New Year New Post, Part 2

So what else have I done in the past three months? Well The End Times has kicked in full swing in the Warhammer world and for some reason the idea of a Chaos Legions army really sounded like a good idea, finding a decent deal on Wargaming Trading page on Facebook I found myself with quite a rather large collection of unmade current edition Chaos and Beastmen figures!

Just some of the Chaos that I Got!

I don’t have a clue what came over me, most of the models are still unbuilt, I did make an attempt of a Beastmen BSB and Beastlord and the unit of Chaos Warriors I built and started to paint as Khorne Warriors I’ve been a little underwhelmed with. I know Chaos Warrior armies can be low numbers and really competitive but I’m honestly not sure whether I can see myself to build, paint and play another Fantasy army at the moment. I’ve got so many Beastmen models to build it’s a daunting task, I’ve gone from one horde army of the Vampire Counts to another Horde army of Beastmen. I think realistically thinking I’ll probably resell all of this and hopefully someone else will have more luck than I did!

One of my resolutions for 2015 is not to impulse buy, last year I had a rather bad habit of jumping from army to army, something which I think a lot of wargamers do, but I’d buy enough for way over the normal points limit and then struggle to complete it and sell it on. This year I want to make a concentrated effort on the armies I own and get them finished and fully painted/based.

The armies are as followed;

Warhammer Fantasy

Ogre Kingdoms – Finish painting my first Fantasy army when I got back into the army. I’d say I’m about 75% of the way through this army but still need to paint a few of the bigger things. I do have an unbuilt Thundertusk which needs building at some point too.

Vampire Counts – As mentioned I’ve made a good start but still have a lot to do for these. Obviously being a horde-style army each unit is 40 strong so it’s a big task for each unit. Though if they’re as simple as the Zombies to paint, I feel I could get through the army quite quickly.

Empire - I’m not too sure what to do with my Empire. I’ve got a pretty big force built and mainly primed but whenever I pick them up I cannot for the life of me get motivated to paint them up. It also doesn’t help whenever I play them on the table they’re boring to play. It may well be the case that I sell these rather than trying to paint them up.

Bolt Action

German Waffen SS – This was a Christmas present and spent the Christmas week building it all. Now with the weather being it’s normal British weather I’m finding it pretty hard to get anything primed. I unfortunately don’t have a garage or anything so have to go outside in the shed so I really need a decent mild temperature. As mentioned in Part 1 this is more of a modelling and painting project so I’m not too fussed if this takes me longer to get these painted and sorted.

Warhammer 40K

Necrons – I’ve got about 90% of everything painted. I’ve got one unit primed and halfway painted and then a couple of units still to build. I’ve not really played much 40K recently so it’s not a major rush to get these finished but with the new Necron Codex coming out I’d like to get these finished so I can properly learn 40K in the near-distant future.

Space Marines – This was actually meant to be my winter project and wanted to get everything built and primed over the Christmas period. That obviously didn’t happen with so many other things happening! I really want to make a effort to get these done as they’re going to be pretty simple to paint and build. I know I’ve got a weekend in March where the fiancé is going away with work friends all weekend so I might very well just spend the whole weekend building and priming it all.

Infinity

PanO – Everything is primed and I just need to paint the Military Orders up. Unfortunately not many people are playing the game at the club and that’s after the Version 3 rules which came out recently. These shouldn’t take too long to get done so I might just need a weekend or two to focus and get them done.

Morats – Again these are all primed and half painted but need finishing off. I think my motivation for them have really died down now no one plays at the club but I think I need to make a focused pledge soon to get them done and relearn Infinity. But it’s not a major rush to get them done at the moment.

So yeah quite a few projects, and I’ve also got one bigger one that I’ll be mentioning in a blog post this week. Something that I’m looking forward to being a part of and it’s for a brand new system that I’ve not learnt yet. It’ll probably get me visiting a couple of different North East clubs to play the game but I’m already really looking forward to jumping into this and learning to play it.

Beginning of the BA League/Infinity Painting

Ahoy, it's time for another update! I'm fresh from kicking off the NAG Bolt Action League and I managed to hold onto a draw against Jim's Veteran British. I've only defended a couple of scenarios now but I hate it, prep bombardment is really annoying especially with the British rolling two dice and choosing the highest. It can instantly put hurt on your army before you've even activated an order!

We rolled for point defence and had to cut down the distances of the 3 objectives due to playing on a 4' x 4' board for the 500pts. We used three of my 15mm StuGs as objective markers (really need to build some 28mm WW2 objective markers now) and I had my lieutenant, a regular squad and Zis-3 defending the far right objective, left the middle objective free and defended the left hand objective with a Medium Mortar, AT Rifle and Sniper team. I left an inexperienced squad and regular squad in reserve to bring on from turn three depending on where Jim's reserves came on. My regular squad I brought on easily on the left to support the weapon teams, but my Inexperienced squad refused to come on (needing a 6 on two dice) until turn 6 where they rushed the middle objective and reclaimed it from a two man Brit team left taking that objective.

