Heavy metal

Several months ago I bought a box of Plastic Solider Company Churchill tanks to complete the Infantry devision lists for my Spearhead 20mm British 1944 army. This week I finally got around to assembling and painting the two vehicles. They were an absolute joy to assemble. I love these rapid assembly kits - none of those old Airfix bogie wheels by the zillion.

I needed one standard Mk VII with 75mm gun, and one close support to complete the independent tank brigade per the SH lists, and the kits come with four weapon options: 75mm, 6pdr, 95mm CS and Petard spigot  mortar.

I really wanted to assemble one with the spigot mortar, but didn't need one... maybe another time.

Blink and you'd miss it ...

Blink .. no reference Dr Who' weeping angels, but definitely some weeping as I suffer what may be the fastest defeat I've ever been handed in 40K. Adrian and I met for our 4th game of Warhammer 4th Edition in a row .. our way of learning the rules. We each used a different army this time: for me Space Marines, and for Adrian Sisters of Battle. The game was a 1500 point match, playing the 'Recon' scenario from the 4th Edition rule book.

My SM army was a little unbalanced as I used what I had available:

1 x Space Marine Captain
1 x Space Marine Chaplain
2 x 9 SMs with Sergeant
1 x 6 SMs with Sergeant
1 x 10 Assault Marines
1 x 10 Vanguard in drop pod
1 x 5 Devastators with 2 x Plasma cannon and 1 x Lascannon, mounted in Razorback with T/L Lascannon
1 x 5 Devastators with 3 x M/Ls and 1 x Heavy Bolter

So, being a little light in the flexible heavy support, we went at it.

Initial deployment with Space Marines on the left, and Sisters on the right

I just live those penitent engines, here backed up with 8 Seraphim

St Celestine.. she turned out to be one tough ......

Space Marine anti tank support

Assault Marines ready to go .. I planned to hold them back ready to race into Adrian's set up zone . but ...

Devastator Squad in position in some ruins

Opening move ..

 Adrian one first move and managed to destroy the Razorback before it managed to fire a single shot .. ouch

The Librarian used psychic powers to take a SM tactical squad deep into the enemy lines

The drop pod is deployed first turn as it is required to do.

Here's where it starts to go wrong ..

 I decided to move the assault marines forward in support of the Vanguard veterans . This wasn't the original plan, and brought them close to the advancing penitent engines .. in hindsight this was never going to end well, but .. sigh...

In the first turn I managed to destroy the Sisters heavy support, and bring down some fearsome fire on this squad positioned in some ruins.

 After an initial successful turn, the rest of the game went very sour from the SM point of view. St Celestine and a squad of seraphim assaulted the Librarian and his tactical squad... result? massacre .. oh my G*** ...

The penitent engines charged the assault marines and .. again, pretty much a massacre ..

The Vanguard veterans having emerged from their drop pod were assaulted by seraphim and... yep .. massacre .

The smaller tactical squad advanced and assaulted a unit of sisters and.. not enough to win the assault.

 By the start of turn 3 there wasn't  a lot left. The penitent engines shifted their focus to the left flank devastator squad. Aha, I thought .. eat my shorts, here come two plasma cannons and a lascannon. Net result? NOTHING.. not a single wound. OOooo this is going to hurt again ..

The cannoness destroys the drop pod with her inferno pistol

The devastators have missed and are now open to assault ...

St Celestine in her glory.

So we called it after turn 3.. I simply had no way of scoring enough victory points in terms of the scenario conditions to come even close.

Now that was a real 'thumping. Looks like I have a little to learn about how to use Space Marines then, but the game looked great. Again a lot of fun pushing beautiful miniatures around on the table.

Eclectic? Me? Surely not ...

Surely you could never accuse me of being that? Errr... well ...

Several years ago I acquired an unmade kit of the GW Space marine Drop-pod. It has sat .. you guessed it, unmade, since then.

As Adrian and I have pottered with our return to 4th Edition Warhammer 40K, I thought I'd take some time during this holiday break to make the thing up and get it on the table for tonight's game. The Space Marine army is still very unbalanced, but this will make things interesting.

The drop-pod has been painted in the colours of my own Chapter "Les Voies Sacres'... the purple and bronze. A nice little addition, should look good on the table. Watch out for the AAR.

An 'eastern front' teaser

A small group of us played the most awesome August 1914 eastern front game on Friday. The game saw a combined German/Austro-Hungarian corps attacking a reduced strength Russian corps. The game played out just like those German war diary accounts of firefights in France (even though this was the eastern front).

