Categorie: Campaign

In with the old, in with the new!

It’s been almost two weeks since the last post and this is mostly because I accidentally my old laptop. I have a new one now so everything is a-ok again and that means it’s time for a new post!

I took some time off from work as well these weeks, so besides relaxing, I managed to do quite a bit of work on both Clan Thikket and the Dust Vultures.

Clan Thikket has grown considerably from the lone clanrat I posted last time and is joined by 4 of his mates as well as a freshly painted Warlock Engineer and two Doom-flayer Weapon Teams. Next on the list for new paint things are the rest of the clanrats and a doomwheel.

It’s been so long since I painted anything fantasy I almost forgot about command groups.

This model gets the award for ‘most rewarding to paint’ this week.

These two were really tough to paint. Too many random things I had trouble identifying and I had to glue and paint the giant wheels on seperately. I make it a point to always assemble something completely before I paint it, but this time there was really no way around it.

I also took the time to rebase two models I had left over from my old Skaven army: A Master Moulder and a Hell Pit Abomination. Both of these are heavily converted and were staples of my old Skaven force so it feels good to see them on new bases, ready for action again. It’s also nice to have these two make up a small moulder theme to go along with my skryre and verminous guys.

Don’t know if I ever posted these on this blog, but they’re some golden oldies for sure.

Already posted these last time, but I changed the basing a little and they’re officially Moulder now in AoS I found.

For the Dust Vultures I painted up a small support squad of plasma gunners. These are to arrive via a Drop Pod that I still hope to finish painting this month.

This pic was made with infinitely better lighting at GameForce.

I used them right away in a battle for the 30k campaign this friday against Michiel’s Mechanicum army. The game was a total massacre. I didn’t have a single thing left by the end of turn 4. Most of this has to do with the mission, which was a break through style thing where I had to run a table length in order to score objective points. Unfortunately, running all out all the time against an army that’s perfectly capable of decimating your squads with a couple of standard troop volleys, is not such a great thing to be required to do in a game of 30k. It was interesting though to see the mechanicum in action and next time I hope I don’t have to play a mission like this against them again.


This is how things were after my turn 1.


Close up shot of the new guys in action.

So, lots of pics this time, but that’s ok. Hopefully next post will have a finished drop pod and some progress on some new raven guard stuff for the 1250 point mark of the campaign.

Victory or Death!

I’m Actually Gaming!

Wow. I totally forgot to publish the last post..

That’s embarrassing and basically means this one is going to be a long one. I also don’t feel like retyping the whole thing, so you’ll have to imagine a bit of a timeskip in between. Anyhow!

I played a game of Ninth Age recently. I got out my old Empire army for it, which had been gathering dust ever since the release of 8th edition made it obsolete. What is pretty cool is that it seems that the army has now become really poweful in the Ninth Age system. Check it out in the pics below:

Turn two. The first important combats are starting to erupt.

The game was against Dirk and his yellow Orc army (lovingly named the “Pizzkidzz”). The game was pretty fun as we quickly found out that the game is very, very much like old Warhammer Fantasy. The downside however, was that we spent so much time flipping through the pdf’s that we weren’t able to properly finish the game. Also, my detachments formations are still not legal (I have them in 3 by 3 blocks). All in all I can’t give the game a good verdict yet other than that it’s an admittedly more balanced version of Warhammer Fantasy that you can get for free and will probably remain relevant for a couple of years. Good for anyone with an old fantasy army, not so good for introducing new people to the hobby. Then again, the game itself is in a self-declared Beta stage right now so comparing it to fully supported games such as AoS and KoW may still be premature.

Close-up of the big savage orc unit. Tough to kill units all around.

In more recent news I’ve played the second game of the 30k campaign that’s still going on at the GameForce. Incidentally this game was also against Dirk.

The mission however, was not quite a success as we had to place objectives which one of us had to destroy and the other had to protect. I was assigned the protecting role, but was also informed that objectives had to be deployed before we were allowed to choose sides. This made setting up the objectives very difficult and I ended up placing them somewhere in the middle. When I then lost both rolls to pick a side as well as the roll for first turn I could only watch helplessly as 2 objectives got immediately taken out in turn 1. Dirk’s army spent the rest of the game running away. What also didn’t help is that I had chosen to field a contemptor while the boards we used had passages that were consistently too small for a dreadnought to pass through. Nevertheless, it was a short game and I still had fun throwing dice against Dirk’s nicely painted Death Guard.

Seriously though. I’m glad we’re not doing zone mortalis anymore next game.