Zis-3 and Lieutenant Defend The Motherland

Regular Squad Defends the Left Objective

Pinned Squads with Reinforcements Coming On

Pesky Heavy Mortar Wouldn't Die

The Brit Vet Squad Moments Before They Were Killed by the Zis-3

As the game ended I held one objective, Jim held one and we were contesting the other. A draw. Not bad for our first league game. Jim took more points than me, I learned killing vets are a tough job to do and can see why the majority of people use vets in comp lists. Going from killing people on half of the dice rolls (4+) for my Soviets to killing them on a 1/3 of dice rolls (5+) for Jims really makes a different. Sure I can hit them easily enough to cause a pin but trying to kill the buggers well that's a different thing. Thankfully the Zis-3 luckily landed a shell straight on the Vet squad coming up the right. The +2 Pen really helps against Vets as you're then killing them on 3+, alot better!

I ranged in on his heavy mortar knocking it down to one man, but then my Medium Mortar couldn't finish it off for the full game, to the point the Heavy Mortar took a pot shot on my Lieutenant (needing a 6+ to range in) and managed it in the very last turn! This left the contested objective on the right was now easily in Jim's control. It was a great game but I cannot wait to attack in a scenario with prep bombardment! Jim went onto play a second league game against Dom's Italians and managed a marginal victory so leads with 4 points. We've already had a couple of extra guys sign up and another couple are showing interest, hopefully we can have even more people join!

So the progress of my Japanese for Bolt Action has been halted for a bit, I was burning myself out doing the same paint scheme over and over! I want to get them finished soon (just 10 men and the weapon teams left) but I needed a bit of time away from them to not get completely bored.

In light of this I've been painting my Infinity Combined Army! I've got another couple of training games with my Morat on Sunday going to be taking 250pts with me so I'm really looking forward to that. I really enjoyed my training game against Mike in June so looking forward to learning the more advanced rules on Sunday. I should be having a couple of games so hopefully I can learn from the first game and then implement it in the second game. Earlier this week I had the Yaogat box set delivered and I've built them along with my Morat Vanguard Boxset. I'm waiting for my bases to be delivered from Element Games which should be tomorrow so I can base everything on the bases and get them all primed grey for Sunday.

So far I've finished two of the Morat Vanguard with Combi Rifles and almost finished the big Suryat beast and got another Vanguard with Combi Rifle as a WIP. I'm not the greatest painter and still learning but I really enjoyed painting these guys. Hopefully once they're all finished and completed and look uniformed together they'll look ok for tabletop. I'm hoping with the others being primed I might be able to make some more progress on them but it all depends on time and whether the weather holds out.

It Returns!

Back From The Dead....

Fear not I'm alive! It's been almost two months since my last post, apologies for that. Since then I've been to Morocco and back, tore up the back garden and laid turf and fitted a new fence, been to Glastonbury to work for Oxfam for the week, and been working my tits off in my job. Unfortunately with all of that happening I've had to put the blog on the backburner but I'm now back and hopefully it'll be better than ever!

So what have I been up to in the world of wargaming in the past two months? Well the Soviets are fully finished to a 1,000pts on the dot. Me and Jim had a game with his finished Brits a couple of weeks ago and while I took a very early lead by the end of the battle Jim had beaten me by about 2 points mainly by getting his units off the board. I'll get some pictures sorted out in the next week or so, at the moment they’re in a case and with another 1,000pt game on Sunday I don’t want to take them all out to then put them all back in.

Despite having the Welsh Open at the beginning of October I’ve made absolutely no progress on my Japanese, I’ve put the next couple of weeks aside for getting all the squads built and primed, weather permitting. I’m still trying to source a couple of the models as unfortunately Warlord doesn’t seem to have a lot of the artillery and anti-tank guns for sale yet. I’ll be trailing through the other companies of the web to try and source what I need hence why I’m going to focus on the troops first.

I’ve organised an Escalation League for Bolt Action at NAG, we’re going to be starting at 500pts before moving to 750pts and finally 1K. A couple of people haven’t exactly been happy about some of the rules but at the moment we’ve got five people signed up with a couple more showing interest so hopefully it’ll garner so more interest once a few of the games have begun. Full details and rules for the league can be found here.

Outside of Bolt Action, I went to the midnight launch of the 7^th Edition Warhammer 40K. Granted I was coming back from Morocco at the time but why not, I’ve still yet to play a game of 40K due to my recent time constraints but having read the rulebook quite a bit it seems like it’ll be decent once I pick it up and I get playing a bit more.

