Battletech: Holy cow, talk about a flash back to my childhood. I just saw this on a news letter I get.
Found a couple of a run downs/reviews on the box sets at
http://critical-hits.com/
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/
Hell.. I can see another game joining my ever increasing list.
After a long day causing chaos and death the Farrow pitch camp and the War hog hacks a make shift throne for Dr Arkadius to ponder his next creation.
I’ve also been sculpting a bit more. In keeping with my current binge on sculpting tree’s and logs, I thought I’d add a little something different to Dr Arkadius base. I had a old wine bottle cork lying around that I had been using to test some tree sculpting on. One particular angle made it look like stairs, which was ho hmm .. normal. Then looking at another angle it looked a bit like a seat, so after a little bit of carving and some more putty, A throne was born.
| I couldn’t resist starting something out of my Egyptians, even thought I’ve still got a few Vikings to go. So I put together the camp, using a few models from the command pack and then the three models from Reaper. |
I’ve been doing a little sculpting over the last few days, in spits and sprits in-between everything else. I tried out an idea from the picture of Goreshade the Bastard in the Cryx Forces book. The tree trunk and roots with skulls around it. I decided to go for just sculpting up a nice base rather than doing any conversions on the models themselves. I’ve done the base tree trunk, I’ll eventually get around to adding more tree roots and skulls once I practice a bit to get them looking right. My first attempt at a skull was very feeble and looked more like pumpkin lantern than a skull.
After starting on both models I found this really nice sculpting job on the PP forums, (I've got plenty of room for improvement) http://privateerpressforums.com/showthread.php?49050-Goreshade-The-Cursed-Finished
With the Deathwalker I thought I’d carry on the theme and try out making a dead tree. I did the base first and let that dry over a few days, then came back to it and ended up running out of green stuff and moved onto using the grey stuff I had. I’m semi happy with the outcome, I still haven’t learnt to keep my finger prints completely out of it.
| I managed to finally square my Vikings off against Marks Carthaginian's this morning. We played a 600 point game, my 8 battle groups vs. 10 of Marks. I lost the initiative, so Mark choose a “Developed” terrain layout and to my luck I managed to get most of the terrain off to the sides so not to imped all my slow moving heavy foot. My deployment was pretty straight forward (normally is for Vikings). Having to face Elephants and a battle group of mounted Swords I was a little worried about one flank but was confident on the rest of my troops, I just had to hold them back from charging in too early. Again I forgot my camera, so these pictures are from my iphone.. hence they are not great but give a bit of a feel to how the game ran it’s bloody course. Mark deploys one battle group in the Village, and I deploy around the enclosed field, the only piece of terrain that really gets in the way in this game for the Vikings. I pop my Archers out in front to do a little bit of teasing. Mark’s battle line ends up with his skirmishers out on the right flank in front of the Elephants. I knew this was gonna be a bit of praying to the Dice god’s to get thought on that flank.
The light foot troops force my battle line out after I fail a check not to charge, which ultimately ends in there destruction as the Elephants show how effective they can be. The dice God’s deserting my today.
One the left flank I move my Freemen up along with my Archers and try a few shots but nothing comes of it. Mark sits back and waits in the Village. Moving up slowly I decide to split my battle line a little to give me an option to turn my Huscarls into the Elephants, which ends up to be a waste as my battle group of Freeman gets routed and flees, with the Elephants in hot pursuit charging right past the waiting Huscarls. The battle lines then clash and we get into some serious overlaps of battle groups. Taking our time we work through it, the Huscarl heavy weapons doing there work. Mark charges in his Horsemen against my Offensive Spear Freeman on an overlap, which end’s in them breaking and fleeing into my second group Huscarls that I managed to get around to the back after missing the Elephants. At this point the Carthaginian's have destroyed my right flank and Mark is well ahead with 6 points only needing 8 for the win, and I only had 4 points needing 10.
