A friend picked up a copy of Aeronautica Imperialis Wings of Vengeance and asked if I’d like to play a game. I said, “Sure, why not?”
This game is a starter set which allows you to fight it out in games of air combat between the Imperial Navy and an Ork Air Waaagh. Wings of Vengeance, out of the box, supports air-to-air combat between a handful of opposing aircraft — a typical flight.
The aircraft are 8mm scale. The plane to the left is a dakkajet, which is a fast, pretty agile fighter with a large number of forward-firing machine guns that put out a hail of bullets if you can get close enough to the enemy.
I enjoyed the game and found the rules easy to pick up yet full of tactical possibilities, which is always a good combination to my way of thinking. Players roll initiative with the winner picking who goes first. Then players secretly assign a maneuver for each of their planes using numbered chits. Once that is done, the player with initiative moves one plane according to the parameters of the maneuver they’ve chosen, adjusting speed and altitude as they go. Then the other player moves one plane and so on.
Speed and altitude are tracked on the base of the models with dials and each plane can perform certain maneuvers such as “Swoop” or “Level Flight.” There is a fair amount of possibility within a maneuver for how you move so I didn’t find it too limiting: a swoop can take you quite a few different places. I also appreciate that each player gets a page explaining the maneuvers graphically on one side with a summary of the rules on the other. The maneuver page was particularly helpful and by turn two I was swooping and snap turning like a real Flyboy.*
Once all of the planes have been moved the turn shifts to the shooting phase. The player with initiative shoots all available weapons for one of their planes and then the other player does the same, alternating planes until all aircraft have fired. If a plane is shot down before it fires then it doesn’t get to shoot.
The playing field after we finished setting up.
I like that the game is played on a grid. I’ve played airplane games before where everything is measured out by inches or centimeters and it can become very fiddly and imprecise, which to my way of thinking isn’t so good in games where a plane being angled a few degrees either way can make the difference between it getting to shoot or not shoot, particularly in the case of fighters that only have forward-fixed guns.** I also like that the forward firing arc is molded right into the bases. All of this makes movement and shooting very easy to resolve.
Shooting is fairly simple. Weapons get a certain number of to hit dice at various ranges. The ork planes are most effective at short ranges while the imperial planes are more effective at medium ranges, which makes for some interesting maneuvering battles. The ability to hit is also influenced by relative altitudes with the best results being achieved if both planes are at the same altitude band. If a die achieves a hit then you roll for damage with each weapon having its own damage probability. Most ork guns damage on a 5+ on a D6 if they hit while the imperial autocannons and lascannons generally hit harder.
Also, the Imperial Navy planes are structurally more resilient than the Ork planes, which is to be expected.
“Tailing,” or a situation where one plane has its front arc in an enemy plane’s rear arc, while being at short range, is handled nicely. At the start of the turn, before anyone moves or does anything, a tailing plane gets to shoot for free and then the turn begins as normal. So in the picture above the two ork fighters get free shots at the large Imperial Navy plane they are following. Since the imperial plane has rear-facing tail guns it can also shoot back, which makes sense.
The two dakka jets behind the imperial plane are tailing.
The models are nicely detailed, as one would expect from Games Workshop, and I imagine they’d look great painted up. The game also features bombers and ground assets, and the planes can be given different weapon loads, including rockets, missiles, and bombs. GW sells planes of other factions besides the Imperial Navy and Orks, such as the Tau, Asuryani, and of course the Adeptus Astartes and Astra Militarum. There are also campaign books to expand on the official scenario possibilities. My own interest would be in Chaos Space Marine planes but I suppose nothing is stopping one from painting the loyalist marine planes appropriately if one chose to do so.
The game as it plays out of the box seems fairly balanced based on the first dogfight scenario we played. I obviously can’t speak to the other missions or to the other aircraft one can purchase as expansions to the boxed set.
If you like airplane combat games where it is easy to get up and flying quickly while being tactical enough to be interesting, I think you’ll enjoy Aeronautica Imperialis. All in all, I enjoyed my return to the 40K Universe with this little game and would certainly play it again.
* Given my friend’s and my many past battles between his Imperial Guard and my Orks it went without saying that for our first game I played the orks.
** This can lead to a lot of arguments and confusion that simply don’t come up with a grid.
My thoughts turned (as they often do, especially when I’m buying another box of undead or demons or something) to the fact that most of us already have a box or closet or garage full of unpainted plastic and wouldn’t it be nice to chip away at that mountain, even if only symbolically? Thus the Paint the Crap You Already Own! painting challenge was born.
We have twenty-two artists, who contributed pictures of their work, this time around. As you will see, this post is quite long. So I decided to split the round-up into two parts.
If you click on the various pictures and such, many of them will take you to the painter’s website. Click on the galleries to see larger versions of the pictures. (As usual there are a few Easter Eggs here and there.) Thank you to everyone who participated and I will get the second part out just as soon as I can.
Who better to place in the vanguard of this month’s offerings than a squad of Mcmattilaminis’ nicely painted space marine scouts with shotguns led by the sergeant with a big fist?
I like the basing skulls, particularly the orkish one.
