40kaddict Towers - board, board, board

I'd been a bit apprehensive about the weekend. I'd been asked to referee a kendo tournament. As I haven't done kendo in 5 years, refereed about the same and I'm no longer even eligible to be a member of the British Kendo Association because I'm no longer a member of a club then I wasn't sure but my friend, and British Kendo Team member, Tom Widdows invited me to help out and I changed my mind. I'm glad I did as it was a really good day but it did mean I had a lot to do on the Sunday to make up for the lost day. First up I had to mow the grass and build a new computer table before I even got in the man cave but when I did I was on a mission. I measure up the window board and then insulated it.

The board went in bang tidy...

...erm and then it didn't because the small corner pieces were set back a bit and I couldn't get my head round this discrepancy 

Until I realised the offcuts I'd used were from the ceiling panels and these are all 9.5mm thick compared with the 12.5mm thick wall panels! What an idiot, oh well maybe the caulk can help disguise the step.

So I continue on with the back and put the first lot of insulation up after measuring the bottom board.

Second lot of earthwool goes in

And then the board secures it all in place.

And the upper board goes in too.

So the back wall aside from the two apex pieces is done.

I then quickly insulate the other side piece. I actually get one of the smaller pre-perforated sections to go in without need for staples. Wished I'd done that on the right side as that's all piecemeal sections whereas this is super stuffed. I actually cut and attached the board too, I just ran out of screws so didn't take a picture as only half the screws were in place. I bought two packs of 200 screw and expected to take one of them back and instead I need to buy another bag! So I'll have spent £9 on screws alone, it keeps adding up. Whilst I was at it I also measured and cut the left hand window section.

And whilst I was at it removed the right hand side panels and used them as templates to cut new 12.5mm thick sections and installed them. I may be short of screws but I can use time wisely to fix this mistake at least.

As you can see it's slightly tidier, less of a step down at least between the boards.

And to cap it all off I trimmed one of the pieces to go on the door but didn't take any pictures, it's super awesome though. So all that's left to do of the boarding is the two back wall apex pieces and the three front wall apex pieces, oh and to get some screws to do it. But overall this was a pretty epic stint, I've shredded my Tyvek suit with the amount of measuring but luckily my back held out. I expected this to take about a week of evenings to get done so I'm stoked at the progress.

The 2015/16 Hobby Season starts soon, join me!

The 2015/16 hobby season will be starting soon so for those alumni who joined in last year it might be cool to look back at your lists at what you've achieved , what might have slipped and those lovely unexpected successes that happened despite life getiing in the way and loss of mojo - I speak from experience.

I think from my perspective things started out OK but progress becamse more difficult towards the middle part of the year I didn't even manage to achieve half of my planned goals but that's not a bad thing as I did quite a few other things that I'll cover in a review of my 2014/15 hobby season coming soon. Then, on the 28th August I'll be revising my new plan for the forthcoming season and see what lies ahead of me.

In the mean time I created a new set of Big Green Stamps of Approval, this time I did them as transparent gifs so hopefully they'll look better on whatever blog background you use, However I probably should have done them as .png because I'm not a huge fan of the bitmap edges. Anyway, there's four of them, my onw 'branded' version, a non-branded one and a major and minor project stamp if you're that way inclined to record your achevements. Personally I'm just happy to get something done. I hope you all take part again and hopefully we get a few new participants, they'll all be on my community tab when the dust settles

40kaddict Towers - I'm getting board now!

With the upper board measured and ready to go it didn't take me too long to add this piece in.

Sadly I ended up with a bit of gap on the left had side. Luckily I ended up with a bit of a sliver which has covered most of this gap, at least until I put some caulk in it.

With a bit of momentum I actually tackle one of the tiny strips alongside the window. 

The original plan was to do the tiny bit on the left side of the window but for some reason I swapped things round, grabbed some off cuts and knocked this up quick smart.

I did however discover another crack on this side, not sure how this happened again I'm hoping some liberal addition of PVA might just seal it a bit and the painting will cover it all up. If this is the worst imperfection in the boards I can live with that.

I've got windows and the other half of the back to do next...

Now this is a man cave!

I'm not the only one who's relocating their hobby enterprise, a number of people have shared pictures of their efforts or their planned purchase on the Facebook group. Of these I had to reshare on the blog Otty's Man Cave, although by the size of it it's more like a cave system! What's more impressive is Mr Otterburn has built this with his bare 'man hands' from scratch no doubt after going out hunting non-favorit,e non-named animals, probably a Mammoth, making fire from sticks and wrestling a blue whale! He's like Bear Grylls and Tommy Walsh rolled into one!

This is not some pre-built shed, oh no and I bet it's possibly no more expensive but if you've got the skills to construct such a beast, including the base and a back capable of smashing up a load of concrete to put down for it then this is definitely the way to go.

