That Was Some Healthy Hobbying!

Last Friday's Hobby Nite was some kind of awesome. It started off on the right foot with a great meal and beers, and by the time we arrived at the Forge, we were raring to go. I especially like the look of the hordes of Astartes that greeted us at the Forge. Nice.

I had a bit of trouble with focus, and took out 11 Black Knights and a couple of Land Speeders to add to my Ravenwing armory. I also took out my WIP Heldrake, but did not do any work with it. It's coming along yes.

Anyways, I took the last Land Speeder to assemble, and got that done, right before my first game with Hakim's deadly Eldar. Fielding my new Ravenwing list, I must say I had loads of fun with it. It's super-fast and hard-hitting. Salvo 4 twin-linked bolters on bikes are super-deadly! I think just one squad wiped out an entire Dire Avengers squad, mercilessly gunning them down. At any rate, I still got outgunned and lost the game. And had great fun too!

The next game was against Aiman's Balakor/Daemon Prince/Ahriman Thousand Sons army. This one was pretty one-sided as my bikes got torn apart really fast. Completely forgot a lot of special stuff like Preffered Enemy and the Skyfire on one of the objectives I held.

We were going for a second round when the Lord AK arrived. We had prebooked this game, so I unpacked my AirCav for a fight with his Raven Guard. It was pretty fun, and funny, and the AirCav managed to truimph in this one. He's written a batrep with pics and all, you can check it out at http://ak-skullthrone.blogspot.sg/2014/03/flight-of-valkyries-raven-guard-vs.html

Anyways, it was pretty late by the time we got done, and after the sumptuous meal, beers, hobbying and 3 games, I was beat, retired home and went to bed with a smile. All hobby nites should be this awesome.

Keep rolling them dice!

Catachan-Brandenberg Escalation Force!

Last Friday, it was my Shadowsword's turn to face Rizal's titan. This time, the Brandenbergers combined forces with the Catachan Air Cav. HQ, 2 vet squads and 3 Vendetta were from Air Cav, while the Shadowsword, 2 Leman Russ and 1 platoon were from Brandenberg.

Rizal's force was White Scars - bikes, tough flyers and a Warhound Titan. Scary. The battle was okay until I over-committed on killing his Titan, disembarking all 3 Catachan squads within the titan's void shields, and quickly bringing it down. Unfortunately, I failed to see that the thing only 6 hull points left. So the White Scars seized upon that mistake and shot down both hovering Catachan Vendettas, as well as the squads on the ground.

The Catachan Captain fought on valiantly, managing to survive a hail of fire, until the Astartes flyer concentrated all firepower on him. Only 4 Brandenbergers and 1 Vendetta survived the battle - but it was great fun! Gotta do it again!

Earlier in the evening, the Thousand Sons-Eldar tutorial continued, this time with Rhinos added back into the Sons' list. I must say they are much more effective with Rhinos (as they always were), and had 2 narrow losses. Gotta do this again too!

 

 

Escalation!

Finally got to try out Escalation at Hobby Night last week. And it was awesome! Of course, I am slightly biased about Escalation - I do play IG, and have a decent collection of super-heavies. So the chance to play them in a regular game of 40k is real good stuff.

My opponent was Rizal. He brought his Warhound Titan, supporting an IG force of a Company Command Squad w Astropath, 2 veteran squads, Marbo 2 Leman Russ, a Hydra and 3 Vendettas. I brought a more conventional force of a Lord Commissar, 2 Platoons with 35 men each, a regular commissar, 2 Vendetta, 2 Leman Russ and a Baneblade. You could say my force was a bit outclassed.

In the first turn alone, a single shot from the Titan took out 7 of my Baneblade's 9 hull points. The next turn, my big tank blew up, and it was really fun to see how the new explosion mechanics work. The blast threw the Baneblade to the right, flipping over the mighty machine onto one of Rizal's Leman Russ, obliterating both.

In the meantime, my venerable infantry advanced implaceably towards the enemy, under whithering fire. The last remnants of first platoon actually reached Rizal's other Leman Russ, parked right at the edge, and charged it with krak grenades, quickly destroying it. But they eventually got wiped out themselves. Second platoon was hunkered down near 2 objectives but was also eventually reduced to around squad strength.

The funny part was, Rizal's Titan actually felt the sweat. Somehow. Following age-old anti-Titan tactics, Leman Russ battle cannon were tasked to take out void shields while heavier guns like the Baneblade battle cannon and lascannons took out hull points. My Vendetta reserve rolls weren't great but when they did arrive, they made a difference. The Titan was reduced to 3 hull points by the time the game was over. And all the while I was paraphrasing lines from the first Star Wars movie - "sir, we have analyzed the rebels' attack patterns and identified a weakness in our defenses ... should we make ready your escape pod?"