Mcmattilaminis reports that he did quite a bit of work modifying these guys. He used Scion heads, which I agree look good on these guys. I also appreciate his nod to tradition in having the sergeant eschew wearing (or even carrying) a helmet.
I thought the backpacks were a nice touch too and added a lot both from an aesthetic and gaming standpoint. (These also came from the Scion box.) They look good and if you use these scouts in a game they can pay the points and have camo cloaks or if you’d rather not, well, they’re rolled up and stowed.
Nice job on the camo cloaks.
Mcmattilamini also presents three orks, which seem like they’d make suitable enemies for our scouts. I like the weather and armor chipping and the orange is pretty. Plenty colorful too. The freehand work on the helmets and shoulder pads and the little “evil sun” on the boy’z shoulder pad on the right are all nice touches.
I like how he uniforms aren’t identical …
… but still appear unified along the same theme.
Mikeland82 from Starship Vorenuswrites that “from 28th Feb through to the end of June I would buy no new minis, and focus on the backlog.” In other words he’s going to paint the crap he already owns. Good man! He made excellent progress for May as the gallery below illustrates. (You can also see some larger pictures of these models by clicking on the gallery or still larger yet on the round-up post in his blog.)
Stoessi’s Heroes: German Commander
Necromunda Bounty Hunter by Mikeland82.
Copplestone Casting: Gangsters street thugs
Warlord Games/Conquest Miniatures: Last of the Mohicans
More Last of the Mohicans
My personal favorites are the Last of the Mohicans figures. I remember these miniatures from a Muskets & Tomahawks game I played at a convention some years ago. I also like how Mike based them so they are carefully advancing through the tall grass. The brown roots evoke memories of wetlands for me because I’ve hiked and hunted many times through exactly this kind of thing back in my ancestral stomping grounds of New England. Never met any Mohicans but I’d occasionally meet a Penobscot.
Turning toward the gigantic now, we have Lordcommandereloth’s, of Eloths Endeavours, mighty “Stick Man” with a giant sword that his wife bought him for their 5th wedding anniversary. As he reports, this is most appropriate since this the wooden anniversary. Good thinking indeed on both their parts!
A lot of interesting stuff going on with this highly impressive centerpiece ent.
I think LMC did a brilliant job. I particularly like the bark and all the many details, such as the red shelf mushrooms, the sword and staff, the leaf loincloth and of course the base. L.C. Eloth says that he did the bark by basing with a cream color, washing with dark brown and then dry brushing progressively lighter colors ending with white. Smashing. Did I say that I liked the bark yet because I really do?
“For the Forest!”
Note the differently colored eyes.
Mushrooms!
In addition to all of this arboreal goodness, I found some interesting work-in-progress posts as well:
Next up is that rather prolific painter, Azazel of Azazel’s Bitz Box, with, well, lots of different things. Imagine, for a moment, that you have been challenged to play a game with whatever figures you can paint in 30 days. The game is Mishmash 40,000 where your force is more effective and you unlock key capabilities by putting together something like what we have below.
I respectfully submit, Gentle Reader, that this is a power gamer’s list for Mishmash 40K!
If you would like to know more about these miniatures, I’ve included a list of Azazel’s individual posts. Something I find interesting about reading his site is that he enjoys working on older pieces and one gets to see some unlikely and obscure items from the past on his blog. From more or less left to right (more or less) from the above image:
As Azazel pointed out, a few things he painted didn’t make it into the above group picture. He painted two of the “industrial pallets” from the Battlefield Accessories Set, of which I only see one. His Slaaneshi Champion, from 1988, who has been sitting neglected for maybe 20 years never made it into the picture and neither did a respectably large collection of cages and chains. I don’t know if it is just me, but do you think perhaps there might be some sort of dark prince-based connection here?
I definitely could come up with some interesting house rules for this terrain.
Twenty years and now a fully painted Slave to Darkness!
“Reiksguard Knighrts, your Emperor is calling!”
We turn now from ancient miniatures cast during the mists of time and left sitting on desks throughout dark antiquities to a painter, who is making her debut on the pages of this blog, and exhibits her art using the non de plume of The Little Elf. Her work can be primarily found at Double Down Dice, where she is assisted by Faust.
My Little Pony by Faust’s Little Elf!
I like Little Elf’s choice of colors for Her Little Pony. One wonders what the pony’s name is and what magical powers our equine friend exhibits?
Faust’s offering is another Blood Bowl entry, well, sort of. He is planning to use the prosperous fellow below as a “dwarf coach” for his team, though I agree with Faust that Coach could also “do double duty as a merchant, noble, etc. for other games.” Whatever the case, surrounded as he is by all of those chests of treasure, Blood Bowl seems to be treating him well. What more could any dwarf want?
Faust said that the gold bands on the chest are lighter in the picture than in person.
Speaking of the chests, Faust reports that he used Contrast paints for the wood, “which was nice and quick.” He used Army Painter Light Tone shade for the metal parts. I liked how the wood turned out and the word “quick” got my attention as it always does, so I asked him in the comments what he used for paints.
Faust wrote that he used Gore-Grunta Fur Contrast for the open chest, Wyldwood Contrast for the darkest one, and Aggaros Dunes Contrast for the lightest chest. “Washes were only used sparingly towards the base on most of the chests.”
