Monday 30 April 2018

Salute 2018 Purchases

So, with a spring in my step, I set out across the mystical halls of Salute to find treasures to return home with. What bounty might I discover?


The bag I was handed at the door already came with a souvenir miniature and a free dice. Already up!


First stop was Northumbrian Tin Soldier, where I had pre-ordered some lovely new goblins. Yes, more goblins. I thought if I got it out of the way early, I might not go too mad again... I also got a free gift of a badge, which I thought was a nice touch.


Next up was Eureka Miniatures, where I wanted to pick up a couple more oddnesses from their chaos range. I ended up with these beauties.


My wife and I then got a demo of a game called Moonstone, which we both really enjoyed and ended up picking the core box for. I took a few photos of the demo game, so I'll put them up shortly in a separate blog post.


I remember seeing the Kickstarter for this when it came out, but I was on a crowdfunding ban at the time. The figures are definitely a style I appreciate, and I'm looking forward to getting them painted up and playing some games!


While queuing to pay for Moonstone, I noticed that Troll Trader, who were the distributor, had got a little laser cut laser cutter as their event exclusive, so I kind of had to get one! I mean, you can't blame me, can you?


One of the stands I wandered past was "Awesome 3D Printing", who 3D print things for other wargaming companies. I didn't get a shot of their stand, but they gave me a free keyring, so the least I can do is link their site.


I then wandered by the Warploque stand. The original plan was just to drop by and say hi as I haven't assembled the stuff from their first Kickstarter yet...


But then I saw the Mjowls, and they were just adorable and I had to own them...


Then a quick trip to the Anvil Industry stand (obligatory Kickstarter plug) to say hello and pick up their show only miniatures... So I now have a werewolf and a political commissar type, which is excellent.

I then got a text from my darling wife. We have, for some years, had a rule that until we bought a property, she was not to buy a titan. She's broken this rule a few times so far, with "Knight Titans Don't Really Count", "They're Smallish Eldar Ones So It's Not That Bad" and "An Ordinatus Isn't a Titan" (OK, I deserve that last technicality)...


But a few weeks before Salute, we'd bought a flat. So . . . technically, she was allowed to buy a Titan. She did, however, acknowledge that this was lightly taking the piss, and some level of light bribery was necessary for me not to give her grief about this forever and a day. Negotiations occurred, and I was allowed two significant purchases...


She was also buying herself a Termite, and agreed to buy me one as a present as well. I have some cunning plans for this that I'm looking forward to doing, but they will remain secret for now. The casting quality on these kits is also really excellent, and there's a lot less flash than I recall from other Forge World kits I've bought of late.


I have been looking super thoughtfully at the Heresy Giant for a while now. Heresy put out some amazing kits, so I'd really recommend, of any of the kits I've linked here, you go and check their stuff out. Andy who runs Heresy is good people, almost an institution of the small hobby businesses out there, and it's well work grabbing a purchase of something.


My other large purchase at Salute was a selection of pre-painted 4Ground scenery, for my planned Infinity table in the new place. There was a bit of a discount if you spent certain amounts so I grabbed a few pieces of scatter to hit the threshold.






I had a few pounds left in my pocket, so I pottered by the Fenris Games stand and got just one more goblin.

I really do have a goblin problem, don't I?

Monday 23 April 2018

Daughters of the Burning Rose - Anvil Industry Kickstarter


As I mentioned in last week's Salute post, Anvil Industry are currently running a Kickstarter for their "Daughters of the Burning Rose" miniatures.


So firstly, having seen the miniatures in person, I can definitely recommend them. They are wonderfully detailed, well cast, and have a nice consistent theme across the range.


Obviously, one of the most common uses for heavily armoured sci fi warrior women will be as Sisters of Battle in Warhammer 40,000. Many people will have seen the announcement by Games Workshop that they'll be releasing Sisters in 2019, with an open development process. So why buy these now?

Well, if you only play in your local Games Workshop, then no, you won't be able to get to use them there. But otherwise? You'll still be able to use both these and the new Games Workshop plastics. These aren't a direct rip off - there's clear tips of the hat, sure, but they are their own thing and I don't feel bad about buying them. They're also sensibly proportioned and armoured, with no over-sexualised nonsense that I've seen so far.

In short - these are the sort of figures that there's been a bit of a shortage of up until now, and it should be encouraged. If you can spare even a token amount for a single figure or squad, I'd recommend throwing it into the pot now to show that there is a market for this sort of thing and it's worth doing.


To finish, this magnificent figure - it's a "10 up" figure that Anvil basically put together because they could. Pretty awesome, right?

Disclaimer: I am friends with the owners of Anvil Industry. However, I've not received any free product from them and this isn't a paid advertisement. I'm promoting something I think there should be more of in this hobby, because I think it's awesome and you'll like it to.

Thursday 19 April 2018

HATE Infinity League 2018: Corregidor vs Acontecimento, Looting & Sabotage


HATE is once more descending into the chaos and mayhem of a League - this time organised by the fearsome Riker. This one is a full on ITS tracked League...

With most of my Corregidor now assembled, I decided to stick with them for the League and try and get as many practice games in with them as possible. You will see a few other games up on the blog, as I've got some other things recently I'm wanting to try out, but for the most part, I want to try and improve my play by sticking with this sub faction as much as possible.


First game, and I'm drawn against Yashar. Now, Yashar is Really Rather Good at Infinity, but has only done one ITS tournament. He's started up a Shock Army of Acontecimento as a break from his usual MRRF, and they're already beautifully painted.