In the second game I wanted to try what it would feel like to use a conventional 40k force and take on an Escalation force. I whipped out my Eldar Alaitoc Windriders for this. And it was quite one-sided actually. The Eldar won decisively, leaving only the mon-keigh Commander and 2 very badly damaged Vendetta (1 hull point left on each) alive. The Warhound Titan was destroyed in turn 2 under concentrated bright lance and fire prism (lance) fire. In the resulting apocalyptic blast, the dying Titan took out one of my jetbike squads which was deep in mon-keigh territory having just destroyed his Hydra.

Eldar tactics vs Titan paraphrased Imperial ones. Multi-shot weapons like Serpent Shields were used to rapidly take down void shields, while lance weapons followed up to destroy the beast itself. I must say I was lucky too - a D shot only clipped one of my Fire Prisms, and the resulting penetrating hit only destroyed its shuriken catapults. Another memorable moment in that battle was my relatively tiny and nimble lone Crimson Hunter flying amidst 3 bulky mon-keigh Vendetta. And after the Titan was destroyed, the exarch executed an impossible manouver putting him on the six of the Vendetta carrying the mon-keigh HQ, blasting it to pieces.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to my next Escalation game. I'm going to try out my Shadowsword next time. See how that works out.

In the meantime, I've started painting my Heldrake - wish me luck! Keep them dice rolling!

Favored Rubric Terminators - Finally!

After years and years of absolutely inspired expert procrastinating, my favored squad of Rubric Terminators finally got done last night. This was truly a long drawn out old project, with more stops than starts.

And just how old? Well, the squad was started when Thousand Sons Rubric Terminators had 2 wounds each, and the aspiring champion was actually an aspiring sorcerer, and when you buy them in squads of 9 (Tzeentch favored number), the aspiring sorcerer came free with the squad. This was back in the good ol' broken days of CSM Codex 3.5 when aspiring sorcerers were charging with powerfists with 5 attacks and 2 re-rolls!

The project is so old that the models are actually plastic Space Marine termies - simply because the Chaos ones weren't created yet! The crowns are metal Rubric Thousand Sons, which I cut and shaved off the entire front part of the power armor helmet. Then I cut the rear half of the Space Marine termie helmet and glued the two together. Tabards are metal Thousand Sons bits, and so are half of the combi-bolters (the ones with the bird heads), made by glueing two Thousand Sons bolters together.

The power swords, gauntlets and shoulder armor are from various bits - Chaos warriors, Space Marines, CSM, etc. Yes, this was wayyyyyyyy before power swords counted as only AP3! The Champion's chainfist is stock Space Marine termie chainfist. His shoulder armor are from a hapless Grey Knight, and the helmet is an old metal fantasy Chaos sorcerer's. The Icon of Tzeetch and spiky bits are from the CSM vehicle accessories frame.

There was a lot of shaving away of Imperial icons, eagles and purity seals. And a lot of glueing on of skulls and slightly more Chaotic symbols, as well as some battle damage. The combi-bolters that were not made of Thousand Sons bolters were a mix of CSM metal termie combi-bolters, DIY combi-bolters (2 CSM bolters glued together) and even an actual combi-bolter from a Rhino. I will be adding 4 melta-barrels to these guys when I get around to it - hopefully within the decade!

Anyways, now that the squad is done I'll probably be using more of the list that includes the full favored squad - which takes away the Rhinos from their power armored brethren! Next up - the Heldrake!

Keep rolling them dice!

Some painting, some procuring, lots, LOTS of dice rolling!

That was a pretty awesome Hobby Night! Starting off pretty innocently, and in a rather disciplined manner I'd add, with a spot of painting to finish up the Tzeentch Terminator Champion - the last model in the favored terminator squad that's been WIP since before plastic Chaos termies were ever invented, and Codex Chaos 3.5 Rubric terminators were the scourge of the galaxy.

A most fantastic excuse to stop painting came along very quickly when I discovered I had forgotten to pack my favorit old school brown ink to wash all that gold. At any rate, stocks had arrived at Hobby Forge, and I had some procurement business to do in the name of the Emperor. To which a transaction was promptly done, resulting in me becoming the proud owner of the Escalation book (finally) and 2 Land Speeders (for my Ravenwing expansion).

Jo's Grey Knights were up for a game, so I dutifully unpacked my AirCav in an 1850-point Relic mission. The Grey Knights were beautifully hobbied, from the nice paint scheme, to the very liberal use of magnets to ensure that all his models are always able to swap equipment and weapons and turn up WYSIWYG. The battle turned out one-sided, as he had very limited AA capability, but there were many hilarious moments, quite typical of 40k. Like when the surviving 2 Guardsmen in a melee with a GK monster just refused to give up (double-1), or the volley in which snap shots hit twice as much as normal-BS shots. It's clear not that with AirCav, the tendency so far is either they win big, or lose most gloriously.

