Doc's Projects

Not dead....

2010-08-24T15:10:00.000-07:00

... well a little!

It has been a crazy summer so far. For one it has been too hot to paint most days, and work has been full of "surprises"!

Sadly I had to skip out of Astronomi-Con this past weekend, but my club mates and buddies did a great job without me there (;p). Nick took Best Overall, and Les took Best Sportsman - congrats guys.
Of course Nick has a coveted "Golden Ticket" now...

One good thing came out of my flying visit to the event; I was inspired and I actually put paint to plastic on Saturday evening! Yes, I've started on the last 500pts of my Blood Pact army - for next year's Astro'.
I may find a tourney sooner to attend - GottaCon in Victoria is back on for 2011, plus there is the Seattle ConQuest GT is in January...

My basement is calling.

AdeptiCon 2010

2010-03-24T18:17:00.000-07:00

so coming down to the last stretch with painting (I fly at 8:30am tomorrow).
Here is a teaser of my AdeptiCon Team army:

bug alert! bug alert!

2010-03-13T10:16:00.000-08:00

No this is not some hacker warning (what the frak is wrong with some people?).
I'm taking part in a local 3-game tourney tomorrow, and the Tyranids are coming back out to play, this is my list:

HQ: Tyranid Prime (1#, 115 pts)
1 Tyranid Prime @ 115 pts (Unit Type: Infantry; Bonded Exoskeleton; Synapse Creature; Alpha Warrior; Independent Character; Shadow in the Warp; Lash Whip & Bonesword; Scything Talons; Adrenal Glands; Toxin Sacs)

HQ: Tyranid Prime (1#, 115 pts)
1 Tyranid Prime @ 115 pts (Unit Type: Infantry; Bonded Exoskeleton; Synapse Creature; Alpha Warrior; Independent Character; Shadow in the Warp; Lash Whip & Bonesword; Scything Talons; Adrenal Glands; Toxin Sacs)

Elite: Hive Guard Brood (2#, 100 pts)
2 Hive Guard Brood @ 100 pts (Unit Type: Infantry; Claws & Teeth; Hardened Carapace; Impaler Cannon; Instinctive Behaviour - Lurk)

Elite: Zoanthrope Brood (2#, 120 pts)
2 Zoanthrope Brood @ 120 pts (Unit Type: Infantry; Claws & Teeth; Reinforced Chitin; Synapse Creature; Psyker; Shadow in the Warp; Warp Field; Warp Blast; Warp Lance)

Troops: Hormagaunt Brood (20#, 200 pts)
20 Hormagaunt Brood @ 200 pts (Unit Type: Infantry; Chitin; Scything Talons; Instinctive Behaviour - Feed; Bounding Leap; Fleet; Move Through Cover; Adrenal Glands; Toxin Sacs)

Troops: Hormagaunt Brood (20#, 200 pts)
20 Hormagaunt Brood @ 200 pts (Unit Type: Infantry; Chitin; Scything Talons; Instinctive Behaviour - Feed; Bounding Leap; Fleet; Move Through Cover; Adrenal Glands; Toxin Sacs)

Troops: Tyranid Warrior Brood (4#, 160 pts)
4 Tyranid Warrior Brood @ 160 pts (Unit Type: Infantry; Hardened Carapace; Scything Talons; Synapse Creature; Shadow in the Warp; Rending Claws; Adrenal Glands; Toxin Sacs)

Troops: Tyranid Warrior Brood (4#, 160 pts)
4 Tyranid Warrior Brood @ 160 pts (Unit Type: Infantry; Hardened Carapace; Scything Talons; Synapse Creature; Shadow in the Warp; Rending Claws; Adrenal Glands; Toxin Sacs)

Troops: Genestealer Brood (5#, 110 pts)
5 Genestealer Brood @ 110 pts (Unit Type: Infantry; Reinforced Chitin; Rending Claws; Brood Telepathy; Fleet; Infiltrate; Move Through Cover; Scything Talons; Adrenal Glands; Toxin Sacs)

Heavy Support: Trygon (1#, 210 pts)
1 Trygon @ 210 pts (Unit Type: Monstrous Creature; Bio-electric Pulse; Bonded Exoskeleton; Scything Talons x2; Instinctive Behaviour - Feed; Deep Strike; Fearless; Fleet; Subterranean Assault; Adrenal Glands)

Heavy Support: Mawloc (1#, 180 pts)
1 Mawloc @ 180 pts (Unit Type: Monstrous Creature; Bonded Exoskeleton; Claws & Teeth; Instinctive Behaviour - Feed; Burrow; Deep Strike; Fearless; Hit & Run; Terror from the Deep; Adrenal Glands)

Fast Attack: Spore Mine Cluster (3#, 30 pts)
3 Spore Mine Cluster @ 30 pts (Unit Type: Infantry; Spore Mine; Living Bomb; Orbital Deployment)

Not my usual style of "soft" list!
I tried it out last night; beat Les' marines and scared Nick's IG into a tie even whilst making a couple of huge [learning] blunders...

Looking forward to tomorrow!

GottaCon 2010

2010-02-08T20:12:00.000-08:00

Returned last night from GottaCon. This was the latest GW Tournament Circuit qualifier, held in Victoria (well Saanich actually), on Vancouver Island.
Took the ferry over on Friday afternoon, along with fellow A-Club-er Nick Daniels. Les Sohlier took the ferry 1 hour ahead of us.
After checking in at the sketchy (and we would find out how much so later) Howard Johnson we headed over to the venue. GottaCon was held in a local community/rec' centre. We were using the indoor basketball/tennis courts as our space, so it was well lit and well ventilated!
First impression of the set up was good - lots of table space (side bars!) and good terrain. It turned out that ~80% of the terrain belonged to the tournament organizer - quite impressed by that.
We took a look over the scenarios and the scoring sheet; we were not so impressed by that - they were using the much hated Massacre system.. So after a bite to eat, and some lively debates about rules we normally let slide in the club (such as how to do multiple combats correctly!) it was time to sleep... or try to. It so happens that our hotel hosted a seedy bar, which generated multiple conflicts during the night, and we were also disturbed by sirens down the street - there has been a shooting murder. In Victoria? W.T.F.

Saturday was a wonderful Spring morning (yes, the Winter Olympics start this week...), and boded well for the day's festivities....

I had elected to run my Penitent list (again), yes it has it's weaknesses, but it is pretty and fun, and I really don't care!

Cannoness, with multi-melta Celestians, in HF-Immolator
2 units of Arbites (5) in Rhinos.
10 battle Sisters (HF, FL, VSS with SB) in Rhino
2 units of 2 Penitent Engines
14 Sisters Repentia with Priest
Inquisitor with PW
Callidus Assassin

Game 1

Opponent - Ric Jesson - Guard.

Mission - Dawn of War; Primary - Annihilation, Secondary - Capture and Control

Ric set up first, strung out on his back edge with a few units held in reserve (I'll post pictures later), I deployed aggressively as I wanted to get into combat as soon as possible.
As you can imagine I took a lot of fire, but the game swung my way on turn 2. My Callidus Assassin popped out - next to his unit of 10 Rough Riders. She "flamed" 6 of them down (they passed their morale some how) but then she chopped the rest down in combat. The next turn she repositioned. On turn 4 she went after the psyker choir (and Primaris), shooting and killing them in a similar manner. Turn 4 she stumbles - charging into an infantry squad, she must have been tired... it took two turns to take them down! On turn 7 (yes, one finally went my way!), she cooked the crews of the 3 sentinels that had been a thorn in my side for most of the game.
For those of you at home keeping score - 120 pts of 2 wounds, T4, S4 chick took out 612 points of Guard.
Sweet!

Result - Primary - win, Secondary - tie.
Minor Victory - 17 battle points gained
If it had not been for the Assassin ripping through the back line it would have gone VERY differently. Ric was a very good sport about the whole thing, and his army was stunningly converted (it was one of my 3 favourites on the weekend).

Game 2

Opponent - James Allen - Ultramarines.

Mission - Spearhead; Primary - Capture and Control, Secondary - Big Game Hunt (kill most expensive unit).

Well this game did not start off well. As soon as I saw his list there was a problem. He was 2 points over. This did not seem to concern him, nor did the TO want to do anything about it (did not want to cause a "fuss"). What really got my goat was James was unrepentant about this... not a sign of contrition on his part (nor did he change his list over the rest of his games).
His list was VERY hard hitting - 2 Vindicators, LR with TH/SS termies, Sternguard in drop pod (with Librarian), 2 Tactical squads in Rhinos and Scout squad with Telion.
Well the game was over on turn 1... his Sternguard dropped in and flamed my Repentia (both these were our most expensive units). They dealt 18 wounds to a 17 wound unit. I did manage to run around and take out the two Vindicators, the terminators, and most of the Sternguard - sadly my Assassin (must have been pooched from game 1) failed to kill off the last of the Sternguard.

Result - Primary - loss, Secondary - loss.
Massacre!- 0 battle points gained
Horrible and controversial...

Game 3

Opponent - Scott James - Space Wolves.

Mission - Pitched Battle; Primary - Annihilation, Secondary - Center of the Table.

Good job there was no rule about unpainted models! Whilst James' army was beautifully converted, only 1 unit dogs had been "washed"... and I think that those were the only models that had been primed. This saddens me, especially when I've taken so long to paint my own army, often for people who can not appreciate the effort or the results. But I digress...

This game was interesting - a two-in-one type of game. The dogs did a good job forcing my units to commit to them (Rage rules), and bogging me down whilst they chipped away at me. Canis Wolfborne is a beast (!), and it took a lot to get rid of him (the Callidus did it in the end). The 3 units of Grey Hunters then did the mop up. In the end it was close, 11 KPs to 9, but due to the Massacre system that was enough, along with the Secondary, to give Scott the Massacre win.

Result - Primary - loss, Secondary - loss.
Massacre!- 0 battle points gained
If James' army had been painted he would have received a lot more points - it was a fun game, which I thought I had on turn 3, but the GHs were just too much for the little of my army that was left. It is games like this which remind me of why I despise the old GW Massacre system so much, and how systems like they have at OFCC, and at Conquest, are much better.

Game 4

Opponent - Stew Murray - Tau.

Mission - Spearhead; Primary - Seize Ground (4 objectives), Secondary - Assassination (Destroy enemy HQ).

This table had a LOT of terrain, with a bastion and barriers in the middle. I finally one a dice roll, and chose to go first - it was a deliberate move, I wanted to dominate the table. I set up aggressively with the Engines to either side of the bastion, and with the rest of my army split evenly behind them and to their flanks.
Stew chose to keep all his suits (3 identical elite units, plus the obligatory HQ), one (of his two) Hammerheads, and two 'fish mounted 6 man squads in reserve. I asked him to clearly state how they would be entering "all suits will deep strike" was his response. Cool I thought! This left him with one hammerhead, two Broadsides and two 6-man fire warrior squads to deploy. He deployed them in the farthest corner.
Turn 1 was pretty quiet - I think I just moved up my units, and his shooting was ineffectual. Turn 2 saw my Assassin turn up, she immediately went after the Broadsides, destroying both of them, and she also inflicted one glancing damage to the hammerhead - which immobilized it! I love my assassin... Stew pulled in his HQ and 2 units of suits on turn 2. When he walked his commander on the board edge (to go after my assassin) I questions the move. He said he had indicated that the HQ would walk on... O.K. And I must have misheard him (well I am 41 and decrepit!). One unit of suits came in at the "north" of the table, and did little damage to the Engines up there. The other came in "south" and engaged the repentia (thank you!). My next turn I wiped out both units in HtH. I also went after the troops that had been deployed initially - burning one away with a remaining engine (one had been destroyed by the immobilized hammerhead). Turn 4 I went after the remaining 6 man unit - immobilizing my Immolator 2" too short to burn them off with the Inferno cannon... The HQ deployed, and would have to do it on foot the next turn. My Assassin had been taken down by combined fire from the the fire warriors and the HQ. My battle sister squad went after the two transports and the hammerhead that had come in on Stew's 3rd turn. With some luck, and an Act of Faith, I was able to immobilize one of the 'fish. Stew's final unit that had been "delayed" in turn 2, can in again and again it mishap-ed - so I put in in difficult terrain (::evil::) - he made all 3 tests, right by my repentia (:: VERY evil::). Of course I wiped them out... My HQ shot (but did not break) the fire warriors sitting on one of the objectives (I was planted on two others, and one was up for grabs, though I contested it with a Rhino). Stew moved in to my deployment zone and took the objective from the Arbites.
Turn 6 I moved my sisters back to hold one objected, and booted their Rhino, that had been contesting it, over to the one I just lost. I made a HUGE mistake at this point. Instead of my HQ going after the lone fire warrior, who had pulled back from the objective, I went after the hammerhead, and wiffed. Stew punished that unit - taking them off the board, and as his warrior had moved up to the objective I could no longer contest that one. His hammerhead took out the SoB Rhino that had been contesting the one in my zone. Game over!

Result - Primary - tie, Secondary - loss.
Loss - 7 battle points gained

Trygon and Mawloc

2010-01-25T18:07:00.000-08:00

so back to the fun stuff...

These took about 2 hours to paint, I'll base them later when I have a few more tyranid models to do. I'm liking the look of the Codex so far, and look forward to trying out new combo's.
I'm sure I'll be one of about 50 Tyranid players at AdeptiCon!

Justice is Served...

2010-01-25T18:03:00.000-08:00

http://conquestgt.avalongamecon.com/sitebuilder/images/Seattle.html-5.png

Cheaters - Why do they do it?

2010-01-21T20:20:00.000-08:00

Well the short answer is because we let them...

Last weekend I played at the Conquest Seattle Slaughter; the first of the new GW Tournament Circuit. This happened to be my 30th GT since 1999 when I played my first at the same location (and on the same weekend IIRC).
This was the second year of this particular event, and by far a huge improvement over last year's. Yes, there were some "drama Llamas" out there over the club that had been scheduled to run it pulling out at the last minute (2 weeks "notice"), but the organizers pulled an excellent team together, and they worked on terrain for 2 weeks solid (one guy put in over 100 hours alone) and made the show work. I had a great time, and I look forward to next year's event (I'll blog my games when I have more energy).

Now those of you who read my blog (on the infrequent times I update it...) may recall last years write up and the shit-storm over the play-what-you-display issue. Now, I'll be the first to agree that this was not a breach of the rules per se. There is no such rule (well there is now!), but damn it was a thrashing of the spirit of our hobby, and as we English are fond of saying - it was not cricket (!).

The same guy was back this year. Predictably of course - he came second last year, and was gunning for a trip to Vegas. This is a going to be an on going problem with the way GW has designed this Circuit - everyone wants to kick ass... but I digress.

Once it was known he was playing there was a collective groan, and there was even a move to have him blocked from the event. We all knew going into the gaming room what his reputation was, and everyone pretty much dreaded a match up against him (I both dreaded and wanted one!). Well it turned out he played true to his nature. Comments about bad sportsmanship, whining when models were removed, slow play, pre-measurement - these were all in abundance all weekend. And lo and behold, at the end of day Sunday he walks off with the Overall Championship - and that treasured spot in Vegas.
Few applause, no hand shakes from enthusiastic buddies, no "well done mate!"...
So I hear a "WTF?" from you... yeah me too... I did not get to play him, and as all my games went to turn 5 or 6 I did not get chance to see the games. But others did... and they video taped it!

One of those videos can be found here, there is also a good commentary by the videographer here.

It is obvious from this footage that the player did cheat. You know what really got my goat about this? He scored 47/50 on Sportsmanship... yeah the same as ME. Me, who has won 4 GT Sportsmanship awards, who owns up to his mistakes openly, politely calls all his opponents on errors and scores his opponents fairly. FRAK.

So how did he get away with it - for all FIVE games. The opponents let him. Simple.
They. let. him.

Either they were scared of him (he is a big guy), or they did not want their scores affected by him sandbagging (chipmunking) them, or they were too stupid to realize the implications (which I doubt in this case). But either way, no one had the balls to stand up for what is right in the game - fair play.

Now some will argue that the Judges should have intervened. Well, firstly no one told them about it until after the fact. Secondly, note their role - Judges - not one of 3 Referees in a Soccer game, not one of 5 (?) in an NFL game looking for infractions, or even 3 in an NHL game. A Judge, who weighs evidence presented to them, and makes a decisions based on that evidence. Let's face it, in a room of 60 active tables, you can not have 60 "referees" watching the games. It is beholden upon the players to do something about it.

Complaining (even legitimately) after the fact is too late folks.

As a result of these videos, and player discussion, a tourney organizer has taken the bold step of banning the player in question. I applaud this, however, the Seattle GT has been sullied by this player (and I hope he gets beat down badly when he plays in Vegas, 'cos I know some of the guys who play at that level well, and they will NOT tolerate his BS!) two years in a row.

Will it ever recover its reputation as one of the best on the circuit? I played in the first 5 GTs that were held in Seattle, and of the first 20 or so I played in they were the best. I hope it does. But that will take a shift - a shift in the attitude of players; stand up for the hobby! A shift in organizer's attitudes - be willing to ban a bad player. And an education for this individual in the wrongness of what he has done to our hobby.

I hope I can be a part of all three of those "shifts".
Because I love this hobby.

current project...

2010-01-03T15:39:00.001-08:00

Something I'm working on for AdeptiCon

an OLD picture request!

2009-10-30T15:34:00.000-07:00

Just sharing my old Possessed for a fellow gamer...

World Wide Tournament - quick report

2009-09-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

So the 40K Radio WWT wrapped up yesterday; 3 games in 1 day. The WCP Club organized the ONLY Canadian event - quite shocked about that. a) They are traditionally a FB club, and b) there are a hell of a lot of clubs across Canada!
Twelve players signed up - mostly locals, but Jeff Everitt made the 5 hour drive from Kelowna on Friday to play.
I took my usual Space Wolves army; Venerable Dreadnought, Wolf Priest, WG battle Leader, 58 Blood Claws, 6 Grey Hunters (bleh), Wolf Scouts and an Exterminator (I'm going to miss that...).

Game 1 (Punch In)
Jeff Everitt! Jeff bought Eldar, pretty much as that was all he had left after his house burnt down earlier this summer...
Well, this should be a fun game - a shooty army, vs an HtH army on what was a jungle table for all intents and purposes! Modified kill points were going to be bad for me - with 3 Hqs vs his one (which happened to be Eldrad) I was theoretically already 6 points behind.
I deployed aggressively, Jeff very defensively. Not much happened in turn 1 (no line of sight!), on turn 2 my scouts came in, and I decided to use them to tie up his best HtH unit, Striking Scorpions, hopefully for a couple of turns. They failed miserably in shooting, and managed to wiff with their power weapons just as spectacularly. They did weather most for the return hits and passed their leadership test.
With lots of dancing around terrain I really did not get to grips with his army; the only exception as when Jeff bought up a unit of fire dragons to take out my Ven Dread. They failed miserably to do anything in shooting, but each having a meltabomb they were able to take it down when I charged. That proved to be the turning point of the game.
Result:
Minor Loss for the Wolves (8 battle points gained)

Game 2 (Lost in the Ustream)
For this scenario I got to play a "new" player - Mark Wakeham, and his Necrons. Necrons seem quite popular in 5e, and they are a pretty solid army. Shame they are tough to get top painting scores on!
This scenario was a simple Capture and Control one, with a twist - you got bonus VPs for teleporting a unit, and a scenario point for doing if EVERY turn!
Predictably Mark castled his forces in one corner and kept the Monolith in reserve. He spent the next 4 turns backing up and shooting me... it was getting a bit boring! I did take out his Destroyer squad, but my Scouts failed to account for the Tomb Spider. Oh, I also tried teleporting a Blood Claws unit (of 12) close to his lines on the first turn. I lost them in a mishap! The Monolith came in turn 3, and by turn 5 had pushed my Grey Hunters off my objective. Not getting into combat until turn 5 really hurt me...
Result:
Major Loss for the Wolves (3 battle points gained)

Game 3 (That's a Wrap)
For this game I drew Adam Sarophim, who I have played MANY times in the past. However, I've never played against his Tau army, which he has been running for the past couple of years.
This was a straight up objectives battle. I won the roll, and let Adam set up. His army was pretty balanced, the only annoying unit was going to be the Sniper Drones. My counter deployment was quite good, but I knew, again, I was going to have to slog it across a killing field...
I managed to take out the Hammerhead quite early in the game, and then it just came down to the slog. Have a couple of units pinned over the first couple of turns was tough to deal with, but a few units got in Adam's face, making them priority targets. Once I did get into combat (turn 4) results were predictable. At the end of turn 5 we were holding two objectives each, with the middle one contested by Adam.
Sadly I did not get a turn 6 (how often have I lost games on turn 7?!). The game was at the tipping point and one more turn would have given it to me - my Exterminator would have wiped one unit off an objective, and a almost full strength Blood Claws unit with Wolf Priest was 8" away from another... I probably could have taken the middle if it had gone to turn 7!
Result:
Tied game - 10 battle points gained.

