Painting - Epic Armageddon + Kensei Undead

Hello Folks,

Bit of another painting update. I am on a bit of a 6mm kick at the moment so I did some more Epic Imperial Guard stuff, keep chipping away at the old stuff I have had kicking around. But I got a little bit of other stuff done as well.

Imperial Guard Infantry Company:

For starters I painted another company of infantry. This gives me 2 that have been recently painted so I have a bit more options for lists without having to use my old poorly based one from long ago. I added in some of the catchment options you get as well. So on the left there are 4 stands of Ogryns, big ogre guys with large heavy guns to whack people on the head with, and on the right hand side are 4 bases of ratling snipers. Basically hobbits with sniper rifles. Except for the command stand these are all from a plastic infantry box believe it or not. The only epic stuff I have left to paint is tons more infantry, I might to one more company and a few more attachments but really I am ready for the next big thing.

Explosions:

With the tournament coming up I need some blast markers to play that game with. I can't find my bag of the old official GW counters, so I decided to make some my self. These are 20mm bases with some plaster and bit of paper clip and then small clump foliage glued on and then painted. I had a real hard time with this at first but got better as it went along. SO you can see that the ones in front are short and crap, but the back ones are much better! Nothing fancy but I think it is a better looking way of doing the counters then a dice or whatever.

Undead Ashigaru with Nagae-yari: 

Also a couple of more under samurai types with long spears. These guys are pretty cool but I am finding they take a bit of time to paint with all their undeadness and lots of bit. The mon is a decal also. But slowly building up my undead samurai army bit by bit.

Pledge Status 2016:
Bought: 285 (Some stuff for Infinity)
Painted: 403
Total: +118

Ops forgot to include the counts.

Thanks;
Mike

Battle Report - SAGA - Normans vs Vikings

Hello All,

Time for another Wednesday wargaming battle report. This time we decided to play a game of Saga to get some practice in before some tournaments in November. Well I am still undecided if I will play in the one at Fall-In or not but either way.

I decided to go with a Norman army for a change. This army is not very good due to allot of their abilities needing 2 dice to activate and also not being very good and needing certain dice. But I decided to give it another try and see if I can get it working for me. My plan was to use a religous adviser as my Warlord. This gives some extra Saga dice, so I hoped that would make the difference. He lets you roll 7 and can take a fatigue to roll 2 more.

The vikings had the standard fare with Harald and his guard and what have you. Serge has painted up his own army of Vikings so they are who you will be seeing.

We played the first scenario in Crescent and Cross which is just a 6 turn battle for slaughtering victory points. Nice and easy.

Here we are after my first turn. My plan is to use my bow men and cross bows to whittle down the viking units and the counter attack at the end with 3 units of knights. This turn went pretty good and I shot up 4 viking warriros and moved up my warriors to protect my crossbows from the guard.

The vikings pressed in with the guard and killed all but 2 of my warriors. The other guys hid in the woods from my arrows. So far this is going according to my plan.

Now was my turn to try and get lucky with shooting. The peasants went first to draw out defensive abilities, so they tried to shoot first but moved instead and then shot. Then 2 rounds of shooting for the cross bows. Sadly with the guards high armor of 6 and no luck for me only 1 died. Was hoping to do a bit better. Then I moved back the 2 warriors.

On the viking turn the annoying guard came forward and murdered my cross bow guys, and the warriors got rid of my 2 guys. That is a loss of 2 Saga dice which is not ideal.

Now I had to decided to charge with the knights or shoot again. Against my better judgement I decided to charge. I paid for that by loosing 2 knights and killing 0 guards. Should have ignored them and just shot the warriors.

The guards the of course rounded up the last 2 knights. So really feeling low on dice now.

I decided to try a charge again but at a much weaker opponent. I was hoping to get really lucky and score 2 units. So my archers fired at the small units of viking warriors and killed half. Then my Knights charge the big unit and killed half.

The vikings countered this by having the guard kill half of my peasant archers and the Berserkers finally came out from their hiding place.

Next turn I tried my 2 unit killing plan again the same way and had some more success, getting both units! But now I am down to 6 knights 6 archers and a priest. So not really allot of killing potential.

The Berserkers did a combined charge against my knights with the big boss and killed them both, annoyingly one berserk survived.

I made a very desperate last attempt with the last of the Knights to kill Harald as this was the only hope for victory now. But I lost half and didn't even get close. Although it was a possibility so worth a shot right.

The vikings used their last turn to clean up the knights with the stupid Varangian Guard who still have taken just 1 casualty! Leaving just my Priest to beat a hast retreat.

This left the score as something like 24 to 13 ish for the Vikings.