Here are three 'teaser' photos. Watch 'The Great Adventure' next week for a full photo after action report.

A tale of Tau and Traitors

Friday night was another chance for Adrian and I to 'push some nice toys around'. Yep, another 4th Edition Warhammer 40K using the 'toys' we've both collected over the years. I took the Lost and the Damned again, and this time Adrian took his Tau (another of his m,any beautifully painted armies.

I altered the L&tD army list this time, in an effort to make it just a little more competitive. I took the heavy weapons out of the traitor squads, and added an additional heavy weapons squad instead.

The game was an objective based game, with 5 objectives (or 'Loot' counters). The winner was the player who controlled the most objectives (which means a scoring unit within 6" and NO enemy scoring unit within 6").

Both Adrian and I tend to take units that we think look good rather than looking to optimise combat capabilities etc. Adrian wanted to try his 'Gnarloch riders. For my part, while I use the 'Eye of Terror' codex for the L&tD, I don't stick strictly to the OOBs, so this army had 8 Troops choices - hardly a 'game breaker'. His army did however include two Hammerheads, while mine included a Valkyrie gunship and a Leman Russ.

Set-up on the table, with the L&tD on the left, Tau on the right.

The Gnarloch Rider (yes, that's a Kroot chappie at the back, a proxie for the third Gnarloch rider)

Kroot on an objective marker

I loaded my right wing, with a Chaos Dreadnought, two Traitor Sentinels armed with Lascannon, and a unit of Mutants. This left my left wing weak.

One of the Sentinels, and the Chaos Dreadnought, with the Mutants behind.

I managed to win the first turn, and the Sentinels armed with lascannon took out the Tau Hammerheads deployed against my right wing.
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My right was still facing the Gnarloch riders, two Battle suits, and a unit of Fire Warriors

The Leman Russ was 'sniping' various Tau targets in the centre supported by  a squad with Lascannon and autocannon, which lead Adrian to pull out  the centre and shift his focus to his flanks

A traitor squad meets Kroot in the forest .. this might not end well (for someone)

This was the Tau left, about to be 'mobbed' by some serious mutant .. stuff ... you know, tentacles, double chins (well, heads actually), claws  .. all that sort of .. stuff

In went the mutants, supported by the Chaos dreadnought which had already failed one roll to bring fire down on a traitor sentinel

Turn 3 and a Valkyrie arrived, stolen from a nearby airfield by its traitorous aircrew... mwahahahahahahaha The Valkyrie disposed of the second Tau Hammerhead

The mutants made short work of the Gnarloch riders, and pushed on to assault the unit of Fire Warriors

The Fire Warriors didn't last, and the mutants consolidated into the Kroot who occupied the nearby woods which contained another objective marker.

It was pretty frenzied in that wood but the Kroot didn't stand

 The right had certainly gone my way with the forces I'd deployed there. However it had been a different story on the traitor left, made worse by three units of traitors failing leadership tests, two of them when below 50% strength so unable to rally.

The Tau right had eliminated most of the traitor left, secured two objectives, and pushed on.

The Valkyrie provided invaluable support before being brought down by two Battle suits

One of the two sentinels had lost its armament, but the other had recovered from a 'Crew Stunned' result and advanced only to be destroyed by the Chaos dreadnought in the middle of a 'Fire Frenzy' attack (the 3rd of the game.. ouch)

The Chaos Marines now advanced to finish off the Tau left and secure the objective that had been captured by the mutants.

In the foreground a traitor unit that had earlier failed a morale check rallied and pushed back up to secure the second objective sitting in the centre, supported by a heavy weapons squad

The Tau commander threw himself against the mutants, supported by the reserve Fire Warriors, in an effort to recover the lost objective.

The remaining unit of traitors pushed forward to combat the Tau reserve moving across the centre.

However the mutants survived the onslaught

The table scene at the end of the 6th turn. Yep, that's a bottle of 'Crafty Beggars Pale Ale' in the background. A nice wee drop.

The game finished with each side holding two objectives, with one disputed. It was a draw, a glorious draw.

As always the game was great fun. The 4th edition rules continue to serve us well. We have agreed to one change. Neither of us like the old 'consolidation into contact' rule, which of course subsequently disappeared with GW's 5th edition. But we have agreed that what we perceive as specialist melee units should be allowed to do this. Units like mutants, Banshees, and Orks for example seem like likely choices. There are more, but you get the idea.