woensdag 29 november 2017

What I Painted in november 2017

Hello all, and welcome to the monthly overview of all the figures I completed for my armies.

While my figure collection grew rather spectacularly during november, with Crisis, Kickstarter arrivals and some freebies and duo-deals, I went in a strong painting regime and played less Final Fantasy as well...

Got to keep that lead mountain in check after all.

Historical

The "must do" thing this month was completing "romanizing" my forces for Dux Britaniarrum, with the final two units of Late Romans finished as such.  I also did some loose ends, like a celtic cross I picked up at Crisis, and a wandering bard as an additional token figure for the tabletop.



Fantasy

Even though Age of Sigmar is rapidly loosing my attention, more on that in a post I have been waiting to make, but will really do later this week, I did paint up some models for it.  The first is a set of 5 knights to serve as my Reiksguard, and the unit will be expanded with the command group et all.

I also did some Chaos, in the form of Warriors and an Avatars of War model to serve as a Herald.  She can do duo work in Warhammer 40k as well, as the Chaos Daemons lists are perfect crossover forces, and the plan in the end is to have 4k of Slaaneshi daemons afterall, which can then be used in both game systems...


Which brings us nicely to...

Warhammer 40k

The big bulk of painting for the past month, and it seems that december will be "pink ambition" painting time full stop.  More on that when you see this weeks Painting Desk video on friday, but it`ll feature a LOT of Slaaneshi forces.

But something different first, as I painted a test model for an Alpha Legion colourscheme.  While I liked the result, in the end I decided not to field additional legions and go for the huge pink and purple force, to prevent having to buy and field much of the same, while perhaps ending up with a sad panda feel when I painted something in a wrong scheme and needed it for another force.

For my beloved III Legion though, I painted up a unit of Terminators, a unit of Cultists led by a champion by Freebooter Miniatures, Raptors who once where Black Templar assault marines, a Havoc squad in pre-heresy colours and the creme de la creme this month, a very impressive daemon princess model made by Creature Caster from Canada.






Future War Commander

The smallest thingies are for the last, as I round out the painting month overview with some tiny space marines.  I finished 7 bases of 6mm epic warriors to boost the infantry department of the army.

A pretty good painting month, which added 91 models to my painted up tally... lovely!

Well, that`s it for this month, see you near the end of the year for the final tally of 2017!


maandag 27 november 2017

The Conjurer's Crew

Empowered by Slaanesh, the former dancer known as the Conjurer (see my post a few days ago) went about assembling a crew for her newly found cult and bid to power.

Now, as an exotic dancer, this wasn`t that hard to do at all.

She just went into the club, and used her enforced allurement by Slaanesh to seduce all the men there into her service, soon ending up with a bunch of small arms wielding, frothing maniacs.  Bascally her normal clientele doing like they always do...

This small Cultist unit is painted to match the Freebooter figure I did earlier this week, and will serve mainly as a sort of firepower distracting unit.  As I equipped her rulewise with a shotgun, the unit is bound to advance to the enemy and hopefully survive a round of small arms fire before locking something in combat around some objective. 

To that end, I went for all pistol and brutal assault weapon for the gang combined with a flamer to advance along the shotgun, as that would grant a completely intact unit a decent 19 attacks, not to shabby for a small group.

The unit with their champion:

I just might see that they don`t start their rush in the open to fanatically, to avoid granting that first blood victory point in most scenarios...

zondag 26 november 2017

A very sticky sunday

Today I sat down and decided to spend all the day glueing together Slaaneshi models for my Emperor's Children force.

They started to litter around everywhere, and that way I could get a bit of an oversight on all that was in lots the past few weeks, and to see what needs to be added come 2018 and the preparations for the big 40k battle at TSA at the end of may.

Now, this resulted in my hobby room becoming a bit of a battlefield, as bits boxes, sprues, boxes and all sorts of other containers lingered around, until I about totally filled my painting desk with figures.


The first thing I stuck together was a Helbrute, with a fist and melta.  I did some small converting on him to allow for a combi-bolter to be placed on his chest area.

The second model I assembled is something I didn`t have yet in my force, being a basic Chaos Lord in power armour.

