40k Battle and Updated Vampire's

Two posts in two days! What the hell is going on?

Game of 40k:

Well my regular gaming buddy Phil, sent me on a couple of pictures of our game of 40k the weekend before last. A classic Ork vs Guard match up, 1500pts each. I was playing a boy heavy Ork army (90 slugga's) supported by 3 deffkopta's, an eight strong Nob mob with a painboy and a Weirdboy, a Big Mek with a Shokk Attack Gun and a looted wagon with Boom Gun. I can't remember exactly what Phil ran, but there were definitely 3 sentinels, some snipers, a couple of platoons, a veteran squad in a chimera, three autocannon teams, three heavy bolter teams an a Leman Russ of some sort.

Phil's Deployment (with objective)

My Deployment, beginning my first turn (with objective)

We had a great game, despite the fact we were both fairly rusty with the rules having not played a game of 40k in a couple of months. I gave Phil a bit of a shock in the first couple of rounds with my Weirdboy warping the unit of Nobs up the board right into his lines. The painboy made the unit quite durable and they caused a lot of damage initially, but eventually weight of fire wore them down. By this stage two of my maxed units of boyz were almost on the Imperial Guard lines. But Phil stayed disciplined with his firing and eventually wiped out both boyz units. He eventually counter attacked in turn 5 with his veteran squad in the chimera for my objective. It would have been a drawn if the game finished on turn 6 but his chimera tank shocked the remaining boy unit to contest my objective in turn 7 and earned him a hard fought win.

I really enjoyed this game and about half way through thought I had a good chance to win it, but two mistakes really cost me. Firstly I just didn't have a enough anti-armour weapon's in my army. I had neglected to give any nobs power fists, and relied two heavily on the Shok Attack Gun and BoomGun to do the damage. While the Shok Attack Gun was decent (I managed to roll a str9 shot for 3 turns) and only rolled a double once, relying on the looted wagon with a BS of 2 to do a large amount of damage may not have been the best plan. Especially with the amount of terrain we had on the board. The second mistake was calling the Waaagh a turn too early, and not actually getting any of my ork units into CC. A rookie mistake made due to lack of game time with my boyz.

But a very enjoyable game over all and well done to Phil for staying the course and eking a win out of a hard fought game.

Vampire Counts:

So here is a quick update on the painting of my vampire counts. Firstly I did a quick basecoat and wash on the mounted vampires base. It was a basecoat of GW Khermi Brown followed by a heavy wash of Devlan Mud.

Inital work on the skelleton's

I have spent more time with the female vampire (stop snickering down the back!), focusing mainly on the reds. I have been experimenting with shading and highlighting with complementary colours.

Initial work on the red dress

Back

Currently the closest to finished part of the dress

So the recipe so far looks like this:

1. Undercoat Black

2. Basecoat Vallejo Gory Red

3. Shade 50:50 mix of Vallejo Gory Red and Dark Green

4. Darkest Shadows Vallejo Dark Green

5. First Highlight 50:50 mix of Vallejo Gory Red and Livery Green.

The use of complementary colours to shade and highlight is only something I have recently come across but I think it's a very interesting technique and something I would really like to get to grips with.

Until next time.

A third ever game of Warmachine

Hi all,

Phil and I got together last Saturday to have another game of Warmachine. This time we decided to push the limit out to 30pts. I can just about make 15pts with my newly purchased Mercenaries mini's, so I allied them with 15pts of Phil's Menoth. My list was this.............

Army Name: Menoth & Merc

Protectorate of Menoth
30+11 points, 13 models

High Exemplar Kreoss  +5 points
* Crusader  6 points
* Revenger  6 points
* Vanquisher  8 points

Magnus the Warlord  +6 points
* Freebooter  6 points
* Mariner  8 points

6 Croe's Cutthroats  7 points

Phil ran this list..........

Khador

30+11 points, 20 models
Koldun Kommander Aleksandra Zerkova  +6 points
* Behemoth  13 points
Kommander Sorscha  +5 points
* Juggernaut  7 points
6 Assault Kommandos  5 points
* 1 Assault Kommando Flame Thrower  1 point
4 Battle Mechaniks  2 points
Gun Carriage  9 points
Widowmakers  4 points

I took a couple photo's of the deployment but got so wrapped up in the game I forgot to take any during it. It got fairly tense a couple of times so I suppose it is only to be expected!