My Viking Thralls stand to protect the camp, I’m hoping they will be a speed bump and maybe allow me to pull back into the game being down in points and Mark only needing one more for the win. Amazingly the Thralls stand proud and strong and deflect the initial impact against the charge.(impact foot troops). But it wasn’t long after this my army fell, the win going to the Carthaginian's. It was a really close game, the match up of troops was very much even for the most part, alot of straight dice rolling with no Point of advantage to either side. And now I think about it, this was very evident in the actual dice rolls as well. Many times did the middle of the battle field come up even. The two things that really lost me the game were. Losing control of one battle group on my right flank which charged forward and broke my battle line, this allowed Marks Elephants to crush them and that pretty much cascaded through that flank. Then the second thing that after thinking about it was the time it took for my Huscarls to break the centre battle groups. That gave Mark time to break my left flank as well and I couldn’t catch up in points quick enough. Great game. |
What do you do while waiting for servers to reboot after working far to many hours… random YouTube surfing of course
The funny
The slightly strange
The disturbing .. things you can’t un-see …goggle cake farts….(at your own risk)
Some sweet tunes
Having spent the past few weeks on 15mm Vikings, I was needing a distraction.. something larger. Well I found it. Being a rather large dragon fan, (just one or two tattoos) I was given this Dragon by my wife a long time ago. It was actually a toilet roll holder, but in our new house it just didn’t fit the style. So it’s sat collecting dusty for many years. Until the other day when I uncovered it in the annual garage clean up. It sits perfectly upright by itself , it’s wings supporting it exceptionally well. So I don't need to mount it onto anything. After removing the roll holder and screws, then green stuffing in the holes, then a little black paint, it’s now ready for a good bash with the air brush. Not sure what sort of colours I’ll use, I think I’ll just stick with the grey/black of stone and maybe add in dome colour for it’s eye’s. It’s a superb piece for the table, towering over most miniatures, sitting next to the Gale Force Nine scenery it fits in magnificently.
There are some things in life that there are few words for, “scary”
First Christchurch and now Japan,
It’ s crazy world and we are only along for the ride.
With Mike turning up yesterday morning (a veteran player) so we had great help with learning the rules, and got some good clarification on a few things as well. The game started out with me taking the initiative and choosing a Mountain battle field with lots of terrain. I started up with my usual huge battle line, but staggered them a little to account for the terrain I was in, so after the second turn I should end up about even across the line.
As the Vikings squared off against Chris's Ottomans. The mighty Thor looked down apon his noble and courageous warriors , blessing them with the luck of the God’s in there battle against their Ottoman foe’s. Yes, my dice rolling in this game was just outrageous, with over 75% of rolls hitting. I’ve never, ever, rolled this well in any game. With that sort of dice rolling it is no surprise it was a bit of a slaughter. With the Viking only losing a few bases and no battle group breaking or even making it to fragmented, it was a complete victory.
If I had rolled on average, it would have been a much closer battle. On the rules side of things, I’m struggling to get my head around them, with the rule book being so hard to navigate. (Not saying I could do any better mind you) I’ve got a plan to try and fix that. It’s to focus on my two armies, being the Vikings and Egyptians, and go though the rule book writing up a spread sheet on the rules that apply to my armies and to each battle group. Fingers crossed this will help. I’m hoping that the new version that’s being worked on at the moment will result in a far superior formatted and index rule book. It’s still a great game, it’s just got lots of room to improve.
I’ve just finished off a few more detail's on my Viking camp, the main thing being the rock wall. I had good intensions of using some green stuff to sculpt out the stone wall, then decided to just try and paint it instead. Then if it didn’t work, go back and sculpt over it. As it turns out the stone wall came out looking rather good. So I stayed with it and added in the flocking. So I’m left with just the few Viking models to paint up and stand around the Church.
Having painted a huge amount of Vikings in the last couple of weeks, I was nicely surprised today when some models turned up from Reaper, which of course got me side tracked from my Vikings. Just gotta play with the new toys. :-) Talk about impressive, I ordered them straight from the www.reapermini.com web site, they got shipped the following day and arrived 12 days later. Which is super fast since the shipping was only $8. They were well packed in a box with foam chips.
So these little beauties are all 35mm but are going to create my Base Camp for my Egyptian FOG army, I’m going with a temple entrance type theme The column is actually really nice, the photo above (from Reapers web site) doesn’t do it justice at all. It has Egyptian writing all around the bottom half, which I’m look forward to painting up…..after I finish my Vikings…..(Yeah right)
Having painted a huge amount of Vikings in the last couple of weeks, I was nicely surprised today when some models turned up from Reaper, which of course got me side tracked from my Vikings. Just gotta play with the new toys. :-) Talk about impressive, I ordered them straight from the www.reapermini.com web site, they got shipped the following day and arrived 12 days later. Which is super fast since the shipping was only $8. They were well packed in a box with foam chips.
