Warhammer 40,000 Open Day - The Exhibition Halls

I hope to get a little more up to date with processing all my pictures from Cool Things I Did over past weekends, but I'm still trawling through a lot of photos!

This post - what we saw in the exhibition halls as we wandered around them on Saturday afternoon at the 40K Open Day.

First up, this is the new Age of Sigmar display that had been added since we'd last arrived. There were giant floating islands, with Stormcast Eternals and Chaos forces fighting over it.

There was a massive, epic presence to it. The display really does look like some of the art work. For me, it emphasised the very different style and theme of Age of Sigmar, as opposed to the Old World. More high fantasy, almost to the point of heavy metal album covers.

While it is different to the Old World, I think my conclusion is that I like this. I like the look, I like the themes, and I like how it's developing. It's a more high fantasy world, and it's more flexible in what you can do with it. I still love the Old World setting, but don't particularly think one or the other is a "better" setting.

But, to return to the display, it's really well put together and really brings to life the new setting. While I might not be all that enthused about Stormcast Eternals, I am looking

Ironically, I took this photo as i was more interested in how they'd painted up the arcane ruins than I was in the Khornate demon chariot in front of it...

 
And here's another interesting use of scenery - converting a ruined tower to have teeth so it's clearly very chaos mutated.

 
I'm not sure I remember this converted Baneblade being here the first time I came around. I mostly took the photo because I kind of want one. The use of the wings is really clever.

But this? This is genius. I am unsure if I could justify the expense of a winged Valkyrie, but I kind of want one for my Inquisition force...

 
I think the Death Korps display is new, though. It's a lovely, weathered display that almost calls to mind historical displays in places.

This was mostly taken for scenery ideas, I will admit, but thought people might be interested in how it looks.

I didn't take many pictures of the Eldar display last time, so I tried taking a couple more this time.

Still, I'm not sure what it is, but Eldar versus Tyranids just doesn't really interest me. My camera frames some nice shots, but I don't get excited about it in the same way as I do at some of the other displays.

Here's the studio Emperor's Children army - photo mostly taken because I like the pink transition on their shoulder pads and I'm thinking about using it with my Chaos Marines.

Is this a new thing, or an old Forge World thing? I don't know Tau all that well and I'm too lazy to google it.

Here's the new Tau / Mechanicus display, starting off with the massive Forge World Manta on a landing pad. A decision was made that there was no good way to make it look awesome flying...

Here's bits of the new Tau defensive scenery, with big artillery walkers in the background.

Meanwhile, there's large rail guns and small turrets with missiles...

And advancing on them are a massive force of Mechanicus - Titans, Knights and an Ordinatus.

I mostly took this photo to post on twitter making Monty Python Black Knight jokes. I'm easily amused.

Warhammer 40,000 Open Day - Staff Armies

The Saturday of the Warhammer 40K Open Day had displays of some staff armies, which I took a few pictures of and I thought I'd share with you.

This is an awesome conversion of a Vampire Counts model (and I think some Dark Eldar bits) into an Adeptus Mechanicus model.

I totally need to own some Skitarii...

I love this little mini diorama with only two figures - you can still see the story.

This was a gorgeously weathered knight. I'm starting to think I need to pick one up.

I love the weird free hand banners in particular.

I'm planning some Iron Warriors, so I took a couple of photos here.

Sadly, it's hard to pick out the detail with so many very busy models!

There was a massive Eldar and Harlequin force too. This only gives a small impression of the scale of it.

How my brain works

So, this weekend I was away at No Rest for the Wicked, which is a Rogue Trader style 40K LARP. As such, aside from getting my weapon phys reps done (see above) my hobby has been sparse, as has my time to blog about it.

Until I get caught up, here's a little example of how my brain leaps from idea to idea in very quick succession.

• I saw a post on G+ from someone asking for advice for kit in No Rest.
• My general advice is to focus on costuming the top half of the body, as Sensible Boots are a very reasonable costuming compromise if you're running around in the wet and the cold.
• I then thought about how cool a good pair of LARP pirate boots would look.
• Maybe it would be cool to play a pirate in the 40K LARP.
• I'm reminded of how I think there's a very specific difference between "Renegade Space Marines" and "Chaos Space Marines", and how often, but not always, that line slowly and gradually blurs and Renegades become Chaos worshippers.
• I then start working out how to do a (human, not Space Marine) Renegade captain in the LARP, with Orks, Eldar Corsairs and even a small unit of Renegade Marines as part of his warband.
• Halfway through this, I realise it could be a really, really cool 40K tabletop army.
• I then sit down working out which forces to use for which sections, settling on the Lost and the Damned army list for the human pirates and renegades, with a formation of Ork Freebooters, an Allied Contingent of Eldar Corsairs and Chaos Space Marines as the Renegades.
• Realising this is, mechanically, a Chaos force, I'm reminded of the cool background and ideas I came up with for the Iron Warriors force I already own models for and have been planning on painting for a while.

