Batreps: CVC Longest Night Visit!

So Friday night I noticed the Crow Valley Crusaders, a club based in Cwmbran and occasional visitors to our own Tredegar Reavers, were having one of their more famed events. The Longest Night. Plenty of dice rolling from 3pm on Saturday til 6pm Sunday. Oh yes! Myself and Alun went down with some 40k and managed to get a couple of good games in... and the pizza...

Heres some of the CVC lads playing Game of Thrones, Alun has this and it looks awesome, deffo need to play this soon! 

All hail pizza. What was that Byron? Order over £50 and its all half price? SWEET! 

Not sure what the best thing about the pizza was, that it lasted longer than Aluns Eldar, or that it was one tasty summa' bitch! 

Check these beauties out too, Alun wondered where the cape was from.... 

Then we were told they were ALL based on Calgar. So much money, but so much love! I love the look of these guys, just awesome conversion work! Even using one body they all look different, good lesson in posing there folks! 

Onto the first of two games... the first I played against Alun who was using Eldar. Wave Serpents, are dicks. With this in mind I wondered what the best way to shoot them down was. Then it hit me. Don't shoot em, Power Fist or Krak Grenade em! My list consisted of two full assault squads, two tactical squads, bikers with Khan, devs, TF cannon and a lascannon pred plus a dreadnought with multi melta in a drop pod. Of course, the Legion of the Damned appeared too... 

Both my assault squads jumped as far up as they could, and the scouting Rhino (its a vindicator, but I forgot rhinos so had to use him) dropping out its guys straight away, they were almost in the Eldar deployment zone in turn one. Most of my fire went on the dark reapers... not all, cause they died with some shooting left. I hate those guys, they're deadly! 

Alun retaliated but didn't do much damage due to night fighting, and I consolidated by assaulting a prism with one unit of assault marines, which they destroyed, the surviving forward tactical squad blew up a wave serpent, Khan split from the squad and also assaulted a serpent, his hammer of wrath alone blowing it up. I can see him wheelie-ing up and into the cockpit killing the driver then skidding back down as it explodes! the bikes fail to assault some fire dragons, and I lose a few to fire. The other assault squad gets stuck in combat for the next few turns with some Direavengers who prove difficult to shift. Dreadnought makes a 10" assault into another serpent and wrecks it, Farseer and warlocks exposed! 

The game ends in my fourth turn, and Aluns force is wiped out. I won 9-0 in the end, having gained first blood, kill the warlord and linebreaker along with the two objectives (Emperors Will). I don't think Alun expected a fast moving force and I caught the elfling offguard. Score!

The second game was a bit more important... on our last visit we got beat up on quite a bit, so we wanted to regain some club pride. 1500 points per player, doubles! So I had to team up against the person I'd just tabled... hmm! All of the enemies shooting pretty much got poured into my bikes. Khan and the attack bike survived, but thats it! Our shooting did little, couple of Chaos termies died and a few troops but not much. 

Mikes Fireraptor came on but luckily did little, and in reply my Adeptus Stormwing comes on, the Stormraven doing nothing but the one stormtalons assault cannons takes down the flyer. We both do some damage to each other, wave serpents take down more of the enemies troops, the thunderfire cannon slowing the enemy advance down and a couple of the contemptors are stunned, weakening them for later fire. 

Khan kills a plaguemarine champion before hit and running out and into combat with the Chaos Lord, and gets kill as he strikes the Chaos Lord down after I rolled a 6 and the player failed to save, instant death ya'll! He gets one VP, I get two due to Khans trait. Couple of eldar tanks succumb to enemy firepower, although they lose a few of their own along with a couple of the contemptors. My thunderhammer terminators assault the plaguemarines on the relic and are able to wipe them out, although it takes two turns to do so! Aluns Dire Avengers are able to take the objective and hold onto it. 

I believe the game finished 2-5 to us, we had the objective and 2 vps from the warlord kill, and the CVC guys had one for first blood and one for killing Khan. We had a hell of a laugh playing this, the Chaos players dice rolling for saves was incredible, and I had to shake his hand 12 times for rolling four 5's or 6's to save a unit being destroyed, impressive stuff! Hopefully we'll be able to visit the Crow Valley Crusaders more often, and vice versa.... we have some coming up tonight so I'm expecting more battling tonight! 

Also saturday we have International Tabletop Day coming up at the Reavers, cannot wait for this!

GW 40k Gaming

So this Friday just gone, myself and Alun travelled down to our most local GW store in Cwmbran, which is still half hour away! I had planned to play store manager Etienne, all round nice guy and we'd been bantering for a while about who was going to win. 

Firstly though I had to take a picture of this. One of the guys painting to my left, a gentleman by the name of Shaun Beckett, was working on a contemptor in Imperial Fists colours, and while chatting he'd mentioned he'd finished one already and took it out... and I was blown away! Not only my most wanted fit if I get a contemptor of dual Kheres pattern assault cannons but nicely painted too. I'll definately be keeping an eye out for more of his miniatures when I visit the store!

So onto the game. 1500 points and 4 objectives in a modified version of the scouring. I was facing Necrons, and I should have been more fearful of this than I was! I took an assault based army using the white scars tactics again.