I thought my plan for the archers was working pretty good, but the armor of the guard was just a bit to high. I think this has finally proved to me that the cross bow guys are useless for the Normans. The guard are their ideal opponent actually and they only killed 1. My plan is to try with 2 units of archers next weak with William the Bastard to lead.


Well hope you enjoyed this report, tune in next week for another go. Serge is going to try out an Anglo Dane army with Egil and his Mercenaries.

Thanks;
Mike

Battle Report - Epic Armageddon

Hello All,

Time for another Wednesday Battle Report! This week we are playing a game of Epic Armageddon. I decided to sign up for a tournament at Fall-In, so would be good to have a test game to try out a force and get the rules down a little bit better. So far I am thinking about doing an Imperial Guard Army, mostly as it has the most recently painted stuff. My Eldar forces are old so they look a bit crap.

Armies:

Imperial Guard, Steel Legion:

Here is the guard army with a Leman Russ Tank Company, Armored Infantry Company with Hellhound flame tanks attachment, Artillery Platoon with 3 Basilisks, Baneblade, Sentinel Platoon, Storm Trooper Company mounted in Valkyries, a Warhound Titan, and 2 Thunderbolt Fightres (yellow planes only thing not offical models).

TEF:

Facing off I have a TEF army mostly with models from Microworld. They are based on the space marine stats but I fudged units to match what I had and made some new ones up. This army has a company of Infantry mounted in Scarab APCs (Spacemarines with Razorbacks), 2 units of 6 Landhawks (Space Marine Attack Bikes), 6 Dragonfly Gunships (Landspeeder Typhoon), a unit of 3 Warthog SAM (Hunter), a unit of 3 Warthog AA (hydra Flak Battery), 3 Komodoo Tanks (Predators), 2 Bombers, and an Infernus Heavy Tank (modified Shadowsword). I would say the main issue this caused it for the tanks they are sold in 3s but really should be 4. So I costed them as what 4 tanks would cost, but this maybe gives them a bit more activations then they really should.

Here we are all set up after deployment, most stuff ended up on the left side. I have the Sentinels over there, the tanks behind the hill, the armored infantry and baneblade bunched up by the river. Then the artillery, storm troopers, and titan on the other side on the mountain.

Right off the bat the TEF brought in some bombers to attack my tight formation, they killed a couple of transports and their occupants doing a bunch of pins, and put a couple on the baneblade. I brought in my fighters to attack them hoping to kill, but they did not much just getting a pin. So the start was not great. The Infernus also moved up and vaporized most of my artillery guys.

Here we are at the end of turn 1. The Storm Troopers have moved up behind a small wood on the right to get in striking range of the Marines that moved to cover the objective in the big wood. Have my titan in support. The armored infantry and baneblade have moved up and spread out towards the objective by the river bend. My tanks supported by the sentinels moved into the mid field near the square ponds. I want to get some shots on the Infernus hoping it would die, it did not.

Poor Sentinel facing lots of gunships.

My big plan for turn 2 was to assault the marines with my storm troopers. But they failed to activate, so instead the just hovered there and played cards.

Turn 2 is where things really became not good. My tanks took lots of fire and pulled back a bit. I moved my infantry up into the forest, but they got basted by machine guns despite having cover and after almost all died fell back broken. My titan killed most of the komodo tanks, so something was going well. My Sentinels fired a few shots a the landhawks but didn't get any kills. Allot of the marine stuff fired on my tanks, but weren't able to get to many kills, so at least I had that. Turn 3 is where the objectives start to count. But I am not really getting much damage out so that is a problem.

Turn 3 I finally got to press my assault. So my Storm Troopers flew into a close engagement against the space marines. My idea was that I would mostly just have their transports fighting against all my stuff, with a couple of marines. This was true and I got a good amount of hits, but all but one were saved and I lost 2 stands. When we rolled for the result and added the casualties and all I lost by 1! So it was my formation that was broken and had to fall back. The marines were the most expensive unit on that side and there is an objective in the woods, so would have been a good win.

On the other side I was under allot of pressure. But I managed to get a few tanks on the enemy side to prevent a loss on turn 3, but took allot of fire. Killed a bit of stuff thou so wasn't totally useless. Got rid of the AA warthogs so that was something.

On to the final turn. My Storm Troopers failed to activate again, so no second chance to get the marines, and my titan got broken and I think then destroyed. On the left things were also not good. The TEF circled around my beleaguered tanks and fired them to broken, with around half now destroyed. The Landhawks then went for a close assault with supporting fire from the Dragonflies. I had allot of pins  and was out numbered, but had hope that the good saves on the tanks good keep me in it. In the end of all I lost by 1 point again! Since the tanks were already broken this meant they were now destroyed. That was my most expensive unit (650 out of 2500!) so gave the break their spirit objective. In the end the TEF were quite successful acheiving 4 of the 6 objectives (only need 2 to win).

