Maximum Assembly

 

I got back to the hobby desk this weekend and finished assembling Maximus. I'm still a bit up in the air if I'm going to put together a small Pan O force, or just eBay him as is. Still, he's easier to store like this than as a pile of bits.

I've also sorted a handful of small repairs of models that had taken a ding in transport from my commission painters. They'll get proper photos with the other models they came with shortly.

During the HATE Bring and Buy, I grabbed a couple of blisters from Conquest Games. In a small effort not to add to the stash I've gotten them out and got them cleaned up and glued to their bases. They'll be getting added to the collection of miniatures for RPGs and so on once painted.

Finally, while I was at Dark Sphere on Friday for the Flesh and Blood Armory event, I spotted that the Colour Forge sprays from their recent influencer tie in Kickstarter had arrived. I'd wanted to play around with the blue and the pink, so picked them up to give them a go.

White Company Last Few Bits and Pieces

 

I had a few more miniatures painted for my White Company by Tesseract Miniature Studios for the end of N4. It was a mix of some newer miniatures, niche profiles and filling out some utility pieces. There's more to come - I've got a couple of repairs to do, and I've separated out some miniatures with a different theme that will be in a different batch.

I added a couple of remotes to the commission to round the force out. I already had one of each Dronbot, so was looking to pick duplicates. I went with a second Fugazi and a Sierra. The Fugazi is a cheap repeater remote with a flash pulse that provides a cheap order and potentially a light ARO. Meanwhile, the Sierra is a Total Reaction remote armed with a Heavy Machine Gun. Having the option to take two Sierras gives an option for a relatively strong ARO presence.

The reinforcements update added a few profiles to White Company (after a short delay). White Company gained the Blade Ops and the Blocker. The centre model here is the Blocker, while on either side are different Blade Ops profiles.

The Blade Ops are very elite light infantry, with either a Boarding Shotgun profile that just fights, or an SMG Engineer profile that can either join a fireteam or deploy up the field. The Blocker can't join a fireteam in White Company, and his equipment of an Adhesive Launcher, Nanopulser and Flash Pulse doesn't lend well to a solo attack piece. However, with the Sensor skill and a Hacker profile he could be an option to fill a troop slot that provides a utility piece and back up hacker.

There was recently a limited edition Varangian Guard miniature I picked up, who I thought looked great, so picked him up and included him in the commission.

Finally, we have a Kunai with Shock Marksman Rifle and a Guilang Hacker. The Kunai is quite pricey for what he is, and as a shooting piece is not a particularly good shot. I've not had much success with him so far. The Guilang, meanwhile, means I now have two Guilang models to match the availability in White Company. While in N4 I've mostly relied on the White Company fireteams, I may try using more midfield skirmishers with them in N5.

Red Star Blues: Project Sunset

 

Back in August, during "Infinity Global Week", Hackney Area Tabletop Enthusiasts (HATE) hosted the latest in the "Red Star Blues" series of Infinity tournaments run by our very own Yashar. I decided to bring Combined Army after my enjoyable test game with them. (There is a test game I'm not blogging because "getting straight up annihilated by Tohaa" didn't have much story to tell, beyond "the Caskuda is not a great pick.")

The first game was against Peakede, who went on the win the tournament. It's been a while since the tournament so I've forgotten what faction he was playing - vanilla ALEPH, maybe? It's not helped that the only photo I've taken with a clear shot of one of his models shows a Libertos.

Said Libertos did a run on me on my first turn and picked off my Nexus Lieutenant who I had clearly not quite protected enough. So it was a rough game. Peakede was playing a top level game and I did not have answers for it!

How rough? Well, it was Frontline, and my last turn viable play was to try and run my Raicho up into the centre zone, vaulting some low structures on the way and taking some unpleasant amounts of ARO. Of all the things, it ended up getting Immobilised too far from the centre zone to score, so I took a resounding 10-0 loss.

Second game, I got the bye, but one of the club was on hand to give you a friendly game rather than sit about. He was running Steel Phalanx, and the mission was Unmasking.

It's probably a good thing it was a bye, because I simply couldn't stop Steel Phalanx pushing buttons and smushing targets into the ground. I was having trouble clearing the ARO pieces, and the time I spent doing that meant I didn't have many orders left to do the actual mission...

