Christmas 40K

So with both lads home for the holidays they insisted on playing, of all things, 40K?!?
I tried to suggest Xenos Rampant, or Frostgrave but no, 40K it was to be.

We've played three times so far with the Eldar claiming the two 500 point games and the Marines (and their Land Raider  Crusader) getting the win when we moved up to 750 points.
I was the Orks and came last in every game to no one's great surprise.

Some pictures:

Hammer Lad deals with Fire Dragons

Things not going well for the Gretchin crew

Renowned Warboss SantOrk Klaws made a festive return to the field of battle.

Despite being elite combat queens this did not end well for the Banshees.

All good fun games and 40K (at this scale)  not as horrific as I remembered.

There's an oddity that the core rules are all pretty clear and straightforward but absolutely every troop has a rule (and sometimes more than one rule) that modifies in some way the core rules. So nothing works exactly as described in the core rules. I guess the brains of adolescent (mostly) boys (mostly) love this kind of thing - but I find it all quite hard work.

But great fun to be playing with the boys - the True Spirit of Christmas.

A diversion into the grimdark future...

Saturday afternoon and the kids wanted to play 40k. Possibly influenced by the fact that I'd just banned phones, consoles computers and television for the next four hours.

So we just threw down everything we had and played a game.
Although my army is the biggest in terms of numbers, it's the smallest in terms of points and effectiveness, so the boys like giving me the smack-down.

Anyway we played three turns I think and it was the usual mixture of unsubtlety, head scratching and page turning to find the rules and an overall feeling (for me at least) of nice models, terrible rules.

Still I think they had fun and as Saturday afternoons go, I've had far worse.

 The Ork horde assembles

 Eldar Rangers begin to lurk

 War walkers? Ulp!

 Templars on patrol

 The Avatar, with his Wraithlord chum

 Just hoverin' in the bushes maan!

 Da boyz take cover

 Waaaaaagh!!

 Come here. I got a huge hammer!

 Da boyz close in...

 ...an' it all kicks off!

 The Orks see what they're up against

 Here they come!

 Avatar v Warboss - who will win? (Its the Avatar)

 The Fire Dragons get jumped

 More templars killin' more of da ladz

Avatar v Deff Dredd, who will win? (See previous answer)

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.

Biel Tan Eldar

Son and Heir has joined the wargames club at school. As is to be expected it's a largely 40k dominated affair and after a short period of borrowing my Orks he eventually upgraded to an Eldar army, largely thanks to the generosity of Stephen, who happened to have a load of half painted ones he had no use for.
After an initial burst of enthusiasm he soon dropped any desire to paint them but carried on taking them in for regular punch-ups with his mate's Tau.
The club is an active one and they duly entered the Games Workshop Schools League, which is IMO a Good Thing that GW does to encourage younger gamers. For this he needed a painted army. Apparently the half-painted unbased stuff he had was "fine Dad" but I had other plans. However at the same time he managed to get cast in a role in the school play and weekends and evening painting time all but vanished. So I picked up brush and helped finish off some of the models.
And here they are:

A squad of guardians. Son and Heir painted most of these last year, so they just needed basing.

Fire dragons - again mostly painted by the lad last year

Banshees. He did the basecoats. I supplied the touching up

Rangers. These were mostly my work

Farseer. I did him

He also needed some objective counters, so I created these using some little oval gem things from a craft shop.

I was aiming for an "abandoned Spirit Stone" look - Just the thing Biel Tan Eldar would be searching for
They look a little like Skittles in that shot, and the more on the base the less convincing they look, but I'm pretty happy with how the single one turned out.

Funnily enough Eldar were the first Rogue trader models I ever bought many, many moons ago. And that Farseer model is one I've always loved. Simple, but elegant - Jes Goodwin at his finest I think.

There's also an Avatar, but he's suffering from droopy sword syndrome at the moment (we've all been there) so he'll await some straightening before he gets photographed. And there's a Wave Serpent that I forgot about - a picture for another day too.

In the end he won one game and lost two and his school were runners up in the heat. He had a great time and came home full of it.

Oh, and he won best painted army - a certificate he handed over to me.