Tournament Practice: Combined Army vs Steel Phalanx

 

With a tournament at the weekend, I arranged to get in a practice game with one of my club mates. We were practicing Capture and Protect as the mission I'd played the least out of the three at the tournament.

I was up against Steel Phalanx, who'd taken first turn, and had Ajax as their reserve drop. He forward deploys now. Could that be a problem?

Ajax spent his first turn running up, using smoke and positioning to kill Sheskiin. Which was deeply unfortunate for me as Sheskiin was my Lieutenant, so I started my first turn in Loss of Lieutenant.

Never mind, I'll just have Agent Dukash walk on the back board edge using my Warhorse orders. He'll be fine. Whiffed against a Servant Remote, you say? Immobilised in place by a 3 point peripheral you didn't respect? That's deeply unfortunate.

Maybe the Libertos can . . . nope, he's discovered.

Well, at least the Dartok can drop a Repeater from his Pitcher and immobilise Ajax before he does any more damage...

Agamemnon then led the charge to lock down the Combined Army. Unfortunately, my inability to stop rolling critical hits helped me significantly here, with two crits in my first ARO, and continuing along that vein for several orders.

Eventually, however, the luck had to run out, and the Q drone was down.

To make sure the pesky remote didn't get back up again, an Ekdromoi dropped in, jet packed over, and took out the Med-Tech. Who . . . was my new Lieutenant. Oh dear.

There wasn't much I could do on my second turn really. I locked down Ajax but that was about it. Agent Dukash got out of his immobilised state just in time to get gunned down by Agamemnon.

Phoenix then fought his way up the board, getting held up a little bit by a Libertos, but he was not to be denied.

The fireteam reached the console and got in place to score it. The kicking I'd received meant I started my third turn in Loss of Lieutenant, and while the Dartok tried to run back and deny the scoring, it was no good...

Despite the horror, I did manage to score my classified, which is pretty good going for two turns in Loss of Lieutenant and one in Retreat... I learned a couple of lessons about positioning and the vulnerabilities of my two main attack pieces, so it was a productive evening of having terrible things happen to my models so I could play better at a tournament...

Tiefling Warlock and Combined Army Agent Dukash

 

In last week's update I mentioned I'd finished a couple of figures but hadn't had time to take fancy photos. Well, here's the fancy photos! I feel like I'm definitely getting the hang of this photography business.

First up is Agent Dukash, another Shasvastii for Infinity. In N5 he's now a Parachutist (Deployment Zone), and is pretty fighty. He's a hefty chunk of points, though, so he's not going to taken all that often. He's been very hit and miss for me so far, though I'm not sure if that's because he's very hit and miss, or just that it's a skill issue on my part.

Meanwhile, I also painted a Tiefling Warlock. This is a Frameworks miniature, and it's painted up really well. When I first got these models, I thought the details were a little soft, but I've been pleasantly surprised how it painted up. There's still a few areas of meh detail, but they aren't in areas you'll focus on.

To get this miniature done quickly, I painted it with contrast to start with, then gave it an Agrax Earthshade wash. Once this was dry, I drybrushed it with Karak Stone before picking up a few details, mostly with the skin. If I was doing this again, I might pick a couple of block colours to drybrush a more specific colour on, and other areas where I don't drybrush at all and use manual brush highlights.

I'm not sure if that's going to add a lot of time onto painting a model like this but I suspect it won't add much time on but will look much better. I'll give it a go in a future model and report back.

Old World Campaign Day - Battle 3 - The Finale

 

The final battles of the campaign were the undead trying to take the town - but they had a limited time to do so before the sun rose and the vampires got significantly weaker. The games were doubles game, and my ally was running a powerful Blood Dragons list, using some custom rules written by the organiser for this event.

I took the right flank to, with the plan of using my ghostly stuff to hold up some scary units on the flank, while the Blood Dragons were planning on charging into the rows of Empire infantry.

I brought my wolves up into the outriders, who managed to cut them down quite effectively.

Meanwhile, my bats, which I'd planned to send flying over the enemy lines to take out the war machines, either got charged by a big block of infantry and smushed, or enchanted to not be able to charge, which did not go well for them.

The Blood Dragons were doing terrible things over on the left flank, taking advantage of the event rule that let them form lances...While the Empire knights had gotten caught up in some massive zombie hordes...

The grave guard and spirit hosts swarmed over and destroyed the outriders.

Meanwhile, the banshee tried to hold up the steam tank, but instead got discorporated. Whoops.

The spirit hosts pushed forward to lock up the demigryph knights.

The undead started to push into the town as the demigryph knights desperately tried to get away from the ghostly swarms.

Meanwhile, the big block of Empire infantry swung towards the blood knights and zombie horde...

The Empire infantry block crashed into the undead lines, cut down swarms of zombies, and pulled down a couple of blood knights. The impact was too much for the undead, and they crumbled away as their magic stopped holding them together...