So, in this particular case, this crazy run of logic (which took a single afternoon) has resulted in a new army idea to be queued up after I finish my existing armies, but has gotten me a little enthused about one of my existing projects.

Overlords Christmas Battle Report 2: Astra Militarum and Dark Eldar vs Eldar and Blood Angels

I have not forgotten the remaining battle reports from the Overlords Christmas event! After the first games were totted up, it seemed that the Nice forces had earned an early lead, seizing key objectives, and now looking to put the Naughty forces on the back foot. Many pockets of Naughty forces found themselves cut off and surrounded as the Nice Forces went in for the kill.

This game I was assigned some Dark Eldar allies, and the mission deployment was that we were deployed in the centre, with the Nice forces surrounding us from all sides. We had both Kill Points and the random card draws for victory points.

With the Blood Angels down one end of the battlefield, the Dark Eldar player grabbed me for a quick huddle and we agreed to run over and beat up the Eldar, hopefully before the Blood Angels got to us. We needed to do it that way around as the Eldar were much quicker and would have been on us before we'd finished off the Blood Angels.

The plan started off reasonably well, although in the first turn, we didn't manage to kill quite as many of the Eldar as we'd have liked.

The Nice team rolled up the "Governor's Daughter" objective, where they had to rescue the civilian from a randomly determined objective. They were unlucky enough to have it turn up at the objective at the centre of the board!

With the Blood Angels bearing down on us, and the Eldar down but not out, the Astra Militarum tanks raced back to hold up the Blood Angels.

The Eldar were still taking fire from the foot squad in the ruins.

The Sentinel finished off the Eldar Psyker, after the Hellhound had taken out the Dire Avengers he'd been leading.

A second Eldar Hornet arrived and the Ravager suddenly had some problematic company.

The Blood Angels were all over the Guard, and had reached the VIP. We were definitely in trouble!

The Guard managed to gun down the Assault Marines and the VIP, but the Hellhound was done for. The demolition veterans bailed out of the Chimera before it got taken out, so they had a chance of getting into assault.

The Librarian Dreadnought charged the demolition vets, and paid for it, being brought down by Melta Bombs.

Overall, while the Guard had taken some casualties and the odd Dark Eldar skimmer had gone down, we had a clear lead in victory points. The "divide and conquer" plan had paid off, and Naughty was back in the game...

Battle Report, Slow Grow League Week 3: 500 pts vs Eldar

So, after a distinctly lack-lustre performance in my first two games, I drew Eldar in my third game. An Autarch, two Wave Serpents with Dire Avengers... And that's it. It's not quite the Wave Serpent Spam a competitive player may know and 'love', but really, this is 500 points!

We join the action after the first turn has started - I went for the first turn in the hope of wrecking a Wave Serpent before the pain started coming in. It was unsuccessful.

I swarmed the conscripts forward, but I was having real problems doing anything about the Wave Serpents - most of my anti tank in the 500 point list is short ranged, and they are much faster than me with no need to close the gap!

The Dire Avengers in the ruin are the only infantry on the board, and the erratic lasgun fire heading their way is enough to take out the odd one here and there.

The Chimera takes an absolute kicking from the Wave Serpent.

The Veterans edge out of cover to use their Grenade Launcher in a vain hope of causing some kind of damage to the Far Away Wave Serpent.

And then they run back into cover in the ruins, thanks to orders. Hah, see how you like it now, Eldar!

The other Dire Avengers finally get out, so I can shoot them!

Unfortunately, they shoot first, wreck the Chimera, and send the command squad and infantry squad both fleeing!

Shortly after this photo was taken, I had fewer Veterans...

My infantry squad in the central ruins got the job of sacrificing themselves for the sake of getting a victory point for issuing a challenge. Bad luck, guys.

I bundled the conscripts out of the bunker to provide some form of mobile cover...

But it was too late, and the Veterans were wiped out to a man.

You'll start to see a trend here, as generally, taking photos of empty table where models used to be isn't the greatest...

The conscripts at least got a victory point back from an objective, but I was too far down by this point.

By this point, it was down to glory or dying cowering in a hole.

This is no real choice! My brave Guardsmen chose glory...

But this fight, unsurprisingly, did not end well for him...

A little post battle reflection

Having played four battles with this list, I would probably build it differently in the future. While I had pretty much every opponent comment about how intimidating the number of models in the list was, it didn't really have enough offensive punch. The combination of a lack of mobility and mostly short ranged anti tank weapons in particular caused it some huge problems.

Obviously, I'll be looking to fix this in the 750 point games which are coming next. You'll get to read about the first of those next week!