40k Orks v Marines

My wife's colleague has a son who's just starting out with 40K.
So while she cracked on with her PHD dissertation, me her son and the Gaming Heir had a game.
The two youngsters combined their Marines to take on the might of Waaagh Gruzzkup.

Here follows some pictures

Much fun was had. I'm not sure any of us knew the rules much better by the end but slaughter was dealt out.
And I lost. Inevitably.

Warhammer Orcs v Empire

General Ballroom remains indisposed so Steve and I were able to return to our first love proper Warhammer (8th ed).

I took my greenskins so Steve naturally went with the traditional enemy the Empire.

Steve began by pushing a big block of Pistoliers into the centre to draw out my fanatics, who failed to reach them.

With traditional Orcy subtlety I just ran forward. Steve attempted to get the charge in but rolled a double two for one unit and then a double 1 for the second. Tee-hee.

Unfortunately my trolls rather fluffed it and were beaten up by the Hippogryph rider things.

They then failed ther leadership test. Twice. Ran away and were slaughetered.

My chariot however did some serious damage to the swordsmen.

The Hippogryph things bore down on the Night Goblins

The chariot remarkably hung around.

The hippogryph things crashed into the poor Night Goblins. To everyone's surprise they hung in there.

The pistoliers had chased off the Night Goblin archers. But they rallied. And then failed an animosity test and charged the pistoliers.

The hippogryph things ground on  into the gobbos and eventually killed enough to chase them off.

Meanwhile the second chariot wreaked further choppy death on the swordsmen.

At this point we called a halt and declared a draw - though Warhammer was the real winner.

Steve and I really like playing Warhammer - it's ace.
If only General B hadn't turned into a wrong 'un who likes Age of Sigmar.
*sigh*

Square Bashing - German assault

Another trip over to James' house for a game of the very enjoyable Square Bashing.
After wasting quite some time laying out trees and craters on a a terrain mat and then watching James' daughter perform handstands and cartwheels on it (it's for another game at Partizan - though without the cartwheeling daughter) we adjourned to the kitchen for some Square Bashing.
James has recently created a mat from fleece with craters and roads cleverly "burned" into the surface. He'd made this one for a Verdun game but has plans for another for Arras at Partizan.

We threw down some of the rather nice houses he acquired at Crisis to create a small town and decided that for a change I'd be on the defensive.

 The war ravaged settlement of Abeillesville

 The British dig in

 The Germans prepare their assault

The initial depletion didn't do much damage to the British forces, with only a couple of stands removed and a single unit of reservists forced to pull back

Soon the pinpoint barrages began to crash in and my left flank came under pressure

 The firestorm erupts

Friendly fire

The German forces summoned an aircraft to assist with guiding their own shelling, whilst the rest of the force advanced.

 von Mauritz flies over the battle

And calls in deadly fire

The initial German advance slowed down and fire was being exchanged across No Mans Land to little effect.

Despite throwing up some hasty defences the left end of the British line was under severe pressure, especially as flame throwers were bought up.
Desperately I ordered a suppression barrage - which stalled the advance for a turn but inflicted equal casualties on both sides.

Another British shell falls short!

Inevitable the German assault went in on the British left...

 It's no good lads, pull back

...and the plucky Tommys were evicted from their makeshift defences

Over on the right some concentrated fire for the advancing Germans also forced the other British flank to withdraw

And with that the battle drew to a close with us adjudging a narrow German win and the British forced to cede the town.

These are very jolly and surprisingly quick games. You can pretty much play with just the QRS and the choices, especially for the defender, are quite limited - there's little point in storming out of your defences. Looking forward to a few more games and then putting on a demo at Partizan in May.

Release the Kraken!

When the small boy and I played a few games of OGAM a couple of years ago he was in the midst of reading the Percy Jackson books and obsessed by the idea of playing with Poseidon.
When he read the rules he became even more obsessed with the idea of Poseidon having a Kraken to unleash.
Sadly decent models of Kraken in 28mm at a sensible price are hard to find and I spent a while checking out plastic kids octopus toys. In the end we moved on and the OGAM games and  Greek gods in general fell by the wayside.
However a recnt need to buy some things for other games led me to the Ral Partha website and a spot of random browsing later I came across their Kraken model - so I popped it in the cart and several days later took delivery.

And for the price it's pretty good. I've mounted it on a 60mm base and it still hangs over a fair bit.

It's had a fairly basic paint job - after some research it seems reddy-orange is the most likely colour for giant squid, though it's also likely they can change colour - anyway I decided the orange would contrast well with the sea colour. So it got painted with Citadel Foundation orange and then had a Baal Red wash applied, a little highlighting and I have a Kraken.

Now to challenge James to an OGAM game!

Rats for Frostgrave

A selection of rats for games in the frozen city (like I never play)

Most are Ral Partha with a couple of plastic Citadel ones (from the Corpse Cart I think).
They're based on pennies (and need some snow).