Now! For the painting part of the blog post.

Two weeks ago I had this standing on my painting table:

It’s going to be a busy month.

Here’s what I managed to complete:

Can you read the text I wrote on his chest flag things? Pretty pleased with myself that I kinda pulled that one off.

Chaplain dude. Is this the time to start naming things? Maybe flesh out the fluff a bit?

And the first of the Skaven!! Unspectacularly they are rat swarms. Still took me long enough to paint up though. Warlock engineer is next on the list.

So that’s all for this post. I tried not to keep it too long this time. There’s a big forge world order coming in this week and I also finished the Legend

of the Age of Sigmar: Pestilens novel which I kinda wanna do a book review for. I already talked about the latter on the latest episode of Skavenblight Radio, but a more thorough review on here would probably be a good idea also. So! Fingers crossed for next week guys!

Victory or Death!

Ravens and Skavens

It’s been a busy couple of weeks on the wargaming front!

First thing I want to talk about is the Horus Heresy campaign at my local gamestore. The campaign has kicked off in full swing and we’ve got a seriously large group of 18 gamers going at it. Freshly assembled Betrayal at Calth marines are everywhere. It’s an escalation campaign designed to help us build our armies and so my first 250 points zone mortalis battle was against Night Lords (courtesy of Peter Zuidgeest, check out his pro-painting service!). Despite going for the ridiculous option of fielding a land speeder, I actually won this. Because of a shortage of assembled models, I went with a single unit of 10 guys and a land speeder. Peter figured more bodies would be better, but in the end resulted in a victory for me due to my squad’s superior combat capabilities. We did a second battle afterwards where Peter took some different upgrades and I lost that battle completely. Biggest thing I took away from all of this though is to never use a land speeder in a zone mortalis game.

Phone shot of the second battle. Note the sad, useles, immobilised land speeder in the back.

With my first battles done I could return the focus on painting the army again. So, just last night I finally finished my first tactical squad! Next month will have 500 points battles and I think I’ll try and build a contemptor and the BaC chaplain to round out my army.

The finished squad. Not featured in this image: some extra grass tufts that I added later.

Now, because working on a 30k army is apparently not enough to keep me busy, I’ve also made my first steps on the road to the Age of Sigmar! Which basically means that I’ve bought a lot of stuff and I’m doing a lot of reading. As people might have noticed, Age of Sigmar has released Skaven Pestilens as a playable faction. Complete with their own battletome and black library love.

index

Just look at that beautiful mug and tell me you are not hype for this faction.

Since I plan on playing Skaven exclusively to start with, I have picked up the battletome and the black library book ‘Legends of the Age of Sigmar: Skaven Pestilens’. The latter one is well on its way to being finished so hopefully I’ll be able to find the time to do a proper review for the blog some time as well as perhaps a future Skavenblight Radio episode.

Squeeking of the Radio, we released a new episode a couple of weeks ago. It’s most likely a lot better than the previous episode since I talk a lot less in it. Also, it’s episode #13 and that has to at least count for something on a Skaven podcast.

So that’s what I’ll leave with for now. Next couple of weeks should hopefully provide painted Skaven, progress on the 500 point Dust Vultures and a review of the Pestilens black library book.

Victory or Death!

It Lives!

First out the gate I have to mention a new thing I’ve been involved in:


I’ve been talking to SkavenDan through UnderEmpire.net for a while and I basically agreed to become a co-host to the show. The first episode I feature in (Episode 12 – It Lives!) went live last friday and so far I haven’t heard too much complaints. Personally, I still have some things I’d like to work on, but I’ll probably get there with practice. Big thanks though, to SkavenDan for allowing me to join in on this and I look forward to the next recording.

Also, as you might have heard on the podcast, I’m going to start looking into Age of Sigmar soon. I don’t think I mentioned on this blog, but I moved house last summer. There’s still a huge chunk of unassembled and unpainted Skaven lying around and AoS might be the perfect excuse to get started sorting that out.


Just a small sampling of the unassembled hordes inhabiting our new attic.

Now that the whole idea of an advancing storyline and ‘pointless’ gameplay have had some time to sink in I’ve re-examined my initial reaction. After reading some of the books I think I might actually enjoy AoS a lot. To me it seems like AoS is increasingly intended for people who enjoy gaming from a background perspective. I ramble about this in the podcast a lot as well, so I’ll leave it from the blog and just say that you should expect to see more Skaven models on round bases here soon.

Now for the real progress! The first 5 Dust Vultures have been painted and are looking mighty fine if I may say so myself.