Summary:
Not my best showing, but still lots of fun! The terrain was a bit sparse/homogeneous for a HtH army.
So my Wolves are now in semi-retirement; once Codex: Flavor-of-the-Month is out next year I'll probably bring them back - in the mean time I'll be adding some Terminators, a Land Raider, and reworking my Blood Claw units to fit the new Codex: Space Wolves out in weeks!
Of course the Exterminator is out of the army (::tears::), but it will find a new home (and new armour/guns!) in my Guard Army. I'll most likely make it a character/command tank.

Thanks to Dan Miner for putting on the event!

edit - haha , I forgot - I won Best Painted...

World Wide (ish) Tournament

2009-09-18T21:18:00.000-07:00

I'm off playing games tomorrow!
The local guys at WCP have organized a 40K tournament as part of the 40K Radio World Wide event. Sadly only 11 (yes ELEVEN) groups world-wide managed to organize anything. Quiet disappointing really...
I'll give you an update tomorrow evening (doubt I'll win the $1000 of product prize!), I'm having one last event with the "old" Space Wolves - and in particular my Leman Russ Exterminator.

Bloody hell, he's been painting!

2009-09-06T22:28:00.000-07:00

Obviously having a "resolution" is quite motivating!

The Malanthrope:
Old One Eye:

New (school) Year's resolution

2009-09-05T14:56:00.000-07:00

As the more observant among you may have noticed, I've not been posting much recently!

The new job, whilst fantastic (and fantastically well paid) is all consuming when it comes to my time. Hence the lack of project completion, actually the lack of project starts...

So a Resolution:

"I, Jason Dyer, of relatively sound body, and completely lacking in a mind, do hereby promise (::cough cough::) that I will complete the following projects, in order, before starting on anything new":

- Tyranids - Old One Eye Scratch build, Forgeworld Malanthrope (dipping to match the rest of my 7000 pts of 'nids)
- Grey Knights - ~4000 pts of GKs and GKTs (quick painting method and dipping!)
- 17 Assassins - 6x Callidus, 6x Vindicare, 5x Eversor
- War of the Ring - complete basing my Uruk-hai, 2 Trolls, 2 trays of scouts, characters, captains and 12 Warg Riders.
- Space Hulk - paint and convert Terminators to match my Deathwatch Space Marine Army, paint genestealers to match my horde.
- 12 regular genestealers

Wish me luck, and watch me burn!

Back from....

2009-07-13T10:38:00.000-07:00

... Winnipeg, and the "dead" I guess.
Has it really been 10 weeks since my last post? Well, like any act of neglect I'm going to be making it up to you!

If has been a crazy summer so far, the new job has been all consuming, even though I'm officially only working 2 days per week until August. My parents are visiting from the UK and have been dealing with Landing as Canadian Residents, and frankly I've enjoyed being a slug-butt!

After missing out on the Vancouver Astromomi-Con, I was able to attend the Winnipeg version this past weekend. Lots of fun was had.
I'll get started on the batreps from the weekend asap.

All Quiet on the West[ern] Front (Coast)

2009-04-30T08:40:00.001-07:00

Post AdeptiCon I have been busy with a number of things:

writing up the [bloody] BatReps!
rebuilding the army courtesy of United Airlines' "wasn't it fun to build the first time!" program
working on the first 1500 points of my Isengard force for War of the Ring
I've had to pull out of Astronomi-Con Vancouver - family scheduling commitments - which is a sad thing for me to do as it is one the of the highlights of the gaming calender north of the border.
I've also been interviewing for a new job - I've actually had FIVE interviews for the position! This started on the last day of AdeptiCon when the recruiting company flew me home. My last interview is in a couple of hours...

I'll get back to model making this weekend, and if I get the new job, I'll be buying myself a SWEET gift from Forgeworld!

Post AdeptiCon - Part 3

2009-04-10T09:44:00.000-07:00

Day 3... getting tough to keep going...

Warhammer 40k Championships.

Game 1

Opponent - Jon "yakface" Regul - Tau.

Mission - Annihilation; Primary - Annihilation, Secondary - VPs, Tertiary - Eliminate Troops.

OK... so I get one of the best rules "lawyers", and he is playing Tau. So I won't be cheating... hehehe.
The best shooting army in the game, vs. my HtH beasts. Oh, this was going to hurt!

I let Jon set up first - I want to see where he was going (I guessed either way I was screwed, but at least this way I could maybe counter some of his deployment. I could always seize the first turn.
I failed to take the first turn... Jon quickly dispatched two Penitent Engines.
Turn 2 saw my Arcoflagellents and remaining Engines moving up. I had to try to get something into HtH as quickly as possible...
The Tau ventured forward and I committed my celestians to the battle - they had to be capable of doing something!
Not much it seems... other than attracting a LOT of Tau fire power and dieing...
Turn 4 would finally see some combat (yes, all my other HtH units had been wiped out...).
Yes! Lost combat to 5 Firewarriors - TWICE.... bloody hell... Eventually she beat the warriors, but succumbed to the waiting circle of Kroot.
Mercifully the game would end on turn 5... I think I had one Inquisitor left - he hid all game.

Result - Primary - loss, Secondary - loss, Tertiary - ... loss! ZERO points gained.
Ouch.... Jon was a lot of fun to play; just the wrong match up for me and mine!

Game 2

Opponent - Jason Bentley -Space Marines

Mission - Unplanned Assault; Primary - unknown, Secondary - VPs, Tertiary - Eliminate HQs.

I like this mission - we find out on turn 4 what we are fighting for Table Quarters, Seize Ground (terrain), or Field of Battle.

The marines set up first.
The rest of the army was destined to come on on turn 1...
I countered with one unit and transport.
Turn 1 saw some inconsequential shotting from the marines (plus turn 1 was a night fight), and then I bought my army on.
So did you notice it? Yep, he forgot to bring his army on during his first turn. OMFG!
To be honest I have no idea what this means in rules terms, but I did not want to even contemplate asking the judges, just in case they came up with "destroyed!".
We decided that they should now come on as Reserves. Of course, this could potentially doom his game plan as I out numbered him for most of the game.
He did manage to get a Vindicator and Devastator Squad on in turn 2.
My Penitent Engines had rushed forward and after dealing with one of the tactical squads, they were engaged by the other, in the woods. This battle would last for the majority of the game.
My Immolator moved up to the woods, to track down anything that wanted to come near the combat - and promptly immobilized itself...
Turn 4 was good to the Marines... the Landraider arrived! An attack bike showed up, but I killed it off with 2 storm bolter shots from an Arbite Rhino!!
My Arco's went after the Vindicator (which has been pummeling the Sisters Repentia in the woods), and the Repentia finally Raged and ran towards the Landraider.
Turn 5, and the final unit of marines shows up - jump troops! The assault terminator squad, with Cassius, jumps out of the Landraider and heads towards my Celestians and Palantine.
The Sisters Repentia get stuck into the Landraider and wreck it (woot!), the Celestians stand up to the terminators (Spirit of the Martyr, and Preferred Enemy really do help!)
Turn 6 I had to try to deal with the jump pack troops that were going to deny me my right table quarter, but that was not going to work out.
The Repentia came over to help deal with the terminators, but in the end Cassius survived, denying me both the tertiary objective and one of my table quarters!
Result - Primary - tie, Secondary - tie, Tertiary - tie. Plus all 3 Tactical Bonuses. 20 points gained.
Hard fought game. I'm not sure how different it would have been if the marines had come on on turn one like they were supposed to. But that is part of the game - you have to remember which units are coming on how, and when. I really should check the rule on that mistake.

Game 3

Opponent - Chuck Bethea - Daemons of Chaos (Nurgle).

Mission - Capture and Control; Primary - Objective Markers, Secondary - VPs, Tertiary - Control the Table.

Ah, daemons - so much fun! Chuck had one of the nicest Nurgle armies I've ever seen, and his painting score reflected this.

Chuck let me deploy first... I use my turn 1 to spread out a bit.
The Tallyman, a Soul Grinder, some plague bearers and two winged daemon Princes drop in...
Epidemius backs off from my penitent Engines...
My Repentia charged up the middle (with some nice Holy Rage rolls), and wiped out the unit of plague bearers. They'd need that cover to survive shooting from the Soul Grinder...
Didn't help much! But at least I failed my moral check and got to charge.
The DP went after my two Engines, that combat would last a couple of turns more...
Turn 3 saw some Plague Bearers come in behind my lines, so I needed to deal with them ASAP, and my other two engines went toe-to-slime with the Greater Daemon - eventually beating him down.
Turn 3 saw more Plague bearers come in, and need to be dealt with. As well as the Soul Grinder going over to help out the Greater Daemon.
Turn 4 - I wanted Epidemius dead! I threw in my Battle Sister squad... the Penitent Engines finally went down, it would have been nice if they could have lasted one more round...
Turn 5 saw some ongoing combats...
Turn 6 did not resolve much...
Game end.

Result - Primary - win, Secondary - tie, Tertiary - tie. Plus one Tactical Bonus.13 points gained.
A good hard fought game! This is the first time I've done well against daemons in a regular game - I think my extra-choppy units were well worth the points.

Here are the results. Not so great - I really stunk on the quiz, and I'm betting I lost a sportsmanship point from game 2, when I did not allow him to just walk on after messing up his turn one deployment (yeah, like I'm going to give up an immediate assault, on his terms!).

Post AdeptiCon - Part 2

2009-04-09T09:43:00.000-07:00

Day 2 - the Team Event!

The team event is why the Geeks came to AdeptiCon. A moment of madness at the OFCC last August had Eric, Trent and myself planning our armies - we soon has Rob involved. With Trent's work commitments he sadly had to drop out, but we were very fortunate to find a replacement player. Mitch Tucker (Elthniar) stepped up with an excellent Eldar list to help us out.

Looking around the room I was not sure what to make of the event. Obliviously some people went to a lot of effort on their displays, some had lots of fun with theme, some just stayed with power/WAAC concept from the Gladiator event!
This one made me laugh (you seeing this John?!)
Warhammer 40K National Team Tournament.

Game 1

Opponent - Rocky Mountain Cavaliers (Damien Garcia and Daniel Lemier) - White Scars

Mission - A Breakfast of Shrapnel; Primary - Control Objective Markers, Secondary - Kill Points.

Eric (Daemonhunters) and I opted NOT to use our Command Counters this game.

We set up first - the plan was to protect the Inquisitional Retinue for as long as possible...
And sit on objectives as long as we needed to.
The Cavaliers chose not to Outflank, or deploy anything. On turn one they came on in a concentrated "left hook". Strangely they did the same on the other table (vs. Rob (Marines) and Mitch's Eldar)... did they have a plan???
Yes, those are all bikes! Ones that look like Sammael's Jetbike were in fact Attack bikes. Oh, and Kor'sarro Khan is buried in there somewhere! They immediately took a turbo-boost move to saturate that corner. I figured if they were allowed to do that again they would have the table in 3 turns, so I moved my two Penitent Engines (2 units) and a unit of Arbites up to slow them down, and make them fight for the objective.
The maneuver achieved this goal, but I'm sure Eric thought I was nuts "sacrificing" the Engines!
Eric's shooting picked away at the more central unit, but we really could not do that much damage with the 3+ save. Eric forgot to roll for his GK Termies on turn 2...
Turn 3 saw greater success. For them... The Arbites were finally dealt with...
And the bikes started to use the classic "bull horn" move to envelope our forces.
Eric's Termies showed up on turn 5... close to the objective.
Lots more bike movement this turn, and plenty of HtH; IIRC the Repentia went on their monthly rampage and attacked the bikes after failing a Ld test from shooting (I kill off the Mistress sometimes to allow this to happen!)
Oddly my Arbites could not stand up to Khan...
Game ended after turn 5...

Result - Primary - Tie, Secondary - Loss. 7 (?) battle points gained.
Well, I know we did "OK", but having lost my record sheet from the Team event I'd don't know exactly how we did!
These guys were lots of fun. they went onto win the Best Imperial Theme Award.

Game 2

Opponent - Opposing Force (Jeremy and Michael) - Nurgle CSM

Mission - The Process of Denial; Primary - Control table Quarters, Secondary - Kill most expensive unit, Tertiary - Kill Points.

So these were the guys with the amazing display (sorry no photos!) - 4 Nurgle armies, themes boards... the two guys who Rob and I faced off against had identical lists.

We got to set up first...
Their deployment was rather conservative, given the primary objective (I was surprised when they did not mingle their troop units!). The two winged princess (one had rather small wings...) were obviously placed for a purpose.
Turns one and two see a little bit of dancing around, but no major moves by either side. In turn three I decide that my Penitents need to get stuck in, especially to deal with annoying Obliteraters, so I use my Arbites Rhinos (empty) as a shields.
For the previous turns my Repentia had been merrily skipping up the board and into the ruins. This little "jaunt" had attracted some attention from the foul minions of Nurgle. They beat the crap out of them with shooting! Whilst it may seem crazy to run them forward like this, I am never ceased to be amazed at how they scare the crap out of an opponent - if I'd got into HtH with multiple units there would have been some serious vehicular carnage at the least!
Rob had done some serious maneuvering - teleporting his Sternguard (Librarian's ability) to the left flank, and shooting one unit of marines up the right side. These now came into play in turn 4 as we headed towards game end.
The right flank got messy, with an addition unit of PMs coming in... and the combat not seeming to be able to be anything but a draw!
In the top right Rob continued to pin down 3 units of Plague Marines
In the middle he was in tough against a Daemon Prince.
To help out the left I sent the Palatine and Retinue over...
Rob's Marines succumbed in the middle, so my Arbites bravely stepped up...
On the right, my Arbites were charged by the other Daemon Prince...
Amazingly they would wound the Daemon Prince, and then he would completely fail to wound the Arbites!
In the bottom of 5 I lost a couple of guys, but they passed their Ld test!! Holy Crap - I stood up and beat a Daemon Prince!

Result - Primary - Win, Secondary - Tie, Tertiary - Loss.
What a hard fought battle! I think Rob and my armies worked well in concert. Guess who won the game for us? The Arbites!
The Celestians were a huge help on the left flank - a women's touch was all it needed.

Game 3

Opponent - Emperor's Grease Monkeys -Ultramarines

Mission - A Flood of Skulls; Primary - Objective Markers, Secondary - "Marked for Death". Tertiary - Recon.

I was paired with Mitch for this game.
The game was very odd - almost seemed to be played at a "staccato" pace. One of our opponents was a veteran player, the other (his brother I believe) was not...
I marked the bikes for death, and my Penitent Engines were duly marked also.
Turn 1 saw some early action. The bikes had turbo-boosted forward to I was able to engage in HtH, and a marine drop pod came in behind our lines.
Mitch has taken down the Landspeeder Storm early on, and now had to contend with the Scout that survived the ordeal. They proved to be a tough bunch!
My (now Immobilized) Penitent Engine was ticking away at the bikes, the Celestians came back to deal with the drop pod marines, and the Sisters Repentia were moving up on the left flank to anchor that side.
I don't really remember much else of the battle, other than Telion was a pain, I had a tough HtH battle with some assault marines in the ruins on the right (with my Celestians) - ultimately I lost that one IIRC. My Repentia ripped though a couple of marine units, and then started after objectives.
Nope - no recall and a lack of pictures!!!

I think we ended up with a tie across the board.

Result - Primary - tie, Secondary - tie, Tertiary - tie.
Not a bad game, not the best game. I think we were all flagging at that point - a quick dinner and a "Punch-In!" were definitely in order if we were going to survive the final round!

Game 4

Opponent - Trent and [sorry don't recall!] -Grey Knights and Imperial Guard

Mission - A Twilight of Ash and Ruin; Primary - Victory Points, Secondary - Control Objective Markers, Tertiary - Survival of the Fittest (HQs).

OK... so it was getting really late, I'd had a couple, and I was tired... yeah, so no pictures of this one...
Highlights.

both objectives failed to scatter on placing
they forgot to use the Callidus Assassin's "Word in Your Ear" (as I had for all my games during the Gladiator event.)
once the GKs had been dealt with it was slog across the board to deal with the 2 Leman Russ Battle tanks.
The hellhound was a tough nut to kill - I think it took the combined efforts of 4 units to finally get rid of it.
one Penitent Engine was tank shocked by a LRBT... I stood up to it, penetrated, and rolled a 6 - BOOM!
the engine then walked up to the other Leman Russ and pen-sixed that one too. The better (!) part was the explosion took out a number of guardsmen that were holding "our" objective. They failed their moral test from these wounds and fled. With the Engine being so close they continued to run off the table.
Rob was able to get a unit over there to secure it from any other unit taking it (not that they had much left...).
I took their objective with my Arbites, and Rob rolled half his force along their table edge and wiped out the dug-in guardsmen.

Result - Primary - win, Secondary - win, Tertiary - tie.
Hugely fun game! These guys, and the game they played, were what we were hoping for at the team event. It was a pleasure to play such fun opponents.

Overall thoughts:
In all the years I've been playing on the GT circuit this day has to be one of the highlights. The events was so well run, the idea well executed, and the general tone (10 Land raiders armies aside...) also good; I'm glad we signed up for this one.
Next year we will have a complete team. Having Mitch join us worked out so well, but with [our] Trent dropping we lost the theme of our army, and the drive to compete things like ours display.
I'm going to put this one down to a learning experience - we know now what is "expected" of us, and will step up next time.

Here are the Team results! NWGG came in... I dunno, bottom quarter?
We got burned on the Theme aspect (no display base, costumes, hand outs etc.). Next year...

Post AdeptiCon - Part 1

2009-04-08T10:45:00.000-07:00

Day zero... and I'm tired already!
My Penitent Engines did not do so well on the flight over and I had to completely rebuild them. I also had a fair bit of painting to do - my Throne of Judgment was only half done!
Eric showed up at about 5pm and we sat down to paint - he had a few models that needed finishing.
We had a good pub dinner at a local brew house later in the evening. Once Shelly, Ron and Frank showed we headed back there for desserts (and dinner for them!). I finally crashed at about 1am...

Up at 6am...

Event registration was supposed to start at 7am - we got down there at ~7:10 to be greeted by this:

Bloody hell! Crazy sods lining up this early. Eric decided he wanted out of the Gladiator event (really don't know why...) and he signed up for the Combat Patrol (smart man!).

After sorting out the first round of paperwork we headed of for a "quick" breakfast. Word of warning - if you go to AdeptiCon next year and want to eat (without walking a mile) plan plenty of time for the restaurant; it seats about 50 people!

Warhammer 40K Gladiator Tournament
"No Whining!"

9am - line up for event registration (again!) and get first round pairing. 9:20 am - pee myself as I face off against a Warhound Titan (I shall not whine, I shall not whine...). Frankly the Warhound was small potatoes. Reaver Titans, Tyranid Bioconstructs, Thunderhawk Gunships, Eldar flyer squadrons - it was a Forgeworld addicts paradise!

Game 1

Opponent - Matthew Fillebrown - Space Marines (really!)

