comittign further resources. 

 

 Even so I positioned the Chidlren of Cryptus on this flank, I didn't think they'd prove to swing the balance in my favour but I couldn't think what else to do with them so thought it was a good a place as any and should I see this side crumble they were fleet enough to retreat out of range and slo with Dominion as a power I could throw in some synapse on this side should I need it.

 A lot of my heavy hitters were in the middle on the Skyshield but they were going to sweep in from the righ and cut across his lines. Ben went first, moving eveything forwards. He wasn't particularly effective with his shooting, he killed a couple of Genestealers and a couple of Termagants. His psychic phase was a bit rubbish too as I had 7 warp charge to dispel his 3.

 With my go I set about my plan, trying to get efficient overlaps of fire. The Flyrants swooped forwards with the Acid Spray Tfex and Carnifex holding on to the chaos shrine. The Flyrant cast Warp Blast and blew up the left Trukk for First Blood but periled in the process, unfotunately lsoing my remaining warp charge which the other Flyrant was going to use for Psychic Scream on the now exposed passengers of the Trukk. Later on Ben remembered ramshackle allows a roll to downgrade penetrating hits to glances, but it still failed and a couple of Orks died in the explosion.

 I think the Carnifex targetted the Deffkoptas, scoring 3 wounds, the pilots bottled it and immediately flew off the board. The Tfex spewed acid and stinger salvos into the cowering trukk occupants and with added shooting only the warboss survived. Meanwhile on the right flank the Children of Cryptus and Termagants abandoned the woods and headed towards the left flank where all the action was happening. And the Tervigon had spawned out on 8, all of which sat below the Skyshield as a buffer for any assaults.

In Ben's turn the Kommandos arrived to threaten  the Genestealers.

 A lot of shooting whittled down the gaunts and left me with the Spawn of Cryptus and three of his brood remaining. One mob disembarked from their trukk.

 The Orks in the middle of the battlefield tried to take down the Warlord Tyrant but couldn't get past his armour.

 Ghazguhls retinue charged the Spawned Gaunts, I killed a couple but he savaged 7 of the 8 leaving the combat in progress but inevitably a loss waiting to happen for me.

 The mob from the trukk charged by big brood of Termagants, once again I managed to kill a few thanks to counter attack but I lost significantly more to their choppas.

 Ghazghul charged the Carnifex and

 inevitably chopped him to pieces.

 Hi Warboss charged the Tyrannofex who managed to wound him twice on overwatch thanks to the acid spray being AP4 but thanks to his stikk bombs he got to assault first and

 had a special weapon, called the head-lopper or somesuch that on a 6 caused instant death - bye, bye, T-fex. Ben had been markedly despondent after my first turn, the success of a honed army against his thrown together Ork mob had been stark but this went some way to redress the balance of the game. Over one sixth of my army gone in two one sided combats. And Ben would remember the Warboss had a lucky stick and so his second wound would magically heal later on. That was two VPs for killing my Heavy Support.

 Not so many pics of my second turn, my Spore Pod and Devgaunts dropped into the medieval walled garden. They did some shooting but weren't particularly effective. The Spinefist Rippers deepstruck in the trees with the onjective. Ghazghull was in range of one Ripper base who shot, hit once and wounded once and Ben only went and failed his armour save to suffer the first of it's wounds. The Flyrants swooped across the battlefield shooting at Orks. My Hive guard took out the remaining Trukk as I wanted to deny that mobility. The Spawn of Cryptus and his brood joined the Termagant blob and the deadlock was broken leaving only one Ork in combat.

 I'd moved everything away from the now legendary Warboss and Ghazgull but the Hive Guard were still in range and he assaulted. I think I wounded him once but lost 3 wounds in the process.

 The Orks in the centre of the board managed to wipe out the Rippers, so I lost the objective but still think the wound on Ghazgull was worth it.

All but 2 of the Devgaunts died, but they stayed put thanks to the Flyrant. As my turn began I knew that if the Flyrants continued to swoop they'd be out of position to affect the objectives so I gambled and let them glide.

 I moved the Warlord tyrant back so he could jump to the objective in my next turn and the other tyrant took up position halfway between the heavy shoota mob and the mob in the centre for psychic scream. I pulled it off, it killed enough of the shootaz ro force a moral check which the last one on the top floor of the tower failed and then ran 12" [6 down and 6 back] towards his board edge, he wouldn't rally and I'd get a VP as they were Heavys. The remaining mob was shot to pieces by Brainleech worms.

