Bashin' dose sissie hoomies

Yeah, dat's wot we luvz doin', bashin sissie hoomies.. er well, bashin any hoomies..  well, achually bashin anyone.. so let's doooooo it!!

Friday night, and it's 40K time with Andy and Adrian, since it has been a wee while since we pushed the GW (am I meant to say that no challenge to copyright is intended by using these two letters?) plastic around the table top.

Anyway, out came the Orks again, and they faced off against Adrian's Sisters of Battle in an objectives based game with Spearhead deployment. Andy ran the battle for the Orks and I joined in at totally inappropriate moments (it's a gift I have, really!!), while Adrian commanded his Sisters.

Andy deployed first and managed to keep first turn, so started with a mobile left of bikes, acccompanied by a truck loaded with Nobz. His intention was to strike behind the Sisters and attack them from front and rear around the objective on his left.

Adrian had deployed  Inquisitor Lord Karamazov on his own right flank, and the Lord Inquisitor soon moved to head off the fast Ork attack coming in from his right.

The Sisters had a unit of three Penitent Engines in the centre, and the Ork looted wagon with boom gun spotted these and had a crack straight away, with a shot that was bang on target .. one Engine exploded, but nothing else was quite close enough to be taken down in th resulting explosion.

Meanwhile on the Sisters' left a squad of Sisters, supported by their Exorcist and two squads of Seraphim, moved out to claim the objective on that flank.

The Looted Wagon fell to fire from the Exorcist in turn 2..  before a single Ork had managed to fail his 'Don't touch dat' roll.. bother!!! We were looking forward to yet another laugh (the game had already been filled with quite a number!)

The Sisters advanced their centre against the other objective ...

which was held by a unit of Grotz hunkered down in the ruins.

After a couple of rounds of fire there were too few Grotz left, they failed their leadership test and fell back.

Meanwhile Karamazov was having fun playing with the Bikes who kept passing their saves... much to his annoyance.

The second of the three Penitient Engines then fell to rocket fire from the two Killer Kans, and the war buggy, leaving one Engine, which then proceeded to assault a unit of boyz supporting the Grotz. Adrian then assaulted the war bugy with a unit of Seraphim and.. yep, destroyed it comletely!! Damm!!!

In all fairness to the Sisters, in their next turn they hit the Killer Kanz with a barrage from the Exorcist, and both were destroyed.. one blew up, quite spectacular as it took several boyz with it).

Meanwhile Karamazov was still tied down in combat with the bikes... gahhh!!!

The truk borne Nobz were now within range of the Sisters Squad on the Sisters' right flank, and Gazghull declared a Waaaagh, allowing them to make the assault.

... and Gazghull charged into combat with the Penitent Engine (would you believe that we forgot that he had a power claw?) so he made hard work of this combat.. he was locked there for the remaining turns of the game.

The boyz mob on the Ork right flank used the Waaagh to charge into contact with one of the units of Seraphim (before they got shot away!!).

Adrian pulled them out of the combat hoping to eliminate the unbti with massed fire. There were still a few left though (and they still passed their leadership test) and next turn Andy pushed what was left of the mob into a squad of Sisters. This was ugly (for the sisters). Despite their low numbers (yep, they'd managed to pass every leadership test.. whew!! I wasn't used to this with Orks) they inflicted enough casualties to win the combat. The sisters failed their leadership test, and were run down by the boyz.

The Nobz were still slugging it out with the other Sisters squad.

A unit of Burna Boyz had meanwhile been trying to creep up on a third unti of Sisters (mwahahahahahahaha). They took fire, and these were their saving throws!!.. Don't see that very often.. since they needed 6's!! Yep, there are only two 4's, the rest were their saving 6's!!

However this same unit of Burna Boyz then took fire from the Exorcist, which proceeded to wipe out the unit... an ignominious end and such poor reward after their deft avoidance of bolter rounds from the Sisters squad.

The game ended after 5 turns, with a hard fought draw.

Interviewed after the match, Gazghull could only say "Wot a bashin' .. yeah right.. sissie girlies, come on den bring 'em on, eh!"

Just pottering ... with the Royalists.

I've finally started to get the painting pottering bug (well, maybe). Having played a few DBR condensed scale games lately, I decided to give the Royalists a little TLC. When I'd originally acquired them (previously painted by someone else) I based them on thin card bases (as was my habit at the time).

