40K Xenos versus Imperial

I pottered over to the Hucknall Palais Des Jeux with both offspring in tow as Stephen had generously agreed to host a game of 40k.
I would be taking the Orks of Waaagh Gruzzkup, Son and Heir had his Biel Tan Eldar, the Gaming Heir wanted to use his new Land Raider Crusader, which I have neglectfully failed to finish assembling and painting for him, and our host had his Imperial Guard. We all had around 750 points. Ish.

Steve had got out his very nice Cityfight terrain and we used the Eldar Spirit Stone objective counters. It seemed only right and proper to have the two imperial forces allied together to face the Xenos misalliance over the ruins of Stefangrad.

The Avatar leads the Banshees forth

Killa Kans hold the centre

To the left Da Deff Dredd and the Guardians hold sway

Th Imperial faction took the first turn and the (not quite finished yet) Land Raider raced forward to seize the central objective. The guard opened up with a withering but largely ineffectual round of shooting. Apart from a pie plate template that killed all of the guardians and the Spirit Seer.

Until we remembered the cover save and most of them came back.

Melty, melty...

Thwop, thwop thwop

Stomp, klank stomp

Lalalalalala, hello birds, hello sky sa Fotherington Avatar

In response to the Crusader menace we unleashed Fire Dragons and reduced it to a puddle of molten ceramite. Sadly all the terminators and the Emperor's Champion emerged unscathed.

Hahahahah. Oh.

The slightly camp Eldar Wraithlord minced into the fray on our left, supported by Deffkoptas.

Waaaaggh, klank, waaaagh!

In an attempt to stop the terminators savaging the rest of my army, I sent the Killa Kans klunking and a klanking into kombat. Which went about as well as expected (i.e. not very)

Pew, pew!

I'll wave my sword and attract it's attention!

Da Deff Dred plodded forward in search of squishy targets whilst the rest of the army poured fire into the terminators, who began failing saves. Eventually Ork boys hurled themselves at the Emperors Champion (once his terminator chums were all safely deceased), but Sigismund fought them off manfully.

He's in there somewhere...

Da Deff Dredd contented himself with murderising some guardsmen in the face.

At this point we called a halt to proceedings. The Xenos scum had racked up a large tally of dead servants of the Emperor, but we were playing the Cityfight game with missions and stuff and the Imperial side had been steadily racking up VPs. So at game end they had a clear lead, although they'd be forced to retreat from the smouldering ruins of Stefangrad.

You can read the Imperial version of events here.

Pretty good fun, though 40k occasionally bogs down in special rules. The armies on Steve's terrain look jolly splendid I reckon and it was a good way to amuse a couple of small boys (and my children) for the afternoon. Big thanks to Stephen for hosting once again.

Reaper Bones Animals for Frostgrave

I painted some critters for my Frostgrave games. They're Reaper Bones models.
Not the nicest or most detailed, but cheap and quick and easy to paint up

A bear, a wolf and a snow leopard. They're a bit on the small side and my ham fistedness around the noses makes them look a little cute rather than threatening, but for quick and dirty Frostgrave solutions they're fine.

Great War Miniatures Late War British

I've always been fairly ambivalent (well, actually, fairly opposed) to the idea of gaming WW1.
But games last year with James and Scrivs and a little more reading around the subject has weakened my resolve.
And these are really nice models.
So I got some just to, you know, see how it went.

Very easy to paint, nice results.
Think the "battle bowler" may need some work.

I got some guidance from the splendid Over Open Sights blog who generously supplied his Late War British PDF.
Thanks very much Mark, most useful.
However I varied it to suit the paints I have, and the fact that I'm a much less talented painter.

Still not 100% sure how I feel about it all, but there's an anniversary next year that gives me a chance to mary up my toy soldier love with my main sporting passion, so I expect I'll paint a few more...

Crusader Miniatures US Mortar

I've been enlarging my CoC force with the addition of this jolly little trio from Crusader miniatures.

Painted like all the others and dipped in woodstain.
Now I really have no excuse for not raining death and destruction on Oberstleutnant Ballzimmer

Artizan NWF British (2)

Seven more of these splendid models finished.

If you're wondering about the whereabouts of the twelfth model,don't fret, he'll be along shortly as the star of a step by step guide.

Frostgrave: The Living Museum

The Gaming Heir and I settled down for a game of Frostgrave over the weekend. His elder brother was off wooing a girl or some-such, so I fear he may be lost to the hobby for the foreseeable future so it was time to see how just a two player game went.
We would be playing the Living Museum scenario, which involves six statues next to the treasure tokens in the centre of the board, who come to life when the treasure is moved and try to cut down the nearest adventurers. In the absence of any suitable statue models we use the Arab Warband models I'd created for the eldest boy.

After some initial fumbling with the rules we were soon up and running. The Gaming Heir has a marvelous memory and so  kept reminding me of rules I'd forgotten or got wrong, which was handy.

 Valerie d'Horlage the Chronomancer leads her men into the ruins

 The Elementalists hove into view

 Titus the Elementalist's apprentice with his Templar chum

 The fiery Elementalist lurks by the tower

 A statue comes to life and stabs at the crossbowman

 Another statue takes on the man-at-arms

 More of the Chronomancer warband are drawn into fights as the Elementalist looks on

 The thief sneaks off with a treasure

 Wandering zombies arrive to make life tricky for the |Templar

 An Elementalist thug hacks down the archer

 Chronomancer warband tries to retreat, harried by statues

Wuff the dog gets a face full of Elementalist arrow

 A thug tries to get away, covered by the crossbowman

 Finally the statues turn on the Elementalist and his men

The Templar wades in as zombies converge on the warbands

We had great fun playing what turned out to be a very brutal and bloody game. Despite an early kill of one of the lad's thugs by my crossbowman, as soon as the statues came to life they all converged on my men and began to whittle my forces down. The Gaming Heir used his thief and Leap to nick one treasure then pinched some others while the statues picked on my men. Neither of my spellcasters were having good days and eventually killed themselves when miscasting spells. Finally as my last thug tried to make it off the board he was cruelly shot down just yards from safety.

A big and easy win for the Gaming Heir, who captured four treasures to my none (we play to a random turn length and you get whatever treasure you are carrying or have taken off the board when the game ends). I got a measly 30 XP, not even enough to level up, whilst the lad managed to rocket up to level 5. Pretty much my entire warband had been taken out during the game, but fortunately only the archer actually died in the post game round up, though both Wuff the dog and the Infantryman will miss the next game...

I really enjoyed playing this and I'm now thinking about actually finishing off the rest of my warband

Black Templars Captain

Another model painted for the Gaming Heir's Black templar army.
This is a Games Day 2008 model.
Ridiculous hammer action going on, which makes photography a bit tricky

 

 The face has a touch of the Keifer Sutherland's about it I reckon.