 With the last Ork killed the SChildren of Cryptus headed for Ghazghull.

The Kommando went and chopped up my Spore Pod with the Devgaunt also succombing the green horde.

 Finally, turn four the Flyer arrives and I'd forgotten about it completely and having seen it wipe out a Flyrant in the past I'm suitably worried. Ben manages to put two more wounds on the nearest Flyrant and then I have to make three or four saves to keep it alive and make them all.

 Having failed his previous charge the legendary Warboss has a second crack at the Tervigon who once again sprays it's Miasma Cannon all over it and again AP4 does the business and kills him, much to Ben's annoyance.

 Ghazghull managed to kill the remaining Hive Guard but take a wound and is then hunted down by the Spawn of Cryptus and his brood. He may have a 2+ Armour save but he's not invulnerable and those rending claws took him apart. Considering I had no idea what to do with the Genestealers they'd cleaned up pretty well as a sweeper/deadlock busting unit and crossed most of the battlefield with acceptable losses, shame the actual Spawn model has had his paint chipped in transit :(

Given one Flyrant was down to a single wound I had him glide over to the far objective, he needed a 1" run move to secure the objective which is all he got. I sent the other Flyrant to secure the middle objective and hopefully be the focus of any other incoming fire. As it was 1am and Ben was not able to secure more than the one objective he had we called it a night, although Ben did have another turn and kill the Flyrant in the woods.

So the final score was First Blood, Slay the Warlord,  Heavy VP, 1 Objective and 1 VP for taking three wounds off a Lord of War = 7pts to me. Ben had 2 Heavy VPs and 1 objective for 5pts. At the time we forgot about the poitns for LoW wounds so we thought it was 6:5 which given how bad Ben's first turn came about was good going and really points out that sometimes you can claw your way back despite disaster.

It felt like a really tactical game though, particularly because a lot of my plans actually played out - the Children of Cryptus starting out on one side and ending up on the other. I'm not sure why that was a good thing but I was impressed that they actually contributed and survived. I was a bit disappointed with the unlucky Tfex but I'm beginning to like him as on paper he's really survivable, obviously not in this case but that torrenting acid spray is pretty cool. The Rippers were pretty pants but they took a wound off Ghazghull so I can't complain and they got shot to pieces which meant the Flyrants went unmolested by a pretty big mob of Orks who could have been lucky, just one wound could have tipped the balance on the Flyrant that was eventually killed by the Ork flyer, in which case the Flyer could have focused on something else. So overall things worked well, nothing was spectacular it was just the all performed to expectation whereas I think Ben had a lot of things that just didn't do what they should have done, although his Warboss and Ghazghull didn't do so bad.

A great game nontheless and it poses a lot of thought for how Ben progresses with his Ork and actually left me really chuffed by my 'nids in general. I'm actually enjoying just putting the big creatures on the table. I need to look at a predominantly MC list for giggles.

40kaddict Towers - one side done

I think it was Saturday I got chance to quickly measure and cut the second board to finish the right hand wall. As I mentioned in my last post it could have done with a little stud to attach in the centre of the two as the boards do flex a little if you push them but other than that it was a pretty straightforward procedure. The measuring was good enough and the top lip is angled so once again the roof panels have some extra support. By installing the wall sections after the roof the wall will all offer support underneath for the roof panels. So even if the screws in the ceiling somehow failed catastrophically there is actually something holding it up at the edges.

On the day after this I got opportunity to measure up the bottom left wall panel but my obsessive effort on the shed has caused a bit of friction at home. I'm struggling to balance my usual tasks with this and my viewpoint that this should be my priority because:

1. I can only work on it in daylight hours as there are no electrics
2. The sooner I move my hobby stuff out the sooner I can redecorate the back room
3. There's no point having this standing empty
4. Better to do this during the good weather
5. This is going to take a while to get done so I need to crack on while I have the momentum

and a whole host of other reasons that make this a priority. It doesn't preclude other tasks but the fact I'm in there constantly trying to get it done may be perceived as the shape of things to come when everything is complete, although that won't be the case.

Anyway, I'm taking a couple of days off building so it's less of a contentious issue, getting a game on with Ben and we'll reconvene when the project is under more favorable light, at least it should give my back some time to recover.

