Got some stuff ….

It has been rather busy at work, but that has stopped the accumulation of stuff! We popped into a nearby WHSmith and a quick perusal of the magazine shelves and I found issue 4 of stormbringer - a gw part work. 

I pick this up for the 4 paints and a brush - £8.99 seemed like good value.

Steedo and mine joint kickstarter - Onus came through a couple of weeks ago. Steedo took the later period - Trajan Roman empire, and I took the Punic war and Greco-Macedonian-Persian wars. This looks like a really good product. 

The game looks to be a DBA styled card/element game, but with more detail. DK had a fantasy game called Battleground a few years ago which might be similar. I like the transparent terrain to lay over the game mat  and the cards of the troops. Steedo and I have already pencilled in to have a first game (in about 2 weeks).

I also need to get a game of Kill Team in with Tiger-king (I need to return his rule book).

Morts

Kill Team - intercession versus Traitors!

I had an unexpected day off due the lack of communication between my union and government, so I asked if anyone was available for a game - DK stepped up (although I wish I hadn’t …). We played 2 teams which hadn’t had an outing - I chose an Intercession Team with 3 Assault Intercessors (including the sergeant with plasma pistol) and 3 Intercessors (one with Stalker rifle and one with Auxiliary grenade launcher). DK picked Traitor marines - 3 marines (champion with plasma pistol and power fist, one with chainsword and pistol and one with a bolt gun) and 8 cultists (from the Blackstone - including 2 gunners with flamer and heavy stubbed).

We allowed the Traitor marines to have the equivalent of shock assault and bolt discipline for free rather than having to use CP. 

We went through the scouting phase and I won initiative and the starting position of the game - escalation.

The first turn I managed to put some decent damage on the traitors but not enough do put any out of action. By cunningly getting 2 cultists on one side of the container managed to get wrestle the VP from my marine. He also sent the traitor marines and with some quality dice rolling took and plasma out the grenade guy took out and off the objective, so the turn finished 3-1 to him.  

On turn 2 DK won the initiative and sent round the Chaos leader who beat the cr*p out of one of my assault Intercessors - the power fist helped and me not rolling the correct number of dice for my chainsword. And not rolling well …

While on the other flank 4 cultists and a Chaos space marine overwhelmed my Intercessor - again some horrible dice rolling by me. I was down 3 marines, it had all gone wrong. 

Turn 3 saw me plasma the Chaos boss below - which was nice. 

But the lack of figures was servely limiting me scoring points - DK was stacking them up nicely. I did manage to kill of another traitor marine - this did take some rule checking by DK, as he had lots of hits, but as I attacked - my strike got through first, dealing the killing blow! But by the end of the turn I was down to just the sergeant…

The end of the final turn - the intercessor sergeant surrounded and scoring nil points. 

The game ended in a right thrashing 12-2 to DK. Some nice moments. The Chaos team seemed to have a nice mix of a few tough operatives and a number of group activating operatives, allowing them to swamp the objectives. I did have some shocking dice rolls, but I can’t hide from the fact that I didn’t use the intercession team well. It was the first outing for both teams, so I can’t use that as an excuse.

The game played well - no issues with line of sight. DK had a good game - I need to play again … I need to beat someone!

Morts

New Sicarians

So after the last game of kill team I decided to get some more Sicarian Infiltrators for the Hunter Clade. So I did - I have added 3 infiltrators and 1 ruststalker, which need to be painted. 

This means I can field a very varied Kill Team, but will have 2 units of sicarians for 40k games and or Xenos Rampant. 

Just got to paint them up now.  

Morts 

Change of plan …

 A little while ago I picked up the old space wolves 2018 kill team set, with the intention of painting them up as space wolves. Then the new edition of kill team came out and eventually the Phobos kill arrived which used infiltrator and incursors, as well as reivers. I picked up some space wolf 3d printed shoulder pads and some infiltrators and set an out assembling at kill team with some options - did some conversions for the helix adept and was pretty happy with the plan … hadn’t really got into the painting this year. 