Thanks, Faust, I’m definitely going to give this a try on my two Etsy chests!
Glad the painting challenge helped you get this guy done! I like the cloak.
Next up we have The Introverted Hermit, who some of you might know as (among other things) the Monday Maker of Mandalas. This month she completed some interesting (and useful speaking from someone who plays D&D with a grid map) bases and bunch of “miniatures I’ve had shoved in drawers for months.” Sounds like an ideal project for the “Paint the Crap You Already Own” challenge!
Here we have our Stone Golem friend, who made its debut in the advertisment for the upcoming May Miniatures of Magnitude challenge. I would say from the expression on its face, some treasure robber is going to have a bad day.
Love the mean, glaring expression.
As for the treasure this lithic chap is guarding, I.H. helpfully supplied some treasure bases, including this one and some more in the gallery …
I think my 3rd level Fighter could retire with all of this loot.
… and being ever-helpful, there are also some bases of bones, entrails, and such in the gallery just in case things go awry for any plunderers of ancient wizards’ towers.
Two Mind Flayers
Bat Swarm
Gnoll with Big Axe
Bugbear!
Two Bases of Entrails
Bandit with Crossbow
Two Bases of Bones
Hero Forge Miniature: “Odin”
Troll by The Introverted Hermit.
Bandit with dagger
Treasure and Rocky Bases
More treasure
TIH’s Painting Area
Last and not least, just in case our adventurers don’t run afoul of bandits, gnolls, bugbears, mind flayers, bat swarms, and trolls, plus make it past the stone golem, there is this Mummy Captain and/or Lord as a suitable end boss. In addition to dual-wielding a couple of khopesh-looking blades, the good captain/lord may also have defenses and powers formed from the dreams/nightmares of the intrepid DM!
“Join me in death, vile mortals!”
Continuing down the black road of eldritch magicks, undeath, darkness and perhaps even “vile mortals,” we have another Reaper offering from Dave at The Imperfect Modeller — the aptly named Marise Greyshroud (and friends).
One wonders what the writing on the sword says.
I must say that Dave has been doing a good job of marketing for Reaper between their fun miniatures and his great painting skills. Last month his wizard caused me (or perhaps ensorcelled me, who knows?) to go over the their website, make an account, and put a bunch of their miniatures onto my nascent wish list.
Besides being nicely painted, Queen Greyshroud (or perhaps Greenshroud?) would certainly make a meet sovereign for some wraiths I started assembling. Yet more grist for the mill of my Reaper wish list?
I think it is best, before I hand the good folks at Reaper all my credit cards, to perhaps plane shift over to the more solid ground of Napoleon and the 19th Century, courtesy of Marvin at Suburban Militarism. For April, he undertook the fairly ambitious project of completing these 28 figures representative of Napoleon’s Old Guard.
Marvin says that he liked how the miniatures had interesting “facial features which seem to give each pose character.” He goes on to opine: “Perhaps my favourite is this fella below who seems to be casting a quizzical glance askew.” (He is speaking of the soldier in the largest image on the right in the gallery below.) I wonder if the grizzled veteran can’t help but think of all that has happened over his years of service and wonder how it all could have come to this?
The Officer
One of Marvin’s favorite soldiers.
Pioneer Sergeant
Eyes Right!
Attention!
The “this” I’m referring to is of course Napoleon’s farewell address before he leaves for his exile to the Isle of Elba in 1814. Marvin has put down some sand and arrayed his Old Guard into a hollow square in front of his 18th Century country house that has also seen duty as an ersatz palace.
“Soldiers of my Old Guard, after 20 years I have come to say goodbye!”
Here we have Napoleon Bonaparte. The figure below also comes with the Strelets kit, which I think is a nice touch. Marvin, as a painting guide, “settled on some portraits of him wearing a grey overcoat and the uniform of a colonel of the Chasseurs a Cheval,” and including “a silver medal with a red ribbon” he often wore.
L’Empereur Himself!
All quite well done, I’d say, but Marvin wasn’t done yet. No, not by a long shot. He decided to make a Youtube video, “Napoleon leaves for Elba”. This link will take you directly to the video, where you can leave Marvin a like if you wish.
You can also access the video from his page or see a non-video pictorial transcript of the farewell. Marvin was kind enough to allow me to post the video here as well.
We say farewell (or bon voyage perhaps?) now to Napoleon and hoof it west, hop a boat, hoof it west some more and finally hop into our moves-temporally-while-staying-in-the-same-place time machine from France to the Aztec Empire.
Mark Morin recently purchased a bunch of miniatures that were from the ’70s to the ’90’s, including a bunch of Badger Games Aztecs. He originally didn’t have a “fully developed concept” for them, but then he “volunteered to write a supplement covering the Spanish Conquest of the Americas in the 16th Century,” and thus he had a reason to paint up his miniatures. Let’s begin things with Mark’s novice warriors.
I’m sure what the novices lack in experience they more than make up for their enthusiasm.
Mark reports that “a major aspect of warfare of this period was the overriding need to take captives.” A novice could advance to veteran status by taking suitable prisoners. (You can read more about what he has to say on the subject here.)
Red-themed novices.
