August Painting

Not much painting done in August.  Life has been busy with house selling, work and kids going back to school. Plus I have started playing Diablo3 again, as the v2 patch has actually turned it into quite a good game.

One thing I did manage was to get a gang painted for the club impending Necromunda campaign.  I am going to use the chaos cultists as a House Cawdor gang, as in the background they are supposed to be quite a bunch of fanatics, just my bunch are fanatical in the wrong way.  I could have used the chaos cultists rules but as I have never played Necromunda before I thought I would try and keep it simple.  The campaign has attracted quite a lot of interest and it looks like there are going to be a large number of players involved.

These are very hasty paint jobs and it really shows as there are lots of messy bits that could really do with getting tidied up, but they are good enough to hit the table for now....

Youths

Gangers

Heavy

Leader (with a strong left arm!)

No names are anything yet, but they did not turn out to bad in the end.

Stem the Tide

This week I managed to get another game of Epic in. That's two this year already, and its only August!  This time it was 3000points, with my mighty Imperial Guard vs a marauding warband of Orks.

We set up a fairly neutral table, and just played using the tournament scenario in the rulebook, as that is a pretty easy setup for a pick up game.

Table set up

Imperial Guard Forces

Ork Rabble

My force was a bit different today. I had decided not to field my usual tank company as it was very expensive which made it quite hard to get the best use of. Instead I swapped it out for a second mechanised company and a couple of Warhound Titans.  IN the end my army looked like this:

Supreme Commander with AA

Mechanised Company with AA

Infantry Company with Heavy Weapon Support

Artillery Platoon (rockets)

Rough Rider Platoon

Super Heavy Tank Platoon ( Shadowsword)

Sentinels

Sentinels

Warhound Titan

Warhound Titan

Hydra Battery

Thundrebolt Fighters.

Marks force consisted of (roughly):

Very Large Mechanised Ork Warband

Large warband of Big Guns

Large Speed freaks 

Large Gyrocopters warband

2 flights of Fighta Bombers

Stompa Mob

Stormboyz Mob.

For deployment Mark deployed fairly evenly across the board, and I concentrated my forces on the right, with my Infantry company occupying the town, with various support units deployed behind and a Warhound on my extreme right. My left Flank consisted of my two mechanised companies and the other Warhound Titan.

For the first turn I actually managed to get the initiative, and managed to drop an artillery barrage on to the ork speed freaks, making a hefty dent in their numbers.  Mark then spent several of his activations trying to advance his orks but rolled a large number of ones and his force ended up going nowhere. I managed to advance slightly (but not much) and inflict some damaged on Marks forces, but that large (flippin' massive) ork warband advancing up the centre was a bit of a worry.

Second turn saw more of the same. Mark was a bit more successful with his activation rolls this time but I think the damage was done by then. I managed to bring all three of my large formations of guard to bear on the Orks in the centre and broke them. I then tried to assault another Ork formation on my left by moving one mechanised company up and then assaulting with a titan so that the infantry can lend support. This backfired badly and the Titan was shot to pieces by the Ork counter assault. 

We never managed a turn three, as it was getting late and also the orks were starting to look a bit thin on the ground.  An excellent game where my opponents chances were scuppered from turn one by some lousy dice rolls, but he still cam out swinging, as every ork general should.

I really must try and get some more games of epic in. Perhaps go for three games in a single year!

August Gallery

Things have been pretty hectic of late.  Summer Holidays, selling our house and then attempting to buy a new one (estate agents are really not worth the money you pay them!) and some much needed professional development stuff for work (boring!) has severely limited painting time.  

When painting time is limited it tends to move towards larger projects that doesn't need a fine touch and can be done with a large brush.  In this case this has meant some more Dark Age buildings, some wattle fences and some dark age era livestock.  Its pretty dull stuff to paint, but all helps to set the scene, which is an important part of any game. 

Enough preamble:

I am undecided on the basing of the fences. As is they are very flexible but probably not very stable, but only an in-game test will be able to settle that for sure.

On another note yesterday was my annual trip to Edinburgh for the Claymore Wargames show.  I had both of the kids with me this time and only managed jusst over 2 hours before they started to get too unruly/bored and we had to leave.    From what I saw there was a few good games going on, with our clubs Indian Mutiny game looking rather nice. One thinsg I did notice was that there was a lot of Saga getting palyed in its various forms, both offical and homebrew.I did not really get the chance to browse very much or take any pictures but still managed to get a few things that I could easilly locate. My final shopping list ended up as:

Another batch of Kev Adams goblin sculpts (I only need to lay my hand on the crooked claw ones now!)

Some more narrow river sections from Last Valley

A quadrant terrain set from Mantic Games, for use in our upcoming Necromunda Campaign.

A copy of the third edition Warhammer Armies book.  I have been looking for this on e-bay for a while but it has always been too expensive. I dont know how much I will use it but it is a nice bit of nostalgia regardless. Now I can start looking for some of the 40k Rogue Trader books (especially the Ork ones!)

Not to bad, until I got home and remembered all things I meant to get and forgot/did not have time to rummage for:

Barbed Wire for use in Chain of Command

Emplacements for use in Chain of Command

Minefields to use ofr Chain of Command

Some decent paint brushes.

A restock of tufts. 

Look for some suitable models for use with In Her Majesties Name

Should have made a shopping list, or asked my eldest to remember as she has a fantastic memory and an eagle eye for spotting these sort of things........