I've been working on my Tzeentch termies off and on for the past couple of weeks, and assembled the Heldrake too, so I was dead curious how my new Thousand Sons list would do. Enter Dann, with his Deldar, in an urban Scouring. I must say that I'm a little more than out of touch with my Thousand Sons (haven't played them in a year) and made several nube mistakes (like outflanking Rubric squads on foot and realizing they can't run, etc). The battle was actually going not too bad, when Ahriman promptly turned into a Spawn, and I decided that the rest of the Sons should just go home then, as they were way too far from any objectives.

Doc Selvam and his White Scars-Space Wolves coalition came on next, and we duked it out rather bloodily (he did include several Space Wolves) in the same urban setting. The early part of the battle was quite painful for Doc, as his initial wave of drop pod infanry and dreadnought were wiped out by concentrated fire and a spirited Terminator charge. Things started to look better as more loyalist reinforcements turned up, and as my armor refused to work (a touch too many 1's). The Heldrake was amazing, and saved me from being annihilated, even though he arrived late (-1 on my reserve rolls). In the end, both sides were left with very few models (Loyalist survivors: 2 flyers, 3 bikes; Thousand Sons survivors: Ahriman, Heldrake, Predator) and nobody held any objectives, but the Sons narrowly won 2-1. That was indeed epic.

Next time, I'm going to try a list without the Land Raider, and see how annoying outflanking Thousand Sons in Rhinos can be. Or I might just bring in the Brandenburgers, with a Baneblade or three.

On another note, last week was also the first time I had a proper wargame with my son, in a FOW small battle that saw his British infantry tabling my panzergrenadiers.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to the many projects I've set myself up for. Next update, I'll show some newly painted models.

Catachan AirCav in Action!

These are the first-ever pics of my completed AirCav army (v.1). Like my past themed army projects, it took me awhile to get it done. First conceived in late-2009, the very first Vakyrie (#02) was done by the end of that year. West Wind US Army helmet heads and ForgeWorld Vendetta upgrade kits arrived at about the same time. This was followed closely in early-2010 with the first 2 veteran infantry squads. But disaster struck with the first Vendetta (#03) - painstakingly painted inside and outside, I had a matt varnish spray mishap, turning the whole aircraft into a frosty mess. This brought the project to a grinding halt.

Like most wargamers, other distractions quickly filled the void, and the AirCav was left on the shelves, with repeated self-promises of getting back to it. A spate of 40k and FOW leagues and campaigns were a most excellent distraction. Not to mention a brief foray into pre-heresy Thousand Sons. Also, 6th ed came along, and trying out my armies in the new edition took some time, with more dice rolling than painting (it was a lot of work - infantry IG, tank IG, mechanized IG, Ranger Force Eldar, Guardian Eldar, mechanized Eldar, Ravenwing, Thousand Sons, Apoc, etc). On top of that, I took on a new job, which further limited hobby time.

In late-2011, there was a blip of hobby resurgence. Sucking it up, I went back to Vendetta #03 and started fixing the paint-job, which was as time-consuming as the original paint-job. With morale boosted, I proceeded to assemble Straken's squad. Then got promptly distracted by painting up most of the Thousand Sons rubric terminators I converted way back in pre-Legio days. And the AirCav project went to sleep again.

It was left alone throughout 2012, which was largely a FOW year for me, building up both early-war and late-war German armies for some excellent campaigns. 40k hobbying in general was extremely limited.

Then in early-2013, Legio's first 40k Throwdown painting challenge re-ignited the AirCav project. As I've already had 4 units painted up, I had to build a new list to include additional units. And that included the Basilisk and Ogryns (which are in the 2000-pt version of the list), among other things. But the Throwdown really helped get things going again, pushing me to finish another Vendetta, a couple of squads and the Basilisk.

There was a slight lull until the first week of the fasting month, during which I was home alone. That was simply an intense week of hobbying, finishing up almost all the flyers, and Straken's command squad. And on top of that, an Eldar jetbike squad, a warlock and a Crimson Hunter. That was pretty intense. By the next month, all the flyers were ready, and the AirCav were only 2 squads to go before completion. Which I vowed to get done by the end of the year.

Which I did! On or around 30th December 2013, the final basing was completed for the last 23 infantry models, as well as 4 flyer bases, thus completing one epic hobbying journey. And it's only the first leg of the journey - the list was built back in 5th ed, and there will be a new IG codex in a couple months' time, so I am fully expecting the army to evolve further.

Baptism of Fire
II Catachan Air Mobile Detachment saw heavy action last night, rushed into combat against a major Eldar incursion. The AirCav beat off a Dark Eldar/Eldar alliance, was narrowly beaten by another such alliance, and was soundly trounced by an unconventional Craftworld Eldar force. I must say the AirCav makes for some really amazing wargaming.