Shit pictures, but you get the idea.

I’ve got the first battle for our local Horus Heresy campaign coming up next week, so next post will probably contain a small battle report with more painted miniatures. It’s a small 250pts zone mortalis style battle against Night Lords so should be fun to see.

Victory or Death!

The Dust Vultures – Raven Guard, 8th Battalion, 4th Company

8th battalion, 4th company of the XIX legion or the ‘Dust Vultures’, as they came to be known during the early stages of the great crusade, trace their origins to parts of the original XIX legion during the unification wars. Infiltration, patience and swift action were trademarks of the style of warfare employed by the legion that was orignally known as the hidden hand of the Emperor. 

The 4th company gained their monniker during deployments alongside the Luna Wolves legion under the command of Horus. Their ability to infiltrate and lie in wait at key locations proved invaluable to the Luna Wolves commanders. These commanders frequently sent out the ‘Vultures’ well before sector attack strategies were being formulated. The 4th company would then arrive in stealth and autonomously deploy squads at strategic locations. Their survival skills and independent operation allowed them to gather intelligence, disrupt and identify critical enemy sites for long periods of time. 

At the time the main body of the assault force arrived, the world’s defense infrastructure would be severely broken, allowing for an alpha strike to take entire continents nearly unimpeded. The vultures, having usually expended most of their resources during these long waits, would often be found lagging behind the main assault lines mopping up survivors and discouraging retaliation. 

Some Raven Guard during the Horus Heresy

At the time when the XIX legion primarch, Corvus Corax, was discovered, the legion entered a period of reorganization to suit the new Primarch’s needs. Many companies similar to the Dust Vultures were disbanded and sent on nomadic crusades. During these changes, the 4th company happened to be deployed in the Kehrfells system and escaped scrutiny as their extraction was deemed too hazardous.
 
A decade later, when the reformed Raven Guard finally arrived in the Kehrfells system, they found the local xenos civilization significantly weakened and the system was taken by Corax within weeks. Impressed by the patience and planning displayed by the 4th company, Corax allowed the terran-born vultures to remain active among the new legion.

During the following years, due to their involvement in the warrior lodges, the Dust Vultures would later also be selected to participate in the Battle of Gate 42. Major losses were suffered by the company during this battle. The surviving remnants however, would later prove to be extremely loyal to their primarch and of great value during the tragedies following their deployment at Isstvan V.

The beginnings of greatness!

So, there you have it. I will be building a Raven Guard force for the coming months to participate at a 30k campaign at my local store. Expect painting progres, battle reports and fluff development of this brand new company of Raven Guard marines!

Victory or Death!

Drake MacBain and Winged Chaos Sorcerer

I started painting again this week. Purely to avoid not finishing any of my vows this month.

I tried to get a daylight picture, but we’re at the point this year where the sun has already set before I am able to get home from work.

Tried some new things with these guys. The bone wings and the flesh shoulderpad were fun to paint on the sorcerer and I tried to do something different with Drake’s yellow armor wash. Either way, both of these models are now painted.

In other news, last week I mentioned I was going to help start up a new campaign at the local gamestore. Well, so far the campaign system which I helped design looks like it’s working pretty well! It’s based on an idea that came from Dirk (who’s going to run the campaign), where every player has to build their army based on a force org chart that they drafted from a deck of cards. It’s kind of a wierd idea but I hope we found a way to make it work. So this friday people will start playing their first battles and hopefully things won’t be too unbalanced.

Also: Assassin’s Creed Unity as well as Dragon Age: Inquisition are great games so far. There’s a couple things to gripe about in both games (the gameplay bugs in AC:U being one of the most frustrating), but the experience so far has been great overall on both accounts. So, in between painting I’ll probably also still be trying to get out of the Hinterlands…

Death to the False Emperor.

Glimpse into the Golden Age: Battle 7

Apologies for the long wait (it’s almost been a whole month..), but we’re finally back with the 7th battle of the ongoing campaign: Glimpse into the Golden Age. My opponent, Rob (Grimzilla on the forum), had apparently taken some crap before the battle about the list he was using. His previous list was something along the lines of 2 necron fliers and 3 annihilation barges, but today he was going to try a new list. His new list consisted mainly of a unit of 7 necron lords. The rest of the list was filled up with 2 mandatory warrior units and a C’Tan. The unit of 7 lords was something he was curious to try. A unit like that is so hard that it has the ability to kill virtualy every unit it comes into contact with. The question of course, is whether it will be able to kill enough of those units to earn their points back.
I myself am using the new chaos dex for the first time. I made the list in a hurry and all I could say about it at that poin that I was kind of dissapointed that the daemon prince and defilers got more expensive. I also didn’t like that my cheap and effective daemon weapon option for the lord was gone.


