Steamy T

I recently acquired a new T-shirt. Designed by Sam Logan, creator of my favorite web comic Sam and Fuzzy, it reflects my views on steam power very well. I purchased it at Topotoco and I was very pleased with how quickly it shipped.

I'm wearing it to American Thanksgiving. I know American thanksgiving is an orgy of excess designed by none other than the god of pleasure and us Canadians must resist the urge to debase ourselves in such a way, but I've got family who are American and I feel I must support them in their descent to debauchery. 

Well I'm off, expect some actual Wargaming posts soon.

Warriors, come out to play

I somehow managed to get rides to/from Ottawa with Jake and Jed two weekends in a row. I got in some games but apparently it's too difficult to take enough pictures. Maybe, Darko, if you have a bunch we could put them together.

It seemed like there was a lot of cool new shit all around, and I was pretty jealous. Then I manned up and bought myself a couple boxes of chaos warriors =D.

Marching the cracked, desolate earth of my thesis paper.

 12 warriors and 5 knights. The warriors only come with hand weapons but I gave them the lances from the knights to be halberds. I didn't get the battalion box since I don't need the marauders. I like the marauders but there's so much core for the warriors that 25% fills pretty easy. And instead of hounds I'm going to use these spiders that I've had forever.

Essentially the same stats, and the dogs can have poison for 1pt each anyways.

Anyone need that 40mm base?

So now I'm pretty excited for the holidays, asked for some more of this warhammer stuff for christmas, and hopefully get in plenty of games. Apocalypse is certainly not a bad idea.

I'll be building these guys while not studying, however I'm not done exams until the 16th.
poops.

Some Flames of War and a Halloween Throwback

I finally got my shit together and decided to do some posting again. In the last month I've accomplished very little when it comes to war-gaming. I finally got all my Americans based.

As you can plainly see, I've only done the bases for the infantry and the whitewashing for the tanks but this means that when I field either my infantry company or my tank company it'll look good from a distance.

Below is a picture of LCol Abrams. Not exactly an impressive paint job, but it's a start.

I also ended up purchasing 2 Flames of War started sets for the RMC Wargames Club.

The starter sets contain a German infantry company accompanied by some StuGs and some AT guns.

As well as a British tank company accompanied by some U.S. Paratroopers.

The mini rule-books are nice to have around, but they have a pretty shitty binding. The dice and token sets are nice as well. The tokens are thick cardboard; not the most durable, but pretty good for a starter set.

The terrain the starter set comes with is kinda nifty. Once again it is just thick cardboard, but it is printed very nicely. 

The set comes with more than enough walls, buildings and forests to play the contents of the box, which would be really handy for a new player. 

They also have text on them that describes what each kind of terrain piece does. As I bought these sets to teach new players the game, this comes in really freakin' handy 

Lastly the box comes with a V1 rocket. I guess this is just for show as it is kinda big to use as an objective. I'm probably gonna steal these and turn them into Ork heavy weapons teams. The one thing I find disappointing about the starter set is the lack of bombardment templates and minefield templates. Even though we have been playing for a long time, we still just use one I cut out of clear plastic. I mean, I think I did a pretty good job, I even doodles explosions on it, but, come on, I want a blast template and I don't want to pay full price for it! But I guess I'm just demanding. 

Pictured was only the contents of one of the starter sets. If you want to see what two starter sets looks like copy the pictures yourself; I'm pretty lazy. Finally in Flames of War news: I'm starting a King Tiger company! I found some cheap ones online. I'll post some pictures when I get them.

Last but not least, here was my Halloween costume this year:

Yeap. I went as Commodore 64 Zapp Brannigan! As you can probably guess I knew all the quotes. Let me tell you that skirts are breezy to the extreme, and that it is very difficult to find gloves that go over a man's forearms.

Also, by the end of the night, neither I nor the hotel room looked that good. We had like 15-20 people in there. Shit. Show.

Flames of War Tournament

I went to my first FloW tournament yesterday at "The Gaming Den" in London. There were eight players, three rounds with 1,750pt late war lists and no special characters seemed to be the courtesy. I wanted to bring a fully-painted list (no panthers) and I never seem to pass confident morale checks so I went with a Sperrverband from Grey Wolf. This is a Reluctant Veteran list as a Sperrverband was a blocking force formed of the hardest veterans consigned to hold back the Russians while the rest of the line fell back. These guys get cheap stuff while being veterans, have one platoon of Tank Assault 5 ersatz-pioneers, and count as fearless when assaulting tanks.

