Month 2. Just Killin' and lootin'

Hi every one, I'm back with more of my tale of (about 8 but it keeps changing) gamers blog. My only purchase for this month was a truck giving me £8.50 saved for next time and more importantly enough transport for all the boyz in the battle force. I've built and painted this one a bit differently from the last one cos I don't think any self respecting Mek is going to built exactly the same thing twice.. As for the boyz, this time there just standard boyz but I've given then a nice Evil Sunz feel by giving some of them things like drive shafts and gear chains from the bikaz sprue instead of choppaz. That gives me 20 boyz in 2 trukkz and a boss on bike (not allowed to use him as wazzdakka till next month) at 500pts.


As for the game it's self, it was 8 players on a 4 foot by 12 foot monster of a board. The objective was to get from one end to the other, and get the uplink devise, (which jonny got to start with for winning the last game) and use it to take control of the power plant. Units could deep strike but the closer they got to the objective the more dice they has to roll for scatter. Thanks to rules that allow reduction to deep strike scatter and the shear length of the table, only really jonny's grey knights and kyles blood angles (he switched army last month, thus lost his uplink devise) had a chance and the rest of us fought over the various buildings down end we started on, each of which had hidden stuff in it (some good, some bad). My orkz had a great time killing a imperial guard command squad, three infantry squads, a lord commissar, half a unit of pink horrors and a 200point daemon prince of Tzeench and looting a suit of power armour, a jet bike and a daemon hammer to use in the next game. We also, through some wheeling a dealing with our dark eldar “allies” gained control of the planetary defence bastion objective from last month. Kyle eventualy won, with Commander Dante and sanguinery guard being perfectly suited to the misson.

So I may not have won but I had fun and got a few bonuses for next month. The campaign now splits into two groups of four for a few weeks, so I'll be up against Jonny, Kyle and Carl, should be some intense gaming with a good bunch of guys and some seriously tough armys.

In other news me and Carl are entering the double tournament a GW Colchester tomorrow. He's using his new grey knights and I've gone for a vastly changed salamander list from the last time I played double. We should be pretty competitive and will let you know how it goes.

Game One

Game one of “tale of (what turned out to be) 8 gamers” was a massive 8 way 5 objective game on two boards with a tunnel connecting them. The story was that a warp storm has disrupted the space travel of our armies and caused the planets deference lasers to fire at random leaving all of our forces to make an emergence landing, represented by deep strike in a randomly determined location. The objectives represented five vital instillations on the planet that would give bonuses in the next game.

My orkz landed in the centre of the board, close to Stumpy's daemons and the HQ bastion objective. He sent his pink horrors and herald into the bastion and down the tunnel to the other table with the planetary defence controls. I sent the boyz in after them but didn't count on the ranged attacks of the pink horrors (come on, they don't even have a ranged weapon on the model :p) and lost most of my boys. I did get into combat but got bogged down and my Warboss on bike (wasn't allowed to use him as Wazzdakka in the first game) had to bail them out, which he did with ease. This left me as the sole army on the second table, poised to seize the planetary deference controls. Alas, before I could make the most of this Carl's Tau turned up and his fire warriors took out the remainder of my force. I did still have the truck but that was really me out of the game. In the end only three army's survived, Jonny's Grey Knights, Kyle's Necrons, and Sam's, Dark Eldar, with Jonny and Kyle holding one objective each

Even though I didn't do well in the game I had great fun got a really good feel for the campaign and quite frankly I can't wait for the next month.

P.S. Sorry for the lack of photo's, I forgot my camera. Next blog will have pics.

'Ere weez go!!!

So....... Month one of the new tale of gamers with my orkz and the challenge is harder than you would expect. 400Pts, only one troops choice, only one H.Q. and all for £50 (with a bit of squeeze room for the V.A.T. increase) There are two ways I could realistically go. Assault on Black Reach or the ork battleforce. Initially I was thinking that AoBR would be better for month 1 and to be honest in probably would be if I was only thinking about month one, but this is the only month I could afford the battleforce, where as with a monthly budget of £30 I could get AoBR latter (yes it cost £55 but just the orkz would be about £30)

So the battleforce it is then. As I'm planning to do an Evil Sunz Kult of Speed army I want every model to either be fast moving in it's own right or have a transport, So I started off with the Truck from the battle force and after tha mandatory red paint job, filled it with Boyz. I added a nob with a power klaw and boss pole to give the mob extra combat punch and then decided to upgrade them to 'ard boyz. As I'm only allowed one troops choice in the first game I need there 'eavy armour to keep them alive long enough to claim an objective and the extra cost means that I can make the army up to 400pts despite only having one troops unit.

Anyone see a problem....? There's no HQ unit in the ork battle force. Or is there.....?

Well no, there isn't, but I've converted one. Fitting with the evil sunz theme I've gone for Wazdakka Gutzmek as my HQ choice. Being able to move 24 inches to claim a 3+ cover save AND firing 4 strength 8 shots a turn is really potent and 5 strength 9 power klaw attacks on the turn he charges should turn the tide of any combat he joins in with. He needs to be this potent cos at 180pts he is nearly half my army for the first game.

To make Wazdakka I used one of the standard bikers with parts from the boyz mob nob, some spare assault cannons from my salamander landspeeders (Like I was going to ever use anything other than flamers and meltas on my landspeeders), a tau fussion blaster, the scenic bass from a mounted high Elf prince, some space skulls and a bit of green stuff. I'm pleased with the finished product but do let me know what you think.

