40K Orks on Orks on Orks

The Sherwood Hucknall and Ilkeston Team assembled once more to do battle.
Our battle choices are limited as General Ballroom refuses to play Warhammer and Steve only wants to play Warhammer.
40K is a kind of compromise.

We've all got Orks so we fought with those, cos dats wot Orks do best.

Steve was using Bad Moons. Who are dead shoory in the new Codex.

I had Evil Sunz who are dead fast.

General Ballroom had bought his Mad Max Evil Sunz

I raced forward to grab a building.

Steve and I had plotted before to take the pain to General B as usually he picks on one of us and we can't stop his mega armoured whatnots.

However the new Codex seems to have re-balanced things. Yellow Orks shooting stuff is proper scary.
Dakka dakka dakka.

The Mad Morx Klan rumbled on into a storm of flying lead.

While I sneaked round the side and blew rokkits up their exhausts

Gebneral B decided to try and run over the new buggy thing. This proved unwise. It is a new thing, so of course it is very good.

Meanwhile the yellow lads were wiping out bikers and boys with more an' more dakka.

They did a bit of biffing when strictly necessary.

With their transport destroyed the boys had to attack the new Buggery Buggy

Some Mad Morx boys made it into combat

Before they got dakka-d in the face.

A lone boy was left to challenge the Buggery Buggy

We'd had enough soon after this with the Bad Moons declared the winner.
The yellow team shooting is terrifying. It also makes for quite a long shooting phase. Re-roll ones and sixes and then any sixes from the re-rolled ones.
Still I think Steve enjoys finally having a vaguely competitive shooty Ork army.

We're now about to embark on a campaign.

Stay tuned for thrill a minute Orky Akshun.

Dwarfs v Night Goblins - 8th edition Warhammer

Our last game of 2018 was Warhammer and so it was only right and proper that our first game of 2019 should be the greatest of all games - Warhammer (yes, this games was played before the OGAM game I blogged yesterday).
Steve had the afternoon off work and I had not yet returned to the office.
Steve also had around 40 bottles of beer "left-over" from Christmas that needed seeing to before they went off. Or something.

We decided on a big-ish game at 2,500 points. Steve wanted to go green (there's a clue in his name) so I took Dwarfs.

I worked up a scenario based on one of the many in Neil Thomas' book One Hour Wargames (whatever one may think of the rules, the book is worth it for the scenarios alone) - which in turn is based on a Stuart Asquith scenario based on the battle of Lundy's lane in the War of 1812.
With me so far?

The basic gist was that I started with a third of my army on a big hill. The Night Goblins began to attack with half their army, then another third of mine turned up, then the rest of the greenskins and then finally the last of my army who would arrive much closer to the hill.
Whoever had the hill at the end of seven turns would be the winner.

All that sorted out we set up, cracked open some beers and the game began.

For some reason my camera didn't like the illuminations in the Hucknall Palais des Jeux so the pics aren't great. Also by the end I was having difficulty focusing my eyes, never mind a camera lens.

 The throng assembles to defend Lunds Hill

 Boingy AND spinny!

 Toothy!

Skarsnik rapidly led his fellows towards the hill. Well actually mostly he just pointed them in the general direction and hoped for the best.

Soon the shooty dwarfs were engulfed by bouncing spinning red stuff.

With a giant waiting to mop things up!

Oh look, here he comes.

So that's two huge spinning things, a giant AND a whacking great spider to deal with.

They gyrocopter was cornered by the squigs, but saw them off. Hurrah!

But the hill was a world of (dwarf) hurt.

 Nom, nom, nom!

Over by the road the rescuing Longbeards got themselves held up.

Seriously held up.

While the big lad carried on doing what big lads do.
Right up until the Warriors killed him.

Throndin arrived with the Hammerers to save the day (and the hill)

The spider decided to have a word about that.

I have no idea what these dice were. But i suspect the weren't what Skarsnik wanted (perhaps it was wound rolls on hammerers)

The bodyguard duly crushed the Araknorok and tried to secure the hill. However Skarsnik had maneuvered his lads on to the other slope as the battle closed!

A brief countback of points revealed that as Skarsnik had murdered more dwarfs than Throndin had managed to murder gobbos the battle of Lund's Hill would go down as a (narrow) greenskin victory.

Hurrah for Warhammer.
Steve and I are going to try and play WFB at least once a month in 2019 because we do love it best of all.

Of Gods and Mortals - Celtic Cattle Raid

James came over to the Sherwood Soldier Shack for a game of OGAM using the Celts he's been painting.

We're going to be running games at Hammerhead in March so it makes sense to maybe practice a bit. Also James has been painting lots of new Celtic figures of various sorts so we wanted to get some of them on the table.
Before we began I took the chance to grab a few pictures of James' models.

He's painted an alternate version of the Morrigan.

And the Dagda.

And a couple of giants

This is an older Celtic chariot re-purposed for OGAM

This was my force. We wanted to give the Dagda a try. He looks pretty meaty on paper (C5!) but we decided to go with him as written. I also took a chariot (we wanted to give the rules for them in the Celt book a try too) a giant (we made him a hero rather than a mortal unit), some Celt warriors, a hero and a pack of hounds.

James took the Morrigan, a hero on foot and one in a chariot, along with Maeve two lots of warriors (one in armour) and some peasant boys with slings.

The scenario required me to get some cattle off the edge of the board for a win. So I set up my first unit ready to start driving the cows home for dinner.

The giant prepared to take out the hero.

Early on our chariots were involved in a minor road traffic incident. However as the resulting combat was a draw both heroes were immediately wiped out!

The giant charged into the enemy hero and another drawn tie saw my second hero die on only my second turn. The enemy hero was wearing armour and so survived!

In the centre the evil Morrigan caused the warriors to Tremble Before Her Might. Which seemed harsh.

Fortunately the Dagda used his Bard ability to allow them to throw off the awe in short order.

However while they were busy trembling the Morrigan nipped off with the cows and handed them over to the armoured warriors.

James' hero along with Mavis decided to give the dogs a good kicking.

A plan that was very much helped when the Morrigan rushed over and plagued both dogs and warriors - killing rather too many.

Fed up of seeing his followers slaughtered the Dagda ran over to give the Morrigan a slap. Banishing her from the mortal realm and causing the Celtic slinger boys to sling their hook.
However swift prayers by the warriors soon saw her back.

My hero went over to ask for his cows back from the warriors

And some fighting broke out.

Eventually I was able to make a break for the border with cows in tow.

The Dagda, meanwhile was trying to exact vengeance for the death of all his dogs (bar one). Unfortunately he kept rolling a one for hammering blow, which meant James' hero could try and free hack him!

Just as it looked like my hero might make off with the cows The Morrigan transformed into a crow, flew across the board an then materialised in front of him!

Which allowed the pursing warriors to catch up. The reulting struggle saw the Morrigan dispatch the mighty fellow and with that the game was up.

I really enjoyed playing this. James' models look brilliant and OGAM makes for a really fun game. I wish I played more often as it always takes me the first part of the game to remember how everything works ("oh yeah, unsupported heroes get killed real quick!") and I don't remember most of the special rules until it's too late!

I've got some more Celts in the painting queue to try and finish this week.