So that was a fun game, but not exactly a victory. The fighters seemed to most useless to me so I think I will  change my army a bit and get rid of them. The artillery didn't do anything either but that was mostly my fault, so fair enough.

Army wise I think the few small units the TEF had gave them a bit of an advantage, probably will get a few more and move to companies of 6 maybe. Probably will get rid of the marines special rule as well, but that will change points maybe I am not sure exactly. But I like that army even thou it is not really 40k stuff.

Thanks;
Mike

Painting - Kensei Undead & 6mm Sci-Fi

Hello Folks,

Been a few weeks since the last painting update, mainly because I had some games to blog about that so I decided to just save on a painting post. Well now the time has come so I got a bunch of stuff built up, so bear with me.

Skeleton Samurai:

First up are some skeleton Samurai from the Kensei Miniatures undead kickstarter. These are pretty cool I think, in particular I like the ones who don't realize they have stuff messed up. Like the guy carefully drawing a broken off sword. I don't have really any game super in mind for these I just thought they seemed cool / fun. But I guess something like the LoTR mini game can be used.

Ghouls:

I also have some ghouls from this set done, bunch of zombie type guys chowing down on some flesh.

Zombie Kensei:

Then there is the zombie sword master, doesn't get more fun the that. With bones and guts hanging out! He is super proud to have gotten someones head, but seems to not realize it is his head hah.

KubiKajiri:

Then we have some kind of ghost or oni type lady. According to google these are some kind of monster that only eats peoples heads, about to chow down no less. I actually find this one to be pretty neat as well.

So that is the undead samurai type guys I got painted so far. Of course there are allot more to go. But then I signed up for an Epic Armageddon tournament at Fall-In so I decided to tkae a short break to work on a bunch more 6mm Science fiction stuff.

Basilisk, Artillery Squad:

First up I am adding in some more Imperial Guard stuff as I plan to use that army. So here is a few guns to give me some long range support. I actually have 3 more of these and 3 rocket guys but really just need a squad not a full company.

Chimera, Troop Transports:

Then I finished off a set of 7 APCs so I can have a company of infantry mounted, they have multi lasers and search lights, which is what the big yellow spot is meant to be.

Sentinel, Walkers:

Also have a unit of 4 sentinel scouts. I would really like to do some more of these, but sadly I have lost the top half of the rest in the many years since I got my Epic stuff.

Warhound, Titan:

Of course I also have some larger supports, here is a giant titan to help blow stuff up. Added a few extra infantry guys to the base to help give a sense of scale. This guy is the smallest titan in the game and he is way bigger then the other stuff.

Baneblade, Super Heavy Tank:

Last but not least is a big old baneblade tank, lots of weapons on this guy to make heretics dead. I really like the ladders up the side to show how big it is and give it that scale.

Scarab, APC:

I am planning an epic game on Wednesday to get a bit familiar with the rules, so I decided that would be a good excuse to add to my TEF forces from microworld games. I am going to loosley base the stats for this stuff on Space Marines so we can try out something other the Eldar again. Anyway these are a few new APCs.

Landhawk Light Vehicles:

Painted up another set of these motor bike type guys which I really like. I decided that they needed to be based after all so I went back and based the other set I did awhile back as well.

Dragonfly Gunship:

Also got a few more of these really cool gunships completed. I didn't have anymore brass rods so I used paper clips which didn't work nearly as well unfortunately. But not bad. Now I have 6 of these guys so they can really bring some pain.

Infantry:

Of course this army needs at least some infantry. So I did 6 bases to rid in my now 6 APCs. The ones on the right all ave missile launchers, and the ones on the flet all have a machine gun guy but they are hard to see.

Corsair Space Fighter:

Finally for today I have a pair of space fighters, these are actually battletech models, so not from microworld. I just think they are pretty cool. I didn't have any old GW aircraft and it is a bit late to get them now so have to make do!


So that is the painting I got done over the last little while. To finish things off here are a few shots of my TEF and Epic armies that I have been working on.

TEF:

Imperial Guard:

The green based infantry is old, so hopefully will get those replaced soon.

Pledge Status 2016:
Bought: 279 (pair of early war desert anti-tank guns)
Painted: 379
Total: +100

Seems like a stretch to count a 6mm tank as 1 point but oh well precedent was set before.
Thanks;
Mike