Then while browsing eBay at the weekend I came across a silly cheap eliminator model - which could join the team as an incursor marksman. And as luck should have it I won the auction - hurrah. 

But this got me thinking - why was I planning to paint a space wolves team?

I had started a sort of space marine chapter of my own … so I decided that I needed to change the pauldron icon to the rams head from the wolf’s.

A work in progress shot as I remove the wolf icons - and make a few changes to the models - added another grapple launcher and am work on making one of the reivers into an incursor for kill team. For bigger games there will be 2 5 figure squads of reivers and 1 5 figure squads of infiltrators/incursors … would quite like to get a dreadnougt model. 

Morts 

Power Grid - played

In the on going attempt to play games that we own rather than the new and shiny, the collective went to Steedo’s to play Power grid. Now we have played this before back before I started recording my adventures in gaming  … so quite a while ago.  

The game was marked by two strategies employed - Steedo and I went for a get cheap power stations and build the city network, whereas DK, Sylon and Snake-eyes went for get the big power stations, then build the network. Initially the build the network strategy seemed to be working for Steedo and myself - the downside of it being we were buying resources and building the network last for sometimes more cost. In the end I couldn’t get hold of a big power station, so ended with a big network but I couldn’t power it - Steedo was in a better position. Where a DK could power a big network, which he didn’t have … but Sylon won by having the by being able to power the same size network as DK, but having more money that DK - Just 11 electros!

It was a tight game with all us thinking we had a chance - I needed another two turns, where as DK and Steedo and Snake-eyes needing just one more turn. Good fun had by all. 

Morts 

Ad Mech versus Craftworld …

Steedo popped over for a quick game of Kill Team - we used the Ad Mech list which had taken on Steedo’s Orks and Tiger-King’s Tyranids and a Craftworld (compendium based - although I had to use BattleScribe to source the stats as I had left my compendium at Tiger-king’s) force do Eldar. 

After a quick rules explanation Steedo chose to be the Ad Mech, so I was the Eldar. We played the scenario Duel of Wits. Which allowed you to collect more command points as well as victory points.

The starting positions - there was a little bit too much stuff in the middle of the kill zone. 

The view from the Eldar side - not much available in the way of firing lines … this would be a problem. There was a lot of movement as we tried to get operatives into position and onto objectives. The plasma and arc gunners did some serious damage. I think 4 Eldar were out of action, compared to 2 skitari. I scored first, but had my operative shot off the marker. This allowed Steedo to win the turning point 2-1. 

The start of the second turning point - I had retained the initiative, but the movement and heavy sniper rifles of the rangers was limiting by ability to shoot at any of the Ad Mech. Poor rolling to shoot and on saves were not helping my team get or retain any of the objectives - Steedo was pulling away. 

The third turning point saw some serious damage and the death of both of the leaders - the Eldar going down to a whirl of blades from the ruststalkers - we also worked out that we were doing the fighting wrong - we will get it right nice time. The Ad Mech Alpha was shot by a ranger with a pistol - my one decent dice roll of the game. 

The start of the fourth turning point saw 6 Ad Mech move up on the final 3 Eldar - Steedo had build up an unassailable lead in victory points by this point, but we had to finish the game. 

The final picture shows the final Eldar and 2 of the 4 remaining Ad Mech operatives (9 - 7 to the Ad Mech in OoA) and 11-1 in victory points - a right royal beating … eek!

Fair play to Steedo for the win - totally out played. The Eldar are a tough team to use in my opinion, so here come some excuses; the rangers all have heavy rifles, meaning they can’t move and fire (unless using the pistol, but you have to be close - not a good idea) - the Voidscared Corsairs equivalent does MW3 compared to MW1 for the rangers, which seems a little tough, and the corsairs only have one, in a team of 10, not 5! The terrain, which I didn’t set up didn’t help the rangers with very limited targets. I didn’t use the dire avengers very well - these need to be used in a shoot and scoot way, so that they can get overwatch actions - the last thing you should do is put them in to hand to hand combat (especially with ruststalkers or any other melee orientated opponent) - looking back there are some ploys giving the Eldar extra movement or free movement, which would make sense. 