After turn 1: My daemon prince is trying to distract the lord unit while my rhino unit and defiler go for the (comparetively) squishy C’Tan and warriors.

The mission had us deployed in wierd, vertical lines throughout the battlefield and it also prevented Rob’s lord unit from deep striking anywhere else than the deployment zones. This was a great advantage to me since he was kind of relying on his teleportation ability (which worked like deep strike) to get to the important combats.


Turn 3: Rhino unit with lord kills the warrior units and makes contact with the C’Tan. Epic combat between chaos lord with  murder sword and C’Tan begins.

The lord unit managed to take out an obliterator and a daemon prince while my rhino unit and defiler took out the 2 warrior units and the C’Tan. The C’Tan combat was unusually epic though. The C’Tan was locked in a challenge with my lord and between his initiative test forcing bolt, my activated murder sword and his wound regenerating ability, the combat lasted at least a full 4 rounds. In the end my lord died to an initiative test right before he was about to knock of the C’Tan’s last wound. The defiler came in afterwards and cleaned up the mess though.


C’Tan kills chaos lord. Defiler is not amused.

Once the C’Tan was dead, all I could do was grab as many objectives as possible and keep his lord unit from doing anything. I had to use some tricky tactics but with his assault rolls sucking balls I managed to accomplish all of this and bring it home for the win.


This fine tactic is called my ‘lets grab this objective but keep just out of range of those necron lords’-maneuvre.

So, since it took so much time to post this report you might have guessed it already: there haven’t been much other battles for the campaign since. I never heard the full story, but some people wanted to quit the campaign while other people then also didn’t want to keep it going anymore and basically: drama.

Oh well, at least nobody can say that we didn’t see it coming.
Hopefully this won’t be the last campaign batrep, but if you’ve been following along, just letting you know it might be. I’ve had a lot of fun and the goal we had in mind in the first place (getting experience with 6th ed) has been accomplished pretty nicely. I’m going to try and keep the blog posts coming though. I’m slowly but steadily finishing my raptors as well as reading the new chaos codex, so I might blog some stuff about that in the near future and until then…
Death to the False Emperor!

Glimpse into the Golden Age: Battle 6

Battle 6 for the campaign was against Piers (Str10_hurts on the forum). Piers is the one organizing the campaign and I had a feeling his necrons were going to be a tough opponent to deal with. He had a destroyer lord, a bodyguard of some sort, two big units of immortals, 3 tomb spiders, loads of scarabs, a couple of wraiths and a small unit of warriors carrying his relic. The mission objective was for each player to carry his own relic to a ‘doorway’ in the middle/back of the board. Otherwise the mission was just kill points (or whatever they call it nowadays). I went for a big unit of 20 marines accompanied by a lord, a small unit of 10 in a rhino, some lesser daemons, some termies, a defiler and an obliterator.


This was how it looked after the first turn. Big marine unit would be going to try and punch through to the objective (the big tower in the back) to deliver the package.

It soon turned out though, that punching through the scarab wave wouldn’t be going as easy as I would have hoped and my big marine unit got stuck in bad. Also, my 10 man unit was thrown out of their rhino almost immediately by the wraiths and also got stuck in. In turn two I decided to throw in my daemons and termies with the 10 man squad, hopefully killing the wraiths as soon as possible.

Turn 2: Big unit stuck in scarabs, about to get assaulted by necron lord/spiders and 10 man squad + daemons duking it out with the wraiths.

Unfortunately, none of those quick breakthroughs happened and at a couple of points I was wondering if they were ever going to happen at all. Luckilly, the termies charging in with the 10 man squad and the defiler helping out with the big unit was enough to break all of Piers’ units eventually.


Epic challenge between chaos lord and necron lord. Necron lord reanimated himself twice and had to be beaten down repeatedly by awesome daemon weapon rolls.

The battle ended with me having a major lead in killpoints and piers having been able to deliver his package. I made a last ditch effort to reach the objective zone, but was stopped by a distinct lack of a turn 7.


My poor marines, stopped dead in their tracks by sheer lack of turnage.

In the end the battle was a draw and all in all a nice way to sound out the old codex. Piers has a great necron army that’s proven tough to beat by everyone else so far, so fighting him to a standstill counts as a solid result in my book.

