Astra Militarum Veteran Re-Deployment Approved!

The redeployment of a squad of veterans from the 3rd Pakeshi Regiment to the Tallarn XVI has been approved, following Inquisitorial review.

Inquisitor Steve from The Overlords was having a bit of a clear out, and I arranged a trade for his excellent "Governor of the Pakeshi Sector" models, which he didn't need any more on the grounds of the Governor of the Pakeshi Sector being very dead. I have separate plans for those.

However, because Steve is a gentleman and a scholar, he included a squad he'd been using as Inquisitorial Henchmen that he'd made up out of spare parts. I quickly decided I was going to tinker with them a little to make them suit as an Imperial Guard squad.

Four of them had been converted to use Grenade Launcher parts, which were intended to be "counts as" Storm Bolters. I was happy to use them as Grenade Launchers in a Veteran Squad, which meant I could only use three - so one got swapped out for a lasgun, using the same conversion technique Steve had originally used.

I also used some Vallejo Coarse Pumice and Sandy Paste to rebase the models, as I wanted them to match my existing Guardsmen, now based on a hot desert planet rather than the city rubble of Pakeshi.

There were also a few mould lines which were were vexing, me, so they quickly got seen to with a sharp scalpel blade. They were then re-undercoated using Imperial Primer and painted back up to match the original scheme.

As you can see from the top of the page, the squad is now at full strength and ready to be deployed to smite the enemies of the Emperor!

Next up is an Inquisitorial Crusader. He was picked up from Bits and Kits, who are now doing "pre-loved' models. The motley crew he came with had paint jobs beyond saving, so into the Fairy Power Spray they went. But this chap had quite a nice bit of work on his shield, so I decided it was worth trying to save him rather than throw what had been done so far away...

Overlords Christmas Battle Report 3: Astra Militarum and Space Marines against Adepta Sororitas and Space Marines

With everything at a dead tie, we went into the final round. This was a pretty standard mission with strategy cards, and deploying in table quarters. The only complication was that it was the one where you draw mission cards equal to the number of objectives you're controlling. I was paired with a Space Marine bike list run by one of the gentlemen from HATE. We were paired against the tactical genius of Jason and Inquisitor Steve from the Overlords.

Due to some interestingly placed objectives, we ended up with the odd strange placement, like these Guardsmen holding a ruin while also running a line of guys back to claim the objective.

Jason hadn't been expecting to play, so borrowed some models from the club Imperial Fists army, and kept it super simple - Terminators, Tactical Marines and a Captain. Steve had a Battle Sister Squad in a Rhino, then a Canoness, an Inquisitor, and a bunch of henchmen in a second Rhino.

The Chimera full of Veterans raced out to the right flank to deal with the Rhino full of Sisters. It managed to get into the ruins without getting immobilised, which was a first for me!

Meanwhile, we managed to luckily immobilise the other Rhino, forcing the Henchmen and characters to walk.

The monowheel bikes allied to me get into a scrap with the Terminators, then Hit and Run out to let them hit someone else next turn.

Unfortunately, we underestimate quite how tough henchmen squads are, and we take a bit of a kicking from them!

The Chimera gets immobilised trying to get out of the ruins. I should have known! Meanwhile, my Scout Sentinel turns up somewhere useful from Outflank to shoot some people in the back.

The henchmen are causing us real problems!

The demo charge fails me, and the revenge fire blasts many of the Veterans to death.

The Hellhound thanks the Imperial Fists for getting into such a convenient straight line for him.

And the Imperial Fists kindly offer to return the generosity with as many krak grenades as they can manage.

The sole survivor of the Terminators bears down on the guardsmen in the ruins, but it's not going to be enough...

The Inquisitor and Canoness fall back to hold an objective.

Argh! Get them off, get them off! The Hellhound has definitely attracted a lot of affection for its shenanigans with Torrent.

The Sisters take out the Veterans, but with their Rhino destroyed, it's too late for them to affect another part of the battlefield.

At this point, the battle ended, with a close game - we managed to hold onto victory with a single victory point, with a Linebreaker swaying it. It turned out that the Naughty forces had managed to be victorious in the day's campaign, making things even less comfortable for the surviving Imperial inhabitants of the Pakeshi sector...