So these little beauties are all 35mm but are going to create my Base Camp for my Egyptian FOG army, I’m going with a temple entrance type theme The column is actually really nice, the photo above (from Reapers web site) doesn’t do it justice at all. It has Egyptian writing all around the bottom half, which I’m look forward to painting up…..after I finish my Vikings…..(Yeah right)
So we decided to play the “Wave Assault” from the Mission Book. The day started out with me lining up all my Tyranids into the three groups for the assault, one for each front while Mike and Darryn deployed there Space Marines and Eldar into their deployment zone. Separating my list into three groups was a bit of a mind bender, with synapse range to consider I had to split my force up. I went for two stronger groups and one small groups with a little punch, in the form of Zoanthopes.
Space Marines and Eldar deployment, a formidable force including 4 Gave vehicles and 2 Space Marine Predators. 
My first group deploy along the left flank , with Mike’s Death Company dead in their sites. But all those vehicles not far behind were a little daunting.
Mike’s Death Company take a pounding from my first round of shooting as the Dice God’s laughs as Mike fails lots of saves.
My Tervagon spawns 10 more grunts but rolls a double and stops spawning for the rest of the game. I lose a few Termagaunts in the shooting round but nothing else is in range so an easy and quick turn 1.
Turn 2 see’s one of Darryn’s Gav Tanks zooms in and deploy some troops right in front of my 32 Termagaunts giving them something to shoot at and with a Space Marine Dreadnought steaming forward into position. My Tervagon charges the Gav Tank and managed to completely miss everything. My second group deploys along the front, including my Hive Tyrant and a Tyrgon Prime and lots of troops. They poured in, engaging a squad of marines, and my Genestealers assaulted the Predator. This turn saw my Tyranids take a massive pounding. The Baal Predator flamed 80% of my Gargoyles before they even got to shoot at anything and the ripper swarms got barbequed quickly. My genestealers got completely decimated after the damaged Predator limped off leaving them in the open to be cut down by the Eldar.
Turn 3 sees the rest of my Tyranids deploy on the right flank, with all the shooting failing. To short or just simply missing or those damn Medic’s and Armour saves. Then in my Ravenors assault and hit on every roll only to have them all.. yes all save, unfortunatly they take one wound and end up fleeing.
We battle it out until turn 5, at which point most of my Tyranids are dead, with my Trygon and all my heavy support dead in turn 4, I have no way of taking out the vehicles as the Dreadnought stomps though my remaining troops.
All in all a really fun game, a great mission to play with lots different things to think about. My lack of play and remembering the rules meant I missed out a a good few dice rolls in the first few turns, but I don’t think it would have changed the outcome. The combination of Eldar and Space Marines was down right nasty especially with what Mike and Darryn fielded. looking forward to the next game,
Darryn has written up this Prelude for our 3000pts game tomorrow. Tyrainds vs Space Marines and Eldar.
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Captain Laevinus regarded the ancient Xenos structure. It certainly didn't look like any transport machinery used in the imperium, which would be humming and sparking, the air pungent with the aromas of the incenses and unguents of the acolytes of the machine spirit. In contrast, this machine looked like nothing more than another old ruin, though he could not deny that it was responding to the Eldar group around it who were, of all things, singing at it.
The Farseer's melodic voice cut through the music - though even this, mused Laevinus, seemed only to enhance its beauty, "It will take the bonesingers some time to complete their task. I suggest that your men take up defensive positions, the enemy will be here soon". Laevinus regarded the Eldar through narrow eyes. Though it was true that she had not yet demonstrably lied to him at any point, he knew that the aliens' reputation was of untrustworthiness, and she still refused to tell him what the Eldar were doing on Altus 4.