Overview of deployment

Sorscha with her Juggernaut and a Gun Carriage

Zerkova and her battlegroup 'Big B!' Along with a squad fo battle commando's

Oh my side of the table, Kreoss and his battlegroup; Revenger, Crusader and Vanquiser

eMagnus and his battlegroup; Mariner and Freebooter (the whole battlegroup mysteriously missing their arms!)

Croe's Cutthroats advanced deployed in the Graveyard.

And Phil's widowmakers did the same in the wood

Turn 1:

I got first turn and moved my whole army forward. I wanted to see could I get a shot off with the mariner against anything in the Khador army but unfortunately I had made the mistake of moving the Mariner before eMagnus so there was nobody in base contact to load the ship cannon. I'd imagine I would have been out of range of everything anyway. When Magnus did active he moved into base contact with the Mariner again and cast Bullet Dodger on himself and on the two jacks.

On the other side of my line everything also moved forward and Kreoss cast Defender's Ward on this battlegroup. With that my first turn ended.

Phil also moved everything forward, the Juggernaut moved into the tree's that were in front of him, the widowmakers took a few shots at Magnus' battlegroup but protected by Bullet Dodger they only succeeded in drawing the warjacks closer. The Gun Carriage on the opposite flank shot at the Protectorate Jacks but Defender's Ward negated a lot of any potential damage.

Turn 2:

Once again I moved everything forward, The Revenger running to try and get in contact with the Gun carriage. The Crusader got a shot off on the Carriage and took around 8 damage points off of the rolling fortress. Kreoss used his focus to upkeep Defender's Ward.

Magnus moved first this time then followed by the Mariner, who did get a shot off on 'Big B' knocking a point or two damage off of him.

Phil moved his Mechaniks  to repair 'Big B' which they did successfully. The giant warjack then shot at the Mariner who was protected from the worse of the damage by the Bullet Dodger spell. The Gun Carriage continued to pound the protectorate force but was finding it difficult to get past the Defender's Ward enchantment. The Assault Kommando's advanced in the shadow of the Behemoth.

Turn 3:

This is the turn that I attempted to go for broke! Firstly I moved Kreoss into the middle of the board and popped Menoth's Wrath, knocking down all enemy model's in his control range, which included the Juggernaut in the wood, all the Assault Kommando's and the Behemoth. Then I activated Magnus and used Kill Box before charging the knocked down Kommando's with him. The charge I really wanted to get off though was to get the Freebooter into close combat with the knocked down Behemoth and had loaded him up on focus for just that purpose. Unfortunately my distances were just out by about an inch, even with Magnus casting mobility! Of course I forgot about the Jury Rigged special rule until about 2 turns later which would have easily gotten me to where I wanted to be. So despite all my careful planning to get rid of the Behemoth early in the game I only succeeded in killing one Kommando. The Protectorate Jacks succeeded in taking another couple of damage boxes from the Gun Carriage but they were not able to get a charge in due to the craters it's huge guns left behind.

Phil's movement was seriously curtailed as Magnus was standing awkwardly right in the middle of the table. But the Gun Carriage was out of Magnus control range so it reversed backwards towards the Mechaniks who were crabbing toward the battle machine. Phil used his focus to stand up his behemoth and Juggernaut and sacrificed his movement for the Kommando's to stand back up. The Behemoth, the Widowmaker and Zerkova's shooting did little to no damage.

Turn 4:

I knew that now was the time I had to make popping both my feat's last turn pay off as Phil could move normally in his next turn. Magnus was dangerously close to the Behemoth, but I decided to ignore him and focus on the slightly softer target of Zerkova behind 'Big B'. I charged her and knocked her down with Magnus' Mechanical Arm. Then I proceeded to chop her apart using several of his Foecleaver X's Armour Piercing Attacks. (Yes, yes I do now know that this was cheating in two different ways! Using a special attack on the charge and using the special attack more than once in an activation. Both Phil and I completely forgot/didn't know about these limiters on special attacks, it was only our 3rd ever game of Warmachine remember! But we both commented on the time how super powerful Magnus seemed to be) With Zerkova taken out, her associated Behemoth powered down. On the same flank the Mariner charged into the Widowmakers and Croe's Cutthroat's shot at the Kommando's doing no damage.  On my other flank Kreoss charged at Kammando's and killed three. While the Revenger made a last desperate charge on the Gun Carriage to attempt to destroy it before the Mechaniks could get to work which didn't work. The too heavy Jacks continued to run toward the Carriage. I have to admit after this turn I was feeling confident. I had basically destroyed one flank of Phil's force and had the other side on the run.