My first game was against a scary, confident-veteran American mechanized infantry list I'd played before in Waterloo. The mission was hasty attack so half platoons in reserve and I was defending.  I managed to hold one bridge quite nicely with pioneers in building but the left flank was his main attack.Two PaK40s held that side's bridge, but I put an observer in there and made that point a very smoke-able target. I held off a crazy assault with only one team and my 1st in Command remaining (who proved to be a bad-ass in assualt) and managed to pass my reluctant check there. He scooted past these and my first in command called in a heavy bombardment on his massed half tracks, ranging in on the first try, but he rolled 5 armour saves and lost none. With no reserves by third turn for me, that game was a hard loss.

Next I was up against a confident-trained Canadian tank company playing the dust-up mission (the fair-fight table quarters). His first 3 shots with stuarts managed to take out both my Pak40 AT guns in one go, which was freakish, but I mopped them up quickly with 5 panzer IVs. His shermans dicked about and slowly got popped at long range due to the veterancy of the glass-armoured panzers. Both of our corner-suprise reserves whiffed incredibly: my 3 StuGs missed all their 3+ shots on sherman asses and then bogged/burnt/fled. His M10 tank destroyers got one panzer IV and the remaining four sat and wasted them handily. It was a long and grinding game but my second infantry assault succeeded with two platoons to push him back and I got a narrow victory.

Third game was intense, fast, and fun. Up against 20 T-34/85s and 5 SU-100s (which are god-damn horrifying at AT16 and front armour 9). My pioneers began hopping up a string of central buildings while my PaK40s hid in some hedges. With the help of heavy artillery these guns brought down their 10 T-34/85s and left the road mostly clear for my StuGs to flank up an objective. I was feeling good, his other tank platoon bearing down on the objective needed to pass the pioneers in buildings. Smoked the tanks, noted the Sperr-pioneers' fearlessness in assaulting tanks, and rolled a 2. And repeated next turn down to the same roll, also a 2. As I cursed the uselessness of these supposed 'fearless tank-hunters', he quickly scooted onto the objective a turn before the StuGs could reach theirs and won a fun and narrow game.

That's quite the wall of text...haven't painted much over midterms but some sexy vermacht-vomit-vehiculars are ready for camouflage and detail painting:

Brummbar and some 8-rads. That back bastard needs a highlight.

The turret-men were spare tank commanders given  greenstuff torsos.

Dark Elves

A couple weeks ago the new Dark Elves were released, and I've played a few games with it. With that freshness in mind, like to share my thoughts on the changes and then put together a list!

Lord Balewind & Co. advances at the head of his army for what will probably be the
last time in a long time. Given that his precious Executioner's axe was confiscated by
the state, I can't see him being that useful on foot. 

A Skirmish and A Battle

A week or so ago I played a small game of Fantasy against a friend at the local GW. For the purposes of this blog he shall be known as Lord Karathess or L.K. for short. L.K. hadn't played fantasy since 6th so this was just a refresher game and an update on the rules. I played a small force of Tomb Kings and L.K. fielded his detachment of Empire. The whoreson employee of GW was rushing us along so I only took pics of the first turn and then we had to finish quick.

As the photo evidence shows the Empire deployed on the hill in an attempt to leverage full use of the artillery advantage, which would have proved effective if the cannon hadn't exploded upon firing its first shot. With the artillery out of the picture the Tomb Kings charged in for the kill and were in the thick of a bloody combat when the invisible hand of GW taint came and declared "pack it up, the stores closing in 15 mins and I wanna go home."

When I went home for thanksgiving (canadian thanksgiving which I would like to declare as the real thanksgiving in an effort to piss off any of our american viewers, suck it) I got to play a huge fantasy battle against Darko and Wooster. We played a 4800 pt game on our realm  of battle, which proved to be dismally small for that many points. I played both my Tomb Kings and Lizardmen against Wooster's Wood Elves and Darko's Dark Elves (alliteration yay). 