In the end, I wasn't winning, and couldn't even get the Anathematic far enough to take out a target and score a few points to bring my score up. That said, it was a really fun, back and forth game, just one I didn't score many actual points in...

The final game was a straight up Firefight, and I was facing khayne666, a former club local who's sadly moved away, but had come back to visit for the tournament. He was also running vanilla Combined, so it was time for an interesting (and rather scary) mirror match.

After weathering the first turn, I decided to concentrate my efforts on scoring my classifieds - sending my Anathematic to score two HVT classifieds, and Dr Worm to repair a broken remote. My logic was that it was going to be a bloody game, so I was better off scoring things that needed specific models early in case they weren't around later to score them.

This turned out to be the right call as khayne666 was quick to deal with the Anathematic before it could do any more damage.

The last turn saw a final attempt to take out my Charontid Lieutenant, this time with a Cube Jaeger parachutist. It had a rough run to take out some guards on the way, but was making it through...

Fortunately, I'd had a spare order to put the Charontid into suppressive fire, so when the Cube Jaeger came a-calling, he needed to win a gunfight before getting to use his terrifying close combat weapon. Fortunately, the weight of fire took him down, meaning my Lieutenant was safe.

Not super sure I had the game in the bag as I'd lost quite a lot of points and knew quite a few of the models I'd killed had been cheap warbands, I decided it was time to go all in. We ended up in a gunfight between our two Lieutenant Charontids, and fortunately, as I was the active player, I had the edge and swung the game in my favour, ending it 7-1 to me.

At the prize ceremony I was delighted to discover that I'd won the most "favourite game" votes, which Red Star Blues holds up as the highest award in the tournament, as everyone's there to have fun. I'm genuinely touched to have won it, as it reassures me people are having fun playing games with me, no matter what my treacherous brain might be worrying about.

A Firbolg Fighter

 

A friend of mine ran a small charity auction earlier in the year and I won a couple of bids to have figures commission painted. Here's the first of them back.

The figure is a 3D printed Firbolg Fighter that was printed by Grumpy Gorilla. I'd picked it up at SELWG and gave my painter friend a pretty free reign to come up with a paint scheme as I didn't have a specific concept for the model. 

I think he's come out really well. I've been upping my photography set up of late with some scenery pieces by Berlin Tuesday and the Jon Hodgkin backdrop books. I still don't feel like I've got my lighting just right yet, as I seem to have trouble balancing getting enough light on the miniature and not getting a shine off the backdrop. I suspect I'll need to play around a little more to get it dialled in.

A huge shout out and appreciate for my friend who painted this figure in return for me making a donation to charity. It's a lovely figure I'm super happy to have in my collection.

A little aaaaaah as a treat

As I crawl out of the wreckage of a Monday, a short update for you. I got in another game in the 40K narrative campaign as some "routine maintenance" for the Tallarn's current Necron Masters resulted in a little bit of an oops that resulted in a demonic incursion... 

The weekend was the London Grand Tournament, which had Infinity running for the first time. So I've had six games of Infinity over two days. I'm surprised my brain is working as well as it is, quite frankly.

I've got a whole ton of games photoed ready to be written up for the blog, I just need to slow down playing them a little to give myself the time to write them all up. But first, an early night has been well earned.

AoS, Flesh and Blood and some Commission Paints arrive...

 

It's been a busy week again! I managed to get in my first ever game of Age of Sigmar, pitching my Stormcast against a friend's Seraphon.

I also managed to pop down to Spellbound Games who'd had to reschedule a pre-release for Flesh and Blood. It was an event where you get given eight booster packs to make a playable deck, and I had a bunch of fun. The new set are wizards and "runeblades" (fighters wielding magic), with themes of Earth and Lightning. It was an incredible amount of fun, and I got in four games (and lost them all).

I've also had two commission batches back from Tesseract Miniature Studios. This will be just in time to get in a last few games with my White Company before the new edition drops. We're still waiting to hear what changes are happening to factions, so I'm hoping this isn't their last hurrah...

Still mostly out...