As for the new book…

I’ll try and give a proper review next week since I just didn’t have any time to do anything with it except look at the pretty pictures.

At least the back of the book has a cool line on it.

Death to the False Emperor!

Glimpse into the Golden Age: Battle 5

So, last friday, another battle for the campaign went down. It’s kinda scary because we’re about over half-time with the campaign and it’s still going! I’d have to knock on wood, but it almost seems like this one might actually be able to make it to the end…

The battle I played was against Remco (Confessor Theodoris on the forums) with his sisters of battle. His list is kind of famous at the club for doing well in tournaments and stuff “despite” it being a sisters list. This kinda put me on my guard and also pretty much halfway into writing down a loss.

Totally unnessescary of course as the battle turned out to be just a plain ‘ol draw. Well, not quite plain as it was a really tense battle in the end which could have swung a lot of ways before the final dice was rolled.


Turn 1: The big trench in the middle is supposed to represent a river (something that was required for the mission). We obviously didn’t have a lot of river terrain at the store.

The battle started out bad for me as my defiler got shot down right away and my lord got killed by Saint Celestine (which I believe his unkillable special character was called) a couple turns later. My rhino unit compensated a bit by surviving an outflanking sister unit and killing them off in revenge, claiming a special mission objective afterwards (you needed to get two of those for 1 vp). When my deepstrikers came tried to use a termicide unit (3 guys with combi meltas) and an obliterator to kill off his two nasty S8 AP1 tanks, but I only managed to kill one before I lost both units. I used my daemons to kill off celestine and her unit of flying sisters.


Celestine is apparently best dealt with though superiority in numbers.

At the end of the battle my only shot at a draw was to hold on to my home objective, as I wasn’t going to be able to get him off of his, and score 2 mission objectives, for a single vp, to counter his ‘first blood’ vp. I also had to hope Celestine stayed dead of course…


End of the battle: I only had a single daemon claiming that objective… Thank the gods for fearless units!

So a draw it was!

In other news: I am getting the new Horus Heresy book from forgeworld. I’m not planning on starting a pre-heresy force in any sense of the idea (at least not before I win a fucking lottery or something), but just think of all that juicy fluff, people. Oh that juicy fluff!
I’ll also be getting the new chaos codex of course. But so far I find most of the models ugly. Especially the dragon. It looks really wierd and not at all like anything that would fit into my chaos army as I built it. Wtf is it even? A mechanical dragon? It doesn’t have a crew as far as I can see… Is it some sort of daemon? Why would it wanna help chaos marines? Is this something that one would see regularly among a random chaos marine warband or is it tied to a particular legion? It’s just too much nonsense for me right now.
Left: Awesomeness. Right: Dafuq..
Oh well, I guess I’ll read all about it next week and in the meantime…
Death to the False Emperor!

Glimpse into the Golden Age: Battle 4

Back again with another recap of yesterday’s battle.

This week’s fighting was done against Dirk (Papa Papaja on the forum) and his nurgle chaos marines / daemon allies. Despite using lots of proxies and unpainted models (what kind of horrible, horrible person would do such a thing is beyond me), Dirk’s army could have actually been pretty fun to play against. It had lots of big nasties, healthy heavy support and enough solid troops. If only it hadn’t looked like a big, confusing pile of crap… *sigh*.


For clarification purposes: the upside-down spider is a wrecked soulgrinder, the unfinished hellbrute is a great unclean one, the dreadnought is a greater (summoned) daemon, the blue/orange rhino is a plague marine rhino and the green terminators are actually obliterators….

Hopefully having sufficiently illustrated my distaste for unpainted/proxied models, I’ll explain a bit about the battle itself. The mission was “The Relic” and the mission said we could only use forests as terrain. The only time this really mattered was when Dirk’s daemon prince landed in a piece of terrain that made him hit himself for 1 wound (that was pretty funny). The battle went back and forth a lot of the time and although Dirk had some bad luck with his daemon prince and greater daemon. Only the great unclean one seemed to be performing as it should and totally murdered one of my marine units, an obliterator and half of my termies. My terminators were pretty useful in taking out the greater daemon and a plague marine unit.

When the game ended at turn six I was extremely relieved, having only a single troop model left (that was holding the relic) while my termies were desperately holding off the great unclean one and a full plague marine unit.


Sometimes, dumping a unit of 10 terminators on a table is worth it for the psychological bonus alone.

If you’re wondering whether I actually got any painting done after all those promises I made last week…

Erhm…

No.

…

Death to the False Emperor!