There were some pretty memorable moments. In the first game, Straken and his entire squad were wiped out when their Valkyrie crashed and burned, shot in the rear by a Guided Ravager. In the second game, 2nd squad made a desperate grav-chute drop in an attempt to claim an objective - with their Vendetta zooming at full speed! Also in that game, Straken's medic actually made 6 or 7 saves with his Imperial-issue flak jacket before running out of meds.In the last game, things were so desperate for Straken's troopers that he, his command squad and 1st squad made an incredibly crazy drop amidst a Wave Serpent, Dire Avengers and Wraithguard - and survived! (and wrecked the Wave Serpent too),

The army's definitely not for beginners and I'm glad to be able to start the learning process of how to handle it. What's for sure is that the Valk and Vend squadrons are resilient - unless you are Tau, it takes a lot to destroy a squadron. I also need to compensate for the fact that the army by nature gives up a lot of the traditional strengths of the Imperial Guard. The AirCav has no massed lasguns, is usually unable to make use of orders, no Leman Russ, etc.

But it's a lot of fun nonetheless, and it's certainly a rush! I am thinking of adding heavy weapons to the squads that have to start on table, and maybe even convert the starting units to regular platoons and leave the Basilisk on the shelf. Anyways, I'm happy to be plugging away with this list for awhile. Looking forward to more epic battles with this army in the coming months.

2013 - Not a Bad Hobby Year After All.

With very limited time available for the hobby, it seemed at first that 2013 was going to be the worst year in a long time as far as my personal wargames hobby is concerned. Funny enough, it turns out that this is yet more proof that fact and perception are often-times at complete odds with each other.

The fact is, I actually did more painting and hobbying in 2013 compared to 2012 and 2011. I did play less games, and attended less events, but the personal hobbying was not too shabby at all.

I guess the highlight would be the completion (finally!) of II Catachan Rgt's Air Mobile Detachment (a.k.a. AirCav), an army that actually started with much fervor with the first Valkyrie completed in 2009, but got completely derailed as I finished off several other projects in between. But largely thanks to the first Throwdown earlier in the year, the project was given a huge kick and restarted with gusto! And now, version 1 is done! I've got version 2 on the cards, but I'll wait for the new codex before doing more work on them (it might turn out I'd have to use the army as a counts-as Elysian list if some of the rumors are true - but we'll see).

 

So in 2013, I actually finished:
- 36 IG aircav infantry (almost all converted)
- 1 Col Straken
- 1 Uriah Jacobus preacher
- 1 Astropath
- 3 Vendetta
- 1 Valkyrie
- 1 Basilisk (happy with the simple conversion for this guy)
- 1 Crimson Hunter
- 6 Eldar Jet Bikes (in one (long) intense hobby session, I might add)

On top of that, I started (but obviously did not finish):
- 1 Eldar Warlock on jetbike (actually, this guy is almost done - maybe another hour or so)
- 1 Ilyic the super Pathfinder
- 1 Dark Reaper Exarch (converted from bits + OOP Eldar warrior)
- 1 Nephilim
- 1 Helbrute
- 1 Heldrake
- 6 Ravenwing Black Knights
- 5 Ravenwing Command Squad Black Knights
- 30 Deathwing Terminators (including command)
- 23 Dark Angels Space Marines (including command)
- 1 Officer of the Fleet

It's not too shabby, given the circumstances.

Now on to the lowlights. I guess the worst part of my hobby year was actually missing Legio's big move to its shiny new premises at Hobby Forge. That was a real bummer. The next one has to be the fact that this was the first year in a long time that I did not play in a tournament. And this was in a year with a bumper crop of tournaments! And I just realized that my proud 6th Brandenberg Imperial Guard never left the shelves all year! That is something that must be rectified this year!

Anyways, I'm not going to dwell in doldrums so early in the day. I am looking forward to 2014. The first project in mind is a quick revisit of Master Ahriman and the Thousand Sons. I'm looking to finish up my first ever Heldrake, the 1.5 models left to paint to complete the Favored Rubric Terminator squad, and the awesome Land Raider that's been WIP for 6 years (I think). After that, it's a bit more work with the Ravenwing - finish up the Black Knights and the Command Squad, and add 3 Land Speeders to the army.

We'll see how far that takes me. Here's hoping that I don't get TOO over-distracted (e.g. WW1 Brit-themed IG with steel helmets, fixed bayonets and tanks that look like Malcadors ... or a Thunderbolt (or two) ... or an expansion of the seedling of the Tzeentch daemons in my collection ... or a 28mm Napoleonic army ...)

Cheers to 2013! Cheers to 2014!
Happy New Year guys!
Keep them dice rolling ...