 

As the end of the summer means I finish up a bunch of my commitments, the hobby desk is still looking a bit dry, and the blog a little sparse. I've been slowly assembling Maximus in my free time, just so I can throw the box away. He's a little further advanced than this now, but I'm not going to get up and show you an updated photo just yet...

I've not had time to write up the Red Star Blues tournament games just yet, but I won the best player / best sports award, which is obviously the best award. I picked the exclusive edition Samsa model, which isn't something I've had the opportunity to do before.

From the general prize pool I grabbed a donated Morat Vanguard with Combi Rifle who I suspect is about to be the subject of some paint scheme testing...

Apart from a book and a couple of cans of undercoat, I only grabbed these two miniature blisters at the club bring and buy. I think if I'm going to justify to myself having gotten them, I should really get them assembled sooner rather than later... The plan is to use them as NPCs for fantasy roleplaying games like D&D and Pathfinder.

And finally, my Warcrow pre-order arrived, so I've got a few more miniatures to get assembled. It's about to be another busy week, so I'll be writing about things I've done rather than completed hobby, but I hope to have a slightly more regular blog schedule moving forward...

Warhammer 40,000 Crusade Battle Report: Astra Militarum vs Adeptus Mechanicus

 

The campaign continues...

The Tallarn "Seventeenth" picked a quiet looking planet to 'invade' to try and get some level of redemption for their absolutely terrible showing in the campaign so far. Unfortunately, their efforts to find an isolated spot to set up a base were interrupted by having picked a spot a lost force of Skitarii were searching to try and find some kind of radio to communicate with their higher ups.

We were playing a custom mission, with multiple locations to search for the "real" objective with a dice roll. You could score any objective before the real objective was found, but the moment the real objective was found, that was the only point to score.

Of course, the Skitarii immediately found their radio on the objective on the furthest left flank, that was hardest for my troops to reach...

In the centre, the Leman Russ Executioner sought to take out the Skitarii transport to stop it reinforcing the main objective.

While the Hellhound put the hurt on the Skitarii holding the objectives, the Armoured Sentinels tried to take some wounds off the the Onager Dunecrawler.

In the centre, my disgraced commander managed to prove himself to his troops by holding the centre for a brief moment before being absolutely wrecked by killer servitors.

The right flank was over-run by Rust Stalkers killing everyone in sight.

While the Hellhound was attacked by a Mechanicus walker, it wasn't able to cause much damage.

As the Onager's super death ray thing picked off one tank at a time, the walker fled fighting the Hellhound to charge into the Sentinels that were bullying the surviving Skitarii, and managed to swing the fight in favour of the Mechanicus.

With few Guard survivors, but honour restored to a couple of disgraced units, the Astra Militarum withdrew from the field, leaving the Skitarii delighted to have finally recovered a working radio...

Infinity Battle Report: Clicking with Combined Army

 

A little while back I knocked together a quick Combined Army list to get a feel for the faction. It wasn't particular complicated, just a standard set of support pieces built around the Charontid HMG and the Anathematic Hacker.

We were practicing Unmasking ahead of Red Star Blues, and my opponent (who wasn't playing the tournament as they are TOing) brought their Acontecimento force. The main threats were a Tigbalang and a Knight of Montesa.

I was lucky enough to take out the Tikbalang due to it being a little bit over-extended, at which point I started throwing warbands at the engineer who'd come forward to push a button until one of them succeeded.

On a cheeky off chance, I had my Dartok speculatively fire a Pitcher into the Montesa, and managed to successfully isolate it. It was later able to reset itself out of it, but it certainly stopped a rampage early on!

In the end, I started pushing my Anathematic forward to push some buttons and target some decoys, but by this point I'd lost too many models for it to have enough orders to get forward and get the job done.

Overall, it was a slightly unusual game, in that I managed to outgun a PanOceania force in many ways, but my opponent managed to stay true to the mission and get more of the objectives than I did! While I wasn't successful, it felt to me like the Combined Army really clicked for me as a faction and a lot of the models who have a particular role were doing well in their roles individually. I need to spend a bit more time understanding how they work together in a force, but all in all I'm very happy that I'm headed in the right direction.