At this point, the game ended, and we narrowly hadn't taken the town, and overall in the campaign, the Empire had narrowly swung back to win at the last moment.

All in all, this was good fun. I definitely made some bad decisions from not knowing the game very well, but it reassured me that I enjoyed playing the game and it was worth continuing to try and get my army together.

Frostgrave Warband and Plans

 

The club has started running a small Frostgrave campaign, so I've decided to dig out an assortment of miniatures I've painted over the years. It took a bit of searching, but here we have Hannah of the Owls, a witch and her warband.

Centre, we have my warband's wizard, or rather witch - Hooty from Bad Squiddo Games. On the right is the apprentice, from Oathsworn Miniatures Sensible Shoes range. The goose is a model to be a summoned Ice Toad, and is from Northumbrian Tin Soldier.

For my specialists, I have a Crossbow woman, an Apothecary, a Woman at Arms and an Archer. The Crossbow woman is from Reaper Miniatures, the apothecary is from Otherworld Miniatures, the Woman at Arms from Bronze Age Miniatures, which I picked up from their UK seller, Fenris Games, and the archer is another Bad Squiddo miniature.

Finally, a thug and three thieves. From left to right, another Bad Squiddo miniature, a Toadstool Brownie from Fenris Games, a rogue from the Dungeons and Diversity range by Strata Miniatures, and finally another Otherworld miniature.

I'm not sure when I'll manage to schedule my first game in, but I'm aiming for some time this month...

Painted models! A practice game! A tournament!

 

It's been a busy week. I finished up a couple of figures on my lunchbreaks, had a practice game at HATE for a tournament at the weekend, and then, you know, went to the tournament on the weekend. As a result I've not had the time to do the fancy backdrop photos of my finished models, so you'll have to make do with badly lit photos from my painting table for now.

I finished Agent Dukash for the tournament. Another model that got a "glow up" for N5, and now has a very different role to the one he used to have. I'll report back with more details in other posts.

Obviously, there was the tournament itself, which was held in Norwich. I travelled up from London, staying in a hotel before and after. The tournament was excellent, and I believe they're planning to hold more that are more widely advertised now they've had a good practice run at it.

I also finished this Wizkids Frameworks Tiefling while waiting for the paint to dry on Dukash. It occurred to me only after base coating him that I could be using these figures to test paint schemes for my Bretonnians. So, umm, expect some more D&D figures painted up in some more colours while I work out some paint schemes, I guess...

Wargames Atlantic Dead Animal Bits

 

I was checking my Bluesky account the other day when I noticed I had a notification of being tagged by someone. This is unusual a I'm not super busy on Bluesky, but it turned out that Wargames Atlantic had done a draw of their followers on Bluesky and I'd won a box of their miniatures.

We got to pick which box it was, so I went for "Dead Animal Bits", which is a whole bunch of bones, bits of corpses and so on, which can then be used to decorate bases or terrain.

The box is three copies of the same sprue, with a whole ton of bits on. The detail on them is perfectly fine for what it is, and there's a huge selection of horns, ribcages, hands on hooks, the works. They're all going straight into my basing box for future modelling projects. It's definitely something folk could get plenty of use out of.

I didn't get on very well with the Wargames Atlantic Halflings I got a few years back, but these seem great. My only worry is that I might have too many of them for my purposes! This one box is going to last me years, and I've put off getting several Wargames Atlantic boxes for D&D and such like because I don't quite need that many miniatures! I'm guessing it's how they achieve a lot of their value / economy of scale, but it might be something to club together with friends to share between you, to eBay spare sprues from, or just to pick up a single sprue from eBay unless you're planning a big army project that's going to need a lot of them.

Obviously, as mentioned above, I received this box for free, but have not been asked to review this product, all opinions my own, etc, etc.

The end of eternal January

 

Well, I'm done with January. And also January is over. I had a pretty productive hobby month, finishing up a few models that have been on my paint table for a good while. This Lyran lance means I've definitely got enough models to try Battletech when I'm inspired to.

I am a little behind on "buy less than I paint" right now, down to a Made to Order box of Blood Bowl Halflings and Blue Giant Studios ending a few product lines. But six painted, twelve bought isn't too catastrophic, and is easily recoverable. If I can finish Agent Dukash and the goblins I've had on and off my desk for a whole age, I'll be back to neutral.

Getting back into painting Infinity was pretty darned great. Getting Oktavia painted and playing a game with her was a really positive vibe. There's a small amount of stress to be painting miniatures that I'm likely to use soon, which I'm not liking and will likely avoid in future. I've got an Infinity tournament next weekend that I'm currently planning on playing Combined Army at. I'm starting to consider shifting to playing one of my mercenary factions for a while until I've got the core of Combined Army painted up to take the pressure off.