Blue-themed novices
Pair of slingers
These two look like them mean business.
Next up are the veteran eagle warriors. These guys and the novices represent the beginning of what Mark hopes will someday be an impressive force of 150 painted models. I like how colorful these Aztecs are, so I agree that many warriors would look very nice on the tabletop.
Veterans on the run brandishing their tepoztopilli (spears).
Veteran Eagle Warrior by Mark Morin.
I fondly remember the days of lead miniatures so it comes as no surprise to me that Mark wrote that the spears were “spaghetti-like” and “vulnerable to bending.” I liked his solution, which was to put a thin layer of Apoxie Sculpt on the weapons, which made them less bendy. That is a great idea that I’m going to remember. Mark details the process he used here if you are interested. I’m looking forward to seeing what the future brings for his 150 warrior horde.
Tarmor of Dragons of Lancasm, who is “married with four chickens,” completed five Reaper miniatures this month. He hasn’t been painting as much because he’s getting ready to play Shadowrun, but five is “more painting than I’ve achieved any other month this year!” so it sounds good to me. Heck, I would count five as a darned good month in my household so well done, Tarmor!
I like Mal’s glowing, green eyes.
The miniatures represent, from left to right, “Reaper 03893 “Mal” Catfolk Warrior, SW76 Mon Calamari, SW26 Bossk (trandoshan bounty hunter), SW77 Engineer, & SW27 Weequay.”
Looks like the Star Wars contingent isn’t getting along very well at the moment!
He plans on using the Reaper Catfolk Warrior as “one of the player characters” in his D20 Gamma World game. The other Star Wars figures were produced by West End Games/Grenadier as part of boxed sets in 1988-89, and he purchased them back then.
Glad to see you were able to get some of those vintage figures you’ve had sitting around painted up!
Obliterators are used to endings (or ending peoples’ lives, rather!) so I think a pair of these guys are a good place to close out part one of our round-up. The Word Bearers are strong over at Dreadaxe Games as is evidenced by first a helbrute and now this fanatically gruesome (or gruesomely fanatical?) pair offered up for our spiritual edification and enslavement.
Dreadaxe achieved his obliterators’ “mad pink” flesh by base coating with Rakarth Flesh, which he washed with Carroburg Crimson. He “added Cruchii Violet to the recesses and some of the more bulbous areas of the skin for a bruised, infected look.”
On that happy note so ends Part One of the April 2020 “Paint the Crap You Already Own!” challenge. Part Two will be about as long as this offering and I will publish it as soon as I can. I hope you have enjoyed our little journey through space, time, and the imagination. So we won’t say goodbye quite yet to our painting challenge but instead au revoir!
This is an old battle report I had misplaced, when the website I originally posted it on lost a bunch of data. I duly forgot about the report, but ran across it recently so I thought I would give it a new home here, even though I’ve gotten away from posting long-winded battle reports. Anyway, reporting on a four year old game seems apt somehow, given the state of archives in the 41st Millennium.
We played 6th edition, which was current at the time. One thousand points of Orks versus Nurgle Chaos Space Marines. The mission was the Eternal War mission Big Guns Never Tire with Vanguard Strike deployment.
My forces were led by Warboss Hungry and his band of cybork nobz in a battlewagon. They were backed up by two squads of boyz in trukks, a handful of gretchin, and a dakkajet.
The opposition was led by the self-style Sluglord Scabidemius with the mighty Typhus as his trusty lieutenant. The rank and file were two squads of plague marines, though they could apparently only scrape up a single rhino between them, a bunch of zombie cultists, and three obliterators.
The early going with space marines coming onto the scene.
TURN ONE: Hungry’s plan was to run his battlewagon up the middle while sweeping both trukks on the left flank to obliterate the obliterators. They were scoring in this scenario, as well as being a prime target, and camped on a back objective, obviously poised to deliver turn after turn of heavy long range fire.
First order of business was snake eyes on the dangerous terrain test for the shoota boyz trukk. (I had reinforced rams on all my vehicles allowing re-rolls.) So the trukk moved maybe 6″ and threw an axle trying to motor through a crater. Not a good start for the master plan but nevermind. The choppa boyz’ trukk was more durable and roared up within striking distance of the marines’ sole heavy support.
The battlewagon skirted the edge of the forest at cruising speed. The driver then pivoted with the idea of presenting the vehicle’s heavy front armor to the enemy. This brought the back end of the half track into the forest. No problem. Another dangerous terrain test and another set of snakes eyes. Two ork vehicles immobilized before the marines had fired a shot. Nice!
The obliterators fired their mutated lascannons at the battlewagon to no effect. Plague marines led by Typhus legged it toward the ruin containing objective B, while the other squad, in their rhino, headed north of the ruin apparently toward objective C. Zombies staggered up the middle toward the now stricken battlewagon.
Nurgle Obliterators versus Ork Boyz
TURN TWO: Gretchin reinforcements skulked in from the south-east. Their plan was to avoid fighting, use the ruin with the nearby immobilized trukk for cover and make a mad dash for objective D if needed. Otherwise they would hunker down and hope they didn’t draw unwanted any attention.