Early going, I moved up to the right with my bikes but failed a fairly long assault attempt. My jump packs did charge the wraiths however and in two combat turns I'd killed them... relief! Then all of a sudden Etiennes necron troops teleported away from my bikes and threatened the four point objective... I didn't know they could do that! Anyway, bitter fighting took place, my captain tried to take on a necron lord, I did wound but mindshackle scarabs made him wound himself and eventually killing himself. For 15 points they're horrible, its hard to believe a Necron player not taking them. My assault marines were brought down by another warrior squad with Obyron and a cryptek and I just didn't have enough to budge them away. 

If the game ended on turn 5 however I would have sneaked a win just by contesting and positioning units, but I ended up losing 12-3 I think... ouch! Those necrons have so many special rules, the death ray on the necron flyer is insane too, and they're just hard to keep down. Especially with 2 special characters and some more in the warriors and immortals... very cheesy! 

I still enjoyed it though, and I've learnt a little more about necrons. After the game myself and Alun played a 1000 pt game of Relic. Alun, who'd just built up his harlequins took eldar, and I used Marines again.

This game ended 1-1, I went after the objective straight away and managed to get it back towards my deployment zone but the rhino carrying it was blown apart and the lone tactical squad member carrying it was shredded by dire avenger fire. I did get first blood however, when my bikes and captain blew up the fire prism. Aluns point from slay the warlord after I rolled three ones on 6 saves. Eugh! Just wasn't my day dice rolling wise but thats how it rolls sometimes... heh. 

Next up are using the new Sternguard box for a new chapter master and possibly some honour guard, when I can get a vanguard boxed set too. I've got some ideas with what to equip the new chapter master model, so keep an eye out for some WIP pictures in the next couple of weeks.

Apocalypse Progress

Welcome! Heres another look at my progress into painting my army ready for the big apocalypse game on the 8th of September. Its been a busy day, I've built 10 tactical marines, 4 command squad models and finished painting the tactical squad I was working on. Theres also a predator basecoated but I need to switch the sponsons around before I do anymore, and possibly repaint one or two parts as it isn't quite balanced for my liking. Getting there slowly though! 

Tomorrow will consist of hungrily feeding the new White Dwarf into my eyes, rushing down to GW Cwmbran and preordering the codex and also picking up a Venerable Dreadnought for my matey Bam. Then I'll hopefully be able to finish those guys above when I get back! Well, the standard bearer is another story... as I don't know what direction to go in. Do I try some sort of freehand piece or keep it simple? We shall see!

Sternguard and Terminators Update!

So its been a wee while since I've shown you much progress with my Evandalists, but this past week or so I've been busy on these beauties. I've always fancied Sternguard, the thought of the elite Marines from the 1st company still armed with power armour and (special ammo issued) boltguns made an evocative image and was something I needed. I scoured what I had, and trawled through Ebay. I had decided that as the Sergeant torso was reasonably distinctive with its high collar, ten of these were added to the shopping list. What else? Phobos pattern boltguns! I picked up 9 of these, and also a Ferrox pattern bolter for the sarge to make him stand out a bit more. Also added were parts from a command squad I bought at the Cwmbran GW and plenty of veteran shoulder pads!

 The colour scheme is much the same as my main army, although a few new things were done. With the Veteran pads I did them silver, and when painting the armour after everything was basecoated, I covered the entire model except the face with nuln oil. I wanted a bit of a dirty grimy look to them, and I'm pretty pleased with how they've turned out. So much so that I may revisit other squads and repeat this technique!

Heres two of the Sternguard, as you can see I went for a black skin tone with two of the guys and then a more white tone with the others. I think the black skin tones came out well, and I shall be doing some more! 

Heres the Sergeant with a Powerfist, armed to take out the trickier things these guys may come across that their ammo may not hurt. How I use these guys I don't know, either as a nice defensive unit using the Kraken bolts, or drop pod them down to take out power armoured enemies. I look forward to fielding them though!

Ah Terminators! I've bought 5 ranged Terminators before, but they were the Assault on Black Reach ones and posing them isn't much of an option. I got myself a box of these at Firestorm Games in Cardiff and looked forward to fixing them up.

I posed the Assault Cannon Termie to look like he's balancing against the recoil, and I think its worked ok. Its so nice to have chainfists at last!

Two of the regular Termies. You'll note that I've not done the Chapter badge on these or the Sternguard, this will come when I've practiced it a little more! 

I'm quite happy with how the Sarge's face has come out. I love using Khemri Brown as a base, washing it and then adding little amounts of white 2-3 times to build up the highlights. 

Lastly is my other regular armed Termie, and I've posed this guy twisting as if reacting to a new threat. Needless to say its my favourite one, seeing such a bulky guy in a more dynamic pose is why I wanted to build some of these guys for myself! 

So there we go, some progress to show how the Chapter are growing. I'm still planning on getting some pics of the entire army set up, so eyes peeled for when I pluck up the courage to try and organise this. Don't forget, I'm having a giveaway to celebrate 20k views on my blog, so click here for details! I've got a couple of well known people in the world of gaming entering, so fingers crossed we should have a great gallery. So whats stopping you gettng a self portrait of yourself and your favourite miniature?