40kaddict Towers - moar boards

Moving on from my last manc cave post that actually repeated the previous post I'd taken the day off for my wife's birthday but after a big lunch everyone was pretty lethargic so I decided to crack on with the shed. Right now my obsessive compulsive behaviour is being channelled into this. Ordinarily I'd be feeling the 'itch' to pain but this needs to be done and it's going to benefit everyone the sooner I get my hobby stuff out of the house and far better to do that in the summer than as Autumn approaches. So I ended up putting in 3.5 hours of solid work, without even getting frustrated with the enormity of it. First up I measured and cut the final roof panel, that way I could insulate and board in one go and have everything done and call it a night. I even managed to do the final board with the little to no further trimming to fit - so I am getting better!

And the insulation started to go in...

and the second...

third...

fourth...

fifth...

and sixth! The staple gun is still hit and miss and trying to put it in place initially is a nightmare as the goggles steam up almost instantly thanks to the filter mask funneling my breath up into them. But the job got done.

I was still getting my son to help support the panels but thanks to that lip on the side walls all I really needed to do was slot it in place and support it with my head until I could pop one screw in place and then he didn't even really need to do anything.

And then the final board went up which felt like a significant accomplishment as I think these were the hardest bits.

The finished ceiling, not too bad, some elements that could have been neater but most importantly none of the boards broke and I'm still in one piece.

Filled with my acheivement I actually continued on and measured up one of the side boards as I only needed to cut around 60mm off one end and then mark it up. The cutting was super easy I just forget how long the marking takes but I know it's worth it. With the remaining 53cm wide earthwool strip it fit perfectly into the side pieces. Unfortunately I need to make a diagonal cut across it and it was here I got my second twinge of sciatic back pain since I started the shed but originally happened when I was shifting concrete fence posts in the garden. All the bedning over measuring and cutting is a huge gamble at the moment.

And I had to do a second one too! Part of me wants to do the insualtion in short bursts, although there's no guarantee that would save me from it giving out, fingers crossed that I can just get through it. Anyway, I had to saw my second roll to get another 53cm section for these panels, luckily I can use it on the other wall too.

And conveniently the remaining piece was exactly the right size for the centre piece. Now in hindsight I really should have added a small stud in the centre of this space as the plasterboard could do with that little extra stability but at this stage I didn't know that.

And having installed the board I called it a night after I collected 3 more 12.5mm boards from the garage and moved them ready for finishing both side walls.

I'm spending a lot of time looking at the remaining elements and trying to plan the best way to achieve the finished result. I've a diagram of where the boards can go but I keep hitting snags of sharing single 1" thick beams between two boards that really need at least half an inch clearance at each edge so it doesn't crumble apart. Essentially I need 2" beams so I'll be getting some extra 2"x1" to make things easier.

Imperial Knight - Cerastus in manufactorum pt 3

Hopefully no one really noticed the cock up in that I posted the same article twice but actually wrote it from scratch with only a few times where I thought, hmm this seems familiar. Just goes to show how Swiss cheese my brain is at the moment!

With a bit of momentum in the bag I was in a position to get the undercoats on this bad boy. It's really handy that you can dry fit a lot of these pieces, most of the armour plates snap into place so you can get a good feeling for the end result but then detach them so you can get to all the skeleton structure for the painting.

As my pot of Tin Bitz rapidly approaches it's end of life I got some Warplock Bronze as a replacement. It's very similar although I think it's a tad more red/warm. It goes on lovely though, very smooth and not thick at all but with just as good coverage, if not better, than Tin Bitz.

All the black will be bronze with some brassy accents and my usual copious amounts of verdi-gris. Although there is a very 'real' fluff reason why all the Dark Angels armour is patinated I'm not sure how I justify this on these bigger Ferron elements, particularly as so far it's been described as an arid planet full of certain desert-like wastelands. Still, it's an anomaly I'll one day address, I'm good at making stuff up ;)

I finally got everything pinned, magnetised and primed. Obviously there are elements that need gluing in place but these are bits that are unattached until such paint as the painting process isn't compromised by their attachment - carapace, shoulders, shin guards, chest guards etc. Unfortunately I think something has been lost slightly in the pose since my early WiPs. I can't quite explain it but he appears to be toppling over in this picture. not quite as planted as I first thought. It isn't quite as unnatural looking in person so hopefully I can capture the true majesty when it's complete.

Bronze elements have been painted, though some still to do, then it'll be brass and a whole lot of washes to add depth to the metals. Then it's the reds and any additional heraldry colours with verdigris and special FX being the last elements.

