The Mek Shop

I've completed the build work on the first of my 'Orky terrain' builds - behold, the Mek Shop:

Just need to paint it and it's done.  I'm going to get it undercoated, then paint it, along with the rest of the builds, in one big mad painting dash.

In other news, my builds are coming along nicely - the weekend saw all of this completed:

Terrain time

The build work continues  with four Ork bikers and eight space marine bikers underway, and 5 sternguard, 5 vanguard and 10 Ork Kommandos are in the pipeline.

But now I'm thinking my terrain needs a bit of love.  Allistair, one of my gaming friends, is interested in playing through the 'Raid on Kastoral Novem' campaign with me starting in April, which will require some orky junkyard terrain.  I've been meaning to get some terrain organised for some time now, so this is as good a motivator as any. 

I'll also need to get my build team focused on Orks for the next month.

More assembly underway

Well, the DeffDred is done and I'm now tackling some 'special' marines for my Blood Angels: 

• Two meltagun totin, jump pack wearing assualt marines
• Two flamer totin, jump pack wearing assualt marines
• One power sword totin, jump pack wearin Sanginary Priest
• One Blood champion with jump pack for my honour guard

The assualt marines will let me pad out the special weapons choices on my two current squads.  I need two more squads assembled, and I need two squads of vanguard veterans and one or two squads of sternguard veterans befoee I'll consider the jump troops done.

I've also decided to bump my non-jump pack death company to 16 marines, so that they can fill out a land raider if needed.

It's been an age...

It has been a great many moons since last I put virtual quill to virtual ink to scribe my thoughts for the world to weigh...

So thaty means enough guff!  I'm likley the only one reading this  (if not please do say hello).  So I'm going to use it in a more shorthand manner to keep track of my hobby goings on for myself.

First note - I had game against Alistair last week - the first since July!  Played his Dark Eldar from the new codex vs. my Blood Angels using a mission from the battles book.  I won!

Builds are getting back underway, with this week seeing the completed assmbly of 3 killa kans, 5 sanguinary guard, 5 Deffkoptas (in progress), 4 Ork bikers (in progress) and 1 Deff Dred (in progress).

How am I getting so much done?  Sub-contracting!

Doldrums Over, Let the Waaagh Re-Commence!

Well it would seem I'm out of my slump.  The secret  is I have been out of it for a while but I've been too busy with other things to write.  My most significant news is my new daughter - Maia.  She was born on April 29, and suffice to she has made war gaming time a bit more limited  - but totally worth it.

At the moment I'm assembling my Baneblade - finally.  Since the release of the new Blood Angels codex I have been assembling many things power armoured - Devastators, Tanks, Terminators, Scouts, Sanguinary Guard, along with the new special characters - Asteroth, Sanguinor and the revised Lemartes.  But if I'm going to field my angels in Apocalypse size games, they will need some super heavy help -  hence the Baneblade.  Once it's finished I'll need to get back to painting though - only a few short months til Fields of Blood 2010, and since I've already registered and paid, I need to get the Boyz ready.

I'll be running Orks again this year - as much appeal as the Angels hold, the fact it I'm 100 times stronger when running Orks - I know them through and through.

Given my composition score last year was the lowest of the tournament  (though I'd have to say I don't think it was all that bad) I'm rebuilding the list a bit.  I'm dropping the Nob bikers and two of the battle wagons, as well as the warboss on bike.  In their place I'm dropping in a small squad of Grots, a looted wagon with Boomgun, running 3 mobz of 20 boys and a small Mega-Nobz mob with a Mega-Warboss in a Trukk, along with 15 Stormboyz.  Overall the list is a lot more 'horde'.

My plan is to run the grots inside the remaining battle wagon to make it a scoring battle tank with a deff rolla (now with unambiguous vehicle crushing mayhem) and a kill kannon, plus four rokkits.  It will lay to waste all light to medium armour at 24", and will sort out any heavy armour with it's rolla.

The Stormboys will be my 'early threat' for my opponent to worry about shooting up when playing gun line lists - they are also good for getting that turn 1 charge on any enemy threats, and in a pinch can deep strike to go after heavy support at the back of the table.

Lootas and the boomgun looted wagon (here fore onwards known as the  'Boomwagon') w2ill provide me with heavy support of my own.

That leave the Nobs, who as troops can hold objectives, and can smash any tough to crack units, and the big boyz mobs - two with shootas and one with Sluggas, who will smash enemy forces off objectives and will form my main battle line.

That just leaves a lot of painting to get done - both tanks will need to be finished, as will the Nobz, and the Grots, Stormboyz, Warboss and a good few Boyz will need to be painted ASAP.

Wargaming Hobby Doldrums

I'm stuck in the war gamers doldrums, and I don't mean a belt of calms and light winds between the northern and southern trade winds of the Atlantic and Pacific.  I mean stagnation: a state of inactivity (in business or art etc).  I think many gamers go through this.  Periods of low motivation, in which the act of painting and modeling loses it's appeal.  My longest strech lasted six years - I'm feeling it again now.

The fact is I have plenty to paint, and plenty to model, but I'm having a hard time 'wanting' to.  I'm finding excuses not to paint far too easily.  Take last weekend as an example.  I had two days off before the weekend, and ended up with a wonderful four day weekend.  Exactly how much painting did I do?  Squat.  And not the unmentionable lost race in 40k, I mean nothing.

So how do I get out of the slump?  Gaming helps, but I'm nearly two weeks away from the next game, and I found that even leading up to the last game, I was still pretty unmotivated.