Warhammer Fantasy-wise I participated in the first tournament of the year a month ago, we had a no-comp 2,000pt competition and I decided to take my Ogres as usual. Two 20-0 losses and one 14-6 win wasn’t really what I had planned but I’ve finally decided to box up and store away the Ogres for the foreseeable future. After a little while they get a little boring and stale. I’ve started the process of clearing out some of my failed armies (Lizardmen will be the first to go, my Empire will either go into storage or be sold too), once I’ve cleared those out I’m going to be starting a Vampire Count army. They were my original choice when I returned to Fantasy last year until I was drawn into the Ogres because let’s be honest what’s cooler than; Vampires, Zombies, Ghouls, Skeletons and everything else that goes bump in the night? I know I’m going to need a big bunch of Zombies (thankfully Mantic Games do pretty well priced undead) and the thought of painting every one is a little daunting but I’m hoping the Army Painter Necrotic Flesh Spray will give me a decent basecoat to then give the skin a wash and colour the clothing. It’ll be a long project for sure to get done but I have a feeling the army is going to look pretty cool once they’re finished.

Gorgeous Models

A couple of weeks back I had my first training game for Infinity. Mike, one of the main advocates of Infinity at the club is now a Warcor who can teach players the rules. I used his beautifully painted Ariadna against his Toahaa army and loved the game. The small model count really helps the game flow especially with the reactive orders meaning that no player is ever sat twiddling their thumbs because everyone is always involved. Check out Mike’s great blog here for all things Infinity. I’ve bought the Morat Sectorial Starter Force and the Vanguard Infantry box, they’re two of the newest box sets to be launched and they’re beautiful sculpts. I’ve already got the Starter Force based and grey-primed with the Vanguard waiting in the wings for a spray. Once I get these all started I’ll be having another training game to learn some more of the advance rules of the game and I really cannot wait for whenever that will be.

Finally I’ve signed up for a Judge Dredd Campaign at the club! The models and rulebook is produced by Warlord in conjunction with Mongoose Publishing. I’ve started a Cursed Earth Desperadoes gang but I’m still working out what equipment to give to each person in the gang for the campaign. I originally had an idea of two heroes and multiple goons but after kitting out two heroes with all the bells and whistles it really limited my choice for how many men I could run. We’re kicking off the Campaign August 10^th so hopefully by then I’ll have a couple of games under my belt and the initial guys for my gang all painted and sorted.

So yeah it’s been an eventful couple of months, hopefully now I can settle down and focus on getting the Japanese in some sort of recognisable state and make a move on with everything else. More updates later this week once I have Banzai’d straight into my Japanese models.
Chalmers

Christmas Projects

So guys, moved from Wordpress over to Blogspot and it's so much better!

Such an easier interface and the options to customise without being stuck behind the limitations of a set theme. Hopefully my blog will now blossom and become one that people read and enjoy!

So it's my last day at work before I take a week's holiday for Christmas, at work we were only going to have the Christmas Day and Boxing Day off as we need to do a full warehouse stock check. Thankfully, after participating in it last year, I've managed to book off the whole week so I can sit back and chill and mainly focus on my Wargaming while the girlfriend is at work.

As mentioned before I know I'll be getting some new Empire units for Christmas so that'll keep me busy in the following days after but before then I'm going to be building and painting my new Infinity team, make a start on my INQ28 Retinue and I've also decided it's about time my Tau Battleforce is taken out of the wrapping and get building and painting them! I've already got a colour scheme and the paints sorted as I'm going to attempt a Purple coloured Tau army.

Hopefully everyone has an awesome Christmas period and you all get what Santa wants. I'm sure I'll be posting a bit throughout the weekend and on Monday/Tuesday with my progress for all three projects.

Chalmers! 

Starting Infinity The Game

So along with Fantasy and Flames of War, I've been enticed into Infinity The Game by the lads at NAG. After seeing the georgous models by Corvus Belli I was instantly in-love and it's really got me in the mood to start a small-scale futuristic skirmish army.

After going through the various models and armies I realised I could easily spend a hell of ALOT of pounds on these models. But the one army that really grabbed my attention was the alien forces of the Combined Army but most importantly the Shasvasti Expeditionary Force. While the Starter set gives you some decent looking figures to start it's the extra units to add to your army that have got me burning a hole in my pocket!

Hopefully the starter set arrives tomorrow so it'll give me something to paint over the Christmas week as I've taken the whole week off work. I'll also be making a start on my INQ28 Retinue, I've already got some ideas of adding a Tau and Kroot to the warband and have ordered some great extra bits from Anvil Industry to really make these custom figures shine. More on the progress of that next week along with the first pics of my Empire and Ogre Kingdoms armies.