Hungry’s last working trukk careened over several boulders and knocked over a tree, while choppa boyz piled out dodging lascannon overwatch fire, each other. They mostly succeeded in not getting run over by their own slightly insane (by ork standards) driver. Luck was with them and all 12 got stuck in. The marines won the first round taking out several boyz though the klaw-armed nob did get a piece of one marine. Being nurgle obliterators they were of course dead tough.
The shoota boyz piled out of their immobilized trukk. The nob sergeant led his troops in and near the south-east ruin. His idea was to support the choppa boyz if necessary or take objectives later in the battle. Hungry and his nobz stayed put in their wagon, which bounced a kannon shell off the side of the plague rhino.
Typhus and his marines lumbered up middle of the battlefield. It appeared their plan was to use zombies as a screen and take out the battlewagon. The plague marines got close enough to discover that objective B was a skyfire nexus. Uh oh.
Meanwhile the chaos rhino hooked to the south and drove up right next to objective C. The obliterators won the fight for objective A again, reducing ork numbers just below fearless at the cost of losing one of their trio to a well-timed axe between the eyes.
Plague Marines secure an objective.
TURN THREE: Hungry called in air support in the form of an up-gunned MIG-15. The plane came in low out of the twin suns and in a hail of lead murdered several of Typhus’ plague marines. The marines responded with accurate bolter and meltagun fire, courtesy of the skyfire nexus. The ork pilot jinked away from a melta shot that would have ended any hope of making ace.
Hungry radioed an order to his shoota boyz. The shoota sergeant barked a command and his boyz hustled through the ruin toward objective D. The plan was now to hold this objective and skirmish with the marines holding objective C. If necessary, the orks would advance and try to contest C with the gretchin coming out of their defensive positions to secure D.
The nobz decided the zombies were close enough now so they jumped out of their half track and charged with a Waaagh! (Declared that earlier to get the eighteen shots for the MIG-15.) They ended up massacring 12 or 14 of the zombies with barely a scratch in return. Ouch. Naturally Hungry opted to let his painboy take on the zombie champion while he “kept an eye on the bigger picture.”
Meanwhile it was a tie back at the hand-to-hand (or choppa to horribly mutating power fist) fighting between the orks and obliterators.
Every vehicle in the battle was immobilized by treacherous terrain!
TURN FOUR: The ork pilot pitched his MIG sideways, dipping a wing low to the ground in an effort to decapitate the meltagun-wielding plague marine, not to mention navigate between two ruins without losing too many vital bits of his airplane. Once through, he hit the afterburner, rocketed between the two ruins and bugged out. He’d had enough of skyfire nexuses and meltaguns for one day. The nobz finished off the few remaining zombies and moved toward Typhus and the remnants of his squad. It isn’t every day one gets First Blood killing for 21 zombies in close combat!
The choppa boy nob finally managed to wade his way to the front and “showed dem how itz be dun” and finished off the obliterators. A bit of luck in winning that fight. The boyz consolidated around their trukk.
Typhus cast weapon virus on the nobz, which made all of their weapons have the “get’s hot” rule. The squad then moved up and charged. Despite going through difficult terrain and losing their front marine to an overwatch combi-skorcha (talk about get’s hot!) the marine charge was successful.
Hungry answered the inevitable challenge from Typhus by bodily picking up his hapless painboy and hurling him at the hulking terminator, who duly crushed the painboy as one would a gnat. The marines won the combat but not by much. The chaos gods decided to give mighty Typhus a boon such that all of his attacks were now poisoned. Wait, what?!
Marines on objective C continued to skirmish with the shoota orks. Their rhino moved forward in an effort to shield the squad from battlewagon kannon fire and to take bolter shots against the immobilized wagon’s rear armor. Naturally the rhino lost its drive axle trying to move into the forest and was immobilized. They bailed out of their rhino in practiced advance and assault pattern, Vomitus, taking objective C. One astartes dropped to a knee, took aim and put a bolter round right between the eyes of the lead ork on objective D. Good shooting, soldier!
Warboss Hungry heads for the hills!
TURN FIVE: Choppa boyz danced around objective D, then went about the serious business of decorating their trukk with obliterator body parts. Ignoring all of this, the driver spun his trukk around in place so his gunner could shoot at Typhus. What with the boyz jumping up and down on top of the trukk and rocking it side to side, not to mention the trukk being about five feet up a sentient, chaos-warped tree, instead of doing a 180 in place it did a 90, right over onto its side. Yep, I rolled snake eyes for the dangerous terrain test for the third time in the game!
Gretchin low crawled, with some prompting from a hungry squighound, through holes in the ruin toward objective D, just in case the skirmishing went badly for their larger cousins.
Back to the main event at the center of the battle. With nowhere to run Typhus challenged the warboss once again. This time Hungry ordered his nobz into a phalanx-like formation and stood at the rear ready to power klaw anyone who ran or brought up how challenges worked. One nob was brave (or desperate) enough to cite something on page 64 about Hungry “not getting to use his leadership” and got his head scissored off for his trouble.
Typhus, with nothing to slow him down killed four nobs with his scythe o’ diseased doom. The nobz finally had enough and ran in all directions, figuring Hungry couldn’t have off all their heads while dodging the clumsy but jovially insane nurgle terminator lord. One nob did put the final plague marine escort out of his misery as a sort of courtesy before running for it though.