Mission - Dancing in the Dark; Primary - Control Battlefield (scoring units in the center - each turn!), Secondary - Find the Enemy, Fix the Enemy (VPs), Tertiary - Disrupt Enemy Command & Control (kill the HQ).

So "other than" the Titan, Matthew was dropping two of the Deathstorm drop pods on my army. One of each type. The saving grace for me was the entire game was a night fight; given my almost total lack of shooting beyond 12" this could only help my game!
I went first, moved up and occupied some more space. On Matthew's turn he promptly dropped the 2 Deathstorm pods in my midst
Not much happened - IIRC my HQ Immolator lost its gun...

I decided at that point that I needed some retribution, and went after the Inquisitional Stormtroopers mounted in a Chimera. I made pretty short work of the vehicle (2 meltaguns!), but I could not pin the unit, and a charge was not possible.
Turn 2 was the "getting serious" turn... the Warhound (that could not see on turn 1) had stomped forward toward the middle of the table, so I moved up the Throne to engage (my best bet for taking it down!) . Matthew's Stormtroopers received support from a Dreadnought and the inquisitorial unit in a rhino.

Two drop pods of Tactical Marines also dropped in... The Warhound at this point had not done too much - I think I lost 2 Penitent Engines. The remaining engines, and the Throne dealt with the two drop pods in my deployment zone.

My brave Arbites jumped out of their transport to attempt to deal with the drop podding Marines. They would not last long...
The other drop pod marines squad went after the empty Immolator....
In the background (ie I forgot to take pictures...) the Throne was heading towards the Warhound - I took one void shield down with a multimelta shot. A Penitent Engine had also got into HtH with it, and taken a structure point off.
It now looked my Palantine and Retinue were going to be in tough against a LOT of marine attacks... I should have gone after marines and not the dreadnought!
This turn also saw the arrival of my Sisters Repentia (who I had held in reserve to avoid being shot at).
They promptly got double pie-plated and taken back off the table!
My HQ was amazing in HtH; they would survive 18 of 20 invulnerable saves they had to make!
With the center of the table being the primary objective, and neither of us having anything in there so far, now was the time to rush in...
My Throne was also about to get attacked, but I countered it with Arcoflagellents that had also been held in reserve.
The Throne stomped forward to engage the Warhound...

Boom!

After dealing with the one unit of marines, the Arco's then move forward to support the Arbites in taking out a unit that was sneaking towards the middle.
I rolled for game end - done!

Result - Primary - Tie, Secondary - Loss, Tertiary - Loss - 8 battle points gained.
Wow - I blew up a Titan! In the end neither of us managed to get into the middle of the table. Matthew had the barest of advantages in the secondary objective and neither of us killed the others HQ. I also gained 1 point for "Tactical Bonuses". Great game - lots of fun - now I could concentrate on fun gaming as I was out of the running!

Game 2

Opponent - Steve "Green Blow Fly" - Deathwing and Grey Knights (in a Thunderhawk...)

Mission - The Shortest Distance Between Two Points; Primary - Seize Ground, Secondary - Recon, Tertiary - The Biggest Target (kill it!).

Steve gave me the first turn...
Arbites in bunkers to weather the fire, units spreading out to make any Deepstriking difficult. Steve had declared Belial, 2 units of DW termies and the GK termies to be in the Thunderhawk. One unit of Termies to deepstrike in.
Turn 2 I spread out some more and a unit of termies duly drops in...
They lay waste to most of the Arco's... Retribution time!
Not much can stand up to 14 Sisters Repentia and a Preacher charging... I'll take the loss of 3 Repentia over a Terminator squad!

From here the game went down hill - not game wise, but in tone.
Steve flew his TH around pounding my units.
Now, with me not being that familiar with flyers, I kind of expected him to be straight up, and all knowing about how these things work - especially a Super-Heavy flyer. Frak no! He'd do a bombing run and then fly off the table. Pretty much denying me my (limited) shooting chances. I think he got the Bomb Pylons wrong too.
Then we hit the big issue - at the turn 5 he tried to drop off his models from the TH. Firstly I had to point out that he was now a skimmer - argument #1 - no, you can't fly 36" into the middle and drop off troops! #2 - yes, your entire model has to be on the table and >1' from my models. I set this up so it was impossible. That lead to pouting... In the end I backs off a bit and said the wings could hang OFF the table.
If this was not bad enough. #3 When models disembark some portion of the base as to be within 2" of the exit. As termie bases are 1.5" wide you can not go in 3 "ranks"- that took 10 minutes to explain! Then there was the whole coherency thing - he did not want to put a unit "behind" the TH (thus negating assault). He was so upset (!) when he had to break Belial off from one of the units.
After the fact, reading his rules and discussing it with the judges, he should have only been able to get 3 units out, not 4, as per the Super-heavy transport rules.

Result - Primary - Tie, Secondary - Loss, Tertiary - Tie - 9 battle points gained.
Wow, that sucked...

Game 3

Opponent - Lester Westmorland - Chaos Daemons

Mission - The Gift That Keeps On Giving ; Primary - Annihilation (modified), Secondary - Capture and Control, Tertiary - Hold the Field (table center).

We get a Vortex Grenade each (::evil snicker::)...

Les did what I did - he amped up his regular army for the Gladiator event. This was going to be fun!

Les let me go first (duh!). Set up was pretty limited...
I completely forgot to "play" the turn, and actually bought my army on in turn 2 (oops). Les dropped a few units in...
Turn 2 I shoot up papa Nurgle.
He then charges, and my "Spirit of the Martyr" keeps me alive!
Turn 3 I get involved in a bigger combat.
Turn 4 - My other Penitent Engines get to mix it up with a Soul Grinder, with mixed results, and the Bloodcrushers of Khorne join the fray.
The lone Penitent Engine finally finished off the last Bloodcrusher and Skulltaker..
Game ended on turn 5...

Result - Primary - Win, Secondary - Loss, Tertiary - Tie - 20 battle points gained.
Woot! I got my win!! LOADS of fun! I ended up winning on mKPs about 13-5. I also gained a tactical bonus for killing his 2 HQs.

Game 4

Opponent - Jeff Miller -Chaos Space Marines

Mission - The Final Battle; Primary - Cleanse, Secondary - Fragmentary Orders (we'd find out after 45mins!), Tertiary - Attrition (unit "marked for death" - worth double VPs).

I got to set up first...
The plaguereaper of Nurgle was going to be annoying...
Well this game became a big mass of close combat, straight from turn 1...
Which continued into my turn 2...
Ah, some shooting! I really hate AP3 bolters....
Combat was getting really messy!
Time to mop-up with some shooting of my own...
Bottom of turn 4 was big for Jeff - he started to control table quarters.
You may have noticed the lack of Arcoflagellents and Sisters Repentia in these picture. Well, let me tell you that there is nothing interesting in seeing them get pus cannoned off the table in 3 turns!
I have to give the Repentia credit - they do attract a LOT of fire power - maybe there is something in 31 Eviserator attacks on the charge - rerolling misses....

Game ended after 6 turns.

Result - Primary - Loss, Secondary - Loss, Tertiary - Win - 7 battle points gained.
Well that was a fun, hard fought game. If it was not for the pus-cannon on the Plaguereaper I think I would have had it.

Overall thoughts:
Well I was expecting a certain level of "cheese" for the Gladiator event, but it was way more that that! Whilst I respect, and applaud, the AdeptiCon organizers for doing this event I think the "spirit" has been lost. In talking with one of them on the way to Burger King to grab food (we finished at 10:30pm, and everything had closed down - thanks for saving me from starvation!). The original intent was to allow those cool FW models in that a few people have collected. Now with the rise of Apocalypse everyone and their dog seems to have a superheavy or a titan. I think that there were 5 Reavers on tables...
Hopefully next year some limitations will be put in place; I'd suggest limiting structure points to 3 for any one model, and maybe a limited total.
*Edit - a quick update - I've noticed that the AWC Forum has a great thread about this issue.
Would I play again? Not sure... I'm not really into power gaming. It was fun to go up against these models, but it was nothing new for me - I play Apoc games most Friday nights, and at ~7000 points. If I do it again next year (and yes, I am going back!) I'll take something to counter the Titans more effectively.

Here are the results! I placed 80th... moving on up next year!

New Home!

2009-04-08T08:55:00.000-07:00

Well blogspot.com is now the official home of "Doc's Projects"!
I've given up on the other site and will only continue my blog here.

Happy reading guys!

Back from AdeptiCon...

2009-04-06T08:50:00.000-07:00

... weary (arrived home at 1am) after having played 11 intense games in 3 days.
I'll start on the blog tomorrow, but don't expect too much until the end of the week - I do have a job!
Already working on next year's team event, and the Gladiator if I'm brave enough to face that again...

Road to AdeptiCon - Part 10

2009-04-01T14:58:00.000-07:00

Completing the team!

After long, and often furious, debate the three Ordos of the Inquisition have come to an agreement.

New allies were sought, and of the many possibilities, the choice was made.

Despite strong resistance from the Ordo Xenos, the Eldar will be joining our battle. Their extensive archaic knowledge, combined with the common hatred they share with the Imperium for many of our enemies makes them a fragile ally.

Praise the Emperor that the masses of the Imperium never know of what we are about to do...

Road to AdeptiCon - Part 9

2009-03-30T13:28:00.000-07:00

Getting down to the wire!
I have -
10 SoB, Palatine and Repentia Mistress to detail...
5 Celestians to highlight and detail
Inquisitor Lord Karamazov
bases
Display base.

Road to AdeptiCon - Part 8

2009-03-25T12:13:00.000-07:00

Stuck at home feeling under the weather today, so taking the chance to get some painting done...
Previously I have finished the Immolator...

and the Rhino for my Sisters

Road to AdeptiCon - Part 7

2009-03-22T12:11:00.000-07:00

Arbite rhinos are done...

Had some fun learning new techniques for the weathering of the dozer blades - thank you Forgeworld!

Road to AdeptiCon - Part 6

2009-03-21T07:57:00.000-07:00

Painting continues at a frenzied pace...
The Sisters Repentia are complete now.

The Arbites Rhinos, and the Sisters Rhino and Immolator should be completed today. The Battle Sisters are base coated and washed, ready for highlighting. I'm going to take advantage of today's good weather to assemble and prime the extra models I need for the Gladiator army.

Road to AdeptiCon - Part 5

2009-03-19T13:45:00.000-07:00

a change of plans....
[look, Eric just pooped himself!]

So whilst painting is coming along nicely (I'm just taking a break from 2 hours of painting red on Sisters Repentia), I feel that my initial goal for AdeptiCon was unrealistic. I was planning on using the Sisters army for both the Team and the Individual events, and building a "Deathwatch" army for the Gladiator (and oh, what a sweet army it would have been...). The Marines just ain't gonna happen!

So I'll be adding some units to the Sisters army to bring it up to speed (about 3rd gear...) for the Gladiator event.

The Marines will have to sit and wait until June - Astronomi-Con Vancouver. Even with their new composition scoring system I think I can still pull out an 18/20 with a bloody mean list.

War of the Ring, or "the Rise of Isengard!"

2009-03-08T13:40:00.000-07:00

Games Workshop are finally releasing the rules that long time LotR SBG players have been waiting for - War of the Ring. This will be a mass battle version of the game, with blocks of troops moving and fighting in a new way (a bit of 40K, an bit of Warmaster, lots of Tolkien and death!).
Between layers of paint on my AdeptiCon projects I have been converting this (a Golden Daemon entry):

To this:

Lots of work to be done still!

a brief distraction

2009-03-07T13:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I headed down to the GW Surrey battle bunker. They were holding the final Hall of Heroes tournament for the 2008/09 season. I was looking forward to catching up with a few friends that I'd not seen in a while and battling with 2000 points of my Wolves.

I took a Wolf Priest, Wolf Lord, Ven Dread, two full size units of Blood Claws, one small unit in a Rhino, minimum Grey Hunters, Wolf Scouts, Exterminator, a three-Las Predator and two Land Speeders with Assault Cannon/Heavy bolter. Terrain as a bit sparse, so I was concerned about my vulnerability to mass fire.

Game 1
Opponent - Kyle – Imperial Guard
Mission – Annihilation (Primary), Breakthrough (Secondary), Deployment - Pitched Battle

Well this table bought my fears to life... not only was I facing guard with THREE Leman Russ Battle Tanks, and THREE Hellhounds, there was almost NO cover down the middle of the table! Kyle got to set up (and go) first - I wanted to see what he was going to do with his troops on the back board edge. He pretty much kept them forward, and left me a few gaps for my scouts to come in. Hopefully I would be able to exploit and/or widen those gaps. The first three turns were bloody for me... I did very little damage, on the other hand Kyle ripped both my blood claw squads to pieces with battle cannon fire, and very cleverly managed to kill my scouts by blocking their deployment as they came in from reserve on turn 2.
Turn 4 I started to get stuck in - an immobilized speeder, that ended up surviving 3 rounds of Hellhound pounding, forced his mortars to go to ground, and then on turn 4 made them flee from the table. A unit of annoying lascannons was finally dealt with by the Exterminator, one Leman Russ was destroyed, and other one stunned. I also got to clear out a couple of his smaller "sacrificial" units.
After turn 5 Kyle rolled for the end of game... done!

Result - Space Wolves Victory! 11 battle points gained.
I won the primary objective (7KPs to 6), and the secondary was tied (neither of us was able to get to the other's deployment zone). A 6th turn could have spelled doom for me, so I was pretty happy to pull the win out. I found the use of 3 LRBTs and 3 Hellhounds a bit excessive, but with the current Guard codex they really need to bump up the armour at 2000 points!

Game 2
Opponent - Adrian – Necrons
Mission – Capture and Control (Primary), Sharpshooters (Secondary), Deployment - Spearhead.

Ah Necrons... only the 4th time I'd ever faced them! Sharpshooters would make the game interesting; you receive a point for each time you cause 25% casualties from shooting, whether the unit pass/fail/is fearless.
Adrian bought two Lords with Res' Orbs, two full size Necron Warrior units, a unit of 5 Immortals, a unit of 3 Wraiths, unit of 3 destroyers... and two Monoliths. With four potential las cannon shots per turn I was hopeful I could take the 'liths down. This was raised when Adrian chose to keep one in reserve, along with one Warrior squad/Lord.
I managed to seize the initiative and with my first round of shooting took the wraiths, immortals and destroyers down enough to cause leadership checks. The WBB rolls would prove to be a disadvantage in this scenario for the Necrons. I was racking up secondary mission points fast! By turn 2 I had taken down the Destroyers, one Wraith and immobilized the Monolith on the table; I'd also racked up a few more "sniper" points and was about to take down the Immortals. I also got my scouts in close to his objective. They won combat, but could not break the unit; it would have been sweet to make them run off the board freeing up the objective! Damn Ld10.
Adrian got his second 'lith in and dumped it right onto my tanks! The warriors also arrived, but due to the scatter they came in through the immobilized 'lith in the middle of the table.
I managed to immobilize and wreck the deeps striking monolith with all four lascannons opening up on it. Apparently that messed with Adrian's plan a little! I also finally destroyed the Wraiths, which made it impossible for him to win the Primary objective. There were two rounds of HtH in the shadow of the Monolith, with the Necrons in both cases being pulled through the 'lith.

Result - Space Wolves Victory! 11 battle points gained.
The primary was tied, and I took the secondary 8-5. The game "winner" for the Necrons was the scouts battle, loosing a power weapon due to a shooting phase plasma pistol over heat (squad has not been reconfigured for the 5e casualty rules) hurt my HtH, and the Lord taking away all charge bonuses also cut down the attacks I could do. Also Ld 10 is not too shabby! The two monoliths were a bit annoying, but other than that the list was pretty soft.

Game 3
Opponent - Steve – Chaos Space Marines
Mission – Seize Ground (Primary), No Quarter Gained (secondary), Deployment - Pitched Battle (with Night Fight the whole game!).

I've played Steve before and he had a terrifying Eldar army back then, When I saw him pull out a winged Daemon Prince I immediately thought I was going to face a Daemon army... followed by "oh, crap...".
This time he had a nicely balanced force! CC Daemon Prince, two Autocannon/Lascannon Predators, two units of terminators, daemon pack, Chosen, 2 Obliterators and 3 units of CSM mounted in Rhinos.
I allowed Steve to set up first, hoping to seize turn 1... which of course I failed to do. We had set up the objective counters in such a way that we would be fighting a lot of HtH in the middle of the table.
Battle went pretty much to plan - Steve refused to charge my Wolves as my Counter Attack would give me more PW attacks that if I charged! He relied heavily of plasma and melta weapons to thin my numbers. His DP lasted all of one charge. The two squads of terminators about the same. The real thorn was the daemon pack and a late coming CSM unit. In the end Steve held one objective, two were contested and the final one was uncontested. Steve also held one table quarter.

Result - Space Wolves Loss. 5 battle points gained.

Pretty good day's gaming! Two wins is always a good thing.
I also walked away with Best Appearance. I may get high enough in the HoH rankings to get an invite to the GT...

2009-02-25T13:38:00.000-08:00

Arbites are finished...

I'll start on the vehicles and probably the Sisters Repentia next.

Road to AdeptiCon - Part 3

2009-02-23T13:36:00.000-08:00

Holy Purity Seals!

Well the Penitents are done... if I'd realized that there were ~30 purity seals on each one I'd have thought twice about painting 4 of the things!

back to the Arbites....

slow, slow, slow...

2009-02-13T13:35:00.000-08:00

Between battling my kids getting sick, my wife's crazy trial schedule and then me getting sick I've not made much tangible progress these past 2 weeks. The Penitent Engines are taking up SO much time it beggars belief. Thank goodness I've only got 4 of them - no bloody way I'll be doing more than that! Hopefully I will get the Engines and the Arbites finished this weekend.

My SoB paint scheme is going to need a rethink. Originally they were going to be in bone armour, but Eric has decided that he does not want to do his GKs in bone (I was using the SoB to tie in with his army, and the black Arbites to tie in with Rob's Deathwatch). I may go with a gun metal based scheme...

Edit - Eric tells me that the bone armour for his models is back on! He sent me a w.i.p. picture and I think they will be rather sharp - better than boring gun metal! We are still looking for out 4th team member. Trent had to drop out due to work commitments.

Road to AdeptiCon - Part 2

2009-01-29T13:34:00.000-08:00

First unit painted! I've been a bit slow this past two weeks; ConQuestNW and work really messed with my painting schedule. The Penitent Engines are coming along nicely, and I'll start work on the Arbites this week to be done in parallel (to be frank the Penitent Engines are going to take a while - they are quite complex!).
But for now, here are the Arco-flagellates...

GTs... so what does the future hold?

2009-01-26T13:33:00.000-08:00

So after the events of the ConQuestNW Seattle GT I have been doing a fair bit of thinking about how they need to improve and my subsequent place in them.

The event itself was VERY well run; the group that took over (The Fallen) at 2 week's notice did an excellent job in running two different gaming systems. Props to them.
The terrain for gaming was not bad, but it was a little "thin"; stores stepped up to help out on this and they gave pretty much everything they had.
The prize support was astounding - the winners walked away with Forge World models, Citadel Battle tables and army boxes. Trophies were pretty sweet too!
The venue is excellent - just off I5, and cheapish accommodation.

So what needs to be improved?

Terrain - with a year's notice until the next one, and the dozen or so GW stores in the area chipping in, this should not be an issue.
Composition - I truly think that without a composition system the GT will be nothing more than a "posh" 'Ard Boyz event. Playing to win is fine, but with the GT it is about the hobby. Unlike the 'Ard Boyz there are sportsmanship scores, and appearance points... the 'Ard Boys is about winning, the GT is about celebrating the hobby and having fun. How much fun can it be to get double Lashed into 2 Vindicator cannon shots? And then get assaulted but a squad of lightening claw terminators. Wow, great tactical thinking there guys... Come up with something the gaming community did not work out the same day as the CSM Codex came out! There are plenty of composition scoring structures out there, one such as Astronomi-Con's could be adapted for the 1850 point game.
Painting - have the judges use a lighting source - some spots of the room were under 12W bulbs... or it felt like that! Also, make it clear that you MUST display the army you are playing with; the WHOLE army (have players put their list next to their army for verification).
Army list - have them checked... yes I appreciate that this is a lot of work. Astro' (these guys lead the way don't they!) give bonus points to players who get their list in 2 weeks before hand. I'd get my list in for 5 extra points! Playing 3 lists that had errors in them (to the advantage of the owner) is pretty galling...