I also managed in the last week to get another quick pass of undercoating done. The Anathematic, Rindak and Dartok are now ready for painting. I'm not sure what I'm going to pick up and paint next - I'm thinking I want to get a bit of volume painted, so I really need to go with what's enthusing me in the moment.

I also got back to HATE at its new venue, which I really like. It's a little harder for me to get to and needs a little more planning to reach. But I've had a couple of games there now, and I'm looking forward to more. I've also missed being able to get food at the venue, and have appreciated being able to get dinner there.

The Old World campaign day was also a great success. It confirmed to me that I like the Old World game, and that the effort to put my miniatures together and paint them won't be a waste. I'm not going to be doing quite as many events this year, but this and the upcoming Infinity tournament in February is a nice start to the year while I have the time.

Old World Campaign Day - Game 2, Dungeon Delve

 

Casting back to the Warhammer Old World campaign day, the second round was a dungeon delve, as the heroes searched for vampires as they slept to try and destroy them. I was one of the GMs, running the monsters from a the random tables our event organiser had written for us.

There were a bunch of effects that turned up, like having a trooper wandering off alone, or having someone jumped by the vampire once their coffin had been discovered. It was a pretty rough scenario that was hard for the heroes to win.

A bat swarm, in particular, was a really rough opponent for the players, especially as extra zombies kept turning up while they were held up. In the end, the players managed to find the vampire's lair, but their heroes were wounded enough and their warband had lost enough troops that they weren't able to over-come him, and the vampire was able to slay his pursuers.

As the event organiser totted up the number of Imperial heroes and vampires slain, we moved on to the third game of the day - the large finale battles...

Infinity N5 Slow Grow League Battle Report - Shasvastii vs Operations Subsection

 

To get folk going with N5 at the club, our Warcor is organising a narrative slow grow league. I'm running Shasvastii after I threw a list together to help me decide which faction to play and fell in love with it. My faction assigned me to the mission "Domination", facing ALEPH's Operations Subsection.

I went with a Mentor as a reliable Lieutenant. The Med-Tech and Ikadron were my "support package" with a Q Drone for defence. Trying a new link team, I took a Nox, Oktavia and Aida Swanson. Oktavia has had a major glow up this edition and it earned her a new paint job. Finally, I grabbed a Shrouded Minelayer and Malignos Hacker for midfield control, and a Taigha as a throwaway warband and solving problems that throwaway warbands solve.

I had the first turn and was super cautious about getting into a gunfight with the ALEPH gun fighters, so sent the Malignos out to flip a console. I ducked it into a quiet spot and went back into camouflage to avoid the spectacular number of hackers I was facing.

The Q Drone (discount, Thunderbolt version) headed up into the centre board to try and cost my opponent a few orders in her first turn. It lightly bullied a Deva hacker who managed to dodge out of sight.

The Taigha went for the Apsara hacker with a Berserk attack, but absolutely stuffed it and was shot down with a shotgun on its way in.

A Dakini HMG had a go at taking out the Thunderbolt, but got unlucky. Trisha N33 managed to Gizmokit the Dakini back up again, formed a link team with another Dakini and the Deva . . . shot again . . . and got taken out a second time. Ooof. This was a particularly unlucky chain of events that was a pretty hefty order drain.

I spent my turn bringing my Shrouded Minelayer up to try and take on some of the advanced pieces, but didn't get much success. I then brought the link team up, and Oktavia absolutely ashed poor Trisha with the rocket launcher, before heading up into the midfield to try and strengthen my scoring.

At this point, the ALEPH firepower I'd been so worried about started showing its strength. The proxy HMG (out of shot) simply exploded my Q drone without breaking a sweat.

The Apsara then worked around past my Malignos, who I had no intention of revealing in my reactive turn. She then snuck through the gap left by the Q drone, shot the Shrouded in the back (who miraculously survived but then failed guts into a horrifically exposed position), and melted the Nox hacker, breaking the fireteam apart.

The Med-Tech got the Q drone back online, but Aida was pinned down by the Proxy HMG, and I didn't fancy my odds on getting rid of it with the Q drone. Oktavia worked her way around the left of the barrier to engage the Apsara and was able to take it out.

In an effort to clear the opposition, I ran Oktavia forward and she got into a fight with three separate models. Most were fine, but I was able to take out the Operations Subsection lieutenant, meaning that my opponent now had to think very hard about how to spend her orders in her final turn.

As it was, she did a pretty good job! She was able to to clear the Shrouded, put Oktavia dogged, and then dive for the button with her Proxy doctor on the last order - sadly failing the WIP roll and being taken out by Oktavia moments before Oktavia passed out.

The mission ended with a 7-3 score in favour of the Shasvastii, but it was pretty close - if the doctor had survived, it would have moved to 6-4, and if the WIP roll had passed, it would have been 6-5... It was a fun game, and I spent most of it really scared of the ALEPH firepower. In many cases, I was being saved by the Shasvastii being difficult to hit, and if they'd been just a little less lucky they'd have evaporated completely.