There the battle ended with Hungry having executed his overall strategic plan, despite malfunctioning vehicles and running screaming into the sunset followed by a tireless yet irate Typhus who was heard to scream, “Where are you going you stupid ork? All I want to do is kill you a little!”
Naturally Hungry had the sole remaining nob murdered after the battle for reasons too obvious to go into here. Disappointed space marines accounted for the rest.
Orks: Two Objectives + Linebreaker + First Blood + HS Kill = 9
CSM: One Objective + Linebreaker + Warlord (was running at the end of game) = 5
.
Santa Cruz Sector, Mythic Games: February 17, 2017
We played a 1500 point Orks versus Orks game where as it turned out my opponent’s warlord was the mega-warboss-with-the-lucky-stikk or MWLS for short. We both ran a single Combined Arms Detachment. My opponent convinced me to also include a Painmob formation since I had included the models for it. Rather sporting, I must say.
The mission was Maelstrom War: Deadlock, which is the one where each player gets less cards with each passing turn.
What started out as a seemingly typical ork brawl between elements of Waaagh: Hungry and Waaagh: Derrius ended in something far different as we’ll see.
Early stages from the fight. I like how the white lines neatly mark our deployment zones.
My forces got out to an early lead, taking key positions in an effort to break the tactical stalemate. The other (bad) Orks countered by blunting a slow motion Charge of the Light Walkers up the center. Still, Waaagh: Hungry built up a big lead that was going to be hard to beat, especially given the nature of our mission where each side relied on dwindling supplies.
My nobz attacked on the left flank and were stopped by an impossibly strong, giant ork in a strangely cobbled together suit of heavy mek armor. He pretty much was able to take on all eleven nobz by himself and easily win. What few survivors there were left had no choice but to run for it or die uselessly. Our left flank crumbled.
Fortunately, crack Hungarian artillery kept our positions from being completely overrun. Mortars pounded infantry bunched up in the aftermath of close assaults, while supremely heroic goblin kannoneers punished cautious meganobz, all the while dueling Derrius’s keen-eyed flashgitz.
Still, the situation was fast deteriorating and becoming desperate.
One sneaky git tries to ambush another.
With the enemy warboss rampaging toward our lines, someone had to do something. No one was exactly volunteering to confront this seemingly invincible titan, so Lieutenant Scarbag Flashboy, the last survivor of his squad as usual, knew he had to act.
The situation was all confusion, smoke and screams. Flashboy knew the most important thing at the moment was information. He shrugged off his crippled rokkit pack and concentrated on remotely piloting a drone carrier ahead into the fiery chaos. It was rigged with a camera and piled high with explosives.
Cautious meganobz pick their way forward. A feller could get hurt out there!
Flashboy was astounded by what he saw in his video screen from the drone’s vantage point. The enemy warboss’s suit was obviously a cobbled together abomination of corrupted Tau technical genius and evil mek madness!
Pistons shrieked with each of the mega armored boss’s steps. Shoota fire pattered against his armor like light hail. Even direct artillery hits ricochetted harmlessly, though this did put paid to more than a few of his boyz, much to the behemoth’s amusement. Even energy weapons fire was absorbed by a sparking electric field. This only seemed to make him stronger.
Flashgitz turn the center of the battlefield into a walker scrapyard.
The lieutenant tapped a few keys with a shaking head, sending a video capture to higher headquarters. He’d done has much as he could for now. It was time to look to his own precious lilly green hide.
To Flashboy’s horror he saw the warboss point a snapping power klaw at him. Zog! He had thought himself well concealed. His drone was still on the move, though it was taking sporadic hits from cowering shoota boyz, as well as being rocked by friendly mortar fire coming from who knew where. It’s left tread was damaged and looked in danger of coming apart at any moment.
He punched the drone’s Self Destruct on Impact button and sent it trundling directly at the warboss’s back. It was a sort of slow motion race as the damaged probe struggled to catch up with its ungainly target.
Flashboy rolled out from the shell crater and hustled behind a friendly battlewagon-turned-pillbox, which had lost its front axle. Its crew opened up on the advancing warboss. Their chattering machine guns made a lot of noise but had little other effect.
Mortars taking the measure of distant infantry.
There was a massive explosion. The boss had torn the battlewagon in half with his dizzying collection of power weapons, and some sort of short ranged plasma cutter array. Predatory growls boomed from his vox caster. Flashboy was thrown clear. Dazed, he crawled under some of the burning wreckage. Ammunition from the destroyed APC cooked off in the heat and flames. Everything was obscured by thick smoke. His titan opponent was surrounded by the gleaming nimbus of his force field. Without this protection nothing could stand in the midst of this atomic wreckage and live.
The boss’s laughter stopped. There was an explosion, even larger than the first, and screams. Scarbag Flashboy had no idea what happened or how he later found himself in a ship’s medical bay, agreeing to give a painboy most of his teef to sew his legs and part of his left arm back on. A young tau nurse shook her head and silently busied herself with the needless task of sterilizing a hacksaw.
Perhaps the drone had done its job after all?
