Very Modest Salute Purchases

So, last weekend was Salute, and I tried to keep my shopping reasonably modest. We're trying to have a clear out, so it seems like a bad idea to buy loads of stuff without any intent on getting to paint it soon. Lets see how well I did at managing to keep it restrained... A couple of bigger items didn't fit in this photo, so lets cover them first.

First up is the Dungeons & Lasers Dwarven Mine . . . but in this case, it's pre-painted. I've not had time to dig into it just yet, but it looks incredibly promising and I'm stoked to dig into it further.

I picked up some area terrain from Playmats.eu pretty much moments before the show closed. These were pretty cheap and should add to my area terrain for both RPGs and for Infinity.

Between two of these, there's plenty of area covered by two packets. That'd be plenty for a typical 4 x 4 game table alongside other more traditional terrain.

The company Debris of War had a good range of resin terrain, but I picked up a couple of sheets of transfers. I'm pondering adding some graffiti to my Nomad Remotes when I get them painted, and these would be great for that.

On the Infinity front I grabbed the new event exclusive Varangian Guard (plus a second for a friend, which is now winging its way to him). I also hadn't picked up the Helen of Troy limited model when she came out, and I thought another Infinity civilian wouldn't be the end of the world, so I got her two. The Varangian will be heading off to my commission painter for a White Company paint job, but Helen is one for me to paint.

Annie was kind enough to bring some of the Community Miniatures I'd backed down to the show so they didn't need posting. The Community Miniatures project is a Bad Squiddo side project to make historical figures who wouldn't otherwise get made. They get voted on going up for pre-order, then when enough people have pledged a fiver to them being made, they get sculpted and made.

Here's the other Bad Squiddo model - the show miniature! There's a sculpted scull and crossbones on the flag, and it should be a fun paint.

Anvil Industry also produced a 3D sculpted show model, which you could either download, or pay them for a print of. I decided to pick one up at the show as we don't have a 3D printer.

I got some orcs from Forgemaster Miniatures, too. This is another small company 3D printing miniatures, and these orcs looked like a useful set of models for Pathfinder, D&D and so on.

The company Warbases has a new range of minis, called Bifrost Miniatures. I've got a Gnoll wizard planned in Pathfinder, and while Gorrit here is marketed as an artificer, my character comes from the Mana Wastes, so can look a little technological. I'm hoping to get him painted up in time for the UK Game Expo when I'm hoping to get some games of Pathfinder in.

Some nice gentlemen were handing out free sprues of Wargames Atlantic "British Expeditionary Force". I'm thinking of assembling them as a Last War warband. Probably a good opportunity for an unusual paint scheme for otherwise historical miniatures.

A couple more 3D printed miniatures, this time from "Modular Worlds". I got a Leshy, which I'm a big fan of from Pathfinder, and a skink familiar holding a scroll in its tale which is perfect to add some flavour to a friendly NPC wizard.

Only Games was doing a promotional offer where they gave you a model if you signed up to their mailing list. This model is intended for One Page Rules, which I have enjoyed playing the sci-fi versions of.

And finally, the Gaming Vault was giving out little packets of freebies. They're a gaming shop that has a sideline in 3D printing bases.

The freebie packet included a sci fi base and some sweets. Not sure what I'll use the base for, but free is free!

I don't want to let this lot build up, so I'm planning to work through getting these assembled and painted pretty quickly so they all end up done and painted sooner rather than later. I'm not sure how quickly that will be, but I'll give it a shot.

A short Salute post

 

I went to Salute 51 at the Excel Centre on Saturday. It was a pirate themed event, and my friend Annie at Bad Squiddo Games had made the show miniature! I'm super impressed with how far Annie's come with her company, though apparently not impressed enough to take an in focus shot of the show miniature she had made...

Here's the Titan Owner's Club "Titan Walk", playing Adeptus Titanicus in 40K scale. I couldn't get an angle to actually get the whole board in! I didn't put the effort into getting a ton of photos this year, preferring to wander, look at what was about, and pick up a few bits and pieces without going wild.