One thing I haven't added is the banners, the resin chain attachments snapped so I'll be using some jewellery chain but it's buried in an undisclosed box somewhere so it'll be added once I've made the move to the man cave.

Lastly here's my mate Ben's Cerastus, this was one of the WiP pics he sent me a while back, it's actually yellow now. He's promised me the completed pictures soon, with the rest of his guard pics. It'll be cool to see these two together when they're complete. They won't be twins, given their different colours but it'll be interesting to see them paired up,

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |

Imperial Knight - Cerastus in manufactorum pt 2

Another dryfit, but finally you can see how this guy is coming together and I think this pose somehow manages to dispense with that gangly look the Cerastus can suffer from.

In fact I think it's extremely reminiscent of the the Riptide pose, what do you think?

     

Around about this time I suddenly discovered I had misplaced yet another piece of the kit, in particular one of the shoulder mounting armatures. This particular piece was far from replacable, I mean even when I lost the waist socket I waited a good month hoping I would find the piece [which I did] despite it being replacable with a 25mm base. However, with this project gathering momentum, because I knew the shed was due and that was going to become my main focus I wanted to move this on, despite the potential hiaitus offering me opportunity to find the missing piece. So I set about a simple cast of the missing piece. First up I got some of that Oyumaru - Japanese plastic putty you put in boiling water to make malleable. I did just that and cast it round the other arms existing armature. I actually had to snap it to remove the shoulder piece.

Now the Milliput cast isn't great, but it will be covered by the shoulder pauldrons, and I've swapped the shoulders around so this will now be the back armature, which is tilted to the ground anyway so will be less noticable altogether.

Sure, it's not as good as this, but it'll do and as the whole thing is pinned at the shoulder the Milliput just has to stay in place.

So, now I can start painting this thing...

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 

40kaddict Towers - 2 down

When we left things yesterday I'd managed to get one board in and hoped to do the second and third in the evening. Unfortunately I didn;t quite meet that target, I prepped the third but decided to leave putting it up as light was starting to go and I din;t think trying to lift it up while a little tired would be condcuive to an incident free installation. So, this was the first bit of insulation, you can see that despite the 150mm depththe staples managed to keep it tidy.

I'm pretty sure the insulaiton properties work best when there are air pockets in it's full 150mm depth but I'm hoping this will still work. You can see the gap on the first board which had to be trimmed out to ensure it would fit.

The third insulation piece went up, even with my works heavy duty staple gun there was still problems getting the staples to stick. Admittedly if they fail after it's boarded over I don't care but I need to have it contained enought it doesn't put too much pressure on them so they pop the drywall screws.

This time I marked on the board where the joists were and then marked where I was going to add the screws. Measuring was nearly perfect. I had one area that snagged in the top right and had to trim the left edge by about 5mm. Unfortunately when it went up I screwed it in place in the  middle then came to do the top right and it had moved to render my trimming completely moot which resulted in a further 5mm wedge int the corner breaking off :( still it's not too bad.

With the second board in place I was going to call it a night but thoguht if I prepped the third board, made the measurements, cuts and ensured it fit then that would speed things on during the next build phase. This prepwork made me plan to measure, cut and ensure the fit of the fourth panel before installing the third next time. The insulation process still sheds a lot fibres. I was stricter with my filter mask this time but prepping the 3rd board without the mask still left me with a cough afterwards. So if I get things ready and then do the insulation at the end of a session I think progress will be smoother and less uncomfortable afterwards.

I'm feeling a lot of similarities to the nights I would make the Capillary Tower chitin plates - slow but steady. Even the wife said this is going to take a long time but I'm hopeful this is the hardest bit, certainly ther will be the boards on the left and right wall that just require trimming on the ends and they will slot right on top of each other. The back wall is a little trickier as that thin central beam needs to share two plasterboard ends. However I may add in another 2"x1" so each board end has a good inch to be joined to. Unfortunately that'll mean another trip to the DiY store but I think I need some more bits anyway so it won't be a completely inefficient journey.

40kaddict Towers - the first board is in.