As for painting I started with the skin, Orkhide shade base coat with successively light dry brushes of Snot green, Goblin green and Rotting flesh give a fast but effective ork skin colour and I gave Wakdakka a Thakka green wash to darken him up a bit. I wanted to keep the red parts clearly red, but looking dark and dirty so I started with Mechrite red with a Devlan Mud wash. I then picked out the armour and straps in another coat of Mechrite read and an edge highlight of blood red. The metal parts were mostly just Boltgun metal dry brushed over chaos black, broken up with areas of Tin Bitz with a lighter Boltgun metal dry brush. To complete the evil sunz look I added some yellow details, such a glyphs and check pattens but chose Iyanden Darksun as the yellow tone to keep then suitably dark.

I tried something a bit new for bases, snakebite leather dry brushed over scorched brown to give a muddy effect with patches of Scorched grass to give the effect that a once verdant field is now torn up by the advance of the Speed Kult.

Not quite finished painting all the boyz yet but I've still got a week to go. After the first battle I'm planning to get a blog up with how it went and some pics from the game.

See you soon.

P.S. If you like my blog please subscribe so I know people are actually reading this and I'm not just blogging to my self.

Da new beginin'

Evenin' all. I've finally had the time to put another blog up. I've been busy with work, life and winning four games in a row with my newly revised 2000pt high elf list, but that's not what I'm blogging about today.

As I said months ago I'm planning to start an ork army, that's what I'm blogging about today. I've had the models for the army and the idea for the list for a while now but I needed an incentive to get it going. Then my good friend Mr Carl Short came to me with the idea for another tale of four games for 40k. Well if you've read my blog for a while you know I can't say no to one of these collecting, painting and gaming challenges and this one has something a little extra to make it even better. Carl's done up a good set of rules for this competition to spice things up and keep us on track. Basicly we've got £50 in the first month to get 400pts of our chosen army with only one troops choice, one HQ and what ever else we want. At the end of the months we have an 8 way game at the north hill gaming club in colchester. We then get a set budget and points limit for each subsequent month and play a variety of different games. Each month we get points for the result in the games and as well as for painting, converting etc. And to add another layer to the challenge the games will form a planetary empires campaign that will play out over the months. All in all I'm really looking forward to it.

I'm not the only one blogging about it either, Carl's got his own blog about it so if you want another point of view on it, and a look at his tau army head over to http://ch1hammer.blogspot.com/2011/03/hello.html where you can also see the plans for the first game.

That all for today. I'm hoping to get some more blog action up before the end of the week with details on the start of my waaagh!

Tactica Chaplin

Hey guys. I've just finished the Space Marine Chaplain in terminator armour that my brother got me for Christmas so I wanted to show him off cos I'm really pleased with how he turned out. But rather than just rabbiting on about the paint scheme I thought I'd do a bit of tactica blog about Chaplains.

Back 4^th edition chaplains had the same stats as captains so were pretty good combat characters in there own right. That changed in 5^th edition and a chaplain's role has become more specific. His strength is in supporting other units by making them fearless and letting you re-role failed roles to hit in the first round (as long as you charge) not in killing loads of stuff himself. So when you put a chaplain in a list you need a specific unit that you're going to put him with. This unit needs to be combat focused, likely to charge rather than be charged and have a delivery system (transport, bikes, jump packs, ect) that the chaplain can join them in.

So what units should he be with? Well, any of these would be a good choice.

Terminators

Assault terminators (But not if Vulkan is in the list and you have thunder hammers)

Command squad (including bike mounted command squads)

Vanguard veterans (but not if you are planning on using heroic intervention)

Assault squad (but only really worth it with larger units)

These units, however, would be less useful units to put a chaplain with.

Tactical squad

Bike squad

Scouts

Sternguard

Devastators

These units just aren't assault focused enough and/or don't have enough attacks to make it worth the points for a chaplain.

So that’s his job sorted, but what equipment should be have? As little as possible! I usually Just take a basic chaplain with no upgrades, remember the chaplain is there to support other units, not to do much himself. Obviously if the unit he joins has jump packs or bike he will need a jump pack or a bike to keep up with them. However, in my opinion, terminator armour in only worth it if you plan him to deep strike with a terminator squad (This is a viable tactic and a teleport homer in a rhino mounted tactical squad help it to be more reliable) if he is going to ride in a landraider with terminators, save the points and give him power armour. Terminator armour means he can't use a pistol (so he gets 1 less attack) and doesn't give that much extra protection cos it will be probably be a power weapon that kills him anyway. If you have the points a plasma pistol or melta bombs are good options but only if you have points left over.

Now we have our chaplain's role defined and he's armed, what to do with him on the battle field. Well, him and his unit are awesome on the charge and not great at much else so they need to get stuck in there as soon as possible. Ideally they shouldn't get draw into protracted combats as weight of number will be a problem if combat drags on and you start taking casualty. They need to charge units that they can break or wipe out in 1 or two rounds of combat and them move onto a new target. The plan is that they can either rack up several kill points or take out the enemy’s scoring units while your tactical squads manoeuvre to the objectives or get to hard cover and give supporting fire.

That's it for my first tactica blog. Let me know if you liked it and it you want to see more of them on here