Of the enemy warboss and his strange battle suit there was no sign. Other than the lieutenant’s video capture, of course. One thing was for sure, he knew that Warboss Hungry, as a close ally of the Greater Good and honorary Shas’O, would not stop until he solved the mystery of the mega mek armor.
Mega Mek Warboss and boyz surge over a hedgerow. Note Flashboy’s drone scout.
So the MWLS gave me an idea. Why not take advantage of him unexpectedly turning up into a sort of four game narrative campaign of sorts instead of just a one shot deal? I’ll put the campaign up in a future post and link it is this one, which will be the first game of the series.
It was a good fight and a close one. A battle that definitely highlights the maxim of never giving up. Especially with the Maelstrom missions. Although my opponent rolled double 1’s with his lucky stikk and killed off his own warboss inches from my deployment zone, which was unquestionably the high point of our game, he did manage to squeak out a 13-12 victory point win despite my achieving the all important First Blood in addition to the aforementioned seemingly insurmountable early battle lead!
Still, thanks to the indomitable senior lieutenant, higher command is in possession of some very interesting intelligence. One wonders what the Earth Caste will have to say about all of this? As Warboss Hungry likes to say, “Wot’s all dis den?”
I recently finished painting this goblin miniature from Maxmini, which they call a Mean Green Gobbo. I’ve had him for a few years now. I originally bought him when many of my opponents were using Marbo and I thought this guy would make for a humorous answer to that worthy super commando.
I considered trying to do some pupils for his eyes. In the cell phone pictures I think he could use some, though from table top distances I doubt anyone is going to notice. I might do so one of these days when I’m painting something else, but I’m not too worried about it.
I also tried out some Vallejo gun metal blue for the first time on his left gun. I used Nuln Oil over it, but decided I didn’t like how dark it was, so I did a heavy second layer of blue. Then I added a little silver to the blue for the highlights, and just a very light touch of silver only to a couple of places I wanted to be very light, such as the muzzle tip.
I’ll probably use him to keep some of my artillery or foot gretchin in line when my commissar is too busy for such mundane duties. (He usually is to be found these days among the boyz.) He’s kind of short for a gretchin minder, but I think if I allow my opponent to draw line of sight from the top of his right thump gun, then that’ll be about the same height as a standard runtherd.
Further, his Moar Dakka approach to things certainly gives him at least the same shooting and close combat power as any goblin leader, though trying to fire everything at once, like I’m sure he inevitably does, isn’t going to be too great for his accuracy.
Senior Lieutenant Scarbag Flashboy was given the mission of helping by dropping his stormboyz into the front lines and attacking heavy support targets of opportunity in one of the many battles in the Santa Cruz Sector against the Imperium. In the target rich environment of a general Imperial Guard advance, the target in question turned out to be a manticore.
Everything went according to plan. Their air assault went perfectly. Actually it was 11 inches off target and another half inch would have dropped the entire squad into no man’s land, but it all worked out so that is what counts.
Death and rude gestures from above courtesy of the semi-mysterious Red Git!
The manticore blissfully continued to fire its gigantic storm eagle missiles at distant ork units as the stormboyz prepared for their attack. Bundles of grenades were checked, rokkit packs dialed to full throttle red line, and Scarboy himself produced a steel bar to jam into the tank’s track.
A few guardmen ran in their general direction but they were apparently retreating from general ork mayhem and soon disappeared in the fire and smoke.
Suddenly a deffkopta roared overhead in a red streak, spewing oil, gears, and stikbombs in its wake. The ground vibrated under the stormboyz’ feet. As they stood watching aghast, their now useless weapons falling from their hands, the deffkopta pilot corkscrewed a pair of rokkits into the missile tank. The remaining two storm eagles detonated in a hellish fireball. All that was left of the manticore was a burning crater.
Naturally Lieutenant Scarboy found himself stand alone, dumbfounded and patting out flames on his uniform, with all of his boyz laying dead around him. Those who hadn’t been vaporized of course.
The distinct red deffkopta flew back and hovered over Scarboy. It was shedding even more parts than before after being damaged in the explosion. Clearly the only thing keeping the increasingly grotesque machine in the air was the pilot’s invincible belief in his own airmanship.
‘You! Ya you, da stoopid grot dat be on fire. Zog off an’ die, mate, cause I’m da bestestz an’ I’m da fastestz too! ‘Cause I’m da Red Git!’ the pilot screamed.
‘Wot?’ The stormboy looked up.
The pilot replied with a rude gesture and tossed a ticking melta bomb at Scarbag’s feet. He zoomed off cackling into the sunset.
‘We need ta talk,’ the drone said.
Lieutenant Flashboy became introspective as the ebb of battle drifted away from him. He woke up when the melta bomb laying in a nearby puddle of mud and fuel misfired with a depressing fizzle rather than the usual white hot boom of coruscating light. The ork sighed and kicked some muck onto his now smoldering boots.
A universal drone trundled up to him on squeaking treads. Waaagh! Hungry has always made good use of the ubiquitous drones as ammo carriers, mobile bombs, soldiers (remote-controlled or sporting a primitive AI), and especially for recon.
A tinny voice come from a crackling speaker on top of the drone. “My name iz Big Mek Fixxit an’ we need ta talk if yer lookin’ fer revenge.”