Next up, a full unit of 10 Chosen, who use the special character I already have as an Exalted Champion in my force as the unit champion.  I did some weapon swaps to include a meltagun, as well as enough bolters and chainswords to make them totally Wysiwyg for the tabletop.

The lot I got past friday contained Cultists, so I assembled them and added a 20th model, as the normal one is the special champion from the Dark Vengeance set.

Next up from the Chaos Terminator character set, I made up a Sorcerer and added a (of course naked) little Sprite in case I give him a Familiar.  Or just a pretty gift by Slaanesh...

The box of regular Jump Marines I got a few weeks ago are drafted to reinforce my "Black Templar Raptors", as I saw past friday versus the Guard that in order to be a real deepstriking threat, the Raptors need to be with more then 5, if only to get through overwatch decently.

A group of Seekers of Slaanesh has been assembled as well.  I got four more, but as they come in fives I`m looking around for something suitably sexy on the net to round the unit out to 10 models, and start with the 5 woman unit first for now.

Talking demons, I also assembled the second of my units of daemonettes, so I can summon more of them or even field a Slaanesh detachment one of these weeks to go along the Marines.

The final model I glued together is one of the Raging Heroes characters, a very sexy (if gruesome) lady to become a Herald in said demonic force.

So all in all, I put together 65 models today, and together with all the cultists on the desk (as shown in the video yesterday) that would almost double my force in points, definitly in numbers of models.  So I guess for the big battle, I`m going to focus on rounding out the havocs at first, and then start adding some armoured forces to the Legion.

Guess next sunday it won`t be sticky sunday, but undercoating sunday hehehe...

Triage X

A 10 episode (and one very heavy fanservice OVA) series of the more action orientated genre, Traige X is an assassination series.

Based on a 12 volume manga, it has aslo been released in an english version.

Behind the exterior of Mochizuki General Hospital resides the vigilante organization known as "Black Label." The team, made up of select hospital staff and local teenagers from nearby Mochizuki High School, task themselves with killing undesirable people, dubbed "cancers" of society, and to stop their spread of infection into society. 
This brings them on the hunt of a secret organisation of "created" people, Arashi and his team are out to eliminate them, and this leads to some very violent scenes like the cold-blooded execution of a pop idol lead singer for example.

It`s not a bad series at all, and for all the lovers of drawn boobs (admit it, which otaku doesn`t... the merchandise number can`t hide it) there are quit a lot of bathing scenes with all the female members of the team...

Was it any good though if you take the fanservice away?  Well, actually yes.  it has a nice character relation arc going on, it`s well drawn and it is a brutal series in a genre that isn`t riding high at the moment.

Recommended for a nice afternoon of binging like I did today...

The Haul Report 109: Dice, gnomes and cultists

Hello everyone to another week of stuff added to my collection.

A bit of a varied episode, as I got troops for both "main" GW systems this time round.

But first, I would love to thank my Noshi.  She went to shop for my christmas gifts, and as I knew she would go GW (she had asked a pure GW list) I asked if she would ask for the stamps for Path of Conquest for the dice.  Later, she send me this picture:


The action is apparently ending (so I need to pass by and trade in my card), and the store manager gave her the set of dice instead in one go... woop woop woop.

My Old School Miniatures Company Kickstarter arrived earlier this week as well, being the Alpine Gnome force.  All kinds of tiny Garden Gnomes in tiroler pants, who will make a lovely The Moot contignent for my Empire army.

The final purchase this week was the Chaos part from my buddy Vincent, who had them still lying around from the Dark Vengeance box.  More cultists!!!  As well as a second Helbrute and a bunch of Chosen, this will be another serious boost for my forces to get those 4000 points on the table in may.

A good week, but now we are going to (try and) cut back as holiday period is coming slowly but steadily...

zaterdag 25 november 2017

On the Painting Desk 22

Also known as "the one where I stocked away things to make space for a lot of cultists"...

A bit of reorganising, as I got my greedy little paws on a lot of Slaanesh models the past week, and they will go first to work towards the 4k points needed for the big battle in may.  



Guess when these are all done, I`ll be halfway there... but that resulted in me storing away for now the Reiksguard and Dark Elves Cauldron, together with the Chaos Warriors.  On the topic of AoS, I`ll be doing a seperate blogpost on that probably this weekend, and how it relates to my gaming group and club at current.