This was a project to model the Italian town of Gradara in the Renaissance. This is a historical project that was sponsored by the EU and the town in question! They were also cross promoting a renaissance skirmish wargame called "Force of Virtue". It's also absolutely huge, and the photo doesn't do it justice.

That's all I've got on Salute this year. It was good fun but I was hard pressed to think of what to write about it beyond what I've said already about previous years. It remains something I'll attend any year it doesn't clash with Empire LRP.

Books in, models out, and some news about the future

 

After my first game of 40K 10th edition went well, I noticed that the club was kicking off a new campaign based on the Pariah Nexus Crusade book. I decided it was worth signing up, and while I was grabbing the Pariah Nexus book, I decided to order the Tyrannic War Crusade book as well. I've had a little scan read of the Pariah Nexus book so far, and while there's a little bit of admin, it looks like Goonhammer have built a good app to handle all that stuff 

Much of this weekend was spent packing up my O-12, which I'd listed on eBay. With 50 lots sold, it's a good chunk of stuff out of the flat, but it was very time consuming to get it all gone!

The internet has been getting very excitable about the discontinuation of a significant number of Age of Sigmar models, including a good chunk of the Stormcast Sacrosanct Chamber, which is a good portion of my Stormcast. I've not played AoS yet, and given 4th edition is coming, I'm now planning on holding off until then. Having had some time to think about it, I'm pretty relaxed about the whole situation. Age of Sigmar isn't my main game, and I don't really know enough about what's staying and going to really know how it will affect me until the new edition releases, so I may as well wait until then.

Trying Warhammer 40,000 10th Edition - Deathwatch vs Thousand Sons

 

A few weeks back I took my Deathwatch down to the club to try 10th edition Warhammer 40,000. I'd found 9th edition a bit fiddly and hard to keep track of, and was quite hopeful for 10th. I certainly found list building a significant chunk easier!

My opponent was running Thousand Sons, and had been playing a few games of the new edition. We picked a pretty standard mission and deployed, with me taking the first turn.

I advanced my bikes, claiming an objective, but my fire into the Thousand Sons was pretty ineffective.

A squad of Thousand Sons with flamers and Ahriman headed into the midfield. They used some kind of magical ritual to remove the armour saves of my assault intercessors, who basically exploded.

Some Thousand Sons teleported into my backfield to score a secondary objective.

On my turn, I charged a Dreadnought and Bladeguard into the Thousand Sons.

But the counter attack started to whittle them down...

Kill Team Cassius then rolled into the Thousand Sons squad who'd charged my Spectrus Kill team...

At the start of the Thousand Sons turn 2, Magnus turned up. I was definitely in a lot of bother.

That's . . . that's a lot of casualties.

My Phobos Librarian charged into the Tzeentch sorcerer to try and finish him off...

Buti it was basically all over - my Captain got run over by a Rhino (the ignominy!), while the surviving Hellblaster tried to facedown a (proxied) Mutalith Vortex Beast on his own...

Magnus smushed another Killteam on his own - the sole survivor got charged.

My dice were not helping, though. Here's a typical round of armour saves...

After some ineffective flailing at each other for a few combats, the Phobos Librarian eventually fell to the Sorcerer, despite having had a relatively good chance of killing the sorcerer outright...

And it was then basically down to the mopping up. At the point of turn 3 that I was tabled, I was down 22-57 victory points...

That said - I had a lot more fun than with 9th edition. The Goonhammer game tracker is excellent and makes it easy to keep track of what you're meant to be doing, picking which special abilities your army has means that you only have a few things to keep track of, and all the units having some cool special ability on their card was fun.

I'm going to put the Deathwatch away for a little, though. They currently lack good anti armour options with the models I have, and I don't want to invest money in them until their Codex comes out. So, it's time, I think, to pull out my rather dusty Astra Militarum...

