#BattleReport - 1,000pts Imperial Knights v Astra Militarum

Afternoon #WarHamFam and #WarhammerCommunity I've been playing TENTH! #New40k so my second game and after an awesome game of MESBG the night before Ben and I still wanted a crack at 40k, just 1,000 points to get familiar. I went with my Knights, much less bang for my buck since the first game, but I do get my Lancer, even if it means I have to take just three Armigers [2 Warglaives and 1 Helverin]. Whereas Ben had 3 Leman Russ [1 being his Tank Commander], a Rogal Dorn and 2 Techpriest Engineseers. We drew the Ritual mission - one objective each, one in the middle and the ability to make an objective in no-man's-land if it is within 9" of the centre. It was a diagonal setup from half the board and I won first turn.

With my Bondsman ability I was able to Advance up the board with the Lance and a Warglaive. That left my Helverin on my home objective [not realising that was literally pointless - you only got VPs for objective's in no-man's-land]. Which meant my Warglaive spending his shooting turn creating an objective in no-man's-land something of tactical genius. The Helverin scored some wounds on the Tank Commander.

Ben's turn and the Techpriest managed to heal most of them and confer a 4+ invulnerable save to it, as did the other Techpriest to the left Leman Russ. Shooting happened and the Lancer weathered a lot, not sure how many wounds, I think it was down to 12, but not as much as Ben hoped for. One Warglaive got taken down to 6 damage . Then in my turn I got to charge with the Lancer, but Ben got to Overwatch, doing a little damage, but the Rogal Dorn was going to die with both free Tank Shock and the Lance... 

But it didn't. Tank shock did it's 6 mortal wounds, and the Lance got two penetrating hits causing 16 wounds - which should have killed it. But, a Rogal Dorn has a special rule to shrug one penetrating hit once per game, so 8 damage got removed, 14 damage received. Then we realised my Lancer should have taken a Battle Shock test as it was below half-strength. Naturally I failed that roll, but why is that important to do it retrospectively? Well, you can't use stratagems on Battle Shocked units and Tank Shock is a stratagem. So the Dorn suffered only 8 damage total! Meanwhile my Warglaive got into combat with the Tank Commander

The Tank Commander would eventually fall, giving me 5+ FnP on all my Knights for fulfilling their oaths. My Lancer continued to be shot at in combat, but he passed battle shock so at least he could get re-rolls. He went on to destroy the Rogal Dorn, but my Warglaive got overwatched as it moved to capture Ben's home objective [out of shot behind the alien rockface]

By this stage I'd been racking up VPs holding objectives in the board and securing secondaries. My Lancer fell to the tanks though. Ben had only scored a couple of secondaries and suddenly he's down to 2 tanks and his Techpriest, who swarmed the Warglaive. They were beasts chopping at it with their axes. 

But I assume the Armiger, had an amazing saving throw against those axes - need in 5+, the two that got through then scoring 4 wounds but 5+ FnP saving some of them.

Ben lost another Leman Russ, down to his last one, I think on all its wounds but my Warglaive severely damaged, so it didn't take much to finish it off and as it got to midnight we called it.

A close game in respect to the forces we deployed - limited models, high durability for both of us and those techpriests went some way to making the tanks match the Knights with their invulnerable saves and FnP. But, I managed to keep him in his deployment zone, which meant he didn't score any primary objective points. We didn't even bother to count the score in the end which felt underwhelming for both of us, which is a shame as we both agreed it was a good game. Certainly better than my first 10th game but Thursday night MESBG had been such riotous fun, with everyone familiar with the rules that the constant checking of the massive 40k Core Rule Book and Data cards etc. It just made this game feel like a chore. Add to that it was just the two of us, where you don't have a partner to riff off and share the experience, so the banter gets heightened it was incomparable to the fun we'd had the night before.

We'll continue to persevere, but we've had so many games of other simpler systems and I'm convinced my lack of desire to win with other folk's figures makes the end result irrelevant compared with the experience of hanging with my mates just throwing dice. Put it this way, when we were rolling for the first priority on MESBG we both got the same numbers twice. We could have just done that all night and I bet if doubles had come up every time we'd have had a blast!

#BloodBowl - Nurgle player and Tree Sprites - TO DONE!

Afternoon #WarHamFam and #WarhammerCommunity I've been #PaintingWarhammer some additional bit for Blood Bowl. This includes a spare Nurgle Rotter and a couple of tree sprites.

I believe there's a rule in the Nurgle team that if you kill an opposing player there's a chance they come back as a Rotter. I don't know if that still exists or not but just in case I had a suitable Poxwalker and spare helmet that I could make a less-armoured reserve player.

Not that I ever play or need one, but it was a quick conversion and been sitting around for a while so I finished it off.

Thankfully he fits in with the rest of the team too, not much difference at all.

So I'm going to give this the first Bloody Great Big Bloody Minor Stamp of Bloody Approval 

The Kurnoth Hunters come with a variety of additional tree sprites, most of which I didn't use, but three come with little bits of tree stump that I though I could do something with, but settled on just these two.

Naturally I painted the tree stump as Silver Birch and positioned these BB balls on top - so they could be use as balls for the team.

