Setting up for November success

 

In a gap in the weather, I managed to get these Conquest Games miniatures undercoated so they're ready to paint. I've gotten a lot of my half finished assembly projects done, so I'm hoping to get on to painting shortly.

The last unfinished assembly project are the Bretonnian men at arms. It took me a bunch of time to dig out all the bits for them as part of my tidying up.

Trying to get all twenty five done at once is a recipe for disaster. It'll be way too many, and get overwhelming. I'm planning on breaking it down into individual ranks to make it a bit more manageable.

Age of Sigmar Stormcast Eternals vs Seraphon

Back in September, I finally got my Stormcast Eternals out to get in my first game of Age of Sigmar. Mine were painted by Squiggle's Studio. One of the members of my club had offered me a game and had brought his Seraphon.

I won the first turn and moved a bunch of models forward and shot a few Seraphon, but then on the Seraphon turn they advanced back then charged into the Stormcast, causing a hefty chunk of casualties.

I brought on Yndrasta to try and take out the big Seraphon general. She's a monster hunter with huge bonuses on killing monsters.

Ah. Oh dear. It's like that, is it?

I did charge forward and take out a unit of Skinks with my spear troops, but a lot of other troops elsewhere were dying horribly...

On the right flank, my other spear unit had been whittled down by shooting, and the survivors had charged the skinks. They cut down a chunk of them, but the wait of numbers pulled down all but the hero...

Which led to a somewhat cartoon moment of the hero beating up the small lizards not realising their big cousin was bearing down on them...

So, unsurprisingly, I lost my first game. It seems like advancing on the first turn is bad? I'm sure there's something clever you should do.

Did I have fun? Yes. It was good fun and I could see the broad shape of how the game is meant to play. That said, I was spending most of the game wishing that I was throwing my minions in front of me, chewing glowing green rocks, and screaming "more-more power" at my unreliable wonder weapons before they explode.

In short, I really want to get my Skaven on the table...

White Company Chaksa Longarms

 

A few more models from White Company painted by Tesseract Miniature Studios. These are Chaksa Longarms, aliens who escaped the control of the Tohaa and now work as mercenaries. In N4 they haven't been the best of profiles, so I'm waiting to find out if they are still going to be in play, and if they get a profile overhaul.

To get this photo, the background book didn't look right at the bottom of the picture, so I propped texture sheet up on some shipping container models I own to get them at a height that looked right. I had to do a bunch of fiddling about with the angle of the scatter terrain so the shadow wasn't landing on the backdrop.

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...