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: Overlords Christmas Party 1: Astra Militarum and Lost and the Damned vs Space Marines and Space Marines

For the first battle of the Christmas party, we had to make "Squigfall" - landing our forces on the giant squig and winning objectives from a custom deck the Overlords had prepared for the event. To keep my life "interesting" I decided not to read any of the cards until I drew them.

I was a bit nervous about the first game - I didn't have much in the way of AP3 weapons, and only the Hellhound could ignore cover, and we were up against two bike army lists - one using a Gorgon Chain.

My somewhat ropey allies were a bunch of renegades and cultists using the Lost and the Damned army list. Their BS2 means they're much cheaper, so there were a few more troops on the table, filling me with reassurance.

I was impressed by both the terrain quality the Renegades. I didn't get much of a chance to take a close look at the bikes we were facing, though, which is a shame!

We spent our first turn trying to blast the bike command squad to bits, but with the apothecary, Gorgon Chain and other equipment, it proved really hard. In the end, getting units around the flank and shooting the other guys really helped. The Apothecary had a couple of "Look Out, Sir" rolls, but refused to roll over.

With the Captain having shrugged off the demo charge, the return fire blew most of my demolition veterans to pieces. It wasn't looking good!

The meagre survivors were charged by the bikes, and it wasn't looking good for our heroes! The Commissar Lord issued a challenge to the Apothecary, as the Captain was off punching a tank to pieces, but sadly, the high toughness and Feel No Pain kept him up.

Remarkably, the Commissar Lord stayed on his feet. Unfortunately, this meant that we couldn't shoot the command squad as much as we wanted - a lot of units ended up effectively unable to shoot as a result!

Meanwhile the Blood Angels poured into the trench network to dislodge the other Veteran Squad.

This assault, similarly, did not go well for me.

The Commissar Lord did his best, but eventually, he was run down.

And now the renegade militia would come into their own and quickly dispatch the Space Marines, right? Right?

Sadly, it seems that gene-enhanced super soldiers outmatch a ragged mob of renegades, heretics and cultists, and our remaining fire was shrugged off, leaving the field in the hands of the "Nice" team, represented by the Space Marine bike teams!

At the end of the first round, the "Naughty" list were on the back foot, with the forces of "Nice" moving in for the kill. Were we luring them into a false sense of security and a trap? Tune in again soon for another instalment of "The Battle for the Pakeshi Squig"!

What's it like to visit The Overlords?

For those of you who haven't heard of them, The Overlords is a Warhammer 40K podcast and gaming club. Their club meets a surprisingly short distance from my house, and I previously attended their bring and buy in a catastrophic attempt to sell more things than I bought. But what's it like to attend one of their events?

Early last Saturday, I braved the public transport of East London to make my way to the Overlords HQ - a Scout hut behind a church in the wilds of Zone 4. (For those of you unaware of London's zoning system, the higher the number, the greater the chance of meeting rad mutants, zombies and cannibals.)

The event was the Overlords Christmas bash. The plan was for three doubles games, with 500 points a player, fighting with custom mission cards and a narrative arc of missions over a giant squig full of resources which had been spotted in the Pakeshi sector - part of an ongoing setting they are using at the moment.

My Guardsmen - ever mercenary and shifty - chose to ally with the "naughty" forces, based on noble motives such as the opportunity for looting and a greater chance of victory.

I had three amazing fun games with all sorts of mayhem and shenanigans, from allying with Dark Eldar to gun fights with Sisters of Battle.

There was also an opportunity to see "Behind the Magic" of the Overlords Podcast as they recorded a segment based on a topical news quiz. It was an honour to see the slick professionalism and careful preparation that goes into the episodes to make them seem so 'off the cuff' and chaotic.

I will, in time, probably write up some battle reports of the three crazy battles I got to fight over the course of the day. It was the most fun I've had with 40K in a long while, and if you have any way of getting to East London of a Sunday at some point, I would strongly recommend you give it a try.

Guardsmen! Know your foe!