Categorie: GameForce

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!

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.

Warmachine, Chaos Space Marines + The 24 Hour Painting Challenge

Now for a real blog post!
During the last couple of weeks I’ve been busy getting back into the hobby. What mostly got me started again was Rob, reminding me that I signed up for his warmachine tournament. Luckilly, I finally had some free time on my hands, so I ordered some last-minute mini’s and paint-rushed them just in time for the weekend. I managed to take some pics of the first and last battles:


First battle was against a hard Menoth army led by the Harbinger. We were both rusty with the rules and struggling with our plays a couple of times, but luckily I managed to pull through with a last minute assassination.


Second battle was against Niek, who I play regularly and I lost to his Khador as always, but the third battle was against Sjoerd. I haven’t played against Sjoerd in a long time and was surprised by his new Retribution army. Not knowing any of the rules for Retribution models saw me make a few bad decisions and my inability to damage his Hyperion did the rest. I held out for quite a while, but eventually lost on scenario.


Here’s a sample of one of the models I painted for the tournament. Quite happy with the result, even though I had to rush them a bit.

The rest of the tournament was great and I actually won Best Painted on account of having the nicest painted army out of the two people who actually painted their entire army. I always seem to forget that Warmachine players don’t usually take painted armies to local tournaments. Which is rather odd, seeing as they have less models to paint than your average warhammer/40k player. Maybe it’s just something local.

Anyhow, after the warmachine tournament I decided to put some much needed attention into my Chaos Space Marines. I tried out a couple of list ideas and last week I played an actual game again with Koen, Dirk and Michiel. The game was great fun, and me and Michiel’s orks won in the end. The win was more due to Michiel’s orks than my own marines unfortunately. It seems the new edition really has my army stumped and I’ll probably need to come up with some better lists sometime soon.


Decided to take a photo from something more than just mini’s this time. I came to regret my decision almost immediately afterwards.

I was on a roll that weekend and proceeded to participate in UnderEmpire.net’s 24 Hour Painting Challenge. I only did 18 hours in the end, but that was more than enough to finish my remaining chaos marine infantry, an Aiana model for someone in my D&D group, a dark apostle and 2 raptors. Now I finally finished most of my basic infantry for the chaos marines. Next up are some random characters, 2 warmachine models and a bunch of cultists.


The combined result of my 24 Hour Challenge run.

So, I’ll leave it at that for now and hopefully next post I’ll have some newly painted stuff to show!

Death to the False Emperor!