Another method is the way GW-Canada did it for the last few years of their GT/Conflict system. After round 1 have the players exchange army lists (and codexes). If your list is found to be incorrect you forfeit that game. Your opponent then signs off on the list if it OK. In the event that signature was put on an invalid list you BOTH loose your battle points... all of them! Of course GW really never enforced this (when do they ever?) as at the last Vancouver event I played a Tau player who was allowed to continue with his army even though he had no battlesuit as Commander... I was told this AFTER we had set up!

Mid-way scores - the organizers made the mistake of publishing the halfway results at the beginning of day one. These included the painting scores for SOME of the players. At best pointless, at worst it would encourage beardy play amongst those near the top for the last 2 games.
Getting distracted - the score tabulators were constantly getting bugged at the end of the event (before the prizes were given out). Shame on the players who did this, but the scoring computers should have been set up in a separate area.
Preliminary results - don't ever, ever publish something preliminary! So if it turns out the winner was not the winner, how will you feel asking for the prizes back?

So where do I stand in all of this, will I be going back?

Yes, I'll be going back. However...
I'm pretty much tired of "martyring" myself to theme! From now on I'll be playing "by the rules" - if the event has no composition to talk of I'll be bringing a "winning" army. If composition is strong, I'll bring "themed" armies. Whilst the two are not mutually exclusive, I find when I stick to a story line the armies are weaker than the WAAC armies that others bring!

beaten... and slightly down...

2009-01-20T13:29:00.000-08:00

Well yesterday I returned from Seattle and the first ConQuestNW GT. The return of GT gaming to the Seattle area.

I have mixed feelings about the event itself, which I'll get to at the end of the batrep (this will be slightly truncated as I really did not take that many in-game pictures).

I took my Space Wolves, a reprise of the "Training Day" that made its debut in the same room 5 years ago. 53 Blood Claws... that got a few people's attention!

Game 1
Opponent - Russell Jordan – Eldar
Mission – Seize Ground, Deployment - Spearhead

[no picture; Avatar, Farseer, 2x 10 Pathfinders, 2x 6 Guardian Jet Bikes, 2x 20 Guardians, Wraithlord, 3 Warwalkers]

Result - Space Wolves Victory. 18 battle points gained.
Good game - Russell had an interesting mix of units that could have messed my army up badly, but being able to force one unit of this Pathfinders behind a terrain piece, and then getting to them on the first turn (rhino rush and shooting) was pretty big for me. Those Pathfinders can ruin your day rather quickly! On turn 2 my scouts came in, shot and assaulted his War Walkers and one of his units of guardians. I tied them up for the next few turns. After that it was a matter of shooting down the bikes (with my exterminator and land speeder), and getting stuck into the Avatar. In the end I think I held 3 objectives, and the other two were contested.

Game 2
Opponent - Wesley Knutsen – Space Marines (Salamanders)
Mission – Annihilation, Deployment - Spearhead

Result - Space Wolves Minor Loss. 8 battle points gained.
Well, I was pretty convinced I was going to get tabled by turn 3! I'd looked at Wesley's army earlier in the day and it gave me chills... Vulcan's ability to have all flamer and melta weapons count as twin-linked is huge. Luckily the Firestorm cannons are not included in that. Wes decided to deep strike his Land Speeders - I'm not sure if he was crazy, or being nice to me (when they came in they deviated, and were destroyed on the Mishap Table...). I managed to destroy one of the Land Raiders with my small Blood Claw unit, and take out the Attack Bikes with my scouts. My dreadnought took an ungodly amount of fire from Land Raiders and various other weapon systems, but after loosing both weapons and being immobilized it was still alive at the end of the game! We ended up with the Kill Points being 7-5. Pretty close for what I was up against. Wes told me the next day that I had given him his toughest fight of the event. If there has been a Favorite Player ballot (they took it out this year) Wes would have got my vote.

Game 3
Opponent - Ivan Neering – Orks
Mission – Seize Ground, Deployment - Pitched Battle

[no pictures; 8 nob bikers, 5 meganobs, truck, 30 shoota boyz, 30 slugga boyz, Ghazghkull, Warboss, 15 lootas 3 Zzap guns]

Result - Space Wolves Minor Loss. 9 battle points gained.
So this looked ugly from the get go... I was able to get the first turn and wreck Ghazghkull's Truck with my first shot; luckily, due to Ivan's deployment, they had to come out the back of the truck and pretty much started on the back edge. I could ignore them for the next couple of turns... Using my Exterminator I concentrated on the Lootas, slowly picking them apart. The bikes were going to be the BIG problem. 8 Nob bikers, with Cyborg bodies, 4 power klaws, and a painboy (that is 530 points if your were wondering), where going to be hard to kill. Well, I figured 30 blood claws and 2 HQs could do the job. Man was I wrong! I think I managed to kill 3 out of the unit, and with Ghazghkull running across the table as fas as his fat legs could take him, he was in combat pretty quickly. That turned the game for Ivan. His orks boyz were pretty much not part of the game - I broke one unit, and tied up another for a couple of turns. At the end of the game I think we had 2 objectives each. We had to go to Victory Points to decide the winner. Ivan had MANY more than I did!
Whilst I enjoyed the game, this is where my doubts about the tourney started to creep in. I thought Ivan's list was rather "un-orky"; too much dependence upon the big units and really not that many ork boyz.

Game 4
Opponent - Zen Zheng – Space Marines
Mission – Capture and Control, Deployment - Pitched Battle

Result - Space Wolves Minor Loss. 8 battle points gained.
So here was a marine army - with only 2 troops choices... one tactical and one scout unit. This was also my first chance to see the Thunderfire Cannon in action. Zen threw me from turn one - he only deployed the Landraider, the Thunderfire Cannon and the terminators across the back board edge, presumably protecting them from my scouts. I got to go first and immobilized and stunned his Landraider with my first shots. His Ironclad Dreadnought dropped in near my objective on his first turn, but did very little. I managed to destroying a couple of turn later. My scouts came in and went after his terminators - pretty suicidal, but I wanted to try to tie them up for a while; this they succeeded in doing, but they could not last too long. Pretty much took the termies out of the game though. The real pain in my a$$ was the Thunderfire Cannon - it's accuracy is scary and 4 blast shots at Str 6 can do a lot of damage. It won the game for Zen - knocking 2 of my units off the objective in my deployment zone. With his Vanguard dropping in on turn 3, and tying up one of my squads for a turn, this allowed his command squad to get into my deployment zone and take the objective. The homing beacon on the dreadnought drop pod also allowed his Land Speeders to come in on my side with out deviation - these ended up helping him immensely. Zen used his sniper (!) scouts to outflank and attempt to take his own objective. I was able to contest it with a rather thinned down Blood Claw unit that had weathered some long range shots from the terminators.

Game 5
Opponent - Ben Hanner – Black Templars
Mission – Annihilation, Deployment - Dawn of War

Result - Space Wolves Major Loss. 3 battle points gained.
This looked like it was going to be a good match up - Ben had bought four 10-man squads. Sure the two Vindicators would potentially be a pain in the ass, but I figured my scout would deal with at least one of them. Well, two things went wrong; firstly I thought I would be clever and assault BOTH of the Vindicators at the same time. I could not damage them! I really should have concentrated on blowing up one of them... The other issue was 15 Blood Claws could not take down 10 Crusaders; at all... I ended up loosing 7-2.

So why am I "slightly down"?
Well it is not from the "beating", I'm used to that. It is from the nature of the beating, and a few peripheral things.

of my 5 opponents 3 had incorrect or illegal lists... three...mathematical errors... geez...
the organizers published the results as "preliminary". Good job too... the data sheet was riddled with errors - right now the guy in second place has one more point than the Overall winner. Hmm... I think that needs fixing - but how to do it without being accused of shenanigans?!
"cheese" seemed to be the number one rule of the day. Given the richness of the background of 40K one would expect more story-driven army designs (and in the past these seemed to be the norm, especially in Seattle). But no, it was almost as though WAAC was a requirement. I blame GW. The 'Ard Boyz events have thrown out any semblance of composition. The current soft scoring system really does not give any latitude for rating the composition of your opponents army.

Not all armies were bad, this one for example was really cool, and did well in battle points - an example of how a themed army can succeed:
this one was VERY themed:

then you start to get into the ones that were obviously built to win:

5 10-man Khorne berserker units, and two Slaanesh Sorcerer Lords with Lash... pretty blatant! At least he had a 2CCW dreadnought... and the 'zerks were painted red...

Then you get to the creme-de-la-creme of fromage...

So this army won best painted - sweet... I thought the highlighting was rather rough, but it was still excellent. Let's look at the Composition...
Two Winged Daemon Princes with Lash of Submission
Two Vindicators
Two dreadnoughts, with Plasma Cannon and Missile Launcher
Two five man Noise Marine squads.
Five terminators in a Landraider
Defiler (Soul Grinder proxied)

This is a Slaanesh army? With 5 man units? Well at least he got the Lash in there.... and they are pink/purple...

Now we get to something that I find VERY offensive. Apparently the army above, was not the one the player used in his battles. He dropped the two dreadnoughts and slotted something else in. What that "something else" is has been debated; one would assume it was the same for all games...

[update; there is a picture on the GW Community website of the army in action, that shows a LOT more than 10 Noise Marines on the table! I also thought there was a ban on GW taking pictures of 40k/FB models with LotR parts on them...]

Really? Shouldn't you display the army you play? I think the rest of us did!

on the road

2009-01-16T13:28:00.000-08:00

I'll shortly be heading down to Seattle, to what I hope will be the Renaissance of the Seattle GT. ConQuestNW is putting on the first event of the GW Independent Tournament Circuit 2009.
Seattle is near and dear to my heart for 40K gaming; almost 10 year ago to the weekend I attended my first (and it was Seattle's first too) GT there. The second event was the year of my triumph in the Painting category, the third year was the closest I've come to winning overall (loosing the final game put an end to that!). Looking forward to 5 games of fun 40K gaming, catching up with old friends and hopefully making a few new ones.
I'll blog my experience on my return Monday afternoon; wish me luck!

5e... ripples keep on going...

2009-01-14T13:26:00.000-08:00

The 5th edition of 40K changed the game a lot.

I've been playing competitively since the birth of 3rd, and I can safely say that 5e is my favorite. I enjoy the mechanics, the pace, but most of all I enjoy the lack of "cheese". With an emphasis on troops being the "scoring" units in 5e there are a lot less terminator-spam armies out there, less uber-HQs, less min-maxing. All this is good. The down side is that this only really works when you play the lackluster GW scenarios from the book! Sure GW-Canada and GW USA (ie "GW-North America") have added some secondary mission objectives in, but you still need troops to "win"!

One of the best independent tournaments out there is Astronomi-Con. They have been running events for quite a few years now. Based out of Winnipeg, they have expanded to Toronto and Vancouver (with an ongoing desire to have one in Lenton). The part I enjoy about Astro' is the unique scenarios (I built a table for last year's Vancouver event). Each table has a unique objective, and many of these have special rules. Many Astro' scenarios do not require troops to "take" objectives". And here comes the ripple...
The Astro' organizers recently revamped their Composition chart.
In a past effort to head off the "cheese" of 3e/4e, and maintain the fun aspect of Astronomi-Con they built in a 20 point Composition score, with negative modifiers. Sure you could cheese-out, but you'd loose points for duplicates/triplicates, or maxing out a unit category. The worst list I saw on that scale would have been a -15! These composition score could be very important - most of the time Astro' winners take it my 1 or 2 points - often tie-breakers are needed to decide the winner! With 5e the organizers decided to take a long look at their system, both the scoring and the scenarios. Now the new chart is out and I'm not happy with some of the changes:

a 4th troop selection is a -1 modifier, 5th and 6th are -2 each

Huh? This a troops based 40K now - hopefully there will be a good balance of played games that does not "discriminate" against troop-light armies.

selections that fall outside their respective slots in the FOC don't get modifiers against them.

Chaos players of the world rejoice! Not only can you take twenty man squads, but you can take LARGE daemon squads that can be a sod to get off an objective and can also score - with no negative modifiers!

a second HQ is a -1 modifier.

makes sense - unless you are a Space Wolves player! Jeez, talk about "discrimination"! So I HAVE to take that 2nd HQ, my Codex tells me so, but I loose a composition point? What, you don't like Jervis?

So Astro' is going to change, I predict it will change a LOT; I think we will see less troops in a Space Marine Army (the option to Combat Squad will help them), more marine armies (!), and armies that will be a bit more "elite" than in past years; if you can't take an objective be sure-as-hell to be able to deny it to an enemy's troops! We will also see a "drop" in the composition scores - high (18+) have been the norm for many year. This drop will have advantages - first round match ups will be more balanced (based on composition), and the tie breakers may be easier too!

So will I be going to Astro-Vancouver 2009? Sure, abso-bloody-lutely!
Will I be changing my army list? Nope - I'll be there with 4 or 5 troops, as I always do; my current list is looking like a 17...

Victory in the City

2009-01-08T13:22:00.000-08:00

Well after the farce of trying to put on the Cities of Death event for the gen-pop, Mighty Miniatures offered the event up to the members of A-Club. Last Friday night 8 of us battled it out in the City.
I took 1250 point of Space Wolves; the obligatory 6 Grey Hunters (blah!), 6 Wolf Scouts, a Venerable Dreadnought (TL-Las/ML), a Wolf Priest, 2 Land Speeders (HB/AC) and 3 units of Blood Claws.

Round 1 - High Ground (hold the tallest building). I drew Nick Daniels and his Ultramarines for this one. As I'd chosen Preliminary Bombardment and Tank traps I was able to a) corral his Razorbacks in his deployment zone, and b) stun a couple of them for the first turn. After that is was pretty straight forward; I took the tall building (intact!) on turn 2 with my GHs, the it was a matter of getting into HtH, weathering the heavy weapons and having my scouts lay the smack down on Telion and his scout unit!
Result - Space Wolves Victory!

Round 2 - "Take and Hold" (occupy buildings) vs. JP Silke and his Chaos Space Marine army. JP had a NASTY list with 2 Defilers, three units of Plague Marines, and small unit of CSM (all mounted in Rhinos) and a winged Daemon Prince. I goofed on my tanks traps and allowed a small space for him to deploy 2 of his rhinos... they dutifully drove up towards a building I was occupying, containing a BC unit with meltagun, and were popped and both units destroyed in HtH. I consolidated back into the building after each vehicle and unit was destroyed! In the end I held 2 buildings, JP 1 and one was contested.
Result - Space Wolves Victory!

Round 3 - Fire Sweep (plant flags in buildings) vs. Raj and his orks. Now, Raj has been playing for all of a week; he was gifted the orks from a few BBR box sets, so showed with 9 deffkoptas, about 80 boys and a unit of nobz in mega-armour. Ah, an ork on "ork" battle - lets face it Blood Claws are just better orks! Well Raj has some horrible DT rolls and I had some good luck with shooting his 'koptas down, making his nobs flee (I killed 2 with the preliminary bombardment), and destroying a few of his mobs with sweeping advances after winning combat. Knowing VERY little about the current orks I did not realize that he could Waaagh! (I thought you needed a special upgrade for that) - I think this would have made a huge difference in the game. In the end I lost 9 models and wiped him off the board (a first for me - sorry Raj!)., I held 3 of the 5 buildings, and Raj none.
Result - Space Wolves Victory!

So in the end I went 3-0, had the highest painting score and took Best Overall. Not that makes much difference for the Canadian Hall of Heroes, but I'm now sitting 37th... I doubt I'll make the GT!

Thanks to Nick, Thor and the A-Club guys for a fun evening.

Road to AdeptiCon - Part 1

2009-01-02T13:20:00.000-08:00

As I've mentioned before I am attending (tickets paid for, flight purchased) AdeptiCon 2009 in Chicago this April. This is my first time there; whist I've been on the "GT" circuit for 10 seasons now, I've generally stuck with the GW run events. As more and more events are put on as "indys" (with GW support) I'm getting more confident that the caliber will be high. Highest of them all is AdeptiCon. Run by the Adeptus Windy City crew it has grown into an event of monstrous proportions - with THREE full days of tournament gaming, in three systems, including individual and team events. This time, as it is my first, I've signed up for Friday's Gladiator, Saturday's Team, and Sunday's Individual events. The Geeks (Trent, Rob, Eric and myself) will be teaming up with our "hybrid" composition of three Ordo's of the Inquisition vs. a 4-god Daemon army.

In the immortal words of the Joker... "So here we ... go"

I'm building the following:
1x Inquisitor Bolt Pistol (x1); Force Weapon (x1)
10x Adeptus Arbites
2x Rhino (Storm Bolter; Dozer Blade; Extra Armor; Searchlight; Smoke Launchers)
4x Penitent Engines
14x Sisters Repentia
1x Repentia Mistress
1x Priest with Eviscerator
6x Arco-Flagellants
10x Battle Sisters
1x Rhino
1x Palatine
4x Celestians
1x Immolator

Penitent Engines

Sisters

Arbites and Inquisitor

Arco Flagellents and Sisters Repentia

Gamer Apathy

2008-12-28T13:14:00.000-08:00

Frak me!
Man am I steamed... today was supposed to be the annual Cities if Death Tournament. I started running this event annually at [the now closed] Checkpoint Charlie's the year Cityfight came out. With the loss of Checkpoint, Thor at Mighty Miniatures, with the help of Nick Daniels, kindly agreed to continue the "tradition". I was pumped to be playing CoD again, as it has some great scenarios and 1250pts on a 4x4 makes for a fun 90 minute game (which means you can play 5 in a day easily).
This morning only TWO players show at at MM. After months of whining about the lack of tourneys going on locally, and then "demanding" we run more events, the locals don't show. WTF? Well that pretty much kills tournament gaming on a monthly basis in Vancouver; other than the mediocre GW events (one per system per quarter) no store is running regular events. Why should they bother? Players seem not to want to support their stores when they do put one on. Sure I don't go out monthly like I used too, but there are LOTS of other players who want events. Oh well, f**k 'em...

GW plastic Drop Pods - tips when assembling

2008-12-11T13:13:00.000-08:00

I'm on my 6th drop pod now... and I think I've finally worked out the best way to put the cool little blighters together! The GW instructions on paper are, as usual, quite vague (I really do think that they should have a "novice" do a test run before they write those instructions!). The GW-US on-line guide is pretty good, but I found it is missing a couple of pointers:

a lot of people have commented that their doors don't close all the way up. On the outer door panel piece, at the bottom (near the hinge) there is a rather heavy mold line. Scrape this off before assembly (or use a needle file after!) and the door will close perfectly (assuming you don't have the wings in the way...).
when assembling the restraint blocks there is one you need to pay particular attention to. On the frame with the pod's base on it you'll find the "Sergeant's restraint block" (Part No 4). The harnesses that are on the sprue with that block ONLY fit on that block (one of them has a skull on it). Make sure you get them the right way round...
in the on-line instructions, Stage 15, it states "... When you are happy with the position, glue it into place.". I think this is too vague! If you want the gun pivot to, well pivot, only apply glue to the end of the post, and the hole it will nest in.

Hope those help; I'll keep on updating this post as I find more problems.
If you have any more issues you have found, leave a comment, and I may add it to the main body of the post.

Resin bases - a Review: Dragon Forge Design

2008-12-09T13:11:00.000-08:00

So continuing my fetish for resin bases...
I took delivery this weeks of a smallish order of custom resin bases from Dragon Forge Design. Dragon Forge Design (DFD) is run by Jeff Wilhelm, a multiple Golden Daemon (and Slayer "Plaque") winner.

