My Flames of War Volksgrenadier are coming along nicely. They're not anywhere near finished as much as I'd of wanted this week but they're getting there! I'm still aiming for an end of March finish for everything but I think I'm being rather optimistic with that date, it may very well be April by the time everything is done (boo! hiss!).
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| Hammerhead |
I actually spent alot of this week building the rest of my Tau army after I had my first 40K training game against Carl's Dark Angels at Games Workshop Metrocentre on Thursday night! Rather than doing a very basic HQ and Troop choice we both made limited 1,000pts lists from what we had and went straight into a battle. I was kind of stuck to what I could field with what I had but my list looked something along the lines of this;
HQ
Cadre Fiberblade
Troops
6 x Firewarriors
6 x Firewarriors
Elites
3 x Crisis Suits (mix of weapons)
3 x Stealth Suits
Heavy Support
1 x Hammerhead (Rail Gun)
1 x Broadside (High Yield Missile System)
1 x Broadside (Twin-Link Rail Rifles)
Plus a few wargear options and some drones. It was limited and I really need to get some extra Firewarriors and some Pathfinders to bulk out my army. I did end up picking up a Riptide last week mainly because I know Riptides are great for the Tau and most importantly it's an amazing looking model! It's still wrapped up in the box at the moment but I'll definitely get building and painting it soon!
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| Coming to the Display Cabinet Soon! |
I tried my hand at magnetising the weapons for the Crisis Suits which was an experience to say the least! I learnt from the first one that the magnets need to be the right way round for all the weapons to attract on both arms. It was fiddly and having to use the GW Hobby Drill to drill a 2mm hole and then use a 3mm drill bit my hand to finish drilling wasn't ideal but in a couple of hours I had all three Crisis Suits and one full set of weapons magnetised for Thursday night. The rest of the weapons I need to go back to and get sorted out.
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| Old Style Broadside |
So the game itself...was quite fun and pretty easy to pick up. Having come from Fantasy it was pretty straight forward but at times completely different and I know it'll take a few games/weeks to get my head around all the rules. We didn't go over anything about shooting at tanks, did a tiny bit of assault and nothing about Psykers. I can see it being fairly straight forward though and I enjoyed it alot especially with the majority of missions revolving around mission objectives which you have to hold and defend. I realised mid way through that drones should always be the first models in front of the rest of the squad. I learnt the hardway as one of my Crisis Suits needlessly died as it was ahead of the two drones supporting the team. I've got a week off this week as Carl is on holiday but the following week we'll be picking it up again, now to see if I have enough time to make the Riptide!
I actually did some priming too this week! With the weather taking a turn for the better on Friday I managed to get all my built Tau primed black ready for painting! Hopefully the weather holds out and I can get the majority of my un-primed models all undercoated and stock piled for when the weather inevitably takes a turn for the worse, let's be honest it's Britain it's going to happen!
Saturday night as the other half was on earlies and went to bed at 8pm I test painted my first Firewarrior and before I knew it I had it fully painted, based and tabletop ready by midnight! It's a pretty simple colour scheme using Naggaroth Night as a basecoat and Xereus Purple on certain parts of the armour to give it a distinctive look and finally washed with Druchii Violet. The cloth was basecoated with Vallejo German Camo Dark Brown, washed with Agrax Earthshade and then drybrushed with Balor Brown. The Rifle was mainly the same as the armour but with the end of the gun and the scope given a Temple Guard Blue coat to give them a pop. It's not the greatest standard but it's tabletop standard and after getting a squad of 6 all done over the weekend they really look distinctive and eye-catching from the battlefield.
So apart from the Tau and 40K yesterday I was up at Blyth for the normal Sunday NAG games. I managed a couple of Fantasy games at 2,400pts with my Ogres against two lots of Elves which I've never played against before. The first was against Jim's High Elves, an army that used lots of small units and he kept redirecting and blocking my big units of Ogres and Ironguts with his Hawks and smaller units. My deployment really mucked up my first couple of plans here as I was struggling to get my units walked across the table. I had 3 Sabertusks this time around and putting my normal 2 on the sides I stupidly put the other one in the middle. It meant I was constantly trying to keep the 6 inch panic bubble away from it which gave me a very limited area to deploy everything else.
The Mournfang yet again proved their worth and continued to mow down units with ease. The most suprising was his White Lions which charged the front and a huge block of spearmen which charged the flank. The Mournfang held out for two rounds before wiping them out and finally dying in a battle against the Swordmasters. My big Ironguts unit almost got rear charged by his General, BSB and big unit of Calvarly but thankfully they managed to swift reform to face the charge and then proceded to smash face, including my Slaughtermaster taking on the General in a challenge. After the dust settled I had very marginally won thankfully with my Slaughtermaster, BSB and most of the Ironguts block still left.
After that we welcomed a new player Dom to the club and I took on his Dark Elves, I didn't realise how many shots the Dark Elves can produce from their repeater crossbows, and straight from the off I had lost a couple of Ogres and Ironguts. But then my luck changed, I actually did something with the Cannon! Dom had brought his General with a Manticore to the game and he'd moved him bang into the middle of the battlefrield. Thankfully my normally untrusty Ironblaster hit home and wiped out the Manticore first turn, leaving his General just on his own in front of a big block of Ogres. The Mournfang were the star of the show again though being charged on one turn by the Hydra, Cold One Knights and the General who opted for the Mourfang's flank rather than taking on the block of Ogres on his own. After the battle suprisingly the three Dark Elves units had only managed one wound on the Mournfang, the Ogres didn't let the Dark Elves off as lightly wiping out the Cold One Calvary and Hydra and sending the General running for the forest!
After a couple of turns and the two blocks of Ogres and Ironguts marching and crushing everything in their path, Dom called the game. I felt quite bad as he was just getting back into Fantasy and I don't think he was expecting such a one sided game, nor did I to be honest. But with the Mournfang running the show, the Ironblaster cannon finally working and a series of unfortunate rolls on Dom's behalf I could see how the game turned out the way it did.
So overall a decent weekend of gaming and a pretty busy week of wargaming overall. This week I'll be cracking on with painting up the Tau, probably building the Riptide and trying to crack on with the Volksgrenadier. Fun times ahead for sure!
Chalmers
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