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.