But for now, I got a lot of cultists to paint... and a trainload more to assemble as well as I got some more of them, but that is for tomorrows haul report...

Emperor's Children vs Astra Militarium: 1500 points Battlereport

Aaaah, the Guard, how I loathe them.

To play against that is, I always loved the looks of the massed tanks and rank upon rank of Guardsmen mind you.

But tonight I had to face them, and to be honest I was pretty scared at the prospect.  The list i build for my tastes had not enough models.  I needed to focus on quick combat initiation, so I took Terminators and a Lord, a Raptor squad with melta and a winged daemon princess with Warptime for that.

For a solid firebase, I had two full squads of Marines, a small cultist unit to claim some forlorn objective, a Quad Bolter Rapier, and two havoc squads.  One had a lascannon and three plasmaguns, the other 2 heavy bolters and 2 autocannons.  Supporting this base was a Sorcerer whose most important job was keeping Prescience up

And then my opponent arrived and he kept unpacking... and unpacking... and unpacking.  Spread over three detachments, he had Cadians, Valhallans and "non defined".  A couple of lords, two psykers and an additional astropath, two assassins, a squad ratlings, a big blob of conscripts, heavy weapon teams of lascannons and heavy bolters, drop troopers, three guardsmen regiments, a flamer tank, a missile tank, the gatling russ and a standard russ... oh boy.

My plan was to engage and keep the tanks occupied in combat, forcing them to disengage so they couldn`t shoot.  And hope for the best... which happened with the scenario as Cloak and Dagger included the -1 to hit penalty for shooting over 18 inch.  Something my marines can better cope with then the guard.

Deployment was done, and I felt like a tiny pink dot across a wall of lasguns...


I had turn one, and my daemon princess made perhaps the most important roll of the game.  She managed her warp time, and was in one move within a few inch of the Russ on his flank.  The Terminators and lord materialised on the other flank to take on the gatling tank, and took out the heavy bolter squad to net the point for first blood in the process.  They charged the gatling tank and it escaped with a single wound after some furious battling.  But on the other flank, the daemon princess massacred the Russ and paid back her points already.



This caused Marc, my opponent, to make a capital mistake he admitted on later in game.  By spreading out, he was now forced to split his army in two to deal with the two slaughtering characters on his flanks, leaving my firebase in the middle able to support where needed.

His drop troops arrived, and it took all the firepower on the flank to take down the Terminators, but the lord survived so he could go on for another turn.  The same happened on the other side, with the daemon princess only receiving a single wound...

Turn two saw the Lord shoot down the gatling tank with his combi melta though, while the daemon princess and raptors engaged the Guardsmen, thirsting for the blood of their general.



It took all the firepower of the Guard in the second turn to finally bring down my Lord but that was after he mauled the assassin behind him, and then again mostly due to Smite.  The daemon princess however survived against all odds, including desperate charges by the Guard, and his Ogryn bodyguard went down while his lord was wounded.


By this point, I had all three my objectives on my side, and Will of Chaos, which I had drawn at the start of this second turn, would every time come up with one of them, feeding me easy victory points.  At  7 - 3 and his army in big trouble and tanks taken out, the game was already netted by this point to be honest.

In my third turn, his general was ripped to pieces by Bar'Ba'Ra the Seductress, and while the rest of the force dwindled down his units in both close combat (the Raptors versus the Conscripts) and shooting (the annihilation of his snipers), he needed to bring in all his psykers to shoot down the final wound from the princess at last.



Turn four, which would be the final one, saw my few forces that where on the move push forward, and my Marine squad with twin flamers was annihilated as they failed every save against the Hellhound`s firy death... yes, that`s 7 on 7 fails for a 4+... that hurt, as was the final raptor smited down.  But it was to little to late, as the result ticked out on a 11 vs 6 victory for the forces of Slaanesh.


I admit, I was helped by the scenario, but the gamble I took to charge in on both flanks turned out excellently.  His psyker force was a thorn in my side, costing me the daemon princess, but she was without a doubt the star of the battle, slaughtering about everything that came near her.  And shrugging of volley after volley...

A good game, but this doesn`t solve my `fear for Guard` in any way...