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.

Going places and doing things?

 

So, it's been a pretty busy week, all told. I've been Going Out and Doing Things an awful lot, which meant that I haven't had a huge amount of time to get any hobby done. I did manage to do a bunch of tidying on the hobby desk so it didn't look quite this bad, but I think it's deteriorated again as I sorted my KR cases to work out what models I was taking out and how I was packing them.

Early in the week I did grab a few of my Combined army models who needed basing material adding to get that done.

The basing material takes a long while to dry, so getting it done early means that when the weather breaks to allow some undercoating, they can be ready to go.

Wednesday night I had a practice game for Saturday's tournament. I took a bunch of profiles I haven't tried before to see if they were good. My opponent hadn't played in a while, but brought a pretty tasty Tohaa list, and some models didn't survive long enough for me to determine if they're good or not. One that did was the Rindak, a heavy infantry paramedic who can deploy into the midfield. He's pretty tough, and while he was eventually taken out, he's a tough nut to crack and I'm keen to try him out again.

The other model I tried out was the Caskuda I'd just assembled. It has to drop in, and with the table we had and not having been able to clear reaction pieces, I had nowhere good to drop it in. I went after the sniper who was pinning me down, but it just got exploded by reactions before it could really do anything.

Saturday was Red Star Blues at HATE (Hackney Area Tabletop Enthusiasts). It was a three round tournament with Frontline, Unmasking and Firefight. I was bringing my vanilla Combined again. I'll write up what happened later - I've got other blog posts planned for this week, but maybe next week?

Sunday was a Bring and Buy at HATE. I went up to the storage unit and picked up a bunch of stuff I'd packed up previously before getting a cab down to the club.

It was a pretty productive day clearing things out. I sold enough bits and pieces to cover the cab ride from the storage unit and the cab ride home, so its a net success. It was good to get back to selling things.

This many things to do in a week was massively exhausting. It was all fun and productive, but also A Lot. I definitely feel like a bit of a rest after all that!

Warhammer 40,000 Crusade Battle Report: Astra Militarum vs Dark Angels (Watchers of the Fall)

 

The Tallarn XVI, concerned their Necron 'landlords' might be a bit upset about them losing a whole bunch of Necron territory, decided to go on the offensive, while staying on the Necron home planet. Unfortunately for the Tallarn, they ended up running into a bunch of angry looking Dark Angels ?Successors? coming the other way...

This mission was all about seizing some objectives, and the Dark Angel bikes were quick and effective at doing so, with the Guard on the defensive.

They also had a Vindicator for close support, which ended up covering one of the objectives and heavily damaging the Tallarn Chimera.

The Hellhound swept up to counter attack, causing a chunk of damage but not really finishing anything off.

Near the Hellhound, the Deathwatch arrived to counter its advance.

While the Infantry squad piled out of the Chimera to take the objective.

The counter-attack from the assault squad was swift and merciless...

Bikes poured onto the Guard squad holding the central objective...

The Terminators neutralised the Hellhound...

And it wasn't long before the Guard positions were over-whelmed, with the Manticore getting charged and taken out by the bike squad. In the end, while I'd scored a few points holding objectives (my best result so far) it was a 100-30 loss, with every Guard unit lost. I took three Battle Scars, paying for one to be removed immediately to prevent it wrecking a unit, but leaving the others on for the next game...

Infinity Battle Report: Are Jayth Cutthroats Any Good? (No)

 

A while back, now, I arranged a game of Infinity and decided to dip back into Shasvastii to look at the "Jayth Cutthroat" profile. These are lightly armoured, one wound models who are excellent in close combat, have some good mid and short ranged shooting profiles, are incredibly hard to hit and have a visor to help them shoot enemy models that are hard to hit.

I took a Haris, with one armed with a Red Fury, another Chain Rifles, and the last a specialist with a shotgun. I deployed them defensively on the left flank with the intention of advancing once things that threatened them had been dealt with.

My opponent and I had a whole bunch of back and forth, trading pieces. My Speculo and my Noctifer both got a bit of piece trading done to clear out threats to the Jayth, and the Taigha cleared others.

However, by the time it came for the Jayth to push up the table, I didn't really have enough orders left to complete the mission. They are very vulnerable to template weapons that don't need to roll to hit, which means deploying them cagily, which in turn means that they're not really pulling their weight in a list.

I'm not sticking with Shasvastii at the moment, but it was good to pull out some profiles that people say are probably bad and have some experience as to why.