With the troops back on the table top the thin bases have been annoying the beejeebers out of me (as they tend to slip and slide over each other all too easily), so I cut enough thick card bases to rebase them all (by gluing the exisiting bases onto the new rather than detaching figures from the old bases.

While we were at it I gave them a small subtle make-over with a couple of layers of a Citadel wash (Badab Black) to bring out the recesses on the figures.

Voila.. the final result.. slightly better than before, nothing fantastic. Those close-up camera shots tend to be pretty unforgiving though!!

Royalist Horse? Damn them sir!!

A condensed scale DBR last night with my Royalists taking the field against Keith's Parliamentarians. This time I felt somewhat let down by my Horse and their inability to deal with their parliamentarian opponents.

A nice battle report can be found here on Keith's blog.

The Anglo Sikh Wars ..

The Anglo Sikh Wars are a new sub-period for us, an application of our ever faithful Volley and Bayonet rules. The period is one that Adrian has been beavering away at for a little while, and so this was the first outing of yet another two beautifully painted 15mm armies on the Friday night table top.

This image from the web site 'Second Anglo Sikh War' gives an artist's impression of warfare on the Infian Sun continent during this confict. See if our game photos create anything quite like this..

Adrian had thought through a few modifications to the VnB rules to cater for this sub-period and so, with modifications and armies in hand, it was indeed 'game on'!!

Rather than give a blow by blow account, here are a few photos from the game, and comment on a couple of notable events.

This was the inital set up, Sikh forces on the right, British forces on the left.

The British were attacking and stormed forward.

Included in the British forces were the elite 17th Lancers (M7!!) and a unit of Indian cavalry (who were no slugs themselves, I hasten to add).

The Sikh forces included General mounted on elephant, and a couple of war elephants.

The Sikh forces also included Warriors.. fearsome guys, but no firearms!!!

... and a couple of rocket batteries.. here is one attached to the Sikh cavalry.

Action was soon joined...

... and Adrian's British attacked the Sikh left flank.

In the centre an intense firefight developed.

A Sikh cavalry attack against their Indian counterparts was foiled, and then the Sikh cavalry division driven into exhaustion in two quick turns of combat!!

The Sikh calary division failed it's exhaustion check, and so became a sitting duck for the British cavalry to pick off at will.

The British infantry broke through the centre and attacked the warriors waiting behind.

The elite Sikh fanatics were attacked by British infantry with Shock (bad timing on my part) .. not pretty ..

... as were the remainder of the Warriors ...

And it was all over.

A fascinating introduction to a brand new sub period. We will be play testing the rules modifications a little more (we weren't sure that things panned out quite as they should, but it was still a great game).

Wars of Religion .. with Armati

The usual Friday evening 'gaming turned into a Saturday evening of 'gaming this week, and we decided to play some more Armati Renaissance. The first game featured French Hugenot (Adrian) against Austrian Imperialist (me). We were once again using Adrian's 15mm armies.

It was a close fought game in which I misused the Austrian Hussars and allowed Adrian to tackle my centre at his leisure. Misjudgment on my part allowed his pike blocks to slam into my lines of arquebusier (and all a turn earlier than I'd planned).

Hugenots advancing!!

French Millars and Reiters....

The lines at the point of contact.

It was initially a 'push of pike' in the centre as we jostled each other.

The Millars took on the Imperialist Reiters.

While some  Imperialist Hussars got in behind the French lines and attacked their artillery .. my misjudgement was to use them in this attacking role, in which they are not particularly strong - they are Horse Archers, Robin.. for goodness sake!!). Bad die rolling and they took a casualty from the artillery. never a good sign!!

And then the French mounted arquebusiers hit them in the rear... this may not end well (especially when I rolled a 1)!!!

The French Gendarmes hit an Austrian pike block in the rear, but by a miracle of die rolling (two 6s in two successive rounds of combat) the pike block held!!!

However the cumulative losses for the Austrians finally took their toll, and the day belonged to the French.

We played a second game using the French against a Moldavian army. This was a dismal affair in which I had my head served to me on a platter... Adrian used his horse archers to good effect, harrying my flanks and causing large numbers of casualties. The army fell apart.. urrgghh... Here are just three random photos.. all that remains to record a dismal defeat, but a great night's 'gaming!!!