The Craftworld also struggle with the fact this team have no heavy damage weapons - plasma, arc etc.

On the plus side the Ad Mech performed well - they are quite a balanced team, Steedo reckons they could benefit from another Sicarian Infiltrator - but this would mean only 2 gunners for the Skitari - although I should have had an extra ranger or vanguard against the Nids. We also work out that Tiger-king and I got the charge rules wrong - shoot - charge - fight is 3 actions - d’oh. 

On a separate note I did manage to win a game of snooker against Evo and Fish - which was nice and means I might be making progress there. 

Morts

Ad Mech versus Tyranids - a Kill Team rematch

So I trundled down to Tiger-King’s for a game of Kill Team. I took 3 possible teams with me - Eldar, Space Marines or Ad Mech. Due to a slight lack of preparation (and snacks apparently) I decided to use the Ad Mech team which had comprehensively beaten Steedo’s Orcs not so long ago.

My team looking over the away pitch ….

We rolled and were playing the scenario Awaken the Data Spirits.

The starting positions with opposite diagonal corners - which actually made things very funnelled around the centre of the board.  

I won the initiative in the first turning point - which allowed me to get the first objective marker and get a shot at one of the big Nids, which scored a couple of mortal wounds … the plasma gunner got some good damage on another Nid … but unfortunately Tiger-King killed my Arc gunner with a blast shot which also wounded my Transuranic Arquebus gunner.  He was also keeping his homgeants out of range and sight. However the turn end 4-2 on victory points for the Ad Mech, so I thought I was doing better than in the last fight against the Nids. I was lining up by Sicarians to take on the Hormagaunts.   

However a the second turn i lost the initiative which then allowed Tiger-King to get first shot in which killed my leader and plasma guy - which was probably the key turning point in the game, as they hadn’t activated yet and the plasma gunner was a big hitter in the last game. It was also the point that I knocked over a building (might have been subconsciously trying to end the game … I could see the writing on the wall). The Sicarians were mobbed one by one by the annoying little Hormagaunts and were slowly wiped out - the initiative and charging causing no end of issues - not getting enough hits to kill off the little gits. They also killed me off an objective marker. On the plus side I did manage to kill off two of the big shooty Nid warriors. But the score had changed to 6 - 4 to the Nids. 

The third turning point started with all my warriors injured and things were not looking good - below 1 Sicarian trying to hold off 4 Hormagaunts and 2 Skitari (the transuranic arquebus was still hiding on the top of the building) looking nervously at the warrior and Hormagaunts heading their way. I did win the initiative which was a sort of bonus. 

I activated a shooter first in the vain hope that I could kill off the warrior - but it was not to be. Tiger-king chewed up the last of the Sicarians, and shot the comms guy. 

After eating up rest of the team the last vanguard prepares to die. 

The situation at the end of the 3rd turn, start of the 4th - score now 10 - 4 to the Nids and I just have the Arquebus Skitari left … with this lot looking up. 

So the game was called - another win for Tiger-King’s Tyranids and back to the drawing board for the Ad  Mech in how to deal with to hit wounds monsters. 

A good game, but I still haven’t worked out how to deal with the high wounds Tyranids, especially when most of the heavy guns are taken out of action with either only one shot or no shots taken - with the Vanguard it is like trying to kill them with a thousand cuts. 

I did try a couple of extra rules - the data tether to give an extra action point and leader allowing effectively a group activation. 

The Hormagaunts had group activation of 2 which meant they could mob the sicarians one at time and I wasn’t getting the hits I needed to kill them. 

Next time.

Morts