For full disclosure I know Jeff fairly well, whilst I'd not call him a "buddy" we have chatted on many occasions about painting, and more recently about his developing company.

Aside from producing bases for us mere mortals, Jeff is a free-lance-sculptor-for-hire type, with MANY years experience in the industry. Jeff also asked that I do a review of his bases.

As well as my "regular" AdeptiCon force (using the Back 2 base-ix bases), I'm working on a "Deathwatch" army for the Gladiator event (as there are no official Deathwatch rules I'm using the Space Marine Codex, with some self imposed limitations to keep in theme).My "other" Inquisitional armies are already mounted on a fairly standard gravel/wasteland-based scheme. Wanting to "match" these, but have something better than my dull basing, I took a good looks at DFD's products.
Over the past few year DFD have been building up fairly impressive range of square, round and lipped bases. The greatest advantage, for me, is the inclusion of bike, attack bike and 5" bases. It seems logical, but as far as I can tell DFD is the only company to offer a FULL range of base sizes for 40K.
Browsing the site I decided on the "Wasteland" theme; with a mixture of Desert Wasteland and Wasteland 2 I can integrate my new army into my existing forces without base "matching" issues. I duly ordered the following:

30x 25mm Urban Wasteland, 3x 60mm Wasteland II, 5x 40mm Urban Rubble Wasteland, 10x 24mm Desert Wasteland, and a Wasteland II "heroic" set.

DFD's bases arrived a short while later (the advantage of ordering from one's own continent!). They arrived neatly packed in zip lock bags (I recycle these for my eBay sales...) and in a sturdy cardboard box. No damage this time round!
As you can see there is almost no flashing. All the bases needed was a quick once around with a soft sanding pad. This took off the minor burrs with no effort. The bases then got the usual bath in warm soapy water, and primer was applied (Rust-oleum brand again). I won't waste bandwidth with a picture of them primered grey!

Inspecting the bases I could not find a SINGLE defect in casting - no air bubbles, no cracks, no blobbing... quite something! I don't know what Jeff's tricks are but I suspect he "tops" his molds with a glass sheet when the resin is curing, as the backs had no excess resin. I don't think he casts under pressure as I found a couple of air bubbles on the bottom; he may use a thin resin that had a long cure time - the lack of casting errors suggest this.

So, in summary:
Dragon Forge Designs
US based...
Near perfect selection of products in both round, round lipped and square.
Shipping is fixed cost- packaging is excellent, and I had no problems with damage
Payment via PayPal (even GW does this now, so it can't be all that bad!).
Resin quality is excellent, production quality is prefect - no defects in the ~60 bases I received.
No repetition in designs - 10 unique bases in a pack of 10...
Cost is good; 25mm bases run at US$1, 40mm at US$1.50. Whilst the per unit cost is higher, the fixed rate shipping compensates for this (so buy in bulk!). The quality of the bases is totally justified by the price point; I have yet to find a manufacturer that can match DFD for quality and design.

Overall I give Dragon Forge Designs a A++

Resin bases - a Review: Back2Base-ix

2008-12-02T13:08:00.000-08:00

I recently took delivery of an order from Back 2 Base-ix. There are a lot of companies out there right now that make resin bases so the rationale for choosing one over another is very individual. This order was placed as a "group" decision. The team going to AdeptiCon spent about a week looking at what was out there. For better or for worse we made our choice; I thought I would share my review of the bases with you...
From their web site "Based in Adelaide, Australia, Back 2 Base-ix® Wargaming Products serves both the national and international wargaming community with quality cast polyurethane resin castings." The fact that they are based (haha) in Australia would potentially put a number of people off. However I've found this NOT to be an issue.
I placed two orders with them; the first was a "look see", the second (which obviously meant that their product was suitable!) was a larger order. I ordered from the "Ruins" and "Rubble" ranges. Their list of ranges is VERY extensive, with great support in all the standard base sizes. The only areas they are lacking in (for 40K) is bike and "monster" (the CD size) bases.
I had a minor issue with my first shipment; B2Bix uses "reinforced" paper envelopes - the first shipment got ripped open, and my 60mm bases were lost. They kindly offered to replace, but they would not cover the shipping charge! I deferred replacement to my next order.
This is the collection from the two orders:

Left to right: 5x 40mm Rubble, 20x 25mm Rubble, 70x 25mm Ruins, 9x 60mm Ruins/Rubble.
As you may be able to see one of the 60mm Rubble bases was broken.

There is also a large amount of excess resin on the bases (i.e. mold overflow). This can be a major issue with some people as removing this "flash" is not routine! It is a total P.I.T.A., and I'm fortunate enough to have a rotary sander and a vacuum system for dust removal... and dust control, this is essential when dealing with resin as this stuff will cause a lung inflammatory response if inhaled for long periods. ALL the bases needed some sort of clean up - be it the bottom, or the sides. Many companies will have done this for you, or cast with a "cap" over the mold to squeeze out the excess resin (one I like in particular is Epicast, who use a "nogahide" patterned material on the bottom of their bases during casting - this also increases base friction on the table!). The resin itself is good quality - hard, no soft spots (indicative of old resin batches or poor mixing). There seemed to be a lot of air bubbles though. I'm not filling them all, but it is suggestive of a reduced Teflon coverage of the mold, and not casting under pressure.
After cleaning up the resin the bases got a double bath is warm soapy water; this removed the potentially dangerous resin dust, and also cleans off the mold release that could inhibit primer adhesion. After drying the bases were sprayed with grey primer (Rustoleum brand).

I've started to mount the models for this army project, and pictures will follow soon.

So, in summary:
Back2Base-ix
Australian based...
Great selection of products in both round and square.
Shipping is by weight (my 2 shipments totaled ~AUS$30) - packaging needs improvement.
Charges in AUS$!
Payment via PayPal (good!).
Resin quality is good, production quality is fair.
Minimal repetition in designs
Cost is excellent! 25mm bases run at ~40c Australian - this in a ridiculously low charge, and may reflect the "speed" casting, lack of clean up and shipping by weight.

Overall I give Back2Base-ix a B+

Damn You AdeptiCon!

2008-12-01T12:02:00.000-08:00

Just getting caught up after my weekend in Banff and I see the rules for AdeptiCon 2009 are up... and they have changed.
Lots of armies have been removed from the allowed list (GW's influence no doubt), including the WH Zealots. I've been collecting these OOP models for 2 years now, and had enough accumulated from my army list.
Great.
Thanks Guys!

Now I have to pop them off the resin bases that I bought from B2B-ix... find a new army design, and maybe change the entire team balance/makeup with Rob, Trent and Eric...

mid week update

2008-11-26T12:01:00.000-08:00

Just a quick one...
No I'm not dead... just working! Ever had one of those weeks where you KNEW it was going to be quiet, then BAM! the stuff hit the fan? Last 2 weeks like that - no [major] deadlines at work, yet I had 23 proposals to review.
I'm off to Banff, AB tomorrow for 4 days - presenting [twice] at my "other life's" convention.

I took delivery of the Back2Base-ix order this week. I have a draft of the review in progress - hopefully I can post on my return on Sunday.

Ciao!

oh dear... what a mess!

2008-11-13T12:00:00.000-08:00

So I'm "transitioning between projects" right now. Whatever.

I'm done working on small stuff and I am about to embark on my AdepticCon army build (the bases are in the mail, so they'll be here in 2 weeks roughly).
Remember my workbench I posted back in April? Well this is it 7 months later!

I have a little bit to tidying up to do...

The observant amongst you may notice the 23 Assassins on the table... yep, I'm one Eversor short of a full set for Apocalypse gaming. Some of my AdeptiCon stuff can be seen to the left of the table.

Bases - an unifying feature, or a complete screw-up! You choose.

2008-11-07T11:58:00.000-08:00

So you have a great theme for your force (as Rob, Trent, Eric and I do for our AdeptiCon 09 armies); you themed the composition, you themed the colour scheme. You even wrote a story about the background of your army and its characters! And now you want to glue them to a small black disc...
Basing is often overlooked by model makers. I'm not talking about those artisans that make models for Euromilitaire, or even the greats who dominate Golden Daemons - they of course view the bases as an extension of the model they are converting/painting, and usually put as much effort in to the base as the model it will be "supporting".
No, I'm talking about you and I - Joe (or Jason!) average gamer. If you look through my blog you'll see I tend to favour straight forward bases (ie boring!) - mixed size gravel, a brown or grey dry brush scheme (usually with a spot of bleached bone in as well); depending on the theme I'll add small amounts of flock (brown or green), and occasionally I'll brush that too. Some players do even less than that, thinking that the base is "unimportant" (or maybe they are just bloody lazy) and slapping some green paint would be good enough.
Now, with the team building their armies for AdeptiCon, and the theme concept we have planned that would most definitely not be enough! We embarked on a search for a suitable basing scheme. Being the inherent slackers we are (I do have more than 90 models to paint...) our preference was for pre-cast resin bases. Here are some of the companies we researched.

Evil Mushroom
Dragon Forge (one of my favourites)
Micro Art Studios (one of the most diverse)
CMM
Armorcast
MaxiMini (they do "custom" bases)
Back 2 Base-ix

In particular we looked at Dragon Forge (Jeff Wilhelm, a free-lance sculptor and Golden Daemon winner), Micro Art Studios and Back 2 Base-ix. Trent has used B2B-ix in the past for his "undead" Eldar army. So we took a long look at those. In the end Eric and I (Rob is "off line" most of the time and will do what we ask him to!) picked the following for our Inquisitional forces:
Rubble:

Ruins:

Not only are they relatively cheap (did I mention I need about 90?), but they also support all themes in 25mm, 40mm and 60mm. My plan is to use the Ruins in the majority, with ~ 20% Rubble for some variety.

I'm not sure what Trent chose in the end.... I was pushing for these!

So get basing folks...

Doing the right thing...

2008-10-25T11:57:00.000-07:00

... so who just felt guilty?!

I'm actually talking about recycling; we do it at home, we do it at work, we do it in our schools - it is just something that we do now. However, our modeling hobby seems to be "behind the times" when it comes to recycling. Let's face it - we use a lot of petroleum product - the plastic to the make the models, the wrapping on the box, the shipping. Sure we can recycle the cardboard boxes, and GW got rid of those god-awful Styrofoam shells they used to have; but what about the plastic itself?
After you have built your shiny new Rhino, your units of Empire Halberdiers or those lovely Romans you end up with a "square" of plastic - the sprue!
I bet most of you have thrown them away? Guilty... But for the past two years I have been saving mine. Saving them for the day when some bright spark would come along and say "hey I can reuse these - let's keep them out of the landfill!" I know they can be recycled; I've been told so, I've seen GW do it with their "test" runs and now I have proof irrefutable - a new program.

Those wonderful lads (and lasses) at Wargames Factory have a recycling program! The coolest part about this program is that not only do you get to do the right thing, you also get entered in a draw to win MORE stuff! So get your club together and recycle those old sprues, and try to stop me winning more stuff - I'm sending in 50 sprues per week for the next 6 weeks. Please!

Warpstone Painting Contest at WCM

2008-10-23T11:55:00.000-07:00

I really got into this hobby as a painting hobby - the tournaments did not happen for over 10 years into the GW side of the hobby (and ~20 years after I started painting plastic tanks and planes). The reason I've been "quiet" on the blog recently (other than Vegas draining me, my parents visiting, my 40th birthday...) was getting models ready for the Warpstone. The Warpstone painting contest is GW Canada's "mini" Golden Daemon; born from an Edmonton store's idea of their own painting contest it has grown to a high quality event that happens at all the big GW sanctioned events, and more recently at independent events. This year I worked on two pieces.

For the Warhammer Open -

This model has been sitting on my desk for 8 years waiting to be painted! I did a fair bit of work on the metallics - I'm a huge fan of Jakob Rune Nielsen's work.

Happily for me this ended up winning the category!

For the 40K Single I entered another Forge World model (this one a lot newer!).

Sadly he did not place (the winner was a Bryce Jensen Farseer model - absolutely beautiful - look for it on the GW Canada site soon!), but I had lots of fun painting him. I used the new GW Washes extensively - after initially resisting I found them wonderful for this kind of work.

Wolves at West Coast Mayhem!

2008-10-22T11:51:00.000-07:00

The weekend of October 18 and 19 saw 42 players attend the GW-Canada Premier tournament events at West Coast Mayhem (held at BCIT). OK so 21 persons in each system is not exactly Las Vegas levels, but it pretty close to Chicago attendance!
I took my Space Wolves; at 2000 points I ended up with 5 Troops.

On arrival we were told that the Astronomi-Con composition system was in use. Well that was a surprise! I quickly changed by list to put the two Land Speeders together; this would reduce my hit on Composition to a -2 (5th troops choice). Frankly in hindsight I should have left them separately - but I'm a slave to composition - they would have been more effective as 2 units.

Game 1
Opponent - Bryce Jenson – Eldar
Mission – Primary - Seize Ground, Secondary - Assassination

Result - Primary Mission - Space Wolves Victory, Secondary Mission - Tie. 12 battle points gained.
Really good game - Bryce is a bit of a veteran player, and I was flattered to find he was looking forward to our match up. His army was unbelievably stunning! Unsurprisingly he won the Best painted Award. the only unit that caused me problems was the Harlequins - they chewed through a LOT of my army. The scouts made short work of the Farseer and his bike units.

Game 2
Opponent - Dan Miner – Dark Eldar
Mission – Primary - Capture and Control, Secondary - Recon

[not pictured are the 4 Raiders he had in his army]

Result - Primary Mission - Space Wolves Victory, Secondary Mission - Space Wolves Victory. 15 battle points gained.
Dan's dice sucked! Other than his wyches and archon I pretty much took this army apart. I don't think he inflicted any damage with a single Dark Lance all game - most certainly not in the first couple of rounds when it mattered most. This was sweet retribution, as the last time I played Dan he horrorfex-ed my Wolves into submission and slaughtered them in combat! Credit where credit is due, on turn 5 he had a tie for the primary - with his LONE warrior hiding from my fire power on my base's objective. Turn six the same... Turn seven - ah not so much luck - my lone Rhino had reversed after dropping some Blood Claws off the table edge to snipe the single warrior left. My best game of the weekend!

Game 3
Opponent - Adrien Schaeffer – Eldar (again!)
Mission – Primary - Annihilation, Secondary - Vantage Point (hold high ground).

Result - Primary Mission - Eldar Victory, Secondary Mission - Eldar Victory. 4 battle points gained.
Well, this had to be my worst game of the weekend. Not because I lost (jeez, I'm used to that!), but because of the army and frankly the player. The army is the Uber-Eldar build as far as I'm concerned; all the best units, very few basics. Also we had issues of "measurement" somehow the Banshees
[edit - I ran this army list through AB3... it comes in at 35 points over... grrr]

And there endeth day one... pretty good as far as I was concerned; 2 wins and a trophy from the painting contest! I hung around to do a bit of clearing up for the WCM organizers, had a bite to eat and then watched a couple of board games going on.

Game 4
Opponent - Danny Hope – Witch Hunters
Mission – Primary - Seize Ground, Secondary - Pay Back (kill highest point unit).

Result - Primary Mission - Witch Hunter Victory, Secondary Mission - Tie. 4 battle points gained.
OMG, will you look at all those tanks! I've known Danny for a few years now, and played him many times. He is a fine general and knows this army well. I think this force was well suited for the event. His Canoness and Celestians were the VPs for him - carving through a few units and helping run 2 more off the table. Blasted 2+ invulnerable save for the Canoness was a P.I.T.A.! She should have died 3 times over.

Game 5
Opponent - Mark Spaidal – Grey Hunters
Mission – Primary - Annihilation, Secondary - Cleanse.

[sadly I don't have a picture of Mark's army; 2 Land Raiders, Dreadnought, 3 GK Squads, Grand Master and two GK Termie squads. Lots of psycannons!]

Result - Primary Mission - Grey Knight Victory, Secondary Mission - Space Wolves Victory. 7 battle points gained.
This was a one sided shooting match. I could not get into HtH quick enough to negate his shooting. Once I did the units faired quite well, Mark was also smart enough not to charge me in cover with his Terminators!
I probably should have deployed in the open and forced him into the cover. Meh, you die and learn!

Summary

U2KR put on a good show - they are experienced gamers all - good scenario mix (I like the addition of secondaries to the bland GW scenario options), not too many Kill Point games (!), good terrain (though a couple of tall towers were causing game imbalance issues). I also thought they did an excellent job with the scoring; the Sportsmanship points were well thought out, the composition "modifier" (for Best General) is ingenious. They also had player rated composition and painting scores done BEFORE the game - something I introduced a few years ago locally after experiencing it at the first Calgary GT.
OK... time to get out the soap-box... Whilst I like the Astronomi-Con system for composition scoring I have a few issues; Firstly it is designed for 4th edition 1500 point games, currently you get docked points for having more than 4 troops (somewhat counter to 5e, unless you have Combat Squads of course!). We really should have been told in the rules that it was being used - to deny a player the opportunity to get soft score points seems unfair; I know of no other top-level tournament that would do this. Thirdly, if you are going to use it - use it correctly! The Overall winner's composition ranking was not scored correctly - and he won by one point, mine was also scored incorrectly.
Army lists - my Game 3 opponent appears to have an illegal list! How can this be allowed? His list should have been checked during the day, and errors corrected ASAP (run it through Army Builder - it takes 5 minutes per army - there were at least 5 computers there - owned by the organizers). Should there be a post game correction if the army list does hold up as invalid? I think so - we need some form of discouragement for incorrect lists and encouragement for checking your own list and taking responsibility for errors; "rules" don't seem to be enough!
Painting - the "rules" stated that GW/FW/Marauder etc models only, and that they should be fully painted. Well, one Orc army was bare plastic and metal (and still scored 7 for painting!), and there was a non-GW Character model in one army. So is this a rule or a "suggestion"? If an event was to allow unpainted armies (such as GW-USA's Ard Boyz - first 2 rounds anyway), I'm cool with that. Just let everyone know and don't piss us around with unnecessary "rules"!
moved ~14" in their first turn and were going to assault me.. then there was the issue of being told which order to do my shooting in.... the non-WYSIWYG units (that looks like a Bright lance on the Falcon, not the pulse laser listed)... I think we should just leave it at that!

West Coast Mayhem

2008-10-22T11:50:00.000-07:00

West Coast Mayhem 2008 happened this past weekend. Held at BCIT for the second year, this GW Premier event was initially a "replacement" (in 2007) for GW Canada pulling the plug in its Conflict system. WCM now has enough momentum that it will become a regular, and most excellent, event in its own right.
I did not take many pictures on the day as I was playing in the 40k Tourney. I did enter 2 models in the Warpstome painting contest... I'll follow up on that later!

other blogs to watch...

2008-09-24T11:42:00.000-07:00

A team of us are working on a project for AdeptiCon (Chicago) 2009. I'll be starting to blog that project in the next month or so.

Eric is building a Grey Knight army for it; you'll be able to follow his progress here.
Trent has a blog for his daemons too!

Now if only Rob would blog...

5e, GT and Army "nerfing"!

2008-09-19T11:22:00.000-07:00

After playing at the Las Vegas GT a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been participating in a number of on-line discussion about how the “new” GT system works, how 5e works in competitive play and which (if any) armies suffer under 5e in competitive play.

Using the results from the Vegas GT (published by GW) I’ve done some VERY basic trends analysis

These results are in no way definitive, but they give some answers to some of the questions. I’m not going to overstate my opinions on the data, I’ll leave that up to the rest of you!

Q: Do soft scores skew the overall result and take away from the “competitive" nature of GTs and the Battle points system?

A: It does not appear to be that way.