The fact is the tournament gave me such a charge and a firm deadline I painted hell for leather just to get there in time.  Now, with no tournament on the horizon, my motivation is waning again.  Perhaps I need to start planning my list for the next tournament - or maybe I just need to make sure I'm painting at least every other day.  Either way, I don't want to give up and go another six years, so I need to find something to motivate me again.

One thing I will try to do shortly is to post some close up shots of my tournament models.  Most are not 'done' painting wise (they still need highlighting) but I'll put up some pix of the ones which are done - like my big mek, or my Nob Bikers.  Maybe that will motivate me to paint the rest.

Fields of Blood 2009

On September 19-20 2009 I entered my first ever tournament.  Given how long I've been playing 40k, you would think I would have entered the tournament scene a long time ago, however tournaments have a reputation as brutal cut throat affairs that always put me off - I'm in this game for the fun after all, winning is secondary.

Well, at least when it comes to Fields of Blood, nothing could be further from the truth.  The whole event was fantastic, every player was friendly, helpful and really just looking for a good time, and so the whole thing was much more of a 'Warhammer 40k party' than a competitive event.

I played OK - I was fighting off the flu the whole weekend so had a splitting headache for much of the time, and never seem to have enough time between games to eat or take breaks, so it was a bit of an endurance test too.  On the positive side, I got to see some amazingly painted armies, and met some fantastic people.

This is the army I fielded:

It's made up of the following:

A Big Mek with a power claw and a kustom force field

Warboss on Bike with Power Claw

6 Nobz on Bikes, with 2 power claws and two 'Uge choppas and a boss pole

20 shoota boyz with 2 big shoota and a Nob with power claw, 'eavy armour and boss pole, in a Battle wagon with a Kannon, big shoota, deff rolla and red paint job

2x12 choppa boyz with a Nob with power claw, 'eavy armour and boss pole, mounted in trukks with rams and red paint jobs

10 burna boyz in a Battle wagon with a big shoota, deff rolla and red paint job

10 Lootas in a Battle wagon with a big shoota

I won three games and lost three.

 

My first game was against a Khorne demon army.  I deployed badly, which is to say I deployed at all.  I've found the best tactic when playing against all-deep-strike armies is to stay off the table in reserve to rob them of the initiative.  This means I lose turn one altogether, and makes my entry to the table a bit random, but it eliminates a pretty powerful advantage for the enemy.  At any rate, I didn't do that this time, putting everything but my Trukk mobs on the table.  Craig, my opponent, deep striked just out of assault range, soaked up the firepower I could muster, then charged me.  From memory It was not quite a wipe out, but it was pretty close to one.  In my defense, the table may as well have been a clear board, based on the way it was set up - but that would have worked in my favour if I had put more thought into it.

My second game was against Necrons - this was a much closer game, which ended in a draw.  When this happens, you tally up how many points of units you killed vs. your opponent, and if there is a 500 point margin, the leader wins.  I had used my expensive Nob bikers and warboss to soak up the Necron shooting in turns one and two, which protected my force well, but cost me the game due to the points they gave up at the end.  So while the mission was a draw, this counted as a loss.

My third game was against Eldar (sorry, no picture).  I was warmed up by this point, and had learned some of the particulars of the tournament bonus points system, and the 'tie breaker' rules.  I also picked up on a comment the Necron player had made - I was playing defensively.  He didn't actually say that - what he said was 'I'm not used to an Ork player who holds back so much' but that was the gist of it, and the main mistake I had been making.  No more.  So this game I threw everything I had forward, and it paid off.  I wiped out every single Eldar unit.  I'm not sure, but that may be the only time I've every actually achieved a wipe out.  I was patting myself on the back until the Eldar player said he had been wiped out in all three games - so I guess my win was as much due to his playing as my own.  Oh well, it was my first actual victory, so I savoured it.

Sunday morning I got up bright and early and was ready for round four.  My next opponent was using Sisters of battle - an army I have never played before.  He was ready for me - I played aggressively and charged his lines, but he used a combination of Rhino walls and flamers to toast many of my boys, and used the thrice damned missile tanks to put great amounts of hurt on my Nobz.  In the end I lost, but it was actually pretty close.

Game five was against Nurgle Demons.  I used the lessons learned from my first demon battle and held my army in reserve, which worked a treat.  Nurgle forces are pretty slow once they hit the table.  Add to that some bad reserve roles by my opponent, and overall I did very well, ending in a decisive victory for the Orks.

Game six I played a very classic Space marines army (sorry, no picture of this one either) - in many ways similar to my Blood Angels force - which meant I knew where the soft spots were.  Using my truks to hold objectives, I sent my Nobz and Wagons after his left flank, ignoring his right flank.  He deployed spread across the table, and  there were huge buildings providing good line of sight blocking, so I was able to divide his force in two, and only had to deal with one half.  By the time he bought the rest of his force over, the battle was decided - almost.  In turn six a desperate fight between one of my boyz mob and his librarian left only my Nob alive, who was able to run to the objective after killing the wierdbeaky with his power claw.  There was a land raider hot on his heels, so if the game ended I would win, but if there was another turn, he would likely gun down my Nob in a hail of assault cannon fire.  I gave the Marine player the dice and had him roll to see if we would play another turn.  To my relief, the game ended, and in a role of the die victory was mine.

All in all it was a blast.  It turned out I was given the lowest comp score in the tournament however, so ended up ranking pretty low.  But who cares - I had lots of fun - and now I have a painted 1750 point force!