Laevinus had come to the planet after the governor had put out an emergency call to help quell a rebellion which had taken over more than half of the planetary defence force. When the strike cruiser 'Litany of Vengeance' arrived, they had found the planetary palace under siege. After clearing the immediate threat, Laevinus force tracked down the leaders of the revolt and dropped directly into their headquarters, determined to strike at the heart of the cancer. What a cancer it turned out to be, at the heart of the rebellion was a genestealer cult. Laevinus had led his men through dark subterranean caverns, dripping with aliens ichor and filled with half human monstrosities, while the thick layers of plascrete above them cut off all communication. Breaking through to the very heart of the alien lair, Laevinus had found the core of the cult, all lending their voice to a singular chant. Their leader, a bald tattooed parody of true humanity, surrounded by his harem of dominated women, mocked the space marines, telling them that they were too late, that the great devourer had come. Laevinus had ended his life with a single shot from hist bolt pistol, while his men exterminated the chanters. Returning to the surface, however, Laevinus found that the magus had been all too correct. As soon as they were within communicator range, the 'Litany of Vengeance' reported that they were under heavy attack. Reaching the surface, the space marines saw the sky begin to turn black as thousands of mycetic spores dropped from the leaden skies. Unable to lower their shields for teleport, the ship dispatched gunships to retrieve Laevinus' men, but they were torn apart by swarms of gargoyles and tyranid shrikes before they could descend halfway through the atmosphere. Within minutes, the strike cruiser was overwhelmed, the last communication from the captain to Laevinus was to seek cover. Realising what the crew were about to do, Laevinus led his men back into the bunker of the genestealer warren. The 'Litany of Vengeance' then lived up to its name. Descending into the atmosphere, it detonated its plasma engines in the heart of the tyranid horde. When the space marines emerged again, they found nothing but devastation and corpses. Only their blessed power armour protected them from the incredible doses of hard radiation left by the explosion. Laevinus was torn - he knew that his duty was to get off the doomed planet, but could see no way to do so - even if he could find a ship it would simply be overwhelmed by the fleet of hiveships above the planet. Instead he resolved to sell the lives of his men dearly. That was when the Eldar had turned up. Usually Laevinus would have had nothing to do with the Xenos scum, but he acknowledged that the space marines were in a desperate situation, and the aliens could hardly lead them into a worse trap. They had promised a way off Altus 4, and the only price was helping to protect the bonesingers while they activated it. The only other real question Laevinus had managed to get answered was why didn't they leave the way they had come - the answer was that the Strike Cruiser's detonation had destroyed that avenue.
For the past three days, then, the combined force had travelled across the once verdant landscape of Altus 4, now pockmarked with alien vegetation taking root. All the time Laevinus aesthetic soul had been at war with his mistrust. Everything the Eldar did, from walking and running through to battle or simply taking meals was performed with an effortless artistry that thrilled the blood angel to watch. Nevertheless he was glad when, with the Tyranids closing in, they had reached this destination. Now, assuming that the Eldar delivered on their promise, all they had to do was hold out long enough to open the gate. Laevinus turned away and began ordering his men into position.
Today Chris and I stumbled thought 2 games of FOG. Both of us still being new and learning the rules, we battled through the games spending a large amount of time thumbing through the rule book trying to work out situation the had arisen. We came across quite a few situations that we hadn’t run into before, And typical Chris coming up with something different to really stretch our noodles with rules. Unfortunately the FOG rule book isn’t laid out that well, so finding some of the rules was a bit of a mission. But we managed to get though and the rules are becoming easier. I’m really hoping the second edition rules will simplify a few things and make the game easier to lean. Personally I think alot of my frustrations would be alleviated with a better laid out Rule book and tables, the content and structure of the rules are all good. (But eh, I’ll get over it once I get my head around the rules) . I’m really enjoying the game even with the rule struggles.
Here’s a few shots from the games, Chris is proxing in all his army using some of Mark’s Greeks' (I think) And a few blank bases to fill in, the Elephants were actually Heavy artillery.
Moving up field
Charging in my Viking Freemen face off against some Chivalry, and some good old routing thought some of his own troops, This really gave me the upper hand in the centre of the table and pretty much won me the 1st game in the end.
The battle for the left flank, turned against me as Chris killed my commander and then I rolled an epic fail
Game 2: In deployment I mesed up not giving myself enough room to have one huge battle, line. So ended up having to gamble a bit and put a battle group of Huscrals in behind the main battle line.
The main battle line coming up to the crunch and a risky (stupid) deployment or one of my Battle groups over the far left flank to try and take the Heavy artillery and Camp… with heavy foot.. moving at 3” .. (What in the nine hells was I thinking)
After some looking up of rules I managed to wheel my battle groups apart enough to get my Huscarls through into battle and not get caught in behind, then I finished off a battle group on my right flank by charging into there side. One of my battle groups got total routed and destroyed then in another epic fail after another one of my commands got kill, my Huscarls got routed as well. Pretty much everything failed after that and Chris walk home with a resounding win.
All in all a good day, even though it drains the brain somewhat with learning all those new rule.
(Easily fixed with a nice Single Malt Scotch)
After some hit and missing printing onto the t-shirts I did some more research and ended up getting myself some Essdee fabric inks along w...