Q: Are some armies “hurt” by the advent of Kill Points into the scenario package? How are “other” scorings affecting specific armies?

		total points	battle points	sports'	appearance
		130	56	49	25	Overall
Space Marines	36	126	54	49	24
Chaos Marines	21	128	54	48	26
Daemons	6	142	67	49	26
Eldar	15	134	59	48	26
Orks	7	140	63	50	28
Tyranids	12	128	53	49	25
Tau	5	125	54	49	23
Necrons	4	128	52	49	28
Witch Hunters	6	136	66	48	22
Daemon hunters	2	133	62	50	21
IG	10	128	55	48	25
Dark Eldar	3	117	43	49	25
	n=

As you can see from the averages, most armies are comparable when you have a mix of the 3 scenarios at an event. the obvious exception is Dark Eldar, but we already know they need a major overhaul!

Viva Las Vegas!

2008-09-18T11:21:00.000-07:00

Ok... so I'm 10 days late...

Vegas was most excellent! had 5 good games, had fun catching up with old friends and had a hoot playing on the blackjack tables with some crazy b'stards (yes Corey you!)
I'll start the batreps soon...

Gearing up for Vegas

2008-09-03T11:19:00.000-07:00

So only 2 more sleeps until I fly to Las Vegas for the GT!
Pretty excited about the trip.
Sure I'm still trying to get the OFCC Batrep finished (I'll work on it some more tonight), but Vegas is going to be SO cool!
Bought a new camera - Sanyo 7.3MPx, so my pictures should be a bit better quality.
Packing the army tonight.
Playing Space Wolves - pretty solid list with 40 Blood Claws, and I'm playing my Leman Russ Exterminator for S&Gs.

Geeks at Ordo Fanaticus Club Challenge (OFCC) 2008

2008-08-28T11:10:00.000-07:00

Last Friday I took the, not short, drive to Vancouver. The other Vancouver...
The Portland based Ordo Fanaticus Wargaming Club were holding their 4th annual 40K Club Challenge, and for the second year the North West Gaming Geeks were taking part; unlike last year I was able to get across the border and participate (don't ask).

On the way down I collected Eric Soulvie (from Pasadena), playing a Nurgle-themed CSM army; the rest of the team was Trent Le Clair (Walla Walla - yes really) playing an "undead" Eldar force, and David Faulkner (Portland) playing a genestealer heavy tyranid army.
I bought my Witch Hunters - a good solid list at 2000 points.

Eric and I lugged some tables around (i.e. helped with set up) and then sat around waiting for Trent to show... I cracked a couple of ciders and we went and "laughed" at a few guys who were still painting (one still assembling!).

Once Trent got in we had a quick dinner (note to self; book appointment with cardiologist ASAP... and maybe a gastro-intestinal surgeon). Gut jokes aside we had just found out that our good friend and fellow Geek, "Dirty" Steve Fuller (yes, the ex-GW photographer) had undergone two rounds of colon surgery after getting it perforated. Our thoughts are with his wife Cassie and the poor nurses who are looking after the letch (Steve too, but we know he will be fine!).

The OFCC is an unusual event (they run a FB one as well); each team has 4 members. Armies are not ranked, but just reviewed (the emphasis of this event on solid FUN gaming, not power/WAAC armies), and at each round (based on team Swiss scoring) the captains "negotiate" the match ups. This makes for some real fun - the chance to play someone you have always wanted to, play a classic grudge match, or the chance for revenge against that guy who crushed you last time!

The Head of Gaming (Kevin Clements) has chosen to use the new “advanced” scenario pack produced by GW-Canada for their Hall of Heroes events. I’d seen this package a few weeks ago, prior to its release, and I have been quite impressed by how it would add some flavour to the games.
[my apologies in advance for the low quality of the pictures. I was using my old Nikon Coolpix 995, and the lighting was quite poor in the room.]

Game 1
Opponent - Jeremy B (of 40K Fight Club “C”) – Dark Angels
Mission – Primary - #8 [Grudge Match], Secondary #4 [Assassination]

Jeremy had a VERY cool "doublewing" army; 1000 points of Ravenwing and 1000 points of Deathwing. The paint job was stunning, and knowing this will be at the Las Vegas GT next weekend, I can see a successful weekend ahead of it!
Jeremy set up his Angels very conservatively - using the terrain to block LOS (I was going first). I'd also "hidden" my Exorcists, know that this would be a major PITA for his army, and thus going to attract a lot of fire. I'm not sure why Sammael was deployed way off in his right flank... The game started pretty much as I thought it would . Jeremy scouted his bikes forward prior to me going first. With Teleport Homers on all DA bikes I know that the Terminators would be coming in first turn and they would be up close soon. I targeted his bikes as quickly as I could.

The shooting was pretty bloody for 3 rounds - I whittled down his bikes in the center.

Tied up the bikes on my right flank (after shooting them) - they had already "guided" a unit of Terminators onto the table. I was just awaiting the "delivery" of Belial and his unit of terminators from the Land Raider.

Hopefully I would have enough fire power to deal with them!
Up on my left flank the Culexus assassin had finally arrived. Whilst a couple of multilaser shots had knocked off two wounds on Sammael, it was left to the Culexus with his AP1 pistol shots to finish him off. This would be important for the secondary mission. My army was capable of giving up 18 Kill Points... Jeremy's just 10. Winning the Primary objective was going to be an uphill battle for me, especially with my less than stellar AP weapons!
Unloading everything I had into Belial and his unit I managed to wipe them out.

I even managed to get a couple of meltagun toting Stormtroopers into place to pop the Land Raider!

In the end I was not able to finish off enough of the odds-and-ends of his bike squads, and he was popping my transports with ease through out the game.

Result - Primary Mission - Dark Angels Victory, Secondary Mission - Witch hunters Win. 10 battle points gained.
EXCELLENT game! Jeremy played like a true DA veteran (though I understand this was his 5th game with Dark Angels after playing Tyranids for many years). The toughness of his bikes and terminators made the game close, but the number of Kill Points available to him was the deciding factor - popping vehicle is pretty easy now, especially in HtH. I'm happy with the "moral" victory - killing both his commanders, whilst mine was "kept safe" in the far corner was quite satisfying! Hopefully I will not have to play Jeremy in Las Vegas next weekend; great player, but a fearsome army. Though I think my Space Wolves could handle many aspects of it!

Game 2
Opponent – Micah (of Ordo North Seattle) – Dark Angels
Mission – Primary - #5 [Chance Encounter], Secondary #3 [Breakthrough].

Yep, Dark Angels again! I'd been following Micah's progress on the Ordo Fanaticus forum. Micah is an excellent painter, and he'd been putting a LOT of detail into his army - things like checkerboard markings on legs. Sadly, he had not had time to complete the army; he had a lot of models without heads! I took this match-up at the request of his Captain - he wanted Micah to have a fun game against someone who was not concerned about winning. Sounds like me...

Micah chose to deploy very conservatively (is this a DA trait?!) I figured this would be a shooting match.

This is the silly 5e scenario where you place an objective in your deployment zone and try to run through your enemy to get to theirs.
Micah scouted his bikes, but could not scout his attack bike as it had no path through his own troops (too many players forget this rule...). We spent 2 turns taking pot shots at each other; my lance strike failed to come on turn 2 (I nominated the "industrial" terrain piece as my target). The Dark Angel bikes moved forward to engage my lines, and presumably take my objective. I surrounded them with stormtroopers and opened fire...

This was the end result...
After that we sent a couple more turns sniping at each other - me slowly whittling down his heavy support (devastators), and moving a scoring unit towards his lines for the secondary. Micah had left it too late to win the secondary, but his Chaplain and assault marines finally got into the battle and took apart my Seraphim, Culexus and the Deathcult assassins (the assassins had outflanked - a new rule I love!). I could not get to his objective... he could not get to mine. On the last turn I blasted my Sisters in Rhino forward, and just clipped the zone needed to take the secondary objective.

Result - Primary Mission - Tie, Secondary Mission - Witch hunters Win. 16 battle points gained.
An odd game, with 2 polar opposite forces, playing a bad scenario. Micah took his dice failing him towards the end of the game in good stride - a lesser sportsman would have been hissing!
As scenarios go, it was rather a dumb one GW - sorry, but at the end of this one all I heard in the room was "tied game"

Game 3
Opponent – Russ (of Da Mommas Boyz-Drunken Sluts) – Chaos Daemons
Mission – Primary - #6 [Tipping the Scales], Secondary #11 [Sharp Shooters]

I've known Russ for quite a few years, as we were Outriders together in times gone by. I picked this match-up as I wanted to play against him... and I did not want to play Dark Angels for the 3rd straight game! I knew that DMB had come to win (they have won all 3 previous OFCCs) and that the new Daemon codex was "nasty"... but I had no idea how tough this game was going to be. As the daemons enter with half their forces on the table on the first turn, via deepstrike, I was not going to push to far forwards and allow them space behind me on my deployment...
I really do not recall much of this game - I spent most of it trying to keep up with the rules Russ was pulling out of his a$$! Not his fault; this Codex is just SO damn different from anything else out there. Split fire, taking over my shooting, musicians affecting combat resolution (WTF - that is Fantasy!). Russ' frustration was the inability of his troops to do anything more than stun/shake my vehicles! I came close to tying this games, but we ended up going to the 7th round that allowed the daemons to finally finish off my vehicles that were contesting the objectives.

Result - Primary Mission - Daemon win, Secondary Mission - Witch hunters Win. 10 battle points gained.
Know thy enemy. No shit! Well now I do, now I do...

So endeth Day 1. We had a nice Thai dinner and then sat in my room planning Eric's new Daemonhunter army and what we were going to do for AdeptiCon 2009!

Game 4
Opponent – Brant (of 40K Fight Club “A”) – Tyranids
Mission – Primary - #3 [Dawn Raid], Secondary #9 [Vital Objects]

Well here is an enemy I do know! With ~8000 point of tyranids in my collection I know how to play them, and how to play against them.
Fast, scary. Mushy, weak. Big, scary.
Pretty much sums up a tyranid force!

Brant had a good mix of a force; 3 units of genestealers (including a Broodlord), zoanthropes, a carnifex, warriors, some small gribblies.... there may have been a couple of lictors in there - don't really recall! We rolled 3 objectives for the game; one was places on each "central" hill, and one, by Brant, towards my deployment zone. The secondary called for us to pick one as our target one - I chose tyranid model objective, with my orbital strike targeted on the hill with my fleur-de-lys marker. Brant was able to Seize the Initiative from me, and took turn one.

Predictably he moved some of his fast movers forward heading towards the ground level objective. Not wanting to be assaulted by genestealers (!) I countered with some of my transports and flamed the hell out of the 'stealers and warriors.
Turn 3 saw the arrival of the Broodlord and his max sized retinue!

Luckily for me they were out of range of my seraphim - so he ran them closer. I dutifully jumped to the "north" of them. and lined up my two flamers. To be sure of a complete kill I also moved over a squad of flamer/plasma toting stormtroopers. Sadly my shooting was less than stellar, and I would have to charge the seraphim in to finish off the Broodlord.

The remnants of the genestealers on the right flank stared to get a little close... shooting would deal with those.

Brant got the bulk of his force going on turn 4, and the first wave has withered under my vehicle fire power. It was time to start think "objectives"!

My fire support Stormtroopers were now in BIG trouble! Surely 10 guys could come out on top vs. "just" 3 genestealers, and the Broodlord...

Clearly not, but as Ordo Hereticus only takes 'troopers made of sterner stuff they passed their leadership check on double 1s (I think the Broodlord is screaming "Noooooo")!

Turn 5 saw the real rush for the objectives... I'd thrown pretty much all I had at the carnifex to try to stop him - Battle Sisters, a few stormtroopers and my HQ. I was able to hold it and nothing else.
Brant rolled to end the game... done.

Result - Primary Mission - tie, Secondary Mission - tie. 12 battle points gained.
This was a hugely fun game! My objective was "held" by Brant, but I was contesting it. I held his objective, and he held the neutral one. The game pretty much went to plan - I knew I could weather the first "fast" wave (though the Broodlord and friends gave me a scare). It came down to how much could I pour into the second wave o deny him the objective. Not enough!

Game 5
Opponent – John (of Da Mommas Boyz-PBR) – Squats (IG)!
Mission – Primary - #7 [Blood Feud], Secondary #12 [Head Hunting]
[this is where the pictures start to get "wonky"! A few late nights and a couple of Jack Daniels!]

Squats! Bad if you have a case of them, bad to be up against them...

quick update...

2008-08-15T11:09:00.000-07:00

So have you been watching the Olympics? I miss being in the UK sometimes - at least they put on coverage, not like the half-assed stuff CBC puts on. Talking of half assed... OMG, how hard does Team Canada suck right now? Harder than my sump-pump on a November day...
The saving grace of these Olympics so far has been Michael Phelps. My parent's generation had Mark Spitz to watch, mine has Phelps.
After the first day of track we are in for a treat there! Looking forward to getting up at 0700 tomorrow to watch the 100m final.

On the Slaanesh army...
So far I have assembled and primered the Dreadnought, 12 Noise marines, and 6 daemonettes (I love those models!). The two Rhino's are assembled, as is the Daemon Princess. I'm waiting on some vehicle bits to add the second bolters to the Rhino's.
No, no pictures - what is the point?! I'll put some paint on models this weekend and try to get shots for you.
I'm still trying to find the right bases for the army...

reality... bites...

2008-08-05T11:08:00.000-07:00

Well after a great week resting, playing with the kids and drinking wine (lots of wine!), I achieved the lofty production run of 6 models.. assembled!

Looks like the Slaanesh army will not be going to Las Vegas after all - I'll have to dig out my old Tzeentch army, or Space Wolves. I may go with the Wolves - use the Exterminator for one last hurrah!

The local event I was also going to use the Slaanesh army at has also thrown a wrench into the works. The organizers have increased the points cap to 2000. Whilst I don't mind playing at 2000 points, and the addition of a Land Raider will fill the gap nicely, I'm not sure that this was a good idea.

The Vancouver area really does not have that many players (who come out to tournaments currently) that can support an army of that size.
Those that do come out for the "normal" 1700pt events do not have the troop numbers that 5e seems to demand we have as players.
If the tourney organizers are hoping for "travellers" they may be disappointed. The US players (on the west coast there is a large 2000 pt club tourney that I'm attending in a few weeks) seem reticent to travel to events these days - be it the cost of fuel (car or plane) or the crappy (for them!) dollar exchange rate. Canadian players (notably Ontario) rarely come out to Vancouver for events - again flights are just too expensive. The occurance of the Edmonton Onslaught the weekend before, and Calgary's OtoCon 3 the same weekend as West Coast Mayhem will also not help matters!

Well, back to assembly - hopefully tonight I can get another 6 man squad and Rhino put together...

onto the next project...

2008-07-22T10:58:00.000-07:00

Las Vegas GT is looming... so I'm doing a new army! It is going to be good getting back on the US GT circuit - I've been "absent" for 3 years, and I miss some old friends.
With 5th Edition out, and a few games under my belt I've tweaked the list a little.
Oh yeah... I'm building a Slaanesh CSM force.
There will be both mobile elements, as well as units that can anchor objectives. I'll also have some Chosen that can do the Flanking move that is proving to be quite a lot of fun. I'm going to use the FW dreadnought (Crazed rule be damned), and the FW Daemon Prince(ss).
First pictures in the next week or so - I'm heading on vacation so I may take some models with me to work on in the evenings!

"Mutants & Scum" at Astronomi-Con Vancouver 2008 - Pt2

2008-07-16T10:52:00.000-07:00

Day one started early for me... nothing to do with the event, just the kids!

After arriving at UBC and doing the usual round of catching up with old friends and saying hello to the new players, I unpacked my army and did a few touch ups to the table damage that had happened in transport. I spent a while talking with players about the table, its construction and getting a lot of complements about it. Job done and mission accomplished!

Onto the gaming. First round match-ups are based on your composition score. Most players will have an 18 or 20, so it is pretty arbitrary.

Game 1
Opponent - Colin Sherlow - Orks
Mission - "Divide and Conquer"

Deployment was with a diagonal split across the table, with an 18" push back. I put my Basilisks as far back as I could (don't like Orks inside my minimum range...), and Colin then "pushed" the rest of my army back. Game was pretty predictable. Orks have a huge advantage in games like this - 18" is nothing for them, so first or second turn charges are pretty much guaranteed! My Basilisks managed to take out his Battlewagon on turn 2, which probably made the game last 15 minutes longer that it needed to! Took out his dreadnought, 2 of the killerkans and a lot of the boyz, but in the end the sheer speed of orks was my undoing. Oh, and the fact that I was out numbered about 3 to one! In the end I was totally wiped out...

Result - Ork Victory (zero battle points)
Notes - Colin was lots of fun to play, and his army is very "orky". Astro' scenarios are usually story driven, with 10 pts for the win, 3 for a loss, and 7 for a tie. There are also three (+/-) battle modifier points (ala the old GT days...). Later in the day I found up we had screwed up the deployment zone - the sheet said that we could not go within 6" of the middle of the table - it should have been 6" of the LINE down the middle of the table! Meh, probably would have lost anyway.

Game 2
Opponent - Craig Fleming - Orks (ARGH!)
Mission - "Assault and Battery"

Great, Orks again! "Assault and Battery" is a time honoured Astro' scenario. You have 3 griffons (gotta use them for something these days), which for every turn they "fire" the defender gets 50VP per shot per gun. The attacker gets 200VP for each gun that can no longer fire. The deployment is a modifed escalation, with the defender (me according to the standard Astro' attack/defend table) getting to put 1 HQ and 2 troops down. Well that would be the Last Chancers wouldn't it! The deployment "box" was 24" square, and in cover. The orks get to put everything out... again just 18" away from me! I needed to at least try to slow them down, so I placed my Chimerae up front, with some shooty/counter assault guys behind.
The game is also a Night Fight. Orks get first turn of course... and yes, the trucks get the nobs in mega armour to the Chimera on the left straight away. The nobs were the bane of my game - that 2+ armour save is tough! The Ogryns did a good job coming in on reserve and marching up the road - they ended up taking out 2 units of boyz. The Ratlings were pretty good too; whilst not pinning large ork mobs they can pick off troops and hold table objectives. I think the game may have been a draw if it has ended on turn 5, as oppossed to going an extra turn (Random Game Length). In the end though it was not enough, Craig's force was just too numerous and too tough for 25 T3 guardsmen with 4+ saves!

Result - Ork Victory (3 battle points)
Notes - Craig is new to 40K (long time FB player), but he plays with some VERY experienced players who have taught him well, and helped him build a fine ork force (damn you Aaron, Jeremy and Derrick!). I have one criticism of the scenario, and maybe of some the Astro scenarios in general. They seem to favour HtH armies - Night Fight is a common theme, and the 18" deployment differential favours faster HtH armies like Orks and Tyranids, and these 2 are pretty much always going to be the attacker. Sure my force was pretty specialized I admit that, but even with regular guard I would have a tough time stopping the orks from getting to the Griffons. Now 5th edition may help balance this; Orks winning HtH will NOT be able to sweep into the next "speed" bump (ie 10 guardsmen).

Game 3
Opponent - Marshall Reeves - Imperial Guard
Mission - "Midnight Patrol"

Marshall had a HUGE guard army! This included 50 Conscripts (with Commissar), and Basilisk, Demolisher, and a Cyclops. Many people forget that Astro' allows Imperial Armour entries and lists. This army was also in Vancouver last year, and I managed to avoid it. The table were put on was a familiar one to me; the terrain was from Checkpoint Charlie's, and I played on it last year vs. my nemesis Nick Daniels!
Again another Night Fight, and a modified Escalation game. Combined with only a 12" deployment zone, and zero fire lanes this was going to be a battle of indirect fire and HtH... Again one Troop and HQ deploy initially, with reserves starting turn 1 (on a 5+). I believe Marshall got the first turn, and failed to roll for anything coming on... I did a bit better, with both my units in Chimerae coming on and a Basilisk. There was not much shooting. Turn 2 saw the Cyclops come on and move towards my lines. Still not much shooting! My turn I got my Ratlings (oh, they were so going to swing this game...), the other Basilisk and my Ogryns on the table. The Ogryn moved towards the enemy, and my first Basilisk opened up on the guard. Due to scatter and good cover I think I only killed four guardsmen. On the right flank, my "heavy" unit was able to start working on getting rid of the couple of units that were deployed in cover. Turn 3 Marshall gets his conscripts on the table, jamming his deplyment zone with a juicy ID fire target, as well as his Basilisk.