Now these balls are in fact original 2nd Edition balls, I've a few floating around that I thought fitted the purpose perfectly.

I painted the sprites themselves in the same way I did them for my Y'lthari's Guardian sprites.

Starting with Iyanden Yellow contrast paint, then some sepia shading and  VGC Sun Yellow highlights.

Eyes were dotted black, white highlight and a spot of gloss varnish - little Pikachu's

Alternatively, I think either of them could be proxied as Akhorne the Squirrel - they look cool on my flock test base. A lot of fun and some extra bits to add for my Armies On Parade board.

And this gets the second Bloody Great Big Bloody Minor Stamp of Bloody Approval or should it be two of them?

Not Battle Reports - Middle Earth Strategy Battle Games

Afternoon #WarHamFam and #WarhammerCommunity I've been playing games again, in fact a fair few but I haven't shared them with you because they take too long to write to so I struggle to fit them in rather than do the hobby, blog about the hobby or play the actual games. What I have here are three games of #MESBG, I'm not sure I can relay what happened but if I can convey just some of the joy I got from these games it's all that really matters. 

Otty and Ben are going to a MESBG doubles tournament at Warhammer World so Liam and I have been 'sparring' with them so they can familiarise themselves with the rules more and also help fine tune their army list.

Ben may have been absent for this game, so Otty's son subbed in. The rules have you in control of one half of the army and I had this half with a much feared dweller in the dark.

Otty's Moria Goblins had loads of Warg Marauders for speed and durability.

Liam charged forward with his Orcs, a lot faster than the Goblins I had, which I tried to use the rocks to hide behind. 

We were all trying to get the objective in the centre, behind the picket fence, which gave me an idea.

I put the Dweller in the picket, his bulk meaning no one could get into the area, unless they climbed over the fence - so I had the objective...

Or so I thought, the mission actually stated it was a 6" area and the player with the most in was the winner. I had assumed it was a 3" area and blocked off access to it. All I ended up doing was trapping my own monstrous creature who did nothing for the entire game - much to everyone's amusement. We got royally trounced thanks to this cock-up.

If I'm honest, I have no recollection of this game whatsoever, which is why these aren't battle reports.

I think I vaguely remember Otty being exceptionally lucky with his dice rolls, because I think the next time we played [Turnip28] he continued to roll hot.

But it didn't matter that I lost again, I had been having so much fun just playing and once again realising - not my figures, not my problem if I lose.

Ultimately I'm seeing my role as helping Otty get better, so if I win or lose it doesn't matter - being a good friend and having fun does!

This time we got all four of us to play, but Otty went with me and Liam partnered with Ben running Rohirrim and Gondor. I wasn't sure on the logic of this as Ben needs to get familiar with the Goblins rather than his own Gondorian warband. But they did pretty well by focusing on Otty's side of the battlefield.

It was a mission where the heroes had to rack up kills, Which meant Otty's Goblin Shaman and my Durbûrz were at something of a disadvantage to Liam's mounted Theodred.

He just seemed to slice through the Goblins and there was only one drama where Otty managed to shoot into combat, avoid numerous 'in the ways', hit Theodred's horse a couple of times and almost kill it, if not for some special rule that allowed Theodred to escape being unhorsed.

The game carried on with Otty's half getting decimated an my half out of position, struggling to join the fray, my Dweller once again doing almost nothing, again to everyone's amusement. Throw in the fact that Liam's dice were on fire - almost any time he needed a 6 it would magically appear to ensure he won a duel or kept somebody alive. Otty couldn't believe it, I was hysterically laughing. Genuinely one of the best night's gaming I'd had in ages. Doubles makes it so much better.

'nids part 352 - Tyranid Leviathan - Psychophage white pics

Afternoon #WarHamFam and #WarhammerCommunity I've been #PaintingWarhammer on my Psychophage. And the pictures on a white background.

Not a huge amount to add, although I will concede it looks a lot better on the white background than the red one.

You can pick out the creature a lot more.

And the feeder tentacles in particular look more impressive.

As does the abdomen and it looks much more disturbing for it!

I've also spotted some elements I didn't end up painting, like the rebar on rubble on the right as well as the pipe in it's tentacles.

I may add some Dirty Down Rust to these at some point, seeing as the rest of the model is varnished and sealed.

You might be able to pick out on some of these close-ups that the matt varnish has slightly 'frosted' in the recesses. It's not really noticeable, but zoomed in you can just see it.

Gloss up of its glossy abdominal sack.

It's unfortunate that applying the matt varnish, particularly on the basing sand just makes the varnish foam a bit.

This in turn dries with those bubbles trapped in the creases, creating the slight frosting. Annoyingly, that's the least important place for varnish to be - you don't need protection in the creases.

However, it is where the dust will settle, so inevitably it will always end up like this eventually.

Still, the varnish really makes the chitin plates  look great.

It's not quite a matt finish, maybe satin, but it balances out all the washes on the blue somehow and makes them much deeper.

My Screamer Killers are much more patchy with their washes on the chitin so I am fascinated to discover how those will turn out in comparison - we'll just have to wait for #DreadTober.