Thursday 18 February 2016

18th February - 15th Feb Dropzone Commander vs The Wife

The Wife and I got a game in of Dropzone Commander in on Monday. I have to admit I got a little over-zealous with the size of the table I set up. Once we both catch up on our Dropzone painting a 6' x 4' will be great but for this game we played in the middle 4' x 4' (I'll also need a few more buildings for a larger game to fill the edges of the table). We just went for an objective capture mission with four objectives in the central buildings.

I won the initiative roll and choose to begin. The first turn saw us both advancing in relatively quickly with two of my Marauders (medium dropships) carrying my Hunters and Reavers rushing up my left flank to gain ground rather than disgorging their cargo. The Wife fell for my aggressive move and deployed all of her anti - air on that flank which left me clear to run my Reapers up the other side of the table and move into a position to harass her Tomahawks.


Another initiative win and I launch the first fire of the game raining gouts of plasma down on her Tomahawks who are (un)fortunately saved my their shielding systems and only one of the tanks is destroyed. The Wife begins to bring down her Birdeaters in response not quite getting in range but taking the opportunity to rain fire in to the nearby building my Warriors are searching but they managed to dodge the falling debris and the building was still relatively intact. I chose to mirror her attack but with my Slayers on the larger building she's currently got her Braves in. Her troops also avoid debris but my guns being more suited to demolition almost halve the buildings structural integrity. Seeing her Coyote sitting mostly exposed to a flank attack my Marauder lands and the Hunters scream around the corner managing to get past it's heavier shielding and do some serious damage to the Shaltari command vehicle.

Again I opened up the proceedings for the turn and began by demolishing The Wife's Coyote with my Hunters. Her Birdeaters finally made it across the table and took out one of the Reapers. The remaining ship opened fire at the Birdeaters but barely made it through the flickering Shaltari shields ever the bane of my existence. The Wife quickly utilised her gates sending the Kukri over to add more anti-air on the other flank while the Eden gate withdrew to a safe distance and the Tomahawks while arriving too late to save the downed Coyote proceeded to open fire but are unable to hit my rapidly moving skimmer tanks. My Slayers take a shot at the Kukri covering them in an incandescent stream of hot plasma but as the image cleared the Shaltari tanks remained completely unscathed again thanks to their overworking shielding.




The Wife managed to grab initiative finally in the fourth turn, beginning by firing another salvo off at the Hunters, this time obliterating two of my three tanks. The Kukri open fire at the remaining Reaper downing the aircraft before it has a chance to react. The Slayers again open fire at the Shaltari anti-air tanks this time managing to pierce the seemingly impenetrable shields taking one of them out. The remaining Hunter tries to avenge the smoking debris that was it's unit but it's fire is again deflected by shielding, so the Marauders are called in and finally another of the tanks is destroyed leaving but one of the nigh impossible to kill tanks to go. The Reavers also take advantage of a sudden opening in the Shaltari lines and skim to the rear opening fire on the large Gaia gate causing some not insignificant damage. Both of our infantry begin to pull out this turn as well in an attempt to secure our captured objectives.

The fifth and what would end up being final turn begins with my Commander in his Desolator firing a second round into the small building containing the remaining objective bringing the structure down in a impressive display of exploding glass and flying concrete shards, dashing The Wife's hopes of some sort of last minute resurrection of today's clash with the might of the Scourge. She lashes out one last time denying the Slayer's a chance to return to their Marauder taking the opportunity opened but the now collapsed building and clear line of fire to bring the transport ship crashing to the ground. My next move is to send my further Invader into the waiting maw of it's Marauder and fly it from the table with my second Invader close enough to leave on it's own power thanks to an early turn Underground Monorail getting my Warriors safely from building to building.

We both had a great time and are intending to get some more of our unpainted stuff finished off and on the table soon.

Monday 15 February 2016

15th February - Finished Relics Britanan Troopers and Company Sergeant Major

Finished off these guys last weekend but haven't had a chance to get a decent photo until yesterday. I've got the Highlanders still to go from the starter box and have quite a few bits and pieces heading my way soon. I'm not sure if the Highlanders will be on the painting table next though as I do want to finish off the Nomads and Pan-O forces I have for Infinity in time for The Eldest and The Wife to be able to use them for the upcoming Beasts of War campaign.

Troopers




Company Sergeant Major




I also got in a game of Kings of War on Sunday morning with The Youngest. I didn't get any photos this time, but after a hard fought game she managed to grab two out of the three loot counters and took out the game. She was quite happy with her win and wants to get on with putting her army together, after her USAriadna are finished.


The other part of day was setting up a Dropzone table for Valentine game with The Wife though we ended up just watching a few shows and got the game in this morning. I remembered to take notes this time so I'll have a AAR up in the next day or so.