‘Revenge?’ Flashboy asked. The drone had his full attention.
So I played my first game of 40K recently at Mythic Games in after taking well over a year off. It was Guard versus Orks. Eternal War Scenario: Big Guns Never Tire. Some pictures from our game:
Manticores deliver an interesting and indisputable form of Detante.
Boyz piling out of their wrecked trukk: a pretty common sight for these guys.
Outflanking mechanized infantry on the attack.
Tearing the turrets off of APC’s and throwing them with lethal effect at the disembarking infantry.
In the spirit of working on projects I had left half-finished when I took my break from miniatures, I recently completed this goliath mine from Kromlech. The first time I had heard of a goliath mine was when I saw one at a military museum many years ago.
Goliath mine aka “Mecha Bomb Squig”
I also started a building a unit of tankbustas. The nob, with the mine controller, is again from Kromlech. I might do a little more dry brushing on the nob, but I haven’t decided yet. If I had him to do over again I would consider experimenting with liquid green stuff and see if I could hide the seam where his arms attach to his torso.
I might also try adding some dust to the treads on the mine, but then again I might not.
Tankbusta nob with goliath mine controller and a couple of his toadies.
So moving forward the plan is to build some more rank and file tankbusta boyz. After more than four years of using nothing for elites in my army except nobz, I think it is time to add a little variety.
I’m not sure why they wear great coats and winter hats in the desert. Perhaps they are in a cold desert or more likely being orks they are just crazy and/or the heat doesn’t affect them like one would reasonably expect, because everyone knows (when they think about it) that orks are much tougher than weedy gits like humans and eldar and such.
So I recently decided to start acquiring some of my own gaming terrain. I thought I’d work on collecting along the theme of a generic farm or ranch. One can use just about any sort of terrain for Warhammer 40K, since battles can take place on almost any sort of landscape. I have been getting into the WWII game Bolt Action lately, and I also occasionally play battles set in the mid to late 18th Century using Muskets & Tomahawks. So the terrain has to suit for those games too. I think these buildings would also look nice in games set in the American West.
The pieces have to be suitable for “heroic 28mm” figures. The roofs can be removed so models can be placed inside and moved around, which is important to me, because all of the aforementioned games include rules for having forces inside buildings of various sorts.
The boyz seem pretty happy with their new digs.
I purchased another building already that is between the size of the two pictured here. I am also hopefully going to add a fenced garden, an outhouse, a well, and maybe some details like stacks of hay and the like.
Maybe I can make a big tentacle out of green stuff that I can show coming up out of the well (or even better — from the outhouse!) when we are using it for science fiction games. I think I’d dispense with such whimsy for our Second World War battles. Our forces have enough to cope with without Cthulhu or some random monstrosity oozing out the Sicilian underdark.
Warriors freshly awoken from their (apparently not) eternal slumber.
Necrons
HQ: Lord with resurrection orb and staff of light = 75
Troop: Warriors (10) = 130
Troop: Warriors (10) = 130
Khorne Daemonkin
HQ: Herald = 55
Troop: Bloodletters (8) = 80
Fast Attack: Flesh Hounds (5) = 80
Orks
HQ: Weirdboy (level 2 psyker) = 70
Troop: Choppa Boyz (22); nob w/ big choppa & boss pole, one rokkit = 151
Troop: Shoota Boyz (23); nob w/ big choppa & boss pole, two big shootas = 191
Troop: Gretchin (11) = 38
This list uses two Combined Arms Detachments, with either the Orks or Necrons being the primary force. The Daemonkin are allies. The overall warlord could either be the psyker or the lord.
Interestingly (and who knew?) Khorne heralds are apparently consummate diplomats. The Orks and Necrons don’t trust each other and optimally tend to keep their distance during the fighting, whereas the daemons are free to mingle with either side. I suspect that the Orks intuit that they and the horned boyz both just want to “get stuck in”. As for the Necrons, they probably find Daemonkin behavior extremely predictable and so their actions don’t play merry hell with logical calculations and circuitry. Certainly can’t say that about the greenskins!
Khornate gribblies encounter the Imperium of Man
I’ve played my Terrible Trio now a few times in casual games and they’ve done alright. Win about half the time and that is what I’m hoping for. My general 40K list building philosophy is if I’m winning or losing more than about half the time against my regular opponents of similar skill and luck, then something is wrong with my list and it either needs to be toned down or toughened up.
The “desperate allies” thing can be a challenge, so what I usually do is deploy the Necrons first, often lining up against whatever armor my opponent plunks down if I’m setting up second. Then the Orks rank up after that with the daemons either deep striking or deploying to take advantage of terrain or something I see in the set up. One common theme is I use the khornate forces to protect the Necrons from close combat.
Why play this odd combination? Story-wise it is easy to justify almost anything. The real reason is I haven’t been painting Daemonkin very long and I wanted to use my painted models in games. In general, playing with models I paint is the engine that keeps me painting. As for the Necrons, someone gave me a bunch of models, which I’ve put into the paint stripper and have been slowly refurbishing. Ditto on not having enough to field a proper army. So I team up both factions with my main painted forces — the Orks.
Ann's Immaterium 