AAR - Soviets vs Japanese - Bolt Action

So as mentioned I hosted a training game for Craig at the club as he's just getting into Bolt Action with Japanese. We decided to keep it at 500pts for his first game on a 4 x 4 board and for ease of playing we played Maximum Attrition, it's my least favourite scenario in the Rulebook but when you're just starting out it's easier to just aim to kill the opponent while learning the rules than worrying about objectives and the such.

I ran a 500pt Veteran List, a first for my Soviets and Mort ran a mix of Vets, Regulars and Inexperienced (Heavy Mortar) including a nasty horde of Veteran Japanese Infantry that proved to do any significant damage to. As already mentioned I was easily wiped off the table, Mort used Smoke really well to block my Sniper hiding in a centralised building and then used his Sniper to take him out in one shot.

His Sniper continued to pick off units including my Lieutenant and Medium Mortar. Funnily enough my MVP unit was my free rifle squad who seemed to shrug off any incoming fire and even wiped a squad of Regular infantry too. At the end of the game they were the only Soviets left on the table and seemed to be the only thing that wanted to kill stuff. My two Vet squads both assaulted the large vet squad and failed miserably and were wiped. After that it was down to the teams and the free squad and I knew that I wasn't going to get anywhere with that.

Here's some pics I managed to get, I need to remember to get more pictures in the future of my games;

Cough...Splutter...Is This Thing On?

Has it really been over a month since I've updated? Time flies and all that. In the past month I've been to Leeds Festival, been to one of my best mates Weddings, been to Southampton for a couple of days for work, got a new kitten and generally been one busy man.

So hobby time has been at a premium recently, I've been a bit realistic and started selling off stalled projects. The Tyranids have gone, they weren't getting the attention they needed and I'd rather someone else have them and get them sorted. It does mean that my planned Space Marine project has been bumped forwards and I've now got everything I need for my army;

As you can see I'm going to be painting them purple and gold. I didn't realise these were the colours of the Emperors Children, I saw the colour scheme in the Space Marines Codex under one of the Ultramarines sub-chapters called the Hawk Lords. I'm going to be doing a bit of a Hawk Lord/custom chapter using either the Raven Guard tactics or Imperial Fist tactics (re-rolling Bolters FTW).

With just under a month to go for the Bolt Action Welsh Open I've been putting the finishing touches to my Japanese. Granted on Monday I remembered about the Armoured Platoon game that kicks off the event so I hurriedly ordered some tanks and a lorry from Warlord on Monday morning and they arrived this morning, not too shabby for customer service! So with my girlfriend working nights next week I'll be getting these built, sprayed and painted ready for the tourne. I've organsied a 1K Game with my tourne list for next Sunday against Jim so at least I'll have some practice with them before the Welsh Open. My first tournament and I cannot wait, though I'm ready for my Pacific warriors to be sitting at the bottom of the table come the end of Sunday!

Squads Finished

My Vampire Count army is coming along really nicely, I've not even got bored of painting Skeletons, Zombies or Ghouls yet huzzah! It helps I'm doing them in batches of 10 and then switching to another unit. It means nothing gets too samey and the Ghouls are pretty easy to do anyway as they're just a couple of washes followed up by a tiny bit of detail work. I’ve still got the likes of the Mortis Engine and Terrorghiest to build but I want to spend some time on these are they’re going to be two of the vocal points of the army. I really like the idea of the Terrorghiest sitting on top of the Garden of Morr building but I don’t want to feel like I’ve copied it. I want to be able to have the full army built for a club game soon but I know for a fact that at least 50% of the army (probably 75%) will be grey plastic and I hate playing with grey plastic.

I had my first proper game of 40K on Sunday, after giving Mort a tutorial 500pt game of Bolt Action (his Japanese absolutely wiped my Vet Soviet force), Jim gave me a intro game of 40K at 1,500pts. His Space Wolves against my Necron army in a Kill Point game. We added the secondary objectives (Linebreaker, First Blood etc) to the scoring too and I really enjoyed it. Thankfully most of the rules were pretty self-explanatory and I don’t think I was too slow for Jim in my first game. I did lose 6-3 but my first turn I completely forgot to fire my Monolith, you know because it’s so small I missed it bang in the middle of my side of the battlefield, then didn’t realise it had a S8 AP1 Pie Plate Ordnance attack until Turn 3 where it then wiped out one squad and almost wiped out another. I need to fully learn all the rules for the Necrons but when they have about 5 pages of FAQs and Erratas I’ll be waiting until the new book comes out (hopefully before the New Year with the speed GW is launching the new hardback books).

So while I’ve not had the time to post on here I’ve been pretty darn busy. Promise to keep you all updated, even if they’re just small updates with some pics of painting progress and that.

Chalmers