The mission chosen is Looting and Sabotage, and knowing that the Acontecimento TAGs are much better than the Nomad ones, I decide to rely on punchy close combat with smoke to try and get to the AC2.

On the left, I threw down the Jaguar link, with the Intruder HMG nearby, and a few Alguacile order generators.


In the middle, the Lunokhod covered the objective with two Crazy Koalas in an inconvenient spot for anyone want to try and hit the buttons, even if they were under smoke.


Finally on the right, the Haris Wildcat link with HRL and Assault Hacker covered this flank, with a doctor behind a wall nearby to run around and sort them out when they invariably got smooshed.



My reserve model was McMurrough. I've not used him before, so I avoided making him my data tracker in case he got easily smushed. One of the Jaguars got that honour. The basic plan was for McMurrough to run up the table, punch as many long ranged ARO pieces to death as possible, and leave the second turn open for me to head up the table and hit the AC2.


He did OK at getting up the table, picking up an MSV1 Visor from the Panoply on his way past, but his intuitive attacking of the Regular Sniper resulted in him eating a Critical Stun, leaving him unable to do any more attacks that turn.


My Intruder HMG stepped out using all the midfield smoke and neutralised the second sniper and an unfortunate Fugazi that was hanging out from cover a little too much.


The Jaguars took advantage of the remaining orders to start their swing up the board for turn two, and I left the Panzerfaust in a nice awkward spot with a good view across the board in case anything started working it's way up - in particular I was looking suspiciously at the Guarda de Assalto...


I decided to try and neutralise the surviving sniper with the Wildcat Haris link. The HRL has a pretty good range, so I moved it up for a shot.


Unfortunately, I'd misjudged the range, was over 32" and in a terrible position, so my HRL lost the firefight and ended up with her brains splattered all over the asphalt... With a few models thrown into suppressive fire, it was time for the second round.



A Bagh-Mari HMG walked out to get into a gun fight with McMurrough out of chain rifle range. Fortunately, McMurrough has a good throwing arm and live grenades as well as the smoke ones. Yashar had a bit of a panicked moment as grenade damage started splashing onto the link  team, but they incoveniently made the necessary armour saves. McMurrough was now injured and in a risky spot.


Another burst from the HMG as the Bagh-Mari hastily moved out of the blast range of the link, and McMurrough was down. An Akali Sikh Commando came on the side and put the Panzerfaust Jaguar Dogged, and the rest of the turn was models positioning for turn two - a helper bot heading up to repair the Fugazi, and the Guarda de Assalto


The Akali Sikh commando had an inconvenient "not dying" problem, costing me seven orders and another Jaguar.


The sniper just wouldn't dislodge - a vain attempt to use a Wildcat in the hope of getting lucky was of no use.


The Alguacile might have had better luck if I'd had enough orders to move him up to a closer firing position, but I shot from further away and he also got sniped out.


The Guarda then advanced and took out the Lunokhod to disable the Koalas. There was a short and panicked pause while he melted my Wildcat Assault Hacker's brain, but it didn't take long before he could advance.



I dropped Senor Massacre into suppression in the vain hope of doing something useful, but a carefully placed Eclipse Grenade put paid to my efforts and I took an 8-0 win, with a 270-80 split on Victory Points.

Monday 16 April 2018

Salute Summary

At the weekend, I headed down to Salute for a teensy bit of retail therapy. I missed last year because of LARP, so was super keen to see what was about.



Eureka Miniatures were over as usual from Australia. I was after picking up a couple more of their weird Chaos range, which uses Hieronymous Bosch as an inspiration.


Sadly, they didn't have any painted examples for me to show off, so I decided to take a couple of photos of these wonderful retro cars which might be of interest to people who play Gaslands... Apparently it's their "Mad Maximillian" range...


My wife Sim and I sat down to play a quick demo game of Moonstone, which is a skirmish game that Kickstartered recently and is about to go retail. We utterly loved it and ended up picking up a box or two to play with.


 This table is all 3D printed scenery, which as an Infinity player I was super interested about. The company is called Thunder Chrome. You can't buy their stuff from a store - only the 3D printed files from their site. You then print the scenery yourself.


 One of the demo games was an amazing zombie game set at Salute! I sadly didn't see who was running it, though.


Anvil Industry have a Kickstarter at the moment for some amazing sci fi women. You should totally check it out! They're called the Daughters of the Burning Rose and I was really impressed by the quality of what they had on display. I hope to have another more detailed post up shortly.


Next up was the Extraordinary Laser Company, who are running a Kickstarter for pre-painted terrain called "Desecration City".


It looks pretty nice, and is well suited to 40K games in particular. They've also got some nice stuff from a previous Kickstarter you can buy from their website now.


I was drawn to this large and imposing display because pirate ships are always cool.


Even inside, there were lights and well painted figures. The display was amazing!


It's apparently for a game called Briskars which has just been translated into English.





There were also a couple of Kickstarters I liked which I abjectly failed to get photos of. The first was this one by the Laser Terrain Co. They'll be launching on 19 April.





You've also probably already heard about the Artis Opus Kickstarter to make some fancy new brushes. They've sent a bunch of stuff out to much better painters than me whose opinions probably matters much more. All I can add to those recommendations is that their brush soap smells pretty nice. ;-)



With Salute done, all that was left was to retire to the Docksider for a quiet civilised meal before home time...


A review of my ill gotten gains will follow shortly...