But Phil played a blinder in his turn! He activated Sorscha, moved her past my Protectorate Jacks closer toward Kreoss and popped Icy Gaze making Kreoss stationary. He then cast Boundless Charge on the Juggernaut in the woods, who proceeded to charge Kreoss and chopped him into tiny pieces, thereby completely inactivating the Revenger, Crusader and the Vanquisher, with about three full damage boxes between them! The Mechaniks completely fixed the Gun Carriage and with that one turn Phil completely turned the game in his favour.

Turn 5 and 6:

I knew I was now in serious trouble but I  was determined to go down fighting, I charged the Juggernaut (who had charged and killed the Freebooter) with Magnus and completely destroyed him in one turn (using the wrong rules!) Phil used the Gun Carriage to blow away the last of Croe's Cutthroats and slow down the Mariner. Eventually the game came down to Sorsha blasting Magnus out of his boots with her Hand Cannon and so ended the game!

Wrap Up and Comments:

That game was one of the most singularly enjoyable war games I've ever played. Down mainly to the swings in fortune. I thought I had the game wrapped up by the end of turn four,  I had the majority of my force alive and kicking apart from one dead Cutthroat, while Phil had one dead Warcaster, an inactivated Behemoth and a seriously damaged Gun Carriage. But with clever use of his feat and magic and me leaving Kreoss wide open for a charge from the Juggernaut (which I honestly had nearly forgotten about hiding in the trees) Phil swung the game dramatically in his favour with one ballsy move. Completely taking out half my army in one swing of a giant axe. It was always going to be a struggle to come back from that blow but if Phil hadn't managed to kill Magnus with Sorscha, she was about to get a faceful of a very angry former Cygnar hero in the next turn. As we were using the incorrect rules it would have been quite probable that Magnus would have chopped her down where she stood.

So if you've made it through that wall of text, congratulations. If you've noticed anything we were doing wrong (apart from the obvious!) please let me know as we're still finding our way in the game and we'd love to her from more knowledgeable players.

Until next time............

Initial Skaven Thoughts

Drawn by Adrain Smith, coloured by MajesticChicken (DeviantArt)

Hi gang,

I got to play my two first games with Skaven yesterday and I wanted to give some inital thoughts on them. But firstly I want to say that I am in no way a regular WFB player and in fact these thoughts should be seen as being from someone who has just started playing the game. With that statement out of the way onto my thoughts about the army.

So both myself and my regular opponent Phil have been learning WFB with the same army, namely Vampire Counts. As you can imagine while having enjoyable games they have tended to be quite magic heavy with little to no shooting or psychology. The combats have also tended to be large grind fests with neither side breaking and each Vampire respawning any lost troops in the magic phase.

The get around this we decided to start another army each, so Phil decided on Wood Elves and from my previous posts you should know I have gone for Skaven. As I have said we played two games with these armies yesterday. The first was a 1000pts game and the second was a 750pts game.

The First Game:

I used all the mini's from the Island of Blood Box set along with a 15 man(rat) unit of Gutter Runners. I placed the Engineer (upgraded to a level 2 Wizard with Skitterleap and Warplightening) in the unit of Clanrat Spearmen with a Poisoned Wind Mortar, the chieftain was with the unit of handweapon Clanrats with a Warpfire Thrower and the Giant rats with a Master Moulder were on the right hand side of my flank. Phil had 2 ten man units of Glade Guard, 2 five man units of Scouts, an 8 man unit of Dyrads, 5 glade riders and a hero of some kind with a bow that shot four arrows a turn. He deployed the 2 units of scouts and the hero on my right flank. Everything else was deployed in front of me.

So how did it go for the ratmen? Awfully! I got completely destracted by the flanking force of the scouts and hero, and didn't know whether to stick or twist and in the end fell between both stools and ended up being pincushoned by the elves bow fire.