I don't even know where I'd start with this sort of build. I spend about 15 minutes Every night after putting up one plasterboard panel just trying to work out what needs doing next and whether I’ve everything I need to get it done!

Anyway, he's included a little bit of background info with the pics so I'll leave you to his knowledgable descriptions:

The whole shed is lined with dpm then clad internally with osb and as soon as my parents front room is decorated and furnished, I will inherit carpets for the ground floor.

I've left a hatch into the loft space which I will be installing a set of wooden stairs.

Ive used osb as flooring in the loft

Not only that but he's sent me a load of pictures of his recent additions to his Tyranids including his scratchbuilt Bastion so alongside future updates to his man cave build I'll be sharing those too.

40kaddict Towers - another board session

I had planned to do quite a lot last Thursday evening and you know what they say about best laid plans. Instead of cracking straight on with the shed I had to nip out to pick up a new laptop, which ordinarily would be a moment of celebration but too much is going on for me to enjoy this new bit of tech. It did allow me to pick up the correct sized wood for the door but the super cheap skirting board wasn't available to I could only kill two non-named, non-favorite, birds with one stone instead of three. So it was 7:30 by the time I got home which was a bit of a late start but I cracked on. Did all the measurments on the two boards that will cver 90% of the left hand side of the back wall. Then it was the unpleasant insulation.

I guestimated and cut the smaller left panel but my guessing was way off and I had to add lots of little strips and bits to fill out the cavity. It's not too bad actually but now I'm runnign out of staples as half of them don;t even go through the thickness of the earthwoll anyway, which is annoying. I opened up my third roll of Earthwool and split two-thirds off for the wider middle section. You can clearly see where the pre-cut perforations already exist so all I did was unwind the piece I need. It was also hand to wrap roudn tthe two little mid wall studds I added for extra support. I also realised that I'd forgotten to put any extra wood at the top but I was luckily able to peel back the insulation and add two pieces to allow screws to be placed on the top panel and the Apex board wedges.

I was really lucky with the bottom board as the insulation was not as flat as I would like and there was another real risk that the internal pressure would pop the screw holes again but it went on fine. I then trimmed the corner of the top piece so it could accommodate the bottom-left sloping edge.

Light was fading at this stage so I didn't persevere. The board is ready to go, the fit isn't perfect there's a bit of a gap in the bottom left corner but it has to be that way or the right edge won't line up with the extra studwork. Far better to fill a gap than not have the board attached. But I'll get that piece up tomorrow and then decide if I continue on the back wall, which will be difficult as I've run out of longer screws to add the mid board studs, or try some of the front wall pieces.

40kaddict Towers - second side done

I managed to reach some kind of resolution about the progress on the shed, I think the sooner I move out of the back room the better a situation that has been accelerated by a 'scratching' noise we've heard in the walls/roof. I'm of the opinion it might be a mouse but we need to discover how it might have got into the cavities and if it's finding a way to breach the walls. Obviously all my hobby stuff is preventing us see whether any ingress has occured...

So, moving on I managed to put up the left wall's insulation, and I did add in the little stud support in the centre panel. However I didn't trim down the 60cm wide earthwool so it was much more bulky than the other side.

Which I would live to regret as I struggled to fit the board on. I persevered though and a number of the dry wall screws just popped straight through the plasterboard as too much wool prevented them from securing flat to the wooden beams.

I just couldn't get the bottom left corner to slot into place so stupidly tried to shove it with a 2x1 only to rip through the bottome corner. So I unscrewed the board, reset it so both edges would slot into places and rescrewd it into place. I'm hoping I can try and make that bototm edge more solid iwth some PVA or I may have to reconsider adding a skirting board afterall.

The following night I was able to get the top section in place. I'd added a lot more staples to the earthwool so there was less pressure to combat. Measuring was pretty much perfect with the only cock up being I fogot I had to trim 6 or 7cm off the top edge and did all my measurements and marking only to have to cut them off and redo them! But the board went up perfect after this

I even added a few extra 2x1s to the back wall. I keep convincing myself this will be easy to do as I only need to trim one edge of the board. The back wall is 3m long and each board is 1.8m so I just need to trim 30cm [give or take depending on with peice of wood I attach it to] and the bottom two panels will go straight on, but then I forget I also need to put in the markings for the screws which will be about 15-20 minutes and then I'll need to measure, cut the insulation and then tack it in place that'll be another half hour no doubt, particularly as there is a diagonal strut through the two end pieces and also the middle space is pretty wide so I'll have to crack open a new roll of earthwool. So 'straightforward' it maybe but I'm not so sure it'll be quick.

Then I've got to add the two panels on top, which will require a little trimming to accommodate the sloping roof and then a couple of wedges on top to handle the Apex, which worries me a little as again I'm not sure about the width of wood I'm going to fix to...

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.