I seem to have misplaced the actual list I wrote but it was something like this:

Lords

- Grand Heirophant Khatep (Lore of Nehekhara)

- Slann Mage Priest (Lore of High Magic)

-->Scroll/magic resist (1)/loremaster/lizardchannel

Heroes

- Chakax (scar vet name character)

- Gor-Rok (scar vet name character)

- Scar-vet

-->cold one/piranha blade/light armour/shield

- Tomb Prince

-->Chariot/Armour of Destiny/Great weapon

Core

- 30 x Skely Archers

- 20 x Saurus

- 24 x Skink cohort

--> 3 x Kroxigor

- 7 x Skely Chariots

--> Banner of Swiftness

Special

- 30 x Temple Guard (horde)

--> Jaguar Standard

- 20 x Tomb Guard

-->Banner of the Undying Legion

- 7 x Cold One Riders

- 3 x Necropolis Knights

- 2 x Khemrian Warsphinx

- 2 x Tomb Scorpion (proxy)

Rare

- Casket of Souls

I leave it to Darko and Wooster to add their lists if they so choose.

At the start of the battle I felt I had the upper hand as the elves had precious few combat blocks and I had stretched my battle line across the entire table with very few holes. But as the game progress it became abundantly clear that I had underestimated a key factor that my opponents were counting on for victory.....Darko's witchery.

Prior to deployment Darko and Wooster spend a mind numbing amount of time debating spells as I declared that both my casters were in fact loremasters.

As the deployment phase began, I soon realized I wouldn't have a chance to counter deploy anything as my entire army was almost down and they had maybe one non-chaff unit on the table. This isn't a foreign concept for me but in this instance it was exaggerated as I had less than half the number of units that were arrayed against me.

I won the roll for first turn, a rare sight for me, and advanced across the board. I needed to cross the open ground as quickly as possible to negate their shooting. The first signs of witchery came in the magic phase when my slann rolled irresistible force on arcane unforging (on 4 dice I rolled 1-6-6-6) and exploded killing 6-8 temple guard, drained the power pool, and to top it off rolled a 1 and failed to destroy the magic item. After losing power dice I believe I threw the rest at the casket which was dispelled but I may be forgetting something. I don't recall anything significant happening in the shooting phase.

In the bottom of turn two, the elves advanced a marginal amount in an effort to reorganize their line and leverage their shooting advantage. I don't recall anything particularly exciting happening apart from some shooting related deaths on my side. (Note for the elves, feel free to edit and correct me if I'm forgetting something important)

At the top of turn two I made my first charge, my Temple Guard had been secreting the Jaguar Standard which gives them swiftstride. The temple guard leaped across no-mans land and crashed into Wooster's tree ogres, surprising to say the least. The rest of my units advanced except the chariots as they were in danger of a flank charge. I also brought on my two units of deep strikers (entombed beneath the sands) a group of 3 necropolis knights and 1 tomb scorpion, they surfaced behind the tower in the middle of a bunch of chaff. 

The second sign of their powerful witchery came in the magic phase, I decided to start with the movement bubble for tomb kings. Khatep rolled irresistible force (on 4 dice 1-6-6-6, AGAIN FUCK), blew up some archers, and drained the power pool. I realized now that I had wasted 800 points on magic because both my wizards were incapable of doing anything except sucking Darko's large witchy member. I think I got off one other inconsequential spell that turn, but I remained stalwart as I could still rely on my hordes of elite combat blocks to butcher the puny elves. Little did I know that the full extend of the cursed witching would be revealed. I was excited to smash tree ogres in the first combat of the game, but I was about to find out that Darko's witchery extended beyond the realm of magic. My temple guard proceeded to wiff almost entirely and get thumped by the tree ogres.

The rest of the game was dominated by the elves, I managed to fail every important roll, neither of my 2 warsphinxs manage to land a single thundercrush attack (thunderstomp template style). I conceded at the end of turn 3, I'm not interested in reliving the death of my beloved army but Darko or Wooster may be persuaded to boast their victory.

The above pictures are Wooster's Wood Elves arrayed on trays waiting to be deployed

Darko's Druchii Dark Elves

My disorganized Lizard/Skeleton horde

The elf battle line from a few perspectives

My fearsome battle line of elite combat units

Koptor Kans!!!

Look at these Krazy Koptor Kans! Dakka dakka dakka! I know there is no rules for them, but I think they're awesome anyways. I'll probs play them as Killa Kans if the guys let me.

 This one has a biting jaw, a twin assault cannon, and a twin heavy bolter with enloudener. Dakka Dakka Dakka.

 This one has an impressive array of rokkits! Fwoosh! It also has a handy dandy buzz saw for trimming off heads!

This Koptor Kan has a plethora of flame throwers. These augment the power-snippier-chainsaw-combo.

Croozin over the battlefield looking for stuff to bisect.

Run Devilfish Run!

These Crisis Suits are having a Krazy Koptor Krysis

In conclusion giant battle robots are awesome!