I used skitterleap in the first magic phase to move my engineer to behind the scouts units in the hope of killing them in my shooting phase only to realise I had forgotten to give my engineer a gun! (No doubt some rival engineer had switched the real gun with a wooden dummy!) He was quickly shot to death in Phil's turn, thereby giving up the clear magical advantage I had as Phil had no wizards in his army. From there on my force was really split in half with one unit of clanrats shot by the two units of Glade Guard and the Glade Riders and the reminder running away. The second unit of clanrats with spears and the Chieftain being beaten by 1 in close combat with the Dyrads and being run down and the Rat Ogres and Master Molder falling from the combined fire of the scouts and Wood Elf hero. The only high point was the Gutter runners coming on behind the Scouts and wiping out one unit with poisoned throwing stars and the other in close combat. But by the end of the fourth turn it was all over and a convincing victory for the Wood Elves.

What I learned: 

1. Skaven have really low leadership! Being used to playing Vampire Counts who never break in combat it was quite a shock to me how easily the Skaven broke. It was even more a shock how easily it is for the opposing player to run them down. If not in the turn which they broke but in the turn after. It really drove home to me the need for the extra ranks leadership boost the skaven have access to.
2. ALWAYS know what your characters are equipped with. While the plan to skitterleap the Engineer behind the scouts and hero was a bad idea in the first place as I was never going to be able to kill them all even if I had a gun, to not have a gun at all was idiotic! We did have a good laugh at my stupidity though.
3. Be focused. I really did get distracted by the flanking force and hesistated in my first turn. This allowed Phil to fire at me at will in his turn, as he didn't feel treatened by my units in any way. It was always an uphill struggle after the first turn.

The Second Game:

For this game we dropped the points down to 750pts. I removed the Chieftain from my list and coverted my Gutter Runners to Night Runners with slings. My Engineer Rolled Warp Lightening and Cracks Call (?) for his magic this game. Phil removed one unit of scouts, reduced the no of Dyrads and took away the command group from one of his Glade Guard. We left the table the same.

This time around I resolved not to get distracted by the flanking force (Phil used the exact same tactic) and instead marched both Clanrat units and the Rat Ogre Unit right up the middle of the board. The Night Runners scuttled up the side of the board. In the magic phase I got Warp Lightening off on the Dryads and rolled high for the number of hits and ended up killing 3. In Phil's turn he really had a hard time choosing what targets to shoot at but decided to shoot everything at the Rat Ogres. He succeeded in killing the Packmaster and one Rat Ogre. The final Ogre wandered into dangerous terrain 2 turns later due to stupidity and managed to kill himself. In my second turn I didn't move, but used Warp Lightening on one unit of Glade Guard who broke and ran off the table and hit the second unit with the Poisoned Wind Mortor, killing 8 of the ten, who also broke and ran off the table. The Night Runners on the flank targeted the Glade Riders with their slings and killed all five and finally the Warpfire Thrower killed 2 of the scouts on the right flank causing them to flee. From then on it was a mop up mission for the skaven, but not before my Engineer Clanrat unit passing a panic test on a roll of six when my leadership was a six. My other clanrat unit a turn later passed a leadership test on exactly the same score a turn later to stop them running of the table, only for their attached Warpfire Thrower to explode and wipe five of them off the face of the old world.

What I learned:

1. Skaven have really low leadership! The game could have been quite different if I had not luckily passed two different leadership tests on a six. It seems lots of ranks of rats is the only way forward.
2. Sometimes the dice gods are with you. See point 1 above. Also twice Phil rolled an inititive test to stop firstly his hero and then a dyrad falling into the crack from the Cracks Call spell, His inititive 7 models both rolled sixes.
3. When Skaven magic and shooting hit they are very powerful. The second game only emphasied how much I missed my Engineer in the magic phase in the first game. I never got a chance to use the weapon teams in the first game but in the second game they were deadly to both elves and skaven.
4. Stay focused. By giving Phil a lot of targets in the early stages of the game I forced him to make decisons. He wiped out my Ogres but that left the Engineer and the weapons teams to still cause a lot of damage. It was a lot better than dilly dallying in my deployment zone, which I did in the first game.

So two very enjoyable games with a lot learned about using skaven in WFB and I'm looking forward to using them again. I'm already planning on what to add to it and a Screaming Bell is really calling out to me! I also feel a Skaven Battalion with more clanrats/rat ogres and plague monks would be a good addition. Oh and an Assassin!

Until next time..............