Sunday 7 February 2016

7th February - Guildball vs The Brother and Kings of War vs The Wife

Got a game of Guildball in with The Brother last Tuesday and I'm happy to say he enjoyed it. I had borrowed Toby's Butchers for him and of course I fielded my Morticians. It had been a while since I'd got a game of it in so the first couple of turns were a little slow and there was a few minor mistakes made, but by the end of the game we had it all down. We finished up with a narrow win to The Brother in a goalless game. I did attempt one run at goal but he managed to intercept me and get the ball away. I sent him home with my collection of Butchers to do with as he will.

Early turn two

Graves spreads some bleeds













Cosset takes down Brisket with a little help
Meathook knocks Obulus from behind










Boar sees an opportunity and puts Obulus down
The big men face off










Graves gets revenge for Obulus
Ox strips the ball from Silence











I'm really looking forward to seeing what The Brother does with his team but I'll have to wait until he finishes off the final few minis for his Caledonian Ariadna force for Infinity.

I also got another game of Kings of War in, this time against The Wife and her Goblins. Once again my opponent perhaps hadn't finished (or even started her army) but I had a few old bits and pieces from an old orcs and goblins army of mine to help this time and giving how nice her Frostgrave wizard and apprentice are coming along I'm willing to let things go. The game took place over the course of the week as we could fit bits in between so again not the best battle rep but I'll take some notes next game like I'm supposed to ;).

Abyssal Dwarf Line
Goblin Line 

Dwarves start breaking Goblin lines

Goblins make a comeback

Final combat of the game breaks the Spitters
[Ignore the dust on the Goblins ;)]
I've got two days off coming up now so I'm hoping to get my Britanan CSM and Troopers finished off and maybe start playing around with a terrain piece or two. I've also got a Dropzone Commander game planned against Toby on Tuesday and The Youngest wants a Kings of War rematch as well so hopefully getting quite a bit of hobby in.

Tuesday 2 February 2016

2nd February - 31st Jan Kings of War vs The Youngest and Broken Purchasing Vows :)




The more I get done on my Abyssal Dwarves the more I've been feeling like getting an actual game in before the challenge against The Eldest Niece. The Youngest decided she was the one to step up and help me get the practice in. Now as of yet she hasn't managed to assemble her Undead force but sat down with me and built an army based off one of the Mantic boxed sets. This was going to give us a 635 point game [nice round number really ;)]. She's since built her list up to 1000 points but I think we'll need to do some research into the magic items to bolster a few units here and there.





We rolled up the straight forward "Kill!" scenario and set to deploying. Neither of us took any ranged troops so it was going to be a fairly straight forward clash of lines. Her Necromancer was unfortunately not having his best day with his Surge spell failing to really bring anyone forward more than inch or two each turn.







My gargoyles proved to be rather deadly but a change facing move followed with her only effective Surge of the game saw her mummies hit them and crush them in a single turn. They then proceeded to collapse most of my flank until finally running out of steam on the third troop I had in their path.

The centre I had more firmly under control with my Blacksoul and Lesser Obsidan Golem regiments crushing everything she threw at them. Although I did stall on the Zombies for a couple of turns.




I have to say I was really impressed with how easy the rules were to pick up and also how smoothly the game plays. I'm thinking this will be my Mass Battle Fantasy choice for the foreseeable future and I'll be looking at setting up some form of campaign to add a bit of continuing story line to the game. [I may insist on seeing some models at least partially completed first though :)].






As to broken vows, I had told The Wife that we'd (I'd) slow down on mini purchases for at least the first six months of the year. I even managed to spend the entire weekend at Cancon refusing to buy any models for myself (several for The Wife and The Daughters though, plus a few rule books and terrain for me) I finally caved when upon getting home Tor Gaming decided to have a 25% sale on the Relics store. Some Dragoons, Heavy Dragoons, a Hunting Pack, Grenadiers and an Arcanum Guard later and I can safely say I broke that vow. Luckily for me she bought slightly more pound worth of Nuem and had a good laugh at my expense :). Seeing as I had made my purchase and finished off my Angkor Heavy Mortars (and wanted a break from Dwarves for the moment) (photo to come I haven't quite managed to get a decent one of them yet) I've begun work on my Company Sargent Major and a unit of Troopers.

I also had The Brother drop round today and we got in a game of Guildball. I've been trying to organise a game with him for the last couple of months to give him a look at it but we always ended up playing something else so it was good to finally get it on the table. We had a few hiccups as I forgot a few bits and had to do a bit of flicking through the book (it'd been a while between games) but after a few turns I had it down again and it went smoothly. He walked away with a narrow win (got me with kills) and I gifted him my Butchers to call his own so I'm looking forward to see what he does with them. I'll get a report up in the next couple of days hopefully but I'm covering one of the guys anniversary weekend this week so it'll depend on how I go for time.