March progress - A productive Easter Weekend

 

I spent a chunk of the long Easter weekend getting some painting done. I'd basically only done assembly this month and wanted to make sure I got something painted. So I blitzed through these two Imetrons for my Combined Army.

I'd assembled them without line of sight markers because it hadn't occurred to me that their line of sight would be relevant given they don't have any guns. Then I realised that they can still use the "Look Out!" ARO (and nothing else), so they needed line of sight markers. I eyeballed it to start off with, then bluetacced a base with line of sight markers on it to tidy it up. Turns out I was quite far out on this side!

I also finished up these two Oathmark Dwarfs from the leftover miniatures from January's D&D project. They're really nice, not too detailed sculpts that were nice and simple to paint. They're good additions to my generic fantasy RPG miniatures to provide NPCs when I need them.

So, I didn't quite manage to get the Bretonnians assembled this month, so they're still on the docket. There's also those two 3D printed miniatures from the Sheffield Satellite I haven't done yet, and the last two Frameworks miniatures that need assembling. Finishing the dwarfs was great, and getting a couple more half done things finished would really help.

I should do another "project" paint this month - I've got options between some supply boxes for Infinity, another Combined model, or hitting my Battletech lance. I'm not sure which I'll pick just yet - I'll probably make a decision on that on a whim when I sit down at the paint table.

Finally, it's Salute this month. I'll be there, but am keen not to end up adding too much stuff to the massive stash pile. I'll see if I spot any gems I can't resist...

Infinity League: Last Launch - Nomads vs Invincible Army

 

For the second round of the HATE Infinity League, I was up against Invincible Army. The mission was Last Launch, one of the new missions in this season. I've never played it, either, so I was a bit nervous. The mission is about getting points and specialists evacuated, so I chose three expensive specialists - Mary Problems, Mother Agatha and Zoe, on top of Jazz as a primary Hacker. For firepower, I was relying on an Intruder sniper and a Hellcat with Spitfire.

My opponent won the Initiative roll and chose to go first. He had a chunky heavy infantry link led by a (proxied) Shang Ji HMG with all the tools. On the closed table, it was able to clear out the one ARO piece that could see the box, have a specialist take three ID tokens to escape, handing them around the team.

Two models then headed up into space, with the missile launcher staying behind to provide some AROs. I ran up my Heckler and tried to Jammer the Shang Ji HMG, but he passed his save. Someone then managed to take the Missile Launcher out, all the way to dead so he wasn't getting back up again.

Mary Problems had started heading up the table to push a button and got very lucky avoiding the Shang Ji HMG in ARO. Mimetism -6 turned out to be clutch in this case. The Shang Ji then ducked back inside to protect the box.

So, there was still a special character engineer on the ID dispenser, and a Shang Ji HMG guarding the room. How was I going to clear this?

I dropped in my Hellcat Spitfire, scored my classified with him, and shot someone who was protecting the engineer, before going out for the engineer.

Unluckily, I didn't manage to land a useful shot on the Engineer and he failed guts out of my line of sight, and I didn't have the orders to chase him down.

I then mercilessly bullied the Shang Ji HMG. He got Isolated, Targeted, and shot unconscious. A Pan O Paramedic managed to get a shot to medi-kit him back up again, and now I still had a problem! 

Agatha ran up to the box, shot at the special character until he ducked, but ended up having to spend a turn holding on the box...

The Morlock dropped smoke on himself and got a lucky high roll meaning a Total Reaction remote couldn't beat the roll. This gave Zoe a clear run for the box.

The Chimera dropped Eclipse smoke to cover the box, and the Shang Ji dropped a chain colt, killing the Chimera who'd gotten a little too close. Two Uberfall smacked him about, but he passed all four armour saves and survived the game!

Agatha and Mary Problems were able to evacuate the room, swinging the mission score from a 3-5 loss for me to a 9-1 win for me! So a very good score, but it didn't reflect how close the game was in practice.

My opponent is now assembling and painting his actual Shang Ji HMG model in honour of this brave soldier who survived all sorts of Nomad awfulness to hold the room. A true hero of the people!