Full disclosure - I am not a 'handy man'. There si stuff I can do - painting and decorating, small amounts of woodwork and gardening etc. I can wire a plug but most other electrics terrify me but boarding out the shed fits within my capabilities and was cheaper than getting the shed people to do it. Of course I may live to regret that decision, particularly as the cost to insulate the shed is about £150 now and will still rise. So here's some of my materials, I picked up the Earthwool off Gumtree. I'd been searching on Google for paving slabs, to see if I could add that extra foot at the back and this advert for loft insulation came up. £5 a roll, for 150mm thick Earthwool. Now I was looking at specific 50mm stuff from Wickes but it was going to cost around £130 to insulate the shed. So this was a bargain. The only problem was the fact it's three times the thickness of my cavity and clearly the size of the rolls and how they'd fit in my Micra. Anyway, I managed to put 4 in the car, leaving one behind. The fact is I probably only need three rolls to complete the insulatios so its was lucky I didn't get the final one. As you can see I've cut one of the rolls down. I needed a strip about 53cm wide to sit between the ceiling joists so went at it with a saw. You can see it's a pretty tidy cut, surprisingly. The roll is actually perforated, so you can split it into three but the perforations would have been no use in this instance as it's too narrow.

This is the first plasterboard up. All of my boards were 1800mm x 900mm [6' x 3'] because most of the panels were no bigger than this. The 8' x 4's are cheaper in the long run but more importantly heavier and although the cutting is going to be roughly the same lugging these things about, with my back, meant the smaller ones were more convenient. I'd measured the entire internal surface area, did a little illustration and plotted boards on each surface so I new how many to order. I opted for 9.5mm on the ceiling [12.5mm on the wall] as it's lighter and there is a gap between those fascia board on the cross beam of the apex that I hoped to slot the board into. The hoep was the slot would give me some support while I tried to screw the board in place.

I measured repeatedly and cut the board exactly, using a stanley knife to cut through. Which resulted in a board that just wouldn't fit. It was too snug and even with shaving the fascia board I just couldn't slot it into the gap at the apex. What was worse is that every time I lifted it up I was convinced the plaster was going to fold up and break. I must have had this thing over my head about 20 times and I hadn't even put the insulation in place! One edge did break apart on the left luckily as I had to shave down the sides by about 15mm I removed the worst of it. When it finally slotted into place I could go back to the insulation problem. I'd cut a piece 180cm long to go behind that apex support beam but there was no way I could push 90cm of a rapidly expanding insulation wool [it's compressed in the shrink wrap, hence why I thought I;d get it in the 50mm cavity] through that gap. In the end I cut it in half and tucked one end behind the beam, but there was no way to secure the other end and it kept falling down. Additionally those perforations in the wool came into play and the 50cm wide piece became 35 and 15 wides strips. The end solution was to get out my staple gun and tack it in places.

 Even pushing as hard as possible the 8mm staples struggled to get through the wool but I managed it and the remaining wool was still quite fluffy and it was clear I'd have no problems containing it behind the board, so stapled up the two remaining pieces. With everything in place I got my eldest to use an old flat headed sponge mop to support one end while I supported the rest and tried to screw into one of the cross beams. I think I got luck in my second attempt and the board held, which made putting the remaining screws in much easier as I didn't have to take all the weight. I probably went overboard on screws but the last thing I want is this dropping on my head. I missed the beams a few times, not sure how to remedy that but it'll be easier in the future as I now know what I'm doing, just hope that the luck I had in the board staying solid thorugh all this fuss doesn't fail me when I'll have less faffing to do next time. I may well put a few less screws in though and then get some flat D shaped beading to then postion above those screws and intersperse some more so it's more secure overall, rather than trust the countersunk heads to the plasterboard...

Throughout all this I was weraing a Tyvek suit, to keep the glass fibres away, a filter mask and some protective glases [couldn't find my goggles] even so I kept taking the mask off and the glasses because they got steamed up. Because of that I'm now coughing repeatedly thanks to gettign the fibres in the back of my throat so if you try anything like this with this material DO NOT take away the mask, EVER! Also the Tyvek suit gets really hot, so I took my 'work' jumper off.

I do absolutely all my 'construction' work in this thing but given it's heritage andreturn to my interest in it's origin I kind of regret it's covered in paint splatter, expanded foam and silicone sealant from 15 years of DIY.

I'm hoping my next attempt will secure two more ceiling panels, this took about 90 minutes to do and I'd had enough by then. It's exhausting holding these boards above your head but this is the most difficult bit and once the side walls go on they should help support it at the edges too, making it impossible to fall down. Overall it was a frustrating but ultimately rewarding first attempt. It's not pretty but the board didn't break, the insulation fit and thereore I was vindicated in going with the cheaper Gumtree gamble and I now know better how to attempt the remaing three quartes of the roof.