The cyclops moved even closer to my Ogryns... Ogryns don't like the dark, so I moved then up and jumped out in front of one of his squads.

My shooting was pretty unspectacular! Other shooting knocked off a few veteran guardsmen, but I guessed incorrectly when targetting the Cyclops controller - he was inside my minimum range.
Turn 4... Marshall gets his Demolisher onto the table - thank goodness for 24" range! - and scoots it down my left flank. However the Cyclops moves up and get close to my Ogryns (and his guardsmen). BOOM! Two Ogryns get pulped, the Chimera gets immobilized, and 2 guardsmen die. Not bad. The Ogryns pass their leadership test from the remaining shooting. I have everything on the table now... I ignore the Conscripts, I'm not going to break them, wipe them out, and they can't do anything to me. I go after the veterans in the middle of the table, and move up on my left flank a little. I also move one Basilisk that is getting threatened by the Demolisher. Some direct fire kills a few guardsmen, indirect takes out Marshall's Basilisk. My heavies take down a few more guardsmen, but they continue to stick around, little buggers... The veteran squad take a melta gun, flamer, plasmagun, and demo charge in the face - some of them survive!
Time to get stuck in... the Ogryns charge the squad above - and fail to wipe it out - weak.
Turn 5. My squad that has shot at the veteran squad has been charged (I had fired RF weapons so I could not), and they get wiped out, as do the Ogryns. Nothing much went on here, the Basilisks took out his demolisher that had moved up on my flank, I managed to take out the sentinel with some lucky shooting in the dark. I could not finish of the squad on my left flank. I roll for more turns - the game ends after 5.

Result - Tied Game! (6 battle points)
Notes - damn that was close. In the end it was a 71 point differential. If there has been one more turn I think I would have wrapped the game up, but "ifs" don't count in 40k! Marshall was a great opponent with a very cool army; we realized on ~turn 3 that "tactics" would play NO role in the game - it was truely a game of chance. Fives all round on the soft scores from me!

Well there ended day one. Three good games and I'm going up in the results! We all headed off to Mahoney's for a drink and food, I headed home for a good night's rest for day two...

Day 2...

On arrival at UBC I found that there has been late night gaming (crazy blighters...), and that one of the games had been on the table I bought!

Game 4
Opponent - Brian Hicks - Imperial Guard
Mission - "Dyer Straits"

Oh great I get to play on my own table! Whilst you may think this would be something I would want (and normally it would be), I was dreading playing this scenario. The Astro' system would put me as the defender... luckily I was playing against another guard army, so there was a chance I would get to be the attacker (still not a palettable choice given the "size" of my army!).
Brian had one of the most beautifully painted armies at Astro' - and there were some damn fine conversions too (his Hydra had been the "talk of the circuit" for a couple of years.). He also had a flyer...

On the roll off for attacker/defender I lost, so I get the choice I did not want! The scenario allowed me to place one HQ, all my troops (so the Last Chancers again) and a unit "of my choice". Well of course I put a Basilisk out. I also get to control the turret as a Leman Russ Battle Cannon. Everything else is held in Reserve.

Brian got to deploy his entire force 24" from his table end.

Those heavy bolter teams were going to be a pest...
Brian started his turn with the repeating Preliminary Bombardment. This scenario rule was going to prove to be VERY effective for the attacker; with at least one vehicle unable to fire each turn and my Last Chancers getting slowly shredded by d6 wounds everytime the PB hit. Brian seemed to be able to roll a lot of 6's in the first 3 turns!
The game was pretty slow for the first 3 turns - Brian would move forward, slam my lines with the Preliminary Bombardment. Brian also had a LOT of grenade launchers. These served him REALLY well, when they hit, and he did alot of damage with them. I think they will be the Guard assault weapon of choice in 5th edition. Last Chancers don't break or get pinned of course, unless Schaeffer is dead. Turn 3 my Ogryns come on.

I chose not to shoot, as with the lines bunched the way they were on my left flank I figured I could roll 2 or 3 units. The first unit gets pounded into the mud, then I roll into the next, and hit the platoon command HQ. After wiping both those out I consolidate, but for some whacky reason I don't sweep into the storm troopers that had rallied from previous turns of indirect pounding! Oops...
The following turn they would take some grenade-love in the face, plus the Vulture showed up and dropped a full ammo load on them! Ultimately they would succumb, but they held that flank for 3 rounds of combat.
On the other flank I had immobilized the Trojan first turn, and the Command Chimera in the 3rd.

The Rough Riders (beautifully converted Cold Ones!) were also a worry. I had been sniping at them for a few turns, slowly thinning their numbers. In the end they would charge the unit in the trench above and wipe them out. However, Ratling Sniper and Chimera shooting would be the end of them! Brian rolled for the end/continuation of the game - done on Turn 5. With no units in my deployment zone I won!

Result - Last Chancers Victory! (11 battle points)
Notes - that was a REALLY good game. Lucky for me the Vulture gunship did very little other than crush my Ogryns. The MVP for me was the Ordnance fire - both from the Basilisks and the defensive turrent. For Brian it has to be the "Shell Shock" (repeating Preliminary Bombardment). Not that it affects anything, but I should have had 12 battle points - I had a Basilisk between the rear and middle defensive lines, as well as the Ratlings in the front trench line.

Game 5
Opponent - Andrew "Muskie" McKay - Nurgle CSM
Mission - "Dust Off"

Ah! Muskie! What a character... Seriously, Muskie IS a character, in the nicest possible way. And a damn fine painter too.

"Dust Off" is a favourite Astro' scenario of mine - I played it last year and I was the only one of the Defenders to win from what I understand. For the attacker it can be quite a challenge (as Muskie was about to find out...) as they start with nothing on the table, and the defender everything. The objective is to get the pilot to the Valkyrie (and off the table). The trick of this one is that he is too far away to "walk" - the solution is to put him in a vehicle, have him assault a unit on the way back, or in the case of 5th Edition "run".

The above shot is about 4 turns in... the game is a Night Fight (again!). Muskie got first turn, and failed to get anything in from reserve. I jumped the pilot into one of the Chimerae, zoomed backwards 12" and stopped. The Ogryn Chimera backed up too, keeping on "point".
Turn 2... Muskie failed to roll for any of his reserves.... Ouch... The pilot jumps out and makes a 6" difficult terrain move into the complex.
Turn three - Muskie gets his havocs on! They don't have much to shoot at with bolters, and Night Fight is not helping. The pilot moves up the steps with another good DT roll, and makes it to the Valkyrie - 500VPs for me.. I've moved the Chimerae around a bit, but with no targets it is pretty quiet. I fire one Chimera at the Havocs and fire my Ratings - I think I killed 2 Havocs that round.
I'm nicely castled in the terrain, and I have no intention of leaving!

Turn four Muskie starts to get some stuff on the table - a Rhino with Plague Marines, his Lord and the Land Raider. Sadly for Muskie it is too little too late. He give one of the Basilisks a bit of a scare, and takes out about 6 Last Chancers, but the "protection" of nightfight and hard cover served me well. My Ogryns counter charge his Plague Marines, the Basilisks dropped their load on one unit, and take out the Land Raider (after previously immobilizing and stunning it)... Muskie's Dreadnought failed to show at all. At the end of turn five I rolled to see if the game would go on. Game end!

Result - Last Chancers Victory! (12 battle points)
Notes - the scenario killed Muskie - pure and simple. Oh, that and using GW dice to roll for his reserves, his plasma shots and his FnP rolls - I've never seen so many 1s!
Muskie keeps a blog too - here is his version of the game.

Game 6
Opponent - Teras Cassidy - Tyranids
Mission - "Hammer & Ambull"

I don't have any pictures of the game - I was pretty tired by the time 4pm rolled around on the Sunday!
Teras had an "odd" list. The army was beautifully painted, and in many cases very well converted; the presence of the Ripper Swarms and the Malanthrope made sense, but the Zoanthrope, the 2 Carnifexes, the "spawning pool" and the Mycetic Spores really threw the "theme" for me. I've been around tyranid players for many years, some of the best (Jeff Burcham), and this one just did not "fit" for me.
The game was going to be an odd one - H&A had been around since the beginning of Astro' from what I know. This does not excuse the PITA that those Ambulls were going to be! EVERY SINGLE ONE that popped out of the ground did so towards me. Which meant that they would be assaulting the closest unit the next turn. My units.
In the first turn I took the initiative and shot/charged the first two. Moving beyond my hatred for the Rogue Trader era monsters...
I spent a lot of time dropping ordnance rounds on Ripper swarms, mushing them to chitinous pulp. The slower monsters I was not worried about at this stage as I'd have plenty of time to shoot them later. An interesting little side combat took place on my left flank. The Ratlings got charged by the Malanthrope, and even though they lost the combat they rolled two 1s to stay in the game (needing a three as they were below half strength and under the influence of a zoanthrope's crazy brain!). My Ogryns did nothing in this game - except survive, as their Chimera was immobilized on the first turn as I attempted to leave terrain!
The game was going ALL my way - emphazied when Schaeffer got charged by a Carnifex (with only 2 wounds left) - he hefted his power sword, swung, hit twice and then did 2 wounds (needing 6s), one dead 'fex! The next turn he walked up to the other Carnifex and blew its brains out with a single plasma pistol shot!
Then turn 5 happened... Those Mycetic Spores dropped in. They took out one of my Basilisks which allowed a "trapped" ripper swarm and hormagaunts to get to my Command HQ hidden behind (the "keep 1 inch away" rule in 4th ed stopped Teras from ignoring the Basilisks and charging the HQ with the rippers through the small gap between my two Basilisks. Well this turned the game. The Malanthrope then proceeded to attack Schaeffer, who despite dieing to excessive wounds managed to stand up on his bionics for one more round of heroic battle!
He later succumbed to his wounds.. fittingly he was the Last to die...

Result - Tyranid Victory (2 battle points)
Notes - pretty good game. I could have done without the distraction of the five Ambulls... or at least the odd one going into the Tyranid line. I sensed a Xenos conspiracy!

Summary
Yet again Astronomi-Con delivered on its promise! The weekend was lots of fun; good scenarios, good players, good looking armies. I feel sorry for the Vancouver players who could not be bothered to attend especially those that whinned that "it was not 5th edition". What tripe.
Astro' is the best we have had in Vancouver in a number of years (since the GT was cut), not playing at Astro' is confessing you can't hack a balanced, yet competative tournament. Oh well more space for the guys who DO enjoy that type of event.

I was very happy with the way the table turned out, how it was received and with the excellent scenario Mike and Christian cooked up for it. Thanks guys!

In the end I finished 9th Overall (edit - this may actually be 7th, as there appears to be errors in the final ranking sheet). I got second for Best Terrain... that made a few people look at Mike and Christian a bit funny...

I won Best Appearance! Holy Cow! I got 28/30 for my painting scores, beating Brian and Muskie. Pretty happy with that!

As always thanks to the guys I played - 6 excellent fun games.
I look forward to Astro-Vancouver 2009, and possibly Astro-Nottingham. My fellow Brits will not know what hit them!

"Mutants & Scum" at Astronomi-Con Vancouver 2008 - Pt1

2008-07-14T10:50:00.000-07:00

Astronomi-Con is Canada's premier independent 40K tournament. Best part is that is not just one, but three; held in Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
This year's Vancouver event was scheduled for the weekend of 5th edition's release, and hence would be a fitting end to the era of 4th edition.

For those that have been following my blog, you'll know (and will have or will read below) about the table I was working on. When it finally got to the venue (UBC) I could see the final result!

Using my "Mutants & Scum" at Astro' would probably be the last time I play the army as-is. It really is not viable for 5th edition (it was not that great for 4th...), so they will now be incorporated into my Guard army generally.
This was the force I took, their display base is an extension of the table

Terrain Project - Complete!

2008-07-09T10:46:00.000-07:00

Yep - it is done - and here are the pictures to prove it!
[I'll try to get better ones on Friday, once the table is set up at Astro, and out of my dungeon of a garage!]

the whole thing...

and this will be my display/movement tray

Terrain Project - Part 2

2008-06-22T10:24:00.000-07:00

So, sorry for the lack of updates - I *have* been working on the table, but I've also been distracted by a leaking hot-tub that has to be fixed (the hot tub is elevated and imbedded in our deck - the deck has rotted out [who the frak uses untreated wood for supports in an arboreal rainforest zone?], and is to be replaced later this summer).

I've been working on the table in the garage (relegating my Santa Fe to the driveway to get regular doses of bird poop from the overhanging tree...). As of last night I had some really bad photographs of ~1/3 of the table complete. The layout is done, and about half the foam cutting is completed. I'm hoping to do some more this afternoon - and with the nice weather finally being here I can open the garage door for some light!
Casting rates are a bit of a limitation right now - I have one mould to build, and about 10 pieces to come out of another. Working with HydroStone has been a great experience. I'm liking the way it pours, sets up, and retains the details from the mould. Working with it post-hardening is also easy - it cuts and sands a lot better than resin (ie faster!) so fitting pieces is pretty easy. Besides, HydroStone is about 1/10th the cost of resin!

The Layout shots - this is the time you can make mistakes!

The first cuts and insertions - no time for mistakes now!

Terrain Project - table for Astronomi-con Vancouver

2008-06-05T10:23:00.000-07:00

So far this blog has focused on model painting. Let's be fair, that is what I enjoy most about the hobby; creating cool figures to take to high level tournaments and having fun with them.

Now, if I had the time, and the space, I'd probably spend a whole lot more effort (and money!) on terrain building. Frankly my motivation for terrain building is limited. Whilst I do like it (and I am pretty good at it) I've been spoiled by the local community. Checkpoint Charlie's had a great selection of terrain, both built by the guys who played there, and bought from local "professional" builder. These days I have the pleasure of playing at The Showroom, where Thor has produced some of the best terrain in the country.

Astronomi-con is coming to Vancouver in a few weeks. Part of their "show" is for locals to bring a table to the event. Not only is this cool, it also saves the organizers from shipping terrain all over the country! Even better - they award a prize for the Best Table.

I've been in discussion with the Astro' organizers and we have agreed on a table. I'm not going to reveal the details now, but I'll take teaser shots as it comes together. More to come tomorrow (when I get started on the basics).

"Mutants & Scum" at the Canadian GT

2008-05-29T10:19:00.000-07:00

The morning of Friday May 23rd saw five BC boys meeting at Vancouver International Airport for our flight to Toronto. Myself, Nick Daniels (Guard), Danny Hope (Necrons), Carson Sawatasky (Nurgle CSM) and Josh Steinhider (Tyranids). Our flight was pretty uneventful - Nick and I sat together, but could not get the movies to work on his laptop. We spent most of the flight bs-ing! We picked up our Aspen at the airport and proceeded to use Nick's rather useful GPS system to get us the 21km to Oakville... should have been 19 minutes (mapquest), took about 40. Let me tell you how I love the GTA...

After a quick trip to the HQ (which was mostly closed) we headed to our spiffy hotel, grabbed a bite at Wendy's and then played poker for a couple of ours. I was 3rd!

Saturday morning we gathered bleary-eyed (it was 5am PST...) loaded our armies and headed over to the Battle Bunker.

Just the day before we left I had finished the army. I was pretty happy with the end result (the models had gone past that "ass-phase" that painters often get to with their projects where they doubt the finished product will be anything but "ass"!). I'll probably do some more highlighting before Astronomi-Con Vancouver.
The full army list and backgrounder can be found here.

The Chimera came out nicely. I've switched airbrushes (to a Paasche), and whilst it is nice, I'm not at quite the same level of control I was with the Aztec; I really should get it fixed!

The Ogryns look good based.

And here are the 22 Last Chancers! I went with the classic DA Green Flak (Carapace in game terms) over Black fatigues. Weapons were kept simple - just metal - there has been none of that regimental "personalization" we see in regular Guard units.

and a close up...

This is the Command Squad with their 3 Basilisks. The rear doors on both the FW variants are hinged (bloody pain to do!) and detailed inside.

And last (the two M&S Chimerae are below), and least (!) the ratlings.

Game 1 - yes I was there to play games!
Opponent - Josh Curtis - Eldar
Mission - Head Hunt (kill the HQ!)

I've seen Josh on the GT Circuit for about 4 years now; he brings hard armies and has gotten progressively better as a player as he has matured. This army was no exception. THREE units of Pathfinders and 2 Fire Prisms. As soon as he deployed his Pathfinders in a building, to get a 2+ cover save, I knew I was pretty much doomed! Even with 3 Basilisks I was going to have a hard time winkling those guys out of there. I did a fair bit of damage to his force, but with the death of my HQ, the loss of a deep striking anti-tank unit to "drift", and the expensive Pathfinders staying above 50% I was unable to withstand the withering fire that I was on the receiving end of.

Result - Eldar Victory (Victorious Slaughter)
Notes - Josh played pretty straight up - there were a few times he moved through is own bases and I'm not convinced his measuring was 100% accurate!

Game 2
Opponent - Chris Orr - Black Templar
Mission - Scouting Engagement (escalation...)

Chris and I are old aquaintances - I have played against him one other time at GTs (where he barely beat my Armoured Company). He plays a drop-poding BT army, which is quite unusual, and can throw a lot of players off their guard, as he has some ground elements in there to engage you early. Escalation was going to hurt me, that and no infiltrate. I got my Ratlings and most of my Last Chancers in place, but kept a unit back in reserve. I was quick to do wounds to Chris' units (breaking his devastator squad in 2 turns), but the "flee forward" rule BTs have meant Chris was able to engage my LCs pretty quickly. Whilst his reserves were slow coming in, their ability to come in on turn 5/6 and take table quarters was my undoing.

Result - Black Templar Victory (Victorious Slaughter)
Notes - good fun game - thought I might pull out a tie on this one until a dreadnought dropped on my head on turn 5 and the unit pictured above engaged with the CC Dreadnought finally sucumbed after 3 rounds of combat.

Game 3
Opponent - Chadi Faraj - 13th Company
Mission - Enemy's Pride

Sadly I have no pictures of Chadi's army. Needless to say, like most of the work he has done it was well converted and had a cool paint scheme. Chadi is one of those "larger than life" gamers; loud, obnoxious (in a good way!) and loads of fun to play against. His attitude PO's some people, but after ~120 GT games I can pretty much take anything (other than that guy who was chewing and spitting tobacco... ::shudder::). Knowing 13th Co as I do I knew I had 2 ways to play this game - form a gun line and let him come to me... or get stuck in and try to tie him up and let the big guns do their work. Guess which I chose? Yep, the wrong one! Chadi got the first turn, so my LCs who infiltrated got into combat that same turn... ug-ly! His army moved so fast that I was unable to use the LCs as FOOs (as I'd been playing all day) forcing me to have the Basilisks push their way through the jungle (one immobilized of course) and engage his forces directly...

Result - 13th Company Victory (Victorious Slaughter)
Notes - LOADS of fun! Chadi got my favourite opponent vote at the end of the event

So there ended day 1 - bloody but not broken - I'd have another 2 games to get my "one win"! We headed off to the Outback Steakhouse and then off for the night's entertainment...

Day 2!
Even more bleary-eyed from the night out we hit the Bunker full of zeal for the last 2 games (!)

Game 4
Opponent - Dustin Perejma - Space Marines (Swift Like the Wind trait)
Mission - Personal Objectives.

Dustin had a pretty cool army. On first look most people thought it was a Ravenwing list, but we spotted some things that did not belong in that list. Also he had converted them up to be Legion of the Damned models - pretty sweet!

The battle was to and fro; I was happy with the way things were going for me. Dustin's dice roles for dangerous terrain were horrible! He lost his Librarian to a pair of 1's... I was able to kill quite a lot of his bikes, but my heavy weapons failed me when they most needed to kill bikes (the lascannon could not hit anything all game). Of course every time Dustin detached his techmarine from a unit they proceeded to fail their to hit rolls, and when he was attached the re-roll was not needed... yep, it was one of those games!

Fittingly Schaeffer was the last man left alive.

Result - Legion of the Damned Victory (Solid)
Notes - Good game, lots of missed opportunities, and a fair result. Dustin played it straight up, and he did not realize my "handicap" I was playing with of the Last Chancers acting as fire controllers for the Basilisks until I pointed it out at game end.

Game 5
Opponent - Doug Beverage - Imperial Guard
Mission - Secure and Control (and avoid being the Worst General!)

Doug is another player that I have known for a number of years and I've been at five events with him in the past. The only time I have played him though was at the GT last year, where he beat down my non-shooty tyranid army. Doug plays a mechanized, and Canadian themed, army.. This time he chose to bring 2 demolishers. I have no idea why! He had very little long range fire power on the table, and when I got first turn and took out his sentinals he had even less...
With only 3 objective markers on the table, this was not going to a close game.
Doug chose NOT to move his demolishers forward, but sideways, allowing my basilisks to target them indirectly with ease - every turn. I managed to stun or immobilize 2 of his transports in the second turn, and the third blasted towards my lines. To Doug's credit he had the right idea with that. Get amongst my basilisks and use the storm trooper's melta guns to blow them up. Sadly his dice failed him, my ogryns shot the unit to pieces and they were trapped, and therefore wiped out on their fall back. This is the ONLY time this has happened for me in 4th edition!
In the end I held 2 of the 3 objectives, had lost one Basilisk and 6 Last Chancers, with all my sub-units remaining as scoring. Doug had an immobilzed demolisher left.

Result - Mutants & Scum Victory (Victorious Slaughter!)
Notes - His game was pretty much summed up by a Ord 6 roll on his Ogryn filled Chimera in turn 3, and my melta/plasma LC squad deep striking at a point 4" from the table edge and between a demolisher and a chimera - 5" to either side. They drifted and stopped 3" behind his demolisher... I hate putting the beat down on a player like that, but Doug just had the wrong fit for my army and he was in a foul mood during the game! Besides, I really did not want to be labeled the worst general.

Summary
So the weekend was lots of fun. I think the guys who came out to experience the GT for the first time had mixed feelings. They enjoyed the games, but felt disappointed at the painting and sportsmanship scores they received. There is local bias when a BC player goes to Toronto - I've felt it in the past myself. But after playing as the "visitor" so many times I've either gotton used to it, or adapted to overcome it. This was my 24th GT, so I have a thick skin!

In the end I finished 20th Overall, and 9th in Sportsmanship (thanks to whomever voted me their favourite opponent). Congratulations to all the winners, and my thanks to all those I played against.

GW Canada's coverage can be found here.

I'd like to thank Cory Burns for organizing the event so well (as usual). He is leaving GW after Games Day and will be missed by gamers all over Canada. Best of luck to you Cory!

"Mutants & Scum" Part 7

2008-04-26T10:17:00.000-07:00

Yep, 2 updates in one day! Don't get too used to it...
The Ogryns are done.

"Mutants & Scum" Part 6

2008-04-26T10:16:00.000-07:00

So the saga continues on! The Ogryns are nearing completion - I'm suprised about the amount of work they are taking! Yesterday I took the time to give them 4 coats of GW's 'Ard Coat. This should help protect the paint on metal models.

I have completed the Command HQ - all 5 models and 60 pts of kick-ass guardsmen!
(bases will be done for the whole army in one go)

The Ratlings are now wip...

Last night was a sad day for Vancouver gamers... we said goodbye to Checkpoint Charlie's in North Vancouver. Checkpoint has been North Van's "home" for all things gaming for almost 8 years. I have a very close association with the store; when I started as an Outrider with GW I spent many weekends there running demos, painting clinics and later Rogue Trader and Hall of Heroes tournaments.

We did see the place out in style though - a ~32,000pt Apocalypse game that played out until 0130h!
Fittingly this ended in a tie.

I'd like to thank Drew Arnott for opening the store, supporting Vancouver gamers both in the store and through vast amounts of sponsorship at local events, and to wish him the best of luck in finding a new location in the very near future.

Lord of the Rings...

2008-04-25T10:13:00.000-07:00

... I love this game! So under-rated and so under-played. We are hoping to get a bit of a revival going in the late summer; turns out that a bunch of locals have armies. I have about 300 pts of Rohan and about 1900 (that is about 160 Uruk-hai!) of Isengard.
This troll was done for a Warpstone painting contest. It was doing quite well until a GW regular with a nice Sauron showed... As he is hanging with Uruks I figured I make him one too - a BIG one!

"Mutants & Scum" Part 5

2008-04-22T10:12:00.000-07:00

Finally I have gotton on with the project that this blog was started for. I'm off work for [most of] the week - huzzah! So, whilst I've been doing fix-up jobs around the house I've also been painting and building. The Ogryns are near completion (I hope to have pictures tomorrow for you), and the Ogryn's Chimera is built.

I've also completed the Chimera's the "scum" will use; I figured they will be given/take the crapiest piece of rejected junk in the yard!

Workspace

2008-04-17T10:10:00.000-07:00

I'm VERY fortunate to have a 12' x 12' room dedicated to my hobby, quite a lot of space; somehow I managed to fill it up anyway! A local gamer posted his work "space" recently. Now don't get me wrong - this guy produces some fine product - but man is he chaotic!

I've just had my semi-annual clean up - so this state will last about 3 weeks!

My lighting source is quite good, ~1Kw of 96% daylight bulbs. No shadows! Only down side is my blending often gets lost in "lesser" lighting situations (ie everywhere).

I also have lots of "resource" space:

"Mutants & Scum" Part 8

2008-04-15T10:18:00.000-07:00

Whilst my weekend in Halifax was a blast (well the conference was dull [work], but the hotel was fun; we were in the same one as Team Canada so I got to chat with Shane Doan, Danny Heatley, said "hi" to Stevie-Y, Pat Burns, Eric Staal and Ken Hitchcock...) it was not conducive to getting my army finished.
I was hoping to have them completed by this weekend so I could get a practice run in at The Showroom's HoH event on Saturday. Oh well, guess I'll just take the army "cold" to the GT! Wouldn't be the first time...

The Ratlings are done.

Ugly little buggers! I kept the Green Jackets consistent as an homage to Sharpe's Rifles.

So the "Mutants" are done... just the "scum" to complete!

completing the Horde...

2008-04-15T10:09:00.000-07:00

So that brings my Tyranids to an end... just finished up the last 2 carnifexes, 5 bases of rippers, 10 genestealers and 37 hormagaunts. I have about 8000 pts ("Apocalyzed") of tyranids. The only ones I'd consider putting in now would be characters; The Red Terror, Old One Eye (which I would build from plastic) and some Hive Tyrants. Yep, currently my army is tyrant-less! Synapse is provided by the 21 Warriors.

you can thank Trent...

2008-04-08T10:07:00.000-07:00

Trent sent me an e-mail today. In it he "encouraged" me to update my blog.... ::sigh:: sure Trent, anything for you!

Well, work has been busy (fiscal year end), the kids have been sick, and I have this nasty ra.... oh, you want to see models?

Not much been produced recently. I've been getting my Tyranids completed - I now have ~8000 pts for Apocalypse gaming - including 8 Carnifexes and the Trygon... yes, I dipped the FW Trygon!

Warmachine

2008-03-05T10:05:00.000-08:00

wow... 3 weeks... man am I a slacker .
Well not really... I have 2 kids and a job... and then there was the distraction of Warmachine...

A local gamer decided that he did not need two Warmachine armies, so he put one up for sale. Well, I have been resisting Warmachine since the day it came out (for one I found the 'jacks goofy to start with - they are much cooler now!), but this deal was to good to refuse - $140 for ~$400 of models. Sweet!

Here are my observations so far (on the models):
1) on the whole they look great, but man are they a bitch to put together! Not difficult, but just plain nasty. Large gaps and misaligned parts. After 20+ years of GW models I realize now that they ARE the best figures on the market!
2) I need more Green Stuff!
3) Why the f**k don't Warmachine players paint their models? At my local store not ONE Warmachine player I've seen has a completly painted army. WFT? They are just begging to be painted! Maybe that is me as a painter before a gamer talking.

BTW - I bought Khador...

"Mutants & Scum" Part 4

2008-02-15T09:55:00.000-08:00

Just a quick text update (no picture).

I've started laying paint down on the models I have so far - working on the flesh tones.
The sniper rifles (SM Scout) arrived this week, so I'm hoping to get those 2 models done this weekend.

"Mutants & Scum" Part 3

2008-01-28T12:09:00.000-08:00

Finally, some pictures!
These are my Last Chancers... still wip (obviously!)...

Col Schaeffer and Lt Kage... badass the two of them!

2 Flamers

Heavy weapons

2 meltaguns

2 democharge psychopaths (alt models for "post chuck" are also done)!

plasma (2 more to come) plus 2 "boring dudes"

a couple of close combat specialists

and my 2 psykers

the guy kneeling is pointing with both hands (one is bigger than the other I know, but he is a mutant!); I'm hoping to model some "plasma" between the fingers. The second one will probably get an arm and hand swap so both hands are cradling his head.

still to come; snipers and plasmagun dudes.

Comments?

(Originally posted Jan 28 20008)

Tournament Play

2008-01-28T12:06:00.000-08:00

Those of you who know me, or know of me, know that I play in tournaments; a LOT of tournaments! Whilst I enjoy playing friendly games (we play Apocalypse almost every Friday night now), tournaments have always been the "thing" for me when it comes to gaming. Why, you may ask?

I like the structure.

Simple, huh?

Fixed time allocations, balanced terrain (set by the organizer), composition scoring systems, recognition for effort in painting and the un-written rule that you do not come to be an arse, as this will not go over well with players 2 thru 4, after they hear how you pissed off player #1!

Ok, so I tend to do rather well at tournaments – I admit it! I get high scores in painting (well, I *can* paint!), I like building balanced composition friendly armies (I’m not a WAAC type) and I’m 99% of the time fun to play against – I don’t argue, cheat or lie, and I own up to my FUBARs. Once in a while (not too often!) I'll win a game or 2 at an event!

Well my tournament run is coming to an end. The Canadian Hall of Heroes season has just 4 more weeks left in this season, Sure, I’ll be gaming every weekend until then, but after that I’m focussing on just a few events. Family is growing and I need to spend time with them. Don’t be worried – I will turn up once in a while to scare the crap out of the local kids who may have heard of me!

Expect to see me at the Canadian GT in May, Astronomi-Con Vancouver in July, and the OFCC in August, and West Coast Mayhem in October.

(Originally posted Jan 28 2008)

"Mutants & Scum" Part 2

2008-01-24T12:01:00.000-08:00

OK, not quite the update I was hoping for... 2 kids under 5yrs keep you busy!
I was going to show you the figs that are done, but last night I was having too much fun actually DOING the conversions to get photographs done!

Kage is done (bar the bolt pistol), as is Col Schaeffer. I’m using plastics from the Catachan, Cadian, Chaos Marauder, and Space Marine ranges, as well as some resin FW Elysian, Cadian and Krieg parts. Trying to avoid using metal figs for the Last Chancers. The Ogryns will be the new metal models – they are freakishly HUGE! I was going to convert FB Ogres, but that was turning into too much hard work… oh, and the Ratlings will be metal at this stage – I have no good ideas for making plastic conversions (feel free to share if you have any).

After a discussion on the excellent Guard group on yahoogroups, my old friend Don “Mondo” Morris has convinced me that sniper LCs may not be the best use of points. I’ve done a little tweaking of the army list, which I will update later.

I will try to post a “real” update on Sunday. I have a 7 game Combat Patrol tournament all day Saturday.

(Originally posted Jan 24 2008)

"Mutants & Scum" Part 1

2008-01-17T11:38:00.000-08:00

A beginning...

All armies start with an idea; mine was formulated way back in ~2002, when I watched my good friend Trent Le Clair play the "old" Last Chancers at a GT - 12 models plus a Chimera. SO COOL! Since that time I've been itching for a chance (haha) to do likewise.

However, as always, other armies just kept on getting in the way!

Well the 2008 Canadian GT has now been announced, and I’m sure to qualify (I’m #2 in Canada in the Hall of Heroes standings, behind my buddy, and oft protagonist Nick Daniels). I have a fine “tradition” of taking a NEW army to each and every GT season. So new that I don’t play test them before hand, and I am often seen basing the night before (much to my wife’s amusement).

This year I’m going with my “Mutants & Scum” list; Last Chancers, with Abhumans, and a snotty Artillery Officer in “Command” (I was a Combat Engineer for 3 years, and I got a skin full of snotty Artillery Officers – old rivalry from the Crimea!).

So here is the list. Pretty much fixed; don’t bother telling me you don’t like it, or what the problems with it will be (well you can, but I may not change the list!). This is the [planned] list for the event, and as usual I’m going for Theme and Fun.

Later I’ll tell you about some of the Fun stuff that the list will be doing!

1700 Pts - Imperial Guard Roster

Troops: Last Chancers (24#, 927 Pts)
0 Last Chancers @ 927 Pts
Chimera; Chimera
1 Colonel Schaeffer @ [75] Pts
Bionics; Carapace Armour; Macharian Cross; Medallion Crimson; Plasma Pistol; Power Weapon; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Bionics @ [0] Pts
1 Carapace Armour @ [0] Pts
1 Macharian Cross @ [0] Pts
1 Medallion Crimson @ [0] Pts
1 Kage @ [35] Pts
Bolt Pistol; Close Combat Weapon; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
0 Last Chancers @ [637] Pts
Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Specialist @ [33] Pts
Carapace Armour; Surveyor; Sniper Rifle; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Carapace Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Surveyor @ [2] Pts
1 Specialist @ [33] Pts
Carapace Armour; Surveyor; Sniper Rifle; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Carapace Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Surveyor @ [2] Pts
1 Specialist @ [27] Pts
Carapace Armour; Make Psyker; Bolt Pistol; Close Combat Weapon; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Carapace Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Specialist @ [34] Pts
Carapace Armour; Surveyor; Bolt Pistol; Demolition Charge; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Carapace Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Surveyor @ [2] Pts
1 Specialist @ [36] Pts
Carapace Armour; Missile Launcher; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Carapace Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Specialist @ [29] Pts
Carapace Armour; Surveyor; Bolt Pistol; Power Weapon; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Carapace Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Surveyor @ [2] Pts
1 Specialist @ [38] Pts
Carapace Armour; Surveyor; Plasma Pistol; Power Weapon; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Carapace Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Surveyor @ [2] Pts
1 Specialist @ [31] Pts
Carapace Armour; Heavy Bolter; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Carapace Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Specialist @ [23] Pts
Carapace Armour; Surveyor; Lasgun; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Carapace Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Surveyor @ [2] Pts
1 Specialist @ [27] Pts
Carapace Armour; Make Psyker; Bolt Pistol; Close Combat Weapon; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Carapace Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Specialist @ [23] Pts
Carapace Armour; Surveyor; Lasgun; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Carapace Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Surveyor @ [2] Pts
1 Specialist @ [46] Pts
Carapace Armour; Lascannon; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Carapace Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Specialist @ [34] Pts
Carapace Armour; Surveyor; Bolt Pistol; Demolition Charge; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Carapace Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Surveyor @ [2] Pts
1 Specialist @ [29] Pts
Carapace Armour; Surveyor; Flamer; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Carapace Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Surveyor @ [2] Pts
1 Specialist @ [29] Pts
Carapace Armour; Surveyor; Flamer; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Carapace Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Surveyor @ [2] Pts
1 Specialist @ [33] Pts
Carapace Armour; Surveyor; Plasmagun; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Carapace Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Surveyor @ [2] Pts
1 Specialist @ [33] Pts
Carapace Armour; Surveyor; Plasmagun; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Carapace Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Surveyor @ [2] Pts
1 Specialist @ [33] Pts
Carapace Armour; Surveyor; Meltagun; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Carapace Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Surveyor @ [2] Pts
1 Specialist @ [33] Pts
Carapace Armour; Surveyor; Meltagun; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Carapace Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Surveyor @ [2] Pts
1 Specialist @ [33] Pts
Carapace Armour; Surveyor; Sniper Rifle; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades
1 Carapace Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Surveyor @ [2] Pts
1 Chimera @ [90] Pts
Extra Armour; Multilaser; Hull Heavy Bolter
1 Extra Armour @ [5] Pts
1 Chimera @ [90] Pts
Extra Armour; Multilaser; Hull Heavy Bolter
1 Extra Armour @ [5] Pts

HQ: Command Platoon (5#, 60 Pts)
0 Command Platoon @ 60 Pts
0 Command Squad @ [60] Pts
Carapace Armour
1 Junior Officer @ [40] Pts
Carapace Armour; Close Combat Weapon; Laspistol
4 Guardsmen @ [0] Pts
Carapace Armour; Lasgun (x4)

Heavy Support: Basilisk (1#, 150 Pts)
1 Basilisk @ 150 Pts
Armoured Crew Compartment; Extra Armour; Earthshaker Cannon; Hull Heavy Bolter; Indirect Fire Capability
1 Armoured Crew Compartment @ [20] Pts
1 Extra Armour @ [5] Pts

Heavy Support: Basilisk (1#, 150 Pts)
1 Basilisk @ 150 Pts
Armoured Crew Compartment; Extra Armour; Earthshaker Cannon; Hull Heavy Bolter; Indirect Fire Capability
1 Armoured Crew Compartment @ [20] Pts
1 Extra Armour @ [5] Pts

Heavy Support: Basilisk (1#, 130 Pts)
1 Basilisk @ 130 Pts
Extra Armour; Earthshaker Cannon; Hull Heavy Bolter; Indirect Fire Capability
1 Extra Armour @ [5] Pts

Elite: Ratlings (5#, 55 Pts)
5 Ratlings @ 55 Pts
Sniper Rifle

Elite: Ogryns (6#, 225 Pts)
4 Ogryns @ 225 Pts
Ripper Gun; Frag Grenades; Chimera
1 Bone 'ead @ [35] Pts
Ripper Gun; Frag Grenades
1 Chimera @ [90] Pts
Extra Armour; Multilaser; Hull Heavy Bolter
1 Extra Armour @ [5] Pts

Total Roster Cost: 1697

(Originally posted Jan 17 2008)

Blogging my projects!

2008-01-17T11:36:00.000-08:00

Yes, as the title, and the message, says I'm going to start blogging my army builds, conversions and terrain projects. I may even share battle reports and tournament commentaries! Expect to see updates, often at odd stages, of how my builds are progressing; I'll share my joys, pains, trials and tribulations with you along the way. I may even share some of my hobby experience that I've accumulated over the past 35 years of model making, wargaming and tournament play.
Hopefully you will stick around for the "ride"!

Until the weekend (when I hope to have the first army list posted...).

Cheers!

Terrain Project - Part 3

2007-07-07T10:44:00.000-07:00

The table is nearing completion! Yeah, I know, no pictures to prove it.. well I've been keeping the progress "secret"; I will be updating the previous posts with "in progress" pictures later this week.

So this is the getting towards the complete build:

J ust about 20 trench pieces to glue in!

This is how I left the table before we headed to Whistler:

We had a great 4 day trip to Whistler this past week. The kids loved the village, and the ride up Whistler Mountain on the gondola was a treat for them. Getting to see 3 Black Bears was the prefect "bonus"!

Saturday and Sunday I spent a lot of time on the table. The painting is complete, just need to finish the [small amount] of flocking, the trees (using the new GW plastic ones - god awfull...), and the defensive turret.
I think the Astro' organizers have set the scenario, so I hope to be able to post that on the weekend, along with "in action" pictures.
I'll also be doing a Astro' Batrep ala the GT one.